I don’t know what is wrong with our blog community. We seem to have a insatiable desire to read the posts about sex.. The last one I did became my highest visited post in just a day!!.. Seriously, this is not about sex..it is about a band that was in Sri Lanka sometime back.
Can you remember Sylph..? They did one awesome track called “About a Girl, About a guy”. I found that they’ve done a video on it. Check it out… The music is really really good…believe me..
Most of the people who have meddled with the internet, has been associated with internet porn at least once in their life. it is amazing as to how BIG this industry is…just check out this video…I’ll leave you to decide whether pornis good or bad…I’ll do a detailed article on that later on..
For the past several years, the US bee farmers faced a major crises in the form of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) . The bee colonies started to collapse quite suddenly. If would’ve watched Seinfield’s Bee Movie, a person can understand the structure of a bee colony. (Discount the ridiculous parts-bees carrying planes, died trees given a boost of life by a spray of pollen….) The colony’s mere existence is based on its structure. If it is tampered with, the colony collapses.
The exact causes of CCD are unknown. However, as one news feature on ScienceDaily states, mites, viruses or pesticide contamination might be the cause.
The damage on the Bee industry is tremendous. Around 36% of Bee colonies have collapsed. However, I am not much worried of loosing some honey. It is the crops that people are worried of. For the Information of the ignorant, without bees,butterflies and other pollinators no flower will turn to fruit. It is essential. It just occurred to me how many less number of bees and butterflies I see in my own country. It was ages since I last saw a butterfly in my garden.
I was just wondering whether any amount of research has done on bees and butterflies in Sri Lanka in respect to their affect on our crop industry. Basic research showed me that we know nothing of it. Doesn’t the decline of the insect population in Sri Lanka has anything to do with our Food crisis?. Are we getting lesser yields due to this factor?. ..Hmm…It seems quite significant..I know…but it really matters… in America, the collapse of the Bee colonies would affect around 90% of the apple harvest . Isn’t that a lot?…Hmm..I let you decide..
The people who know me the most would find it quite interesting that I talk so ill about the whole Global Warming drama. So I need to do some explaining on the very first reasons for my change.
Hmm.. yes there was a time when I was very concerned about the amount of Carbon I should emit on my day-to-day activities. Then why the sudden change?.. You’ll never believe this, in around November of last year only I actually watched the much acclaimed ‘The Inconvenient Truth’..
So what did I see?..
I always feel bit suspicious of people who claim that they are doing all the good in the world. For by experience I know humility is a virtue of a great man., a virtue this movie lacked. So I watched this movie..minus any emotions…I just watched to understand the issue in strict scientific sense..
One slide show was highly questionable. It was the slide show where AL Gore was analyzing the ice core records. He drew a graph of CO2 quantity in the atmosphere vs time and a Temperature vs Time graph on the same grid. Interestingly there was a correlation…Ahh and he concluded that whenever CO2 increased in the atmosphere, the Temperature increased too.. Seems quite convincing..if you didn’t have all the facts.
Two things came to my mind.. One; how did the CO2 percentage go up and down in the past?..what drove that increase or the decrease which caused the ice ages and the warm periods of the past? Second was a bit tricky..How can the Globe be ever warm if CO2 drove the temperatures?…Hmm fishy question..
It is like this. Any person with the basic knowledge I had in Chemistry knows that CO2 dissolves in water. A little extra knowledge (which i fortunately had when I watched the movie) would tell you that, when the temperature increases, the solubility decreases. The ocean carries a tremendous amount of CO2 dissolved in its waters. Armed with this bit of knowledge, my problem was, whenever the earth warmed, more CO2 would be released and more CO2 would mean more Greenhouse effect and higher temperature. Then once more the High temperature will increase the CO2 percentage….the cycle will go on and on…until…????….yes until when?
If actually CO2 is such a major contributor of Global warming, then the earth will be really really hot that it won’t support any life to actually absorb any of the CO2…
So I was wondering what is the truth…?.. Actually there IS a correlation between the Temperature and the CO2…but actually the high temperature only caused the high CO2 percentage…so we’ve grabbed the tail rather than the head…oops!!..
