(humour)
V.S.GOPALAKRISHNAN
As per Zapla's* Universal English dictionary, "Tabletology" pertains to the scientfic study of tablets in all their aspects. Can there be unscientific studies too, I wonder! I understand that although originating several thousands of years ago, the "tablet science" is a continuously evolving subject with considerable amplitude, scope, variation, differentiation, forms, colours, features, fixtures, facets, facts, fallacies, functions, facilities, future possibilities, fecundities etc attached to the kinds of tablets. This needs a detailed elucidation.
The most ancient tablets forming the earliest objects of "tabletology" are what are known as stone tablets. They were generally square or rectangular and meant to carry inscriptions. These stone tablets were not the types prescribed by doctors for ailments. Many modern tablets too don't dissolve easily.
Those were pre-Christian times and civilisation started with Paleolithic Age and went on to Neo-lithic Age and onto Bronze Age etc. "Lithic" means stone. The Paleolithic man was truly nomadic using crude hunting stone tools. The Neolithic man was settled into agriculture and he used smoothened stone implements. And perhaps the first reference to stone tablets pertains to what God gave Prophet Moses on Mount Sinai nearly 1500 years before Christ. God gave Moses two stone tablets with Ten Commandments.
Forgetting religion for a moment, I hail those two stone tablets as containing the best moral and legal lessons ever concisely given in the world. Four Commandments are somewhat religious, thus - I am the God; Don't fashion idols; Avoid false oaths in God's name; and Observe Sabbath Day. The secular, moral and legal six commandments,the best ever in the world, went on to say this - Honour your father and Mother; Do not murder; Do not commit adultery; Do not steal; Do not bear false witness and Do not covet your neighbour's wife. The last one is the cutest! It seems to be a universal law that the neighbour's wife is always more beautiful. No bar to coveting the neighbour's daughter, married or unmarried.
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If religion produced the stone tablets, medicine later on has produced swallowable tablets. They also bear inscriptions, neither religious nor moral. And they are numbers such as 5, 50, 100, 500 etc as you must have also noticed. That represents the milligrammage or something like that.
The tablets without commandments (that we swallow) do good to our body just as the tablets with the commandments did good to the soul! I must have seen these swallowable tablets for the first time some 50 years ago before which the apothecaries gave the patients "mixtures" in bottles which were to be shaken before use. The tablets to be swallowed are not to be shaken before use, and that much trouble is avoided.
There are chewable tablets too apart from swallowable tablets. The latter requires a glass of aqua but I have a friend who can swallow a bunch of tablets even without water. Tablets came in sealed bottles earlier and it needed heculean efforts before those bottles could be opened. The opening was usually successfully achieved, never by a weak patient but by his strong son-in-law, with the streaming of blood from a couple of cuts on fingers effected by sharp edges of the metal cover of the bottle. Luckily the Pharma Companies later introduced Aluminium Foil packing that saved our finger cuts.
Then came what is known as "blister packing" where the finger push-effect liberates the tablet from its enclosure. However, the push effect generates momentum and velocity on the tablets and they are seen flying a bit in the air before landing on the floor. The round tablets start rolling on the floor like the wheel of Formula One Cars and disappear in a corner of the room. They are as good as lost. I have therefore sent a petition to the President of India to issue an Ordinance forthwith that all tablets should only have a square shape and not circular to prevent their running on the floor.
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"Tabletology" in very recent times is concentrating on the aspects of electronic "Tablets" increasingly in use as alternative to laptops. These tablets neither increase our moral strength nor our digestive powers. They remind us simply of the "black slates" we used in schools decades ago and are to be gently held by the hands in a very similar fashion. You go on touching the screen of the tablet for your working purposes. Many men say that they have lost the magic of the feel they experienced while touching their wives. As girl-friends also happen to be constantly touching tablets only, both genders have almost wholly lost the sense of human touch. All this has resulted in the total loss of a sense of romance by the Tablet owners. To compensate for this, Samsung is trying to introduce a touch screen which will generate different fragrances depending upon which part of the Tablet you touch. That will resurrect the lost romance in men.
I have not been able to cover all the intricate aspects of this growing science in this short blog-piece. Actually scientists are now in search of a Unified Theory of Tabletology covering all kinds of Tablets and all kinds of human nature. We are on the brink of an exciting Tableto-era of the future.
===================================
Note: Zapla* is the name by which a college mate used to address me (instead of Gopal).
