Hindu Zionism, Book by Zaid Hamid of Brass Tack

Zaid Hamid the Defence Analyst, who recently disclosed the facts related to Mumbai Drama (inside job by Hindu Fundamentalists) has just released book titled Hindu Zionism. The book is published by Brass Tacks, Zaid Hamids own Defence think tank. It would be a great chance for People of Pakistan , the west and India to look closely at the increasing new force under Hindustan banner. Starting with the Killing of their own leader Gandhi at the hands of Hindu Mahasabah to the present Mumbai Crisis, the book is expected to unveil new face of terrorim and fundamentalists, threatning the world. A book named Hindu Zionism written by prominent defence and political analyst Zaid Hamid has published under the auspices of Brass Tacks, a Think Tank, says a press release. Zaid Hamid besides giving his acute analysis of the world geo politics also sheds light on the invigorating forces in the second season which have influenced Hindu Zionism. Its conclusions are sure to amaze the readers. Besides this Brass Tacks have also published booklets being written by Zaid Hamid on war on terror, religious and sectarian terrorism, Jewish and Christian Zionism, Pakistan Aik Ishq, Aik Janoon and Pakistan, Afghan relations - a historical debacle. Prose writer Yousaf Alamgirian who has written the flap of the book has declared the effort as splendid and a great service to the nation and Ummah. Books and booklets are available on strategic bookshops in twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Source: http://geotauaisay.com/2009/01/hindu-zionism-book-by-zaid-hamid-of-brass-tack/

From: izlamabad@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of Adeel Ayub

Pakistan’s Space Agency

Pakistan will launch its first indigenously developed communications satellite on August 14, 2011, from a facility in China.Speaking to Dawn, Dr Mohammad Riaz Suddle, the director of the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission’s (Suparco) satellite research and development centre in Lahore, said the satellite’s life span will be 15 years.Responding to a question, Dr Suddle said the satellite would be launched at a longitude of 38 degrees in geostationary orbit on the equatorial plane at an altitude of 36,000km above the Earth’s surface. Paksat-1R will carry a communications payload to facilitate the introduction of a range of new services, including broadband internet, digital TV distribution/broadcasting, remote/rural telephony, emergency communications, tele-education and tele-medicine. The contract for Pakis- tan Communication Satellite (Paksat-1R) was signed between Suparco and China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC), a Chinese firm, on October 15, 2008, in Beijing, during President Asif Zardari’s visit to China. Work on the execution of the contract began soon after, and is progressing as scheduled, according to Dr Suddle. He did not reveal the cost of the project, but said the contract involves various other projects, including infrastructure, and therefore it is difficult to put an exact cost on the satellite itself. Continue Reading...

From: izlamabad@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of Adeel Ayub

Helping hands are better than Praying Lips

Not liking the food you have daily???? .......................................................................................How about some pizza?

No??? Ok....... Pasta?
No?? .. How about Taco?

Not in taco mood today? ... ok.. Trying this Mexican Food?

No again? No probs.. we have more choice..
Hmmmmmmm.. chinise??????? J

Burgersssssss????????

Ok.. lets try Indian.. J
South Indian Food?
Naaaaa??? North Indian?

Junk food mood?

Or some diet food today?

The choice we have is endless.......
Tiffin?

Non-Veg?

Large Quantity?

Or just some bites of chicken?
You can have any of these... or try out little from all...
But..
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

They have No choice..

They just need some food to survive..

Think of them next time you throw the cafeteria food saying, its not tasty!!

Think of them next time you say .. Roti here is too hard to eat...

Please DO NOT WASTE food

and

REMEMBER SAWAT IDPs

If you have a function/party at your home in Pakistan and food gets wasted , don't hesitate to call Edhi . They will come and collect the food.

From: Wajeeha Erum

Importance of having Breakfast...

From: Maheen Aali

Breakfast can help prevent strokes, heart attack and sudden death. Advice on not to skip breakfast!
Healthy living.. For those who always skip breakfast, you should stop that habit now! You've heard many times that "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." Now, recent research confirms that one of the worst practices you can develop may be avoiding breakfast. Why?
Because the frequency of heart attack, sudden death, and stroke peaks between 6: 00a.m. and noon, with the highest incidence being between 8: 00a.m. and 10:00a.m.What mechanism within the body could account for this significant jump in sudden death in the early
morning hours? We may have an Answer. Platelet, tiny elements in the blood that keep us from bleeding to Death if we get a cut, can clump together inside our arteries due to Cholesterol or plaque buildup in the artery lining. It is in the morning hours that platelets become the most activated and tend to form these internal blood clots at the greatest frequency.
However, eating even a very light breakfast prevents the morning platelet activation that is associated with heart attacks and strokes. Studies performed at Memorial University in St.Johns,  Newfoundland found that eating a light, very low-fat breakfast was critical in modifying the morning platelet activation. Subjects in the study consumed either low-fat or fat-free yogurt, orange juice, fruit, and a source of protein coming from yogurt or fat-free milk. So if you skip breakfast, it's important that you change this practice immediately in light of this research.
Develop a simple plan to eat cereal, such as oatmeal or Bran Flakes, along with six ounces of grape juice or orange juice, and perhaps a piece of fruit. This simple plan will keep your platelets from sticking together, keep blood clots from forming, and perhaps head off a potential Heart Attack or stroke. So never ever skip breakfast 

