AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
"Pop" music is a type of "popular" music that many people like to listen to. The term "pop music" can be used for all kinds of music that was written to be popular. The word "pop music" was used from about 1880 onwards, when a type of music called music was popular.
Modern pop music grew out of 1950's rock and roll, (for example Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard) and rockabilly (for example Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly). In the 1960s, The Beatles became a famous pop music group. In the 1970s, other styles of music were mixed with pop music, such as funk and soul music. Pop music generally has a heavy (strong) beat, so that it is good for dancing. Pop singers normally sing with microphones that are plugged into an amplifier and a loudspeaker.
"Musical notation" is the way music is written down. Music needs to be written down in order to be saved and remembered for future performances. In this way composers (people who write music) can tell others how to play the musical piece as it was meant to be played.
Solfège (sometimes called solfa) is the way tones are named. It was made in order to give a name to the several tones and pitches. For example, the eight basic notes "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do" are just the names of the eight notes that confirm the major scale.
Music can be written in several ways. When it is written on a staff (like in the example shown), the pitches (tones) and their duration are represented by symbols called notes. Notes are put on the lines and in the spaces between the lines. Each position says which tone must be played. The higher the note is on the staff, the higher the pitch of the tone. The lower the notes are, the lower the pitch. The duration of the notes (how long they are played for) is shown by making the note "heads" black or white, and by giving them stems and flags.
Music can also be written with letters, naming them as in the solfa "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do" or representing them by letters. The next table shows how each note of the solfa is represented in the Standard Notation:
The Standard Notation was made to simplify the lecture of music notes, although it is mostly used to represent chords and the names of the music scales.
These ways to represent music ease the way a person reads music. There are more ways to write and represent music, but they are less known and may be more complicated.
People can enjoy music by listening to it. They can go to concerts to hear musicians perform. Classical music is usually performed in concert halls, but sometimes huge festivals are organized in which it is performed outside, in a field or stadium, like pop festivals. People can listen to music on CD's, Computers, iPods, television, the radio, casette/record-players and even mobile phones.
There is so much music today, in elevators, shopping malls, and stores, that it often becomes a background sound that we do not really hear.
People can learn to play an instrument. Probably the most common for complete beginners is the piano or keyboard, the guitar, or the recorder (which is certainly the cheapest to buy). After they have learnt to play scales, play simple tunes and read the simplest musical notation, then they can think about which instrument for further development. They should choose an instrument that is practical for their size. For example, a very short child cannot play a full size double bass, because the double bass is over five feet high. People should choose an instrument that they enjoy playing, because playing regularly is the only way to get better. Finally, it helps to have a good teacher.
Anyone can make up his or her own pieces of music. It is not difficult to compose simple songs or melodies (tunes). It's easier for people who can play an instrument themselves. All it takes is experimenting with the sounds that an instrument makes. Someone can make up a piece that tells a story, or just find a nice tune and think about ways it can be changed each time it is repeated. The instrument might be someone's own voice.
The fact is, there are tons of instruments in the world.
Madrid (pronounced: “mah-DRID” or /məˈdrɪd/) is the capital and largest city of Spain. Madrid is in the middle of Spain, in the Community of Madrid. The Community is a large area that includes the city as well as small towns and villages outside the city. 7 million people live in the Community. More than 3 million live in the city itself. It is the largest city of Spain and, at 655 m (2,100 ft) above sea level, the second highest capital in Europe (after the Andorran capital Andorra la Vella). It is the third largest city in the European Union. As it is the capital city, Madrid is where the monarch lives and also where the government meets. Madrid is the financial centre of Spain. Many large businesses have their main offices there. It has four important footballs teams, Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, Getafe, and Rayo Vallecano. People who live in Madrid are called madrileños.
Madrid was ruled by the Romans from the 2nd century. After AD 711 it was occupied by the Moors. In 1083 Spain was ruled again by Spaniards. Catholic kings ruled the country. By the mid-16th century it had become the capital of a very large empire. Spain was ruled by monarchs from the House of Habsburg, then the House of Bourbon. After the Spanish Civil War it was ruled by a dictator until the mid-1970s when it became a democracy.
Although it is a modern city, a lot of its history can be seen and felt as one walks along the streets and in the large squares of the city. There are beautiful parks, famous buildings, art galleries and concert halls.
During the history of Spain many different people have lived there. The Phoenicians came in 1100 BC, followed by Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths and Moors. It was not until 1492, when the Catholic Monarchs got power, that Spain became a united country. Jews and Moors, who had lived happily there for many years, were driven away. Spain became very rich because it conquered many overseas countries, especially in Central and South America. However, Spain fought many wars and lost much of its treasure. It was very poor in 1936 when the Civil War was fought. General Franco became a harsh dictator until 1975 when Juan Carlos I was brought back to Spain and made king. There is now a democratic government.
