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GUILTY & UNGUILTY ?!
From: nemo seas |
Created: Feb 7 2006, 10:05 am
Another foolish method was used in Europe hundreds of years ago. When a man was accused of a crime, he was taken to a pool or a river. A rope was tied to the man and he was then thrown into the water. If he floated, the people declared that he was guilty. They took him out of the water and punished him. Sometimes he was killed. However, if the man sank, the people maintained that he was innocent. They pulled him out of the water quickly and released him. I don't know what happened if he had learnt to swim under the water.
Today our methods are much better. An accused man is taken to a law court. When the offence is small, a magistrate judges the case. If the offence is serious, the people on the jury decide whether the prisoner is innocent or guilty. An innocent man is set free, while a judge decides the punishment for a guilty man. [/size][/font]
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AJOKE
From: nemo seas |
Created: Feb 4 2006, 11:25 am
[font=times][size=large]A doctor was examining a lady who was no longer young. She had fallen down and hurt her knee. The doctor wanted to be sure that was all she had was suffering from hurt and nothing else was wrong with her. He asked her casually about her age. When she answered that she was twenty five, the doctor wrote "loss of memory". [/size][/font]
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SLEEP
From: nemo seas |
Created: Feb 2 2006, 01:45 pm
A recurring state of inactivity accompanied by loss of awareness and reduction of responsiveness to the environment. Unlike a coma, or unconsciousness caused by general anesthesia, a sleeping person can be easily aroused. Sleep is not a single state; electroencephalographic (EEG) studies, which measure the electrical activity in the brain, show that there are two basic alternating states.
The first is known as nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, during which the heart and respiratory rates slow down, the muscles are greatly but not completely relaxed, and the eyelids remain. This can be divided into four general states of increasing depth of sleep. If awakened during the NREM sleep, the individual may say that he was "thinking" at the time of waking up.
During rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the eyeballs move jerkily under closed lids, the heart and respiratory rates quicken (but this is variable), and the muscles (especially the neck muscles) are completely relaxed. This is the stage during which dreams occur, and dreams are more likely to be remembered if the individual wakes up or is awakened during REM sleep.
On going to bed, drowsiness is followed by NREM sleep of progressively increasing depth. After about 90 minutes, REM sleep takes over; during this first cycle of sleep, the REM stage may last only about 5 to 10 minutes. There are also fewer eye movements in the first cycle. During a night's sleep, there may be 4 to 6 cycles of sleep, each lasting 80 to 100 minutes, the duration of REM sleep increases with each successive cycle and may make up about 30 minutes of the later cycles.
The amount of sleep required by an individual and the pattern of cycles varies according to age. The young adult who has about 6 to 8 hours of sleep spends about 20-25% of the night in REM sleep. The baby, whose sleep cycle is short (about 40 to 45 minutes), spends about 50% of the sleep in REM sleep. In the elderly – in whom the total sleep time required gradually diminishes-the proportion spent in REM sleep also reduces gradually toward 20%.
Despite these general patterns of sleep, the amount required varies a great deal from person to person. The function of sleep is not entirely clear, but is thought to be a time that the body uses to catch up with the growth processes and repair. Some sleep is certainly required, but how much is difficult to say. Extreme sleep deprivation ( used as one method of" brainwashing") can lead to hallucination and paranoia. However, most people manage to adapt to smaller amounts of sleep deprivation; they may complain of irritability and loss of sleep efficiency (but again it is difficult to quantify how much of this is caused by the loss of sleep and how much to worry about loss of sleep and lack of efficiency). When they do get a chance to catch up on the lost sleep, they do so not only by longer hours of sleep but also by spending greater proportion of it in REM sleep.
Sleep disorders may be primary-the inability to fall asleep or stay asleep for very long (insomnia) or the abnormal tendency to fall asleep or have uncontrollable attacks of drowsiness in the daytime (narcolepsy)-or they may be secondary to various emotional or mental disturbances, chronic alcoholism, disease of the thyroid gland ( hyperthyroidism), or brain disease.
The treatment of primary sleep disorders is the administration of the appropriate drug: stimulants (such as amphetamines) to control narcolepsy and sedatives or hypnotics (drugs that induce sleep) to control insomnia. It should be remembered, however, that it is unwise to take hypnotics for prolonged periods. Most of these drugs lose their effectiveness when used excessively and they may make the person psychologically and physically dependent on them. Withdrawal of most of these drugs may cause the individual to react by having more than usual amounts of REM sleep; this leads to vivid dreams, which then make the individual even more reluctant to stop taking hypnotics, creating a vicious circle. Because of this, most doctors have become more selective in prescribing sleep pills.
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THE BRITISH PEOPLE
From: nemo seas |
Created: Feb 2 2006, 01:36 pm
It is advisable, if you study the language of people, to learn something about them. The people of the Middle East, and most of those in the continent, speak of the English and mean practically all the inhabitants of the British Isles. This is perhaps due to the fact that the English were once the ruling race of the British Isles. However, there are those in England who say, half meaningly, half jokingly, that the real rules are the Scots.
The inhabitants of the British Isles are made up of the English, the Welsh, the Scots, and the Irish (not to mention the channel Islanders who seem to be a mixture of English, French and Spanish). The English occupy the main part of the largest island to the south –east; the Welsh live in the west; the island of their own. The Irish are divided into the Ulster people in the north, who remain a part of Great British, and the people of Eire, who gained their independence after a very long and bitter struggle.
To the non-British it seems strange that the inhabitants of the British Isles are not as united as the name United Kingdom suggests. However, even in Wales and Scotland there are strong nationalist movements which, although not to be taken seriously, yet can be the cause of bitter public discussions. The Welsh nationalists very much resent the union with the English, and do everything in their power to keep up the cultural and social differences between them. If you visit Wales, you may find many people there who talk nothing but their own old language. The word "Welsh" meant originally "foreigner," and it was the English who gave the country the name of Wales. The Anglo-Saxons when they came to the island drove the original inhabitants farther and farther west. Having settled themselves comfortably in England, they began to think of the original people whom they drove away as Welsh or foreigners, which perhaps was a little too much! However, the name stuck to them , so the west became Wales. But until this day, some of the Welsh nationalists call themselves "cymru", which is their original name, and some of them are known as the Druids, who were the high-caste priests of the old Welsh religion.
The Welsh are very good singers. There is a yearly festival called the "Eisteddfod" (pronounced Estethfod), to which thousands of inhabitants of the British Isles flock, and which is not held in the same place twice. It is a public competition in singing, recitation and poetry which lasts for days, and might remind an Arab of the ancient Souq Oqaz, where the poets of the various tribes of Arabia met and recited their poems.
Mining is the basic industry of Wales. This accounts for the fact that some of the Welsh valleys look black and desolate. However, the countryside in North Wales and the coast towns generally is beautiful. During the summer months, Wales becomes popular with the English holidaymakers.
The Welsh people are great mystics. They are small in body with very dark hair and faces a little like the Armenians. If you meet someone from the British Isles called Jones or Williams or Evans or Davies, the chances are that he is Welsh. The national emblem of Wales is the leek-not a very romantic emblem, but still on St.David's day (March 1st) ‎‎, their national day, you see thousands of merry-making Welshmen going about each with a leek in his buttonhole!
Some of the Scots also have strong national feelings and aspirations, and a language of their own called Gaelic. They are a proud people, and recent being called English, even those who do not wish to separate from England. The Scots are Highlanders and Lowlanders, divided into clans. In a way, they are like the Bedouin Arabs. They call themselves Clan McDonald, Clan McKenzie, Clan McTavish and so on, meaning the children of the tribe of Donald, kenzie, Tavish, etc., just as the Bedouins do. Their native dress is the "kilt," which is a garment often brightly colored. The highlanders dance beautifully and wildly to the haunting music of the bagpipe at the Highland Games or other national festivals. The Scottish people are an object of humour to the other Britishers and to themselves. The jokes are mostly about their supposed meanness, and the Scots themselves make the best of these jokes. To a stranger, perhaps, the Scottish people are the best looking of the inhabitants of the British Isles. A good number of them have red hair and blue eyes. They are taller, o the whole, than the Welsh or Irish. Many consider them the most interesting of the inhabitants of the British Isles. They are certainly admired by other Britishers.
Scotland has produced first-class business managers, philosophers, theologists, engineers and, finally yet importantly, the poet Burns. Besides the whisky industry in various parts in Scotland, there is shipbuilding on the Clyde; and the wool industry in the district of the River Tweed is world famous.
If you meet someone called Mac anything, or called Murray, Campbell, Stuart, or Hamilton, you may be sure he originally came from Scotland. The national heroes of Scotland are Wallace, Bruce, and Rob Roy and the emblem of the Scots is the thistle. Their National Day is St. Andrew's Day, which falls on November 30th.
There are many more Irish people outside Ireland than there are in it. The reason for their extensive emigration is not only the persecution they suffered but that their island is a small one and they have not the raw material for major industries. They are mainly farmers, and produce fine linen, hand-woven tweed, good whisky, and excellent beer.
The Irish have supplied the British Army with such famous generals as Kitchener and Montgomery. As there are jokes about meanness of the Scots, so there are jokes about the supposed love of fighting of the Irish. There is the one about the Irishman who saw two people quarreling in the street, and who approached them saying, "Please, is this a public or a private fight? Because if it is a public one, I should like to join in!"
The typical Irish people have dark hair and blue eyes, and are famous for the beauty of their skin. They are sentimental, fiery and the majority of them are Roman Catholics. Some of the best writers of English have been of that nation; for example, Swift, George Bernard Show, and the poet Yeats-not to mention James Joyce.
The emblem of Ireland is the shamrock, and the National Day is March 17th. On this occasion it is not unusual for Irishman allover the world to receive boxes of shamrock from their native land; for the Irish, wherever they are, never lose their feelings for their country.
The English people possess all the virtues necessary for islanders whose lives depend on trading with the rest of the world. They are honest and realistic. "Honesty is the best policy" is not just saying; it is the experience of all trading people, particularly the early Arabs. One cannot trade profitably with others at a distance without trusting and being trusted, without keeping one's word and depending on other people's honor.
The English possess the oldest parliament in the world, and their unwritten constitution is more binding to their rulers than most of the written constitutions are to the rulers of other nations. They love pageantry, and turn sports into a national pastime. Among themselves, they are proud of Hyde Park, where anybody can get on a soapbox and run down religion or the British royal family, while another defends black magic or proves that the worship of cows is sensible. At weekends, there are always crowds of humorous onlookers in Hyde Park, moving from speaker to speaker and booing or cheering as they listen to the strangest beliefs.
The English are a very mixed people, with coloring ranging from extremely fair with blue eyes to very dark with brown eyes. The patron saint of England is St.George, whose National Day is April 23rd, and the emblem of the country is the rose.
England is a highly industrialized country. The main industries are steel, coal, wool, and textiles. Although the pottery industry is not a very large one, the English produce some of the best china in the world. Owing to the number of the population compared with the size of the country, a great deal of basic food, such as wheat, butter, meat, etc., is imported, but, on the other hand, a great deal of the fruit eaten by the people is grown in the country.
It is one of the characteristics of the English that they are very devoted to their homes, and especially to their gardens. The gardens of even the poorest cottager are often crowded with flowers, and villages are pleasant and restful enough for anyone to spend a holiday there.
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WOULD THEY EVER LEARN?!
From: nemo seas |
Created: Feb 2 2006, 12:38 pm
Most of people who appear most often and most gloriously on the history book are great conquerors, generals, and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched a seaworthy book or calculated the length of the year or manured a field, but we know all about the killers and destroyers. People think a great deal of them, so much so that on all the highest pillars in the great cities we find the figure of a conqueror or a soldier. Most people think that the greatest countries are those that have beaten the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized.
Animals fight, so do savages, hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. People fight to settle quarrels. Civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side and so is considered the winner. Because it has won, it has been in the right. So war means saying that might is right.
It is true that people do not kill and fight each other in the streets. We have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life. However, nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave like savages.
Some peoples are also suppressed and oppression definitely leads them to rebel and destroy what is around them. International public opinion has woken up recently to protect human rights and to show how human rights are being violated all over the world. Countries try to face the phenomenon of terrorism, solve international problems and abolish the shadow of war, but they forgot that social justice and effective communication is the basic condition for peace and stability.
All disputes and confrontation between nations must be settled, either by blows, or by words, either by compulsion, or by persuasion, either by violence, or by peaceful discussion. The effect of modern tyranny and modern war are probably worse, and certainly more horrifying, than those of any past age; yet the number and intensity of our disputes do not seem to have decreased. The exchange of force seems not only unpleasant, but also ineffective as a method of solving problems. The exchange of argument is our only possible substitute; and since our arguments are necessarily expressed in language, the importance of the study of communication is enormous. The necessity of "understanding our neighbors inevitably" entails understanding what our neighbors say and mean, and having the mental equipment necessary for assessing the value of their views.
We live in a world where most nations, through ignorance as well as through innate hostility, are both unable and unwilling to understand each other. They use words as slogans stopping but early to understand or evaluate their meaning and truth. It is evident, for example that the words "democracy" and "freedom" mean different things to the western world and to the eastern one; yet neither side ever discuss these ideals on a linguistic basis. On such fundamental issues, communication is at its worst where it is most needed. When such conditions prevail, it becomes the duty of all those who desire peace and co-operation amongst the nations to acquire the ability to handle and understand language properly.
The European countries have turned their dream of unity into a reality when they put an end to cold wars, confrontations and disputes when they realized that war means saying that might is right was not definitely true. They decided to settle their disputes through discussions and peaceful means.
The world is a place where many conflicts exist. These conflicts lead to wars which may not be on a wide scale but which use up the energy and economy of the place. We find wars everywhere in Africa, in Asia, in Europe and in Latin America. What is surprising is that the people who are fighting are the poorest in our world.
Wars actually lead to destruction leaving millions of widows and orphans it also ruins the country's economy. Therefore, the fighting countries are of the lowest economic levels. Rich countries, which provide them with weapons, are the winners.
It is high time people enjoyed peace. We have had enough of the armed conflicts and the engagements of hostilities. We look forward to solving problems among peoples and nations through negotiations and discussions as civilized people. All disputes should be settled in peaceful ways. The wise of the world should rise and call for peace forgiving and forgetting all previous disputes to start anew era with all the principles of the United Nations Organization put to action.
Finally, we should do our best to solve the problem of war all over the world. If we fail, our new discoveries will turn into weapons of destruction, and then we just wait for our end and the extermination of the humanity.
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