English Through Reading
001. THE BEST RECRUITING AGENTS
In 1849 a servant girl wrote home to her brother from Port Adelaide, South Australia: "I have accepted a situation at £20 per annum, so you can tell the servants in your neighbourhood not to stay in England for such wages as from £4 to £8 a year, but come here." Letters such as these, which were circulated from kitchen to kitchen and from attic to attic in English homes, were the best recruiting agents for the colonies, which were then so desperately in need of young women to serve the pioneers who were trying to create a new life for themselves in their chosen countries. Other girls read about the much better prospects overseas in newspapers and magazines, which also published advertisements giving details of free or assisted passages.
002. TO BRING BACK LOST MEMORIES
Our unconscious mind contains many millions of past experiences that, so far as our conscious mind knows, are lost forever. By means of several devices, we now know how to bring back lost memories. One method is "free association", used by psychiatrists. If a patient lets his conscious mind wander at will, it can give him clues to forgotten things which, if skilfully pursued by the doctor, will bring up whole networks of lost ideas and forgotten terrors. There are certain drugs which also help in this process; hypnotism, too, can be of tremendous value in exploring a patient's unconscious.
003. PALM TREES
Of the world's 2,500-plus species of palm trees, the Palmyra palm is most important to man, next to the coconut palm, because it yields food and provides over one hundred different useful end-products. To obtain the majority of its benefits, the Palmyra needs to be climbed twice daily to extract the nutritious juice from its flower-bunches. It is this juice, converted by several different methods, that is the basis for a wide variety of other products. Collecting this juice, however, is arduous - and often dangerous - work, for the trees can top 30 metres in height.
004. OVERREACTING TO A JOKE
More often than not, the person who habitually laughs longest and loudest when I a joke is retold does not possess a particularly keen sense of humour. Though he 1 may not admit it, he is vaguely aware of his deficiency, and frequently goes to 1 extremes to cover it up. A mediocre joke is likely to get as big a rise out of him as a I truly humorous one. Psychological studies, likewise, show that people with a really I keen sense of humour are not prone to much laughter. They are highly appreciative 1 of humour, but they are also discriminating. And they never overreact.
005. ALPINE FORESTS
Forests are the lifeguards of the snowy peaks of the Alps. They provide a natural barrier against avalanches and landslides, but the skiing industry, which proved a boon for poor Alpine farmers, is damaging the environment. Forests have been felled to make way for more ski runs, car parks, and hotels, and Alpine meadows have been abandoned by farmers keen to exploit tourism. Consequently, the avalanche has now become a common phenomenon. Forestry experts estimate that two-thirds of the several thousand avalanches that descend into inhabited parts each year are the result of forest depletion.
006. THE ASSEMBLY LINE
Henry Ford was a car builder. He was not the first to have the idea of the horseless coach. The Germans Daimler and Benz had invented it, but he was the first to use the assembly line for mass production. His Model-T car was the first to be produced on the assembly line. The new system cut the time in which the car was put together from 14 hours to 1 hour and 33 minutes. Eventually the price of the car fell from $1,200 to $295. The car lacked certain luxuries; still, it could be relied on and did not need much looking after. Soon, the Model-T became the people's car. After nineteen years, when the Model-T became obsolete and sales dropped sharply - for other car manufacturers, copying Ford's assembly line system, were able to bring down the costs of much more attractive cars - Ford developed the new Model-A. It, too, was the most inexpensive car on the market. Today there are hardly any factories to be found where Ford's assembly line system is not being utilized for mass production.
007. ALLERGIC REACTIONS TO COSMETICS
In a recent survey, it was found that 25 percent of the women interviewed reported drying and burning of the skin after using certain soaps, ten percent had eye and nasal irritations after using certain perfumes, and eight percent had cracked lips after using certain lipsticks. The most common symptoms of allergic dermatitis are extremely dry skin, scaling, and redness with swelling and itching. The products most likely to cause this condition are lipstick, nail polish, soap, hair preparations, deodorants, and perfumes. Various drugs are being developed for the relief of allergy sufferers. However, your best help is to convert to a cosmetic product to which you have no harmful reaction. Remember that the product is not at fault or in any way injurious; it is your particular sensitivity to it that creates the problem. A line of hypo-allergenic cosmetics that are relatively free from substances that have been found to create allergic reactions is on the market.
008. THE "JAZZ AGE"
" Some of America's finest novelists began to write in the 1920s, or the "Jazz Age", as this decade is sometimes termed. Older authors such as Theodore Dreiser and Ellen Glasgow were still writing, but new authors wrote with new attitudes and styles. Most of the serious novelists critically analyzed American society and ways of life and tried to depict Americans as they really were. F. Scott Fitzgerald caught the restless spirit of the 1920s in his The Great Gatsby. Ernest Hemingway depicted war and disillusionment in his The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. With his direct, unadorned style and forceful dialogue, Hemingway set a pattern for much future American literature. Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, satirized the American businessman and small town in his Main Street and Babbitt. His style was mediocre, but his work vividly dissected a large section of American life.
009. PACIFIC SALMON FOR THE JAPANESE
Nobody eats as much Pacific salmon as the Japanese, who consume the fish raw, pickled, baked, salted, fried, smoked and put in soup. They eat salmon liver, and salmon skulls, and they process the fish into burgers and sausage. They eat 300,000 tons of the fish each year, a third of the world's total catch. The center of it all is Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, the largest on earth. Long before sunrise, the market is buzzing. Hundreds of men and women rush around between stalls, shout orders at one another, slice fish, work the telephones, and joke under bright strings of lights that shine down on acres of iced-down fish steaks, shark fillets, and thick red slabs of tuna stacked like wood. The concrete floors are newly washed and swept. The whole place smells fresh, like the sea.
010. THE MUSEUM ROBBERY
It was, Italian authorities said later, as if the thieves had a catalog and knew just what they were after. Armed bandits bound and gagged six unarmed guards, entered a storeroom containing artifacts from the Roman town of Herculaneum, and stole about 280 objects - gold rings, bracelets, earrings, and precious stones. All had been discovered during excavations of the seaside town, buried by the same eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 that destroyed its larger and better-known neighbor, Pompeii. Authorities said that the stolen items also included a small bronze statue of Bacchus inlaid with copper and silver, a bronze vase, and a box of coins. The total value of objects taken during the robbery was estimated at 1.6 million dollars. Art historians and others criticized lax security that permitted two gunmen to climb a wall, enter the site, and break through a flimsy partition to get into the room where the artifacts were kept. Some of the critics also complained that the guards were unarmed. Officials said it would be hard for anyone to sell the stolen objects because all had been catalogued and photographed, and most had been exhibited and published.
011. READING
This is an age of speed! Technological advance has brought jet airplanes and streamlined trains whizzing over transportation lines, helicopters carrying the mail, missiles hurtling through space; telegraphs, long-distance phones, radio, television, telstar and flashing communications. These are just a few examples of the Revolution in Speed, which is hastening us along in its breathless velocity. As for reading, thousands of newspapers, hundreds of magazines and dozens of books roll from the presses daily, speeded by technological invention. Yet no one has enough time to read as much as he would wish. We hurry all day long - workers hurry to their jobs in the morning and they hurry through the working hours in an attempt to accomplish as much as possible. After work they hurry home to hurry out in the evening to a business dinner, a social function, or one of many fascinating diversions. There is more reading to be done than ever before and less time in which to do it! What is the answer? Not more time in which to read, Out the ability to read more in the time we have. (From Reading Instructions for Today's Children by Nila Banton Smith)
012. READING TO THE CHILD
It is advisable for parents to read to their children at preschool and early primary levels. When they read to a child from story books, comic strips of the better type, and children's magazines, he becomes aware that books, magazines, and newspapers hold something of interest and amusement for him. He also comes to realize that this "something" which he enjoys is tightly locked within black and white symbols, and that these symbols can be unlocked only when one knows how to read. This awareness and interest form a springboard from which he can leap into learning to read in school, and into the voluntary reading of self-selected books. Parents, however, should not continue reading to their child year after year as he passes through the elementary grades. If the child can only get his reading pleasure through his parents' efforts, he may not have much incentive for doing the reading himself. Parents should decrease their reading to the child as he learns to read and put him on his own as soon as possible. (From Reading Instructions for Today's Children by Nila Banton Smith)
013. JUST FOR PLEASURE
In all civilizations, articles are consumed that have no nutrient value but make the food more attractive, or give pleasure. Spices, condiments, herbs, vinegar and pickles are used for this purpose. There is no objection to them for the normal stomach, and there is no evidence that they can cause damage to the normal stomach lining. Tea, coffee, manufactured drinks, and alcohol also form part of the diet. They have no nutritive value but add to the pleasure of a meal, in moderation. Tea and coffee both contain caffeine, which is a mild stimulant and also causes the kidneys to excrete more water. They may cause sleeplessness, but not all people are affected. Alcohol, if not consumed excessively by adults, cannot be strongly objected to on medical grounds.
014. THE INVADERS
In the early days of the settlement of Australia, enterprising settlers unwisely introduced the European rabbit. This rabbit had no natural enemies in the Antipodes*, so it multiplied incredibly quickly. It overran a whole continent, and caused devastation to herbage which might have maintained millions of sheep and cattle. Scientists discovered that this particular variety of rabbit was susceptible to a fatal virus disease. Trying to create local epidemics of this disease, they found out that there was a type of mosquito which acted as the carrier of this disease and passed it on to the rabbits. So while the rest of the world was trying to get rid of mosquitoes, Australia was encouraging this one. It effectively spread the disease all over the continent and drastically diminished the rabbit population. * Antipodes, "dünyanın öbür ucu" anlamına gelir. Ancak parçada "Avustralya" anlamında kullanılmıştır.
015. WEANING
Weaning is a very delicate process, important for the whole of a child's life. It is not a problem of nourishment, but of the spirit. This side of the problem is all but neglected. We must be careful to substitute some other kind of pleasure to take the place of the original pleasure of the mother's breast. The process of weaning can be carried out so that the child himself, with a little encouragement, will choose a new and wider form of pleasure, and so pass lightly through this, the most intense, emotional experience of life. If the change, when its time comes, is violently made, desire will not go forwards to new fields and to wider experience of mind, but backwards to some substitute pleasure of the same type as the one to be surrendered. Thumb-sucking, an obvious substitute, is the commonest. (From Talks to Parents and Teachers by Homer Lane)
016. THE COMPUTER
The computer is basically a device for ingesting, judging, and otherwise processing or usefully modifying knowledge. Thus it enlarges brainpower in the same way that other man-made machines enlarge muscle power. Like man, the computer expresses knowledge in terms of symbols; man's symbols are letters and numbers, and the machine's symbols are electromagnetic impulses that represent letters and numbers. Although man must usually instruct or program the machine minutely, its chief present advantage is that it can manipulate symbols a million times faster than a man with pencil and paper, and can make calculations in a few minutes that might take man alone a century. An expert has remarked that the difference between doing a calculation by hand and by computer is the difference between having one dollar and having a million. Sometimes the difference is infinite; only a computer can calculate swiftly enough to analyze the data from a satellite, or to enable man to control the flight of a missile.
017. WHEN SEIZED WITH CRAMP
Perhaps more swimmers have been drowned by cramp than by anything else, and only those who have suffered from it can conceive its fatal power. Even good swimmers, when seized with cramp, have been known to sink instantly, overcome with the sudden pain, and nothing can save the victim but the greatest presence of mind. The usual spot where the cramp is felt is the calf of the leg; and it sometimes comes with such violence that the muscles are gathered up into knots. There is only one method of proceeding under such circumstances: to turn on one's back at once, kick the leg out in the air, disregarding the pain, and rub the spot smartly with one hand, while the other is employed in paddling towards shore. These directions are easy enough to give, but quite difficult to obey; cramp seems to deprive the sufferer of all reason for the time, and it seems to overpower him with mingled pain and terror. Therefore, the method of saving a person drowning because of cramp demands great practice. The chief difficulty lies in the fact that a person who cannot swim feels, in deep water, much as if he were falling through air, and consequently clutches instinctively at the nearest object. If he succeeds in grasping the person who is trying to save him, both will probably sink together. Every precaution should be taken to prevent such a misfortune and the drowning man should always be seized from behind and pushed forwards.
018. A "SISSY" OR A "TOM-BOY"
" In most societies differences in play between boys and girls are not merely expected, but actively encouraged. In our own culture, only very young boys may be allowed to play with their sisters' dolls occasionally without ridicule or remonstrance. And even they are rarely given dolls of their own, although teddies and stuffed animals may be allowed. A seven-year-old boy who enjoys tucking teddies up in cots is likely to be ridiculed if he does it too often. Similarly, girls do enjoy playing with toy cars and train sets, but are rarely given these as presents. Older girls particularly are discouraged from playing boisterous games and may be labelled "torn-boys" if they do not conform to the quieter, gentler, less aggressive activities expected of them. Boys who abstain from rough games, or prefer reading or playing the piano are in danger of being labelled "sissy".
019. THE CHAIN OF HOPE
The children who are cared for by the Chain of Hope come from countries which are stricken by poverty or torn by conflict. They are children who have been injured by a mine or an exploding shell, who have been born with deformities, who have caught diseases or who suffer from the after-effects of injuries. A very simple operation can often save them. But there is usually no prospect of such surgery in their own countries, owing to the lack of specialized expertise and technical resources. "Faced with this terrible fact," says Professor Alain Deloche, a heart surgeon, "a simple idea took root: to bring these children to France, to provide them with operations, and then send them home, cured, to their families." To achieve this, continues Professor Deloche, "one simply needs to bring into action a series of links in a chain of skills, asking people with all types of expertise to join in. This project has a powerful appeal. Everyone can participate and become a link in the chain." And so, well-known surgeons, the most highly skilled in their fields, operate free of charge in their hospitals throughout France. Similarly, ambulances provide the children with free transport, and the airlines Air France and UTA offer complimentary tickets. At the end of the chain, one finds a network of families who take the children in free of charge during their recovery. (From the United Nations' monthly magazine Refugees)
020. CHARLES CHAPLIN
İn 1911 a penniless young music-hall artist left England for America. His future was uncertain, but he did not believe it could be unhappier than his past. He had grown up in the slums of London's East End and had experienced great poverty. His mother's life had been so hard that she had finally gone mad, and his father had died of drink. Both parents had been on the stage and lived in the hope that they would one day be stars. Their son was determined to succeed where they had failed. By 1914 his optimism and determination had been justified. Charles Chaplin was the most talked-about man in America, the king of silent movies. He was not only admired as a first-class actor and comedian, he was also making his name as a director. How did he reach the top of the film world in such a short time? He was not an instant success. His attempts to copy other slapstick comedians who were popular at that time were a failure. However he gradually began to develop the character of the tramp that will always be connected with his name. He borrowed ideas from many sources and though he "stole" most of his clothes from other slapstick comedians of the time, he developed his own special mannerisms to go with them. He used his bowler hat to signal secret messages and his walking stick allowed him to cause confusion and punish his enemy from a distance. He got the idea for his famous flat-footed walk from a London taxi driver who had sore feet.
021. TO CURE THE CRUELTY OF CHILDREN
Psychologists believe that the combative and aggressive instinct is permanent in all human beings; but it is probable that, with a correct understanding of children, the instinct for aggression need not survive childhood. It's certain that to repress the aggressiveness of a child will make him later more aggressive and anti-social; he will later on revenge himself for his sufferings by criminality or by acts of cruelty. The desire to hurt living things generally appears in the child who has been given a strong hatred of authority. This problem of cruelty is very difficult to handle. It requires the parents to use good temper and good sense, trying to find out where the child's real interests lie and guiding its energy to these channels. Except in the worst cases, sympathetic treatment by parents and teachers will gradually suffice to cure, for it will give back self-confidence, self-love, and a belief in life, and it is the absence of these which is the cause of cruelty.
022. HEADSET STEREOS
Most headset stereos have one thing in common: they can cause hearing loss. Studies have shown that sound levels from the machines can reach 115 decibels or more - roughly equivalent to standing 100 feet from a commercial jet at the moment of take-off. At that level, permanent hearing damage can occur after just 15 minutes. And the earlier a child begins using a headset, the more damage can accumulate. Loud noise causes hearing loss by killing irreplaceable hair cells in the inner ear. Normally, the process occurs slowly as people age, but noise damage can accelerate it. Noise-induced hearing loss is insidious; damage may not be apparent until later in life. Since headsets are used privately, parents often don't realize how loud their children's music is.
023. THE REASONS FOR RAPID POPULATION GROWTH
Statistics show that rapid population growth creates problems for developing countries. So why don't people have fewer children? Statistics from the developed countries suggest that it is only when people's living standards begin to rise that birth rates begin to fall. There are good reasons for this. Poor countries cannot afford social services and old age pensions, and people's incomes are so low they have nothing to spare for savings. As a result, people look to their children to provide them with security in their old age. Having a large family can be a form of insurance. And even while they are still quite young, children can do a lot of useful jobs on a small farm. So poor people in a developing country will need to see clear signs of much better conditions ahead before they can think of having smaller families. But their conditions cannot be improved unless there is a reduction in the rate at which population is increasing. This will depend on a very much wider acceptance of family planning and this, in turn, will mean basic changes in attitudes.
024. LIFE AFTER DEATH
Nearly all religions include the belief that human beings survive death in some form. For many people, such as the Balinese, a funeral symbolizes the passage from one life to another, rather than the end of a person's existence. In Bali, a cremation is therefore a time of joy and celebration. On the morning of the cremation, friends and relatives gather to pay their last respects and to eat and drink § with the family. There is then a procession to the cremation ground, some men carrying the corpse in a tower built of bamboo and paper, and other men carrying a special container called a sarcophagus, which may be in the shape of a cow or a bull. At the cremation ground the body is transferred to the sarcophagus and when it has been reduced to ashes and the soul released, there is a happy noisy procession to the sea, where the ashes are scattered. This last section of the ceremony represents cleansing and purification.
025. NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL
Notting Hill Carnival is held in London each August bank holiday, and is the largest and most colourful street event in Britain. The festival celebrates the traditions of the British black community, who emigrated to Great Britain from the West Indies in the 1950s. They brought with them the Caribbean idea of the carnival, with processions, colourful costumes, steel bands and street dancing. Preparations for the carnival begin many months beforehand. Costumes have to be made, and floats built, ready for the street procession. Steel bands practise traditional Caribbean music on instruments made from old oil drums. Shortly before the festival, the streets are decorated with red, green and yellow streamers, and amplifiers are set in place, to carry the rhythmic sounds over the roar of the London traffic. The carnival lasts for three days, and is full of music and colour. Processions of floats, steel and brass bands, and dancers in exotic costumes make their way through the narrow London streets, watched by thousands of people. The streets are lined with stalls selling tropical fruits, such as fresh pineapple, watermelons and mangoes. Everybody dances - black and white, young and old - and even the policemen on duty take part in the fun. For these three days in August, a little Caribbean magic touches the streets of London.
026. ALFRED NOBEL - A MAN OF CONTRASTS
Alfred Nobel, the great Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man of many contrasts. He was the son of a bankrupt, but became a millionaire; a scientist with a love of literature; an industrialist who managed to remain an idealist. He made a fortune but lived a simple life, and although cheerful in company he was often sad in private. A lover of mankind, he never had a wife or family to love him; a patriotic son of his native land, he died alone on foreign soil. He invented a new explosive, dynamite, to improve the peacetime industries of mining and road building, but saw it used as a weapon of war to kill and injure his fellow men. During his useful life he often felt he was useless: "Alfred Nobel," he once wrote of himself, "ought to have been put to death by a kind doctor as soon as, with a cry, he entered life." World- famous for his work, he was never personally well-known, for throughout his life he avoided publicity. "I do not see," he once said, "that I have deserved any fame and I have no taste for it." Since his death, however, his name has brought fame and glory to others. His famous will, in which he left money to provide prizes for outstanding work in Physics Chemistry, Physiology, Medicine, Literature and Peace, is a memorial to his interests and ideals. And so, the man who felt he should have died at birth is remembered and respected long after his death.
027. ATTITUDES TOWARDS MONEY
Generally, people are classified into three categories according to their attitudes towards money: misers, spenders, and economizers. Misers seem almost obsessed with the idea of saving, so they accumulate money in banks if their income is large, or in the house - stuffed in mattresses or under the living room rug - if they are low- income people. They deprive themselves of many things and spend money just on the most essential things. Spenders are people who have a tendency to spend too much on too many unnecessary things. They are often too generous, making elaborate gifts to friends and family. Credit cards in some spenders' hands are often dangerous weapons. They become addicted to using them, only to regret it later when the bills come in and they are unable to pay. Economizers are practical people who spend wisely, usually making use of a budget. They can enjoy more and various material things and activities due to their careful utilization of funds. They spend in moderation and save in moderation for their future retirement or the education of their children. Of these three types of people, economizers are what most of us are having to be in our age. The acute problems of inflation, shortages, and low salaries are forcing us to become economizers. It is the only way to be if we are to survive in the future. Hopefully, the misers and big spenders will modify their extreme attitudes towards money in these circumstances and convert into economizers.
028. SPIDERS
If you look around the area where you live, you may notice many different kinds of spiders.The world has anywhere from 40,000 to 120,000 different species of spiders. In any ordinary field, two million spiders may be hard at work.They thrive in the hottest jungles and the coldest polar regions. They have been found even at the height of 22,000 feet (6,700 meters), on Mount Everest! The spider's incredible silk-spinning organs are on its abdomen. The silk thread begins as a liquid that hardens on contact with the air. A spider can make many different kinds of silk thread. Each kind has its own special purpose. By using certain tubes, or by combining the threads in different ways, a spider can make a very delicate thread or a thick, broad band of silk. Some sizes are used to line their nests or retreats. Others are used for egg cocoons, or for tying up victims, or for weaving webs. Spider silk is stronger than silkworm silk. If twisted into a rope.it can lift more weight than a rope of the same size made of iron wire! In his book Sociobiology, E.O. Wilson quotes an old Ethiopian proverb, "When spider webs unite, they can halt a lion." Although lions have never been seen in spider webs, there does seem to be some truth in this. Scientists believe that cooperative prey-capturing in spiders has probably evolved because it improves efficiency. It also allows the spiders to go after larger prey. Cooperation and sharing improve the use of their webs and the food available to them.
029. HOW TO TRAIN ELEPHANTS
Two main techniques have been used for training elephants, which we may cal respectively the tough and the gentle. The former method simply consists of setting an elephant to work and beating him until he does what is expected of him. Apart from any moral considerations, this is a stupid method of training, for it produces a resentful animal who at a later stage may well turn into a man-killer. The gentle method requires more patience in the early stages, but produces a cheerful, good- tempered elephant who will give many years of loyal service. The first essential in elephant training is to assign to the animal a single trainer who will be entirely responsible for the job. Elephants like to have one master just as dogs do, and are capable of a considerable degree of personal affection. There are even stories of half-trained elephant calves who have refused to feed and pined to death when, by some unavoidable circumstance, they have been deprived of their own trainer. Such extreme cases must probably be taken with a grain of salt, but they do underline the general principle that the relationship between elephant and trainer is the key to successful training.
030. TEENAGE ENTREPRENEURS
Surveys often reveal that more than half of all the teenage entrepreneurs that have recently emerged in the United States are firstborn children, and many are from immigrant families. Some are content with modest revenues, others are primarily after big money - but most are driven simply by the desire to shape their own destinies. Certainly, all possess qualities such as ingenuity, a good intellect, a healthy sense of self, inner drive, and a clear-cut purpose. "It's not luck; it's hard work," says one of them. "If you work hard, you'll be successful - that's what I always say. You can't rely on anybody but yourself." Perhaps the most engaging quality of the teenage entrepreneurs is their effervescent optimism. Reared in an era of unprecedented exposure to news of disaster, terrorism, famine, and the threat of nuclear mayhem, they nevertheless developed into positive-thinking achievers. Aware of the obstacles, they are far more interested in the opportunities.
031. CHINESE NEW YEAR
The most important holiday in China is the Lunar New Year. Since it is based on the lunar calendar, it comes about a month later than the Western New Year. The Chinese New Year season traditionally lasts about a month; however, so that working life will not be interrupted for too long, the period has now been reduced to a week or less. There are some parallels with the Western New Year: houses are cleaned thoroughly, for instance, and families all get together for the festivities. All debts must be paid off so that the new year can start with a fresh beginning. Feasts are enjoyed with family and friends, and there are lively dragon and lion dances in the streets. Everywhere there is the sound of firecracker explosions. Children receive gifts of little red envelopes with money inside them. Many superstitions are related to the celebration of the Chinese New Year. No sweeping should be done in case the family's good fortune is swept out of the door with the trash. One should be especially careful not to break any dishes, for such an accident is believed to bring about serious problems between members of the family throughout the coming year.
032. LEVI STRAUSS
In 1850, during the Gold Rush, a twenty-year-old immigrant from Bavaria named Levi Strauss stepped off the boat in San Francisco. He had with him a special cloth called Serge de Nimes, which would later be called denim in America. Levi Strauss hoped to sell the denim as material to make tents and covers for wagons, to the men who were going to the goldfields to look for gold. "You should have brought pants to sell. In the goldfields we need strong pants that don't wear out," one young miner advised Strauss. So Levi Strauss took some of his denim to the nearest tailor and had him make the miner a pair of pants. The miner was so pleased with his pants that he told other miners about the wonderful new Levi's pants or Levis, and soon Levi Strauss had to open a shop to manufacture enough trousers for the miners. The miners wanted trousers that were comfortable to ride in, that were low-cut so they could bend over easily to pick up the gold from under their feet, and which had big useful pockets. One miner complained that the gold in his pockets kept tearing them. So Levi put metal corners in the pockets to make them stronger. Very soon, miners and cowboys from all over came to get fitted up with Levi's pants. Today, more than a hundred years later, Levi's pants walk the world as Levi's blue jeans.
033. ASTROLOGY
All around the world, it seems to be true that people prefer mysterious explanations to simple explanations. If someone is killed in a car crash, for example, many people say it was caused by fate, rather than by poor driving or bad road conditions. In many countries, a profitable business has developed around the subject of astrology. Astrologers want us to believe that our characters are formed as soon as we are born, according to the particular zodiac sign we are born under. Many people prefer to believe this than to read the scientific explanations of the development of human character and personality put forward by psychologists and doctors. Hence, in many popular magazines and women's journals, we find a column such as "You and Your Stars". And in some countries, you can even ask an astrology "expert" questions about your future.
034. THE IMPORTANCE OF DREAMS
In 1960, an American psychiatrist named William Dement published experiments dealing with the recording of eye-movements during sleep. He showed that the average individual's sleep cycle is punctuated with peculiar bursts of eye- movement, some drifting and slow, others jerky and rapid. People woken during these periods of eye-movement generally reported that they had been dreaming. When woken at other times they reported no dreams. If one group of people were disturbed from their eye-movement sleep for several nights on end, and another group were disturbed for an equal period of time but when they were not exhibiting eye-movements, the first group began to show some personality disorders, while the others seemed more or less unaffected. The implications of all this were that it was not the disturbance of sleep that mattered but the disturbance of dreaming.
035. EUROPE'S LAST UTOPIA
Everybody knows that Santa Claus lives somewhere near the North Pole where a carpet of snow covers the mountains and the amazing Northern Lights shine brightly in the Arctic night. It has generally been assumed that he settled there because of all that snow for his reindeer and sleigh, but the real reason he put his roots down on the edge of the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland, Europe's last wilderness, must surely be that he simply loved the beauty and solitude of this last Utopia, Santa Claus Land. Sandwiched between Norwegian Lapland and the former USSR, Finnish Lapland lies almost entirely above the Arctic Circle in Northern Finland. The capital is the winter-sport center of Rovaniemi. It's a modern town in the middle of nowhere. Concorde used to land there and many daily Finnair flights arrive from all over Finland.
036. THE GORILLA'S CHEST-BEATING
Why does a gorilla beat its chest? It depends on the gorilla - and on the situation. In some instances, the flamboyant and intimidating gesture may be just what it seems: a warning to keep away. When truly aroused, the leader of the gorilla troop rises and drums his chest rapidly, palms open and slightly cupped. Then he explodes into a charge which may or may not be a bluff. Scientists who have been charged at by gorillas report that the animals almost always stop short of violence - unless the human intruder responds in a hostile manner. Sometimes chest-beating is only an expression of relief after the danger has passed, a means of keeping in touch with other gorillas in the troop, or a way of warning other troops away from the feeding area. Some gorillas, especially the young ones, often beat their chests as expressions of high spirits. One thing the gorilla does not do is stage a victory celebration by drumming furiously on his chest after he has just cracked an opponent's spine. That sort of thing happens only in the movies.
037. LOVE
is the most absorbing subject in existence. There is an enormous range of meanings in this one little word: motherly love and self-love, fatherly love and children's love fc their parents; there is brotherly love and there is the love of one's home and one's country; there is love of money and there is love of power. Love clearly includes all of these, but the love in which one can be oneself is the pre-eminent love for most of us. Love at its fullest can include an enormous range of emotions and sentiments. It can combine humility with pride, passion with peace, self- assertion with self-surrender; it can reconcile violence of feeling with tenderness. "Being in love" is love at its most intense, and is personally focused in a very special way. Our common speech reflects this fact, as we talk of "falling in love" as if it were something into which we are precipitated against our will, like falling into a pond.
038. THE MIND'S EYE
Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? Everyone knows the answer: they both weigh the same. An interesting point, however, is what sort of image popped into your head when you read those words. One person who answered this question saw, distinctly, a pair of scales with a cube of lead on one scale balancing a big mound of feathers on the other. A second person got no mental image, but simply conceived of the problem in terms of words. People differ greatly in their power to "make pictures in their heads." Years ago the British scientist Sir Francis Galton asked a group of colleagues to try to visualize the breakfast table as they had sat down to eat that morning. Some of them saw the table in sharp detail and in colour. Others saw it only in black and white. Still others saw a blurred outline, as if through a badly adjusted magic lantern. Many could get no visual image at all. Scientists believe that most people are born with the ability to summon up in the mind's eye precise visual images of past experiences, but that many of us lose this power as we grow up, simply because we fail to exercise it.
039. THE WILL TO LIVE
A very old lady who had devoted her life to pioneer work in education once told about a dangerous illness she had suffered in her middle years. She lay hovering between life and death, in the twilight of half-surrender, when she overheard two of her co-workers talking just outside her hospital room. "If we could only reach her!" one of them said passionately. "If we could only make her understand how much we need her!" The words did reach her, and with the forces of life and death hanging in the balance, they resurrected her will to live. In that moment of discouragement and wavering faith, the intensity of her colleague's plea reassured her and gave her courage to take up the struggle again. If we truly wish to live, if we have something to live for, then the will to live becomes a powerful force in combatting illness. Within each of us there are two strong instinctual drives, the will to live and the desire to destroy ourselves. The powerful instinct to remain alive is bolstered by our desire to create, to discover and to accomplish. Doctors make obeisance to it when, in a crisis of illness, they say, "We have done all we can - now it is up to the patient."
040. DEBATE OVER THE WORLD'S FUTURE
How many people can the earth hold? Will birth and death rates continue to 1 decline? Can food production keep pace with population growth? Can technology I supplement or replace today's resources? What are the long-term effects of pollution 1 on health, climate, and farm production? Debate over such issues has spawned I many volumes, as scholars look to the future with varying degrees of optimism and 1 gloom. In a lecture titled "The Terror of Change", Patricia Gulas Strauch cited three I aspects of our future about which there is little disagreement: the speed of change I will accelerate; the world will be increasingly complex; and nations and world issues I will be increasingly interdependent. Today's problems - which face Third World 1 megacities in particular - cannot be ignored by developed countries. We cannot look I to the past for solutions as there is no precedent for such growth. We are in 1 uncharted, challenging waters.
041. THE IMPORTANCE OF LETTER-WRITING
The letters we write can spell the difference between making and missing an important sale, between landing and losing a job, between a yes and a no from the girl or boy of our dreams. A neighbor of mine recently wrote to two contractors for bids on a concrete driveway. Here's the beginning of one reply: "Dear Mr : I am offering you a special price because I am having a slack season now. I have some debts to pay and this work will be a big help to me." The second began: "Dear Mr : 1 can give you a good solid driveway with a six-inch bed of cinders and three inches of concrete. Properly graded and drained, this should last you 20 years without cracking." The second man got the job. Why? Because he told my neighbor what he wanted to know, not how much good the job would do the contractor. He followed the first principle of good letter-writing, one I've hammered at in my classes for years: think of your reader's problems, not of your own.
042. THE WIND'S WITH US
A strong wind had started up, whistling and moaning through the thick leaves, and frightening Sue and Anne. CRASH! They heard a loud smashing noise as a tree came down in a large gust. They took refuge under the gateway of a building and were not sure what to do. Sue doubted whether they would have the strength to cycle all the way home. But they couldn't just go on waiting there much longer. "We'd better go then. If we can't ride our bikes we'll just have to push them. Or perhaps we'll be able to get a lift on a truck." Sue went out, her short hair blowing in the wind. It was impossible to speak, so she just beckoned to Anne to start out. As they pushed their bicycles unsteadily onto the road, Sue suddenly shouted, "Hey! The wind's with us!" Anne got onto her bicycle. There was no need to pedal - all she had to do was hold onto the handlebars. She felt an almost unreal sense of exhilaration, as if she were floating through the air. "The wind's with us!" Sue shouted again, her voice filled with surprise and elation. "Even we have the wind with us sometimes, eh?"
043. WEEP FOR HEALTH
Anger, fear, or the shock of sudden sorrow brings physical changes in our bodies. The digestion is shut down, the blood pressure is raised, the heart speeds up, and the skin becomes cold. If maintained over a prolonged period, this emergency status makes the body - and the personality - tight, dry and rigid. In people who are afraid to let themselves pour forth their painful emotions, doctors find that suppressed tears can trigger such ailments as asthma, migraine headache, and many others. Weeping, on the other hand, comes as part of the reversal of conditions of alarm, shock and anger. Tears do not, therefore, mark a breakdown or low point, but a transition to warmth, hope and health. So there is a genuine wisdom in tears. In permitting ourselves to weep instead of repressing the impulse, we help ourselves to health.
044. THE BENEFITS OF TECHNOLOGY
j Science and technology are getting a bad press these days. Increasingly scornful of the materialism of our culture, some people speak about returning to a simpler, pre-industrial, pre-scientific day. They fail to realize that the "good old days" were actually horribly bad old days of ignorance, disease, slavery, and death. They I fancy themselves in Athens, talking to Socrates or watching the latest play by Sophocles but never as a slave brutalized in the Athenian silver mines. They imagine themselves as medieval knights on armoured chargers but never as starving peasants. They also ignore the fact that, before modern technology, the full I flower of art and human intellect was reserved for the few. It was the technical advances that brought many of the marvels of mankind to even the poorest.
045. NADIA COMANECI
One of the most popular and exciting gymnasts to compete in the Olympic Games was the Romanian Nadia Comaneci. Fourteen-year-old Nadia burst on the Olympic scene when she competed in 1976 in Montreal against Olga Korbut, the great young Russian gymnast. Olga had won two gold medals in the 1972 Olympics, and she was going to try to repeat her victories in 1976. As Nadia watched, Olga approached the uneven parallel bars, leaped up, caught hold of one bar, and began her routine. She flipped, twisted, and turned. The crowd cheered, and the judges awarded Olga a score of 9.90. It would take almost a perfect, score of 10.00 to beat Olga. Nadia was next. She jumped and grabbed the lower bar. She performed an incredible series of whirls and spins. She made a dazzling dismount, and stood straight as an arrow. The crowd applauded Nadia wildly. The judges were astonished by Nadia's performance and gave her a perfect score of 10.00! It was the first perfect gymnastic score in the history of the Olympic Games. Nadia won three gold medals and one silver in Montreal. Even with her perfect scores, however, she could not be called the greatest of all women gymnasts. That honour belongs to Larissa Latynina of the former Soviet Union, who, in three Olympics - 1956, 1960 and 1964 - w o n nine gold, five silver, and three bronze medals.
046. THE TITANIC
On 15 April 1912, the Titanic - at that time the world's largest and most luxurious ocean liner - disappeared into the icy depths of the North Atlantic. Some 1,500 people died - more casualties than in any other marine disaster in peacetime history. After striking a huge iceberg, the 46,500-ton vessel sank in less than three hours. Lloyd's of London, the firm which had insured the Titanic, had reasoned that the probability of such an event was one in a million. At 11:40 pm on the evening of the disaster, the lookout on the Titanic's bridge saw an ominous shape ahead. "Ice! Dead ahead!" he shouted. The helm was turned hard over and the engines were reversed, but it was too late. A 300-foot gash was ripped along the side of the Titanic's hull as though it were made of tin. If the lookout had not sighted the iceberg and the helmsman not turned the wheel, the Titanic would probably have struck the iceberg head-on. It is then likely that only the bow sections of the ship would have been flooded and, though seriously crippled, she would have remained afloat.
047. WHERE NEW PRODUCTS COME FROM
Akio Morita, the chairman of Sony Corporation in Japan, wanted a radio he could carry with him and listen to wherever he went. From that small desire was born the Sony Walkman, a radio small enough to be worn on a belt or carried in a pocket. Not all product development, however, is so easy. Most of today's products, including many of the basic necessities of food, clothing and shelter, are the result of creative research and thinking by staff. A new product is one that is new for the company that makes it. A hamburger, for example, is not new, but when McDonald's introduced the Big Mac, it was a new product for that company. Decisions to make a new product can be the result of technology and scientific discovery, but the discovery can be either accidental or sought for. The original punch-card data- processing machine was devised specifically for use by the Bureau of the Census. Penicillin, by contrast, was an accidental discovery and is now one of the most useful antibiotics. Products today are often the result of extensive market research to learn what consumers and retailers want.
048. HOW TO TREAT FROSTBITE
Frostbite is a common injury in winter weather, particularly when low temperatures are combined with wind. The nose, ears, fingers, toes, and chin are the most susceptible. The involved part begins to tingle or hurt mildly and then becomes numb. Frozen tissue usually ranges from distinctly white in light-skinned people to ashen grey in dark-skinned people. Here are some tips to help rescue someone with frostbite: 1. Remove the person from the cold as soon as possible. 2. Every effort should be made to protect the frozen part. If there is a chance that the part might refreeze before reaching medical care, it may be more harmful to thaw it and let it refreeze than to await arrival at the treatment area for thawing. 3. Rapid rewarming is essential. Do not rub the injured part as friction may cause further damage. Use lukewarm water or use warmed blankets. Within about 30 minutes, sensation may return to the part, which may become red, swollen, and painful. 4. When the part is warm, keep it dry and clean. If blisters appear, use sterile dressings.
049. UNFAIRNESS TO THE PIG
Few animals have such economic significance to mankind yet suffer from such a deplorable image as does the pig. As a domestic animal, it is a source of a wide variety of meats, high-quality leather, durable bristles for many kinds of brushes, and hundreds of medical products. At the same time, the pig is frequently regarded as unclean and even untouchable by many people. In spite of their reputation, pigs are neither filthy nor stupid. Because their sweat glands are relatively ineffective in lowering body temperature, pigs seek relief from the heat by wallowing in mud or shallow waterholes. When provided with? a clean environment sheltered from the sun, however, pigs are fastidious. Furthermore, in tests of intelligence, pigs have proved to be among the smartest of all domestic animals - even more intelligent than dogs.
050. TEA INNOVATIONS
The Louisiana Purchase* Exposition took place in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904. At the fair was the young Englishman Richard Blechynden, who represented the tea interests of India and Ceylon - now Sri Lanka. It was his job to popularize tea drinking in the United States. The weather that summer turned quite hot, and Blechynden watched as people passed by his booth to others that were serving cold drinks. In desperation, he filled tall glasses with ice and poured hot tea over it. Iced tea was an immediate success. The invention of tea bags happened almost simultaneously. Thomas Sullivan of New York City owned a tea and coffee business. In sending samples of tea to customers, he decided it would be cheaper to sew the tea inside small cloth bags instead of sealing it in tins. To his surprise, orders for the tea bags poured in. Tea bags are now made of a special filter paper, and the manufacturing and packing of them has become an industry in itself to meet the great demand. Instant, or powdered, tea has become common on grocery shelves along with bulk and bag teas. Instant teas offer greater convenience than ordinary leaf tea as they are easy to prepare and leave no leaf sediment. The treaty signed with France in 1803 by which the USA purchased a large portion of its present territory.
051. THE FATHER OF THE AMERICAN RESTAURANT
For nearly 50 years, Lorenzo Delmonico ran the foremost and largest restaurant in the United States. Nobody in the 19th century contributed more than he did to make the concept of fine restaurant dining a reality in America. Delmonico, born in Switzerland in 1813, went to New York at the age of 19 and worked with relatives in a catering firm. He soon opened a restaurant that offered an unusually large menu, including a great variety of European dishes never before served in the United States. He also served American wild game as well as a selection of wines. The success of the restaurant inspired him to open branch restaurants, including the internationally renowned Delmonico's on the corner of Broadway and 26th Street in New York City. His organization also operated its own farm in nearby Brooklyn and temporarily ran a hotel. His fame as a restaurateur brought many imitators, and between them they helped make New York City one of the primary culinary centres in the world. He was largely responsible for making the restaurant an accepted and popular institution.
052. SOCRATES
Interested in neither money, fame, nor power, Socrates wandered through the streets of Athens in the 5th century BC. He wore a single rough woollen garment in all seasons and went barefoot. Talking to whoever would listen, he asked questions, criticized answers, and poked holes in faulty arguments. His style of conversation has been given the name "Socratic dialogue". He was the first of the three great teachers of ancient Greece - the other two being Plato and Aristotle. Today, he is ranked as one of the world's greatest moral teachers. His self-control and powers of endurance were unmatched. In appearance he was short and fat, with a snub nose and wide mouth. Despite his unkempt appearance, the Greeks of his day enjoyed being with him and talking with him and were fascinated by what he had to say. Socrates did not write any books or papers. The details of his life and doctrine are preserved in the "Memorabilia" of the historian Xenophon and in the dialogues of the philosopher Plato. It was chiefly through Plato and Plato's brilliant disciple Aristotle that the influence of Socrates was passed on to succeeding generations of philosophers.
053. POSSESSING A MATHEMATICAL MIND
Several old jokes common amongst the scientific disciplines illustrate the difference between the mathematical mind and that of other disciplines. One goes as follows: An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are all staying at a hotel one night when a fire breaks out. The engineer wakes up and smells the smoke; he quickly grabs a garbage pail to use as a bucket, fills it with water from the bathroom, and puts out the fire in his room. He then refills the pail and douses everything flammable in the room with water. He then goes back to sleep. The physicist wakes up, smells the smoke, jumps out of bed. He picks up a pad and pencil and makes some calculations, glancing frequently at the flames. He then measures exactly 15.6 liters of water into the garbage pail, and throws it on the flames, which are extinguished. Smiling, he returns to sleep. Finally the mathematician wakes up. He too grabs a pad and begins fervently writing, glancing at the flames, and then writing more. After a while, he gets a satisfied look on his face; entering the bathroom, he produces a match, lights it, and then extinguishes it with a bit of running water. "Aha! A solution exists," he murmurs, and goes back to sleep.
054. SHORT STORIES
Ours is the great generation of the short story. The growth of the newspaper, the development of the magazine, the universality of popular education with its increase in human curiosity - most of all, the increasing pace of modern life, its speed of living and competitive pressure - gave this literary type its greatest encouragement. Here is the people's literature, and the most democratic of all forms of writing because it offers a means for the use of every conceivable sort of plot, character or background. It's just the right length in a world of tumult and hurry; it is a form that presents things concisely and graphically, and it is the type of writing most easily understood by every kind of reader.
055. THE SPICE TRADE
Spices were known to Eastern peoples thousands of years ago. Arab traders artfully withheld the true source of these spices, however, and they became valuable items of commerce early in the evolution of the spice trade. The most notable uses of spices in very early times were in medicine and in the making of holy oils. Belief in the healing power of spices filtered down, in a moderated form, into the Middle Ages and even into early modern times. It is not known when spices were first used in food. Certainly, the ancient Greeks and Romans used spices to flavour food and beverages because they discovered that spices helped to preserve foods, mask the flavour of partially spoiled meats, and also brought a change of flavour. Knowledge of the use of spices to preserve and flavour food slowly spread through Europe. Finally, in the last third of the 15th century, the Europeans decided to build ships and venture abroad in search of a route to the spice-producing countries.
056. ALEXANDRE DUMAS
The novels and plays of Alexandre Dumas are filled with action and clever talk. Some critics, however, have said that Dumas's work is not good literature because it is sometimes carelessly written and historically inaccurate. After several failures as a playwright, Dumas wrote a play about the king called Henri III. It was produced in Paris in 1829 and was a great success. Dumas became prominent as one of the leaders of the Romantic movement. In the 1840s, Dumas turned nearly all his attention to writing vivid historical novels. The best known are The Three Musketeers, and The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas hired collaborators, added material here and there to their work, and changed the plot and characters, giving the works the charm and movement that made his novels popular. Collaborators' names never appeared on the title pages of these works, but this omission was a practice of the day. Dumas earned vast sums, but he spent money faster than he earned it. His wish to be elected to the French Academy was never fulfilled.
057. CLASSIFYING LIFE FORMS
Exactly what is a plant and how is it different from other life forms? This may initially seem like a simple question. Everyone knows that an elm tree is a plant, whereas a dog is not. Nevertheless, the precise definition of plants is still a matter of debate among some scientists. All living things are made up of protoplasm, a complex material composed of organic substances such as sugars, proteins and fats. Protoplasm is arranged in tiny units called cells. All living things are composed of cells. As recently as the late 1960s, scientists believed that all organisms could be classified as members of either the plant or the animal kingdom. Life forms that are green and that can synthesize their own food using light energy were put in the plant kingdom. Those organisms that lack green pigment and are able to move about were considered to be animals. Researchers now agree that living things are more properly divided into two groups-prokaryotes and eukaryotes. These major groups comprise five kingdoms. Major differences between cells are used to distinguish between these groups and kingdoms. M O a ELS
058. ICE-BORG
Because of his imperturbable manner, both on and off the tennis court, and his relentless ground strokes, Bjom Borg was dubbed Ice-Borg by his opponents on the professional tennis circuit. Borg won his first tournament when he was 11. In four years, he won all the world's junior titles, and became the first of the teenage wonders to achieve world-class status. He dropped out of school when he was in the ninth grade, at the age of 15, and qualified for the Swedish Davis Cup team, becoming the youngest player ever to win a cup match. This was his first encounter with team captain Lennart Bergelin, who later became Borg's full-time coach. In 1975 Borg's three match victories, including doubles, brought Sweden its first Davis Cup. In his first decade in competitive tennis, the golden- haired Swede broke more records than anyone else in the history of tennis. Borg was only 26 when he retired, and he failed in his attempt eight years later to make a comeback with his old wooden racket - made obsolete by the oversized models that are now used in the game.
059. SMALL WHALES
Dolphins and porpoises, often called simply "small whales," are mammals, not fish, and are thus warm-blooded, keeping their body temperature nearly constant even when they are exposed to different environmental temperatures. The mothers provide milk for the young for a year or more. Like other whales, dolphins have lungs and breathe through a single nostril, called the blowhole, located on top of the head. The blowhole is opened during their frequent trips to the surface to breathe. In contrast to some of the large whales, dolphins and porpoises have teeth, which they use to seize their food, consisting primarily of marine fish. Certain species of marine dolphins are the best-known biologically because they survive well in captivity, which means they can be more carefully observed. The bottle-nosed dolphin has been the most intensively studied because of its adaptability to salt-water holding tanks. It is a major participant in acrobatic shows at oceanariums and is noted for its curiosity toward humans.
060. SWIMMING BIRDS OF THE ANTARCTIC
Penguin ancestors could fly as well as any other sea bird. Now its wings are short, paddle-like flippers that are entirely useless for flight. The bird has lived for ages in or near the Antarctic regions, where it has few enemies. Thus it came to spend all of its time on land or in the water. For generations it did not fly. In the course of evolution, its wings became small and stiff and lost their long feathers. The penguins, however, became master swimmers and divers. Of all birds, they are the most fully adapted to water. Their thick coat of feathers provides a smooth surface that is impenetrable to water. Their streamlined bodies glide through the water easily. The birds use their wings as swimmers use their arms in a crawl stroke, and they steer with their feet. Penguins can swim at speeds of more than 25 miles per hour. When they want to leave the water, they can leap as much as 6 feet from the water's surface onto a rock or iceberg.
061. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
The composer of some of the most influential pieces of music ever written, Ludwig van Beethoven created a bridge between the 18th-century classical period and the new beginnings of Romanticism. His greatest breakthroughs in composition came in his instrumental work, including his symphonies. Unlike his predecessor Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for whom writing music seemed to come easily, Beethoven always struggled to perfect his work. In the late 1700s Beethoven began to suffer from early symptoms of deafness. The cause of his disability is still uncertain. By 1802 Beethoven was convinced that the condition not only was permanent, but was getting progressively worse. He spent that summer in the country and wrote what has become known as the "Heiligenstadt Testament." In the document, seemingly intended for his two brothers, Beethoven expressed his humiliation and despair. For the rest of his life he searched for a cure, but by 1819 his deafness had become total. Afterwards, in order to have conversations with his friends, Beethoven had them write down their questions and replied orally.
062. OUR ANIMAL FRIENDS
The human race's progress on the Earth has been due in part to the animals that people have been able to utilize throughout history. Such domesticated animals carry people and their burdens. They pull machinery and help cultivate fields. They provide food and clothing. As pets they may amuse or console their owners. Domesticated animals are those that have been bred in captivity for many generations. While a single animal may be tamed, only a species of animal can be considered domesticated. In the course of time, by selective breeding, certain animals have changed greatly in appearance and behaviour from their wild ancestors. There is a vast difference between the scrawny red jungle fowl of southern Asia and its descendant, the meaty, egg-laying farm chicken. Not all domestic animals are tame at all times. An angry bull, a mother goose, or a mother sow with young piglets can be vicious. Some creatures confined in zoos breed in captivity. The lion is an example. These animals are not domesticated, however, for they remain wild and dangerous.
