the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
However, soba is traditionally the noodle of choice for Tokyoites.
This tradition originates from the Edo period.
At that time, the population of Edo (Tokyo) was much richer than the rural poor, were more susceptible to beriberi because of  their high consumption of white rice which is low in thiamine.
They are thought to have made up for this by regularly eating thiamine-rich soba.
Every neighbourhood had one or two soba establishments, many also serving sake, which functioned much like modern cafes where locals would drop by casually.
Serving soba
Soba is almost always eaten with chopsticks, and in Japan, it is traditionally considered polite to slurp the noodles noisily.
This is especially common with hot noodles, as drawing up the noodles quickly into the mouth acts to cool them down.
Common soba dishes
Like many Japanese noodles, soba noodles are often served drained and chilled in the summer, and hot in the winter with a soy-based dashi broth.
Extra toppings can be added onto both hot and cold soba.
Toppings are chosen to reflect the seasons and to balance with other ingredients.
Most toppings are added without much cooking, although some are deep-fried.
Most of these dishes may also be prepared with udon.
Soba noodles often have a witdh of around 1.5 mm.
Chilled soba is often served on a sieve-like bamboo tray called a zaru, sometimes garnished with bits of dried nori seaweed, with a dipping sauce known as soba tsuyu on the side.
The tsuyu is made of a strong mixture of dashi, sweetened soy sauce and mirin.
Using chopsticks, the diner picks up a small amount of soba from the tray and swirls it in the cold tsuyu before eating it.
Wasabi, scallions, and grated ginger are often mixed into the tsuyu.
Mori soba  – Basic chilled soba noodles served on a flat basket or a plate.
Zaru soba  – Mori soba topped with shredded seaweed.
furikake soba– Cold soba served with various toppings sprinkled on top, after which the broth is poured on by the diner.
It may include:
tororo – puree of yamaimo (a Japanese yam with a slimy texture)
oroshi – grated daikon radish
natto – sticky fermented soybeans
okra – fresh sliced okra
Soba maki – Cold soba wrapped in nori and prepared as makizushi.
Soba is also often served as a noodle soup in a bowl of hot tsuyu.
The hot tsuyu in this instance is thinner than that used as a dipping sauce for chilled soba.
Popular garnishes are sliced scallion and shichimi toragashi (mixed chili powder).
Kake soba  – Hot soba in broth topped with thinly sliced scallion, and perhaps a slice of kamaboko (fish cake).
Kitsune soba (in Kanto) or Tanuki soba (in Kansai) – Topped with abura age (deep-fried tofu).
Tanuki soba (in Kanto) or Haikara soba (in Kansai) – Topped with tenkasu (bits of deep-fried tempura batter).
Tempura soba  – Topped with tempura, usually a large shrimp.
Tsukimi soba ("moon-viewing soba") – Topped with raw egg, which poaches in the hot soup.
Tororo soba – Topped with tororo, the puree of yamaimo (a potato-like vegetable with a slimy texture).
Wakame soba – Topped with wakame seaweed
Soba served on special occasions
Soba is traditionally eaten on New Years Eve in most areas of Japan, a tradition which survives to this day.
In the Tokyo area, there is also a tradition of giving out soba to new neighbours after a house move, although this practice is now rare.
Varieties of soba noodles
The most famous Japanese soba noodles come from Nagano.
Soba from Nagano is called Shinano Soba or Shinshu soba.
Ni-hachi (two-eight) soba, consists of two parts of wheat and eight of buckwheat.
Sarashina soba – thin, light-colored soba, made with refined  buckwheat
Inaka soba – "country soba", thick soba made with whole buckwheat
By location
Shinshu soba – named after the old name of Nagano Prefecture.
Also known as Shinano soba. (
Shinano=Shinshu)
Etanbetsu soba – named after the central region of Hokkaidō (Asahikawacity)
Izumo soba – named after Izumo in Shimane
Izushi soba – named after Izushi in Hyogo
Miyako soba - named after the Miyako Island in Okinawa
By ingredients
Tororo soba or Jinenjo soba – flavored with wild yam flour
Cha soba – flavored with green tea powder
Mugi soba – flavored with mugwort
Hegi soba – flavored with seaweed
Ni-hachi soba – soba containing 20% wheat and 80% buckwheat
Towari soba or Juwari soba – 100% buckwheat soba
Other uses of the word soba
Soba is also the Japanese word for buckwheat.
Roasted buckwheat kernels may be made into a grain tea called sobacha, which may be served hot or cold.
Buckwheat hulls, or sobakawa, are used to fill pillows.
In Japan, ramen is sometimes called chūka soba or shina soba (both mean Chinese noodles).
Parboiled chūka soba is stir-fried to make yakisoba.
Note that these noodles do not contain buckwheat.
In Okinawa, soba usually refers to Okinawa soba, a completely different dish of noodles made out of flour, not buckwheat.
Okinawa soba is also quite popular in the city of Campo Grande (Brazil), due to influence of Japanese (Okinawan) immigrants.
It is eaten at street markets or in special restaurants called "sobarias".
Tokyo soba chef making noodles by hand from scratch - illustrated article in English
A Soba and Tofu recipe  (with photo)
Carmen Basilio (born April 2, 1927 – November 7, 2012) was an American boxer who held the welterweight and middleweight world championship.
He won the welterweight title from Tony DeMarco in 1955.
He then fought Sugar Ray Robinson for the middleweight title.
He won the belt from Robinson in 1957, but lost it when they fought again.
