Jothi's private notes

Quote:“When I was a young man I observed that 9 out of 10 things I did were failures. I didn’t want to be a failure, so I did 10 times more work”=GBShaw

Adolf Eichmann, who ordered 5 million Jews to be killed escaped from the prisoner’s camp in 1946 and took a job as a Management expert in a hydro-electric plant at Tucman-Andes.
In 1960 he was kidnapped by the Israelis. brought to trial on 11 April,1961. He was sentenced to death on 15 Dec, although Israel does not normally employ the death sentence, and hanged on 1 June, ’62.

Everest
Men started to climb it in 1921, when Hillary was 2 years old and Tenzing norgay 7. Success was almost achieved in 1952 when a Swiss mountain guide, Raymond Lambert, and that same Sherpa Tenzing, got within 1000 feet of the top.
The ascent of Everest by Hillary and Tenzing began on I Sept 1952 and achieved on 29 May, 1953.

Quotes:
“No one ever really paid the price of a book, only the price of printing it”-Louis Kahn.
“I wish I were what I was when I wanted to be what I am now”- James Steinbeck.
“Untrained intelligence is as much use as a bottle without an opener”
“Many men would gladly be married – but not 24 hours a day”.

Hammurabi Code
The code opens with the enactment that “if a man has thrown a curse upon another man and it’s not justified the layer of the curse shall be slain”,. The second is similar recalling the witch finding ordeals practiced in this country up to a couple of centuries ago. But then come a number of laws having to do with matters of practical ethics and morality. A man who has harbored or fugitive slave shall be slain, but he who apprehends one in his fields and takes him back to his master shall be suitably rewarded. A man who out of laziness has neglected to repair his dykes with the result that his neighbors’ field is flooded, shall make good the latter’s; loss. A man, who is caught breaking into a house, shall be slain in the breach he has made in the wall and shall be buried there. If a fire breaks out and one of the fire fighters seizes the opportunity of stealing some of the victims’ goods, he shall be thrown himself into the blaze. If plotters against the state meet in the house of a wine seller and she does not seize them and deliver them up to the great house, she shall be slain.
If a priestess slips out of her convent and enters a wine shop for a drink, she shall be burned alive. A man, who has contracted a debt and cannot otherwise pay, may sell his wife, his son or his daughter as slaves, for a period of 3 years to his creditor-after which time they shall be allowed to return home and the debt will be liquidated. If a man’s wife is taken in adultery, she and her lover shall be bound together and thrown into the river: unless the husband allows his wife, live and the King lets his servant live. A man may divorce his wife should she prove barren but he must return to her father and her husband is under no obligation to return her dowry or bride price. If a man’s wife falls sick and he wants to marry another, she shall not be allowed to divorce her, but must maintain her in his house as long as she lives. If a man lifts up his hand against his father and strikes him, his hands shall be cut off. If he has knocked out the eye of a fellow citizen, his own eye shall be destroyed, if he’s knocked out a slave’s eye or broken one of his bones, he shall pay half the slave’s value to his owner. If a builder builds a house for a citizen, and the house falls down through bad workmanship, and kills the house holder that builder shall be slain. Likewise if a doctor treats a man with a metal knife for a severe wound, and the patient dies during the operation, the doctors’ hands’ shall be cut off, presumably to prevent similar mistake again.
“It’s the patient who should be treated, not the disease”.-Hippocrates.

Socrates
Born in 470 b.c. Among the more orthodox Athemans, Socrates, put forward the proposal was bound to b unpopular for his ideas,. He looked beyond Athens and Greece, upon man as the brother of all men and a citizen of the world.
This was looked upon as a lack of patriotism and it was not surprising, therefore, that sooner or later an attempt should be made to get rid of him.
When he was at length arraigned in 399 B.C. it was on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of
Athens that he faced his 501 judges. To them he explained his life and actions, but when judgment was taken he was found guilty by a majority of 60.
His prosecutor demanded the death sentence. Socrates put forward the proposal that he should be fined half a talent. The judges were bound by law to accept one or other of the two proposals and they chose death.
Socrates might easily have escaped. But he refused to do so, and a month after the trial he drank the hemlock poison, cheerful among his weeping friends, with whom he had spent his last hours discussing the immortality of the soul. “Death is either a state of nothingness or a change of the soul from this world to another. Wherefore be of good cheer and be assured that no harm can happen to a good man either in life or after death. The hour of departure has come. We go over ways. I to die and you to live. Which is better, God only knows”.
In the group which had attended Socrates in his last hours and had listened to the last expressions of wisdom from the courageous man who was fired by the rightness of his convictions was his pupil Plato. Plato had been horrified by Socrates’ reception at his trial and by the final scenes in the death cell, in which he saw the intellectual blindness and cowardice of intellectually little men bent on destroying one of the great minds of all time.

Quotes:
“Sleep, riches and health to be truly enjoyed, must be interrupted” Jean Paul Friedrich Richter.
“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war” Admiral Hyman Rickover.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone on March 10, 1876. For months since the just feeble twang there had been no progress. Then today the faithful Watson was listening, as usual, they had adjusted both machines and a dozen times during the morning. Suddenly, perfectly, frighteningly clear came the words: “ Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!”
Bell had spilt a flask of acid down his clothes. Being a poor man unable to buy himself anymore, he was appalled at what he had done. If Watson would only dash in from the next room, help with bowls of water while he moped, the trousers might yet be saved.
But to Watson, the crisis, whatever it might be was trivial. Bell’s word had come to him, not through the air, but along wires, had emerged from his little receiver loud and clear. He ran into the next room, blurted out the news and drove all thoughts of trousers from Bells mind. Like children playing some game a vocal musical chairs, they hopped from one room to the other, reciting poems to each other, singing snatches of song.

Guglielmo Marconi was born on 25 April, 1874. Suddenly he realized that if the phenomenon of wireless telegraphy were to have practical use the waves from the transmitter would have to go round or through buildings and hills. In fact the waves would have to follow the curvature of the earth, or they would get as far as the horizon and disappear into space. The two brothers had been using a visual system of return signaling, with Alfonso waving a handkerchief to tell his brother up in the attic whether he had read the message. For this next experiment, visual signaling would be useless. Guglielmo gave his older brother a hunting rifle and told him to go with the receiving apparatus to the far side of the hill behind the house.
Alfonsos walked over the rim of the hill, carrying heavy experiment, took 20 minutes. Marconi watched from his attic window until his brother disappeared. “After some minutes, I started to send, manipulating the Morse key, and then in the distance, a shot echoed down the valley”, he wrote later.
And so, in Sept. 1895 the first practical transmission was made.

Albert Einstein born on March 4,1879 in the German town of Wurttemberg.
To a colleague in Princeton who was late for an appointment in the town, he remarked, “Don’t worry, why should I mind that you are late meeting me? Am I less capable of reflecting on my problems here then at home,?
Showing a much chewed pencil he said,” Here is my laboratory”. So approachable was he.
He died in 1955. Known for his Theory of Relativity which led to the Atomic fusion. He encouraged Roosevelt to produce the Bomb and this ultimately led to the end of the II World War by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There were only 3 atomic bombs produced. One was tested over Alamagordo, New Mexico.
Hiroshima was atom bombed on Aug 6,1945.
The pilot dragged “Enola Gay” into a steep climbing turn to port, threw open the throttles, headed South East.
Suddenly the sky exploded.
For the inhabitants of Hiroshima, 30000 feet below, there was the same huge flash of light and for those of them in the street immediately below the air burst bomb, nothing else. They were incinerated, turned in an instant to ashes and dust, dust which was blasted away a moment later by the huge, rushing wind which followed. But for those a mile and more from the centre of the explosion there came first the tremendous flash of light, then the feeling of sudden intense heat, then the blast which picked up houses, threw them across the street, across the pitiful fire picked up an entire hospital, a cinema and a hotel, flung them into the river. For those in the city itself there was little recollection of noise.
To each survivor and perhaps 200000 had died instantly-it seemed that the bomb had been a personal bomb, demolishing his own house, or office or factor, but sparing the rest of the city. There was a thick choking cloud of dust over everything and at half past eight in the morning it seemed as though the sun had set. One of the survivors, quoted in John Hersey’s remarkable account,”Hiroshima”,saw the house he was about to enter collapse in front of him and assumed that it had received a direct hit on the roof. Then he noticed that the walls had fallen inwards not outwards. He also noticed and was too shocked and dazed to feel surprise that a squad of soldiers who had been underground in the hillside opposite, digging a deep and complex shelter were staggering out into the dust filled air, blood pouring from their wounds.
The bomb had been exploded in the air above a level expanse of wooden houses, and of these 4 square miles of habitation had been absolutely and totally destroyed-knocked down, smashed to pieces by the blast, burnt to ashes. The Ferro concrete buildings, most of them were specially reinforced against earthquakes had withstood the blast but were gutted by fire. Their contents, including the people inside them, vanished within seconds. People like Mr.Tanimoto, sheltered by the building he had hoped to enter, and two miles from the explosion, stood a chance of survival: yet many of these, who considered themselves safe, were dead within a year from the poisonous effects of radio activity. These brought the total casualties from one bomb within a year to over a quarter of a million. These would have been far more serious had not the large scale evacuation of Hiroshima begun, as we have seen in earnest so that the 1940 census figure had been reduced by almost a third.
On the one hand, the scale of the disaster was vastly increased by the panic stricken exodus, after the bomb had fallen of almost all the rest, so that thousands trapped among fallen masonry were left to die. Almost all fire and rescue services were abandoned: it was a month before any clearing away could be started, before the bodies of those who had been left to die could be cremated.
The effects of the bomb over Hiroshima- the first atomic bomb to be dropped on an enemy target. Of the 3 which had been constructed by the end of the II W.W, the I was tested successfully in New Mexico in July, 1945, the second destroyed Hiroshima, a few weeks later and the third, 3 days after that, did the same to the Japanese port of Nagasaki-the effects are still being studied, in the II and III generation of survivors, for genetic changes of which many have been noted.
It was weeks before all of the survivors had a clear idea of what had happened to them. Many became ill, vomiting almost incessantly, and this led them to blame a gas attack because of the strong smell of ionization (the familiar electric smell) given off by the bombs fission. Some without visible wounds or burns died within a few hours, for no apparent reasons and this too, heightened false rumors of a gas attack.
In Hiroshima some of the buildings damaged in the blast of the atom bomb have been left unrepaired as a perpetual monument.

