Author: Best of Blurtit

Although most people take the existence of categories such as “children” and “teenagers” for granted, the entire notion of childhood is a relatively new phenomenon.

Prior to the 18th century, children were widely seen in European societies as “little adults.” Rather than being dressed in specially tailored children’s clothing, young adults wore the same clothes as their seniors, only in smaller sizes.

Childhood, however, became a category in the late 18th century and early 19th century, when professionals realized that children represented a new market for a number of services, such as schools, playgrounds, toys and clothing.

In 18th and 19th century Europe, there was a prevalent belief among society’s upper crust that working-class parents did not care for their children as much as middle and upper class parents did. Middle-class parents often believed that they valued children the most and treated them best. A frequently recited refrain among middle-class parents when referring to children was to talk of the “economically useless, emotionally priceless child.”

In the early 19th century, children ceased to be “little adults,” and thus the least important members of a household who would be expected to perform child labour, and instead became the recipients of parental love.

The first historical studies of childhood and the changing perception of parents and children were produced in the early 1970s.

People have worked out some ways to stop volcanoes erupting.

In 1919 Americans exploded dynamite in a Mexican volcano and released the pressure that was building in it. In 1943, American planes dropped two bombs in the crater of the volcano at Vesuvius in Italy and stopped it in its tracks.

Most volcanoes are, however, unstoppable. An eruption can last from a few seconds to a year, even centuries. Stromboli in Italy has erupted every few minutes over the last 2,000 years.

Some volcanoes erupt all the time. Most volcanoes erupt for three to four weeks and then rest. An eruption will stop naturally as soon as there is no more molten rock, when there is not enough gases in the magma, or when the chimney is plugged with cooled lava.

Human intervention is costly and is usually only attempted when many human lives would be lost if nothing was done.

Johnny Cash was an infamous country rock singer from the USA. He became ill in 1997, when he was diagnosed with the degenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome, (a rare, progressively degenerative disease of the autonomic nervous system.)

This diagnosis however was later altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes (affecting mostly the internal organs such as the bladder muscles.) Cash’s illness forced him to give up his touring circuit.

He was hospitalized in 1998 with severe pneumonia. He died on 12 September 2003 just three days after being discharged from Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, following a bout of pancreatitis.

Cash was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Two years before his death, in 2001, he received the National Medal of the Arts for artistic excellence.

On this day April 14th:

Five days after Robert E Lee surrendered the Confederate forces to the Union, John Wilkes Booth shot and killed Abraham Lincoln, and went with his wife to Ford’s Theatre, to see a famous play called Our American Cousin.  Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated.  Booth believed he was avenging the North’s tyranny of the South.

On this day 1975, Operation Babylift occurred, lifting thousands of Vietnamese babies (orphans) to the USA.  On April 4th, hundreds had died when the plane carrying them crashed.  Wonder why they took all those babies… What do US service men do when they’re not involved in incidents of friendly fire?

On this day in 1988, Russian Soviet forces finally admitted defeated and pulled out of Afghanistan.

On this day in 2003, Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein fell to US forces, without much resistance at all.

Cay is a low lying island composed mainly of sand and corals. Very often, the Caribbean islands are synonymous with the word “cay.”

The Florida Keys, an assortment of coral islands and limestone reefs forming the southern edge of Florida and the Great Barrier Reef (the largest coral reef in the world) are also termed as “cays.”

The cays are formed over a period of time from the action of tidal waves, wind and the deposit of sea birds. The weather conditions influence the arrangement of cays to a great extent. If there is heavy tidal action, then it would result in the addition of a lot of debris and subsequent cays.

However, anything adverse like a hurricane can totally eradicate a cay. Incidentally Cay was also the name of a female rockband from London which had a short span of popularity from 1998 to 2001.

On one hand, modern technology has enabled people to live in cleaner, less disease-ridden environments, freed up time for many people; enabling children to spend their time learning, and relieving the pressure on families to be financially responsible for their sick and disabled. It has made a standard education available to all, and through the welfare state eliminated a great deal of extreme poverty, and brought advanced healthcare to save and prolong millions of lives.

However, the question there is, how much of this is really as good as it looks?
(If you’re in a hurry or don’t fancy a long read, skip to the last section now.)

Our Cleaner Environment

Our cleaner environment exposes our children to disease to a lesser degree as they are growing up, which combined with our advanced healthcare means the child mortality rate is a great deal lower. However, this also means children do not develop natural resistance to disease in the same way they previously would have done, providing they survived childhood. Some people also argue the lack of challenges to a child’s developing immune system may also be responsible for many allergies. Whether this is true or not… We will probably find out as time goes on. The other thing modern medicine and cleanliness does, is mess with natural selection. This is a sad thing to have to say, as no one wants a child to die, but as the children being saved by modern medicine would not have survived previously, their vulnerabilities would not have been passed on. Saving children’s lives is a wonderful thing for parents, but for the human race as a whole, this may not be such a good thing. However, time will tell, and nature will generally take care of itself.
Yes, this aspect of modern living has probably made us weaker. This is a trade off for our quality of life.

The Welfare State

Lack of pressure on families to care for their sick, disabled and elderly financially (and practically, due to the acceptable nature of abandonment in care homes etc.) has caused a culture where people who are no longer productive in societies are deposited and put into a separate category where they are no longer in control of any aspect of their own lives, and no longer respected as human beings. This is a psychological strain on both these people and their families, and therefore a potential hazard to health.

Modern Medicine

Modern medicine saves lives, cures and prevents illness to enable people to gain back full and productive lives. However, it also grasps at prolonging life as long as possible, often at the cost of quality of life. The financial aspects of drug companies in many countries also contribute to an approach often no closer to scientific fact-based medicine than that of a witch doctor. Segments of the population are marked out as mentally ill (e.g. Creative/right-brained types diagnosed as ADD/ADHD in the USA,) or even physically ill (e.g. Podiatrists recommending further support to people whose problems caused by a lifetime of unnatural gait (shoe wearing) and who would often be cured by taking their shoes *off*.) Modern medicine does a great deal to improve life in the right hands, providing its practitioners are not misguided, however it also does a great deal of harm when used to further profit-orientated or practical/political agendas, thereby contributing to ill-health.

Modern Lifestyle – Excesses and Sedentary Activity Levels

The modern lifestyle encourages sedentary behaviour, not only through bad habits, but directly through its culture and practicality. Long working hours at desk jobs and lack of natural movement mean most people not only become “unfit” but see a state of real natural human fitness as exceptional. People are designed to have a lot more fitness, flexibility, and natural control and use of their bodies than the average person would dream of. Gyms are a poor substitute for the rigours of natural movement, and the result is a population struggling to keep themselves in healthy condition.
Not only pizza and burgers are a hazard to health, but most fine dining, if indulged in regularly does exactly the same thing. (despite the more natural content, these meals are still high in fat and calories.) Heart disease, obesity, diabetes, are all results of our lifestyle, but even without these, many people who would consider themselves healthy, are in fact in very poor condition simply due to their lack of appropriate movement.
Alcohol on the other hand, has been around for much longer than modern technology.
Modern society supports our wants, but is negligent towards our needs.

Standardised Availability of Education

Due to the demands of modern society’s structure, education needs to be widespread to produce the necessary number of specialists to fill the required jobs. This education is therefore necessary and beneficial to society, and to maintaining the standard of living supported by modern society. However, to make this work, the school system is more of a socialization process than an education process, which channels people into appropriate fields of speciality and strongly enforces conformity in individuals. Although there are rewards; prestige, increased access to material rewards, for those who do well at this, this cog-in-wheel mentality fails to treat students as individuals or recognise individual needs and differences, and can put heavy demands on students’ personal welfare. Psychological problems are widespread.
University students are also culturally subjected to extremes of an unhealthy lifestyle as they are introduced to this by their peers, risking long-term health problems including liver damage and alcoholism. Education as we manage it is beneficial to society, and therefore to supporting the individual’s modern living standard, but detrimental to the personal development of the individual.

Anti-work attitudes towards children have protected them from exploitation and dangerous environments, however, this has also meant a strong work ethic and sense of independence and capability has not been forged in the current generation of many westernised countries. People often have little self-discipline and remain innocent and childlike later in life. The individual has an easy and protected life, however, this naivety could prove potentially damaging to the development of society as a whole.

Psychological problems.