Saxton beat Kid Gavilan in 1954 to become the welterweight champion.
The lost the title the following year to Tony DeMarco.
In 1956 he won the title again by beating Carmen Basilio, but lost the title in a rematch with Basilio later in the year.
He retired in 1958.
The case of weight
In one of his classic experiments, Weber gradually increased the weight that a blindfolded man was holding and asked him to respond when he first felt the increase.
Weber found that the response was proportional to a relative increase in the weight.
That is to say, if the weight is 1 kg, an increase of a few grams will not be noticed.
Rather, when the mass is increased by a certain factor, an increase in weight is perceived.
If the mass is doubled, the threshold is also doubled.
This logarithmic relationship means that if a stimulus varies as a geometric progression (i.e. multiplied by a fixed factor), the corresponding perception is altered in an arithmetic progression (i.e. in additive constant amounts).
For example, if a stimulus is tripled in strength (i.e., 3 x 1), the corresponding perception may be two times as strong as its original value (i.e., 1 + 1).
If the stimulus is again tripled in strength (i.e., 3 x 3 x 1), the corresponding perception will be three times as strong as its original value (i.e., 1 + 1 + 1).
A logarithmic scale is a scale used when there is a large range of quantities.
Common uses include earthquake strength, sound loudness, light intensity, spreading rates of epidemics, and pH of solutions.
It is based on orders of magnitude, rather than a standard linear scale.
The value of each mark on the scale is the value at the previous mark multiplied by a constant.
Some of our senses operate in a logarithmic fashion (multiplying the actual input strength adds a constant to the perceived signal strength, see: Stevens' power law).
That makes logarithmic scales for these input quantities especially appropriate.
In particular, our sense of hearing perceives equal multiples of frequencies as equal differences in pitch.
On most logarithmic scales, small multiples (or ratios) of the underlying quantity correspond to small (possibly negative) values of the logarithmic measure.
Richter magnitude scale and moment magnitude scale (MMS) for strength of earthquakes and movement in the earth.
bel and decibel and neper for acoustic power (loudness) and electric power;
counting f-stops for ratios of photographic exposure;
rating low probabilities by the number of 'nines' in the decimal expansion of the probability of their not happening: for example, a system which will fail with a probability of 10−5 is 99.999% reliable: "five nines".
Entropy in thermodynamics.
Information in information theory.
Particle size distribution curves of soil
Some logarithmic scales were designed such that large values (or ratios) of the underlying quantity correspond to small  values of the logarithmic measure.
Examples of such scales are:
pH for acidity;
stellar magnitude scale for brightness of stars;
A logarithmic scale is also a graphical scale on one or both sides of a graph where a number x is printed at a distance c·log(x)  from the point marked with the number 1.
A slide rule has logarithmic scales, and nomograms often employ logarithmic scales.
On a logarithmic scale an equal difference in order of magnitude is represented by an equal distance.
Logarithmic graph paper, before the advent of computer graphics, was a basic scientific tool.
Plots on paper with one log scale can show up exponential laws, and on log-log paper power laws, as straight lines (see semilog graph, log-log graph).
Noodle soup is a kind of soup.
It contains the normal soup stock, together with noodles, and sometimes other ingredients.
This kind of soup is very popular in Asia, where it originally came from.
There are also many instant soups of this kind.
Beef noodle soup - popular in China; noodles in a beef soup
Ban mian - popular in China, Malaysia and Singapore; a noodle soup with flat noodles, egg, and usually vegetables.
Soba - popular in Japan; noodles are made of buckwheat
Udon - popular in Japan; noodles are made of wheat, toppings can be added, broth is usually dashi
The scale of a map shows the ratio between the distances on the map and the corresponding distances in reality.
For example, a map of scale 1:50,000 shows a distance of 50,000 cm (or 500 m) as 1 cm on a map.
A 1:25 scale model of a building with a height of 30 m has a model height of 1.20 m.
Scale bars
Scale bars for microscopic or unusual objects are necessary.
They help readers  to understand the diagram.
Weighing scale Weighing scale used for measurement of weight (mass or force)
Scalability in computing
Zoology: Scale insect, plant parasites which resemble animal scales
Scale parameter, probability and statistics
Logarithmic scale, mathematics
Architect's scale — (or draughtsman's scale) is a ruler-like device, which facilitates the production of technical drawings.
Engineer's scale
Zadok scale cereal development
Screen Actors Guild wage standards
Mizan or Balance is a comprehensive treatise on the contents of Islam written by Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, a Pakistani Sunni Islamic scholar.
Solar flare energy intensity
The constellation Libra (constellation) (Latin for scale) and the zodiac sign Libra (astrology)
Chemistry and physics
Allred-Rochow scale
Mulliken scale
Pauling scale
Radiodensity
The Hounsfield Scale is a linear transformation of the original linear attenuation coefficient measurement into one in which the radio-density of distilled water at standard pressure and temperature (STP) is defined as zero Hounsfield units (HU), while the radiodensity of air at STP is defined as -1000 HU.
Relative density or specific gravity
The Baumé scale measures specific gravity or relative density.
Brix scale / Degrees Brix (symbol °Bx) is the sugar content of an aqueous solution.
One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution and represents the strength of the solution as percentage by mass.
Plato scale
Twaddell scale
Beaufort scale (wind)
Fujita scale (tornadoes)
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
Okta (cloud cover) - a unit of measurement used to describe the amount of cloud cover at any given location such as a weather station.