Quotes:
“The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives”-American Indian Proverb.
“If you add to the truth, you subtract from it”
“A penny saved is a penny earned. And a penny spent is a penny enjoyed”
“I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a King who did not love reading-Macaulay.
“The larger the island of Knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder”-Ralph Stockman.

Excerpts from Leon Uri’s “The Exodus”
Karen heard the name of Frank and Mueller an Himmler and Rosenberg and Streicher and Kaltenbrunner and Heydreich . She heard the names of thousands of lesser ones.Ilsa Koch, who won infamy by making lampshades out of human tattoed skins, and of Dieter Wisliczeny, who played the role of stockyard goat lending the sheep to slaughter, or Kramer, who sported in horse whipping naked women. The name of the greatest killer of them all came up over and over again:Eichmann , the German Palestinian who spoke fluent Hebrew and was the master of genocide
Genocide-carried out with the precision and finality of a machine. At first the efforts of the Germans had been clumsy. They killed by rifle. It was too slow. They organized their transport and their scientists for the great effort. Steel covered trucks were designed to lock in and gas to death prisoners enroute to burial grounds. But even the gas vans proved slow. Next came the crematoriums and the gas chambers capable of killing 2000 people in a half hour-10000 on a good day in a major camp.
And Karen heard of thousands of prisoners who threw themselves on the quick mercy of electrified barbed wire to cheat the gas chambers.
And Karen heard of the game of deception that was played to tear children away from their mothers under the guise of resettlement, and of trains packed with the old and feeble. Karen heard of the delousing chambers where prisoners were given bars of soap. The chambers were filled with gas and the soap was made of stone. Karen heard of mothers who hid children in their clothing, which was hung up on pegs before going into the Chambers. But the Germans knew the ruse and always found the little ones.
She heard of SS Hampsturns-fuehrer Fritz Gebauer, who specialized in strangling women and children bare handed and who liked watching infants die in barrels of freezing water.
She heard of Heinen who perfected a method of killing several people in a row with one bullet, always trying to beat his previous record.
She heard of Frank Warzok, who liked to bet on how long a human could live hanging by the feet.
She heard of Ober Sturmbann fuehrer Rokita, who ripped bodies apart.
She heard about Wilhaus at Janowska. She heard his hobby, was throwing infants into the air and seeing how many bullets he could fire into the body before it reached the ground.
Was her family among the bodies which were melted to fat in the manufacture of soap at Danzig?
Auschwitz with its warehouse of human hair for the manufacture of mattresses!
Auschwitz, where the fold teeth of the dead were methodically pulled and melted down for shipment to Himmler’s Science Institute..Auschwitz, where an especially finely shaped skull would be preserved as a paperweight.

Bees
A bee beats the air with its wings at the rate of 16000 times a minute. Air sac in her thorax fills in flight and make her buoyant. A bee has 5 eyes and an eye consists 6000 lens whereas a man’s has only one. It can thus see the angles of individual specks of dust upon the ground; the pores of the young leaves, the play of the sun of the rough bark of elms, every separate wimple in the flashing stream.

Quote:
“You can suffocate a thought by expressing it in too many words”-Frank Clark.

