Thursday, November 26, 2009

Inspiration from A Farmer

There was a Nebraska farmer who grew award-winning corn. Each year he entered his corn in the state fair where it won a blue ribbon.

One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors.

"How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?" the reporter asked.

"Why sir," said the farmer, "didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn."

He is very much aware of the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor's corn also improves.

So it is in other dimensions. Those who choose to be at peace must help their neighbors to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others to live well, for the value of a life is measured by the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy must help others to find happiness for the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all.

The lesson for each of us is this: if we have to be happy, we should help neighbor to be happy.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Fascinating Facts

- The luckiest number in Italy is 13.

- The sphinx was carved from one piece of stone.

- Every tenth egg is larger than the preceding nine.

- When a piece of glass cracks, the cracks move at a speed of over 4,800 kms per hour.

- The most talkative parrot on record, an African grey parrot belonging to a London family, had a vocabulary of almost 1000 words.

- Most people move about forty times in their sleep during the night. Insomniacs may move as many as seventy times.

- The camel has no gall bladder.

- The famous Egyptian sphinx is in fact a statue of the goddess Armachis.

- Abraham Lincoln had a dream on the eve of his first election as President. In a large mirror, he noticed two distinct images of himself, one imposed on the other. One image was much paler than the other. Lincoln told his wife about the dream and she interpreted it to mean that he would be elected to a second term but would not live through it.

- While it was the deepest secret in the world, the atomic bomb was publicly described with considerable accuracy by Cleve Cartmill – a year and half before it was announced officially. The description was included in a science-fiction story called “Deadline” in the March, 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, so virtually no one paid any attention.



- In the Tahiti botanical gardens, there is a bamboo plant standing 140 feet high.

- Napoleon suffered from ailurophobia, the fear of cats.

- The complete root system of the pumpkin plant would stretch for 24 kilometers, if every root was laid end to end.

- In 1695, two scientists obtained a diamond from a rich patron and heated it by using a lens to focus light on it. The diamond disappeared. Diamond is made of carbon, and it burns just as coal will when it is heated strongly enough.

- The social instinct among monkeys is so strong that if one of a group is ill, the others will forego their food etc. for him.

- A mole can dig a tunnel 100 yards long in a single night.

- The chameleon’s tongue, which always hits its prey, can be extended more than twice the length of its body.

- The average electrical eel produce a shock of 400 volts, though some larger ones have been known to generate much larger shocks of 650 volts, powerful enough to kill a man.

- Hens in the USA lay over 13, 80,000 eggs every minute.

- Blind people who have been blind from birth can not dream sights but they dream sounds instead.

- Eskimos use refrigerators to keep food from freezing.

- The JEEP got its name from its original initials G.P. which stood for GENERAL PURPOSE VEHICLE.

- 14622047999 divided by 10 leaves a remainder of 9, Divided by 9 leaves a remainder of 8, Divided by 7 leaves a remainder of 6 and so on.

- Chemically the substance that is closest to human blood is sea water.
-Luminous bacteria that have the ability to give off light have been cooled to a temperature of -190 Deg. C and found to be alive when they were warmed up.

- An albatross can fly all day and not flip its wings once.

- The only animal that sleeps on its back is man.

- Mosquitoes prefer to bite blondes.

- It takes over ten years for a cork tree to grow one layer of cork.

- Soya beans are used in the manufacture of glue, paint, plastics and explosives.

- Some stars in the Milky Way are 80,000 light years from the earth.

- The human body contains enough fat to make seven bars of soap.

- Petrol and paraffin extinguish fires in bales of cotton more efficiently than water.

- Grasshoppers have white blood.

- Christian Heinrich of Lubeck was able to talk when he was eight weeks old and he knew pieces from the Pentateuch and the Bible at the age of thirteen months.

- An Alsatian’s sense of smell is a million times better than a man’s.

- The Great White Shark is the only creature living in the sea that has no natural enemies even killer whales avoid it.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

