Five years ago, Sellur K Raju, the former Tamil Nadu Minister for Cooperatives, came up with an ingenious idea to curb water loss due to evaporation at Tamil Nadu’s Vaigai dam.
The officials of the Public Works Department, under the guidance of the minister, undertook the task of covering a portion of the dam with thermocol sheets worth ₹10 lakhs to curb water loss due to evaporation.
Minister Sellur K. Raju said he got the idea from a source. It involved using thermocol sheets, worth ₹ 10 lakhs, to cover a portion of the dam to curb water loss due to evaporation.
So, five years ago, on April 21, 2017, Minister Sellur K. Raju and the officials of the Public Works Department tried to cover a portion of the dam using thermocol sheets.
The minister invited the press to the Vaigai dam, located 67 km away from Madurai, to view his breakthrough technique to save water.
As the minister set the experiment in motion by placing a few sheets over the waterbody, strong winds swept the sheets away.
Tamil Nadu Cooperative Minister Sellur K Raju places thermocol sheets at Vaigai dam
Undeterred, the minister directed the PWD officials to spread the thermocol sheets deep in the water using an Indian coracle (Tamil: பரிசல்). But, wind washed them ashore within a few minutes, leaving the minister and other officials red faced.
K. Veera Raghava Rao, the Collector of Madurai, said they would hereafter adopt different methods to save water. Rao also said that they used thermocol because it is non-polluting. But, Mr. Rathnam, a scientist, says thermocol is non-biodegradable and can harm fish when it breaks into smaller pieces.
The public and social media threw brickbats at the minister for his failed experiment that earned him the moniker “Thermocol” Raju.
I am now 82 years old. My memory is failing. I can’t recall the names of people I knew when I was young, but I do remember the household items we used then.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, soap was the most common laundry detergent. My mother used Lever’s yellow Sunlight soap to wash our clothes. At that time, powdered soap was not manufactured, so my mother never had the chance to use it.
For bathing, we used Lux, Rexona, and Mysore Sandalwood soap, and we washed our hands with Lifebuoy soap.
Except for my father, everyone in the house used Colgate Dental Cream. My father preferred Forhan’s toothpaste. From 1950 to 1952, I was a boarder at St. Mary’s College in Chilaw, Sri Lanka. My father then bought me Kolynos toothpaste.
For brushing our teeth, everyone in the house used Colgate Dental Cream except my father. He preferred Forhan’s toothpaste. From 1950 to 1952, I was a boarder at St. Mary’s College in Chilaw, Sri Lanka. My father then bought me Kolynos toothpaste. toothpaste.
Colgate Toothpaste
A depiction of William Colgate (1783–1857) in his later years, drawn in 1881
William Colgate (January 25, 1783–March 25, 1857) was born in Hollingbourne, Kent, England. In 1804, Colgate went to New York City, where he worked as an apprentice in a soap boiler. He learned the trade by watching the methods practiced by his employer.
In 1806, Colgate established a starch, soap, and candle business in Manhattan, New York. He named it William Colgate & Company, which later became the Colgate-Palmolive Company.
Colgate’s Ribbon Dental Cream in 1920s
Colgate’s oral hygiene products were first sold in 1873, sixteen years after the founder’s death.
Colgate Dental Cream with Gardol in 1950s
Colgate-Palmolive is a global leader in oral, personal, and home care products. It manufactures and sells toothpaste, mouthwash, dental floss, and toothbrushes.
According to Dun & Bradstreet, the annual revenue of the company as of December 31, 2022 (12-month period) was US$17.97 billion.
Forhan’s Toothpaste
Dr. Richard Joseph Forhan (1866–1965), a graduate of the Denver School of Dentistry, practiced in Cripple Creek, Colorado. In 1913, he moved to New York, where he began manufacturing dentifrice under his name. He developed Forhan’s toothpaste, foamless and not sweet, as a prescription to treat pyorrhea (also known as periodontitis), a polygenic disease that affects the oral gums and causes bleeding and tooth loss. It was the first mass-produced toothpaste to be sold in tubes.
In 1929, Zonite Products Corporation in New Brunswick, N.J., bought Forhan’s firm.
Forhan’s toothpaste later entered India when US multinational consumer goods company Colgate ruled the toothpaste market.
Marketed as a product “created by dentists,” Forhan’s established itself as the country’s first commercial fluoride toothpaste.
