Timbuktu is a city in Tombouctou Region, Mali. Sankore University and other madrasas are in the city. The city was important for thinking and for religion in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was important in spreading Islam through Africa at that time. There are three great mosques: Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahya. They are reminders of Timbuktu's golden age. They are always being fixed, but are threatened because the desert is spreading.
Songhay, Tuareg, Fulani, and Mandé people live in Timbuktu. It is about 15 km north of the Niger River. There is a route across the Sahara Desert from east to west and this is used for trade. There is another from north to south. These two routes meet in Timbuktu. It is an "entrepôt" for rock salt from Taoudenni. This means that the salt is brought here and sold to other people to take it somewhere else, but no tax is charged.
Its location helped different people meet, so local people, Berbers and Arabs met here. It has a long history of mixed African trade, so it became famous in Europe for this reason. Therefore, western people often thought of Timbuktu as being exotic. It has a hot desert climate ("BWh" in the Koeppen climate classification).
Timbuktu has given a lot of research and study to Islam and to the world. Important books were written and copied in Timbuktu in the 14th century. This made the city become the center of writing in Africa.
Jeanne Demessieux
Jeanne Demessieux (born Montpellier, France, 13 February 1921; died Paris, 11 November 1968), was a French organist and composer.
She started to learn the piano when she was very young, before taking up the organ. Her family moved to Paris so that she could continue to have music lessons there. She became an organ student at the Conservatoire in 1933. In the same year she got a job as organist of the St. Esprit church in Paris. She had this job for 29 years.
Between 1936 and 1939, she studied organ privately with the great Marcel Dupré, and in 1939 she joined his organ class at the Conservatoire. After receiving a first prize in organ performance and improvisation in 1941, she studied five more years with Dupré in Meudon, before she played her first recital at Salle Pleyel in Paris in 1946. This was the beginning of her career as an international recitalist. She played more than 700 concerts in Europe and the United States.
Gifted with an amazing musical memory, she could play more than 2,500 pieces from memory, including all the organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, César Franck, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Dupré.
She was also a remarkable improviser. When she gave her first solo concert in Paris at Salle Pleyel in 1946, she was given four musical themes and improvised a symphony in four movements.
A teacher of the organ at Nancy and Brussels, she made several LP recordings, of which those of music by Franck are probably the best known. She had plans to record all the organ works of Olivier Messiaen. However, she died relatively young, at age 47, of cancer, before she was able to finish this task.
She wrote many compositions, especially for the organ. These include: "Nativité", "Six Études", "Sept Méditations sur le Saint-Esprit", "Triptyque", "Twelve Choral-Preludes on Gregorian Chant Themes", "Te Deum", "Répons pour les Temps Liturgiques", and "Prélude et fugue en UT".
House mouse
House mouse ("Mus musculus") the common mouse is one of the species of the genus "Mus". Often, it is just called a mouse. It is a small rodent. In most parts of the world, they live close to humans. Laboratory mice are types of house mice and are some of the most important organisms used for research in biology and medicine. They are the most commonly used laboratory mammal for experiments.
They are quite small, but are not the smallest mammals. House mice have an adult body length (nose to base of tail) of 7.5–10 cm (3.0–3.9 in) and a tail length of 5–10 cm (2.0–3.9 in). The weight is typically 10–25 g (0.4–0.9 oz). In the wild they vary in color from light to dark agouti (light to dark brown). Selected strains of mice can be got in various other colours.
It is a small, scaly-tailed mouse with a distinct notch in the cutting surface of upper incisors (seen best in side view). Its hair short; ears moderately large and naked.
The main problem of small mammals is their high surface to weight ratio: they have a big surface area for such a small mass. Since heat is radiated from the surface, they have adaptations to help them keep their temperature up to normal. They need to eat frequently, and live in areas where they are protected from the coldest weather. Easy access to high-quality vegetable food (such as grains) and a protected habitat helps them survive and multiply. That is why they are found in numbers living in human settlements.
Their life-span in the wild averages about a year. They are eaten by a variety of small carnivores, but they reproduce rapidly, so that keeps the numbers up. Females have 314 babies in a litter, and can have 5 to 10 litters a year. In good conditions, the mouse population rises quickly.
Although not native to North America, the house mouse was introduced accidentally to seaport towns. It is now widespread throughout the United States. It occurs either as a commensal or feral animal in practically all parts of the U.S.
As commensal animals, house mice live in close association with man – in houses, outbuildings, stores, and other structures. Where conditions permit, feral mice may be found in fields, along watercourses, and in other places where vegetation is dense enough to hide them.
Scientology
Scientology is a movement based on a system of beliefs. These beliefs are based on written words by L. Ron Hubbard. A few other people have added, but almost all of it is his. He started it in 1954. Hubbard contributed until his death in 1986.
Different people understand the words Hubbard wrote differently. In some countries, there are Churches of Scientology. Some people are suspicious of the Church. They feel that it is a cult, and a business to make money. Scientology has been controversial since it began.
Scientology teaches that people are immortal spirits who have forgotten their true nature. Scientologists say that, through a system called "auditing", they help people remember their true nature by re-experiencing painful events in their past and understanding them better.
There are many organizations that are linked to Scientology. For example, some help people stop using harmful drugs or to get back into society after they served a prison term.
Scientology says that psychiatry is bad, and should not be allowed to exist.
The Church of Scientology says that 13-15 million people are a part of the Church. Critics disagree with that figure, however. They say the organization probably does not have more than 100,000 followers, mostly in the United States. They say that in 1960, there were probably 50,000 to 100,000 followers in the U.S. In the 1990s, a representative survey claimed there were only about 45,000 followers left. These figures seemed to have increased a bit, by 2004, where there were an estimated 55,000 followers.
The Church of Scientology was started by the American writer and philosopher L. Ron Hubbard in the year 1954. It is not as well known as Christianity or Islam, but it is newer. Scientologists believe their movement is growing. They claim it has thousands of churches, some of which are very small. The largest is in Clearwater, Florida.
L. Ron Hubbard wrote about the goals of Scientology, saying:
This means the goals of Scientology are to create a civilization where:
In 1972, Hubbard told a group of Scientologists: "You are the people the planet obeys. You are the people who own the planet."
Scientologists say that the book Dianetics was the first self-help book ever written. It was written by L Ron Hubbard in the year 1950. Some key concepts in the book are: