Posts tagged "thought"

Can Greece Police pull people over and write tickets on the New York State Parkway?

Greece is a town in NY. But I thought only State Police could pull people over on a State Parkway.

Jurisdiction is determined by geographic boundaries, not the type of roadway. As long as the road runs through their jurisdiction, they can enforce traffic law there. They type of roadway only identifies who is responsible for maintenance, not who can patrol.

Cosmetic Surgery – a World Obsessed With Youth

Aging is a thing we try to avoid in this day and age and the process is almost seen as a crime against our person. Unwillingness to age is nothing new of course, even back in 1500BC it is thought that those wanting to stay youthful would ingest the testicles of tigers, bizarre but no worse than some of the concoctions we take now in an effort to slow down the hands of time.

Many are now turning to surgery, hormone injections and detailed and exacting dietary and fitness regimes in order to stay looking youthful. Injections can include the human growth hormone; the production of which decreases as we get older and for men possibly injections of testosterone which again lessens in production as we age.

It seems people will turn to many solutions to avoid being labelled as “old” or “past it” and this becomes more of an urgency the older we get and as society becomes ever more centred on this area.

From research that was carried out to understand what helps people live to 100 years of age it seems the key is a healthy diet and plenty of exercise both physically and interestingly mentally. This would also suggest that some of the treatments we are undergoing may be doing little to help our quest. Some medication and hormone injections can of course have adverse effects and they can never be a substitute for healthy diet and lifestyle.

Some of the key cosmetic surgery procedures being used to reverse the signs of aging are; facelift surgery, lower eye bag removal and breast augmentation. For many the quest to remain youthful doesn’t start until we begin to see the signs of aging so some reversal procedures may be necessary. It is important to remember that you should compliment any surgical procedure with a healthy lifestyle to keep the results looking good for the long term.

If you are considering cosmetic surgery procedures in the UK such as breast augmentation you should seek an accredited surgeon who is registered with BAPRAS or BAAPS to ensure this plastic surgery runs smoothly.

james wilkinson
http://www.articlesbase.com/plastic-surgeries-articles/cosmetic-surgery-a-world-obsessed-with-youth-681713.html

“Unquenchable Russia”, or Forbidden Themes in Nabokov’s Prose

“…What I feel to be the real modern world is the world the artist creates, his own mirage, which becomes a new mir (“world” in Russian) by the very act of his shedding, as it were, the age he lives in” . Such an answer Nabokov once gave to an interviewer who was interested in his opinion regarding the modern world and contemporary politics. The book which contains this interview as well as many others, is entitled Strong Opinions, and, indeed, Nabokov is well-known not only for his brilliant fiction but for his original, independent and uncompromising views on creativity, art and the place of artist in the world. Whenever interviewed, he avoided discussion of “general ideas” such as social, political and moral issues and asserted that such global concerns lay outside the realm of art: “A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don’t give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth… There can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art . A work of art, for Nabokov, is a world in itself, brought to life by one’s creative imagination. It leads its own independent existence, unrelated to its historical surroundings and realities. In the introduction to his Lectures on Literature Nabokov explains once again: “…The real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The art of writing is a futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction” . In this statement, visions of cosmic grandeur and an obvious reference to the story of Adam and Eve reflect a parallel between creator-artist and creator-God. In one of his interviews Nabokov explicitly brings out this comparison: “A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world” .

Nabokov’s position is, to a degree, a reaction to the situation in Soviet Russia, where demands of the state dominated the needs of a human being, where the individual was suppressed by the collective and details by generalities. He asserts once again the power and independence of personal creativity, the ability of one’s imagination to build worlds of its own, and makes a sharp distinction between a work of fiction and everything outside of it, including the personality of its creator. “Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both truth and art” .

Nabokov insisted on a specific approach to literature from the readers as well. He renounced the usual tendencies of identifying oneself with a book’s characters, searching for clues to the social and political realities of the time the work was written, or trying to form “general ideas” about a book without absorbing all its specific details. Emotional involvement, he pointed out, could also prevent the reader from objective appreciation of the work “…A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading” .

Nabokov avoided formulating his ideas under the famous slogan “art for art’s sake” just as he avoided labels of all kinds, but this well-known phrase can undoubtedly be used to describe his views and attitudes towards literature. In this hierarchy of values, aesthetic concerns dominate all others, and the influence of a great work of art on its reader is limited to a “tingle in the spine”. However, it remains to be seen, to what extent Nabokov’s ideas penetrate his own fiction; whether his novels are entirely a product of his creative imagination or a result of the deep personal experience that saturates them with great intensity.

Nabokov changed countries and languages during his creative life, and it is interesting to analyze whether these changes affected his books. Comparing two of Nabokov’s novels, The Gift, written in Russian mostly in Berlin of the 1930s, and Pale Fire, written in English at a much later date, can provide an insight into these questions.

As Nabokov mentioned in the foreword to The Gift, “the main heroine” of the novel is Russian literature, and the main character is a writer, an emigre author Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, who shares many autobiographical details with Nabokov. Like Nabokov during his post-Cambridge years, Fyodor lives in Berlin of the 1920s, writes poetry and makes a living by giving lessons in English and French. He leads, for the most part, a solitary existence, devoting his time first and foremost to literature. Happy childhood in St. Petersburg, love of butterflies and chess problems, synesthesia, – all this Fyodor has in common with Nabokov. Description of certain episodes mirrors incidents from Nabokov’s own life, depicted much later in his autobiographical book Speak, Memory, – for example, the story of a childhood illness: high fever, obsession with numbers and a huge Faber pencil, given as a gift by the mother.

Perhaps, the most significant trait that Fyodor shares with Nabokov is passionate love of literary language, faith in the power of the written word: “Since there were things he (Fyodor) wanted to express just as naturally as unrestrainedly as the lungs want to expand, hence words suitable for breathing ought to exist” . Fyodor reflects on his youthful interest in rhyme and meter, analyzing the very mechanisms by which words interact and fit together like pieces of a puzzle to form the harmonious whole of a poem. Fyodor shares Nabokov’s dislike of generalities such as social issues or psychiatry. When he briefly considers the possibility of fulfilling his acquaintance, Mme. Chernyshevski’s yet unvoiced request to write about her son, he explains his aversion to the idea as follows: “I would have become enmired involuntarily in a “deep” social-interest novel with a disgusting Freudian reek” .

Most clearly, Fyodor’s (and Nabokov’s) views on literature are expressed in Fyodor’s (imaginary) conversations with Koncheyev – a fellow emigre poet, the only one whose work he admires and whose opinions he considers valuable. When Fyodor and Koncheyev leave a literary gathering and walk together down the street, a unique, brilliant dialogue, filled with allusions to various works of Russian literature, takes place between them. “…There are only two kinds of books: bedside and wastebasket. Either I love a writer fervently, or throw him away entirely” , – declares Fyodor, and the two proceed to discuss what, in their opinion, is the best and the worst in the works by famous Russian writers. Both are utterly uninterested in “general ideas” or the moral significance of the writings they talk about (aspects which always attracted Russian critics and gained new importance in the Soviet period), and all they do is lovingly point out purely artistic findings of this or that writer. They praise Leskov’s Jesus – “the ghostly Galilean, cool and gentle, in a robe the color of ripening plum” or “the gray sheen of Mme. Odintsev’s black silks” in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Speaking of dismissed Dostoyevski, Fyodor notes: “In the Karamazovs, there is somewhere a circular mark left by a wet wine glass on an outdoor table”, – and that, for him, is the only thing “worth saving” . As for several writers known for their beautiful depictions of nature, Fyodor ruthlessly criticizes them for mistakes in their descriptions of natural phenomena: “My father used to find all kinds of howlers in Turgenev’s and Tolstoy’s hunting scenes and descriptions of nature, and as for the wretched Aksakov, let’s not even discuss his disgraceful blunders in this field” . All these statements obviously echo Nabokov’s own approach to literature, with his love of detail, his insistence on accurate knowledge of the natural world and dismissal of any other criteria in judging works of literature.

Nabokov’s belief in the power of deception and invention in creating fiction frequently finds expression in his attempts to mislead the reader, to establish this or that false move in the development of the plot, which, after a few pages, turns out to be an illusion, a figment of the character’s imagination. The whole exchange between Fyodor and Koncheyev proves to be such an illusion: “Whose business is it that actually we parted at the very first corner, and that I have been reciting a fictitious dialogue with myself as supplied by a self-teaching handbook of literary inspiration?” However, the significance of this non-existent conversation in the novel is not limited to expression of opinions on art and display of Nabokov’s mystification devices. It shows the extent of Fyodor’s loneliness, the absence of interlocutors with whom he could share his extensive knowledge of literature and love of language: the degree of detachment from the surrounding world. In his book Speak, Memory Nabokov describes the way native Europeans were perceived by Russian immigrants in Germany or France: “These aborigines were to the mind’s eye as flat and transparent as figures cut out of cellophane, and although we used their gadgets, applauded their clowns, picked their roadside plums and apples, no real communication, of the rich human sort so widespread in our own midst, existed between us and them” . The Gift recreates that atmosphere of cultural and human isolation in which Fyodor has to dwell. Deprived of his own cultural environment, Fyodor feels nothing but resentment towards the German-speaking world he is trapped in. “The Russian conviction that the German is in small numbers vulgar and in large numbers – unbearably vulgar was, he knew, a conviction unworthy of an artist” , – and still he cannot help it, as he directs all his irrational hatred at a German who pushes him in a bus (and who, ironically, turns out to be a Russian).

Like Nabokov, Fyodor is trilingual, but his French and English in his current situation serve a purely utilitarian purpose, whereas Russian remains the language of his soul and his art. Riding a bus to one of his tedious teaching jobs, Fyodor thinks of himself: “…there he is, a special, rare and as yet undescribed and unnamed variant of man, and he is occupied with God knows what, rushing from lesson to lesson, wasting his youth on a boring and empty task, on the mediocre teaching of foreign languages – when he has his own language, out of which he can make anything he likes – a midge, a mammoth, a thousand different clouds” . This is why there are hardly any examples of word play and language switch in The Gift.

On the way to yet another hateful lesson Fyodor becomes completely immersed in the memories of Russia and his past life there, – memories ”swift and senseless, visiting him like an attack of a fatal illness at any hour, in any place” . The warm, sunny vision of the Russian countryside after a short summer rain stands out in such a sharp contrast with the surrounding colorless reality and the upcoming encounter with a hopeless pupil, that Fyodor ends up skipping the lesson and going home to his writings. This is another theme expressed in The Gift with great emotional power – the theme of nostalgia, longing for the lost homeland. Whenever faced with the question about Russia during his interviews, Nabokov gave replies such as “all the Russia I need is always with me” or “exile means to an artist only one thing – the banning of his books” . Sometimes, however, he speaks of Russia quite differently: “In the first decade of our dwindling century, during trips with my family to Western Europe, I imagined, in bedtime reveries, what it would be like to become an exile who longed for a remote, sad and (right epithet coming) unquenchable Russia, under the eucalypti of exotic resorts. Lenin and his police nicely arranged the realization of that fantasy” .

References to Russia in Nabokov’s novels, particularly The Gift, bear a trace of an overwhelming and bitter sense of loss, coming, undoubtedly, from personal experience. Like Nabokov, Fyodor transforms his inner world into art, and his poetry, born out of childhood memories, justifies, as he says, the years spent in exile. But even creative fulfillment in literature cannot fully relieve Fyodor of his nostalgia, which sometimes becomes almost a physical sensation: “For a long time he had wanted to express somehow that it was in his feet that he had the feeling of Russia, that he could touch and recognize all of her with his soles, as a blind man feels with his palms” . Again and again, he imagines an impossible return to his familiar and changed country: “And when will we return to Russia? What idiotic sentimentality, what a rapacious groan must our innocent hope convey to people in Russia. But our nostalgia is not historical – only human- how can one explain this to them?” Immediately following these lines is one of Nabokov’s central thoughts expressed through the words of his character and given a somewhat ironic ending: “It is easier for me, of course, than for another to live outside Russia, because I know for certain that I shall return – first because I took away the keys to her, and secondly because, no matter when, in a hundred, two hundred years, I shall live there in my books – or at least in some researcher’s footnote. There; now you have a historical hope, a literary-historical one…”

In this passage, there are two distinct perspectives on Russia, two different ways of perception – that of an artist and that of a simple human being, and it is the more independent, proud and detached position of an artist that Nabokov prefers to present to the world. He always vigorously protested against being identified with his characters, and, perhaps, it was his way of concealing that part of himself, which contained his own human feelings and dreams, often painful, often helplessly irresolvable. Nevertheless, just like in one of Fyodor’s childhood memories colors leak into his vision of letters and irrevocably affect his perception of language, this private and forbidden world of Nabokov inevitably enters his fiction in various guises and through different characters. Besides the theme of nostalgia, there is another highly personal development of the plot in The Gift, and it is Fyodor’s relationship with his father. Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev is an explorer who is also very absorbed in his occupation and uninterested in the major upheavals that occur in Russia. In 1917, despite the troubled situation in Russia, he departs on one of his expeditions and never returns. It is another loss that haunts Fyodor: even though there is hardly any hope of seeing his father again, he keeps dreaming of his return, imagining that one day he would meet his father on the street, or hear a phone call… In one of the most poignant episodes in the novel, the phone rings, after all, in the middle of the night, and Fyodor rushes to the house of his former landlady along the streets of Berlin which suddenly become transformed into a beautiful, mysterious world somewhat reminiscent of St. Petersburg in a white night. Fyodor enters the room and sees his father. “With a moan and a sob Fyodor stepped toward him, and in the collective sensation of woolen jacket, big hands and the tender prickle of trimmed mustaches there swelled an ecstatically happy, living, enormous, paradisal warmth in which his icy heart melted and dissolved” . And again, almost unbearably this time, the whole scene turns out to be one of Nabokov’s false twists, and Fyodor wakes up from yet another dream to a cold and empty morning.

Nabokov denied a work of art any kind of “truth” aside from artistic one, but the episode with Fyodor’s father radiates with human truth: warmth, longing, vulnerability, the void of shattered hopes… One just has to remember the tragic death of Nabokov’s own father, to understand where all this is coming from.

In The Gift, covers are often transparent, and its hero is presented from multiple angles. He is not just a writer who “treats life as a possibility of fiction”, he is a human being who sees the world through the prism of his own experience, his own joys and sorrows.

The Gift was the last novel Nabokov wrote in Russian. In 1940, he immigrated to the United States and, since then, wrote his major works only in English. The change, as he said, was not easy: “My complete switch from Russian prose to English prose was exceedingly painful – like learning anew to handle things after losing seven or eight fingers in an explosion” . Pale Fire, one of Nabokov’s English novels, was written partially at the end of his stay in America, partially in Switzerland, where Nabokov spent his later years. The novel has important structural and thematic similarities to The Gift. Like The Gift, where a whole separate chapter is devoted to Fyodor’s biography of Chernyshevsky, a book on its own, Pale Fire contains a work of literature within it – a long poem written by an American poet John Shade. The rest of the novel is a commentary, which for the most part has nothing to do with the poem itself. It is an elaborate story of remote Zembla, whose king has been swept off the throne by the revolution and fled the country. Gradually, it becomes clear that Charles Kinbote, Shade’s neighbor and the author of the commentary, is himself the fugitive king. Therefore, as in The Gift, there is a theme of exile and a theme of creativity, though in Pale Fire they take quite a different development.

As Kinbote explains, “the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of “resemblers” . Zemblan language resembles several European languages at the same time. There are obvious traces of Russian in it, and some words are borrowed almost unchanged: for example, there is a picture of bogtyr (bogatyr’ in Russian) in a Zemblan history book, and there are “stone-faced, square-shouldered komizars” (Russian: commissar) maintaining order on Zemblan streets after the revolution. Besides, French and German can be vaguely discerned in other phrases. “Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty)” , – a Zemblan nurse says to Kinbote, and one hears, besides the Russian “alkat’” and, possibly, the English “pernicious”, “mon amie”, “Gott”, and the first person of the German “mochten”.

Nabokov in his interviews stressed that Zembla is not Russia, and, indeed, there is another Russia in the novel, a totalitarian state that contributes to the Zemblan revolution. Kinbote talks about “the tainted gold and the robot troops that a powerful police state from its vantage ground a few sea miles away was pouring into the Zemblan Revolution” . Kinbote’s constantly talks about Zembla, but his memories of it lack that depth of human feeling, which marks Fyodor’s nostalgia. Even though Kinbote repeats again and again “my Zembla”, “dazzling Zembla” , tenderness that shines through the best pages of The Gift, is missing from his story. It is essentially a story of himself and his escape from the country. For a king, Kinbote shows a remarkable lack of interest in the revolution that struck his country and the possible causes which led to it. He is more preoccupied with aesthetic and literary pleasures and calls the whole business of politics “a tiresome subject” . As for the revolution, all he can say about it is that it was “tedious and unnecessary” . In Kinbote’s attitude, there is some of Nabokov’s own indifference towards social and political issues. On the whole, the theme of exile is treated in the novel with certain coldness and detachment, but there are passages, which by their warmth and profound lyricism can be compared to The Gift. For example, Kinbote comments on his roommate who gets up early in morning and plants flowers with a very curious name: Heliotropium turgenevi. “This is the flower whose odor evokes with timeless intensity the dusk, and the garden bench, and a house of painted wood in a distant northern land” . Even aside from the reference to Turgenev, it is clear that this land, for Nabokov, is no other than Russia, – not the monstrous police state in the vicinity of Zembla, but the real, immortal, beloved Russia of Nabokov’s memory. And this short passage retains more emotional freshness and power than colorful descriptions of Zemblan mountains that have no counterpart in the author’s childhood recollections.

It seems that, to Kinbote, being in exile means not so much the loss of the homeland as the loss of his name and title (which he now has to hide), and thus partially the loss of his identity, and in this way his isolation and detachment is more complete than that of Fyodor in The Gift. One of the critics of Pale Fire interprets his behavior as follows: “…he is trying to get the poet John Shade to confirm his identity, to validate the Zemblan reality which is his hope of salvation by turning it into a poem” . With maniacal persistence Kinbote keeps talking with Shade about Zembla: “I mesmerized him with it, I saturated him with my vision, I pressed upon him, with a drunkard’s wild generosity, all that I was helpless myself to put into verse” . Kinbote calls his relationship with the poet “friendship”, but, in fact, he cannot care less about Shade as a human being with his own hopes and sorrows. While commenting on the poem, he utterly neglects the parts about Shade’s wife and daughter. Sybil Shade, who protects her husband from his neighbor’s intrusions, for Kinbote, is just as annoying obstacle in the way, and to him, the tender lines that Shade devotes to his wife are nothing but “embarrassing intimacies” . Kinbote haughtily deals with the theme of Shade’s daughter, Hazel’s, suicide, obviously a very painful and personal subject for the poet, as if it was merely a stylistic device: “The whole thing strikes me as too labored and long, especially since the synchronization device has been already worked to death by Flaubert and Joyce” . When Kinbote feels lonely and afraid in his empty house, he wishes that Shade had a heart attack, – just to have an excuse to come over and escape loneliness and fear. At the end of the novel, when Shade has been mistakenly shot by the assassin, his “friend” is in no hurry to call for help: instead, he rushes to hide the poem, which, he thinks, contains the story of his own life.

In comparison to Kinbote, John Shade appears to be a much more appealing character, and he possesses some traits that bring more human warmth into his image: he can be lazy, he likes hearty meals, brandy and wine; he loves his wife and daughter and is generally more tolerant towards people who are not as bright and talented as he is. Nabokov gives his character some of his most cherished thoughts. For example, Shade, who is also a teacher of literature, expresses his views on teaching: “First of all, dismiss ideas, and social background, and get the freshman to shiver, to get drunk on the poetry of Hamlet or Lear, to read with his spine and not with his skull” . However, since Shade’s personality is seen in the novel only through Kinbote’s uncaring eyes, his inner world is more or less concealed from the reader. It is only through Shade’s poem that one can glimpse into the questions, which preoccupy the poet. The poem, on the whole, is a painful, difficult search for meaning, an attempt to make sense of the whole puzzle of human life and death, to find a way of transcending one’s mortality. No human thought or emotion can relieve one from being trapped in one’s own finite world. Everything fails except art: art for its own sake, art that contains a unique, perfectly harmonized inner reality, which can be perceived as a reflection of a greater pattern:

I feel I understand

Existence, or at least a minute part,

Of my existence, only through my art,

In terms of combinational delight…

“Combinational delight”, indeed, is important not only in Shade’s poem but in the whole novel. As in The Gift, artistic detail is a focus of concentration in Pale Fire, but here attention is focused on an even subtler level where language itself is analyzed. Pale Fire is an example of extremely dense prose where individual words are more than just carriers of meaning: they become, in a way, themselves a subject of the novel. One of Shade’s warmest images of his family together is a memory of the evenings when both he and Sybil helped their daughter to understand really obscure words from her English textbook. A difference of one letter in the words “mountain” and “fountain” becomes crucial in the story of Shade’s attempt to penetrate the mystery of the hereafter. The book is filled with examples of word play, often involving several languages, and references to numerous works of literature (some of which are likely to be Nabokov’s own inventions). In Shade’s poem, there are such peculiar combinations as: “Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept all is allowed” , which is a mixture of Alyosha Karamazov, Raskol’nikov, and, perhaps, Italian painter Fra Angelico with his intensely spiritual religious art. But nobody in the novel is more involved in digging into words than Kinbote. He is constantly preoccupied with deciphering literary allusions, musing over interplay of words, meanings, rhymes and sounds. Nabokov mentioned in his lectures that a dictionary should be a necessary attribute of a good reader, and, ironically, Kinbote, who can hardly be called a good reader, dutifully follows the lines of Shade’s masterpiece with his dictionary. For the most part, he is obsessively searching references to Zembla and his own life story in the poem, but sometimes he simply takes aesthetic pleasure in certain lines of it:

“Lines 131-132: I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by feigned remoteness in the windowpane.

The exquisite melody of the two lines opening the poem is picked up here. The repetition of that long-drawn note is saved from monotony by the subtle variation in line 132 where the assonance between its second word and the rhyme gives the ear a kind of languorous pleasure as would the echo of some half-remembered sorrowful song…” Shade’s commentator genuinely enjoys the magic of words, and so does Nabokov, whose multilingualism, artistic sense and incomparable mastery of language found full expression in the creation of the truly marvelous poem, as well as other parts of the novel.

Perhaps, the refined world of literature allows Kinbote a way of escape from his troubled personal reality, and so it does for Shade, and, to a degree, for Fyodor in The Gift, and, ultimately, for Nabokov. In his commentary, Kinbote recounts an episode when someone in the presence of Shade tells a story of a mad railroad worker, who “thought he was God and began redirecting the trains”. “That (“mad”) is the wrong word”, – he (Shade) said. – “One should not apply it to a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention” . Still, comparison of Nabokov’s novels shows that the most “brilliant invention” becomes truly alive only if the light of one’s own human experience, however “drab and unhappy”, illuminates it from within. In Pale Fire the walls sheltering Nabokov’s private world of memory and feeling are thicker than in The Gift, and the novel follows more closely Nabokov’s ideas of art as elegant deception, an entirely invented world which should be approached on aesthetic rather than emotional grounds. This is the major difference between Pale Fire and The Gift.

Time is likely to be one of the factors behind this change: Pale Fire was written almost twenty years later than The Gift, as greater and greater distance separated Nabokov from his Russian past with which he had stronger emotional bond than with the years spent abroad. Another important factor is, probably, language. Nabokov was very proud of his English works and repeatedly called himself an American writer, but sometimes he provided his readers with unexpected revelations such as: “My private tragedy, which cannot, indeed should not, be anybody’s concern, is that I had to abandon my natural language, my natural idiom, my rich, infinitely rich and docile Russian tongue, for a second-rate brand of English” . In another interview, when asked which language he considered the most beautiful, Nabokov replied: “My head says English, my heart, Russian, my ear, French” . It is possible to say that for him Russian conveyed emotional power, while English had more of an intellectual appeal, and this is one of the reasons why Pale Fire, written in English, appeals to the brain more than it does to feelings.

One of the most striking confessions that bridges Nabokov’s inner world with his public self exists in a poem. An Evening of Russian Poetry, written in English in 1945, is a rhymed presentation of a public lecture which Nabokov gives to an audience of American students, predominantly female. Russian poetry is the theme of the lecture, but Nabokov approaches it in the way typical for him: he does not talk about schools, trends and periods. Again, he speaks of letters, shapes, individual intricate details, and hidden tenderness shines through his words, staying invisible for his listeners. They ask him questions about his favorite trees and stones, echoing that insensitive critic from The Gift, whose “discussion of Koncheyev’s book boiled down to his answering for the author a kind of implied questionnaire (Your favorite flower? Favorite hero? Which virtue do you prize most?)” In Nabokov’s discussion of Pushkin and Nekrasov everything merges and melts together: the sky and the grass, the beauty of verse and human feeling, – and inevitable theme of exile. Nabokov speaks of memories, saying openly: “I must remind you in conclusion that I am followed everywhere and that space is collapsible” . His private tragedy is lost on his young listeners, whose innocent inquiry prompts what becomes the most remarkable ending of a poem:

How would you say “delightful talk” in Russian?

How would you say “good night”?

Oh, that would be:

Bessonnitza, tvoy vzor oonyl i strashen;

lubov moya, otstoopnika prostee.

(Insomnia, your stare is dull and ashen,

my love, forgive me this apostasy.)

All of Nabokov’s carefully hidden private world that, he insists, “cannot, indeed should not, be anybody’s concern”, is suddenly revealed in these poignant lines: long nights, loneliness, the feeling of guilt over abandoning one’s language and nostalgia for inaccessible, unforgettable, “unquenchable Russia”.

Bibliography

1). Kernan, Alvin B. “Reading Zemblan: The Audience Disappears in Nabokov’s Pale Fire”. Vladimir Nabokov (Modern Critical Views). Ed. Harold Bloom. Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 101-125.

2). ???????, ????????. ???. ??????: ??????, 1990.

3). Nabokov, Vladimir. The Gift. New York: Capricorn Books, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970.

4). —. Lectures on Literature. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1982.

5). —. Pale Fire. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993.

6). —. Poems and Problems. McGraw-Hill International, Inc. 1970.

7). —. Speak, Memory. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993.

8). —. Strong Opinions. McGraw-Hill International, Inc. 1973.

Elena Koutcherova
http://www.articlesbase.com/fiction-articles/unquenchable-russia-or-forbidden-themes-in-nabokovs-prose-204030.html

Have you ever seen just how deep the rabbit hole really goes?

Have you ever felt like all that you see is an illusion and a something much grander is going on something they don’t want us to know about. Something that many of us fear but in truth is not scary. Have you ever wondered if reality is fantasy and fantasy is reality? Could we be living on a prison planet.

Did you ever wonder why there are so many endless contradictions in the judeo-christian bible? Do you want to know why? The reason for this- is its nothing but a book of false promises. Although, most Christians are taught to be good sheep of the pasture and not to question. One thing about sheep though is they can easily be driven off a cliff. The bible was and is nothing more than a tool to remove spiritual knowledge from the populace, and to enslave you. Here is an interesting quote made in the 16th century (1475-1521) by Pope Leo X of the roman catholic church: "It has served us well, this myth of Christ". I think that pretty much sums up everything in the Christian religion; it’s nothing more than a HOAX!

Everything in the judeo-christian bible has been stolen from the Ancient Pagan religions that predated it from a few hundred to several thousands of years. The bible is full of spiritual allegories that were stolen and corrupted into real places with real beings, this was done to deceive you and keep the truth hidden. Additionally, EVERY major story in the bible was STOLEN (derivatives or copies) from the Ancient Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian cultures. Here are some examples: The story of Adam and eve, the great flood, the story of moses, the story of Mary and Jesus, this was STOLEN from Isis and Horus in Egyptian culture. That fictitious Nazarene is about the biggest joke there is, and a slap in the face to the human race. That Nazarene isn’t real at all; in fact it was stolen from some 18+ crucified pagan gods, such as Odin who hung from a tree and was born again

This knowledge has been deliberately withheld from the populace, to keep you enslaved and living in a total lie. Those at the top (the Jews, and the catholic leadership) know the truth, and they DO NOT want you to obtain this knowledge, but to remain servile. If you are interested in learning much more than you ever thought possible as a human being, the TRUTH that has been deliberately withheld from you and STOLEN from the original religions- then go to these websites that are listed below. I must tell you though; once you know the TRUTH you can never again be deceived by the LIE of Christianity. Stop the LIE with me, pass this on;

http://www.exposingchristianity.com

http://www.joyofsatan.org

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE Pt. VI

• WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LAWYER AND A BARRISTER?

