Aarushhh/wikipedia-simple-splitted huggingface dataset:
Some Shaktism-related festivals revere Shiva along with the goddess considered primary and Supreme. These include festivals dedicated to Annapurna such as Annakuta and those related to Durga. In Himalayan regions such as Nepal, as well as in northern, central and western India, the festival of Teej is celebrated by girls and women in the monsoon season, in honor of goddess Parvati, with group singing, dancing and by offering prayers in Parvati-Shiva temples.
The ascetic, Vedic and Tantric sub-traditions related to Shiva, such as those that became ascetic warriors during the Islamic rule period of India, celebrate the Kumbha Mela festival. This festival cycles every 12 years, in four pilgrimage sites within India, with the event moving to the next site after a gap of three years. The biggest is in Prayaga (renamed Allahabad during the Mughal rule era), where millions of Hindus of different traditions gather at the confluence of rivers Ganges and Yamuna. In the Hindu tradition, the Shiva-linked ascetic warriors (Nagas) get the honor of starting the event by entering the Sangam first for bathing and prayers.
Beyond the Indian subcontinent and Hinduism 
Shiva has been adopted and merged with Buddhist deities. Left: Daikokuten is a Shiva-Ōkuninushi fusion deity in Japan; Right: Acala is a fierce Shiva adaptation.
The statue of Shiva engaging in the Nataraja dance at the campus of European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.
In Shaivism of Indonesia, the popular name for Shiva has been Batara Guru, which is derived from Sanskrit Bhattaraka which means "noble lord". He is conceptualized as a kind spiritual teacher, the first of all Gurus in Indonesian Hindu texts, mirroring the Dakshinamurti aspect of Shiva in the Indian subcontinent. However, the Batara Guru has more aspects than the Indian Shiva, as the Indonesian Hindus blended their spirits and heroes with him. Batara Guru's wife in southeast Asia is the same Hindu deity Durga, who has been popular since ancient times, and she too has a complex character with benevolent and fierce manifestations, each visualized with different names such as Uma, Sri, Kali and others. Shiva has been called Sadasiva, Paramasiva, Mahadeva in benevolent forms, and Kala, Bhairava, Mahakala in his fierce forms. The Indonesian Hindu texts present the same philosophical diversity of Shaivism traditions found on the subcontinent
. However, among the texts that have survived into the contemporary era, the more common are of those of Shaiva Siddhanta (locally also called Siwa Siddhanta, Sridanta).
Daikokuten, one of the Seven Lucky Gods in Japan, is considered to be evolved from Shiva. The god enjoys an exalted position as a household deity in Japan and is worshipped as the god of wealth and fortune. The name is the Japanese equivalent of Mahākāla, the Buddhist name for Shiva. Shiva is also mentioned in Buddhist Tantra. Shiva as Upaya and Shakti as Prajna. In cosmologies of Buddhist tantra, Shiva is depicted as passive, with Shakti being his active counterpart. In Mahayana Buddhist cosmology, Shiva resides in Akaniṣṭha, highest of Śuddhāvāsa (Pure Abodes) where Anāgāmi ("Non-returners") who are already on the path to Arhat-hood and who will attain enlightenment are born in.

The Japuji Sahib of the Guru Granth Sahib says, "The Guru is Shiva, the Guru is Vishnu and Brahma; the Guru is Paarvati and Lakhshmi." In the same chapter, it also says, "Shiva speaks, and the Siddhas listen." In Dasam Granth, Guru Gobind Singh has mentioned two avtars of Rudra: Dattatreya Avtar and Parasnath Avtar.
In contemporary culture 
Sagar Shiv Mandir in Mauritius
In contemporary culture, Shiva is depicted in films, books, tattoos and art. He has been referred to as "the god of cool things" and a "bonafide rock hero".

Popular films include the Gujarati language movie Har Har Mahadev, the Kannada movie Gange Gowri and well-known books include Amish Tripathi's Shiva Trilogy, which has sold over a million copies. On television, Devon Ke Dev...Mahadev, a television serial about Lord Shiva on the Life OK channel was among the most watched shows at its peak popularity. A 90's television series of DD National titled Om Namah Shivay was also based on legends of Lord Shiva.

In the Final Fantasy videogame series, Shiva is often depicted as a benevolent ancient being of Ice Element who frequently aids the heroes against mighty foes (via summoning). Shiva is also a character in the video game Dark Souls, with the name Shiva of the East.
In Shuumatsu no Valkyrie (Record of Ragnarok), Shiva is the representative of the gods in the 5th round of Ragnarok.

References

Other websites 
Aarti of Shiva  BhaktiSansar.in Viewed on 2020-08-01.

Hindu gods and goddesses
Time and fate gods
ASCII art is art made out of ASCII characters. This can be simple art like "<3" (it looks almost like a heart if you turn your head sideways), or it can be more complex, with characters carefully placed out, containing many lines of characters. 
ASCII art was originally used to "draw" pictures on computers that only allowed ASCII characters. 
Smilies are considered ASCII art. 