Then I questioned..what drives the Temperature?..A rational investigation proved that there are more than ONE factor…but mainly it is the sun..then cosmic rays..The amount of sun’s rays hitting the sun due to patterns in the orbit of the earth, the tilt of the earth, the changes in the wabble… and also Greenhouse effect ( mainly caused by water vapour)
So after some digging up I realized that, chasing after carbon is just a one crazy ride…and I decided to stay behind…There are other things where we can put that effort on and bring serious change…
But i’ll bet that if within several years the global temperature should fall down suddenly due to a new twist in solar activity..there will be many who’ll be willing to take the credit…
It is quite surprising that there are a quite a number of individuals who do not even know the existence of Mozilla Firefox. In my opinion, it is the best browser around. The main reason would be it’s plethora of add-ons available. However, if you add too many of them, you are going to have a very slow browsing experience.
I thought of telling you the add-ons I like;
First of all the themes; they are outright smashing…I like the darker themes like, BlackJapanMax and the DarkBlood, Darkwaters in BlackJapan series, NASA night launch, Pitch Dark….one can go on..if you are a not-so-dark fan, then you will have a big list of themes too.
Themes are just the looks and the easy access of the buttons…but the only other add-ons that add value to Firefox.
The coolest add-on is the Cooliris Previews. When you have installed this extension, when you move the mouse over any link, an icon appears which you can click to see a preview of the link. it is kinda like a window within a window. It is very helpful when you need to try out different links in the same window.
If you love nice photos, pictures…etc. PicLens will help you out. It works with Google, Facebook, Flickr and some more sites. For example, you are in an album page on Facebook, the thumbnails will have a tiny arrow once you move over the mouse. once you click it, PicLens will open a slideshow for you. you can checkout all those photos without going next.., next.., and next… until you come to the end of the album. the whole album will be just spread on the screen. you just have to click it to zoom. You can do the same with google images searches. only prob is that you don’t get right-click menus so you can download those pics to the comp
If you are a download-holic, then you have DownThemAll. it is acts as a built-in download manager. It makes photo, picture download a breeze. it is some what like download accelerator (DAP), but it doesn’t have a memory. so you cannot pause the downloads and close the browser and resume later. once u close the browser, the download links go off as well.
I know some people are addicted to wikipedia, they get all the info from it. But I always Google it to get the other stories as well. so why not Googlepedia ?. Yes this add-on gives you a new experience in Google searches. It didvides the search page to have the other half for the relevant Wikipedia page. You can either expand or shrink it. It is a quite a tool, which i kinda cannot do without.
Hmm..Sometimes you have started the work, and need to finish it later. and you might need all the tabs open. so rather than keeping the computer on or putting it into hibernate mode, you can use Session Manager.. it saves the older session, so once you restart firefox, you can use the session manager to use that session with all those tabs you’ll need… awesome!!
Then there is YouPlayer.. if you have problems in downloading youtube clips, use Youplayer it is kinda like a media player within a browser, and you can download them to your computer as well. believe me…it is quite interesting ( to download youtube clips, you can use the Realplayer extension as well. but you need realplayer for that)
I found this new one called TABOO. Have you ever come up with a site which you wan’t to read later but don’t want to bookmark?..Taboo will save the tab to be read later. the tabs are shown as thumbnails and you can delete them once you’ve read it. It is quite an awesome tool.
Another new one I just tried out was AdBlock Plus. It blocks the ads on sites. it gets rid of all those annoying signs that say…”you are a millionaire!!..click to claim the prize..”..(why do they give us false hope on a daily basis???..i hate them!!) it has its own filter, but we can also right click the ad and tell it not to load. But it seems that it slows down the browser for a moment…need to check it out a further to make sure.
