ejaasaari/simplewiki-2025-04-01 huggingface dataset:
The Japanese tea ceremony (called cha-no-yu, chado, or sado) is a special way of making green tea (matcha 抹茶). It is called the Way of Tea. It is a Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of matcha, powdered tea. People who study the tea ceremony have to learn about different kinds of tea. They also have to learn about kimono (Japanese clothes), flowers, and many other things. It takes much practice to learn the tea ceremony.  History. Tea came to Japan from China in about 900 CE. Tea became very popular in Japan, and Japanese people started to grow tea in Japan. In the 12th century, "matcha" (green tea powder), became popular. This tea comes from the same plant as black tea.  By the 16th century, all people in Japan, rich people and poor people, liked drinking tea. A man called Sen no Rikyu started teaching the ceremony. Many years have passed, but people still make tea the same way that Sen no Rikyu taught. Many schools of Japanese tea ceremony exist now (omote-senke, ura-senke, etc.), and each school teaches in a slightly different way. Materials needed. People need many different things for a tea ceremony: Tea ceremony. People do the tea ceremony in a special tea room or a special building called a "cha-shitsu". Most people wear kimonos. When people go into the tea room they take off their shoes and sit on special floor mat called a tatami. Cha-shitsu often are very small. The guests (the people who go to the tea ceremony) sometimes eat food and drink special Japanese wine called sake. Before they drink the matcha (green tea) they eat something sweet.  The host (the person who does the tea ceremony) symbolically purifies the tea bowl and the other tea things. Then he or she puts some green tea powder into the tea bowl. The host mixes the tea with hot water. He or she mixes it with a whisk. The guests drink tea from the bowl. When everyone has finished drinking tea, the host cleans everything and puts them away. Then the guests leave. A tea ceremony can take from about twenty minutes to about four hours.
A movie or film is a type of visual art that uses images and sounds to tell stories or teach people something. Most people watch movies to entertain themselves or to have fun. Movies can vary significantly in emotional tone both overall as a specific genre type but also within a single work. Some of the most typical approaches are to make people laugh (comedy), make them cry (tragedy or drama), or make them feel afraid (horror). However, there are also movies that combine genres, like horror-comedy.  Overview. Most movies are made so that they can be watched at home or on a movie screen at movie theaters. Movies are shown in movie theaters a few weeks or months after or before the movie is released. Movies can be marketed using media. Movies are shown on paid television or cable television or are sold or rented on DVD disks or videocassette tapes so that people can watch the movies at home. Movies can also be downloaded or streamed. Some movies are shown on television broadcasting stations. Movies are filmed with movie cameras or video cameras. Movie cameras take pictures very quickly, usually 24 or 25 pictures or frames every second. When a movie projector, a computer, or a television shows the pictures at 24 frames a second, it looks like the things shown in the set of pictures are moving. Sound is usually recorded at the same time as the pictures are, but sometimes, they are added later. The sounds in a movie are usually people talking, the soundtrack, and sound effects. In the 20th century, the camera used photographic film. Making movies. Most movies start to be made when a screenwriter writes a script, which is the story of the movie with dialogue and words and things that the actors will say and do. A producer hires people to work on the movie and gets the money that will be used to pay for the actors, or actresses, and the equipment. Producers usually get the money by borrowing it from a bank or by asking investors to give money to them. Some producers work for a movie studio, but other producers work by themselves. Actors, or actresses, and directors read scripts to learn what to say and what to do. The actors learn the
Holland is the name of a region in the western part of the Netherlands. Holland was a county of the Holy Roman Empire and later the leading province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (1581–1795). Today, there is no country called "Holland". There are two provinces called "Holland" in the Netherlands: North Holland () and South Holland (). Those provinces were created in 1840. The earlier country and province of Holland used to be bigger, but some parts of that province were given to other provinces during the French occupation (1795-1813). For example, Willemstad became part of North Brabant, the islands of Vlieland and Terschelling were given to Friesland, and the island of Urk to Overijssel. But for a short time during that period (1806–1810), there "was" a country called "Holland", the Kingdom of Holland, which was in the central and northern Netherlands and East Friesland in Germany. Many people use the name "Holland" to refer to all of the Netherlands, including the other ten provinces. That is not correct and is like calling the United Kingdom, "England" or "Great Britain". Some Dutch people who live outside "Holland" find it unacceptable to refer to the entire country Holland. But acceptable when you refer "Holland" to the Netherlands national team.