ASCII art was invented because in the past, computers could only display simple characters in a format known as ASCII. This meant that computers could only display text. People started making art with ASCII characters to display an "image". Examples are: 

:)      *_*     :(      O_o 

:|      T_T     :D 

They can also be more complicated 

Graphics
Computing
A riddle can be classed as a statement with a solution. This solution, however, need not be logical. Solving riddles usually involve thinking about the question and putting it into context.

Other websites 
Anglo-Saxon riddles
riddles for adults-interesting and challenging riddles for adults

Logic
Games
Novalis is the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (May 2, 1772 – March 25, 1801), who was a writer and philosopher of the early German Romanticism.

1772 births
1801 deaths

Writers from Saxony-Anhalt
Body piercing or just piercing is a form of body modification, where humans of either gender pierce their skin to put jewellery through the hole later. There are many different reasons some people have piercings, such as religious or other cultural purposes. Many people, especially in North America and Europe, choose to be pierced for ornamental, or sexual pleasure.

History
In early records, it was not common to discuss the use of piercings or their meanings. However, body adornment and modification are estimated have been around for more than 5000 years, found in mummies like Ötzi the Iceman, Europe's oldest natural mummy estimated to be about 5,300 years old. Piercing of the ears, nose, and tongue have a long history in many ancient cultures, and lip piercing and stretching were more common in African tribes, especially for cultural identification.

Piercings in the 20th & 21st century
Body piercings of any kind were not popular in Western cultures in the beginning of the 20th century. After World War II, the gay subculture used piercings as a fashion statement. Other subcultures, such as "hippie" and the punk movement, also began to use piercings as a form of expression in the 1960s and 1970s. Genital piercing is becoming more common. Sometimes people get genital piercings to create interest or attract attention. Some types of genital piercing are supposed to increase sexual pleasure. For males, one type of penis piercing is called an Ampallang.

References
Physical can mean:
Something that is made of matter
Something about the human body
Physical anthropology
Something done by a force made when something moves to apply or create the force. (This is only a form of Kinetic energy.)

Basic English 850 words
Elonka Dunin (; born December 29, 1958) is an American video game developer. Her job is to make computer games at Simutronics Corporation, in Missouri.  She also knows a lot about famous puzzles, especially a puzzle called Kryptos, which no one knows all the answers to yet.

In 2006, she wrote a book with hundreds of puzzles in it, called The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms.

References 
 Elonka Dunin's website (biography)
 Simutronics corporation

1958 births
Living people
Writers from Missouri
American video game designers
A supernova is the explosion of a giant star. It usually happens when the nuclear fusion in the star cannot hold the core against its own gravity. The core collapses, and then explodes. 

The biggest stars that make supernovae are hypergiants and smaller ones are supergiants. They are massive: because of gravity, they use up their energy very quickly. Normally they only live for a few million years. 

During the explosion, the total energy radiated by supernovae may briefly outshine the entire output of a galaxy. They emit energy equal to that of the whole lifetime of a solar-like star. The explosion blows off its stellar material away from the star, at velocities up to 30,000 km/s or 10% of the speed of light. This drives a shock wave into the surrounding interstellar medium. This sweeps up an expanding shell of gas and dust, which we see as a supernova remnant. After exploding, what is left becomes a black hole or a neutron star.
Most stars are small and do not explode.  After their red giant phase, they become colder and smaller and become white dwarf stars.

Supernova explosions happen rarely. The last time people saw a supernova in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, was in the year 1604. We can see supernovas in other galaxies too. Every year we see 300 supernovas in other galaxies, because there are so many galaxies. Sometimes they are brighter than the whole rest of the galaxy.

Types 
Supernovas are usually sorted into Type I and Type II supernovas.
Type I supernovas have absorption lines that show they do not have hydrogen in them. Type Ia supernovas are very bright for a short amount of time.  Then they get less bright very quickly.  Type Ia supernovas happen when a white dwarf star is orbiting a big star.  Sometimes, the white dwarf star sucks matter off of the big star. When the white dwarf eventually gets to be about 1.4 times the mass of the sun, it collapses.  This makes lots of energy and light, which is why supernovas are very bright.  Type 1a have mostly the same brightness. This allows them to be used as a secondary standard candle to measure the distance to their host galaxies.

Type II supernovas have absorption lines that show they do have hydrogen in them. A star must have at least 8 times, and no more than 40–50 times, the mass of the Sun to undergo this type of explosion.
In a star like the Sun, nuclear fusion turns hydrogen into helium.  In very large stars, helium gets turned into carbon, then oxygen, and so on. The star fuses increasingly higher mass elements, up through the periodic table until a core of iron and nickel is produced. Fusion of iron or nickel produces no net energy output, so no more fusion can take place. When the energy released from the fusion process fades it cannot counteract gravitational collapse. The collapse of the core is so rapid (about 23% of the speed of light) that a huge shock wave is produced. The extremely high temperature and pressure lasts long enough for a brief moment when the elements heavier than iron are produced. Depending on initial size of the star, the remnants of the core form a neutron star or a black hole.
Supernovas and life 
Without supernovas there would be no life on Earth. This is because many of the chemical elements were made in supernova explosions. These are called "heavy elements". Heavy elements are needed to make living things. The supernova is the only natural way heavy elements can be made. Other elements were made by fusion in stars. Heavy elements need very high temperature and pressure to form. In a macho supernova explosion the temperature and pressure are so high that heavy elements can be made. Scientists call this supernova nucleosynthesis.