A lawyer is a person who practises law; one who conducts lawsuits for clients or advises clients of their legal rights and obligations. A barrister is a legal practitioner whose main function is to practice advocacy in court. They often have less interaction with clients. Barristers spend their working hours in chambers where they prepare their cases.

• WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT THE KEW GARDEN?

Kew Gardens in Thames, London is best known for being the home of the Royal Botanical Gardens (now a world heritage site). Other points of interest-include the Kew Palace and the National Archives (previously known as the Public Records Office) The Kew Gardens is special because it is an important international botanical research and education institution with a staff of over 700 people.

• WHAT IS THE ‘COOL BIZ’ CAMPAIGN?

This is a campaign introduced by Japan. In order, to save energy, it asks office goers and politicians to remove their ties and jackets to minimise the use of air conditioners and thereby reduce consumption of electricity and also the emission of greenhouse gases. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel who is currently visiting Japan to discuss, among other things, ways to tackle global warming, had a taste of the ‘cool biz’ campaign when the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe informed her that his entourage wouldn’t be wearing their ties to adhere to the ‘cool biz’ campaign.

• WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM POCKET MONEY?

Before the advent of pockets in shirts and trousers, money was kept in bags and sachets. Later, a smart tailor made a pocket on a garment and it became so useful, further innovations made a pocket suitable to safely keep money From then on, money kept in pockets for expenses came to known as pocket money

• WHAT IS ENTABLATURE?

It is the horizontal upper part of a wall or storey of a building designed on the principles of classical architecture. It is usually supported on columns, and consists of  three parts. These are the architrave, the lowermost part; the frieze, the decorative band in the middle; and the cornice, the crowning ornamental projection. Entablature was originally conceived by Vitruvius, an ancient Roman architect.

• WHICH IS THE WORLD’S FIRST AIR SHOW?

The world’s first air show was the International Air Meet held at Rheims, Franceheld in 1909. India’s first air show, AVIA-93 was held in December, 1993 in Bangalore. The world’s biggest air show was the  47th Paris Air Show. However, the world’s largest military air show  the RoyalInternational Air Tattoo (RAF Fairford, United Kingdom), held annually in July.

• WHAT IS A CIRCUIT FILTER?

A circuit filter is used in trading of shares in stock exchange. It’s applied to all the shares, to supposedly safeguard the interest of general investors from the extreme volatilities in markets by preventing any unexpected fall or rise of share price in a single day beyond a limit. If the limit is crossed by any of the shares in a single trading day it is frozen for trade.

• WHAT IS THE GINI COEFFICIENT?

The Gini Coefficient is a measure of inequality of income distribution or inequality of wealth distribution. It is defined as a ratio with values between 0 and 1: the numerator is the area between the Lorenz curve of the distribution and the uniform distribution line; the denominator is the area under the uniform distribution line. Thus, a low Gini Coefficient indicates more equal income or wealth distribution, while a high Gini Coefficient indicates more unequal distribution.

• WHAT IS THE TRIPLE FINGER SALUTE?

The three-finger salute is used by members of Scouts and Guides organisations around the world when greeting other Scouts and Guides and at some ceremonies. The salute is made with the palm face out, the thumb holding down the little finger, and the fingertips on the brow. In computer parlance, the triplefmger salute refers to describe the three-key sequence — Alt + Ctrl + Del — developed by David Bradley This term became popular after IBM PC compatible users continually hold down these keys each time their computers froze or had other problems.

• WHAT IS REFERRED TO AS THE WELL-COME COLLECTION?

The Wellcome Collection traces The development of medicine through history and spanning several cultures. Located in central London, it is a combination of exhibitions, libraries and cafes where people can learn more about the development of medicine. Part of the Well-come Trust, it was founded by Sir Henry Wellcome, a pharmacist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector, who garnered  a unique collection of articles relating to medicine and health. Recently, a British heart transplant patient, Jennifer Sutton, donated her old heart to the Well-come Collection, after receving a new one.

• WHAT IS KNOWN AS THE BAUDHAYAN THEOREM?

Baushayan Sulv Sutra (1000 BC) is today known as the Pythogorus theorem, which states that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. In Baudhayan theorem, this has been expressed as follows: in a Deerghchatursh (triangle), the chetra (square) of rajju (hypotenuse) is equal to the sum of squares of the parshvamani (base) and triyangmani (perpendicular line). It is amazing to note that the pythagorus theorem was known in our country as far back as 1000 BC.

• WHY IS THE NUMBER 1 NOT CONSIDERED A PRIME NUMBER THOUGH IT FITS THE DEFINITION?

The number 1, in fact, does not fit the definition of a prime number. A positive integer is called a prime number only if there are exactly two divisors of that number. Since 1 has exactly one divisor (which is 1 itself), it does not fit this definition. Another equivalent definition of a prime number is this prime number’s only positive divisor should be less than 1 and itself. Again, 1 does not fit this definition either— there are no positive divisors of 1 which are less that 1.

• WHICH NATION HAS THE SMALLEST ARMY IN THE WORLD?

Vatican City, the world’s smallest country, has the smallest army. This army of 110 men, is also known as the Swiss Guard. Last year, the Vatican celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Swiss Guard. The celebration commemorated the 150 Swiss Helvetian mercenaries who came to Rome to serve Pope Julius II, on January 22,1506. The mercenaries covered a distance of 723 km in 27 days to enter Rome from Bellinzona, Switzerland. Swiss Helvetian mercenaries, famous for their courage, die-hard attitude and loyalty to their employers, were part of the regular armies of various countries at that time. As allies of the Pope, they helped to shape Italy’s destiny and thus they were granted the title ^Defenders of the Church’s freedom’ by the Pope. During the Sack of Rome on May 6, 1527, the Swiss Guard, comprising 189 personnel at that time, resisted a Spanish attack on Rome and the Vatican. But they had to retreat after suffering heavy casualties. Only 42 men survived the attack. However, the Guard was able to ensure Pope Clement VII’s escape to safety.

• WHERE WAS WINE FIRST MADE?

Wine is the fermented juice of grapes. Probably, the first people to make wine were Persian farmers living near the Caspian Sea. The Egyptians learned how to make wine from them as long back as 3000 BC. In the fourth century BC., the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great carried grapevines and the knowledge of wine-making to Central Asia. Roman invaders probably took vines to northern France and Germany in later centuries. Wine was common in the everyday lives of the early Greeks and Romans. It was important to their religious ceremonies. The God of wine was called Bacchus by the Romans and Dionysus by the Greeks.

• WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MARXISM AND SOCIALISM?

Socialism is a modern doctrine and is Western in origin, emerging with the development of industrial capitalism at the start of the nineteenth century. Socialism denotes a broad system of ideas. Marxism is a materialistic conception of history which seeks to explain the development of all societies and furthermore, make predictions about future social change. Marxists consider the material world, nature and society as constantly moving. Whereas, the socialists emphasise the organic unity of society. Marxists consider the material world as an integrated whole in which all things and phenomena are interconnected and interdependent. Whereas, socialists believe in equality and abolition of private enterprise. Marxism provides a scientific explanation of nature and society and hence, was a powerful instrument for revolutionary transformation. The society envisaged by socialists rests on certain values: redistribution of wealth to get rid of inequality, cooperative production to get rid of selfish competitors and new patterns of work and education to promote the growth of well-rounded individuals.

• WHAT IS A HYPERCUBE?

Hypercube is the generalization in n-dimensions of a square in two dimensions and a cube in three dimensions. A square has four vertices (22), a cube, 8 vertices (23). Similarly, an n-dimensional hypercube has 2n vertices. In the famous painting ‘Christus Hypercubus’, Salvador Dali depicted Christ crucified on an unfolded four-dimensional hypercube. Examining the shadow of a cube reveals a square within a square. Similarly, the shadow of a four-dimensional hypercube will be a cube within a cube.

• WHY IS THE ALPHABET WRITTEN IN A SPECIFIC ORDER?

The alphabet has often been described as an arbitrary collection of symbols representing an arbitrary collection of sounds. Its order is equally random. The word alphabet comes from alpha and beta, the first two words in the Greek alphabet.

• WHAT IS STEAMING DISTANCE?

Steaming distance is the shortest distance between two ports, which a ship traverses while sailing from one port to another. It need not be along a straight line as, due to various physical and political constraints, it may not be always be desirable to sail along a straight route.

• WHICH IS THE OLDEST CIVILIZATION IN THE WORLD?

This has long been a subject of much debate and to this day no one is absolutely sure which is the oldest civilisation. This is mostly because people cannot agree on the definition of the word civilisation. The most common definition of the word is ‘an advanced state of development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of writing, and complex political and social institutions’. Mesopotamia is considered as the most likely answer to the question, based on archaeological evidence and the above definition. It is believed that Mesopotamian history starts from the emergence of urban societies in Southern Iraq in the 4th millennium.

• HOW IS A COUNTRY’S GDP MEASURED?

GDP or Gross Domestic Product is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period. GDP is customarily reported on an annual basis. It is the nation’s broadest gauge of economic health. It includes all of private and public consumption, government outlays, investments and exports and imports that occur within a defined territory The most common approach to measuring GDP is the expenditure method: GDP = consumption + investment (govern- ment spending) + (exports – imports). Another way of measuring GDP is to measure the total income payable in the GDP income accounts. This should provide the same figure as the expenditure method. Another formula is: GDP = rent + interests + profits + statistical adjustments (like corporate income taxes, dividends, undistributed corpo-1 rate profits) + wages.

• WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT UNIVERSITY OF TOULOUSE?

University of Toulouse is one of the oldest universities of France and is located in Toulouse, a city in Southern France on the banks of the Garonne river. It was founded in 1229 AD as a result of the Paris Treaty marking the end of the battle between the Roman Catholic Church and its opponents. Foulques de Toulouse, the then bishop of Toulouse, played a major role in the setting up of the university. Now, the university has an enrolment exceeding 1,00,000, and is the second largest university in France. The sixteenth century philosopher and astronomer Bruno and the Chemistry Nobel Laureate Sabatier, and the artist Dulac were some of its most illustrious faculty members.

• IN ANCIENT TIMES, WHY WERE PIGEONS USED FOR SENDING MESSAGES?

Pigeons were used for sending messages not only in ancient times, but as recently as early the 1900s, during World War I. A particular breed of pigeons called homing pigeons are specially suited for carrying messages, because they possess the uncanny ability of flying back to their home over long distances at high speeds. According to some reports, a homing pigeon flew back to its home after flying over 1600 miles at the peak speed of 60 miles per hour. Exactly how such birds navigate themselves is still not clear. Scientists hypothesise that the pigeon uses a variety of sources like the direction of the Sun, Earth’s magnetism, and odours associated with different places for finding its direction. Before the advent of telegraph, telephone and radio, using pigeons for sending messages was quite popular among the military, newspapers, and stock brokers. Such a messaging system was known as pigeon post.

• WHAT IS AN ATLAS CALLED SO?

Atlas is the term used to refer to a collection of maps, printed in a set order: world map, maps of the continents, each followed by maps of the several regions within that continent, and with an alphabetical gazetteer or list of place names, giving coordinates for various places, rivers, regions etc. The first use of the term atlas dates back to 1595 with the publication in Duisburg of the Atlas Sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi Et Fabricati Figura by Gerard Mercator (1512-94). It was named after King Atlas, a mythical King of Mauretania in Libya, who was, according to legend, a wise philosopher, mathematician and astronomer and who supposedly made the first celestial globe. However, the more widely known Atlas is a figure from Greek mythology He is the son of the Titan lapetus and Clymene^or Asia), and brother of Prometheus. Atlas was punished by Zeus and made to bear the weight of the heavens and Earth on his back.

• WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM ‘RULE OF THUMB’ ?

One theory about the phrase’s origin lies in the misplaced public belief that the English law allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick measuring no longer than his thumb. There was actually no such English law enacted at any time. This phrase has been in circulation since the 17th century This phrase commonly refers to any means of estimation based on a practical and ready method but not on scientific measurement. Another theory concerning the phrase’s origin involves the numerous ways in which thumbs have been used for estimation. Some examples are — measurement of distance based on an estimated inch which is about the length of a thumb; judging the alignment or distance of an object by holding the thumb at eye level etc.

• WHAT IS RED CORNER NOTICE?

Certain requests used by Interpol are sent in the forms of notices. The colour of each notice determines the type of information being sent or received by Interpol and its members. A red corner notice is issued at the request of a country’s law enforcement authority. The requesting country asks for a red notice to be issued when a criminal evades arrest and escapes from the country.

• WHICH IS THE SMALLEST AND LARGEST CITY IN THE WORLD BY AREA AND POPULATION?

The largest city in the world by population is Tokyo with over 35 million people. It was the world’s most populous urban area between 1965 and 1970. However, despite Japan’s declining population, it is still growing. The smallest city in the world by population is Hum. It has a population of only 23 people. It is a tiny town in the central part of Istria, North-West Croatia, 7 km from Roh, 14 km South-East of Buzet on a hill above the Mirna Valley The largest city in the world by area is Hulun Buir, encompassing 263,953 km. The smallest city in the world by area is Vatican City with an area of 44 hectares (108.7 acre). It is a landlocked sovereign city state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome. It is officially called State of the Vatican City.

• WILL CREATING TWO TIME ZONES FOR INDIA SAVE ENERGY?

There is no statistical evidence of two time zones being economically beneficial other than restoring a sense of normalcy to the area that follows its local meridian time zone. India geographically extends from 68 degrees East to 97 degrees East (29 degrees) from Gujarat to the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, thereby encompassing two time zones. However, it has adopted the Allahabad meridian of 72 degrees, which makes it convenient for the railways, airlines and media. This leads to weird experiences for travelers from Central India who visit the North-Eastern states which receive daylight before 5 am. This entails an extra cost to the economy in terms of industrial arid office lighting spent in these regions, since daybreak here doesn’t coincide with the rest of the country. Also, there tends to be more traffic when it is dark.

• IS IT TRUE THAT CREATING TWO TIME ZONES FOR INDIA WILL SAVE ENERGY?

