"text":"These days, people who do manual work often receive far more money than people who work in offices. \nPeople who work in offices are frequently referred to as \"white-collar workers' for the simple reason that they usually wear a collar and tie to go to work. \nSuch is human nature, that a great many people are often willing to sacrifice higher pay for the privilege of becoming white-collar workers. \nThis can give rise to curious situations, as it did in the case of Alfred Bloggs who worked as a dustman for the Ellesmere Corporation. \nWhen he got married, Alf was too embarrassed to say anything to his wife about his job. \nHe simply told her that he worked for the Corporation. \nEvery morning, he left home dressed in a smart black suit. \nHe then changed into overalls and spent the next eight hours as a dustman. \nBefore returning home at night, he took a shower and changed back into his suit. \nAlf did this for over two years and his fellow dustmen kept his secret. \nAlf's wife has never discovered that she married a dustman and she never will, for Alf has just found another job. \nHe will soon be working in an office. \nHe will be earning only half as much as he used to, but he feels that his rise in status is well worth the loss of money. \nFrom now on, he will wear a suit all day and others will call him 'Mr. Bloggs',not 'Alf'.",
"text":"Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their reader with unimportant facts and statistics. \nLast year a journalist had been instructed by a well-known magazine to write an article on the president's palace in a new African republic. \nWhen the article arrived, the editor read the first sentence and then refuse to publish it. \nThe article began:'Hundreds of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace '. \nThe editor at once sent the journalist a fax instructing him to find out the exact number of steps and the height of the wall. \n\nThe journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts, \nbut the took a long time to send them Meanwhile, the editor was getting impatient, for the magazine would soon go to press. \nHe sent the journalist two more faxes, but received no reply. \nHe sent yet another fax informing the journalist that if he did not reply soon he would be fired. \nWhen the journalist again failed to reply, the editor reluctantly published the article as it had originally been written. \nA week later, the editor at last received a fax from the journalist. \nNot only had the poor man been arrested, \nbut he had been sent to prison as well. \nHowever, he had at last been allowed to send a fax in which he informed the editor that the he had been arrested while counting the 1,084 steps leading to the fifteen-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.",
"text":"The expensive shops in a famous arcade near Piccadilly were just opening. \nAt this time of the morning, the arcade was almost empty. \nMr. Taylor, the owner of a jewellery shop was admiring a new display. \nTwo of his assistants had been working busily since eight o'clock and had only just finished. \nDiamond necklaces and rings had been beautifully arranged on a background of black velvet. \nAfter gazing at the display for several minutes, Mr. Taylor went back into his shop. \n\nThe silence was suddenly broken when a large car, with its headlights on and its horn blaring, roared down the arcade. \nIt came to a stop outside the jeweller's. \nOne man stayed at the wheel while two others with black stocking over their faces jumped out and smashed the window of the shop with iron bars. \nWhile this was going on, Mr. Taylor was upstairs. \nHe and his staff began throwing furniture out of the window. \nChairs and tables went flying into the arcade. \nOne of the thieves was struck by a heavy statue, \nbut he was too busy helping himself to diamonds to notice any pain. \nThe raid was all over in three minutes, for the men scrambled back into the car and it moved off at a fantastic speed. \nJust as it was leaving, Mr. Taylor rushed out and ran after it throwing ashtrays and vases, \nbut it was impossible to stop the thieves. \nThey had got away with thousands of pounds worth of diamonds.",
"text":"Has it ever happened to you? \nHave you ever put your trousers in the washing machine and then remembered there was a large bank note in your back pocket? \nWhen you rescued your trousers, did note in your back pocket? \nWhen you rescued your trousers, did you find the note was whiter than white? \nPeople who live in Britain needn't despair when they made mistakes like this (and a lot of people do)! \nFortunately for them, the Bank of England has a team called Mutilated Ladies which deals with claims from people who fed their money to a machine or to their dog. \nDogs, it seems, love to chew up money! \nA recent case concerns Jane Butlin whose fiancé, John, runs a successful furniture business. \nJohn had very good day and put his wallet containing $3,000 into the microwave oven for safekeeping. \nThen he and Jane went horse-riding. \nWhen they got home, Jane cooked their dinner in the microwave oven and without realizing it, cooked her fiancé's wallet as well. \nImagine their dismay when they found a beautifully-cooked wallet and notes turned to ash! \nJohn went to see his bank manager who sent the remains of wallet and the money to the special department of the Bank of England in Newcastle:the Mutilate Ladies! \nThey examined the remain and John got all his money back. \n'So long as there's something to identify, we will give people their money back,' said a spokeswoman for the Bank. \n'Last year, we paid $1.5m on 21,000 claims.' Damaged bank notes. \nThe Queen's head appears on English bank notes, and 'lady' refers to this.",
"text":"The Great St. Bernard Pass connects Switzerland to Italy. \nAt 2,473 metres, it is the highest mountain pass in Europe. \nThe famous monastery of St. Bernard, witch was founded in eleventh century, lies about a mile away. \nFor hundreds of years, St. Bernard dogs have saved the lives of travellers crossing the dangerous Pass. \nThese friendly dogs, which were first brought from Asia, were used as watchdogs even in Roman times. \nNow that a tunnel ahs been built through the mountains, the Pass is less dangerous, \nbut each year, the dogs are still sent out into the snow whenever a traveller is in difficulty. \nDespite the new tunnel, there are still a few people who rashly attempt to cross the Pass on foot. \n\nDuring the summer months, the monastery is very busy, for it is visited by thousands of people who cross the Pass in cars. \nAs there are so many people about, the dogs have to be kept in a special enclosure. \nIn winter, however, life at the monastery is quite different. \nThe temperature drops to--30 o and very few people attempt to cross the Pass. \nThe monks prefer winter to summer of they have more privacy. \nThe dogs have greater freedom, too, for they are allowed to wander outside their enclosure. \nThe only regular visitors to the monastery in winter are parties of skiers who go there at Christmas and Easter. \nThese young people, who love the peace of mountains, always receive a warm welcome at St. Bernard's monastery.",
"text":"Cats never fail to fascinate human beings. \nThey can be friendly and affectionate towards humans, \nbut they lead mysterious lives of their own as well. \nThey never become submissive like dogs and horses. \nAs a result, humans have learned to respect feline independence. \nMost cats remain suspicious of humans all their lives. \nOne of the things that fascinates us most about cats is the popular belief that they have nine lives. \nApparently, there is a good deal of truth in this idea. \nA cat's ability to survive falls is based on fact. \n\nRecently the New York Animal Medical Center made a study of 132 cats over a period of five months. \nAll these cats had one experience in common:they had fallen off high buildings, yet only eight of them died from shock or injuries. \nOf course, New York is the ideal place for such an interesting study, \nbecause there is no shortage of tall buildings. \nThere are plenty of high-rise windowsills to fall from! \nOne cat, Sabrina, fell 32 storeys, yet only suffered from a broken tooth. \n'Cats behave like well-trained paratroopers.' a doctor said. \nIt seems that the further cats fall, the less they are likely to injure themselves. \nIn a long drop, they reach speeds of 60 miles an hour and more. \nAt high speeds, falling cats have time to relax. \nThey stretch out their legs like flying squirrels. \nThis increases their air-resistance and reduces the shock of impact when they hit the ground",
"text":"The great ship, Titanic, sailed for New York from Southampton on April 10th, 1912. \nShe was carrying 1,316 passengers and crew of 891. \nEven by modern standards, the 46,000 ton Titanic was a colossal ship. \nAt the time, however, she was not only the largest ship that had ever been built, \nbut was regarded as unsinkable, for she had sixteen watertight compartments. \nEven if two of these were flooded, she would still be able to float. \nThe tragic sinking of this great liner will always be remembered, for she went down on her first voyage with heavy loss of life. \n\nFour days after setting out, while the Titanic was sailing across the icy water of the North Atlantic, huge iceberg was suddenly spotted by a lookout. \nAfter the alarm had been given, the great ship turned sharply to avoid a direct collision. \nThe Titanic turned just in time, narrowly missing the immense walk of ice which rose over 100 feet out of the water beside her. \nSuddenly, there was a slight trembling sound from below, \nand the captain went down to see what had happened. \nThe noise had been so faint that no one though that the ship had been damaged. \nBelow, the captain realized to his horror that the Titanic was sinking rapidly, for five of her sixteen watertight compartments had already been flooded! \nThe order to abandon ship was given and hundreds of people plunged into the icy water. \nAs there were not enough lifeboats for everybody, 1,500 lives were lost.",
"text":"Customs Officers are quite tolerant these days, \nbut they can still stop you when you are going through the Green Channel and have nothing to declare. \nEven really honest people are often made to feel guilty. \nThe hardened professional smuggler, on the other hand, is never troubled by such feelings, even if he has five hundred gold watches hidden in his suitcase. \nWhen I returned form abroad recently, a particularly officious young Customs Officer clearly regarded me as a smuggler. \n\n'Have you anything to declare?' he asked, looking me in the eye. \n\n'No',I answered confidently. \n\n'Would you mind unlocking this suitcase please?' \n\n'Not at all,' I answered. \n\nThe Officer went through the case with great care. \nAll the thing I had packed so carefully were soon in a dreadful mess. \nI felt sure I would never be able to close the case again. \nSuddenly, I saw the Officer's face light up. \nHe had spotted a tiny bottle at the bottom of my case and he pounced on it with delight. \n\n'Perfume, eh?' he asked sarcastically. \n'You should have declared that. Perfume is not exempt from import duty.' \n\n'But it isn't perfume,' I said. 'It's hair gel.' \nThen I added with a smile, 'It's a strange mixture I make myself.' \nAs I expected, he did not believe me. \n\n'Try it!' I said encouragingly. \n\nThe officer unscrewed the cap and put the bottle to his nostrils. \nHe was greeted by an unpleasant smell which convinced him that I was telling the truth. \nA few minutes later, I was able to hurry away with precious chalk marks on my baggage.",
"text":"Most of us have formed an unrealistic picture of life on a desert island. \nWe sometimes imagine a desert island to be a sort of paradise where the sun always shines. \nLife there is simple and good. \nRipe fruit falls from the trees and you never have to work. \nThe other side of the picture is quite the opposite. \nLife on a desert island is wretched. \nYou either starve to death or live like Robinson Crusoe, Waiting for a boat which never comes. \nPerhaps there is an element of truth in both these pictures, \nbut few us have had the opportunity to find out.Two men who recently spent five days on a coral island wished they had stayed there longer. \nThey were taking a badly damaged boat from the Virgin Islands to Miami to have it repaired. \nDuring the journey, their boat began to sink. \nThey quickly loaded a small rubber dinghy with food, matches, \nand cans of beer and rowed for a few miles across the Caribbean until they arrived at a tiny coral island. \nThere were hardly any trees on the island and there was no water, \nbut this did not prove to be a problem. \nThe men collected rainwater in the rubber dinghy. \nAs they had brought a spear gun with them, they had plenty to eat. \nThey caught lobster and fish every day，and, as one of them put it 'ate like kings'. \nWhen a passing tanker rescued them five days later, both men were genuinely sorry that they had to leave.",
"text":"After her husband had gone to work. \nMrs. Richards sent her children to school and went upstairs to her bedroom. \nShe was too excited to do any housework that morning, for in the evening she would be going to a fancy-dress part with her husband. \nShe intended to dress up as a ghost and as she had made her costume the night before, she was impatient to try it on. \nThough the costume consisted only of a sheet, it was very effective. \nAfter putting it on, Mrs. Richards went downstairs. \nShe wanted to find out whether it would be comfortable to wear. \n\nJust as Mrs. Richards was entering the dinning room, there was a knock on the front door. \nShe knew that it must be the baker. \nShe had told him to come straight in if ever she failed to open the door and to leave the bread on the kitchen table. \nNot wanting to frighten the poor man, Mrs. Richards quickly hid in the small storeroom under the stairs. \nShe heard the front door open and heavy footsteps in the hall. \nSuddenly the door of the storeroom was opened and a man entered. \nMrs. Richards realized that it must be the man from the Electricity Board who had come to read the metre. \nShe tried to explain the situation, saying 'It's only me',but it was too late. \nThe man let out cry and jumped back several paces. \nWhen Mrs. Richards walked towards him, he fled, slamming the door behind him.",
"text":"There was a time when the owners of shops and businesses in Chicago that to pay large sums of money to gangsters in return for 'protection.' If the money was not paid promptly, the gangsters would quickly put a man out of business by destroying his shop. \nObtaining 'protection money' is not a modern crime. \nAs long ago as the fourteenth century, an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, made the remarkable discovery that people would rather pay large sums of money than have their life work destroyed by gangsters. \n\nSix hundred years ago, Sir Johan Hawkwood arrived in Italy with a band of soldiers and settled near Florence. \nHe soon made a name for himself and came to be known to the Italians as Giovanni Acuto. \nWhenever the Italian city-states were at war with each other, Hawkwood used to hire his soldiers to princes who were willing to pay the high price he demanded. \nIn times of peace, when business was bad, Hawkwood and his men would march into a city-state and, after burning down a few farms, would offer to go away protection money was paid to them. \nHawkwood made large sums of money in this way. \nIn spite of this, the Italians regarded him as a sort of hero. \nWhen he died at the age of eighty, the Florentines gave him a state funeral and had a pictured with as dedicated to the memory of 'the most valiant soldier and most notable leader, Signor Giovanni Haukodue.'",
"text":"Children always appreciate small gifts of money. \nMum or dad, of course, provide a regular supply of pocket money, \nbut uncles and ants are always a source of extra income. \nWith some children, small sums go a long way. \nIf fifty pence pieces are not exchanged for sweets, they rattle for months inside money boxes. \nOnly very thrifty children manage to fill up a money box. \nFor most of them, fifty pence is a small price to pay for a nice big bar of chocolate. \n\nMy nephew, George, has a money box but it is always empty. \nVery few of the fifty pence pieces and pound coins I have given him have found their way there. \nI gave him fifty pence yesterday and advised him to save it. \nInstead he bought himself fifty pence worth of trouble. \nOn his way to the sweet shop, he dropped his fifty pence and it bounced along the pavement and then disappeared down a drain. \nGeorge took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and pushed is right arm through the drain cover. \nHe could not find his fifty pence piece anywhere, \nand what is more, he could no get his arm out. \nA crowd of people gathered round him and a lady rubbed his arm with soap and butter, \nbut George was firmly stuck. \nThe fire brigade was called and two fire fighter freed George using a special type of grease. \nGeorge was not too upset by his experience because the lady who owns the sweet shop heard about his troubles and rewarded him with large box of chocolates.",
"text":"Mary and her husband Dimitri lived in the tiny village of Perachora in southern Greece. \nOne of Mary's prize possessions was a little white lamb which her husband had given her. \nShe kept it tied to a tree in a field during the day and went to fetch it every evening. \nOne evening, how-ever, the lamb was missing. \nThe rope had been cut, so it was obvious that the lamb had been stolen. \n\nWhen Dimitri came in from the fields, His wife told him what had happened. \nDimitri at once set out to find the thief. \nHe knew it would not prove difficult in such a small village. \nAfter telling several of his friends about the theft, Dimitri found out that his neighbour, Aleko, had suddenly acquired a new lamb.Dimitri immediately went to Aleko's house and angrily accused him of stealing the lamb. \nHe told him he had better return it or he would call the police. \nAleko denied taking it and led Dimitri into his back-yard. \nIt was true that he had just bought a lamb, he explained, \nbut his lamb was black. \nAshamed of having acted so rashly, Dimitri apologized to Aleko for having accused him. \nWhile they were talking it began to rain and Dimitri stayed in Aleko's house until the rain stopped. \nWhen he went outside half an hour later, he was astonished to find that the little black lamb was almost white. \nIts wool, which had been dyed black, had been washed clean by the rain!",
"text":"Verrazano, an Italian about whom little is known, sailed into New York Harbour in 1524 and named it Angouleme. \nHe described it as 'a very agreeable situation located within two small hills in the midst of which flowed a great river.' Though Verrazano is by no means considered to be a great explorer, his name will probably remain immortal, for on November 21st, 1964, the longest suspension bridge in the world was named after him \n\nThe Verrazano Bridge, which was designed by Othmar Ammann, joins Brooklyn to Staten Island. \nIt has a span of 4,260 feet. \nThe bridge is so long that the shape of the earth had to be taken into account by its designer. \nTwo great towers support four huge cables. \nThe towers are built on immense underwater platforms make of steel and concrete. \nThe platforms extend to a depth of over 100 feet under the sea. \nThese alone took sixteen months to build. \nAbove the surface of the water, the towers rise to a height of nearly 700 feet. \nThey support the cables from which the bridge has been suspended. \nEach of the four cables contains 26,108 lengths of wire. \nIt has been estimated that if the bridge were packed with cars, it would still only be carrying a third of its total capacity. \nHowever, size and strength are not the only important things about this bridge. \nDespite its immensity, it is both simple and elegant, fulfilling its designer's dream to create 'an enormous object drawn as faintly as possible'.",
"text":"Modern sculpture rarely surprises us any more. \nThe idea that modern art can only be seen in museums is mistaken. \nEven people who take no interest in art cannot have failed to notice examples of modern sculpture on display in public places. \nStrange forms stand in gardens, and outside buildings and shops. \nWe have got quite used to them. \nSome so-called 'modern' pieces have been on display for nearly eighty years. \n\nIn spite of this, some people--including myself--were surprise by a recent exhibition of modern sculpture. \nThe first thing I saw when I entered the art gallery was a notice which said:'Do not touch the exhibits. Some of them are dangerous!' \nThe objects on display were pieces of moving sculpture. \nOddly shaped forms that are suspended form the ceiling and move in response to a gust of wind are quite familiar to everybody. \nThese objects, however, were different. \nLined up against the wall, there were long thin wires attached to metal spheres. \nThe spheres had been magnetized and attracted or repelled each other all the time. \nIn the centre of the hall, there were a number of tall structures which contained coloured lights. \nThese lights flickered continuously like traffic lights which have gone mad. \nSparks were emitted from small black boxes and red lamps flashed on and off angrily. \nIt was rather like an exhibition of prehistoric electronic equipment. \nThese peculiar forms not only seemed designed to shock people emotionally, \nbut to give them electric shocks as well!",
"text":"Kidnappers are rarely interested in animals, \nbut they recently took considerable interest in Mrs. Eleanor Ramsay's cat. \nMrs. Eleanor Ramsay, a very wealthy old lady, has shared a flat with her cat, Rastus, for a great many years. \nRastus leads an orderly life. \nHe usually takes a short walk in the evenings and is always home by seven o'clock. \nOne evening, however, he failed to arrive. \nMrs. Ramsay got very worried. \nShe looked everywhere for him but could not find him. \n\nThere days after Rastus 'disappearance, Mrs. Ramsay received an anonymous letter. \nThe writer stated that Rastus was in safe hands and would be returned immediately if Mrs. Ramsay paid a ransom of $1,000. \nMrs. Ramsay was instructed to place the money in a cardboard box and to leave it outside her door. \nAt first she decided to go to the police, \nbut fearing that she would never see Rastus again--the letter had made that quite clear--she changed her mind. \nShe withdrew $1000 from her bank and followed the kidnapper's instructions. \nThe next morning, the box had disappeared but Mrs. Ramsay was sure that the kidnapper would keep his word. \nSure enough, Rastus arrived punctually at seven o'clock that evening. \nHe looked very well though he was rather thirsty, for he drank half a bottle of milk. \nThe police were astounded when Mrs. Ramsay told them what she had done. \nShe explained that Rastus was very dear to her. \nConsidering the amount she paid, he was dear in more ways than one!",
"text":"In 1908 Lord Northcliffe offered a prize of $1,000 to the first man who would fly across the English Channel. \nOver a year passed before the first attempt was made. \nOn July 19th, 1909, in the early morning, Hubert Latham took off from the French coast in his plane the 'Antoinette IV.' He had travelled only seven miles across the Channel when his engine failed and he was forced to land on sea. \nThe 'Antoinette' floated on the water until Latham was picked up by a ship. \n\nTwo days alter, Louis Bleriot arrived near Calais with a plane called 'No. \nXI'.Bleriot had been making planes since 1905 and this was his latest model. \nA week before, he had completed a successful overland flight during which he covered twenty-six miles. Latham, however, did not give up easily. He, too, arrived near Calais on the same day with a new' \nAntoinette'.It looked as if there would be an exciting race across the Channel. \nBoth planes were going to take off on July 25th, \nbut Latham failed to get up early enough, After making a short test flight at 4,15 a.m., Bleriot set off half an hour later. \nHis great flight lasted thirty-seven minutes. \nWhen he landed near Dover, the first person to greet him was a local policeman. \nLatham made another attempt a week later and got within half a mile of Dover, \nbut he was unlucky again. \nHis engine failed and he landed on the sea for the second time.",
"text":"Boxing matches were very popular in England two hundred years ago. \nIn those days, boxers fought with bare fists for prize money. \nBecause of this, they were known as 'prizefighters'. \nHowever, boxing was very crude, for these were no rules and a prizefighter could be seriously injured or even killed during a match. \n\nOne of the most colourful figures in boxing history was Daniel Mendoza, who was born in 1764. \nThe use of gloves was not introduced until 1860, when the Marquis of Queensberry drew up the first set of rules. \nThough he was technically a prizefighter, Mendoza did much to change crude prizefighting into a sport, for he brought science to the game. \nIn this day, Mendoza enjoyed tremendous popularity. \nHe was adored by rich and poor alike. \n\nMendoza rose to fame swiftly after a boxing match when he was only fourteen years old. \nThis attracted the attention of Richard Humphries who was then the most eminent boxer in England. \nHe offered to train Mendoza and his young pupil was quick to learn. \nIn fact, Mendoza soon became so successful that Humphries turned against him. \nThe two men quarrelled bitterly and it was clear that the argument could only be settled by a fight. \nA match was held at Stilton, where both men fought for an hour. \nThe public bet a great deal of money on Mendoza, but he was defeated. \nMendoza met Humphries in the ring on a later occasion and he lost for a second time. \nIt was not until his third match in 1790 that he finally beat Humphries and became Champion of England. \nMeanwhile, he founded a highly successful Academy and even Lord Byron became one of his pupils. \nHe earned enormous sums of money and was paid as much as $100 for a single appear one of his pupils. \nHe earned enormous sums of money and was paid as much as $100 for a single appearance. \nDespite this, he was so extravagant that he was always in debt. \nAfter he was defeated by a boxer called Gentleman Jackson, he was quickly forgotten. \nHe was sent to prison for failing to pay his debts and died in poverty in 1836.",
"text":"Some plays are so successful that they run for years on end, In many ways, this is unfortunate for the poor actors who are required to go on repeating the same lines night after night. \nOne would expect them to know their parts by heart and never have cause to falter. \nYet this is not always the case. \n\nA famous actor in a highly successful play was once cast in the role of an aristocrat who had been imprisoned in the Bastille for twenty years. \nIn the last act, a gaoler would always come on to the stage with a letter which he would hand to the prisoner. \nEven though the noble was expected to read the letter at each performance, he always insisted that it should be written out in full. \n\nOne night, the gaoler decided to play a joke on his colleague to find out if, after so many performances, he had managed to learn the contents of the letter by heart. \nThe curtain went up on the final act of the play and revealed the aristocrat sitting alone behind bars in his dark cell. \nJust then, the gaoler appeared with the precious letter in his bands. \nHe entered the cell and presented the letter to the aristocrat. \nBut the copy he gave him had not been written out in full as usual. \nIt was simply a blank sheet of paper. \nThe gaoler looked on eagerly, anxious to see if his fellow actor had at last learnt his lines. \nThe noble stared at the blank sheet of paper for a few seconds. \nThen, squinting his eyes, he said:'The light is dim. \nRead the letter to me'.And he promptly handed the sheet of paper to the gaoler. \nFinding that he could not remember a word of the letter either, the gaoler replied:'The light is indeed dim, sire, I must get my glasses.'With this, he hurried off the stage. \nMuch to the aristocrat's amusement, the gaoler returned a few moments later with a pair of glasses and the usual copy of the letter with he proceeded to read to the prisoner.",
"text":"People become quite illogical when they try to decide what can be eaten and what cannot be eaten. \nIf you lived in the Mediterranean, for instance, you would consider octopus a great delicacy. \nYou would not be able to understand why some people find it repulsive. \nOn the other hand, your stomach would turn at the idea of frying potatoes in animal fat--the normally accepted practice in many northern countries. \nThe sad truth is that most of us have been brought up to eat certain foods and we stick to them all our lives. \n\nNo creature has received more praise and abuse than the common garden snail. \nCooked in wine, snails are a great luxury in various parts of the world. \nThere are countless people who, ever since their early years, have learned to associate snails with food. \nMy friend, Robert, lives in a country where snails are despised. \nAs his flat is in a large town, he has no garden of his own. \nFor years he has been asking me to collect snails from my garden and take them to him. \nThe idea never appealed to me very much, \nbut one day, after heavy shower, I happened to be walking in my garden when I noticed a huge number of snails taking a stroll on some of my prize plants. \nActing on a sudden impulse, I collected several dozen, put them in a paper bag, \nand took them to Robert. \nRobert was delighted to see me and equally pleased with my little gift. \nI left the bag in the hall and Robert and I went into the living room where we talked for a couple of hours. \nI had forgotten all about the snails when Robert suddenly said that I must stay to dinner. \nSnails would, of course, be the main dish. \nI did not fancy the idea and I reluctantly followed Robert out of the room. \nTo our dismay, we saw that there were snails everywhere:they had escaped from the paper bag and had taken complete possession of the hall! \nI have never been able to look at a snail since then.",
"text":"We often read in novels how a seemingly respectable person or family has some terrible secret which has been concealed from strangers for years. \nThe English language possesses a vivid saying to describe this sort of situation. \nThe terrible secret is called 'a skeleton in the cupboard'. \nAt some dramatic moment in the story, the terrible secret becomes known and a reputation is ruined. \nThe reader's hair stands on end when he reads in the final pages of the novel that the heroine a dear old lady who had always been so kind to everybody, had, in her youth, poisoned every one of her five husbands. \n\nIt is all very well for such things to occur in fiction. \nTo varying degrees, we all have secrets which we do not want even our closest friends to learn, \nbut few of us have skeletons in the cupboard. \nThe only person I know who has a skeleton in the cupboard is George Carlton, \nand he is very pound of the fact. \nGeorge studied medicine in his youth. \nInstead of becoming a doctor, however, he became a successful writer of detective stories. \nI once spend an uncomfortable weekend which I shall never forget at his house. \nGeorge showed me to the guestroom which, he said, was rarely used. \nHe told me to unpack my things and then come down to dinner. \nAfter I had stacked my shirts and underclothes in two empty drawers, I decided to hang one of the tow suits I had brought with me in the cupboard. \nI opened the cupboard door and then stood in front of two suits I had brought with me in the cupboard. \nI opened the cupboard door and then stood in front of it suits I had brought with me in the cupboard. \nI opened the cupboard door and then stood in front of it petrified. \nA skeleton was dangling before my eyes. \nThe sudden movement of the door made it sway slightly and it gave me the impression that it was about to leap out at me. \nDropping my suit, I dashed downstairs to tell George. \nThis was worse than \"a terrible secret';this was a read skeleton! \nBut George was unsympathetic. \n'Oh, that,' he said with a smile as if he were talking about an old friend. \n'That's Sebastian. You forget that I was a medical student once upon a time.'",
"text":"One of the most famous sailing ships of the nineteenth century, the Cutty Sark, can still be seen at Greewich. \nShe stands on dry land and is visited by thousands of people each year. \nShe serves as an impressive reminder of the great ships of past. \nBefore they were replaced by steamships, sailing vessels like the Cutty Sark were used to carry tea from China and wool from Australia. \nThe Cutty Sark was one the fastest sailing ships that has ever been built. \nThe only other ship to match her was the Thermopylae. \nBoth these ships set out from Shanghai on June 18th, 1872 on an exciting race to England. \nThis race, which went on for exactly four exactly four months, was the last of its kind. \nIt marked the end of the great tradition of ships with sails and the beginning of a new era. \n\nThe first of the two ships to reach Java after the race had begun was the Thermopylae, \nbut on the Indian Ocean, the Cutty Sark took lead. \nIt seemed certain that she would be the first ship home, \nbut during the race she had a lot of bad luck. \nIn August, she was struck by a very heavy storm during which her rudder was torn away. \nThe Cutty Sark rolled from side to side and it became impossible to steer her. \nA temporary rudder was made on board from spare planks and it was fitted with great difficulty. \nThis greatly reduced the speed of the ship, for there was a danger that if she traveled too quickly, this rudder would be torn away as well. \nBecause of this, the Cutty Sark lost her lead. \nAfter crossing the Equator, the captain called in at a port to have a new rudder fitted, \nbut by now the Thermopylae was over five hundred miles ahead. \nThough the new rudder was fitted at tremendous speed, it was impossible for the Cutty Sark to win. \nShe arrived in England a week after the Thermopylae. \nEven this was remarkable, considering that she had had so many delays. \nThese is no doubt that if she had not lost her rudder she would have won the race easily.",
"text":"No one can avoid being influenced by advertisements. \nMuch as we may pride ourselves on our good taste, we are no longer free to choose the things we want, for advertising exerts a subtle influence on us. \nIn their efforts to persuade us to buy this or that product, advertisers have made a close study of human nature and have classified all our little weaknesses. \n\nAdvertisers discovered years ago that all of us love to get something for nothing. \nAn advertisement which begins with the magic word FREE can rarely go wrong. \nThese days, advertisers not only offer free samples, \nbut free cars, free houses, \nand free trips round the world as well. \nThey devise hundreds of competitions which will enable us to win huge sums of money. \nRadio and television have made it possible for advertisers to capture the attention of millions of people in this way. \n\nDuring a radio programme, a company of biscuit manufacturers once asked listeners to bake biscuits and send them to their factory. \nThey offered to pay $10 a pound for the biggest biscuit baked by a listener. \nThe response to this competition was tremendous. \nBefore long, biscuits of all shapes and sizes began arriving at the factory. \nOne lady brought in a biscuit on a wheelbarrow. \nIt weighed nearly 500 pounds. \nA little later, a man came along with a biscuit which occupied the whole boot of his car. \nAll the biscuits that were sent were carefully weighed. \nThe largest was 713 pounds. \nIt seemed certain that this would win the prize. \nBut just before the competition closed, a lorry arrived at the factory with a truly colossal biscuit which weighed 2,400 pounds. \nIt had been baked by a college student who had used over 1,000 pounds of flour, 800 pounds of sugar, 200 pounds of fat, \nand 400 pounds of various other ingredients. \nIt was so heavy that a crane had to be used to remove it from the lorry. \nThe manufacturers had to pay more money than they had anticipated, or they bought the biscuit from the student for $24,000.",
"text":"It has been said that everyone lives by selling something. \nIn the light of this statement, teachers live by selling knowledge, philosophers by selling wisdom and priests by selling spiritual comfort. \nThough it may be possible to measure the value of material good in terms of money, it is extremely difficult to estimate the true value of the services which people perform for us. \nThere are times when we would willingly give everything we possess to save our lives, yet we might grudge paying a surgeon a high fee for offering us precisely this service. \nThe conditions of society are such that skills have to be paid for in the same way that goods are paid for at a shop. \nEveryone has something to sell. \n\nTramps seem to be the only exception to this general rule. \nBeggars almost sell themselves as human being to arouse the pity of passers-by. \nBut real tramps are not beggars. \nThey have nothing to sell and require nothing from others. \nIn seeking independence, they do not sacrifice their human dignity. \nA tramp may ask you for money, \nbut he will never ask you to feel sorry for him. \nHe has deliberately chosen to lead the life he leads and is fully aware of the consequences. \nHe may never be sure where the next meal is coming from, \nbut his is free from the thousands of anxieties which afflict other people. \nHis few material possessions make it possible for him to move from place to place with ease. \nBy having to sleep in the open, he gets far closer to the world of nature than most of us ever do. \nHe may hunt, beg, or stead occasionally to keep himself alive;he may even, in times of real need, do a little work;but he will never sacrifice his freedom. \nWe often speak of my even, in times of real need, do a little work;but he will never sacrifice his freedom. \nWe often speak of tramps with contempt and put them in the same class as beggars, \nbut how many of us can honestly say that we have not felt a little envious of their simple way of life and their freedom from care?",
"text":"Small boats loaded with wares sped to the great liner as she was entering the harbour. \nBefore she had anchored, the men from the boats had climbed on board and the decks were son covered with colourful rugs from Persia, silks from India, copper coffee pots, \nand beautiful handmade silverware. \nIt was difficult not to be tempted. \nMany of the tourists on board had begun bargaining with the tradesmen, \nbut I decide not to buy anything until I had disembarked. \n\nI had no sooner got off the ship than I was assailed by a man who wanted to sell me a diamond ring. \nI had no intention of buying one, \nbut I could not conceal the fact that I was impressed by the size of the diamonds. \nSome of them were as big as marbles. \nThe man went to great lengths to prove that the diamonds were real. \nAs we were walking past a shop, he held a diamond firmly against the window and made a deep impression in the glass. \nIt took me over half an hour to get rid of him. \n\nThe next man to approach me was selling expensive pens and watches. \nI examined one of the pens closely. \nIt certainly looked genuine. \nAt the base of the gold cap, the words 'made in the U.S.A.' had been neatly inscribed. \nThe man said that the pen was worth &10, but as a special favour, he would let me have it for& \n8. \nI shook my head and held up a finger indicating that I was willing to pay a pound. \nGesticulating wildly, the man acted as if he found my offer out-rageous, but he eventually reduced the price to& \n3. \nShrugging my shoulders, I began to walk away when, a moment later, he ran after me and thrust the pen into my hands. \nThough he kept throwing up his arms in despair, he readily accepted the pound I gave him. \nI felt especially pleased with my wonderful bargain--until I got back to the ship. \nNo matter how hard I tried, it was im possible to fill this beautiful pen with ink and to this day it has never written a single word!",
"text":"Whether we find a joke funny or not largely depends on where we have been brought up. \nThe sense of humour is mysteriously bound up with national characteristics. \nA Frenchman, for instance, might find it hard to laugh at a Russian joke. \nIn the same way, a Russian might fail to see anything amusing in a joke witch would make an Englishman laugh to tears. \n\nMost funny stories are based on comic situations. \nIn spite of national differences, certain funny situations have a universal appeal. \nNo matter where you live, you would find it difficult not to laugh at, say, Charlie Chaplin's early films. \nHowever, a new type of humour, which stems largely from the U.S., has recently come into fashion. \nIt is called 'sick humour'. \nComedians base their jokes on tragic situation like violent death or serious accidents. \nMany people find this sort of joke distasteful The following example of 'sick humour' will enable you to judge for yourself. \n\nA man who had broken his right leg was taken to hospital a few weeks before Christmas. \nFrom the moment he arrived there, he kept on pestering his doctor to tell him when he would be able to go home. \nHe dreaded having to spend Christmas in hospital. \nThough the doctors did his best, the patient's recovery was slow. \nOn Christmas Day, the man still had his right leg in plaster. \nHe spent a miserable day in bed thinking of all the fun he was missing. \nThe following day, however, the doctor consoled him by telling him that his chances of being able to leave hospital in time for New Year celebrations were good. \nThe good. \nThe man took heart and, sure enough, on New Years 'Eve he was able to hobble along to a party. \nTo compensate for his unpleasant experiences in hospital, the man drank a little more than was good for him. \nIn the process, he enjoyed himself thoroughly and kept telling everybody how much he hated hospitals. \nHe was still mumbling something about hospitals at the end of the party when he slipped on a piece of ice and broke his left leg.",
"text":"For years, villagers believed that Endley Farm was hunted. \nThe farm was owned by two brothers, Joe and Bob Cox. \nThey employed a few farmhands, but no one was willing to work there long. \nEvery time a worker gave up his job, he told the same story. \nFarm labourers said that they always woke up to find that work had been done overnight. \nHay had been cut and cowsheds had been cleaned. \nA farm worker, who stayed up all night claimed to have seen a figure cutting corn in the moonlight. \nIn time, it became an accepted fact the Cox brothers employed a conscientious ghost that did most of their work for them. \n\nNo one suspected that there might be someone else on the farm who had never been seen. \nThis was indeed the case. \nA short time ago, villagers were astonished to learn that the ghost of Endley had died. \nEveryone went to the funeral, for the 'ghost' was none other than Eric Cox, a third brother who was supposed to have died as a young man. \nAfter the funeral, Joe and Bob revealed a secret which they had kept for over fifty years. \n\nEric had been the eldest son of the family, very much older than his two brothers. \nHe had been obliged to join the army during the Second World War. \nAs he hated army life, he decided to desert his regiment. \nWhen he learnt that he would be sent abroad, he returned to the farm and his father hid him until the end of the war. \nFearing the authorities, Eric remained in hiding after the war as well. \nHis father told everybody that Eric had been killed in action. \nThe only other people who knew the secret were Joe and Bob. \nThey did not even tell their wives. \nWhen their father died, they thought it their duty to keep Eric in hiding. \nAll these years, Eric had lived as a recluse. \nHe used to sleep during the day and work at night, quite unaware of the fact that he had become the ghost of Endley. \nWhen he died, however, his brothers found it impossible to keep the secret any longer.",
"text":"True eccentrics never deliberately set out to draw attention to themselves. \nThey disregard social conventions without being conscious that they are doing anything extraordinary. \nThis invariably wins them the love and respect of others, for they add colour to the dull routine of everyday life. \n\nUp to the time of his death, Richard Colson was one of the most notable figures in our town. \nHe was a shrewd and wealthy businessman, \nbut most people in the town hardly knew anything about this side of his life. \nHe was known to us all as Dickie and his eccentricity had become legendary long before he died. \n\nDickie disliked snobs intensely. \nThough he owned a large car, he hardly ever used it, preferring always to go on foot. \nEven when it was raining heavily, he refused to carry an umbrella. \nOne day, he walked into an expensive shop after having been caught in a particularly heavy shower. \nHe wanted to buy a $300 watch for his wife, \nbut he was in such a bedraggled condition than an assistant refused to serve him. \nDickie left the shop without a word and returned carrying a large cloth bag. \nAs it was extremely heavy, he dumped it on the counter. \nThe assistant asked him to leave, \nbut Dickie paid no attention to him and requested to see the manager. \nRecognizing who the customer was, the manager was most apologetic and reprimanded the assistant severely. \nWhen Dickie was given the watch, the presented the assistant with the cloth bag. \nIt contained $300 in pennies. \nHe insisted on the assistant's counting the money before he left--30,000 pennies in all! \nOn another occasion, he invited a number of important critics to see his private collection of modern paintings. \nThis exhibition received a great deal of attention in the press, for though the pictures were supposed to be the work of famous artists, they had in fact been painted by Dickie. \nIt took him four years to stage this elaborate joke simply to prove that critics do not always know what they are talking about.",
"text":"The salvage operation had been a complete failure. \nThe small ship, Elkor, which had been searching the Barents Sea for weeks, was on its way home. \nA radio message from the mainland had been received by the ship's captain instructing him to give up the search. \nThe captain knew that another attempt would be made later, for the sunken ship he was trying to find had been carrying a precious cargo of gold bullion. \n\nDespite the message, the captain of the Elkor decided to try once more. \nThe sea bed was scoured with powerful nets and there was tremendous excitement on board went a chest was raised from the bottom. \nThough the crew were at first under the impression that the lost ship had been found, the contents of the chest proved them wrong. \nWhat they had in fact found was a ship which had been sunk many years before. \n\nThe chest contained the personal belongings of a seaman, Alan Fielding. \nThere were books, clothing and photographs, together with letters which the seaman had once received from his wife. \nThe captain of the Elkor ordered his men to salvage as much as possible from the wreck. \nNothing of value was found, \nbut the numerous items which were brought to the surface proved to be of great interest. \nFrom a heavy gun that was raised, the captain realized that the ship must have been a cruiser. \nIn another chest, which contained the belongings of a ship's officer, there was an unfinished letter which had been written on March 14th, 1943. \nThe captain learnt from the letter that the name of the lost ship was the Karen. \nThe most valuable find of all was the ship's log book, parts of which it was still possible to read. \nFrom this the captain was able to piece together all the information that had come to light. \nThe Karen had been sailing in a convoy to Russia when she was torpedoed by an enemy submarine. \nThis was later confirmed by naval official at the Ministry of Defiance after the Elkor had returned home. \nAll the items that were found were sent to the War Museum.",
"text":"We have all experienced days when everything goes wrong. \nA day may begin well enough, but suddenly everything seems to get out of control. \nWhat invariably happens is that a great number of things choose to go wrong at precisely the same moment. \nIt is as if a single unimportant event set up a chain of reactions. \nLet us suppose that you are preparing a meal and keeping an eye on the baby at the same time. \nThe telephone rings and this marks the prelude to an unforeseen series of catastrophes. \nWhile you are on the phone, the baby pulls the tablecloth off the table, smashing half your best crockery and cutting himself in the process. \nYou hang up hurriedly and attend to baby, crockery, etc. Meanwhile, the meal gets burnt. \nAs if this were not enough to reduce you to tears, your husband arrives, unexpectedly bringing three guests to dinner. \n\nThings can go wrong on a big scale, as a number of people recently discovered in Parramatta, a suburb of Sydney. \nDuring the rush hour one evening two cars collided and both drivers began to argue. \nThe woman immediately behind the two cars happened to be a learner. \nShe suddenly got into a panic and stopped her car. \nThis made the driver following her brake hard. \nHis wife was sitting beside him holding a large cake. \nAs she was thrown forward, the cake went right through the windscreen and landed on the road. \nSeeing a cake flying through the air, a lorry driver who was drawing up alongside the car, pulled up all of a sudden. \nThe lorry was loaded with empty beer bottles and hundreds of them slid off the back of the vehicle and on to the road. \nThis led to yet another angry argument. \nMeanwhile, the traffic piled up behind. \nIt took the police nearly an hour to get the traffic on the move again. \nIn the meantime, the lorry driver had to sweep up hundreds of broken bottles. \nOnly two stray dogs benefited from all this confusion, for they greedily devoured what was left of the cake. \nIt was just one of those days!",
"text":"Antique shops exert a peculiar fascination on a great many people. \nThe more expensive kind of antique shop where rare objects are beautifully displayed in glass cases to keep them free from dust is usually a forbidding place. \nBut no one has to muster up courage to enter a less pretentious antique shop. \nThere is always hope that in its labyrinth of musty, dark, disordered rooms a real rarity will be found amongst the piles of assorted junk that little the floors. \n\nNo one discovers a rarity by chance. \nA truly dedicated bargain hunter must have patience, \nand above all, the ability to recognize the worth of something when he sees it. \nTo do this, he must be at least as knowledgeable as the dealer. \nLike a scientist bent on making a discovery, he must cherish the hope that one day he will be amply rewarded. \n\nMy old friend, Frank Halliday, is just such a person. \nHe has often described to me how he picked up a masterpiece for a mere $50. \nOne Saturday morning, Frank visited an antique shop in my neighbourhood. \nAs he had never been there before, he found a great deal to interest him. \nThe morning passed rapidly and Frank was about to leave when he noticed a large packing case lying on the floor. \nThe morning passed rapidly and Frank just come in, \nbut that he could not be bothered to open it. \nFrank begged him to do so and the dealer reluctantly prised it open. \nThe contents were disappointing. \nApart from an interesting-looking carved dagger, the box was full of crockery, much of it broken. \nFrank gently lifted the crockery out of the box an suddenly noticed a miniature painting at the bottom of the packing case. \nAs its composition and line reminded him of an Italian painting he knew well, he decided to buy it. \nGlancing at it briefly, the dealer told him that it was worth $50. \nFrank could hardly conceal his excitement, for he knew that he had made a real discovery. \nThe tiny painting proved to be an unknown masterpiece by Correggio and was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.",
"text":"The word justice is usually associated with courts of law. \nWe might say that justice has been done when a man's innocence or guilt has been proved beyond doubt. \nJustice is part of the complex machinery of the law. \nThose who seek it undertake an arduous journey and can never be sure that they will find it. \nJudges, however wise or eminent, are human and can make mistakes. \n\nThere are rare instances when justice almost ceases to be an abstract concept. \nReward or punishment are meted out quite independent of human interference. \nAt such times, justice acts like a living force. \nWhen we use a phrase like 'it serves him right',we are, in part, admitting that a certain set of circumstances has enabled justice to act of its own accord. \n\nWhen a thief was caught on the premises of large jewellery store on morning, the shop assistants must have found it impossible to resist the temptation to say 'it serves him right.' The shop was an old converted house with many large, disused fireplaces and tall, narrow chimneys. \nTowards midday, a girl heard a muffed cry coming from behind on of the walls. \nAs the cry was repeated several times, she ran to tell the manager who promptly rang up the fire brigade. \nThe cry had certainly come form one of the chimneys, \nbut as there were so many of them, the fire fighters could not be certain which one it was. \nThey located the right chimney by tapping at the walls and listening for the man's cries. \nAfter chipping through a wall which was eighteen inches thick, they found that a man had been trapped in the chimney. \nAs it was extremely narrow, the man was unable to move, \nbut the fire fighters were eventually able to free him by cutting a huge hole in the wall. \nThe sorry-looking, blackened figure that emerged, admitted at once that he had tried to break into the shop during the night but had got stuck in the chimney. \nHe had been there for nearly ten hours. \nJustice had been done even before the man was handed over to the police.",
"text":"We are less credulous than we used to be. \nIn the nineteenth century, a novelist would bring his story to a conclusion by presenting his readers with a series of coincidences--most of them wildly improbable. \nReaders happily accepted the fact that an obscure maidservant was really the hero's mother. \nA long-lost brother, who was presumed dead, was really alive all the time and wickedly plotting to bring about the hero's downfall. \nAnd so on. \nModern readers would find such naive solution totally unacceptable. \nYet, in real life, circumstances do sometimes conspire to bring about coincidences which anyone but a nineteenth century novelist would find incredible. \n\nWhen I was a boy, my grandfather told me how a German taxi driver, Franz Bussman, found a brother who was thought to have been killed twenty years before. \nWhile on a walking tour with his wife, he stooped to talk to a workman. \nAfter they had gone on, Mrs. Bussman commented on the workman's close resemblance to her husband and even suggested that he might be his brother. \nFranz poured scorn on the idea, pointing out that his brother had been killed in action during the war. \nThough Mrs. Busssman fully acquainted with this story, she thought that there was a chance in a million that she might be right. \nA few days later, she sent a boy to the workman to ask him if his name was Hans Bussman. \nNeedless to say, the man's name was Hans Bussman and he really was Franz's long-lost brother. \nWhen the brothers were reunited, Hans explained how it was that he was still alive. \nAfter having been wounded towards the end of the war, he had been sent to hospital and was separated from his unit. \nThe hospital had been bombed and Hans had made his way back into Western Germany on foot. \nMeanwhile, his unit was lost and all records of him had been destroyed. \nHans returned to his family home, \nbut the house had been bombed and no one in the neighbourhood knew what had become of the inhabitants. \nAssuming that his family had been killed during an air raid, Hans settled down in a village fifty miles away where he had remained ever since.",
"text":"We have learnt to expect that trains will be punctual. \nAfter years of conditioning, most of us have developed an unshakable faith in railway timetables. \nShips may be delayed by storms;flights may be cancelled because of bad weather, \nbut trains must be on time. \nOnly an exceptionally heavy snowfall might temporarily dislocate railway services. \nIt is all too easy to blame the railway authorities when something does go wrong. \nThe truth is that when mistakes occur, they are more likely to be ours than theirs. \n\nAfter consulting my railway timetable, I noted with satisfaction that there was an express train to Westhaven. \nIt went direct from my local station and the journey lasted mere hour and seventeen minutes. \nWhen I boarded the train, I could not help noticing that a great many local people got on as well. \nAt the time, this did not strike me as odd. \nI reflected that there must be a great many local people besides myself who wished to take advantage of this excellent service. \nNeither was I surprise when the train stopped at Widley, a tiny station a few miles along the line. \nEven a mighty express train can be held up by signals. \nBut when the train dawdled at station after station, I began to wonder, It suddenly dawned on me that this express was not roaring down the line at ninety miles an hour, \nbut barely chugging along at thirty. \nOne hour and seventeen minutes passed and we had not even covered half the distance. \nI asked a passenger if this was the Westhaven Express, \nbut he had not even heard of it. \nI determined to lodge a complaint as soon as we arrived. \nTwo hours later, I was talking angrily to the station master at Westhaven. \nWhen he denied the train's existence, I borrowed his copy of the timetable. \nThere was a note of triumph in my voice when I told him that it was there in black and white. \nGlancing at it briefly, he told me to look again. \nA tiny asterisk conducted me to a footnote at the bottom of the page. \nIt said:'This service has been suspended.'",
"text":"Future historians will be in a unique position when they come to record the history of our own times. \nThey will hardly know which facts to select from the great mass of evidence that steadily accumulates. \nWhat is more, they will not have to rely solely on the written word. \nFilms, videos, CDs and CD-ROMS are just some of the bewildering amount of information they will have. \nThey will be able, as it were, to see and hear us in action. \nBut the historian attempting to reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficult task. \nHe has to deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available. \nEven seemingly insignificant remains can shed interesting light on the history of early man. \n\nUp to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture, for then man was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons. \nRecent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is incorrect. \n\nHistorians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols which have been engraved on walls, bones, \nand the ivory tusks of mammoths. \nThe nomads who made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Age which began about 35,000 B.C. and ended about 10,000 B.C. By correlating markings made in various parts of the world, historians have been able to read this difficult code. \nThey have found that it is connected with the passage of days and the phases of the moon. \nIt is, in fact, a primitive type of calendar. \nIt has long been known that the hunting scenes depicted on walls were not simply a form of artistic expression. \nThey had a definite meaning, for they were as near as early man could get to writing. \nIt is possible that there is a definite relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them. \nIt seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20,000 years earlier than has been supposed.",
"text":"The rough across the plain soon became so bad that we tried to get Bruce to drive back to the village we had come from. \nEven though the road was littered with boulders and pitted with holes, Bruce was not in the least perturbed. \nGlancing at his map, he informed us that the next village was a mere twenty miles away. \nIt was not that Bruce always underestimated difficulties. \nHe simply had no sense of danger at all. \nNo matter what the conditions were, he believed that a car should be driven as fast as it could possibly go. \n\nAs we bumped over eh dusty track, we swerved to avoid large boulders. \nThe wheels scooped up stones which hammered ominously under the car. \nWe felt sure that sooner or later a stone would rip a hole in our petrol tank or damage the engine. \nBecause of this, we kept looking back, wondering if we were leaving a trail of oil and petrol behind us. \n\nWhat a relief it was when the boulders suddenly disappeared, giving way to a stretch of plain where the only obstacles were clumps of bushes. \nBut there was worse to come. \nJust ahead of us there was a huge fissure. \nIn response to renewed pleadings, Bruce stopped. \nThough we all got out to examine the fissure, he remained in the car. \nWe informed him that the fissure extended for fifty years and was tow feet wide and four feet deep. \nEven this had no effect. \nBruce went into a low gear and drove at a terrifying speed, keeping the front wheels astride the crack as he followed its zigzag course. \nBefore we had time to worry about what might happen, we were back on the plain again. \nBruce consulted the map once more and told us that the village was now only fifteen miles away. \nOur next obstacle was a shallow pool of water about half a mile across. \nBruce charged at it, but in the middle, the car came to a grinding half. \nA yellow light on the dashboard flashed angrily and Bruce cheerfully announced that there was no oil in the engine!",
"text":"It has never been explained why university students seem to enjoy practical jokes more than else. \nStudents specialize in a particular type of practical joke:the hoax. \nInviting the fire brigade to put out a nonexistent fire is a crude form of deception which no self-respecting student would ever indulge in. \nStudents often create amusing situations which are funny to everyone except the victims. \n\nWhen a student recently saw two workmen using a pneumatic drill outside his university, he immediately telephoned the police and informed them that two students dressed up as workmen were tearing up the road with a pneumatic drill. \nAs soon as he had hung up, he went over to the workmen and told them that if a policeman ordered them to go away, they were not take him seriously. \nHe added that a student had dressed up as a policeman and was playing all sorts of silly jokes on people. \nBoth the police and the workmen were grateful to the student for this piece of advance information. \n\nThe student did in an archway nearby where he could watch and hear everything that went on. \nSure enough, a policeman arrived on the scene and politely asked the workmen to go away. \nWhen he received a very rude reply from one of the workmen. \nHe threatened to remove them by force. \nThe workmen told him to do as he pleased and the policeman telephoned for help. \nShortly afterwards, four more policemen arrived and remonstrated with the workmen. \nAs the men refused to stop working, the police attempted to seize the pneumatic drill. \nThe workmen struggled fiercely and one of them lost his temper. \nHe threatened to call the police. \nAt this, the police pointed out ironically that this would hardly be necessary as the men were already under arrest. \nPretending to speak seriously, one of the workmen asked if he might make a telephone call before being taken to the station. \nPermission was granted and a policeman accompanied him to a pay phone. \nOnly when he saw that the man was actually telephoning the police did he realize that they had all been the victims of a hoax.",
"text":"The quiet life of the country ahs never appealed to me. \nCity born and city bred. \nI have always regarded the country as something you look at through a train window, or something you occasional visit during the weekend. \nMost of my friends live in the city, yet they always go into raptures at the mere mention of the country. \nThough they extol the virtues of the peaceful life, only one of hem has ever gone to live in the country and he was back in town within six months. \nEven he still lives under the illusion that country life is somehow superior to town life. \nHe is forever talking about the friendly people, the clean atmosphere, the closeness to nature and the gentle pace of living. \nNothing can be compared, he maintains, with the first cockcrow, the twittering of birds at dawn, the sight of the rising sun glinting on the trees and pastures. \nThis idyllic pastoral scene is only part of the picture. \nMy friend fails to mention the long and friendless winter evenings in front of the TV--virtually the only form of entertainment. \nHe says nothing about the poor selection of goods in the shops, or about those unfortunate people who have to travel from the country to the city every day to get to work. \nWhy people are prepared to tolerate a four-hour journey each day for the dubious privilege of living in the country is beyond me. \nThey could be saved so much misery and expense if they chose to live in the city where they rightly belong. \n\nIf you can do without the few pastoral pleasures of the country, you will find the city can provide you with the best that life can offer. \nYou never have to travel miles to see your friends. \nThey invariably lie nearby and are always available for an informal chat or an evening's entertainment. \nSome of my acquaintances in the country come up to town once or twice a year to visit the theatre as a special treat. \nFor them this is a major operation which involves considerable planning. \nAs the play draws to its close, they wonder whether they will ever catch that last train home. \nThe cit dweller never experiences anxieties of this sort. \nThe latest exhibitions, films, or plays are only a short bus ride away. \nShopping, too, is always a pleasure. \nThe latest exhibitions, films, or plays are only a short bus ride away. \nShopping, too, is always a pleasure. \nThere is so much variety that you never have to make do with second best. \nCountry people run wild when they go shopping in the city and stagger home loaded with as many of the exotic items as they can carry. \nNor is the city without its moments of beauty. \nThere is something comforting about the warm glow shed by advertisements on cold wet winter nights. \nFew things could be more impressive than the peace that descends on deserted city streets at weekends when the thousands that travel to work every day are tucked away in their homes in the country. \nIt has always been a mystery to me who city dwellers, who appreciate all these things, obstinately pretend that they would prefer to live in the country.",
"text":"Cave exploration, or pot-holing, as it has come to be known, is a relatively new sport. \nPerhaps it is the desire for solitude or the chance of making an unexpected discovery that lures people down to the depths of the earth. \nIt is impossible to give a satisfactory explanation for a pot-holer's motives. \nFor him, caves have the same peculiar fascination which high mountains have for the climber. \nThey arouse instincts which can only be dimly understood. \n\nExploring really deep caves is not a task for the Sunday afternoon rambler. \nSuch undertakings require the precise planning and foresight of military operations. \nIt can take as long as eight days to rig up rope ladders and to establish supply bases before a descent can be made into a very deep cave. \nPrecautions of this sort are necessary, for it is impossible to foretell the exact nature of the difficulties which will confront the pot-holer. \nThe deepest known cave in the world is the Gouffre Berger near Grenoble. \nIt extends to a depth of 3,723 feet. \nThis immense chasm has been formed by an underground stream which has tunneled a course through a flaw in the rocks. \nThe entrance to the cave is on a plateau in the Dauphine Alps. \nAs it is only six feet across, it is barely noticeable. \nThe cave might never have been discovered has not the entrance been spotted by the distinguished French pot-holer, Berger. \nSince its discovery, it has become a sort of potholers 'Everest. \nThough a number of descents have been made, much of it still remains to be explored. \n\nA team of pot-holers recently went down the Gouffre Berger. \nAfter entering the narrow gap on the plateau, they climbed down the steep sides of the cave until they came to narrow corridor. \nThey had to edge their way along this, sometimes wading across shallow streams, or swimming across deep pools. \nSuddenly they came to a waterfall which dropped into an underground lake at the bottom of the cave. \nThey plunged into the lake, \nand after loading their gear on an inflatable rubber dinghy, let the current carry them to the other side. \nTo protect themselves from the icy water, they had to wear special rubber suits. \nAt the far end of the lake, they came to huge piles of rubble which had been washed up by the water. \nIn this part of the cave, they could hear an insistent booming sound which they found was caused by a small waterspout shooting down into a pool from the roof of the cave. \nSqueezing through a cleft in the rocks, the pot-holers arrived at an enormous cavern, the size of a huge concert hall. \nAfter switching on powerful arc lights, they saw great stalagmites--some of them over forty feet high--rising up like tree-trunks to meet the stalactites suspended from the roof. \nRound about, piles of limestone glistened in all the colours of the rainbow. \nIn the eerie silence of the cavern, the only sound that could be heard was made by water which dripped continuously from the high dome above them.",
"text":"Insurance companies are normally willing to insure anything. \nInsuring public or private property is a standard practice in most countries in the world. \nIf, however, you were holding an open air garden party or a fete it would be equally possible to insure yourself in the event of bad weather. \nNeedless to say, the bigger the risk an insurance company takes, the higher the premium you will have to pay. \nIt is not uncommon to hear that a shipping company has made a claim for cost of salvaging a sunken ship. \nBut the claim made by a local authority to recover the cost of salvaging a sunken pie dish must surely be unique. \n\nAdmittedly it was an unusual pie dish, for it was eighteen feet long and six feet wide. \nIt had been purchased by a local authority so that an enormous pie could be baked for an annual fair. \nThe pie committee decided that the best way to transport the dish would be by canal, \nso they insured it for the trip. \nShortly after it was launched, the pie committee went to a local inn to celebrate. \nAt the same time, a number of teenagers climbed on to the dish and held a little party of their own. \nDancing proved to be more than the dish could bear, for during the party it capsized and sank in seven feet of water. \n\nThe pie committee telephoned a local garage owner who arrived in a recovery truck to salvage the pie dish. \nShivering in their wet clothes, the teenagers looked on while three men dived repeatedly into the water to locate the dish. \nThey had little difficulty in finding it, \nbut hauling it out of the water proved to be a serious problem. \nThe sides of the dish were so smooth that it was almost impossible to attach hawsers and chains to the rim without damaging it. \nEventually chains were fixed to one end of the dish and a powerful winch was put into operation. \nThe dish rose to the surface and was gently drawn towards the canal bank. \nFor one agonizing moment, the dish was perched precariously on the bank of the canal, \nbut it suddenly overbalanced and slid back into the water. \nThe men were now obliged to try once more. \nThis time they fixed heavy metal clamps to both sides of the dish so that they could fasten the chains. \nThe dish now had to be lifted vertically because one edge was resting against the side of the canal. \nThe winch was again put into operation and one of the men started up the truck. \nSeveral minutes later, the dish was again put into operation and one of the water. \nWater streamed in torrents over its sides with such force that it set up a huge wave in the canal. \nThere was danger that the wave would rebound off the other side of the bank and send the dish plunging into the water again. \nBy working at tremendous speed, the men managed to get the dish on to dry land before the wave returned.",
"text":"People travelling long distances frequently have to decide whether they would prefer to go by land, sea, or air. \nHardly anyone can positively enjoy sitting in a train for more than a few hours. \nTrain compartments soon get cramped and stuffy. \nIt is almost impossible to take your mind off the journey. \nReading is only a partial solution, for the monotonous rhythm of the wheels clicking on the rails soon lulls you to sleep. \nDuring the day, sleep comes in snatches. \nAt night, when you really wish to go to sleep, you rarely manage to do so. \nIf you are lucky enough to get a sleeper, you spend half the night staring at the small blue light in the ceiling, or fumbling to find you ticket for inspection. \nInevitably you arrive at your destination almost exhausted. \nLong car journeys are even less pleasant, for it is quite impossible even to read. \nOn motorways you can, at least, travel fairly safely at high speeds, \nbut more often than not, the greater part of the journey is spent on roads with few service stations and too much traffic. \nBy comparison, ferry trips or cruises offer a great variety of civilized comforts. \nYou can stretch your legs on the spacious decks, play games, meet interesting people and enjoy good food--always assuming, of course, that the sea is calm. \nIf it is not, \nand you are likely to get seasick, no form of transport could be worse. \nEven if you travel in ideal weather, sea journeys take a long time. \nRelatively few people are prepared to sacrifice holiday time for the pleasure of travlling by sea. \n\nAeroplanes have the reputation of being dangerous and even hardened travellers are intimidated by them. \nThey also have the disadvantage of being an expensive form of transport. \nBut nothing can match them for speed and comfort. \nTravelling at a height of 30,000 feet, far above the clouds, \nand at over 500 miles an hour is an exhilarating experience. \nYou do not have to devise ways of taking your mind off the journey, for an aeroplane gets you to your destination rapidly. \nFor a few hours, you settle back in a deep armchair to enjoy the flight. \nThe real escapist can watch a film and sip champagne on some services. \nBut even when such refinements are not available, there is plenty to keep you occupied. \nAn aeroplane offers you an unusual and breathtaking view of the world. \nYou soar effortlessly over high mountains and deep valleys. \nYou really see the shape of the land. \nIf the landscape is hidden from view, you can enjoy the extraordinary sight of unbroken cloud plains that stretch out for miles before you, while the sun shines brilliantly in a clear sky. \nThe journey is so smooth that there is nothing to prevent you from reading or sleeping. \nHowever you decide to spend your time, one thing is certain:you will arrive at your destination fresh and uncrumpled. \nYou will not have to spend the next few days recovering from a long and arduous journey.",
"text":"In democratic countries any efforts to restrict the freedom of the press are rightly condemned. \nHowever, this freedom can easily be abused. \nStories about people often attract far more public attention than political events. \nThough we may enjoy reading about the lives of others, it is extremely doubtful whether we would equally enjoy reading about ourselves. \nActing on the contention that facts are sacred, reporters can cause untold suffering to individuals by publishing details about their private lives. \nNewspapers exert such tremendous influence that they can not only bring about major changes to the lives of ordinary people but can even overthrow a government. \n\nThe story of a poor family that acquired fame and fortune overnight, dramatically illustrates the power of the press. \nThe family lived in Aberdeen, a small town of 23,000 inhabitants in South Dakota. \nAs the parents had five children, life was a perpetual struggle against poverty. \nThey were expecting their sixth child and were faced with even more pressing economic problems. \nIf they had only had one more child, the fact would have passed unnoticed. \nThey would have continued to struggle against economic odds and would have lived in obscurity. \nBut they suddenly became the parents of quintuplets, an aeroplane arrived in Aberdeen bringing sixty reporters and photographers. \n\nThe rise to fame was swift. \nTelevision cameras and newspapers carried the news to everyone in the country. \nNewspapers and magazines offered the family huge sums for the exclusive rights to publish stories and photographs. \nGifts poured in not only from unknown people, \nbut room baby food and soap manufacturers who wished to advertise their products. \nThe old farmhouse the family lived in was to be replaced by new $500,000 home. \nReporters kept pressing for interviews so lawyers had to be employed to act as spokesmen for the family at press conferences. \nWhile the five babies were babies were still quietly sleeping in oxygen tents in hospital nursery, their parents were paying the price for fame. \nIt would never again be possible for them to lead normal lives. \nThey had become the victims of commercialization, for their names had acquired a market value. \nInstead of being five new family members, these children had immediately become a commodity.",
"text":"So great is our passion for doing things for ourselves, that we are becoming increasingly less dependent on specialized labour. \nNo one can plead ignorance of a subject any longer, for these are countless do-it-yourself publications. \nArmed with the right tools and materials, newlyweds gaily embark on the task of decorating their own homes. \nMen, particularly, spend hours of their leisure time installing their own fireplaces, laying out their own gardens;building garages and making furniture. \nSome really keen enthusiasts go so far as to build their own computers. \nShops cater for the do-it-yourself craze not only by running special advisory services for novices, \nbut by offering consumers bits and pieces which they can assemble at home. \nSuch things provide an excellent outlet for pent up creative energy, \nbut unfortunately not all of us are born handymen. \n\nSome wives tend to believe that their husbands are infinitely resourceful and can fix anything. \nEven men who can hardly drive a nail in straight are supposed to be born electricians, carpenters, plumbers and mechanics. \nWhen lights fuse, furniture gets rickety, pipes get clogged, or vacuum cleaners fail to operate, some woman assume that their husbands will somehow put things right. \nThe worst thing about the do-it-yourself game is that sometimes even men live under the delusion that they can do anything, even when they have repeatedly been proved wrong. \nIt is a question of pride as much as anything else. \n\nLast spring my wife suggested that I call in a man to look at our lawn mower. \nIt had broken down the previous summer, \nand though I promised to repair it, I had never got round to it. \nI would not hear of the suggestion and said that I would fix it myself. \nOne Saturday afternoon, I hauled the machine into the garden and had a close look at it. \nAs far as I could see, it needed only a minor adjustment:a turn of a screw here, a little tightening up there, a drop of oil and it would be as good as new. \nInevitably the repair job was not quite so simple. \nThe mower firmly refused to mow, so I decided to dismantle it. \nThe garden was soon littered with chunks of metal which had once made up a lawn mower. \nBut I was extremely pleased with myself. \nI had traced the cause of the trouble. \nOne of links in the chain that drives the wheels had snapped. \nAfter buying a new chain I was faced with the insurmountable task of putting the confusing jigsaw puzzle together again. \nI was not surprised to find that the machine still refused to work after I had reassembled it, for the simple reason that I was left with several curiously shaped bits of metal which did not seem to fit anywhere. \nI gave up in despair. \nThe weeks passed and the grass grew. \nWhen my wife nagged me to do something about it, I told her that either I would have to buy a new mower or let the grass grow. \nNeedless to say our house is now surrounded by a jungle. \nBuried somewhere in deep grass there is a rusting lawn mower which I have promised to repair one day.",
"text":"Pollution is the price we pay for an overpopulated, over industrialized planet. \nWhen you come to think about it, there are only four ways you can deal with rubbish:dump it, burn it, turn it into something you can use again, attempt to produce less of it. \nWe keep trying all four methods, \nbut he sheer volume of rubbish we produce worldwide threatens to overwhelm us. \n\nRubbish, however, is only part of the problem of polluting our planet. \nThe need to produce ever-increasing quantities of cheap food leads to a different kind of pollution. \nIndustrialized farming methods produce cheap meat products:beef, pork and chicken. \nThe use of pesticides and fertilizers produces cheap grain and vegetables. \nThe price we pay for cheap food may be already too high:Mad Cow Disease (BSE) in cattle, salmonella in chicken and eggs, \nand wisteria in dairy products. \nAnd if you think you'll abandon meat and become a vegetarian, you have the choice of very expensive organically-grown vegetables or a steady diet of pesticides every time you think you're eating fresh salads and vegetables, or just having an innocent glass of water! \n\nHowever, there is an even more insidious kind of pollution that particularly affects urban areas and invades our daily lives, \nand that is noise. \nBurglar alarms going off at any time of the day or night serve only to annoy passers-by and actually assist burglars to burgle. \nCar alarms constantly scream at us in the street and are a source of profound irritation. \nA recent survey of the effects of noise revealed (surprisingly?) that dogs barking incessantly in the night rated the highest form of noise pollution on a scale ranging from 1 to 7. \nThe survey revealed a large number of sources of noise that we really dislike. \nLawn mowers whining on a summer's day, late-night parties in apartment blocks, noisy neighbors, vehicles of al kinds, especially large container trucks thundering through quiet village, planes and helicopters flying overhead, large radios carried round in public places and played at maximum volume. \nNew technology has also made its own contribution to noise. \nA lot of people object to mobile phones, especially when they are used in public places like restaurants or on public transport. \nLoud conversations on mobile phones invade our thoughts or interrupt the pleasure of meeting friends for a quiet chat. \nThe noise pollution survey revealed a rather spurring and possibly amusing old fashioned source of noise. \nIt turned out to be snoring! \nMen were found to be the worst offenders. \nIt was revealed that 20% of men in their mid-thirties snore. \nThis figure rises to a staggering 60% of men in their sixties. \nAgainst these figures, it was found that only 5% of women snore regularly, while the rest are constantly woken or kept awake by their trumpeting partners. \nWhatever the source of noise, one thing is certain:silence, it seems, has become a golden memory.",