Pakistanis Posted More Google Map Data than Any Other Country Counterparts

Pakistan netizens are posting more localized information and data to the Google’s ‘map maker’ than the web users of any of the 160 countries, said Mr. Lalit Katragadda, the founder of Google Map Maker.

Continue Reading The Story

From: Pro Pakistani

18 Beautiful Places To Visit In Your Lifetime!

Today I would like to share the best 18 Beautiful Places I love to Visit,I am not giving any rating to all of it because nature don’t need any rating

Here I am gone share with you:

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon is the steep-sided gorge carved by the Colorado River in Arizona State of United States. The powerful sources that cause an impact on the Grand Canyon is erosion, first is by water and second is by wind. Nearly 5 million people visit the 1 mile deep Grand Canyon every year. Planning a vacation to the Grand Canyon national park provides a great relief for you and your family. The best time to visit Grand Canyon is during the summer, fall and mild spring, but most locals agree that winter is the great time to visit. There are various camp grounds both on the top and floor of the Grand Canyon. Camping at the floor of the Grand Canyon needs a permit from the country office.

Continue reading »

From: izlamabad@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of Adeel Ayub

Flight of the Falcon - Story of a Fighter Pilot

When the mainstream biographies by civil and military bureaucrats in Pakistan tend to be tedious rationalizations of their stay in the corridors of power, including military dictatorships, Air Commodore Sajad Haider’s book, “Flight of the Falcon” breaks this mode. Newly launched by Vanguard Books, it is a most fascinating study of not only Haider’s interesting and adventurous life but also of the Pakistan Air Force itself. Sajad Haider has always been outspoken with a “no-holds barred” approach to life and his life story reflects this most vividly, with his near-death encounters while flying as well as his turbulent times fighting against an unjust court martial which eventually exonerated him. Interesting anecdotes abound in the book reflecting different facets of Haider’s life in the PAF – including his run-in with the Shah of Iran in Washington, his unfulfilled true love and other amusing flirtatious encounters. Continue Reading >>>

From: From: izlamabad@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of Adeel Ayub

Tracking on Trail 3 in Margala Hills

Host: Nauman Khan

Type: Trips - Group Trip

Network: Global

Date: Friday, May 29, 2009

Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm

Location: Parking of Trail 3, opposite to F6

Street: Margala Road

City/Town: Islamabad, Pakistan

View Map Google MapQuest Microsoft Yahoo

Phone: 923005019028

Email: nauman.khan@bigfoot.com

Description

Tracking will start from parking of Trail 3, destination will be view point which is at 2km. Wear Caps and bring ur own bottle of water and some kind of backpack bag to carry it. Wear proper boots/joggers as the way is quite rocky.

Talk @ RCCI: Google Business Solutions & Internet Marketing.

From: Badar Khushnood

Try this mathematical riddle

2+3=10  

7+2=63

6+5=66

8+4=96

then,

                           9+7=???????????

 

Highlight this line to c the answer - Ans: 144

From: Akbar Ali Syed

Orascom Telecom Q1 Down on Currency Devaluations

Egypt's Orascom Telecom has reported a 66 percent drop in its first-quarter profits to US$72 million - largely due to local currency devaluations against the US Dollar. Revenues dropped by 4 percent to US$1.2 billion.
In US$, revenues for Mobilink decreased by 1% in local currency vs. a decrease of 23% in US$, revenues for Tunisiana increased by 24% in local currency vs an increase of 3% in US$.
Total subscribers exceeded 80 million, an increase of 9% over March 2008, driven by an impressive growth performance in Egypt, up 31%, Bangladesh, up 30%, and Tunisia, which grew 13%. Subscriber growth in Algeria was weak as a result of a lengthy approval process for our promotion by the regulator.
Naguib Sawiris, Chairman and CEO of OTH, commented on the results: “The first quarter of 2009 confirmed our expectation that economic growth would slow further leading to a more challenging operating environment. OTH’s US$ revenue performance in Q1 was negatively impacted by currency devaluations in Algeria, Pakistan and Tunisia, which respectively lost 9%, 22% and 17% of their value over Q1 2008."
"We have started to implement our OPEX reduction program across all our main subsidiaries and we are on track to reduce OPEX in local currency by 7-9% vs the 2009 budget. The aim of these processes is to ensure OTH maintains a solid liquidity position that will allow it to weather the difficult credit market conditions without specific funding requirements."
The company is also looking at other measures, including the possible stock market listings of its operations in Algeria and Tunisia, along with already rumored merger with another operator in Bangladesh. The firm is also looking at tower sharing opportunities in Pakistan.
For its operations in the secretive North Korea, the company recorded revenues of US$4.46 million in the first quarter with 19,208 subscribers. The North Korean ARPU was a surprisingly high US$24.7, which is the second highest in the group, behind Lebanon.
Posted to the site on 27th May 2009
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/37683.php?s=h
--
From: Khurram Naveed