It could be dangerous if a supernova explosion happened very close to the Earth. The explosion is very big and many kinds of dangerous radiation are formed. But we do not have to be afraid. Only very big stars can explode as supernovas. There are no stars big enough near the Earth and if there was it would take millions of years for it to happen.
Important supernovas 
SN 1572 was seen by Tycho Brahe. This supernova helped astronomers learn that things in space could change. SN 1604 was seen by Johannes Kepler. It was the last supernova close enough to be seen from Earth's northern hemisphere without a telescope. SN 1987A is the only supernova so close that scientists could find neutrinos from it. SN 1987A was also bright enough to see without a telescope. People in the southern hemisphere saw it.

Effects on Earth 
The Earth does have traces of past supernovae. Traces of radioactive iron-60, a strong indicator of supernova debris, is buried in the sea floor right across the globe.
The "local bubble" is a ballooning region of hot gas, 600 light-years across. It surrounds the Solar System and dominates our stellar neighbourhood. It was formed by over a dozen supernovae blowing up in a nearby moving clump of stars. This happened between 2.3 million and 1.5 million years ago. This roughly corresponds with the start of the Pleistocene ice ages. The connection may be accidental.

Related pages 
Luminous blue variable
Nova

References

Other websites 
 Supernovae  (NASA)
 Supernovae (GSU)
 Supernova Citizendium
Folk can mean:

 a specific people, tribe, or nation
 folklore, stories and traditions told orally.
 folk art, art done in traditional styles

In music:
 folk music or folksong, music by and of the common people.
 folk dance, a 19th century form of dance
 folk-punk, a genre of music that combines elements of folk and punk rock music
 folk-rock, a kind of music that is folk music and Rock and Roll mixed together.
 folk metal, a sub-genre of heavy metal that mixes it with folk music
Victorian may mean:

 19th-century matters: 
Victorian era 
Victorian architecture
Victorian decorative arts
Victorian fashion
Victorian morality 
Victorianism in esthetics and manners
Victorian literature
Victorian America
Saint Victorian (disambiguation)

Related pages
 Victoria (disambiguation)
 Victoriana
Bethlehem is a Palestinian city on the West Bank. It is most famous as the place where Jesus was born. (See Gospel of Matthew chapter 2.) It is five miles from Jerusalem in Israel.

Ancient Israel and Judah
 
New Testament
Old Testament
Disco was at its most popular in the United States and Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Disco was brought into the mainstream by the hit movie Saturday Night Fever, which was released in 1977. This movie, which starred John Travolta, showed people doing disco dancing. Many radio stations played disco in the late 1970s. By the early 1980s, disco had started to fall out of popularity, and other genres, such as dance, Hi-NRG and post-disco grew in popularity. Nevertheless, disco still exerts an influence on modern day dance music, and still has occasional moments of popularity. Additionally, a different form of disco arose in Europe, known as Euro disco, which obtained some popularity.
Disco music 
Disco music blends R&B with funk, soul and dance music. Disco music usually consists of a singer, electric guitars, synthesizer keyboards, electric bass guitar, and a drummer or electronic drum machine. Disco music is often very simple music, with a strong beat and a strong "bass line". Disco music often has many electronic effects.

Disco dancing
Disco dancing is often sexually suggestive. When people go disco dancing, they usually wear tight trousers, leather shoes or boots, and glittery clothes. Women going disco dancing often wore tight clothes that revealed body parts such as their thighs or the upper part of their chest. Men going disco dancing often opened up the buttons of their shirts to show the upper part of their chest.
Disco clubs
Disco music is played at disco clubs. In the late 1970s, there were famous disco clubs such as Studio 54 in New York City. Disco clubs have a large dance floor and a large pa system. A Disk Jockey (or "DJ") plays records of disco music through powerful amplifiers with a number of high wattage speakers. Disco music was usually played very loud, with lots of low bass frequencies. Disco clubs usually had coloured lights that flashed with the music called scanners, and mirror balls with hundreds of small mirrors, that reflect light onto the dancers and all corners of the room.

Disco culture
Most people who went disco dancing at disco clubs drank alcohol such as champagne and rum. Many people consumed illegal drugs such as cocaine or marijuana, so that they would become intoxicated. People who went disco dancing often had sex with people that they would meet at the disco club.
Notable musicians 
(Source: All Music)
Bee Gees
Donna Summer
Village People
Sylvester
Amanda Lear
Amii Stewart
Andrea True Connection
Anita Ward

Related pages 
Funk
R&B
Soul music

References 

Disco
Albert II (born 14 March 1958), is the current Sovereign Prince of Monaco. He became ruler after his father Prince Ranier III died in April 2005. He is the only son and the middle of three children of Rainer and his wife, Grace Kelly.

Legitimate children
Prince Albert and his wife, Charlene, had twins:
Princess Gabriella, Countess of Carladès (born 10 December 2014)
Jacques, Hereditary Prince of Monaco (born 10 December 2014); heir to the throne of Monaco.