"text":"In this much-travelled world, there are still thousands of places which are inaccessible to tourists. \nWe always assume that villagers in remote places are friendly and hospitable. \nBut people who are cut off not only from foreign tourists, \nbut even from their own countrymen can be hostile to travellers. \nVisits to really remote villages are seldom enjoyable--as my wife and I discovered during a tour through the Balkans. \n\nWe had spent several days in a small town and visited a number of old churches in the vicinity. \nThese attracted many visitors, for they were not only of great architectural interest, \nbut contained a large number of beautifully preserved frescoes as well. \nOn the day before our departure, several bus loads of tourists descended on the town. \nThis was more than we could bear, \nso we decided to spend our last day exploring the countryside. \nTaking a path which led out of the town, we crossed a few fields until we came to a dense wood. \nWe expected the path to end abruptly, \nbut we found that it traced its way through the trees. \nWe tramped through the wood for over two hours until we arrived at a deep stream. \nWe could see that the path continued on the other side, \nbut we had no idea how we could get across the stream. \nSuddenly my wife spotted a boat moored to the bank. \nIn it there was a boatman fast asleep. \nWe gently woke him up and asked him to ferry us to the other side. \nThough he was reluctant to do so at first, we eventually persuaded him to take us. \n\nThe path led to a tiny village perched on the steep sides of a mountain. \nThe place consisted of a straggling unmade road which was lined on either side by small houses. \nEven under a clear blue sky, the village looked forbidding, as all the houses were built of grey mud bricks. \nThe village seemed deserted, the only sign of life being an ugly-looking black goat on a short length of rope tied to a tree in a field nearby. \nSitting down on a dilapidated wooden fence near the field, we opened a couple of tins of sardines and had a picnic lunch. \nAll at once, I noticed that my wife seemed to be filled with alarm. \nLooking up I saw that we were surrounded by children in rags who were looking at us silently as we ate. \nWe offered them food and spoke to them kindly, but they remained motionless. \nI concluded that they were simply shy of strangers. \nWhen we later walked down the main street of the villager, we were followed by a silent procession of children. \nThe village which had seemed deserted, immediately came to life. \nFaces appeared at windows. \nMen in shirt sleeves stood outside their houses and glared at us. \nOld women in black shawls peered at us from doorways. \nThe most frightening thing of all was that not a sound could be heard. \nThere was no doubt that we were unwelcome visitors. \nWe needed no further warning. \nTurning back down the main street, we quickened our pace and made our way rapidly towards the stream where we hoped the boatman was waiting.",
"text":"It is a good thing my aunt Harriet died years ago. \nIf she were alive today she would not be able to air her views on her favourite topic of conversation:domestic servants. \nAunt Harriet lived in that leisurely age when servants were employed to do housework. \nShe had a huge, rambling country house called 'The Gables'. \nShe was sentimentally attached to this house, for even though it was far too big for her needs, she persisted in living there long after her husband's death. \nBefore she grew old, Aunt Harriet used to entertain lavishly. \nI often visited The Gables when I was boy. \nNo matter how many guests were present, the great house was always immaculate. \nThe parquet floors shone like mirrors;highly polished silver was displayed in gleaming glass cabinets;even my uncle's huge collection of books was kept miraculously free from dust. \nAunt Harriet presided over an invisible army of servants that continuously scrubbed, cleaned, and polished. \nShe always referred to them as 'the shifting population',for they came and went with such frequency that I never even got a chance to learn their names. \nThough my aunt pursued what was, in those days, an enlightened policy, in that she never allowed her domestic staff to work more than eight hours a day, she was extremely difficult to please. \nWhile she always criticized the fickleness of human nature, she carried on an unrelenting search for the ideal servant to the end of her days, even after she had been sadly disillusioned by Bessie. \n\nBessie worked for Aunt Harriet for three years. \nDuring that time she so gained my aunt's confidence that she was put in charge of the domestic staff. \nAunt Harriet could not find words to praise Bessie's industriousness and efficiency. \nIn addition to all her other qualifications, Bessie was an expert cook. \nShe acted the role of the perfect servant for three years before Aunt Harriet discovered her 'little weakness'. \nAfter being absent from the Gables for a week, my aunt unexpectedly returned one afternoon with a party of guests and instructed Bessie to prepare dinner. \nNo only was the meal well below the usual standard, \nbut Bessie seemed unable to walk steadily. \nShe bumped into the furniture and kept mumbling about the guests. \nWhen she came in with the last course--a huge pudding--she tripped on the carpet and the pudding went flying through the air, narrowly missed my aunt, \nand crashed on the dining table with considerable force. \nThough this caused great mirth among the guests, Aunt Harriet was horrified. \nShe reluctantly came to the conclusion that Bessie was drunk. \nThe guests had, of course, realized this from the moment Bessie opened the door for them and, long before the final catastrophe, had had a difficult time trying to conceal their amusement. \nThe poor girl was dismissed instantly. \nAfter her departure, Aunt Harriet discovered that there were piles of empty wine bottles of all shapes and sizes neatly stacked in what had once been Bessie's wardrobe. \nThey had mysteriously found their way there from the wine cellar!",
"text":"The New Year is a time for resolutions. \nMentally, at least, most of us could compile formidable lists of 'dos' and 'don'ts'. \nThe same old favorites recur year in year out with monotonous regularity. \nWe resolve to get up earlier each morning, eat less, find more time to play with the children, do a thousand and one jobs about the house, be nice to people we don't like, drive carefully, \nand take the dog for a walk every day. \nPast experience has taught us that certain accomplishments are beyond attainment. \nIf we remain inveterate smokers, it is only because we have so often experienced the frustration that results from failure. \nMost of us fail in our efforts at self-improvement because our schemes are too ambitious and we never have time to carry them out. \nWe also make the fundamental error of announcing our resolutions to everybody so that we look even more foolish when we slip back into our bad old ways. \nAware of these pitfalls, this year I attempted to keep my resolutions to myself. \nI limited myself to two modest ambitions:to do physical exercise every morning and to read more of an evening. \nAn all-night party on New Year's Eve provided me with a good excuse for not carrying out either of these new resolutions on the first day of the year, \nbut on the second, I applied myself assiduously to the task. \n\nThe daily exercises lasted only eleven minutes and I proposed to do them early in the morning before anyone had got up. \nThe self-discipline required to drag myself out of bed eleven minutes earlier than usual was considerable. \nNevertheless, I managed to creep down into the living room for two days before anyone found me out. \nAfter jumping about on the carpet and twisting the human frame into uncomfortable positions, I sat down at the breakfast table in an exhausted condition. \nIt was this that betrayed me. \nThe next morning the whole family trooped in to watch the performance. \nThat was really unsettling, \nbut I fended off the taunts and jibes of the family good-humouredly and soon everybody got used to the idea. \nHowever, my enthusiasm waned. \nThe time I spent at exercises gradually diminished. \nLittle by little the eleven minutes fell to zero. \nBy January 10th, I was back to where I had started from. \nI argued that if I spent less time exhausting myself at exercises in the morning, I would keep my mind fresh for reading when I got home formwork Resisting the hypnotizing effect of television, I sat in my room for a few evenings with my eyes glued to book. \nOne night, however, feeling cold and lonely, I went downstairs and sat in front of the television pretending to read. \nThat proved to be my undoing, for I soon got back to my old bad habit of dozing off in front of the screen. \nI still haven't given up my resolution to do more reading. \nIn fact, I have just bought a book entitled How to Read a Thousand Words a Minute. \nPerhaps it will solve my problem, \nbut I just haven't had time to read it!",
"text":"Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. \nWho could have imagined, in the mid 1970s, for example, that by the end of the 20th century, computers would be as common in people's homes as TV sets? \nIn the 1970s, computers were common enough, \nbut only in big business, government departments, \nand large organizations. \nThese were the so-called mainframe machines. \nMainframe computers were very large indeed, often occupying whole air-conditioned rooms, employing full-time technicians and run on specially-written software. \nThough these large machines still exist, many of their functions have been taken over by small powerful personal computers, commonly known as PCs. \n\nIn 1975, a primitive machine called the Altair, was launched in the USA. \nIt can properly be described as the first 'home computer' and it pointed the way to the future. \nThis was followed, at the end of the 1970s, by a machine called an Apple. \nIn the early 1980s, the computer giant, IBM produced the world's first Personal Computer. \nThis ran on an 'operating system' called DOS, produced by a then small company named Microsoft. \nThe IBM Personal Computer was widely copied. \nFrom those humble beginnings, we have seen the development of the user-friendly home computers and multimedia machines which are in common use today. \n\nConsidering how recent these developments are, it is even more remarkable that as long ago as the 1960s, an Englishman, Leon Bagrit, was able to predict some of the uses of computers which we know today. \nBagrit dismissed the idea that computers would learn to 'think' for themselves and would 'rule the world',which people liked to believe in those days. \nBagrit foresaw a time when computers would be small enough to hold in the hand, when they would be capable of providing information about traffic jams and suggesting alternative routes, when they would be used in hospitals to help doctors to diagnose illnesses, when they would relieve office workers and accountants of dull, repetitive clerical work. \nAll these computer uses have become commonplace. \nOf course, Leon Bagrit could not possibly have foreseen the development of the Internet, the worldwide system that enables us to communicate instantly with anyone in any part of the world by using computers linked to telephone networks. \nNor could he have foreseen how we could use the Internet to obtain information on every known subject, \nso we can read it on a screen in our homes and even print it as well if we want to. \nComputers have become smaller and smaller, more and more powerful and cheaper and cheaper. \nThis is what makes Leon Bagrit's predictions particularly remarkable. \nIf he, or someone like him, were alive today, he might be able to tell us what to expect in the next fifty years.",
"text":"My cousin, Harry, keeps a large curiously-shaped bottle on permanent display in his study. \nDespite the fact that the bottle is tinted a delicate shade of green, an observant visitor would soon notice that it is filled with what looks like a thick, grayish substance. \nIf you were to ask Harry what was in the bottle, he would tell you that it contained perfumed mud. \nIf you expressed doubt or surprise, he would immediately invite you to smell it and then to rub some into your skin. \nThis brief experiment would dispel any further doubts you might have. \nThe bottle really does contain perfumed mud. \nHow Harry came into the possession of this outlandish stuff makes an interesting story which he is fond of relating. \nFurthermore, the acquisition of this bottle cured him of a bad habit he had been developing for years. \n\nHarry used to consider it a great joke to go into expensive cosmetic shops and make outrageous requests for goods that do not exist. \nHe would invent fanciful names on the spot. \nOn entering a shop, he would ask for a new perfume called 'Scented Shadow' or for 'insoluble bath cubes'. \nIf a shop assistant told him she had not heard of it, he would pretend to be considerably put out. \nHe loved to be told that one of his imaginary products was temporarily out of stock and he would faithfully promise to call again at some future date, \nbut of course he never did. \nHow Harry managed to keep a straight face during these performances is quite beyond me. \n\nHarry does not need to be prompted to explain how he bought his precious bottle of mud. \nOne day, he went to an exclusive shop in London and asked for 'Myrolite',the shop assistant looked puzzled and Harry repeated the word, slowly stressing each syllable. When the woman shook her head in bewilderment, Harry went on to explain that' \nmyrolite 'was a hard, amber-like substance which could be used to remove freckles. \nThis explanation evidently conveyed something to the woman who searched shelf after shelf. \nShe produced all sorts of weird concoctions, but none of them met with Harry's requirements. \nWhen Harry put on his act of being mildly annoyed, the assistant promised to order some for him. \nIntoxicated by his success, Harry then asked for perfumed mud. \nHe expected the assistant to look at him in blank astonishment. \nHowever, it was his turn to be surprised, for the woman's eyes immediately lit up and she fetched several bottles which she placed on the counter for Harry to inspect. \nFor once, Harry had to admit defeat. \nHe picked up what seemed to be the smallest bottle and discreetly asked the price. \nHe was glad to get away with a mere twenty pounds and he beat a hasty retreat, clutching the precious bottle under his arm. \nFrom then on, Harry decided that this little game he had invented might prove to be expensive. \nThe curious bottle, which now adorns the bookcase in his study, was his first and last purchase of rare cosmetics.",
"text":"The Scandinavian countries are much admired all over the world for their enlightened social policies. \nSweden has evolved an excellent system for protecting the individual citizen from highhanded or incompetent public officers. \nThe system has worked so well, that it has been adopted in other countries too. \n\nThe Swedes were the first to recognize that public official like civil servants, police officers, health inspectors or tax-collectors can make mistakes or act over-zealously in the belief that they are serving the public. \nAs long ago as 1809, the Swedish Parliament introduced a scheme to safeguard the interest of the individual. \nA parliamentary committee representing all political parties appoints a person who is suitably qualified to investigate private grievances against the State. \nThe official title of the person is 'Justiteombudsman', \nbut the Swedes commonly refer to him as the 'J.O.' or 'Ombudsman'. \nThe Ombudsman is not subject to political pressure. \nHe investigates complaints large and small that come to him from all levels of society. \nAs complaints must be made in writing, the Ombudsman receives an average of 1,200 letters a year. \nHe has eight lawyer assistants to help him and examines every single letter in detail. \nThere is nothing secretive about the Ombudsman's work for his correspondence is open to public inspection. \nIf a citizen's complaint is justified, the Ombudsman will act on his behalf. \nThe action he takes varies according to the nature of the complaint. \nHe may gently reprimand an official or even suggest to parliament that a law the altered. \nThe following case is a typical example of the Ombudsman's work. \n\nA foreigner living in a Swedish village wrote to the Ombudsman complaining that he had been ill-treated by the police, simply because he was a foreigner. \nThe Ombudsman immediately wrote to the Chief of Police in the district asking him to send a record of the case. \nThere was nothing in the record to show that the foreigner's complaint was justified and the Chief of Police strongly denied the accusation. \nIt was impossible for the Ombudsman to take action, \nbut when he received a similar complaint from another foreigner in the same village, he immediately sent one of his layers to investigate the matter. \nThe lawyer ascertained that a policeman had indeed dealt roughly with foreigners on several occasions. \nThe fact that the policeman was prejudiced against foreigners could not be recorded in the official files. \nIt was only possible for the Ombudsman to find this out by sending one of his representatives to check the facts. \nThe policeman in question was severely reprimanded and was informed that if any further complaints were lodged against him, he would prosecuted. \nThe Ombudsman's prompt action at once put an end to an unpleasant practice which might have gone unnoticed.",
"text":"We have been brought up to fear insects. \nWe regard them as unnecessary creatures that do more harm than good. \nWe continually wage war on them, for they contaminate our food, carry diseases, or devour our crops. \nThey sting or bite without provocation;they fly uninvited into our rooms on summer nights, or beat ageist our lighted windows. \nWe live in dread not only of unpleasant insects like spiders or wasps, \nbut of quite harmless one like moths. \nReading about them increases our understanding without dispelling our fears. \nKnowing that the industrious ant lives in a highly organized society does nothing to prevent us from being filled with revulsion when we find hordes of them crawling over a carefully prepared picnic lunch. \nNo matter how much we like honey, or how much we have read about the uncanny sense of direction which bees possess, we have a horror of being stung. \nMost of our fears are unreasonable, but they are impossible to erase. \nAt the same time, however, insects are strangely fascinating. \nWe enjoy reading about them, especially when we find that, like the praying mantis, they lead perfectly horrible lives. \nWe enjoy staring at them, entranced as they go about their business, unaware (we hope) of our presence. \nWho has not stood in awe at the sight of a spider pouncing on a fly, or a column of ants triumphantly bearing home an enormous dead beetle? \n\nLast summer I spent days in the garden watching thousands of ants crawling up the trunk of my prize peach tree. \nThe tree has grown against a warm wall on a sheltered side of the house. \nI am especially proud of it, not only because it has survived several severe winters, \nbut because it occasionally produces luscious peaches. \nDuring the summer, I noticed tat the leaves of the tree were beginning to wither. \nClusters of tin insects called aphids were to be found on the underside of the leaves. \nThey were visited by a large colony of ants which obtained a sort of honey from them. \nI immediately embarked on an experiment which, even though if failed to get rid of the ants, kept me fascinated for twenty-four hours. \nI bound the base of the tree with sticky tape, making it impossible for the ants to reach the aphids. \nThe tape was so stick that they did not dare to cross it. \nFor a long time. \nI watched them scurrying around the base of the tree in bewilderment. \nI even went out at midnight with a torch and noted with satisfaction (and surprise) that the ants were still swarming around the sticky tape without being able to do anything about it. \nI got up early next morning hoping to find that the ants had given up in despair. \nInstead, I saw that they had discovered a new route. \nThey were climbing up the wall of the house and then on to the leaves of the tree. \nI realized sadly that I had been completely defeated by their ingenuity. \nThe ants had been quick to find an answer to my thoroughly unscientific methods!",
"text":"Recent developments in astronomy have made it possible to detect planets in our won Milky Way and in other galaxies. \nThis is a major achievement because, in relative terms, planets are very small and old not emit light. \nFinding planets is proving hard enough, \nbut finding life on them will prove infinitely more difficult. \nThe first question to answer is whether a planet can actually support life. \nIn our won solar system, for example, Venus is far too hot and Mars is far too cold to support life. \nOnly the Earth provides ideal conditions, \nand even here it has taken more than four billion years for plant and animal life to evolve. \n\nWhether a planet can support life depends on the size and brightness of its star, that is its 'sun'. \nImagine a star up t twenty times larger, brighter, brighter and hotter than our own sun. \nA planet would have to be a very long way from it to be capable of supporting life. \nAlternatively, if the star were small, the life-supporting planet would have to have a close orbit round it and also provide the perfect conditions for life forms to develop. \nBut how would we find such a planet? \nAt present, there is no telescope in existence that is capable of detecting the presence of life. \nThe development of such a telescope will be one of the great astronomical projects of the twenty-first century. \n\nIt is impossible to look for life on another planet using earth-based telescopes. \nOur own warm atmosphere and the heat generated by the telescope would make it impossible to detect objects as small as planets. \nEven a telescope in orbit round the earth, like the very successful Hubble telescope, would not be suitable because of the dust particles iron solar system. \nA telescope would have to be as far away as the planet Jupiter to look for life in outer space, \nbecause the dust becomes thinner the further we travel towards the outer edges of our own solar system. \nOnce we detected a planet, we would have to find a way of blotting out the light from its star, \nso that we would be able to 'see' the planet properly and analyze its atmosphere. \nIn the first instance, we would be looking for plant life, rather than 'little green men'. \nThe life forms most likely to develop on a planet would be bacteria. \nIt is bacteria that have generated the oxygen we breathe on earth. \nFor most of the earth's history they have been the only form of life on our planet. \nAs Earth-dwellers, we always cherish the hope that we will be visited by little green men and that we will be able to communicate with them. \nBut this hope is always in the realms of science fiction. \nIf we were able to discover lowly forms of life like bacteria on another planet, it would completely change our view of ourselves. \nAs Daniel Goldin of NASA observed, 'Finding life elsewhere would change everything. \nNo human endeavor or thought would be unchanged by it.\"",
"text":"The river which forms the eastern boundary of our farm has always played an important part in our lives. \nWithout it we could not make a living. \nThere is only enough spring water to supply the needs of the houses, \nso we have to pump from the river for farm use. \nWe tell river all our secrets. \nWe know instinctively, just as beekeepers with their bees, that misfortune might overtake us if the important events of our lives were not related to it. \n\nWe have special river birthday parties in the summer. \nSometimes were go upstream to a favourite backwater, sometimes we have our party at the boathouse, which a predecessor of ours at the farm built in the meadow hard by the deepest pool for swimming and diving. \nIn a heat wave we choose a midnight birthday party and that is the most exciting of all. \nWe welcome the seasons by the riverside, crowning the youngest girl with flowers in the spring, holding a summer festival on Midsummer Eve, giving thanks for the harvest in the autumn, \nand throwing a holy wreath into the current in the winter. \n\nAfter a long period of rain the river may overflow its banks. \nThis is a rare occurrence as our climate seldom guest to extremes. \nWe are lucky in that only the lower fields, which make up a very small proportion of our farm, are effected by flooding, \nbut other farms are less favorably sited, \nand flooding can sometimes spell disaster for their owners. \n\nOne had winter we watched the river creep up the lower meadows. \nAll the cattle had been moved into stalls and we stood to lose little. \nWe were, however, worried about our nearest neighbors, whose farm was low lying and who were newcomers to the district. \nAs the floods had put the telephone out of order, we could not find out how they were managing. \nFrom an attic window we could get a sweeping view of the river where their land joined ours, \nand at the most critical juncture we took turns in watching that point. \nThe first sign of disaster was a dead sheep floating down. \nNext came a horse, swimming bravely, \nbut we were afraid that the strength of the current would prevent its landing anywhere before it became exhausted. \nSuddenly a raft appeared, looking rather like Noah's ark, carrying the whole family, a few hens, the dogs, cat, \nand bird in a cage. \nWe realized that they must have become unduly frightened by the rising flood, for their house, which had sound foundations, would have stood stoutly even if it had been almost submerged. \nThe men of our family waded down through our flooded meadows with boathooks, in the hope of being able to grapple a corner of the raft and pull it out of the current towards our bank. \nWe still think it a miracle that they we able to do so.",