Sky conditions are estimated in terms of how many eighths of the sky are covered in cloud, ranging from 0 oktas (completely clear sky) through to 8 oktas (completely overcast).
Scale (economics)
Resource-Based Relative Value Scale, returns to scale
Bohlen-Pierce scale
Chromatic scale
Deutsch's scale illusion
Diminished scale
Mathematics of musical scales
Scale (string instruments)
Scale (album), an album by electronic artist Matthew Herbert
Scale models
2 mm scale
HO scale
O scale
Social science
Kinsey scale, sexual orientation
Likert scale, questionnaire format
Phrase completions, questionnaire format
The Goldberg scale measures mania and depression.
The Liebowitz social anxiety scale measures the severity of social anxiety disorder.
The Medvedev-Sponheuer-Karnik scale and the Mercalli scale measure the intensity of earthquakes.
The Mohs scale of mineral hardness characterizes the scratch resistance of various minerals.
The Richter scale, a mathematical device to compare the size of earthquakes.
The Scoville Scale measures the hotness of peppers.
The Apgar score is determined by evaluating the newborn baby on five simple criteria on a scale from zero to two, then summing up the five values thus obtained.
The resulting Apgar score ranges from zero to 10.
The five criteria are summarized using words chosen to form a backronym (Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration).
A map scale is the size of an object compared to the size of the object's smaller representative on a map.
This can be shown by a scale bar and a ratio 1:n. The reader can measure a distance on the map to know what is the distance on the ground.
People sometimes speak of a map as one with a "large scale" or "small scale".
A "large scale" map makes things look large, and a "small scale" map makes things look small.
For example, an island displayed on a 1:10,000 map will appear larger than if it were displayed on a 1:25,000 map.
Thus, the former is "large scale".
What can be confusing is that for a map of a given physical size, say 11 by 17 inches, a "large scale" map will have a smaller geographic extent than a "small scale" map centred on the same point.
Maps with a ratio of 1:50 000 or larger (for example, 1:40 000 would be larger) are considered large scale.
Maps with a ratio of 1:50 000 to 1:250 000 are considered intermediate scale.
Any maps with a smaller scale (for example 1:300 000) are considered small scale.
Midnight sun is a phenomenon that exists north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle.
It means that the sun, on parts of the year, is visible the whole night long.
The sun above the horizon at midnight in the arctic or Antarctic summer.
Eight Below is a 2006 Walt Disney Pictures movie.
It was directed by Frank Marshall and written by David DiGilio.
The movie was released on February 17, 2006 in the United States.
General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (born 9 September 1949), is an Indonesian retired military general and politician.
He was the sixth President of Indonesia from 2004 to 2014.
Yudhoyono is the first president to be elected directly by voters.
Yudhoyono won the presidency on 20 September 2004.
He defeated President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Presidents of Indonesia
The Most Noble Order of the Garter is an English order of chivalry.
It was started in 1348, by King Edward III of England.
The Order is the highest level of knighthood that can be given by the English monarch.
It is the world's oldest national order of knighthood.
Membership in the Order is limited to those people who have done many great things for the United Kingdom.
The Order of the Garter is made up of a very small number of people.
This group includes the Sovereign (the King or Queen of Britain) and no more than 25 full members.
These members are called "Companions".
Male companions are called "Knight Companions".
Female members are called "Lady Companions".
There are also a number of extra members known as "Supernumerary" Knights and Ladies.
These members are usually members of the British royal family, and monarchs of other countries.
The monarch alone can grant membership to the order.
He or she is known as the Sovereign of the Garter, and the Prince of Wales is known as a Knight Companion of the Garter.
Knights of the Order use the post-nominal letters (KG) and Ladies of the Order (LG).
Knights Companion can use the title "Sir" before their first name, and their wives can use the title "Lady" before their surnames.
Ladies Companion can use the title "Lady" before their first name, but their husbands cannot use any title.
Current Members
Sovereign: Queen Elizabeth II
Royal Knight: The Prince of Wales KG KT GCB OM AK CC QSO PC
The Lord Bramall KG GCB OBE
The Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover KG
The Lord Ashburton KG KCVO
Sir Timothy Colman KG
The Duke of Abercorn KG
The Lord Inge KG GCB
Sir Antony Acland KG GCMG GCVO
The Lord Butler of Brockwell KG GCB CVO PC
The Lord Morris of Aberavon KG PC QC
Sir John Major KG CH PC
The Lord Luce KG GCVO PC
Sir Thomas Dunne KG KCVO
The Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers KG PC
The Lord Boyce KG GCB OBE
The Lord Stirrup KG GCB
The Baroness Manningham-Buller LG DCB
The Lord King of Lothbury KG GBE
The Lord Shuttleworth KG KCVO
Sir David Brewer KG CMG CVO
Lady Mary Fagan LG DCVO
The Viscount Brookeborough KG
Lady Mary Peters LG CH DBE
The Marquess of Salisbury KG KCVO
Sir Tony Blair
The Duke of Kent KG GCMG GCVO
The Princess Royal KG KT GCVO QSO
The Duke of Gloucester KG GCVO
Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy KG GCVO
The Duke of York KG GCVO
The Earl of Wessex KG GCVO
The Duke of Cambridge KG KT PC
1348 establishments
1340s establishments in England
HD DVD, also known as High-Definition DVD, is an optical disc that is able to store large amounts of data, such as high-definition videos.
It was considered to be the successor of the DVD.
It used to compete against the Blu-ray Disc, a similar version of an optical disc that is designed to hold large amounts of media, but all of the companies that backed it decided to only use Blu-ray discs, so the HD DVD format is now considered dead.