Kolynos Toothpaste
Newell Sill Jenkins (1840–1919)
Kolynos is a line of oral care products created by Newell Sill Jenkins in 1908.
Jenkins developed and improved porcelain enamel, thus making a composition of porcelain paste into porcelain inlays, dental crowns, and bridges and the associated processing equipment.
In 1890, Willoughby D. Miller set up the pioneering and still valid theory that bacteria of the oral flora degrade carbohydrates into acids that damage the tooth enamel and thus allow access to bacteria to destroy the dentin by caries.
Together with Willoughby D. Miller, Jenkins developed the first toothpaste containing disinfectants. He named it Kolynos – a combination of two Greek words, Kolyo nosos (κωλύω νόσος), meaning “disease prevention”.
Numerous attempts to produce the toothpaste by pharmacists in Europe were uneconomic, and Jenkins returned to the US. After 17 years of development and clinical trials, Jenkins retired after transferring production and distribution to his son, Leonard A. Jenkins.
Within a few years, the company expanded in North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Far East. A branch operation opened in 1909 in London. By 1937, Kolynos had been produced in 22 countries and sold in 88 countries. Currently, Kolynos is widespread, mainly in South America and Hungary. Colgate-Palmolive took over the product of American Home Products in 1995 at a cost of one billion US dollars.[
In 1995, Colgate-Palmolive acquired Kolynos at a cost of one billion US dollars.
Kolynos products were popular in the 1930s and 1940s.
In December 2019, a highly transmissible and pathogenic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2), emerged and caused a pandemic of acute respiratory disease named ‘coronavirus disease 2019’ (COVID-19), which threatens human health and public safety.
COVID-19 was first identified in a flare-up in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and attempts to contain it there failed. The virus then spread to other areas of Asia, and in January 2020, it became a worldwide pandemic of acute respiratory disease. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) pronounced the pandemic a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
During the present coronavirus pandemic, many people searching for useful health information have started believing many things that are not true. Widely circulated social media posts falsely suggest that the pH of COVID-19 ranges from 5.5 to 8.5 and advise readers to eat alkaline foods (specifically fruits and vegetables) with a pH of more than 8.5 to prevent COVID-19. According to many health experts, this claim about consuming alkaline foods to increase the body’s pH level and create an environment that is deadly to the virus is untrue. Eating more acidic or alkaline foods is not related to an increased or decreased risk of COVID-19 infection. There is neither evidence nor enough data to prove or support this claim.
Back then, I saw a message on WhatsApp claiming novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) could be treated by eating alkaline fruits. Similar messages appeared on Facebook and Twitter. The following message I saw on WhatsApp happens to be a fake.
“This is to inform you that the pH for coronavirus varies from 5.5 to 8.5.
*RESEARCH: JOURNAL OF VIROLOGY & ANTIVIRAL RESEARCH,*
All we need to do, to beat coronavirus, we need to take more of alkaline foods that are above the above pH level of the Virus.
Increase your intake of the above to help boost your immune system. Do not keep this information to yourself only. Pass it to all your family and friends.”
Scientists have denied the claim that coronavirus has a pH level between 5.5 and 8. Viruses themselves do not have pH levels, because they are not water-based solutions.
According to this WhatsApp message, avocado has a pH of “15.6”, but the pH scale measures from zero to 14. Nothing has a pH above 14.
The message also mentioned the wrong pH values of various fruits, which are acidic and not alkaline.
Here are the original pH levels of the fruits mentioned in the fake message:
Is this claim to eat alkaline foods (specifically fruits and vegetables) with a pH of more than 8.5 to prevent COVID-19 true? The answer is “No!”
The study quoted in the fake WhatsApp message dates back to 1991. The abstract of the study mentions that it is about coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus type 4 (MHV4). It reads: “Infection of susceptible murine cells with the coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus type 4 (MHV4) results in extensive cell-cell fusion at pHs from 5.5 to 8.5.” But COVID-19 is a new strain of virus that was unknown in the 1990s.
Our body regulates pH levels. Our diet can change only the pH level of our waste products, such as our urine and saliva, but not the pH levels in our blood cells or tissues.
Yet, there is no treatment or cure for the coronavirus. So, eating alkaline foods cannot cure or prevent coronaviruses. Yet, a healthy and balanced diet can help boost our immunity, which in turn can help us fight the deadly virus.
Now in this computer age, everyone is trying their best to do away with paperwork. The technological advancements in writing aids have made work and life easier for all of us. Most of us are familiar with the writing tablet, an electronic device, just about the size and form of an iPad, that enables us to write or draw images on its surface with a unique writing instrument called a stylus.
Surprisingly, the above image depicts the “tablet” we used when we were children as a medium for writing
It is called a writing slate, a small, thin, smooth piece of hard, flat material typically encased in a wooden frame. Writing slates were made in several different sizes and formats. Standard sizes included 5 x 7, 6 x 9, 7 x 11, and 8 x 12 inches. A slate pencil was used to write on the slate board.
Slate pencils (kallukuchi in Tamil, galkooru in Sinhalese) are made from softer and lighter chunks of soapstone, shale, slate rock, or chalk. In India, specifically in southern India, slate pencils are made from a sedimentary rock called shale, which is light gray and composed of mud, a mixture of clay minerals (kaolinite, illite, and montmorillonite) and minor amounts of other minerals, including calcite and quartz. The shale’s colour is determined by the proportion of clay to other minerals.
Erasable writing slates and slate pencils are a cheap and durable substitute for costly paper and ink.
Usually, we used the palm of our hand or a piece of cloth to clean up what we wrote on the slate.
By the turn of the century, there were calls to remove the writing slates from classrooms on grounds of hygiene.
The exact origins of the writing slate are not clear. Evidence suggests that it was used in the 16th and 17th centuries. Developments in sea and land transport in the late 18th century resulted in the gradual expansion of slate quarrying and the growth of a substantial slate workshop industry.
Slate is a fine-grained argillaceous [clayey] rock with frequent mica and quartz inclusions. This can be split or cleaved readily into thin slabs. Slate occurs in various colours: blue, green, purple, grey, and black, with the darker slates caused mainly by carbon-based inclusions.
Slate has been used in Wales, located on the western side of central southern Great Britain, since at least the Roman era, for roofing, flooring, and paving. It was popular as a building material because it was weatherproof, durable, and easy to work with. Writing slates have also been in use for centuries.
By 1840, writing slates were manufactured commercially using smoothly planed wooden boards coated with thick, porcelain-based paint.
The writing slate later developed into the blackboard. Although the term blackboard did not appear until 1815, the use of cobbled-together slates spread quickly.
At the dawn of the 20th century, writing slates were the primary tool in the classroom for students in the civilized world. In the 1930s (or later), the writing slates were replaced by modern methods for writing, but the writing slates did not become obsolete. They are still made in the twenty-first century, though in small quantities.
Kachchakaduge Nalin Ruwanjeewa Fernando (born May 8, 1973) is a Sri Lankan politician and Member of Parliament.
Nalin Fernando got educated at Joseph Vaz College, Wennappuwa, Sri Lanka.. He has a postgraduate degree in Business Management from the University of Colombo and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Northampton.
He has held various senior roles at state-owned organizations:
Director: Agricultural Products Marketing Authority, Director: Ceylon Steel Corporation, Chairman: Co-operative Wholesale Establishment, Chairman: Lanka Sathosa, Director: Paddy Marketing Board , and Director: State Commercial (Cooperatives and Wholesale) Company.
On July 21, 2016, former Chairman of Sathosa Nalin Fernando was arrested by the Colombo Crimes Division (CCD) on charges of alleged misuse of vehicles belonging to the government.
On April 6, 2018, the Colombo Crimes Division and the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) arrested Nalin Fernando, while attempting to flee the country for embezzling Rs 39 million of state funds in the purchase of carom and checkers boards in 2014. He was later released on bail.
In October 2019, the authorities imposed a travel ban on him and lifted it in December 2019.
Nalin Fernando and Mahinda Rajapaksa in October 2019.
In 2020, Nalin Fernando, belonging to the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) took part in the parliamentary elections as an electoral alliance candidate of the Sri Lanka People’s Freedom Alliance. He contested in the Gampaha District and got elected to the Parliament of Sri Lanka.
Nine new cabinet ministers were sworn in on Friday, May 20, 2022, in debt-ridden Sri Lanka to ensure stability until the formation of a full cabinet. Nalin Fernando was sworn in as the Minister of Trade, Commerce, and Food Security. His appointment did not evoke any surprise among the public.