I guess that’s enough for now…..BytheWay..can anyone please tell me whether it is possible to use yahoo or msn mail with Thunderbird?..I know you can but the setting up process it a bit tricky. if any one had tried it out before please let me know…thanks
Of course everybody knows that Coke and Mentos can nearly kill a person. If you didn’t know that, watch this video:
However, it is a surprisingly very few people actually know that ‘Coca’ in Coca-Cola represents Cocaine. A glass of Coca-Cola in early 1900s contained approximately 60 mg of cocaine! Even now, though the drug Cocaine is not present, the Coca-cola company imports 8 tons of Coca leaves (Coca is used to extract Cocaine) from South America each year. As they claim, it is used only as a flavour. You can find more info on famous Cocaine Wines (Mariani Wine) and Coca-Cola at www.cocaine.org or at Youtube: .
Not surprisingly, there IS a drink made of Coca leaves. It is called Coca-Sek and is meant to challenge Coca-cola. Actually people claim that it tastes better than Coke and that it is a fusion between Lemonade and Ginger Beer….mmm two of my favourite beverages. Sadly it is sold only in Colombia.
Actually it isn’t only Coca and Cola you get in Coca-cola. Several years back the Indian Coke company had a shock when people claimed that Coke contained trace amounts of pesticides!! However, the company’s factories were continually accused of using up groundwater. This must even be a way of telling them that they aren’t welcome in India. Actually the water problem was quite severe where people had to walk miles to get water as the factories soaked up all the water:
But there are good stories too. In India, they use Coke as a pesticide!!!…not that it contained tremendous amount of pesticide, but actually the Coke solution attracts red ants which kills the larvae: quite smart! It is cheaper so i guess we should introduce it to our farmers considering the astronomical Rice prices.
And do you know that Coca-Cola, and not Pepsi Cola is kind of a religion in the Latin American countries. It is more than just a drink, once I read in the Times that it is used as a bribe in Mexico. So when you need to get to approve a house plan just give the clerk a crate of Coke!!!
Before anyone thinks that I work for some other beverage Company, i should shut up. Personally I never extremely liked coke or pepsi. However, It is your choice to guzzle up some powder diluted in carbonated water or settle for some other beverage, juice or just plain water…..
It is a little more than a month since my last post. So where have I been?.. I was using a computer almost every day since then but.. but..I’ll tell the truth; I was never in a mood to write something. I left school. After all the happy days and the Big Match, you are pushed into a space which just cannot be filled in. It is the period when you are trying to get your act together. The Blog was the last thing in my mind…. I almost forgot that it existed. However, I’m glad to notice the decent amount of traffic even when I haven’t updated it at all. So it seems that I should give this a try once more….So we’ll see….
These days I am busy after a long stretch of joblessness. I always hated joblessness but after the A/Levels I decided to try out joblessness. It is kind of addictive. however, the work of these days were a welcome change to my life. Yet I am having trouble getting back to a ‘busy’ life.
Even though I have nothing to write, the Big Match seems to be a great topic. Now a days people will ask which one?..For Your Information, there is only one Big Match; it is the Royal Thomian. If I should provide information to the ignorant mind, the RoyTho is the world’s longest uninterrupted sports encounter in progress!! It is whooping 129 years old! all other so called big matches are just sorry attempts to imitate this great encounter.
The papare got its recognition here, the trucking started here. It is sad that trucking has been considered taboo by many as all Toms, Dicks and Harrys started perpetrating a tradition of the RoyTho. when it comes to new ideas, Sri Lankans are painfully bad. Just as the Sirasa TV copied American Idol, just as all ‘vidyalayas’ became ‘Colleges’ (i have some respect reserved for vishaka vidyalaya for bravely protecting her identity) All other schools have copied the great Big match and its traditions.
If you ask a Christian Thomian family, they will say” There is Xmas, and there is the Big Match” Such is the placement given to this encounter. So what is it about a cricket match? I guess it is not just about cricket. It is just an excuse for old boys of the best and the third best school in Sri Lanka (second best is Trinity) to congregate in numbers. It is an excuse to relive the wonderful days of the yesteryears, when they were younger and had less fat around the waistlines. It is an excuse for a holiday. it is an excuse sold to their wives to get drunk and flirt around.