Pakistani family makes room for 93 relatives in Swat refugee crisis

By Saeed Shah in Malakand

Dr Mohammad Ayaz and his huge extended family were respectable professionals back in Swat but they were forced to flee with hundreds of thousands of others when the Pakistan army operation began earlier this month against the Taliban who had taken over the area. On Sunday the Pakistani interior ministry claimed that over 1,000 militants had been killed in the offensive so far.

Over 1 million from Swat and two adjoining districts, Dir and Buner, also subject to anti-Taliban operations, have run from their homes to become "internally displaced people". But over 90 per cent of them are staying with friends, family and in some cases strangers, not in the camps that have hurriedly sprouted to accommodate them.

"We are all poor now," said Dr Ayaz, surrounded by dozens of children of his siblings and cousins. "We are human beings, not animals. Give us back our self-respect, we are Pashtuns, we are Muslims, we cannot shed our self-respect."

The 93 family members are packed into five rooms, spread between two modest houses that belong to cousins in Malakand Top, a village just south of Swat. They said that have received no aid. Those living outside of camps have been largely ignored by aid agencies, the government and the media. But the plight of Dr Ayaz, whose family used in live in seven houses within a single compound in Saidu Sharif, Swat, is not unusual.

Huge families are now dependent on the charity of friends and family, who are often poor themselves. Aid workers warn that the situation is unsustainable and many of these refugees could be driven into the camps, as their hosts would not be able to cope with the financial burden for months on end. Across the North West Frontier Province, families are squeezing into one room, in order to cater for the deluge of desperate relatives who have descended on them.

In Jalala village, outside Mardan, the nearest major city to Swat, Alamgir Khan has come with 25 family members. They are being put up by an uncle in four rooms. He said that he had also been forced to borrow around R45,000 (£400), a considerable sum in Pakistan, from his uncle, to buy bedding, clothes and eating utensils.

"We came with nothing," said Mr Khan, 26. "They (our hosts) will get fed up with us eventually. Then I don't know what we'll do but I have faith in God that something will turn up for us."

The Pashtun people of Swat and the NWFP province, the same ethnic group that dominates Afghanistan, have proud traditions of hospitality. Without their generosity, the refugee influx from Swat would have been overwhelming. Aid agencies and the government are now trying to figure out a system to help those – the vast majority – who are being accommodated by friends and family.

There are distribution points where registered refugees who are not in camps can pick up non-food items, though most don't seem to know about this service.

Ariane Rummery, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), which is at the forefront of the aid effort, said: "We recognise that we're certainly not reaching everyone."

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/5340852/Pakistani-family-makes-room-for-93-relatives-in-Swat-refugee-crisis.html

From: Khurram Naveed

Daily Tips and Tricks Special Delivery - Microsoft

Create Custom ScreenTips for Shapes Shape ScreenTips in Microsoft Office Visio are the boxed text that appears when you point to a shape. Some Visio shapes have built-in ScreenTips—usually the name of the shape (such as the name of a workflow step). However, you can edit existing ScreenTip text or create new ScreenTip text for shapes that don’t have a built-in ScreenTip. To create or edit a ScreenTip: 1. Select the shape. 2. On the Insert menu, click either Shape ScreenTip or Edit Shape ScreenTip, as applicable. 3. In the Shape ScreenTip dialog box, type or edit the ScreenTip text. 4. Click OK.

Save and Reuse Tables Do you frequently create the same type of complex table, such as a financial table or tables to use for custom page layouts? If so, you can save that table for easy insertion into any document by storing it in the Quick Tables gallery. Here’s how: Select the table, and then press ALT+F3 to open the Create New Building Block dialog box. Type a name for your table, click the Gallery drop-down arrow, and then choose Tables from the list. You can set other options as well, such as choosing or creating a category for your table, which affects where in the Quick Tables gallery it is stored. By clicking the Save in drop-down arrow, you can indicate the template in which you want to store the table. However, if you leave the default Building Blocks.dotx as the Save in location, your table will be available to you for use in any document. To access your saved table, on the Insert tab, click Table, and then point to Quick Tables. Format Chart Elements Just Like Shapes In Microsoft Office Excel 2007, charts have as much data-crunching power as ever. They’re also part of the new Microsoft Office graphics engine, so you can format charts with the same flexibility as other Microsoft Office drawing objects, such as shapes. To apply a style of formatting to the entire chart, on the Chart Tools Design tab, select an entry from the Chart Styles gallery. Or to apply custom formatting, select a chart element (such as a data series), and then click the Chart Tools Format tab for the option to apply shape styles, fill, outline, or effect formatting. From the Chart Tools Format tab, you can also apply WordArt formatting to the text of selected chart elements, such as the legend, axis labels, and data labels.

Use Outlook to View the Web You can view the Web from Microsoft Office Outlook. Here’s how: 1. On the View menu, click Toolbars, and then click Web to display the Web address bar. 2. Enter a URL, and the view pane will become a browser while still retaining the Outlook Navigation Bar. 3. Click any navigation item or the Back button to return to your Outlook view.

Share Custom Chart Types To save your active Microsoft Office Excel chart as a template that you can reuse or share, on the Chart Tools Design tab, in the Type section, click Save as Template. In the Save Chart Template dialog box, type a name for your new chart type, and then click Save. To create a chart based on a chart template, on the Insert tab, in the lower-right corner of the Charts section, click the dialog box launch icon to open the Insert Chart dialog box. Then click Templates to access your saved custom chart types. Each chart template is saved as an individual file that you can copy and share. Saved chart templates are located in your Microsoft Office user templates folder, inside a subfolder named Charts. To locate your user templates folder, click the Office button, and then click Excel Options. Click the Trust Center tab, and then click Trust Center Settings. In the Trust Center dialog box, on the Trusted Locations tab, double-click the entry Excel 2007 default location: User Templates to view the full file path.

Modifying the Report Here’s how you can modify a report in Microsoft Office Access 2007. 1. Ensure you are in Layout view, which is the default view if you have just created a new report. 2. Select the fields (columns) that you want to delete (press SHIFT to select multiple fields), and then press DELETE. 3. Resize columns by dragging the column edge to the width you want. 4. To reorder columns, select the column that you want to move, and then drag it to another location. 5. Double-click the report title to modify it. 6. To add banded rows, select a row. Then on the Formatting contextual tab, in the Font section, choose a color from Alternate Fill/Back Color. 7. To add a group, in the Grouping pane, click Add a group. If the pane is not open, on the Ribbon, on the Formatting tab, click Grouping. Select the fields that you want to group. 8. To change to Landscape mode or adjust margins, go to the contextual Page Setup tab.

Turn Any 2-D Shape into a 3-D Object Want to convert a flat shape in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 into a 3-D object? Here’s how: 1. With a slide open, click the Insert tab, and then select any shape from the Shapes ribbon. Alternately, select a shape you have created yourself. 2. Click the slide's surface to add the shape to the slide. 3. Right-click the shape, and then click Format Shape. 4. Select a solid or gradient fill. This step is not required but will enhance the 3-D look of your object. 5. Transform your shape into a 3-D object. You can add depth, bevel, contour, and surface type via the 3-D Format tab. 6. Give perspective to your 3-D shape. Rotate the object via the 3-D Rotation tab. Upgrade Old Documents to 2007 Versions If you receive a document from a colleague who is not yet running the 2007 Microsoft Office system, the 2007 Office system will automatically open it in Compatibility Mode. However, not all the new features will be available to you. When you close the document, it will be saved in its original format, not in the format of the 2007 release. If you want to upgrade the file to the 2007 Office system: 1. Click the Office button, and then click Convert. 2. In the Microsoft Office Word dialog box, click OK, and then click Save. Note: You may want to make a backup copy of the file before you upgrade it. Also, to see when you are working in Compatibility Mode, look at the top of the screen. The phrase Compatibility Mode will appear in brackets to the right of the file name.

Allocate Time for Tasks in Your Outlook Calendar Outlook 2007 now provides a view of your current tasks in the bottom pane of your Calendar view. To allocate time in your calendar to perform these tasks, drag each task to a specific time slot on the calendar. These time slots will then appear as "busy" in your Outlook calendar.

UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, some facts about Pakistan

Largest producer of Ghee

2nd largest producer of Chickpeas

4th largest producer of Apricot, Cotton and Sugarcane

5th largest producer of Milk and Onion

6th largest producer of Date Palm

7th largest producer of Mango

8th largest producer of Tangerines, mandarin orange and Rice

9th largest producer of Wheat, and

10th largest producer of Oranges

From: Wajeeha Erum

Pakistani Group Strikes U.S. Military Web Site - GForce Pakistan

Newsbytes News Network,  Oct 21, 2001  by Brian McWilliams

Delivering on earlier threats, a Pakistani hacking group defaced a Web site operated by the U.S. Department of Defense on Saturday.