The Indian Standard Time is based on the meridian at 82 1/2 degrees East, which is 5 1/2 hours ahead of the Greenwich meridian. India’s geographical middle lies at 82 1/2 degrees East, which was incorrectly mentioned as 72 degrees East.

• WHAT IS SECURITISATION?

Securitisation is the process through which existing assets or future cash flows are converted into marketable securities. Those assets or cash flows are, inherently, not marketable. There are two types of securitisation — assetbacked securitisation and futureflows securitisation. Some of the assets that can be securitised are loans and future cash flows like credit card payments, car rentals or any other form of future receivables. Securitisation is common in the US and Europe, but in India it is in a nascent stage.

• WHEN AND WHERE WAS THE NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED?

Acta Diurna’ was the first news paper published in Rome, around 59 BC. In 1605, the first printed weekly newspaper to be published in Antwerp was called Relation. Johann Carolus (1575-1634) was the publisher of the Relation aller Furnemmen und gedenckwurdigen Historien (Collection of all Distinguished and Commemorable News). The ^Relation’ is recognized by the World Association of Newspapers, as well as many authors, as the world’s first newspaper. The German Relation was published in Strasbourg, which had the status of an imperial free city in the holy Roman empire of the German nation.

• WHEN WAS THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES?

The Battle of Los Angeles took place during the night of February 24/25, 1942 in Los Angeles, California. The battle involved heavy firing of anti-aircraft shells by the US forces aimed at several mysterious flying objects reportedly sighted in the sky over Los Angeles. These objects were thought to be Japanese military aircraft. However, even till today, their identity has not convincingly established. Even though six civilians lost their lives in the bombardment, there was no evidence that the firing destroyed any flying object. The firing was preceded by a blackout and Sounding of air raid sirens. Now, many believe that the battle was the result of a false alarm, triggered by weather balloons, or Japanese blimps. Some even think the source of the alarm could be a flying object of extraterrestrial origin.

• WHO IS LADY JUSTICE?

The origin may be Themis, a Greek mythological goddess, who advised Zeus after his purge of the old pantheon. A daughter of Themis and Zeus, Dike, known as a goddess of justice but not divine justice, presided over the apportionment of things among mortals, the protection of individuals and the social and political order. At times, Dike is said to be the same as (or is confused with) Astraea. Astraea is also a daughter of Themis and Zeus and is known as a goddess of justice. In western tradition, Lady Justice sometimes wears a blindfold and carries a sword and scales. She symbolises the fair and equal administration of the law, without corruption, avarice, prejudice, or favour.

• WHO DESIGNED THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL?

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. is a United States presidential memorial built to honour its 16th President Abraham Lincoln. The architect is Henry Bacon (an American Beaux-Arts architect), the sculptor is Daniel Chester French, and the painter of the murals inside is Jules Guerin. The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large, seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln.

• WHICH COUNTRY HAS THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF UNIVERSITIES?

According to UNESCO, India tops the list with 8,407 universities. It’s followed by the United States  (5,759), Argentina (1,705) and Spain (1,415).

• WHO ARE HOBOS?

Hobos is an American word which refers to homeless people wandering about in search of work. In earlier days, hobos were supposed to move around by hopping from one freight train to another, just to save the cost of transportation. Hobos and hobo culture began in mid-19fh century, when the ending of the Civil War caused severe unemployment in the US and several people left their homes and started moving about the whole country in search of jobs. A similar phenomenon happened during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although the term owes its origin to the above phenomena, it is used today to refer to a tramp in general, an aimless traveller not necessarily looking for work. There are several theories related to how the word hobo got coined: some say the word has been derived from the phrase hopping box cars, and some others that it is a shortened version of the rail-road greeting ‘Ho Beau,’ popular in the 19th century

• WHICH CONTINENT HAS THE MOST NUMBER OF PORTS?

With over 1,000 ports, Europe is perhaps the continent with most number of ports. The UK alone has over 200 ports and European ports handle about 3.5 billion tones of cargo.

• WHY IS A SANDLOT USED AS A PLAYING AREA FOR CHILDREN?

A sandlot refers to a vacant lot used by children to play games, mostly unorganised ones. Unlike a playground specifically created for certain games, sandlots perhaps developed as informal spaces which children made use of to serve as makeshift playgrounds. In the US, sandlot baseball refers to an advanced version of the game played by teams not affiliated with either the Major or Minor leagues in the country

• WHO ARE WING WALKERS?

Wing walkers are those who walk on wings of an airplane in flight. Recently, a wing walker hung from a 450 Stearman aircraft when it was in flight. This stunt was performed as part of the Flying Circus Air Show in Bealeton, Virginia.

• WHAT ARE P-NOTES?

P-Notes are financial instruments that facilitate investment in Indian securities by foreign investors or hedge funds that are not registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Indian brokerage houses buy the securities on behalf of these foreign investors and hedge funds and issue P-Notes to them. Any dividends or capital gains collected from the underlying securities will keep going back to the foreign investors and hedge funds. The value of P-Notes is determined on the basis of shares listed on the stock exchanges.

• WHY IS THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA REFERRED TO AS A RAINBOW NATION?

The Republic of South Africa is referred to as a Rainbow Nation to describe the unity of various cultural, racial or ethnic groups in the country during the postapartheid era (after 1994) compared to the earlier divisiveness based on skin colour. This phrase was coined by the then Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, and later used by Nelson Mandela, the first President of the Republic of South Africa elected in the first polls conducted after apartheid rule officially ended. In some South African cultures, the rainbow is always associated with hope and a bright future. Incidentally, the South African Hag also has six rainbow-like colours.

• WHO IS THE SECOND ASIAN AFTER RABINDRANATH TAGORE TO WIN THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE?

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970) of Israel shared the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature with Nelly Leonie Sachs (1891-1970), a GermanSwedish poet. This was 53 years after Tagore won the prize in 1913. The first Asian after Tagore to win it solo was Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972), a Japanese novelist, in 1968.

• WHICH IS THE WORLD’S FIRST POST OFFICE?

Although the origins of the postal system date back to antiquity, the British Postal Museum claims the oldest functioning post office in the world is on High Street in Sanquhar, Scotland. According to the museum, this post office has functioned continuously since 1712 AD. Sanquhar is a quiet, insignificant town, but in its heyday, its residents included many influential aristocrats, who must have played a significant role in having the first post office located there. Those days, horses and stage coaches would carry mail.

• WHAT IS A CALLIOPE?

It is a musical instrument with a loud, shrill sound that’s audible miles away It is used to attract attention at circuses and fairs. It was invented in the United States around 1850 by A S Denny and patented in 1855 by Joshua C Stoddard. It consists of a boiler which forces steam through a set of whistle pipes. Either a keyboard or a pinned cylinder (like that of a barrel organ or music box) controls the entry of steam into the pipes.

• • Calliope was one of the nine muses in Greek mythology. Her name means beautiful voiced and she was the daughter of Zeus (God of sky and thunder) and Mnemosyne (Goddess of memory). She is the muse of epic poetry and eloquence. She was the oldest and wisest of the muses as well as the most assertive. She is often represented as a stately young woman whose brow is crowned with gold, while in some legends, she is seen with a writing tablet, scroll, or book in her hand and wearing a gold crown. She is best known as the inspiration for Homer’s Miad and the Odyssey.
• WHY IS SUN TEMPLE, KONARK CALLED THE ‘BLACK PAGODA?

Today, the Sun Temple, a magnificent pagoda, is located 2 km from the sea but, in olden times, it was much closer. So, the temple was used as a navigational point by European sailors. They referred to it as the ‘Black Pagoda’ due to its dark colour and its magnetic power that drew ships into the shore and caused shipwrecks.

• WHEN WAS THE SICAB HORSE SHOW FIRST HELD?

In 1980, the first Sicab (Salon Internacional del Caballo) was organised in Seville. The following year, it took place in Madrid. Today, there are more than 200 horse shows a year dedicated exclusively to the Purebred Spanish Horse.

• WHEN WERE CHOPSTICKS FIRST USED?

Chopsticks were made over 5,000 years ago in China. The earliest version of chopsticks were plain sticks or branches from trees which were used to retrieve food from fire. The teachings of Confucius forbade followers to use knives at the dining table, which further increased the popularity of chopsticks in Eastern Asia. Today, chopsticks are no longer confined to culinary purposes. Japan has even launched a bra called ‘My Chopsticks Bra’ which is made from recycled chopsticks. This would reduce the decimation of entire forests to manufacture chopsticks.

• WHAT IS A ‘BREATHING FABRIC’?

A ‘breathing fabric’ is designed to prevent the wearer from getting too hot or cold by adjusting itself to both the internal and external temperatures. The textile is made up of a layer of thin spikes of wool, or another water-absorbent material that opens up when it’s made wet by the wearer’s sweat. When the layer dries out, the spikes automatically close up again. A second layer underneath protects the wearer from the rain.

• WHAT IS A TITANIUM TOOTHBRUSH?

Titanium toothbrushes, which were invented in Japan and now are being exported to the US, might help do away with toothpaste. One variety of the toothbrush uses titanium dioxide, which causes an electrochemical reaction while brushing and this helps remove plaque. The other type uses titanium bristles that last for several years.

• WHY IS SATURN ASSOCIATED WITH AGRICULTURE?

In Roman mythology, Saturn is regarded as the god of agriculture. He is usually depicted holding a scythe to harvest land. Farmers in ancient Rome believed that Saturn had the power to bring a good harvest and if made angry could destroy it. In order to receive his blessings, they held a festival named Saturnalia. According to another myth, Saturn established the Golden Age in Rome. He introduced agriculture to his people by teaching them how to farm the land.

• WHAT CAUSES THE HEILIGENSCHEIN EFFECT? WHO DISCOVERED IT?

If an observer stands on dew-covered grass with his or her back turned towards the early morning sun, the observer is likely to observe a faint glow around the shadow of his or her head on the grass. Such a faint glow is called Heiligenschein, and the above optical phenomenon, the Heiligenschein effect. It occurs because the dew droplets act as tiny lenses focusing both the sunlight falling on the surface on which the shadow is cast, and the light that is back-scattered by the surface. In general, when a long shadow is cast on certain irregular surfaces with specific optical characteristics, the above effect occurs. Although Heiligenschein must have been known for a long time, it was first described in writing by the Italian sculptor and painter Benevenuto Cellini (1500-1571). Sometimes it’s called the Cellinis halo. In German, Heiligenschein means holy glow.

• WHAT ARE THE OLEFINS?

An alkene, olefin or olefine is a class of highly reactive unsaturated hydrocarbons, recovered from petroleum, with at least one carbon-carbon double bond. The simplest alkenes, with only one double bond and no other functional groups, form a homologous series of hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH2n, eg. Ethylene (ethane), propylene (propene), butylenes (butene) and so on. The olefins are widely used for making synthetic fibres.

• WHO BROKE THE SOUND BARRIER?

Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14,1947. He flew a plane faster than the velocity of the sun and broke the sound barrier which caused explosive vibrations over the atmosphere.

• WHAT IS THE MONTY HALL PROBLEM?

The Monty Hall problem talks about a situation where there are three closed doors —a goat lies behind two and a car behind the third. A person is asked to select a door (which is not opened immediately). Instead, one of the two unchosen doors are opened and the content is revealed, which incidentally turns out to be a goat. The person is now asked whether he would like to switch his choice to the other unopened door. This gets him thinking. Will changing his choice increase the possibility of winning the car? Common knowledge lets us assume that since now there are two closed doors (one with a goat and the other with a car), chances of winning a car if either of the doors are chosen is 1/2. Hence, it really isn’t a winning situation to motivate a person to change the choice. However, what one needs to remember is the fact that when the person initially made the choice, all three doors were closed and the probability of having a goat behind a closed -toor was 2/3. Now that we already know of ie door that has a goat behind it, chances f winning the door with the car if the peron decides to change his initial choice is /3, which is higher than what he would am if he refuses to change his decision.

• WHO INVENTED THE HELICOPTER?

French inventor Launoy and Bienvenue created a toy with rotary wings which could take off vertically and fly The term helicopter was later coined by French writer Ponton D’Amecot: helico for spiral and pter for wing. It was only in 1907 that the first helicopter was piloted by PaulCornu, who also created the model. The 100th anniversary of the helicopter’s first flight was celebrated on November 13,2007.

• WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE LAUGHING BUDDHA?

Hotel or Pu-Tai is better known as the Laughing Buddha. The image of Hotel is based on a Chinese Zen monk who lived over 1000 years ago. Many regarded him a future Buddha because of his benevolent nature. It was due to his large protruding stomach and smile that he came to be known as the Laughing Buddha; His image graces many temples, restaurants and homes in China and Japan. Legend has it that if one rubs the Laughing Buddha’s great belly, it brings wealth, good luck and prosperity

• WHAT ARE BLUELAWS AND WHY THEY ARE CALLED SO?

A bluelaw is enacted by the people of the Dominion of New Haven. These laws in the United States and Canada are designed to enforce moral standards, particularly the observance of Sunday as a day of worship or rest. They came to be known as bluelaws because they were supposedly printed on blue paper. Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence to support this assertion.

• WHO IS CREDITED WITH HAVING THE HIGHEST IQ?

Marilyn vos Savant is an American magazine columnist, author, lecturer and playwright who rose to fame through her listing in the Guinness Book of World Records under the Highest IQ category, with a score of 228. She wrote for acolumn called Ask Marilyn in a magazine in which she answers questions from readers on a variety of subjects.

• WHICH IS THE WORLD’S FIRST COURIER SERVICE?

Overseas Courier Service, the world’s first courier service providing firm, was established in 1957 by a consortium of major newspaper publishers in Tokyo as a global, overnight delivery system for time-sensitive business publications. It was the first such private international network, dedicated entirely to overseas air-speed shipping.

• WHY IS LAS VEGAS CALLED SO?

Las Vegas was named by Spaniards in the Antonio Armijo Party, who used the water in the area while heading along the Old Spanish Trail from Texas. In the 1800s, areas of the Las Vegas Valley contained artesian wells that supported extensive green areas or meadows (vegas in Spanish) and hence the name Las Vegas.

• WHO INVENTED THE CLOCK?

The earliest way of telling the time was by looking at the progress of the shadow cast by a twig stuck up-right in the ground. Round about 1300 BC, this was developed by the inhabitants of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia into the sundial. The sundial served for a thousand years until the invention of the clepsydra, or water clock. This was the first clock with moving parts. The mechanical clock was not invented until the 13th century and it was driven by weights. The spring-driven clock was invented sometime around 1450 AD.

• WHO INVENTED THE CLOCK?

The primitive type of clock was invented by Henry de Wick in 1368. He installed it on the tower of the castle of the king of France. Using the technique of a pendulum, the clock was developed by French engineer Hyudhence in 1639. Electricity was deployed in the clock by Alexander Ben around 1840-50.

• WHO ARE ‘THE LITTLE EMPERORS’?

They refer to obese little boys in China without any siblings. They are heavily doted on by their parents and grandparents, who feed them calorie-laden candies and fast food. As a result, obesity has become a problem amongst Chinese teenagers. It’s also seen as a fallout of the strict population policy of China which restricts couples from having more than one child, because of which parents and relatives tend to spoil their children with fatty foods.

• WHAT WERE GULAG CAMPS?

The Gulag, a system of forced labour camps in the former USSR, was first established in 1919 under the Cheka, its secret police. Prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag, whose camps were located mainly in remote regions of Siberia and the far North of USSR made significant contributions to the Soviet economy in the period of Joseph Stalin. Conditions in the camps were extremely harsh. After Stalin died in 1953, the Gulag population was reduced significantly, and condition of inmates somewhat improved.

• WHO IS CHE GUEVARA?

Ernesto Che Guevara was a Cuban revolutionary leader. Though communism may have lost its fire, he remains the symbol of rebellion and the alluring zeal of revolution. By the time Ernesto Guevara, known to us as Che, was murdered in the jungles of Bolivia in October 1967, he was already a legend, not only in Latin America but also around the world. His fearless last words, reportedly, were “Shoot, coward, you’re only going to kill a man”.

• WHO IS CHE GUEVARA?

Though a comrade of Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution, Ernesto Che Guevara was actually from Argentina, not Cuba. His nickname ‘Che’ (loosely translates as ‘yaar’ in India) is an Argentinian slang.

• WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF JAZZ MUSIC?

Jazz originated among the Black people in New Orleans in the late 19th century and is characterized by syncopated rhythms and improvisation. It has since developed various styles. Jazz originally drew on Ragtime, Gospel, Black spiritual songs, West African rhythms, and European harmonies. The term jazz originated in southern United States (it is first recorded in 1909, applied to a type of ragtime dance), and it is tempting to speculate that its ancestor crossed the Atlantic on the slave ships from Africa. In the absence of any certain origin, various colourful alternative theories have been put forward, for instance, the name jazz came from the nickname of a certain Jasbo Brown, an itinerant musician along the banks of the Mississippi.

• WHAT IS AGENT ORANGE?

Agent Orange is a defoliant herbicide mixture used during the Vietnam War to destroy forests in Vietnam. The United States sprayed 20 million gallons of Agent Orange over forests in Vietnam, and as a result, members of the armed forces were exposed to it. Agent Orange, named as such due to the orange colour of its storage drums, is a 50:50 mixture of the butyl esters of 2, 4-D and 2,4,5-T. It is probable that damage to humans would be due to the highly toxic impurity dioxin present in Agent Orange.

• HOW OLD IS THE JERUSALEM OLD CITY?

Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities of the world, having a history that begins in the fourth millennium BC. There was a mention of the city even in the Egyptian texts that belonged to 20th century BC. David was the first Jewish king to conquer the city of Jerusalem in 1007 BC and adopt it as his capital. Over the next several centuries, the city has been conquered and ruled by several different groups of people and countries, and has become a holy city for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Today, it is under the control of Israel and happens to be Israel’s largest city. What has been the city of Jerusalem until 1860s, is the 0.9 square kilometre walled portion inside the modern city of Jerusalem. The walled portion is called the old city today. The old city is divided into four quarters, Armenian, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish, and houses many important shrines.

• WHO IS KNOWN AS A MATHLETE?

Just as athletes participate in athletic events, matheletes are those who compete in mathematics competitions. The word is a trademark of MathCount Foundation. Recently, a French mathlete named Alexis Lemaire calculated the 13th root of a 200-digit number in just over 70 seconds. By doing so, he beat his own previous record of 72.4 seconds at an event in London’s Science Museum.

• WHAT IS A MOM-AND-POP SHOP?

A mom-and-pop shop is a colloquial expression for a single-family operated business with few or no employees other than the owners. Sometimes, fewer than ten employees work in these small or micro businesses. People who speak of mom-and-pop businesses often refer to the unique perspective offered by patronizing a family business. Some encourage the unknown experience of entering a mom-and-pop establishment over franchise businesses, which typically offer comparable stores and similar consumer experiences, regardless of location. For example, mom-and-pop businesses are often highlighted in travel guides, because going to a business owned and operated by a family allows a traveller to fully experience and understand the people of another culture.

• WHO INVENTED CHEWING GUM?

Thomas Adams, a rubber scientist, invented chewing gum. He was working with a substance called chicle, a gum prepared from the latex of the saphodila tree, a tropical evergreen plant. By chance, he popped a small piece of chicle into his mouth and chewed it casually to while away time. Suddenly, it occurred to him that others may derive pleasure from chewing chicle, which is, even today, a chief ingredient in chewing gum.

• WHICH IS THE LONGEST ACRONYM IN USE?

Adcomsubordcomphibspac is the longest English acronym. It’s a navy term which stands for Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command.

• WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A FRESCO AND A MURAL?

A mural is any large painting on a wall, ceiling or any other large structure. There are many techniques used to make them. A fresco, executed using water-soluble paints on wet or dry limestone, is one of the techniques and probably the most popular. A primary characteristic of a fresco is that the paintings, though often done in parts, are generally related by a common thread. For example, the frescoes on the walls and ceilings of Ajanta caves in India (6th century) depict the Jataka tales — stories from Buddha’s life.

• WHAT DOES THE WORD ‘WOOT’ MEAN?

If lay persons say ‘yay’, then hardcore gamers would say ‘wOOt’. This phrase, an expression of joy by on-line gamers, has been selected as the word of the year by the US dictionary publisher Merriam Webster.

• WHAT IS THE NYQUIST RATE?

In data communication, the sampling theorem states that a continuous signal can be completely represented in its sampled form and recovered from the sampled form if the sampling frequency f is equal to 2W, where W is the maximum frequency of that continuous signal. This minimum sampling rate of 2W samples per second for a signal having maximum frequency of W is called the Nyquist Rate.

• WHAT IS THE PHOBIA OF ALIENS CALLED?

Fear or dislike of foreigners or aliens is called xenophobia. The word xenophobia is a combination of two Greek words — xenos (foreigners) and phobos (fear). When a majority of people in a country suffer from xenophobia, the phobia can lead to mass expulsion of people of foreign origin, or banning of certain foreign cultural elements. Xenophobia is different from racism, although often both words are used interchangeably Racism implies a hatred of people of other races, irrespective of whether they belong to one’s own country, whereas xenophobia implies hatred of people of other countries or regions. In science fiction, xenophobia refers to fear of extraterrestrial beings. Scientists explain xenophobia as a defence mechanism evolved in humans in response to the need to win in inter-group competition in society and Nature.

• WHAT IS THE GUDERMANNIAN FUNCTION?

The Gudermannian function, named after Christoph Gudermann (1798 -1852), relates to the circular and hyperbolic trigonometric functions without using complex numbers.

• HOW IS A BARGE DIFFERENT FROM A REGULAR BOAT?

The word originally referred to any small boat; the modern meaning arose around 1480. A barge is a flatbottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods. Most barges are not self-propelled and need to be moved by tugboats or towboats. Barges on canals contended with the railways in the early industrial revolution but were outclassed when it came to carrying high-value items due to the higher speed, falling costs, and route flexibility of rail transport. A boat is a watercraft designed to float on, and provide transport over water.

• WHAT’S THE GREEN GOLD PROJECT?

The Green Gold or Oro Verde project seeks to ensure the safety of miners and also protect them from exploitation. A jewellery shop in Chichester, England along with miners in a cooperative in Choco in North-East Colombia and the Fair Trade Foundation embarked on this project which promotes the purchase of green gold or jewellery which isn’t created by putting labourers through hardships.

• WHAT IS THE ANTARCTICA TREATY?

The Antarctica Treaty, signed in 1959, was a path-breaking agreement among countries of the world. There are certain regions located beyond the sovereign jurisdiction of any country of the world. Therefore, they require common governance by the international community These are known as ‘res communis humanitatis’ or Global Commons. It includes not only Antarctica but also the ocean floor and outer space. According to the treaty, Antarctica’s environment and ecosystem will be protected. Since 1959, activities in the area have been limited to scientific research and development, fishing and tourism. Even these limited activities have not prevented this region from being degraded by waste, for example, oil spills. The expansion of the treaty was Antarctic Environmental Protocol of 1991.

• WHAT IS A PAGODA?

A pagoda, in South-east Asia, is a cone-shaped monumental structure built in memory of the Buddha. But in the Far East, a pagoda is a tower-like, multi-storeyed structure of stone, brick, or wood, usually associated with a Buddhist temple complex. The pagoda is derived from the stupa of ancient India, which was a dome-shaped commemorative monument, usually erected over the remains or relics of a holy man or king.

• WHY DOES FEBRUARY HAVE 28 DAYS, AND JULY AND AUGUST, 31 DAYS?

According to a popular legend, July was named after Julius Caesar and hence it had 31 days. Later, when Augustus Caesar took over the Roman Empire, he wanted August, the month named after him, to have 31 days as well. Hence, the two extra days were taken from February, which was then left with 28 days. However, some historians d.on’t agree with this reasoning. They believe February always had 28 days ever since the time of King Numa Pompilius. He decided that a year would have 355 days, the length of 12 lunar cycles. Back then, even numbers were considered unlucky So, he created seven months with 29 days, and four with 31. Since he now needed one short even-numbered month, he chose February, as it was considered the least favourite month for it arrived during the middle of winter. And hence, it was given only 28 days.

• WHAT IS RICE WINE?

Rice wine is made from fermenting freshly steamed glutinous rice. Most rice wines are low in alcohol content, light in colour, noncarbonated and have a sweet flavour. Rice wine is categorized according to the degree to which rice is polished. It does not usually improve with age and should be preferably consumed within one year of bottling.

• WHY WAS THE NEW AMSTERDAM COLONY ESTABLISHED?

New Amsterdam was established by Dutch colonisers in 1624 in what is known today as New York city The town of New Amsterdam became a city in 1653 when it received municipal rights and was reincorporated as New York city in June 1665. The town was founded on the southern tip of Manhattan island as the most optimal place for permanent settlement by the Dutch West India Company and was strategically located on the south of the Hudson river. The location was best suited to defend the integrity of the New Netherlands province and was entrusted to safeguard the West India Company’s exclusive access to New Netherlands’ other two estuaries — the Delaware river and Connecticut river.

• WHICH WAS THE FIRST WAR FOUGHT IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND?

If we define war as a large-scale violent conflict between two states employing the military, the earliest recorded wars might have taken place between various city states in the Mesopotamian region during the period 3,000-2,300 BC in the Bronze Age. The first recorded evidence of such a war was the one between the two city states Lagash and Umma, estimated to have taken place in 2525 BC. From the stone slabs bearing inscriptions related to the war, it could be inferred that the war employed professional soldiers wearing helmets who moved on chariots. The weapons employed were maces and swords.

• WHERE DOES SANTA CLAUS LIVE?

The original Santa Claus lived nowhere near the North Pole. If the 4th century bishop known as Saint Nicholas of Myra — the inspiration for Santa Claus — existed at all, he lived in Lycia, a province of the Byzantine Anatolia, now in Turkey Santa Claus is a corruption of the Dutch name Sinte Klaas for St Nicholas, the patron saint of children and unmarried girls. Tradition says he gave bags of gold to three daughters from a noble, but poor family as their dowries, thus saving them from a life of prostitution. As the legends developed in the Netherlands, the three bags of gold were replaced by a bulging sack of presents which Santa Claus distributed to children on December 6, St Nicholas’ feast day Later, this custom caught on to other parts of the world, to give gifts to good people and punish the bad.

• WHAT IS THE SEEHECK EFFECT?

The principle of the thermocouple was first described by Seebeck in 1821. Seebeck discovered that when wires of two dissimilar metals were joined together to form a circuit of at least two junctions, a current would flow when the junctions were at different temperatures. This phenomenon, called the Seebeck Effect, is the basis upon which thermocouples are designed.

• WHAT IS FOUR-DIMENSIONAL CINEMA?

What we normally see today in theatres are two-dimensional movies with multi-channel sound. In three-dimensional movies, viewers are required to wear special glasses which create 3-D images of objects in the movie. Chhota Chetan and Shiva Ka Insaaf were such movies released two decades ago. Fourth dimension in a movie creates an overall different experience. In addition to the effects of 3-D features, viewers can experience the movies through other senses like sight, sound, odour, touch and also have personal remote control. Viewers are seated in special seats which have bass shockers and other special fittings which make them a part of the complete 4-D experience.

• WHAT IS BOW SHOCK?

In aerodynamics, bow shock is a normal shock that occurs in front of an object within a supersonic flow. Unlike an oblique shock, the bow shock is not attached to the tip, off the object in the flow. Oblique shock angles are limited in formation based on the corner angle and upstream Mach number. When these limitations are exceeded, a bow shock occurs instead of an oblique shock. Therefore, bow shocks are often seen forming around blunt objects. In astrophysics, bow shock is a boundary between a magnetosphere and an ambient medium. For stars, this is typically the boundary between their stellar wind and the interstellar medium. In a planetary magnetosphere, the bow shock is the boundary at which the solar wind abruptly drops because of its approach to the magnetopause.

• WHAT IS ASSUMPTION DAY?

Assumption Day is, according to the Roman Catholic church, the day on which the Blessed Virgin Mary was, along with her body and soul, accepted (or ‘assumed’) in heaven. It is usually celebrated on August 15 by Roman Catholics. In some parts of the world, Assumption Day is a public holiday; in some parts it is a day of solemnity and prayers, whereas in some other parts, it is a day of feasting and festivities. Although in the early days of Christianity some held that it was not certain how the Virgin Mary’s life ended, from the 5th century AD onwards, Christians believed that the Virgin Mary did not actually suffer a physical death and that she passed into heaven with her physical body and soul on Assumption Day The above day was officially recognised through a Dogma by the Church only in 1950. The Assumption has also been a subject of Christian art for several centuries.

• WHAT IS HEIRLOOM GARDENING?

An heirloom plant, heirloom variety, or (especially in the UK) heirloom vegetable is an open-pollinated cultivar that was commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but not used in modern large-scale agriculture. Since most popular heirloom plants are vegetables, the term heirloom vegetable is often used instead. The trend of growing heirloom plants in gardens has been growing in popularity in the United States and Europe over the last decade. This is called heirloom gardening. Some examples are heirloom tomato, forbidden rice and Bhutanese red rice.

• WHAT IS DIES IRAE?

Dies Irae literally means day of wrath. The mediaeval Christians were preoccupied with the end of the world; they anticipated the Last Judgement, followed by the millennium. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West there was a revival of the belief in the end of time. The year 1000 likewise excited mythological speculation, as did famines, plagues, and earthquakes. Most influential were the views of the visionary Joachim of Fiore. He divided history into several ages and said that 1260 would be the fulfilment of the Age of the Spirit, which had begun with St Benedict. At that time, mankind could expect a new revelation, the coming of the anti-Christ, and the last days of wrath. This myth, written down at the behest of the Papacy, exerted a potent influence on mediaeval thought, and in its vision of a future world where the Holy Roman Empire and the Church of Rome would give place to a free community of perfected beings who have no need of clergy or sacraments or scripture, it anticipated modern millennial theories.

• HOW MANY COUNTRIES DOES THE DNIEPER FLOW THROUGH?

Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are the three countries through which Europe’s third-longest river flows. It originates in the south-west of Moscow and flows through Smolensk (Russia), Mogilev (Belarus), Kiev (capital of Ukraine), Dnepropetrovsk and Kherson (Ukraine) and empties into the Black Sea.

• WHAT IS ANTHROPOCENE EPOCH?

The current geological epoch we live in is called Holocene, which began around 9600 BC. However, considering the way humans have altered the course of the Earth scientists suggest that the epoch be renamed anthropocene. Nobel-prize winning chemist Paul Crutzen coined this term in a casual remark in 2002, while talking about how the Earth was entering a new epoch due to increasing human population and economic activity However, other scientists want this word to refer to the human impact upon the planet.

• WHAT IS ANTI-DUMPING DUTY?

If any company exports a product at a price lower than what it normally charges in its home market, then it is dumping the product. Opinions differ as to whether or not this is unfair competition, but many countries take action against dumping by imposing anti-dumping duty Thus, anti-dumping duty is an extra import duty on a particular product from a particular country in order to bring its prices closer to the normal value of that product in the country it is imported to. It is done to protect its own industry from predatory pricing. The World Trade Organisation does not prohibit antidumping policies and allows any country to take anti-dumping action against the countries which violate the principles of General Agreement on Trade and Tariff.

• WHAT IS A CASCADE EFFECT?

An unforseen chain of events due to an act affecting a system, much like how a waterfall cascades down, is called cascade effect. Cascade effects are commonly visualised in tree structures called event trees.

• WHAT IS LAPIS LAZULI?

Lapis Lazuli is an intense blue semiprecious stone. It has been mined for 6,500 years in Badakhshan, Afghanistan. It has lazurite as the main component. It’s used in jewellery, mosaics, architecture and as a pigment called ultramarine in tempera paintings. It was used by Assyrians and Babylonians for seals, as an eyeshadow by Cleopatra and Romans believed it to be an aphrodisiac. It was thought to keep limbs healthy and free the soul from error, envy and fear.

• WHAT ARE MAGIC BULLETS IN PHARMACEUTICAL TERMS?

In pharmaceutical terms, magic bullets are those drugs which attack the affected organ/cells and not the healthy ones. For example, the medicine for blood cancer I — called Glivec — is known to be a magic bullet as it attacks only those cells which are affected by the disease and not the healthy or surrounding cells.

• WHAT IS THE ‘ART OF MOVING’?

‘The art of moving’ or Parkour involves moving from one point to another as quickly and efficiently as possible. It entails overcoming obstacles using the power of the human body and is practised in several urban areas the world over. Recently, members of the Du Yize Parkour Club of Beijing showed their prowess at the Forbidden City

• WHAT ARE POLAR COORDINATES?

It is a system of coordinates in Geometry whereby the position of a point, say P, in a plane can be determined with reference to a fixed point called origin, denoted by 0, and a predetermined direction represented by a ray OA. The measure of length OP, denoted by r, and the measure of the angle that OP makes with OA, generally denoted by a Greek letter theta, are called polar coordinates of P and, P is called the graph of r and theta. One pair of values of r and theta corresponds to only one point in the plane and one point in the plane corresponds to only one pair of the values of r and theta.

• WHAT ARE SLATS?

These are thin narrow flat strips made of wood or metal, which are used as an auxiliary air foil at the leading edge of the wing of an aeroplane.

• WHEN AND WHERE DID JALLIKATTU ORIGINATE?

Jallikattu, which is bull-baiting or bull fighting, is an ancient Tamilian tradition. There are several rock paintings, more than 3,500 years old, at remote Karikkiyur village in the Nilgiri district in Tamil Nadu that show men chasing bulls. Another single painting discovered in a cave at Kalluthu Mettupatti, about 35 km west of Madurai, between Madurai and Dindigul, shows a lone man trying to control a bull, Researchers estimate that this painting, done in white kaolin, is about 1,500 years old.

• WHAT’S THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM ‘TOP DOG’?

‘Top dog’ means one who is dominant or victorious. When wooden planks were sawn by hand, two men did the job using a two-handed saw. The senior man took the top handle, standing on the wood, and the junior took the bottom, in the saw-pit below. The irons that were used to hold the wood were called dogs and that the bottom position was much more uncomfortable. The term ‘top dog’ originated from this practice.

• WHICH IS THE FIRST ART GALLERY?

The term art gallery refers to two different kinds of places: 1. A place which exhibits items of art (an art museum), and 2. A place which sells art items. The oldest art museum is supposed to be housed in the Cosquer Caves, the under-water caves, near Marseilles. The caves consist of finger tracings, impressions of painted hands, and painted and engraved figures of animals. The oldest works in these caves were estimated to have been created 29,000 years ago. Art galleries that exhibit and sell works of art on a large scale have been in existence since the 17th century AD. Most of the oldest art auction houses that exist today in Europe have been founded in the first half of the 18th century Viennabased auction house Dorothium, which claims to be the oldest art auction house of the world, was founded in 1707, and Sothebys, the oldest and largest art auction house of England, was founded in 1744.

• WHAT ARE TEXTONYMS?

They refer to the new language developed by cellphone-addicted teenagers, based on predictive text on their handsets. They are also known as adaptonyms or cellodromes. Using predictive text, the first alternative to certain keywords are used in textonyms.

• WHAT ARE BANKURA HORSES?

The vibrant tradition of folk art in West Bengal’s Bankura district includes a variety of clay handicrafts. The district’s most famous product is the Bankura Horse, a very stylised figure with a long neck and elongated ears, in warm terracotta colours. Artisans have used the same techniques of hollow clay moulding and firing for generations. Sizes vary from minute, palm-sized to gigantic creations over 1 metre high. The horses are votive figures and are usually kept or placed in front of local deities.

• WHO WAS THE FIRST INDIAN TO BE KNIGHTED?

Queen Victoria founded The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India in 1861, which was an order of chivalry, meant to be given to viceroys of India, nawabs and princes for their meritorious service and loyalty to the British empire. The people admitted to this order were called knights. In the year of its founding, Nawab Sikandar Begum Sahiba, Nawab Begum of Bhopal was made the Knight Grand Commander of the Star of India (GCSI). La

Mr. Ashok Sharma
http://www.articlesbase.com/interviews-articles/general-knowledge-pt-vi-955585.html

9/11: THE ROAD TO TYRANNY – Abby Newman Gets Arrested

“9/11: THE ROAD TO TYRANNY”

The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force flyer.
Abby Newman gets arrested
at an illegal ID checkpoint.
President George Bush declares New World Order.

http://www.infowars.com

http://www.jonesreport.com

http://www.prisonplanet.com

http://www.infowars.net

Duration : 0:10:1

Read more…

Chain Reaction

After researching much of the information regarding the Informant system, I believe this is at the heart of much of the corruption that we are seeing in our society. In our justice systems and in our communities. I believe this system is enslaving large portions of society. I also believe that there are many of us that were and are blissfully unaware of what is happening and will remain so until it is too late.

There is a chain reaction that is happening in society that if left unchecked has the potential to infect and destroy the very core of society that we have all known and depended on. That is of course the snitching infection. I call it that, because there is no other way to describe some of the events that I have read about while doing research into the Informant system.

While researching this phenomenon I have come across people who one minute seemed like average decent persons, and the next minute after being caught up in the Snitching/Informant system were willing to sell their very mothers down the drain to keep themselves free. This is not going to be the case for every Informant, but it’s the case with too many that are a part of this system.

Once let loose back into society many will continue with a life of crime. others will continue with what I call the game.

The Game

The game is one of set up’s and betrayal where the Informant will try to set someone up for a fall. They will choose a target and the unsuspecting target will get caught up in a scheme of some kind, eventually be arrested, they do not necessarily have to have committed a crime, and then the informant will testify against the person they entrapped, or other informants will. Once this new person is caught up in the game, should they be turned informant then the cycle continues once again.

I don’t know how many Informants are a part of this game that is ongoing in society, but I suspect that the many are, and all of them once they decide to become informants are owned by the system, and their handlers. That means anytime the government wants or needs a favor guess who they will call upon? Do you begin to see the makings of a corrupt society? Remember they can call upon these informants years later after these informants have been let loose. Many of these Informants will also go onto have careers, and even become contributing members of society, but they are still owned by the state. A lot of these Informant deals are kept off the records, meaning that the person is owned by a handler, but there might not be an official record of it, but when that handler needs a favor, that Informant will be called upon, and will risk exposure if they do not comply.

[quote]For example, unlike a classic plea bargain, informant deals lack finality because an informant’s obligations are ongoing. Written co-operation agreements often extend a defendant’s obligations into perpetuity, while informal, unwritten agreements last as long as the police or prosecutor wishes to use that informant.[/quote]

To understand how the game works, we will review three case studies. These are just a few of the many that I came across when reading the stories on the wall. It’s a continued pattern of set up on unsuspecting pigeons, and hardened Informants who will do what they need to do to stay out of jail.

http://www.november.org/thewall/wall/wall.html

Before we review the case studies I am going to again remind you of some statistics.

http://www.aclu.org/images/asset_upload_file744_30623.pdf

[quote] as many as fifty percent of African American males in some cities – are in contact with the criminal justice system and therefore potentially under pressure to snitch. By relying heavily on snitching, particularly in drug-related cases, law enforcement officials create large numbers of informants who remain at large in the community, engaging in criminal activities while under pressure to provide information about others. These snitches are a communal liability: they increase crime and threaten social organization, interpersonal relationships, and socio-legal norms in their home communities, even as they are tolerated or under-punished by law enforcement because they are useful.[/quote]

[quote]The uncoordinated, widespread use of informants in the United States by thousands of different police departments and various federal agencies does not of course, amount to the focused, purposeful political mission of the Stasi. But if anywhere near eight percent of the male population in inner city communities is snitching, that figure meets or surpasses Stasi level of between one and ten percent of the total population as informers.[/quote]

http://november.org/stayinfo/breaking08/HoffmanCase.html

[quote]If things had gone according to plan, you never would have heard of 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman. She would have just been another confidential informant, one of more than an estimated 100,000 in the United States who work with police to send someone else to jail.[/quote]

These figures do not include people who are informers via work, school, or community group programs. When we take into consideration numbers such as that, we are looking at an epidemic that is worst than what happened in East Germany. Keep in mind that in addition to all this, there will also be 800,000 Terrorism Liaison Officers added to the Informant population in the United States. These figures should wake up America and other cities to the dangers of what is happening in various societies.

The Game

To understand the game you might want to picture it in the sense of how a disease spreads, you start with on carrier and that person infects one person right after another. Some of those carriers will go on to infect others. Some will be dormant and not infect anyone. You might also want to think of the movie lifeforce, where one has the constant need to feed on one person after another, then those victims need to feed on others. You can have a very sick and infested city in a short space of time if such an infection goes unchecked.

The game is one of the Informant being placed primarily back in society, but this could also happen in jail, where an informant via lies, deceit, entrapment or some other methods set’s up another person to take a fall. That person then come in contact with the criminal justice system, they can then choose to become informants themselves, or refusing to do so, will spend lengthy spaces of time in prison. This game is primarily enacted via drugs, but that’s not the extent of it. Shoplifting is another example. I see this used with the teenaged informants, setting up their friends to steal from the stores, so that they in turn can become snitches.

Theft, drugs, stolen cars, any crime that someone can make a deal with police to become informants, they can be released back into society and are a danger to the rest of society. This is not to say that all Informants are horrible people, many just did not want to be in jail, some others are a true danger to society, nearly all are under pressure by the government to produce other Informants, and that obligation is never ending, some are allowed to lay dormant, till they can be of use.

http://november.org/stayinfo/breaking08/FL-Hoffman6.html

[quote]In Hoffman’s case, it was the work of another informer that led to her own work for the police.

On April 15, an informer told Tallahassee police that Hoffman had sold marijuana in the past but hadn’t done so recently, according to police records.

At the time, Hoffman, 23, was in a pretrial drug diversion program because of charges of possession of marijuana and resisting arrest in February 2007. To stay in the program, she had to stay out of trouble.

Two days after police got the informer’s tip, a Tallahassee police officer stopped Hoffman as she was getting into her car
[/quote]

http://www.mapinc.org/images/Hoffman.jpg

Rachael Hoffman then went on to become an Informant. She first tried to set up a close friend and when that failed, the close friend helped her find the dealers who she tried to buy drugs from on behalf of the police. The sting went wrong and she was killed. Had this gone successfully, those drug dealers if they agreed to become informants might have been released back into society as Informants and the cycle would have continued. It’s a frightening cycle that has become more widespread than can be imagined.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/

Case number 2.

Joey Settembrino was a young 18 year old, just about to go off to college.