FASCINATING FACTS

-The Sahara is as large as Europe and larger than the combined area of the next nine largest deserts in the world.
-Up to 30,000 tonnes of cosmic dust are deposited on the earth each year.
-Flies take off with a backward jump.
-Fireflies are bright enough to shine through the stomach of a frog.
-Three 25 watt bulbs produce less light than one 75 watt bulb.
-The sun weighs 3, 30,000 times as much as the earth.
-The world’s largest palace is the Imperial Palace in the heart of Peking, which covers an area of 178 acres.
-Typewriters were first developed to help the blind.
-The Ostrich can run at speeds of up to 40 miles an hour and on Ostrich farms in Cape Province, South Africa, they hold Ostrich races for tourists.
-The cigar is named after the Mayan word for smoking, sik’ar.
-The human eye can distinguish about 17,000 different colours.
-There is more sugar in a kilo of lemons than in a kilo of strawberries.
-If you had fifteen books on a shelf and you arrange them in every possible combination, and if you made one change every minute, it would take you 24, 87,996 years to do them all.
-It was claimed that a tiger shot by Colonel Jim Corbett in 1907 had killed 436 people in India.
-A rattle snake or viper has special cells between its nostril and its eye which are sensitive to infra-red radiant heat. They can locate people in the dark by the heat they give off.
-The Emperor Penguin of the Antarctic can reach a depth of 870 feet and remain submerged for as long as 18 minutes.
-Lightening strikes the earth a hundred times every second from the 1800 thunderstorms in progress, at any given moment.
-Eighty percent of the world’s supply of dates comes from Iraq.
-Scientists have found that mice prefer women to men.
-Early guns took so long to load and fire that bows and arrows – in trained hands – were twelve times more efficient.
-The silkworm is not a worm: It is a caterpillar.
-Each square inch of human skin consists of 19 million cells, sixty hairs, ninety oil glands, and nineteen feet of blood vessels, 625 sweat glands and 19,000 sensory cells.
-The driest place on Earth is Calama, in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Not a drop of rain has been seen there.
-Every year more than 50,000 earthquakes take place on earth. Of these most are too slight to be noticeable to man.
-There are 25, 00,000 rivets in the Effel Tower.
-There are more than 600 muscles in our muscular system.
-Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one, the Pyramids of Egypt, is still in existence. Others have crumbled and disappeared. The great reason of the duration of the Pyramid above all other forms is that it is most fitted to resist the force of gravitation.
-The royal house of Saudi Arabia may at present have as many as 5,000 prices and an equal number of princesses. King Abdul Aziz Saud, who ruled from 1932 until his death in 1953, had 300 wives.
-Coffee is the world’s second largest item of international commerce. (Petroleum is first.)
-House Lizards are perfectly harmless. They neither bite nor are they aggressive. In fact they help man by eating insects like flies and mosquitoes.
-A popular misconception seems to be that filtered cigarettes are less dangerous than unfiltered ones. According to a study the opposite would be the case: people who prefer filtered cigarettes are in danger of dying two to almost four years earlier than smokers of filter less cigarettes. Filters prevent the dilution of the smoke by oxygen so that the bloodstream builds up higher levels of carbon monoxide, in the form of carboxyhemoglobin.
-Egyptian embalmers used to remove a dead person’s brains through his nostrils.
-The heaviest bell in the world, the Tsar Kolokol Bell, was cast in 1733 in Moscow, Russia. This bell, which has been standing in the Kremlin since 1836, is over 19 feet high, 24 inch thick and weighs 216 tones.
-A person’s hair can not turn white overnight because of some terrible tragedy or frightening experience – or for any other reason.
-Assembly line method made it possible for the US Shipyards of Henry J.Kaiser during World War-II to produce a ship in just four days.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

The Boy and The Tree

A long time ago, there was a huge apple tree. A little boy
loved to come and play around it everyday. He climbed to the
tree top, ate the apples, and took a nap under the shadow...

He loved the tree and the tree loved to play with him.

Time went by...

The little boy grew up, and he no longer played around the tree
everyday. One day, the boy came back to the tree with a sad
look on his face. "Come and play with me," the tree asked the
boy. "I am no longer a kid, I don't play around trees anymore."
The boy replied, "I want toys. I need money to buy them."
"Sorry, I don't have money...but you can pick all my apples and
sell them so you will have money."

The boy was so excited. He grabbed all the apples on the tree
and left happily. The boy didn't come back after he picked the
apples. The tree was sad.

One day, the boy returned and the tree was so excited.
"Come and play with me," the tree said.
"I don't have time to play. I have to work for my family.
We need a house for shelter. Can you help me?"
"Sorry, I don't have a house, but you can chop off my branches
to build your house."

So the boy cut all the branches off the tree and left happily.
The tree was glad to see him happy but the boy didn't come back
afterward. The tree was again lonely and sad.

One hot summer day, the boy returned and the tree was delighted.
"Come and play with me!" the tree said.

"I am sad and getting old. I want to go sailing to relax
myself. Can you give me a boat?" "Use my trunk to build your
boat. You can sail far away and be happy." So the boy cut the
tree truck to make a boat. He went sailing and didn't come
back for a long time.


Finally, the boy returned after he had been gone for so many
years. "Sorry, my boy. But I don't have anything for you
anymore. No more apples for you..." the tree said.

"I don't have teeth to bite," the boy replied.

"No more trunk for you to climb on."

"I am too old for that now" the boy said. "I really can't give
you anything... the only thing left is my dying roots," the
tree said with sadness.

"I don't need much now, just a place to rest. I am tired after
all these years," the boy replied.

"Good! Old tree roots are the best place to lean on and rest.
Come sit down with me and rest." The boy sat down and the tree
was glad and smiled with tears.

*****************************************************************

This is the story of everyone.

The tree is our parent. When we were young, we loved to play
with Mom and Dad... When we grew up, we left them...

We only came to them when we needed something or when we were in
trouble.

No matter what, parents will always be there and give you
everything they can to make you happy.

It may seem as if the way the boy treats the "tree" in the story
is cruel, but many of us take our parents for granted in the
same way.

Never forget how important your parents are and try not to take
them for granted... they may not be around forever.


~Author Unknown~