Modern society has created both a high-pressure living environment and a value system which appears to be prone to resulting mental illness. People, as thinking, feeling beings have probably always experienced psychological distress in some shape or form. However, in addition to the usual experiences of violence and bereavement, modern society adds values which define worth in terms such as thinness for example, causing anorexia, and pressures to conform leading to the invention of psychiatric disorders. (bear in mind, psychiatric disorders are not simple cut and dry facts like a broken leg, but are classifications invented by professionals in an attempt to treat psychologically distressed individuals.) Many aspects of modern society are potentially damaging psychologically.

To wrap things up…

In general, our society has developed to favour protection over proficiency or practicality, and wants over needs. Diseases wiped out by modern living and technology have been replaced in prevalence by those often caused and contributed to by it. In a practical sense, people are no more disease prone, because modern technology and living standards protect them from it, though less well-trained immune systems may well mean that in actual terms, people are more disease-prone, and therefore weaker. Our value systems often mean people are self-conscious and psychologically vulnerable.

So I can quite clearly come down on the side of Yes; Modern Living has made the people weak, unhealthy and disease-prone. So what can/do we do about it? Should we all go back to living without modern society? This isn’t of course, entirely feasible; the earth is massively overpopulated and the society, (and therefore the lifestyle) we have today, is a reaction to solve this overpopulation problem; a society which has developed to function living as we do today. There are clear advantages to modern living, and clear disadvantages. We need to question how we can evaluate the positives and negatives whilst being open enough to restructure not only our lifestyle and policies, but even our morals, objectives, and values, to emphasise and capitalise on the positives whilst eliminating as many of the negatives as possible. After all, what are we kidding ourselves that we as a race are trying to achieve, if not the best possible for ourselves?

When the sun is about to set, very low down the sky, the light that is coming from the sky must travel a further distance throughout the whole atmosphere before it gets to you and  reach your eyes. Along the way, more of the light is scattered and dispersed in all directions than ever before. Thus, when less of the light reaches you, the sun shines less brightly compared to other time in the day. That’s why you can see the sky changing from bright blue to dark red, as more of the blue and green wavelengths (colors) are scattered everywhere, so only red wavelengths, the longer one are able to reach in a straight line towards you in a direct beam, passing through the air molecules in the atmosphere without getting reflected in any way.

On this day April 8th:

On this day in 1973, master artist Pablo Picasso died at his chateau, near Canne in France.

On this day in 1995, after twelve years on death row, Richard Ingram, the British man on death row, he was electrocuted for the murder he committed against J.C Sawyer in 1983.

On this day in 1904, Britain and France signed the entente cordiale, resolving disputes about areas of Northern Africa and establishing diplomacy between the two nations.

On this day in 1986, Clint Eastwood was elected Mayor of Carmel, California, but only served for two years.

On this day in 1974, Hank Aaron, the American baseball star slugged his way to 715 homeruns, beating the Babe Ruth’s total, despite receiving daily death threats to leave the record alone. Nevertheless, Aaron finished his career with an amazing 756 homeruns.

On this day in 1997, against a flood of corruption, veteran newsman Martin Bell decided to stand for Neil Hamilton’s constituency.

“Evolution” within a species has always been observed and understood; even before Darwin!  That is, that a species will ADAPT in appearance etc according to climate, location, variation in diet etc.  So evolution in the sense of “adaptation to circumstances within a species” is pretty well universally accepted, even amongst creationists and flat-earthers (if any flat-earthers still exist).

However, evolution from one species into another has never been observed, is certainly not happening now and there is no fossil evidence whatever showing that this has ever happened.  In other words, every single link is missing.  And this is after more than 100 years of digging up a massive amount of fossil evidence.

Much of the early observation has proved to be fallacious.  For example, Darwin thought he had observed finches in the process of evolving because there was clearly a marked change of shape in their beaks over several generations.  Continued observation of the same finches have shown that their beaks change in shape according to whether their habitat is in drought or plenteous rainfall.  In other words, the beak shape changes back and forth according to variations in their climate.  At least Darwin was sincere in what he thought he was observing.  Another example are the drawings by Haeckel, which still appear in biology text books, which show how similar developing foetuses of chickens, frogs, fish, humans and various other mammals are supposed to be in the early days of gestation.  These have since been showed to be totally untrue.  In other words, Haeckel forged them.  Yet they still appear in text books.

Evolution scientists have worked quite a lot with fruit flies, which can go through many generations in a short period of time.  However many odd traits have been bred into these unfortunate experimental insects, they still remain stubbornly and irredeemably fruit flies!!