Jothi's Private notes...

On Writing:

Hemingway began his day by sharpening 20 pencils.

Victor Hugo used to keep his feet immersed in warm water as he wrote.

Anthony Trollope-despite his full time job in the post office was able to write two dozen novels of considerable length, by regularly working at them for 3 hours a day completing a quota of 750 words a day at the fixed rate of 250 words an hour.

Churchill used to shut himself up every morning and would not emerge until he had written 3000 words.

Herbert Spencer once hazarded the view that a monkey tapping a typewriter for millions of years might finally blunder into the production of a great epic.

Every man has at least one book in him, if only he would try to write it.

Astrology

Is fun, no doubt, in its amiable Micawber role of assuring us that something is likely to turn up. As for misfortunes, we may think our stars that what they foretell do not usually come true. Of course, astrologers are not wrong all the time. That would be impossible. Even a clock that has stopped tells the correct time twice a day!

Public Opinion

Deference to popular opinion may be all right, if you merely want to get on in the world. But if the worlds’ first aviators had differed to public opinion, they would not have got up into the skies. They were considered crazy to think of flying about in a machine heavier than air.

Edison’s teachers were agreed that he was a dunce. We may be thankful that he and a host of other benefactors of the human race refused to see themselves as the said human race saw them.

Joke:

Send me an e-mail said the boss. And the employee wondered how the boss could ask him to send a female.

A gala day was mistaken for a gal a day!

Quotes:

Nothing gives a person more leisure than being on time for appointments!

Young’s Law: I+ E= M, (Intelligence + Effort= Merit)

Emile Coule told of the wonders one could work by telling oneself every morning and several times during the day,” Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better”.

“The impossible is often the untried.”

Vasco da Gama

B;1460 at Sines,Portugal was the son of a Governor of the province of Alemtejo. He had a distinguished record as both soldier and sailor and then commanded by the then King Emmanuel after the death of the Navigator, to find a sea route to India.

He was given the latest designed 3 ships-2 of 120 tons and one of 50 tons, then comparatively larger than those used by Diaz. Da Gamma commanded one ship, his brother Paul another and an old friend Nicolau Coelho, the third. In addition there was a small stores hip. Sufficient stores were taken onto last for at least two years consisting of hard biscuits , meat, wine , with rice, codfish and cheese for fast days. Gama also took things like mirrors, bells, fine clothes.

He sailed for India from Lisbon on 8^th July, 1497, He captured a Muslim vessel and on questioning came to know that Christian ships from India were in Malindi. The king there was friendly and exchanged gifts and Gama was entertained for nine days. He was given a pilot to guide him across the ocean to India and he set sail on April 24, 1498 and reached Calicut one month later.

Though received by the friendly King, the Arabs there were jealous and managed to bring a fight between Hindus and Gama. Gama was himself kidnapped and would surely have been murdered had it not been for the swift action of his brother, who seized some leading citizens of Calicut and held them as hostages until Da Gama was safely returned. He reached Cannanore, some 50 miles up the coast and established friendly trading relationships. In Nov. of that year the ships their holds full of spices, at last set off on the long return journey home.

The return was full of troubles… storms, diseases became common. Only one third lived to see Portugal again, even Da Gama’s brother Paulo died on the way. They were welcomed grandly when they touched Lisbon in Sept.

Robinson Crusoe’s prototype was Alexander Selkirk.

First men to fly in balloon were Pilatre de Rozier and Marquis d’Arlandes on Nov 20, 1785, in the presence of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

However the first astronauts were a sheep, a cock and a duck. They made their historic flight at Versailles on 19^th Sept 1783, watched by Louis XIV, his family and 1,30,000 of his subjects and the Montgolfier brothers who started it all.

Rosetta Stone inscription-key to Egyptian history- found by Napoleon’s soldier in Egypt while capturing it. British took hold of it when they defeated French and housed it in British Museum

Quotes:.

He who likes to generalize, generally lies

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body- Joseph Addison.

. Suez Canal:

Was suggested to Napoleon by experts around 1800.

Built by N. Ferdinand de Lesseps and inaugurated in Nov 17-20, 1869.

Connects Mediterranean with Red Sea, flowing through the land of Egypt.

Took ten years

Britain objected to it at first for fear that the new short route to India might fell under the influence of powers hostile to Britain.

Cuts the distance by two thousand leagues.

A sweet water canal was dug by the side of the real one to supply water to the workers-forced labour- from Nile.

60 Monster dredging machines specially designed, removed sand at the rate of 2 million cubic metres a month.

Cost about 500 millions francs.

achievement brought about by a single Frenchman.