Official HD DVD site (for the US)
CDfreaks Article On HD DVD vs Blu-ray
Projector Central article comparing HD DVD to Blu-ray
Volume Unique Keys for Released HD DVD titles
HD-DVD Winning the European Race at Next Generation - Interactive Entertainment Today (Tuesday, 10 April 2007)
HD DVD goes beyond 50GB with new disc  at DVD Town
Next-generation DVD battle begins at BBC
ProjectorCentral first impressions on HD DVD at Projector Central
Microsoft and Intel Supporting HD DVD at Beta News
HD DVD Ships 1.5 Million Movie Titles as of November 16, 2006 at Beta News
Bruges (Dutch: Brugge) is a city in the northwest of Belgium.
It is the capital and largest city of West Flanders.
In 2007, 116,982 people lived there.
It is a centre of tourism because of its historic medieval city centre.
The centre was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
It is a center of commerce because of its port, Zeebrugge.
The movie In Bruges with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes was made there in 2008.
Immortality or eternal life is the idea of something which is alive that will stay alive forever.
The opposite of immortality is mortality, which means a living thing can die.
Right now, only a small number of living things are known to be immortal.
These are mainly simple, lower forms of life like bacteria.
Stories about immortal people or animals are popular in fiction and mythology, but not yet actually possible.
Many religions say people have an immortal soul with an afterlife.
Some people have long used magic and science to look for a way to live forever.
Others feel that death is what defines all living things, and as a natural part of life, should not be taken away.
Insurance actuaries have calculated that even if everyone were physically immortal, the average life span would still be only be 400 years because of the accident rate; eventually, everyone would die of a fatal accident and it would be very unusual to encounter anyone more than 800 years old.
Therefore, it would seem that the only practical way to achieve actual immortality is to upload one's mind into a supercomputer to live in virtual reality.
Futurists such as Ray Kurzweil believe this will become possible about the year 2045 in the technological singularity.
Others websites
Immortality: A Taoist perspective
Dictionary of the history of Ideas:  Death and Immortality
Immortality Institute - Advocacy and Research on Indefinite Lifespan Scientific and sociological discussions, activism, research
"Inventor Kurzweil Aiming to Live Forever"; RedNova
The Quest For Immortality
Immortality International - Life is a basic human right
Mormon Transhumanist Association
The Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection of the Body by Heinrich J. Vogel
The European Union (EU) has an independent parliament and civil service which is distinct from those of the 27 member states.
It has to pay for expenditure on common policies throughout the EU.
Therefore, the EU has an agreed budget of €862 billion for the period 2007-2013.
By comparison, the UK expenditure for 2004 alone was estimated at about €759 billion.
The EU has three elements to its government: the Council of Ministers, the European Commission and the European Parliament.
All three take a part in setting the annual budget.
The EU obtains most of its revenue indirectly by payments from treasuries of member states.
Revenue is divided into three categories.
Traditional own resources are taxes raised on behalf of the EU as a whole, principally import duties on goods brought into the EU.
These are collected by the state where import occurs and passed on to the EU.
States are allowed to keep a proportion of the revenue to cover administration.
VAT based own resources are taxes on EU citizens as a proportion of Value added tax in each member country.
VAT rates and exemptions vary in different countries, so a formula is used to create the 'harmonised tax base'.
The starting point for calculations is the total VAT raised in a country.
GNI based own resources currently forms the largest contribution to EU funding.
A simple multiplier is applied to the calculated GNI for the country concerned.
Revenue is currently capped at 1.24% of GNI for the EU as a whole.
The largest single expenditure item is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) at around 45% of the total budget.
The second largest element is the regional policy, at 30%.
Foreign policy consumes 8%, administration 6%, research 5%.
"As it stands today [in 2003], the EU budget is a historical relic.
Expenditures, revenues and procedures are all inconsistent with the present and future state of EU integration." -
The Sapir Report, 2003, p 162.
EU discussion of revenue
EU Breakdown of revenue
EU financial report 2004
Wittingen is a small town in the north of the district of Gifhorn, Lower Saxony, Germany.
It has 12.268 inhabitants (2005).
Wittingen is located at 52° 43′ N, 10° 44′ E and its postal codes are 29378 and 29379.
www.wittingen.de
The Golden Gloves is the name given to competitions held every year for amateur boxing in the United States.
The Golden Gloves is often the term used to refer to the National Golden Gloves competition, but it can also mean a few other amateur tournaments, including regional golden gloves tournaments and other notable tournaments such as the Intercity Golden Gloves, the Chicago Golden Gloves, and the New York Golden Gloves.
The Golden Gloves are open to all non-professional boxers age 16 and over.
There is also a Silver Gloves amateur tournament, which is for young amateur male boxers age 8 to 15 years old.
Charles L. "Sonny" Liston (May 8, 1932 – December 30, 1970) was an American boxer.
He held the world heavyweight championship from 1962 to 1964.
He was a boxer who was disliked by much of the public because of his criminal history and rumored association with organized crime characters.
Liston served prison sentences for armed robbery and assaulting a police officer.
However, he was a skilled boxer and gained a shot at the heavyweight title held by Floyd Patterson.
He knocked Patterson out in the first round to gain the title in 1962.
He defeated Patterson by another first round knockout in their rematch in 1963.
He lost the championship to Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) when he quit in his corner before the start of the seventh round in their 1964 fight.
