Revision as of 19:38, 30 March 2011 by Genjix(talk | contribs)(Created page with "* Statue of Liberty built by donations. "the World announced that $102,000 had been raised...")
Statue of Liberty built by donations. "the World announced that $102,000 had been raised from 120,000 donors, and that 80 percent of the total had been received in sums of less than one dollar."
83 stone family says (in video) "for lunch we have a jacket potato with a piece of lettuce".
More than two-thirds of the population of Iran is under the age of 30, one quarter being 15 years of age or younger. Iran also exhibits one of the steepest urban growth rates in the world according to the UN humanitarian information unit. According to 2005 population estimates, approximately 67 percent of Iran's population lives in urban areas, up frModern molecular and genome analysis has shown that the genetic diversity of man in sub-Saharan Africa is greater than exists in the entire rest of the human race.om 27 percent in 1950. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Islamic Republic of Iran ranks first in "brain drain" among 61 "developing" and "less developed" countries it measured. More than 150,000 Iranians leave the Islamic Republic every year, and an estimated 25% of all Iranians with post-secondary education now live abroad in "developed" countries of the OECD. As of late 2006 nearly 70% of Iran's science and engineering students are women. Furthermore according to UNESCO world survey, Iran has the highest female to male ratio at primary level of enrollment in the world among sovereign nations, with a girl to boy ratio of 1.22 : 1.00. Science growth in Iran is the highest worldwide.
"Elsie was described by the family as "different", "deaf and dumb" and eventually died in the Crownsville State Hospital in 1955. Years later the family learned Elsie had been abused there and may have had holes drilled in her head during experiments."
Jane Jacobs and New Urbanism. A frequent theme of her work was to ask whether we are building cities for people or for cars.
Asch conformity experiments, when the confederates are not unanimous in their judgment, even if only 1 confederate voices a different opinion, participants are much more likely to resist the urge to conform than when the confederates all agree.
Sons of Iraq or The Awakening. In 2005 the American war in Iraq was failing. The situation was bleak until one tribe in Anbar, later growing to country wide force of 100 000, swung the situation around.
Chung Ju-yung ran away from his small town farm 3 times to pursue his interest in civil engineering. Each time his father would find him in the city and bring him back home. Finally on his fourth attempt upon reaching Seoul, he worked odd jobs for years before coming to inherit a rice store which made good profits. After he setup an automobile repear business, expanding to bigger things later; civil industry, reconstruction of most of South Korea's transportation, world's largest shipyard, nuclear power plant, and philanthropy: hospitals, successful lobbying for hosting Olympics in Korea, normalising relations with North Korea.
Farid later became known as Sher Khan after he killed a full-sized tiger (sher) with his bare hands.
Among the very first American colonists, African entrepreneurs who had arrived as laborers engaged in society and commerce on an equal footing, with equal rights, as EuropeansTemplate:Mdashand with similar attitudes. The Enlightenment brought with it, in the 18th century, the synthesis of humans as unequals, with blacks placed as the lowest of the races in the Great Chain of Being. See Race (classification of humans)
In the mid 1850s, on his way to Paris with his wife, Green found his son John, with his hands bound, on his way to being sold "down the river". He was helpless to protect his son.
The Kakapo breeds only once every two to five years, when a certain type of plant species produces protein-rich fruit and seeds.
Today, the world's more than 1,100 billionaires have a net worth that's roughly double that of the bottom 2.5 billion people on the planet. The richest 10 percent of adults worldwide own 85 percent of global wealth, while the poorest half only barely one percent. The world's almost 10 million millionaires have seen their wealth double to nearly $37 trillion over the past 10 years.
murderous sadism, torture and rape of the Roman games ... "Beasts were specially trained ... the animal would attempt rape. ... bulls, giraffes, leopards, cheetahs, wild boar, zebras, stallions, jackasses, huge dogs, apes, ... often causing extreme suffering, injury or death. On occasion, the more ferocious beasts were permitted to kill devour their victims ... Chimpanzees ... "made drunk by wine, inflamed by odor of females their kind, loosed on girls whose genitals been drenched the urine of female chimps." victims often virgins, not infrequently young children. One spectacle said have included "a hundred tiny blonde girls being raped simultaneously by a horde of baboons."