In prehistoric times people lived in the area which is now Madrid. The Romans lived there for several centuries. The origin of today’s city really starts in the 9th century when Muhammad I had a small palace built where the Palacio Real stands today. The Moors built strong forts in Madrid in 865 and put a wall round the city. These walls stood until 1476 when they were knocked down. In 1561 Felipe I moved the royal court from Toledo to Madrid. Madrid had now become the capital of a very large empire. Over the next years and decades the Plaza Mayor was built and many great buildings and monuments, many of which still stand.
When Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile came to Madrid, Spain had become a very rich country. The 16th and 17th centuries are now known as the “Golden Century”. Their grandson was the famous Charles I of Spain (also known as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor). He liked his court to be in Seville. His son, Philip II (1527–1598) moved the court to Madrid in 1561.
In the late 1800s there was a revolt, known as the First Spanish Republic. Later the monarchy was restored, but then there was a Second Spanish Republic followed by the Spanish Civil War. The Second Spanish Republic started on 14 April 1931 and was celebrated in La puerta del Sol which is the center of the city. Madrid suffered a lot in this war. It was bombed by airplanes.
During the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, especially during the 1960s, south Madrid became very industrialized, and many people from the rural areas moved to Madrid especially to the south east of the city.
When General Franco died and democracy was restored, Madrid became more prosperous. During the 1980s and 1990s many new buildings were put up.
Madrid has been attacked many times by terrorists. This includes the bombing of a restaurant in 1985, killing 18 people and the of trains in 2004, killing over 190 people.
Madrid has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate ("Csa" in the Köppen climate classification). Most rain falls in autumn and spring. The winters are cool because it is high up, and occasionally it snows. The summers are hot and dry. Often the temperature is above 30 °C (86 °F) in July and can often reach 40 °C (104 °F). At night it is much cooler. This is why people have a sleep (siesta) in the afternoon when it is hot. Then they come out again in late afternoon and often eat dinner late at night.
Spain's Royal Palace is in Madrid. It is one of the largest palaces in all of Western Europe. But the king and his family do not live there anymore; they live in a smaller palace, and only use the Royal Palace for important events, like meeting other kings and other official ceremonies. One can go inside the Royal Palace and learn about the history of Spanish monarchy.
Other famous buildings are: The Prado Museum, the Temple of Debod, the Santiago Bernabeú Stadium and the Cuatro Torres Business Area.
There are a lot of very big and important art museums in Madrid. The most famous ones are the Prado Museum, the Queen Sofia Museum, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum. These show off paintings, sculptures, and other works of art from some of the most famous artists in the world.
Many famous, important, and valuable works of art are in these museums. For example, the Queen Sofia museum has a famous painting by Pablo Picasso, called "Guernica". Picasso painted this painting to show how sad and angry it made him when the German Nazis destroyed a town in Spain called Guernica in 1937. Picasso had said that the painting should never return to Spain until it was a democracy again. Once that happened, they built the Queen Sofia museum just to have a good place to put it.
There are many other sights to see in Madrid. Many people go to see the Plaza Mayor which was a market place. The Plaza de la Villa was another famous market place. There are a lot of shops along the Gran Via. Real Madrid football fans celebrate at the Plaza de Cibeles. Two famous gates to see are the Puerta del Sol and the Puerta de Alcalá. A more recent landmark is the Almudena Cathedral.
Madrid has some lovely parks. The Retiro Park is the most famous. The Cristal Palace can be found in this park.
The Plaza de Toros is visited by many tourists. Bullfights take place there.
Montreal (, spelled "Montréal" in French) is a city in the country of Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec and the second-largest city in Canada. It is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris.
Montreal is built on an island sitting in the Saint Lawrence River. More than three million people live in the Montreal region. At the centre of Montreal is a mountain called Mount Royal. The suburb of Westmount, is a very affluent suburb of Quebec.
Most of the people who live in Montreal speak French, but English is also commonly spoken, as a second language.
The name 'Montréal' comes from "Mont Royal", which means 'Royal Mountain' in French. It was originally called "Ville-Marie", or City of Mary.
Montreal has always played a very important part in the history and development of Canada. It continues to be a large Canadian industrial and commercial centre, as well as a major seaport (via the Saint Lawrence River). It once was the largest city in Canada, before Toronto grew to be larger.
Tourists visit Montreal for its historical and cultural interest. One can visit the Old City in horse-drawn carriages, where many buildings from the earliest years stand and remind of the way of life that started in the New World, when Montreal was just a fur trading outpost belonging to France over 350 years ago.
Montreal is in the southwest of Quebec, 530 kilometres north of New York City. The city itself is located on an island, the Island of Montreal. Near the downtown area, there is a hill called "Mount Royal" ("Mont Royal" in French).
Montreal's economy is the second largest in Canada. The city's port is the biggest inland port (a port that is not on the sea) in the world. Many large corporations have their main offices in Montreal. It also hosts many international organizations like ICAO, the World Anti-Doping Agency, and IATA. The city is home to four major Universities, welcoming students from all parts of Canada and from all over the world.
Montreal is also known for its cultural production sector. Because the city has many different buildings, movies are easy to film there. The circus troupe (group) "Cirque du Soleil" is from Montreal. The city is also known for its festivals, like the Montreal Jazz Festival and "Just For Laughs".
Some video game companies also have studios in Montreal.
Montreal is the cultural capital of Quebec and French-speaking Canada.
Montreal has many beautiful churches (Montreal is referred to locally as 'the city of a hundred churches'), including the largest church in Canada, and also many important art, history, and science museums. You can also visit the location of the 1967 World's Fair, where today, as well as many other attractions, one will find the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Formula One automobile race course. Also of interest is the site where the 1976 Summer Olympic Games were held, and the modern architecture of the Olympic stadium (the 'Big O') and its tall inclined observation tower (the highest inclined tower in the world); now a landmark of Montreal.
A lot of Montrealers are interested in hockey, and Montreal is home to its own ice hockey team called the Montreal Canadiens who play in the National Hockey League (NHL).
Montreal Stations
CBMT CBC
CFCF CTV Television Network
CIVM Tele-Quebec
CJNT CH
CFTU Canal Savoir
CKMI Global Television Network
Macadamia nut
The macadamia nut is the fruit of a tree that first came from the east coast of Australia. There is
more than one kind of Macadamia tree. Only one kind is grown for food.
The tree is an evergreen (stays green all year long). It grows up to high. It has groups of small white flowers. It grows best in subtropical (wet and always warm) climates. It needs well-drained soil (water can flow away easily) and of rain a year.
The nutmeat (the soft part inside the shell that can be eaten) is mostly a creamy white color. Sometimes it looks a bit yellow. It has a flavor that many people like. Macadamias are eaten roasted (cooked) by themselves. They are used in cookies, cakes, pastries, and candies. People use them like almonds and cashews as part of cooked meals. This is an Oriental style of cooking.
The first commercial orchard was started in Australia in the late 1880s. Commercial production started in Hawaii during the 1920s. Production later spread to California, Mexico, and other places with warm climate.
Macadamias are poisonous to dogs. A dog usually needs 24 to 48 hours to recover fully after eating macadamias.The plant is in the Proteaceae family of flowering plants.
Maui is the second largest of the Hawaiian Islands, in the United States.
It has a population of just over 100,000 and is 727 square miles (1883 km²) in size. Maui is part of Maui County, Hawaii. The larger (or better known) towns include Kahului, Wailuku, Lahaina, Hana, and Wailea. Main industries are agriculture and tourism.
Maui was named for the demi-god Maui. In Hawaiian legend, he raised all the islands from the sea. Maui is also known as the "Valley Isle" for the large fertile isthmus (narrow land connection) between two volcanoes.
Maui is a volcanic doublet: an island formed from two volcanic mountains that are joined together. The older volcano, Mauna Kahalawai, is much older and has been very worn down. In common talk it is called the West Maui Mountain. The larger volcano, Haleakala, rises above 10,000 feet (3,050 m). The last eruption of Haleakala happened over 200 years ago, and this lava flow can be seen between Ahihi Bay and La Perouse Bay on the southeast shore.
Other places on Maui popular with visitors include:
Golf courses on Maui include:
Molokai (sometimes mistakenly called Molokaʻi) is the fifth largest island in the U.S. Hawaiian Islands. The island is 38 miles long and 10 miles across. Its land area is 261 square miles. The highest mountain is named Kamakou, and it is 4,970 feet (1,514 meters) high.
Molokai has many local indigenous names including Molokai 'Aina Momona (land of abundance), Molokai Pule O'o (land of powerful prayer), and Molokai Nui A Hina (of the goddess Hina). It is one of the least developed of the Hawaiian islands.
The only big town is named Kaunakakai, which is also the main or chief port on the island. The airport is in Central Molokai. Also on the island is Kalaupapa, which is a place for people who have a diease called leprosy.
Molokai has many Hawaiian fish ponds along its south shore. Many of these have been cleaned and fixed.
Money, also sometimes called Currency, can be defined as anything that people use to buy goods and services. Money is what many people receive for selling their own things or services.
There are lots of different kinds of money in the world. Most countries have their own kind of money, such as the United States dollar or the British pound.
money is also called many other names, like currency or cash.
The idea of bartering things is very old. A long time ago, people did not buy or sell with money. Instead, they traded one thing for another to get what they wanted or needed. One person who owned many cows could trade with another person who had a lot of wheat. Each would trade a little of what he had with the other. This would support the people on his farm. Other things that were easier to carry around than cows also came to be held as valuable. This gave rise to trade items such as jewelry and spices.