"text":"I stopped to let the car cool off and to study the map. \nI had expected to be near my objective by now, \nbut everything still seemed alien to me. \nI was only five when my father had taken me abroad, \nand that we eighteen years ago. \nWhen my mother had died after a tragic accident, he did not quickly recover from the shock and loneliness. \nEverything around him was full of her presence, continually reopening the wound. \nSo he decided to emigrate. \nIn the new country he became absorbed in making a new life for the two of us, \nso that he gradually ceased to grieve. \nHe did not marry again and I was brought up without a woman's care;but I lacked for nothing, for he was both father and mother to me. \nHe always meant to go back on day, but not to stay. \nHis roots and mine bad become too firmly embedded in the new land. \nBut he wanted to see the old folk again and to visit my mother's grave. \nHe became mortally ill a few months before we had planned to go and, when he knew that he was dying, he made me promise to go on my own. \n\nI hired a car the day after landing and bought a comprehensive book of maps, which I found most helpful on the cross-country journey, \nbut which I did not think I should need on the last stage. \nIt was not that I actually remembered anything at all. \nBut my father had described over and over again what we should see at every milestone, after leaving the nearest town, \nso that I was positive I should recognize it as familiar territory. \nWell, I had been wrong, for I was now lost. \n\nI looked at the map and then at the millimeter. \nI had come ten miles since leaving the town, \nand at this point, according to my father, I should be looking at farms and cottages in a valley, with the spire of the church of our village showing in the far distance. \nI could see no valley, no farms, no cottages and no church spire--only a lake. \nI decided that I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere. \nSo I drove back to the town and began to retrace the route, taking frequent glances at the map. \nI landed up at the same corner. \nThe curious thing was that the lake was not marked on the map. \nI left as if I had stumbled into a nightmare country, as you sometimes do in dreams. \nAnd, as in a nightmare, there was nobody in sight to help me. \nFortunately for me, as I was wondering what to do next, there appeared on the horizon a man on horseback, riding in my direction. \nI waited till he came near, then I asked him the way to our old village. \nHe said that there was now no village. \nI thought he must have misunderstood me, so I repeated its name. \nThis time he pointed to the lake. \nThe village no longer existed because it had been submerged, and all the valley too. \nThe lake was not a natural one, but a man-made reservoir.",
"text":"The old lady was glad to be back at the block of flats where she lived. \nHer shopping had tired her and her basket ad grown heavier with every step of the way home. \nIn the life her thoughts were on lunch and a good rest;but when she got out at her own floor, both were forgotten in her sudden discovery that her front door was open. \nShe was thinking that she must reprimand her home help the next morning for such a monstrous piece of negligence, when she remembered that she had gone shopping after the home help had left and she knew that she had turned both keys in their locks, She walked slowly into the hall and at once noticed that all the room doors were open, yet following her regular practice she had shut them before going out. \nLooking into the drawing room, she saw a scene of confusion over by her writing desk. \nIt was as clear as daylight then that burglars had forced an entry during her absence. \nHer first impulse was to go round all the rooms looking for the thieves, \nbut then she decided that at her age it might be more prudent to have someone with her, \nso she went to fetch the porter from his basement. \nBy this time her legs were beginning to tremble, \nso she sat down and accepted a cup of very strong tea, while he telephoned the police. \nThen, her composure regained, she was ready to set off with the porter's assistance to search for nay intruders who might still be lurking in her flat. \n\nThey went through the rooms, being careful to touch nothing, as they did not want to hinder the police in their search for fingerprints. \nThe chaos was inconceivable. \nShe had lived in the flat for thirty years and was a veritable magpie at hoarding;and it seemed as though everything she possessed had been tossed out and turned over and over. \nAt least sorting out the things she should have discarded years ago was now being made easier for her. \nThen a police inspector arrived with a constable and she told them of her discovery of the ransacked flat. \nThe inspector began to look for fingerprints, while the constable checked that the front door locks had not been forced, thereby proving that the burglars had either used skeleton keys or entered over the balcony. \nThere was no trace of fingerprints, \nbut the inspector found a dirty red bundle that contained jewellery which the old lady said was not hers. \nSo their entry into this flat was apparently not the burglars 'first job that day and they must have been disturbed. \nThe inspector then asked the old lady to try to check what was missing by the next day and advised her not to stay alone in the flat for a few nights. \nThe old lady though the was a fussy creature, \nbut since the porter agreed with him, she rang up her daughter and asked for her help in what she described as a little spot of bother.",
"text":"People tend to amass possessions, sometimes without being aware of doing so. \nIndeed they can have a delightful surprise when they find something useful which they did not know they owned. \nThose who never have to move house become indiscriminate collectors of what can only be described as clutter. \nThey leave unwanted objects in drawers, cupboards and attics for years, in the belief that they may one day need just those very things. \nAs they grow old, people also accumulate belongings for two other reasons, lack of physical and mental energy, both of which are essential in turning out and throwing away, \nand sentiment. \nThings owned for a long time are full associations with the past, perhaps with relatives who are dead, \nand so they gradually acquire a value beyond their true worth. \n\nSome things are collected deliberately in the home in an attempt to avoid waste. \nAmong these I would list string and brown paper, kept by thrifty people when a parcel has been opened, to save buying these two requisites. \nCollecting small items can easily become a mania. \nI know someone who always cuts sketches out from newspapers of model clothes that she would like to buy if she had the money. \nAs she is not rich, the chances that she will ever be able to afford such purchases are remote;but she is never sufficiently strong-minded to be able to stop the practice. \nIt is a harmless bait, \nbut it litters up her desk to such an extent that every time she opens it, loose bits of paper fall out in every direction. \n\nCollecting as a serous hobby is quite different and has many advantages. \nIt provides relaxation for leisure hours, as just looking at one's treasures is always a joy. \nOne does not have to go outside for amusement, since the collection is housed at home. \nWhatever it consists of, stamps, records, first editions of books china, glass, antique furniture, pictures, model cars, stuffed birds, toy animals, there is always something to do in connection with it, from finding the right place for the latest addition, to verifying facts in reference books. \nThis hobby educates one not only in the chosen subject, \nbut also in general matters which have some bearing on it. \nThere are also other benefits. \nOne wants to meet like-minded collectors, to get advice, to compare notes, to exchange articles, to show off the latest find. \nSo one's circle of friends grows. \nSoon the hobby leads to travel, perhaps to a meeting in another town, possibly a trip abroad in search of a rare specimen, for collectors are not confined to any one country. \nOver the years, one may well become a authority on one's hobby and will very probably be asked to give informal talks to little gatherings and then, if successful, to larger audiences. \nIn this way self-confidence grows, first from mastering a subject, then from being able to take about it. \nCollecting, by occupying spare time so constructively, makes a person contented, with no time for boredom.",
"text":"Punctuality is a necessary habit in all public affairs in civilized society. \nWithout it, nothing could ever be brought to a conclusion;everything would be in state of chaos. \nOnly in a sparsely-populated rural community is it possible to disregard it. \nIn ordinary living, there can be some tolerance of unpunctuality. \nThe intellectual, who is working on some abstruse problem, has everything coordinated and organized for the matter in hand. \nHe is therefore forgiven if late for a dinner party. \nBut people are often reproached for unpunctuality when their only fault is cutting things fine. \nIt is hard for energetic, quick-minded people to waste time, \nso they are often tempted to finish a job before setting out to keep an appointment. \nIf no accidents occur on the way, like punctured tires, diversions of traffic, sudden descent of fog, they will be on time. \nThey are often more industrious, useful citizens than those who are never late. \nThe over-punctual can be as much a trial to others as the unpunctual. \nThe guest who arrives half an hour too soon is the greatest nuisance. \nSome friends of my family had this irritating habit. \nThe only thing to do was ask them to come half an hour later than the other guests. \nThen they arrived just when we wanted them. \n\nIf you are citing a train, it is always better to be comfortably early than even a fraction of a minted too late. \nAlthough being early may mean wasting a little time, this will be less than if you miss the train and have to wait an hour or more for the next one;and you avoid the frustration of arriving at the very moment when the train is drawing out of the station and being unable to get on it. \nAn even harder situation is to be on the platform in good time for a train and still to see it go off without you. \nSuch an experience befell a certain young girl the first time she was traveling alone. \n\nShe entered the station twenty minutes before the train was due, since her parents had impressed upon her that it would be unforgivable to miss it and cause the friends with whom she was going to stay to make two journeys to meet her. \nShe gave her luggage to a porter and showed him her ticket. \nTo her horror he said that she was two hours too soon. \nShe felt inhere handbag for the piece of paper on which her father had written down al the details of the journey and gave it to the porter. \nHe agreed that a train did come into the station at the time on the paper and that it did stop, \nbut only to take on mail, not passengers. \nThe girl asked to see a timetable, feeling sure that her father could not have made such a mistake. \nThe porter went to fetch one and arrive back with the station master, who produced it with a flourish and pointed out a microscopic 'o' beside the time of the arrival of the train at his station;this little 'o' indicated that the train only stopped for mail. \nJust as that moment the train came into the station. \nThe girl, tears streaming down her face, begged to be allowed to slip into the guard's van. \nBut the station master was adamant:rules could not be broken and she had to watch that train disappear towards her destination while she was left behind.",
"text":"Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends? \nBecause they destroy so many insects, \nand insects include some of the greatest enemies of the human race. \nInsects would make it impossible for us to live in the world;they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection we get from insect-eating animals. \nWe owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. \nMoreover, unlike some of the other insect eaters, spiders never do the harm to us or our belongings. \n\nSpiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them. \nOne can tell the difference almost at a glance, for a spider always has eight legs and insect never more than six. \n\nHow many spiders are engaged in this work on our behalf? \nOne authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in grass field in the south of England, \nand he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre;that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch. \nSpiders are busy for at least half the year in killing insects. \nIt is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill, \nbut they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day. \nIt has been estimated that the weight of all the insects destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country. \n\nT. H. GILLESPLE Spare that spider from The Listener",
"text":"Modern alpinists try to climb mountains by a route which will give them good sport, \nand the more difficult it is, the more highly it is regarded. \nIn the pioneering days, however, this was not the case at all. \nThe early climbers were looking for the easiest way to the top, \nbecause the summit was the prize they sought, especially if it and never been attained before. \nIt is true that during their explorations they often faced difficulties and dangers of the most perilous nature, equipped in a manner with would make a modern climber shudder at the thought, \nbut they did not go out of their way to court such excitement. \nThey had a single aim, a solitary goal--the top! \n\nIt is hard for us to realize nowadays how difficult it was for the pioneers. \nExcept for one or two places such as Zermatt and Chamonix, which had rapidly become popular, Alpine village tended to be impoverished settlements cut off from civilization by the high mountains. \nSuch inns as there were generally dirty and flea-ridden;the food simply local cheese accompanied by bread often twelve months old, all washed down with coarse wine. \nOften a valley boasted no inn at all, \nand climbers found shelter wherever they could--sometimes with the local priest (who was usually as poor as his parishioners),sometimes with shepherds or cheese-makers. \nInvariably the background was the same:dirt and poverty, and very uncomfortable. \nFor men accustomed to eating seven-course dinners and sleeping between fine linen sheets at home, the change to the Alps must have very hard indeed. \n\nWALTER UNSWORTH Matterhorn Man",
"text":"Several cases have been reported in Russia recently of people who can detect colours with their fingers, \nand even see through solid and walls. \nOne case concerns and eleven-year-old schoolgirl, Vera Petrova, who has normal vision but who can also perceive things with different parts of her skin, \nand through solid walls. \nThis ability was first noticed by her father. \nOne day she came into his office and happened to put her hands on the door of a locked safe. \nSuddenly she asked her father why he kept so many old newspapers locked away there, \nand even described the way they were done up in bundles. \n\nVera's curious talent was brought to the notice of a scientific research institute in the town of Ulyanovsk, near where she lives, \nand in April she was given a series of tests by a special commission of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federal Republic. \nDuring these tests she was able to read a newspaper through an opaque screen and, stranger still, by moving her elbow over a child's game of Lotto she was able to describe the figures and colours printed on it;and, in another instance, wearing stockings and slippers, to make out with her foot the outlines and colours of a picture hidden under a carpet. \nOther experiments showed that her knees and shoulders had a similar sensitivity. \nDuring all these tests Vera was blindfold;and, indeed, except when blindfold she lacked the ability to perceive things with her skin. \nIt was also found that although she could perceive things with her fingers this ability ceased the moment her hands were wet. \n\nERIC DE MAUNY Seeing hands from The Listener",
"text":"People are always talking about 'the problem of youth'. \nIf there is one--which I take leave to doubt--then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves. \nLet us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings--people just like their elders. \nThere is only one difference between an old man and a young one:the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him:and maybe that is where the rub is. \n\nWhen I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain--that I was a new boy in a huge school, \nand I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. \nFor one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, \nand that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking. \n\nI find young people exciting. \nThey have an air of freedom, \nand they not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort. \nThey are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things. \nAll this seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things. \nIt's as if they were, in some sense, cosmic beings in violent and lovely contrast with us suburban creatures. \nAll that is in my mind when I meet a young person. \nHe may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous or fatuous, \nbut I do not turn for protection to dreary cliches about respect of elders--as if mere age were a reason for respect. \nI accept that we are equals, \nand I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong. \n\nFIELDEN HUGHES from Out of the Air, The Listener",
"text":"I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, \nand that if only the common peoples of the would could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the hattlefield. \nEven if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce if from general principles. \n\nNearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. \nYou play to win, \nand the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. \nOn the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise:but as soon as a the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. \nAnyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. \nAt the international level, sport is frankly mimic warfare. \nBut the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators:and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, \nand seriously believe--at any rate for short periods--that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue. \n\nGEORGE ORWELL The sporting spirit",
"text":"Not all sounds made by animals serve as language, \nand we have only to turn to that extraordinary discovery of echo-location in bats to see a case in which the voice plays a strictly utilitarian role. \n\nTo get a full appreciation of what this means we must turn first to some recent human inventions. \nEveryone knows that if he shouts in the vicinity of a wall or a mountainside, an echo will come back. \nThe further off this solid obstruction, the longer time will elapse for the return of the echo. \nA sound made by tapping on the hull of a ship will be reflected from the sea bottom, \nand by measuring the time interval between the taps and the receipt of the echoes, the depth of the sea at that point can be calculated. \nSo was born the echo-sounding apparatus, now in general use in ships. \nEvery solid object will reflect a sound, varying according to the size and nature of the object. \nA shoal of fish will do this. \nSo it is a comparatively simple step from locating the sea bottom to locating a shoal of fish. \nWith experience, \nand with improved apparatus, it is now possible not only to locate a shoal but to tell if it is herring, cod, or other well-known fish, by the pattern of its echo. \n\nIt has been found that certain bats emit squeaks and by receiving the echoes, they can locate and steer clear of obstacles--or locate flying insects on which they feed. \nThis echo-location in bats is often compared with radar, the principle of which is similar. \n\n--MAURICE BURTON Curiosities of animal--",
"text":"Chickens slaughtered in the United States, claim officials in Brussels, are not fit to grace European tables. \nNo, say the American:our fowl are fine, we simply clean them in a different way. \nThese days, it is differences in national regulations, far more than tariffs, that put sand in the wheels of trade between rich countries. \nIt is not just farmers who are complaining. \nAn electric razor that meets the European Union's safety standards must be approved by American testers before it can be sold in the United States, \nand an American-made dialysis machine needs the EU's okay before is hits the market in Europe. \n\nAs it happens, a razor that is safe in Europe is unlikely to electrocute Americans. \nSo, ask businesses on both sides of the Atlantic, why have two lots of tests where one would do? \nPoliticians agree, in principle, \nso America and the EU have been trying to reach a deal which would eliminate the need to double-test many products. \nThey hope to finish in time for a trade summit between America and the EU on May 28TH. \nAlthough negotiators are optimistic, the details are complex enough that they may be hard-pressed to get a deal at all. \n\nWhy? \nOne difficulty is to construct the agreements. \nThe Americans would happily reach one accord on standards for medical devices and them hammer out different pacts covering, say, electronic goods and drug manufacturing. \nThe EU--following fine continental traditions--wants agreement on general principles, which could be applied to many types of products and perhaps extended to other countries. \n\n--From:The Economist, May 24th, 1997--",
"text":"Alfred the Great acted his own spy, visiting Danish camps disguised as a minstrel. \nIn those days wandering minstrels were welcome everywhere. \nThey were not fighting men, and their harp was their passport. \nAlfred had learned many of their ballads in his youth, \nand could vary his programme with acrobatic tricks and simple conjuring. \n\nWhile Alfred's little army slowly began to gather at Athelney, the king himself set out to penetrate the camp of Guthrum, the commander of the Danish invaders. \nThere had settled down for the winter at Chippenham:thither Alfred went. \nHe noticed at once that discipline was slack:the Danes had the self-confidence of conquerors, \nand their security precautions were casual. \nThey lived well, on the proceeds of raids on neighbouring regions. \nThere they collected women as well as food and drink, \nand a life of ease had made them soft. \n\nAlfred stayed in the camp a week before he returned to Athelney. \nThe force there assembled was trivial compared with the Danish horde. \nBut Alfred had deduced that the Danes were no longer fit for prolonged battle:and that their commissariat had no organization, \nbut depended on irregular raids. \n\nSo, faced with the Danish advance, Alfred did not risk open battle but harried the enemy. \nHe was constantly on the move, drawing the Danes after him. \nHis patrols halted the raiding parties:hunger assailed the Danish army. \nNow Alfred began a long series of skirmishes--and within a month the Danes had surrendered. \nThe episode could reasonably serve as a unique epic of royal espionage! \n\n--BERNARD NEWMAN Spies in Britain--",
"text":"Technology trends may push Silicon Valley back to the future. \nCarver Mead, a pioneer in integrated circuits and a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology, notes there are now work-stations that enable engineers to design, test and produce chips right on their desks, much the way an editor creates a newsletter on a Macintosh. \nAs the time and cost of making a chip drop to a few days and a few hundred dollars, engineers may soon be free to let their imaginations soar without being penalized by expensive failures. \nMead predicts that inventors will be able to perfect powerful customized chips over a weekend at the office--spawning a new generation of garage start-ups and giving the U.S. a jump on its foreign rivals in getting new products to market fast. \n'We're got more garages with smart people,' Mead observes. \n'We really thrive on anarchy.' And on Asians. \nAlready, orientals and Asian Americans constitute the majority of the engineering staffs at many Valley firms. \nAnd Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Indian engineers are graduating in droves from California's colleges. \nAs the heads of next-generation start-ups, these Asian innovators can draw on customs and languages to forge righter links with crucial Pacific Rim markets. \nFor instance, Alex Au, a Stanford Ph. \nD. from Hong Kong, has set up a Taiwan factory to challenge Japan's near lock on the memory-chip market. \nIndia-born N.Damodar Reddy's tiny California company reopened an AT & T chip plant in Kansas City last spring with financing from the state of Missouri. \nBefore it becomes a retirement village, Silicon Valley may prove a classroom for building a global business.",
"text":"Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. \nIn the young there is a justification for this feeling. \nYoung men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have cheated of the best things that life has to offer. \nBut in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, \nand has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. \nThe best way to overcome it--so at least it seems to me--is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, \nand your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. \nAn individual human existence should be like a river--small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, \nand rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. \nGradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, \nand in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, \nand painlessly lose their individual being. \nThe man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. \nAnd if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. \nI should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do, \nand content in the thought that what was possible has been done.",
"text":"When anyone opens a current account at a bank, he is lending the bank money, repayment of which he may demand at any time, either in cash or by drawing a cheque in favour of another person. \nPrimarily, the banker-customer relationship is that of debtor and creditor--who is which depending on whether the customer's account is in credit or is overdrawn. \nBut, in addition to that basically simple concept, the bank and its customer owe a large number of obligations to one another. \nMany of these obligations can give in to problems and complications but a bank customer, unlike, say, a buyer of goods, cannot complain that the law is loaded against him. \n\nThe bank must obey its customer's instructions, and not those of anyone else. \nWhen, for example, a customer first opens an account, he instructs the bank to debit his account only in respect of cheques draw by himself. \nHe gives the bank specimens of his signature, \nand there is a very firm rule that the bank has no right or authority to pay out a customer's money on a cheques on which its customer's signature has been forged. \nIt makes no difference that the forgery may have been a very skilful one:the bank must recognize its customer's signature. \nFor this reason there is no risk to the customer in the practice, adopted by banks, of printing the customer's name on his cheques. \nIf this facilitates forgery, it is the bank which will lose, not the customer. \n\n--GORDON BARRIE and AUBREY L. DLAMOND The Consumer Society and the Law--",
"text":"The deepest holes of all made for oil, \nand they go down to as much as 25,0000 feet. \nBut we not need to send men down to get the oil our, as we must with other mineral deposits. \nThe holes are only borings, less than a foot in diameter. \nMy particular experience is largely in oil, \nand the search for oil has done more to improve deep drilling than any other mining activity. \nWhen is has been decided where we are going to drill, we put up at the surface an oil derrick. \nIt has to be tall because it is like a giant block and tackle, \nand we have to lower into the ground and haul out of the ground great lengths of drill pipe which are rotated by an engine at the top and are fitted with a cutting bit at the bottom. \n\nThe geologist needs to know what rocks the drill has reached, \nso every so often a sample is obtained with a coring bit. \nIt cuts a clean cylinder of rock, from which can be seen the strata the drill has been cutting through. \nOnce we get down to the oil, it usually flows to the surface because great pressure, either from or water, is pushing it. \nThis pressure must be under control, \nand we control it by means of the mud which we circulate down the drill pipe. \nWe endeavour to avoid the old, romantic idea of a gusher, which wastes oil and gas. \nWe want it to stay down the hole until we can lead it off in a controlled manner. \n\n--T.F.GASKELL The Search for the Earth's Minerals from Discovery--",
"text":"Beyond two or three days, the world's best weather forecasts are speculative, \nand beyond six or seven they are worthless. \nThe Butterfly Effect is the reason. \nFor small pieces of weather--and to a global forecaster, small can mean thunderstorms and blizzards--any prediction deteriorates rapidly. \nErrors and uncertainties multiply, cascading upward through a chain of turbulent features, from dust devils and squalls up to continent-size eddies that only satellites can see. \n\nThe modern weather models work with a grid of points of the order of sixty miles apart, \nand even so, some starting data has to guessed, since ground stations and satellites cannot see everywhere. \nBut suppose the earth could be covered with sensors spaced one foot apart, rising at one-foot intervals all the way to the top of the atmosphere. \nSuppose every sensor gives perfectly accurate readings of temperature, pressure, humidity, \nand any other quantity a meteorologist would want. \nPrecisely at noon an infinitely powerful computer takes all the data and calculates what will happen at each point at 12.01, then 1202, then 12.03...The computer will still be unable to predict whether Princeton, New Jersey, will have sun or rain on a day one month away. \nAt noon the spaces between the sensors will hide fluctuations that the computer will not know about, tiny deviations from the average. \nBy 12.01, those fluctuations will already have created small errors one foot away. \nSoon the errors will have multiplied to the ten-foot scale, \nand so on up to the size of the globe. \n\n--JAMES GLEICK, Chaos--",
"text":"Two factors weigh heavily against the effectiveness of scientific research in industry. \nOne is the general atmosphere of secrecy in which it is carried out, the other the lack of freedom of the individual research worker. \nIn so far as any inquiry is a secret one, it naturally limits all those engaged in carrying it out from effective contact with their fellow scientists either in other countries or in universities, or even, often enough, in other departments of the same firm. \nThe degree of secrecy naturally varies considerably. \nSome of the bigger firms are engaged in researches which are of such general and fundamental nature that it is a positive advantage to them not to keep them secret. \nYet a great many processes depending on such research are sought for with complete secrecy until the stage at which patents can be taken out. \nEven more processes are never patented at all but kept as secret processes. \nThis applies particularly to chemical industries, where chance discoveries play a much larger part than they do in physical and mechanical industries. \nSometimes the secrecy goes to such an extent that the whole nature of the research cannot be mentioned. \nMany firms, for instance, have great difficulty in obtaining technical or scientific books from libraries because they are unwilling to have names entered as having taken out such and such a book, for fear the agents of other firms should be able to trace the kind of research they are likely to be undertaking. \n\n--J.D. BERNAL The Social Function of Science--",
"text":"In the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected. \nModern industry is based on the conception of the maximum production at lowest cost, in order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much money as possible. \nIt has expanded without any idea of the true nature of the human beings who run the machines, \nand without giving any consideration to the effects produced on the individuals and on their descendants by the artificial mode of existence imposed by the factory. \nThe great cities have been built with no regard for us. \nThe shape and dimensions of the skyscrapers depend entirely on the necessity of obtaining the maximum income per square foot of ground, \nand of offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please them. \nThis caused the construction of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowded together. \nCivilized men like such a way of living. \nWhile they enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of their dwelling, they do not realize that they are deprived of the necessities of life. \nThe modern city consists of monstrous edifices and of dark, narrow streets full of petrol fumes and toxic gases, torn by the noise of the taxicabs, lorries and buses, \nand thronged ceaselessly by great crowds. \nObviously, it has not been planned for the good of its inhabitants. \n\n--ALEXIS CARREL Man, the Unknown--",
"text":"In the early days of the settlement of Australia, enterprising settlers unwisely introduced the European rabbit. \nThis rabbit had no natural enemies in the Antipodes, \nso that it multiplied with that promiscuous abandon characteristic of rabbits. \nIt overran a whole continent. \nIt caused devastation by burrowing and by devouring the herbage which might have maintained millions of sheep and cattle. \nScientists discovered that this particular variety of rabbit (and apparently no other animal) was susceptible to a fatal virus disease, myxomatosis. \nBy infecting animals and letting them loose in the burrows, local epidemics of this disease could be created. \nLater it was found that there was a type of mosquito which acted as the carrier of this disease and passed it on to the rabbits. \nSo while the rest of the world was trying to get rid of mosquitoes, Australia was encouraging this one. \nIt effectively spread the disease all over the continent and drastically reduced the rabbit population. \nIt later became apparent that rabbits were developing a degree of resistance to this disease, \nso that the rabbit population was unlikely to be completely exterminated. \nThere were hopes, however, that the problem of the rabbit would become manageable. \n\nIronically, Europe, which had bequeathed the rabbit as a pest to Australia, acquired this man-made disease as a pestilence. \nA French physician decided to get rid of the wild rabbits on his own estate and introduced myxomatosis. \nIt did not, however, remain within the confines of his estate. \nIt spread through France, Where wild rabbits are not generally regarded as a pest but as sport and a useful food supply, \nand it spread to Britain where wild rabbits are regarded as a pest but where domesticated rabbits, equally susceptible to the disease, are the basis of a profitable fur industry. \nThe question became one of whether Man could control the disease he had invented. \n\n--RITCHIE CALDER Science Makes Sense--",
"text":"There has long been a superstition among mariners that porpoises will save drowning men by pushing them to the surface, or protect them from sharks by surrounding them in defensive formation. \nMarine Studio biologists have pointed out that, however intelligent they may be, it is probably a mistake to credit dolphins with any motive of lifesaving. \nOn the occasions when they have pushed to shore an unconscious human being they have much more likely done it out of curiosity or for sport, as in riding the bow waves of a ship. \nIn 1928 some porpoises were photographer working like beavers to push ashore a waterlogged mattress. \nIf, as has been reported, they have protected humans from sharks, it may have been because curiosity attracted them and because the scent of a possible meal attracted the sharks. \nPorpoises and sharks are natural enemies. \nIt is possible that upon such an occasion a battle ensued, with the sharks being driven away or killed. \n\nWhether it be bird, fish or beast, the porpoise is intrigued with anything that is alive. \nThey are constantly after the turtles, who peacefully submit to all sorts of indignities. \nOne young calf especially enjoyed raising a turtle to the surface with his snout and then shoving him across the tank like an aquaplane. \nAlmost any day a young porpoise may be seen trying to turn a 300-pound sea turtle over by sticking his snout under the edge of his shell and pushing up for dear life. \nThis is not easy, and may require two porpoises working together. \nIn another game, as the turtle swims across the oceanarium, the first porpoise swoops down from above and butts his shell with his belly. \nThis knocks the turtle down several feet. \nHe no sooner recovers his equilibrium than the next porpoise comes along and hits him another crack. \nEventually the turtle has been butted all the way down to the floor of the tank. \nHe is now satisfied merely to try to stand up, \nbut as soon as he does so a porpoise knocks him flat. \nThe turtle at last gives up by pulling his feet under his shell and the game is over. \n\n--RALPH NADING HILL Window in the Sea--",
"text":"It is fairly clear that sleeping period must have some function, \nand because there is so much of it the function would seem to e important. \nSpeculations about is nature have been going on for literally thousands of years, \nand one odd finding that makes the problem puzzling is that it looks very much as if sleeping is not simply a matter of giving the body a rest. \n'Rest',in terms of muscle relaxation and so on, can be achieved by a brief period lying, or even sitting down. \nThe body's tissues are self-repairing and self-restoring to a degree, \nand function best when more or less continuously active. \nIn fact a basic amount of movement occurs during sleep which is specifically concerned with preventing muscle inactivity. \n\nIf it is not a question of resting the body, then perhaps it is the brain that needs resting? \nThis might be a plausible hypothesis were it not for two factors. \nFirst the electroencephalograph (which is simply a device for recording the electrical activity of the brain by attaching electrodes to the scalp) shows that while there is a change in the pattern of activity during sleep, there is no evidence that the total amount of activity is any less. \nThe second factor is more interesting and more fundamental. \nSome years ago an American psychiatrist named William Dement published experiments dealing with the recording of eye-movements during sleep. \nHe showed that the average individual's sleep cycle is punctuated with peculiar bursts of eye-movements, some drifting and slow, others jerky and rapid. \nPeople woken during these periods of eye-movements generally reported that they had been dreaming. \nWhen woken at other times they reported no dreams. \nIf one group of people were disturbed from their eye-movement sleep for several nights on end, \nand another group were disturbed for an equal period of time but when they were no exhibiting eye-movements, the first group began to show some personality disorders while the others seemed more or less unaffected. \nThe implications of all this were that it was not the disturbance of sleep that mattered, \nbut the disturbance of dreaming. \n\n--CHRISTOPHER EVANS The stuff of dreams from The Listener--",
"text":"How it came about that snakes manufactured poison is a mystery. \nOver the periods their saliva, a mild, digestive juice like our own, was converted into a poison that defies analysis even today. \nIt was not forced upon them by the survival competition;they could have caught and lived on prey without using poison, just as the thousands of non-poisonous snakes still do. \nPoison to a snake is merely a luxury;it enables it to get its food with very little effort, no more effort than one bite. \nAnd why only snakes? \nCats, for instance, would be greatly helped;no running fights with large, fierce rats or tussles with grown rabbits--just a bite and no more effort needed. \nIn fact, it would be an assistance to all carnivores though it would be a two-edged weapon when they fought each other. \nBut, of the vertebrates, unpredictable Nature selected only snakes (and one lizard). \nOne wonders saliva into why Nature, with respect from that of others, as other on the blood. \n\nIn the conversion of saliva into poison, one might suppose that a fixed process took place. \nIt did not;some snakes manufacture a poison different in every respect from that of others, as different as arsenic is from strychnine, \nand having different effects. \nOne poison acts on the nerves, the other on the blood. \n\nThe makers of the nerve poison include the mambas and the cobras and their venom is called neurotoxic. \nVipers (adders) and rattlesnakes manufacture the blood poison, which is known as haemolytic. \nBoth poisons are unpleasant, but by far the more unpleasant is the blood poison. \nIt is said that the nerve poison is the more primitive of the two, that the blood poison is, \nso to speak, a newer product from an improved formula. \nBe that as it may, the nerve poison does its business with man far more quickly than the blood poison. \nThis, however, means nothing. \nSnakes did not acquire their poison for use against man but for use against prey such as rats and mice, \nand the effects on these of viperine poison is almost immediate. \n\n--JOHN CROMPTON The snake--",
"title":"William S. Hart and the early 'Western' film",
"titleTranslate":"威廉.S. 哈特和早期\"西部\"影片",
"text":"William S. hart was, perhaps, the greatest of all Western stars, fro unlike Gary Cooper and John Wayne he appeared in nothing but Westerns. \nFrom 1914 to 1924 he was supreme and unchallenged. \nIt was Hart who created the basic formula of the Western film, \nand devised the protagonist he played in every film he made, the good-had man, the accidental-noble outlaw, or the honest-but-framed cowboy, or the sheriff made suspect by vicious gossip;in short, the individual in conflict with himself and his frontier environment. \n\nUnlike most of his contemporaries in Hollywood, Hart actually knew something of the old West. \nHe had lived in it as a child when it was already disappearing, \nand his hero was firmly rooted in his memories and experiences, \nand in both the history and the mythology of the vanished frontier. \nAnd although no period or place in American history has been more absurdly romanticized, myth and reality did join hands in at least one arena, the conflict between the individual and encroaching civilization. \n\nMen accustomed to struggling for survival against the elements and Indians were bewildered by politicians, bankers and businessmen, \nand unhorsed by fences, laws and alien taboos. \nHart's good-bad man was always an outsider, always one of the disinherited, \nand if he found it necessary to shoot a sheriff or rob a bank along the way, his early audiences found it easy to understand and forgive, especially when it was Hart who, in the end, overcame the attacking Indians. \n\nAudiences in the second decade of the twentieth century found it pleasant to escape to a time when life, though hard, was relatively simple. \nWe still do;living in a world in which undeclared aggression, war, hypocrisy, chicanery, anarchy and impending immolation are part of our daily lives, we all want a code to live by. \n\n--CARL FOREMAN Virtue and a Fast Gun from The Observer--",
"text":"Why does the idea of progress loom so large in the modern world? \nSurely progress of a particular kind is actually taking place around us and is becoming more and more manifest. \nAlthough mankind has undergone no general improvement in intelligence or morality, it has made extraordinary progress in the accumulation of knowledge. \nKnowledge began to increase as soon as the thoughts of one individual could be communicated to another by means of speech. \nWith the invention of writing, a great advance was made, for knowledge could then be not only communicated but also stored. \nLibraries made education possible, \nand education in its turn added to libraries:the growth of knowledge followed a kind of compound interest law, which was greatly enhanced by the invention of printing. \nAll this was comparatively slow until, with the coming of science, the tempo was suddenly raised. \nThen knowledge began to be accumulated according to a systematic plan. \nThe trickle became a stream;the stream has now become a torrent. \nMoreover, as soon as new knowledge is acquired, it is now turned to practical account. \nWhat is called 'modern civilization' is not the result of a balanced development of all man's nature. \nbut of accumulated knowledge applied to practical life. \nThe problem now facing humanity is:What is going to be done with all this knowledge? \nAs is so often pointed out, knowledge is a two-edged weapon which can be used equally for good or evil. \nIt is now being used indifferently for both. \nCould any spectacle, for instance, be more grimly whimsical than that of gunners using science to shatter men's bodies while, close at hand, surgeons use it to restore them? \nWe have to ask ourselves very seriously what will happen if this twofold use of knowledge, with its ever-increasing power, continues. \n\n--G.N.M.TYRRELL The Personality of Man--",
"text":"No two sorts of birds practise quite the same sort of flight;the varieties are infinite;but two classes may be roughly seen. \nAny shi that crosses the Pacific is accompanied for many days by the smaller albatross, Which may keep company with the vessel for an hour without visible or more than occasional movement of wing. \nThe currents of air that the walls of the ship direct upwards, as well as in the line of its course, are enough to give the great bird with its immense wings sufficient sustenance and progress. \nThe albatross is the king of the gliders, the class of fliers which harness the air to their purpose, \nbut must yield to its opposition. \nIn the contrary school, the duck is supreme. \nIt comes nearer to the engines with which man has 'conquered' the air, as he boasts. \nDuck, \nand like them the pigeons, are endowed with such-like muscles, that are a good part of the weight of the bird, \nand these will ply the short wings with such irresistible power that they can bore for long distances through an opposing gale before exhaustion follows. \nTheir humbler followers, such as partridges, have a like power of strong propulsion, \nbut soon tire. \nYou may pick them up in utter exhaustion, if wind over the sea has driven them to a long journey. \nThe swallow shares the virtues of both schools in highest measure. \nIt tires not, nor does it boast of its power;but belongs to the air, travelling it may be six thousand miles to and from its northern nesting home, feeding its flown young as it flies, \nand slipping through we no longer take omens from their flight on this side and that;and even the most superstitious villagers no longer take off their hats to the magpie and wish it good-morning. \n\n--WILLIAM BEACH THOMAS A Countryman's Creed--",
"text":"A young man sees a sunset and, unable to understand or to express the emotion that it rouses in him, concludes that it must be the gateway to world that lies beyond. \nIt is difficult for any of us in moments of intense aesthetic experience to resist the suggestion that we are catching a glimpse of a light that shines down to us from a different realm of existence, different and, \nbecause the experience is intensely moving, in some way higher. \nAnd, though the gleams blind and dazzle, yet do they convey a hint of beauty and serenity greater than we have known or imagined. \nGreater too than we can describe;for language, which was invented to convey the meanings of this world, cannot readily be fitted to the uses of another. \n\nThat all great has this power of suggesting a world beyond is undeniable. \nIn some moods, Nature shares it. \nThere is no sky in June so blue that it does not point forward to a bluer, no sunset so beautiful that it does not waken the vision of a greater beauty, a vision which passes before it is fully glimpsed, \nand in passing leaves and indefinable longing and regret. \nBut, if this world is not merely a bad joke, life a vulgar flare amid the cool radiance of the stars, \nand existence an empty laugh braying across the mysteries;if these intimations of a something behind and beyond are not evil humour born of indigestion, or whimsies sent by the devil to mock and madden us. \nif, in a word, beauty means something, yet we must not seek to interpret the meaning. \nIf we glimpse the unutterable, it is unwise to try to utter it, nor should we seek to invest with significance that which we cannot grasp. \nBeauty in terms of our human meanings is meaningless. \n\n--C.E.M.JOAD Pieces of Mind--",
"text":"May people in industry and the Services, who have practical experience of noise, regard any investigation of this question as a waste of time;they are not prepared even to admit the possibility that noise affects people. \nOn the other hand, those who dislike noise will sometimes use most inadequate evidence to support their pleas for a quieter society. \nThis is a pity, \nbecause noise abatement really is a good cause, \nand it is likely to be discredited if it gets to be associated with had science. \n\nOne allegation often made is that noise produces mental illness. \nA recent article in a weekly newspaper, for instance, was headed with a striking illustration of a lady in a state of considerable distress, with the caption 'She was yet another victim, reduced to a screaming wreck'. \nOn turning eagerly to the text, one learns that the lady was a typist who found the sound of office typewriters worried her more and more until eventually she had to go into a mental hospital. \nNow the snag in this sort of anecdote is of course that one merely a symptom? \nAnother patient might equally well complain that her neighbours were combining to slander her and persecute her, \nand yet one might be cautious about believing this statement. \n\nWhat is needed in case of noise is a study of large numbers of people living under noisy conditions, to discover whether they are mentally ill more often than other people are. \nSome time ago the United States Navy, for instance, examined a very large number of men working on aircraft carriers:the study was known as Project Anehin. \nIt can be unpleasant to live even several miles from an aerodrome;if you think what it must be like to share the deck of a ship with several squadrons of jet aircraft, you will realize that a modern navy is a good place to study noise. \nBut neither psychiatric interviews nor objective tests were able to show any effects upon these American sailors. \nThis result merely confirms earlier American and British studies:if there is any effect of noise upon mental health, it must be so small that present methods of psychiatric diagnosis cannot find it. \nThat does not prove that it does exist:but it does mean that noise is less dangerous than, say, being brought up in an orphanage--which really is mental health hazard. \n\n--D.E.BROADBENT Non-auditory effects of noise from Science Survey--",
"text":"It is animals and plants which lived in or near water whose remains are most likely to be preserved, for one of the necessary conditions of preservation is quick burial, \nand it is only in the seas and rivers, \nand sometimes lakes, where mud and sit have been continuously deposited, that bodies and the can be rapidly covered over and preserved. \n\nBut even in the most favourable circumstances only a small fraction of the creatures that die are preserved in this way before decay sets in or, even more likely, before scavengers eat them. \nAfter all, all living creatures live by feeding on something else, whether it be plant or animal, dead or alive, \nand it is only by chance that such a fate is avoided. \nThe remains of plants and animals that lived on land are much more rarely preserved, for there is seldom anything to cover them over. \nWhen you think of the innumerable birds that one sees flying bout, not to mention the equally numerous small animals like field mice and voles which you do not see, it is very rarely that one comes across a dead body, except, of course, on the roads. \nThey decompose and are quickly destroyed by the weather or eaten by some other creature. \n\nIt is almost always due to some very special circumstances that traces of land animals survive, as by falling into inaccessible caves, or into an ice crevasse, like the Siberian mammoths, when the whole animal is sometimes preserved, as in a refrigerator. \nThis is what happened to the famous Beresovka mammoth which was found preserved and in good condition. \nIn his mouth were the remains of fir trees--the last meal that he had before he fell into the crevasse and broke his back. \nThe mammoth has now just a suburb of Los Angeles. \nApparently what happened was that water collected on these tar pits, \nand the bigger animals like the elephants ventured out on to the apparently firm surface to drink, \nand were promptly bogged in the tar. \nAnd then, when they were dead, the carnivores, like the sabre-toothed cats and the giant wolves, came out to feed and suffered exactly the same fate. \nThere are also endless numbers of birds in the tar as well. \n\n--ERROL WHITE The past life of the earth from Discovery--",
"text":"From the seventeenth-century empire of Sweden, the story of a galleon that sank at the start of her maiden voyage in 1628 must be one of the strangest tales of the sea. \nFor nearly three and a half centuries she lay at the bottom of Stockholm harbour until her discovery in 1956. \nThis was the Vasa, royal flagship of the great imperial fleet. \nKing Gustavus Adolphus, 'The Northern Hurricane',then at the height of his military success in the Thirty Years' War, had dictated her measurements and armament. \nTriple gun-decks mounted sixty-four bronze cannon. \nShe was intended to play a leading role in the growing might of Sweden. \n\nAs she was prepared of her maiden voyage on August 10, 1628, Stockholm was in a ferment. \nFrom the Skeppsbron and surrounding islands the people watched this thing of beauty begin to spread her sails and catch the wind. \nThey had laboured for three years to produce this floating work of art;she was more richly carved and ornamented than any previous ship. \nThe high stern castle was a riot of carved gods, demons, knights, kings, warriors, mermaids, cherubs;and zoomorphic animal shapes ablaze with rea and gold and blue, symbols of courage, power, \nand cruelty, were portrayed to stir the imaginations of the superstitious sailors of the day. \nThen the cannons of the anchored warships thundered a salute to which the Vasa fired in reply. \nAs the emerged from her drifting cloud of gun smoke with the water churned to foam beneath her bow, her flags colour, she presented a more majestic spectacle than Stockholmers had ever seen before. \nAll gun-ports were open and the muzzles peeped wickedly from them. \nAs the wind freshened there came a sudden squall and the ship made a strange movement, listing to port. \nThe Ordnance Officer ordered all the port cannon to be heaved to starboard to counteract the list, \nbut the steepening angle of the decks increased. \nThen the sound of rumbling thunder reached the watchers on the shore, as cargo, ballast, ammunition and 400 people went sliding and crashing down to the port side of the steeply listing ship. \nThe lower gun-ports were now below water and the inrush sealed the ship's fate. \nIn that first glorious hour, the mighty Vasa, which was intended to rule the Baltic, sank with all flags flying-in the harbour of her birth. \n\n--ROY SAUNGERS The Raising of the' Vasa 'from The Listener--",
"text":"This is a sceptical age, \nbut although our faith in many of the things in which our forefathers fervently believed has weakened, our confidence in the curative properties of the bottle of medicine remains the same a theirs. \nThis modern faith in medicines is proved the fact that the annual drug bill of the Health Services is mounting to astronomical figures and shows no signs at present of ceasing to rise. \nThe majority of the patients attending the medical out-patients departments of our hospitals feel that they have not received adequate treatment unless they are able to carry home with them some tangible remedy in the shape of a bottle of medicine, a box of pills, or a small jar of ointment, \nand the doctor in charge of the department is only too ready to provide them with these requirements. \nThere is no quicker method of disposing of patients then by giving them what they are asking for, \nand since most medical men in the Health Services are overworked and have little time for offering time-consuming and little-appreciated advice on such subjects as diet, right living, \nand the need for abandoning bad habits etc.,the bottle, the box, \nand the jar are almost always granted them. \n\nNor is it only the ignorant and ill-educated person who was such faith in the bottle of medicine. \nIt is recounted of Thomas Carlyle that when him in his pocket what remained of a bottle of medicine formerly prescribed for an indisposition of Mrs. Carlyle's. \nCarlyle was entirely ignorant of what the bottle in his pocket contained, of the nature of the illness from which his friend was suffering, \nand of what had previously been wrong with his wife, \nbut a medicine that had worked so well in one form of illness would surely be of equal benefit in another, \nand comforted by the thought of the help he was bringing to his friend, he hastened to Henry Taylor's house. \nHistory does not relate whether his friend accepted his medical help, \nbut in all probability he did. \nThe great advantage of taking medicine is that it makes no demands on the taker beyond that of putting up for a moment with a disgusting taste, \nand that is what all patients demand of their doctors--to be cured at no inconvenience to themselves.",
"text":"Many strange new means of transport have been developed in our century, the strangest of them being perhaps the hovercraft. \nIn 1953, a former electronics engineer in his fifties, Christopher Cockerell, who had turned to boat-building on the Norfolk Broads, suggested an idea on which he had been working for many years to the British Government and industrial circles. \nIt was the idea of supporting a craft on a 'pad',or cushion, of low-pressure air, ringed with a curtain of higher pressure air. \nEver since, people have had difficulty in deciding whether the craft should be ranged among ships, planes, or land vehicles--for it is something in between a boat and an aircraft. \nAs a shipbuilder, Cockerell was trying to find a solution to the problem of the wave resistance which wastes a good deal of a surface ship's power and limits its speed. \nHis answer was to lift the vessel out of the water by a great number of ring-shaped air jets on the bottom of the craft. It' \nflies',therefore, \nbut it cannot fly higher--its action depends on the surface, water or ground, over which it rides. \n\nThe first tests on the Solent in 1959 caused a sensation. \nThe hovercraft travelled first over the water, then mounted the beach, climbed up the dunes, \nand sat down on a road. \nLater it crossed the Channel, riding smoothly over the waves, which presented no problem. \n\nSince that time, various types of hovercraft have appeared and taken up regular service. \nThe hovercraft is particularly useful in large areas with poor communications such as Africa or Australia;it can become a 'flying fruit-bowl',carrying bananas from the plantations to the ports;giant hovercraft liners could span the Atlantic;and the railway of the future may well be the' hovertrain',riding on its air cushion over a single rail, which it never touches, at speeds up to 300 m.p.h.--the possibilities appear unlimited. \n\n--EGON LARSEN The Pegasus Book of Inventors--",
"text":"Our knowledge of the oceans a hundred years ago was confined to the two-dimensional shape of the sea surface and the hazards of navigation presented by the irregularities in depth of the shallow water close to the land. \nThe open sea was deep and mysterious, \nand anyone who gave more than a passing thought to the bottom confines of the oceans probably assumed that the sea bad was flat. \nSir James Clark Ross had obtained a sounding of over 2,400 fathoms in 1839, \nbut it was not until of deep soundings was obtained in the Atlantic and the first samples were collected by dredging the bottom. \nShortly after this the famous H. M. S. Challenger expedition established the study of the sea-floor as a subject worthy of the most qualified physicists and geologists. \nA burst of activity associated with the laying of submarine cables soon confirmed the challenger's observation that many parts of the ocean were two to there miles deep, \nand the existence of underwater features of considerable magnitude. \n\nToday, enough soundings are available to enable a relief map of the Atlantic to be drawn and we know something of the great variety of the sea bed's topography. \nSince the sea covers the greater part of the earth's surface, it is quite reasonable to regard the sea floor as the basic form of the crust of the earth, with, superimposed upon, it the continents, together with the islands and other features of the oceans. \nThe continents form rugged tablelands which stand nearly three miles above the floor of the open ocean. \nFrom the shore line, out a distance which may be anywhere from a few miles to a few hundred miles, runs the gentle slope of the continental shelf, geologically part of the continents. \nThe real dividing line between continents and oceans occurs at the foot a steeper slope. \n\nThis continental slope usually starts at a place somewhere near the 100-fatheom mark and in the course of a few hundred miles reaches the true ocean floor at 2,500-3,500 fathoms. \nThe slope averages about 1 in 30. \nbut contains steep, probably vertical, cliffs, \nand gentle sediment-covered terraces, \nand near its lower reaches there is a long tailing-off which is almost certainly the result of material transported out to deep water after being eroded from the continental masses. \n\n--T.F.GASKELL Exploring the Sea-floor from Science Survey--",
"text":"Appreciation of sculpture depends upon the ability to respond to form in there dimension. \nThat is perhaps why sculpture has been described as the most difficult of all arts;certainly it is more difficult than the arts which involve appreciation of flat forms, shape in only two dimensions. \nMany more people are 'form-blind' than colour-blind. \nThe child learning to see, first distinguishes only two-dimensional shape;it cannot judge distances, depths. \nLater, for its personal safety and practical needs, it has to develop (partly by means of touch) the ability to judge roughly three-dimensonal distances. \nBut having satisfied the requirements of practical necessity, most people go no further. \nThough they may attain considerable accuracy in the perception of flat from, they do no make the further. \nThough they may attain considerable accuracy in the perception of flat form, they do not make the further intellectual and emotional effort needed to comprehend form in its full spatial existence. \n\nThis is what the sculptor must do. \nHe must strive continually to think of, and use, form in its full spatial completeness. \nHe gets the solid shape, as it were, inside his head-he thinks of it, whatever its size, as if he were holding it completely enclosed in the hollow of his hand. \nHe mentally visualizes a complex form from all round itself;he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like, he identifies himself with its centre of gravity, its mass, its weight;he realizes its volume, as the space that the shape displaces in the air. \n\nAnd the sensitive observer of sculpture must also learn to feel shape simply as shape, not as description or reminiscence. \nHe must, for example, perceive an egg as a simple single solid shape, quite apart from its significance as food, or from the literary idea that it will become a bird. \nAnd so with solids such as a shell, a nut, a plum, a pear, a tadpole, a mushroom, a mountain peak, a kidney, a carrot, a tree-trunk, a bird, a bud, a lark, a ladybird, a bulrush, a bone. \nFrom these he can go on to appreciate more complex forms of combinations of several forms. \n\n--HENRY MOORE The Sculptor Speaks from The Listener--",
"text":"In his own lifetime Galileo was the centre of violent controversy;but the scientific dust has long since settled, \nand today we can see even his famous clash with the Inquisition in something like its proper perspective. \nBut, in contrast, it is only in modern times that Galileo has become a problem child for historians of science. \n\nThe old view of Galileo was delightfully uncomplicated. \nHe was, above all, a man who experimented:who despised the prejudices and book learning of the Aristotelians, who put his questions to nature instead of to the ancients, \nand who drew his conclusions fearlessly. \nHe had been the first to turn a telescope to the sky, \nand he had seen there evidence enough to overthrow Aristotle and Ptolemy together. \nHe was the man who climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped various weights from the top, who rolled balls down inclined planes, \nand then generalized the results of his many experiments into the famous law of free fall. \n\nBut a closer study of the evidence, supported by a deeper sense of the period, \nand particularly by a new consciousness of the philosophical undercurrents in the scientific revolution, has profoundly modified this view of Galileo. \nToday, although the old Galileo lives on in many popular writings, among historians of science a new and more sophisticated picture has emerged. \nAt the same time our sympathy fro Galileo's opponents ahs grown somewhat. \nHis telescopic observations are justly immortal;they aroused great interest at the time, they had important theoretical consequences, \nand they provided a striking demonstration of the potentialities hidden in instruments and apparatus. \nBut can we blame those who looked and failed to see what Galileo saw, if we remember that to use a telescope at the limit of its powers calls for long experience and intimate familiarity with one's instrument? \nWas the philosopher who refused to look through Galileo's telescope more culpable than those who alleged that the spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosse's great telescope in the eighteen-forties were scratches left by the grinder? \nWe can perhaps forgive those who said the moons of Jupiter were produced by Galileo's spyglass if we recall that in his day, as for centuries before, curved glass was the popular contrivance for producing not truth but illusion, untruth;and if a single curved glass would distort nature, how much more would a pair of them? \n\n--MICHAEL HOSKIN Galileo Reborn from The Listener--",
"text":"Education is one of the key words of our time. \nA man without an education, many of us believe, is an unfortunate victim of adverse circumstances, deprived of one of the greatest twentieth-century opportunities. \nConvinced of the importance of education, modern states 'invest' in institutions of learning to get back 'interest' in the form of a large group of enlightened young men and women who are potential leaders. \nEducation, with its cycles of instruction so carefully worked out, punctuated by textbooks--those purchasable wells of wisdom-what would civilization be like without its benefits? \n\nSo much is certain:that we would have doctors and preachers, lawyers and defendants, marriages and births--but our spiritual outlook would be different. \nWe would lay less stress on 'facts and figures' and more on a good memory, on applied psychology, \nand on the capacity of a man to get along with his fellow-citizens. \nIf our educational system were fashioned after its bookless past we would have the most democratic form of 'college' imaginable. \nAmong tribal people all knowledge inherited by tradition is shared by all;it is taught to every member of the tribe so that in this respect everybody is equally equipped for life. \n\nIt is the ideal condition of the 'equal start' which only our most progressive forms of modern education try to regain. \nIn primitive cultures the obligation to seek and to receive the traditional instruction is binding to all. \nThere are no 'illiterates' --if the term can be applied to peoples without a script--while our own compulsory school attendance became law in Germany in 1642, in France in 1806, \nand in England in 1876, and is still non-existent in a number of' \ncivilized 'nations. This shows how long it was before we deemed it necessary to make sure that all our children could share in the knowledge accumulated by the' \nhappy few 'during the past centuries. \n\nEducation in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means. \nAll are entitled to an equal start. \nThere is none of the hurry which, in our society, often hampers the full development of a growing personality. \nThere, a child grows up under the ever-present attention of his parent;therefore the jungles and the savannahs know of no 'juvenile delinquency'. \nNo necessity of making a living away from home results in neglect of children, \nand no father is confronted with his inability to 'buy' an education for his child. \n\n--JULIUS E. LIPS The Origin of Things--",
"text":"Parents are often upset when their children praise the homes of their friends and regard it as a slur on their own cooking, or cleaning, or furniture, \nand often are foolish enough to let the adolescents see that they are annoyed. \nThey may even accuse them of disloyalty, or make some spiteful remark about the friends 'parents. \nSuch loss of dignity and descent into childish behaviour on the part to their parents about the place or people they visit. \nBefore very long the parents will be complaining that the child is so secretive and never tells them anything, \nbut they seldom realize that they have brought this on themselves. \n\nDisillusionment with the parents, however good and adequate they may be both as parents and as individuals, is to some degree inevitable. \nMost children have such a high ideal of their parents, unless the parents themselves have been unsatisfactory, that it can hardly hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation. \nParents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation. \nParents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they realized how much belief their children usually have in their character and infallibility, \nand how much this faith means to a child. \nIf parents were prepared for this adolescent reaction, \nand realized that it was a sign that the child was growing up and developing valuable powers of observation and independent judgment, they would not be so hurt, \nand therefore would not drive the child into opposition by resenting and resisting it. \n\nThe adolescent, with his passion for sincerity, always respects a parent who admits that he is wrong, or ignorant, or even that he has been unfair or unjust. \nWhat the child cannot forgive is the parent's refusal to admit these charges if the child knows them to be true. \nVictorian parents believed that they kept their dignity by retreating behind an unreasoning authoritarian attitude;in fact they did nothing of the kind, \nbut children were then too cowed to let them know how they really felt. \nToday we tend to go to the other extreme, \nbut on the whole this is a healthier attitude both for the child and the parent. \nIt is always wiser and safer to face up to reality, however painful it may be at the moment. \n\n--DOTID OFLUM Journey Through Adolescence--",
"text":"The Moon is likely to become the industrial hub of the Solar System, supplying the rocket fuels fro its ships, easily obtainable from the lunar rocks in the from of liquid oxygen. \nThe reason lies in its gravity. \nBecause the Moon has only an eightieth of the Earth's mass, it requires 97 per cent less energy to travel the quarter of a million miles from the Moon to Earth-orbit than the 200 mile-journey from Earth's surface into orbit! \nThis may sound fantastic, but it is easily calculated. \nTo escape from the Earth in a rocket, one must travel at seven miles per second. \nThe comparable speed from the Moon is only 1.5 miles per second. \nBecause the gravity on the Moon's surface is only a sixth of Earth's (remember how easily the Apollo astronauts bounded along),it takes much less energy to accelerate to that 1.5 miles per second than it does on Earth. \nMoon-dwellers will be able to fly in space at only three per cent of the cost of similar journeys by their terrestrial dwellers will be able to fly in space at only three per cent of the cost of similar journeys by their terrestrial cousins. \n\nArthur C. Clark once suggested a revolutionary idea passes through three phases: \n\n1 'It's impossible--don't waste my time.' \n\n2 'It's possible, but not worth doing.' \n\n3 'I said it was a good idea all along.' \n\nThe idea of colonising Mars--a world 160 times more distant time the Moon--will move decisively from the second phase to the third, when a significant number of people are living permanently in space. \nMars has an extraordinary fascination for would-be voyagers. \nAmerica, Russia and Europe are filled with enthusiasts--many of them serious and senior scientists--who dream of sending people to it. \nTheir aim is understandable. \nIt is the one world in the Solar System that is most like the Earth. It is a world of red sandy deserts( \nhence its name--the Red Planet ),cloudless skies, savage sandstorms, chasms wider than the Grand Canyon and at least one mountain more than twice as tall as Everest. \nIt seems ideal for settlement. \n\n--7 DAYS, February 19, 1989--",
"text":"If a nation is essentially disunited, it is left to the government to hold it together. \nThis increases the expense of government, \nand reduces correspondingly the amount of economic resources that could be used for developing the country. \nAnd it should not be forgotten how small those resources are in a poor and backward country. \nWhere the cost of government is high, resources for development are correspondingly low. \n\nThis may be illustrated by comparing the position of a nation with that of a private business enterprise. \nAn enterprise has to incur certain costs and expenses in order to stay in business. \nFor our purposes, we are concerned only with one kind of cost--the cost of managing and administering the business. \nSuch administrative overheads in a business are analogous to the cost of government in a nation. \nThe administrative overheads of a business are low to the extent that everyone working in the business can be trusted to behave in a way that best promotes the interests of the firm. \nIf they can each be trusted to take such responsibilities. \nand to exercise such initiative as falls within their sphere, then administrative overheads will be low. \nIt will be low because it will be necessary to have only one man looking after each job, then the business will require armies of administrators, checkers, \nand foremen and administrative overheads will rise correspondingly. \nAs administrative overheads rise, \nso the earnings of the business after meeting he expense of administration, will fall;and the business will have less money to distribute as dividends or invest directly in its future progress and development. \n\nIt is precisely the same with a nation. \nTo the extent that the people can be relied upon to behave in a loyal and responsible manner, the government does not require armies of police and civil servants to keep them in order. \nBut if a nation is disunited, the government cannot be sure that the actions of the people will be in the interests of the nation;and it will have to watch, check, \nand control the people accordingly. \nA disunited nation therefore has to incur unduly high costs of government. \n\n--RAYMOND FROST The Backward Society--",
"text":"At the age of twelve years, the human body is at its most vigorous. \nIt has yet to reach its full size and strength, \nand its owner his or her full intelligence;but at this age the likelihood of death is least. \nEarlier, we were infants and young children, \nand consequently more vulnerable;later, we shall undergo a progressive loss of our vigour and resistance which, though imperceptible at first, will finally become so steep that we can live no longer, however well we look after ourselves, \nand however well society, \nand our doctors, look after us. \nThis decline in vigour with the passing of time is called ageing. \nIt is one of the most unpleasant discoveries which we all make that we must decline in this way, that if we escape wars, accidents and disease we shall eventually 'die of old age', \nand that this happens at a rate which differs little from person to person, \nso that there are heavy odds in favour of our dying between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. \nSome of us will die sooner, a few will live longer--on into a ninth or tenth decade. \nBut the chances are against it, \nand there is a virtual limit on how long we can hope to remain alive, however lucky and robust we are. \n\nNormal people tend to forget this process unless and until they are reminded of it. \nWe are so familiar with the fact that man ages, that people have for years assumed that the process of losing vigour with time, of becoming more likely to die the older we get, was something self-evident, like the cooling of a hot kettle or the wearing-out of a pair of shoes. \nThey have also assumed that all animals, \nand probably other organisms such as trees, or even the universe itself, must in the nature of things 'wear out'. \nMost animals we commonly observe do in fact age as we do, if given the chance to live long enough;and mechanical systems like a wound watch, or the sun, do in fact run out of energy in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (whether the whole universe does so is a moot point at present). \nBut these are not analogous to what happens when man ages. \nA run-down watch is still a watch and can be rewound. \nAn old watch, by contrast, becomes so worn and unreliable that it eventually is not worth mending. \nBut a watch could never repair itself--it does not consist of living parts, only of metal, which wears away by friction. \nWe could, at one time, repair ourselves --well enough, at least, to overcome all but the most instantly fatal illnesses and accidents. \nBetween twelve and eighty years we gradually lose this power;an illness which at twelve would knock us over, at eighty can knock us out, \nand another 700 for the survivors to be reduced by half again. \n\n--ALEX COMFORT The process of ageing--",
"text":"Contamination of water supplies is usually due to poor sanitation close to water sources, sewage disposal into the sources themselves, leakage of sewage into distribution systems or contamination with industrial or farm waste. \nEven if a piped water supply is safe at its source, it is not always safe by the time it reaches the tap. \nIntermittent tap-water supplies should be regarded as particularly suspect. \n\nTravellers on short trips to areas with water supplies of uncertain quality should avoid drinking tap-water, or untreated water from any other source. \nIt is best to hot drinks, bottled or canned drinks of well-known brand names--international standards of water treatment are usually followed at bottling plants. \nCarbonated drinks are acidic, and slightly safer. \nMake sure that all bottles are opened in your presence, \nand that their rims are clean and dry. \n\nBoiling is always a good way of treating water. \nSome hotels supply boiled water on request and this can be used for drinking, or for brushing teeth. \nPortable boiling elements that can boil small quantities of water are useful when the right voltage of electricity is available. \nRefuse politely any cold drink from an unknown source. \n\nIce is only as safe as the water from which it is made, \nand should not be put in drinks unless it is known to be safe. \nDrink can be cooled by placing them on ice tather than adding ice to them. \n\nAlcohol may be a medical disinfectant, but should not be relied upon to sterilize water. \nEthanol is more effective at a concentration of 50-70 per cent;below 20 per cent, its bactericidal action is negligible. \nSpirits labelled 95 proof contain only about 47 per cent alcohol. \nBeware of methylated alcohol, which is very poisonous, \nand should never be added to drinking water. \n\nIf no other safe supply can be obtained, tap water that is too hot to touch can be left to cool and is generally safe to drink. \nThose planning a trip to remote areas, or intending to live in countries where drinking water is not readily available, should know about the various possible methods for making water safe. \n\n--RICHARD DAWOOD Travellers' Health--",
"text":"I have known very few writers, \nbut those I have known, \nand whom I respected,confess at once that they have little idea where they arc going when they first set pen to paper. \nThey have a character, perhaps two, they are in that condition of eager discomfort which passes for inspiration, all admit radical changes of destination once the journey has begun;one, to my certain knowledge, spent nine months on a novel about Kashmir, then reset the whole thing in the Scottish Highlands. \nI never heard of anyone making a 'skeleton',as we were taught at school. \nIn the breaking and remaking, in the timing, interweaving, beginning afresh, the writer comes to discern things in his material which were not conseriously in his mind when he began. \nThis organic process, often leading to moments of extraordinary self-discovery, is of an indescribable fascination. \nA blurred image appears, he adds a brushstroke and another, \nand it is gone;but something was there, \nand he will not rest till he has captured it. \nSometimes the yeast within a writer outlives a book he has written. \nI have heard of writers who read nothing but their own books, like adolescents they stand before the mirror,and still cannot fathom the exact outline of the vision before them. \nFor the same reason, writers talk interminably about their own books, winkling out hidden meanings, super-imposing new ones, begging response from those around them. \nOf course a writer doing this is misunderstood:he might as well try to explain a crime or a love affair. \nHe is also, incidentally, an unforgivable bore. \n\nThis temptation to cover the distance between himself and the reader, to study his image in the sight of those who do not know him, can be his undoing:he has begun to write to please. \n\nA young English writer made the pertinent observation a year or two back that the talent goes into the first draft, \nand the art into the drafts that follow. \nFor this reason also the writer, like any other artist, has no resting place, no crowd or movement in which he may take comfort, no judgment from outside which can replace the judgment from within. \nA writer makes order out of the anarchy of his heart;he submits himself to a more ruthless discipline than any critic dreamed of, \nand when he flirts with fame, he is taking time off from living with himself, from the search for what his world contains at its inmost point.",
"text":"Waves are the children of the struggle between ocean and atmosphere, the ongoing signatures of infinity. \nRays from the sun excite and energize the atmosphere of the earth, awakening it to flow, to movement, to rhythm, to life. \nThe wind then speaks the message of the sun to the sea and the sea transmits it on through waves--an ancient, exquisite, powerful message. \n\nThese ocean waves are among the earth's most complicated natural phenomena. \nThe basic features include a crest (the highest point of the wave),a trough( the lowest point),a height (the vertical distance from the trough to the crest),a wave length( the horizontal distance between two wave crests ),and a period( \nwhich is the time it takes a wave crest to travel one wave length ). \nAlthough an ocean wave gives the impression of a wall of water moving in your direction, in actuality waves move through the water leaving the water about where it was. \nIf the water was moving with the wave, the ocean and everything on it would be racing in to the shore with obviously catastrophic results. \n\nAn ocean wave passing through deep water causes a particle on the surface to move in a roughly circular orbit, drawing the particle first towards the advancing wave, then up into the wave, then forward with it and then--as the wave leaves the particles behind--back to its starting point again. \n\nFrom both maturity to death, a wave is subject to the same laws as any other 'living' thing. \nFor a time it assumes a miraculous individuality that, in the end, is reabsorbed into the great ocean of life. \n\nThe undulating waves of the open sea are generated by three natural causes:wind, earth movements or tremors, \nand the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. \nOnce waves have been generated, gravity is the force that drives them in a continual attempt to restore the ocean surface to a flat plain. \n\n--from World Magazine(BBC Enterprises )--",
"text":"Two main techniques have been used for training elephants, which we may respectively the tough and the gentle. \nThe former method simply consists of setting an elephant to work and beating him until he does what is expected of him. \nApart from moral considerations this is a stupid method of training, for it produces a resentful animal who at a later stage may well turn man-killer. \nThe gentle method requires more patience in the early stages, \nbut produces a cheerful, good-tempered elephant who will give many years of loyal service. \n\nThe first essential in elephant training is to assign to the animal a single mahout who will be entirely responsible for the job. \nElephants like to have one master just as dogs do, \nand are capable of a considerable degree of personal affection. \nThere are even stories of half-trained elephant calves who have refused to feed and pined to death when by some unavoidable circumstance they have been deprived of their own trainer. \nSuch extreme cases must probably be taken with a grain of salt, \nbut they do underline the general principle that the relationship between elephant and mahout is the key to successful training. \n\nThe most economical age to capture an elephant for training is between fifteen and twenty years, for it is then almost ready to undertake heavy work and can begin to earn its keep straight away. \nBut animals of this age do not easily become subservient to man, \nand a very time man, \nand a very firm hand must be employed in the early stages. \nThe captive elephant, still roped to a tree, plunges and screams every time a man approaches, \nand for several days will probably refuse all food through anger and fear. \nSometimes a tame elephant is tethered nearby to give the wild one confidence, \nand in most cases the captive gradually quietens down and begins to accept its food. \nThe next stage is to get the elephant to the training establishment, a ticklish business which is achieved with the aid of two tame elephants roped to the captive on either side. \nWhen several elephants are being trained at one time, it is customary for the new arrival to be placed between the stalls of two captives whose training is already well advanced. \nIt is then left completely undisturbed with plenty of food and water so that it can absorb the atmosphere of its new home and see that nothing particularly alarming is happening to its companions. \nWhen it is eating normally, its own training begins. \nThe trainer stands in front of the elephant holding a long stick with a sharp metal point. \nTwo assistants, mounted on tame elephants, control the captive from either side, while others rub their hands over his skin to the accompaniment of a monotonous and soothing chant. \nThis is supposed to induce pleasurable sensations in the elephant, \nand its effects are reinforced by the use of endearing epithets. \nThe elephant is not son ',or' ho! \nmy father ',or' my mother ',according to the age and sex of the captive. \nThe elephant is not immediately susceptible to such blandishments, however, \nand usually lashes fiercely with its trunk in all directions. \nThese movements are controlled by the trainer with the metal-pointed stick, \nand the trunk eventually becomes so sore that the elephant curls it up and seldom afterwards uses it for offensive purposes. \n\n--RICHARD CARRINGTON Elephants--",
"text":"An earthquake comes like a thief in the night, without warning. \nIt was necessary, therefore, to invent instruments that neither slumbered nor slept. \nSome devices were quite simple. \nOne, for instance, consisted of rods of various lengths and thicknesses with would stand up end like ninepins. \nWhen a shock came, it shook the rigid table upon which these stood. \nIf it were gentle, only the more unstable rods fell. \nIf it were severe, they all fell. \nThus the rods, by falling, \nand by the direction in which they fell, recorded for the severe, they all fell. \nThus the rods, by falling, \nand by the direction in which they fell, recorded for the slumbering scientist the strength of a shock that was too weak to waken him, \nand the direction from which it came. \n\nBut instruments far more deliecate than that were needed if any really serious advance was to be made. \nThe ideal to be aimed at was to devise an instrument that could record with a pen on paper, the movements of the ground or of the table as the quake passed by. \nWhile I write my pen moves, but the paper keeps still. \nWith practice, no doubt, I could in time learn to write by holding the pen still while the paper moved. \nThat sounds a silly suggestion, \nbut that was precisely the idea adopted in some of the early instruments (seismometers) for recording earthquake waves. \nBut when table, penholder and paper are all moving, how is it possible to write legibly? \nThe key to a solution of that problem lay in an everyday observation. \nWhy does a person standing in a bus or train tend to fall when a sudden start is made? \nIt is because his feet move on , but his head stays still. \nA simple experiment will help us a little further. \nTie a heavy weight at the end of a long piece of string. \nWith the hand to and fro and around but not up and string so that the weight nearly touches the ground. \nNow move the hand to and fro and around but not up and down. \nIt will be found that the weight a piece of string. \nWith the hand held high in the air, hold the string so that the weight nearly touches the ground. \nNow move the hand to and fro and around but not up and down. \nIt will be found that ten weight moves but slightly or not at all. \nImagine an earthquake shock shaking the floor, the paper, you and your hand. \nIn the midst of all this movement, the weight and the pen would be still. \nBut as the paper moved from side to side under the pen point, its movement would be recorded in ink upon its surface. \nIt was upon this principle that the first instruments were made, \nbut while the drum was being shaken, the line that the pen was drawing wriggled from side to side. \nThe apparatus thus described, however, records only the horizontal component of the wave movement, which is, in fact, much more complicated. \nIf we could actually see the path described by a particle, such as a sand grain in the rock, it would be more like that of a bluebottle path described by a particle, such as a sand grain in the rock, it would be more like that of a bluebottle buzzing round the room;it would be up and down, to and fro and from side to side. \nInstruments have been devised and can be so placed that all three elements can be recorded in different graphs. \n\nWhen the instrument is situated at more than 700 miles from the earthquake centre, the graphic record shows three waves arriving one after at short intervals. \nThe first records the arrival of longitudinal vibrations. \nThe second marks the arrival of transverse vibrations which travel more slowly and arrive several minutes after the first. \nThese two have travelled through the earth. \nIt was from the study of these that so much was learnt about the interior of the earth. \nThe third, or main. \nThe third, or main wave, is the slowest and has travelled round the earth through the surface rocks. \n\n--H.H,SWINNERTON The Earth beneath Us--",
"text":"We must conclude from the work of those who have studied the origin of life, that given a planet only approximately like our own, life is almost certain to start. \nOf all the planets in our solar system, we ware now pretty certain the Earth is the only one on which life can survive. \nMars is too dry and poor in oxygen, Venus far too hot, \nand so is Mercury, \nand the outer planets have temperatures near absolute zero and hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. \nBut other suns, start as the astronomers call them, are bound to have planets like our own, \nand as is the number of stars in the universe is so vast, this possibility becomes virtual certainty. \nThere are one hundred thousand million starts in our own Milky Way alone, \nand then there are exist is now estimated at about 300 million million. \n\nAlthough perhaps only 1 per cent of the life that has started somewhere will develop into highly complex and intelligent patterns, \nso vast is the number of planets, that intelligent life is bound to be a natural part of the universe. \n\nIf then we are so certain that other intelligent life exists in the universe, why have we had no visitors from outer space yet? \nFirst of all, they may have come to this planet of ours thousands or millions of years ago, \nand found our then prevailing primitive state completely uninteresting to their own advanced knowledge. \nProfessor Ronald Bracewell, a leading American radio astronomer, argued in Nature that such a superior civilization, on a visit to our own solar system, may have left an automatic messenger behind to await the possible awakening of an advanced civilization. \nSuch a messenger, receiving our radio and television signals, might well re-transmit them back to its home-planet, although what impression any other civilization would thus get from us is best left unsaid. \n\nBut here we come up against the most difficult of all obstacles to contact with people on other planets--the astronomical distances which separate us. \nAs a reasonable guess, they might, on an average, be 100 light years away. \n(A light year is the distance which light travels at 186,000 miles per second in one year, namely 6 million million miles.) Radio waves also travel at the speed of light, \nand assuming such an automatic messenger picked up our first broadcasts of the 1920's, the message to its home planet is barely halfway there. \nSimilarly, our own present primitive chemical rockets, though good enough to orbit men, have no chance of transporting us to the nearest other star, four light years away, let alone distances of tens or hundreds of light years. \n\nFortunately, there is a 'uniquely rational way' for us to communicate with other intelligent beings, as Walter Sullivan has put it in his excellent book, We Are not Alone. \nThis depends on the precise radio frequency of the 21-cm wavelength, or 1420 megacycles per second. \nIt is the natural frequency of emission of the hydrogen atoms in space and was discovered by us in 1951;it must be known to any kind of radio astronomer in the universe. \n\nOnce the existence of this wave-length had been discovered, it was not long before its use as the uniquely recognizable broadcasting frequency for interstellar communication was suggested. \nWithout something of this kind, searching for intelligences on other planets would be like trying to meet a friend in London without a pre-arranged rendezvous and absurdly wandering the streets in the hope of a chance encounter. \n\n--ANTHONY MICHAELIS Are There Strangers in Space? \nfrom The Weekend Telegraph--",
"text":"Custom has not commonly been regarded as a subject of great moment. \nThe inner workings of our won brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, \nbut custom, we have a way of thinking, is behaviour at its most commonplace. \nAs a matter of fact, it is the other way around. \nTraditional custom, taken the world over, is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions, no matter how aberrant. \nYet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter. \nThe fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief, \nand the very great varieties it may manifest. \n\nNo man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. \nHe sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. \nEven in his philosophical probing he cannot go behind these stereotypes;his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs. \nJohn Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual, as against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family. \nWhen one seriously studies the social orders that have had the opportunity to develop autonomously, the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-of-fact observation. \nThe life history handed down in his community. \nFrom the moment of his birth, the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour. \nBy the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, \nand by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities. \nEvery child that is born into his group will share them with him, \nand no child born into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandth part. \nThere is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand than this of the role of custom. \nUntil we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible. \n\nThe study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, \nand some of these propositions have been violently opposed. \nIn the first place, any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items in the series it selects for its consideration. \nIn all the less controversial fields, like the study of cacti or termites or the mature of nebulae, the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. \nIn this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. \nIt is only in the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. \nIn this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. \nIt is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization. \n\nAnthropology was by definition impossible, as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive, ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people's minds. \nIt was necessary first to arrive at that degree of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief against our neighbour's superstition. \nIt was necessary to recognize that these institutions which are based on the same premises, let us say the supernatural, must be considered together, our own among the rest. \n\n--RUTH BENEDICT Patterns of Culture--",
"text":"In man's early days. \ncompetition with other creatures must have been critical. \nBut this phase of our development is now finished. \nIndeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions. \nI am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, \nand in this I do not think that I stand alone. \nThe last creature to compete with man was the mosquito. \nBut even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays. \n\nCompetition between our selves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however;and it is as fierce as it ever was. \n\nBut the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology. \nIt is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, \nbecause the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical. \nOur environment is chiefly conditoned by the things we believe. \nMorocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, \nand probably with rather similar natural resources. \nYet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people wish to emphasize. \nThe most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds. \n\nIt is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. \nIdeas are dangerous. \nThe Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by. \nIndeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society because when you are inside a community, you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. \nIt is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. \nI do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us. \nI would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so. \nPerhaps it will suffice to mention the unclear bomb. \nOf making the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed. \nTwenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history. \nIt is a strange thought, \nbut I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it. \nI have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, \nbut of course outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little way outside, \nand then only if we are very original. \n\n--FRED HOYLE Of Men and Galaxies--",
"text":"a gifted American psychologist has said, 'Worry is a spasm of the emotion;the mind catches hold of something and will not let it go.' It is useless to argue with the mind in this condition. \nThe stronger the will, the more futile the task. \nOne can only gently insinuate something else into its convulsive grasp. \nAnd if this something else is rightly chosen, if it really attended by the illumination of another field of interest, gradually, \nand often quite swiftly, the old undue grip relaxes and the process of recuperation and repair begins. \n\nThe cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of the first importance to a public man. \nBut this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a mere command of the will. \nThe growth of alternative mental interests is a long process. \nThe seeds must by carefully chosen;they must fall on good ground;they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying fruits are to be at hand when needed. \n\nTo be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, \nand they must all be real. \nIt is no use starting late in life to say:'I will take an interest in this or that.'Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. \nA man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, \nand yet get hardly any benefit or relief. \nIt is no use doing what you like;you have got to like what you do. \nBroadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes:those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to hard week's sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball or Saturday afternoon. \nIt is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, who has beer working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the weekend. \n\nAs for the unfortunate people who can command everything they want, who can gratify every caprice and lay their hands on almost every object of desire--for them a new pleasure, a new excitement if only an additional satiation. \nIn vain they rush frantically round from place to place, trying to escape from avenging boredom by mere clatter and motion. \nFor them discipline in one form or another is the most hopeful path. \n\nIt may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human being are divided into two classes:first, one. \nOf these the former are the majority. \nThey have their compensations. \nThe long hours in the office or the factory bring with them as their reward, not only the means of sustenance, \nbut a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms. \nBut Fortune's of sustenance, \nbut a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and modest forms. \nBut Fortune's favoured children belong to the second class. \nTheir life is a natural harmony. \nFor them the working hours are never long enough. \nEach day is a holiday, \nand ordinary holidays, when they come, are grudged as enforced as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation. \nYet to both classes, the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion of effort, is essential. \nIndeed, it may well be that those work is their pleasure are those who and most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds. \n\n--WINSTON CHURCHLL Painting as a Pastime--",
"text":"Economy is one powerful motive for camping, since after the initial outlay upon equipment, or through hiring it, the total expense can be far less than the cost of hotels. \nBut, contrary to a popular assumption, it is far from being the only one, or even the greatest. \nThe man who manoeuvres carelessly into his twenty pounds 'worth of space at one of Europe's myriad permanent sites may find himself bumping a Bentley. \nMore likely, Ford Escort will be hub to hub with Renault or Mercedes, \nbut rarely with bicycles made for two. \n\nThat the equipment of modern camping becomes yearly more sophisticated is an entertaining paradox for the cynic, a brighter promise for the hopeful traveler who has sworn to get away from it all. \nIt also provides-and some student sociologist might care to base his thesis upon the phenomenon--an escape of another kind. \nThe modern traveller is often a man who dislikes the Splendide and the Bellavista, not because he cannot afford, or shuns their material comforts. \nbut because he is afford of them. \nAffluent he may be, \nbut he is by no means sure what to tip the doorman or the chambermaid. \nMaster in his own house, he has little idea of when to say boo to a maitre d'hotel \n\nFrom all such fears camping releases him. \nGranted, a snobbery of camping itself, based upon equipment and techniques, already exists;but it is of a kind that, if he meets it, he can readily understand and deal with. \nThere is no superior 'they' in the shape of managements and hotel hierarchies to darken his holiday days. \n\nTo such motives, yet another must be added. \nThe contemporary phenomenon of car worship is to be explained not least by the sense of independence and freedom that ownership entails. \nTo this pleasure camping gives an exquisite refinement. \nFrom one's own front door to home or foreign hills or sands and back again, everything is to hand. \nNot only are the means of arriving at the holiday paradise entirely within one's own command and keeping, \nbut the means of escape from holiday hel (if the beach proves too crowded, the local weather too inclement) are there, outside--or, as likely, part of--the tent. \n\nIdealists have objected to the package tour, that the traveller abroad thereby denies himself the opportunity of getting to know the people of the country visited. \nInsularity and self-containment, it is argued, go hand in hand. \nThe opinion does not survive experience of a popular Continental camping place. \nHoliday hotels tend to cater for one nationality of visitors especially, sometimes exclusively. \nCamping sites, by contrast, are highly cosmopolitan. \nGranted, a preponderance of Germans is a characteristic that seems common to most Mediterranean sites;but as yet there is no overwhelmingly specialized patronage. \nNotices forbidding the open-air drying of clothes, or the use of water points for car washing, or those inviting 'our camping friends' to a dance or a boat trip are printed not only in French or Italian or Spanish, \nbut also in English, German and Dutch. \nAt meal times the odour of sauerkraut vies with that of garlic. \nThe Frenchman's breakfast coffee competes with the Englishman's bacon and eggs. \n\nWhether the remarkable growth of organized camping means the eventual death of the more independent kind is hard to say. \nMunicipalities naturally want to secure the campers 'site fees and other custom. \nPolice are wary of itinerants who cannot be traced to a recognized camp boundary or to four walls. \nBut most probably it will all depend upon campers themselves:how many heath fires they cause;how much litter they leave;in short, whether or not they wholly alienate landowners and those who live in the countryside. \nOnly good scouting is likely to preserve the freedoms so dear to the heart of the eternal Boy Scout. \n\n--NIGEL BUXTON The Great Escape from The Weekend Telegraph--",
"text":"There is no shortage of tipsters around offering 'get-rich-quick' opportunities. \nBut if you are a serious private investor, leave the Las Vegas mentality to those with money to fritter. \nThe serious investor needs a proper 'portfolio' --a well-planned selection of investments, with a definite structure and a clear aim. \nBut exactly how does a newcomer to the stock market go about achieving that? \n\nWell, if you go to five reputable stock brokers and ask them what you should do with your money, you're likely to get five different answers, --even if you give all the relevant information about your age age, family, finances and what you want from your investments. \nMoral? There is no one' \nright 'way to structure a portfolio. \nHowever, there are undoubtedly some wrong ways, and you can be sure that none of our five advisers would have suggested sinking all( \nor perhaps any )of your money into Periwigs*. \nSo what should you do? \nWe'll assume that you have sorted out the basics--like mortgages, pensions, insurance and access to sufficient cash reserves. \nYou should then establish your own individual aims. \nThese are partly a matter of personal circumstances, partly a matter of psychology. \nFor instance, if you are older you have less time to recover from any major losses, \nand you may well wish to boost your pension income. \nSo preserving your capital and generating extra income are your main priorities. In this case, you'd probably construct a portfolio with some shares( \nbut not high risk ones),along with gilts, cash deposits, \nand perhaps convertibles or the income shares of split capital investment trusts. \n\nIf you are younger, \nand in a solid financial position, you may decide to take an aggressive approach--but only if you're blessed with a sanguine disposition and won't suffer sleepless nights over share prices. \nIf portfolio, alongside your more pedestrian in vestments. \nOnce you have decided on your investment aims, you can then decide where to put your money. \nThe golden rule here is spread your risk--if you put all of your money into Periwigs International, you're setting yourself up as a hostage to fortune. \n\n*'Periwigs' is the name of a fictitious company. \n--INVESTOR'S CHRONICLE, March 23 1990--",
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