Environmental pollution

Environmental pollution

Environmental pollution is contamination of air, water and land from man-made waste. Pollution leads to depletion of the ozone layer, global warming and climate change. Air pollution is the release of chemicals and particles into the atmosphere. Water pollution includes surface runoff, leakage into groundwater, liquid spills, wastewater discharge and littering. If toxins are spilled on the ground or if an underground storage tank leaks, soil can become contaminated. Well known contaminants include herbicides and pesticides. Toxic waste is waste material, often in chemical form, which pollutes the natural environment and contaminates groundwater.

Other types of pollution include ocean pollution and noise pollution. Environmental pollution can have a deadly effect on humans and ecosystems. For example, cigarette smoke, including second-hand smoke, causes cancer, emphysema, stroke and heart attack. Drinking water can become contaminated by untreated sewage, rashes and skin problems occur due to oil spills, while excessive noise can cause hearing loss. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970 to put a limit on the amount of pollutants in the air. Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1963, the Noise Control Act in 1972 and the Clean Water Act in 1977. Pollution is a bigger concern in other parts of the world, especially developing countries. Time Magazine reported in 2007 that the most polluted spots in the world included China, India, Peru and Russia.

Management Information System

Management Information System

Management Information System

Management Information System
Overall information system not only contained in management information systems, because not all information in the organization can be incorporated into a fully automated system. Key aspects of information systems will always exist outside the computer system.
In the business development of sophisticated management information system with computer-based needs of people who have high skill and long experience and requires the participation of the managers of the organization. Since many organizations fail to develop management information systems due to:
First, the lack of proper organization
Second, the lack of adequate planning
Third, the lack of skilled personnel
Fourth, lack of management participation in the form of participation of managers in designing the system, control system development efforts and motivate all personnel involved.
Good management information system is a management information system capable of balancing costs and benefits to be gained means that the SIM will save costs, increase revenue and immeasurable arising from the information very useful.
Organizations need to realize when they are quite realistic in their desires, meticulous in designing and implementing the SIM and the natural desire to fit in determining the cost limit from the point of the potential benefits, then the resulting SIM will provide benefits and money.
In a computer management information systems is not an absolute prerequisite in theory, but in practice good manajemenyang information system would not exist without the help of computer processing capability. The main principle of the design of management information systems: Information systems are carefully woven manajemenharus to be able to serve the primary task.
Management information system aims to meet the needs of the general information of all managers in the company or within organizational subunits company.Manajemenmenyediakan information system for user information in the form of reports and output from various simulation models of mathematics

Mount Everest

Mount Everest

Mount Everest (Mount Sagarmāthā (Nepali: सगरमाथा), Tibetan: ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ; Chinese Zhumulangma Peak simplified Chinese: 珠穆朗玛峰; pinyin: Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng), Chajamlangma (Limbu), or Mount Chomolungma) is the world's highest mountain above sea level at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft). It is located in the Himalayas in Asia.
In 1856, the Great Trigonometric Survey of British India established the first published height of Everest, then known as Peak XV, at 29,002 ft (8,840 m). In 1865, Everest was given its official English name by the Royal Geographical Society upon recommendation of Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India at the time, who named it after his predecessor in the post, and former chief, Sir George Everest.^[4] Chomolungma had been in common use by Tibetans for centuries, but Waugh was unable to propose an established local name because Nepal and Tibet were closed to foreigners.
The highest mountain in
the world attracts many well-experienced mountaineers as well as novice climbers who are willing to pay substantial sums to professional mountain guides to complete a successful climb. The mountain, while not posing substantial technical climbing difficulty on the standard route (other eight-thousanders such as K2 or Nanga Parbat are much more difficult), still has many inherent dangers such as altitude sickness, weather and wind. By the end of the 2008 climbing season, there had been 4,102 ascents to the summit by about 2,700 individuals.^[5] Climbers are a significant source of tourist revenue for Nepal, whose government also requires all prospective climbers to obtain an expensive permit, costing up to US $ 25,000 per person.^[6] By the end of 2009 Everest had claimed 216 lives,^[5] including eight who perished during a 1996 storm high on the mountain. Conditions are so difficult in the death zone (altitudes higher than 8,000 m/26,246 ft) that most corpses have been left where they fell. Some of them are visible from standard climbing routes.