Five years ago, Sellur K. Raju, the former Tamil Nadu Minister for Cooperatives, came up with an ingenious idea to curb water loss due to evaporation at Tamil Nadu’s Vaigai dam.
Under the minister’s direction, Public Works Department employees covered a section of the dam with ₹10 lakh worth of thermocol sheets to reduce evaporative water loss.
Minister Sellur K. Raju said he got the idea from a ‘source’. It involved using thermocol sheets, worth ₹ 10 lakhs, to cover a portion of the dam to curb water loss due to evaporation.
So, five years ago, on April 21, 2017, Minister Sellur K. Raju and the officials of the Public Works Department tried to cover a portion of the dam using thermocol sheets.
The minister invited the press to the Vaigai dam, located 67 km away from Madurai, to view his breakthrough technique to save water.
As the minister set the experiment in motion by placing a few sheets over the waterbody, strong winds swept the sheets away.
Tamil Nadu Cooperative Minister Sellur K Raju places thermocol sheets at Vaigai dam
Undeterred, the minister directed the PWD officials to spread the thermocol sheets deep in the water using an Indian coracle (Tamil: பரிசல்). But, wind washed them ashore within a few minutes, leaving the minister and other officials red faced.
K. Veera Raghava Rao, the Collector of Madurai, said they would hereafter adopt different methods to save water. Rao also said that they used thermocol because it is non-polluting. But Mr. Rathnam, a scientist, says thermocol is non-biodegradable and can harm fish when it breaks into smaller pieces.
The public and social media threw brickbats at the minister for his failed experiment that earned him the moniker “Thermocol” Raju.
Our mothers fed us at any time of the day, even when we cried.
We did not sleep in cribs; we slept with our mothers or siblings on hard beds or on mats spread over the floor.
When we fell ill, the doctor gave us aspirin tablets for fever. Our mothers powdered the tablets, added honey, and forced us to swallow the bitter-sweet mixture.
There were no childproof lids on medicine containers.
We never got checked for any allergies, but we got inoculated for smallpox.
There were no locks on doors in our houses except the front door, and there were no locks on cupboards.
In the 1940s, we never saw a household plastic utensil, but we had celluloid containers. The mass production of plastic utensils started only in the 1950s.
As little children, we rode in cars that had no booster seats, no seat belts, and no airbags.
We rode on rickshaws pulled by humans.
When we grew up and rode bicycles, we had no helmets to protect our heads.
We had fun drinking water from the garden hose.
We shared a single soft drink bottle with several friends without anyone dying.
We added brown sugar or jaggery when we drank tea or coffee.
We ate white bread with real butter and a naturally fruity jam.
We ate lots of chocolate; even so, no one said that we were overweight.
Though we played a lot outside in the sun, we never applied sunscreen lotions or creams.
During holidays, we played all day. We returned home only after the lights were on.
No one could reach us or bother us because there were no mobile phones. Even so, we were all right.
There were no rupee coins in Ceylon at that time. Now, 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, and 50 cents are not in circulation in Sri Lanka, and the minting of these denominations has been discontinued.
In India
1 pice = 1/4 Anna = 1/64 rupee (in Tamil, we called this coin ஓட்டைக் காலணா / oattaikaalana, meaning 1/4 Anna with a hole). . .
1/2 Anna = 1/32 Rupee .
1 Anna = 1/16 rupee .
2 Annas = 1/8 rupee .
1/4 rupee .
1/2 Rupee .
One Rupee
Telephones were rare. They were mounted on the wall or placed on desks; they were not mobile. One stood static in one spot to talk since an electrical cord connected the phone to the receiver.
Since there were no calculating instruments, the word ‘computer’ was not coined at that time. We never heard of computers in the 1940s and 1950s. My first calculating instrument was a Faber-Castell slide rule bought in 1963 at Lake House Bookshop in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Now, young people ask my wife and me, “How do you still manage to stay together for 56 years?”
Our reply: “We were born at a time when if something broke, we would fix it, not throw it away.”
Donald J. Trump, the outgoing President of the United States had thought of running for president in 1988, 2004, and 2012, and for Governor of New York in 2006 and 2014, but did not enter any of those races. In 1988, considered as a potential running mate for George H. W. Bush, he lost to Vice President Dan Quayle.
Donald Trump has always voiced whatever caustic thoughts he has. To him, the Mexicans were “rapists” and “anchor babies“. He has used adjectives such as “bimbo” and “fat pig” to describe women.