He was then knocked out in the first round during their second fight, which happened in 1965.
Buckwheat (or common buckwheat) is a plant whose seeds may be used as a cereal.
Buckwheat is not a true grass.
It is not related to wheat, because wheat is a true grass, and buckwheat is not.
Buckwheat seeds look like small beech tree seeds.
Both seeds have three sides.
Beech is also called buck, which is how buckwheat got its name.
Instead, buckwheat is related to sorrel, knotweed, and rhubarb.
Buckwheat is referred to as a pseudocereal because its seeds are used in cooking the same as cereals, because they have complex carbohydrates.
The Kinston Indians were a Minor league baseball team in Kinston, North Carolina.
The team played in the Carolina League from (1956–1957, 1962–1974 and 1978–2011).
Professional baseball in Kinston started in 1908, and there have been many teams since then.
2007 was the twenty-first season the Kinston team had been known as the Indians.
Before that they were known as the Eagles and the Blue Jays.
The Indians, or K-Tribe as they were nicknamed, played their home games in Grainger Stadium.
The Indians' mascot was a dog named Scout.
For the 2012 season the Indians moved to Zebulon, North Carolina to become the Carolina Mudcats.
The team still plays in the Carolina League.
Source Materials
- Over the years, this publication has also been known as Carolina League Media Guide and Record Book and Carolina League Directory and Record Book
Baseball teams
Sports in North Carolina
Columbia University (officially Columbia University in the City of New York) is a research university in the United States.
It is an Ivy League university and often considered one of the best in the world.
It is the fifth oldest college in the United States.
It was ranked 2nd best college in the United States by Times Higher Education in 2017.
It was ranked 8th best university in the world by U.S. News & World Report.
The university was founded as King's College by royal charter from King George II of Great Britain.
It was the first college in New York, and the fifth college in the Thirteen Colonies.
A lot of the money that paid for the school came from slavery.
After the American Revolution it was renamed "Columbia College" in 1784 and renamed once again to "Columbia University" in 1896 when it moved to its current location in Morningside Heights.
Ninety-Six Nobel Prize winners have been at Columbia, the second most in the United States after Harvard University.
Five Founding Fathers attended Columbia: Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Robert Livingston, Gouverneur Morris and Egbert Benson.
Three U.S. Presidents have attended Columbia: Barack Obama, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt.
Ten Supreme Court Justices have attended Columbia including the most recent Associate Justice, Neil Gorsuch, and the first Chief Justice, John Jay.
Other famous alumni include: Warren Buffett, Madeline Albright, and Lou Gehrig.
Columbia is home to the Pulitzer Prize for good work in journalism, literature and music.
FM radio was created at Columbia.
The school is where the foundation of modern genetics was discovered.
Its Morningside Heights campus was the first North American site where the uranium atom was split.
Columbia's homepage
Columbia School of General Studies
Columbia Daily Spectator - second oldest student newspaper in the nation
The Columbian Exchange, sometimes called the Grand Exchange was the exchange of goods and ideas from Europe, Africa, and Asia and goods and ideas from the Americas.
It also spread different diseases.
It started in 1492 when Christopher Columbus arrived in the West Indies (North America).
This exchange of plants and animals changed European, American, African, and Asian ways of life.
Foods that had never been seen before by people became a major part of what they ate.
For example, before 1492, no potatoes were grown outside of South America.
By the  1840s, Ireland was so dependent on the potato that a diseased crop led to the devastating Irish Potato Famine.
The first European import to the Americas, the horse, changed the lives of many Native American tribes on the Great Plains, letting them to change to a nomadic lifestyle based on hunting bison on horseback.
Italy became famous for its Tomato sauce, made from New World tomatoes, while coffee from Africa and sugarcane from Asia became the main crops of very large Latin American plantations.
Also the chili and paprika from South America was introduced in India by the Portuguese and it is today an important part of Indian cuisine.
Before the Columbian Exchange, there were no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no paprika in Hungary, no zucchini in Italy, no pineapples in Hawaii, no rubber trees in Africa, no cattle in Texas, no chili peppers in Thailand and India, no cigarettes in France and no chocolate in Switzerland.
Even the dandelion was brought to America by Europeans for use as an herb.
Before there was regular communication between the two hemispheres, the different types of domesticated animals and diseases were more numerous in the Old World than in the New.
This partly led to the horrible effects of Old World diseases on Native American tribes.
Smallpox probably caused in the highest death toll for Native Americans.
Table of comparison
The Columbian Exchange: Plants, Animals, and Disease between the Old and New Worlds in the Encyclopedia of Earth by Alfred W. Crosby
Ragusa is also the Italian name for the city of Dubrovnik
ItalianVisits.com
Pictures of Ragusa
Ragusa.
All about the town of Ragusa
Ragusa on lne
Cities in Sicily
Elliott Carter (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American composer.
He is one of the most important composers of classical music of his time.
He experimented with new ideas of composition.
He lived to be 103 years old and continued composing all his life.
He recently composed a piece called Interventions for Piano and Orchestra which was given its first performance in the Symphony Hall, Boston where it was played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine with the pianist Daniel Barenboim as soloist.
The same players played it again a week later on December 11, 2008 in the Carnegie Hall, New York to celebrate Carter's 100th birthday.
Elliott Carter was born in New York.
The composer Charles Ives noticed his talent and gave him encouragement, taking him to concerts.
Carter studied English and music at Harvard University.
He then went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, returning to the US in 1935 where he directed the Ballet Caravan.
In 1939 he married.