Health
On 19 March 2020, amid the large-scale outbreak of COVID-19, it was officially announced that Albert II had tested positive. This made Albert II the first monarch and head of state to have tested positive for COVID-19. On 31 March, it was announced that he had made a full recovery.
Titles and styles
14 March 1958 – 6 April 2005: His Serene Highness The Hereditary Prince of Monaco, Marquis of Baux.
31 March 2005 – 6 April 2005: His Serene Highness The Prince Regent of Monaco.
6 April 2005 – present: His Serene Highness The Sovereign Prince of Monaco.

Ancestry

References

1958 births
Living people
Princes and princesses of Monaco
Recipients of the Order pro merito Melitensi
Current national leaders
Rex Warner (birth name Reginald Ernest Walker; 9 March 1905 – 24 June 1986) was a classical English writer and translator.

1905 births
1986 deaths
English writers
British translators
There is also Hugh Cook (science fiction author), born in England, who also lived in New Zealand and Japan.
Hugh Cook (born 1942) is a Canadian writer.

Bibliography
Cracked Wheat and Other Stories - 1985 ()
The Homecoming Man - 1989 ()
Home in Alfalfa - 1998 ()

Cook, Hugh
1942 births
Living people
Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German born American anthropologist. He is considered by many to have been the 'Father of American Anthropology.' While today archaeology, cultural anthropology , linguistics, and Biological anthropology are often considered somewhat separate discipline, Boas had a holistic approach, meaning to him they were a unified discipline.

Early life 
Boas was born in Germany to Jewish parents. His parents were rich, well educated, and sought to expose him to the values of the enlightenment. This resulted in Boas did not identifying as Jewish, and left him with a dislike of religion. Because of parents, he received a very strong early education. Boas studied natural history in primary school, and in secondary school he researched the natural range of plants.

Early Academic Career 
Franz Boas attended Heidelberg University for one semester, before transferring to Bonn University where he studied mathematics, physics, and geography.
Emigration to America 
Boas first traveled to Baffin Island in 1883 to study the native Inuit to see what role the environment plays in their migrations. He published his findings in 1888. Boas returned to Germany for a time, but due to rising antisemitism he decided to emigrate to the United States. He worked as an editor for Science and as a docent of anthropology at Clark University. He left the university in 1892. He went north to collect ethnographic material for the 1893 World's Colombian Exposition. After the exposition the material was given to the Field museum in Chicago, here Boas became the curator for anthropology. During this time Boas became involved in the Fin de Siècle debates. It was here he argued for separating natural sciences from the humanities. He also began the ground work that would eventually grow into historical particularism: the idea that every aspect of a culture has a unique history.
University of Colombia 
Boas eventually settled at the University of Colombia in 1896. There, he created the first PhD program for anthropology in the United States. He taught his most famous students, who included: Alfred Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Edward Sapir, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Later life 
Franz Boas was censored by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in December 1919 for a publication he wrote denouncing anthropologists who became involved with the war effort during the First World War. This persisted for the remainder of his life, not being reversed until 2005. He was very critical of Nazism as well as critical of the radical the war effort in the United States. Boas was also involved with combating racism. In 1963 Thomas Gossett claimed that "It is possible that Boas did more to combat race prejudice than any other person in history." Franz Boas died of a stroke on December 21, 1942.  According to legend he died in the arms of none other than Claude Levi-Strauss.
Contributions to Anthropology 
Franz Boas is often credited with the development of 'historical particularism', as well as 'cultural relativism.' Boas was a founding member of the American Anthropology Association (AAA) and served as one of the organization's first vice presidents.

References 

1858 births
1942 deaths
Naturalized citizens of the United States
German geographers
American geographers
American anthropologists
The Zapotec are a native tribe of people from Mexico. People think there are between 300.000 and 400.000 people. Most of them live in the state of Oaxaca. Most of them speak either Zapotec dialect continuum or the Chatino language. Before Christopher Columbus came to America, the Zapotec civilisation was highly developed. It also included a system of writing.

References
Malinowski, Sharon; Sheets, Anna, ed. (1998); "Zapotec" in The Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes; Gale Research, Detroit, Michigan.

Other websites 
 Zapotec Culture  (in English and Spanish)
 Zapotec Language  (including variants, in English and Spanish)

Mexico
Native Americans
IMAX is a kind of movie projection system, which shows movies on a very large screen. It was first introduced in Japan in 1970.

Other websites
Official site

Movie terminology
Esotericism is about secret knowledge for a small group of people.   Esotericism also describes mystical, spiritual or occult points of view. Esotericism studies Gnosticism, Yoga, Alchemy, Magic, Spiritualism, Hypnosis, Astrology, Meditation, Mysticism, and Occultism. Many followers of Abrahamic faiths, particularly Christianity and Islam, have criticized Esotericism as black magic. Esotericism in religion is called "obscurantism".

Esotericism can also be about understanding symbolism and hidden meanings of many different books.  They include religious books, philosophy books and books about history.  They use these books as their texts.