The atoms of a chemical element can exist in different types that have very similar behavior, but weigh different amounts. These are called isotopes of the element. Atoms of the same element have the same number of protons, but different isotopes have different numbers of neutrons. Different isotopes of the same element have different masses because they have a different number of neutrons. Mass is the word for how much substance (or matter) something has. Things with different masses also have different weights.  Some isotopes are not stable so they change to another isotope or element by radioactive decay. These are called radioactive isotopes. The ones that are not so radioactive are called stable isotopes.  Atoms of the same element have the same number of protons, which is called the atomic number. Different isotopes of an element have different numbers of neutrons. As a result, they also have different mass numbers, which is the number of protons plus the number of neutrons. An isotope is usually named by giving the element and the mass number. For example, the symbol for carbon is C and all carbon atoms have 6 protons. The most common isotope of carbon also has 6 neutrons, giving a mass number of 12, and it is written carbon-12 or 12C. The isotope of carbon that has 8 neutrons is written carbon-14 or 14C. The word "isotope", meaning "at the same place", comes from the fact that isotopes of the same element are at the same place on the periodic table. Chemical properties. In any neutral atom, the number of electrons is the same as the number of protons. As a result, isotopes of the same element also have the same number of electrons and the same electronic structure. The way an atom acts is decided by its electronic structure, so isotopes of the same element have almost the same chemical behavior, such as the molecules it can form. It is very difficult to separate the isotopes of an element from a mixture of different isotopes because of how similar this behavior is. Heavier isotopes react chemically more slowly than lighter isotopes of the same element. This
In the past, many rulers in south and southeast Asia had people crushed by elephants as a death penalty. This was common for more than 4000 years. The Romans and Carthaginians also sometimes did this. The elephant would step upon the head of the condemned, the one commanded to die. Usually, handlers trained the elephant to put its large foot gently on the person's head. At this point, witnesses looked under the elephant's foot to make sure the prisoner was the one who committed the crime. Often, the condemned would scream and beg the witnesses to say it was not him. If a witness stated this was not the criminal, they would probably commit perjury. In those days rulers could punish perjury with death. Few witnesses denied the condemned was the criminal, because then the elephant may crush them instead. Then the mahout, or elephant driver, gave the order, and the elephant would push down with its weight. The skull broke and the foot crushed the head flat. Sometimes, the elephant would drag the condemned through streets before the crushing. Some elephants crushed the arms and legs first, to increase the pain. Locations. Most rajahs, Indian rulers, kept elephants for death by crushing. The public could often see the deaths. This was the rulers' warning not to commit a crime. Many of the elephants were very large, weighing more than nine tons. Rulers wanted crushing by elephant to be bloody and gross. Some rulers in history condemned children.  One nonreligious Mogul Emperor, Akbar (1547-1605), used his favorite elephant as a judge. Akbar ruled in the city of Agra from 1570-1585. He believed that his favorite elephant could know who was guilty. He put thousands of people to death this way. Even when the crimes were minor, he sent them to the elephant. Elephant handlers staked them before the great elephant and tried to convince it to step on them. The huge elephant crushed most, but sometimes refused. Akbar believed this proved their innocence and then released them.  Different regions crushed people by elephant in different ways. One region put people inside of a bag, so they would not have to watch what was about to
A Power network is a type of contact network where its members can tell other people what to do. It must be large enough to literally scare or force people to go along with its requests, which makes them orders. This typically requires thousands of people in constant touch with each other. A political party is the most obvious example. It is typically much larger than a social network but is not one, since people can only call on each other for a small number of reasons, and perhaps at specific times. Also not every member of the network has the same role or right to help. A corporation may also be a power network if it relies on many power relations to maintain itself - for instance, the right to draw oil from the ground or dump waste without being held responsible for it. When a power network achieves some stable grasp of political power and daily working control of some important infrastructure, it becomes a power structure. In a democracy the visible power networks represented by the parties compete regularly in an election - but much of the power structure, typically the bureaucracy, does not change, and is typically ignored as a power network in itself.
Citizenship is a legal relationship between a person and a country. Usually the country is the one they were born in, lives in, supports, and in return gets protection. A person is usually a citizen of the country where he or she is born, but sometimes a person will apply for naturalization, to become a citizen in another country. There are countries which allow dual (two) citizenship, and countries which do not. Definitions. A citizen is a member of a sovereign group of people that have certain rights. Governments protect these rights or take advantage of them. Some Governments may exile people from citizenship laws on such matter vary between countries. Citizenship in Canada. People born in Canada become citizens of the country by "Jus soli" even if their parents are not citizens. In 2018 the New York Times reported that 20% of babies born in Richmond Hospital in Richmond, British Columbia, were born to mothers involved in birth tourism. This means that the babies automatically acquire Canadian citizenship.