The great thing about ‘Thora’ is that they work hard and play hard. The match fulfills the latter. Tickets sell off within days of release. It is amazing that the ‘Battle of the Blues’ haven’t stopped for any reason; world wars, JVP riots, or the LTTE. The match is part and parcel of many Gentlemen of both institutions.
However, even though I showed some respect to the ‘other’ team…I frankly anticipate a ‘Thora victory’ 
The Big Match is on the 13th, 14th & 15th of March at the SSC grounds… If I am not mistaken, the LTTE will not bomb it..Because it is the RoyTho!!!!…How can they do such a thing?.. It will be almost sacrilege.
I consider myself privileged to have associated with people from many walks of life relative to my very short life. The concept of culture always troubled me. What is it? why does the elders blame the teens for ‘ruining’ it? The conservative Sri Lankan will talk about the Sigiriya with a lot of pride in their hearts and blame the short skirts and the skimpy outfits of the young individuals of the fairer sex. They talk with contempt of the people who have pre marital sex. However, what they don’t understand is that, since the times of the Sigiriya Frescoes to several hundred years back into our history, the Sri lankan women walked around with no (or very little) garment on the upper body . And the Sigiriya was the king’s brothel.
Now I don’t promote women to go naked, but my point is that a culture is something that changes constantly. We cannot expect it to be the same for a long time. However, every attempt ought to be made to be on the safer side on matters. Nevertheless, disparaging pop or rock music won’t give the society any good. It just increases the generation gap even further.
So it is an appeal to the over conservative adults, please understand that culture is something that should change and we are changing it so please don’t disparage us.
“Thirty-five thousand men have come to this once-deserted stretch on the Arabian Sea to labor for the shipbreakers. They live in hovels built of scrap, with no showers, toilets or latrines. They have come from poor villages on the other side of India, lured by wages that start at $1.50 a day, to work at dangerous jobs, protected only by their scarves and sandals.
They suffer broken ankles, severed fingers, smashed skulls, malarial fevers, chol-era, dysentery and tuberculosis. Some are burned and some are drowned. Nobody keeps track of how many die here from accidents and disease. Some say a worker dies every day.”
This an excerpt from an Pulitzer Prize winning Investigative Report on the shipyards of Alang, India. Never heard of? People came to know of the Alang shipyard through this report in 1998 and through a certain Indian Supreme Court decision in 2006.
To give a brief introduction to the Alang shipyard (if you are too lazy to read the whole article), it is a port in India that recycles 50% of the world’s ships. Around 99% of the weight is recycled. The ships come onto the beach at high tide and at low tide the ships are stranded. Thousands of workers (35000 to 40000) work on these ships everyday under minimum safety conditions. The low paid migrated workers scraps around 300 ships a year. This ship breaking accounts to around 7% of the steel production in India and it brings in around 3 billion Indian Rupees a year.
As it is evident, ship breaking is a very profitable business, but the labour that is used in Alang is wrapped in guilt. The workers do not use any safety gear, no hard hats or gloves. They salvage the giant tankers, aircraft carriers with their bare hands. The nearest hospital is some 50 km away from the shipyards. They only get first aid from a Red Cross camp. Some say that on average one worker dies everyday. Funerals are common. Life is not cared for.
Nevertheless, ships need to be scrapped. In year 2006 Greenpeace took action to not allow a French aircraft carrier Clemenceau from been transported from France. it seems that it violated the Basel Convention. They argued that the ship contains numerous toxins, especially asbestos. The Indian Supreme Court denied the ship from entering the Indian Seas. Now as wiki states the ship is still in France. So the scrapping of ships is a crisis.
My point on this is somewhat same as my earlier article on e-waste. Waste IS money, but it needs to be handled with tremendous care. India does it with guilt, but can’t a country like Sri Lanka, where the ships all around the world can easily access consider scrapping, a serious venture? it is not only ships, but airplanes and motor vehicles.
if one should consider the financial aspect, in India the profit of the scrapping is mainly enjoyed by the owners rather than the workers. if you read the investigative Report, you’ll realize that the workers can have a better pay and better working conditions. So waste disposal can be the new money maker.
So again, if there are any smart people who is willing to start something new, go for the junk. it might work.
