Fao Sindia

Here’s a scary statistic from Consumer Reports: In the U.S. annually, an estimated 11,882 people visit emergency rooms because of injuries from glass bakeware. Some of these accidents are, no doubt, due to slippery fingers. But, Consumer Reports analyzed 163 glassware accidents and found that 55% involved glass that shattered while still in the oven. Many victims also reported that, while they were carrying hot bakeware  or when they set it on a counter, it “exploded” and sent shards flying, often causing injuries.

In response to the many complaints related to “exploding” glassware in news reports and online, Consumer Reports embarked upon a year-long study involving product testing. The results, published in the January 2011 issue, led to a recommendation that the Consumer Product Safety Commission investigate further.

Because Pyrex and Anchor Hocking “own 75% of the glass bakeware market,” these are the products that were tested, along with European brands.

American-made Pyrex and Anchor Hocking are made from soda lime glass, while the European products are made from borosilicate, a more expensive glass. The magazine says, “European glass pans withstood our extreme heat tests better than U.S. pans.” However, of the breakage incidents the magazine studied, 78% of users said the temperature they used was 375° or less. This lengthy article provides details about test results as well as anecdotal reports from consumers who have had injuries from glassware products.

If you are using glass bakeware, here are some of the precautions that Consumer Reports and the manufacturersrecommend to avoid breakage and flying shards:

• Always set hot glassware on a dry cloth or potholder, never directly on a counter, metal trivet, damp towel, cold wet surface, or burner.

• Always let the oven fully preheat before placing glassware in it.

• Before cooking meat or vegetables, cover the bottom of the dish with liquid.

• Once the glassware is hot, don’t add water to it.

• Carefully inspect your glassware for chips, cracks, or scratches.

Damaged dishes “may not offer the same safety margin as new dishes,” an expert told Consumer Reports.

• If you’re using the dish in the microwave, 1) don’t use the browning element and 2) don’t overheat oil or butter.

Shelf Life Advice has covered the risks related to “exploding” Pyrex in a previous article. (See “Pyrex Glassware: is it safe to use?” http://shelflifeadvice.com/content/pyrex-glassware-safe-use, so we were happy to see this hazard being addressed by a widely read and respected publication.

Here are our recommendations:

1. If you plan to purchase glass bakeware, European-made products might be a safer bet.

2. If you buy American-made glass cookware, read the instructions and warnings carefully and save them to refer to whenever you use the product.

3. If you already own glass bakeware but no longer have the packaging or booklet about proper use, go online and check the manufacturer’s usage tips. (There may be even more than what’s listed above.)

4. Consider purchasing and using metal bakeware for all baking except in the microwave.

If you are unfortunate enough to have (or have had) an experience with glassware unexpectedly breaking despite no obvious misuse on your part, report the incident to the CPSC at 800-638-27672 or info@cpsc.gov.

Source(s):

Consumer Reports, January, 2011, pp. 44-48.

The day 27 September 2011 is flooded with outstanding news and events from all around the world.

An unknown “Ball of Fire from Sky” caused an explosion in Buenos Aires, Argentina which wrecked two homes, a business and several cars early Monday and left one person dead and injured other nine people. Some witnesses said that they had seen a “ball of fire” or “a powerful flash” falling from the sky around the time of the 2 a.m. A resident of Monte Grande, 28 kilometers (17 miles) from Buenos Aires told, “It was like a horror film. Everyone ran out of their houses, there were cars spinning around and the windows looking out on the street shattered”. More than 100 police and others have been called to investigate the strange situation. Authorities later stated that the blast was probably caused by a pizza oven’s poorly connected gas canister.

The “ball of fire” showing a streak of red light through the night sky was captured and provided false testimony

Police officers checked for radioactivity at the site of an explosion in Buenos Aires, Argentina

A man is rescued from the bottom of lift shaft when he fell down from eight storeys eight in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. He climbed to the roof of the building to view the night sky and accidentally stepped into the abandoned elevator shaft

A grey seal looks happy when seeing photographer Jane Morgan in Devon. He thinks the photographer as human company after a spell of bad weather around the Isle of Lundy in the Bristol Channel

The full-size Ford Explorer, which is pushed by workers from Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant, is made with 380,000 Lego blocks

Photographer Jason Hawkes took the picture of London 2012 site on September 23

Reader Bakhtiar Umataliev took this amazing picture at the National Arboretum in Westonbirt, Gloucestershire

Rescue workers carry the injured passenger who was trapped under the underground railway tunnel in Shanghai, China. About 40 passengers were injured in the accident

A group of giant panda cubs take a nap together at the research base of the Giant Panda Breeding Centre in Chengdu, in southwest China’s Sichuan province

German unicycle rider Lutz Eichholz is riding over 8.93 metres over 127 beer bottles in order to break Guinness World Records

The long-exposure picture by photographer Zheng Wencheng shows off night sky above Burkser, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China

Fishermen stand at the sea port in Navotas city, north of Manila after Typhoon Nesat hit the Philippines

An aquarium employee plays with a while shark in a tank in the city of Yantai, northeastern Shandong province, China

MYSTERIOUS SKY OBJECT Exploded over Argentina Sept 25 ,2011

Related links:

Outstanding News In Pictures: 26 September 2011

Outstanding News in Pictures: September 25, 2011

Outstanding News in Pictures: September 11, 2011

The day June 26 2011 is flooded with breaking news and events from all corners of the world which are best described in the following impressive shoots.

The flood water of Souris River flow through a neighborhood in Minot has threatened the life of thousands of people here. The flood water began pouring into a breached levee and around the Minot Country Club on June 23 in Minot. Recently, the water has tied the 1881 record as it rises up to 11 inches in the previous hour and brought the possibility of a record flood ever. In the picture is the flood water rising the Highway 2 bypass on the east side of Minot, North Dakota.

Flood water is seen in the Highway 2

Pakistani security officials destroy the bottles of liquor drugs in Karachi on June 26, 2011. This action is to mark the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking

A little bear hides behind a farmer legs in Yukong village, Yibin city, China. This farmer takes care of these twin black bears since he found them on his farm in April

US talk show host Oprah Winfrey is in an emotional moment when she received the Honorary Doctorate in the faculty of Education from the University of Bloemfontein on June 24

A horse rider takes part in the traditional San Juan festival in the town of Ciutadella

A car and a school bus have an accident on Interstate 81 in Chambersburg, Pa. on Sunday, June 26. The crash injured more than twenty people

These amorous wood pigeons share a passionate kiss on the beak. The picture is taken by wildlife photographer Colin Varndell at Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetland Trust in Gloucestershire

The sunset sky in Bucharest is seen at the end of a stormy day

A Gypsy maiden holds a candle by a lake on Sanziene night waiting for her turn to launch it in the water. This ritual on “Sanziene” night at a lake shore in Bucharest shows the wishes of unmarried girls

A penguin hunts small fish on the Galapagos Island Archipelago, Ecuador

A 14-year-old Chinese Crested and Chihuahua mix, Yoda, wins the 2011 World’s Ugliest Dog Contest in California

Yoda is world’s ugliest dog

Related links:

Outstanding News In Pictures: June 22 2011

Outstanding News In Pictures: June 21, 2011

Outstanding News in Picture: June 20, 2011

With the Commonwealth Games 2010 round the corner, the historic national city of the country New Delhi is all geared up to host one of the most spectacular and panoramic events of the world. The Delhi Games is the nineteenth of the series and the ninth to be held under this title. No wonder it will be the largest multi-sport event ever conducted in Delhi in particular and India in general; previous records of hosting of international games include the Asian Games in 1951 and 1982. To know in detail about the latest Commonwealth games news, you can visit a news portal, one that publishes news faster than other news portals. Amongst the latest Commonwealth news that have drawn attention are those of the Delhi Games theme song ‘O Yaaro Bula Liya’ launched at Kingdom of Dreams, Gurgaon by Oscar award winner A.R. Rehman and the PM Manmohan Singh’s visit to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium where the opening and closing ceremonies of the Delhi Games are scheduled to take place.

One recurring news on the Commonwealth Games 2010 is about the slow work progress at all the Delhi Games venues and infrastructure projects; news about corruption and mismatch of costs related to products hit the headlines for several days together.

The Commonwealth Games 2010 is the first time to be held in India and the second time ever been held in the whole of Asia, the first being hosted in the year 1998 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The opening ceremony of the spectacular event is scheduled to take place at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi. As per news on the Delhi Games, US$ 1.6 billion is the total budget estimated for hosting the Games. It is surprising that the amount does not include non-sports-related infrastructure projects in the city such as roads, flyovers, airports, etc. The estimated amount is likely to make Commonwealth Games 2010 the most expensive sports event ever, the amount even exceeding the preceding Games held in Melbourne in the year 2006. Read the latest Commonwealth news and stay updated.

The concept of crowdsourcing was recognized as a new business model in 2006 and it is being covered extensively as a topic. It’s now a subject that is attracting vast interest from industry, the media and academia. It is still a nascent industry and a growing area with daily articles, papers, new crowdsourcing sites and various other forms of updates coming to light on a daily basis. If you are a professional that has expertise in crowdsourcing or a user of crowdsourcing models then it is important to be up to date on what is happening in this exciting new field. Crowdsourcing news is available in abundance through various forms of media such as the Internet, books, articles in journals and magazines. Keeping track of solutions, new ideas and innovations is a matter of identifying where the best sources of information are to be found, as there is an overwhelming flow of information being released.
 
Crowdsourcing News on the Internet

Like in most other cases, the Internet is the best source for information and news about crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing is an Internet based phenomena so it would stand to reason that there is a significant amount of information on crowdsourcing online. Crowdsourcing is frequently covered in the top online tech-mags such as Mashable and TechCrunch, there are some specialized blogs that cover crowdsourcing and then there is the industry website Crowdsourcing.org. Hot topics in crowdsourcing are Crowdfunding, a new financial instrument that enables you to seek a sum of capital by requesting small donations or investments from large groups of people to fund or grow your venture. Open Source Innovation is another hot topic which enables companies and organizations across the world to access groups of people that sit beyond their traditional physical locations, to generate and develop new ideas.
 
Books, Magazines and Journals

Although blogs and online journals are much faster to report on the latest developments, books can provide an interesting synthesis of overall trends and insights. Many books have and continue to be published on the subject of crowdsourcing and open innovation, including: The Wisdom of Crowds
- by James Surowiecki, We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business
- by Barry Libert, Jon Spector, Don Tapscott (foreword), The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
- by Yochai Benkler, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
- by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams, and Crowdsourcing – why the Power of the Crowd is Changing the Future of Business – by Jeff Howe. They explain the models being used today and the future potential of open innovation and crowdsourcing. They also provide examples of how crowdsourcing is being used and new ideas and innovations in the area of Open Source Innovation. Many academic papers are also being published that provide a valuable source of research.  Magazines and specialist periodicals publish articles on solutions that have been found using crowdsourcing for problems faced by various companies. Examples of the successful implementation of crowdsourcing techniques are one of the best ways to learn how these crowdsourcing success stories can be replicated within your company. Crowdsourcing news is easier to follow if you can identify the best sources of information and which area within crowdsourcing interests you most.
 

A common misconception among many people is that the news media, including newspapers, radio, and TV, is fair and objective and will report to them anything and everything that they should know about. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that it takes lots of money to own a news media entity, that is to say, their owners are wealthy, and, naturally, wealthy people hire journalists and newscasters who support their interests.

The interests of the wealthy include implementation and maintenance of a stable environment where they pay little or no taxes and thus get richer.  For whatever reason, and perhaps rightly, aliens -intelligent beings from other planets- are and have always been perceived as the greatest threat to that stable environment. Thus, it is not surprising that the media has turned their propaganda machine against aliens.

For many decades now, the public has been regularly bombarded with every quack (easily falsifiable or unprovable) theory there is about aliens, including quite a few UFO photos and abduction stories, all in an effort to fully discredit aliens. Meanwhile, genuinely strong arguments for aliens, like the Tiwanaku drawings of an aquatic creature inside a helmeted spacesuit, will never see the light of day in any media outlet.

Aliens have been so heavily discredited by the media that the current outlook for them is bleak. Indeed, the situation is now so bad that a huge alien spacecraft could come to rest a few feet above the White House and it might be successfully explained away as a secret experiment to protect the president.

It seems nothing can be done to convince anybody that aliens exist. Even the scientific community has been engulfed by the media blitz. Thus, no archaeologist is likely to ever express what he might think: Hey, those Tiwanaku drawing really do look like an alien, plus they explain the Nazca Lines. Such a comment might lead to the rapid termination of an archaeology career.

While aliens remain public enemy number 1, they are not perceived as the only threat to low taxation rates for the rich. In my country, the United States, for example, another threat comes by way of politicians who are open to tax increases, and the media has turned their wrath against them as well. Thus, in the congressional elections of 2010, we find that the country’s elderly and poor flocked to the polls by the millions to vote for politicians that promised to privatize social security, to cut Medicare benefits and health care programs, to cut food stamps, and to reduce unemployment benefits and every other type of benefit for the less fortunate, all for the purpose of helping to pay for continued and expanded tax reductions for the country’s billionaires.

I’m sure the elderly and poor of that country will tell you that they used their judgment in making their voting decisions and will never admit to being duped. The brainwashing techniques employed by the media are extremely subtle and it takes an expert to detect them. I will give you an example. In a rare (very rare) occasion that I was exposed to TV last year, I noticed that a major news network was running the following poll: Do you believe that Barrack Obama is the Antichrist?  Of course, a responsible and respectable national news network has no business running a poll like that especially considering that there is no hard evidence that the Antichrist is alive in contemporary times let alone it being the duly elected president of the United States. In any case, with countless millions of Americans openly declaring their president to be the Antichrist, from where it follows that his supporters in Congress (members of his political party) are all demons, it is easy to see why the elderly and poor voted for politicians who promised to do them harm.

In ancient times and later it was kings and queens versus servants, in medieval times it was feudal lords versus fiefs, in Russia it was landlords versus serfs, in American it was slave owners versus slaves, and in contemporary times it is known as rich versus poor. Thousands of years of human history have gone by but there has been no fundamental change in human inclinations to dominate and control other humans. Only contact with aliens might alter those inclinations.