Elephants are the largest living land animals. They have long noses called trunks and large flapping ears. They are the biggest living land mammals. The largest elephant recorded was shot in Angola, 1974. It weighed and stood tall.  At birth, an elephant calf may be as big as 100 kg (225 pounds). The baby elephant develops for 20 to 22 months inside its mother. No other land animal takes this long to develop before being born. In the wild, elephants have strong family relationship. Their ways of acting toward other elephants are hard for people to understand. They "talk" to each other with very low sounds. Most elephants sounds are so low, people cannot hear them. But elephants can hear these sounds far away. Elephants have strong, leathery skin to protect themselves. Physical description. There are two living genera of elephants. These are the African "Loxodonta africanus", and the Asian elephants "Elephas maximus". Trunk. The trunk is a very long nose, made from the upper lip. An elephant uses its trunk to grab objects such as food. Though the rest of an elephant's skin is strong and thick, its trunk is very soft and sensitive. Elephants avoid Acacia trees with ants because they can bite the inside of an elephant's trunk. The trunk is also used when it trumpets. The elephant usually stands still, raises its trunk, and blows. This is a signal to other elephants and animals. Teeth. Elephants have teeth and tusks. Tusks are large teeth coming out of their upper jaws. A lot of ivory comes from elephant tusks. Ivory traders killed many elephants, and hunting elephants is illegal. In total, elephants have 24 teeth: 12 front teeth, called premolars, and 12 back teeth, called molars. When the last molar falls out, the elephant dies because it cannot eat. They can live for about 70 years. But in a zoo or circus, people can keep elephants alive by feeding them soft food. Grass wears down their teeth because it has a high concentration of silica and is very abrasive. Elephants use their teeth in sequence, not all at once.
Buddhism originated in the Indian Subcontinent, mainly in the North Indian Plain, based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, later known as Gautama Buddha. A Buddha is one who is said to be awake to the truth of life.  Over the centuries, his teachings spread to Nepal, Central Asia, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, and now Europe and North and South America. At least two major branches of practice and theory exist: Theravada Buddhism is most common in South East Asia; Mahayana further north. Buddhism exists in many different strands today, but all schools and sects share basic ideas. About seven percent of the people of the world are Buddhist.  While many people see Buddhism as a religion, others see it as a philosophy, and others as a way of finding reality. Background and Buddhist concepts. Siddhartha Gautama (563483 BC) began life as the infant prince of a small kingdom in Lumbini, now in the southern part of Nepal. As an adult he left wealth and status behind to search for truth. Enlightened at the age of 35, the Buddha spent the next 45 years of his life traveling and teaching in the northern part of India. He died at the age of 80. The Buddha focused much of his teaching on how to overcome suffering. He saw that all living things suffer in being born, in getting sick, in growing old, and in facing death. By overcoming suffering, he taught, a person will be truly happy.  Early teaching. His first lesson after becoming enlightened was to other seekers who had also renounced the world. This was a group of holy men or monks with whom the Buddha had studied for five or more years. To them he first presented what he saw as the Four Noble Truths of life and the Eightfold Noble Path (see below). These teachings identify the causes of suffering and their cure. Three marks of existence. The Buddha taught that life is best understood as being "impermanent" (everything changes), "unsatisfactory" (left on our own we are never truly happy), and "interdependent" (all things are linked,
Governor General is a representative of a head of state. The term is mostly used in Commonwealth realm countries, where the governor general is a representative of the British monarch, who is the head of state of the Commonwealth realm countries. Sometimes the title is spelled as "Governor General", which is used in Canada, but sometimes it is spelled with a hyphen "-", "Governor-General", which is the spelling used in Australia.