When people changed from trading in things like, for example, cows and wheat to using money instead, they needed things that would last a long time. They must still have a known value, and could be carried around. The first country in the world to make metal coins was called Lydia. These first appeared during the 7th century BC, in the western part of what is now Turkey. The Lydian coins were made of a weighed amount of precious metal and were stamped with a picture of a lion. This idea soon spread to Greece, the rest of the Mediterranean, and the rest of the world. Coins were all made to the same size and shape. In some parts of the world, different things have been used as money, like clam shells or blocks of salt.
Besides being easier to carry than cows, using money had many other advantages. Money is "easier to divide" than many trade goods. If someone own cows, and wants to trade for only "half a cow's worth" of wheat, he probably does not want to cut his cow in half. But if he sells his cow for money, and buys wheat with money, he can get exactly the amount he wants.
Cows die, and wheat rots. But money "lasts longer" than most trade goods. If someone sells a cow for money, he can save that money away until he needs it. He can always leave it to his children when he dies. It can last a very long time, and he can use it at any time.
Not every cow is as good as another cow. Some cows are sick and old, and others are healthy and young. Some wheat is good and other wheat is moldy or stale. So if a person trades cows for wheat, he might have a hard time arguing over how much wheat each cow is worth. However, money is "standard". That means one dollar is worth the same as another dollar. It is easier to add up and count money, than to add up the value of different cows or amounts of wheat.
Later, after coins had been used for hundreds of years, paper money started out as a promise to pay in coin, much like an "I.O.U." note. The first true paper money was used in China in the 10th century AD. Paper money was also printed in Sweden between 1660 and 1664. Both times, it did not work well, and had to be stopped because the banks kept running out of coins to pay on the notes. Massachusetts Bay Colony printed paper money in the 1690s. This time, the use became more common.
Today, most of what people think of as money is not even things you can hold. It is numbers in bank accounts, saved in computer memories. Many people still feel more comfortable using coins and paper, and do not totally trust using electronic money on a computer memory.
Many types of money have been used at different times in history. These are:
"Commodity money" can be used for other purposes besides serving as a medium of exchange. We say it possesses intrinsic value, because it is useful or valuable by itself. Some examples of commodity money are cattle, silk, gold and silver. Convertible paper money is money that is convertible into gold and silver. Gold and Silver certificates are convertible paper money as they can be fully convertible into gold and silver.
Inconvertible money is money that cannot be converted into gold and silver. Notes and coins are inconvertible money. They are inconvertible and are declared by the government money. Such fiat money is a country's legal tender. Today, notes and coins are the currencies used in bank deposits.
Types of bank deposits:
Multiplication is an arithmetic operation for finding the "product" of two numbers in mathematics. It is often represented by symbols such as formula_1 and formula_2. Multiplication is the third operation in math, after addition which is the first, and subtraction which is the second. It can also be defined on non-number mathematical objects as well.
With natural numbers, multiplication gives the number of tiles in a rectangle, where one of the two numbers equals the number of tiles on one side, and the other number equals the number of tiles on the other side.
With real numbers, multiplication gives the area of a rectangle where the first number is the same as the size of one side, and the second number is the same as the size of the other side.
For example, three multiplied by five is the total of five threes added together, or the total of three fives. This can be written as 3 × 5 = 15, or spoken as "three times five equals fifteen." Mathematicians refer to the two numbers to be multiplied as "coefficients", or ""multiplicand"" and ""multiplicator"" separately (where Multiplicand × multiplicator = product).
Multiplication between numbers is said to be commutative—when the order of the numbers does not influence the value of the product. This is true for the integers (whole numbers), e.g. 4 × 6 is the same as 6 × 4, and also for the rational numbers (fractions), and for all the other real numbers (representable as a field in the continuous line), and also for complex numbers (numbers representable as a field in the plane). However, it is not true for quaternions (numbers representable as a ring in the four-dimensional space), vectors or matrices.
The definition of multiplication as repeated addition provides a way to arrive at a set-theoretic interpretation of multiplication of cardinal numbers. A more accurate representation is to think of it as scaling quantities. This animation illustrates 3 being multiplied by 2, giving 6 as a result. Notice that the blue dot in the blue segment of length 3 is placed at position 1, and the blue segment is scaled so that this dot is placed at the end of the red segment (of length 2). For multiplication by any X, the blue dot will always start at 1 and end at X. This works even if X is smaller than 1, or negative.
The opposite of multiplication is division.
