Sunday, February 25, 2007

Industry

An industry is normally any grouping of businesses that share a common method of generating profits, such as the music industry, the automobile industry, or the cattle industry. It is also used particularly to refer to an area of economic production focused on manufacturing which involves large amounts of capital investment before any profit can be realized, also called "heavy industry.As-of 2004, Financial services is the major industry or category of industries in the world in terms of earnings.
Industry in the second sense became a key sector of manufacture in European and North American countries during the Industrial Revolution, which upset previous mercantile and feudal economies through many successive rapid advances in technology, such as the growth of steam engines, power looms, and advances in large scale steel and coal production. Industrial countries then assumed a capitalist economic policy. Railroads and steam-powered ships began quickly integrating previously impossibly-distant world markets, enabling private companies to develop to then-unheard of size and wealth. Manufacturing is a wealth-producing sector of an economy. Other sectors such as the service sector tend to be wealth consuming sectors. Following the Industrial Revolution, perhaps a third of the world's financial output is derived from manufacturing industries—more than agriculture's share.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Media

Commercial publicity media can include wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio, cinema and television ads, web banners, web popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in supermarkets, the opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, chicken niblets, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts. Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to distribute their message through a medium is advertising.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Origins of river water

A river may have its source in a spring, lake, from damp, boggy places where the mud is waterlogged, from glacial meltwater, or simply from rain flow off impermeable rock or man-made surfaces. Almost all rivers are coupled by other rivers and streams termed tributaries the highest of which are known as headwaters. Water may also be recruited to a river from ground-water sources. Right through the course of the river, the total volume transported downstream will often be a combination of the free water flow together with a substantial part flowing through sub-surface rocks and gravels that underly the river and its floodplain. For many rivers in large valleys, this unseen part of flow may greatly exceed the visible flow.From their source, all rivers flow downhill, naturally terminating in the sea or in a lake. In arid areas rivers sometimes end by losing water to disappearance. River flow may also be lost by percolation into dry, porous substance such as sand, soil, or into pervious rock.
Excessive abstraction of water for use in industry, irrigation etc can also cause a river to dry before getting a lake or the sea.The mouth, or lower end, of a river is recognized by hydrologists as its base level.The area drained by a river and its tributaries is called catchment, catchment basin, drainage basin or watershed. The term "watershed" is also used to mean a boundary between catchments, which is also called a water divide.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Jewellery

Jewellery is factually any piece of fine material used to decorate oneself. Although in earlier times jewellery was created for more convenient uses, such as wealth storage and pinning clothes together, in recent times it has been used almost completely for beautification. The first pieces of jewellery were made from likely materials, such as bone and animal teeth, shell, wood and engraved stone. Jewellery was often made for people of high importance to show their status and, in many cases, they were covered with it.Jewellery is made out of almost every material recognized and has been made to garnish nearly every body part, from hairpins to toe rings and many more types of jewellery. While high-quality and artistic pieces are made with gemstones and valuable metals, less pricey costume jewellery is made from less-valuable materials and is mass-produced.Form and function Kenyan man exhausting tribal beads.Over time, jewellery has been used for a number of reasons: Currency, wealth display and storage, purposeful Symbolism Protection and Artistic display Most cultures have at some point had a practice of observance large amounts of wealth stored in the form of jewellery. Numerous cultures move wedding dowries in the form of jewelry, or create jewelry as a means to store or display coins. on the other hand, jewellery has been used as a currency or trade good; a mostly poignant example being the use of slave beads.
In creating jewellery, a variety of gemstones, coins, or other valuable items can be used, often set into precious metals. Common expensive metals used for modern jewellery include gold, platinum or silver, although alloys of nearly every metal known can be encountered in jewellery -- bronze, for example, was common in Roman times. Most gold jewellery is made of an alloy of gold, the purity of which is affirmed in karats, indicated by a number followed by the letter K. For example, ordinary gold jewellery ranges from 10K (41.7% pure gold) to 22K (91.6% pure gold), while 24K (99.9% pure gold) is considered too soft for jewellery use. Platinum alloys variety from 900 (90% pure) to 950 (95.0% pure). The silver used in jewellery is usually sterling silver, or 92.5% fine silver.Other generally used materials include glass, such as merged glass or enamel; wood, often carved or turned; shells and other natural animal substances such as bone and ivory; natural clay, polymer clay, and even plastics.
Jewellery and society
One universal issue is control over who could wear what jewellery, a point which indicate the powerful symbolism the wearing of jewellery evoked. In ancient Rome, for instance, only convinced ranks could wear rings; later, sumptuary laws dictated who could wear what type of jewellery; again based on rank. Cultural dictate have also played a important role; for example, the wearing of earrings by Western men was considered "effeminate" in the 19th and early 20th centuries. on the other hand, the jewellery industry in the early 20th century launched a crusade to popularize wedding rings for men — which caught on — as well as appointment rings for men , going so far as to make a false history and claim that the practice had Medieval roots. By the mid 1940s, 85% of weddings in the U.S. feature a double-ring ceremony, up from 15% in the 1920s.Religion has also played a role: Islam, for instance, consider the wearing of gold by men as a social taboo,and many religions have edicts against extreme display.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

The Real Miracle

As far as Miracles is concern, turning salty seawater in to sweet water is quite amazing. Regardless of the scientific clarification being doled out—surplus freshwater flowing from the Mahim River into the sea—the thousand mass to Mahim Creek near the beachfront in Mumbai will pretty see the ‘transubstantiation’ as the deed of the late Haji Maqdoom Baba, whose shrine is in the area. Mass hysteria, of course, is only a term to clarify the hordes of believers filling plastic bottles and drinking the water. But the real miracle would be if those glugging the ‘miraculous’ water manages to flee succumbing to serious gastric illness.
The water of Mahim Creek, sweetened or otherwise, is dirty and would scandalize not only the likes of Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment. Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and officials of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai have already request to people not to drink the water. Industrial waste is not the finest ingredient for a miracle. But telling this to goggle-eyed people facing even more goggle-eyed TV cameras is as worthwhile as persuasive people that a Ganesh idol sipping milk is caused by suction and not godly lactose tolerance.
Fortunately, rumors of the sweetened water turning back to its original brackish form might stop a future surge. Now we only wait for the real miracle of no one complaining of sickness.