A black hole is a region of space-time from which nothing, not even light, can escape. According to the general theory of relativity, it starts existing when spacetime gets curved by a huge mass. There is a sphere around the black hole. If something goes inside the sphere, it cannot leave. This sphere is called the event horizon. A black hole is black because it absorbs all the light that hits it. It reflects nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics. Under quantum mechanics, black holes have a temperature and emit Hawking radiation, which makes them slowly get smaller. Because black holes are very hard to see, people find them by the way they affect other things near them. The place where there is a black hole can be found by tracking the movement of stars that orbit somewhere in space. Or people can find it when gas falls into a black hole, because the gas heats up and is very bright. This can be found by telescopes on Earth or by Earth-orbiting telescopes such as Chandra or XMM Newton. Inside a black hole the rules of physics are very different. Astronomers have found evidence of supermassive black holes at the center of almost all galaxies. In 2008 astronomers found evidence that a supermassive black hole of more than four million solar masses is near the Sagittarius A* part of the Milky Way galaxy. History. In 1783, an English clergyman named John Michell wrote that it might be possible for something to be so heavy you would have to go at the speed of light to get away from its gravity. Gravity gets stronger as something gets more massive. For a small thing, like a rocket, to escape from a larger thing, like Earth, it has to escape the pull of the Earth's gravity or it will fall back. The speed that it must travel to get away is called escape velocity. Bigger planets (like Jupiter) and stars have more mass, and have stronger gravity than Earth. Therefore, the escape velocity would need to be much faster. John Michell thought it was possible for something to be so big that the escape velocity would need to be faster than the speed of light, so even
Sheffield is a big city in a region called South Yorkshire in the North of England. There are 534,500 people living there. Sheffield is in the middle of lots of hills. The city centre is where the River Sheaf meets the River Don, and Sheffield gets its name from the River Sheaf. The city is east of the Peak District National Park. It is estimated that Sheffield has over two million trees, which is more than any city in Europe per each person. 61% of the city is green space, such as parks and forests. The area of Sheffield used to be the Anglo-Saxon shire of Hallamshire, the city itself was founded later. Industry. Sheffield is famous for making cutlery (like knives and spoons). People in Sheffield have made cutlery for a very long time (a Sheffield-made knife is referred to in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", a book from the Middle Ages). Sheffield is also famous for making steel. Benjamin Huntsman discovered the crucible technique for making steel in 1740. In 1856, Henry Bessemer invented the Bessemer converter steelmaking furnace. Henry moved to Sheffield to make steel. Later, in 1912, Harry Brearley invented stainless steel in Sheffield. Sports. The first football team in the world is from Sheffield, Sheffield F.C., set up in 1857. Sheffield currently has two big professional football teams, Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United. Bands. There are lots of famous bands from Sheffield. Some of them are Pulp, the Human League, Def Leppard and the Arctic Monkeys. Michael Palin is also from Sheffield. There is a big arena called the Motorpoint Arena in Sheffield. WWE have visited this arena to do live shows.
A fertilizer is a chemical that helps plants to grow. It is used to replace the mineral salts taken by plants or removed/washed away by rain. Common fertilizers: The important things in fertilizer are: When fertilizers are offered for sale, the percentage of N, P, and K must be written on the bags or boxes, but for historcal reasons, P is shown as %P2O5 and K is shown as %K2O. E.g.:9-23-30 which means: 9% N, 23%P2O5 and 30%K2O. In Australia the percent of elemental sulfur must also be shown. In the UK, the elemental composition (in percentages) may also be shown alongside the mandatory traditional system, provided the numbers are put inside square brackets. Leafy plants need lots of N. Flowering plants need lots of P and K. A soil test can tell how much N, P, and K is needed.
Military forces (often called the military when specific to a certain group) are a group or groups of people that are given power to defend a country or territory with weapons. They are armed, so they are called the armed forces. The military protects its country by defending it from the armed forces of enemies, if there is a war. The military can also be ordered by the government of the country to attack another country. The word "military" comes from Latin "miles", warrior. There are many jobs people do in a military. Some jobs are for fighting and some are for other work to support the military. Some things people do in the military include the use of weapons, driving and operating vehicles, and repairing weapons. Other people in the military learn how to fly specialized aircraft, be a pilot on ships, or repair machines. People in the military usually wear clothes called a uniform. In some places, especially where there may be combat, a uniform often has a camouflage pattern which is designed to make the person hard to see in the forest or desert. There are two ways to join the military. In many countries, people join the military because they want to. In other countries, there are laws that say some people have to be in the military, even if they do not want to be. This is called "the draft" or conscription. It usually depends on age and physical fitness. Old military people or former military people are called "veterans". Some are members of a military reserve force. The military of a country has different branches or organizations which do different kinds of work. Usually they include: Many countries include other branches: Some countries even have small units which perform special actions which are difficult. They are called special forces. There are also mercenaries, soldiers who fight just for pay and have little loyalty to whomever might hire them, and private military contractors (PMC), which are under the command of a company (civilian company). The Medieval Italian "condottieri" were a historical example of PMCs. A warlord may have a private army, which are often no more trustworthy than common gangsters or criminals. Joining up and training. In many countries of the world, young