the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
However, ceremonial clothing in the Imperial Court still looked like clothing from previous centuries, and even today, the new Emperor and Empress of Japan are coronated in Heian period clothing.
During the Genroku period, the common people began to get richer, especially the merchants.
This led to people wearing expensive and beautiful kosode, even if they were not nobility.
People began to experiment with different ways to decorate their clothing, such as embroidery, and experimented with ways of dyeing their clothing.
This made them look like noble people, so the government introduced laws against commoners wearing certain things to prevent it.
However, people did not want to give up their beautiful clothes, and instead found different ways of wearing them; a man, for instance, might wear a haori  jacket made out of wool in a plain, boring colour, but line it with a fancy silk fabric.
This way of thinking about clothing and appearances became known as an aesthetic idea called iki, which is still important to the way people wear kimono today.
Over time, the obi got wider and longer, especially for women.
Because of this, the sleeves of the kosode were no longer sewn to the body entirely, and were instead only attached at the shoulder on kosode for women.
Sleeves also got longer for young women, as did the length of the kosode, which started to be called the kimono sometime in the Edo period.
The kimono would trail behind someone indoors, but had to be pulled up when going out so it would not become dirty.
Women started tucking the extra length of their kimono into a hip fold, which became known as the ohashori.
Kimono are still worn by women today with the ohashori.
Over time, very wide obi and very long kimono fell out of fashion.
During World War Two, longer kimono sleeves were seen as very wasteful, and sleeves on kimono were usually shortened, sometimes a lot.
This new sleeve length lasted, and modern kimono for women are still shorter than they were before the war.
Older kimono, especially from the Taishō period, still have these longer sleeves sometimes.
Today, more women wear the kimono than men.
Men wear kimono most often at weddings and Japanese tea ceremonies.
Men and women's kimono
Kimono are made in different sizes for different people, and are made in different lengths for men and women.
Men and women also wear kimono with different sleeves.
Kimono for women are much longer than kimono for men, and women fold the kimono at the waist in a tuck to make them the right size.
The right length for a woman's kimono is usually the same as her height, though people who are very tall can struggle to find kimono that fits them.
The sleeves on a woman's kimono are not sewn to the body all the way down, and are open at the back.
Part of the body of the kimono is open as well.
The sleeves on a woman's kimono are longer than the sleeves on a man's kimono, and sometimes reach the ankle on kimono for young women.
The curve at the edge of the sleeves is very round, especially on kimono for young women and girls.
Kimono for men do not need to be folded at the hip, and so do not have any extra length.
The sleeves are shorter, and are attached almost all the way down to the body.
The back of the sleeves is sewn shut, and the body is also sewn shut.
The curve at the edge of the sleeve is not as round.
Kimono for men are usually one solid colour, but might have a very small geometric design.
Kimono for women can be one solid colour, have a small design, or be decorated in larger, colourful patterns.
More colourful kimono are usually worn by young women.
Sometimes, these designs are only worn in certain seasons of the year.
Types of kimono
Kimonos come in different types for different occasions, and both men and women have formal and casual kimono.
Formal kimono have a number of crests on them, called kamon or mon.
These are placed on the front of the shoulders, the back of the sleeves, and the centre of the back.
Kimono with crests have either one, three, or five crests on them - the crest on the centre back, the centre back and the sleeves, or the centre back, the sleeves and the shoulders.
The most formal kimono have all five of these crests on them.
The least-formal formal kimono have just one.
These crests can be outlined or coloured in fully in white, with kamon that are just an outline being the least formal.
Kimono are usually made of silk, but there are cotton, polyester, hemp and linen kimono as well.
Some kimono are also made of wool, or rayon.
Formal kimono are always made out of fine silk, and are usually sewn by hand.
However, not all silk kimono are formal kimono, and some types of silk, such as pongee (known as tsumugi) are only ever worn to casual occasions.
The most informal type of kimono is the yukata, worn in summer to festivals and in bath houses and inns by both men and women.