He wrote a ballet called Pocahontas.
In 1940 the suite from this ballet got him the Juilliard Publication Award.
From then on his got many more important awards and prizes for his music.
Carter has taught music and other related subjects in a number of well-known places including the Peabody Conservatory, Columbia University, Queen’s College, New York, Yale University and the Julliard School.
He has received honorary doctorates from many universities and honours from many countries.
When Carter went to study in Paris in the early 1930s Stravinsky was the most famous composer who worked there.
Carter was influenced to some extent by Stravinsky’s music as well as by that of his friend Charles Ives, but he worked hard to find a style of his own.
Some of his music during the Second World War is quite tonal, but his later music uses more atonality (music not in any key) and has complicated rhythms.
His best known works include the Variations for Orchestra (1954-5); the Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano and two chamber orchestras (1959-61); the Piano Concerto (1964-65), written as an 85th birthday present for Igor Stravinsky; the Concerto for Orchestra (1969) and A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976).
Website about Elliott Carter at 100
Dubrovnik is a city in Croatia on the Dalmatian coast.
More than 500 years ago it was called "Ragusa".
The Italian name of the city is still "Ragusa"; this sometimes leads to confusion because there is already a city named Ragusa on Sicily.
It is on the Adriatic Sea.
About 50,000 people lived there in 2001.
Because of its age and unique buildings, the old city of Dubrovnik has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The old city of Ragusa was started by Greeks who left Illirya after their home was invaded in the sixth century.
They had been part of the Holy Roman Empire.
Ragusa in Dalmatia grew to be an important country on the sea, called the Republic of Ragusa.
This republic lasted until Napoleonic times.
Ragusa was once the only city in Dalmatia with Roman influence not to be controlled by the Republic of Venice.
After the Middle Ages more and more Croats and Serbs from inland areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina moved to the area.
They had started the neighbouring town of Dubrovnik, which eventually joined Ragusa.
The original population (the Dalmatian Italians) was reduced to the few people of the ruling class: in the 19th century nearly all the people living in Ragusa were Slavs (Croats and Serbs).
Ragusa officially changed its name to "Dubrovnik" (a Croatian name) after 1918, when the city became part of the newly created country of Yugoslavia.
Today Dubrovnik is one of the main tourist sites in Croatia.
Dubrovnik is famous for its Old Town - this is an ancient fortress with large stone walls, which helped Dubrovnik keep its freedom for many centuries.
There was a major earthquake in 1667 that destroyed many buildings, but the people living there were able to rebuild the town.
Old City of Dubrovnik - UNESCO World Heritage Centre
Flags of Ragusa
Storia e monetazione di Ragusa, oggi Dubrovnik (in Italian)
Dalmatia and Montenegro by John Gardner Wilkinson, on Google Books
Harris, Robin.
Dubrovnik, A History.
London: Saqi Books, 2003.
Scotti, Giacomo.
Ragusa, la quinta repubblica marinara.
LINT Editoriale, Trieste,
Sichuan pepper (or Szechuan pepper) is plant fruit which is used as a spice.
The outer pods of some species in the genus Zanthoxylum are used to make the spice.
Many people in Asia grow them for the spice.
Although the plants are called peppers, they are not related to either black pepper or Chili pepper.
Uses in food
Sichuan pepper has a unique aroma and taste.
This taste is quite different from that of black or white pepper or chile pepper.
It tastes a little like lemon.
It also creates a special feeling in the mouth, a kind of numbness.
Recipes say that sichuan pepper should be slightly toasted, then crushed, before it is added to food.
Only the hull (outer shells) are used in cooking; the seeds are ignored or thrown away.
In general, Sichuan pepper is added at the last moment.
Star anise and ginger are often used with it.
Sichuan pepper figures prominently in spicy Sichuan food.
It goes with fish, duck, and chicken dishes, as well as with fried eggplant.
It has an alkaline pH and a numbing effect on the lips when eaten in larger doses.
Ma la (; literally "numb and hot"), a flavour common in Sichuan cooking, is a combination of Sichuan pepper and chili pepper.
It is also available as an oil (marketed as either "Sichuan pepper oil" or "Hwajiaw oil").
In this form it is best used in stir fry noodle dishes without hot spices.
The preferred recipe includes ginger oil and brown sugar to be cooked with a base of noodles and vegetables, with rice vinegar and Sichuan pepper oil to be added after cooking.
Hua jiao yan is a mixture of salt and Sichuan pepper, roasted and browned in a wok and served as a condiment to accompany chicken, duck and pork dishes.
The peppercorns can also be lightly fried in order to make a spicy oil with various uses.
Sichuan pepper is one of the few spices which are important for Tibetan and Bhutanese cookery of the Himalayas.
This is because few spices can be grown there.
One Himalayan specialty is the momo, a dumpling stuffed with vegetables, cottage cheese or minced yak meat, beef or pork and flavoured with Sichuan pepper, garlic, ginger and onion.
The noodles are steamed and served dry, together with a fiery sauce.
Tibetans believe it can sanitize meat that may not be so fresh.
In reality it may only serve to mask foul flavors.
In Japan the dried and powdered leaves of Zanthoxylum sancho are used to make noodle dishes and soups mildly hot and fragrant.
The whole leaves, kinome, are used to flavour vegetables, especially bamboo shoots, and to decorate soups.
The buds, seeds, flowers, and hulls are also used.
In Korean food, two species are used: Z. piperitum and Z. schinifolium.
Import ban now lifted
From 1968 to 2005, the United States Food and Drug Administration banned the importation of Sichuan peppercorns because they were found to be capable of carrying citrus canker (as the tree is in the same family, Rutaceae, as the genus Citrus).
This bacterial disease, which is very difficult to control, could potentially harm the foliage and fruit of citrus crops in the U.S. It was never an issue of harm in human consumption.
The import ban was only loosely enforced until 2002.
In 2005, the USDA and FDA lifted the ban, provided the peppercorns are heated to around 70 degrees Celsius (160 degrees Fahrenheit) to kill the canker bacteria before importation.
Gernot Katzer's spice pages (full of information)
Sichuan Bang Bang Chicken
Sichuan Crispy Beef (Dry-fried Beef, Gan Bian Niu Rou Si)
Chengdu Chicken Stir-fry
How to Make Five-spice Powder
There is an antiparticle corresponding to most kinds of particle.
It has the same mass and opposite electric charge.
Even electrically neutral particles, such as the neutron, are not identical to their antiparticle.
In the example of the neutron, the 'ordinary' particle is made out of quarks and the antiparticle out of antiquarks.
Particle-antiparticle pairs can annihilate each other if they are in appropriate quantum states.
They can also be produced in various processes.
These processes are used in  particle accelerators to create new particles and to test theories of particle physics.
High energy processes in nature can create antiparticles.
These are visible in cosmic rays and in certain nuclear reactions.
The word antimatter properly refers to (elementary) antiparticles, composite antiparticles made with them (such as antihydrogen) and to larger assemblies of either.
In 1932, soon after the prediction of positrons by Paul Dirac, Carl Anderson found that cosmic-ray collisions produced these particles in a cloud chamber  a particle detector in which moving electrons (or positrons) leave behind trails as they move through the gas.
The antiproton and antineutron were found by Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain in 1955 at the University of California, Berkeley.
Since then the antiparticles of many other subatomic particles have been created in particle accelerators.
In recent years, complete atoms of antimatter have been assembled out of antiprotons and positrons, collected in electromagnetic traps.
Feynman, Richard P. The reason for antiparticles, in The 1986 Dirac memorial lectures, R.P. Feynman and S. Weinberg.
Cambridge University Press, 1987. .
Weinberg, Steven.
The quantum theory of fields, Volume 1: Foundations.
Cambridge University Press, 1995. .
Hamo Beknazarian, also known as Hamo Bek Nazarov (born May 19, 1891 in Yerevan, died April 27, 1965 in Moscow) was an Armenian movie director.
His career in cinema started in 1914, when a friend offered him a part in a movie.
Between 1914 and 1918, he played about 70 parts, becoming a popular actor in pre-Revolutionary Russian movie.
In 1920, instead of going to Armenia as he planned, he went to Tbilisi, where he developed a movie department for Georgian Commissioner's office of Public Education.
Many of his movies were filmed in Tbilisi, including The Father Murderer and Lost Treasures.
In 1925, he filmed his first Armenian movie and moved to Armenia.
In 1933, he made the first Armenian movie to have sound, Pepo.
Shor and Shorshor (1926), scriptwriter, director.
A comedy about two friends.
Namus (1926), Director.
This was the first Armenian movie.
It was a tragic love story.
Pepo (1935), director
Zangezur (1938), director
David-Bek (1943), co-scriptwriter, director.
A movie about an 18th-century Armenian hero, David Bek (died 1728) who fought to free Armenia from the Ottoman Empire.
Anahit (1947), director
Armenian movie directors
His 1977 movie Life Triumphs (Nahapet) is considered to be one of the most important Armenian movies to deal with the Armenian Genocide.
It was exhibited in the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.
1977: Nahapet - Sos Sargsyan
1968: Yerankyunin
1980: Hayrik - Mher Mkrtchyan
1969: Menk enk mer sarare
1978: Ktor me yerkink
Malyan, Henrik
The original Septuagint (often referred to LXX) was a translation of the Torah, the five books of Moses from the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language.
It was done between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC in Alexandria.
It was the first translations of the Hebrew Bible.
After 350 years, the Church translated all the books of the Old Testament, and it also has books that Catholics and Orthodox Christians call the Deuterocanon.
These books are called Apocrypha by Protestants because they do not think these books are sacred.
An ancient tradition says that 70 Jewish scholars were in a different room when they translated the Torah from Hebrew into Greek, yet they all wrote down exactly the same text.
People thought this was a miracle.
The Latin language word for "70" is septuaginta, and the word "Septuagint" comes from that.
Another way to write "70" is "LXX" which is why writers sometimes use that as a short name for Septuagint.
The Septuagint Online - Comprehensive site with scholarly discussion and links to texts and translations
Jewish Encyclopedia: Bible Translations
Catholic Encyclopedia: Septuagint Version
Catholic Encyclopedia: Versions of the Bible
A thorough analysis of the Septuagint with resources
Comparison of names in the LXX and Hebrew Bible (PDF)
Free Online Bibliography (up to date) from BiBIL
Codex: Resources and Links Relating to the Septuagint
Texts and translations
Septuagint as PDF file  Lacks diacritics.
Septuagint published by the Church of Greece
Plain text of the whole LXX, including the anagignoskomena
Greek-English interlinear  of OT & NT.
Lacks diacritics and anagignoskomena.
Bible Resource Pages - contains Septuagint texts (with diacritics) side-by-side with English translations
Septuagint and New Testament - Greek Text of the Septuagint and NT with parsing (no diacritics).
Lacks anagignoskomena.
Greek text - Complete Greek text (no diacritics, needs special font) hyperlinked to Strong's concordance.
Anagignoskomena do not display.
The Septuagint in Greek as a MS Word document (Requires Vusllius Old Face .
Intor and book abbreviations in Latin.)
The Book of Daniel from an Old Greek LXX  (no diacritics, needs special font)
Sir Lancelot C.L. Brenton's translation
The Septuagint LXX: Greek and English  partial version of Brenton's edition, wiki text and PNG images. (
difficult navigation)
The New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS), preliminary edition
Project to produce an Orthodox Study Bible (OSB) whose Old Testament is based entirely on the Septuagint.
The Holy Orthodox Bible, another English translation project of the Septuagint using Greek Orthodox texts of the Septuagint
The Septuagint LXX in English (Online text of the entire LXX English translation by Sir Lancelot Brenton)
The LXX and the NT
Septuagint references in NT by John Salza
The New Testament and the Septuagint  - Instances where the New Testament quotes the LXX against the Masoretic Hebrew
The New Testament and the Hebrew OT  - Instances where the New Testament quote agrees with the Masoretic Hebrew meaning
A defense of the quoting of the LXX by the writers of the New Testament
Katharine Hope McPhee (born March 25, 1984) is an American Pop/R&B singer.
She was the runner-up to Taylor Hicks on the fifth season of the television show American Idol in 2006.
Her first album, named Katharine McPhee, was released January 30, 2007.
Katharine McPhee on American Idol  at American Idol Watch
The World Heavyweight Championship was one of the top wrestling championships in the WWE along with the WWE Championship.
It was created on RAW to match SmackDown's WWE Championship in August 2002.
Some of the past champions include Edge, Triple H, The Undertaker, Booker T, Batista, and Kurt Angle.
The World Heavyweight Championship was brought to Raw by then-General Manager Eric Bischoff after WWE Champion Brock Lesnar became exclusive to SmackDown.
Bischoff awarded the championship to Triple H, but he had to defend it against his then-best friend, Ric Flair.
Triple H was successful and has held the championship on five different occasions.
Other holders of this prestigious championship include Shawn Michaels, Undertaker, Rey Mysterio and more.
The final champion was Randy Orton.
He beat then-champion John Cena on December 15, 2013 at TLC: Tables, Ladders, & Chairs.
He was already WWE Champion when he won the championship and unified the World Heavyweight Championship with the WWE Championship to make the "WWE World Heavyweight Championship".
The World Heavyweight Championship was retired the next day.
WWE World Heavyweight Title History
World Wrestling Entertainment championships
The Islamic calendar or Hijri calendar () is a calendar.
It is used to determine Islamic holidays in most of Islam.
It is a lunar calendar: it uses the phases of the Moon (rather the Earth's orbit of the Sun) to count the passing of time.
Its year has 12 months of 29 or 30 days, and lasts a total of 354 or 355 days.
This means that each year of the Hijri calendar is about 11 days shorter than a solar calendar such as the Gregorian.
Islamic years are often called hijra years, because the first year of the calendar when the hijra occurred, that is when Prophet Muhammad went from Mecca to Medina.
The current Islamic Calendar year is 1443 AH (AH =  = Year of the Hijra.)
Two Islamic countries (Iran and Afghanistan) use a different calendar, the Solar Hijri Calendar ("SH").
The timing of the months in the Islamic calendar is determined by direct observation of the Moon.
A new month can only begin after a "waxing crescent Moon" is observed shortly after sunset.
The "waxing crescent Moon" is the phase of the Moon which starts right after a New Moon.
A lunar month (one new moon to the next) lasts a little over 29.5 days.
For convenience, a month is the Islamic calendar is either 29 days or 30 days, one after the other.
So a 29-day month is followed by a 30-day month (29+30 is the same as 29.5+29.5).
In most years, that means that a year of 12 calendar months last 354 days.
But that "a little over" is 44 minutes every month so, to keep the calendar in step with reality, an extra day is needed nearly every third year, so these years are 355 days long.
Whether or not the first crescent moon is actually visible differs by location.
For desert communities, cloud-cover is rarely a problem but that is not true for people who live in the rain forest.
One option is to use the tabular Islamic calendar, which predicts the moment of waxing crescent moon assuming perfect visibility.
This method is used routinely by some Islamic communities but regarded by others as just an aid to securing a successful observation.
Islamic Calendar
Islamic-Western Calendar Converter (Based on the Arithmetical or Tabular Calendar)
Town privileges were important things.
They were special treaties or royal charters used in the Middle Ages.
In such a charter, a sovereign, a monarch granted the town or city special rights.
These usually included
The right to have a market, to form guilds
Some freedoms, like to determine the government of the town or city, or to judge criminals.
Some people who permanently lived in the town or city (called Burghers) had special rights.
Getting these rights was a special privilege (and not granted to everyone).
Many of those charters were very similar.
In the end, only few charters remained in use.
Notable ones in the territory of modern-day Germany  include the  Lübeck law, the Magdeburg rights and the Kulm law.
Afternoon is the time period from noon to evening.
It is generally agreed upon that afternoon starts at 12:00 pm, but there is no exact definition of when it ends.
Medieval music is music from the Middle Ages.
The time we call the Middle Ages is a long period from about 400 AD to 1400 AD.
We do not know a great deal about music of this time because it was such a long time ago and music was not often written down.
Music was used for both entertainment and religious practice.
Troubadours and Trouvères