The DORMANT volcano

The term Volcano emerges from the word Vulcan, the Roman god of forging and metal works, also known as Hephaestus of Greek mythology. But the volcano I will be talking about is very different than what we have in our prejudicial notions, but none the less dangerous than the one which knocked the living daylights out of Pliny the younger when it burst forth. You will be surprised at the picture:

Well, if you are surprised, then I am happy. Burning leaves leave burning holes in our atmosphere. Yes, people might question my sanity, but a poet’s mind that I have, never allows my conscience to ignore such details.

In India particularly where I live, people burn fallen leaves, everyday in fall, in amounts of thousands of burning heaps. Considering the population of India, you can foretell the amount being burned in front of their houses. I have seen much of this, and it is so irritating to watch them burn under a tree destroying the one that they came from. Why is this enmity? I have no idea.

  

Every morning when I wake up, I try to breathe in the fresh air, so free of pollutants and full of bright shining dew. But it is ugly to know that you need to wake before the sun in order to breathe the good one, for apparently it has been fouled by fuming heaps of burning leaves. And then comes the vehicular traffic and a day in India full of pollutants ensues. No breathers. We are trying to catch up to China aren’t we? Aren’t we trying to exceed in economic growth, basking in glory that we were least affected by the recession in global markets?

Aren’t we trying to make money and hoard it, so that we can hope to bribe God with it? It ain’t gonna work mate. No shortcuts in front of god.

Leaves, dead or alive, have been there before our ancestors learned to speak in words. In fact, it has been the first of firsts that propagated life on dry land. Yet, I don’t know why, we still are so intent to destroy them after they die. Why? Are leaves such a big nuisance? What bad have they done that we punish them, and burn them, and cut their bearers from the stem? Leaves give a natural comfy touch to whatever they cover, like a redwood forest in autumn, has inspired so many poets and authors to write memorabillia about them, notably P.B. Shelley, in his poem The West wind. However, we still try to destroy this poet’s important equipment of imagination.

Apart from these romantic ideas, burning leaves leaves the atmosphere with unhealing wounds. They, how many times have our good scientists repeated this, give away Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and when they are burned in heaps, Nitrogen dioxide. It happens so because, in heaps, the temperature at the centre can well exceed 1000K, and at such temperatures, Nirtogen can combine with oxigen to form Nitrous oxide, and Nitrogen dioxide. These oxides, as we know, are acidic in nature and float up in the atmosphere and condesnse along with water to make HNO₃, Nitirc acid. It causes acid rain, and destroys a myriad of things

 My countries pride, the Taj mahal, has lost its sheen, and its credit goes to these nonsense of burning leaves, and industries too.

And this is just the beginning, my friends.

We should try and limit whatever we can of the pollution, the foulery, that we do to the earth. Be it restricting the use of cars, or you know, using the bicycle while going to the supermarket, and the sort, but we must do something.

Leaves are an important part of compost, and leaf mold. The dead leaves can be used to grow more trees in a healthy manner, because all biodegradable substances can oxidise to from “compost”. Thus, if every individual can make a small compost pit, or give away the raw materials, which of course include that of dead leaves, then he makes an important contribution for Earth, not against it. It no only generates more compost for agriculture, it also makes an industry, where people can find work, and live.

So, I ask you all in a humble voice, unite against this evil! Make use of the gifts of nature! Join in with me to tell people about this problem, and explain the uses and the good things of composting and collecting dead leaves. Don’t burn leaves, and don’t allow them to be burned, except in areas where forest fires take place.

It doesn't in my backyard.

There are 6 billion people on the planet earth. If each collects even a 100 gram leaves, it gives us more than 6 million tonnes of compost every year. More trees. MORE LIFE!

Join me in this voice!

See for yourselves:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compost   

An Injury can ruin!

Aaron Ramsey is wonderful player.
If Fabregas leaves Arsenal for Barcelona, I am sure Ramsey would be a super replacement for him. However, On February 27, 2010, He conceded a horrific tackle from Ryan Shawcross straight on his shins, and now lies in a hospital with his tibia and fibula fractured.

I couldn't post a picture, but I am posting this video, courtesy YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9i1NBLSyxI

If you have the will, then see this, for I certainly don't want to see this thing happen again. It is so unjustified, that Ramsey get that injury. HE is 19! Why should he be so unlucky? He is apt to step in the shoes of Cesc Fabregas, but all of a sudden he is now fighting for his career.

I know this unfairness of God, but I am sure that he has planned something better for Ramsey. Surely, I pray for him, and I know you would too!

About that challenge, well it's a contact sport you know. It could have been worse, there have been worse, but thank god nothing else happened. Shawcross though could have prevented that from happening because evidently, he could have stopped that sliding clear. Ramsey is inexperienced, and he just could not come in properly, and was second best in the challenge. Shawcross didn't have any malice intended from that challenge though. I think he should recompose himself, and drop by Ramsey to apologies.

'Let Us Dream, Ladies and Gentlemen!'

‘Let us learn to dream, ladies and gentlemen, and then perhaps we shall learn the truth. But let us beware of making our dreams public before they have been approved by the waking mind’. So said Friedrich August Kekulé, nigh 120 years ago. If people don’t know him, that’s really a shame. He was one of those free born scientific minds, which wander through the jungles of uncovered information, to find the treasure of truth.

And, if you haven’t read your aromatic hydrocarbons chapter yet, he told us how the Benzene molecule must look like.

It is very interesting to know how he got the idea of the molecule. One fine day he was sitting in his study, with the question rambling through his mind, ‘how does the benzene look like’. Of course, he had some leads, the reactions, the percentage masses, the peculiar behaviours, and of course, ah! The smell!

However, like many before him, he did not have any idea, as to how to connect this jumbled piece of information together. So, not getting anywhere, he dozed off. Now, the humorous quotient aside, it happened to him in the dream of that sleep, that he saw the benzene molecules floating across his mind. He writes later, “Again, the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated visions of this kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformations; long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twisting and turning in snake like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled around me mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I woke…”

 

Lo! There was the birth of Benzene! Kekulé then spent the night working out the necessary details and consequences of the structure, and it occurred to him, that it must be right. X-ray studies indicate that the benzene structure is indeed the one he proposed. Coincidence? Indeed, if anything called coincidence exists in this world! The structure, I think, was revealed to Kekulé much the same way as God revealed himself to Moses.

How otherwise can you explain the dream and the correctness? Kekulé had no leads whatsoever going into the problem; it is only by coincidence that he found that structure.

These incidents reinforce my faith in science. It indicates to us that we are indeed headed onto the right track, with the full blessings of the almighty! After all, aren’t we deciphering the tumultuous mysteries that exist in his creations? Aren’t we deciphering him?

Yes. And we are on the right track.