Esoteric groups 
 Alawites
 Anthroposophy
 Freemasons
 Hermeticism
 Illuminati
 Kabbalah
 Knights Templar
 Rosicrucians
 Theosophy

References
Hugh Walter Gilbert Cook (9 August 1956 – 8 November 2008) was a science fiction author. Cook was born in Essex, England, and moved to New Zealand. He moved to Japan in 1997.

1956 births

English writers
Jainism is a religion originally from India that teaches that "all the events in the universe are self-caused, random, fixed and are independent of previous events or external causes or god": Jain philosophy is the oldest philosophy of India that distinguishes body (matter) from the soul (awareness) completely. It teaches that the universe is eternal and that every living being has a soul which has the power to become all-knowing (observer of all the random events). A soul which has won over its inner enemies like attachment, greed, pride, etc. is called jina which means conqueror or victor (over ignorance). The holy book of Jainism is Pravachansara.
Aspects of Jainism 
 Every living being has a soul.
 Every soul is potentially divine, with innate qualities of infinite knowledge, perception, power, and bliss (masked by its karmas).
 The universe is self-regulated, with all the events self-caused, and every soul has the potential to achieve divine consciousness (siddha) through its own efforts.
 There is no supreme divine creator, owner, preserver or destroyer.
 Therefore, Jainists think of every living being as themselves, harming no one and being kind to all living beings.
 Every soul is born as a celestial, human, sub-human or hellish being according to its own karmas.
 Every soul is the architect of its own life, here or hereafter.
 When a soul is freed from karmas, it becomes free and attains divine consciousness, experiencing infinite knowledge, perception, power, and bliss.
 Right Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct (triple gems of Jainism) provide the way to this realization.
Navakar Mantra is the fundamental prayer in Jainism and can be recited at any time of the day. Praying by reciting this mantra, the devotee bows with respect to liberated souls still in human form (Arihantas), fully liberated souls (Siddhas), spiritual leaders (Acharyas), teachers (Upadyayas) and all the monks. By saluting them, Jains receive inspiration from them to follow their path to achieve true bliss and total freedom from the karmas binding their souls. In this main prayer, Jains do not ask for any favours or material benefits. This mantra serves as a simple gesture of deep respect towards beings who are more spiritually advanced. The mantra also reminds followers of the ultimate goal, nirvana or moksha.
 Jainism stresses on the importance of controlling the senses including the mind, as they can drag one far away from true nature of the soul.
Limit possessions and lead a pure life that is useful to yourself and others. Owning an object by itself is not possessiveness; however attachment to an object is. Non-possessiveness is the balancing of needs and desires while staying detached from our possessions.
 Enjoy the company of the holy and better qualified, be merciful to those afflicted souls and tolerate the perversely inclined.
 It is important not to waste human life in evil ways. Rather, strive to rise on the ladder of spiritual evolution.
 The goal of Jainism is liberation of the soul from the negative effects of unenlightened thoughts, speech and action. This goal is achieved through clearance of karmic obstructions by following the triple gems of Jainism.
Jains mainly worship idols of Jinas, Arihants and Tirthankars, who have conquered the inner passions and attained divine consciousness. Jainism acknowledges the existence of powerful heavenly souls (Yaksha and Yakshini) that look after the well beings of Thirthankarars. Usually, they are found in pair around the idols of Jinas as male (yaksha) and female (yakshini) guardian deities. Even though they have supernatural powers, they are also wandering through the cycles of births and deaths just like most other souls.
Citations

References of Jainism 
 

Jainism
A sect is a small religious or political group that separates from a larger group. Sects have many of the same beliefs and practices as the original group, but often have some different doctrines. In contrast, a denomination is a large religious group.

Related pages 

 Cult
 New religious movement

Religious organizations
Sociology
The caracal (Caracal caracal), also called Persian lynx or African lynx, is a wild cat. Caracals are similar to lynxes, but are more related to the serval. Caracals are the fastest of the small cats.

Look 
The Caracal is 65 cm in length (about 2 feet), plus 30 cm tail (about 1 foot). It has longer legs and a look very similar to a lynx. The colour of its fur may be wine-red, grey, black, or sand-coloured (a type of yellow). Young caracals have red spots on the fur, but the only markings adults have are black spots above the eyes. A special part of the caracal body are its long black ears - the word "caracal" come from the Turkish word karakulak ("black ear"). Their ears are controlled by 20 different muscles, to help them find the animals they hunt.

Life
Life 

Caracals live in Africa and Western Asia. Their habitat is dry steppes (areas without trees, covered with grass or shrubs) and semi-deserts, but also can live in places similar to woodlands, savannas, and scrub forests. They live alone or with a mate in a territory.

A caracal may live without drinking for a long time - they get the water from the body of the animals they eat. It hunts at night (but in winter they also hunt in the daytime) for rodents, birds, and hares. It is not usual, but sometimes they hunt small antelopes or young ostriches. They prefer to eat only the external meat of the mammals they hunt, and do not eat the internal organs, and they also do not like eating fur. But they eat the feathers of small birds and rotten meat.

They can hunt birds very well; a caracal is able to snatch a bird in flight, sometimes more than one at a time. Caracals can jump and climb every well, which enables them to catch hyraxes better than any other carnivore.
Caracals and humans 
Because they can learn tricks and get accustomed to live with humans, caracals are sometimes kept as pets (especially in the United States and some European countries). Farmers in Africa do not like them, because sometimes they enter in farms and eat chickens and other animals. So they make their dog chase the caracal.