Teachers usually require their pupils to memorize the table of the first 9 numbers when teaching multiplication, so that more complex multiplication tasks can be performed.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is a company that makes computer software and video games for users around the world. Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded the company in 1975. Microsoft makes Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office (including Microsoft Word), Edge, MSN and Xbox, among others. Most Microsoft programs cannot be downloaded for free - people have to buy them in a shop or online. Some products (like the Windows operating system) are often already installed when people buy a new computer.
Although Microsoft is best known for its software products, the company also runs a number of web services. They include:
Microsoft has also made a wide variety of hardware over the years. Among them are computer accessories like mice, keyboards, and webcams.
The company also makes and promotes a video game console, Xbox. It lets people play video games on their televisions. The games were first stored on CDs, but many recent games are downloaded from the Internet. There have been three generations of Xbox. The first generation came out in 2001 and was just called Xbox, while the second, the Xbox 360, was released in 2005. The third and newest model is the Xbox One in May 2013. Beginning with the Xbox 360, Microsoft introduced Xbox Live, which lets people play games online against other people anywhere in the world. The Xbox has become very popular and more than 100 million units have been sold worldwide. Because of this, Microsoft is considered one of the three big companies that make video game consoles, along with Nintendo and Sony.
Most recently, Microsoft has also started to make its own PCs, called the Surface. The first model was announced in 2012 and the Surface line now includes tablets that use either ARM or Intel processors, two models of laptops called the Surface Book and Surface Laptop, an all-in-one PC called the Surface Studio, and an interactive whiteboard, the Surface Hub.
In 2014, Microsoft bought the mobile phone division of Nokia, a Finnish company, which then became Microsoft Mobile. The sale included the Lumia family of smartphones, which use Microsoft's own Windows Phone platform. From 2014 to 2016, Microsoft Mobile also made feature phones with the Nokia brand. Then the feature phone business was sold to HMD global, which continues to produce both feature phones and Android smartphones under license from Nokia.
Islamic world
The Islamic World consists of all people who are in Islam. It is not an exact location, but rather a community. When they do things together as Muslims, they are the "umma", which means "community" referring to all of the believers. The faith emphasizes unity and defense of fellow Muslims, so it is common for these nations to cooperate. Recent conflicts in the Muslim World have sometimes spread because of this desire to cooperate (see below). It is also likely that some have been made shorter and less damaging because of it. Some might even have never started.
Muslims are in many countries. In 52 nations, Muslims are the majority. Almost all are Sunni. They speak about 60 languages and come from all ethnic backgrounds.
The "Al-Jazeera" satellite TV network in the Arabic language is a news source many Muslims watch.
In most Muslim nations, the government is the main source of news. This sometimes makes it very difficult or dangerous to make anti-government statements.
There are, however, many other news programmes and websites in the Muslim world.
Islamic law exists in many variations - in Arabic it is called shariah - five schools of which were created centuries ago. These are the classical fiqh: the Hanafi school from India, Pakistan and Bangaladesh, West Africa, Egypt, the Maliki in North Africa and West Africa, the Shafi in Malaysia and Indonesia, the Hanbali in Arabia, and Jaferi in Iran and Iraq - where the majority is Shia. All five are very old and many Muslims feel a new fiqh must be created for modern society. Islam has a method for doing this, al-urf and ijtihad are the words to describe this method, but they have not been used in a long time, and few people are trusted enough to use them to make new laws.
So, in most of the Muslim world, people are very conservative, especially about alcohol, adultery, abortion and women working in jobs where they are used to lure customers.
Muslim women often dress extremely modestly, and many do so by choice. But in some countries they have been forced to do so against their will. This is one of the things that causes tension between the Western World and that of Muslims.
Islamic economics bans debt but in most Muslim countries Western banking is allowed. This is another issue that many Muslims have with the Western world.
One quarter of the world population share Islam as an ethical tradition.
Many people in these countries also see Islam as a political movement. In democratic countries there is usually at least one Islamic party.
Political Islam is powerful in all Muslim-majority countries. Islamic parties in Pakistan and Algeria have taken power.
Many in these movements call themselves Islamists, which also sometimes describes more militant Islamic groups. The relationships between these groups and their views of democracy are complex.
Some of these groups are called terrorists because they attack civilians of other non-Muslim nations, to make a political point.
Israel is very unpopular in the Muslim world, because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the way that the state of Israel came into being in 1948 which many Arabs thought was unfair.
Some Muslims see this as a fight against Judaism or Jews, but not all. In Morocco for instance, the Islamists recently invited Jews to join the party. Jewish groups also cooperate with Arabs in the West Bank, where Neturei Karta (anti-Zionist orthodox Jewish) leader Rabbi Mosche Hirsch served as the Minister for Jewish Affairs in the Fatah before there was a Palestinian Authority. Like the Arabs, this small group of Jews thought the way Israel was created was not right. However, very few Jews believe this, and most support Israel as a state.