Mendel, the great geneticist, was a contemporary of Darwin, and was always very opposed to the theory of evolution.  In fact, genetics, a branch of science which is backed up by a great deal of sound hard evidence, is totally at odds with the theory of evolution.  That is, you have to choose between one or the other.  You cannot have both, despite what some evolutionary scientists who try and bend genetics into evolutionary theory say!

Things have got so ridiculous now that evolutionary theorists are publishing pure fantasy as scientific research.  For example, it is common to set up computer programs to generate imaginary worlds which might “evolve” on totally imaginary planets with totally imaginary climates and present this as “scientfic research” on television!!  This might not be so far-fetched if there was any evidence at all that evolution had ever happened on this planet.  But, as there isn’t, it is totally bonkers!  Not only that, it as far removed from true scientific method as Alice in Wonderland!

The trouble is that, if everything is not here by chance and the universe is here by design, that presupposes a designer, therefore a creator and hence ….. God!!!  This “Darwinian age”, to coin a phrase, has been probably the only one in the entire history of the world to fail to recognise, or delibeately ignore, the evidence of design within the universe.  The Greek philosophers recognised it and, though they did not recognise the originator of that design as a personal God, they referred to him/it, however they understood that originator to be, as the “Logos”.  Evolution is the gospel of the atheist, because, if it were true, it could be understood as removing the need for a creator.  Believing in it is more of a leap of blind faith than the faiths held by believers of any religion at all because all religions in some shape or form incorporate into their belief systems the evidence of design which we all see in the world around us.  Speaking as a christian, I also have the evidence of history, the fulfilment of prophecies, the miracles which I have seen happen in answer to prayer, let alone the many which are recorded in the Bible and all down the ages since, to back up my faith.  I can see “evolution” for what it is; the last redoubt of the person who desperately wants to avoid facing his Creator.

Easter is a Christian celebration – the most important holiday of the Christian year which celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ after his death by crucifixion. Easter falls on a Sunday, because of which it is also referred to as the Sunday of Resurrection or the Resurrection Day. Easter is actually a feast of eight days, which is called the Octave of Easter.

The Easter Season, also known as the Eastertide, begins on the Easter Sunday and continues until Pentecost in the Christian liturgical calendar, thereby covering a total of seven weeks. Some denominations like the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Churches initially included the next two weeks as part of the Eastertide as well.

While the reason of celebration is the Resurrection of Christ, one of the most looked forward practices of this occasion, particularly by children, is the exchange of Easter eggs!

The only English team that has ever beaten Bayern Munich at the Olympic Stadium is Norwich City.

The game finished 1-2 to Norwich City with goals from Goss and Bowen for Norwich City. A goal from Nerlinger for Bayern Munich was a consolation for the German side.

Norwich City are still yet to this day the only English team to win at the Olympic Stadium after that impressive UEFA Cup night.

Bayern Munich team:
Aumann
Jorginho
Ziege (Sternkopf 60)
Kreuzer
Helmer
Nerlinger
Wouters
Witeczek
Valencia
Matthaus
Scholl (Labbadia 64).

Norwich City team:
Gunn
Culverhouse
Bowen
Butterworth
Prior
Newman
Robins (Sutch 26)
Crook
Sutton
Fox
Goss.

Norwich City then went on to draw the second leg 1-1 at Carrow Road to produce an historic win in their history.

Norwich City then went on to face Inter Milan in the next round of the Uefa Cup – loosing 1-0 at home and 1-0 away.

Broadly categorizing, the human skeleton provides the functions of support, protection, movement and muscle attachment to the body.

Support: A skeletal support system allows rapid movement, suspends the vital organs, prevents them from crushing each other and maintains the shape of the body, despite vigorous muscle activity.

Protection: Certain delicate and important organs of the body are protected by a casing of bone. The brain in enclosed in the skull, the spinal cord is surrounded by the vertebral column and the heart and lungs are protected by the rib cage. The skeleton protects the organs from distortion and injury that may result from pressure and/or impact. In addition to providing protection of vital organs, the ribcage also takes part in the breathing mechanism.

Movement: In order to produce movement, many bone of the skeleton perform the function of levers. When muscles pull of these levers like bones, movement is produced. The bending of arms is a common example of skeletal movement. The skeleton requires a system of joints and muscles in order to move.

Muscle Attachment: For effective movement to take place, it is important that muscles are securely attached to the skeleton. One end of the muscle must be attached to the part of the skeleton to be moved, while the other must be attached to the part to be held stationary.

I’m nearing my 45th birthday, and people ask me all the time how I stay slim without any exercise program or special diet plan.  It’s really very easy, and you have heard it before many times, I’m sure.  It’s a lifestyle change…whatever you do to lose the weight, you have to be willing to continue for life…that’s how the weight stays off and it’s no longer a diet…it’s just a way of life.  Btw, I eat whatever I want.  It’s all about portion control.  And the whole thing is very simple:  I call it the three W’s.  Water, Walking, Waste.

Water…drink as much as you like.  Make it your primary beverage.  It’s filling, refreshing and has zero calories.  I still enjoy other beverages, have coffee every morning and iced tea (with sugar) throughout the day when I need a change.  I even enjoy an occasional soda (again, with sugar).  Artificial sweeteners are not healthy; in fact, recent studies have shown they are downright dangerous to your health.

Walking…try to walk everywhere you possibly can instead of driving or taking public transportation.  If possible, walk to and from work, or at least one way, to or from.  I walk somewhere once a day, nearly every day.  It’s the only form of “exercise” I engage in, other than housework, yard work and sex.  

Waste…the best way not to waste food is not to “clean your plate”, but to put less on it to start.  I eat whatever I desire, just smaller portions.  My great-grandmother lived to be 93, was never ill, never hospitalized, never even had a headache.  Her motto:  “Everything in moderation.”  I make sure to eat a balance of fruits, vegetables, grains, etc., but I also enjoy dessert.  Often times fruit is dessert.  Use your imagination and moderation and that ten pounds will be gone in no time!

Any day of the week you can find people talking about the weather. Temperature, humidity, rain or sun, it’s one of our favourite topics of conversation. Sometimes though, the weather does a little more than make plants grow and give us something to talk about with our fellows.  Sometimes it does something very unexpected.

Spain:  

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Megacryometeors

^{This is one ice cube that won’t fit in your cocktail glass}

An aerial assault began to fall on the land of Spain in January 2000 and continued for more than two weeks. The attackers?  Basketball sized chunks of ice weighing up to 6 lbs that rained down out of a clear blue sky, wreaking havoc over the southern Spanish countryside.

Theories abounded as to what had caused these icy bombs, from airplane lavatory based projectiles to aliens, and though some theories have been disproved, no one is sure what causes these massive chunks of ice to form and no one has a clue how they seem to appear without cloud cover or any other weather pattern normally associated with rain or hail. Your average hailstone can be lifted by a powerful updraft, keeping it aloft long enough to form into an ice pellet that eventually grows too heavy for the wind to to keep aloft and finally falls to the ground, a victim of the laws of gravity.  Though these megacryometeors share the basic appearance and chemical make up of an ordinary hailstone, their massive size defies scientific explanations for how something bigger than a bowling ball is staying airborne. How much bigger than an average hailstone are they?
Brazil had a single megacryometeor fall out of a bright, sunny sky that tipped the scales at 440 lbs.  

Tokyo Japan:

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Fire Whirl

^{This nasty tornado is not taking any one to the land of Oz}

What’s worse than a tornado?  How about a tornado made up of fire? Fire Whirls are a rare occurrence, forming when climatic conditions are perfectly balanced to cause a burning fire to create a nightmare inducing vortex.  These spinning whirls of fiery doom range in size from less than 3 meters to more than 1000 meters across, and can last only a few moments or twenty, depending on their power and the conditions that power them.

Though they are seen around wildfires and other large conflagrations, the worst Fire Whirl recorded was part of the aftermath of the Great Kantō earthquake in Japan in 1923. Tokyo was decimated by a firestorm, and at the heart of that storm was a fire whirl that killed 38,000 people in fifteen terrible minutes.

Lajamanu, Northern Territory, Australia:

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Raining Fish

^{One fish, two fish, red fish..splattered fish}

In February 2010, much of Australia was experiencing heavy rains, but in Lajamanu the rain was a little different; instead of water, fish were falling out of the sky. Eye witnesses reported that hundreds of fish tumbled out of the sky, dotting the landscape with floundering fish wondering where their water went. The fish were identified as Spangled Perch, common to many fresh water lakes in Australia.  The thing is, Lajamanu is no where near a lake or any other body of water. The inland town sits on the outskirts of the Tanami Desert, hundreds of kilometres from any lake.