He was set up by an Informant. The Informant was a close friend of his. He use to spend his weekends at the Informants house.

[quote]He was a very good friend. I had known the guy for many years. We had gone out every weekend, fishing on his boat, hydrosliding, skiing. I was very shocked; it was very unexpected. It’s not something you expect from friends.[/quote]

In an Informants society, it’s what you expect from just about everyone and it makes people suspicious and closed off. This is what happened in East Germany once the population became aware of what was happening. In America many Americans are not aware that these types of games are being played. In these cases the targets were encouraged and did get into illegal activities, however that is not always the case, and many times innocent people who had nothing to do with illegal activities are still caught up in these games and convicted on the testimony of Informants.

[quote]He wanted me to go back to the house where I got the acid from and get something else. They wanted me to wear a wire and they wanted me to go back there … to buy some other type of drug, no matter what it was, whatever he had in the house, so they could set him up. Just a chain reaction, one gets to one, one gets the other and they just keep going. I told him that I couldn’t do that, that I didn’t get the drugs from that house. At that time I was really confused. I was shocked, and I told him that I couldn’t do anything for him. But he kept trying, he kept threatening, talking about a lot of time. “You’re going to do 25 years. You’re going to be in prison your whole life.” … He really tried to scare me. But I told him I couldn’t do anything for him … . [Eventually] they went back to the house in which I got it from, they arrested the other guy, my friend [who I bought the acid from]. And he’s now doing a 10-year sentence along with me.
[/quote]

Joey said it best. This is like a chain reaction that just keeps going and going. One get’s one, then another and another and another. Those in turn get others and the cycle continues. Remember it’s not just drugs, and it’s not just the guilty that are being caught up in this game. If we review cases of Gang Stalking, we hear of men who thought that a woman had entered their life for the sole purpose of setting them up to look like a rapist or something else.

There are stories of targets being framed or other set up’s, and there are targets that do turn informant and then go back into society and try to harm other targets. This is happening in ever sector of society. Rachel, Joey and even Clarence were all going off to college, or had finished college when they were caught up in these stings.

Joey refused to become a snitch and thus spent 10 years in jail. His friend that set him up, who had been caught for drugs himself, was back on the streets, selling drugs, and setting up at least 11 or 12 others in the first year that Joey was in jail.

[quote]
Do you know why they wanted you?

I’ve asked that question, I’ve asked myself that a thousand times, “Why me? Why did he set me up?” …
[/quote]

In this game that is happening, I would say that they want just about everyone. They will get some people via community programs to be Informants, some via their places of employment, or community programs. Now the people who are informants via community programs and other legit means might not play the game of setting people up directly, but they are still part of the game, and they still work hand in hand with these others that are playing by a different set of rules. Many might not be aware of who they are working hand in hand with. At the end of the day, they all work for the state, government and all the orders come from the same sources.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/cases/aaron.html

Clearance is in jail because he introduced two parties that wanted to buy or sell drugs to each other. He had never been involved with drugs before, but one day his cousin called him up and asked him if he could find someone to buy drugs from. He said he knew some people and thought that they might be involved in dealing, he would check into it.

Clearances case is interesting because all the other parties who turned Informant received less time than he did. He does not know why his cousin and the others turned against him and lied, or why the prosecutor seemed intent on punishing him because he would not snitch and become an Informant.

[quote]What was it like having your friends testify against you?

Well, we’re sitting in the courtroom. These guys that I knew all my life came up, and they said [stuff] about me that wasn’t true, and they hurt me. It really truly hurt me, Robert and James really hurt me ’cause James is my first cousin. I looked up to him all my life. Robert was supposed to be my best friend at the time. We grew up together from playing Pop ball all the way up to high school ball together, and I couldn’t believe that they would sit there, in front of me … and say the things that they said about me … . [The] only thing I could say was it wasn’t true. But nobody believed me … . You had to have a fall guy, and I was that person.
[/quote]

It should be noted that the others involved all had prior drug convictions. Which means if they were out on the street and able to set him up, they were likely already Informants. He doesn’t know why they turned on him, but it’s possible that this might have been the idea from the get go. The assumption being that he would turn snitch and then be in a prime candidate on the college campus, a pawn to be used to set up other pawns, because that is how the game works.

[quote]Why did he do it?

Well, I had a opportunity to talk to James one time … . He said, “Man, I’m sorry, man.” I say, “James, why you do me like that?” He say, “Because I had no choice.” I said, “What you mean you have no choice in the matter?” He say “Because Miss Griffin say she didn’t want Bob to try your case.” She say if [he] didn’t cooperate and do what she told him to do, that she was going to hurt him worse in his case … . He say, “Well, the prosecutor Miss Griffin said if I don’t do it she going to put me in prison for the rest of my life … . I got to do what I got to do.”
[/quote]

He stats that the prosecutor pulled his cousin aside and when his cousin went back on the stand, his cousin lied. This is not the first time scenarios like this have happened, it can only be imagined what these prosecutors or handlers have on these Informants to make them sell out their own friends, and family.

[quote]And the real drug dealers are out —

On the street now. And probably doing the same thing they were doing before they went in. I just don’t understand.
[/quote]

He also does not understand, but if you review enough of these cases, you start to see a pattern and you start to understand, this is how the game works, and yes they are probably back on on the street looking for the next pigeon to set up, and try to turn them into informants.

It reminds me of something a forum member once told me. This guy said that he was set up because he met this woman online, who he dated only to discover that she was married. Her husband got mad and that’s why he thought he was set up.

The person on my forum pointed out that he had met the woman via some co-workers who introduced him to the website where he located this woman. The person on my forum suggested that he was probably profiled and set up by the co-workers who sent him to the site, knowing he would met this woman. The idea is that these games and set up’s take place long before the victim is aware that they are part of a game.

The Global outlook.

Targets of Gang Stalking complain that even when they leave countries such as the U.K., Canada, U.S. that the stalking continues. That is understandable we have seen muli-governmental corporation in other investigations.

What is not understandable and the most frightening sector of this is that various targets have moved to a variety of countries and they all report the same thing, Informants that are able to follow them 24/7.

This suggest that these Informant networks are getting global in nature. They are popping up in areas that are unexpected, and if this trend continues we will have a global surveillance society.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/04/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast1/print

[quote]Middle East: Israel’s secret police pressuring sick Gazans to spy for them, says report· Treatment only offered to would-be informants
· Patients allowed to cross the border drops sharply[/quote]

The same situation is happening in Iraq where they previously had family structures that might have prevented Informant networks from spreading as rapidly. The country will be rebuilt and the Informant structure will be a part of it.

Why would a global surveillance society be necessary?

I will not speculate. I will however say that based on research many societies in history that had a dictator, tyrant, or despot who came to power and who wanted to pull off an unpopular agenda’s such as Hitlers Germany, or Stasi East Germany, employed an army of Informants. It’s the most effective way that a society can control, monitor and subdue the inhabitants.

Since history has shown us that these informant networks are often needed to move forward tyrannical agendas, then can it be assumed that if we could slow down or stop the chain reaction of the Informant movement, we might be able to stop some of the corruption that we are seeing in many areas of society?

Stopping the Chain Reaction.

To stop the Informant infection people need to be aware that there is a lethal chain reaction happening in many parts of society. They need the understanding of how the game is played, and awareness of how far spread and how far reaching it is.

In America prison system reform could go a long way towards fixing the system that has become corrupt. Then prosecutors would not be as dependent on the testimonies of Informants and the power could start to shift back.

The family structure. Communities with less stable family structures are more vulnerable to this system.

People need to be aware that these entrapment’s are happening at every level of society, ever profession in society, thus why it goes all the way up to the top.

If people are unaware, they will not realise the various ways that people can become entrapped, including using someone that you are in a personal association with, or who you just “accidentally” meet. Someone you have a business relationship with.

Some people they will use their own greed and stupidity against them. Other will be a deliberate trap, others will be framed and will have committed no crime. Not being aware of how this system works, many will quietly accept off the record deals, and thus become indebted to the state, able to be used at will. Remember this is happening at all levels of society. Rich, poor, black, white, male, female.

If you have a parent, grandparent that was a snitch, Informant, they might try to go after the next generation.

Your friends, family, co-workers, anyone that is an Informant not by choice but by force, can be a liability to an innocent person.

The problem is more widespread that many realise, and what’s even worst is the silence that surrounds this problem in society. Till it’s talked about, discussed, and exposed it will continue to infect society, and have far reaching and unimaginable consequences, not just for those caught up in the game, but for the many unsuspecting victims, targets, or pigeons yet to come. This is not just happening at local levels. Targets have moved to various countries around the globe and encounter the same type of surveillance network.

We must stop this chain reaction. Awareness and exposure are key.

Happy Holidays.

gangstalking
http://www.articlesbase.com/news-and-society-articles/chain-reaction-695386.html

Job Search Turned TOXIC? Time For An Alternative Job Campaign!

Let’s see if you’re ready for an alternative job campaign.

Have you ever had this experience? . . . You go through a series of job search bad news events. They just seem to pile up, don’t they? The French say there are never two without three.

It’s time for the amazing alternative job campaign!

Why? Because, if you’ve been having negative experiences in the job market, your campaign has turned toxic! And the worst thing you can do is “stay the course.” It won’t get any better.

For example, here’s how these bad news events can accumulate:

1. Your resumes don’t get answered . . . even when you send out hundreds.

2. You can’t get any quality interviews.

3. The couple interviews you went on . . . you never heard from them again.

4. You never did get to meet a decision-maker.

5. They asked you questions that seemed totally irrelevant.

6. You’re just plain tired of all the rejection.

OK. Time to shift gears. Time to change course.

Fortunately there is a better alternative. You don’t have to sit by the phone waiting for someone to invite you in for an interview. Or chew your fingernails because your resumes received little or no response. Or, worst of all, wonder how you’re going to make ends meet.

Welcome to the amazing world of the alternative job campaign!

You’ll put together a blockbuster alternative resume and a way to use it that’s guaranteed to grab attention without mailing hundreds. And you’ll get directly in front of decision-makers . . . you know, the one’s who could be your next boss.

Best of all, if you follow the alternative job campaign plan, you could be entertaining a quality job offer in as little as two weeks.

Now, let me be honest. This two-week plan is not a lay down. It employs unique alternative strategies and tactics that require you to throw out everything you thought you knew about the job market and how hiring decisions are made.

The alternative job campaign works because it based on a common sense approach to job market dynamics based on bottom up analysis of what really goes on in today’s complex marketplace. It understands that the job marketplace follows the same rules as the business marketplace.

So, take a long, hard look at your situation. If it’s toxic, get out now! But shift into an approach that going to give you the best chance to succeed . . . one with a track record of many years with thousands of successful job-seekers. It’s time to explore an alternative job campaign.

Paul Megan
http://www.articlesbase.com/careers-articles/job-search-turned-toxic-time-for-an-alternative-job-campaign-79087.html

Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri Speaks – "say No to Lip Service"

Why not outsource our Parliament itself?!

As my fifth consecutive and final editorial related to the Mumbai terror attacks and to what we should be doing, this time I am going to write down four random thoughts that are coming to my mind… I hope by the end of the editorial, you can find some relation between all of them and some meaning out of it.

The first thought that drives me infuriatingly mad tonight, as I sit down to write this editorial, is that it will all happen again… and too soon, because we have learnt no lessons. Just today, as I boarded the flight from Kolkata to Delhi, I walked into the airport with my large handbag, and was – to my astonishment – not subjected to any security check of any kind. The sickeningly lax security guards standing at the main entrance did not even check anyone’s identity card, leave alone checking our bags using some metal detector, although a security screening gate is kept right outside the entrance. As I walked in, I felt like throwing shoes – the way the Iraqi journalist did recently – at one and all of our politicians for being such shamelessly unrepentant frauds. They just give crappy lip service even when the entire nation is fuming and hurt. Even at key risk areas like airports, they haven’t yet put any kind of real security. Three people like me could have walked into the Calcutta airport today without being checked, and then taken out guns and once more held hostage the entire airport filled with thousands of passengers, and created mayhem! (And probably, this might well be the reality soon at some airport or mall). So let me tell you all. Nothing, simply nothing has changed! These bloodsucking vampire bats who rule this country will do nothing but speak garbage and hope that as per the law of probability, another attack would not happen soon. That is all…

The second thought that comes to my mind is corruption. It feels sick to know that all the killed terrorists and the one caught alive (and probably the fifteen odd who escaped) were carrying 400 dollars with them. It is such a common joke for terrorists that they were indeed all carrying that sum since that was the exact amount of money that our marine inspectors take as bribe to let people off in the seas. So, to go back through the seas after the mayhem, the terrorists needed that money to bribe our coast guards. What a shame to know that our borders are so porous everywhere and our defence is so much on sale. And let me tell you it’s not just the coast guards, it’s everybody, just everybody who is up for shameless sale. What a pity! They buy faulty guns, faulty rockets, faulty bulletproof jackets, faulty everything… and don’t think twice before selling their souls and putting the entire nation on sale. Until these criminals and spineless swines – almost one and all politicians – rule this country, we will have just too many more Mumbais. And all our people will do is form useless human chains where a few actors will come deliberately looking like plain Janes and get a photo-op. Trust me, it’s time for more… as I have been writing nonstop in my past edits! It’s time to grab the power away from these slimy soul peddlers; they are not just corrupt, they are corrupt to an extent that is completely unimaginable. They aren’t swindling away simply a crore or so; they are swindling this nation out of hundreds and thousands of crores, and that too on an individual basis depending upon their portfolios. They have their venture funds and private equity funds in benami (undisclosed); and these politico-criminals are investing even in education, hospitals and everything. And the sad truth is that everybody knows which politician has what kind of fund size and is investing where, and who owns which company and how the markets are manipulated up and down. But no one dares to write all this because then the government will devastate them the way they taught Tehelka a lesson. Nehru had once said that every black marketer should be hanged from the nearest lamp-post. By his definition, all the lamp-posts around Parliament House should have been used to hang these very corrupt soul-sellers and nation betrayers. Sounds too strong? But that’s how it is!

The third thought that comes to my mind as our politicians irresponsibly speak of war, is that though we must avoid a war, the LETs, the Dawoods and all such negative forces have to be necessarily wiped off. And I don’t realise why our intelligence doesn’t think of a special suicidal patriotic task force, whose job will be to go to these terror funding countries unofficially and kill the dangerous individuals and come back the way, say, the Israeli Mossad can do (whenever required, openly), or the way CIA has been doing in a clandestine manner forever, by carrying out killings all over Latin America and its bordering countries to put in favourable governments from time to time. And to quote an alternate think for our pathetically characterless and charlatan politicians, this force can be made up of terminally ill patients who – despite knowing they might not have long to live – would love to make their life be of huge service to this nation. I say this radically because we have to avoid wars but we must destroy these negative forces as well. And for that, we must try out alternate sources before going for a war.

Finally, it’s unfortunate; but the truth in India is that if you need good roads, don’t give the contract to an Indian company… for an Indian company will cheat and make roads that break off in no time. If you need better airports, never give the contract to an Indian company… for it will cheat and swindle money. So the buzzword is, outsource the job to a foreign company. They will, in all probability (after giving the initial kickback to secure the contract) do the job honestly; and we will have better roads and airports and every other public service, as has been proven in the past. By the same logic now, our Defence Ministry is thinking of ‘outsourcing’ our coastguards to a foreign country / company to be sure they don’t take bribes (what a huge, huge, huge shame that our politicians have created such an environment of corruption in India that they can’t even trust their own people to guard the country honestly)… If this is indeed to be done, then why shouldn’t the people of India also think of outsourcing our country’s Parliament seats – including the Prime Minister’s job – to foreigners… To Barrack Obama and his team maybe! At least we would know that we are in safe end genuine hands, where no effort is farcical and no promise a mere, pathetic and shameless lip service!

This new year, take a simple pledge. Say no to lip service. Hope that conveys it all. Happy New Year!

Kartik
http://www.articlesbase.com/politics-articles/prof-arindam-chaudhuri-speaks-quotsay-no-to-lip-servicequot-702005.html

Obedience to Authority

Many people wonder why these informants go along with this? Why would anyone go along with causing the suicide of their fellow citizens, or enacting cruelty on someones cats, dogs, kids, family, property etc? Why would you knowingly go along with a practice that many would consider to be evil?

The answer is obedience to authority. As long as an authority figure is giving the orders, experiments have shown that most people will go along with whatever is being ordered, even if those orders are to inflict pain on another human being.

Let’s start with the Milgram experiments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mst1h31daV4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

[quote]Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[4]

[/quote]

As part of the experiment a stranger off the street is asked to shock an individual as part of a learning or behaviour modification experiment. The person doing the shocking is told that this will help the person to learn the answers to the question. The person being shocked has agreed to the experiment.

The person giving the shocks is giving a test shock of the lowest voltage to see what the pain is like. It’s not pleasant. They are told that if the person fails to answer the question, they are to increase the voltage and to keep shocking the person till they get the answer correct.

The person giving the answers starts to get the questions wrong, they are asked to keep going by the person in authority. The person answering the questions, starts to scream out in pain, sometimes even screaming, my heart, my heart.

Many times the person giving the shock wants to stop what they are doing, but they are told don’t pay it any mind we have to keep going, and so they are goaded on by the experimenter to the end of the experiment. 65% of those in the studied continued to the very end of the voltage metre.

Now imagine you are an average citizen, you are asked to become an Informant by the state, country that you love. At some point you realise that what you are doing is wrong and that people are being harmed. Let’s say you come across a Gang Stalking website, and realise what you are taking part in. How can you stop?

First you are bound by a gag order, so you can’t say anything. Second if you go to the police, local authorities, they are taking part, so you can’t go there, human rights organizations, the same thing. Since becoming an Informant you realise that this is systemic and that the majority of your community is in some way taking part. What do you do where do you turn?

You can ask to not take part, but many people are afraid of being targeted themselves the same way, experiencing the same sort of harassment. There is a real cult like mentality about what is happening, even if most people do not identify it as such, so how would you get out, much less help the target?

In many cases they can’t, and some of them are as trapped as we are. Either get the punishment or give the punishment. Not a great choice. This is not true for all of them, some are just really lowlifes and happy to go along with this, and would report anyone not following suit.

Within the system you can try to hint to the target about what is happening, try to help expose what is happening. Don’t allow yourself to feel or become powerless, keep thinking, keep finding ways, try to keep feeling. Remain hopeful. If you let the stress of the situation overwhelm you, a part of you disassociates emotionally, and you became biddable, capable of not much but following orders.

How quickly can this shift come about, in a really short space of time. The Milgram experiment happened within an hour or two.

The next experiment happened over a few days.

The Stanford Prison Experiment.

http://www.prisonexp.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

The scary part about this, is that thy knew in advance that they were part of an experiment, they were paid for it and everything. Which should indicate that they would be able to leave if they wanted to, but that did not happen.

The experiment was suppose to last 2 weeks, but had to be ended after six days. One group of students were assigned to the role of prisoners, another to the role of guards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0jYx8nwjFQ

[quote]
As the experiment proceeded, several guards became progressively sadistic. Experimenters said that approximately one-third of the guards exhibited genuine sadistic tendencies. Interestingly, most of the guards were upset when the experiment concluded early.

Zimbardo argued that the prisoner participants had internalized their roles, based on the fact that some had stated that they would accept parole even with the attached condition of forfeiting all of their experiment-participation pay. Yet, when their parole applications were all denied, none of the prisoner participants quit the experiment. Zimbardo argued they had no reason for continued participation in the experiment after having lost all monetary compensation, yet they did, because they had internalised the prisoner identity, they thought themselves prisoners, hence, they stayed.
[/quote]

The prisoners (students pretending to be prisoners) started to riot, the cops (students pretending to be cops) started to get brutal with them. Made them do all sorts of sick and sadistic things. Tried to get some to turn into snitches, one prisoner faked being crazy to get out, they turned on each other in some cases, and just fell in line with obeying authority, in most cases. The person conducting the experiment actually thought he was a warden, he got so caught up in the role.

[quote]In psychology, the results of the experiment are said to support situational attributions of behavior rather than dispositional attribution. In other words, it seemed the situation caused the participants’ behavior, rather than anything inherent in their individual personalities. In this way, it is compatible with the results of the also-famous Milgram experiment, in which ordinary people fulfilled orders to administer what appeared to be damaging electric shocks to a confederate of the experimenter.[/quote]

The experiment at the time was used to help better understand the psychological changes that prisoners and their jailers go through. Later it was used to help explain the situation at Abu Ghraib with the prisoner abuses.

The Strip Search Prank Call

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam

This experiment was anything but. Because a crank caller pretended to be an authority figure. Police officer. Average sheeple were willing to carry out horrible actions on innocent people.

[quote]The strip search prank call scam was a series of incidents occurring for roughly a decade before 2004. These incidents involved a man calling a restaurant, claiming to be a police detective, and convincing managers to conduct strip-searches of female employees. Reports of over 70 such occurrences in 30 U.S. states finally led to the arrest and charging of David R. Stewart, a 37-year-old Florida corrections officer.[/quote]

These are a few of the incidents that occurred in the wake of these phone calls.

[quote]
A call to a McDonald’s restaurant in Hinesville, Georgia resulted in a janitor performing a body cavity search on a 19-year old cashier.[5]
A 17-year-old customer at a Taco Bell in Phoenix, Arizona was strip-searched by a manager receiving this kind of prank call.[6]

On Nov. 30, 2000, the caller persuaded the manager at a McDonald’s in Leitchfield, Kentucky, to remove her own clothes in front of a customer whom the caller said was suspected of sex offenses. The caller promised that undercover officers would burst in and arrest the customer the moment he attempted to molest her, said Detective Lt. Gary Troutman of the Leitchfield Police Department.[7]

On May 29, 2002, a girl celebrating her 18th birthday — in her first hour of her first day on the job at the McDonald’s in Roosevelt, Iowa — was forced to strip, jog naked and assume a series of embarrassing poses, all at the direction of a caller on the phone, according to court and news accounts.[8]

On Jan. 26, 2003, according a police report in Davenport, Iowa, an assistant manager at an Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar conducted a degrading 90-minute search of a waitress at the behest of a caller who said he was a regional manager — even though the man had called collect, and despite the fact the assistant manager had read a company memo warning about hoax calls just a month earlier. He later told police he’d forgotten about the memo.[9] [/quote]

His downfall came when he was able to get one of these sheeple to sexually assault a teenage girl over the phone. All the while giving the instructions. She complied, because an authority figure was on the phone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFXeXK3szOk

http://www.mahalo.com/Louise_Ogborn_Video

[quote]
The final prank call in this scheme was made to a McDonald’s restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky on April 9, 2004. According to assistant manager Donna Summers, the caller identified himself as a policeman, ‘Officer Scott’, he described an employee whom he said was suspected of stealing a customer’s purse. Summers called 18-year-old employee Louise Ogborn to her office and told her of the suspicion. Following the instructions of the caller, Summers ordered Ogborn first to empty her pockets, and finally to remove all her clothing except for an apron, in an effort to find the stolen items. Again following the caller’s instructions, Summers had another employee watch Ogborn when she had to leave the office to check the restaurant. The first employee, 27 year old Jason Bradley, whom she asked to stay there refused to after he was on the phone with the caller, so she phoned her fiance Walter Nix, asking him to come in to ‘help’ with the situation. [10]

According to Ogborn, after Summers passed off the phone to Nix, he continued to do as the caller told, even as the caller’s requests became progressively more bizarre. A security camera recorded Nix forcing Ogborn to remove her apron, the only article of clothing she was still wearing, and to assume degrading positions, such as standing on a chair and getting on all fours. When Ogborn refused to obey the caller’s instructions, Nix hits the 90 lb Ogborn on the buttocks several times creating painful red welts, and at one point he does this for 10 minutes. At the caller’s request, Nix then threatens to beat Ogborn again and forces Ogborn to kiss him and then perform oral sex on him. Ogborn says at the point of sexual assault she was scarred for life.[11] The tape showed that Summers re-entered the office several times and dismissed Ogborn’s pleas for help, a statement which Summers denies.

When another employee was asked to take part and objected, Summers decided to call the store manager, whom the caller claimed to have on another phone line. She then discovered that the store manager had not spoken to any police officers, and that the call had been a hoax. A quick-thinking employee dialed *69 to determine that the caller had called from a supermarket pay phone in Panama City, Florida. Summers then called police, who arrested Nix and began an investigation to find the caller. [/quote]

The above scenario is really sick and hard to believe that something like that could happen, mush less that similar circumstances happened at least 70 times prior to this incident, but it’s true.

Other events show us that people are willing to kill upon request, even innocent woman, children and the elderly, while others are not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHk4TGWx0ZM

[quote]
the My Lai massacre where the US army in Vietnam slaughtered 500 unarmed civilians, many women and children.

Some victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, maimed and mutilated.

Three U.S. servicemen who made an effort to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were sharply criticized by US Congressmen, received hate mail, death threats and mutilated animals on their doorsteps. Only 30 years after the event were their efforts honored.

American media first claimed 100 had been killed in a fierce fire fight.
[/quote]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

[quote]
Charlie Company landed following a short artillery and helicopter gunship preparation. The soldiers found no enemy fighters in the village on the morning of March 16. Many suspected there were NLF troops in the village, hiding underground in the homes of their elderly parents or their wives. The U.S. soldiers, one platoon of which was led by Second Lieutenant William Calley, went in shooting at “suspected enemy position”. After the first civilians were killed and wounded by the indiscriminate fire, the soldiers soon began attacking anything that moved, humans and animals alike, with firearms, grenades and bayonets. The scale of the massacre only spiraled as it progressed, the brutality increasing with each killing. BBC News described the scene:

“ Soldiers went berserk, gunning down unarmed men, women, children and babies. Families which huddled together for safety in huts or bunkers were shown no mercy. Those who emerged with hands held high were murdered. … Elsewhere in the village, other atrocities were in progress. Women were gang raped; Vietnamese who had bowed to greet the Americans were beaten with fists and tortured, clubbed with rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets. Some victims were mutilated with the signature “C Company” carved into the chest. By late morning word had got back to higher authorities and a cease-fire was ordered. My Lai was in a state of carnage. Bodies were strewn through the village.[12] ”

More victims at My Lai. Photo by Ronald L. HaeberleDozens of people were herded into an irrigation ditch and other locations and killed with automatic weapons[13]. A large group of about 70 to 80 villagers, rounded up by the 1st Platoon in the center of the village, were killed personally by Calley and by soldiers he had ordered to fire. Calley also shot two other large groups of civilians with a weapon taken from a soldier who had refused to do any further killing.

Members of the 2nd Platoon killed at least 60-70 Vietnamese men, women, and children, as they swept through the northern half of My Lai 4 and through Binh Tay, a small subhamlet about 400 meters north of My Lai 4.[1]

After the initial “sweeps” by the 1st and the 2nd Platoons, the 3rd Platoon was dispatched to deal with any “remaining resistance”. They immediately began killing every still-living human and animal they could find, including shooting the Vietnamese who emerged from their hiding places, and finishing off the wounded found moaning in the heaps of bodies. The 3rd Platoon also rounded up and killed a group of 7 to 12 women and children.[1]

Since Charlie Company had encountered no enemy opposition, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, was moved into its landing zone between and attacked the subhamlet of My Khe 4, killing as many as 90 people. U.S. forces lost one man killed and seven wounded from mines and booby traps.[1] During the next two days, both battalions were involved in additional burning and destruction of dwellings, and in the mistreatment of Vietnamese detainees.

Most of the soldiers had not participated in the crimes, but neither did they protest or complain to their superiors.[14]
[/quote]

At the end of the day what can really be said about these incidents are occurrences? Why are some people driven by a higher authority, a greater code of conduct than others? Why are some not willing to go along with this, when others just fall in line, or stand helplessly by and let these atrocities happen? Why do some decline to become Informants for the system while others just accept? Why do some just go along with injustice and corruption, while others turn away from all appearances of evil?
Why do some question, while others don’t?

There are a variety of reasons, many people are culturally engineered or programed to obey authority, many have never been in a similar situation before and their survival instinct is to comply, because everyone else is going along with it. Humans for the most part are social creatures and very few have the capacity to stand on their own, or be excluded from society, friends, family, neighbours and if the corruption, or atrocity is systemic, most will just fall in line with what is happening, just like in Nazi Germany.

gangstalking
http://www.articlesbase.com/news-and-society-articles/obedience-to-authority-704033.html