A crew known as GForce Pakistan replaced the home page of the Defense Test & Evaluation Processional Institute (DTEPI) site with a text message about terrorism and Islam. The defaced page also included several photographs described by the attackers as depicting Muslim children killed by Israeli soldiers.

The vandalized site, located at http://www.dtepi.mil , was still viewable Saturday evening. Two other addresses affiliated with the site, including http://enduringfreedom.dtepi.mil and http://nasa.dtepi.mil , were also vandalized with the same message.

Operation Enduring Freedom is the name given by the Department of Defense to its campaign against terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The attackers' message said Arabs and Muslims fear "retaliation due to unjustified stereotyping and accusations" in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on America. The group also criticized the U.S. for historically failing to stop worldwide violence against Muslims.

Traffic requests to the DTEPI site appear to be handled by KCnet, an Internet service provider in Kansas City.

According to Brian Martin of the Attrition.org hacking information site, the attackers may have used a technique called "DNS poisoning" to cause the defacement. Rather than attack the DTEPI Web server directly, GForce may have penetrated the site's name server and redirected visitors attempting to reach the DTEPI site to a compromised server at KCnet, according to Martin.

GForce's message included a threat to deface 1,500 U.S., British, and Indian Web sites in the next month, and claimed to have already obtained sensitive data from Indian government officials. The group also threatened to launch a one terrabyte-per-second denial of service attack against a site that had apparently published information critical of the defacers.

"We have suffered throughout the ages and will suffer no more. This is the era of cyberwarfare, where once again the Muslims have prevailed. We will not rest till every node, every line, every bit of information contained in our suppressors has not been wiped out, returning them to the dark ages," said the message.

On Wednesday, GForce vandalized a Web server operated by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In a message at the defaced site, the attackers said they were part of a group called the Al-Qaeda Alliance Online that planned to target "major US military and major British Web sites" in coming days and jeopardize their internal security.

The Defense Test & Evaluation Processional Institute provides online and CD-ROM training courses in modern defense testing, according to a copy of the site's original homepage cached by the Google search engine.

The defaced page also contained a link to an animated presentation about Islam located at a site operated by the Muslim Student Association at Oregon State University.

Alldas' mirror of the defaced site is at http://defaced.alldas.de/mirror/2001/10/20/www.dtepi.mil/  .

Reported by Newsbytes, http://www.newsbytes.com  .

13:01 CST

(20011021/WIRES ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS/HACKERGEN/PHOTO)

COPYRIGHT 2001 Newsbytes News Network
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group

 

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Nukes

Remembering Manhattan

The nuclear age began in a small laboratory underneath the football field at the University of Chicago in 1942. There, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction. Just three years later, World War II ended with the detonation of nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The scientists of the top-secret Manhattan Project did their job terrifyingly well.

Even before the Manhattan Project, scientists knew that certain elements were unstable, slowly emitting energy as their atomic state changed over time. Some of these radioactive elements, uranium and plutonium in particular, could undergo nuclear fission. That is, the nucleus of their atoms could be split into two equal fragments, releasing large amounts of energy and a few stray neutrons, too. If these stray neutrons could strike and split other atoms, physicists figured, you could create a sustained nuclear reaction.

The problem is that it's very difficult to create just the right conditions for a sustained reaction. The solution, scientists found, is to concentrate a sufficient mass of radioactive material together, so that when one atom splits, stray neutrons stand a good chance of striking and splitting some neighbors, which then release more neutrons to continue the chaos. The mass necessary to achieve this chain reaction is known as "critical mass."

Yet it's not enough to have a critical mass of uranium or plutonium. You need the right kind of uranium or plutonium, as each exists in several different isotopes. Isotopes of an element may have the same chemical properties, but because they have different numbers of neutrons in their nucleus, they have different radioactive properties.

Only uranium-235 and plutonium-239 have the right nuclear stuff for sustainable fission. You can mine uranium ore out of the earth, but almost all of the ore is uranium-238, and you'll need to mine huge amounts to extract even a little U-235. The right plutonium is even harder to get, because it doesn't exist in the earth at all. It has to be produced in sophisticated nuclear reactors. Only after these difficult and expensive processes will you have the purified "weapons-grade" material needed for a nuclear weapon.

The thermonuclear weapons in modern arsenals are even more complex--not to mention a thousand times more powerful than the bomb exploded over Hiroshima. First detonated in 1952, thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bombs use the intense heat of a fission reaction to start a second, fusion reaction, in which hydrogen isotopes combine to form helium. To fit together, the hydrogen atoms must lose mass. The mass becomes energy, and kilotons of destructive force become megatons.

Nightmare Scenario

A 10-megaton nuclear weapon (current U.S. warhead strength) creates an explosion equivalent to the detonation of 10 million tons of TNT. That's 10 million tons versus less than 200 pounds of nuclear fuel. Half of the energy released by a nuclear explosion is in the blast itself. Pressure waves emanating from a 10-megaton blast would exceed 30 pounds per square inch and generate winds in excess of 700 miles per hour. Such winds could knock down steel-and-concrete buildings with ease. Even 20 miles away, the blast would shatter windows and uproot trees.

Temperatures around ground zero would rise to more than 20 million degrees Fahrenheit--hotter than the sun. Everything in a 2-mile radius would be vaporized. Ten miles out, materials like glass and steel would melt. At 15 miles, temperatures would reach 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, igniting all combustible materials and producing innumerable fires. Even at distances greater than 20 miles, humans would suffer serious burns in the intense heat.

Still, despite the massive damage it can cause, the explosion itself is for many the least worrisome aspect of nuclear weapons. When the smoke clears and the fires are out, the bomb's most insidious effect remains: radiation.

Radiation is all around you. It bombards you every moment of your life, everywhere you go. Don't panic, though--radiation is simply traveling energy, and most of it is harmless. Only some forms, like ultraviolet light and X-rays, are harmful if you're exposed too long. Radiation like this, called ionizing radiation, contains enough energy to break down chemical bonds in substances that absorb it.

Radioactive elements like uranium and plutonium emit, among other things, gamma rays, packing 10,000 times more energy than visible light. Gamma rays can pass right through humans. Only dense materials like lead can block them. Because gamma radiation can penetrate human tissue, even external exposure is harmful, causing the ionization of atoms in your body. This leads to massive cellular damage, resulting in system-wide "radiation sickness" and, with enough exposure, death.

Although damage from the blast, heat, and even external radiation burns may heal over time, the ionizing damage done to the DNA in human cells will remain. Sooner or later, the body's own replication of damaged DNA leads to the final danger of a nuclear blast: cancer, mutation, and genetic abnormalities. The final fatalities can take years--even decades--to occur.

Christopher Call
February 14, 2005

From: KnowledgeNews

News from Mesopotamia

Mesopotamian headlines?

Today's Iraq never fails to make headlines. There was a time when Iraq made history, not news--when Mesopotamia actually helped get civilization on its feet. Today, let's take the long view and look at the "old news."

Toddling through Mesopotamia

Some people say Iraq is democracy's greatest test. Others say it's a violent mess. But a historian will say Iraq's the cradle of civilization.

It's true. Ancient Iraq--Mesopotamia--was likely home to the first agriculture, the first cities, the first laws. It was home to the first wheel and the first writing, too. It was where humans grew out of cultural diapers and into toddler training pants. Here's the story, step by toddler step.

Solid Food --
Agriculture

The days of "cavemen" hunting mammoths in the snow really weren't that long ago. The last Ice Age didn't end until around 10,000 BC, and mammoth meatloaf stayed on man's menu for centuries after that. Lunch came largely where you found it--find a berry, eat a berry. Archaeological evidence suggests that a few crafty cowboys (or bad hunters) domesticated cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats and started tending to their food. But nobody grew crops.

People gathered wild grains where they could, of course. Eventually, someone was bound to notice that a few scattered grains of wheat or barley had sprouted beside the grinding place. Archaeologists think this "a-ha!"--perhaps the most important "a-ha!" in human history--happened around 8000 BC, with the first farmers donning seed-corn caps in the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They've identified other contenders for the "first farmer" title, too, in Asia and the Americas. One thing is for sure. With a surplus of food like never before, the people of Mesopotamia (Greek for "land between the rivers") flourished.

Getting Wet and Keeping Dry --
Villages & Cities

As long as lunch was on the hoof, nobody had much incentive to stay in one place. Farming, for the first time, gave people roots, and semi-permanent villages sprang up with the crops. Still, successive plantings sucked the life out of the soil, and people eventually had to pick up and move to a new garden spot. The farmers of Mesopotamia had an advantage here: river water, and plenty of it, fed the alluvial land. The trick was controlling it, both to water the crops and to keep it from flooding the village. So people learned the art of irrigation, dikes, and dams. Add in crop rotation, and you've got villages built to last throughout Mesopotamia.

You've got one more thing, too: government. Maintaining complex irrigation and flood control systems took organization and specialization. You grow the food, and I'll dig the ditches. And Uncle Gilgamesh will collect the taxes to pay my salary and maintain the public works. By 3500 BC, the world's first city-dwellers lived in Mesopotamian burgs where thousands of people did dozens of different jobs--and where anyone would have recognized the old joke about death and taxes.

Circle Time --
The Wheel

Fred Flintstone aside, the wheel was not a Stone Age tool. As Mesopotamian villages gradually morphed into cities between 5000 and 3500 BC, the people closest to the Persian Gulf, called the Sumerians, achieved particular prominence. By 3500 BC, some Sumerian Sam (or Samantha) had figured out how to make a wheel. A Sumerian pictograph from around 3500 BC actually features the wheel in an infomercial-style before-and-after shot, showing a wooden sled side-by-side with a virtually identical wheeled "sled."

Inspiration seems to have come from the potter's wheel, which appeared in Mesopotamia around the same time. All early models of the wheel consisted of three planks of wood clamped together with two crosspieces and carved to roundness. By 2000 BC, deluxe models had spokes. Oxen were sold separately.

One-Two-Three, ABC --
Cuneiform

Around the time the wheel became something to write home about, Sumerians learned how to write home. Thank the accountants, not the English majors. City life had gotten complicated, and merchants and tax collectors could no longer just remember who paid how much for what. So they started keeping simple accounts--tallies and tokens designed more to jog the memory than anything else. Soon, would-be writers started using pictographs to represent objects, and the pictographs, in turn, evolved into linear marks denoting not only objects but the sounds of spoken syllables as well.

Scholars today call the Sumerian symbols cuneiform--from the Latin cuneus, or wedge--because scribes made wedge-shaped characters by pressing the slanted end of a reed stylus into wet clay. When finished, they fired the clay to harden it. Thousands of these clay tablets survive today. The earliest tablets simply list commodities in various amounts next to people's names.

Playing Nice with Others --
The Law

By 2100 BC, people were writing more than receipts. They were recording the law, allowing legal precedent to pass more easily from one generation to the next. Tribal rules surely existed for thousands of years. But the communal complexity of city life expanded both the need for rules and the number of situations calling for a rule in the first place. The law simply outgrew oral pronouncements.

The first known legal code comes from the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu, who founded a dynasty at the city of Ur in 2112 BC. The most famous comes from Hammurabi, who started his rule in Babylon in 1792 BC, after the Sumerians gave way to the Akkadians upriver. Hammurabi didn't look kindly on criminals. Bad guys were as likely to die as face a fine. But he did apparently try hard for social justice. Those captured in the king's wars were guaranteed ransom, farmers hurt by drought or flood could ignore their debts, and wives abandoned by husbands got alimony and child support. True to writing's original purpose, many of the laws regulated commerce. Rule #105: Always get a receipt!

Michael Himick
June 8, 2005

From: KnowledgeNews

Most idiotic crimes of the 20th century

1901. A thief robbed a post train in New Orleans and stole 12,568
Christmas cards.

1910. A man known as John Smith decided to rob a bank. He put on
women's tights and entered the office. All clients and the security
started laughing, but it did not stop Smith from approaching the cash
desk and withdrawing $10,000 from his own account. Laughing police
officers took the bizarre thief away.

1936. A prisoner sentenced to death penalty escaped during his own
execution. He ran away together with the electric chair, to which he
was fixed. The prisoner hoped to cross the Mexican border and sell
the electric chair in Mexico. The police nabbed the fugitive near the
prison gate.

1966. A group of gypsies stole an elephant in the city of
Arkhangelsk, Russia. They failed to sell the animal and had to bring
it back to the zoo.

1975. A married couple of thieves went to court when they could not
agree on how to split what they had stolen before. The court put them
both in jail.

1980. Two perpetrators tried to rob a bank in New York. They disarmed
the security, told them to take all money and other metal things out
of their pockets and stole all that. No one even bothered to catch
them.

1982. A criminal broke into a flat of a Russian elderly lady and
stole a replica of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The lady cut that picture
out from a very old magazine - it was the only thing that the
criminal stole.

1986. A thief broke into a casino in Atlantic City. Yielding a gun,
the man stole a bag of quarters. The thief ran about ten meters away
from the cash desk, sat down at one of the gambling machines and
started playing. Hardly had he lost a half of the money to the
machine, when the police nabbed him.

1998. The largest theft of punched cards took place in the Moscow
region in 1998. Three years later it became known that someone had
stolen about 20 train cars of punched cards. It is still a mystery
who stole the cards, what for and where such a large number of cards
came from. Furthermore, no one even reported the disappearance of 20
cars.