===================
V.S.GOPALAKRISHNAN
As per Zapla's* Universal English dictionary, "Tabletology" pertains to the scientfic study of tablets in all their aspects. Can there be unscientific studies too, I wonder! I understand that although originating several thousands of years ago, the "tablet science" is a continuously evolving subject with considerable amplitude, scope, variation, differentiation, forms, colours, features, fixtures, facets, facts, fallacies, functions, facilities, future possibilities, fecundities etc attached to the kinds of tablets. This needs a detailed elucidation.
The most ancient tablets forming the earliest objects of "tabletology" are what are known as stone tablets. They were generally square or rectangular and meant to carry inscriptions. These stone tablets were not the types prescribed by doctors for ailments. Many modern tablets too don't dissolve easily.
Those were pre-Christian times and civilisation started with Paleolithic Age and went on to Neo-lithic Age and onto Bronze Age etc. "Lithic" means stone. The Paleolithic man was truly nomadic using crude hunting stone tools. The Neolithic man was settled into agriculture and he used smoothened stone implements. And perhaps the first reference to stone tablets pertains to what God gave Prophet Moses on Mount Sinai nearly 1500 years before Christ. God gave Moses two stone tablets with Ten Commandments.
Forgetting religion for a moment, I hail those two stone tablets as containing the best moral and legal lessons ever concisely given in the world. Four Commandments are somewhat religious, thus - I am the God; Don't fashion idols; Avoid false oaths in God's name; and Observe Sabbath Day. The secular, moral and legal six commandments,the best ever in the world, went on to say this - Honour your father and Mother; Do not murder; Do not commit adultery; Do not steal; Do not bear false witness and Do not covet your neighbour's wife. The last one is the cutest! It seems to be a universal law that the neighbour's wife is always more beautiful. No bar to coveting the neighbour's daughter, married or unmarried.
------------------------
If religion produced the stone tablets, medicine later on has produced swallowable tablets. They also bear inscriptions, neither religious nor moral. And they are numbers such as 5, 50, 100, 500 etc as you must have also noticed. That represents the milligrammage or something like that.
The tablets without commandments (that we swallow) do good to our body just as the tablets with the commandments did good to the soul! I must have seen these swallowable tablets for the first time some 50 years ago before which the apothecaries gave the patients "mixtures" in bottles which were to be shaken before use. The tablets to be swallowed are not to be shaken before use, and that much trouble is avoided.
There are chewable tablets too apart from swallowable tablets. The latter requires a glass of aqua but I have a friend who can swallow a bunch of tablets even without water. Tablets came in sealed bottles earlier and it needed heculean efforts before those bottles could be opened. The opening was usually successfully achieved, never by a weak patient but by his strong son-in-law, with the streaming of blood from a couple of cuts on fingers effected by sharp edges of the metal cover of the bottle. Luckily the Pharma Companies later introduced Aluminium Foil packing that saved our finger cuts.
Then came what is known as "blister packing" where the finger push-effect liberates the tablet from its enclosure. However, the push effect generates momentum and velocity on the tablets and they are seen flying a bit in the air before landing on the floor. The round tablets start rolling on the floor like the wheel of Formula One Cars and disappear in a corner of the room. They are as good as lost. I have therefore sent a petition to the President of India to issue an Ordinance forthwith that all tablets should only have a square shape and not circular to prevent their running on the floor.
-----------------------------
"Tabletology" in very recent times is concentrating on the aspects of electronic "Tablets" increasingly in use as alternative to laptops. These tablets neither increase our moral strength nor our digestive powers. They remind us simply of the "black slates" we used in schools decades ago and are to be gently held by the hands in a very similar fashion. You go on touching the screen of the tablet for your working purposes. Many men say that they have lost the magic of the feel they experienced while touching their wives. As girl-friends also happen to be constantly touching tablets only, both genders have almost wholly lost the sense of human touch. All this has resulted in the total loss of a sense of romance by the Tablet owners. To compensate for this, Samsung is trying to introduce a touch screen which will generate different fragrances depending upon which part of the Tablet you touch. That will resurrect the lost romance in men.
I have not been able to cover all the intricate aspects of this growing science in this short blog-piece. Actually scientists are now in search of a Unified Theory of Tabletology covering all kinds of Tablets and all kinds of human nature. We are on the brink of an exciting Tableto-era of the future.
===================================
Note: Zapla* is the name by which a college mate used to address me (instead of Gopal).
===================
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