This morning while going through my e-mail inbox I came across an interesting article in Quora written by Thomas Delvin - Content Producer at Babbel. I found it interesting enough to share it with you, members of myEC.

Can you reveal an amazing etymology finding?

Let’s talk turkey. By which I mean, maybe my favorite etymology is of the word turkey. I love it because it shows that sometimes an etymology can be completely divorced from reality.

So to start, there are two things referred to as “Turkey”:

For a while, I thought it was just a weird coincidence that the animal and the country were called the same thing, but it turns out that they’re kind of connected, but only by accident.

Let’s start with the country, because that’s where the name Turkey first came from. It comes from the Turks, which is the name of the people who historically lived on the land (and continues to be the name of the people who live there). The word “Turk” itself can be traced back at least as far as the 6th century CE, but it likely goes back even further than that. We don’t know exactly why that word was chosen, but it may have started, like many other words for a group of people, as the generic word that the Turks used for “humans.” Often, the word for “humans” that a group used would suddenly become the label of their clan/nation/etc. once they encounter other humans. The word Turk survived the centuries and became the official name of the country (technically Türkiye Cumhuriyeti in Turkish) on October 29, 1923.

Ok, so on to the bird. The first animal ever called a “turkey” looked like this:

If you have a sharp eye, you’ll see that these are not turkeys. In fact, they’re guinea fowl, currently named so because they can be found in the country of Guinea. But in the 16th century, when they were being imported to Europe, they were being taken from Madagascar and sent through Turkey on the course to the European markets. Even though this creature does not at all come from Turkey, the name turkey cock or turkey hen stuck to them.

On the other side of the world, there was a completely different bird that the Aztecs had domesticated. The Spanish conquistadors invading Europe in the 16th century saw these birds and brought them back home. These, too, ended up being called turkeys. Why? One theory is that they kind of look like they could be related, even though the two birds are separated by thousands if not millions of years of evolution. Another theory is that Spain exported the birds to the rest of Europe through North Africa which was, at that time, part of the Ottoman Empire. Or, you know, the Turks. More evidence for this theory is that the corn brought from the “New World” by the Spanish ended up being called “turkey corn” for a time. Of course, turkey corn was eventually changed to be called Indian corn, which brings us into a whole new realm of things being misnamed.

To add one more layer of confusion to the names of turkeys, the Turks themselves call the New World birds hindi, which literally mean “Indian.” This was because, as you may already know, there was still a misconception that the land Columbus found and the Europeans invaded was India. Fortunately, the Hindi word for “turkey” is just टर्की, which is pronounced pretty similarly to “turkey,” so the loop closes there.

As mentioned, I love this example because it shows how off-course words can be. There are countless examples of names built on misconceptions, but there’s something very funny to me about the fact that the meal we eat each Thanksgiving is so-named because people thought it was related to a bird that got its name from the country it was exported through.

 

 

I hope that I did not disappoint you by posting this article here.

 

Here is the text I got this morning in my e-mail box from my cousin in Canada:

One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining the earth. She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Pulverized willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.

“What happened to the carpet?” she asked.

“The carpet was nylon, which is made from butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.
Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fiber bristles.

“Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”

“Where’s the water?” asked Greta.

“Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it.”

“Why’s there no running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.

“Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?” There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tires and how ore has to be smelted to a make metal, and that’s tough to do with only electricity as a source of heat, and even if you use only electricity, the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for truck tires and tires and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .

“What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.

“Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “Raw.”

“How-so raw?” inquired Greta.

“Well, . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges in Sweden anymore.

“But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.

“Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”

“What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”

“Not anymore,” explained godmother. “The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are rapidly disappearing - being used on the black market for roasting eggs and staying warm.”

This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day without carbon-fiber boats to sail in, but a day that will save the planet.

Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocaine is synthesized.

Merry Christmas to whom it concerns!

Lord, how I hate myself for not loving you!!!

How can a miserable creature like me

walk on the soil your angelic feet touched??

how gross! How immensely profane and sacrilegious

that I still breathe the air that gorgeous you

breathed out!!!!

I desire with all my heart to scrape

the memory of you

from the walls of my intestines

yet I cannot bring myself to commit

such an unimaginable blasphemy

no, no...not you, you are the blue sky

over the green fields where love grows!

Drunken with the lack of love

I stumble through thorny shrubs on the way to

the castle you live

hoping and doubting, eager yet undecided

like in a malignous nightmare

I endeavour to force my rogue soul

to accept your existance

I try to persuade myself, silly me

how wonderful this global warming could be

were I capable of bringing myself

to embrace you, whisper sweet

little words into the pink shell

of your ear.

How normal and casual it would be,

Should we just make a date

and tell

how much we mean to each other!!

Your love is like a lighthouse for me,

Guiding me to safety in stormy sea,

The day blooms by the touch of your hand,

Indeed you are my love, the best of friend,

How I adore to look at your beautiful face,

All worries disappear without a trace,

Opening a sunny window for tomorrow,

Dispersing all my gloom and sorrow,

I thank my fortune for giving me you,

For all the joy, bliss and happiness,

My luck came right out of the blue,

Your love and care is more than priceless,

It fills my heart with warmth when I recall,

Our romantic picnics in the countryside,

Making everyday troubles look so small,

With feelings we cannot so easily hide,

You are the best gift I ever had in life,

Without your tenderness and true love,

My life would be a gloomy and lonely walk,

In a dark corridor with all doors locked fast

There would be no place for me to rest,

Tosssed around on the waves of the sea of life

Mauled by dispair and grief of desolate state,

Without you, I would be ready to vanish,

Once for all.

 Oi, folks

Rick’s blog on telling the time evoked in me such an irrefragable desire to make my own mess about telling the time that I decided to put the mess in writing.

The way of telling the time has two main methods – the official one, giving the time of arrivals, departures and other official events which is a 24 hours system. It starts from midnight [00 hours] till the next midnight [24 hours] and it does not partition the day in am and pm [am = ante meridiem – before noon, pm = post meridiem – after noon.

And so, 8 in the morning is 8:00 hrs and 8:00 in the evening is 20:00 hrs, of course, we can give parts of the hour, for example: The meeting will be held at 13:25 hrs on Monday, 2nd of January this year.

The other, less official way of telling the time is based on 12 hours division of the day. This way of telling the time is most commonly used when speaking in everyday routines. It starts from midnight – 00 o’clock [the hour hand of the chronometer is set at number 12 on the clock face] till the digit 6 at the bottom of the clock face, in this partition we use am, for example:”Hey, guys, let’s meet at the pub tomorrow at 10:30 am [at ten thirty or half past ten in the morning/before noon] and have a talk and some beer,”

From the digit 6 to 12 we use pm, for example: „The boss wants us to stay at work today till 7 pm.”

This method of telling the time has some catches in it as there are many ways of telling the same time, for example, when we say the time at full hours, we can say – at two o’clock in the afternoon or in the afternoon at two o’clock sharp.

But that’s not the end of the pitfalls awaiting the time teller, for example:

8:20 am or pm can be:

eight twenty or twenty past eight in the morning/in the afternoon

9:30 am or pm can be:

nine thirty or thirty past nine in the morning/in the afternoon

10:45 am or pm can be:

ten forty-five, a quarter to eleven - we should not say: three quarters past ten.

I am sure that you noticed that time form 12 to 6 is past a given hour and from 6 to 12 is to a given hour.

The next catch is telling the time when the minutes past the main hour is less than 10, the we say: 8:05 or 10:07 as eight oh five and ten, oh seven.

The old school advised to use minutes after the main hour if the clock hand is not on the hour digits, example:

00:06...six minutes past midnight

7:08 am…eight minutes past seven in the morning or seven, oh eight in the morning

Of course, the same goes for time in the afternoon.

Please take notice that the last part of the blog refers to the 12 hours partition of the day.

LOL...hope I have successfully confused you all.

   Oi there, folks

   Here's what I came across in my e-mail in-box this morning:

An amazing 2 letter English word.

   A reminder that one word in the English language that can be a noun, verb, adjective, adverb and preposition.

 UP 

  Read until the end ... you'll laugh.

  This two-letter word  in English has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is 'UP.' It is listed in the dictionary as an [adv.], [prep.], [adj.], [n], [v].

  It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP

  At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP, and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends, brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and fix UP the old car.

   At other times, this little word has real special meaning.  People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. 

  To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

 And this UP is confusing:  A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

   We open UP a store in the morning, but we close it UP at night.  We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

  To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look UP the word UP in the dictionary.   In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

   If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.  It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

   When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.  When the sun comes out, we say it is clearing UP.  When it rains, the earth soaks it UP.  When it does not rain for a while, things dry UP.  One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now . . . my time is UP!

   Oh . . . one more thing:  What is the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night? 

U

P!

Did that one crack you UP?

 Don't screw UP.  Send this on to everyone you look UP in your address book . . . or not . . . it's UP to you.

Now I'll shut UP!

LOL....hope you guys liked it.

Jerusalem – The City of David

     David, the son of Hebraic tribe of Canaan  conquered the city from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of the united kingdom of Israel, and his son, King Solomon, commissioned the building of the First Temple of Judaism in this region.

    All this happened a long time before the Christians established their religion in the Kingdom of Judea. The Christians built their shrines to celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus.

    Much later, Islam made Jerusalem a focal point for Muslim prayer. If anybody has the right to claim Jerusalem as their holy city, the Jewish people most evidently have it.

This night, after staying up late as usually chatting in EC chat room, I finally hit the hay and almost immediately fell asleep, but I was not inundated with the usual night time visions, the phantasmagory that followed was way different, it was the most weird dream I ever had.

  I found myself in an idyllic scenery - temple like building, all of white stone, broad streets running through lavish gardens, people joyfully discussing or just relaxing on the carpets of grass which seemed to spread around where ever one looked. They all were people well known to me which evoked some sort of inner tranquility as if I were in a world of friends only.  

 Then, for no good reason given, some unrest broke out among those people and they got ready to face each other. Two enraged groups were ready to jump at each others throats. I stood amidst one of these groups, also ready to slash out my anger, although I had no idea what it all was about. The lovely scenery disappeared and we were in some sort of rocky valley, barren and gloomy. We had no weapons only held stones in our hands, eyes glaring with hate and lust for blood.

  Suddenly I notice some Iranians among the group on the other side of the barricade. A strange feeling gripped my heart and I was unwilling to fight them, I said: "I shall not fight them as they are of my blood, neither shall I wield my sword at their foes, for they are my beloved friends!" I came up to the leader of the other group, which appeared to be one of my best friends...whom I lost in Iraq, and told him" Kill me, for I dare not harm you and your friends!"

  Hearing these words, the women from both group started lamenting and begged their men to appease their anger. People started embracing each other - the scenery turned to meadows full of shrubs in bloom and things seemed to be going the right way...but we were not given to enjoy our truce. Dark clouds flooded in hanging low over our heads and we heard the thumping of thousands of feet which made the earth under our feet tremble. An army of tall, clad in dark brown leather armor were attacking us. People started to scatter in all directions trying to escape death, yet the pears thrown at us downed many of us. I lay behind a big rock...the weather changed like in a kaleidoscope - howling snow blizzards through raging tempests to total, grey silence. When some blood from a wounded fellowmen stained my robes, I could hold myself back any longer and sprang from behind the rock I was cowardly hiding and truck the nearest warrior with a rock, to my great disbelief and utter joy, the ferocious warrior crumpled down hissing like a fizzy drink powder. When my comrades saw this, they also lashed out with whatever they could get hold of, soon there were no more vicious, nefarious warriors but pools of fizzy drinks of various colours and smell. 

  Feeling that victory was at the reach of our hands, we battled on, and on, and on till we came to a town of gray, tall buildings, narrow, dull streets and we heard some fantastic music coming from nowhere, it resembled the Nabuco slave aria. As conquerors, we were about to do with the women what conquerors usually do..but the women were made of something that looked like strings of garlic, when I befell one of those creatures in something that looked like a sitting room in a barn and tried to strip off the robes, the strings of garlic just fell down and a hen perched on the ceiling beam stared at me. I looked around, there were hundreds of fluffy, greyish fat hens sitting on the beams....in anger i hacked at one of them singing in the meantime an old polish folk song which asked the hen to give me a lovely, big egg..in return the hens started to sing in angelic voices:"Here you are, mighty warrior, take the egg and break it, what comes out of it, splatter it with your gleaming sword"...the singing of angelic voices and the music was something like Bach's fugue in D Minor.

   Blinded by anger and disgust, I started smashing the beautiful eggs which seemed to have a shell of scales in rainbow hues, but no yolk come out, only some clumsy, squarepant bugs started to crawl around. This made me see red, as i squashed the bugs, they changed their form, the more I smashed them, the bigger they got and looked more and more evil...as I kept smashing them, the angelic voices turned into some demonic screech telling me..."squash them all u want, they will grow bigger and hungrier and they will eat you ha ha ha ha"..this infuriated me and I kept lashing out at the bugs until i woke up on the floor.

A lengthy times past ago there existed a young, good heart young prince what lived in beautiful and big castle along with him family. His father, a king of this land, was good ruler but not every time have mind and time for care of his people. May be his lack for attention were not because of not good will but probabli the old king don’t wanted to offend or disturbing some people what was supported his in controling many of important matters for country, so that someone were happy with what the king do but there also were unhappy someones too. Mother of prince was good woman, honest, decent, humble and make very delicious biryani, but the prince very much like her falafel, even the little boy what take care to royal rabbits likes her dolma.

One day, may be it was after a big, tasty food in Eid sacrifice or may be it was during holy Holi feast, the young prince, with belly full and warm feeling spilling all over him, decided to take with his hands some pending matters that old king had no time to bother him royal mind with. For a young and not too experienced person, it must has be very difficult and cumbersome things to do. Yet the prince felt by heart and soul that he musted to do this for making his people feel happy and cared for. From tales said him by his beloved and caring nanny, he know that big things start with small ones. So, slowly and very despacito, the prince made small changes and regulations, of course, immediately were found many bad people grumbling and even mocked or disapprove his good intentions, but the prince, thanks to brave heart and perseverance, step by step, make his decisions come to work. It was not easy job, like eating shawarma, but prince turned deaf ear to all malicious grumble and go on with his work. Slowly, many bad or even horrific things become good and pleasant. When the old king finally kick the bucket, the prince, that was no longer young and uncunning but become wise and respected prince, took the seat of old king and in very short time the land was in bloom, people were happy and very thankful for the new king who had strong will and a goden heart to defeat all obstacles on the road to his goal.

Thank you so much for wasting your precious time to reading my blog, I hoping you enjoy read it.

 Oi there,

   Indeed, translations can be very "tricky"! First of all, the person doing the translation should have well mastered the original language of the text being translated. Translating demands a vast knowledge of our own mother tongue as well as an appreciable knowledge of the language we are to translate into, the customs of the people using that language and some history. All these give the translator a rich "library" of words, notions, quotes and so on.

I have been doing some translations from different languages into also different languages, mostly from English, Portuguese, French or Spanish into Polish and vice versa.

At the beginning of my translating escapade there were many pitfalls awaiting me at every page, baaaaaa..every paragraph as then I had little general knowledge. But with passing time, I came to know different disciplines of science and its particular vocabulary or as it is generally called, „professional jargon”.

  A good example of what I am driving at, is the following phrase: "another ring added to the fortress" with which one of our chatters had to struggle with.

To get the notion what those "rings" are, we should first know what a fortress is and what it served for.

   In the old days fortresses were built to give a stronghold against any attemps of invading the land the said fortress is to safeguard. To make the fortress hard to conquer, usually a moat filled with water surrounded it adding obstacles which the attackers had to overcome. Those protective moats ran around the fortress and may have a shape of rings.

  Knowing all the above said, we can fairly enough assume that the "added rings" could mean additional safety obstacles/difficulties or measures if used in a context not related to trongholds and attacking nefarious, bloodthirsty hoards.

I am far from discouraging anybody from taking a go at translating as translating gives a great dose of satisfaction as well as it enriches our personal knowledge.

   Oi folks,

 

         I got this vital information on my e-mail inbox this morning and hurried to share it with you all as I think this information can be a "life saver".

4 THINGS YOU PROBABLY NEVER KNEW YOUR MOBILE PHONE COULD DO  

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies.
Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival.
Check out the things that you can do with it:  

FIRST    Emergency  
The Emergency Number worldwide for  Mobile  is  112. 
If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an 

emergency, dial  112  and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the 

emergency number for you, and interestingly this number  112  can be dialled even if 

the keypad is locked.  

SECOND   Have you locked your keys in the car?  
Does your car have remote keyless entry?  This may come in handy someday. 
Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys 

are at home, call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone. 

Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your 

home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end.
Your car will unlock.  Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you.

Distance is no object.  You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach 

someone who has the other 'remote' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).  

Editor's Note: It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a mobile phone!'   

THIRD    Hidden Battery Power  
Imagine your mobile battery is very low.  To activate, press the keys  *3370# 
Your mobile will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. 
This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time.  

FOURTH    How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?  
To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone:  * # 0 6 #  
A 15 digit code will appear on the screen.  This number is unique to your handset.
Write it down and keep it somewhere safe.

When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code.
They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the  SIM  card,
your phone will be totally useless.  You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you 

know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. 

If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.  

ATM - PIN Number Reversal -  Good to Know   
If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, 

you can notify the police by entering your PIN # in reverse.

For example, if your pin number is  1234,  then you would put in  4321.  

The ATM system recognizes that your PIN number is backwards from the ATM card 

you placed in the machine.

The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, 

the police will be immediately dispatched to the location.  

This information was recently broadcast on CTV by Crime Stoppers however it is 

seldom used because people just don't know about it.

Please pass this along to everyone. 

This is the kind of information people don't mind receiving, so pass it on to your family 

and friends

    This morning, while going through the news on BBC, I came across an interesting article written by David Robson dealing with "foreign" words used to describe emotional feelings in a research project carried out by Tim Lomas.

    The below posted entry is a resume of a long article in a form of passages randomly selected to my whim and fancy.

Lomas’s Positive Lexicography Project aims to capture the many flavours of good feelings (some of which are distinctly bittersweet) found across the world, in the hope that we might start to incorporate them all into our daily lives. We have already borrowed many emotion words from other languages, after all – think “frisson”, from French, or “schadenfreude”, from German – but there are many more that have not yet wormed their way into our vocabulary. Lomas has found hundreds of these "untranslatable" experiences so far – and he’s only just begun.

Have you ever felt a little mbuki-mvuki – the irresistible urge to “shuck off your clothes as you dance”? Perhaps a little kilig – the jittery fluttering feeling as you talk to someone you fancy? How about uitwaaien – which encapsulates the revitalising effects of taking a walk in the wind?

These words – taken from Bantu, Tagalog, and Dutch – have no direct English equivalent, but they represent very precise emotional experiences that are neglected in our language. And if Tim Lomas at the University of East London has his way, they might soon become much more familiar.

Many of the terms referred to highly specific positive feelings, which often depend on very particular circumstances:

• Desbundar (Portuguese) – to shed one’s inhibitions in having fun

• Tarab (Arabic) – a musically induced state of ecstasy or enchantment

• Shinrin-yoku (Japanese) – the relaxation gained from bathing in the forest, figuratively or literally

• Gigil (Tagalog) – the irresistible urge to pinch or squeeze someone because they are loved or cherished

• Yuan bei (Chinese) – a sense of complete and perfect accomplishment

• Iktsuarpok (Inuit) – the anticipation one feels when waiting for someone, whereby one keeps going outside to check if they have arrived.

But others represented more complex and bittersweet experiences, which could be crucial to our growth and overall flourishing.  

• Natsukashii (Japanese) – a nostalgic longing for the past, with happiness for the fond memory, yet sadness that it is no longer

• Wabi-sabi (Japanese) – a “dark, desolate sublimity” centred on transience and imperfection in beauty

• Saudade (Portuguese) – a melancholic longing or nostalgia for a person, place or thing that is far away either spatially or in time – a vague, dreaming wistfulness for phenomena that may not even exist

• Sehnsucht (German) – literally “life-longings”, an intense desire for alternative states and realisations of life, even if they are unattainable.

In addition to these emotions, Lomas’s lexicography also charted the personal characteristics and behaviours that might determine our long-term well-being and the ways we interact with other people.

• Dadirri (Australian aboriginal) term – a deep, spiritual act of reflective and respectful listening

• Pihentagyú (Hungarian) – literally meaning “with a relaxed brain”, it describes quick-witted people who can come up with sophisticated jokes or solutions

• Desenrascanço (Portuguese) – to artfully disentangle oneself from a troublesome situation

• Sukha (Sanskrit) – genuine lasting happiness independent of circumstances

• Orenda (Huron) – the power of the human will to change the world in the face of powerful forces such as fate

Learning these words, he hopes, will offer us all a richer and more nuanced understanding of ourselves. “They offer a very different way of seeing the world.”

This is what I found in my e-mail box this morning, sent by my cousin Anthony from Canada:

Here is a display of the charms  of Mathematics

                                    1 x 8 + 1 = 9

                                  12 x 8 + 2 = 98

                                123 x 8 + 3 = 987

                               1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876

                             12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765

                           123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654

                         1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543

                       12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432

                     123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321

                                   1 x 9 + 2 = 11

                                 12 x 9 + 3 = 111

                               123 x 9 + 4 = 1111

                             1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111

                           12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111

                           23456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111

                       1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111

                     12345678 x 9 + 9 = 11111111

                   123456789 x 9 + 10 = 111111111

                                 9 x 9 + 7 = 88

                               98 x 9 + 6 = 888

                             987 x 9 + 5 = 8888

                           9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888

                         98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888

                       987654 x 9 +  2 = 8888888

                     9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888

                   98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888

AMAZING, isn’t it?

Just watch the SYMMETRY of this:

                                 1 x 1 = 1

                               11 x 11 = 121

                             111 x 111 = 12321

                           1111 x 1111 = 1234321

                         11111 x 11111 = 123454321

                       111111 x 111111 = 12345654321

                     1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321

                   11111111 x 11111111 = 1234567654321

                 111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

Now let’s consider the following….

From the point of view of Mathematics:

What is the equivalent of 100%?

How to achieve 100%?

What makes 100% in our lives?

This simple Mathematics rule will show.

If the letters:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q E R S T U V W X Y Z

Would be represented by digits:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then we would get:

H-A-R-D- W-O-R-K

8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

And

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E

11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

 But

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E

1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

Hence we get the mathematical conclusion:

With HARDWORD and KNOWLEDGE we would get close to our goal,

But with ATTITUDE we WILL achieve our goal. 

Have a good one, ya folks.....

In the autumn of life, when everything has been said,

All hopes and expectations are all but not yet dead,

Misty memories are all there is left to cling to,

With alzheimer  knocking at the door too,

The echo of  days long past,

Flood the failing mind,

Oh, how very fast,

Nothing to find!

And yet,

  In still warm cinder,

One may still be able to get,

Something worth the trouble to concider,

Something to forget, many to cherish, more to regret,

For not always is the sea placid, sometimes it poses a threat.

Whatever colours may our autumn display,

Be it of golden brown or even gloomy gray,

Whether our mind is dull or sharp as a knife,

Man, it’s really doggone cool to be alive!

  Once, late in the night, I was walking in the park to catch some fresh air before going to bed, there was nobody around…then, suddenly I noticed that SOMETHING was following me – when I walked faster, it speeded up, when I slowed down, it slowed down…fear gripped my faint heart.

 When I walked up to the park lamp post IT disappeared, then I ralised that it was my own shadow cast by the park lantern.

  When the company where I work demanded that their employees not use the Office phone for personal talks, I suggested a general meeting be called where the issue be discussed with the company officials. Jimmy insisted that our Worker’s Union Official ought to participatein the meeting and  should be ready tackle any issue should such be the need.

   The company officials warned us that our demands not be pushed too far and pointed out that retaliations were possible should the company concider such action proper.

   We thought little of such threats and declared bluntly that a strike be called even before the meeting be held.

Rysism

Meaning:

Rysism is a moderately rare disease which renders the affected person over-sensitive about grammar and spelling issues. Rysism has an accute form especially in chatrooms and can be irritating when chatters care little about the way sentences are constructed and the wordings spelled. 

Examples of Rysism in everyday usage:

1 - Man, that dude's Rysisim made our chat lame.....caramba!!

2- Hey,man, skip that Rysism and let me babble how I want!

Origin:

The name of this irritating malady derives from the name of an EC chatter who cannot refrain himself from correcting all sorts of mistakes made in the chat.

Quick Quizz: 

Rysism refers to:

1 -  Cheerful chatting with others.

2 -  Irrisistable need to correct even the slightest mistake in grammar or spelling.

3 -  Claustrophobic behaviour in crowded chatrooms.

4 -  Whatever.

 I want to share a joke I got this morning in my inbox from my cousin in Canada.

Midterm exam paper:

Q1..  In which battle did Napoleon die?

*  his last battle

Q2.. Where was the Declaration of Independence  signed?

*  at the bottom of the page

Q3.. River Ravi flows in which state?

*  liquid

Q4.. What is the main reason for divorce?

*  marriage

Q5.. What is the main reason for failure?

*  exams

Q6.. What can you never eat for breakfast?

*  Lunch & dinner

Q7.. What looks like half an apple?

*  The other half

Q8.. If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what  it will become?

*  Wet

Q9.. How can a man go eight days without sleeping ?

*  No problem, he sleeps at night.

Q10. How can you lift an elephant  with one hand?

*    You will never find an elephant that has one hand.

Q11.  If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three  oranges in other hand, what would you have?

*  Very large hands

Q12. If it took eight men ten hours to build a  wall, how long would it take four men to build it?

*No  time at all, the wall is already built.

Q13. How can u drop a raw  egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?

*Any way you want, concrete  floors are very hard to crack.

I  would have given him 100%!  Each answer is absolutely grammatically  correct, and funny too. The teacher had no sense of humor.

LOL…hope you guys liked it…..I almost burst from laughter!!! The last answer was great, it was a typically grammatical pun.