They are not lined, are always made of cotton, and are worn with thin, brightly-coloured obi.
For formal occasions, men wear fine silk kimono with haori (a kimono jacket) and hakama (loose-fitting trousers).
The hakama are usually striped in white and black, and the kimono and the haori will match in colour.
Women have a number of different types of kimono for different formal occasions.
The designs on the kimono, how they are put onto the kimono, and where they are placed on the kimono all change how formal the finished outfit is.
In order of formality, these are:
Komon - a kimono with one pattern repeating all over.
The pattern does not match along the seams, and can be small or very large.
Edo komon - a komon with a very, very small pattern repeating all over, usually in white on a coloured background.
From a distance, these kimono look like one, solid colour.
Iromuji - a kimono in one, solid colour.
Iromuji may also have a very gentle, dapple-dyed design.
They are worn for Japanese tea ceremony and other semi-formal occasions.
They may have one or three crests on them.
Tsukesage - a kimono with a design along the hem, the back of the right sleeve, and the front of the left sleeve.
The designs generally do not match up along the seams, but sometimes do.
The designs are smaller than those on a hōmongi, and are dyed onto the bolt of fabric before being sewn up.
They may have up to three crests on them.
Hōmongi - a kimono with a design along the hem, the back of the right sleeve, and the front of the left sleeve.
The designs should match up and cross over the seams, as hōmongi are roughly sewn up, and the designs drawn on, before being taken apart and dyed.
The designs are usually larger than those on a tsukesage.
Irotomesode - literally, "colourful short sleeve".
Irotomesode are colourful kimono with a design along the hem, which is either higher at the left side than the right, or placed on both okumi (the overlapping front panel) instead.
An irotomesode can have between one and five crests, but usually has three.
Kurotomesode - An irotomesode with a black background.
These are the most formal kimono for women who cannot wear furisode.
Furisode - literally, "swinging sleeve".
Furisode are formal kimono for young women, and have brightly-coloured, large designs all over.
They have between one and five crests.
People wear a wide belt called an obi with their kimono.
Obi are also colorful, and are very long.
Some types of obi are not worn anymore, as they are too difficult to wear and put on.
The maru obi is an example of a type of obi not worn any more.
The fukuro obi replaced it, as it was less wide and easier to wear.
Kimonos can be very expensive, for example, the Furisode is very expensive to get.
The obi belts can be very expensive too.
The kimono most people have are not so expensive.
Some people make their own kimono, or they buy them second-hand.
Other kimonos
People who play some sports like kendo also wear the kimono.
These are tough, thick and short, not like the typical women's kimono.
They are usually called do-gi.
Wearing the kimono
Most Japanese people do not know how to put on a kimono by themselves as it is very different from other clothing.
Formal kimono for women can be very difficult to put on by yourself.
Some people work as "kimono dressers".
They help people to put on their kimono.
Zori
Tokyo National Museum: Kimono Collection
Kyoto National Museum: Trends in 16th-19th Century Kimono
The Costume Museum: Costume History in Japan
Modern Kimono in Organic Cotton
Kimono Encyclopaedia - many photos
Japanese Kimono - a lot of unique photos
Japanese clothing
A sconce is a holder for candles or electric lights that is fixed on a wall.
Most of the time, sconces are also meant to make the place look more beautiful.
Culture is a word for the 'way of life' of groups of people, meaning the way they do things.
Different groups may have different cultures.
A culture is passed on to the next generation by learning, whereas genetics are passed on by heredity.
Culture is seen in people's writing, religion, music, clothes, cooking and in what they do.
The concept of culture is very complicated, and the word has many meanings.
The word 'culture' is most commonly used in three ways.
Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture.
An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior.
The outlook, attitudes, values, morals, goals, and customs  shared by a society.
Most broadly, 'culture' includes all human phenomena which are not purely results of human genetics.
The discipline which investigates cultures is called anthropology, though many other disciplines play a part.
National cultures
Cultures are what making the country unique and interesting.
Each country has different cultural activities and cultural rituals.
Culture includes material goods, the things the people use and produce.
Culture is also the beliefs and values of the people and the ways they think about and understand the world and their own lives.
Different countries have different cultures.
For example, some older Japanese people wear kimonos, arrange flowers in vases, and have tea ceremonies.
Some countries oppose some things in their culture, like discrimination or religion.
Regional or non-regional cultures
Culture can also vary within a region, society or sub group.
A workplace may have a specific culture that sets it apart from similar workplaces.
A region of a country may have a different culture than the rest of the country.
For example, in a large country like China or Canada a region may have a distinctive way of talking, different types of music, and different types of dances.
Company cultures
Companies or other organizations (groups of people) can have a separate culture.
Japanese manufacturing companies often have a different culture to Western companies; the workday starts with exercise, and the workers are very loyal to the company.
Companies in the high-technology sector often have a different culture than other companies.
Software and computer companies sometimes allow employees to play games during the workday, or take time off work to relax, because these companies believe that this will help the workers to think better.
Anthropology is studying human beings and how they relate to each other.
An anthropologist is a person who studies anthropology.
Anthropologists study how culture shapes people and their lives.
Cultures constantly change as people move and communicate with new groups of people.
For example, immigrants (people who move from one country to another) may keep some of their customs and traditions from their old country.
By keeping their culture in this way, they bring pieces of their culture to a new place where others begin to experience it.
Culture_(social) -Citizendium
A houseplant is any kind of decorative plant.
People grow them indoors, usually in a house, where these plants gets their name.
Well known houseplants
Urn plant
Butterfly Palm
Elephant Leave Plant
Golden Pothos
Mother-in-law's Tongue
Snake Plant
Spider Plant
Prayer Plant
Umbrella Tree
Weeping fig
Waxed paper (or wax paper) is a type of paper which has been coated on both sides with wax.
This gives it a translucent look.
It is used for wrapping food because grease, oil, and water cannot pass through it.
It is also used to line food containers because many kinds of food which would stick to normal paper will not stick to wax paper.
Many kinds of dry foods were once stored in wax paper because of its resistance to water.
Wax paper has been replaced by plastic wrap for most purposes.
Safety razor blades are traditionally wrapped in wax paper to make holding them less dangerous.
Wax paper can also be used to make paper boats that can be used for a long time without getting wet because of its high resistance to water.
Wax paper is commonly used in cooking because it does not sticky foods cannot stick to it.
It is also used in wrapping food.
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.
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
Tea bowl (called chawan ).
In a tea ceremony, people drink tea out of bowls instead of cups.
Some bowls that people use are over 400 years old.
Tea scoop (called chashaku ).
A scoop is a kind of spoon.
Tea scoops are made from bamboo.
They are used to put tea into the tea bowl.
Large scoops are used to put tea into the tea caddy (see below).
Whisk (called chasen ).
A whisk is like a brush made from wire.
People use it to mix tea.
Tea whisks are made from bamboo.
Tea caddy (called natsume or cha-ire ).
A tea caddy is a special container that people put green tea powder in.
There are two kinds of tea caddies: natsume and cha-ire.
Natsume are short and have a flat lid and a round bottom.
They are made of wood.
Sometimes natsume is called cha-ki.
Cha-ire are tall and thin, and are made of ceramic.
Natsume and cha-ire are used in different ceremonies.
Making weak tea (called usu-cha) needs natsume, and making strong tea (called koi-cha) needs cha-ire.
Napkin (called fukusa ).
A fukusa is a special square cloth made out of silk.
It is used to symbolically purify the tea scoop and tea caddy.
Ladle (called hishaku ).
The kind of ladle used is made of bamboo.
There is a cup-like part attached to a long handle.
Water jar (called mizusashi ).
Hot water in an iron pot is not fully after making tea, so a person who made tea must add water.
A mizusashi holds water for it.
Waste-water container (called kensui ).
When a tea bowl and a whisk are washed before and after making tea, the water used for washing is put in a kensui.
Iron pot (called kama ).
A kama holds hot water.
During tea ceremony, water is kept on boiling with charcoal.
Tea (called matcha ).
The tea used in the Japanese tea ceremony is pulverized green tea, which is made into a drink during the ceremony by putting some in the tea bowl, adding hot water, and mixing this with the whisk.
Tea ceremony
People do the tea ceremony in a special tea room or a special building called a cha-shitsu.
Most people wear kimonos.
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.
Homepage of "Introduction: The Art of Tea" in Urasenke Seattle
English books about the ceremony
Okakura Kakuzo.
The Book of Tea.
Tokyo, Japan: Tuttle, 1977.
Tanaka, S. The Tea Ceremony.
New York: Harmony Books, 1977.
Morgan Pitelka, ed.
Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History, and Practice.
London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
Sadler, A.L. Cha-No-Yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony.
Tokyo: Tuttle, 1962.
Freeman, Michael.
New Zen: the tea-ceremony room in modern Japanese architecture.
London, 8 Books, 2007
A sideboard is a piece of furniture.
It is often placed in a dining room with a long table and cupboard below to hold dishes, glasses, and other things.
A movie or film is a type of visual communication scenario which uses moving pictures and sound to tell stories or teach people something.
Most people watch (view) movies as a type of entertainment or a way to have fun.
For some people, fun movies can mean movies that make them laugh, while for others it can mean movies that make them cry, or feel afraid.
Most movies are made so that they can be shown on screen in Cinemas and at home or any other place.
Movies are shown in Cinemas for a period of a few weeks or months, they may be marketed through several other medias.
They are shown on pay television or cable television, and 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.
Older movies are shown on television broadcasting stations.
A movie camera or video camera takes pictures very quickly, usually at 24 or 25 pictures (frames) every second.
When a movie projector, a computer, or a television shows the pictures at that rate, it looks like the things shown in the set of pictures are really moving.
Sound is either recorded at the same time, or added later.
The sounds in a movie usually include the sounds of people talking (which is called dialogue), music (which is called the "soundtrack"), and sound effects, the sounds of activities that are happening in the movie (such as doors opening or guns being fired).
In the 20th century the camera used photographic film.
The product is still often called a "film" even though there usually is no film.
How are they made?
A screenwriter writes a script, which is the story of the movie with dialogue and things that the actors will say and do.
A producer hires people to work on the movie and gets all of the money that will be needed to pay for the actors and the equipment.
Producers usually get the money by borrowing it from a bank or by getting investors to lend money to the movie production.
Some producers work for a movie studio; other producers are independent (they do not work for a movie studio).
Actors and directors read scripts to find out what to say and what to do.
The actors memorize the words from the script that they will say in the movie, and learn the actions that the script tells them to do.
Then, the director tells the actors what to do and a cameraman takes motion pictures of them with a motion picture camera.
When filming has finished, an editor puts the moving pictures together in a way that tells the whole story within a set amount of time.
Audio engineers and sound engineers record music and singing and join it with the moving pictures.
When the movie is done, many copies of the movie are made by movie labs and put onto film reels.
Then the reels are sent to cinemas.
An electric machine called a projector shines a very bright light through the film, and people sitting in a dark room see it on a big screen.
A genre is a word for a type of movie or a style of movie.
Movies can be fictional (made up), or documentary (showing 'real life'), or a mix of the two.
Although hundreds of movies are made every year, there are very few that do not follow a small number of set plots, or stories.
Some movies mix together two or more genres.
Action movies have a lot of exciting effects like car chases and gun fights, involving stuntmen.
They usually involve 'goodies' and 'baddies', so war and crime are common subjects.
Action movies usually need very little effort to watch, since the plot is normally simple.
For example, in Die Hard, terrorists take control of a skyscraper and ask for a big ransom in exchange for not killing the hostage workers.
One hero somehow manages to save everyone.
Action movies do not usually make people cry, but if the action movie is also a drama, emotion will be involved.
Adventure Movies usually involve a hero who sets out on a quest to save the world or loved ones.
Animated movies use artificial images like talking cartoons to tell a story.
These movies used to be drawn by hand, one frame at a time, but are now made on computers.
They can be 2D animated or 3D animated.
Buddy movies involve 2 heroes, one must save the other, both must overcome obstacles.
Buddy movies often involve comedy, but there is also some emotion, because of the close friendship between the 'buddies'.
Comedies are funny movies about people being silly or doing unusual things or being in silly or unusual situations that make the audience laugh.
Documentaries are movies that are (or claim to be) about real people and real events.
They are nearly always serious and may involve strongly emotional subjects, for example cruelty.
Dramas are serious, and often about people falling in love or needing to make a big decision in their life.
They tell stories about relationships between people.
They usually follow a basic plot where one or two main characters (each actor plays a character) have to 'overcome' (get past) an obstacle (the thing stopping them) to get what they want.
Tragedies are always dramas, and are about people in trouble.
For example, a husband and wife who are divorcing must each try to prove to a court of law that they are the best person to take care of their child.
Emotion (feelings) are a big part of the movie and the audience (people watching the movie) may get upset and even cry.
Film noir movies are 1940s-era detective dramas about crime and violence.
Family movies are made to be good for the entire family.
They are mainly made for children but often entertaining for adults as well.
Disney is famous for their family movies.
Horror movies use fear to excite the audience.
Music, lighting and sets (man-made places in movie studios where the movie is made) are all designed to add to the feeling.
Romantic Comedies (Rom-Coms) are usually love stories about 2 people from different worlds, who must overcome obstacles to be together.
Rom-Coms are usually light-hearten, but may include some emotion.
Comedy horror movies blend horror and comic motifs in its plots.
Movies in this genre sometimes use black comedy as the main form of humor.
Science fiction movies are set in the future or in outer space.
Some use their future or alien settings to ask questions about the meaning of life or how we should think about life.
Science fiction movies often use special effects to create images of alien worlds, outer space, alien creatures, and spaceships.
Fantasy movies include magical and impossible things that any real human being cannot do.
Thrillers are usually about a mystery, strange event, or crime that needs to be solved.
The audience is kept guessing until the final minutes, when there are usually 'twists' in the plot (surprises).
Suspense movies keep you on the edge of your seat.
They usually have multiple twists that confuse the watcher.
Western movies tell stories about cowboys in the western United States in the 1870s and 1880s.
They are usually action movies, but with historical costumes.
Some involve Native Americans.
Not all films that are set in the American West are made there.
For example, Western films made in Italy are called Spaghetti Westerns.
Some films can also use Western plots even if they are set in other places.
Business of making movies
Most movies lose money but some make profits in the hundreds of millions, be they dollars, euro or pounds.
In India movies have become an enormous part of the economy.
The industry has always been dominated by a few major movie studios like MGM/UA, Warner Bros., Columbia, Lucasfilm, Paramount or Disney.
There are many large companies that provide all of the services needed to make movies, such as special effects, lighting, set building.
Many of these employees belong to trade unions who say how much their members must be paid.
A huge number of smaller companies also offer services, such as music studios (which record the music for original movie sound tracks) and CGI computer animation.
Movies with famous stars and large budgets (lots of money), are designed to have a wide appeal, so that hopefully millions of people will pay to see them.
These most expensive movies are called blockbusters.
Special effects can add a huge amount to the cost of a movie, especially the newest CGI effects, but people have come to expect them and every blockbuster movie tries to outdo the last.
Even in 2008, some movies cost up to $200 million to make.
Very successful movies can make many times that amount in profit, and that's why the studios keep producing them.
This kind of movie will have a lot of promotion through television advertising, billboards and internet sites.
In blockbuster movies, there is usually a happy ending, in which all of the problems in the plot (story) are figured out or fixed and almost everyone (except the baddie) live happily ever after.
Some movies have been so successful that the studios keep releasing more and more sequels, or movies with the same characters and basic plots.
Indie films
At the opposite end of the scale to the blockbuster, there is the independent, art, or Indie movie.
These are usually made by small movie companies, or even just a small group of people that do not have much money.
An example is The Blair Witch Project, which cost only about $60,000, but which has so far taken perhaps $200 million in ticket and DVD sales.
Movies like this are very unusual and usually become popular 'underground' (word of mouth advertising), so that they become cult, or popular but not mainstream.
Independent movies often tell more creative or unusual (strange) stories, or may have sad endings that do not appeal to the big studios, because they can not be sure how the public will react to them.
They rarely make a lot of money, but if they are successful, the big studios will quickly try to get the people involved to sign a contract with them, by offering them a lot of money to make another movie.
Often the new movie, with its big budget and its stars will be less successful than the first.
Big Ten (movie studios), America's ten largest movie studios
The Internet Movie Database
Rotten Tomatoes – Movie reviews.
Top Trending Movies
srimovie
The Movie Database (TDBM)
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 do not live in Holland do not like it when people call the entire country Holland.
But they don't mind using "Holland" when you mean the Dutch national football team, which they are used to calling "Holland".
Regions of the Netherlands
Regions of South Holland
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.
Others are not radioactive.
These 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.
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 "mass effect" is large for protium (1H) and deuterium (2H), because deuterium has twice the mass of protium.
For heavier elements, the relative atomic weight ratio between isotopes is much less, so the mass effect is usually small.
Some isotopes are not stable so they change to a different isotope or element by radioactive decay.
These are called unstable isotopes, or radioactive isotopes.
The average time it takes an isotope to decay is called the half-life.
Other isotopes do not decay so they are not radioactive.
They are called stable isotopes.
Every atom has an atomic nucleus, which is made from protons and neutrons that are held together by the nuclear force.
Because protons have positive electrical charge, they repel each other.
Neutrons are neutral and they stabilize the nucleus.
The neutrons hold the protons slightly apart.
This reduces the electrostatic repulsion between the protons, so the nuclear force can hold the protons and neutrons together.
One or more neutrons are necessary for two or more protons to bind into a nucleus.
As the number of protons increases, so does the number of neutrons needed to have a stable nucleus.
Some elements only have a single isotope that is stable.
For example, fluorine-19 (19F) is the only stable isotope of fluorine.
The other isotopes of fluorine decay rapidly so they are not found in nature.
Other elements have many stable isotopes.
For example, xenon has seven stable isotopes.
It also has two isotopes that decay very slowly that are found in nature.
The largest number of stable isotopes for any element is ten, for the element tin.
Some elements do not have any stable isotopes, such as curium.
These only exist on Earth because they are created in nuclear reactors, nuclear explosions, or particle accelerators.
Some unstable isotopes exist naturally on Earth because they have a very long half-life.
For example, uranium-238 has a half-life of 4468 million years.
The half life of radium-226 is only 1600 years, and it is found in nature because it is constantly forming from the decay of uranium-238.
Hydrogen has three common isotopes.
The most common isotope of hydrogen is called protium (1H), which has one proton and no neutrons.
A hydrogen atom that has a proton and a neutron (atomic mass of 2) is called deuterium (2H).
Hydrogen with one proton and two neutrons (atomic mass of 3) is called tritium (3H).
Protium and deuterium are stable isotopes, while tritium is a radioactive isotope.
The heaviest elements in the periodic table are all radioactive.
All of the isotopes of radon, thorium, and uranium are radioactive, since they are very heavy.
This is because the nuclear forces inside the nucleus of the atom cannot hold together all the protons and neutrons.
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.
Perjury means lying at a trial.
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.
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, too.
Many rulers in South Asia used elephants as executioners, ones who put the condemned to death.
One nonreligious Mogul Emperor, Akbar (1547-1605), used his favorite elephant as a judge, too.
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 happen.
Then, the elephant would crush the bag flat with the condemned inside.
In another region, people made the condemned watch the elephant slowly come from far away.
Its huge feet kept coming closer.
Sometimes, they buried the condemned to the neck.
The elephant would come and step on the head.
Some places made the condemned put his head on a special stand.
The stand had fountains on the sides where brains and blood would flow when the elephant pressed down its huge foot.
For hundreds of years, people used elephants for military purposes.
Death under the foot of an elephant was common for people who left the army or prisoners as well as for military criminals.
History in writing
There are few records about crushing by elephant.
Many records were lost.
The British wrote about about it during their long rule of India.
Robert Knox was an English traveler.
He wrote about a Sri Lankan crushing in 1681.
The King makes use of them for Executioners; they will run their Teeth through the body, and then taer (sic) it in pieces, and throw it limb from limb.
They have sharp Iron with a socket with three edges, which they put on their Teeth at such times...(An Historical Relation Of the Island Ceylon, Robert Knox, London, 1681)
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.
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.
creative network
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.
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.
People born in the country may be citizens by Jus soli, right of soil.
Those having citizen parents may be natural born citizens.
Some countries also recognise Jus sanguinis, the right of members of the national diaspora to be citizens.
Jus sanguinis comes from Latin meaning "right of blood" which basically means one can inherit citizenship by descent from a parent and in some cases a grandparent or even more distant ancestors.
Foreigners can also be naturalized as citizens.
Naturalization makes them citizens of their new country.
Many countries require that they give up their citizenship of their old country, but some countries have permanent citizenship; you can't quit such a citizenship.
People who are citizens of more than one country, with approval of both Governments, are dual citizens.
They may legally enter and live in either country.
A person who has no citizenship is called a stateless person.
There are many causes of statelessness: wars, refugees, people whose birth was never registered, people born in a territory which is not recognised as a state, and so on.
Some countries are very generous in giving stateless people citizenship, and some are not.
The problem is well-known, but there is no general solution.
Citizenship may be permanent.
Some countries remove citizenship for various reasons, and some citizens renounce their citizenship.
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.
Citizenship in the European Union
Elephants are large grey animals with big ears, long noses and white tusks.
They are the largest living land mammals.
The largest elephant recorded was one shot in Angola, 1974.
It weighed 27,060 pounds (12.25 tonnes) and stood 13 feet 8 inches (2.16 m) tall.
At birth, an elephant calf may weigh as much 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.
An elephant's most obvious part is the 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 wildlife.
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, so now hunting them is illegal.
In total, they have 24 teeth: 12 front teeth, called premolars, and 12 back teeth, called molars.
When the last molar wears 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.
This means that, at any time, they only have one tooth in each jaw, a total of four.
Differences between African and Asian elephants
African elephants are larger and have bigger ears.
They are grazers who still do quite a lot of browsing: they eat leaves, branches and grass.
These big ears have many veins, which carry blood throughout the body.
Biologists think that the blood going through their ears helps African elephants to cool off.
The weather is hotter in Africa than in Asia, so cooling is important for African elephants.
Female African elephants have tusks, but female Asian elephants do not.
African elephants have a low place in their back.
African elephants have two "fingers" at the end of their trunks, but Asian elephants only have one.
Indian elephants eat mainly grass.
Some African elephants live on the savanna while others live in the forest.
Today, many people think these are different species.
Scientists named the forest group Loxodonta cyclotis and the savanna group Loxodonta africanus.
Elephants are distantly related to sea cows, which are large aquatic mammals.
Early ancestors in the Palaeocene and Eocene were small, semi-aquatic animals.
By the Miocene several groups of large mainly forest-dwelling elephants evolved, the gomphotheres and deinotheres.
Their teeth show little wear, indicating a diet of soft, nongritty, forest vegetation.
Modern elephants – the actual family Elephantidae – evolved from gomphotheres as the climate became cooler and drier in the Pliocene and Pleistocene.
This includes the mammoth and mastodon as well as modern elephants.
The gomphotheres lasted  a long time, and were hunted by modern man.
There was a change in plant resources, with the reduced forests and extended grassland.
This favoured specialist grass feeders over generalist eaters.
This change in the dietary supply was one of the factors which forced gomphotheres toward extinction in the late Pleistocene in South America.
The remaining population probably succumbed to climatic change and/or human predation around the time of the Holocene margin.
The significant thing about modern elephants (especially Indian elephants) is that they eat grass: they are primarily grazers, rather than browsers.
Compared with gomphotheres, the teeth of modern elephants are quite different.
Humans have used elephants for different things.
The Carthaginian general Hannibal took some elephants across the Alps when he fought the Romans.
He probably used the North African elephant, a kind of elephant that does not live today.
It was smaller than other African elephants.
Elephants are used by tourists as rides.
People have used Indian elephants to move around and to have fun.
Many circuses have them.
Siamese, Indians, and other South Asians used them for several things.
They fought in armies, and they crushed criminals.
They also did heavy work like lifting trees and moving logs.
However, people have never domesticated elephants.
Domesticated animals are tame and have babies under human control.
The male elephant in heat is dangerous and hard to control.
This state is called musth.
Most elephants used by people are female, except those used in war.
In a battle, female elephants run from males, so armies needed males.
Elephants are used by tourists for riding.
Status today
Both African and Asian elephants are endangered species.
Elephants in captivity do not make many babies, and some captive elephants are abused and mistreated.
African elephants receive some legal protection in every country where they are found.
However, 70% of their range exists outside protected areas.
Conservation efforts in some areas have led to more elephants.
Local numbers may be controlled by contraception or moving the elephants to other places.
Large-scale culling (legal killing) ceased in 1988, when Zimbabwe stopped doing it.
In 1989, trade in elephants and their products (ivory, meat) was made illegal.
Appendix II status (which allows restricted trade) was given to elephants in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe in 1997 and South Africa in 2000.
In some countries, sport hunting of the animals is legal: Botswana, Cameroon, Gabon, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have  export quotas for elephant trophies.
The IUCN estimates a total of around 440,000 individuals for 2012.
The total population of Asian elephants is about 40,000–50,000 (a rough estimate).
Around half of the population is in India.
Although Asian elephants are declining in numbers overall, particularly in Southeast Asia, the population in the Western Ghats may be increasing.
Loxodonta: African elephants
African forest elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis
Genus Elephas: Eurasian elephants
Asian elephant, Elephas maximus
A female elephant will have a single baby (called a "calf") every four or five years.
Calves are born  tall and weigh around .
An elephant's gestation lasts about 22 months.
Another female elephant often stays with the new mother until its baby is born.
The newborn elephant can often stand within a half hour after it is born.
Mother elephants touch their babies gently with their trunks.
It takes a baby a year or more to control its trunk and learn its many uses.
Baby elephants nurse for the first two years of their lives.
After it is born, the first thing that the baby does is wobble in search of its mother's milk.
It drinks about 10 liters of milk every day.
The most famous fictional elephant is Dumbo.
It is a flying elephant in a Disney movie.
The Elephant's Child is one of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories
Ganesha is the god of wisdom in Hinduism.
He has an elephant's head.
The elephant is the symbol for the United States Republican Party.
It is like the Democratic Party's donkey.
The first person to use the elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party was Thomas Nast.
He did that in a Harper's Weekly cartoon in 1874.
Absolut elephant - general information
Tim Radford: - "The elephant time forgot", The Guardian 2001-08-24, 1.
Describes the discovery of the third species of elephant.
Essay on Elephant
Animals used for transport
Buddhism originated in India, 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 from Nepal to Central Asia, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, and now Europe and North and South America.
Theravada Buddhism is most common in South Asia; Mahayana further north.
Buddhism exists in many different strands today, but all schools and sects share basic ideas.