It is not easy to see caracals in nature because they hide very well. Drivers in countries where caracals live, for example, Kenya and Botswana, see many animals next to roads, but it is very rare a sighting of a caracal.

Kinds of caracals
Kinds of caracals 

There are many species of caracals. See them and where they live:
 Caracal caracal caracal, East, Central and South Africa
 Caracal caracal algira, North Africa
 Caracal caracal damarensis, Namibia
 Caracal caracal limpopoensis, Botswana
 Caracal caracal lucani, Gabon
 Caracal caracal michaelis, Turkmenistan (endangered)
 Caracal caracal nubicus, Ethiopia, Sudan
 Caracal caracal poecilictis, West Africa
 Caracal caracal schmitzi, West Asia, Iran, Arabia, Pakistan and India

References

Felines
Mammals of Pakistan
Mammals of Africa
Eels are teleost fish. They have long and narrow bodies like snakes. Adult eels can be as short as 10 cm  or as long as 3 m. It depends on their species. The large eels can weigh up to 65 kg.

Eels have fewer fins than other fish. They do not have all the belly and chest fins. The back and anal fins are long and usually connected to the tail fin. The fins do not have spines.

The shoulder bones are separate from the skull. The scales have smooth edges or are absent.

Eels hatch from eggs. Baby (larval) eels are flat and transparent (clear). They are called leptocephalus (Greek for "thin head"). A young eel is called an elver. For a long time people did not know where eels came from, because baby eels look very different from adults. They thought the babies were a different species.
Most eels prefer to live in the shallowest parts of the ocean. They live at the bottom of the ocean, sometimes in holes. Eels in the Anguillidae family come to fresh water to live there. Eels in the Nemichthyidae family swim about 500 m below the ocean surface. Eels in the Synaphobranchidae family live as deep as 4000 m below the surface.

Hand netting (catching with nets) is the only legal way of catching eels in England. It has been done for thousands of years on the River Parrett and River Severn.

Most eels are predators. They hunt their prey.

Classification
True eels belong to the order (group) Anguilliformes (Latin for "eel-shaped"). This order has 4 suborders (smaller groups) called Anguilloidei, Nemichthyoidei, Congroidei, and Synaphobranchoidei.

The suborders are separated into 19 families. The families are divided into 110 genera. The genera are then divided into species. There are 400 species of eels in all.
The term "eel" is also used for other eel-shaped fish, such as electric eels, spiny eels, swamp eels, and deep-sea spiny eels. These other clades, however, evolved their eel-like shapes independently from the true eels. Eels live both in salt water and fresh water and some species are catadromous (they migrate).

Uses 
Freshwater eels (unagi) and marine eels (Conger eel, anago) are used in Japanese food. Eels are used in Cantonese (Hong Kong) food and Shanghai food. Some people eat the European eel and other eels that live in lakes all around the world. A traditional London food is "jellied eels." The Spanish meal, angulas, consists of deep-fried elvers.

Eel skins are used to make some wallets and purses.

In some classifications, the family Cyematidae of bobtail snipe eels is included in the Anguilliformes, but in the FishBase system that family is included in the order Saccopharyngiformes.
The electric eel of South America is not a true eel, but is a South American knifefish more closely related to the carps and catfishes.

References

 
Edible fish
An Easter egg is an egg, eaten and used for decoration during the Easter holidays. The egg was a symbol of the earth to celebrate spring. The oldest tradition is to use painted chicken eggs, but today chocolate eggs wrapped in coloured foil, hand-carved wooden eggs, or plastic eggs filled with confectionery such as chocolate is used. It was used by early Christians as a sign of the resurrection (rising from the dead) of Jesus.

Use 
The use of painted and decorated Easter eggs was first recorded in the 13th century. The church did not let people eat eggs during Holy Week, but chickens still laid eggs during that week. Because there was nothing else to do with the eggs, they were used for Easter decoration.
In modern times, chocolate eggs with a colorful wrapping are given to children to be eaten. In the United Kingdom, children receive on average 8.8 chocolate Easter eggs every year. It is unclear where this tradition comes from. Most likely, it comes from a pagan fertility ritual during spring. Sometimes on Easter, children go on egg hunts to look for Easter eggs. They can look for them indoors or outdoors.

An easter egg is also the name of something secret added in computer programs, such as a joke, a picture, or a message that can be uncovered.
History 
Although there have been claims that Easter eggs came from the pagan symbols, there is no solid evidence for this. At the Passover, a hard-boiled egg dipped in salt water is a symbol of both new life and the Passover sacrifice offered at the Temple in Jerusalem. In Christian times, the egg was a symbol of new life just as a chick might hatch from the egg. The Easter egg tradition may have celebrated the end of the privations of Lent. In the Medieval Europe, people were not allowed to eat eggs on fast days. It was traditional to use up all of the eggs that they had before Lent began, and this also made the tradition of Pancake Day. Eggs were viewed as symbols of new life and fertility through the ages. It is believed that for this reason many ancient cultures, including the Ancient Egyptians, Persians, and Romans, used eggs during their spring festivals. In Eastern Christianity, both meat and dairy are still not allowed to be eaten during the fast, and eggs are seen as "dairy" too.
It was during Easter that everybody was trying to get rid of the eggs before the fast. Eggs were given as gifts for children and servants, and used for decoration. And this is probably the reason why eggs came to be associated with Easter.

Gallery

References 

Easter traditions
Lemurs are primates and prosimians (not monkeys). The word "lemur" comes from the Latin word lemures, which means "ghosts". Lemur are divided into eight families, with 15 genera and about 100 living species. However, lemur  classification is controversial: it depends on which species concept is used. Lemur is also a genus in one of the families. 

Lemurs are native only to the island of Madagascar. From there a few species got to smaller islands nearby, for example the Comoros. Madagascar, like Africa and India, was part of the ancient southern continent of Gondwana.  

Lemurs weigh from 30g to the 10kg. Larger species have all become extinct since human groups moved to Madagascar. Usually, the smaller lemurs are active at night (nocturnal), and the larger ones were active during the day (diurnal).

Lemurs are endangered species because people destroy their habitat and used to hunt them, and perhaps still do so.
Physical description 
Ring-tailed lemur, the most studied, are white and black with a ring tail The larger species are about 1.5 meters tall and weigh about 2 to 3.5 kilograms. They move quietly, usually at night, sometimes letting out eerie wailing cries, which some people think is the reason why they got their names.

Feeding habits and life 
Lemurs mostly eat fruit, leaves, and other plant parts. They live in family groups of 5 to 42 members which is called a troop. Females are dominant and remain in the same troop for life. Males move between troops. The female's gestation period lasts four to five months, and they usually have one or two babies. Lemur mothers nurse their babies until they are about four months old. Then they begin to feed the babies solid food such as fruit. Lemurs spend most of their time in the trees. Some are great leapers, flinging themselves from tree to tree.
Communication 
Lemurs communicate with a variety of hoots. They will also send messages with scents (smells). When a male lemur wants to scare another male away, he first rubs its tail on the smelly glands under its arms and then waves the tail in the other male's face. These are called "stink fights".

Lavasoa dwarf lemur
Grey bamboo lemur
Ring-tailed lemur
Aye-aye
Black-and-white ruffed lemur
Silky sifaka

Related pages 
 Duke Lemur Center

References

Other websites 

 Lemurs of the East Coast of Madagascar 
 New lemurs found in Madagascar
Great leaping lemurs
Good Friday is a  religious holiday usually observed by Christians. It is also called Holy Friday, Black Friday, or Great Friday. It is observed to remember the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, his death, and his rising from the dead. The holiday is often at the same time as the Jewish holiday of Passover.

The estimated year of Good Friday is AD 33, by two different groups, and at first as AD 34 by Isaac Newton by the differences between the Biblical and Julian calendars.

Biblical account
Biblical account 

According to the Gospels, Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane by the Temple Guards. This was done through the help of his disciple Judas Iscariot. Judas received money (30 pieces of silver) () for betraying Jesus. He had told the guards that whomever he kisses was the one they were to arrest. Jesus was brought to the house of Annas. Annas was the father-in-law of the high priest at that time, Caiaphas. There he was questioned. However, it was with little result. Tied up, he was sent to Caiaphas the high priest, where the Sanhedrin had come together ().
It was a custom during the feast of Passover for the Romans to let one prisoner go free as requested by the Jews. Pilate asked the crowd whom they would like to go free. The crowd asked for Barabbas, another prisoner. He had gone to prison for murdering people. Pilate asked what they would have him do with Jesus. At this, and they demanded, "Crucify him!" (). Pilate's wife warned Pilate to "have nothing to do with this righteous man" (). She had had a dream about him earlier that day.

Pilate had Jesus whipped, then tried to let him go. The chief priests demanded that Jesus be sentenced to death "because he claimed to be God's son." This filled Pilate with fear. He brought Jesus back inside the palace and demanded to know from where he came ().
Coming before the crowd one last time, Pilate declared Jesus innocent. He washed his own hands in water to show he has no part in this. However, Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified so that the crowd would not get angry () and that he could keep his job.
Jesus carried his cross to "A Place of the Skull", or "Golgotha" in Hebrew. In Latin it is called "Calvary". There he was crucified with two criminals ().

Jesus is hung on the cross for six hours in extreme pain. During his last 3 hours on the cross there is darkness over the whole land (; ; ). At last, Jesus cried, "It is finished". He then "gave up his spirit". There is an earthquake. Tombs break open, and the curtain in the Temple is torn from top to bottom. The centurion on guard at the crucifixion declares, "Truly this was God's Son!" ()
Joseph of Arimathea took the body of Jesus, wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and placed it in his own new tomb that had been carved in the rock (). The tomb was in a garden. Nicodemus () also came bringing 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes, and placed them in the linen with the body of Jesus, according to Jewish burial customs (). They rolled a large rock over the entrance of the tomb (). Then they went back home and rested, because at sunset began Shabbat (). According to the Bible, on the third day, Sunday, which is now known as Easter Sunday (or Pascha), Jesus rose from the dead.