Blood on our Hands

Blood on our hands

Blood on our hands
Shulamit Aloni amazed by public’s ability to get caught up in wave of patriotic zeal over Gaza op
Shulamit Aloni
Hamas men and their leaders belong to the evil camp, and their hatred for us made them cast away the rational inhibitions required of a leadership that is concerned for the wellbeing of its citizens. Indeed, Hamas’ conduct ever since the Gaza withdrawal and subsequent election victory does not merit any praise. However, Strip residents who are captives of Hamas’ leadership – women, the elderly, children, students, lecturers, hospitals, doctors, and patients – do not have to be punished with destruction, death, and bereavement because of the despicable acts of their leaders.
It is doubtful whether the method of punishment adopted by the State of Israel for some years now, in the form of targeting populated areas, dropping one-ton bombs on civilian neighborhoods, and using cluster bombs, has any effect or wisdom.
The defense minister declared that the time for war has arrived, in order to put an end to the criminal harassment in the form of murderous rockets fired from Gaza at our communities. Well, the IDF embarked on war with much force, knowledge, and advanced planning in order to sow fear and horror on Gaza civilians and leaders. And it worked for him! There, the defense minister already gained five Knesset seats in pre-election polls. The defense minister is happy, and the people - proud of their glorious army - are already resorting to exaggerated passion and are vowing to elect the hero and his party.
Yet why did he abandon Gilad Shalit? Why didn’t he secure his release before embarking on the operation? Hamas demanded the release of prisoners, and we argued that many of them have blood on their hands, yet when it comes to killing and assassinations we are much more capable than them. Within the first 24 hours of the operation we killed more than 300 people, including two innocent girls, not to mention the victims we killed between this operation and previous ones.
Why did our well organized army, with its excellent intelligence capabilities, object to the release of Palestinian prisoners, when we could send them back home and later assassinate them in the heat of the battle? After all, we are already used to assassinations from the air, sea, at hideouts, or in populated neighborhoods. Assassinate – that is, to kill and murder.
Moreover, the people who drop our bombs do not get stained with blood. Our system is simple: There is no need for evidence or for a trial. Once we decide that a certain someone is wanted, one bang and he’s gone. Recently, the army was also granted permission to kill civilians who happen to be near a wanted person; this was published in the press about two weeks ago next to a photo of a smiling army chief.
There is no doubt that had the defense minister first secured the release of our captive soldier, he would have gained more than five Knesset seats. He may have even been crowned as the king of Israel.

Microsoft Corporation

Cuap Cuap

Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft Corporation is a public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system (OS) market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of OSs. The ensuing rise of stock in the company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) made an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Microsoft would come to dominate other markets as well, notably the office suite market with Microsoft Office.
Primarily in the 1990s, critics contend the company used monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to deal and tying, put unreasonable restrictions in the use of its software, and used misrepresentative marketing tactics; both the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission found the company in violation of antitrust laws.
Known for its interviewing process with obscure questions, various studies and ratings were generally favorable to Microsoft's diversity within the company as well as its overall environmental impact with the exception of the electronics portion of the business.

Rafflesia Flower

Rafflesia Flower

Rafflesia is a genus of parasitic flowering plants. It contains approximately 27 species (including four incompletely characterized species as recognized by Willem Meijer in 1997), all found in southeastern Asia, on the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, and the Philippines.
Rafflesia was found in the Indonesian rain forest by an Indonesian guide working for Dr. Joseph Arnold in 1818, and named after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition. It was discovered even earlier by Louis Deschamps in Java between 1791 and 1794, but his notes and illustrations, seized by the British in 1803, were not available to western science until 1861.^{[citation needed]}
The plant has no stems, leaves or true roots. It is an endoparasite of vines in the genus Tetrastigma (Vitaceae), spreading its absorptive organ, the haustorium, inside the tissue of the vine. The only part of the plant that can be seen outside the host vine is the five-petaled flower. In some species, such as Rafflesia arnoldii, the flower may be over 100 centimetres (39 in) in diameter, and weigh up to 10 kilograms (22 lb). Even the smallest species, R. baletei, has 12 cm diameter flowers. The flowers look and smell like rotting flesh, hence its local names which translate to "corpse flower" or "meat flower" (but see below). The vile smell that the flower gives off attracts insects such as flies, which transport pollen from male to female flowers. Most species have separate male and female flowers, but a few have bisexual flowers. Little is known about seed dispersal. However, tree shrews and other forest mammals apparently eat the fruits and disperse the seeds. Rafflesia is an official state flower of Indonesia, also Sabah state in Malaysia, as well as for the Surat Thani Province, Thailand.
The name "corpse flower" applied to Rafflesia is confusing because this common name also refers to the Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) of the family Araceae. Moreover, because Amorphophallus has the world's largest unbranched inflorescence, it is sometimes mistakenly credited as having the world's largest flower. Both Rafflesia and Amorphophallus are flowering plants, but they are still distantly related. Rafflesia arnoldii has the largest single flower of any flowering plant, at least when one judges this by weight. Amorphophallus titanum has the largest unbranched inflorescence, while the Talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera) forms the largest branched inflorescence, containing thousands of flowers; this plant is monocarpic, meaning that individuals die after flowering.

Batic,Traditional Fabric of Indonesia

Batik, Traditional Fabric of Indonesia

It would be impossible to visit or live in Indonesia and not be exposed to one of the country's most highly developed art forms, batik. On your first visit to a batik store or factory you will undoubtedly experience an overwhelming stimulation of the senses - due to the many colors, patterns and the actual smell of batik. Only through repeated visits and a bit of study will the types of designs and their origins become apparent.

The word batik is thought to be derived from the word 'ambatik' which translated means 'a cloth with little dots'. The suffix 'tik' means little dot, drop, point or to make dots. Batik may also originate from the Javanese word 'tritik' which describes a resist process for dying where the patterns are reserved on the textiles by tying and sewing areas prior to dying, similar to tie dye techniques. Another Javanese phase for the mystical experience of making batik is “mbatik manah” which means “drawing a batik design on the heart”.
A Brief History

Although experts disagree as to the precise origins of batik, samples of dye resistance patterns on cloth can be traced back 1,500 years ago to Egypt and the Middle East. Samples have also been found in Turkey, India, China, Japan and West Africa from past centuries. Although in these countries people were using the technique of dye resisting decoration, within the textile realm, none have developed batik to its present day art form as the highly developed intricate batik found on the island of Java in Indonesia.

King Kertajasa East Java 1294-1309Although there is mention of 'fabrics highly decorated' in Dutch transcripts from the 17th century, most scholars believe that the intricate Javanese batik designs would only have been possible after the importation of finely woven imported cloth, which was first imported to Indonesia from India around the 1800s and afterwards from Europe beginning in 1815. Textile patterns can be seen on stone statues that are carved on the walls of ancient Javanese temples such as Prambanan (AD 800), however there is no conclusive evidence that the cloth is batik. It could possibly be a pattern that was produced with weaving techniques and not dying. What is clear is that in the 19th century batik became highly developed and was well ingrained in Javanese cultural life.

Some experts feel that batik was originally reserved as an art form for Javanese royalty. Certainly it's royal nature was clear as certain patterns were reserved to be worn only by royalty from the Sultan's palace. Princesses and noble women may have provided the inspiration for the highly refined design sense evident in traditional patterns. It is highly unlikely though that they would be involved in any more than the first wax application. Most likely, the messy work of dyeing and subsequent waxings was left to court artisans who would work under their supervision.

Javanese royalty were known to be great patrons of the arts and provided the support necessary to develop many art forms, such as silver ornamentation, wayang kulit (leather puppets) and gamelan orchestras. In some cases the art forms overlap. The Javanese dalang (puppeteer) not only was responsible for the wayang puppets but was also Tambil Miring Designan important source of batik patterns. Wayang puppets are usually made of goat skin, which is then perforated and painted to create the illusion of clothing on the puppet. Used puppets were often sold to eager ladies who used the puppets as guides for their batik patterns. They would blow charcoal through the holes that define the patterns of clothing on the puppets, in order to copy the intricate designs onto the cloth.

Other scholars disagree that batik was only reserved as an art form for royalty, as they also feel its use was prevalent with the rakyat, the people. It was regarded an important part of a young ladies accomplishment that she be capable of handling a canting (the pen-like instrument used to apply wax to the cloth) with a reasonable amount of skill, certainly as important as cookery and other housewifery arts to Central Javanese women.