1999. A group of Russian soldiers robbed a beer kiosk not far from
their quarters. A company of soldiers stopped near the kiosk, a
sergeant called three military men from the line and ordered them to
rob it.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah

(Redirected from Muhammad Ali Jinnah) Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah(bhai) Poonjah (referred to in Pakistan as Quaid-e-Azam, or "Great Leader", which is a legally defined title) (December 25, 1876 - September 11, 1948) was an Indian Muslim nationalist, who led the movement demanding a separate homeland for Muslims in South Asia and served as Pakistan's first Governor-General. Contents [showhide] 1 Early Life and Family History 2 Law 3 Political Career 4 Quotes 5 Trivia 6 References [edit] Early Life and Family History Jinnah's birthplace and date of birth are disputed; however, it is generally believed that he was born in Wazir Mansion, Karachi, and raised in Bombay. His father was Jinnahbhai Poonja, from Gujarat (the younger Jinnah dropped 'bhai' from his name, in 1894). Jinnah's father lived from 1857-1901. Jinnah's family had Hindu, Ismaili, Shia and Sunni ancestry; and the family was primarily Ismaili. Jinnah was educated at the Sind Madrasatul Islam and the Christian Society High School, in Karachi. In 1893, he went to London to work for Graham's Shipping and Trading Company, which his father did business with. He had been married to a 16-year old (distant) relative named Emibai; but, she died shortly after he moved to London. Around this time, his mother died as well. In 1918 he would marry Rattanbai Petit and they had a daughter, Dina. In 1929, his second wife died. He had one sister, Fatima Jinnah. [edit] Law A young Jinnah as a law student In 1894, Jinnah quit his job in order to study law at Lincoln's Inn; from which he became the youngest Indian to graduate (1896). It is believed that Jinnah decided to study there as he was impressed by a mural in the main dining hall (1--Ahmed); one which depicted Moses and Muhammed. Jinnah would briefly work with MP Dadabhai Naoroji. By the end of 1896, Jinnah was a member of the Indian National Congress and practicing law with the Bombay bar (as the only Muslim barrister). There he earned a reputation regarding his lack of respect for the British Empire. In one incident, a judge kept interrupting Jinnah by saying, "Rubbish!" Jinnah eventually responded by saying, "Your honour, nothing but rubbish has passed your mouth all morning." Shortly after this incident, in 1901, Sir Charles Ollivant offered to hire Jinnah at 1,500 rupees per month. Jinnah refused, believing he could earn that much on a daily basis. (By the early 1930s, Jinnah was earning about 40,000 rupees a month.) In 1906, Jinnah served as secretary to Naoroji, who was then serving as president of the National Congress. In 1906, Bal Gangadhar Tilak would ask Jinnah to represent him, during his trial for sedition. Jinnah as a young man [edit] Political Career Jinnah with Gandhi On January 25, 1910, Jinnah became the "Muslim member from Bombay" on the 60-man Legislative Council of India. In 1913, Jinnah joined the Muslim League and, in 1914, would support Indian participation in World War I. In 1916, Jinnah became the president of the Lucknow Muslim League session and again in 1920; and later, from 1920-30 and from 1937-47, would serve as the League's president. Jinnah was initially hailed as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity but later events forced him to change his stance. He disagreed with Mohandas Gandhi over the policy of noncooperation and later over the proposal that Hindu and Muslim communities hold separate elections in any future state. By 1921, Jinnah had resigned from the Indian National Congress and voiced his support for separate Muslim negotiations with Britain over the future of India. Jinnah participated in the Round Table Conference (1930-1931) but was frustrated at the failure to achieve any tangible results; he announced his retirement from politics. By then, however, he was a leader of the local Muslim population, and despite his ostensible retirement, he was voted as President for Life of the League in 1934. Adopting what some have interpreted as a "divide and conquer" policy, the British initially supported Jinnah, hoping that he would be a powerful counterbalance to the Hindu nationalist movement. Jinnah was more amenable to British interests: he supported Indian participation in World War II while the Indian National Congress opposed the war. Jinnah first raised the issue of partition at the Lahore Conference (1940). He was the first to declare that Hindus and Muslims constituted two distinct peoples, adding that if partition was not achieved the subcontinent would erupt in civil war. On July 26, 1943, a member of the Khaksars attempted to assassinate Jinnah by stabbing; Jinnah was wounded. Though the notion of partition was originally rejected by the British, both Jawaharlal Nehru and Lord Mountbatten eventually came round to accepting the idea. The idea was formally accepted on June 3, 1947, and one month later, on August 14, the Dominion of Pakistan was created. Jinnah was the new nation's first Governor-General and president of its legislative assembly. He gave a clear vision for a modern democratic Islamic state. Sadly that vision was never followed. An ailing Jinnah Despite partition, the Subcontinent was engulfed in war. Overworked from dealing with the fighting and a growing refugee crisis, Jinnah was unable to play a significant role in strengthening the new nation-state. He died on September 11, 1948, from tuberculosis. A mausoleum was built to honour Jinnah in Karachi. Quotes Stanley Wolpert on Jinnah -- "Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three." Mohammad Ali Jinnah 1942 -- "I have lived as plain Mr. Jinnah and I hope to die as plain Mr. Jinnah. I am very much averse to any title or honours and I will be more than happy if there was no prefix to my name." "We have to hope for the best, but be ready for the worst."