In 1979 there was a big shift in the way the Muslim world dealt with the rest of the world. In that year, Egypt made peace with Israel, Iran became an Islamic state after a revolution, and there was an invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. A lot of things changed in that year. By 2001 the Soviet Union was gone, Jordan had also made peace with Israel, and on September 11, 2001 there were major attacks on the U.S. - which most people believe were made to drive the United States out of the Muslim world, especially Saudi Arabia. In many ways the events of 1979 led to the events of 2001.
The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq are called part of a War on Terrorism by the United States. Many or most Muslims see it as a War on Islam. After the invasion, the Islamic parties won more seats, and a majority of Muslims polled in many nations expressed support for Osama bin Laden and said he would "do the right thing". Olivier Roy is a French scholar who thinks that this does not express support for al-Qaeda or militant Islam but opposing colonialism and what many Muslims call racism - favourable treatment for Jews especially those living in West Bank settlements, many of whom have American or British passport, and which the United Nations says have no right to live there.
The situation is very complicated and there are many different views of it.
The Organization of Islamic Conference formed in 1969 lets the Muslim nations work as a group. Russia joined in 2003.
The Arab League is a smaller group of only the Arab countries.
OPEC is another forum where issues between the Muslim and non-Muslim world come up. In 1973 to protest U.S. support for Israel there was an oil embargo which caused the 1973 energy crisis.
A multiverse is the theory of a conjectured set of multiple possible universes, including ours, which make up reality. These universes are sometimes called parallel universes. A number of different versions have been considered.
The term "multiverse" was coined in 1895 by psychologist William James as a philosophical concept.
The cosmological multiverse tries to explain why the universe we observe i.e. <nowiki>"our universe"</nowiki> seems so welcoming to the emergence of life. Even small changes to the way physics works would make life impossible. In a multiverse a vast number of universes are randomly created and some happen to favour life emerging there. Many inhospitable universes would also have been created, but there would be no life there to observe their existence.
The quantum multiverse is another version in which our universe splits into alternative futures with every quantum event. This is called many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Mechanistic paradigm
The mechanistic paradigm, also known as the Newtonian paradigm, assumes that things in the environment around humans are more like machines than like life. It was more common in the 19th century. This is a set of loosely related beliefs that affects all sciences:
Believers in this paradigm sometimes say that those who do not believe in it are following a cognitive paradigm - but almost no one uses this term, since it is redundant - cognitive science is already accepted as the most basic idea in the philosophy of science. But mechanists reject some of the ideas of cognitive scientists, like cognitive science of mathematics.
Mechanistic thinking also assumes that philosophy of perception is much less important than cognitive scientists say it is - that humans and their beliefs and equipment do not generally add a lot of bias to a scientific theory. Thomas Kuhn said otherwise, that these things matter, and that the major assumptions of science, can shift drastically. This he called a paradigm shift. The shift from mechanistic to cognitive paradigm is an example of this.
Later he used other words to describe the assumptions and beliefs, like mind-set, but the word "paradigm" is still used. Some say it is much over-used.
Economics is often said to "suffer from" assumptions of the mechanistic paradigm. Sometimes those who believe in neoclassical economics and also in the mechanistic paradigm say they "seek to unify physics and economics," as if people and particles behaved as two examples of the same kind of thing.
Technology is often easier to make if people accept a mechanistic paradigm - but it may be harder to say why it does not work, if one believes in these ideas. For instance, creating diagnostic trees might be easier if one works from experience, not from an idea of how a technology should or must work.
A controversial idea is that mechanistic ideas are just an older idea called scholasticism, with more mathematics. Both tried to work from what should or must be, instead of what experiment seemed to show.
Another controversial idea is that scientism, belief in science as if it were a religion or ethical tradition, comes from this paradigm. Most scientists who are mechanistic do not say they see science as a guide to ethics, but try to keep them separate.
MediaWiki is the name of the software that runs all of the Wikimedia projects. MediaWiki was released in 2003. It is free server-based software which is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The software is licensed under the GPL. This means it is free content, or open source.
MediaWiki is designed to be run on a large web server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. MediaWiki is a very powerful, scalable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation, that uses PHP to process and display data stored in its MySQL database. Pages use MediaWiki's Wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily.
When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the filesystem. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid proxy server software.
All Wikimedia projects run on MediaWiki version .
Because MediaWiki is flexible, many websites that want people to contribute information use MediaWiki rather than other types of wiki software. Those operated by Wikia are among them.
There are also some websites that use MediaWiki as a content management system.
In MediaWiki, a system administrator can choose to install extensions which are provided on the main MediaWiki website. Some are from the MediaWiki developers, while others are from programmers from all around the world.
Most extensions can be download from Wikimedia's Subversion repository. However, there are some other extensions that other people host themselves.
Some extensions had been added to the main software along the development of MediaWiki. For example, the extension is an extension to promote a user into an administrator or a bureaucrat.
There were a total of 2124 extensions as of October 4, 2013.
In the default installation of MediaWiki, the software has 17 namespaces(18 actually, but one does not have a namespace), namely:
Additional namespaces can be added using the from the installation of MediaWiki.
As MediaWiki is a complex software, there would always be bugs in the software, especially for new extensions. Therefore, Wikimedia has created a bugzilla website for people who see a bug to tell the developers of MediaWiki.
Some extensions of MediaWiki use the , while some just use the talk pages of the extension page.
Users can customize MediaWiki for different appearance. They may use one of the several "skins". At different times different skins have been default. For example, Wikipedia once used Monobook before adopting the new Vector skin in version 1.16.
A survey done by Wikimedia showed that more people prefer the Vector skin.
"More information about the software:"
First language
A first language (also mother tongue, native language, arterial language, or L1) often means the language that a person learns first. It helps one understand words and concepts in the style of that language.
Sometimes, "first language" means the language that a person speaks best (the second language is then spoken less well than the first language, etc.). Since "first language", "second language" and "third language" then mean how well one speaks a language, a person can have more than one first language or second language.
The hair that grows on the upper lip of some men is called a mustache. The hair that grows on the sides of the face and the chin of some men is called a beard. Some men have a lot of hair and a big mustache, and some have very little. In the modern world, many men shave part or all of their mustaches, or cut their mustache so it does not get very long. A chin beard with no mustache is called a goatee, whilst a chin beard with a mustache is known as a Van Dyke.
Mustache in United Kingdom and Commonwealth of Nations is spelled moustache.
Some animals such as walruses also have hair like this, and people sometimes also call this hair a mustache.
Mile
A mile is a unit of length. There are many different kinds of mile but "mile" on its own usually means the "statute" mile.
In the US and the UK the word "mile" usually means the statute mile.
The nautical mile is used for sea or air travel.
The nautical mile was originally defined as one minute of arc along a line of longitude of the Earth. There are 60 minutes of arc in one degree or arc (60' = 1°). So there were 10,800 nautical miles from the North Pole to the South Pole.
Now the nautical mile is defined as 1,852 metres.
The speed of a ship that travels one nautical mile in one hour is called one knot
The mile was first used by the Romans. It comes from the Latin phrase "mille passus" (plural: "milia passuum"). This means "one thousand paces". A pace is the distance each foot moves when taking one step.
Different miles have been used throughout history in various parts of the world. In Norway and Sweden, for example, a mil is a unit of length which is equal to 10 kilometres.
Even in English-speaking countries that use the metric system (for example, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand), the mile is still used in many idioms. These include:
Margarine is an artificial butter. It can be made from vegetable oil, or animal fat. It may also contain skimmed milk, salt and emulsifiers. Margarine is used in many baked products. It contains less fat than butter, so is often chosen instead of it. There are also "low fat" margarines, which contain even less fat. However, many types of margarine contain trans fats, which are unhealthy and can cause heart disease and also contain unstable Omega-6 levels. Other fats, like olive oil, and butter, are a better choice for cooking.
The Milky Way is our home galaxy. It contains over 200 billion stars, including our Sun.
The Milky Way has a diameter of about 170,000 or 200,000 light years, and is a barred spiral galaxy. The idea that the Milky Way is made of stars goes back to the Ancient Greek philosopher Democritus.
The Milky Way has three main parts: a "disk", where the Solar System is, a "bulge" at the core, and an outer "halo" all around it. Although the word "disk" suggests it is flat, the Milky Way is actually not quite flat. It is slightly warped and twisted.
This galaxy belongs to the Local Group of three large galaxies and over 50 smaller galaxies. The Milky Way is one of the largest galaxies in the group, second to the Andromeda Galaxy. Its closest neighbour is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, which is about 25,000 light years away from the Earth. The Andromeda Galaxy is moving towards the Milky Way Galaxy, and will collide with it in about 3.75 billion years. The Andromeda Galaxy moves with a speed of about 1,800 kilometres per minute.
The stellar disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is about 200,000 light-years (9×10 km) in diameter, and is considered to be, on average, about 1000 light years thick.
It is estimated to contain at least 100 billion stars, and possibly up to 400 billion stars. The figure depends on the number of very low-mass, or dwarf stars, which are hard to detect, especially more than 300 light years from our sun. Therefore, present estimates of the total number are uncertain. This can be compared to the one trillion (10) stars of the neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy.
The stellar disc of the Milky Way does not have a sharp edge, a radius beyond which there are no stars. Rather, the number of stars drops smoothly with distance from the centre of the Galaxy. Beyond a radius of about 40,000 light years, the number of stars drops much faster, for reasons that are not understood.
