The bible is the sacred book of the Jewish and Christian religions (actually a collection of a number of books) . The Hebrew Bible, recognised by both Jews and Christians, is called the Old Testament by Christians. The New Testament comprises books recognised by the Christian church from the 5th century as canonical (the first Christian bible was produced in 494). The Roman Catholic Bible also includes the Apocrypha. It was only in the 13th century that single-volume Bibles with a fixed content and order of books became common, largely through a Paris-produced Vulgate of 1200 and the Paris Bible of 1230. The first English translation of the entire Bible was by a priest, Miles Coverdale in 1535; the Authorised Version, or King James Bible of 1611, was long influential for the clarity and beauty of its language. A revision of the Authorized Version carried out in 1959 by the British and Foreign Bible Society produced the widely used American translation, the Revised Standard Version.
A conference of British churches in 1946 recommended a completely new translation into English from the original Hebrew and Greek texts; work on this was carried out over the following two decades, resulting in the publication of the New English Bible in 1961 and 1970. Another recent translation is the Jerusalem Bible, completed by Catholic scholars in 1966. Missionary activity led to the translation of the Bible into the languages of people they were trying to convert, and by 1993 parts of the Bible had been translated into over 2,000 different languages, with 329 complete translations.
The King James Bible has probably sold more copies than any other book in history, and is still popular, especially among fundamentalists. The 'Good News Bible' has been the most popular translation into modern colloquial English. Two new versions of the Bible were published in the mid-1990s: the Contemporary English Version of 1996, which rejects old biblical language in favour of a contemporary spoken style, and the Schocken Bible of 1995, a translation of the Pentateuch, which attempts to renew the shock of the original Hebrew. As more manuscripts are discovered, disputed readings become clearer, so that in some respects modern translations are more accurate than older ones. Research Bible
A comet is a small body orbiting the sun on an elliptical path with a long tail of dust and ice.
Some comets are only visible by the aid of the telescope, while others can be seen by the naked eye. In the latter case they usually appear like stars accompanied with a train of light, sometimes short and sometimes extending over half the sky, mostly single and more or less curved, but sometimes forked. In a comet which appeared in 1744 the train was divided into several branches, spreading out from the head like a fan. The train is not stationary relatively to the head, but is subject to remarkable movements. The direction in which it points is always opposite to the sun, and as the , comet passes its perihelion the train changes its apparent position with extraordinary velocity. The head of the comet is itself of different degrees of luminosity, there being usually a central core, called the nucleus, of greater brilliancy than the surrounding envelope, called the coma.
Comets were long regarded as supernatural objects, and usually as portents of impending calamity. Tycho Brahe was the first who expressed a rational opinion on the subject, coming to the conclusion that the comet of 1577 was a heavenly body at a greater distance from the earth than that of the moon. The general law of the motion of bodies, as well as his own observations on the comet of 1680, led Isaac Newton to conclude that the orbits of the comets must, like those of the planets, be ellipses, having the sun in one focus, but far more eccentric; and having their aphelions, or greater distances from the sun, far remote in the regions of space.
This idea was taken up by Halley, who collated the observations which had been made of all the twenty-four comets of which notice had been taken previous to 1680. The results were very interesting. With but few exceptions the comets had passed within less than the earth's shortest distance from the sun, some of them within less than one-third of it, and the average about one-half. Out of the number, too, nearly two-thirds had had their motions retrograde, or moved in the opposite direction to the planets. While Halley was engaged on these comparisons and deductions the comet of 1682 made its appearance, and he found that there was a wonderful resemblance between it and three other comets that he found recorded - the comets of 1456, of 1531, and of 1607. The times of the appearance of these comets had been at very nearly regular intervals, the average period being between seventy-five and seventy-six years. Their distances from the sun, when in perihelion, or when nearest to that luminary, had been nearly the same, being nearly six-tenths of that of the earth, and not varying more than one-sixtieth from each other.
The inclination of their orbits to that of the earth had also been nearly the same, between 17 degrees and 18 degrees; and their motions had all been retrograde. Putting these facts together, Halley concluded that the comets of 1456, 1531,1607, and 1682 were reappearances of one and the same comet, which revolved in an elliptic orbit round the sun, performing its circuit in a period varying from a little more than seventy-six years to a little less than seventy-five; or having, as far as the observations had been carried, a variation of about fifteen months in the absolute duration of its year, measured according to that of the earth. For this variation in the time of its revolution Halley accounted upon the supposition that the form of its orbit had been altered by the attraction of the remote planets Jupiter and Saturn as it passed near to them; and thence he concluded that the period of its next appearance would be lengthened, but that it would certainly reappear in 1758 or early in 1759. As the time of its expected reappearance approached, Clairaut calculated that it would be retarded 100 days by the attraction of Saturn, and 518 by that of Jupiter, so that it would not come to the perihelion, or point of its orbit nearest the 500 sun, until the 13th of April, 1759.
It actually reached its perihelion on the 13th of March, 1759, being thirty days earlier than he had calculated. Along with the period of this comet and its perihelion distance, the magnitude and form of its path were also calculated. Estimating the mean distance of the earth from the sun at 95,000,000 miles (the number which was at that time considered as the true one), the mean distance of the comet was calculated to be 1,705,250,000 miles; its greatest distance from the sun, 3,355,400,000; its least distance, 55,100,000; and the transverse or largest diameter of its orbit, 3,410,500,000. This comet, therefore, is a body belonging to the solar system, and quite beyond the attraction of any body which does not belong to that system; and as this is determined of one comet, analogy points it out as being the case with them all. In 1835 it again returned, being first seen at Rome, on August the 5th, and from that time continued to be observed until the end of the year in Europe, and through a great part of spring 1836 in the southern hemisphere.
The comet denominated Encke's comet, which has made repeated appearances, was first observed in 1818, and was identified with a comet observed in 1786, also with a comet discovered in 1795 by Miss Herschel in the constellation Cygnus, and with another seen in 1805. Its orbit is an ellipse of comparatively small dimensions, wholly within the orbit of Jupiter; its period is 1260 days, or about three years and three-tenths. It has been frequently observed since.
Another comet, the history of which is of the utmost importance in the latest theories regarding the connection of these bodies and the periodic showers of shooting-stars, is one known as Biela's comet, discovered in 1826. It revolved about the sun in about 6.75 years, and was identified as the same comet which was observed in 1772 and in 1806. Its returns were noted in 1832, 1839, and 1845. In 1846 it divided into two, returned double in 1852, but has not since been seen, the Supposition being that it has been dissipated, and that it was represented by a great shower of meteors that were seen in November 1872. One of the most remarkable comets of recent times was that known as Donati's, discovered by Dr. Donati of Florence in 1858. It was very brilliant in England in the autumn of that year, and on the 18th of October was near coming into collision with Venus, The year 1881 was remarkable for the number of comets recorded. During that year no fewer than seven comets, including the well-known short-period comet Encke's, were observed. Research Comet
Factory (from factor), is a name which appears originally to have been given to establishments of merchants and factors (agents) resident in foreign countries; it now signifies a place in which the various processes of a particular manufacture are carried on simultaneously. The rapid growth of factories in this sense is a comparatively recent development of industry, resulting from the free use of machinery and the consequent subdivision of labour sine the late 18th century. Amongst the advantages of the factory system are generally counted: increased productivity arising from the minute division of labour; the mechanical accuracy, and the cheapness of the product turned out by machinery (mass production); the facilities for union and co-operation for common improvement afforded by bringing large masses of workmen together. But this last consideration is probably more than counterbalanced by the smaller amount of independent intelligence called forth in the individual worker, through the monotony of the minutely subdivided operations. Since the 19th century the disadvantages of the factory system have been recognised, and were originally cited as the unhealthiness of the crowded rooms, and the increasing demand on the labour of women and children, which was perceived as interfering with the economy of domestic life. This last issue was sought to be redressed by factory acts, first passed in the late 18th century. Research Factory
Fences are continuous lines of obstacles artificially interposed between one portion of the surface of the land and another for the purpose of separation or exclusion. Live fences are made of hawthorn, holly, box, beech, etc; dead fences of stone, wood, and in more recent times of iron or wire. In agriculture fences are necessary both for restricting the tenant's own animals to their pasture, and for protecting his land from straying animals. The general erection of fences on farms was one of the improvements of later agriculture. Research Fence
An iceboat is a boat-like structure on runners, propelled over ice usually by sails. Modern iceboats have a central tube-like hull, a runner plank extending at right angles to the hull and affixed with a runner at either end, and a third runner, placed either forward or aft, serving as a rudder. In ancient times primitive iceboats were used in the Scandinavian region for haulage and transport.
Iceboating remains a mode of travel in some parts of Europe today. The sport of iceboating began on the Shrewsbury River in Red Bank, New Jersey, around 1840. Subsequent innovations made iceboats the fastest vehicles of the early 1900s, with speeds up to 225 kmh. Modern iceboats are about 6 m long and have sail areas of from 7 to 32.5 sq. m. These boats average about 65 to 95 kmh over the usual 32-km course. Recent innovations include the use of air motors and outboard motors that employ a spiked wheel to drive the boat across the ice, and the use of jet propulsion. Research Iceboat
Japanese drama commenced around the 7th century and to date has evolved a wide variety of genres characterised generally by the fusion of dramatic, musical, and dance elements. The music and dance, as well as the subjects, settings, costumes, and acting styles, were rigidly stylised and, until recent times, offered relatively few realistic or naturalistic qualities. Some genres utilise almost exclusively a fixed repertoire of plays, often many centuries old. The earliest known type of Japanese theatrical entertainment is gigaku, which was introduced into Japan in 612 from southern China; it is thought to have been ultimately of Indian or possibly even of Greek origin. Gigaku dances, performed with masks, seem to have been humorous. In the 8th century gigaku fell into disfavour because its frivolous character displeased the Japanese rulers of the period. It was supplanted largely by bugaku, an entertainment introduced from China. Bugaku dances portrayed simple situations such as the return of a general from war.
The performers wore impressive robes, and their dances had exotic splendour. Japanese rulers, intent on imitating Chinese courtetiquette, favoured bugaku, both because of its solemnity and because of its similarity to Chinese court entertainments, and it quickly acquired a ritual character. Bugaku may now be seen only at ceremonies. A type of acrobatic entertainment known as sangaku, transmitted similarly to Japan from the Asian continent and popular in the 8th century, also influenced Japanese drama. Typical acts included tightrope walking, juggling, and sword swallowing. A Combination of these secular entertainments and the sacred dances and songs associated with the Shinto religion gradually evolved into more complex forms of drama. Surviving documents from the 11th century describe comic playlets, and one play still performed, the ritual dance Okina, may date from this period.
Plays were also performed at shrine festivals in support of prayers for harvests or to depict the history of the shrine. The actors and musicians were organised into troupes. By the 14th century the theatre had developed one of its foremost artistic achievements, No drama. These plays included solemn dances intended to suggest the deepest emotions of the principal character and were written in the poetic language of the Japanese classics. A program also often included kyo gen, or farces written in colloquial language. No was brought to the level of great art by the genius of two dramatists, Kanami Kiyotsugu and his son Zeami Motokiyo. No was patronised by the Ashikaga shogunate after a shogun saw the boy Zeami perform in 1374. Zeami developed No into refined aristocratic drama, but after his death it tended to lose its creative vitality and become ritualistic. Many No plays performed at present are by Zeami, and his books of criticism are considered the final authority on the subject.
For a short period after the Meiji restoration in 1868, No was threatened with extinction because of its connections with the discredited shogunate. It survived the threat, however, and thereafter enjoyed popularity with specialised audiences. An entire program of No drama traditionally consists of five No plays in poetry with music and four kyo gen farces in prose without music, performed alternately. Kyogen farces feature representational acting, and the actors wear neither masks nor makeup. No plays avoid representational accuracy in favour of a symbolic treatment of subjects concerning the worlds of the living and the dead. The principal types of No plays are those dealing with deities, the ghosts of warriors, women with tragic destinies, mad persons, and devils or festive spirits. The actors, who often wear masks, are richly and elaborately costumed. The No drama is performed in a theatre with a roofed stage. The audience is seated on two or, less commonly, three sides of the stage. The actors reach the stage by a passageway, called the bridge, which is marked by three pine trees. The only backdrop is a large painted pine. The scenery consists entirely of impressionistic props suggesting the outlines of a building, a boat, or any other object of importance to the play. Only male actors perform in No dramas. When they play the roles of women or of men whose age is markedly different from their own, they wear masks, many of which are exceptionally beautiful. The No drama also includes a chorus that sits at one side of the stage and recites for the actors when they dance, but the chorus has no identity in the drama. Full programs are seldom presented any longer, but kyo gen continues to be an indispensable part of the entire performance, for it presents the humorous aspects of life with which No is never concerned.
At the end of the 15th century two new popular forms appeared; they were the puppet theatre, jo ruri, also called bunraku, and a form known as kabuki. The puppet theatre combines three elements: the puppets; the chanters who sing and declaim for the puppets; and the players of the samisen, a three-stringed instrument, who provide the accompaniment. The greatest Japanese dramatist, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, wrote chiefly for the puppet theatre, the artistic level of which is perhaps higher in Japan than anywhere else in the world. The puppet theatre, after attaining its greatest popularity in the 18th century, lost in public favour to the kabuki, which has continued to be the most popular traditional dramatic genre. By the mid-1980s kabuki was popular with American audiences, and troupes made annual appearances in the USA Kabuki tends to be spectacle rather than drama. Original kabuki texts, as opposed to those adapted from the puppet theatre, are of lesser importance than the remarkable acting, the music and dance, and the brilliantly collared settings.
Kabuki plays are performed in large theatres, with a hanamichi, or raised platform, extending from the back of the theatre to the stage. In addition to the traditional drama, a modern theatrical repertoire consisting of original Japanese plays in a modern idiom and of translations of European plays has been active in Japan since the beginning of the 20th century. Some 20th-century playwrights have attempted to compromise between traditional Japanese forms and essentially Western idioms, either by introducing modern psychology into their treatment of the ancient tales or by making kabuki-style plays out of such European classics as Shakespeare's Macbeth. Highly successful modern presentations of traditional themes are offered in Five Modern No Plays (1956) by Mishima Yukio. Other plays, notably Twilight Crane, produced in 1949, by Kinoshita Junji, are derived from old folktales. Many contemporary Japanese playwrights deal with such themes as conflict in modern Japanese society and problems of social injustice; other playwrights prefer to work out Japanese equivalents of modern symbolic drama or of the American musical comedy. Research Japanese Drama
Mountains are often classified according to their mode of formation: Fold
mountains; Block mountains; Residual mountains; Volcanic mountains.
High mountain chains such as the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, and Rockies are known as new fold mountain systems. The term 'fold' is a reference to the way in which such mountains have been formed. Throughout millions of years slow movements of the earth's crust have caused these
mountains to be raised. The movements which have resulted in mountain buildings were not, however, vertical uplifts. They were primarily horizontal movements, the effect of which was to cause the crust of the earth to 'wrinkle', in a similar way to which a tablecloth wrinkles if it is pushed along the table. The arched or upraised parts of the folds are known as anticlines and the troughs as synclines. These folds can vary greatly in size. Mountain building is undoubtedly due to some deep-seated cause. For a long period the most simple explanation was that folding was entirely due to the cooling and contraction of the earth, so that the crust, already cold and shrunken, had to wrinkle to fit itself to the still cooling and contracting 'core'. One of the objections advanced against this theory is that the amount of shrinking necessary to account for the Himalayas, Alps, etc., seems to be greater than the mere contraction of the earth would allow. While the theory of contraction cannot be completely rejected, serious consideration must be given to the more recent explanations of mountain building. For instance, Wegener suggests that mountain building may be due to the 'wrinkles' produced by the drifting of a continental mass, e.g. that the Alps were formed by the northward drift of the African continent towards the more stable blocks of Central Europe. As the African mass drifted slowly northward the zone between it and the European mass became narrower, and the land was raised into high ridges or folds. The raising of the Alps was accompanied by the formation of the deep trough which contains the Mediterranean Sea. The same hypothesis would account for the building of the Himalayas and the depression of the Indo-Gangetic trough by the northward drift of the Deccan mass.
During the physical history of the earth, mountain building appears to have proceeded more actively at some periods than others. Fold mountains are, therefore, not all of the same age. The newest group of fold mountains include the Himalayas, Alps, Rockies, and Andes. During an earlier period of folding (the Carboniferous) the Pennines, Appalachians, the Cape Ranges of South Africa, and the Dividing Range of Australia were uplifted. A still earlier period of folding accounted for the original mountains of Scotland and Norway, of which the present mountains are merely the worn down stumps. The older fold mountains, which have been subjected to the forces of denudation (such as the weather, rivers, glaciers, etc.) for long geological periods, are much lower and less rugged than the newer fold mountains. The term 'new fold' is applied to the mountain ranges which have been folded most recently, but they seem very old when their age in actual years is considered because they were uplifted many millions of years before historic time. Mountain building is a very long and slow process; and in the case of certain mountain chains, such as the Andes and the mountains of Japan, is probably still proceeding.
The new fold mountain systems of the world, except in such instances as the simple low folds of the Weald (South-east England), usually consist of high parallel ranges, the average height being well over 3000 metres. In the Himalayas' the highest peak rises to 8840 metres; in the Andes 7000 metres; in the Rockies 6000 metres; in the Alps to 4600 metres. Vast though these heights appear, the wrinkles of the earth's crust are only slight. The highest mountain in the world (MountEverest) is about five miles high, so that on a globe of 40 cm, diameter it would protrude only 2.5 mm. Most of the active volcanoes are found in the neighbourhood of fold mountains, where the crust of the earth has been fractured during the process of folding. All around the PacificOcean there are many active and extinct volcanoes, as in New Zealand, the East Indies, Japan, and North, Central, and South America. Another belt of active volcanoes is associated with the fold mountains of the West Indies. The mountains of this type are characterised by ruggedness of relief in contrast to the smooth and rounded contours of mountain areas which have been subjected to weathering agents for long periods of time. This is obvious if pictures of the Alps and the Scottish Highlands are compared.
Mountains are effective climatic barriers, and the climates of regions on either side of a high mountain range are very different. For example, the coast lands of British Columbia have an equable climate and a heavy rainfall, while the lands to the east of the Rockies have an extreme climate and light rainfall. Again, the climate of the mountainous areas differs from that of the adjacent lowlands. The great mountain systems of the world are mainly important for their minerals, and, in the temperate zone, for their lumber. In the plateau regions of some mountain systems agriculture has been made possible by irrigation, and above the forests in temperate areas there are valuable alpine pastures. The swift streams of mountains are frequently sources of hydro-electric power, especially in countries which have no coal, such as Switzerland and Norway. In North America, the Western Cordillera provides gold, copper, lead, and silver, especially in the states of Nevada and Montana. The Andes provide tin and copper (Bolivia), gold and platinum
(Colombia), and silver (Peru). The Highlands of East Australia are important for copper and gold. The lumbering industry is specially important in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon (soft woods), the Central American mountainous lands (hard woods), the Himalayan slopes (teak and sal), and the Scandinavian mountains (soft woods).
To provide food for the mining communities in inaccessible mountain areas, agriculture has been developed. There are numerous irrigation schemes in operation in most of the mountain states of the USA, e.g. at SaltLake City in Utah. Similarly, the Andean states, e.g. Bolivia, grow small quantities of cereals in the plateau areas. Mountain pastures have been utilised most extensively for cattle rearing in Switzerland and Scandinavia. The vast central plateau of Asia is, owing to difficulty of access and climatic extremes, so isolated from other regions that very little development of any kind, on modern lines, has taken place. High mountain ranges are also barriers to communication, and so tend to separate peoples. Traffic across mountains is limited to the passes, which are often so high as to be snowbound in winter. Such ranges as the Alps, Andes, etc. can only be crossed with great difficulty or by expensive tunnelling.
It sometimes happens that movement of the earth's crust occurs along cracks or faults. Where such movement leaves a block of higher land standing between two areas of lower land, the highland is known as a 'Block Mountain' or horst. The Vosges and Black Forest Mountains are examples of such formations These mountains are usually very steep-sided, and often the summit levels are roughly the same.
When an area of highland remains standing above the general level after rivers and other natural agents have lowered the surface of the surrounding area, the name residual mountain is used. Sometimes such highlands are called 'mountains of denudation'. This term can usually be applied to the mountain ridges associated with 'dissected plateaux'. Included in this class are the mountain ridges of the Highlands of Scotland, the Sierras of Central Spain, and the Mesas and Buttes of the western plateaulands of the United States.
Mountains may be formed by volcanic material piled up around a crater, such mountains are popularly known as volcanoes. Research Mountains
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American organisation founded in 1909 to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination within the USA.
The NAACP works towards a society in which all individuals have equal rights and there is no racial hatred or racial discrimination. Though, in 2007, after nearly one hundred years and with racism rife in the USA this objective seems almost a pipedream. Indeed in October 2007 the NAACP declared a State of Emergency in response to the recent surge in assaults against young African Americans as demonstrated by the boot camp beating death of Martin Lee Anderson, noose hangings in Jena, Louisiana and other communities, and the assault by police on Shelwanda Riley a 15-year old girl who was thrown around, punched and pepper sprayed by a Fort Pierce, Floridapolice officer, a man roughly twice her size, as he tried to arrest her for a non-violent curfew violation.
To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all citizens
To achieve equality of rights and eliminate race prejudice among the citizens of the United States
To remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes
To seek enactment and enforcement of federal, state, and local laws securing civil rights
To inform the public of the adverse effects of racial discrimination and to seek its elimination
To educate persons as to their constitutional rights and to take all lawful action to secure the exercise thereof, and to take any other lawful action in furtherance of these objectives, consistent with the NAACP's Articles of Incorporation and this Constitution.
The New English Art Club is a British society founded in 1886 by a group of artists whose progressive work was being largely rejected by the Royal Academy. Their work was largely influenced by recent French work. Research New English Art Club
In philosophy, ontology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being. Although this can be taken to be the study of what it is for anything to exist at all, as in Heidegger's work, ontological questions are also concerned with what, in particular, exists. Thus our common-sense
ontology would include the material objects with which we interact (such as trees, tables, and mountains), but should it also contain abstract mathematical entities (sets and numbers) or the sub-atomic entities of the theoretical sciences (such as protons and muons)? Closely linked is the question of reductionism. For example, can minds be reduced to bodies, or mathematics to logic? A major question is how we are to decide ontological issues. Ockham's razor, the principle, formulated by William of Ockham in about 1340, that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity, is generally thought of as a principle in the theory of knowledge or epistemology, and was used as such by Russell. But in recent philosophy this has also often been linked to questions of meaning, as in logical positivism. Research Ontology
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