In classical literature Plato and Ovid wrote allegories. Dante Alighieri wrote allegories in "The Divine Comedy". In the Middle Ages "Everyman" was a morality play. John Bunyan’s "The Pilgrim's Progress" tells the story of a man trying to lead a Christian life. Jonathan Swift wrote "Gulliver's Travels", which tells about the strange customs of (made-up) faraway countries, but he was really criticizing things about his own country, the United Kingdom. "Animal Farm" by George Orwell is another example of an allegory, this time of the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin's era and the Russian Revolution. Some of the characters can be directly linked to figures during that time.
Songs may also include allegories. "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy" tells a story of American soldiers in the 1800s, ordered by their commander to march into the Mississippi River, which they could never cross on foot. In truth, it told the story of soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, and being expected to do the white guy's bidding.
Allegories still continue to be popular today. Pictures, movies and plays can be allegories. William Golding’s novel "Lord of the Flies" also has allegorical meaning. "Star Trek" used a great deal of allegory, to look at social conditions and moral values in the present, while telling stories based in the future. Alien races were often a reflection of Earth's own races and countries.
Allegorical artworks include Sandro Botticelli's "La Primavera (Allegory of Spring)" and Jan Vermeer's "The Allegory of Painting".
Newport Pagnell
Newport Pagnell is a town in England. It is in the borough of Milton Keynes.
The town was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Neuport", which is an Old English word meaning "New Market Town". At that time it was fairly new, having been founded by Norman invaders. The suffix "Pagnell" came later, when the manor passed into the hands of the Pagnell (Paynel) family.
At one time Newport Pagnell was one of the largest towns in the County of Buckinghamshire but today the new town of Milton Keynes has made it much less important.
Tickford Bridge, over the River Ouze, was built in 1810. It is the only iron bridge in Britain that still carries main road traffic. This is the oldest iron bridge in the world that is still in constant use. There is a plaque near the footbridge on the side that gives details of its history and construction. A large set of sluice gates used to control downstream flooding of the River Great Ouse is near the bridge.
Since 1954, Tickford Street in Newport Pagnell has been the home of the Aston Martin site, where all Aston Martin cars were built, until the recent opening of the new Ford Motor Company luxury division plant for Aston Martin built at Gaydon, Warwickshire.
The modern civil parish of Newport Pagnell stops at the M1, but the ecclesiastical parish extends to include Broughton and Caldecote. The parish church is dedicated to St Peter and St Paul.
Swearing
Swear or Swearing may refer to:
Amniote
The amniotes are a taxonomic group of animals: all the tetrapods except the amphibians.
They are the land vertebrates which lay cleidoic eggs.
Two super-groups make up the amniotes: the Synapsida (Pelycosaurs, Theriodonts and mammals) and the Sauropsida (all reptiles, including dinosaurs and birds).
The embryos of amniotes are either laid as eggs or develop in the female. These embyros are protected by several membranes, and have a much larger food supply than amphibian eggs.
The 'invention' of the cleidoic egg, and its embryonic membranes, is the main reason why the eggs of an amniote do not need to be laid in water.
Thus, as distinct from the amphibians, "amniotes are truly terrestrial". Secondarily, many reptiles and mammals returned to water, and mammals bear the young live, as do some reptile groups. This evolutionary flexibility is much less common in amphibians.
The first amniotes, such as "Casineria", looked like small lizards. They evolved about 340 million years ago, in the Mississippian or Lower Carboniferous. Their eggs could survive out of the water. This let amniotes move into environments that had less water. The amniotes moved across the Earth. Most vertebrates that live on land are amniotes, as are most of the air-breathing animals of the sea.
Very early in the evolutionary history of amniotes, they split into two main lines, the synapsids and the sauropsids, both of which persist into the modern era.
The oldest known fossil synapsid is "Protoclepsydrops" from about 320 million years ago, while the oldest known sauropsid is probably "Paleothyris", in the order Captorhinida, from the Middle Pennsylvanian epoch (about 306–312 million years ago).
One can assume the ancestors of the amniotes laid their eggs in moist places, as such modest-sized animals would not have difficulty finding depressions under fallen logs or other suitable places in the ancient forests, and dry conditions were probably not the main reason why the soft shell emerged.
In fish and amphibians there is only one inner membrane, also called an embryonic membrane. In amniotes the inner anatomy of the egg has evolved further and new structures have developed to take care of the gas exchanges between the embryo and the atmosphere, as well as dealing with the waste problems. To grow a thicker and tougher shell required new ways to supply the embryo with oxygen, as diffusion alone was not enough.
After the egg developed these structures, further sophistication allowed amniotes to lay much bigger eggs in much drier habitats. Bigger eggs allowed for bigger offspring, and bigger adults could produce bigger eggs, so amniotes grew bigger than their ancestors. Real growth was not possible, however, until they stopped relying on small invertebrates as their main food source and started to eat plants or other vertebrates, or returned to the water. New habits and heavier bodies meant further evolution for the amniotes, both in behavior and anatomy.
There are three main lines of amniotes, which may be distinguished by the structure of the skull and in particular the number of temporal fenestrae (openings) behind the eye. In anapsids (turtles) there are none, in synapsids (mammals and their extinct relatives) there is one, and in most diapsids (non-anapsid reptiles, including dinosaurs and birds) there are two.
The skeletal remains of amniotes have at least two pairs of sacral ribs, a sternum in the pectoral girdle (shoulders area) and an astragalus bone in the ankle.
A simplified phylogeny of tetrapods goes like this:
This is perhaps better than the older taxonomy, which lists recent branches like birds and mammals as classes on mere traditional grounds.
List of mayors of Hamburg
The ' is the First Mayor""' of Hamburg, Germany. He is the President of the Senate (government) of Hamburg. The Erster Bürgermeister is Hamburg's Minister President.
The constitution of 28 September 1860 says that the state is to be governed by the ten-member "Senate" headed by the "First Mayor" as the "President of the Senate". His deputy is the "Second Mayor". Until 1997 the First Mayor was elected by the Senate. Now he is elected by the "Bürgerschaft" (the city's parliament) and the Erster Bürgermeister has appointed and dismissed other Senators.
Synapsid
Synapsids ('fused arch'), is a taxonomic class of tetrapods. This class includes mammals and earlier groups related to mammals. Synapsids are one of the two major groups of amniotes. The sister group, which gave rise to the reptiles, is the Sauropsida. Both groups evolved from early amniotes about 345 million years ago during the early or mid Carboniferous period.
Synapsids include the Pelycosauria (Pennsylvanian to Permian), and the Therapsida (Lower Permian to present).