This is not the first time the Australian town has been hit by perch precipitation either.  In both 2004 and 1974 there are records of fish coming down from the heavens. Though weather conditions were ripe for a tornado at the time of the fishy free fall, meteorologists state that there were no reports of any tornado or waterspouts that could explain the phenomenon.

Kerala, India:

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Multicoloured Rain

_{But where’s the Purple Rain?}

We all know that rain will sometimes lead to rainbows; multihued light shows that arc through the sky.  But sometimes rain itself can be rainbow hued, causing no end of consternation and a great deal of mess, as well as mutterings about rains of blood and the end of the world.

In July of 2001 it rained in Kerala, a common occurrence for this time of year. What was different though, was this rain was red, and in some cases yellow, black and even green. Over the next few weeks outbreaks of technicolour precipitation came in from all around the region, leaving behind pink and yellow stains and a lot of questions.

First thought to be tainted by the dust of a meteor that had exploded far above Earth’s atmosphere, it was later realized that the rains contents were entirely terrestrial, and the items first thought to be star dust resembled spores. Eventually it was determined that the rain had been coloured by algae spores that had bloomed and become airborne, where they had contaminated the rainfall.

London, England:  

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Pea Soup Fog

^{Pea soup Fog – the other silent killer}

During the Industrial Revolution the country of England found itself with a unique weather condition that has made its way into history. Pea Soup Fogs; so named for their disturbing pea yellow colour and thick consistency were common in this era, especially in the city of London.

At the time the fogs were considered to be an inconvenience, limiting visibility and allowing the criminal element to grow more brazen as their acts and subsequent escapes were hidden by the thick mists that could last for days. The legend of Jack the Ripper grew during the times these fogs were common, and they are an iconic element of many descriptions and films depicting London.  What no one realized for many years was that the greatest danger was not in what the fog was hiding, but what is was composed of.  The coal dust and pollutants that caused the fogs to form were carried about the city in a breathable chemical cocktail that hung, suspended for days,  poisoning every man, woman and child who wandered through it.

Respiratory ailments claimed large numbers of the population, and in 1952 the weather in London conspired to brew up a deadly fog that lasted for four days before dispersing.  Cold air, a lack of wind and the presence of an anticyclone all combined, collecting the airborne pollutants from coal fires and other chemicals into what is called the Great Smog. By the time it was gone, over 12,000 people had been killed by its toxic touch and 100,000 were ill.

Ishikawa Prefecture,Japan:

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Raining Tadpoles

^{_{Imagine this pelting down on your umbrella…}}

Fish are not the only thing falling out of the clear blue sky these days. In Ishikawa Japan, reports of tadpoles falling out of the sky started coming in in June of 2009. One man came out to his car to discover that more than 100 dead tadpoles had appeared, splattering themselves over the windshield of his and other cars in a parking lot. Showers of polliwogs were reported all over the Prefecture over a 48 hour period, baffling residents and scientists alike.  

Two theories have been brought forward, the most accepted one being that the rain of tadpoles was being caused by waterspouts and tornados, sucking the unfortunate creatures far up into the air and then leaving them to the perils of gravity. No such weather patterns have been reported however, making many question this line of thinking.  Another theory is that birds have been scooping up mouthfuls of tadpoles, only to spit them out later, while they are in flight. A researcher at the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology dismissed this theory, stating “Crows eat tadpoles but if these were spat out (by the birds), a wider area should have been covered.”  Bad enough to have your car covered in polliwog parts, I hope for the sake of the residents that the tadpoles weren’t spat up by a bird before hitting the ground. That’s just adding insult to injury.

Eastern Canada/USA:

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Ice Storms

^{And you thought black ice was bad…}

Ice Storms are a strange phenomenon that occurs when warm air layers itself over cold air, and the ground is at freezing temperatures or close to it. When the raindrops hit the surface they are super cooled and freeze almost instantly, creating a beautiful and terribly destructive shell of ice around everything it touches.

In 1998 the weather was perfectly set up for ice storms, and Mother Nature complied, pounding a small area of the United States and Canada with a series of storms that resulted in over 5 billion dollars in damages, 25 dead and the near destruction of the area’s entire electrical grid.

