Wednesday, December 29, 2010

FACTS I FOUND

Here's a bunch of facts I found on some playing cards. I don't know the source they came from but logically, they seem pretty reasonable.
  • 20% of the population in the developed nations consume 86% of the world's goods.
  • Russia has twice as many chess Gandmasters as its nearest competitor, Germany.
  • Canadians drink more fruit juice than the citizens of any other nation.
  • In Germany and Italy, every second person owns a car.
  • In many countries, more than 25% of the deaths are attributable to cancer.
  • Canada lays claim to more water than any other nation.
  • Red is the most popular colour used on national flags, and is found on 74% of all the flags of the world.
  • Russia has over 25% of the world's proven gas reserves.
  • 9 out of 10 Scandinavians would fight for their country.
  • Over 35% of young people in Poland are unemployed.
  • The total area of Australia's coral reefs is greater than the total area of some 130 individual countries.
  • More than a third of the world's airports are in the United States of America.
  • THe UK and USA are both in the top ten for Gross Domestic Product - and for child poverty.
  • The average person in UK drinks as much tea as 23 Italians.
  • Venezuela is the happiest and one of the most murderous places in the world.
  • 32.6% of the world's roller coasters are located in the USA.
  • Indonesia contains the most known mammal species - and them most mammal species under threat.
  • People in Germany, Belgium, Hungary and Sweden have to pay almost half their salaries in tax.
  • The women of Iceland earn two-thirds of their nation's university degrees.
  • France is the top destination in the world for tourists, accounting for 11% of all tourist arrivals worldwide.
  • As many as 90% of infants who lose their mothers in delivery will die by their first birthday.
  • The 5 countries with the highest coffee consumption are the ones whose citizens trust one another the most.
  • In Kenya, 9 out of 10 children from poor households fail to complete their basic education.
  • 82% of Americans feel safe walking in the dark. Yet more crimes happen in America than anywhere else.
  • Humans have destroyed more than 30% of the natural world since 1970.
  • If someone you know died from falling out of a tree, you're probably Brazilian.
  • Women make up more than 10% of the prison population in only 6 countries.
  • From a scale of 1 to 10, Swiss are giving their satisfaction of life and awesome 8.
  • 62% of Bulgarians describe themselves as either "not very" or "not at all" happy.
  • Without prevention efforts, 35% of children born to an HIV positive mother will become infected with HIV.
  • Danish workers strike 150 times more than their German neighbours.
  • Considering teaching as a profession? Salaries in Switzerland start at $33,000 per annum.
  • Love cities? Guadeloupe, Nauru, Monaco, Singapore, Gibralter and Bermuda are 100% urbanized.
  • Andorra has zero unemployment, and zero broadcast TV channels. Coincidence?
  • Sick of crowds? Move to Greenland! Greenlanders have 38 square kilometres of land per person.
  • Luxembourgers are the world's richest people - and the most generous.
  • The United States has the world's highest marriage rate - as well as the world's highest divorce rate.
  • Mexican women spend 15.3% of their life in ill health.
  • It is estimated that 80% of the reported global shark catch is caught by only 20 countries.
  • Almost half (44.8%) of the total number of movie goers worldwide, are from India.
  • The Mall in Washington DC is 1.4 times larger than the Vatican City.
  • Australians are the most likely to join charities, educational organisations, sports groups and unions.
  • Sri Lanka has the lowest divorce rate in the world and the highest rate of female suicide.
  • 1 out of 100 young women between the ten and twenty are starving themselves, sometimes to death.
  • 61.5% of Swedes work more than 40 hours per week.
  • The United States spends more money on its military than the next twelve nations combined.
  • More than 90% of the tiger population disappeared in the 20th century: today apporximately 5000 remain.
  • United States, followed by Mexico top the world in plastic surgery procedures.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Monday, October 18, 2010

PUPPIES FOR ADOPTION



Vivek's dog Juno gave birth to these puppies on 6th October 2010. We're desperately looking for homes for them so if you happen to read this and know anyone who will give them a good home, please let me know. They are mutts and so you'll find they don't fall sick often and are extremely intelligent. All 4 are male.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Art Trivia

I found this stuff in a newspaper clipping I'd saved. I finally decided to get rid of all that paper but since this is interesting, I'm typing it out here so I don't lose this information.

Leonardo Da Vinci spent 12 years painting the Mona Lisa's lips.
When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1912, 6 replicas were sold as the original, each at a huge price, in the three years before the original was discovered.


In 1495, Da Vinci designed a pyramid shaped parachute and began painting The Last Supper


Paul Gauguin worked as a labourer on the Panama Canal but was dismissed within 2 weeks. About 25,000 workers died during its construction.



French sculptor Auguste Rodin died due to extreme cold in 1917 when the French government refused him financial aid for a flat. However they kept his statues warmly housed in museums.

The sculpture below is called Gates of Hell and is based on Dante's Inferno


Here's an incredibly useful video on the sculpture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pgZwJ7RJFk



During his entire life, artist Vincent Van Gogh sold just one painting; Red Vineyards at Arles


'Gothic' was originally a term of criticism among the Italian Renaissance artists who coined it. The term implied that, compared to superior classical buildings, the Gothic medieval cathedrals were so crude that only a Goth could produce them.

The word cartoon originally comes from painting terminology. It relates to a preliminary but fully worked sketch from which the outlines could be transferred to be the basis of a design or a fresco or painting.

During World War II the Nazis stole more than 600,000 works of art making this the largest organised theft of art in history.

The Louvre Museum and Art Gallery in Paris was built in 1190 and was used as a fortress.

Pablo Picasso could draw before he could walk and his first word was the Spanish word for pencil.

Monday, May 3, 2010

SWIMMERS by Louis Untermeyer

I took the crazy short-cut to the bay;
Over a fence or two and through a hedge,
Jumping a private road, along the edge
Of backyards full of drying wash it lay.
And now, the last set being played and over,
I hurried past the ruddy lakes of clover;
I swung my racket at astonished oaks,
My arm still tingling from aggressive strokes.
Tennis was over for the day -
I took the leaping short-cut to the bay.

Then the quick plunge into the cool, green dark,
The windy waters rushing past me, through me;
Filled with a sense of some heroic lark
Existing n a vigour clean and roomy.
Swiftly I rose to meet the cat-like sea
That sprang upon me with a hundred claws,
And grappled, pulled me down and played with me.
Then, held suspended in the tightening pause
When one wave grows into a toppling acre,
I dived headlong into the foremost breaker,
Pitting against a cold and turbulent strife
The feverish intensity of life.

Out of the foam I lurched and rode the wave,
Swimming, hand over hand, against the wind;
I felt the sea's vain pounding, and I grinned
Knowing I was its master, not its slave.
Back on the curving beach I stood again,
Facing the bath-house, when a group of men,
Stumbling beneath some sort of weight, went by.
I could not see the heavy thing they carried;
I only heard : 'He never gave a cry-
'Who's going to tell her?' 'Yes, and they just married-'
'Such a good swimmer, too... And then they passed,
Leaving the silence throbbing and aghast.

A moment there my frightened heart hung slack,
And then the rich, retarded blood came back
Singing a livelier tune; and in my pulse
Beat the great wave that endlessly exults.
Why I was there and whither I must go,
I did not care. Enough for me to know
The same persistent struggle and the glowing
Waste of all spendthrift hours, bravely showing
Life, an adventure perilous and gay,
And death, a long and vivid holiday.


Louis Untermeyer was born in New York. Instead of going to school, he preferred to stay home and listen to his mother read him stories from various literatures of the world. His regular absence from school affected his performance and he left high school without completing it. At this point, he joined his father's jewelery store. Along with designing jewelry, Untermeyer never forgot his passion for poetry and literature and in 1911 he published his first book. He then decided to concentrate entirely on writing. Over the next fifty years, he wrote, edited and translated over a hundred books. In 1956 he was awarded a gold medal by the Poetry Society of America. Untermeyer died on 18th December, 1977.

'Swimmers' by Louis Untermeyer is an allegorical poem which focuses on life and death and discusses the closeness of the two. It shows that the fact of death cannot diminish life and that we must live life to the fullest. At one level, the poem also shows the conflict between man and nature. It brings out the poet's extreme optimism and energy.

The poet persona is not worried about deep, philosophical questions such as why he was born and where he must go when he dies as he is focused on the battles of life. The poem shows us that just as the sea is endless, the hardships in life are also infinite. Life is a perilous adventure. It stands for battles, thrill and pushing oneself to the limit. People who realize this know that there is no easy way out. Like Ayn Rand says, "There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence - and it pertains to living organisms. The existence or non-existence of inanimate matter is unconditional - the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death."
The soul is timeless and death is only a parting with one's body. In life, people become attached to their comforts, identities and beliefs and take them for granted. They live in the belief that these materialistic things will last forever and are afraid to let go of them. People invariably dread dying because they know that these comforts which make them feel secure cannot be taken into the afterlife. On the other hand, those who stand up and face hardships, who "dive headlong into the foremost breaker" have nothing to lose when they die.

The sea is a symbol of all the battles of life. The poet doesn't care if he wins because in facing a stronger opponent he becomes stronger himself. His aim is the struggle and not the reward. He is so optimistic that for him, death itself is the reward for "the feverish intensity of life," for him Death is a long and vivid holiday. This poem reminds us that life is transient and death is eternal. Everything in life is uncertain except death. Nobody can tell what the future holds but everyone knows that if one is born, one must eventually die. Death is the necessary salvation and release from the endless circles of life.

Thus death is not the end but the beginning of a new existence, the rest that comes after one had breathed one's last and a vivid holiday only if one has struggled in life.

The 'Swimmers' are the people who do not get washed away by life's challenges. They, like the poet persona, treat death as a shore of the ocean that they must reach after the long, hard swim of life. They live Life to the hilt and hence don't cringe from Death. Imagine for a moment that you are immortal, you would live forever but one by one everyone around you would die. The world would change through the ages while you remain caged in the same body for eternity. The poet makes us see that just as Life is a gift, Death is not doom, but a gift that breaks the spirit free from the shackles of life.





Sunday, April 11, 2010

THE LISTENERS By Walter De La Mare

      'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
      Knocking on the moonlit door;
      And his horse in the silence champ'd the grasses
      Of the forest's ferny floor:
      And a bird flew up out of the turret,
      Above the Traveller's head:
      And he smote upon the door again a second time;
      'Is there anybody there?' he said.
      But no one descended to the Traveller;
      No head from the leaf-fringed sill
      Lean'd over and look'd into his grey eyes,
      Where he stood perplex'd and still.
      But only a host of phantom listeners
      That dwelt in the lone house then
      Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
      To that voice from the world of men:
      Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
      That goes down to the empty hall,
      Hearkening in an air stirr'd and shaken
      By the lonely Traveller's call.
      And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
      Their stillness answering his cry,
      While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
      'Neath the starr'd and leafy sky;
      For he suddenly smote on the door, even
      Louder, and lifted his head:--
      'Tell them I came, and no one answer'd,
      That I kept my word,' he said.
      Never the least stir made the listeners,
      Though every word he spake
      Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
      From the one man left awake:
      Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
      And the sound of iron on stone,
      And how the silence surged softly backward,
      When the plunging hoofs were gone.