For months he preoccupied himself with mocking Kamala Devi Harris, the vice president-elect of the United States.
Earlier Trump had mocked Senator Elizabeth Ann Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts. He called her “the Indian” and “Pocahontas“, and insisted that she was a racist for having listed her heritage while on the faculty of Harvard Law School.
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By the way, Donald Trump has his own share of bullshit thrown at him. The following is a snippet about Native Americans tagging a pandering self-conceited Donald Trump with the name “Walking Eagle”.
Donald Trump received an invitation to address a significant gathering of leaders of the American Indian Tribes. At the meeting, he spoke for almost an hour about his plans for increasing every Native American’s standard of living. Though vague in detail, he spoke about his ideas for helping his “red sisters and brothers“.
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After he concluded his eloquent speech, the Chiefs of the American Indian Tribes presented him a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name, “Walking Eagle” which a proud pompous Trump accepted.
Walking Eagle
After Trump left the venue, a reporter asked the group of Chiefs how they came to select the specific name “Walking Eagle” for Trump. The Chiefs explained that it is the name given to a bird so full of shit it can no longer fly.
A few days ago, I posted an article, What do you call a group of fish? My friend Amir Ganesan Amirthalingam posed the question, “What do you call a group of crows?” And I answered him ”Murder”.
There are different collective nouns to describe large groups of different birds. Most of them are descriptive of the group of birds and their behaviour or personalities. Some collective nouns, such as flock, colony, and fleet, can apply to all bird species.
Other flock names used include cloud, mass, collection, throng, murmuration, parcel, or dissimulation. This list is not exhaustive.
Some flock names are rare, obsolete, and seldom-used. A few that I have come across are plain silly but are familiar to ornithologists.
Murder of crows
A murder of crows (publicdomainpicture.net)
Crows are members of the Corvidae family, which includes ravens, magpies, and blue jays. They are noisy, precocious, and smart, and their intelligence never ceases to amaze us. Farmers consider the crows pests and try to protect their crops and seedlings from them. Crows are most often associated with a long tradition of fear and paranoia. The black feathers of the crow frighten some people who associate them with death.
New research proves crows are gregarious, caring, and one of the smartest creatures on the planet.
Here is a list of collective nouns used rarely for a flock of crows: horde, hover, mob, muster, parcel, storytelling, and murder.
For most of the year, the crows are affable, wary, and intelligent. . They are territorial, especially during the nesting season. They roost as a community consisting of hundreds of birds, usually on large trees. They gather in large numbers at food sources and attractive dumpsters.
In 1486 AD, St Albans Press in England printed Boke of Seynt Albans (The Book of Saint Albans). It is also known by the title “The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms“. In the 15th century, there was a fad for terms of venery (an archaic word for hunting) or names for groups of game animals. This book contains a long list of collective nouns for animals, and it has, of course, “a murder of crows” without any explanation.
Though there was an obsession with terms of venery in the 15th century, most of them fell out of use in the 16th century, including the murder of crows.
There are several explanations for the origin of this term, based on old folktales and superstitions.
According to one folktale, a flock of crows will gather to decide the fate of a crow that encroaches on their turf. If the crow is guilty, the group will execute (that is, “murder”) the defendant. This is based on the fact that a flock of crows will kill a dying crow that doesn’t belong to their territory. The crows are sometimes prone to cannibalism and feed on the carcasses of already-dead crows.
Crows are scavengers and are generally associated with dead bodies and cemeteries. In the medieval period, crows hovered over execution sites, battlefields, hospitals, and cemeteries. They scavenged on human remains. To some, the appearance of crows is an omen of death. So, when a large number of crows circle above a site, they expect someone to die soon.
Medieval peasants feared the sinister-looking crows. They believed the crows came from the Devil or were witches in disguise. To them, a flock of crows would have appeared murderous.
When rediscovered in the early 20th century, authors then posited that the term murder of crows was correct because of the tremendous noise the crows make.
Some etymologists suggest that the association of crows and ravens with death might have led to the use of the word murder.
To me, the term “murder of crows” reflects a time when many animal groups had vivid and poetic names.
Kevin J. McGowan of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology wrote on his website that no scientist would call it a murder of crows. “Scientists would call it a flock,” he wrote.
1 Anna = 1/16 rupee
2 Annas = 1/8 rupee
1/2 Rupee
Impressions 