The ice accumulations were so think that a single twig could be coated in as much as two inches of ice, painting the area in a glittering diamond coat that sparked like a Hollywood starlet on her first trip up the red carpet.  It also meant that the weight of all this ice was enough to collapse electrical pylons, snap power lines, trees and buildings. When the ice finally melted, it set off a series of floods that cost millions more in damages to those living downriver from the melt off.

Fiberglass or glassfibre is material made from extremely fine fibers of glass. It is used as a reinforcing agent for many polymer products; the resulting composite material, properly known as fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) or glass-reinforced plastic (GRP), is called “fiberglass” in popular usage.

Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of fiberglass was only made possible with the advent of finer machine-tooling. In 1893, Edward Drummond Libbey exhibited a dress at the World’s Columbian Exposition incorporating glass fibers with the diameter and texture of silk fibers. What is commonly known as “fiberglass” today, however, was invented in 1938 by Russell Games Slayter of Owens-Corning as a material to be used as insulation. It is marketed under the trade name Fiberglas, which has become a genericized trademark.

It is thought that writing was invented about 5,000 years ago by the Sumerian people of Mesopotamia (part of Iraq in today’s world).  Writing was called cuneiform which translates as ‘wedge shaped’ because writing was done by pressing a reed into soft clay tablets to make wedge shaped marks.  Cuneiform started off as pictures of objects or pictograms.

Over time, these pictograms were simplified to make them easier to ‘write’ and letters as we know them developed from this.  The Greeks are widely credited with having invented the first alphabetic script, around 100 years BC.

The Chinese probably invented writing using a brush and ink 1500 years before the birth of Christ.  At a similar time, the Egyptians started to use hieroglyphs and  papyrus, a paper made from the stems of the papyrus plant.  

Later, papyrus was replaced with parchment made from animal skins, but the Chinese first started using paper from wood pulp in the first Century AD.

Easter is celebrated around the world for many religious and commercial reasons, traditionally falling on a Sunday from March 22nd to April 25th.

It is primarily the celebration of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Christian tradition, and is broken up into Good Friday (the Crucifixion), and Easter Sunday (the Resurrection). It therefore symbolically represents the most important event in the Christian calendar, and forms part of a longer Easter festival that includes Lent, as well as Jesus’ life immediately before the Crucifixion.

Alternatively, Easter has become known as a holiday period in the Western world, with bank holidays on the preceding Friday and Monday, as well as the giving of gifts, most notably chocolate Easter Eggs. Some have argued that the real meaning of Easter has been replaced by its commercial dimension, but in any scenario the holiday represents the symbolic rebirth of spring from winter, and a continuing celebration of annual growth and change.

The largest joint in your body is your knee joint. The knee is the lower joint connecting your lower and upper leg and supports nearly the entire weight of the human it belongs to, so it has to be pretty big to cope with various weights and body sizes.

The knee is a complex piece of machinery and actually comprises two separate joints. The femoro-patellar joint, which consists of the patella or knee-cap to you and me, and the sesamoid bone, which sits within the tendon of the thigh muscle.

The joint is lubricated with a fluid which allows the knee to become flexible. In high sports such as wrestling, American football, competitive swimming and hockey, these can cause great stress to the knees and it is not uncommon for most sportsmen or women to tear one or more knee ligaments. Running, especially competitive running, can also cause a great deal of damage to the knee and cause on-going problems if it is not fixed.

Doing this (especially for baby goldfish) is a really tough thing to do. You can usually tell the sex of a goldfish when its about 1 year old.

The female has a larger butt.This is the best way to tell a female from a same sized male.

The female goldfish has a fanned fin and the male has a fin that sticks out.

Males always chase females around the aquarium most of the time. So the chaser is nearly always male, and the chase is female.

When boy goldfish want to mate, they get white spots on their tail. If your goldfish has a spotty tail, it’s definitely a male. If it doesn’t, it’s a girl or a boy who’s just not ready yet.

The male will develop white bumps on their gills and the females stomach area will enlarge as she fills with eggs. Also, the female will have a slightly larger and protruding vent (anal opening). And they will also look lopsided.

The smallest country in the world is the Vatican City, which is a tiny area of just 0.2 sq miles, within the city of Rome in Italy.

The Vatican City, which is also known as the Holy See, is the central spiritual place for Roman Catholics and where the Pope resides.

It is a place steeped in history, with amazing architecture and art work amongst the many buildings. Many people flock to the Vatican to get a glimpse of this intriguing place, which is surrounded by the city of Rome.