063. I-HO-CH'UAN
In the summer of 1900, members of a secret society roamed northeastern China in bands, killing Europeans and Americans and destroying buildings owned by foreigners. They called themselves l-ho ch'uan, or "Righteous and Harmonious Fists." They practised boxing skills that they believed made them impervious to bullets. To Westerners they became known as the Boxers, and their uprising was called the Boxer Rebellion. Most Boxers were peasants or urban thugs from northern China who resented the growing influence of Westerners in their land. They organized themselves in 1898, and in the same year the Chinese government - then ruled by the Ch'ing Dynasty - secretly allied with the Boxers to oppose such outsiders as Christian missionaries and European businessmen. The Boxers failed to drive foreigners out of China, but they set the stage for the successful Chinese revolutionary movement of the early 20th century.
064. IS IT ART?
? Paintings and power shovels, sonatas and submarines, dramas and dynamos - they all have one thing in common. They are fashioned by people. They are artificial, in contrast to everything that is natural - plants, animals, and minerals. The average 20th-century person would distinguish paintings, sonatas, and dramas as forms of art, while viewing power shovels, submarines, and dynamos as products of technology. This distinction, however, is a modern one that dates from an 18th- century point of view. In earlier times, the word "art" referred to any useful skill. Shoemaking, metalworking, medicine, agriculture, and even warfare, were all once classified as arts. They were equated with what are today called the fine arts - painting, sculpture, music, architecture, literature, dance, and related fields. In that broader sense, art was defined as a skill in making or doing, based on true and adequate reasoning.
065. HISTORY OR BIOGRAPHY?
? History and biography have several similarities, but they are not synonymous. Both the biographer and the historian search for evidence. They evaluate the information they find to decide if it is factual and relevant. History, however, is the recorded past of human societies; it tells the story of nations, wars and movements - the whole range of past human activity. Biography deals with a single life story. The historian is interested in facts and events that affect many lives; the biographer seeks information that reveals the subject's character and personality. If the subject of a biography is a well-known public figure such as a president of the United States, his life story almost becomes a historical narrative. The life of George Washington, - for instance, is a significant segment of American history. But if the subject is a very private person, such as the poet Emily Dickinson, the biography is much less concerned with contemporary historical events.
066. ARE THEY EVIL?
? During the Middle Ages in Europe, the cat became an object of superstitions and was associated with evil. The animal was believed to have powers of black magic - an assistant to witches and perhaps the embodiment of the devil. People who kept cats were suspected of wickedness and were often put to death along with their cats. Cats were hunted, tortured, and sacrificed. Live cats were sealed inside the walls of houses and other buildings as they were being constructed, in the belief that this would bring good luck. As the cat population dwindled, the disease-carrying rat population increased, a factor that contributed greatly to the spread of epidemics throughout Europe. By the 17th century, the cat had begun to regain its former place as a companion to people and a controller of rodents. Many of the superstitions that appeared during the period of cat persecution, however, are still evident today in the form of such sayings as "A black cat crossing your path brings bad luck."
067. WHY LEAVE?
? If people are satisfied where they are, they will not migrate. Throughout history, people have left their native lands for a variety of reasons: religious or racial persecution, lack of political freedom, economic deprivation. The forces that attracted them to new homelands were the opposites of these: religious and political freedom, ethnic tolerance, economic opportunity. The leading motive behind migration has always been economic. Overpopulation creates shortages of jobs and food. The natural resources of a region can become exhausted, impelling a whole group of people to migrate. People who are oppressed for any reason will in all likelihood be economically deprived as well. The movement from farm to city is a prime example of migration for economic reasons. During the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, millions of people left poverty-stricken rural areas for the cities. Even the low-paying, seven-day-a-week jobs in early factories were better than the endless toil and misery of trying to earn a living on the farm. This search for jobs in urban areas has continued to be a leading cause of migration up to the present.
068. FROM HOLY WATER TO COCA-COLA
According to the ancient mathematician Hero of Alexandria, Egyptian temples in 1 about 215 BC had devices from which one could get a squirt of holy water for a few I small coins. Today's vending machines, however, have their origins in coin-operated 1 dispensers of tobacco and snuff in 18th-century England, and later in the American 1 colonies. These were called honour boxes, because when a coin was inserted, the 1 top opened, laying bare the supply. Customers were on their honour to take their 1 entitled amount and then close the lid so that the next person could pay. The first I practical vending machines appeared in the United States in 1888 - chewing gum 1 machines on elevated train platforms in New York City. The machines remained gum I and penny-candy vendors until the modern cigarette machine was introduced in I 1926. Cigarette machines were the first to return change. The first soft drink 1 machine appeared in 1937.
069. THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL
A record producer who had been searching for a "white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel" began recording the Memphis-based country singer Elvis Presley. In 1956 the 21-year-old Presley created a sensation with his rock 'n' roll- styled "Heartbreak Hotel", the first of his 14 records in a row that sold more than a million copies each. Presley's success inspired other country performers to begin singing rock and roll music in the late 1950s. The popularity of Presley also helped to encourage the practice of "cover" recordings. That is, when new records by black performers began to appear on the hit charts, white singers would record simplified versions of the same songs. The recordings by the white performers received wider distribution and were played on more radio stations than the original recordings. As rock and roll rapidly became the most popular music of the late 1950s, record industry executives became aware that young listeners made up the largest portion of this music's audience. Therefore they employed young, often adolescent, singers to record rock and roll music, and produced such teenage romance songs as "Young Love", "16 Candles", and "Teen-Age Crush".
070. JUDO
Judo, which means "the gentle way" in Japanese, is a perfect example of how skill can overcome brute force, because it teaches a person to use an opponent's weight against them. So, although a woman may feel intimidated by a taller male opponent, through the skilful application of throws and holds, she can overpower him. It's easy to see why this sport produces self-confidence and is a great way of releasing tension. The sport of judo was invented in Japan in 1882 to combat bullying in schools. After years of studying other martial arts, Jigoro Kano founded a judo academy in order to discover the most efficient way of deterring his playground enemies. Initially, judo was not accepted by other martial artists, but in 1886, Tokyo's police force held a martial arts tournament and judo techniques scored highly. Recently, judo has been the most widely practised of the martial arts outside China and Japan.
071. THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART'S FAMOUS STEPS
More money is spent on art in Philadelphia than in any other American city. In fact, about one percent of the total city budget is spent on art. Philadelphia's art museum houses an unparalleled collection from the Middle Ages onward. It has exhibits from all over the world and has a superb collection from the Orient. It is a palatial structure set in the middle of beautiful Fairmourit Park. The museum is the city's number one tourist attraction and you would be forgiven for thinking that this has something to do with its collection of 500,000 paintings. However, the museum's popularity has more to do with another form of art, namely, film. During the film "Rocky", the hero - played by Sylvester Stallone - runs up the front steps of the building while he is training for a fight. Tourists arrive in bus loads, but many don't even bother to enter the structure. They come merely for a glimpse of the scene from this Academy Award-winning film.
072. A COUNTRY WALK
We started our hike at the Usk Bridge. Prom there, we walked around Park Farm and then a short distance along the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal until we reached the old miners' path. We took this path and began to ascend the steep hillside. The path led to the summit and to a pillar of rock, known locally as "Lonely Shepherd." From this point, we had a wonderful view over the Usk valley. After eating a hearty lunch, we descended back into the valley by the forest trail. Suddenly 1 the black clouds overhead, which had been menacing us with rain all day, rattled I with thunder and the heavens opened. As the rain was torrential, we took shelter in I an old shepherd's hut. Saturated with rain, we sat round chatting and waiting for the I rain to ease, but it continued falling heavily. Having no other option, we continued our hike, looking forward to a warm fire and a hot drink at the end.
073. FAKE ART
The art world is flooded with forgeries, it has been estimated that only about half of the 600 works supposedly painted by Rembrandt are genuine. No great artist, past or present, has been safe from having his or her work copied by a counterfeiter, and some of the fakes have been so deceptive that only experts have been able to discover them. The number of fake paintings hanging in the world's museums will probably never be known because the museums fear for their reputations if it is learnt that they harbour counterfeit "masterpieces". Many museum curators now will accept a painting only after the most careful analysis and testing of its authenticity. The falsifying of paintings and sculpture has been occurring since ancient times. Occasionally people have knowingly purchased copies of art. Wealthy Romans, for instance, demanded and received copies of famous Greek statues. But in the 20th century, the market for fake art sold as being authentic has become very profitable, since artworks are now bought as investments for private collections.
074. THE ORGAN OF VISION
The human eye is nature's most intricate and delicate organ, and the high degree of development of human society probably rests upon the development of this organ. When nature first developed this intricate and adaptable organism, human eyes were used primarily for outdoor work and living. With the stress of indoor life and artificial lighting, abnormal strain is placed on eyes today. Sometimes more than nature's assistance is needed to keep eyes in shape for the many uses they serve in modern life. It is also true that we have extended man's normal lifespan to almost twice what it was in primitive societies. Visual deficiencies also increase with age, and eyes usually need some corrective care as one grows older. Undetected, uncorrected eye trouble can affect the entire personality structure and can make the difference between success and failure in one's working life or personal relations. Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, was slow and backward till it was discovered that his vision was bad. After his defective sight was corrected, he emerged as one of the leaders of his time.
075. QUEEN VICTORIA
The long reign of Queen Victoria was a time of almost uninterrupted peace and great progress. The rapid growth of industry made Britain the world's leading industrial nation - "the workshop of the world", as it was called - and the British Empire reached the height of its power when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1876. During her long life, which lasted 82 years, the Queen herself became a symbol of Britain's greatness. In 1840, Victoria married Prince Albert and lived happily with him until he died in 1861. After his death she led a lonely life, withdrew from public affairs, and could only rarely be persuaded to visit London. When she died in 1901 after a reign of 63 years, the world stood on the threshold of the 20th century, and many British people felt that a great age had gone for ever.
076. HEALTH EDUCATION
The doctor-patient relationship is of the greatest importance to the effective use of health services. Studies conducted in England and the United States show that many people resort to self-treatment, and that this is due to a barrier between the doctor and themselves, which makes them too diffident to consult the doctor. At the other end of the scale is the person who believes that the doctor is infallible and who expects miraculous treatment. Thus, the need for health education emerges at this point, not with the aim of making every man his own doctor, but rather with the aim of helping people to judge for themselves when they need professional help. For example, a simple cut on a finger will usually respond to first-aid and a simple dressing to protect it and keep it clean, which can easily be done at home. If the injury occurred in circumstances or places in which dangerous infection was likely - e.g. in cultivated land that might contain tetanus spores - then the patient should consult his doctor. In any case, he should be able to recognize the signs of inflammation, in which case he should consult his doctor. (From A Textbook of Health Education by Denis Pirrie and A.J. Dalzell-Ward)
077. DARWIN'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION
Never has a scientist, with one book, caused such a stir in the world as Darwin did with The Origin of Species. His ideas, the fruit of many years of patient thought and study, were attacked by learned and ignorant alike. He was called a madman, a deceiver, and an anti-Christian. Long and bitter quarrels arose, and most religious people of that time attacked him. They accused him of trying to destroy religion and morals completely, though Darwin, of course, had no such intention. His book dealt in a scientific way with a problem of science, and the only critics he answered were those who attacked him on scientific grounds. His refusal to return abuse did not stop his enemies, however. The newspapers were filled with letters and articles pouring scorn on the very idea of evolution and the less the writers knew about the subject, the more violent their attack was. Darwin, however, was well-supported by a few able scientists, who untiringly spread what he taught. He gathered so many facts, and built so surely on these unanswerable facts, that his ideas carried great weight once they were understood. After the first stormy outbursts had died away, men began to see things Darwin's way. Slowly and quietly, Darwin's teachings conquered the world. (From Seven Biologists by T.H. Savory, F.E Joselin and John Walton)
078. TIMING THE CRITICISM
One of the chief faults in the ordinary method of giving "moral" instruction is in the time of day chosen for it. The parent sees that when the child is absorbed in work or play, the instruction passes over his head; he pays no attention. But at night, when he cuddles up on his mother's knee and loves her very much, and wants complete rest and a sense of security, she is apt to fail him and to cheat him of his wish by beginning her moral lesson of how she would like her little boy to behave. This completely spoils his sense of security and rest, and sets up a mental struggle, a wish to defend himself, which is a great cause of fatigue, for fatigue is at all times brought about much more by psychic than by physical experience. "Moral" instruction should be kept for an early hour in the day, when the creative impulse in the child is fresh. It will then do much less harm. Because a sense of inferiority is very easily set up in children, and because it is one of the most destructive of those neurotic disorders which incapacitate us for living, this advice should be followed strictly by parents wishing to bring up healthy children.
079. HAGIA SOPHIA
Consecrated in 537 AD, Hagia Sophia - which means Holy Wisdom - was the largest building in the world, fireproof, with four immense pillars held together with molten lead which supported four arches and lesser domes, creating a space so overwhelming it seems to defy the laws of gravity. Indeed, people were scared to enter it at first in case the dome collapsed. The designs were drawn up by Anthemius of Tralles, a noted mathematician, and Isidorus of Miletus, the last head of the Athens Academy. Colour was provided by stone and marble brought from other parts of the Justinian empire: red from the temple of Boalbek and green from Ephesus. At one time it was bright with golden ornaments and chandeliers. With the Turkish conquest in 1453, it became a mosque, with the addition of the corner minarets, and many of the decorations were concealed with whitewash. These were gradually restored by Thomas Whittemore, of the Byzantine Museum of America, after the building became a museum on the instructions of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1933.
080. THE LOST SETTLERS
In 1587, a group of 115 English settlers - men, women and children - sailed from Britain to set up the first English colony in the New World, on Roanoke Island off what is now North Carolina. Two years later, a second expedition set off from England to join them. However, when they arrived, they found the settlement deserted. There were no indications of where the settlers had gone, nor any sign of a struggle, but just one word mysteriously scratched on a tree: "Croatoan". This was the name of a nearby island where the Indians were known to be friendly, but a trip to the island showed that the settlers had never arrived there. One theory is that they travelled inland, up into the hills of Appalachia, and settled there. No one knows why they might have done this, but fifty years later, when European explorers arrived in Tennessee, the Cherokee Indians told them that there was a group of pale people living in the hills already, people who wore clothes and had long beards. No one ever found this mysterious community. But in a remote and neglected corner of the Appalachians, high up in northeastern Tennessee, there still live some curious people called Melungeons, who have been there for as long as anyone can remember. The Melungeons have most of the characteristics of Europeans - blue eyes, fair hair, lanky build - but a dark, almost Negroid skin coloring that is distinctly non-European. They have English family names, but no one, including the Melungeons themselves, has any idea of where they come from or what their early history might have been. They are as much of a mystery as the lost settlers of Roanoke Island. Indeed, it has been suggested that they may be the lost settlers of Roanoke. (Adapted from The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson)
081. TO TAKE UP EXERCISE
Exercise is one of the few factors with a positive role in the long-term maintenance of body weight. Unfortunately, that message has not gotten through to the average American, who would rather try switching to "light" beer and low-calorie bread than increase physical exertion. The Centers for Disease Control, for example, found that fewer than one-fourth of overweight adults who were trying to shed pounds said they were combining exercise with their diet. In rejecting exercise, some people may be unduly discouraged by caloric expenditure charts; for example, one would have to briskly walk three miles just to work off the 275 calories in one scrumptious Danish pastry. Even exercise professionals concede half a point here. "Exercise by itself is a very tough way to lose weight," says York Onnen, program director of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Still, exercise's supporting role in weight reduction is vital. A study at the Boston University Medical Center of overweight police officers and other public employees confirmed that those who dieted without exercise regained almost all their old weight, while those who worked exercise into their daily routine maintained their new weight. If you have been sedentary and decide to start walking one mile a day, the added exercise could burn an extra 100 calories daily. In a year's time, assuming no increase in food intake, you could lose ten pounds. By increasing the distance of your walks gradually land making other dietary adjustments, you may lose even more weight.
082. JAPANESE EMPLOYEES
In Japan, there is a close relationship between the worker and his company. Employees work hard and do hours of unpaid overtime to make their firms more efficient. If necessary, they give up weekends with the family to go on business trips. They are loyal to their organizations and they are totally involved with them. The system of lifetime employment creates a strong link between the enterprise and its workforce. It covers about 35% of the working population. Generally, when a person joins a firm after leaving high school or university, he expects to stay with that firm until he retires. He has a secure job for life. Therefore, he will not be laid off if the company no longer needs him because there is no work. Instead, it will retrain him for another position. The pay of a worker depends on his seniority, that is to say, on the years he has been with the firm. The longer he stays there, the higher his salary will be. When he is 30 or 40 years old, therefore, he cannot afford to change jobs. If he did move, he would also lose valuable fringe benefits. Promotion depends on seniority as well. Japanese managers are rarely very young, and chief executives are at least 60, and very often 70 years old. The Japanese have a special way of making decisions. They call it the consensus system. This is how it works: when a firm is thinking of taking a certain action, it encourages workers at all levels to discuss the proposal and give their opinions. The purpose is to reach a consensus, or general agreement. As soon as everyone agrees on the right course of action, the decision is taken. Because of this method, a group of workers, rather than one person, is responsible for company policies. One advantage of this is that decisions come from a mixture of experience from the top, the middle, and the bottom of an enterprise. Another advantage is that junior staff frequently suggest ideas for change. A disadvantage, perhaps, is that decision-making can be slow.
083. TEMPERAMENTS OF MAN AND WOMAN
On the basis of research I have carried out, I believe that there are male and female versions of the same temperament. Temperamentally there are male as well as female introverts and extroverts, fiercely brave women as well as fiercely brave men, shy and gentle men as well as shy and gentle women. Every society emphasizes an expected personality for each sex. Sometimes both men and women are expected to have the same kind of personality. That is, both men and women are expected to be outgoing, active people or, on the contrary, introspective, meditative people. In cultures where this is so, sex differences are reflected in the particular ways in which a woman and a man are expected to behave and the activities each is expected to engage in. In a culture in which both men and women are expected to be outgoing and active, women may be expected to take a lot of initiative in personal relations between men and women, while men may be expected to take the initiative in public, community activities. In other cultures it is expected that the personalities of women and men will be complementary. The personality of women is based on one set of temperamental traits and that of men on another. In such a culture women may be expected to be passive, gentle and modest, while men may be expected to be active and self-assertive in whatever activities persons of either sex engage in. m On the basis of research I have carried out, I believe that there are male and 1 female versions of the same temperament. Temperamentally there are male as well I as female introverts and extroverts, fiercely brave women as well as fiercely brave I men, shy and gentle men as well as shy and gentle women. Every society I emphasizes an expected personality for each sex. Sometimes both men and women • are expected to have the same kind of personality. That is, both men and women 1 are expected to be outgoing, active people or, on the contrary, introspective, 1 meditative people. In cultures where this is so, sex differences are reflected in the • particular ways in which a woman and a man are expected to behave and the 1 activities each is expected to engage in. In a culture in which both men and women I are expected to be outgoing and active, women may be expected to take a lot of I initiative in personal relations between men and women, while men may be expected I to take the initiative in public, community activities. In other cultures it is expected 1 that the personalities of women and men will be complementary. The personality of I women is based on one set of temperamental traits and that of men on another. In 1 such a culture women may be expected to be passive, gentle and modest, while I men may be expected to be active and self-assertive in whatever activities persons 1 of either sex engage in.
084. ACTIVE NOISE CONTROL
Imagine living next door to Luciano Pavarotti. You love the big guy, but his full- throated practice sessions are rattling the china. To silence the booming tenor, you could do one of three things: ask him to practice his Puccini outside; wear earplugs around your apartment; or put some rock music on your CD player, crank up the volume, and drown out Pavarotti's voice. The last option wouldn't be smart, obviously, since you'd only be creating more noise. But what if the sounds coming from your CD were the acoustic mirror image of the sound waves coming out of Pavarotti's mouth? Instead of doubling the amount of noise, they would actually cancel it out, zap it from the air. What you'd be left with is peace and quiet. The idea of stifling Pavarotti or any human voice by scientific means is a bit fanciful, of course. But the theory behind it - something acoustics scientists call antinoise - is not. In fact, some of the biggest electronics companies in Japan take the concept seriously and, together with a few small American firms, are making "active noise control" (ANC) devices to help quiet the daily din. These are small but sophisticated sound systems that analyze noise digitally and then - almost instantaneously - generate equal but inverse sound waves, or antinoise. A typical ANC device can weaken a targeted noise by 10 to 15 decibels. For most industrial noise, that means reducing the sound level by 50 to 70 percent.
085. FAITH IN DRUGS
This is a skeptical age, but although our faith in many of the things in which our forefathers fervently believed has weakened, our confidence in the curative properties of the bottle of medicine remains the same as theirs.The majority of the patients attending the outpatient departments of our hospitals feel that they have not received adequate treatment unless they are able to carry home with them some tangible remedy in the shape of a bottle of medicine, a box of pills, or a small jar of ointment, and the doctor in charge of the department is only too ready to provide them with these requirements. There is no quicker method of disposing of patients than by giving them what they are asking for, and since most medical personnel in the health services are overworked and have little time for offering time-consuming and little-appreciated advice on such subjects as diet, right living, and the need for abandoning bad habits, etc., the bottle, the box, and the jar are almost always granted to them.
086. THE LOCH NESS MONSTER
Loch Ness is an immensely deep lake in the northeastern Highlands of Scotland. It is overlooked by brooding hills and wild moorland - the perfect setting for strange and unexplained events. In 1933, a motorist on the new lakeside road saw a tremendous upheaval in the loch*. The waters churned and boiled as a huge monster, its body the size of a whale, broke the surface. The incident was reported in the local paper, and soon the national press was buzzing with news of what came to be called "The Loch Ness Monster." But legends of large water creatures in Loch Ness go back much further than 1933. In the 6th century AD, the Irish missionary Saint Columba was said to have banished a monster which had attacked a swimmer. And local folk tales, going back centuries, speak of "water horses" and "water bulls" inhabiting Loch Ness. Scientists have seriously suggested that large creatures may have been stranded in the loch, when 60 million years ago it was cut off from the sea. Perhaps their descendants live there still. But despite hazy photographs, mostly highly magnified, of strange "humps" in the water, there is very little evidence, as yet, to go on. *The Scottish word for "lake".
087. THE PUFFER FISH
Ian Fleming's* evil globefish - also known as a puffer, blowfish, swellfish, or, in Japanese, fugu - is one of the most mysterious creatures of the sea. It is perhaps the world's most deadly fish, yet in Japan the honorable fugu is the perfect example of gourmet dining. With its lazy, almost feeble way of swimming, the puffer fish gives no hint of its deadly nature. Here is no shark knifing through the water, with gleaming jaws agape; but the poison hidden in the puffer's entrails makes it fearsome indeed. About 100 species of puffers in several closely related families can be found throughout the world. Their most obvious characteristic is their ability to change from a reasonable fish shape into a sphere two or three times larger. When frightened, excited, or annoyed, they gulp water, or even air, into a sac on the belly. It swells inside their tough, elastic skin, like an inner tube inside a tire, so as to discourage predators or intimidate rivals. When the fish feels safe, it squirts out the water or releases the air, deflating to its normal shape. * Ian Fleming: author of the James Bond novels
088. SPARTACUS
For many years, the name of the Thracian slave Spartacus struck fear into the hearts of the Roman people. It served to remind them of the danger that constantly menaced the continued existence of their state - the danger of an uprising of the enormous slave population, which might destroy the Roman nation. Scholars have calculated that in ancient Italy the slaves outnumbered the free citizens 3 to 1. If these slaves, who resented the brutal treatment they received as household and plantation labourers, had succeeded in uniting under capable leadership, no armies could have withstood them. There were many slave uprisings in the history of Rome, but the most formidable was that headed by Spartacus in 73 BC. After escaping from the school of gladiators at Capua, he fled to Mount Vesuvius, where he collected an army of runaway slaves like himself. For two years he terrorized Italy, defeating army after army sent against him from Rome. The insurrection was finally crushed by the Roman commander Marcus Licinius Crassus. Spartacus and 6,000 of his followers were slain.
089. THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
China is the only country in the world with a literature written in one script for more than 3,000 consecutive years. This continuity results largely from the nature of the written language itself. It is the use of characters, not letters as in Western languages, that is most important in the Chinese language. The characters stand for things or ideas and so, unlike groups of letters, they cannot, and need never be, sounded. Thus Chinese could be read by people in all parts of the country in spite of gradual changes in pronunciation, the emergence of regional dialects, and modification of the characters. The dominance of the written language has had significant effects on the development of the literature. In handwriting or in print, a piece of literature has visual appeal. This has given rise to the great respect that calligraphy enjoys in China, where it has been regarded for at least sixteen centuries as a fine art comparable to painting. The main disadvantage of written Chinese, however, is the great number of characters it contains: Even basic reading and writing require a knowledge of more than 1,000 characters.
090. JACQUELINE BOUVIER KENNEDY ONASSIS
The mystique of the Kennedy family in United States politics was due in great part to the glamorous and attractive wife of President John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. They were the first presidential couple born in the 20th century. She brought grace, style, and a flair for beauty to the White House, quickly becoming a celebrity in her own right. She was better-educated than most of her predecessors, having studied at Vassar, Smith, George Washington University, and the University of Paris. She-was working for the Washington Times-Herald when John Kennedy met her in 1952. She and John Kennedy married on September 12, 1953. They had two children. As the President's wife, she was a very accomplished hostess and a patron of the arts. After President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Mrs. Kennedy moved to New York City. In 1968, she married the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who died in 1975. In 1978 she began working as an editor for Doubleday and Company publishers in New York. She and her children were rarely out of the media spotlight until her death in 1994.
091. EXACTLY THE RIGHT WORD
Writing was not easy for the French novelist Gustave Flaubert. Because of his concern for form and precise detail, he often struggled for days searching for "exactly the right word". He took five years to write Madame Bovary, his best-known work. Flaubert's goal was to write faultless prose. In Madame Bovary, which tells of Emma Bovary's revolt against her middle-class environment, Flaubert reveals his own great contempt for the bourgeoisie. This group, he felt, was opposed to art and hated everything that it could not put to use. When Madame Bovary first appeared - in 1856, as a magazine serial - Flaubert was brought to trial for publishing a morally offensive work. He was acquitted in 1857, and in the same year, the novel came out in book form. During his later years, Flaubert spent the winter in Paris, where he held literary gatherings. Flaubert never married, and died on May 8th, 1880.
092. THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIETY
There has been an emphasis, recently, on the possibility that society itself, or the group culture, may be producing the mental illness, emotional instability and distortions of personality which apparently are widespread. Various writers have pointed out that man's basic needs are being extensively thwarted by the demands of society. According to this view, man no longer may be an individual or develop his imagination, reason, and creative powers; and he is prevented, because of society's compartmentalizing, from achieving feelings of relatedness - of loving and being loved. Because of the competitive demands of civilization, man now strives for "things" rather than for his own development. He feels himself to be merely a pawn rather than a contributing member of society. If he rebels, he is subject to punishment by society; but if, on the other hand, he submits, he may become simply a stereotyped, pedestrian member of society and thus lose much of his urge toward creativity and individuality. As an example, the psychologist Erich Fromm suggests that society produces in its members what he calls "a socially patterned defect."
093. THE HABIT OF CHEERFULNESS
There are scarcely any moments that won't benefit from a humorous remark or a cheerful lift. Yet still, some people regularly complain about everything, griping at the taxes and the political opposition and lambasting everyone around them. Frequently the gripers wind up in the doctor's office. But I know many executives who carry on under tremendous pressure as affably and kindly as a girl skipping down the street. They are the people who get along and stay out of the hospitals. It is particularly important in family life to develop the habit of pleasant conversation. Do not - for either your own, your children's, or your digestion's sake - make the family meal a recitation of troubles, anxieties, fears, warnings, and accusations. And what is more important, don't let the feeling pervade your family that everyone is so taken for granted that a pleasantry or kind word is unnecessary. The crabbed note that clangs daily in so many families is a good foundation for many of the neurotic characteristics of later life.
094. BIGGER MAY NOT BE BETTER
You go out for dinner and order spaghetti with your favourite sauce. The pasta is so plentiful that it's falling off the plate. Yes, your meal is appetizing. But isn't it more than you bargained for? In an era when consumers look for great deals, it often seems as though the bigger things are, the better value for your money. "Supersize it," the slogan from a fast-food restaurant chain, seems to sum it up. But more isn't always better - particularly when it comes to weight loss. Sometimes leaving a little food on your plate is worth much more than the dollar it might cost. Watching your total food intake, not just limiting unhealthy foods, is the key to good health and permanent weight loss. Healthy foods are not without any restrictions. Excess calories from any food, not just fatty or fried ones, can cause weight gain. In today's "the-more-you-get-the-better" society, package sizes keep growing. Giant bottles of soda, extra large bags of chips, and king-size candy bars are all the rage. But as these foods get larger, so do our waistlines. Bigger packages and food items W apparently distort portion control. In fact, research from the University of Illinois shows that some people tend to eat more from larger food containers. When movie-goers were given popcorn containers of two different sizes, the people given the larger ones ate 44 percent more.
095. TO TEACH OR NOT TO TEACH
Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that children develop - intellectually, physically, and emotionally - much like plants. He believed, moreover, that children are innately good, but that all social institutions, including schools, are evil and distort children into their own image. He doubted, therefore, that there should be formal schools at all. Whether there were or not, however, he believed that the aim of education should be the natural development of the learner. Between the ages of two and twelve, Rousseau envisioned the cultivation of the body and the senses, not the intellect. When the youngster's intellect begins to develop, between the ages of twelve and fifteen, he can begin the study of such things as science and geography. This study, however, should begin not with an organized body of abstract knowledge, but with the things that interest the child. He must learn not by memorizing, but by firsthand experience. Only when he is fifteen years of age should book learning begin. Since Rousseau believed that the child is innately good and that the aim of education should be his natural development, there would be little for the teacher to do except stand aside and watch.
096. ROMANTICISM
If one term can be used to describe the forces that have shaped the modern world, it is Romanticism. Romanticism had a dynamic impact on art, literature, science, religion, economics, politics, and the individual's understanding of self. There is no single commonly accepted definition of Romanticism, but it has some features upon which there is general agreement. First of all, it was a rejection of the Enlightenment and its emphasis upon human reason. The Enlightenment thinkers asserted that the world of nature is rationally ordered and that human reason, therefore, can analyze, understand, and use it. On the basis of this understanding, a rational society can be constructed. These were ideas that were almost totally opposed by Romantics. Romanticism did not appear suddenly. If a date were to be chosen, however, 1774 would be a useful one. It was the year of the publication of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Sorrows of Werther, a novel about a young man who is so disappointed in love that he kills himself. This fictional suicide brought on many real ones as the novel's vogue swept across Europe.
097. WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?
? The Roman writer Seneca once commented: "All things are cause either for laughter or weeping." The 18th-century French dramatist Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais echoed Seneca's words by stating: "I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep." Both Seneca and Beaumarchais understood that laughing and crying are closely related emotional responses to some kind of outside stimulus. They knew that in life, as in drama, comedy and tragedy are never far apart. Both laughing and crying serve to release tension. Laughter, like weeping, is a reflex action rooted in the central nervous system and its related hormones. It is expressed in the contraction of certain facial muscles and in altered breathing patterns. The stimulus that brings forth laughter is called humour. To define laughter and humour in this way, however, is to leave unanswered two questions: firstly, why do people laugh; and secondly, just what is funny, or humorous? The questions are difficult to answer because emotions and the reasons for them are not easily analyzed.
098. BOUNCING BALLS AND BEATING HEARTS
Over 200 years ago, the British chemist Joseph Priestley received an intriguing bouncy ball from an American friend. It was made of a material he had not seen before. Priestley noticed that it could rub away pencil marks, and so he named the material rubber. Not only has the name stuck, but since then rubber has become so important to modern society that it is hard to imagine life without it. The flexibility, elasticity, and durability of natural and synthetic rubbers have made them the choice materials for products that cushion shocks, soften blows, dampen vibrations, transmit power, and perform in many other ways. Tires, automotive components, electrical insulation, conveyor belts, theatre seats, building materials, footwear, elastic bands, tennis balls, surgical gloves, artificial hearts, and refrigerator linings - these are only a sampling of the huge and growing list of products that are completely or partly made of rubber.
099. HENRY FORD: HUMANITARIAN AND BUSINESSMAN
? Other American industrialists and factory managers were stunned when automobile manufacturer Henry Ford announced in 1914 that he would pay his assembly line workers $5.00 a day and reduce the working day from nine to eight hours. The average daily wage in American industry at the time was $2.34. He became world famous almost overnight. Opponents derided Ford as a socialist, while supporters called him a great humanitarian. Actually, Ford had simply come to understand that mass production required a society composed of many consumers, not just a few wealthy people amid a multitude of poor. He was making cars for the middle class and knew that sales depended on the existence of a middle class able to afford them, preferably including his own workers. This notion went against the grain of most American businessmen, who believed that low wages, coupled with the highest possible prices, were necessary to make a profit.
100. THE WANDERING MINSTREL
The tales told by minstrels during the Middle Ages are called romances. At that time, the nobles of Europe lived in desolate castles. There were few books to read, and travel was difficult. In such a life, visitors were eagerly welcomed, and most welcome of all was the minstrel. The family would gather around the fireplace of the great hall to hear the minstrel chant his thrilling tales. Through the minstrels' songs ran the theme of chivalry. Chivalry taught knights to defend the church, to make war against infidels, to be courteous and to keep their word. Around these ideals, and around the stories of history and legend that exemplified them, the minstrel built his ballads. They were called romances because the minstrels used one of the Romance languages. The theme of all these early romances is a quest or search. The knight in the story may be seeking the Holy Grail, a lost mistress or mother or father, forgiveness for a sin, or simply adventure for its own sake.
101. CREATIVE WRITING
The term creative writing means imaginative writing, or writing as an art. The primary concern of creative writing is not with factual information, or with the more routine forms of communication. It does, however, use many of the same skills. A novel, for example, may contain much sociological, political or psychological information. Scholars may study it for such information, just as Sigmund Freud studied literature for accounts of dreams and emotional states. No true novel, however, is written to communicate facts. Like other forms of creative writing, it attempts to produce in its reader the pleasure of an aesthetic experience. It tries to uncover form and meaning in the turmoil of love, hate, violence, tedium, habit, and the brutal facts which people must deal with from day to day. The novelist and short- story writer John Cheever, when asked why he wrote, said, "To try to make sense out of my life." Whether it takes the form of poem, short story, novel, play, personal essay, or even biography or history, creative writing is certain to involve some search for meaning, a measure of wonder and discovery, and a degree of personal involvement in the result.
102. THE FIRST RENAISSANCE MAN
The term Renaissance man was coined to describe the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. He was a man of so many accomplishments in so many areas of human endeavour that his like has rarely been seen in human history. Casual patrons of the arts know him as the painter of "La Gioconda" - more commonly called the "Mona Lisa" - and of the exquisite "Last Supper", which is painted on the wall of the dining hall in a monastery in Milan. These paintings alone would have assured him enduring fame as an artist, but they should not obscure the fact that he was also a sculptor, an architect, and a man of science who did serious investigations into the natural and physical sciences, mathematics, mechanics, and engineering. More than 300 years before flying machines were perfected, Leonardo had devised plans for prototypes of an airplane and a helicopter. His extensive studies of human anatomy were portrayed in anatomical drawings, which were among the most significant achievements of Renaissance science. His remarkable illustrations of the human body elevated drawing into a means of scientific investigation and exposition, and provided the basic principles for modern scientific illustration.
103. WITHOUT A TRACE
When a catastrophe strikes a ship at sea and she goes to the bottom, there is usually some clue to her fate - a bit of debris or perhaps a floating life jacket. Five years after her sinking, a life jacket from the Lusitania was found, for example, floating along a wharf in Philadelphia - thousands of miles from where the ship went down in 1915. But in the case of the British freighter Waratah, and that of the US Navy collier Cyclops, no clues have ever been brought forward. The 16,800-ton Waratah, only a year old, was last sighted off the coast of South Africa in 1909. The ship had been described by some as top-heavy and may have flipped over in heavy seas; with her vanished 211 people. Equally mystifying is the disappearance of the Cyclops, a 19,000-ton ship with 309 people aboard, about seven months before the end of World War I. She was last heard from in March 1918 while en route to Baltimore from the West Indies. Since no logical explanation has ever been offered for her disappearance, the US Navy file on the Cyclops has never been closed.
104. MIGUEL GIL MORENO
(1968-2000) Even the most war-hardened journalists must have felt a cold shiver of shock on the day that Miguel Gil Moreno was shot dead by rebels from Sierra Leone. Miguel was killed close to where he had recently shot his last pictures, which were images of a massacre of UN troops. The death of Miguel, who was just 32 years old, deprived television news of the cameraman who shot some of the most compelling and powerful images of war. Miguel did not start out as a photographer or journalist, but as a lawyer. After graduating from Barcelona Central University Law School, he practised law at a city firm before studying Human Rights at the Centre for Human Rights in Barcelona. Miguel believed wholeheartedly in the right and obligation to bear witness and to report. He soon gained himself a reputation for unequalled brilliance in photographing human suffering during conflicts. He worked in dangerous places such as Kosovo, the Congo and Sierra Leone. In 1998, he won the Rory Peck Award for his Kosovo coverage. How many people will be brave enough, like him, to go where the perpetrators of war would rather no one went? How many will carry on the work of bringing the ugly and brutal truth into our comfortable lives?
105. THE DANGER OF HEIGHT
Emma Christoffersen was twenty-eight years old when she collapsed moments after leaving a long flight from Australia. Her death highlighted the statistics concerning health-related problems during long flights. In fact, more people die from health-related incidents during flights than from air crashes. Studies show that poor air quality, low oxygen levels, and cramped seating are triggering heart attacks and deep vein thrombosis as well as causing contagious diseases among an increasingly large number of passengers. Long periods of sitting in cramped quarters can cause blood clots to form, especially in the legs and lower abdomen, which can cause deep vein thrombosis, from which Emma died. Passengers have also contracted tuberculosis through recycled air. Despite these problems, the airlines are not addressing these issues and continue to reduce the space between seats. The Aviation Health Institute advises that cabins be ventilated every three minutes, but at present, the average is every ten. To minimize the risk to their health, passengers are advised to exercise and drink plenty of water during a flight.
106. FROM HASHSHASHIN TO ASSASSIN
The adoption of assassination as a political weapon derives from the Islamic world of the 11th century. A secret order of Muslims was founded in Persia in about 1090 by a man named Hasan-i-Sabbah. After gaining control of a mountain fortress near the Caspian Sea, Hasan founded a sect to fight his political enemies by means of murder. Hasan and his followers were known as Nizaris and belonged to the Isma'ili branch of Shi'i Islam. For two centuries this secret organization terrorized the Middle East. Hasan, who gained the nickname "Old Man of the Mountain" from his fortress hideaway, is said to have given his followers a vision-inducing drug called hashish, made from Indian hemp. The visions of Islamic paradise brought on by the drug persuaded his disciples that they would have a glorious afterlife if they followed Hasan's orders and killed his enemies. The killers were called Hashshashin, the plural of an Arabic word meaning "one who smokes hashish." This name was eventually corrupted into its present form, assassin.
107. ETERNAL ART, TRANSITORY TECHNOLOGY
Technology suggests permanent change and improvement. Once a new technique is discovered and adopted, society does not attempt to revert to the former technique. The automobile displaced the horse; the electric light replaced kerosene lamps; sound movies replaced silent films; and word processors are rapidly making typewriters obsolete. This forward march of technology is called progress. In the fine arts such progress does not exist. The skill of the artist rests upon knowledge and experience, just as the skill of the technician does. But the creative processes involved seem to be different. Today, for example, one can admire the design of a Roman chariot, but few people would ever want to depend on it as a regular means of transportation. By contrast, it is still possible to walk into the Vatican's Şistine Chapel and be astounded by the magnificence of Michelangelo's frescoes. These paintings have an excellence that will never become outmoded. A work of art, whether it is a painting by Titian or a concerto by Mozart, is not a steppingstone to something else that will someday be considered better. It is not like the vacuum tube, which served its purpose well enough until the transistor was invented. Each artwork stands on its own - distinctive for all time. Even poor imitations cannot damage the goodness and integrity of the original.
108. BOGEY AND BACALL
The American actress Lauren Bacall first came into prominence as the husky- voiced glamour girl who captivated Humphrey Bogart both on and off the screen, but enduring talent enabled her to build a solid show business career that lasted for more than 50 years. Bacall made her film debut opposite Bogart in "To Have and Have Not" (1944). Dubbed "The Look" for hersophisticated mannerisms and sultry eyes, Bacall was emulated by women across the United States. The real-life romance of the two stars further generated interest in the film. They married in 1945 and had two children. The popular couple, often referred to as "Bogey and Bacall", went on to appear together in "The Big Sleep" (1946), "Dark Passage" (1947), and "Key Largo" (1948). Among Bacall's other early films were "How to Marry a Millionaire" (1953), "Written on the Wind" (1956), and "Designing Woman" (1957). Bogart, who was 25 years Bacall's senior, died of cancer in 1957. She married actor Jason Robards, Jr., in 1961, and they had a son together before divorcing in 1969.
109. VITAMIN FROM 'VITAL AMINE'
" The value of certain foods in maintaining health was recognized long before the first vitamins were actually identified. In the 18th century, for example, it had been demonstrated that the addition of citrus fruits to the diet would prevent the development of scurvy. In the 19th century it was shown that substituting unpolished for polished rice in a rice-based diet would prevent the development of beriberi. In 1906 the British biochemist Frederick Hopkins demonstrated that foods contained necessary "accessory factors" in addition to proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, and water. In 1911 the Polish chemist Casimir Funk discovered that the anti-beriberi substance in unpolished rice was an amine - a type of nitrogen-containing compound, so Funk proposed that it should be named vitamine - for "vital amine". This term soon came to be applied to the accessory factors in general. It was later discovered that many vitamins do not contain amines at all, yet because of its widespread use, Funk's term continued to be applied, but the final letter e was dropped.
110. DR. DEAN ORNISH'S PROGRAM
In an age when medical science was combating heart disease with costly high- tech interventions, American physician Dean Ornish was something of a throwback. His simple, inexpensive program of lifestyle changes - which featured a low-fat, primarily vegetarian diet, moderate aerobic exercise, and daily stress management - contrasted sharply with such potentially risky treatments as bypass surgery, angioplasty, and cholesterol-lowering medication. The holistic regimen that Ornish recommended appeared not only to halt the progress of atherosclerosis - the buildup of fatty substances within the arteries - but actually to reverse it. Despite his reluctance to be labeled a guru, Ornish continued to gain enthusiastic converts following the publication in 1990 of his best-selling second book, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery. Later highlights for Ornish included the publication of a third book, Eat More, Weigh Less: Dr. Dean Ornish's Life Choice Program for Losing Weight Safely While Eating Abundantly, an invitation to the White House in 1993; and the announcement in August of the same year that Mutual of Omaha, an insurance company, would reimburse policyholders for the cost of participation in the program - the first time a major insurer had agreed to cover an "alternative" treatment for heart disease.
111. THOMAS CARLYLE
Through his friend John Stuart Mill, the English philosopher Thomas Cariyle became interested in the French Revolution and set to work on a monumental history. After five months of difficult work on this project, Cariyle completed the first volume and left it with Mill for criticism. While in Mill's possession, the manuscript was accidentally burned by a maid lighting a fire. Mill was appalled when he discovered the loss and rushed to Carlyle's house nearly frantic with grief. Cariyle did not utter a word of reproach but tried only to console his friend. After Mill had left, he said to his wife, "Mill, poor fellow, is terribly cut up. We must endeavor to hide from him how very serious this business is for us." The three volumes of The French Revolution were finally published in 1837. The book was immediately successful. The days of struggle were over, and Cariyle took his place as a leading English writer. His other books followed one another at intervals of two to five years. Cariyle had a few "messages" that he continually repeated. He affirmed that work of all kinds is dignified and sacred. He thought that men must renounce personal happiness to obtain peace of mind. He believed that the world must be governed by "heroes" - strong, just men, and consequently he felt that people should put their faith in such men and not in democracy. In his own day, Cariyle exerted a strong influence on other writers, but today few people read Cariyle for what he had to say. The majority read his books for their majestic style and their revealing flashes of his highly individual personality.
112. ROME'S FOUNTAINS
Most great cities have beautiful fountains, but in Rome they are a living part of the city. Italian poets have immortalized them in verse. One of Italy's major composers, Ottorino Respighi, enshrined them in two richly descriptive symphonic poems. Books about Rome's fountains published in Italian, French and English have contributed to their fame. The best known is Niccolo Salvi's 18th-century Fountain of Trevi. It is a tradition for visitors to cast small coins into its churning waters, allegedly to ensure their eventual return to Rome - for Christians, and for others, to ensure that their dreams come true. The most imaginative fountain is probably Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers. Another by Bernini is the graceful Fountain of the Triton on the Piazza Barberini. In the Piazza della Repubblica is the colossal Fountain of the Naiads. Its charming beauties wrestle with seaborne monsters. The Fountain of the Barcaccia in the Piazza di Spagna was designed like a leaking boat by Bernini's father, Pietro. One of the pleasures of a visit to Rome is a night tour of the city's numerous illuminated fountains.
113. THE PYRENEES
Of all Europe's mountain ranges, the jagged and often snow-capped Pyrenees, 435 kilometres long, have functioned most effectively as a barrier to human movement. Unlike the Alps, the Pyrenees have no low foothills or hospitable valleys to ease access into and through their heights. Rather, the Pyrenees rise abruptly from the flanking plains of France and Spain with only steep gorges and steep- walled natural amphitheatres that lead to almost impassable lofty summits. The French peasant's maxim, "Africa begins with the Pyrenees," is not without a large measure of truth in emphasizing the historic significance of the Pyrenees as a barrier in the development of Spain. In the words of the American historian Will Durant, Spain's mountains, particularly the Pyrenees, "were her protection and tragedy: they gave her comparative security from external attack, but hindered her economic advance, her political unity, and her participation in European thought."
114. SUSAN ELOISE HINTON
Susan Eloise Hinton is an American author, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1950. As a young writer, Hinton decided to write under her initials in order to deflect attention from her gender. She set out to write about the difficult social system that teenagers create among themselves. Her books struck a chord with adolescents who saw in her characters many elements of this system that existed in their own schools and towns. In 1967, while she was still in high school, Hinton published her first book, The Outsiders. The story of confrontation between rival groups of teenagers was immediately successful with critics and young readers, and it won several awards. There was some controversy about the level of violence in the novel and in her other works, but Hinton was praised for her realistic and explosive dialogue. The financial, as well as literary, success of The Outsiders enabled Hinton to continue her education in college. She graduated from the University of Tulsa in 1970. Her other novels for young adults included That Was Then, This Is Now, published in 1971; Rumble Fish, in 1975; Tex, in 1979; and Taming the Star Runner, in 1988. Each of her books featured a cast of characters suffering from society's ills. Young people alienated from their families and from their peers were seen to veer into criminal paths. Several of her books, including The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, were later adapted as motion pictures.
115. SEE NAPLES AND DIE!
! An old Italian proverb says, "See Naples and die!" It testifies to the enduring attraction of this remarkable city, the third largest city in Italy and one of the most beautiful in the world. Approximately 190 kilometres southeast of Rome, the city is on the north side of the Bay of Naples. The bay juts into the western side of the Italian peninsula with Mount Vesuvius in the background. One of the centres of activity is the Piazza Trento e Trieste near the waterfront. It is flanked by two imposing buildings, the Teatro San Carlo and the Palazzo Reale. The theatre is one of Europe's largest and foremost opera houses, dating from 1737. The palace dates from 1600, originally the home of the viceroys who governed Naples during its period of Hapsburg domination. It now houses the National Library. East of these buildings and overlooking the harbour is the Castel Nuovo, begun in 1279. It houses, among other things, the Naples City Council and the Campania Regional Council. Directly south of the piazza is the Castel dell'Ovo. Built on what was an island now connected with the mainland to form the Porto di Santa Lucia, the castle dates from 1154. To the west of Santa Lucia is the Villa Comunale, a large park with Naples's aquarium.
116. KATHERINE MANSFIELD
Gifted with a keen insight into human character, Katherine Mansfield wrote a number of almost perfect short stories. Much of her work is based on incidents and scenes from her own life. She was born Kathleen Beauchamp in Wellington, New Zealand, on October 14, 1888, as the daughter of a banker. Katherine Mansfield was her pen name. Her early years were spent in the village of Karori, near Wellington. In 1903, when she was 15, she went to London to study at Queen's College. After three years she reluctantly returned to New Zealand. In 1908 she persuaded her father to provide her with an allowance and allow her to live in England. She had become an accomplished cellist, but she now turned to writing. After a brief unhappy marriage, Mansfield met John Middleton Murry. He was then an Oxford undergraduate, but he was soon to become a well-known critic. Their marriage was successful. Murry wrote: "She was natural and spontaneous as no other human being I have ever met." Deeply distressed by the death of her only brother, Leslie, in World War I, and already suffering from poor health, she went to the French Riviera in 1916. There she began to write the stories for which she is best known, tales of her childhood in New Zealand. She died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in France on January 9, 1923. In her career, Mansfield strove for a pure style that would express simple reality. Her writing is sensitive, reflecting subtle variations in mood. In a German Pension, a collection of short stories, was published in 1911. Not until 1920, with Bliss and Other Stories, did she obtain recognition, though. After her death, Murry brought out several volumes of her writings that had not previously been published.
117. SANTA CLAUS
The legend of jolly old Santa Claus, or St. Nick, began with a real person: St. Nicholas, who lived many centuries ago. Although he is one of the most popular saints honoured by Christians, very little is actually known about him. He lived during the 4th century in Lycia, a province on the southwest coast of Asia Minor. Tradition says he was born in Patara, a seaport, and travelled to Egypt and Palestine as a young man. Eventually he became bishop of the church at Myra. During the period of the persecution of Christians by Emperor Diocletian, he was imprisoned but was released by Diocletian's successor, Constantine the Great. By the 6th century his burial shrine was well known at Myra. In 1087 his remains were moved to Bari, Italy, which became a crowded pilgrimage centre. Devotion to him spread throughout the Christian world, and thousands of churches throughout Europe were named after him. His feast day was set on December 6. The transformation of St. Nicholas into Santa Claus began in Germany, where he was called Kriss Kringle, derived from Christkindle, meaning "Christ child", and he became permanently associated with the Christmas season and gift-giving. From there his legend spread to France, where he was called Pere Noel. In the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam - now New York City - he was called Sinter Claes, which easily became Santa Claus. As Christmas became more widely celebrated, the legend grew. In 1823, Clement C. Moore wrote "A Visit from St. Nicholas", portraying Santa Claus riding in a sleigh drawn by "eight tiny reindeer", the same mode of travel he uses in Scandinavia. The first drawing of him that resembles today's Santa Claus was a cartoon by Thomas Nast that appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1866.
118. SIR JAMES PAUL McCARTNEY
Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool, England, to Mary and James McCartney. Paul's introduction to music was through his father, who was the founder of Jim Mac's Jazz Band. It was shortly after his mother's death from breast cancer in 1956 that McCartney immersed himself in learning to play the guitar. His mastery of early rock 'n' roll songs impressed his friends and created an opportunity for him to join John Lennon in a local group that would later become The Beatles. McCartney, who is most famous for playing bass in the band, composed many memorable songs, including "Yesterday" (1965), "Eleanor Rigby" (1966), "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967), "Hey Jude" (1968), and "Let It Be" (1969). His willingness to sign autographs, pose for pictures, and give interviews caused the mass media to dub him "the cute Beatle". That title, combined with the prevalent early 1960s belief that the rock genre of music lacked artistic merit, often obscured McCartney's contribution to the music of the Beatles. His expertise in harmony and melody complemented Lennon's love of wordplay and basic rock 'n' roll and helped create many of the vocal and bass lines that have become the trademarks of the Beatles' musical style. As half of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, he created some of the best-known popular music of the 20th century. McCartney was a member of The Beatles from 1962 to 1970;, the founder of Wings, which performed from 1971 to 1980; and has, in more recent years, enjoyed success as a solo recording artist, a composer of classical music, a painter, a poet, and a businessman.
119. THE FIRST MAN-MADE OBJECTS IN THE SKY
Long before men learned how to fly, they sent objects soaring through the air. The arrow dates from the Stone Age. The ancient Chinese flew kites. The early inhabitants of Australia invented the boomerang, the blades of which they carved in the shape of an airfoil. As early as the Middle Ages, men of scientific mind prophesied human flight. About 1250, Roger Bacon, an English friar, suggested the orthopter, a machine that flaps its wings like a bird. He also conceived the balloon, proposing "a hollow globe filled with ethereal air or liquid fire." Some 250 years later, the great Italian artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci studied the flight of birds. About 1490, he drew sketches for flying machines, also of the orthopter type. Leonardo made drawings of a propeller and a helicopter. An Italian monk, Francesco de Lana, in 1670 proposed a vacuum balloon. Four spheres, from which air had been exhausted, were to support a car equipped with oars and a sail. He overlooked the phenomenon of atmospheric pressure, however, which would have crushed the spheres. Not until a hundred years later was the first balloon flown successfully in public. In 1783, J. Etienne and Joseph M. Montgolfier inflated a big paper balloon with hot which rose 6,000 feet.
120. TOURISM
Tourism is travelling for recreation. Tourists originated when large numbers of middle class people began to join the more wealthy aristocratic travellers. As societies became wealthier, and people lived longer, it became more and more likely that lower-middle class and middle class people steadily employed would retire in good health and with significant savings. A tourist can usually be seen as clearly "out of place" in his current surroundings, so he is not confused with other travellers. The term "tourist" is tied to the activity of taking a tour or sightseeing. It is not limited to travelling, but used as a description of a person who enters a situation or culture, for a brief time, requiring knowledge that he does not have. The tourist can be interested - among other things - in the new place's culture or its nature. Wealthy people have always travelled to distant parts of the world, not, for any special purpose, but simply for travelling as an end in itself: to see great buildings or other works of art; to learn new languages; and to taste new cuisines. Organized tourism is now a major industry around the world and many national economies are now heavily reliant on tourism. The term tourism is sometimes used in an uncomplimentary manner, implying a shallow interest by tourists in general in the societies and natural wonders they visit.
121. ORGANIC FARMING
The discovery of antibiotics in the 20th century brought remarkable changes to modern medicine, enabling people to live longer, healthier lives. But in the last generation, new strains of bacteria have emerged that are resistant to these wonder drugs. One of the main causes of resistance is the overuse of antibiotics. That includes drugs given to commercially raised livestock, and this can lead to serious threats to human health if the animal is diseased. Hence, organic farming - which means raising animals and crops without using drugs or chemical fertilizers - is gradually becoming popular. New Horizons is such a farm in the American state of North Carolina. This farm is raising meat without the use of chemicals. Eleven-year-old Chance Lorraine likes to show visitors around. Here, on 20 hectares, his parents raise organic vegetables, pigs, Black Angus beef cattle, and chickens. There are also water buffalo. But what really sets New Horizons apart from commercial livestock farms are three metal silos near the pastures. "We keep feed in all three of these. That's cow feed, that's chicken feed, and the other one is pig feed," says Chance. The feed is special because of what it doesn't have: no growth hormones, no animal by-products, no chemicals against worms, and no antibiotics. The animals in the field that eat this feed eventually end up in cold storage at the New Horizons Farm store.
122. THE NEED FOR THE STUDY OF HISTORY
The study of history is commonly regarded as essential to a full education. It figures prominently in school syllabuses; history departments in universities are well- populated; and publishers' lists are crowded with historical titles. Why? Because it is widely believed that the modern world cannot be properly conceived without a knowledge of the past: as a historian once said, the most significant benefit of studying history is discovering "the origin of things present which are to be found in things past; for a reality is never better understood than through its causes." Besides this, the study of history can help men predict the future on the basis of the past, often by reasoning about parallel events. However, very frequent appeals to the past as a means of solving problems in modern society can sometimes be misleading. Thus, when studying history, men shouldn't expect past events to repeat themselves infallibly, nor should they try to predict the future merely on the basis of very fragmentary evidence, underestimating the genuinely radical changes in society over the years.
123. HOW TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH
Most of us feel quite satisfied with the amount of care we show to our teeth merely by brushing them frequently enough. However, we don't realize the damage we give to our teeth if we don't know the proper way of brushing. Experts state that the way we brush our teeth has a great influence on our dental health. In Finland, for instance, the Academy of General Dentistry has warned against wielding your toothbrush in what it called the "death-grip" - that is, clenching the brush in the palm and scrubbing your teeth vigorously. Such overzealous cleaning can cause the gums to recede and damage the exposed roots of the teeth. Researchers in Finland studied one brushing technique that can help you exert less pressure: grip the brush as you would a pen - between your thumb and first two fingers. Done correctly, this method can cause less damage to the gums and clean as effectively as the standard grip. Select a brush with soft bristles and use short, gentle, circular strokes.
124. THE BEGINNING OF SYNTHETICS
Nearly five thousand years after a Chinese Empress discovered, quite by chance, how to unwind the fine thread of the cocoon of a silkworm, a Frenchman, experimenting with the crushed leaves of the mulberry tree on which the silkworm feeds found out how to produce a fine silk-like fibre which we now call artificial silk. His discovery stimulated other scientists to search for new fibres, and it was not long before several more were produced, but all of them had as their starting-point some natural organic material, such as cellulose, casein, etc. It is only fairly recently that man has succeeded in synthesizing new fibres from inorganic materials. Everyone has heard of nylon, and scarcely one of us can say he doesn't use something made from this product every day. But nylon was the first of an ever-lenğthening list of new synthetic fibres. Now hardly a year passes without some new fibre making its appearance and some unfamiliar name finding its way into our everyday speech.
125. JAPANESE GARDENS
No garden lover can fail to be fascinated by the gardens of Japan, so different from anything in the European tradition. The Japanese gardening ideal is not an arrangement of flowers and plants, formal or informal, but the creation of a miniature landscape in which the designer's view of nature is expressed in a small space and on a small scale. Art is hidden by art. Trees and bushes, rocks and ponds, little singing streams winding round tiny islands: all these refresh the spirit with their gentle naturalness, but they have all been carefully positioned by the landscape garden designer. Often a tea pavilion is a graceful part of the scene, and here the ancient Japanese tea ceremony may still be held. Traditionally, to view the moon from a tea pavilion will bring you a sense of peace and well-being, or even the ability to write poetry. Japanese gardens are full of ancient tradition and symbolic meaning, and many date back as far as AD 600. Streams run from east to west because east is the source of purity and west of impurity. Turtles symbolize long life, so a turtle-shaped rock is always popular. A pine tree twisted in the shape of a crane, a bird that mates for life, represents good luck and lasting companionship. The golden chrysanthemum, sacred symbol of the Imperial family, is cultivated in many shades and forms. The delicate blossom of the cherry tree symbolizes the speed with which life fades, while the cherry fruit stands for loyalty. And a cherry blossom party in the spring is a very lively occasion!
126. THE TEMPLE OF BOROBODUR
Somewhere in the centre of Java, close to a huge volcano that sometimes sends out clouds of smoke and fountains of red hot lava and molten rock, a group of experts from all over the world, helped by 700 Indonesian workers, are struggling to save one of the world's most beautiful art treasures: the ancient temple of Borobodur. The history of Borobodur begins many centuries ago at the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century. During that time, over 10,000 labourers worked to create this huge mountain temple with its carved walls, its terraces, and its stupas. But not long after the temple was built, the civilization that built it left the area. For the next 700 years the temple was almost forgotten. Ash from the nearby mountain covered it and thick trees grew over it. It wasn't until 1814 that people became interested in the temple again. It was in that year that the British governor of Java ordered the army to clear away the jungle that covered the temple. For a couple of months the soldiers chopped and dug, carrying away the rubbish and revealing the beauty of the ancient temple once again.
127. CULTURE SHOCK
Your long expectation has finally been realized: you are going to a university abroad. This new challenge and opportunity might soon collide with the reality of being in a new culture, something known as culture shock. Culture shock has been viewed as a psychological reaction or a generalized disorientation and trauma experienced by a person learning to cope with a new culture and circumstances. It is a normal and natural part of living in a foreign cultural environment. Culture shock doesn't mean that one is adjusting poorly - it means that one is undergoing a normal reaction. However, the way that one manages culture shock can have important implications for the success of one's adaptability to the new culture. The psychological reaction in coping with culture shock includes emotional and cognitive components, as well as the effects of social changes. These changes also result in a psychophysiological reaction to the experience of another culture. The changes caused by culture shock include fatigue, role stress and identity loss, excessive concern with cleanliness, and a fear of danger from food and water.
128. FIELDS OF PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology comprises a number of different kinds of enterprises, so different that they may seem to have nothing in common. One psychologist is engaged in vocational guidance and spends his day talking to high school students, studying their academic records and their test scores and, from these, showing the student how to clarify his own ideas about his future training and occupation. Another spends his day studying delayed reactions in goldfish or the navigation system of bats. Other psychologists are assisting in the diagnosis of neurotic patients, doing research on the childhood experiences that contribute to neurosis, or taking part in combined research on the effects of tranquilizers. But all such disparate activities have this in common: the methods used all derive from the same fundamental training in the procedures and conceptions of academic psychology, and the worker is either putting those conceptions to practical use, or trying to improve on them - or both.
129. THE GINSENG PLANT
A ginseng root, with its stocky middle and arm and leg-like appendages, is said to resemble the human form. According to the lore of traditional Chinese medicine, the greater the likeness, the more formidable its medicinal qualities. And for thousands of years Chinese from all walks of life have coveted the fleshy root. Emperors ruling from the confines of the Forbidden City made a point of supping the bitter herb each day to improve their intellectual abilities. Peasants in the countryside used it more judiciously, ingesting it to cure disease or give them a boost when energy levels ebbed. Today, the list of ailments and diseases apparently cured by ginseng reads like an index to a medical textbook. Few of the claims are supported by scientific proof, though.
130. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
English serves as a functional alternative language in several areas of public activity for the many nations of the world which use it as an international second language. Because of its widespread use geographically, and because of the large number of people who speak it, it has been adopted as the language of aviation and air traffic. English has continued as one of the important languages of commerce, as the sphere of political and economic influence of the English-speaking nations has extended far beyond their own boundaries. The use of English in international diplomacy is strengthened by its acceptance as one of the official languages of the United Nations. And as a final example, English is the language of the majority of published materials in the world, so that education, especially specialized higher education, has come to rely very heavily on an understanding of English. In no sense does English replace the cultural heritage and emotional ties of the first language, but for many speakers throughout the world, it provides a means of communicating with people of similar training and interests who would otherwise not be able to comprehend them.
131. HEALTH EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS
Human biology is a detailed and complicated study. Thus, for the purposes of health education in schools, it is best approached from the point of view of function rather than structure. The detailed anatomy and physiology of the heart and circulation, for instance, are not needed, but students should know that the heart's function improves with use and that regular exercise is the best way to avoid distress upon exertion. Thus, the basic knowledge required to live a healthy life is that oxygen is supplied to the muscles by a partnership of lungs and heart, the lungs taking in a supply and the heart distributing it. Exercise involves a call for more oxygen and, if the heart is not trained to deliver a full volume of blood with each beat, the lungs must work harder to compensate. These simple facts can be appreciated without the need for elaborate detail.
132. APOLLO 13
Apollo 13 was an American space mission in 1970, part of the Apollo program. It was intended to be the third mission to land on the Moon. An oxygen tank in the Service Module exploded while the spacecraft was on its way to the Moon, requiring the mission to be aborted: the Moon landing was cancelled and only a single pass around the Moon was made. Considerable ingenuity under extreme pressure was required from both the crew and the ground controllers to figure out how to jury-rig the craft for the crew's safe return, with much of the world watching the drama on television. Reentry into the Earth's atmosphere required the unusual step of undocking the lunar module, which had been retained for the flight back to Earth, in addition to the separation of the damaged service module. The lunar module had remained attached to the spacecraft to provide emergency propulsion and life support. The crew returned unharmed to the Earth. In the wake of the near-disaster, NASA appointed a review board under the leadership of Edgar M. Cortright, director of Langley Research Center, to investigate the Apollo 13 accident. After some three months of study, the cause of the explosion was traced to two inadequate thermostatic switches in an oxygen-tank heater assembly. Dysfunction of the switches under load caused overheating that led to an insulation fire, and the subsequent blast tore a side panel from the service module and disabled the fuel cells. Other defects in manufacture and in testing procedures were also found. Further Apollo flights were delayed until 1971 so that modifications could be made to prevent similar incidents. Jim Lovell, who was one of the crew members, wrote a book about the mission, Lost Moon, which was later turned into a successful movie, "Apollo 13", starring Tom Hanks.
133. JOAQUIN MURIETA
(18307-53?) Was he a hero or a villain? Did he really exist at all? In the early 1850s, Mexican immigrant Joaquin Murieta was real to Californians; he was wanted, dead or alive, for robbery. He was a hero to Mexicans who resented the prejudice they faced in the United States. Some scholars today believe his story to be no more than a legend. Church records show that Joaquin Murieta was baptized in Sonora, Mexico, in 1830. In 1848, he and his wife moved to California, where, during the rush of 1849, he prospected for gold. Miners in the United States resented the competition from Mexican miners. In 1850, California passed the Greaser Act and Foreign Miners Act, which discouraged Mexican prospecting in California. It was then that the legend of Joaquin Murieta began. Bands of Mexican outlaws staged raids throughout the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, robbing miners and stagecoaches to protest the anti-Mexican legislation. The organizer of these raids was believed to be Murieta, though whether he controlled any or all of the outlaw bands was never proved. California's governor offered a reward for Murieta's capture, and in 1853, the Texas ranger Harry Love produced the head of a Mexican he claimed was Murieta. The raids came to an end, but rumour had it that Murieta lived on and died in the 1870s at his birthplace.
134. EVEN BETTER THAN TODAY'S TEXTILES
People living long ago on the hot coastal strip of Peru created some of the world's most beautiful textiles. Archaeologists have found an amazing quantity of these in "mummy bundles" tucked away in tombs. These ancient people of the Andean region, like those of Egypt, believed the dead needed articles from this life to use in their future life. Some fragments of the cloth are 3,000 years old, but the finest examples belong to the period between about AD 300 and 1000. The people who wove these textiles spun fine, smooth yarn of cotton or of the wool of alpacas, llamas, and vicunas. They used most weaves known today and some too complicated for modern looms. They were expert dyers, with almost 200 hues at their command. With their many-coloured yarns they worked out gay, elaborate designs. They wove cloth ingeniously into the shapes of garments and other articles, for they did not cut and sew.
135. YANKEE
Perhaps the best-known of all national nicknames is Yankee. Yet the origin of this famous name for Americans is a mystery. Scholars once thought it came from Yengees, which was supposed to be the way the American Indians pronounced the word English, or its French equivalent, Anglais. Another theory is that a Dutch nickname Yankey is the source, because as early as 1683 it was used by Dutch sailors. Yankey may have been derived from Janke, a diminutive of the Dutch name Jan. in colonial America the colonists of other regions rather scornfully called New Englanders Yankees. The British did not observe the local distinction and used the term for all of the colonists. During the American Civil War, Southerners spoke of all Northerners as Yankees. The British called United States soldiers Yanks in both World Wars, and eventually, the term became popular as a nickname for all Americans. The origin of the song "Yankee Doodle" is also uncertain. This sprightly, impudent tune had become popular in the colonies by 1770. The British used it to make fun of the Americans early in the Revolution, but the victorious Americans adopted it as their own marching song. The best known verse runs: Yankee Doodle went to town Riding on a pony; Stuck a feather in his hat And called it Macaroni. Macaroni was the name given to English dandies.
136. SPHINX
A sphinx is a legendary monster with a human head and a lion's body. In ancient Egypt, where the idea originated, the head was usually a portrait of the reigning pharaoh. It also represented the sky god Horus. The Egyptians always pictured their kings as calm and stately, with wide-open, staring eyes. The lion's body - symbolizing courage - is crouched with its front feet outstretched. From Egypt the idea of the sphinx spread to the Syrians and Phoenicians and finally to the Greeks. These peoples gave the creature the head and bust of a woman. They added an eagle's wings to represent majesty and a long serpent's tail to indicate wiliness. In later Greek literature, the sphinx was no monster, but a beautiful, wise and mysterious woman. The Great Sphinx at Giza was carved in about 2600 BC. It stands near the three great pyramids, gazing across the Nile to the east. The head is a portrait of Khafre, a pharaoh of the Old Kingdom. Near the sphinx rises Khafre's tomb, the second of the three great pyramids.
137. OGAI MORI
(1862-1922) One of the greatest influences on Japanese literature was a medical doctor. At the end of the 19th century, Ogai Mori helped to modernize both Japanese medicine and Japanese literature. Ogai Mori, whose real name was Rintaro Mori, was born in Tsuwano, Japan, on February 17, 1862. He graduated from the University of Tokyo medical school, and from 1884 to 1888, studied in Germany as a military doctor. This stay in Europe affected him profoundly, and he returned home convinced that Japan should embrace the best of European culture and medicine, but selectively, without recklessly destroying traditional Japanese ways. In 1893, he was appointed head of Japan's military academy, but his literary career had already begun. His first story, The Dancing Girl, a tale based on friends he had made in Germany, was published in Japanese in 1890. This caused a sensation among Japanese writers, wjio had a tradition of composing less personal works, and the course of Japanese fiction was changed. Mori's most popular novel, The Wild Goose, was also based on his own experiences. After 1912, Mori concentrated on more factual, historical works, often with samurai warriors as their heroes. These books were less emotional than his earlier novels, but they had a striking, powerful style. EXERCISE 1". Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as: COLUMN A COLUMN B a) intensely; to a great extent b) persuaded; certain c) choosing carefully d) showing no regard for danger; without thinking of the consequences e) ruin; spoil f) be officially given a job g) story h) general public excitement i) produce; create, especially a musical or literary work j) onward movement; progression; direction k) relating to the truth; real I) principal male character in a novel, play, etc.; a man of exceptional courage m) having or showing strong feelings n) dramatic; impressive and attracting attention
138. ONE REASON TO VISIT AMERICA
During 1831 and 1832, two Frenchmen, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, toured the United States. After their visit, each wrote a book. Beaumont's volume is about slavery, while Tocqueville's is the classic Democracy in America. Publication of the books obscured the original purpose of their visit: the two men had been sent to the United States as delegates from the French government to inspect the American prison system. They were among many Europeans who visited the United States with the same intention, because the modern prison system for the confinement of convicted criminals was invented in the United States in the 1790s. Places of confinement were not new. London had its Tower and Paris its Bastille. However, these were for confining political prisoners, not criminals in the ordinary sense. The common jail has existed since at least 1166, when England's King Henry II ordered jails built. Jails were then, as they are now, mainly for prisoners awaiting trial, but they also held petty offenders such as beggars and debtors. What was new about the American prison system was its purpose. It was designed more as a means of reforming the offender than as punishment for committing a crime.
139. AN EXAMPLE OF ABSTRACT ART
"Intention", by Paul Klee, does not draw upon recognizable subject matter. It is a picture of a thought process. Klee has given us an idea of what an intention might be composed of. Slightly to the left of the centre is a simplified outline of a body and in the head at the top is a single eye. A large number of forms surround it, signifying the thoughts which might go to make up an intention. Many are easily distinguished - a tree, an animal, several figures. Others are vague, and the simple forms might be interpreted in many ways. Some of these are shown by themselves, but some are joined to other forms. The background is a clear brick, red on one side, and dull green on the other side. Perhaps the painter is saying that some thoughts are sharp and clearly remembered, while others are dim and vague.
141. HARRIET MONROE
As a poet, Harriet Monroe knew that other poets had little chance to become known and earn money. Few books by living poets were published, and magazines bought poetry mainly to fill leftover space. She solved the problem by starting her own poetry magazine, Poetry: a Magazine of Verse, in 1912, through which she had a major influence on the development of modern poetry. She knew that a new publication with a small circulation could not pay its own way. Nevertheless, she wanted to pay poets for their work and to offer prizes. She could think of only one way to accomplish this: to persuade well-to-do people to support the magazine as they did orchestras and art museums. By asking about 100 Chicagoans to pledge $50 annually for five years, Monroe raised the money to launch her magazine. She became the first editor. As its motto she chose a line from Walt Whitman: "To have great poets there must be great audiences too." Poetry published the work of nearly every notable modern American and British poet. Some well-known poems that first appeared in the magazine are Carl Sandburg's "Chicago", Joyce Kilmer's "Trees", T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo". Monroe never married. Her hobbies were travel and mountain climbing. She continued as editor of Poetry until her death on September 26, 1936, in Peru.
142. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
When Gulliver's Travels was published in 1726, the author's name, Jonathan Swift, did not appear on the book. The title page read, "Travels into several remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver...". Many people accepted this as fact. Travel books of the time told many tales that were no more strange than the imaginary adventures of Gulliver. One sea captain even claimed that he knew Captain Gulliver well. Other readers condemned the book as full of exaggerations. Although it became one of the most famous books for children, it was not written for children. It was savage satire aimed at the human race. The tiny Lilliputians are vain, malicious and bloodthirsty. The king and the court of Lilliput are a parody of the English king and court. The giants of Brobdingnag are amiable, but commonplace and insensitive. Laputa is full of the foolish philosophers and scientists whom Swift despised. The Houyhnhnms are horses who use degraded men, Yahoos, just as men use horses elsewhere. Looking at mankind through the eyes of horses, Swift sees people as vicious, greedy and ignorant. From its first appearance, Gulliver's Travels delighted its readers instead of shocking them. In spite of his bitterness, Swift took a dry delight in making his narrative sound real even when it was fantastic. Children could enjoy the marvellous adventures of a traveller among pygmies and giants, on a flying island, and in a country where horses talk. Thus, Gulliver's Travels soon became a children's classic.
143. CYRUS FIELD
(1819-92) The businessman Cyrus Field, who had entered the paper business when he was 21, and who retired at 33 with a fortune, promoted the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. He had no technical knowledge to qualify him for the task, but he was a brilliant and persuasive organizer. He also had a determination that helped him overcome repeated failures. The idea of laying a transatlantic cable was not new, but because of the great depths and distance involved, no one had promoted it. In 1854 a Canadian engineer interested Field in laying a cable from St. John's, Newfoundland, to the Canadian mainland. This would speed the receipt of European news by several days. While studying a globe, Field decided that the cable should be extended to Ireland. Laying the Canadian cable took two and a half years. By that time Field had organized companies in the United States and Great Britain to raise funds for an Atlantic cable between the two countries. The first four cables broke, causing heavy losses to investors. The fifth was completed on August 5, 1858. On August 15, Queen Victoria and President James Buchanan exchanged messages on the new cable. Soon, however, the signals became unintelligible, and in October they ceased. Undeterred, Field raised additional funds. After another failure in 1865, the fight was finally won on July 27, 1866.
144. THE MODERN APPROACH TO DISPLAYING ANIMALS
Many of the zoos in the past were actually parks with fenced enclosures and buildings containing caged animals. Lions, tigers and other cats were kept in one house; monkeys in another; birds in another. Single animals in bare cages were not very interesting to the visitors, however. Many animals that live in groups in the wild also did not adapt well to living alone. Modern zoos present the animals by showing them in surroundings that resemble as closely as possible their natural habitats. Visitors to a modern zoo can look across a plain and see lions seemingly free to wander. Nearby are birds, with antelopes and zebras feeding at the edge of a water hole. The other animals are not afraid of the lions because they are separated from them by wide, deep trenches, or sometimes moats. These trenches also separate the visitors from the animals in the exhibit. The trenches are often hidden with plants, and the visitor frequently does not notice them. The animals appear to be living wild in their natural settings. Often what appear to visitors as real trees, rocks and vines, however, are in fact artificial. These naturalistic parts of the exhibit are built of durable materials and designed to withstand rough treatment by the animals.
145. HELEN KELLER
(1880-1968) Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880. Nineteen months later, she had a severe illness that left her blind and deaf. Her parents had hope for her. They had read Charles Dickens' report of the aid given to another blind and deaf girl, Laura Bridgman. When Helen was 6 years old, her parents took her to see Alexander Graham Bell, famed teacher of the deaf and inventor of the telephone. As a result of his advice, Anne Mansfield Sullivan began to teach Helen in 1887. Until her death in 1936, she remained Helen's teacher and constant companion. Sullivan had been almost blind in early life, but her sight had been partially restored. Helen soon learnt the finger-tip, or manual, alphabet as well as Braille - a system of writing for blind people, using raised dots which can be read by touch. By placing her sensitive fingers on the lips and throat of her teachers, she felt their motions and learnt to "hear" them speak. Three years after mastering the manual alphabet, she learnt to speak herself. "Once I knew only darkness^and stillness... . My life was without past or future... . But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leapt to the rapture of living." This is how Helen Keller described the beginning of her "new life" when, despite blindness and deafness, she learnt to communicate with others.
146. DANIEL DEFOE
The author of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, was born into a family who were Dissenters*, people who did not believe in certain practices of the Church of England. Young Daniel was brought up in the strict yet independent beliefs of the Dissenters. At 14 he was sent to a Dissenters' academy. In addition to the traditional Latin and Greek, he studied French, Italian, Spanish, and history and became especially well-educated in geography. He studied for the ministry, but instead of becoming a priest, in 1685 he went into business. Engaged in foreign trade, he visited France and lived in Spain for a time. Meanwhile he was writing and speculating financially, but Defoe was more interested in writing than in conducting business. His lively mind was taken up with problems of the day. In pamphlets, verse and periodicals, he called for reforms and advances in religious practices, economics, social welfare and politics. In his "Essay on Projects", he suggested a national bank, as well as ideas to help reform bankruptcy laws, asylums and academies of learning. He stressed the need for tolerance, often using satire for emphasis. In 1702 he wrote a pamphlet titled "The Shortest Way with Dissenters", satirizing the persecution of Dissenters. The government arrested him. After some months in prison, he was released through the influence of Robert Harley, a statesman who became his patron. In 1704, Defoe started The Review, a periodical. It was the first of many such periodicals with which Defoe was connected-forerunners of the modern newspaper. As people of that era did not care for fiction, Defoe wrote "true histories" of pirates and thieves, spicing facts with his own imagination. In 1719 he published Robinson Crusoe, which was drawn from the experiences and memoirs of a British sailor, Alexander Selkirk. *An English Protestant who dissents is some way from Church of England Dogma
147. BACKPACKERS
"Backpackers" refers to a subculture of generally youthful travellers exploring the planet on a limited budget. They refer to themselves as backpackers because they can be roughly defined as travellers that travel with a rucksack instead of a suitcase. Backpackers need specialized equipment that is both durable and extremely lightweight. Tents, sleeping bags, cooking stoves and even special food that is light enough to be carried for great distances can be purchased at stores that sell camping equipment. Most gear is carried in a backpack. A typical American backpack is designed to be attached to a metal frame that distributes the weight evenly across the wearer's shoulders and hips. Rucksacks, backpacks without metal frames, are more popular in Europe. Backpackers often go hiking and camping, backpacking in the other sense, but they more often explore more urban settings. United in having slim wallets as well as a passion for the exotic, they seek out low-cost options such as standby flights, youth hostels, and buying food at supermarkets abroad instead of going to restaurants. They often assemble in beautiful places with low costs of living such as Goa (India), Essaouira (Morocco), or Thailand. They are generally very social, and a highlight for many backpackers is meeting others like themselves on the road. They are quick to share advice on great sites, cheap accommodations and e- mail addresses. Many strive to meet locals wherever they visit but find that the loose network of backpackers makes them feel at home instantly in a foreign country.
148. GRAFFITI
Graffiti originally was the term used for inscriptions, figure drawings, etc., found on the walls of ancient ruins, as in the catacombs of Rome, or at Pompeii. But it has evolved to include any decorations inscribed on rocks or walls that are considered to be vandalism. However, some people consider graffiti - or at least some graffiti - an art form; in this sense, it is usually denoted as urban Aerosol Art. The practices of graffiti and of considering graffiti as art are generally related to a subculture that rebels against extant societal authorities, or against authority as such. Graffiti art is considered one of the four elements of hip-hop culture. Although existing previously in primitive form, it wasn't until it achieved popularity in the New York City subway system that it took on an extravagant artistic role. The founder or inspiration is noted as TAKI 183, a teenage pizzaboy who would tag his nickname in marker within every subway car that he daily got on. After being showcased in the newspaper, the intricate "tag" was being mimicked by hundreds of urban youths within months. With the innovation of art, and the craving to gain the widest audience, taggers began their work. What developed was a strict adherence to spraypaint, sampling foreign calligraphy, and the much anticipated mural that usually covered an entire subway car. The movement spread to the streets, returned to the railroads - where tagging was popularized by hobos - and eventually spread nationwide, and then worldwide, with the aid of the media and of rap music.
149. CHANGING TRENDS IN AUTO COLOUR
All the colours of the rainbow, and some shades not found in nature, are the choices offered to Americans buying new cars these days. The auto industry has come a long way from the early 20th century, when Henry Ford offered his Model-T in one "flavour": black. Silver and its variations are, by far, the most popular exterior finish for new cars in North America, South America and Europe, accounting for 23% of new vehicles sold. Bob Daily, colour marketing manager for the major auto paint producer Dupont Performance Coatings, explains why: "Silver is really a very stylish-looking colour. I think it's what people equate to things like precision and performance," he says. Mr. Daily says silver goes well with the new car designs. "We're getting away from that 'carved bar of soap' design that we had in the 1980s and 1990s into more chiseled looks. Those kinds of designs are enhanced by colours like silver, as well as black and some of the other colours that are quite popular right now," he says. Black is currently number three in popularity. What's second to silver? "White has been a perennially popular colour. But, surprisingly, over the past five or six years, black has come up considerably in popularity," says Mr. Daily. As one colour fades, another is on the rise, according to Mr. Daily. "When green became popular in the early 1990s, blue dropped off the market for quite a while. And now blue is coming back," he says. "Just a few years ago," says Daily, "there were clear differences in the colours chosen by car buyers in Asia, Europe and North America. Now, with the advent of global society and instant communication, those cultural differences are disappearing. And silver is the dominant choice from Berlin to Beijing."
150. THE SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE
As the human race evolved from its ancestors, many factors affected its survival and the course of its evolution. While we lacked strength and speed, we were endowed with intelligence which enabled us to acquire first weapons and shelter, then fire, art, domestic animals, crops, medicines, sciences, machines and, . finally, all the blessings and curses of modern society. Throughout history, our race has been industrious and resourceful, driven by instinct to explore and discover, to invent, and to improve and protect our ways of life. Of course, these instincts exist to varying degrees in all people, and are essential to the survival of our civilization - but alone they are not enough. Major progress has always called for individuals to lead the way with inventions, voyages of discovery, or other projects that have gone that one step further. Often these endeavours received little support when they were initiated; typically, they were called difficult or impossible, untried or too risky, eccentric or even worthless. But the bold and energetic people who undertook them overcame adversity, succeeded and, eventually, were recognized for their achievement. Then the words used to describe them changed, and they were admired for their originality, inspiration, courage and tenacity! Why did these individuals succeed? It was because all of them possessed an extra measure of that quality which has been the catalyst of virtually all progress in our history - the "spirit of enterprise".
151. THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE
At the Congress of Paris in 1894, the control and development of the modern Olympic Games was entrusted to the International Olympic Committee - the IOC - with headquarters to be established in Switzerland. Today the committee is responsible for maintaining the regular celebration of the Olympic Games; seeing that the Games are carried out in the spirit that inspired their revival; and promoting the development of amateur sport throughout the world. The original committee in 1894 consisted of 14 members in addition to Pierre Coubertin - the leader of the movement aiming to restart the Olympic Games of ancient Greece - and since then, membership has been self-perpetuating. Convinced that the downfall of the ancient Olympic Games had been caused by outside influences that undermined the spirit of the Games, Coubertin felt that the revived Games would go the same way unless they were in the hands of people whose concern was to keep the spirit of amateur sport alive and who were responsible in no way to any outside influences. Thus, IOC members are regarded as ambassadors from the IOC to their national sports organizations. They are in no sense delegates to the committee and may not accept from the government of their country, or from any organization or individual, any instructions that in any way affect their independence. The IOC is a permanent organization that elects its own members. Each member - the present membership is about 70 - must speak French or English and be a citizen of or reside in a country that has a National Olympic Committee. With very few exceptions, there is only one member from any one country. Members were originally elected for life, but anyone elected after 1965 must retire at the age of 75.
152. THE HISTORY OF WINE
Early in the development of agriculture men discovered how to make alcoholic drinks from grapes and corn. The ancient Egyptians drank both wine and beer, and the Greeks carried on a lively trade in wine throughout the Mediterranean. Grapevines are all of a single species although there are hundreds of varieties adapted to different soils and climates. Wine is the fermented juice of fresh grapes. The juice of the wine grape contains sugar, and growths of yeast form on the outside of the grape skins. In wine-making, the grapes are crushed in a wine press and the yeast converts the sugar to alcohol, when there is no air present, by a process called fermentation. Red wine is made from dark grapes, and white wine from white grapes or from dark grapes whose skins have been removed from the wine press at an early stage. The most famous wine growing countries are France, Germany and Italy. Wine was made in England in the Middle Ages, but the climate is not really suitable for grapevines. Wines must be drunk quickly once they are opened; otherwise, bacteria will use the air to convert the alcohol to vinegar. The bacteria are killed by a higher alcohol content than is found in wine and that is why sherry and port, the specialties of Spain and Portugal respectively, are fortified by the addition of spirits to make them last longer.
153. THE DIARIES OF SAMUEL PEPYS
Historians owe most of their knowledge of the London of the 1660s to Samuel Pepys, England's greatest diarist. He began his diary in 1660, the year that Puritan rule ended and the period called the Restoration began. After the sobriety of the Puritan years, Londoners now took great pleasure in attending the reopened theatres, where they enjoyed the comedies of John Dryden and other Restoration dramatists. Pepys enjoyed London life to the full, and he wrote down practically everything he thought, felt, saw or heard. He described the city's churches, theaters and taverns, its streets and homes, and even the clothes that he and his wife wore. Many momentous happenings took place during the years covered in Pepys's diary. He remained in London during the Great Plague of 1664-65, and he also saw the Great Fire of 1666. He numbered among his friends many of the well-known people of the time, including the scientist Isaac Newton, the architect Christopher Wren and the poet John Dryden. Owing to failing eyesight, Pepys regretfully closed his diary in 1669. Pepys wrote his diary in Thomas Shelton's system of shorthand, but he complicated the more confidential passages by using foreign languages and a cipher of his own invention. Upon his death, along with other books and papers, the diary went to his old college at Cambridge. It was not deciphered until 1822. In addition to its historical significance, the diary holds a high place in literature. The style is vigorous, racy and colloquial. Because he intended it to be read only by himself, Pepys was completely honest. An incomplete edition appeared in 1825, and the entire diary, except for a few passages deliberately omitted by the editors, was available by 1899. An edition completed in 1983 includes the entire work.
154. CRANBERRY
Before the Europeans set foot on North American soil, the Native American inhabitants of the continent were already well-versed in the harvesting and preparation of the cranberry. The round, red berries grew wild in marshes and bogs along the East Coast. Although not unknown in England, cranberries were effectively introduced to the Pilgrims by the Indians, who used them for medicine and dyes as well as food. (The early settlers called the berries "crane berries," because the white blossom and stem resembled the head and neck of a crane.) The Indians taught the Pilgrims to crush the berries with stones, combine them with dried meat and fat drippings, and form small cakes out of the mixture. These cakes, called pemmican, kept well and could be eaten throughout the winter. Americans have been devising new cranberry concoctions ever since. And in the state where the Pilgrims first harvested berries growing abundantly in the wild, the fruit has evolved into a viable commercial crop. More than half of the cranberries eaten in the US today are grown on Cape Cod. The berry is also an important crop in the states of New Jersey and Wisconsin. Cranberries are grown in cooperation with nature, in a manner that our immigrant and Native American ancestors would recognize and applaud. Pesticide use is minimal; instead, geese weed the bogs and swallows harvest the unfriendly bugs. Some growers also place beehives near the bogs to promote pollination. The berries are proof that organic farming, like Thanksgiving, is a treasured part of our heritage. Harvested in September, fresh berries are readily available throughout the country in the fall. The fruit will keep between four and eight weeks if refrigerated when bought. Like most berries, they should never be washed until just before use or they'll spoil.
155. THE ENVIRONMENT
The environment is everything that surrounds us: plants, animals, buildings, country, air, water - literally everything that can affect us in any way. The environment of a town, with its buildings and traffic and its noise and smells, where everyone is on top of everyone else, is a far cry from that of the countryside, with its fields and crops, its wild and domestic animals and its feeling of spaciousness. And the environment differs in different parts of the world. Ecology is the science of how living creatures and plants exist together and depend on each other and on the local environment. Where an environment is undisturbed, the ecology of an area is in balance, but if a creature is exterminated or an alien species introduced, then the ecology of the district will be upset - in other words, the balance of nature will be disturbed. Man is a part of the environment and has done more to upset the ecology during his short span on earth than any other living creature. He has done this by his ignorance, his greed, his thoughtless folly and his wanton wastefulness. He has poisoned the atmosphere and polluted both land and water. He has squandered the earth's natural resources with no thought for the future, and has thought out the most devastating ways of killing his fellow men - and every other sort of life as well. Since man has done so much damage, it is up to man to try to put matters right - if it is not already too late. If there is to be any remedy for our ills, that remedy ultimately lies in the hands of the young, and the sooner they start doing something about it, the better.
156. LIFTING THE DIVORCE BAN
In 1995, by a narrow vote of 50.28% to 49.72%, Irish voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing divorce. The margin of victory was just 9,118 votes out of 1.63 million cast, prompting a recount which finally upheld the result. In 1986, Irish voters had rejected the divorce amendment by a 2-to-1 margin. According to political analysts, working-class residents of Dublin, the nation's capital, who accounted for one-third of Ireland's population, provided the crucial swing vote that determined the outcome. Analysts attributed the change in attitude since 1986 to several factors. Many cited as important the fact that the Irish government had passed 18 laws since the failed referendum covering property rights, child custody, child support and other issues related to divorce, because many people voting "no" in 1986 said that they did so because of inadequate laws covering the divisions of property in a divorce. Many analysts also pointed to the Irish government's $500,000 promotional campaign in favour of lifting the divorce ban as an important factor in the amendment's passage. Opponents of the amendment, including the influential Roman Catholic church, said that they would challenge the result in the courts, pointing to the fact that the government's expenditure of public funds to promote the amendment was ruled illegal by the Irish Supreme Court. The amendment would allow people to divorce only if they have lived separately for at least four of the previous five years. There were approximately 80,000 legally separated people in Ireland in 1995. With Ireland's vote, Malta became the only European country to have a ban on divorce.
157. JOHN GRISHAM
With an ear for dialogue and an ability to make legalese understandable to the ordinary reader, lawyer John Grisham became a best-selling writer of legal thrillers. His fast-moving, suspenseful novels often feature an underdog lawyer who must skilfully battle powerful oppressors to save lives. Grisham began writing his first novel after observing a rape trial involving a 10-year-old victim. Stirred by the intense emotions in the courtroom, he wondered what a jury would do if the girl's father killed the attacker. Although he was already devoting more than 70 hours a week to his practice, Grisham got up early each day for three years to write what became A Time to Kill. Some two dozen publishers rejected the book before Wynwood Press bought the manuscript for 15,000 dollars and printed 5,000 copies in 1989. A New York movie scout saw the manuscript for Grisham's next novel before it was sold, and Paramount studios bought the rights to it for 600,000 dollars. This brought attention from many large book publishers, and Grisham quit his practice after signing a contract with the publisher Doubleday. The Firm (1991) spent almost a year on the New York Times best-seller list and was translated into more than 25 languages. Tom Cruise starred in the movie version, which was one of the top-grossing films of 1993. Grisham solidified his reputation as one of the most popular writers of the 1990s with The Pelican Brief (1992), The Client (1993), The Chamber (1994), The Rainmaker (1995), The Runaway Jury (1996), and The Partner (1997). The reissue of A Time to Kill also did well. The film rights to Grisham's novels now command millions of dollars.
158. PARENTS' ATTITUDE TO ADOLESCENTS
Parents are often upset when their children praise the homes of their friends, and they regard it as a slur on their own cooking, cleaning, or furniture, and often are foolish enough to let the adolescents see that they are annoyed. They may even accuse them of disloyalty, or make some spiteful remark about the friends' parents. Such a loss of dignity and descent into childish behaviour on the part of the adult deeply shocks the adolescents, and makes them resolve that in future they will not talk to their parents about the places or people they visit. Before very long the parents will be complaining that the child is secretive and never tells them anything, but they seldom realize that they have brought this on themselves. Disillusionment with the parents, however good and adequate they may be both as parents and as individuals, is to some degree inevitable. Most children have such a high ideal of their parents, unless the parents themselves have been unsatisfactory, that it can hardly hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation. Parents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they realized how much belief their children usually have in their character and infallibility, and how much this faith means to a child. If parents were prepared for this adolescent reaction, and realized that this was a sign that the child was growing up and developing valuable powers of observation and independent judgement, they would not be so hurt, and therefore would not drive the child into opposition by resenting and resisting it.
159. THE CODE OF HAMMURABI
k The Code of Hammurabi is the most complete remnant of Babylonian law. The I background to the code is the body of Sumerian law under which city-states had lived for 1 centuries. The code itself was advanced far beyond ancient tribal customs. The stela on which the code is inscribed originally stood in Babylon's temple of Marduk, the national I god. It was discovered at the site of ancient Susa in 1901 by the French archaeologist Jean-Vincent Scheil, who presented it to the Louvre Museum. The code consists of 282 case laws, or judicial decisions, collected toward the end of Hammurabi's reign, decisions 1 which deal with such matters as family, marriage and divorce; tariffs; trade and I commerce; prices; and criminal and civil law. From the code it is evident that there were I distinct social classes, each of which had its rights and obligations. The right of private property was recognized, though most of the land was in the hands of the royal house. Ownership of land brought with it the duty to provide men for the army and public works. I Families were dominated by fathers. Marriages were arranged by parents, and control of I the children by the father was unlimited until marriage. Adoption was common, either to I ensure continuance of a family line or to perpetuate a business. In criminal law the ruling I principle for punishment was the ancient lex talionis, or law of retaliation. Penalties were calculated according to the nature of the offense. Capital punishment was common, and I the various means of execution were prescribed, depending on the nature of the crime. Neither imprisonment nor forced labour is mentioned in the code. Unintended manslaughter was punished by a fine. Wilful murder was not mentioned. Carelessness I and neglect in the performance of work was severely punished. In general, the penalties prescribed were an improvement over the brutality of previous Assyrian law.
160. THE HOME OFFICE - THE SHORTEST COMMUTE
"A home office allowed me to maintain the career pace I was on," says Colleen Clark, reflecting on three years of telecommuting between Sacramento, California, and Richland, Washington. When Clark and her husband decided to move to California, she looked for a way to keep her job with a public relations company that contracts with the federal government. To that end, she proposed a telecommuting schedule that had her at home in California for three weeks and on location in Washington for one week each month. Her company astounded her and said yes. It hadn't been done before, but now the company is looking into ways to encourage more people to try telecommuting. A home office loft was added to Clark's plans for the new house in Sacramento. Though open to the second floor of the house, the loft was designed to be self-contained and separate from the rest of the house. Extra phone lines were installed during construction. Her employer arranged for her to have remote access to the Local Area Network, processed through an autodial feature with a built-in calling card. Clark's office phone in Richland automatically bounced callers to her Sacramento address. "A lot of callers didn't realize I wasn't on site," she says. Adapting to working at home was "a learning experience," Clark admits. She found that it was important to minimize distractions. "Everything needs to be in the work area," she says, "so that you're not up and down, back and forth." She also came to realize that her work benefited if she followed a routine of getting ready for work as if she were going to a regular workplace. "At first, it seems cool to roll out of bed in your pajamas and sit down to work still bleary-eyed - it's the shortest commute in history; it's really a dream. But I learned that it was important to stick to a professional routine. In this manner, I find it easy to stay focused." E X E R C I S E 1: Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as: COLUMN A COLUMN B a) travelling back and forth regularly, especially between one's place of work and home b) keep in a certain state, or in an unaltered condition c) think deeply about (phrasal verb) d) in order to achieve a particular aim (phrase) e) at a particular place (phrase) f) amaze; overwhelm with amazement, shock or surprise g) investigate (phrasal verb) h) an open space at the top of a house just below the roof, often used for storage i) complete and separate, not requiring any resources from outside j) (of signals) automatically be redirected k) something that takes your attention away from what you are doing I) excellent (slang) m) having red and watery eyes (usu. when sleepy) n) remain with something and not to change to something else (phrasal verb) o) concentrated on one thing
161. THE AGE OF SAMURAIS AND SHOGUNS
In April 1986 in Nikko, Japan, the Edo Mura Village was opened to the public. The village commemorates the period in Japan's history from 1603 to 1867, called the Tokugawa shogunate, when warlords called shoguns ruled the country. The warriors of the shoguns were called samurai. By the 12th century, the ability of the emperor and his court to govern effectively had diminished. It was then that the samurai emerged as a distinct social class. They were held together by personal loyalty to powerful chiefs - the shoguns - who brought more territory under their control. Local wars among the chieftains continued for generations until finally, under the Tokugawa shogunate, the whole nation was united under one warlord. From the end of the 12th century until the Meiji Restoration, or resumption of the emperor's authority, in 1868, government was exclusively in the hands of the samurai class. The behaviour of the samurai was strictly regulated by a code of conduct called Bushido, which is translated as "way of the warrior." The idea of the code developed in about the 13th century, and it encompassed the ideals of loyalty and self-sacrifice. By the 19th century, it had become the basis of ethical training for the whole of Japanese society, and it, contributed significantly to the tough Japanese nationalism " and morale exhibited during World War II.
162. TRAINING TO BE A DANCER
A dancer's training is as strenuous as that of an athlete. In the great academies of classical dance - the pre-eminent centres in the late 20th century are to be found in New York City's School of American Ballet and St. Petersburg's Kirov Ballet School - a would- be dancer begins to train at the age of 7 or 8. If the young dancer shows both physical and artistic promise, the next decade will be spent perfecting a program that is progressively more rigorous. Following a strict series of exercises that have been developed and refined over the last three centuries, the young dancer will be trained in a great tradition. The limbs will be strengthened, the torso will be molded into what ballet masters consider an ideal posture, and the dancer's experience will be enriched through the study of related subjects in humanities and the arts. Should the dancer show exceptional promise, he or she will be accepted into the corps de ballet of a company, where an apprenticeship of a different sort begins. First, to give the young performer experience, the dancer will fill, minor roles. While the glamour associated with these roles may be slight, they give the young performer a chance to gain assurance on stage and the opportunity to measure their skills against those of other young artists. Should the dancer continue to grow in stature, graduation from the corps de ballet may lead to becoming a soloist or a principal artist. Of the multitude of students who begin the study of dance, only a few of the most gifted will win the fame and fortune to which many aspire. E X E R C I S E 1: Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as: COLUMN A COLUMN B a) involving a lot of effort or energy b) more important, powerful or capable than others in a group c) seeking advancement or recognition; desiring, attempting to be d) gradually e) strict, precise or severe f) made better overtime g) arms and legs h) main part of your body; the body excluding the head, neck, and arms and legs i) be changed over a period of time so that someone develops in a particular way; be given the shape of (phrase) j) position in which one sits or stands; characteristic way of bearing one's body k) surpassing what is common or usual or expected; extraordinary I) period of time spent learning the skills needed to do a job properly m) the quality of being attractive and exciting n) high level of respect gained by impressive development or achievement o) a very large number p) having a natural ability for a particular activity q) have a strong desire to have, do, or be something
163. THE POLGAR SISTERS
Chess had always been the domain of males. However, the male domination of this game experienced a shock when three Hungarian sisters moved into the front line of world-class players. The feats of the Polgar sisters at early ages, in fact, matched or surpassed some of those of the greatest male players. In December 1991, at the age of 15, the youngest sister, Judit, achieved the rank of grandmaster against male competition, replacing Bobby Fischer as the youngest person in chess history to have won this honour. Although Susan was the eldest, she ranked as the number two woman player in the world behind Judit, who was acclaimed number one. The other sister, Sofia, lagged a bit behind: she was "only" the world's sixth-ranked woman player, though, according to their father, Laszlo, Sofia was the most talented of the three. The chess-playing Polgar sisters, according to their father, achieved their uncommon abilities as the result of a carefully planned educational program. A psychologist, Polgar held a theory that "geniuses" are made, not born, and that early training and specialization were the key. He set out to prove his theory and determined that his children would focus on chess when Susan at the age of 4 expressed interest in the game. From that time Susan - and the others, when they came along - were immersed in a chess environment. Each of the girls began learning the game at 4, and eventually their daily training included five or more hours a day of playing time. Physical training was also included in the schedule for diversion and in order to build endurance for grueling matches. The sisters never attended school, having been tutored entirely at home by their parents. Through their mother, Klara, who taught several languages, and their international travels, the three learned English, Russian, Spanish, German, and even some Esperanto.
164. THE TIGRIS RIVER
The streams that join to form the Tigris River begin in the high mountains rimming Lake Van in eastern Turkey. Leaving Turkey, the Tigris touches the northeastern border of Syria and then flows southeastward across Iraq. In Iraq it is joined by tributaries from the east - principally the Great Zab, the Little Zab, and the Diyala. The Euphrates, west of the Tigris, runs in the same general direction. In ancient times, the two rivers had separate mouths. Now they meet in a swamp in southern Iraq and form a single stream, the Shaft al-'Arab, which flows into the head of the Persian Gulf. At 1,900 kilometres, the Tigris is shorter than the Euphrates, but it is more important commercially because its channel is deeper. The fertile region between the Tigris and the Euphrates was called Mesopotamia by the ancient Greeks, and it was here that the earliest known civilization flourished. The Tigris was the great river of Assyria. The ancient city of Assur, which gave its name to Assyria, stood on its banks, as did Nineveh, Assyria's splendid capital. Much later the Macedonian general Seleucus built his capital city Seleucia on the Tigris, and across the river from Seleucia the Parthian kings built Ctesiphon. The chief cities on the river today are Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, and Mosul, farther upstream. River steamers make regular trips between Basra, a modern port on the Shatt al-Arab, and Baghdad. Since ancient times the people of Mesopotamia have depended on the water of the two rivers to irrigate their hot, dry land. The soil itself is largely a gift of the rivers, which deposit tremendous quantities of silt on their lower course. The shallow Persian Gulf is being filled at the rate of about 20 metres a year, and ruins of cities that were once gulf ports now lie far inland.
165. JAMES HARGREAVES
The obscurity of James Hargreaves's life contrasts sharply with the worldwide influence of his invention, a yam-spinning machine called the spinning jenny. Almost nothing is known of his life. He was probably born in Blackburn in Lancashire, England. While still a boy, he became a carpenter and spinner in Standhill, a village nearby. At that time Lancashire was the centre of England's manufacture of cotton goods. The industry was still confined to workers' homes, however, and the cards, spinning wheels and looms were operated by hand. It is said that an accident gave Hargreaves the idea for his spinning jenny. In his crowded cottage, which served him both as home and workshop, he was experimenting with spinning two threads at one time. His experiments were unsuccessful, however, because the horizontal spindles allowed the threads to fly apart and become tangled. After his daughter Jenny overturned the experimental machine and its wheel continued to revolve with the spindles in a vertical position, it occurred to Hargreaves that a machine with spindles in this position might be successful. He proceeded to build a spinning machine, probably in 1764, that would spin eight threads at the same time. He called his new invention, after his daughter, a spinning jenny.
166. THE FAUST LEGEND
In the early 16th century, there sprang up in Germany tales of a magician, Dr. Johannes Faust - or, sometimes, Faustus - who was rumoured to be in league with the devil. With the devil's aid, Faust could supposedly perform remarkable feats. There seems little doubt that a fortune-teller of this name actually existed. He is said to have died in about 1540, but the details of his life have been lost. He was reputed to be a charlatan who travelled from place to place in Germany, passing himself off as a physician, alchemist, astrologer and magician. Faust owes his first literary fame to the anonymous author of "Das Faustbuch", published in Frankfurt in 1587. This was a collection of tales concerning a number of ancient and medieval wizards who had gone by the name of Faust. "Das Faustbuch" relates how Faust sought to acquire supernatural knowledge and power through a bargain with Satan. In this pact, signed in his own blood, Faust agreed that Mephistopheles, a devil, was to become his servant for 24 years. In return, Faust would surrender himself to Satan at the end of that period. Mephistopheles entertained his master with luxurious living, long intellectual conversations, and glimpses of the spirit world. After the agreed 24 years, during an earthquake, Faust was carried off to Hell. The Faust legend soon gained wide popularity and was used as a theme by many writers. The most outstanding treatment of the legend was formulated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who raised the story to the level of a powerful drama and introduced the motif of a heroine, Margarete. Other authors in the 19th and 20th centuries have used the legend as the basis for stories, but the best recent work is probably the 1947 novel "Doktor Faustus", by the German writer Thomas Mann. This version makes use of certain passages from the original "Faustbuch".
167. HALLUCINOGENS
While many drugs speed up or depress the central nervous system, there is a class of drugs that distorts how we feel, hear, see, smell, taste and think. Called hallucinogens because users often hallucinate, or experience non-existent sensations, these drugs are also known as mind-bending drugs. Some hallucinogens come from natural sources, examples of which are mescaline, psilocybin, DMT and marijuana. Others are made in laboratories. Of all drugs, synthetic and natural, the most powerful is LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide. Twenty micrograms, an almost infinitesimal amount, is sufficient to produce a hallucinogenic effect. The most pronounced psychological effects induced by hallucinogens are a heightened awareness of colours and patterns together with a slowed perception of time and a distorted body image. Sensations may seem to "cross over", giving the user a sense of "hearing" colours and "seeing" sounds. Users may also slip into a dreamlike state, indifferent to the world around them and forgetful of time and place to such an extent that they may believe it possible to step out of a window or stand in front of a speeding car without harm. Users may feel several different emotions at once or swing wildly from one emotion to another. It is impossible to predict what kind of experience a hallucinogen may produce. Frightening or even panic-producing psychological reactions to LSD and similar drugs are common. Sometimes, taking a hallucinogen leaves the user with serious mental or emotional problems, though it is unclear whether the drug simply unmasks a previously undetected disorder or actually produces it.
168. CONFUCIUS
(551 BC - 479 BC) For more than 2,000 years, the Chinese people have been guided by the ideals of Confucianism. Its founder and greatest teacher was Confucius, whose humane philosophy also influenced the civilizations of all of eastern Asia, by way of many legends spread to illustrate Confucius' beliefs. According to one story, he and his disciples passed a cemetery where a woman was weeping beside a grave. "My husband's father was killed here by a tiger, and my husband also, and now my son has met the same fate. That's why I'm crying," she explained to them. When they asked her why she did not leave such an unlucky place, she answered that, in this place, there was no oppressive government. "Remember this, my children," said Confucius, "oppressive government is fiercer and more feared than a tiger." In such teaching and with such wise sayings, Confucius tried to bring people to a virtuous way of life and a respect for the teachings of the wise men of older generations. He always said of himself that he was a "transmitter, not a maker". He collected and edited the poetry, the music and the historical writings of what he considered the golden age. Confucius laid no claim to being more than a man. Yet when he died, he was revered almost as a god. Temples were erected in his honour in every city of China. His grave at Kufow, in what is now Shandong Province, became a place of pilgrimage. Though Confucianism is commonly called a religion, it is rather a system of moral conduct. Confucius did not talk of God but of goodness. He did not teach about any god, saying simply, "Respect the gods, but have as little to do with them as possible." His attention was centred on making people better in their lifetime.
169. EARLY BRITISH PRISONS
In England the first use of prisons was to house vagrants and other idle persons. Later, minor offenders and debtors were imprisoned - major offenders, on the other hand, were executed. Prisons were mainly places to put people away and forget about them. Thus, they were neglected and poorly-run institutions subject to terrible overcrowding, filth and disease. Charles Dickens presented a vivid picture of life in London's famous Marshalsea debtors' prison in his novel Little Dorrit, published in 1857. Even more famous were London's Newgate and Fleet prisons, known for their overcrowding, filth and violence. In Great Britain the movement to reform prisons was begun in 1773 by John Howard, the appointed sheriff of Bedfordshire. His reports on prison conditions, especially "The State of the Prisons," spurred a sweeping reform movement that was also influential in the United States. His reports coincided with an extreme overcrowding of British prisons, in part because transportation of criminals to overseas colonies such as Australia had diminished. So overcrowded were some prisons that many criminals were housed on decaying ships in the Thames River. The Prisons Act of 1791 was the first step toward creating a national prison system and alleviating the worst conditions.
170. WILLIAM TELL
Early in the 14th century, the village of Altdorf in Switzerland was supposedly ruled by a tyrannical Austrian governor named Gessler, who placed a hat on top of a pole as a symbol of Austrian power. According to the legend, the people were ordered to bow to it as though it were the duke of Austria. A skilled crossbowman named William Tell refused to do this. Soldiers took him and his son Walter before Gessler. The cruel Gessler ordered Tell to shoot an apple off Walter's head at 100 paces. Tell took an arrow from his quiver and slipped it under his belt. He took another and fired it from his bow. The arrow pierced the apple. Gessler asked Tell what the first arrow had been intended for. "To slay you, tyrant, had I killed my son." In a rage Gessler sent Tell to prison. Tell fled during a storm and soon after killed Gessler. Swiss legends place these events in the year 1307. In the country's actual history, in 1315, the men of the three forest-cantons - Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden - defeated an invading Austrian army. They then renewed and enlarged the Everlasting League, which helped lay the foundation of Swiss independence. William Tell first appeared in Swiss literature in the second half of the 15th century. In 1804 the German poet Friedrich Schiller made the legend the subject of a drama, and the Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini used it in an opera in 1829.
171. IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC
Irish traditional music is the folk music of the Irish people as well as of the descendants of Irish emigrants in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Irish traditional music as it is known today is the result of a centuries-old tradition of melodically rich dance music and song. It was formerly played without harmonic accompaniment such as guitar, and was usually learned "by ear" rather than from written music. Irish dance music is distinctively lively, and Irish songs are often highly ornamented. This music is contrasted with the Irish pub ballad tradition - which has made, for example, the song "Whiskey in the Jar" famous - and the modern "folk" tradition, as well as what goes under the name "Celtic music". The term "Celtic music" usually combines Irish traditional music with various other traditional musics, including those of Scotland and the Shetland Islands; Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada; Wales; the Isle of Man; Northumberland in northern England; Brittany in northwestern France; and sometimes Galicia in northwestern Spain. The term, though widely used, is eschewed by many traditionalists. While once mostly homemade by non-professionals for their own entertainment and that of their neighbours and friends, now Irish music can be heard at informal gatherings of musicians, often in pubs, and occasionally in concert halls, not only in Ireland and countries with large Irish immigrant populations, but indeed in many countries around the globe. The Irish song tradition is diverse and rich. It enjoys a prominent place among the interrelated song traditions of Scotland, England and North America. Irish songs, with plaintive or sprightly melodies to suit their themes, cover many subjects: love and betrayal, everyday country life and occupations, and historical or newsworthy events.
172. BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS
Blood, Sweat and Tears is an American musical group. A pioneer in the field of jazz rock, the group topped the charts in the late 1960s with their fresh sound. The idea for the group was conceived by Al Kooper, a keyboard player and vocalist who had previously been a member of the Royal Teens and the Blues Project, as well as playing organ for Bob Dylan. He wanted to form a band that would expand the scope of rock to include elements of jazz, blues, classical and folk music. The core of the original group included Kooper, Blues Project guitarist Steve Katz, drummer Bobby Colomby and bassist Jim Fielder. Blood, Sweat and Tears added numerous horn players from New York jazz and studio bands before releasing the moderately successful debut album Child is Father to the Man, in 1968. It included various Kooper compositions as well as songs by Randy Newman, Carole King and others. Several members, including Kooper, left to pursue other interests after the first album. The band regrouped with David Clayton-Thomas, formerly of the Canadian blues band The Bossmen, as the lead vocalist. The 1969 Grammy-winning album Blood, Sweat and Tears spent more than two years on the United States charts, including seven successive weeks at number one. The group also achieved worldwide recognition, and the US State Department asked the band to do a good will tour abroad. In the early 1970s, the band had hits with "Hi-De-Ho", "Lucretia MacEvil" and "Go Down Gamblin'". A series of singers replaced Clayton-Thomas when he left to pursue a solo career, but he rejoined the group in 1974. With the emergence of other rock bands with a similar emphasis on brass, the group had trouble duplicating its recording success but became popular on the nightclub circuit. Through the years, more than forty musicians filled the positions of the eight-to-ten-member band. E X E R C I S E 1: Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as: COLUMN A COLUMN B a) one of the first people to be involved in an activity and develop it b) new and exciting in a favourable way c) think of something and work out how it can be done d) become larger e) the area an activity or piece of work deals with or includes f) a small group of indispensable persons or things; the most essential or most vital part of some idea or experience g) having a large number of something h) issue something, such as a statement or a record, and make it available i) to a medium degree j) the act of beginning something new; the first appearance or recording of a singer or musician k) make efforts to achieve something I) happening or existing one after another, without a break m) a friendly or helpful attitude towards other people, countries or organizations (phrase) n) the act of coming into existence o) special importance that is given to an activity or to a part or aspect of something p) make exact copies; do the same thing q) a series of places that are visited regularly by a person or group
173. THE EFFECTS OF SCARY MOVIES ON CHILDREN
While the psychological community now pretty much agrees about the effects of repeated television and film violence on children, there's still some argument on the effects of a good scare - or a bad one, as the case may be. After "Jurassic Park" opened, some mental health professionals posted warnings about the "intensity" of its excitements, especially for younger children. It's not just that the dinosaurs emit deafening roars and demolish things - like the monsters of a more innocent cinematic age - these beasts look virtually real. And what is more, they eat people - to them, kids are just appetizers. "This movie is dedicated to making you feel like food," says one psychiatrist. Children handle scary movies differently at different ages. Regardless of age, however, reactions may depend on how secure a child feels. "I don't think that, by themselves, most of these movies can cause a terrible trauma," says another professor of child psychiatry. Likewise, some parents think that some psychiatrists are too cautious. If most grownups enjoy a good scare, the argument goes, why deny it to kids? What's the big deal if they have a nightmare or two - does it warp their lives? All of these points make one nostalgic for creature features like "King Kong". As Kong-era kids knew without parental guidance, the big monster never meant any harm to anyone - not even child psychologists. He was simply in love. But they don't make monsters like that anymore.
174. PAUL SERENO
One fossil discovery after another gave University of Chicago professor Paul Sereno a reputation for having extraordinary luck. Sereno's "luck" was due in part to his willingness to go wherever the bones might be, however difficult and remote the site. His discoveries helped him piece together the family tree of dinosaurs. Sereno's discoveries began during graduate school. In 1984, as the first American graduate student of paleontology to study in China, he identified two new dinosaur species among the bones in Chinese fossil archives. When Chinese authorities rejected his application to dig in the Gobi desert of Mongolia, he took his request to a local official in Mongolia. Sereno explained in French that he wanted to hunt for the bones of big animals. The confused official admitted him under the provisions for big game hunters but offered little hope of finding much game in the desert. Sereno used his findings in China and Mongolia to make a family tree of the omithischian, or bird-hipped, dinosaurs, one of the two main orders of dinosaurs. He based his work on careful comparison of details of various skeletons. The discovery that made Sereno famous came in 1988, the year after he completed his doctorate and joined the faculty at the University of Chicago. In a dry, dusty Argentina valley, among sediments 225 million years old, he found the skull and a nearly complete skeleton of a Herrerasaurus, which, at the time, was the oldest dinosaur ever discovered. Three years later and less than a mile away, Sereno found the complete skeleton of a 228-million-year-old dinosaur, which he named Eoraptor. Only six feet long, with sharp teeth and long claws, this earliest known dinosaur looked like a miniature version of Tyrannosaurus Rex. It confirmed that dinosaurs began as small, meat-eating animals that walked and ran on their hind legs. Sereno was the first person to conduct extensive searches for dinosaur fossils in Africa. Governmental red tape and conditions in the Sahara desert made his expeditions to Niger in 1993 and Morocco in 1995 two of his most gruelling but also most rewarding.
175. THE END OF THE MINOAN CIVILIZATION
For over 500 years, beginning in 2000 BC, there flourished on the island of Crete in the eastern Mediterranean one of the most splendid civilizations of the ancient world: the Minoan civilization. Its capital was Knossos, a city dominated by the palace of Minos the king. All over the eastern half of Crete there were cities, each with its own palace, and the population of the island must have been at least a quarter of a million. Minoan power and influence, however, were not confined to Crete alone, for the Minoans, by means of their ships, ruled the surrounding seas, set up colonies on the Aegean islands to the north, and established trade links with other peoples on the mainlands of Anatolia and Greece as well as with the Pharaohs of Egypt. Minoan objects and cultural influence have been found as far away as the ruins of Mycenae in Greece. But suddenly, sometime between 1500 and 1400 BC, the Minoan civilization came to an end, and was forgotten by the world for over 3,000 years. In the early years of this century, however, archaeologists discovered the remains of the Minoan civilization and evidence of its abrupt end. They thought that the Minoans had been overthrown by the invasion of a powerful enemy, the Mycenaeans from mainland Greece, but they could not explain why the Minoans, with their large fleet, should be taken by surprise before they could protect their cities, around which there were no signs of defensive walls; nor could they explain why the invaders left the capital, Knossos, intact, yet destroyed all the other cities.
176. ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM
Studies have shown that not all individuals are equally exposed to pollution. For example, worldwide toxic waste sites are more prevalent in poorer communities. In the United States, the single most important factor in predicting the location of such sites is the ethnic composition of a neighborhood. Three of the five largest commercial hazardous waste landfills in America are in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods, and three out of every five Black or Hispanic Americans live in the vicinity of an uncontrolled toxic waste site. The wealth of a community is not nearly as good a predictor of hazardous waste locations as the ethnic background of the residents, suggesting that the selection of sites for hazardous waste disposal involves racism. Environmental racism takes international forms as well. American corporations often continue to produce dangerous, US-banned chemicals and ship them to developing countries. In addition, the developed world has shipped large amounts of toxic waste to developing countries for unsafe disposal. For instance, experts estimate that 50 to 80 percent of electronic waste produced in the United States, including computer parts, is shipped to waste sites in developing countries such as China and India. At a waste site in Giuyu, China, laborers with no protective clothing regularly burn plastics and circuit boards from old computers. They pour acid on electronic parts to extract silver and gold, and they smash cathode-ray tubes from computer monitors to remove lead. These activities so pollute the groundwater beneath the site that drinking water must be brought to the area by trucks from a town 29 km away.
177. MINIATURE ADULTS
Perhaps the best description of the children who attended schools in the 18th and 19th centuries is by the English novelist Charles Dickens: pale and worn-out faces, lank and bony figures, children with the expressions of old men.... There was childhood with the light of its eyes quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone remaining. It is no wonder then that Johann Heinrich Pestaiozzi's (1746-1827) school at Yverdon, Switzerland, created international attention and attracted thousands of European and American visitors from educational circles. What they saw was a school for children - for real children, not miniature adults. They saw physically active children running, jumping and playing. They saw small children learning the names of numbers by counting real objects and preparing to learn reading by playing with letter blocks. They saw older children engaged in object lessons - progressing in their study of geography from observing the area around the school, measuring it, making their own relief maps of it, and finally seeing a professionally executed map of it. This was the school and these were the methods developed by Pestalozzi in accordance with his belief that the goal of education should be the natural development of the individual child, and that educators should focus on the development of the child rather than on memorization of subject matter that he was unable to understand. Pestaiozzi's school also mirrored the idea that learning begins with firsthand observation of an object and moves gradually toward the remote and abstract realm of words and ideas. The teacher's job was to guide, not distort, the natural growth of the child by selecting his experiences and then directing those experiences toward the realm of ideas.
178. THE REMAINS OF THE QUEEN ANNE'S REVENGE
For more than two and a half centuries, the final resting place of one of history's most notorious sea vessels remained a mystery. In 1718 the Queen Anne's Revenge, which had been the flagship of the infamous pirate Edward Teach's fleet, was sunk off the Atlantic coast of the American colonies. Teach, known popularly as Blackbeard, escaped from the sinking vessel along with his crew. Legend has it that they were able to save the vast treasures they had accumulated during two years of plundering ships and towns along the Eastern seaboard. Although the whereabouts of the rumoured treasure remain unknown, marine archaeologists working off the coast of North Carolina discovered what they believed to be the sunken remains of the Queen Anne's Revenge. The hull of the ship apparently settled near where it was reported to have sunk, in water little more than 6 metres deep and less than 2 miles from the coast. The location of the ship had remained undetermined for more than 270 years mostly because of the clutter of other ships at the bottom of the ocean in that area. Since the time of the ship's sinking, literally hundreds of ships had come to rest in the vicinity of the suspected resting place of the Queen Anne's Revenge. The team of marine archaeologists, however, consulted a rare book from 1719 that chronicled the story of the sinking of Blackbeard's notorious ship, which ran aground in 1718 while attempting to enter the Beaufort inlet near North Carolina. The book provided an exact description of the location where the ship went down, and the marine archaeologists were able to locate the ship using that information and a sophisticated device designed to detect large amounts of metal. This device made it possible for the archaeologists to detect the ship's numerous cannons. In November 1996, after a decade-long process of research and underwater searching, the team finally located the hull of a ship that seemed consistent with known information concerning the design of the Queen Anne's Revenge.
179. A LONGING FOR THE PAST
The Goldman Environmental Prize is the world's largest award for grass-roots activism and environmental achievement. The recipients - and there have been a total of 94 of them since the prize was launched in 1989 - hail from every region of the globe. Among the profiles of the 2003 award winners is Odigha Odigha, a Nigerian forest activist and educator. He recalls what it was like as a child to walk to school under the canopy of the rainforest in Cross River State in southeastern Nigeria. "You could walk several kilometres without seeing the sun's rays," he says. "You would only hear the sounds of animals and birds, and see wonderful butterflies, and come in close contact with nature, run around and pluck some leaves and fruits. As an adventurous kid, I used to enjoy it so much. And, at that time, you could get into fresh water, which was so fresh that you could drink it." The rainforest was a paradise in the eyes of the young boy. It had vast stands of hardwoods and was home to the world's endangered gorillas. But 40 years later, the rainforest in Cross River State has become a much different place. "What we have now is a vast desert encroachment coming in from the north, coming towards the coastal area," Mr Odigha says. "The trees have gone, trees like mahogany and ebony. It is a pathetic situation. I am not sure that we have fully come to terms with what we are losing, what is happening to us as a country." A century of excessive and largely unchecked logging has had devastating consequences, says Mr. Odigha, "and today less than ten percent of Nigeria's original rainforest survives."
180. THE ODYSSEY
Although set within the circumstances of the Trojan War, Homer's Odyssey is a far different book from his Iliad. With the latter, the book itself as well as the archaeological excavations supporting it makes it reasonable to infer a real historical event as background. With the Odyssey, such an assumption is impossible. The book is a tale of adventure at sea and of homecoming after a long absence. These two themes have pervaded Western literature ever since the Homeric epic was written, and the story may well have proved a popular one well before Greek history began. The story could just as well have stood on its own without any relation to the conflict of the Greeks with Troy. The vividly fictional characteristics of the story have not prevented critics, past and present, from seeking to place it in a specific geographic context. Hesiod, who wrote later than Homer, believed that Odysseus and his ships sailed around in the general area of Italy and Sicily, to the west of Ithaca. Later analysts tried to set the wanderings within the Mediterranean Sea generally, while others suggested the Atlantic Ocean as more likely. The ancient astronomer Eratosthenes, who lived in the 2nd century BC, regarded all such speculations as foolish. For him, the world of Odysseus was a completely imaginary one. Indications of this are found within the text itself. Some of the hero's wanderings could well have been based on the even older story of Jason and his Argonauts, who sailed east in search of the golden fleece. To sum up, in the case of the Odyssey, it is quite likely that several ancient legends were woven into one continuous epic.
181. THE MADRID METRO
The Madrid metro is the large metro system serving Madrid, the capital of Spain. It is one of the largest metro systems in the world, which is especially remarkable considering Madrid's population of less than four million. It is also one of the fastest- growing in the world, rivalled only by Seoul's in South Korea; the latest round of expansions, completed in the spring of 2003, have increased its length to 223 kilometres. The metro opened in 1919 under the direction of the Compania de Metro Alfonso XIII. Metro stations served as air raid shelters during the Spanish Civil War. Starting in the 1970s, it was sequentially greatly expanded to cope with the influx of population and urban sprawl from Madrid's economic ascendancy. A huge project in the late 1990s and early 2000s installed approximately 50 kilometres of new metro tunnels, including a direct connection between downtown Madrid and Barajas International Airport (Line 8), and service to outlying areas, including a huge 40-kilometre circuit called Metrosur (Line 12) serving Madrid's southern suburbs. Metrosur, the largest civil engineering project in Europe, opened on April 11, 2003. It includes 40.7 kilometres of tunnel and 28 new stations, including an interchange station and an additional station on Line 10, which connects it to the downtown area. Construction began in June 2000, and the whole circuit was completed in less than three years. It connects the towns of Getafe, Möstoles, Alcorcön, Fuenlabrada and Leganes. Madrid also has an extensive commuter train network operated by Rente, the national rail line, which is integrated with the metro network. Several commuter train transfer stations were included in Metrosur.
182. WILLIAM H. TAFT
The only man in United States history to hold its two highest offices was William Howard Taft. He was both the 27th president and later, from 1921 to 1930, the chief justice of the US Supreme Court. Owing to Taft's long years of experience, he was the man best fitted to serve in both positions. He had been in public office almost continuously since 1881. He was the first civil governor of the Philippines and Secretary of War in President Theodore Roosevelt's Cabinet, these are only two of the many high positions he held. His large size and his famous chuckle made Taft a memorable figure. He was 5 feet 11 inches tall, with a fair complexion, clear blue eyes, and light hair. At the time he was president, he weighed 350 pounds. He joked about his bulk and took no offense at the jokes of others. Asked to accept a chair of law at Yale University, he replied that he would if they could make it a "sofa of law". Chairs were indeed a problem for him. He always "looked before he sat" to avoid armchairs or antiques in which he might get stuck or which might collapse under his bulk. When he was governor of the Philippines, Taft made a trip into the mountains for the benefit of his health. He cabled Secretary of War Elihu Root: "Stood trip well. Rode horseback 25 miles to 5,000 feet elevation." Root cabled back: "Referring to your telegram ... how is the horse?" His biographer, Henry F. Pringle, has described the Taft chuckle: "It was by all odds the most infectious chuckle in the history of politics. It started with a silent trembling of Taft's ample stomach. The next sign was a pause in the reading of his speech, and the spread of a slow grin across his face. Then came a kind of gulp which seemed to escape without his being aware that the climax was near. Laughter followed hard on the chuckle itself, and the audience invariably joined in."
183. THE SHIFTING ECONOMY
Each year, countless small businesses close their doors and go into bankruptcy. The corner grocer, the little dress shop, the locally-owned sandwich shop, the bakery, the dancing school, the beauty salon: all are victims of the constantly shifting economy. They are, at times, replaced by other small businesses that temporarily fill the needs of the neighbourhood but frequently end up sharing the same fate of dissolution. More often, the market served by the small business is taken over by a large store or plant, frequently from a more distant place of operation. Typically, the customers of the corner grocery or bakery have already gone to the nationwide supermarket chain just down the street. The woman who runs the dress shop chooses fashions out of tune with the times and gets too old to keep the store open during the most convenient hours for shoppers, who then go off to the big department stores. It is increasingly difficult, apparently, for small businesses to succeed in our complex economic structure based, as it is, on small profit margins and tremendous sales volume.
184. A DIFFERENT OUTLOOK ON LIFE
One stormy autumn night when my nephew Roger was about 20 months old, I wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to the beach in the rainy darkness. Out there, big waves were thundering in, dimly seen white shapes that boomed and shouted and threw great handfuls of froth at us. Together we laughed for pure joy - he a baby meeting for the first time the wild tumult of the ocean, I with the salt of half a lifetime of sea love in me. It was hardly a conventional way to entertain one so young, I suppose, but now, with Roger a little past his fourth birthday, we are continuing that sharing of adventures in the world of nature that we began in his infancy - a sharing based on having fun together rather than on teaching. I have made no conscious effort to name plants or animals or to explain to him, but have just expressed my own pleasure in what we see, as I would with an older person. I think the results have been good. We have let Roger share our enjoyment of things people frequently deny children because they are inconvenient or because they interfere with bedtime. We have searched the shore at night for ghost crabs, those sand-coloured, fleet-legged beings rarely glimpsed in daytime, our flashlight piercing the darkness with a yellow cone. We have sat in the dark living room before the window to watch the full moon riding lower and lower toward the far shore of the bay, setting all the water ablaze with silver flames. The memory of such scenes, photographed by his child's mind, will mean more to him in manhood, we feel, than the sleep he lost.
185. THE HAYMARKET RIOT
On 1 May 1886 (May Day), labor unions organized a strike for an eight-hour work day in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. On 3 May, a small riot occurred at the McCormick Harvester Plant in which there was a shooting and one death when police clashed with the rioters. Violence intensified on 4 May when a protest meeting began in Haymarket Square. During this meeting to denounce the events of the previous days, the police had just begun to clear out the crowd when someone threw a bomb, killing twelve people and wounding more than sixty. Policeman Mathias J. Degan was killed almost instantly and seven other policemen later died as a result of their injuries. Four of the protestors were also killed when the bomb went off and, in the panic that followed, the police fired into the crowd, killing one more person. Some of the speakers earlier in the day had been anarchists, and so the crime was supposed to have been committed by an anarchist, despite the fact that no evidence for such a link could be demonstrated. Although the bomb-thrower was never identified, eight men - mostly of German descent - who had been involved in organizing the rallies were accused of the crime and found guilty. Seven of the men were sentenced to death and the eighth was sentenced to fifteen years in prison by Judge Joseph Gary, in spite of a startling lack of evidence that any of them had had any role in the bombing at all. The sentencing sparked outrage in international labor circles, resulting in protests all around the world and, eventually, the beginning of the worldwide celebrations of 1 May as an international workers' day.
186. THESEUS
According to Greek legend, the hero Theseus, the son of Aegeus, king of Athens, was born and brought up in a distant land. His mother did not send him to Athens until he was a young man able to lift a stone under which his father had put a sword and a pair of sandals. When Theseus arrived in Athens after many adventures, he found the city in deep mourning. It was again time to send to Minos, king of Crete, the yearly tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to be devoured by the Minotaur. This was a terrible monster, half-human and half-bull. Theseus offered himself as one of the victims, hoping that he would be able to slay the monster. When he reached Crete, Ariadne, the beautiful daughter of the king, fell in love with him. She aided him by giving him a sword, with which he killed the Minotaur, and a ball of thread, with which he was able to find his way out of the winding labyrinth where the monster was kept. Theseus had promised his father that if he succeeded in his quest, he would hoist white sails on his ship when he returned; it had black sails when he left. He forgot his promise. King Aegeus, seeing the dark sails, thought his son was dead and jumped into the sea. The sea has since been called the Aegean in his honour. Theseus then became king of the Athenians. He united the village communities of the plain of Attica into a strong and powerful nation. Theseus was killed by treachery during a revolt of the Athenians. Later his memory was held in great reverence. At the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, many of the Athenians believed they saw his spirit leading them against the Persians. After the Persian Wars, the oracle at Delphi ordered the Athenians to find the grave of Theseus on the island of Skyros, where he had been killed, and to bring his bones back to Athens. The oracle's instructions were obeyed. In 469 BC, the supposed remains of Theseus were carried back to Athens. The tomb of the great hero became a place of refuge for the poor and oppressed people of the city.
187. FIRDAWSI
(9357-1026?) The greatest poet of Persia - now Iran - was Abu al-Qasem Mansur, who wrote under the name Firdawsi. He wrote the country's national epic, Book of Kings, in its final form. Of the man himself, little is known. The most reliable source of information is an account by a 12th-century poet, Nezami-ye 'Aruzi, who visited Firdawsi's native village of Tus and collected stories about him. Firdawsi was born about 935, the son of a wealthy landowner. It was to earn money for his daughter's dowry that he began the 35-year task of composing the Book of Kings, or Shah-nameh as it is called in Persian. The work, nearly 60,000 couplets long, was based on a prose work of the same name, itself a translation of a history of the kings of Persia from the most ancient times down to the reign of Khosrow II in the 7th century. When the poem was completed in 1010, Firdawsi presented it to Mahmud, the sultan of Ghanza, in the hope of being well paid for it. In this the poet was disappointed: he considered his reward so paltry that he gave it away. This angered Mahmud, and Firdawsi fled to Herat, then to Mazanderan. Some years later, Mahmud tried to make amends to the poet by sending him a valuable amount of indigo. Unfortunately the shipment arrived at Tus on the same day that Firdawsi's body was being taken to the cemetery for burial. His daughter refused the award. The Book of Kings has remained one of the most popular works in the Persian language. Modern Iranians understand it easily because the language in which it was written bears a relationship to modern Persian - a relationship similar to that between Shakespearean English and contemporary English.
188. MALPRACTICE
In law, malpractice refers to misconduct or negligence by a professional person, such as a physician, lawyer or accountant. Such misconduct includes failure to exercise the level of skill and learning expected of a licensed professional. The result of malpractice to the client or patient is injury, damage or some loss owing to professional incompetence. The official criteria for a valid medical malpractice claim are duty, breach, damages and causation. The practitioner must have had a relationship to the patient, which indicates that he or she had a duty to exercise ordinary care; must have breached - that is, failed to measure up to - that duty, according to the applicable standard of care; and because of that breach must have caused the patient physical and monetary damages. If there is evidence of malpractice, a client may sue in a civil action, seeking damages in the form of money. Those most likely to be sued are surgeons, since malpractice is much easier to prove when a surgical operation has been done. If, for example, a surgeon leaves a foreign object inside a closed wound, the surgeon is clearly liable for the carelessness. Plastic surgeons are most at risk, since their operations are done to improve the patient's appearance. Dissatisfied patients may sue. Medical malpractice actions do three things: provide quality control for the medical profession; provide some measure of compensation for the harm done; and give emotional vindication to the plaintiff, which is a measure of his or her ability to make a complaint and receive a satisfactory response.
189. HOW TO LIVE TO BE 100
Since aging and lifespan are broadly determined by the genetic plan of a species, attention has been directed to the possibilities of their modification by altering the environment. The biologist Jacques Loeb showed early in the 20th century that the life span of the fruit fly was halved by every 10-degree rise in temperature. This led to impractical speculations about prolonging the human life span by experimenting with various degrees of cooling the body. Fairly severe restriction of caloric intake in the laboratory rat can more than double its life span, chiefly by prolonging the period of immaturity. Caloric restriction is so far the only factor shown to have a major effect on aging and lifespan. Unfortunately, food restriction has less effect on species other than rodents. It has not been shown that undernourished human populations live longer, but vitamin deficiency, disease, and poor medical care found in such groups complicate the analysis. In geriatric medicine, the hope is to eliminate the disease processes that prevent human beings from living to the end of their natural lifespan.
190. THE INTERNET
The Internet originated as a system used for research by the military in the USA. Universities were the next group to connect to the system. The Internet started to develop as a commercial system in the late 1980s, and by the mid-1990s, home users were starting to connect to the Internet in significant numbers. Internet usage is still growing quickly and the number of hours we spend online is rising sharply. The United States still leads the way in Internet usage, but Europe is catching up. It is difficult to predict anything in such a fast-growing area, but at the end of 1999, it was estimated that between 13 and 14 million people in the UK - about one-fifth of the population - had access to the Internet, while worldwide, at least 100 million people are connected to the system. E-mail is the simplest application of the Internet, but it is also the most popular with both businesses and personal users. E- mail is a straightforward and cost-effective way of communicating using Internet, falling somewhere between the phone and the fax in terms of formality and speed. E-mail is cheap and it only takes a few seconds for a message to reach the Internet. At the moment, the computer is the most common way people connect to the Internet, followed by mobile phones, but in the future, television sets will also have Internet capabilities.
191. HOW TO BECOME A KING?
? The boy who was to become a great military leader and king of Prussia began his career hating the life of a soldier. Frederick II was born on January 24, 1712, in Berlin. His father was King Frederick William I. His mother was Princess Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, sister of George II of England. Frederick's father insisted on a practical, military education for his son. The boy preferred music, art and literature. He rebelled against tobacco, drinking and hunting, which his father believed were natural pleasures of royalty. The king forbid the prince's tutors to teach him Latin, but he studied it and the classics in secret. As Frederick became older, the relationship between father and son grew worse. Frederick's mother and his sister Wilhelmina sided with him against his father. This further enraged the stubborn king, who became more and more severe with his son, hitting him in public and even beating him with a cane in front of army troops. When Frederick was 18, he tried to escape the tyranny of his father by running away. Caught before he crossed the border, he was locked in solitary confinement for a time. From a window of his cell he was forced to watch the execution of his closest friend, who had accompanied him in his flight. After this incident, young Frederick was changed and became ruthless, crafty and cynical. Gradually the old king gave his son ever greater responsibilities.
192. THE MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
Cosmology is the scientific inquiry into what the universe is like. By making assumptions that are not contradicted by the behaviour of the observable universe, scientists build models, or theories, that attempt to describe the universe as a whole, including its origin and its future. They use each model until something is found that contradicts it. Then the model must be modified or discarded. Cosmologists usually assume that the universe, except for small irregularities, has an identical appearance to all observers - identical to the laws of physics - irrespective of where in the universe the observers are located. This unproven concept is called the cosmological principle. One consequence of the cosmological principle is that the universe cannot have an edge, for, otherwise, an observer near the edge would have a different view from that of someone near the centre. Thus, space must be infinite and evenly filled with matter, or, alternatively, the geometry of space must be such that all observers see themselves as at the centre. Also, astronomers believe that the only motion that can occur, except for small irregularities, is a uniform expansion or contraction of the universe.
193. OWNER OF A SAMURAI ARMY
He was a novelist who had his own samurai army, and he was an intellectual who worked at body-building. The brilliant Japanese writer Yukio Mishima was a man torn between Japanese tradition and the westernization of his culture. He was born as Hiraoka Kimitake on January 14, 1925, in Tokyo, but as an adult, he published under the name Yukio Mishima. He attended Tokyo's Peers School and the University of Tokyo. Mishima's writing career took off with the 1949 publication of his first novel, Confessions of a Mask. A man of discipline and great energy, he usually wrote from midnight until dawn, and in his lifetime, produced more than 100 works, including novels, short stories, screenplays and traditional Japanese No and Kabuki plays. He even starred in a film version of his own short story, "Patriotism". One of his best-known novels is The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, published in 1958. Although Mishima enjoyed many benefits from the westernization of Japan, he was troubled by the changes wrought on traditional Japanese ways, which was a common theme in his stories. His last work, Sea of Fertility, compares modern Japan to the barren landscape of the moon. In an effort to recapture the samurai tradition, Mishima organized a private army called the Shield Society. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four society members took control of an office at military headquarters in Tokyo. He gave a speech attacking Japan's post-World War II constitution and then committed suicide.
194. WARRIOR WOMEN
A team of American and Russian archaeologists announced the findings that they recorded during the lengthy excavation of a series of ancient tombs that date back to the 6th century BC, which were discovered along the westernmost border of Kazakhstan. Most surprising among the findings were the contents found within the tombs of females. The women had been buried along with swords, daggers, bows and arrows, leading many of the archaeologists to the preliminary conclusion that at least some of the female members of the Sauromatian and Sarmation nomadic tribes, to which the tombs had been traced, served as warriors. One of the most provocative graves was that of a bowlegged young woman who had been buried with a dagger and a quiver containing 40 bronze-tipped arrows. The woman's bowed legs, combined with the armaments at her side, seemed to indicate that she was trained both in horseback riding and archery and was perhaps skilled in the practice of mounted warfare. Some observers suggested that the women warriors bore some relation to the mythical Amazons, powerful female warriors of whom the Greek historian Herodotus had written. Archaeologists involved with the excavation stated that any connection between the entombed women and the legendary Amazons was largely speculative.
195. PELE, THE SOCCER LEGEND
"Soccer in its purest form" was played by Pele, a South American superstar who was the world's most famous and highest-paid athlete when he joined a North American team in 1975. He led the Brazilian national soccer team to three World Cup victories in 1958, 1962 and 1970, and to permanent possession of the Jules Rimet Trophy. Edson Arantes do Nascimento was born to a poor family on October 23, 1940, in Tres Coracoes, Brazil. He began playing for a local minor-league club when he was a teenager. He made his debut with the Santos Football Club in 1956. With Pele at inside left forward, the team won several South American clubs' cups and the 1962 world club championship. Pele scored his 1,000th goal in 1969. The legendary athlete retired in 1974 but made a comeback in 1975, reportedly after accepting a $7-million contract for three years with the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League. He said he came out of retirement, not for the money, but to "make soccer truly popular in the United States." His farewell appearance was against his old Santos club in 1977. Pele, whose nickname does not mean anything, became a Brazilian national hero and was also known as Perola Negra, meaning Black Pearl. An average-sized man, he was blessed with speed, great balance, tremendous vision, the ability to control the ball superbly and the ability to shoot powerfully and accurately with either foot as well as with his head. In his career he played in 1,363 matches and scored 1,281 goals. His best season was 1958, when he scored 139 times. In addition to his accomplishments in sports, he published several best-selling autobiographies, starred in several documentary and semi-documentary films, and composed numerous musical pieces, including the entire sound track for the 1977 film "Pele". He was the 1978 recipient of the International Peace Award, and in 1980, he was named athlete of the century.
196. GRAND CANYON
Nature's greatest example of sculpture, the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona is the most spectacular canyon in the world. It is a 446-kilometre gorge cut through high plateaus by the Colorado River. It is noted for its fantastic shapes and colours. Within the walls of the canyon stand imposing peaks, canyons and ravines. In general, the colour of the canyon is red, but each layer or group of layers has a distinctive hue - buff and gray, delicate green and pink, and, in its depths, brown, slate-gray and violet. The canyon extends in a winding course from the mouth of the Paria River, near the northern boundary of Arizona, to Grand Wash Cliffs, near the Nevada line. Grand Canyon National Park, which has 493,076 hectares, was established in 1919. Its area was greatly enlarged in 1975 by the addition of adjoining lands so that it now extends from Lake Powell to Lake Mead. The north and south rims of the canyon are connected by a paved road and by a trans-canyon trail. Scenic drives and trails lead to all the canyon's important features. Mule trips are a popular way of viewing and experiencing the beauty of the vast canyon, as is river rafting on the Colorado River, which can be quite exciting and dangerous as the gorge has many rapids. Many cliff-dweller ruins indicate prehistoric occupation, while several Indian tribes continue to live on nearby reservations. No other place on the Earth compares with the mile-deep Grand Canyon for its record of geological events. Some of the canyon's rocks date back about 4 billion years. The river's speed and such "cutting tools" as sand, gravel and mud account for its incredible cutting capacity. The canyon has many varieties of wildlife. Willow trees and cottonwoods grow at the bottom of the canyon where there is plenty of water. There are magnificent forests on the north rim of the canyon where the soil is moist and deep. There are also drought-resistant plants, including numerous species of cactus. The first sighting of the Grand Canyon by Europeans is credited to the Coronado expedition of 1540. In 1869, John Wesley Powell organized the first party to go through the canyon. His account remains a classic of American travel. By the 1870s, extensive reports on the area were being published.
197. FESTIVAL IN ZIMBABWE
In the Zimbabwean capital, the annual Harare International Festival of the Arts ended on Sunday after a somewhat controversial week-long run. The festival ended with a fireworks display after the London Community Gospel choir gave the final performance, delivering a message of hope. There are some Zimbabweans who feel, because of the economic and political crisis, the festival should not have been held this year. Some say holding the festival sends a message that things are normal in Zimbabwe. They even launched a mail campaign to make their point. But the festival's founder and director, London-based Zimbabwean concert pianist Manuel Bagorro, argues that Zimbabwe needs the festival now more than at any other time. "I believe that this is absolutely the most important time to do something of this nature," said Mr Bagorro. "I think that any initiative that nurtures any section of our community is incredibly important at this time when people are so desperate. My decision to keep the festival right in the centre of the city, despite concerns about security, and concerns about petty crime and so on, is some effort on behalf of the festival to acknowledge the reality of the situation. "Yes, it is true you walk out of the gates of the festival and are confronted with the destitution of many, many Zimbabweans," he continued. "However, it seems to me that to cancel a festival like this achieves nothing." Despite the controversy, thousands of people who could afford the modestly priced tickets and had the fuel to go to the city centre attended the festival. Zimbabwe's difficult problems include an 80% unemployment rate, shortages of basic commodities, and a political crisis that is splitting the nation. But for the last week, the Harare International Festival of the Arts provided, at least, some distraction.
198. THE ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS OF WAR
A quarter century of conflict and war has rendered Afghanistan one of the most environmentally damaged nations on the Earth, and now, Afghanistan's environmental degradation is considered a stumbling block to its development. "Our evergreen forests have been diminished in the last twenty-five years by 40- 50%, or in some places 60%. Our pistachio forests in Badghis and Takhar in the north are gone, or at least 90% of them are lost," says Yusuf Nuristani, Afghanistan's minister of irrigation, water resources and environment. A recent report by the United Nations Environment Program warns that Afghanistan faces a future without forests, clean water, wildlife or unpolluted air if current trends are not reversed. The report says Afghanistan's environmental damage is a "major stumbling block" to reconstruction and development. It is not only Afghanistan's forests that are disappearing though. Five years of drought and the destruction of a centuries-old canal network have left many Afghans without clean drinking water or water for irrigation. The UN report says even the good news, such as the return of more than one million refugees to Afghanistan last year, has hurt the environment, choking major cities with exhaust fumes and overloading the sewer systems. Mr Nuristani says a quarter century of war has left his country environmentally devastated. "Right now, we are in a mess. The drought, the war, the neglect and the low level of understanding among the people about the environment have caused all these problems. So we have to intervene right now in whatever way we can," he said.
199. AQUACULTURE
The growing of plants and animals on land for food and other products is agriculture. Raising animals and plants in the water is aquaculture. Practised since ancient times in many parts of the world, aquaculture embraces such diverse activities as the Chinese tradition of growing carp in ponds, the harvesting and processing of seaweed in Iceland and the artificial culture of pearls - a Japanese invention. Aquaculture can take place in still water or running water, fresh water or salt water. The practice of aquaculture has been growing rapidly. Experts have projected a five-fold increase in harvests during the final quarter of the 20th century. In the 1970s, Asia accounted for approximately 85% of world production in the field. Aquaculture is regarded as one possible solution to the world's food supply problems. The quantity of tillable land is limited and shrinking everywhere. But two thirds of the globe is covered with water, and the supply of food animals and plants that may be grown there is almost limitless. In contrast to agriculture, which is practised on the land's surface only, aquaculture is three-dimensional. Within the same vertical region, several different crops can be grown at once - near the water surface, on the bottom, and in the area between. Multiple cropping of this kind, called polyculture, represents an efficient use of labour, materials and energy. Moreover, aquaculture is less affected by climatic change - droughts, floods, and extremes of heat and cold - than is agriculture.
200. MAGNIFICENT MALLS
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the West Edmonton Mall, Canada, which encloses 5.2 million square feet on a 46-hectare site, is by far the largest in the world. The Mall of America, which opened in the early 1990s, the largest such center in the United States, is twice the size of its predecessor, the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, California. Designed as a regional entertainment center, this mall, which is designed around a theme park, Knott's Berry Camp Snoopy, is still a million square feet smaller than the West Edmonton Mall. The West Edmonton Mall has more than 800 stores, including 11 department stores, and more than 100 restaurants and snack bars. Its other attractions include an 18-hole miniature golf course; an indoor water park with beaches and a wave-making machine for surfing; a dolphin water show; one of the world's longest water slides; submarines for underwater rides; a regulation-sized hockey rink; a nightclub area fashioned after Bourbon Street in New Orleans; cinemas; Canada Fantasyland, an amusement park with nearly 50 rides; a zoo; art exhibits; and a 360-room hotel.