Adoption was not secretive or considered shameful, nor was the adopted boy expected to cut ties to his original family. Like a marriage contract, adoption was a way to reinforce inter-family ties and political alliances. The adopted child was often in a privileged situation, enjoying both original and adoptive family connections. Almost every politically famous Roman family used it.
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." -Henry Kissinger
Discrimination against atheists: A 2006 study found that 40% of respondents characterized atheists as a group that did "not at all agree with my vision of American society", and that 48% would not want their child to marry an atheist. In both studies, percentages of disapproval of atheists were above those for Muslims, African-Americans and homosexuals. Demographics: A 2009 study reported that two thirds of teenagers in the UK do not believe in God.
Einstein Cross, all 4 quasars are the same one but the light is gravitationally lensed.
The URV was extinguished on July 1, 1994, when it was converted to a new currency, the real at a parity (i.e., 1 real = 1 URV = CR$ 2,750), effectively breaking the hyperinflationary cycle, bringing stability to the Brazilian currency.
Zimmermann challenged these regulations in a curious way. He published the entire source code of PGP in a hardback book, via MIT Press, which was distributed and sold widely. Anybody wishing to build their own copy of PGP could buy the $60 book, cut off the covers, separate the pages, and scan them using an OCR program, creating a set of source code text files. One could then build the application using the freely available GNU Compiler Collection. PGP would thus be available anywhere in the world. The claimed principle was simple: export of munitions—guns, bombs, planes, and software—was (and remains) restricted; but the export of books is protected by the First Amendment.
The world wonders, TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS. Halsey later recalled. "The paper rattled in my hands, I snatched off my cap, threw it on the deck, and shouted something I am ashamed to remember" and let out an anguished sob. Regarding the message as an open humiliation, he delayed for an hour - saying he was refueling - before turning around with his two fastest battleships along with three light cruisers and eight destroyers.
The oft-repeated tale of Messalina's all-night sex competition with a prostitute ... identified the prostitute as Scylla. According to Pliny, the competition lasted for 24 hours and Messalina won with a score of 25 partners.
The North Korean government engages in forced prostitution. Its prostitutes are known as manjokcho (만족조 “satisfaction team(s)”) and are organised as a part of the Gippeumjo, who are drafted from among 14 to 20 year old virgins, trained for about 20 months, and often “ordered to marry guards of Kim Jong-il or national heroes” when they "retire" at 25 years old. For a girl selected to serve in the kippŭmjo, it is impossible to refuse, even if she is the daughter of a party official. Manjokcho must have sex with male high-ranking party officials. Kim Il-sung is believed to have established this corps of women in the belief that having sexual relations with young women would have the effect of enhancing his life force, or gi.
It is estimated that only 25 percent of the comfort women survived and that most were unable to have children as a consequence of the multiple rapes or the disease they contracted. "The women cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance.". Women working at the brothels “most likely served 25 to 35 men a day”
Following Shinzo Abe's declarations, former education minister Nariaki Nakayama declared he was proud that the LDP had succeeded in getting references to "wartime sex slaves" struck from most authorized history texts for junior high schools. "Our campaign worked, and people outside government also started raising their voices.", "It is good that expressions such as comfort women and forced labor have decreased in history textbooks" He also declared that he agreed with an e-mail sent to him saying that the "victimized women in Asia should be proud of being comfort women". "Those women deserve much sympathy, but (being forced to provide sex) is not so much different from what was commonly seen in poor rural Japanese communities in the past, where women were sold to brothels. It could be said that the occupation was something they could have pride in, given their existence soothed distraught feelings of men in the battlefield and provided a certain respite and order." He has denied the term "comfort women" existed during the wartime years.
Hawala informal network of money traders based on trust and reputation.
It's like saying that you learn more by teaching and sharing with others. Every time I pass on a little bit of information to someone else, it helps to ingrain that knowledge in my head, even spur on a desire to learn more.
—Forum quote from article
Having fought in WW2 and starred on one of the most successful franchises in history; Star Trek, James Doohanrecalls his proudest moment. A female fan had sent him a suicide note. Doohan immediately contacted the fan and arranged to speak with her at his next convention appearance. Doohan continued to see her at several other conventions, but ultimately didn't hear from her for several years. Doohan, visibly moved by relating this tale, then reveals the reason for the eight-year-long silence: He received one final letter from the previously distraught fan, thanking Doohan for his kindness and comforting words, and informing him that because of his encouragement, she had successfully gone back to school and earned a degree in Electrical Engineering. Scotty's exploits as the redoubtable Chief Engineer aboard the Enterprise inspired many students to pursue a career in engineering. Because of this, the Milwaukee School of Engineering granted Doohan an honorary degree in engineering.
The Chicxulub crater impact would have caused some of the largest megatsunamis in Earth's history, reaching thousands of feet high. ... would have been heated to incandescence upon re-entry, broiling the Earth's surface and possibly igniting global wildfires; meanwhile, colossal shock waves spawned global earthquakes and volcanic eruptions... This has led to the hypothesis that the Chicxulub impact may have been only one of several impacts that happened nearly at the same time.
Bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present.
Psychological refractory period refers to the delay observed in the execution of the second of two tasks when it must be in close temporal succession with a prior task.
Maya numerals seem better and more logical than arabic ones.
The Zapatistas are not a political party: they do not seek office throughout the state, because that would perpetuate the political system by attempting to gain power within its ranks. Instead, they wish to reconceptualize the entire system.
Laws in the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities are passed by the will of the people. General assemblies gather weekly to decide on matters facing the community. The assemblies are open to all, with no formal hierarchy. Decisions made by the communities are passed to elected delegates whose only job is to give the decided upon information to a council of delegates. Delegates are recallable, and are rotated. This way, massive numbers of people are able to decide things with no formal hierarchy, and without people speaking for them.
Media customarily discourages reporting on suicides due to Copycat suicide stemming from social proof. The Werther effect predicts that the more similar the person in the publicized suicide is to the people exposed to the information about it, the more likely the age group or demographic is to commit suicide.
Anarchy in Somalia. Somalia, though brutally poor, is a kind of libertarian's dream. Free enterprise flourishes, and vigorous commercial competition is the only form of regulation. Somalia has some of the best telecommunications in Africa, with a handful of companies ready to wire home or office and provide crystal-clear service, including international long distance, for about $10 a month." Installation time for a land-line is just three days, while in the neighboring Kenya waiting lists are many years long. The Economist cited the telephone industry in anarchic Somalia as "a vivid illustration of the way in which governments…can often be more of a hindrance than a help. Economist Peter T. Leeson, "Somalis are better off under anarchy than they were under government.".
Availability heuristic (can result in cognitive bias) is where people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind.
Obedience (human behavior). Extensive training is given in armies to make soldiers capable of obeying orders in situations where an untrained person would not be willing to follow orders. Soldiers are initially ordered to do seemingly trivial things, such as picking up the sergeant's hat off the floor, marching in just the right position, or marching and standing in formation. The orders gradually become more demanding, until an order to the soldiers to place themselves into the midst of gunfire gets a knee-jerk obedient response.
The Third Wave experiment took on a life of its own, with students from all over the school joining in: on the third day the class expanded from initial 30 students to 43 attendees. All of the students showed drastic improvement in their academic skills and tremendous motivation. All of the students were issued a member card and each of them received a special assignment (like designing a Third Wave Banner, stopping non-members from entering the class, etc). Jones instructed the students on how to initiate new members, and by the end of the day the movement had over 200 participants.
Jane Elliott and the “blue-eyed/brown-eyed” exercise. At the commercial break, audience reaction to her was instant as hundreds of calls came into the show’s switchboard, most of the reaction was negative. The most often-quoted letter states “How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children.” More than 450 children went through her experiment from 1968 to 1984 and many say that she is “a hero, a teacher extraordinaire, whose simple experiment, which lasted just two days, forever changed their lives.” ( p9) Almost all these students say that they remember the exercise very vividly and that it made them think, and try to be different. Video of the exercise.
At the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, police and security services infiltrated black blocs with agent provocateurs. Allegations first surfaced after video footage in which "men in black were seen getting out of police vans near protest marches". Persons employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act. Three masked protesters, one of whom was armed with a large rock, were asked to leave by protest organizers. After the three protesters breached the police line, they were brought to the ground, handcuffed, and taken away. The evidence that the arrested people were police provocateurs was circumstantial, including the fact that the protesters were wearing similar boots. After the protest, the police force admitted that three of their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators, they denied provoking the crowd and instigating violence.
Acid rock got its name because it served as "background" music for acid trips in underground parties in the 1960s.
On November 23, 2004, in the Tlahuac lynching, three Mexican undercover federal agents doing a narcotics investigation were lynched in the town of San Juan Ixtayopan (Mexico City) by an angry crowd who saw them taking photographs and suspected they were trying to abduct children from a primary school. The agents identified themselves immediately but were held and beaten for several hours before two of them were killed and set on fire. The incident was covered by the media almost from the beginning, including their pleas for help and their murder.
By the time police rescue units arrived, two of the agents were reduced to charred corpses and the third was seriously injured. Authorities suspect the lynching was provoked by the persons being investigated.
Both local and federal authorities abandoned them to their fate, saying the town was too far away to even try to arrive in time and some officials stating they would provoke a massacre if they tried to rescue them from the mob.
Caste-related violence in India. On September 1, 2007 some Yadavs poured steaming dal on a Dalit woman and her infant daughter, and beat up several other Dalits, for allowing their children to play in the premises of a temple at Shivayalay Mushari, on the outskirts ofPatna.
Ranvir Sena is an caste-supremacist fringe paramilitary group based in Bihar. The group is based amongst the higher-caste landlords, and carries out actions against the outlawed naxals in rural areas. It has committed violent acts againstDalits and other members of the scheduled caste community in an effort to prevent reforms aimed at their emancipation.
Matt Henson, first man to reach the North Pole. Black & received no recognition. His expedition leader broke off contact after he wrote a book because he considered him no more than a servant.
"It is likely that Glenn Beck owes his brand of Founding Father-worship to Mormonism, where reverence for the founders and the United States Constitution as divinely inspired are often-declared elements of orthodox belief ... Many Mormons also believe that Joseph Smith prophesied in 1843 that the US Constitution would one day 'hang by a thread' and be saved by faithful Mormons." See White Horse Prophecy.
Because gambling for cash is illegal in Japan and Taiwan, Pachinko balls won cannot be exchanged directly for cash in the parlor. Instead, the balls are exchanged for token prizes, which can then be taken outside and traded in for cash at a business that is nominally separate from the parlor.
Mosuo#Walking_marriages. Chinese ethnic group that engages in serial monogamy. No inhibitions against multiple partners for both males and females. Women don't leave to live with partners and children are raised in family's home. Show monogamy is IMPOSED on us.
Because of the lower costs in Second Life, it suffers from a greater level of irrational economic behaviour than real economies. A business using a model which has proven economically unviable may be kept open for months or even years using the owner's real money, because the cost of doing so is so low and some business owners are more motivated by a sense of "winning" than monetary profit. (For example, some businesses spend more on marketing than they earn.) These businesses compete with, and potentially damage the market for, other businesses that are striving for economic viability.
Titanic. The initial reluctance of the passengers to board the lifeboats contributed to the death toll. For example, Lifeboat #7 launched first, at 00:40 and with only 12 people aboard, despite its capacity of 40. Titanic did not initially appear to passengers to be in imminent danger, so they were reluctant to leave the apparent safety of the ship.
RONJA is a Free Space Optics device that transmits data wirelessly using beams of light. Ronja can be used to create a 10 Mbit/s full duplex Ethernet point-to-point link.
The Christmas truce was a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires that took place along the Western Front around Christmas of 1914, during the First World War. Through the week leading up to Christmas, parties of German and British soldiers began to exchange seasonal greetings and songs between their trenches; on occasion, the tension was reduced to the point that individuals would walk across to talk to their opposite numbers bearing gifts. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, many soldiers from both sides – as well as, to a lesser degree, from French units – independently ventured into no man's land, where they mingled, exchanging food and souvenirs. As well as joint burial ceremonies, several meetings ended in carol-singing, or – famously – games of football.
Freenode catalysts - an important characteristic of successful catalysts is the infrequency with which they wear authority or invoke special privilege.
When a drunken man entered a train one day and started harassing a young women, he struggled with him for a while until others called a conductor. On returning home, he shared his experience with other posters on the influential 2chan (Japanese 4chan) and was eventually nicknamed "Densha Otoko" (Train_Man). ... he had never been on a date. Because of this last fact, he consistently posted updates on his situation, asking for advice on everything from restaurant choices to what clothing to wear.... Hugely popular; spawned book, mangas, TV drama and a film.
The mass of plants comes from water and CO2, not the soil.
Coatsworth's dog Tubby, a black male cocker spaniel, was the only fatality of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster; he was lost along with Coatsworth's car. Professor Farquharson and a news photographer attempted to rescue Tubby during a lull, but the dog was too terrified to leave the car and bit one of the rescuers. Tubby died when the bridge fell, and neither his body nor the car were ever recovered.
Charles Lyell realised standing on top of Etna that the Earth was not thousands of years old but millions. This was a scary thought for the religious man. A close friend of Charles Darwin, he struggled to square his religious beliefs with evolution. This inner struggle has been much commented on. He had particular difficulty in believing in natural selection as the main motive force in evolution.
Thomas Henry Huxley, "Darwin's bulldog". Militant, outspoken. Self-taught. autodidact. A boy who left school at ten became one of the most knowledgeable men in Britain.
Ernst Haeckel, the foreigner. German race-supremist. Theories outright rejected by Darwin & others. (Darwin hated slavery & disliked racism).
Alfred Russel Wallace, unconventional. Socialist, anti-capitalist, pro-suffrage, anti-social-darwinism/eugenics and anti-militarism. Spiritualist with belief in non-material origins for man's higher faculties. At odds with the scientific establishment. Social activist with prolific writings critical of the unjust social and economic system in 19th-century Britain. First prominent scientist to raise environmental concerns due to impact from human activity. His account of adventures and observations during his explorations in Indonesia and Malaysia, The Malay Archipelago, was one of the most popular and influential journals of scientific exploration published during the 19th century.
Richard Owen, villain. Coined the word & early researcher on Dinosaurs. Deeply religious. Hated Darwin personally & evolution, tried to smear the others. Hateful egoist that would steal credit for others work wherever possible. Derided Gideon Mantell as a mediocre scientist in an obituary right after his death. Downplayed others work. Jealous. Owen ignored the genuine scientific content of Mantell's work. For example, despite the paucity of finds Mantell had worked out that some dinosaurs were bipedal, including Iguanodon. This remarkable insight was totally ignored by Owen, whose instructions for the Crystal Palace models by Waterhouse Hawkins portrayed Iguanodon as grossly overweight and quadrupedal, with its misidentified thumb on its nose. Richard Owen, his long-time nemesis, had a section of Mantell's spine removed, pickled and stored on a shelf at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. It remained there until 1969 when it was destroyed due to lack of space.
Modern molecular and genome analysis has shown that the genetic diversity of man in sub-Saharan Africa is greater than exists in the entire rest of the human race.
Huxley was certainly not slavish in his dealings with Darwin. As shown in every biography, they had quite different and rather complementary characters. Important also, Darwin was a field naturalist, but Huxley was an anatomist, so there was a difference in their experience of nature. Lastly, Darwin's views on science were different from Huxley's views. For Darwin, natural selection was the best way to explain evolution because it explained a huge range of natural history facts and observations: it solved problems. Huxley, on the other hand, was an empiricist who trusted what he could see, and some things are not easily seen. With this in mind, one can appreciate the debate between them, Darwin writing his letters, Huxley never going quite so far as to say he thought Darwin was right.
When Huxley himself was young there were virtually no degrees in British universities in the biological sciences and few courses. Most biologists of his day were either self-taught, or took medical degrees. When he retired there were established chairs in biological disciplines in most universities, and a broad consensus on the curricula to be followed. Huxley was the single most influential person in this transformation. Huxley founded the X Club which founded the journal Nature.
Huxley's interest in education went still further than school and university classrooms; he made a great effort to reach interested adults of all kinds: after all, he himself was largely self-educated. There were his lecture courses for working men, many of which were published afterwards... and so was the free library organised by the college, an idea which was widely copied. Huxley thought, and said, that the men who attended were as good as any country squire. The technique of printing his more popular lectures in periodicals which were sold to the general public was extremely effective... Its theme — that vital action is nothing more than "the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it" — shocked the audience.
Thomas_Henry_Huxley#Mental_problems_in_the_family - Suffered depression throughout his lifetime. Many others in his family were mentally ill. Several descendents from first to third generation of his suffered severe depresson, some committing suicide.
Chris Gardner, millionaire entrepeneur. Homeless with a young child. Slept in public toilet raising his young son whilst trying to establish himself as a stockbroker, as portrayed in the film The Pursuit of Happyness.
Coco Chanel invited Vera Bate Lombardi to come to Paris and renew their work together. This was actually a cover for "Operation Modellhut", an attempt by Nazi spymaster Walter Schellenberg to make secret contact with Lombardi's relative Winston Churchill. When Lombardi refused, she was arrested as a British spy by the Gestapo. Chanel was later charged as a collaborator, but avoided trial due to an intervention by the British Royal family.
2010–2011 Tunisian protests, The Tunisian government of Ben Ali, which had been criticised in the media and amongst NGO's, was supported by the United States and France because of Ben Ali's "persecution of the Islamists, his economic agenda was touted as a brilliant model that could be replicated in North Africa and he proved to be a staunch US ally actively involved in the controversial rendition programme." As a result, the initial reactions by the US and France were muted.
Miscegenation- A 2007 opinion survey found that more than half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage is equivalent to "national treason".
Miscegenation- By some estimates, 80,000 North American and European women (most of them over the age of 40) visit Jamaica every year for sex with young men (mostly in their 20s). They're called "milk bottles". HIV/AIDS infection rates in the Caribbean are much higher than in Canada or the U.S. Even so, female sex tourists in the Caribbean are not especially preoccupied by the risk.
Some historians have suggested that the at-the-time unprecedented laws banning interracial marriage were originally invented by planters as a divide and rule tactic after the uprising of servants in Bacon's Rebellion. According to this theory, the ban on interracial marriage was issued to split up the racially mixed, increasingly mixed-race labour force into whites, who were given their freedom, and blacks, who were later treated as slaves rather than as indentured servants.
Interracial films that include black men and white women together have a majority audience of white male viewers.
Author Nils Ringdal alleged that three out of four men between the ages of 20 and 50 who have visited Asia or Africa have paid for sex. (I call bullshit!)
In Qinghai, premarital sex between Tibetan girls and Han Chinese was common, some Tibetan girls boasted of their sexual conquests of Han Chinese boys.
These marriages were not recognized by local mullahs since Muslims women were not allowed to marry non Muslim men under Islamic law. This did not stop the women because they enjoyed advantages, not being subject to Islamic law and they were not subjected to certain taxes. Uyghur women married to Chinese also did not have to wear a veil and they received their husband's property upon his death. These women were forbidden from having burial in Muslim graves. The children of Chinese men and Uyghur women were considered as Uyghur. Some Chinese soldiers had Uyghur women as temporary wives, and after the man's military service was up, the wife was left behind or sold, and if it was possible, sons were taken, and daughters were sold.
Rape and enslavement of Hindu women by invading Islamic armies was very common. During the Arab invasion of Sindh (712 CE), all males of the age of seventeen and upwards were put to the sword and their women and children were enslaved. During the Islamic involvement in India, it was normal for kings to possess harems filled with native Hindu women won as booties of war. The most famous one was of Akbar's harem, which had over 5000 women.
Interracial marriages between European men and Indian women were very common during colonial times. Most of these Indian Women usually were Muslim belonging to Aristocratic families and familes with royal ancesstry. According to the historian William Dalrymple, about one in three European men had Indian wives in colonial India. This was primarily because the Europeans (mostly Dutch, British, French and Portuguese and up to a lesser extent Swedes and Danes) — came to India when they were young and there were very few white women available in India. The most famous of such interracial liaisons was between the Hyderabadi noblewoman Khair-un-Nissa and the Scottish resident James Achilles Kirkpatrick.
Many British and other European officers had their own harems made up of Indian women similar to those the Nawabs and Kings of India had. In the 19th century and early 20th century, thousands of women and girls from continental Europe were also trafficked into British India (and Ceylon), where they worked as prostitutes servicing both British soldiers and local Indian (and Ceylonese) men.
In the early part of the Shōwa era, Japanese governments executed a eugenic policy to limit the birth of children with inferior traits, as well as aiming to protect the life and health of mothers. In 1928, journalist Shigenori Ikeda promoted the 21 December as the blood-purity day (junketsu de) and sponsored free blood-test at the Tokyo Hygiene laboratory.[130] By the early 1930s, detailed "eugenic marriage" questionnaires were printed or inserted in popular magazines for public consumption. Promoters like Ikeda were convinced that these marriage surveys would not only insure the eugenic fitness of spouses but also help avoid class differences that could disrupt and even destroy marriage. The goal was to create a database of individuals and their entire households which would enable eugenicists to conduct in-depth surveys of any given family's genealogy.<brNikah Ijtimah (English: combined marriage) is a form of polyandry that existed in the Pre-Islamic period in the Arabian peninsula. />One of the last eugenic measures of the Shōwa regime was taken by the Higashikuni government. On 19 August 1945, the Home Ministry ordered local government offices to establish a prostitution service for Allied soldiers to preserve the "purity" of the "Japanese race". The official declaration stated that : "Through the sacrifice of thousands of "Okichis" of the Shōwa era, we shall construct a dike to hold back the mad frenzy of the occupation troops and cultivate and preserve the purity of our race long into the future...."
Japanese society, with its ideology of homogeneity, has traditionally been intolerant of ethnic and other differences. Men or women of mixed ancestry, foreigners, and members of minority groups faced discrimination in a variety of forms. In 2005, a United Nations report expressed concerns about racism in Japan and that government recognition of the depth of the problem was not total. In 2005, Japanese Minister Taro Aso called Japan a "one race" nation.
International marriages now make up 13% of all marriages in South Korea. Between 1990 and 2005, there have been 159,942 Korean males and 80,813 Korean females married to foreigners.
Admixture has been an ever present and pervading phenomenon in the Philippines. ... there is more approval if the Filipina marries out than a Filipino male.
Such intermarriages were particularly common in the Emirate of Sicily, where one writer visiting the place in the 970s expressed shock at how common it was in rural areas. In the Republic of Venice in northern Italy, it was common for foreign Arab and Berber traders, known to Europeans as the "Moors", to take local Italian wives. In ancient history, the Iberian Peninsula was frequently invaded by foreigners who intermarried with the native population.
It was common in the Ottoman Empire for Turkish males to intermarry with European females... Some of these European wives exerted great influence upon the empire as Valide Sultan ("Mother-Sultan"), some famous examples including Roxelana, a Slavic harem slave who later became Suleiman the Magnificent's favourite wife, and Aimée du Buc de Rivéry, wife of Abdul Hamid I and cousin of French Empress Josephine. Due to the common occurrence of such intermarriages in the Ottoman Empire, they have had a significant impact on the ethnic makeup of the modern Turkish population in Turkey, which now differs from that of the Turkic population in Central Asia.
The degree of miscegenation is very high in the former Soviet Union. Interethnic marriages made up about 22% of all marriages in Moscow, according to the figures from 1995. The number of unions between Slavic women and Caucasus men has skyrocketed, according to the Institute of General Genetics.
In modern times, attitudes towards miscegenation in the former Soviet Union vary greatly, depending on the race and gender of each partner. For example, unions between white/Slavic males and Asian/Oriental or Turkic women are almost universally tolerated, and their children are generally identified and treated as members of the local ethnic majority. However, unions between Slavic women and visibly non-Slavic men may meet varying degrees of discrimination, from light to none for Asian men (depending also on origin, whether they are immigrants or were born in the Soviet Union, and where in the Soviet Union they were born), to some hostility for Turkic men (although much of this is due to the assumption of their faith as Muslim) and Jews, and quite high intolerance towards those who marry blacks or have children by them (young African-Russians in Moscow are often scornfully called 'Children of the Olympics', under the assumption that they were conceived by visiting tourists during the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games). The situation is also highly affected by self-identification, since many people of Asian or Turkic blood have assimilated to the point where they identify themselves as Russian/Ukrainian/etc. and are socially accepted as such.
America has many fewer specific definitions of race (four racial definitions as opposed to the United Kingdom's 86).
Race in Brazil - Multiracial Brazilians make up 42.6% of Brazil's population, 79.782 million people, and they live in all regions of Brazil. Multiracial Brazilians are mainly people of mixed European, African and Amerindian ancestry.
In a poll conducted by Datanalisis, almost 70 percent of Venezuelans polled opposed the shut-down of RCTV, but most cited the loss of their favorite soap operas rather than concerns about limits on freedom of expression
Jesters had political significance. Regarded as pets or mascots, they served not simply to amuse but to criticise their master or mistress and their guests. Queen Elizabeth (reigned 1558-1603) is said to have rebuked one of her fools for being insufficiently severe with her. Excessive behaviour, however, could lead to a fool being whipped, as Lear threatens to whip his fool. ... His characteristic idiom suggests he is a 'natural' fool, not an artificial one, though his perceptiveness and wit show that he is far from being an idiot, however 'touched' he might be.
The position of the Joker playing card, as a wild card which has no fixed place in the hierarchy of King, Queen, Knave, etc. might be a remnant of the position of the court jester. This lack of any place in the hierarchy meant Kings could trust the counsel of the jesters, as they had no vested interest in any region, estate or church.
Stańczyk has been always considered to have been much more than a mere court jester. He is remembered as a man of great intelligence and a political philosopher gifted with formidable insight into Poland's current and future situation. He used his job to criticize and warn his contemporaries by the use of satire.
Traditionally, the role of the Jester or Fool was to speak Truth to Power. Only the Fool was actually allowed to criticize the King or warn him of his folly. If you look historically, you'll find that comedy (especially satire) tends to flourish in times of great hardship where traditional values have crumbled or become irrelevant. Look at the history of the Jews, the Irish or African-Americans and you'll see rich, profound comic traditions. It is often a necessary and humane response to ordeal.
Neanderthals may have had an elaborate proto-linguistic system of communication that was more musical than modern human language, and that pre-dated the separation of language and music into two separate modes of cognition.
Nikah Ijtimah (English: combined marriage) is a form of polyandry that existed in the Pre-Islamic period in the Arabian peninsula.
"there were four types of marriage during the ancient Arab period. One ... type of marriage was that a group of less than ten men would assemble and enter upon a woman, and all of them would have sexual relations with her. If she became pregnant and delivered a child and some days had passed after her delivery, she would send for all of them and none of them could refuse to come, and when they all gathered before her she would say to them "You (all) know what you have done and now I have given birth to a child. So it is your child O so and so! Naming whoever she liked and her child would follow him and he could not refuse to take him."
In May 2006, tour-guide Paul Raffaele led an Australian 60 Minutes crew to report on the Korawai people.] After a few days' filming, the crew were allegedly approached by a man who claimed his 6-year old nephew Wa-Wa had been accused of being a Kakua (witch doctor), and was in danger of being cannibalised. The 60 Minutes crew declined to offer assistance. Paul Raffaele approached the rival Seven Network, who agreed to send a Today Tonight crew to remove Wa-Wa from the area. Before being able to gain access to them, the crew were deported by Indonesian authorities at the Papuan capital of Jayapura over visa issues.
The distinctive high stilt architecture of the Korowai houses, well above flood-water levels, is a form of defensive fortification- to disrupt rival clans from capturing people (especially women and children) for slavery or cannibalism. The height and girth of the common ironwood stilts also serves to protect the house from arson attacks in which huts are set alight and the inhabitants smoked out.
False allegation of child sexual abuse Of the allegations determined to be false, only a small portion originated with the child, the studies showed; most false allegations originated with an adult bringing the accusations on behalf of a child, and of those, a large majority occurred in the context of divorce and child-custody battles. In highly publicized cases, the general public has a strong tendency to summarily assume the accused is guilty, leading to very serious social stigma.
Homeless scientist George R. Price. Committed suicide due to not being able to help the homeless.
Cetacean intelligence - The same experiment was repeated with humans, and it took the volunteers about the same length of time to figure out what was being asked of them. After an initial period of frustration or anger, the humans realised they were being rewarded for novel behavior. In dolphins this realisation produced excitement and more and more novel behaviors - in humans it mostly just produced relief.