Extending beyond the stellar disk is a much thicker disk of gas. Recent observations indicate that the gaseous disk of the Milky Way has a thickness of around 12000 light years–twice the previously accepted value. As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if the Solar System out to the orbit of Pluto were reduced to the size of a US quarter (about an inch or 25 mm in diameter), the Milky Way would have a diameter of 2,000 kilometers. At 220 kilometers per second it takes the Solar System about 240 million years to complete one orbit of the Galaxy (a galactic year).
The Galactic halo extends outward, but is limited in size by the orbits of two Milky Way satellites, the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds, whose closest approach is at about 180,000 light years. At this distance or beyond, the orbits of most halo objects would be disrupted by the Magellanic Clouds, and the objects would likely be ejected from the vicinity of the Milky Way.
The galactic disc, which bulges outward at the galactic center, has a diameter of 170–200,000 light years.
The exact distance from the Sun to the galactic center is debated. The latest estimates give distances to the Galactic center of 25–28,000 light years.
Movement of material around the galactic center shows that it has a compact object of very large mass. The intense radio source named Sagittarius A*, thought to mark the center of the Milky Way, is now confirmed to be a supermassive black hole. Most galaxies are believed to have a supermassive black hole at their center.
The nature of the galaxy's bar is also actively debated, with estimates for its half-length and orientation spanning from 3,300–16,000 light years (short or a long bar) and 10–50 degrees. Viewed from the Andromeda Galaxy, it would be the brightest feature of our own galaxy.
In Greek mythology, Zeus places his son (the baby Heracles) whose mother was a mortal woman on Hera's breast while she is sleeping so that the baby will drink her divine milk and become immortal. However, Hera wakes up while she is breastfeeding the baby and realizes she is nursing a baby she does not know. According to Greek mythology, she then pushes the baby away and a stream of her milk sprays the night sky, making a faint band of light known as the Milky Way.
Movement, or motion, is the state of changing something's position—that is, changing where something is. A flying bird or a walking person are moving, because they change where they are from one place to another. There are many kinds of science and math related to movement.
Thanks to the work of scientists including Galileo Galilei and Issac Newton, we know that "position" and motion are relative. This means that an object's position depends on where it exists in relation to other objects. For example, a ball can be 5 feet away from a box, 3 feet away from a chair, and a foot away from a table. Here, the box, chair and the table helped me to decide the position of the ball. In other words, they acted as the reference points for my observation. By telling you how far the ball was from other objects, I told you its relative position.
Similarly, an object's "motion" is also relative. It depends on how its position changes in relation to other objects. Let us understand this with an example:
Suppose you are sitting inside a train. The train has not started moving yet. Let us call this Train A. You look out from the window and see another train moving in the opposite direction. Let us call this Train B. Now, when you look at Train B, it appears as if Train A is moving in the forward direction. But when you look at a nearby electric pole, you notice that train A was actually at rest and Train B was moving backwards.
From this, we conclude that we cannot decide whether a body is moving or at rest, unless we choose a frame of reference. In the above example, when we chose Train B as our frame of reference, Train A appeared to be moving forward. On the other hand, when we chose the electric pole as frame of reference, Train A appeared to be at rest and Train B appeared to move backward.
The study of motion, without considering its cause is called kinematics. In kinematics, we come across terms like speed, velocity, and acceleration. Dynamics is the branch of physics concerned with the study of causes and effects of motion. In dynamics we come across terms like force, inertia, work, energy and momentum.
Metaphor is a term for a figure of speech. It does not use a word in its basic literal sense. Instead, it uses a word in a kind of comparison. We run, and we also say rivers run. We may run into trouble, especially if we run up a bill at the bar.
So a metaphor uses words to make a picture in our mind. It takes a word from its original context, and uses it in another.
Metaphors are an essential part of language: it is not possible to speak or write without them. A simple example is the word "run". This has a basic meaning of "moving quickly" or "go with quick steps on alternate feet, never having both feet on the ground at the same time". The "Concise Oxford Dictionary" then gives
34 other uses as a verb; 21 uses as a noun; about 50 uses in short phrases. All of these are metaphors, although we do not usually notice this.
We use metaphors to make "indirect" comparisons, but without using 'like' or 'as' – because that would be a simile. A simile is a "direct" comparison: "Jane is like a child".
A metaphor very often uses the verb 'to be': "love "is" war", for example, not "love "is like" war" (that is a simile).
Poetry includes much metaphor, usually more than prose.
Spam is an example that any email user knows about – this word was originally a metaphor, from 'Spam', a type of canned meat. Servers putting unwanted email into somebody's inbox was similar to waiters putting unwanted Spam into food. This was originally suggested by a Monty Python scene. When we use a metaphor very often and we forget the old meaning, or forget that the two meanings are connected, this is a 'dead metaphor'.