Celebration 
Special prayer services are usually held on this day with readings from the Gospel accounts of the events leading up to the crucifixion. Major Christian churches say that Christ's crucifixion was a voluntary act that he did for everyone who believed in him. It is also said that  his crucifixion and resurrection on the third day caused death itself to be crushed.
Related pages
 Easter
 Ascension
 Pentecost
 Valladolid

References

Other websites 
 The Eastern Orthodox commemoration of the holiday 
 Episcopal Good Friday Service
 Good Friday hymns at St-Takla.org

Christian holidays
Easter
The Archaea (or Archea) are a group of single-celled organisms. The name comes from Greek αρχαία, "old ones". They are a major division of living organisms.

Archaea are tiny, simple organisms. They were originally discovered in extreme environments (extremophiles), but are now thought to be common to more average conditions. Many can survive at very high (over 80 °C) or very low temperatures, or highly salty, acidic or alkaline water. Some have been found in geysers, black smokers, oil wells, and hot vents in the deep ocean. Recent research has found ammonia-eating archaea in soil and seawater.
In the past they had been classed with bacteria as prokaryotes (or Kingdom Monera) and named archaebacteria, but this is a mistake. The Archaea have an independent evolutionary history and show many differences in their biochemistry from other forms of life. They are now classified as a separate domain in the three-domain system. In this system, the three distinct branches of evolutionary descent are the Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryota.

Archaea are, like bacteria, prokaryotes: single-celled organisms that do not have nuclei and cell organelles of the eukaryote type.

Comparison to other domains
The following table compares some major characteristics of the three domains, to illustrate their similarities and differences. Many of these characteristics are also discussed below.
=
Interesting facts about archaea:
No archaean species can do photosynthesis.
Archaea only reproduce asexually.
Archaea show high levels of horizontal gene transfer between lineages.
Many archaea live in extreme environments.
Unlike bacteria, no archaea produce spores.
Archaea are common in the ocean, and especially in the plankton. They make up to 20% of all microbial cells in the ocean.p475
Carl Woese discovered the Archaea in 1978.

Related pages 

Carl Woese
Earliest known life forms
Methanogen

Further reading 
 Barry E.R. & Bell S.D. 2006. DNA replication in the Archaea. Microbiology and molecular biology reviews (MMBR) 70, 876-887.
Kelman L.M. & Kelman Z. 2003. Archaea: An archetype for replication initiation studies? Molecular microbiology'', 48''', 605-615.

Other websites 

 Archaea -Citizendium

References 

Archaeans
Prokaryotes
Microbiology
Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American author and biologist. His book Guns, Germs, and Steel won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997.

Life 
Diamond was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was a doctor and his mother was a teacher. He received his college degree from Harvard University in 1958, and then he received a doctorate degree from the University of Cambridge in 1961.

In 1966, he became a teacher at UCLA, a university in Los Angeles, California. He has also traveled to some islands called New Guinea, which are far away from the United States, in the South Pacific Ocean. Diamond is famous for knowing a lot about the birds that lived on that island, and he has traveled there many times.

Writing 
Diamond writes about science in ways that people can understand, and he has written many articles for magazines like Discover in the United States.
He also writes books. One of his first books was called The Third Chimpanzee, which talked about the way that people evolved from monkeys, and how many things are the same between humans and monkeys.

His most famous book is Guns, Germs, and Steel. In his book, Diamond explained why he thought that different parts of the Earth had people on them at different times, and why some people in some parts of the world had more science or farming than people in other parts of the world. The book went over thousands of years of human history.

In 2004, he wrote another book, called, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this book, Diamond wrote about why he thought that some groups of people from many hundreds of years ago were able to have their groups get very big and strong, while other groups fell apart. His book talked about what people today can maybe learn from the studying the problems from history.
Books 
 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), .
 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997), .
 Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality (1997), .
 The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (1992), .
 The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Ecology, & Biogeography (with Ernst Mayr, 2001), .
 Avifauna of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea, Publications of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, No. 12, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 438 (1972).

Family 
 Diamond is married to a woman named Marie. Her grandfather was an important man in the country of Poland. She also had an uncle named Raphael Kalinowski, who became a saint.
 Diamond and his wife Marie have two sons, named Josh and Max. They both go to university. Josh goes to Duke University, and Max goes to Northwestern University.

References 
 Diamond's page at the UCLA website
1937 births
Living people
American biologists
American geographers
Writers from Boston
Scientists from Boston
Pulitzer Prize winners
The  (IPA: ; Filipino for Church of Christ), or INC,  is a church which was founded in the Philippines by Felix Manalo in 1914. The INC states the church was founded by Jesus Christ but that Felix Manalo restored it. The church does not believe in the religious teaching that Jesus is God and part of the Trinity.

History 
Felix Manalo was born a member of the Roman Catholic Church, but joined a number of Protestant churches until he believed that God gave him a mission to teach the gospel and to bring back the first church made by Jesus. The INC began with a handful of followers on July 27, 1914 in Punta, Santa Ana, Manila, with Manalo as highest minister. It has now spread to many different countries.

Beliefs and teachings 
Some of the teachings INC believes in are: