thebestblogever

The Story of a Girl

2011-07-07T08:20:00.003+03:00

This was the headlines that everybody in the town could read five days ago in the local newspaper. I cannot think of something else since I read the news.

Mary, the girl who was found dead, was a classmate of mine. Beautiful, smart and admired by everybody for her intelligence she was a popular person with the whole school. Half a year ago she fell in love with an older guy, she was 17 and he was 20. Her friends thought it had been love at first sight. Flowers, telephone conversations and long walks in the park made us think it was a relationship that appears once in a lifetime. She had actually said a couple of times this was the man of her life.

Mary left home two months ago. Her parents immediately phoned the police and informed the authorities about their daughter’s disappearance and about a large sum of money being stolen from the house. Since then the police has been searching her. Someone came up with the idea she was kidnapped while others thought she was killed.

Five days ago everybody’s impatience to find out the truth came to a tragic end. A boy found her dead body on the bank of the lake 2 km far from the town. The police officers started an investigation and it became obvious that Mary had committed suicide. She drowned in the lake in a desperate attempt to escape the situation she had entered. After leaving home she moved with her boyfriend. She remained pregnant. In a long suicide letter, found by the police at her boyfriend’s place, she wrote the guy she was with had been cheating on her with a former girlfriend of his. Given the situation, her pregnancy and the shame of having been cheated on, she made a stupid decision and committed suicide one week before Christmas.

The local community is terrified. A well behaved young lady, the only child of a respectful family found her terrible death in a stupid way. Personally I regret her death. Young people like her often do mistakes because they lack experience and because they do not communicate with their family and friends. This tragedy could have been avoided if she had been helped and advised by family, friends or social workers.

Roma people

2010-09-14T08:34:00.001+03:00

Many people in Europe try to integrate the Roma people or gypsies in their societies and culture. Things start to improve, at least in their mind, when they call them roma, gens du voyage or travellers. Is this enough? No, it is not.
Gypsies have been so far dependent on landowners or on practising various crafts such as wood craving. They simply do not know how to make a living from a decent job. Until the mid 1850's another person used to take care of them as they were mere slaves on a property. After 1848 revolutions in Europe thye were set free, but freedom is irrelevant for them. They started movinf from a place to another as they were not welcome anymore.
Today history repeats. It is hard for them to understand that no state in supposed to socially assist them from birth to death without paying taxes or without earning their living.

Roma people will cause trouble as long as they do not understand work brings prosperity and stability and at the same time helps them really fight prejudice.

Sir Winston Churchill - 45 years since he died

2010-01-23T20:48:00.000+02:00

Full name: Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965)
born 30th of November, 1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England
died 24th of January, 1965, London

Tomorrow it is the 45th year since Sir Winston Churchill passed.

Son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a prominent Tory politician, and the American Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. He had an unhappy childhood and was an unpromising student who attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before embarking on an army career. After joining the 4th Hussars in 1895, he saw service as both a soldier and a journalist, and his dispatches from India and South Africa attracted wide attention. While working as a journalist during the Boer War he was captured and made a prisoner-of-war before escaping.
Fame as a military hero helped him win election to the House of Commons in 1900 and become a Member of Parliament (MP) for Oldham. But he became disaffected with his party and in 1904 joined the Liberal Party. When the Liberals won the 1905 election, Churchill was appointed undersecretary at the Colonial Office. In 1908 he entered the Cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, becoming home secretary in 1910. The following year he became first lord of the Admiralty (1911-1915). He held this post in the first months of World War One but after the disastrous Dardanelles expedition, for which he was blamed, he resigned. He joined the army, serving for a time on the Western Front. In 1917, he was back in government as minister of munitions. From 1919 to 1921 he was secretary of state for war and air, and from 1924-1929 was chancellor of the exchequer.
In the years before World War II, his warnings of the threat posed by Adolf Hitler’s Germany were repeatedly ignored. When war broke out, he was appointed to his old post as head of the Admiralty. After Neville Chamberlain resigned, Churchill headed a coalition government as prime minister (1940–45). He committed himself and the nation to an all-out war until victory was achieved, and his great eloquence, energy, and indomitable fortitude made him an inspiration to his countrymen, especially in the Battle of Britain. With Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, he shaped Allied strategy through the Atlantic Charter and at the Cairo, Casablanca, and Tehran conferences. Though he was the architect of victory, his government was defeated in the 1945 elections. After the war he alerted the West to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union. He led the Conservative Party back into power in 1951 and remained prime minister until 1955, when ill health forced his resignation.
For his many writings, including The Second World War (6 vol., 1948–53) he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953; his later works include his History of the English-Speaking Peoples (4 vol., 1956–58). He was knighted in 1953; he later refused the offer of a peerage. He was made an honorary U.S. citizen in 1963. Among other majors contributions to the history of the mankind it is worth mentioning that he came up with the term “Iron Curtain”. In his late years he attained heroic status as one of the titans of the 20th century.
Sit Winston Churchill died on 24 January 1965 and was given a state funeral.

Post

2010-01-04T10:37:00.001+02:00

Rain has just started pouring over the city. Don't you wanna dance said John to Mary. And they lived happily ever after.

Let there be hope

2010-01-03T23:48:00.001+02:00

The year to start, 2010 namely, is gonna be a good one or it's not going to be at all.
Peace and hope!
God bless ye all!

10 Facts about the Sun

2009-08-26T18:12:00.005+03:00

1. The sun is actually a star, the closest star to Earth
The sun is an average star, meaning its size, age, and temperature fall in about the middle of the ranges of these properties for all stars. While some in our galaxy are nearly as old as the universe, about 15 billion years, our sun is a 2nd-generation star, only 4.6 billion years old. Some of its material came from former stars.

* Velocity Relative to Near Stars: 19.7 km/s
* Spectral Type: G2 V
* Synodic Period: 27.2753 days
* Solar Constant (Total Solar Irradiance): 1.365 - 1.369 kW/m2

2. The sun is by far the largest object in the solar system
The sun contains over 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System (Jupiter contains most of the rest).

* Equatorial Radius: 695,500 km
* Equatorial Circumference: 4,379,000 km
* Volume: 1,142,200,000,000,000,000 km3
* Mass: 1,989,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg
* Density: 1.409 g/cm3
* Surface Area: 6,087,799,000,000 km2

3. We have always known the sun
Unlike many other objects in our solar system, the sun has been known to humans since the dawn of time. There is no discovery date or discoverer.

4. Since its creation, the sun has used up about half of the hydrogen in its core
Over the next 5 billion years or so, it will grow steadily brighter as more helium accumulates in its core. As the supply of hydrogen dwindles, the Sun's core must keep producing enough pressure to keep the Sun from collapsing in on itself. The only way it can do this is to increase its temperature. Eventually it will run out of hydrogen fuel. At that point, it will go through a radical change which will most likely result in the complete destruction of the planet Earth.

5. The Greeks named the sun Helios but the Romans used the name Sol, which is still in use today. Because of the important role the sun plays in our lives, it has been studied, perhaps, more than any other object in the universe, outside out own planet Earth. Our Sun has inspired mythology in almost all cultures, including ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Native Americans, and Chinese.

6. Ulysses was the first spacecraft to study our Sun's poles
Launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery and sent towards Jupiter with powerful booster rockets. After studying Jupiter for 17 days, Ulysses used the giant planet's gravity to hurl it into an orbit out of the Ecliptic Plane, where planets orbit our Sun.

The other primary Solar mission is SOHO. The international Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been keeping a steady watch on the Sun since April 1996.
7. The sun's strong gravitational pull holds Earth and the other planets in place
It keeps the planets orbiting inside the solar system:

* Equatorial Surface Gravity: 274.0 m/s2
* Escape Velocity: 2,223,720 km/h

8. The sun is made up of distinctive areas
In addition to the energy-producing solar core, the interior has two distinct regions: a radiative zone and a convective zone. From the edge of the core outward, first through the radiative zone and then through the convective zone, the temperature decreases from 8 million to 7,000 K. It takes a few hundred thousand years for photons to escape from the dense core and reach the surface.

9. How does the sun's "surface" and "atmosphere" compare to planets?
The "surface," known as the photosphere, is just the visible 500-km-thick layer from which most of the Sun's radiation and light finally escape, and it is the place where sunspots are found. Above the photosphere lies the chromosphere ("sphere of color") that may be seen briefly during total solar eclipses as a reddish rim, caused by hot hydrogen atoms, around the Sun. Temperature steadily increases with altitude up to 50,000 K, while density drops to 100,000 times less than in the photosphere.

10. An unsolved mystery of the sun involves the corona ("crown")
Above the chromosphere lies the corona ("crown"), extending outward from the Sun in the form of the "solar wind" to the edge of the solar system. The corona is extremely hot - millions of degrees kelvin. Since it is physically impossible to transfer thermal energy from the cooler surface of the Sun to the much hotter corona, the source of coronal heating has been a scientific mystery for more than 60 years.

What does it mean to be American

2009-08-09T21:16:00.000+03:00

What does it really mean? How is it like to be an American? What does one make adhere to such a title? At this time of worldwide detestation, distrust and contempt towards the Americans all over the world this is a question which is important to put and it is as important to answer.
Is having citizenship simply enough to classify one as an American? The response is definitely no, as the Constitution of the USA protects all of those who live and work within the borders between Canada and Mexic regardless of their citizenship.
"American" is a word which defines all of those within the borders of the USA. It encompasses all of those who are the heirs of the early settlers, all of those who were brought to this land under the shackles of slavery, all of those who are the descendants of Native-American, and all of those who have immigrated here willingly in pursuit of a much better life.
Despite this one singular designation, "American" we are not a nation of people, for a nation of people share common heritage, common language, and common religion. The United States is not, has never been, and shall never be a nation-state.
This, I think, is something that everyone who is American can take pride in; that we all hail from different and diverse backgrounds, we are of all religious faiths, we are all of our own personal beliefs, and we come from all countries.
Not in spite of these differences, but in pride because of them, we can embrace the future as one group of people, Americans who have compassion for their fellow Americans, Americans who share the same equal rights and privileges, and above all Americans who do not carry with them contempt for their fellow Americans. These are the things that the Constitution underscores.
Yes, it is true that Americans have fought amongst themselves in the past, and in the past they have committed extraordinary crimes, despicable things that are decidedly "un-American." However, the past is the world of yesterday and of yesteryear. The past should be remembered and not ever forgotten, but it should also be left in the past, for if we cannot do that then we cannot embrace the future in and move forward through it. The future is now; it is the world of today, and of this very instance. Will we move forth together in stride, or will we be cursed to wear the sins of the past on our sleeves and drive the wedges between us deeper still? For the sake of our selves, our children, and of all future generations, we must burn those sleeves and embrace the future together, as Americans, for our time, and for all time.
For the one value that decidedly defines the term "American" is that we are a diverse group of people, that we are a tolerant people, that we are not a nation of people, rather we are an assemblage of people who hail from all of the nations of the world, and from all faiths. That is what the term "American" truly means.

Stupid American Laws and Regulations

2009-07-20T19:36:00.001+03:00

In Atwoodville, Connecticut, it is illegal to play Scrabble while wailting for a politician to speak.

In Nebraska, a parent can be arrested in his or her child can’t hold back a burp during a church service. It is also against the law to sneeze in a Nebraska church. Meanwhile in God-fearing Alabama, it is illegal to wear a false moustache which causes laughter in church.

It is illegal to walk down the street in Maine with your shoelaces undone.

In Pennsylvania, it is illegal for a man to purchase alcohol without written consent from his wife.

When a man meets a cow in Minnesota, he is required by law to remove his hat.

In Texas, it is illegal to take more than three sips of beer at a time while standing.

It is illegal to spit into the wind in Nebraska.

In Ohio, women are prohibited from wearing patent leather shoes in public. In Cleveland, Ohio, it is illegal to catch mice without a hunting licence.

In North Dakota, it is illegal to lie down and fall asleep with your shoes on.

No store is Providence, Rhode Island, is allowed to sell a toothbrush on a Sunday. But they can sell toothpaste and mouthwash on the Sabbath.

In Kansas, it’s against the law to catch fish with your bare hands.

An Ohio law states that pets have to carry lights on their tails at night.

In Florida, women may be fined for falling asleep under a hair dryer. And men may not be seen publicly in any kind of strapless gown.

In Vermont, it is illegal for a woman to wear false teeth without first obtaining written permission from her husband.

In Iowa, it is illegal for a kiss to last more than five minutes.

In Oklahoma, it is illegal to get a fish drunk. You also risk arrest, a fine or a jail sentence if you are caught making “ugly faces” at a dog.

You may not eat cottage cheese after 6pm on a Sunday in Tampa Bay, Florida.

In California it is illegal to peel an orange in your hotel room.

In Milwaukee, residents must keep pet elephants on a leash while walking them on public streets.

In Mobile, Alabama, it is illegal to howl at ladies inside the city limits.

Dogs must have a permit signed by the mayor in order to congregate on private property in groups of three or more in Oklahoma.

In Muncie, Indiana, it is illegal to carry fishing tackle in a cemetery.

It is illegal to go fishing while wearing pyjamas in Chicago.

It is strictly against the law to allow lions to run wild on the streets of Alderson, West Virginia.

In New York, a fine of $25 may still be levied for flirting. This old law prohibits men from turning around on any city street and looking “at a woman in that way”. A second conviction for this crime requires the offender to wear a pair of racehorse blinkers whenever he goes out!.

In Kirkland, Illinois, it is forbidden that fly over the town.

In California, it is illegal for anyone to try and prevent a child from playfully jumping over a puddle of water.

In Tusla, you may not open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer.

In California, it is illegal to threaten a butterfly, let alone kill one.

In Massachusetts, snoring it prohibited unless all bedroom windows are closed and securely locked. In the same state, goatee beards are banned unless you pay a special licence fee for the privilege of wearing one in public.

In Atlanta, Gerogia, it is forbidden to dress a mannequin without first pulling down the window blinds. It is also illegal to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp.

A law in Kansas reads: “When trains meet at a crossing, both shall come to a full stop and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.”

At International Falls, Minnesota, it is illegal for a dog to chase a cat up a telegraph pole. Owners are liable to be fined.

It is illegal to carry an ice-cream cone in your pocket in Kentucky.

The secret of the eternal youth

2009-07-19T14:48:00.001+03:00

Brooke Greenberg, 16, is a daughter of Melanie and Howard Greenberg. The couple has three other children, aged 13, 19 and 22 – all of them females. The other Greenberg girls are growing like all other kids. Brooke, who already turned 16, seems to be stuck in her infancy. Her appearance has not been changing for 15 years already.

Brooke weighs about 7 kilos, she is 80 centimeters tall. The girl has a baby’s body and face. There is no other human being like her anywhere in the world. Scientists say that the parts of the girl’s body live independently from one another. For example, Brooke has infant’s teeth and brain, but the structure of her bones corresponds to those of a ten-year-old child.
Modern medicine knows many incidents of premature aging. There are about 20 children living in the world today, who suffer from an extremely rare disease known as progeria. All of them look
like elderly people, although they are only ten years of age. The disease develops as a result of genetic mutation.
Scientists originally believed that Brooke Greenberg had an opposite of progeria. A closer insight showed, though, that the girl was not suffering from any known genetic diseases. Since the phenomenon is obvious – the girl is not ageing – scientists believe that she gives the world an opportunity to find out why it happens. They hope that they will find the gene or a group of genes, which make people change with years and eventually die.

The little girl does not speak. She can not eat alone either – her parents have to use special tubes to feed the child. Nevertheless, the secret of everlasting youth is hidden somewhere inside the poor child.

The Largest Swimming Pool in the World

2009-06-29T18:47:00.000+03:00

San Alfonso del Mar, a seaside resort in Chile, houses the biggest artificial swimming pool in the world. San Alfonso del Mar is situated on Chile’s southern coast, 100 km west of the capital Santiago.

San Alfonso del Mar has already been attracting people from all over South America and this artificial lagoon and swimming pool, eight hectares in size and with an incredible 250,000 cubic meters of water, is intended to turn it into a must see for virtually all people. Acknowledged by Guinness World Records as being the world’s largest swimming pool, the lagoon trounces all other record holders in the category, including the Orthlieb pool in Casablanca, Morocco, itself a huge 150 meters by 100 meters – the San Alfonso pool is 1km in length.

The unique clear water artificial lagoons, transparent to a depth of 35 meters and unprecedented in design and construction methods, are the work of Crystal Lagoons founder, biochemist and Chilean businessman Fernando Fischmann. It is equivalent in size to an incredible 6,000 normal backyard pools. The lagoon, cost an estimated $US1.5 billion ($1.74 billion) to build. The pool itself took five years to build and the annual maintenance bill will be £2million. It can harvest, filter and permanently recirculate ocean water by itself.

The water in summer is kept at 25 degrees Celsius, around nine degrees warmer than the chilly Pacific Ocean nearby. The man-made lagoon large enough to allow guests make use of small kayaks boats to ferry around the pool.

The lagoon technology can “harvest, filter and permanently recirculate ocean water,” according to the Chilean biochemist Fernando Fischmann who heads Crystal Lagoons Corporation, the company which developed the technology.

The man-made saltwater lagoon has been attracting huge crowds to the San Alfonso del Mar resort at Algarrobo since its opening. Its turquoise waters are so crystal clear that you can see the bottom even in the deep end.

The Youngest Mother in the World: Lina Medina, Peru

2009-06-28T11:53:00.002+03:00

Born at full term at Lima's maternity clinic, Lina Medina's child was taken through a caesarian operation done by Dr. Lozada and Dr. Busalleu.

Lina's son was weighing 2,700 grams at birth, was in good wealth and well formed. The baby and his young mother were able to leave the clinic after only a few days.

Lina Medina (born 27th of September, 1933, in Paurange, Peru) is the youngest confirmed mother in medical history, giving birth at the age of 5 years, 7 months and 21 days.

Lina Medina was brought in 1938 to a local hospital by her parents at the age of 5 years because of increasing abdominal size. She was originally thought to have had a tumor, but her doctors determined she was in her 7th month of pregnancy. Dr. Gerardo Lozada took her to Lima, Peru, prior to the surgery to have other professionals confirm that Lina was in fact pregnant. A month and a half later, on 14th of May, 1939, she gave birth to a boy by a caesarean section necessitated by her small pelvis. The surgery was performed by Dr. Lozada and Dr. Busalleu, with Dr. Colareta providing anaesthesia. Her case was reported in detail by Dr. Escomel to La Presse Medicale, along with the additional details that her menarche had occurred at 8 months of age, and that she had had prominent breast development by the age of 4. By age 5 her figure displayed pelvic widening and advanced bone maturation.

Her son weighed 2.7 kg at birth and was named Gerardo after the doctor who delivered gim. He was raised believing that Lina was his sister, but found out at the age of ten that she was his mother. He grew up healthy but died in 1979, aged 40, of a disease of the bone marrow.

Lina Medina never revealed who was the father of her child, nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Dr. Escomel suggested she might not actually know herself by writing that Lina "couldn't give precise responses". Lina's father was arrested on suspicion of incest and rape, but was later released due to lack of evidence. Medina later married Raul Jurado, who fathered her second son in 1972. They live in a poor district of Lima known as "Chicago Chico" ("Little Chicago"). She has never spoken to the press and has not given any details on the cirmunstances she became pregnant.

In young adulthood she worked as a secretary in the Lima clinic of Dr. Gerardo Lozada, the doctor who performed her caesarean section. Lozada gave her an education, and helped put her son through high school.

Rezultatele parţiale la BAC 2009

2009-06-26T19:42:00.003+03:00

Au fost publicate primele rezultate parţiale ale bacalaureatului 2009. Dupa proba A si B - limba română şi limba străine, prob orale - situaţia stă aşa

bacalaureat.edu.ro/2009/rapoarte/index.html

The King is Dead! Long Live MICHAEL JACKSON!

2009-06-26T17:55:00.003+03:00

The King of Pop has passed away. Michael Jackson, 50, died on Thursday at local time 2:26 in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California.
It seems that a heart attack was fatal to him as he had already had major health problems. His career was extremely prolific. In 1982 he sold more than 57 million copies of his album Thriller. The exact cause of his death is still unknown, but Jacko might have died from a pain killer over dose (Demerol).
In recent years his fortune and wealth went down. He intended to go on a tour of 50 concerts in the UK this summer, starting from July 13.
Michael Jackson has greatly influenced the history of music in general. His name will be always associated with success and talent.
May God rest him in peace!

Romania - Transylvania (Ardeal)

2009-06-24T17:35:00.002+03:00

Transylvania, or Ardeal as it is also called, is an old Romanian province inhabited by the Romanians starting with the first centuries of our era. During the Middle Ages the Romanian majority population fought for national identity and at the same time different ethnic communities joined them. Nowadays the mixture of peoples is of an outstanding variety. Many important events for the modern Romania took place here. I want to mention Michael the Brave’s success in uniting the three Romanian principalities in 1599 and the Great Union. Today according to the 2002 census 7.2 million people live here and the local economy is the most developed in the country.
After a general introduction about Ardeal I considered to be of interest a presentation of three towns – Sibiu, Sighişoara and Alba Iulia - that can give the reader an idea about how this region really is. I have to mention here the contribution to the development of Transylvania of the German and Hungarian settlers who came here centuries ago.
Sibiu is situated near the geographical center of Romania. The city was founded in 1190 by German settlers, near an ancient Roman settlement. The museums such as Astra or Brukenthal Museum and the wonderfully preserved medieval fortifications and churches recommend it as a tourist destination for those who enjoy discovering the past. In 2007 it proudly welcomes visitors and artists from all over the world as the European Capital of Culture.
Sighişoara is the oldest inhabited citadel in Europe. Its German founders took great care of this fortress that was situated on important commercial routes and transformed it into a marvel of military defense. The medieval festival held here each year in July comes as a natural continuation of its historic past. The Clock Tower and the Museum of History hosted here or the house where Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes) was born attract visitors who have a first hand experience in a medieval town.
Alba Iulia is considered by many to be the spiritual capital of Romania. On the 1st of December 1918 the representatives of all the Romanians gathered here and decided to bring together in a single state the historic principalities of Transylvania, Moldavia and Walachia. Not only then it proved its importance but also in 1599 when Michael the Brave made it his capital. Built on Roman ruins, in the Middle Ages it played an important role in the history of Transylvania, being the capital of the region between 1541-1690. The churches and the historic places make Alba Iulia an enjoyable tourist attraction.
I am sure my paper can provide the reader with a clear view about Transylvania and its past and present. A region of the present day Romania, full of the marks of the past, it fully proves its European vocation as part of a proud nation and country.

Mothers-in-law. Behaviour and characteristics.

2009-06-09T09:15:00.003+03:00

Mothers-in-law, also called “her mother”, are a unique and distinct human species. Unfortunately they do not disappear, this is the problem most married men encounter. They do not live either as normal and natural humans. They simply interfere with honest men’s life, they bother young honourable gentlemen and husbands who want to have some fun late at night in a pub or refuse to take their newly born baby out for a walk.
A typical mother-in-law is 40 or 50 years old, retired or on her way to retirement, a good looking, or on the contrary, a one in a thousand ugly woman, who has no other concern than to take care of her beloved child. The fact is most mothers-in-law totally forget that their babies are frown-ups, young responsible persons who want to enjoy at least a moment of peace and quiet. A mother-in-law leaves you no break: she is a pain in that part of the body- If you got a training session to become a SWAT, you would have more free time for yourself and your wife. But your mother-in-law might be even tougher and more challenging.
How does she behave?
On a typical day she phones you to ask if you have fed the baby and if you have bought flowers for aunt Mary’s birthday. (Who’s this aunt Mary after all?!) You did not? Oh my God!!! YOU PIG! You should go and buy some at once! She will be at your place at 12 p.m. Unlucky you, this was supposed to be your free day. The guys were coming to see a football match on TV. At 12 p.m. sharp, she knocks at the door. Your place is a mess – in her opinion – the baby cries and you stink. Your wife told you to do this and that, but you did not, she knows that and nothing can make her believe something else. Yet, the day is saved once more by your mother-in-law. She actually drives anyone crazy – and brings what she calls “order” to other people’s lives.
She starts doing the housework and claims you should do the same. Whatever, helping her is just a stage in your life. But the fact is nothing is well done. Eventually leaving home is a decision to be made. At 7 p.m., when you are back, your life is ruined. The wife knows you are lazy, drunkard and ignore the child.
And above all mum wanted to help but got no support from anybody in the house. Is it any use to get angry with her? No, there is not. She is just another pain there-
At least she makes good food, which is not the case with her daughter.

Definition of the EU

2009-05-07T22:15:00.002+03:00

What is the European Union?

A unique economic and political partnership between 27 democratic European countries.
What are its aims?

Peace, prosperity and freedom for its 498 million citizens — in a fairer, safer world.
What results so far?

Frontier-free travel and trade, the euro (the single European currency), safer food and a greener environment, better living standards in poorer regions, joint action on crime and terror, cheaper phone calls, millions of opportunities to study abroad … and much more besides.
How does it work?

To make these things happen, EU countries set up bodies to run the EU and adopt its legislation. The main ones are:

* the European Parliament (representing the people of Europe);
* the Council of the European Union (representing national governments);
* the European Commission (representing the common EU interest).

The flag of the EU

This is the European flag. It is the symbol not only of the European Union but also of Europe's unity and identity in a wider sense. The circle of gold stars represents solidarity and harmony between the peoples of Europe.

The number of stars has nothing to do with the number of Member States. There are twelve stars because the number twelve is traditionally the symbol of perfection, completeness and unity. The flag therefore remains unchanged regardless of EU enlargements.

History of the flag

The history of the flag goes back to 1955. At that time, the European Union existed only in the form of the European Coal and Steel Community, with just six Member States. But a separate body with a larger membership - the Council of Europe - had been set up several years earlier and was busy defending human rights and promoting European culture.

The Council of Europe was considering what symbol to adopt for its own use. After much discussion, the present design was adopted - a circle of twelve gold stars on a blue background. In various traditions, twelve is a symbolic number representing perfection. It is also, of course, the number of months in a year and the number of hours shown on a clock face. The circle is, among other things, a symbol of unity. So the European flag was born, representing the ideal of unity among the peoples of Europe.

The Council of Europe then encouraged other European institutions to adopt the same flag and, in 1983, the European Parliament took up the call. Finally, in 1985, the flag was adopted by all EU heads of State and government as the official emblem of the European Union - which, in those days, was called the European Communities.

All European institutions have been using it since the beginning of 1986. The European flag is the only emblem of the European Commission - the EU's executive arm. Other EU institutions and bodies use an emblem of their own in addition to the European flag.

The Anthem of the EU

This is the anthem not only of the European Union but also of Europe in a wider sense. The melody comes from the Ninth Symphony composed in 1823 by Ludwig Van Beethoven.

For the final movement of this symphony, Beethoven set to music the "Ode to Joy" written in 1785 by Friedrich von Schiller. This poem expresses Schiller's idealistic vision of the human race becoming brothers - a vision Beethoven shared.

In 1972, the Council of Europe (the same body that designed the European flag) adopted Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" theme as its own anthem. The well-known conductor Herbert Von Karajan was asked to write three instrumental arrangements - for solo piano, for wind instruments and for symphony orchestra. Without words, in the universal language of music, this anthem expresses the ideals of freedom, peace and solidarity for which Europe stands.

In 1985, it was adopted by EU heads of State and government as the official anthem of the European Union. It is not intended to replace the national anthems of the Member States but rather to celebrate the values they all share and their unity in diversity.

Europe Day
On the 9th of May 1950, Robert Schuman presented his proposal on the creation of an organised Europe, indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations.

This proposal, known as the "Schuman declaration", is considered to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union.

Today, the 9th of May has become a European symbol (Europe Day) which, along with the flag, the anthem, the motto and the single currency (the euro), identifies the political entity of the European Union. Europe Day is the occasion for activities and festivities that bring Europe closer to its citizens and peoples of the Union closer to one another.

Romania and its beauty

2009-05-06T22:05:00.003+03:00

It's been quite a while, if not a whole life now, I heard and I kept hearing how beautiful is Romania.
Yes, indeed. It is beautiful, rich and the people here ale welcoming, but is this enough?
Foreign tourists coming here need roads, good guides, good hotels and last but not least safety. Nobody will ever come back again unless you convince, if you do not sell your product.
Watching this might get a tourist interested in coming to Romania and spending his or her holiday?

Romania - The Land Of Choice
Vezi mai multe video din Muzica »

Orthodox Easter

2009-04-18T17:51:00.005+03:00

The Orthodox Church celebrates Easter on April 19-21, 2009.
This year comes with some minor financial problems for all the world, but hopefully and with God's help we shall overcome all the challenges.
For the Orthodox Easter is an occasion for repentance, forgiveness and joy. Christ is risen and all the world has the chance to come back to life, to light and eventually to salvation.

Happy Easter!
CHRIST IS RISEN!

Coming back

2009-03-25T21:52:00.002+02:00

It's been quite a while since I wrote last on the blog. Quite uneasy days lately but it's been a pleasure to overpass some aspects which seemed more or less long lasting.

The origin and history of the F-WORD

2009-02-21T23:31:00.002+02:00

Fuck is a widely used word in English.
Watch this movie and find out where does it come from and how is it used in various situations and communication context.

Roman Britain

2009-02-06T00:09:00.003+02:00

In the summer of the Roman year 699, now described as the year 55BC, the Proconsul of Gaul, Gaius Julius Caesar, turned his gaze upon Britain. He knew it was inhabited by the same type of tribesmen who confronted the Roman army in Germany, Gaul and Spain.
On 26 August, 55 BC the great Roman general invaded Britain for the first time. This was to be the first military conquest of the British Isles. His army set sail from Gaul and landed somewhere near Dover. The highly efficient Roman troops had little difficulty in routing the local Celtic chieftains. Caesar decided to return the following year considering this first expedition as a preliminary to the conquest. On 6 July 54 BC, legionaries and cavalry set sail to Britain in 800 boats. Caesar conquered the south-eastern part – the most accessible and the richest - of the island but the coming of winter forced him to return to Rome. He had now the knowledge that Britain was far from being the primitive island of brutal tribesmen which Romans had previously imagined it to be.
In 43AD, emperor Claudius decides to incorporate Britain into the Roman Empire. So began what was called the “ Roman occupation “ which was to last for 360 years.
The superior Roman civilization imposed its values over the Celtic society. This material culture was strongest in the towns. The ruins of the Roman cities and villas which we can still visit today are remarkable. Having imposed a uniform set of principles in architecture all over the Empire, whether we talk about Africa, the Middle East or Europe, the new comers brought their sense for order and symmetry. Towns were planned in chessboard squares for communities dwelling under orderly government. The building rose in accordance with the pattern standardized throughout the Roman Empire. The urban areas had their forum, temples, and courts of justice, baths, markets and main drains. During the first century of occupation the builders took in consideration an increasing population. Nowadays the experts dispute the population of Roman Britain, and rivals estimates vary between 500,000 and 1.5 million. It seems certain that the army, the civil administration, the townsfolk, the high class and their dependants amounted to 300.000 or 400,000 people.
London, the Roman Londinium, had become the center of the road system and an export market for corn and cloth. An extensive and well-planned city with mighty walls took the place of the wooden trading settlement of 61AD. At the end of the 3rd century money was coined in the London mint, and the city was the headquarters of the financial administration. In the later days of the Roman occupation it seems to have been the center of civil government, as York was of the military, although it never received the status of municipium. From the objects dug up in all the south-eastern part of Britain it has been possible to reconstruct the pleasant life then enjoyed by the well-to-do under the protection of the Roman rule. Togas, shoes and sandals of leather seem to have been worn in the Roman fashion. In cold weather, rooms were kept warm by heated flues beneath mosaic-patterned floors.
Christianity seems not to have had an important role in Roman Britain, given the fact that they worshiped many different deities. The proto-martyr St. Alban, who is said to have suffered for the faith under Diocletian, is spoken of with some uncertainty. In 313 AD emperor Constantine the Great offered the possibility to practice the Christian belief. In 314 the first British bishops are present at Arles. By the year 391, when Emperor Theodosius ordered the closure of the pagan temples, the British Church was highly organized, sending its bishops and delegates to the great councils held on the continent. The British – actually Romano-Briton - Church was still not strong enough to be an influential institution in the political game. The Anglo-Saxon later gave it a status of high importance but the Normans took it to the highest point of development in the early Middle Ages, reshaping it as an efficient instrument of submission of the natives
For over 300 years Britain remained a relatively untroubled outpost of the Roman Empire, the barbarians, from beyond the frontiers being kept at bay by forts and legions along coasts and in the north by Hadrian’s Wall. Stretching 73 miles from the Tyne to Solway, it remains the most impressive surviving Roman landmark in the country.
Roman soldiers looked very different from the Celts they defeated. They wore metal helmets and articulated plate armour and carried shields with a sword suspended and dagger suspended from a belt. A high degree of fitness was demanded so that a legionary could leap fully armed on a horse or swim with all his equipment across a river. The legions were dotted across Britain and were established in forts sited to achieve maximum strategic defence. In some instances the pattern of fort-building will be followed by the Normans who also took great advantage of the old Roman roads, sometimes still in use.
There was law, order and peace and a long established custom of life during the Roman occupation. The population was free from barbarism without being sunk in sloth or luxury. The culture was just a pale reflection of the metropolis. Latin was the official language and it seems that some Latin words entered the common use of Celtic population. French, imposed as an official language by the Normans, influenced much more the existing Old English idioms. Later, historians of art and architecture have attempted to describe the Romano-Celtic culture but have generally concluded with a note of the fortunate blend that was achieved in late 7th and early 8th century. Latin had an interesting fate as it became the language of culture and of scholars in monasteries during the Middle Ages especially in Ireland, from where some monks reintroduced it in Europe. As A Maurois2 said, the language spoken in England was little influenced by the Roman rule. The Latin words in English were borrowed later from French, mainly through the Normans, or were used out of scientific needs. Among the words directly inherited from Latin we can mention: street (strata via – Stratford ), mile ( Lat. mila ), wall ( Lat. vallum ), or –chester ( Lat. castra )
By the year 400 AD, at latest, the Wall seems to have been abandoned. By now the Empire itself was beginning to crumble into ruins, and in Britain one legion after another was recalled to fight Rome’s wars on the Continent. In 407 AD the last two remaining legions were withdrew on the orders of Emperor Honorius, not to return. Until by the middle of the 5th century Rome’s protection was at an end. The islanders were left to fend for themselves.
What was the important effect of the Roman occupation on the later kingdom of England? Besides the city of London and a few ruins, the Romans left no direct significant traces on culture, arts or social life. The Romanic elements in language and in the material civilization were brought back to the island by with the coming of the Normans. The irony of history lies in the fact that the descendants of the very people who contributed to the fall of the Emperial Rome and to the withdrawal from Britain, would bring back – after more than six centuries – the seeds of the new Romanic spirit which emerged in Europe.

Details

2009-01-19T22:30:00.001+02:00

What can I say seeing this clip on youtube?
People are so much alike?
Yeah, I think we look pretty much the same...

Grigore Vieru Has Passed Away

2009-01-18T23:51:00.000+02:00

The Romanian poet Grigore Vieru has passed away.

All his literary and political activity followed some very good principles and one ideal: Moldova is part of Romania and she will join her mother land.
No one can tell whether his unfortunate accident was simply a matter of faith or some secret service from east has played a role in this story.
Let us not forget the accident of Doina and Ion Aldea Teodorovici.

God rest him in peace and light!

Romanian modern family

2009-01-11T22:48:00.002+02:00

It has been a couple of days since I came across a very interesting statistics on the most valued elements of the modern Romanian society. Not surprisingly, the family qualified in top 5 when it came to choosing between various institutions which were considered in this poll. The Church and the army are the first two most appreciated establishments by those who expressed their opinions.
Traditionally the Romanian family consists of husband and wife and one to three children, but this number may depend on region and local traditions. Yet no matter the region where they live, the couple first goes to the town hall to register their marriage and after that both of them with relatives and friends go together to the church to symbolically unify their destiny in front of God and the community. This being done the wedding party can begin.
The links and connections between relatives and the members of the family are very strong in Romania. The grandparents play a vital role in raising the children, the aunts, uncles, cousins and some other distant relatives usually help each other in order to achieve the common goal of prosperity and happiness. For example in case of a close relative’s death most members of a family – both elders and youngsters - come together and prepare everything and support each other. This is an unfortunate occasion, however life is easier when there is somebody there to listen to you and offer a little help when you need it.
Of course besides milk and honey there are also some clouds that might bring sorrow to the Promised Land of the Romanian family. Some of the guys who get married are not quite ready to consider their new responsibility as fathers, loving husbands and all in all “pater familias”. Some of them start drinking and cannot stop anymore. Their wives and children fall victim to their frustration and low self esteem. In this case the state must help and protect. That is the case of abused women who can get any necessary assistance from specialized state organizations and personnel, NGO’s and the Church.
All in all family is still the most reliable institution in Romania. As a matter of fact most of those who went abroad to work or study come back home after a longer or shorter period they spent working in a foreign country. Some of them actually have left just to save some money and return home to buy a house and get married.

Putin and the self esteem

2008-12-21T10:59:00.000+02:00

I guess the Russin prime minister Vladimir Putin has a very good opinion about himself and tries to establish a kind of new order in Russia and not only.

What is politics?

2008-11-08T16:57:00.000+02:00

According to the most definitions of politics I've read so far, politics is the science of convincing people to act in a certain way: to vote for you or convince them to support different initiatives you take to fulfill a common goal or to improve the living of your people.
In Romania things are everything but this definition. Politicians do their best once in every four years to fool the Romanians and to get another mandate either in the Parliament or the government.
Considering this I do not give a penny on the elections on November 30th. My vote is not important as what they do is not relevant to me.

Stefan Paun nu mai e cu noi. Rolul sau de vorbitor s-a terminat

2008-10-29T18:48:00.006+02:00

Se spune ca inceputul intelepciunii este tocmai moartea. De obicei definim sfarsitul existentei noastre in lumea aceasta ca pe un final abrupt, clar, radical si fara drept de apel. Si plangem si ne jelim, si ne tanguim in marea noastra nerabdare si lipsa de apreciere a ceea ce vrea Dumnezeu cu fiecare dintre noi. Pana la urma ceea ce suntem fiecare sunt doar urmele pe care semenii le lasa asupra noastra, pe sufletul nostru. Urma pe care o lasam trebuie sa fie luminoasa, curata, plina de amintiri placute.
Un dialog placut, arsenalul de argumente, elocinta si rabdarea didactica a unui om ca Stefan Paun mi-au intarit convingerea ca, pana si astazi, mai poti fi rafinat, usor boem, mai poti sa iti doresti sa fii elegant si boier. Tot el mi-a aratat ca poti convinge si te poti lasa convins. Demonstra elegant ca doar ideea buna si luminata poate lasa o amprenta reala asupra cuiva.
Avem in comun prenumele. Avem in comun amintiri dintre cele mai placute de acasa si de prin tara.
Dumnezeu, in marea Sa intelepciune, m-a lasat pe mine aici sa ma mai inteleptesc si sa traiesc cu speranta in revederea ce va veni.
Maine la ora 12 Stefan isi ia ramas bun de la aceasta lume. Este depus la biserica Sf. Cuvioasa Parascheva, de pe Strada Unirii din Botosani si va fi inhumat la Cimitirul Pacea.
Dumnezeu sa il ierte.

Why Do the Orthodox Christians Pray?

2008-10-27T21:33:00.003+02:00

The Church is the hospital where people cand find cure and help, while prayer is the medecine itself. Most of us ignore this.
Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me! - the most simple prayer a believer cand say.

Traditional Greek Wedding Party

2008-09-22T02:49:00.000+03:00

The traditional wedding service in the Greek Orthodox faith is an ancient and gorgeous ceremony that's continued unchanged for centuries.

It's also a ceremony full of symbolism. And it amounts to a great experience if you've never attended one before, because it's likely to be quite different from other weddings you've been to.

Many people find the service itself rather unique. The bride and groom don't make vows to each other — it's understood that standing together in the church shows they're serious about getting married.

How it All Begins ...
In most cases, the wedding guests wait with the groom outside the church until the bride arrives (a few sneaky wedding pros will go into the church early to secure a good seat). In summer, when most weddings take place, it's not unusual for ceremonies to be scheduled back to back. So the wedding guests will often hang around with those who've just attended the previous wedding as they prepare to leave. The crowd's professional wedding commentators will get to talk over at least two and maybe even three brides as they leave the church (bargain)!

Meanwhile, the nervous groom waits for the bride at the entrance to the church, often holding her bouquet. He hands it to her as they meet. Then they stroll inside together, followed by the guests. There's no dividing guests into those "for the bride" or "for the groom" — everyone sits together, and in the case of small churches, many people actually prefer to stand somewhere that offers a great view of the proceedings.

Service of Betrothal. The wedding ceremony itself takes place in two parts: the Service of Betrothal, and the Ceremony of the Sacrament of Marriage. The Service of Betrothal focuses on the ring exchange. The priest blesses the rings by holding them in his right hand, and makes the sign of the cross over the the bride's and groom's heads. He then places the rings on the third fingers of their right hands.

The "Koumbaro," the couple's religious sponsor, then swaps the rings three times between the bride and groom's fingers. A number of rituals in the ceremony are repeated three times, which symbolizes the Holy Trinity.

Ceremony of the Sacrament of Marriage. This Ceremony consists of several key parts. First, the priest leads several prayers. Then, as they come to an end, he joins the right hands of the bride and groom. Their hands remain joined until the wedding ceremony ends, which symbolizes their union.

The Crowning.
The bride and groom are crowned with flowered crowns, or "stefana", which are joined by a white ribbon and have been blessed by the priest. The crowns symbolize the glory and honor bestowed on them by God, and the the ribbon signifies the couple's unity. The "Koumbaro" then exchanges the crowns three times between the couple's heads.

The Common Cup.
The priest follows the crowning with a Gospel reading, which tells of the marriage of Cana at Galilee. It was at this wedding that Jesus performed his first miracle, changing water into wine and offering the result to the married couple. Repeating this ritual, the priest gives wine to the couple. They each drink from the cup three times.

The Ceremonial Walk.
The priest now leads the stafana-crowned couple three times around the altar, which amounts to their first steps as a married couple. The "Koumbaro" follows close behind, holding the stefana place.

At this point the couple (and anyone standing nearby) is usually pelted with rice, which ushers handed out earlier to the guests. The rice throwing can get pretty wild — and it's not unusual to catch the priest warding off the rice assault with his Bible.

The Removal of the Crowns.
When the Ceremonial Walk ends, the priest then blesses the couple, removes the crowns and separates their previously-joined hands with the Bible, reminding them that only God can break the union they've just entered into.

Wedding Traditions and Where They're Headed.
Much of the information available on Greek Orthodox wedding traditions is slightly outdated, and sometimes gives the impression that every Greek couple who marries still follows them. Some of these waning traditions include:

- Rolling a baby on the marital bed to encourage fertility.

- Throwing money onto the marital bed.

- Pinning money on the bride (and sometimes the groom) at the wedding reception.

Although these rituals are seen as traditional, fewer and fewer young people are adopting them — they seem rather old-fashioned, just as the Dollar Dance seems somewhat outdated to some American brides.

After all, many couples don't want to put their guests through the ordeal of having a monetary gift put on public display. Although money's still a very common (as well as practical and appreciated) wedding present, guests often give it to the couple ahead of time, or hand it to someone like the best man at the reception for safekeeping.

Greeks living in the more remote parts of Greece and abroad, who often feel more strongly about doing things the traditional way, are more likely to follow these traditions than a young couple living in Athens. Still, like weddings everywhere, Greek weddings are changing. At the time of this writing, there's a growing fashion to go and get married on an island, and I recently heard someone say that he was looking into getting married in a ski resort.

Not everyone is leaping head first into nontraditional weddings, however. As his friend wisely pointed out, "You'd better first ask the priest if he wants to perform a marriage up a mountain!"

Goran Bregovic - Mesecina

2008-09-21T22:38:00.006+03:00

Another unplugged masterpiece of Goran Bregovic and his south-eastern band. Brass and drums join together to provide a vivid framework for the wonderful voices of the backing vocals and Goran himself. Note the special tones and sounds specific to the music of the Balkans. This is common to all the cultures in this particular area.

Nema vise sunca
Nema vise meseca
Nema tebe, nema mene
Niceg vise, nema joj.
Pokriva nas ratna tama
Pokriva nas tama joj.
A ja se pitam moja draga
Sta ce biti sa nama?
Mesecina, mesecina,
joj, joj, joj, joj
Sunce sija ponoc bije,
joj, joj, joj, joj
Sa nebesa, zaproklija
Niko ne zna, niko ne zna
Niko ne zna, niko ne zna
Niko ne zna sta to sija

The Sultanate of Oman

2008-09-16T10:36:00.000+03:00

The Sultanate of Oman occupies the south eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula - 300,000 sq. km boasting some 1,700 km of coastline stretching along the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Gulf. It is the second largest country in Arabia, and has the most diverse landscape including fjord-like rugged mountains in the far north, magnificent tracts of desert and a lush south.
Oman's history can be traced back to 12,000 BC. The country is strategically located on the crossroads of several trade routes that linked the ancient world. It became a centre of power in the 17th century with Omani rule extending from Zanzibar in East Africa to parts of Persia and Pakistan.
Evidence of a glorious ancient past is spread all over the country which boasts more than 500 forts, castles, and towers. Their diversity and numbers reflect the high standards achieved by Omanis in architecture.
Oman enjoys many unique features including an unspoiled culture and lifestyle traditional in almost every aspect. The people are friendly and offer incomparable hospitality. A rich variety of flora and fauna abound, together with panoramic beauty witnessed in its mountain ranges, deserts and sand dunes.
Today, His Majesty Said Bin Sultan Qaboos rules the country and Oman is considered a safe and secure destination with many modern amenities and facilities

Climate: The hottest months are June through August when temperatures are in the 40’s. However, modern AC and sea breezes make this more than bearable. The most pleasant months to visit Oman are mid October through March when daytime temperatures fall into the lower 30s and below.

Dress: The dress code is fairly liberal in Muscat, although decency is still expected. Women should wear, for example, tops with sleeves, and long skirts or trousers. Men are required to wear trousers and shirts with sleeves. Swimwear should be restricted to the beach or pools.

Language: Arabic, English and Swahili are widely spoken.

Time Zone Difference: Oman is GMT+4

Currency: The unit of currency is the Rial Omani (RO) consisting of 1,000 baizas. ($1USD = 0.384 OMR 22.5.06)

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

2008-09-14T08:40:00.005+03:00

The Feast of the Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross is celebrated each year on September 14. The Feast commemorates the finding of the True Cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by Saint Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine.

Background

In the twentieth year of his reign (326), the Emperor Constantine sent his mother Saint Helen to Jerusalem to venerate the holy places and to find the site of the Holy Sepulchre and of the Cross. Relying upon the oral tradition of the faithful, Saint Helen found the precious Cross together with the crosses of the two thieves crucified with our Lord. However, Helen had no way of determining which was the Cross of Christ.

With the healing of a dying woman who touched one of the crosses, Patriarch Macarius of Jerusalem identified the True Cross of Christ. Saint Helen and her court venerated the Precious and Life-Giving Cross along with many others who came to see this great instrument of Redemption.

The Patriarch mounted the ambo (pulpit) and lifted the Cross with both hands so that all of the people gathered could see it. The crowed responded with "Lord have mercy".

This became the occasion of the institution in all of the Churches of the Exaltation of the Precious Cross, not only in memory of the event of the finding of the Cross, but also to celebrate how an instrument of shame was used to overcome death and bring salvation and eternal life.

The Feast is an opportunity outside of the observances of Holy Week to celebrate the full significance of the victory of the Cross over the powers of the world, and the triumph of the wisdom of God through the Cross over the wisdom of this world. This Feast also gives the Church an opportunity to relish the full glory of the Cross as a source of light, hope and victory for Christ's people. It is also a time to celebrate the universality of the work of redemption accomplished through the Cross: the entire universe is seen through the light of the Cross, the new Tree of Life which provides nourishment for those who have been redeemed in Christ.
1. Patriarch Macarius is seen standing on the pulpit in the center of the icon elevating the Cross.

Icon of the Feast

The icon of the Feast of the Precious Cross tells the story of the finding of the Cross and of its Exaltation. Patriarch Macarius is standing in the pulpit elevating the Cross for all to see and venerate. On each side of the Patriarch are deacons holding candles. The elevated Cross is surrounded and venerated by many clergy and lay people, including Saint Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine.
Deacons can be seen holding candles while coming to venerate the Holy Cross (detail).

In the background of the icon is a domed structure that represents the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. This church was one of the churches constructed and dedicated by Emperor Constantine on the holy sites of Jerusalem.
Saint Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine who discovered the Holy Cross (detail).

Orthodox Christian Celebration of the FEAST OF THE Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross

This Feast of our Lord is celebrated with the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, which is conducted on the day of the feast and preceded by the Matins service. A Great Vespers is conducted on the evening before the day of the feast.

On the day of the Feast at the conclusion of the Matins or of the Divine Liturgy, a special service is held. The Cross is placed on a tray surrounded by branches of basil and is taken in solemn procession through the church to the chanting of the Hymn of the Feast. The tray is placed on a table, and the priest takes the Cross and offers petitions from each side of the table, the four directions of the compass. This represents the universal nature of the offering of Christ upon the Cross. As the people respond by chanting "Lord have mercy", the priest raises and lowers the cross, a commemoration of its finding and exaltation. At the conclusion of the service, the people come and venerate the cross and receive the basil from the priest. The basil is used and offered, as it was the fragrant flower growing where the Cross was found.

Scripture readings for the Feast of the Cross are the following: At Vespers: Exodus 15:22-16:1; Proverbs 3:11-18; Isaiah 60:11-16. At the Orthros (Matins): John 12:28-36. At the Divine Liturgy: I Corinthians 1:18-24; John 19:6-11, 13-20, 25-28, 30-35.

Hymns of the Feast

Apolytikion (First Tone)

Save, O Lord, save Your people and bless Your inheritance; grant victory to the faithful over their adversaries. And protect Your commonwealth, by the power of Your Cross.

Kontakion (Fourth Tone)

You who were lifted upon the Cross of Your own will, O Christ our God, bestow Your compassions upon the commonwealth that bears Your Name. By Your power, gladden our faithful rulers, giving them victory over their adversaries. May your alliance be for them a weapon for peace, an invincible standard.
(source GOARCH)

John Wayne talks about cancer

2008-09-13T18:54:00.000+03:00

John Wayne eventually died of lung cancer.

Jede Zelle

2008-09-12T23:55:00.000+03:00

A good online dictionary

2008-09-12T23:47:00.000+03:00

Merriam-Webster is a very good online dictionary which I have repeatedly made use of.

Nicoleta Luciu celebrated her birthday before giving birth

2008-09-12T23:11:00.004+03:00

Today September 12, 2008, Nicoleta Luciu celebrated her anniversary.
Nicoleta was born on September 12 1980 so she is 28 at the moment. She was born in Bucharest and spent most of her childhood in the capital of Romania.
Nicoleta Luciu's measurements: 96-61-90. She is brown haired ans brown eyed. In 1999 she was won Miss Romania contest. She speaks, beside Romanian, English and Spanish. She likes practising sports very much, reading and seeing movies. Nicoleta Luciu was on the cover of many magazines in her country such as Vivid, Playboy, Vivre, Pro Tv Magazin, Tv Mania. She has also worked as a TV Presenter and Entertainer for Pro Tv - with Teo Trandafir, Antena 1, Tele 7 ABC, Divizia Fantastica, Bingo Liberty. She also took part in the Miss Model of The World Contest.
Nicoleta Luciu is due to give birth to a girl in two weeks. She decided to go to Hungary to give birth in a highly specialised hospital there.
She had a great birthdday party in Buftea. Her colleagues - actors and actresses in Inima de tigan - bought her flowers and a present. Nicoleta is a few kilos fatter than before her pregnancy began and her voice seemed dramatically changes.

Children who give birth to children: Teen Pregnancy

2008-09-09T17:23:00.001+03:00

Babies born in the U.S.A. to teenage mothers are at risk for long-term problems in many major areas of life, including school failure, poverty, and physical or mental illness. The teenage mothers themselves are also at risk for these problems.

Teenage pregnancy is usually a crisis for the pregnant girl and her family. Common reactions include anger, guilt, and denial. If the father is young and involved, similar reactions can occur in his family.

Adolescents who become pregnant may not seek proper medical care during their pregnancy, leading to an increased risk for medical complications. Pregnant teenagers require special understanding, medical care, and education--particularly about nutrition, infections, substance abuse, and complications of pregnancy. They also need to learn that using tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs, can damage the developing fetus. All pregnant teenagers should have medical care beginning early in their pregnancy.

Pregnant teens can have many different emotional reactions:

* some may not want their babies
* some may want them for idealized and unrealistic ways
* others may view the creation of a child as an achievement and not recognize the serious responsibilities
* some may keep a child to please another family member
* some may want a baby to have someone to love, but not recognize the amount of care the baby needs
* depression is also common among pregnant teens
* many do not anticipate that their adorable baby can also be demanding and sometimes irritating
* some become overwhelmed by guilt, anxiety, and fears about the future
* depression is also common among pregnant teens

There may be times when the pregnant teenager's emotional reactions and mental state will require referral to a qualified mental health professional.

Babies born to teenagers are at risk for neglect and abuse because their young mothers are uncertain about their roles and may be frustrated by the constant demands of caretaking. Adult parents can help prevent teenage pregnancy through open communication and by providing guidance to their children about sexuality, contraception, and the risks and responsibilities of intimate relationships and pregnancy. Some teenage girls drop out of school to have their babies and don't return. In this way, pregnant teens lose the opportunity to learn skills necessary for employment and self survival as adults. School classes in family life and sexual education, as well as clinics providing reproductive information and birth control to young people, can also help to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.

If pregnancy occurs, teenagers and their families deserve honest and sensitive counseling about options available to them, from abortion to adoption. Special support systems, including consultation with a child and adolescent psychiatrist when needed, should be available to help the teenager throughout the pregnancy, the birth, and the decision about whether to keep the infant or give it up for adoption.

Ode to Joy by Beethoven

2008-09-02T08:14:00.000+03:00

Goran Bregovic - Ederlezi

2008-08-30T10:47:00.004+03:00

Why is the music of Eastern Europe so popular with the westerners?
Because the people living in this particular area live their lives. After 50 years of comunism - meanwhile the socialists in France for example were making plans and dreaming of the perfect society - suffered and had to hide their real feelings and emotions. But the amazing fact is that they did not lose their souls and kept living in the "underground".
A wonderful song from Goran Bregovic - Ederlezy. A song about hope and suffering.

Animal Testing

2008-08-30T10:31:00.004+03:00

I believe that animal testing is necessary nowadays. Some animals may suffer for the benefit of humans. If you prevent animal testing, should you stop people from eating meat? Many scientists say that they can't cure deadly diseases without using animals.
I believe that animal testing is extremely necessary because it is unethical to make people sick on purpose. Most experiments can only be done on animals. As a result of animal testing we have discovered diseases and cures for most of them.
If you prevent animals from being tested, should you stop people from eating meat?
Killing an animal for food isn't that different from killing an animal while testing a new product or medicine. Animal testing could be considered more necessary than killing an animal for food. People enjoy the animal "products" that they consume daily.
Many scientists say that humans can't cure deadly diseases without using animals. Without animal testing scientists believe that it may take longer to find cures for diseases like AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer's. Causing unnecessary suffering is wrong, but conducting experiments on animals is necessary for human health. The testing that scientists perform on animals can save human lives.
Animal rights activists' claim that test tube experiments, computer simulations and other methods are alternatives to testing medicines and other products on animals. Many of these techniques are valuable, and are used by scientists on a regular basis. The problems are that they don't tell us everything we need to know. Mixing human cells with a new drug in a test tube doesn't show how the drug will affect an entire human body. Animals are far too complicated for computers to simulate perfectly. Animal testing is a very important step in improving human health.

Payment from Google

2008-08-30T10:24:00.004+03:00

I've just picked up the money GOOGLE sent me via Western Union for the ads I put on my blogs. I guess it is a good business to place ads from Google. They really provide good das and you can make good money with them.

Edgar Degas

2008-08-27T08:37:00.005+03:00

Degas, (Hilaire-Germain-) Edgar (b. July 19, 1834, Paris, Fr.--d. Sept. 27, 1917, Paris)
French artist, acknowledged as the master of drawing the human figure in motion. Degas worked in many mediums, preferring pastel to all others. He is perhaps best known for his paintings, drawings, and bronzes of ballerinas and of race horses.

The art of Degas reflects a concern for the psychology of movement and expression and the harmony of line and continuity of contour. These characteristics set Degas apart from the other impressionist painters, although he took part in all but one of the 8 impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886. Degas was the son of a wealthy banker, and his aristocratic family background instilled into his early art a haughty yet sensitive quality of detachment. As he grew up, his idol was the painter Jean Auguste Ingres, whose example pointed him in the direction of a classical draftsmanship, stressing balance and clarity of outline. After beginning his artistic studies with Louis Lamothes, a pupil of Ingres, he started classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts but left in 1854 and went to Italy. He stayed there for 5 years, studying Italian art, especially Renaissance works.

Returning to Paris in 1859, he painted portraits of his family and friends and a number of historical subjects, in which he combined classical and romantic styles. In Paris, Degas came to know Édouard Manet, and in the late 1860’s he turned to contemporary themes, painting both theatrical scenes and portraits with a strong emphasis on the social and intellectual implications of props and setting.

In the early 1870s the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes in which dancers on stage, entering the stage, and resting or waiting to perform are shown simultaneously and in counterpoint, often from an oblique angle of vision. On a visit in 1872 to Louisiana, where he had relatives in the cotton business, he painted The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans (finished 1873; Musée Municipal, Pau, France), his only picture to be acquired by a museum in his lifetime. Other subjects from this period include the racetrack, the beach, and cafe interiors.

After 1880, Pastel became Degas's preferred medium. He used sharper colors and gave greater attention to surface patterning, depicting milliners, laundresses, and groups of dancers against backgrounds now only sketchily indicated. For the poses, he depended more and more on memory or earlier drawings. Although he became guarded and withdrawn late in life, Degas retained strong friendships with literary people. In 1881 he exhibited a sculpture, Little Dancer (a bronze casting of which is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and as his eyesight failed thereafter he turned increasingly to sculpture, modeling figures and horses in wax over metal armatures. These sculptures remained in his studio in disrepair and were cast in bronze only after his death

The Invention of Google

2008-08-27T08:21:00.003+03:00

Google is the most popular Internet search engine in the world. It was invented by two students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They met in 1995, when they were both studying computer science at Stanford University, USA. They were also both fans of the SF TV programme Star Trek, and they loved spaceship computer. They dreamed of producing something that could also answer any question in seconds.
Internet search engines at the time were slow and gave many websites that weren’t useful. In January 1996, Page and Brin decided to make a better and faster search engine. They thought the results should be based on the popularity of each website – the most popular ones have the highest number of ‘weblinks’ (links to other websites).
Nobody would give them money for their project so they used their credit cards and bought as much computer memory as possible. They also borrowed money from family and friends. Then, in 1998, they were given a cheque for $100,000, and they started their own company. Their first office was in a friend’s garage! The company name Google comes form mathematics. A ‘googol’ is a very high number -1 followed by a hundred zeros.
Nowdays Google is one of the most succesful and reliable American company, with incomes of hundreds of millions each year. Google has besides its search engine department many other sites that are concerned with online advertising, evaluating sites or ranking webpages.

A Typical British Meal

2008-08-26T09:49:00.001+03:00

A traditional English breakfast is a very big meal – sausages, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms... But nowadays many people just have cereal with milk and sugar, or toast with marmalade, jam or honey. Marmalade and jam are not the same! Marmalade is made from oranges and jam is made from other fruit. The traditional breakfast drink is tea, which people have with cold milk. Some people have coffee, instant coffee, which is made with just hot water. Many visitors to Britain find this coffee disgusting!

For many people lunch is a quick meal. In cities there are a lot of sandwich bars, where office workers can choose the kind of bread they want – brown, white, or a roll and then all sorts of salad and meat or fish to go in the sandwich. Pubs often serve good, cheap, food, both hot and cold. School-children can have a hot meal at school, but many just take a snack from home – a sandwich, a drink, some fruit, and perhaps some crisps.

'Tea' means two things. It is a drink and a meal! Some people have afternoon tea, with sandwiches cakes, and, of course, a cup of tea. Cream teas are popular. You have scones (a kind of cake) with cream and jam.

The evening meal is the main meal of the day for many people. They usually have it quite early, between 6.00 and 8.00, and often the whole family eats together.

On Sundays many families have a traditional lunch. They have roast meat, either beef, lamb, chicken, or pork, with potatoes, vegetables and gravy. Gravy is a sauce made from the meat juices.

The British like food from other countries, too, especially Italian, French, Chinese and Indian. People often get take-away meals – you buy the food at the restaurant and then brin it home to eat. Eating in Britain is quite international!

Yuri Gagarin. The First Man in Space.

2008-08-26T09:43:00.002+03:00

His early years
Yuri was born on a farm in USSR and his family was very poor. As a teenager in World War II, he saw his first plane – a Russian fighter jet. At that moment, he knew that he wanted to be a pilot. He studied hard so that he could join a flying club. His teachers thought he was a natural pilot and told him to join the Sovietic Air Force.

What he did
He became an excellent pilot. And he was now a husband and father. But when the first Russian satellite went into space, he wanted to become an astronaut. After two years of secret training, the doctors chose Yuri because he was the best in all the tests. On 12 April 1961, when he was 27, he finally went into space. It was very dangerous, because the doctors didn’t know if Yuri could survive the journey. When he came back to Earth he was famous, and he travelled around the world to talk about his experience.

His last flight
He wanted to go into space again, so in 1967 he began training for the next space flight. He was also a test pilot for the new Air Force aeroplanes. But he next year he died when his fighter jet crashed on a test flight. He was only 34 years old.

Ajutor pentru sinistratii din Moldova

2008-07-29T22:54:00.003+03:00

Nordul Romaniei a fost grav afectat de revarsarea raurilor ca urmare a ploilor abundente cazute in ultimele zile pe toata intinderea bazinelor hidrografice respective. Prutul si Siretul si-au iesit din matca in judetele Botosani, Suceava (aici si alte rauri majore afluente), Iasi (grav afecctat este Pascaniul) Neamt si Bacau. Din cate se pare unda de viitura se propaga spre aval, respectiv spre sudul Moldovei.

La Botosani Prutul si-a iesit din matca in zona Radauti-Prut (Darabani) iar specialistii isi pun problema deversarii unor cantitati sporite de apa spre aval din lacul Stanca-Costesti, cu acordul partii moldovene. Capacitatea acumularii este de 1,4 miliare metri cubi, in prezent fiind stocate 1,1 miliare. Debitul Prutului este de 6.500 m3/secunda.

Sute de persoane din sate aflate in lunca Prutului au fost evacuate. Unele case sunt iremediabil distruse.

Am vazut la TV ca in sedinta de guvern de astazi prezidata de catre Traian Basescu s-a decis acordarea de ajutoare celor care si-au pierdut complet locuintele si celor ale caror gospodarii au fost afectate in proportie de peste 50%. Sumele sunt mai mult decat modice - intre 300 de lei si 5.000 de lei pentru cei cu rude decedate in urma viiturilor - si probabil nu vor acoperi pagubele uriase. Anul electoral indeamna Guvernul la aceasta pomana dar se pare ca peticul e prea mic de data aceasta pentru a acoperi gaura.

Masurile trebuiau luate mai din timp in sensul amenajarii si regularizarii cursurilor de apa cu risc. Cel mai grav este ca in zona montana aceste inundatii s-au produs dupa ce proaspat "retrocedatii" si-au taiat padurea care mai de care. Acum le vin dealurile peste ei si probabil regreta amarnic faptul ca au barbierit la sange padurile care retinuau apa.

Mitropolia Moldovei si Bucovinei a raspuns initiativei PF Patriarh Daniel si a deschis un cont pentru strangerea de fonduri in vederea ajutorarii sinistratilor din eprahie.

Îndemn la solidaritate cu oamenii sinistraţi ca urmare a inundaţiilor din Moldova şi Maramureş

Preafericitul Părinte Patriarh Daniel adresează clerului şi credincioşilor din Biserica Ortodoxă Română îndemnul la solidaritate cu oamenii sinistraţi ca urmare a inundaţiilor din Moldova şi Maramureş. În acest sens Preafericirea Sa face un apel ca toţi cei care pot ajuta cu sume de bani, să le depună în următoarele conturi bancare:

Arhiepiscopia Sucevei şi Rădăuţilor, contul în lei: RO 51 RNCB 02 34 03 70 10 91 00 14, deschis la BCR, filiala Suceava

Episcopia Maramureşului şi Sătmarului, contul în lei: RO 97 RNCB 01 82 03 41 35 55 00 01, deschis la BCR, filiala Baia Mare

Arhiepiscopia Iaşilor, contul în lei: RO 19 BACX 00 00 00 30 10 57 80 14, deschis la UniCredit Ţiriac Bank - Iaşi

(de aici - basilica.ro - via site MMB)

La Botosani sediul UniCredit Tiriac este vis-a-vis de Starea Civila, in fostul magazin Altex.

Protopopiatul Botosani a trimis deja sinistratilor 60.000 lei dupa inundatiile din aprilie 2008 si sunt sigur ca se va implica si de data aceasta.

p.s.

dupa ce atatia ani am tins asiduu spre integrarea in UE cum ne ajuta practica aceasta organizatie minune in caz de catastrofa? nu exista fonduri de urgenta pentru ajutorarea membrilor sau dupa ce ne-au vazut in curtea lor cu toata zestrea de fata mare au spus ca e bun si cotetul cainelui pentru noi?
de aici

Ice Egg vs Ice Age

2008-07-08T16:34:00.003+03:00

More than funny and more than once in a lifetime opportunity to see what is really going on during a cast...

And now the result of that cast. It seems they prefered the squirrel.

I couldn't help myself laughing for the 1000th time when seeing this...

Canada Day - 1st of July

2008-06-30T20:20:00.002+03:00

Background

On June 20, 1868, a proclamation signed by the Governor General, Lord Monck, called upon all Her Majesty's (queen Victoria) loving subjects throughout Canada to join in the celebration of the anniversary of the formation of the union of the British North America provinces in a federation under the name of Canada on July 1^st.

The July 1 holiday was established by statute in 1879, under the name Dominion Day.

There is no record of organized ceremonies after this first anniversary, except for the 50^th anniversary of Confederation in 1917, at which time the new Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, under construction, was dedicated as a memorial to the Fathers of Confederation and to the valour of Canadians fighting in the First World War in Europe.

The next celebration was held in 1927 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation. It was highlighted by the laying of the cornerstone by the Governor General of the Confederation Building on Wellington Street and the inauguration of the Carillon in the Peace Tower.

Since 1958, the government has arranged for an annual observance of Canada's national day with the Secretary of State of Canada in charge of the coordination. The format provided for a Trooping the Colours ceremony on the lawn of Parliament Hill in the afternoon, a sunset ceremony in the evening followed by a mass band concert and fireworks display.

Another highlight was Canada's Centennial in 1967 when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II attended the celebrations with Parliament Hill again being the backdrop for a large scale official ceremony.

The format changed in 1968 with the addition of multicultural and professional concerts held on Parliament Hill including a nationally televised show. Up until 1975, the focus of the celebrations, under the name "Festival Canada", was held in the National Capital Region during the whole month of July and involved numerous cultural, artistic and sport activities, as well as municipalities and voluntary organizations. The celebration was cancelled in 1976 but was reactivated in 1977.

A new formula was developed in 1980 whereby the National Committee (the federal government organization charged with planning Canada's Birthday celebrations) stressed and sponsored the development of local celebrations all across Canada. "Seed money" was distributed to promote popular and amateur activities organized by volunteer groups in hundreds of local communities. The same approach was also followed for the 1981 celebrations with the addition of fireworks displays in 15 major cities across the nation.

On October 27, 1982, July 1^st which was known as "Dominion Day" became "Canada Day".

Since 1985, Canada Day Committees are established in each province and territory to plan, organize and coordinate the Canada Day celebrations locally. Grants are provided by the Department to those committees.

(source here)

The Norman Conquest - 1066. General Considerations.

2008-06-18T09:51:00.004+03:00

Generally speaking the history of the British Isles is up to a certain moment the story of repeated waves of migrations and invasions, the story of successive waves of invaders and immigrants from the mainland Europe which gloriously closed with the Norman Conquest in 1066. The most significant aspect for the understanding of Britain’s evolution throughout time is the fact that it is an island. The south-eastern part of the archipelago situated in North Atlantic was the most suitable way of access and at the same time the guarantee of security and a favourable land for civilization. Here lay the inviting routes for invasions which, many times over, seem to have run much the same predestined course. Those who came to Britain would conquer or drive before them the previous occupants of the land, imposing each time something new on them. The Normans were to be the last of the conquerors and at the same time the most influential.
However much dispute there may be concerning the detail of the Norman impact on England, there can be no doubt whatever concerning the general importance of the coming of the Normans. Long centuries of different changes and influences made nothing more than to prepare the country for the most spectacular revolution in its history. Until 1066 England has undergone civil war, invasion and change of dynasty, but never before a change like that wrought by the Normans. Yet it is utterly misleading to ascribe to the Normans all the credit for the fine flowering of the civilization in the post-Conquest centuries or to neglect the contribution of the natives to the whole process and the fact that they were deeply rooted in the Western world. As a consequence many of the most striking achievements after 1066 were e rather cosmopolitan in character.
Till the 11^th century all invaders seem to have followed much the same objective. They were seeking to get away from the forests; they wanted room, land, dry gazing and good water. The late 11^th century would give to the act of conquering and invading a new dimension: the extortion of the resources of the country for the benefit of a hand of new foreign rulers.
The natural resources and the mild climate attracted many different people who came here as immigrants or as conquerors. We might say that British history until the Norman Conquest in 1066, was determined by two important migrations – the Celts (800 BC) and the Anglo-Saxons (410 AD) - and by one major conquest – the Romans (55 B.C.). The interposition of these historical phenomena of invasion and of conquest gives to the British history a chess board like aspect.
The insularity offered to the different pretenders an opportunity and at the same time it raised many problems concerning the efficient rule of these islands. Only twice has it ever been conquered, once in 55 BC, by the Romans and again in 1066 by the Normans. A fact which we should mention here is that the conquerors always had to have a dialogue with the pre-existing inhabitants, producing sooner or later a mixed society with elements from both.

Subiecte BAC engleza oral 2008

2008-05-19T07:36:00.002+03:00

EXAMENUL DE BACALAUREAT 2008
Proba orală la Limba Engleză
L1 Normal / L2
TOPICS FOR SUBJECT 2

1.
We are becoming overwhelmingly dependent on computers. Is this dependence on computers a good thing or should we be more suspicious of their benefits? Give arguments and examples to support your ideas.
2.
Do you agree with the idea that children should be raised by their grandparents? Why yes/no?
3.
Damage of the environment is an inevitable consequence of worldwide improvements in the standard of living. Discuss.
4.
Some people prefer to live in a small town. Others prefer to live in a big city. Which place would you prefer to live in? Use specific reasons and details to support your answer.
5.
How do movies or television influence people's behaviour? Use reasons and specific examples to
support your answer.
6.
If you could change one important thing about your hometown, what would you change? Use reasons and specific examples to support your answer.
7.
Is it better to enjoy your money when you earn it or is it better to save your money for some time in the future? Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
8.
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Grades (marks) encourage students to learn.
Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
9.
If you could go back to some time and place in the past, when and where would you go? Why? Use specific reasons and details to support your choice.
10.
You have the opportunity to visit a foreign country for two weeks. Which country would you like to visit? Use specific reasons and details to explain your choice.
11.
Speak about the importance of friendship in one’s life. You may give yourself as an example.
12.
Speak about a person or personality you admire most. Give reasons for your choice.
13.
Speak about the negative aspects of using the Internet. Give arguments and examples to support your
ideas.
14.
Speak about your favourite means of transport. Give arguments and examples to sustain your opinion.
15.
Speak about your favourite holiday and the traditions related to it. Give arguments and examples to
support your ideas.
16.
Speak about the things you do to have a healthy life. Give arguments and examples to sustain your
ideas.
17.
Speak about the importance of being good – mannered in one’s life.
18.
Speak about the way in which fashion influences one’s personality. Give arguments and examples to
sustain your ideas.
19.
Speak about your favourite actor / actress. Motivate your choice.
20.
Speak about a day in your life when something happened and changed your life.
21.
Describe the town where you live or another place in which you would like to live.
22.
Speak about the advantages of being a famous person. Give arguments and examples to sustain your
opinion.
23.
Despite some critical opinions, sport is believed to bring out the best in us. Speak about the benefits of
doing sports.
24.
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: One has more opportunities for selfdevelopment
abroad? Bring arguments and examples to sustain your opinion.
25.
Pets occupy an esteemed place in many of our households, often being treated as members of the
family. Speak about the benefits of keeping pets.
26.
Describe your best friend (physical appearance, moral qualities - supported by examples -
hobbies/interests) and say why he/she is special to you.
27.
Speak about a hobby you have or you would like to have.
28.
Speak about the impact of music on your life.
29.
Describe an object in your house which represents you.
30.
What does advertising mean to you: information or manipulation? Give arguments to support your
ideas.
31.
Do you think a disability of some kind makes a person more determined to succeed? Give arguments
to support your ideas.
32.
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being your own boss. Give arguments and examples to
support your ideas.
33.
Comment on the following statement: Where there's a will there's a way. Bring arguments and
examples to sustain your ideas.

How to become emo when on a budget

2008-05-12T18:22:00.005+03:00

For those wanting to be "in with the emo scene" but are limited on cash, this is the guide for you. (warning * this is how to look emo, not be emo.)

Steps

1. Listen to the music. Some good bands to get into are:
* The Get Up Kids
* The Used
* Atreyu
* At The Drive-In
* Backslap

2. * Ringworm
* Underoath
* Linkin Park
* Evanescence
* With Honor
* Flirting With Suicide
* Sunny Day Real Estate
* Hawthorne Heights
* Dashboard Confessional
* Alesana

-Flirting With Suicide's songs are easily to download on the Internet. For other bands find cheap CDs at Best Buy, WalMart, Target, or the bargain racks in media stores like Virgin and Tower Records.
o Keep up with the latest bands, part of being emo or following any music trend is keeping up. Keeping up also costs no money at all.
3. Develop an emo attitude. Any "attitude" is hard to describe: like love you just know it if you have it. Observe other emos and copy their attitude. Some aspects of the emo attitude include:
* Be social, yet slightly withdrawn.
* Be a little isolated and only talk to a few people, but make friends in all groups, genders, and races.
* Don't lament: That is way too stereotypical.
* Cry sometimes so that you can be seen by your friends.
4.
float
You don't need to follow the fashion. Here are some emo fashion tips include:
Tees.
You can find these cheaply at or thrift stores.
5. Fitting jeans: You can get these at a thrift store and modify them your own way with things like fabric paint and safety pins.
A studded belt.
Pick these up for cheap at a thrift store.
Converse shoes.
You have got to splurge on these or you may be able to pick up a good original pair in a used clothing store, these are usually slightly worn.
Buy striped socks and fingerless gloves
Pick these up cheaply or knit your own. Create the gloves with a pair of scissors.
Horn-rimmed glasses
If you don't need glasses don't wear them, you'll look and feel really stupid and be blind.

* Consider bright greens, reds to black and skeleton bone shirts like My Chemical Romance wears.
* Choose the right colors. Color is important to emo culture as it helps define the kind of emo kid you are. Think about color with these tips:
* Black is always the main color, but not always the most important.

6.
Wear makeup. Everybody has their own makeup tips. Some emo kids makeup tips include:
- Don't put too much white powder, actually put none on at all!
- You can buy cheap but quality makeup in a variety of places including Walmart and Dollar Stores
- Get black nail-polish at any dollar store.

Tips

* Go to local thrift stores for some band tees.
* Check eBay and other online sites for great deals on unique items.
* Look for SALES at the most unexpected shops or markets.
* Try searching youtube for music videos if you can't afford the album itself. Although not the best quality it can help you choose between albums if you can only buy one or two.

Warnings
* A lot of people hate emos; expect to be made fun of.
* If you go too far, you look like a poser.
* Don't expect to do this in just five seconds.

Things You'll Need

* First of all a small amount of money.
* Time to shop for bargains.
* Good local stores.

Business Ethics.

2008-04-25T12:14:00.003+03:00

Being honest, being correct and having integrity are ethical terms. They represent a principle for the people who are convinced they are right. These concepts represent in fact our moral standards. They can vary from an individual to individual because the values they are based on are different. Ethical issues represent real dilemmas for the managing staff because they stand for conflicts between the economical performance of the company (income-costs-profit) and the social evolution (expressed in terms of personal duties within the organization as well as outside). The origin of these duties can be open to some interpretation, but most of us agree that they include to a certain extent elements related to protecting the loyalty of the employees, to maintaining market competitiveness, providing useful and safe products and services. Fortunately the management dilemma relates to the costs of these obligations both for the company – assessed through financial standards – and for the managers – expressed through financial reports and audits. It is highly desirable for most of the managing staff in various companies to bring in people who have a clear vision of what means ‘honest’, “correct” and “integrity”. Thus any employee can be required not to act against the interest of the firm, not to offend other people and not to disclose any negative aspects about that particular company.

London Icons. Things to Do and Visit.

2008-04-17T19:47:00.006+03:00

London is a city located in the south-eastern part of the UK. The old city has a lot of interesting things to offer the interested tourists. Here there are only a few of them.

Tower Bridge

It's a spectacular bridge built in the late Victorian era. Tower Bridge is truly magnificent! It's great to see the bridge open to let ships through, which happens more often than you'd think; around 900 times a year. Walking across the bridge, you see the amazing views of London, although it can get quite windy. It really gives you a sense of old London – for me it's the ultimate London icon.

The British Airways London Eye

I love the big wheel at a fair ground, so I think The BA London Eye is a fantastic way of getting a bird's-eye view of the city. On a good day you can see for miles and miles – at the peak the whole of London is laid out for you, almost like a game of Monopoly. A friend hired a private capsule for her birthday, so we were up there with all of our mates, oohing and ahhing. It was fantastic!"

Covent Garden

It's a bit of continental Europe right in the middle of London, with tables from restaurants and eateries spilling out onto the piazza. Covent Garden is also where you'll find London's best street performers, from singers belting out arias to mime artists performing crowd-pleasing stunts. Whenever my family comes to London, this is where I take them.

Piccadilly Circus

There's always a real buzz in Piccadilly Circus – the buildings are lit up with dazzling electric signs, and there are always people standing by the Statue of Eros, waiting for friends. Piccadilly Circus leads you into Soho, Chinatown and Leicester Square, areas where you'll find restaurants, pubs, clubs, theatres and cinemas. It's where I spend my Friday nights!"

St Paul's Cathedral

I was only 10 when I watched Prince Charles and Lady Diana's wedding on the television. I remember the 25-foot-long (7.6m) dress train trailing behind her as she walked up the aisle in St. Paul's – it looked so dramatic! I've been a fan of the cathedral ever since. You can walk around the whole of the ground floor, visit the crypt, and climb all 530 steps to the top of the dome.

Westminster Abbey

For me, Westminster Abbey is more of a historic site than a religious one. It's where every King and Queen has been crowned since 1066, and it's also the final resting place for many sovereigns, politicians and artists. I also love the choral concerts they hold here. Last Christmas Eve I went Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve – it was amazing.

Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament

The Houses of Parliament stand on the site of the old Palace of Westminster, the main London residence of Kings and Queens. It's a really stunning riverside building. The clock tower is the main timepiece of the nation and home to Big Ben (the bell). I took my son on a tour around Parliament during the summer opening and he loved it! We even managed to climb all the stairs to the top of Big Ben.

Sites for Teachers

2008-03-12T07:56:00.003+02:00

A lot of teachers of EFL and not only worldwide look for sites and free online teaching resources and sometimes it is not quiet an easy task.
Here there are some sites that I have found and I considered to be useful. I really use these sites.
http://www.ego4u.com/
http://www.onestopenglish.com/
http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/teachingandlearning/resourcematerials/
http://free.ed.gov/
http://www.sitesforteachers.com/
http://teachingtreasures.com.au/
http://www.teachit.co.uk/
Personally I try to use the free printable worksheets as often as possible. Anyway one can easily find any resources they need or can him or herself upload and share materials on one of these websites.

Australia and the Orthodox Christians

2008-02-16T09:02:00.004+02:00

It's been a real surprise for me to find on Elisabeth and Craig's blog these pictures - I hope they don't mind me taking these pictures from their post on their trip in Australia.
This church is situated in Cobber Pedy

"Coober Pedy

846km North of Adelaide. Coober Pedy - the opal capital of the world is Australia's unique "underground town". Half its 3,500 people from over 45 different nationalities live underground to escape the summer heat.

The cosmopolitan capital of Australia's opal mining towns has numerous interesting features including historic mines, dugout homes, shops, churches, the colourful Stuart Range and - of course - OPAL! It has been described as looking much like the surface of the moon."

(from here)

At Cobber Pedy there is also a Catholic church built underground - in an old copper mine.
More details here.
In Australia there are a few orthodox denominations that are organized either as bishoprics or as parishes under the jurisdiction of dioceses.
The Greek Orthodox Archidiocese of Australia - jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch
The Russian Orthodox Diocese for Australia and New Zealand
The Coptic Orthodox Church of Australia
The Romanian Orthodox Church in Australia - as far as I understand there is also a Romanian Vicariate in Australia
Other links to other Orthodox churches and denominations in Australia.

St. Valentine and the Orthodox Church

2008-02-14T12:54:00.006+02:00

The Orthodox calendar mentions Saint Valentine, actually more than one Valentine. It depends on the country and on the decisions of the Patriarch and the synod (council).
For example the Romanian Orthodox Church celebrates a St. Valentine on April 24. This saint lived in Moesia in Durostorum. He was martyred because he was a Christian and refused to worship the pagan gods.
In the Romanian Orthodox calendar there is a Saint Valentine celebrated on February the 16. (Sfantul Valentin 16 februarie). This Saint Valens lived in Caesarea Palestine (or Caesarea Maritima). Valens was martyred during the persecution begun by Diocletian in 303. Another Saint Martyr executed on the same day is Saint Pamphilus - Christian scholar whose most important disciple was Eusebius of Caesarea - for further reading go to GOARCH.
A full list of the saints celebrated on February 16 is available on OrthodoxWIKI.
Martyrs Pamphilus the presbyter, Valens the deacon, Paul, Seleucus, Porphyrius, Julian, Theodulus, Elias, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Samuel and Daniel, at Caesaria in Palestine; Saint Maruthas, Bishop of Martyropolis in Mesopotamia, and the Persians martyred with him; Martyr Romanus of Mount Athos; New-Martyrs Priest Elias and Priest Peter Lagov; Saint Flavian the hermit; Saint Flavian, Archbishop of Antioch; Saint Flavian the Confessor, Patriarch of Constantinople; Saint Romanos the Younger; Virgin-Martyr Juliana of Naples. Other events: repose of Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, Apostle to the Altai.

The Roman Catholic Church celebrates on February 14th Saint Valentine. There are three saints - all martyred - named Valentine, Valens or Valentinus in the Catholic calendar. It is said that he was a priest who lived during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius II - 3rd century AD. The Emperor outlawed the marriage of young men because he wanted them to join the army and not no be concerned with the daily life of a family. Valentinus continued to perform marriages and defied the decree. The Emperor found put and ordered the execution of Valentine.
It seems that in fact the Catholic Church tried to adapt and adopt the pagan rituals which were still very popular in the early years of Christianity.
It is said that St Valentine is the patron saint of lovers and love. People give presents to the loved ones on this day. "Will you be mt Valentine?" and the handwritten love notes are very popular especially in the western countries and the are becoming increasingly popular with lovers all over the world.
A very interesting article about St. Valentine and the modern celebration of this saint may be found here.
I dare to quote: "And St. Valentine demonstrated this love when he died for his friends, and for his faith in Christ. This is the kind of love that Valentine's Day is really all about. And this is what his Feast Day of Feb. 14 should bring to our minds. May God help us to have that same kind of love for others, and that same kind of commitment and faithfulness to Christ, even in the face of death, until the Lord calls us home."

Feast of the Three Holy Fathers, Great Hierarchs and Ecumenical Teachers, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom

2008-01-30T09:54:00.000+02:00

Today January 30th the Orthodox Church celebrates The Three Great Hierarchs and Holy Fathers: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom.

Introduction

During the reign of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118), a controversy arose in Constantinople (today Istanbul in Turkey) among men learned in Faith and zealous for virtue about the three holy Hierarchs and Fathers of the Church, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom. Some argued for Saint Basil above the other two because he was able, as none other, to explain the mysteries of the Faith, and rose to angelic rank by his virtues. Organizer of monastic life, leader of the entire Church in the struggle with heresy, austere and demanding shepherd as to Christian morals, in him there was nothing base or of the earth. Hence, said they, he was superior to Saint Chrysostom who was by nature more easily inclined to absolve sinners.

The partisans of Saint Chrysostom retorted that the illustrious Archbishop of Constantinople had been no less zealous than Saint Basil in combating vices, in bringing sinners to repentance and in raising up the whole people to the perfection of the Gospel. The golden-mouthed shepherd of matchless eloquence has watered the Church with a stream of homilies in which he interprets the divine word and shows its application in daily life with more accomplished mastery than the two other holy Doctors.

According to a third group, Saint Gregory the Theologian was to be preferred to the others by reason of the majesty, purity and profundity of his language. Possessing a sovereign mastery of all the wisdom and eloquence of ancient Greece, he had attained, they said to such a pitch in the contemplation of God that no one had been able to express the dogma of the Holy Trinity as perfectly as he.

With each faction setting up one of the Fathers against the other two in this way, the whole Christian people were soon caught up in the dispute, which far from promoting devotion to the Saints in the City, resulted in nothing but ill-feeling and endless argument. Then one night the three holy Hierarchs appeared in a dream to Saint John Mauropus, the Metropolitan of Euchaïta (5 Oct.), separately at first, then together and, speaking with a single voice, they said: “As you see, the three of us are with God and no discord or rivalry divides us. Each of us, according to the circumstances and according to the inspiration that he received from the Holy Spirit, wrote and taught what befits the salvation of mankind. There is not among us a first, a second or a third, and if you invoke one of us the other two are immediately present with him. Therefore, tell those who are quarrelling not to create divisions in the Church because of us, for when we were on earth we spared no effort to re-establish unity and concord in the world. You can conjoin our three commemorations in one feast and compose a service for it, inserting the hymns dedicated to each of us according to the skill and knowledge that God has given you. Then transmit it to the Christians with the command to celebrate it each year. If they honor us thus as being with and in God, we give them our word that we will intercede for their salvation in our common prayer.” At these words, the Saints were taken up into heaven in a boundless light while conversing with one another by name.

Saint John immediately assembled the people and informed them of this revelation. As he was respected by all for his virtue and admired for his powerful eloquence, the three parties made peace and every one urged him to lose no time in composing the service of the joint feast. With fine discernment, he selected 30 January as appropriate to the celebration, for it would set the seal to the month in which each of the three Hierarchs already had a separate commemoration (Saint Basil – January 1; Saint Gregory – January 25; Saint John (translation of relics) – January 27).

The three Hierarchs—an earthly trinity as they are called in some of the wonderful troparia of their service—have taught us in their writings and equally by their lives, to worship and to glorify the Holy Trinity, the One God in three Persons. These three luminaries of the Church have shed the light of the true Faith all over the world, scorning dangers and persecutions, and they have left us, their descendants, this sacred inheritance by which we too can attain to utmost blessedness and everlasting life in the presence of God and of all the Saints.

With the feast of the three Hierarchs at the end of January—the month in which we keep the memory of so many glorious bishops, confessors and ascetics—the Church in a way recapitulates the memory of all the Saints who have witnessed to the Orthodox faith by their writings and by their lives. In this feast we honor the whole ministry of teaching of the holy Church, namely, the illumination of the hearts and minds of the faithful through the commemoration of all the Fathers of the Church, those models of evangelic perfection which the Holy Spirit has raised up from age to age and from place to place to be new Prophets and new Apostles, guides of souls heavenward, comforters of the people and fiery pillars of prayer, supporting the Church and confirming her in the truth.

(source Greek Orthodox Archiodiocese of Amercica - GOARCH)
Troparion
Let us who love their words gather together
And honor with hymns the three great torch-bearers of the triune Godhead:
Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom.
These men have enlightened the world with the rays of their divine doctrines.
They are sweetly-flowing rivers of wisdom filling all creation with springs of heavenly knowledge.
Ceaselessly they intercede for us before the Holy Trinity!

Kontakion
O Lord, You have taken up to eternal rest
And to the enjoyment of Your blessings the divinely-inspired heralds,
The greatest of Your teachers,
For You have accepted their labors and deaths as a sweet-smelling sacrifice,
For You alone are glorified in Your saints!

Further reading
OCA
Orthodox Wiki

Great Expectations

2007-10-03T08:45:00.000+03:00

Great Expectations is merely timeless. It is about all the things that life is about: how relatives can be loving, or abusive, how people can choose their own families; how a woman might be driven to destroy her child, or give her child away; how people may be corrupt, may be redeemed; how your upbringing defines your character, and how you may rise above or embrace that definition; and how, finally, love is a choice.

Great Expectations, written by Charles Dickens, is a moral book, without any clear moral directives. Its language is beautiful, its plot compelling, its characters complex and complete. People, Dickens tells us, are not always what they seem. Not simply because they've disguised or hidden or renamed themselves, like Magwitch; not only because those who seem most beautiful may be, in fact, most terrible, like Estella. People are not always what they seem because people are never only one thing. The wretched Mrs. Joe becomes nearly lovable after her injury; Mrs. Havisham melts (before she burns); Magwitch in trouble terrorizes Pip, but in prosperity is his benefactor; Wemmick's character is dependent on his location; there is a hint that even Estella, at last, is not as brightly cold as her name and nature suggests; and, of course, Pip is at first good, and then snobbish and profligate, and then, finally, good. Money changes everything except human nature. Human beings change: not for the better, and not for the worse, and not permanently. People change, then change back. Their changes do not necessarily make them happy. That is the human condition.

"That was a memorable day for me," says Pip, after first visiting Satis House, "for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."

"Great Expectations" is no less instructive for not being morally definite. That first link will change you, as the circumstances of your childhood will. It is your own duty (I believe Dickens says) to change yourself inwardly as you are changed outwardly.

God, the pleasure of reading "Great Expectations" -- pleasure being, I think, sometimes an underrated part of reading serious fiction. Everything is so right and so surprising, from plot to language to the details of character -- Pip calling himself a "connubial missile," Drummle being described as so sulky that "he even took up a book as if its writer had done him an injury." (Dickens is so often seen as a model of plot and character that it's easy to forget what a beautiful stylist he is.) Still, and of course, his characters, major and minor, are unforgettable: Joe, the Aged P., Mr. Wopsle the enthusiastic amateur, pale Herbert Pocket, even Mrs. Joe as she asks Biddy to place her arms around Joe's neck as she dies.

Still, the character who lives most in my head is Miss Havisham. She is brought into the book as a woman defined by the things she owns: her dark house, her tattered clothing, her money, her beautiful ward. If she were left at that, a splendid invention, she'd still be forever memorable. And yet she -- who has not even changed her clothing or the time on her clocks for decades -- memorably changes, is changed. It isn't that Dickens gives her a second chance; instead, he takes from her chances that she (and the reader) doesn't even realize she has. This improves and then kills her. Throughout the book there is the opportunity for heartbreak -- why is it that Pip can be destroyed by Estella, whom he barely knows, but Joe lives with Mrs. Joe and ever speaks of her with (cautious) love?

Lasting romantic love is always cautious in "Great Expectations"; every couple who marries has known each other for quite some time. It's friendship that's passionate, requited, transforming. Be careful, Dickens seems to say, of who you allow to break your heart. Mrs. Havisham is, of course, forever a symbol of heartbreak -- of heartdeath, really -- but what makes her magnificent is her passion at the end of her life. There she is, wrapped in cotton wool, on her table, kissed, but insensible to kisses. She has forgotten how someone else once broke her heart. She repents only how she has broken her own. It is the same with any life.

source 123helpme

Back again

2007-09-19T10:09:00.000+03:00

It's been a long time since I did not write anything on this blog. I have to come back in business.
:)

Sworn Translator - Traducator autorizat

2007-08-17T00:05:00.001+03:00

Sworn translator in Botosani. Licence granted by the Romanian Ministry of Justice.
Best prices
16 lei/page - 6 euros/page (A4, Word, 2000 signs)
60 lei/hour - 17 euros/hour (transportation and other expenses paid by the client)
Romanian-English
English-Romanian
Romanian-French
French-Romanian.
The translations will be sent via e-mail, on CD or diskette or the Romanian Post. I accept payments on card (in my personal bank account).
If interested please leave a comment or e-mail me at
dacialongan at yahoo.com

Traducator si translator autorizat din Botosani. Autorizatie eliberata de catre Ministerul Justitiei.
Cele mai bune preturi
16 lei/pagina - 6euro/pagina (A4, Word, 2000 de semne)
60 lei/ora - 17euro/ora (transport si alte cheltuieli suportate de catre client)
romana-engleza
engleza-romana
romana-franceza
franceza-romana
Livrare pe e-mail, support optic/magnetic sau prin Posta Romana. Accept plata pe card (in contul personal).
Pentru oferte lasati un comentariu sau trimiteti e-mail la
dacialongan at yahoo.com

God Loves Man

2007-08-09T23:21:00.000+03:00

Darwin and his theory seem to fall especially after Leakey discovered that many things previously supposed correct and universally true are in fact doubtful.
Anyway I think a joke such this one is a piece of good humour.
One day Adam was walking in Eden.

Adam says to God: "Why did you make woman so beautiful?"
God says:
"So you would love her."
"But God," Adam says, "Why did you make her so dumb?"
God says:
"So she would love you."

Fossils Challenge Old Evolution Theory

2007-08-09T19:54:00.000+03:00

Surprising research based on two African fossils suggests our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, challenging what had been common thinking on how early humans evolved.

The discovery by Meave Leakey, a member of a famous family of paleontologists, shows that two species of early human ancestors lived at the same time in Kenya. That pokes holes in the chief theory of man's early evolution that one of those species evolved from the other.

And it further discredits that iconic illustration of human evolution that begins with a knuckle-dragging ape and ends with a briefcase-carrying man.

The old theory is that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became human, Homo sapiens. But Leakey's find suggests those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years. She and her research colleagues report the discovery in a paper published in Thursday's journal Nature.

The paper is based on fossilized bones found in 2000. The complete skull of Homo erectus (the man who stands) was found within walking distance of an upper jaw of Homo habilis (the skillful man), and both dated from the same general time period. That makes it unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis, researchers said.

It's the equivalent of finding that your grandmother and great-grandmother were sisters rather than mother-daughter, said study co-author Fred Spoor, a professor of evolutionary anatomy at the University College in London.

The two species lived near each other, but probably didn't interact, each having its own "ecological niche," Spoor said. Homo habilis was likely more vegetarian while Homo erectus ate some meat, he said. Like chimps and apes, "they'd just avoid each other, they don't feel comfortable in each other's company," he said.

There remains some still-undiscovered common ancestor that probably lived 2 million to 3 million years ago, a time that has not left much fossil record, Spoor said.

Overall what it paints for human evolution is a "chaotic kind of looking evolutionary tree rather than this heroic march that you see with the cartoons of an early ancestor evolving into some intermediate and eventually unto us," Spoor said in a phone interview from a field office of the Koobi Fora Research Project in northern Kenya.

That old evolutionary cartoon, while popular with the general public, is just too simple and keeps getting revised, said Bill Kimbel , who praised the latest findings. He is science director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and wasn't part of the Leakey team.

"The more we know, the more complex the story gets," he said. Scientists used to think Homo sapiens evolved from Neanderthals, he said. But now we know that both species lived during the same time period and that we did not come from Neanderthals.

Now a similar discovery applies further back in time.

Susan Anton, a New York University anthropologist and co-author of the Leakey work, said she expects anti-evolution proponents to seize on the new research, but said it would be a mistake to try to use the new work to show flaws in evolution theory.

"This is not questioning the idea at all of evolution; it is refining some of the specific points," Anton said. "This is a great example of what science does and religion doesn't do. It's a continous self-testing process."

For the past few years there has been growing doubt and debate about whether Homo habilis evolved into Homo erectus. One of the major proponents of the more linear, or ladder-like evolution that this evidence weakens, called Leakey's findings important, but he wasn't ready to concede defeat.

Dr. Bernard Wood, a surgeon-turned-professor of human origins at George Washington University, said in an e-mail Wednesday that "this is only a skirmish in the protracted 'war' between the people who like a bushy interpretation and those who like a more ladder-like interpretation of early human evolution."

Leakey's team spent seven years analyzing the fossils before announcing it was time to redraw the family tree â€” and rethink other ideas about human evolutionary history. That's especially true of most immediate ancestor, Homo erectus.

Because the Homo erectus skull Leakey recovered was much smaller than others, scientists had to first prove that it was erectus and not another species nor a genetic freak. The jaw, probably from an 18- or 19-year-old female, was adult and showed no signs of malformation or genetic mutations, Spoor said. The scientists also know it isn't Homo habilis from several distinct features on the jaw.

That caused researchers to re-examine the 30 other erectus skulls they have and the dozens of partial fossils. They realized that the females of that species are much smaller than the males something different from modern man, but similar to other animals, said Anton. Scientists hadn't looked carefully enough before to see that there was a distinct difference in males and females.

Difference in size between males and females seem to be related to monogamy, the researchers said. Primates that have same-sized males and females, such as gibbons, tend to be more monogamous. Species that are not monogamous, such as gorillas and baboons, have much bigger males.

This suggests that our ancestor Homo erectus reproduced with multiple partners.

The Homo habilis jaw was dated at 1.44 million years ago. That is the youngest ever found from a species that scientists originally figured died off somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million years ago, Spoor said. It enabled scientists to say that Homo erectus and Homo habilis lived at the same time.
(source AP via yahoo)

Nicoleta Luciu Is Proud of Her Breasts

2007-08-01T14:22:00.001+03:00

Nicoleta Luciu is one of the sexiest women in Romania. She was born on the 12th of September 1980 in Bucharest, Romania. She is 1.75m tall and she weighs only 51 kg. She is brown eyed and has long black hair.

She has been working in modeling since she was 16. In 1999 she won Miss Romania contest and the same year she represented Romania at Miss World. Her favourite actor
is Brad Pitt and her favourite female Hollywood star is Angelina Jolie.
Nicoleta's favourite writers are Mircea Cartarescu and Paul Coelho. As far as she says her favourite pets are the cats. She also likes very much shopping and sports. Nicoleta appeared four times on the cover of Playboy Romania and her pictures fired up the imagination of all the men in the country and not only.
The perfect part of her beautiful body are her breasts. In 2006 she insured them for a large sum of money.
She has become very famous especially after appearing for a couple of seasons in the very popular TV show Teo, by Teo Trandafir, on PROTV.
Nicoleta is a very good and appreciated actress in Romania. This autumn Nicoleta Luciu will star in a new soap opera, Inima de tigan (Gypsy Heart) on Acasa TV. This next series might be a new success for her as Lacrimi de iubire was.
You might also be interested in visiting her website where you can find a bunch of pictures and some short films, even if in Romanian.

The Controversial London Olympics Logo

2007-07-25T16:58:00.001+03:00

There are a lot of people who do not like the official logo for the 2012 Olympics. Thy say it has nothing in common with the idea of sport, competition and with London.

London Prepares for the Olympic Games in 2012

2007-07-25T16:45:00.000+03:00

The organisers say they are on schedule to take control of the land for the Olympic Games in 2012.
The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) moves on to a 312 hectare site, which has been subject to one of the biggest compulsory purchase orders in living memory, in Stratford, east London, on Thursday.
David Higgins, chief executive of the ODA which is in charge of building Games facilities and infrastructure, said: ‘We are where we thought we would be two years on. We are right on schedule. We have had a great start and it puts us in a good position to get on with the big build after Beijing 2008. This is a project without precedent. Twice the size of Heathrow Terminal 5 in half the time and one of the biggest construction jobs in the world. Now we will have full control of the site the pace of work can really accelerate.’
The last of the 208 businesses, 425 residents, 35 traveller families, 64 allotment holders and the entire Eastway Cycle Circuit have been relocated at a cost of £650 million, the London Development Agency confirmed.
Compulsory purchase powers of eviction or offering residents or businesses compensation to move or shut down were used in 2% of the deals made with 2,200 land and property owners.
A massive clear-up of contaminated land will get under way before building work on the Olympic Stadium begins in summer 2008. It is set to shrink from 80,000 seats to 25,000 after the Games.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone said: ‘This is a truly fantastic achievement. With the world watching and many cynics predicting failure and that the 2012 Games would be jeopardised, the London Development Agency worked professionally and steadily to assemble the land needed for the 2012 Games on time and budget.’
(source dailymail)
The 2008 Olympics is the second greatest investment in the last two decades in the UK. The Tunnel that connects the British Isles with the continent has proved so far a total failure from a financial point o f view. The security measures in 2008 are expected to be extremely severe and Heathrow airport and other transport infrastructures in London prepare for an increasing traffic and pressure form the millions of fans that are expected to come from all around the world.

Southern Britain Faces the Worst Floods in 60 Years

2007-07-23T19:04:00.000+03:00

GLOUCESTER - Flood waters across huge swathes of England rose to hte highest levels in the last 60 years on Monday, submerging vast tracts of land and leaving thousands of people without running water or electricity.
British Environment Secretary Hilary Benn told Parliament further flooding was very likely, as heavy rains continued and major rivers such as the Thames swelled.
The Environment Agency said Britain's Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), which assembles, maintains and decommissions nuclear warheads, had reported that their site at Burghfield (Berkshire) had experienced severe flooding.
'Several parts of the site, including a number of buildings and the site's sewage treatment works, have been affected,' the agency said. 'AWE staff have been sampling and analyzing the floodwater from the site. They have confirmed that there has been no escape of radioactive materials.'
Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited the western county of Gloucestershire, badly hit by the flooding, and promised more money to help with drainage and flood defenses.
'What we saw here was a month's rainfall in some places in an hour, something that was quite unprecedented, and put enormous pressure on water and the emergency services,' he told reporters.
Benn said up to 10,000 homes had been or could be flooded and about 45,000 homes had lost power. (source REUTERS)

In some regions the situation seems really desperate and the British prime minister, Mr. Brown, are doing their best to handle the situation.
Europe has been affected by floods and excesive temperatures lately. In Romania in some regions the situation is much worse than the most pesimistic prognosis. In Vaslui for example draught has affected all the crops and immediate help form the central authorities in Bucharest is required. Temperatures have reached the highest values in the last 64 years. Yesterday for example in Bucharest was even hotter than in Athens where the temeperatures reached 36 degrees Celsius.

10 Places to Visit in London

2007-07-16T21:06:00.001+03:00

Most people think they have already seen everything is worth seeing in their home country. Let's take for example the UK. A lot of British citizens want to go on vacation to the so called exotic countries without considering the opportunity to visit their wonderful country and especially their capital London. Prince Charles for example is buying land and old houses - which he completely refurbishes - in Transylvania and many other British are buying properties in Spain or Italy.
The wonderful city of London has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The Romans conquered Britain and built a settlement (castrum) here and named the place Londinium replacing thus the traces left by the Picts. Later the Anglo-Saxons came and built their unique civilization . In 1066 William the Conqueror (Guillaume le Batard) came with his brave Norman warriors and started a new era in the long history of England.
London is nowadays one of the most important economical and cultural centre in the world. The banks, the companies and the cultural life of the city transformed it into one of the most successful and influential capitals of the 21st century.

If I could go to London right now these are the top 10 places that I would surely like to visit:

1. The British Museum
It is the oldest and the most important museum in the world. The public displays and the collections of the British Museum represent an important part of the cultural and material heritage of the world.

2. Buckingham Palace
Is the official residence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The changing of the guards is one ritual that no tourist should miss when visiting London.

3. London Eye
The giant wheel was built on the bank of the Thames - in front of the Houses of the Parliament - and offers a wonderful perspective of the whole city.

4. The Houses of Parliament (The Westminster Palace)
The world famous Big Ben is the major attraction of the building. The huge clock tower dominates the City and it precisely strikes every hour.

5. Westminster Abbey - The Coronation Cathedral
Beginning with the 25 of December 1066 - when William the Conqueror (William I r. 1066-1087) was anointed king of England - all the kings and queens receive the divine blessing in this huge cathedral.

6. The Tower of London
Before his being anointed king of England William ordered the Norman builders who were accompanying to erect a tower. The White Tower gradually became, after repeatedly being extended, what is today known as the Tower of London - a series of fortifications that were used as royal residence, prisons or Royal Treasury (for the Jewels of the Crown). Today is a famous museum and the Beefeaters are most pleased to guide all the tourists.

7. St. Paul's Cathedral
It is a Baroque master piece built under the supervision of Sir Christopher Wren. The Dome is one of the largest in the world. Christopher Wren himself was buried here. Other famous British subjects that rest under the roof of St. Paul's are Duke Wellington, Lord Nelson, John Donne or J.M.W. Turner.

8. Tower Bridge
Built in the neogothic style Tower Bridge was inaugurated in 1894. It is a wonder of technology and engineering. When finished the mobile bridge was lifted by steam engines. Now the half an hour guided tour offers the tourists another perspective of London and its achievements.

9. The National Gallery
Displays more than 2,300 paintings created between 1260-1900. The main entrance is in the Trafalgar Square but the Sainsbury wing is more appropriate for starting a tour of the exhibitions.

10. The Underground
Particularly interesting is the London Underground or the tube (initially the tunnels were perfectly round) as it also called. It is not a real touristic attraction but I consider it worth "visiting" I mean using. It is the best means of transport in London - there are also the famous double deckers or the black cabs - even if a little bit too crowded during rush hours.

Big Ben Strikes 12 o'clock

2007-07-15T12:41:00.000+03:00

Two short films.

The Big Ben is a landmark in London that is worth seeing. So if you go to London don't miss it.

The Big BANG Theory For All

2007-07-15T12:31:00.000+03:00

Here it is a short documentary that explains in short the theory of the Big Bang - the initial phenomenon that triggered the expansion of the Universe.
part 1

part 2

'Hope the materials are pretty useful and will help you get an idea about what happened and how did the Universe started "to function".

Laura Andresan at Botosani

2007-07-13T21:28:00.001+03:00

Laura Andresan is coming to Botosani for a hot show on the 14th of July. This is a double celebration for this county in the north-east of Romania as on that day the French people celebrate their National Day. So the National Day of France is a double occasion for celebration in Botosani, a small part of the francophone speaking world.
Laura Andresan is very well known in Romania for her really hot public shows and private parties she goes to. She has already starred in some hot clips and movies that are in fact considered by the Romanian authorities (especially NAC - CNA) as too hot and not appropriate for public display.
Laura is to appear in a show in KUAN YIN club for the first time in Botosani. Some journalists from Bucharest claim she is actually raising money - some 100,000 euros - for a young woman suffering from leukemia.
People in Botosani - especially men - can hardly wait to see her performing in a local club and the party is going to be a once in a life time occasion to enjoy the best atmosphere ever in this part of the world.

ENJOY! ;)

Big Ben versus Big Bang

2007-07-13T19:56:00.000+03:00

Most people take one of these phrases for the other one. Here are some information about each of them, which I hope are of interest

THE STORY OF BIG BEN

At 9'-0" diameter, 7'-6" high, and weighing in at 13 tons 10 cwts 3 qtrs 15lbs (13,760 Kg), the hour bell of the Great Clock of Westminster (the Houses of the Parliament in London, on the Thames bank) - known worldwide as 'Big Ben' - is the most famous bell ever cast at Whitechapel.
On 16th October 1834, fire succeeded where Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters had failed on 5th November 1605, and destroyed the Palace of Westminster, long the seat of the British government. Those few bits of the Old Palace that survived the fire - most notably Westminster Hall, which was built between 1097 and 1099 by William Rufus - were incorporated into the new buildings we know today, along with many new features.
In 1844, Parliament decided that the new buildings for the Houses of Parliament, by then under construction, should incorporate a tower and clock. The commission for this work was awarded to the architect Charles Barry, who initially invited just one clockmaker to produce a design and quotation. The rest of the trade objected to this, demanding the job be put out to competitive tender. The Astronomer Royal, George Airy was appointed to draft a specification for the clock. One of his requirements was that:
"the first stroke of the hour bell should register the time, correct to within one second per day, and furthermore that it should telegraph its performance twice a day to Greenwich Observatory, where a record would be kept."
Most clockmakers of the day considered such accuracy unnattainable for a large tower clock driving striking mechanisms and heavy hands exposed to wind and weather and lobbied for a lesser specification. However, Airy was adamant that the first specification be adhered to. Due to this impasse, Parliament appointed barrister Edmund Beckett Denison as co-referee with Airy. Edmund Beckett Denison, later Sir Edmund Beckett, the first Baron Grimthorpe, was a difficult man. He was described by one writer as:
"zealous but unpopular, self-accredited expert on clocks, locks, bells, buildings, as well as many branches of law, Denison was one of those people who are almost impossible as colleagues, being perfectly convinced that they know more than anybody about everything - as unhappily they often do."
Denison decided to apply himself to the problem of the clock. It was 1851 before he came up with a design which could meet the exacting specification. The clock Denison designed was built by Messrs E.J. Dent & Co., and completed in 1854. The tower was not ready until 1859, so the clock was kept on test at Dent's works for over five years.
Next came the bells, and Denison discovered that Barry, now Sir Charles Barry, had specified a 14 ton hour bell but had made no provision for its production or for that of the four smaller smaller quarter chime bells. Denison's studies of clocks had included bells and he had developed his own ideas as to how they should be designed and made.
The largest bell ever cast in Britain up to that time had been 'Great Peter' at York Minster. This weighed just 10¾ tons, so it is not surprising the bellfounders were wary of bidding for the contract to produce the new bell, particularly since Denison insisted on his own design for the shape of the bell as well as his own recipe for the bellmetal. In both respects his requirements varied significantly from traditional custom and practice. Eventually, a bell was made to his specification, albeit somewhat oversize at 16 tons, by John Warner & Sons at Stockton-on-Tees on 6th August 1856, but this cracked irreparably while under test in the Palace Yard at Westminster. It was then that Denison, who now had QC after his name, turned to the Whitechapel foundry....
George Mears, then the master bellfounder and owner of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, undertook the casting. According to foundry records, Mears originally quoted a price of £2401 for casting the bell, but this was offset to the sum of £1829 by the metal he was able to reclaim from the first bell so that the actual invoice tendered, on 28th May 1858, was in the sum of £572. It took a week to break up the old bell, three furnaces were required to melt the metal, and the mould was heated all day before the actual casting, the first time this had been done in British bell-founding. It took 20 minutes to fill the mould with molten metal, and 20 days for the metal to solidify and cool. After the bell had been tested in every way by Mears, Denison approved it before it left the foundry.
Transporting the bell the few miles from the foundry to the Houses of Parliament was a major event. Traffic stopped as the bell, mounted on a trolley drawn by sixteen brightly beribboned horses, made its way over London Bridge, along Borough Road, and over Westminster Bridge. The streets had been decorated for the occasion and enthusiastic crowds cheered the bell along the route.
The bells of the Great Clock of Westmister rang across London for the first time on 31st May 1859, and Parliament had a special sitting to decide on a suitable name for the great hour bell. During the course of the debate, and amid the many suggestions that were made, Chief Lord of the Woods and Forests, Sir Benjamin Hall, a large and ponderous man known affectionately in the House as "Big Ben", rose and gave an impressively long speech on the subject. When, at the end of this oratorical marathon, Sir Benjamin sank back into his seat, a wag in the chamber shouted out: "Why not call him Big Ben and have done with it?" The house erupted in laughter; Big Ben had been named. This, at least, is the most commonly accepted story. However, according to the booklet written for the old Ministry of Works by Alan Phillips:
"Like other nice stories, this has no documentary support; Hansard failed to record the interjection. The Times had been alluding to 'Big Ben of Westminster' aince 1856. Probably, the derivation must be sought more remotely. The current champion of the prize ring was Benjamin Caunt, who had fought terrific battles with Bendigo, and who in 1857 lasted sixty rounds of a drawn contest in his final appearance at the age of 42. As Caunt at one period scaled 17 stone (238 lbs, or 108 kilogrammes), his nickname was Big Ben, and that was readily bestowed by the populace on any object the heaviest of its class. So the anonymous MP may have snatched at what was already a catchphrase."
In September, a mere two months after it officially went into service, Big Ben cracked. Once again Denison's belief that he knew more about bells than the experts was to blame for he had used a hammer more than twice the maximum weight specified by George Mears. Big Ben was taken out of service and for the next three years the hours were struck on the largest of the quarter-bells. Eventually, a lighter hammer was fitted, a square piece of metal chipped out of the soundbow, and the bell given an eighth of a turn to present an undamaged section to the hammer. This is the bell as we hear it today, the crack giving it its distinctive but less-than-perfect tone.
Not prepared to admit any error on his part, Denison befriended one of the Foundry's moulders, plied him with drink, and got him to bear false witness that it was poor casting, disguised with filler, that had caused the cracking. (A close examination of Big Ben in 2002 failed to find a trace of filler, incidentally.) With reputations at stake this led to a court case, which Denison rightly lost. Nor was this the end of the story. Denison, obviously aggrieved at having lost the court case, continued to badmouth the Foundry. Twenty years later he was unwise enough to do so in print and this led to a second libel trial. And he lost that case, too.
In mid-2002, we uncovered a dusty old boxfile bearing a label that read "Stainbank v Beckett 1881". It contained a complete transcript of the second trial between the Foundry - this time in the person of founder Robert Stainbank - and Sir Edmund Beckett Denison. Initially, we thought we'd discovered a transcript of the original, Big Ben trial. While it's a shame we don't possess a transcript of the first trial (at least, none we've yet found) there is apparently a copy still extant at the Palace of Westminster. This may, however, be the only existing transcript of the later trial. That original, handwritten transcript will be lodged in the Foundry library after a typed record has been made.
One final point of interest is that the transcript mentions the lawyer for the Foundry using a small model to demonstrate the principles of bell-casting. This would almost certainly have been the same small, exquisitely crafted model currently on display in the Foundry's lobby museum area.
Big Ben remains the largest bell ever cast at Whitechapel. Visitors to the foundry pass through a full size profile of the bell that frames the main entrance as they enter the building. The original moulding gauge employed to form the mould used to cast Big Ben hangs on the end wall of the foundry above the furnaces to this very day.
Among the gift items available from Whitechapel Bell Foundry are a finely detailed miniature of the bell itself and an illustrated booklet about Big Ben. These can both be found on our merchandising page. (source http://www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk/bigben.htm)

THE BIG BANG THEORY
The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.
In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître was the first to propose that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom. His proposal came after observing the red shift in distant nebulas by astronomers to a model of the universe based on relativity. Years later, Edwin Powell Hubble found experimental evidence to help justify Lemaître's theory. He found that distant galaxies in every direction are going away from us with speeds proportional to their distance.
The big bang was initially suggested because it explains why distant galaxies are traveling away from us at great speeds. The theory also predicts the existence of cosmic background radiation (the glow left over from the explosion itself). The Big Bang Theory received its strongest confirmation when this radiation was discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize for this discovery.
Although the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, it probably will never be proved; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions.

iPhone and I Talk

2007-07-12T20:37:00.000+03:00

On the 29th of June 2007 Apple launched the new iPhone and immediately after its official releasing it became a huge success with the consumers and the pros worldwide. During the last few years Apple developed and started selling high tech devices such as Apple iPod Nano and iPod Video that integrate some of the latest technologies available in the IT domain. iPhone is not just a cell phone it is also a music player, video player, internet device and camera. The dimensions of the iPhone are: 11.6mm thick, 2.4-inches wide and 4.5-inches tall. The screen is a generous 3.5-inch, 320x480 pixels at 160 ppi touchscreen display with multitouch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the screen when it is close to your face. The iPhone has storage capacity of 4GB or 8GB supported by an internal flash memory. The mobile network connectivity offers a wide range of options: GPRS/EDGE, 2.5G GSM Quad band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), data speed up to 384kbit/s. iPhone from Apple uses a 30-pin iPod dock connector, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth 2.0 to connect to a Mac or a PC.
Apple says that the battery lasts up to 5 hours for video and talk with 16 hours in music mode. There is no data available about the standby time yet.
Apple officials are confident in the new iPhone and intend to sell more over 10 million units by the end of 2008 in USA, EU and Asia. The most optimistic previsions of the professionals in the field of telecommunications and IT say that they will actually sell more than 10 million units in the next 6 months. The fame and the strong brand of Apple and the fact that the iPhone has been long time now waited for and rumored about will definitely lead to unexpected rates of market shares.
Apple is launching iPhone in Europe in the fourth quarter of 2007 and in Asia in 2008. The fact is that not all the Europeans can buy the new device as Apple intends to sell it only in the UK, France and Germany.
Hopefully we shall not wait for too long to enjoy the latest technologies in the domain of mobile phones with integrated functions.

Strange Phenomena Up in the Sky

2007-07-07T20:40:00.000+03:00

A NASA satellite has captured the first occurrence of mysterious shiny polar clouds that form 50 miles above Earth's surface. The AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) spacecraft returned some of the first data on these noctilucent or "night shining" clouds on June 11, 2007. In this image of the Arctic regions of Europe and North America, white and light blue represent noctilucent cloud structures. Black indicates areas where no data is available.
The clouds form in an upper layer of the Earth’s atmosphere called the mesosphere during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer season which began in mid-May and extends through the end of August and are being seen by AIM’s instruments more frequently as the season progresses. They are also seen in the high latitudes during the summer months in the Southern Hemisphere.
Very little is known about how these clouds form over the poles, why they are being seen more frequently and at lower latitudes than ever before, or why they have been growing brighter. AIM will observe two complete cloud seasons over both poles, documenting an entire life cycle of the shiny clouds for the first time.
AIM is providing scientists with information about how many of these clouds there are around the world and how different they are including the sizes and shapes of the tiny particles that make them up. Scientists believe that the shining clouds form at high latitudes early in the season and then move to lower latitudes as time progresses. The AIM science team is studying this new data to understand why these clouds form and vary, and if they may be related to global change.

(source www.nasa.gov)

LEVI STRAUSS and the Blue Jeans

2007-07-07T08:11:00.000+03:00

The company and the world famous "blue jeans" traces its origin to Levi Strauss (1829–1902), a Bavarian immigrant who sold dry goods to miners during the California gold rush in the late 1800's. Hearing of the miners' need for durable trousers, he hired a tailor, Jacob Davis, to make garments out of tent canvas, later substituting denim (a cotton cloth from France called "serge de Nimes," which became known as denim). On May 20, 1873, the two men received patent #139,121 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We consider that day to be the official "birthday" of blue jeans. The company's most spectacular growth occurred after 1946, with the decision to concentrate wholly on manufacturing clothing under its own label. In 1959 it began exporting, and during the 1960's Levi's jeans became enormously popular worldwide. The company went public in 1971 and was returned to private control (by Strauss's descendants) in 1985.

Jeans - where does the name come from?

The word jeans comes from a kind of material that was made in Europe.
The material, called jean, was named after sailors from Genoa in Italy,
because they wore clothes made from it. The earliest cite is from 1495. The modern spelling has existed since at least 1622.

History and evolution of Jeans

The 1930's: westerns
- cowboys - who often wore jeans in the movies-became very popular.
The 1950's: rebels
- ìn the 1950's, denim became popular with young people. ìt was the
symbol of the teenage rebel in tv programmes and movies
The 1960-70's: hippies and the cold war
- different styles of jeans were made, to match the 60's fashions. In many non-western countries, jeans became a symbol of ' western decadence' and were very hard to get.
The 1980's: designer jeans
- in the 1980's jeans became high fashion clothing, when famous
designers started making their own styles of jeans, with their own labels on them.
sales of jeans went up and up.
The 1990's: recession
- although denim is never completely out of style, it certainly goes out of
'fashion' from time to time

Former Romanian Football Player Sells His Shares in a Wine Production Company

2007-07-06T15:44:00.000+03:00

Former Romanian soccer player Gica Popescu wants to give up most of his shares of the Vincon Vrancea wine producer to businessman Gigi Netoiu, who will thus regain control of the company. Popescu now owns 49% of Vincon.

Gica Popescu will keep a small five percent share package, Luchi Georgescu, Chairman of the company's Board of Directors, told Business Standard. Ownership of Vincon Vrancea will pass back to Gigi Netoiu, who is close to both Popescu and Georgescu. "This is not the time to talk about shareholding changes, as negotiations are still ongoing. Talking about this could harm the negotiation process. What is certain is that Gica Popescu will sell his Vincon package by October," says Luchi Georgescu.

"There is an important three shareholder group at Vincon, of which I am one, and which includes Gica Popescu. I will buy the majority shares owned by Popescu and will become main shareholder," said Netoiu. The reason the former soccer player has given up his Vincon shares is because he is initiating several important real estate projects.

Gica Popescu bought 49% of Vincon back in 2002 valued at $500,000 from Luchi Georgescu. The company was experiencing serious financial difficulties because it had not paid two installments stipulated in the privatization contract.

Vincon's 2006 profit amounted to €2.1 million, against €1.7 million the previous year, 15% higher year-on-year. With some 3,000 hectares of vineyards located in Vrancea and Dobrogea, the company registered turnover of €34 million in 2006. Vincon also owns 20 wine cellars, whose storage and production capacity is some 80,000 tons per season. Sources on the market estimate the company's market value to be approximately €15-20 million. Its market share is about 8% for 750 ml bottles and some 10-12% for table wines.

Market
The Romanian wine market is worth some €450 million, and major producers are Murfatlar, with a 27.8% market share (in volume), Jidvei, with 14.5%, Cotnari, 13.1%, and Vincon, with 7.8%.

(source Business Standard)

Life Is Priceless

2007-06-20T00:25:00.000+03:00

Vatican - the Holy See, the official residence of the Pope, spiritual leader of the Catholic Church - has given drivers Ten Commandments to obey. In the Old Testament Moses received the ten divine Commandments directly form God but this time it seems He works through His mortal subjects to guide the sheep.
So here it is the series of commandments the Catholic Church has just passed.
Life is more precious than any other matter and it's worth protecting it by all means.

1. You shall not kill.

2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.

3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.

5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.

6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

7. Support the families of accident victims.

8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.

9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.

10. Feel responsible toward others.

Life Is THE Gift. Be Sure You Have a Life Insurance.

2007-06-19T19:35:00.000+03:00

I was not thinking to write again about insurance policies any time soon but meanwhile I have told to myself that people have to get some advice and become aware of the huge potential the internet has in this field.
So my question is “Have you ever experienced the feeling that you have just done a bad business after buying a life insurance policy form a certain company?”. I am sure you have, at least some of you. The biggest mistake someone can do is b to buy a life insurance policy from the first company they come across. Not choosing the right company for you might negatively influence your budget and eventually your family.
The best way to get an idea about companies and their offer is to go online to each company’s site or simply read a few tips and reviews as those you can find on 2insure4less.com. This site provides free Life Insurance Quotes to costumers all across the US.
Do not hesitate to ask questions and read articles about life insurance before you buy one. The website I have already mentioned does not sell life insurance policies but besides providing Life Insurance Quotes it provides those who visit it with buying tips and useful information about insurance that helps everyone to choose the best policy. Moreover you will find articles about benefits you have to look for when buying a life insurance policy and it answers a series of FAQ.
So be sure that when you decide to buy a life insurance policy you have got all the necessary information so you can make the best decision.

Keep Your Body in Good Shape

2007-06-18T23:06:00.000+03:00

The ancient Greeks paid much attention to the body and did their best to improve man's natural abilities. Later the Romans became preoccupied with sports. While for the Greeks and the Romans the games were either displays of force and courage or preparations for the wars they fought, nowadays it is a necessity to practice a sport.
Football is the anointed king of all sports. Teams or players are international stars. Business is made. TV Commercials or ads on the pitch transformed the world of sports into a multi-billion dollars industry. What is left from the ancient ideals of beauty and perfection is the respect for the physical performance and less for the means of achieving it.
People enjoy watching or playing football, tennis or golf for example. Due to the lack of physical activity many of us are forced to go to gyms where we can exercise our bodies. All over the world authorities and private persons try to involve as many people as possible in sport activities. Perhaps the best known occasions to make athletics popular with the public are the huge public marathons that are held in big cities worldwide. This kind of sport is very popular as more and more people get involved into long term physical training activities.
There are sports, however, that are ‘passive’. Let us take for example the F1. Who does not like to see a car passing at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per hour past the… camera? You simply watch and the only physical effort are the exclamations of surprise when a driver loses direction. Some other sports such as climbing are not accessible to anyone because it is necessary to be in an extremely good physical shape and to be mentally balanced.
In my opinion everybody should go out from time to time and jog in the park because it is healthy and really helps you. Playing football with your friends just for fun, even you are not Ronaldo, helps you keep your body healthy and in good shape. Becoming a couch potato is not a challenge but a danger.

Insure Your “Home, Sweet Home"

2007-06-17T10:16:00.000+03:00

Besides health the house where you live is your most valuable thing that is worth paying attention to and taking care of. Most of us know how much money one has to invest in a house and how difficult it might be to keep it in good condition. Why should you risk wasting your life-long efforts and not buying an insurance policy to cover any undesired accident such as a fire or a tornado? Home insurance is the best way to protect your asset. I am sure most of us have already chosen the best insurance plan to cover any risks connected with the houses we are living in. OK. What about those who have just bought a nice little house and want to buy a homeowner insurance and get to take advantage of as many benefits as possible?
Some are choosing the first so called ‘best offer’ they find without comparing more offers and without really looking for the best benefits. As I said in some other previous posts of mine the Internet is the best market advisor and when it comes to Home Insurance Quotes there are very useful sites that provide free home insurance related tips and advice to consumers. I am sure everybody wants 2insure4less his or her house and you are right www.2insure4less.com is the very place to find valuable information about home owner insurance. Their automated rating engine provides any interested person with basic estimates from many insurance companies doing business in the US. The Home Insurance Quotes section on their website provides you with more articles and tips related to choosing the cheapest insurance or to saving money on home insurance.
So next time when you are buying a home insurance be sure it is the best one, the one that meets all your needs and demands.

Lying the Lawyers?

2007-06-15T18:43:00.000+03:00

Most of us – in no matter what state or country – believe that all lawyers are extremely well paid persons who work for their clients and are get a lot of money from the defendants in intensely publicized trials. But every day I find more and more evidence on the web or in newspapers that in fact being a lawyer is nor necessarily synonymous with being rich and having an expensive mansion
Hank Petty, Jr. is one of the many American recent law school graduates and he can testify to the fact that many myths about this job are in fact just lies. He really says The Truth About The Lawyer Mill and he provides valuable information and evidence – in the Know Before You Go section there are a lot of very useful links - that might be of great help for young people who intend to become lawyers. His weblog also brings new evidence for those lawyers who intend to quit their jobs for better paid and more rewarding ones in other domains.
Most law school graduates are lied to about their options after graduation. Young lawyers usually end up in jobs that bring very low monthly income and they cannot pay their student loans. They start doing – sometimes with no chance of improvement – the work the top employees do not want to do anymore.
The posts and the links on Hank’s weblog are written in a style that most of you will enjoy reading. He makes his point telling us his very well written stories and presenting as objectively as possible his own experience in the field of law. His links to various sites are very well chosen and range from the Departament of Labor to sites that deal with tuition fees and the hidden traps of the so called 'bright prospects'.

Health Care and Insurance

2007-06-13T11:42:00.000+03:00

Most people know how important is to have a health insurance. But at the same time most of us do not know how important it is to choose the right insurance plan. Basically ‘the best plan’ offers a package that provides the most relevant coverage to our personal needs at the lowest cost. Anybody knows – some of us from personal traumatic experience – that health care in the US is very expensive and that hospital bills and the doctor’s fees that have to be paid usually reach tens of thousands of dollars. The right health insurance package that meets the demands of you and your family covers all the costs of a routine medical treatment or a complex operation. But how can you choose the most suitable one?
The other day I was looking on the internet for more details about health insurance and I have come across this website, My Insurance Review - Health, that does not sell any ‘all covering’ health-insurance but it gives you free online advice on insurance issues and some good tips that will definitely help you. If you are shopping for a health insurance this site helps you to learn the basics of insurance before buying an insurance package.
For example I have found out that “the lowest priced plan is not always the cheapest”, in other words you should look for the insurance plan that offers the benefits which are most likely to be used by you for the lowest price. Another great tip is about your provider. My Insurance Review-Health recommends that you learn as much as possible about your provider. You have to look for the best doctors and health care facilities that can meet any needs that you might have at a given time in the future.
Do not forget to take a look at the section about legal rights that you have as an employee and citizen who works and pays his monthly premium. Your rights are guaranteed by COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act). So get your health insurance considering all the aspects of this important decision.

New Age in Politics

2007-06-12T20:32:00.000+03:00

I have just come across news about two world leaders acting quite strange in different situations in two EUropean countries.

The first is the newly appointed president of France Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy. After an official dinner with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, Mr. Sarkozy was supposed to answer the journalists' questions but it seems he was a little ... tired and too happy. The French news channel claim he was simply too tired and that he had only water during the meeting with Mr. Putin. And yet it seems that highly effective Russian persuasive arguments determined Mr. Sarkozy lose his control.
Just watch this short film

Other "interesting" episode is the one that demonstrates Mr. George Bush, the president of the USA does not really know how to talk to a Pope in Vatican, namely Pope Benedict XVI. Instead of addressing the Pope by the formal name of his office he used the words "Yes, sir".

Oh there is something more. On a visit to Albania (in the Balkans, southern Europe) Mr. Bush lost his watch, some say it has been stolen by a sincerly appreciative supporter. Perhaps some citizens there lost their Soviet made Pobeda watches.

Precious Allies Fight Aging

2007-06-11T11:32:00.000+03:00

Did you ever think you would grow older one day and your skin would lose its smoothness and you would have wrinkles around your eyes? Most of us surely did and try to keep their skin young and healthy. There are many cosmetic products that claim they can do wonders. It is trendy nowadays to use botox for removing wrinkles. Most scientists agree on the negative effects of this substance on the human body.
But you don’t need to use aggressive methods to get rid of puffy eyes or of the thin laughter lines around your eyes. There is a whole line of skin care products that help you improve the texture of your skin and keep every inch of it smooth and bright. Dremu skin care products are among the best solutions that prevent the early aging of the skin and the development of any unwanted effects of aging such as wrinkles, age spots or pet skin problems. Oprah, Beyonce, Demi Moore or Goldie Hawn use the Dremu products on a regular basis and testified to their long lasting positive effects. But Dremu does not work only for your skin. Extra Strength Pain Relief is the product that makes your stiff joints just another nightmare that you got rid of.
I personally wondered “Why Dremu?’ and I found out that every product is based on emu oil – the flightless Australian bird. The usage of emu oil has been tested and the pros in the field of cosmetics discovered that it is the perfect ally against aging of the skin. Airbrush – an eye cream – or Cashmere – a hand and body lotion – are two of the top Dremu skin care products that you can order form their site and have it shipped to your place anywhere in the world.

technorati

2007-06-10T22:30:00.001+03:00

hi there

Technorati Profile

Transilvania Film Festival 2007

2007-06-10T19:21:00.000+03:00

Good news

The jury of the 2007 Transilvania Film Festival (TIFF) (June 1-June 10 2007, Cluj and Sibiu) has just awarded the grand prix to a Chilean director, Sebastian Campos, for the movie "La Sagrada Familia".

Other films were awarded prizes for direction, best actor, best script.

Not exactly good news

Unfortunately the Romanian film world lost one of its best representatives, Adrian Pintea, who has just been buried today in Bucharest.

Being Young

2007-06-09T00:22:00.000+03:00

Some say being young is the best part of someone’s life. Some believe in the eternal spirit of the youth. To me something is clear: I am young and I intend to benefit from this every second yet minding not to hurt someone by doing stupid things.
Being young means to enjoy the moment – Carpe diem – to take the best from life and to gain experience that you can use later. Starting with the teenage and up to the mid forties people are considered young. They are enthusiastic, are willing to go far beyond their limits, trying to do things that they have never done before, are open minded and above all have the resources to do all these. Their body and mind allow them to do almost everything is physically and mentally possible.
Of course many of us remain young deep in their souls even after the society stamps – OLD – on their face, and that is the case of those who enjoy working or having fun, who like to discover new things and confronting new challenges all the time long after they have become seniors.
Being young is the courage to fight the prejudices the grown ups try to impose on us. Taking risks is not always quite the perspective of the adults that is why sometimes we, the youth, feel somehow rejected or not taken into consideration. I said that being young means to gain experience and what I mean is that we are supposed to pay attention to the advice of more experienced people but at the same time we should not obey their rules as if they were perfect.
And what is really important is that we rule – we, the young people, are more actively involved in all kind of activities that allow us to get more money and to keep the information we have access to up to the date. And everything is sometimes excessive in our case: eccentric outfits, loud music, crazy but eventually good ideas, good reactions. Some live dangerously others share more traditional values but one thing is clear – we fight for every inch of everything we know is ours.
So beware because we’re coming!!!!!

Just Playing

2007-06-08T11:00:00.000+03:00

The first time when I played poker I really enjoyed the game although me and my friends were using an old simple wooden table. I remember the cards were as old as the hills and instead of chips we were using some old coins we had found in my grandma’s one hundred year old chest.
Meanwhile I’ve saved some money and started thinking that I could spend a few dollars on some high quality gambling products such as a high quality poker table, a set of cards or some chips.
And what’s really fantastic is that there is a company in Iowa City, Cardroom Supply, right there for me and all the poker players, offering all its customers one of the internet’s largest selection of poker tables and poker supplies. They sell a wide selection of gaming products at wholesale prices via the web and can delivery their poker products nationwide.
You should take a look at the poker tables which are really high quality. I am sure these tables meet the demands of most people playing poker on a quiet Saturday evening or of the best pros who are looking for a perfect table. The fact is that these Casino Poker Tables offer you a new perspective on playing poker. Why not enjoying a Las Vegas-like atmosphere any time you gamble? If you already have your lucky table in your living room don’t worry – you can purchase one of the table tops that will definitely increase your earnings, you know what I mean.
What has really surprised me were the gaming chairs which you can order directly from their website, actually you can order anything you need using their page. Shipping and delivery are Cardroom Supply's concern so you will enjoy using your new poker table in the shortest time possible.

Coin Tricks

2007-06-07T14:44:00.001+03:00

It has been quite a long time since I saw this first. I simply cannot understand how does he do it? Just look at his fingers and movements - is this a fake or he puts the camera off for a couple of seconds?

You can find more like this if you search on the youtube site 'coin tricks'

Enjoy

Celebrating Good Wines

2007-06-06T13:39:00.000+03:00

Wine which is not kept in proper conditions is not good wine at all. Unfortunately many of those people who say they just love a glass of the good wine they keep in their own cellar spoil their precious drink just because they use the wrong type of bottle, because they do not control the temperature and in most cases because they do not use the appropriate type of wine racks.
Why losing the precious and expensive drink of gods just because the Wine Rack or wine cooler is not built according to the recommended patterns designed by the pros? A couple of years ago I had the chance to visit a vineyard with its cellar and vine store. It was a delight for my senses. And now, when I have found on the web an online store which offers the clientele a wide range of products that help people enjoy the quality of a good wine for a longer period of time, I told to myself it is the time to speak about both of them .
Surprisingly or not the Vine Store.com sells not only wine racks but also wine coolers and glasses which I assure you are made of high quality materials. The wine racks are specially designed for a proper keeping of any kind of bottled wine in the optimal position that allows wines reveal their unique properties and taste.
What is more the prices are good and vary from $15 to sums that can make proud anyone who values a delicious ten year old wine. The sellers, the connoisseurs or the collectors of fine wines can also choose from the wide range of accessories that will definitely make their life a pleasure.

My Online Fitness Center

2007-06-02T12:00:00.000+03:00

I have recently found out that I might have some problems in the years to come because of some extra pounds I weigh. This means of course that some medical conditions related to the excess of fats can also appear. I am not a very active person. I try to practice a sport but as it is the case with so many of us I do not have the time and sometimes I am too tired to go for a jog around the park.
A friend of mine told me to eat only fat free ecological food, another told me to go to a doctor who could help me, another one told me to take medicines. And yet, I told to myself, all these are time consuming and perhaps I have to pay for a therapy that would lead to a unsatisfactory result.
In my opinion taking weight off or keeping the right weight is not easy. I have looked for various methods and some of them promised wonders, some of them were unaffordable and others were simply stupid and impossible.
One week ago I was absolutely delighted to find out that there is the best solution for my concerns. On myfitnesspal.com there are is the healthy, 100% free and very accessible method to control effectively my weight. I have started keeping a food diary and an activity log after joining free myfitnesspal.com. Keeping track of the nutritional contents of the food I have every day and of the physical activity I do helps me losing weight easily and quickly without any special diet and without paying a cent. The system, that consists of a calorie counter and an over 6,000 food items data base listed according to some key categories and principles, learns from me and at the same time I can make better food choices that meet my body’s demands and needs. There is not only this log that you can keep on-line but also a large community of people who you can join and read or post different threads that concern you.
Personally I have found out that I can keep fit eating what I like and when I like just that I have to keep in my mind that healthy food supports a healthy body.

Be Free, Be Smart, Get Your Card

2007-05-29T17:34:00.000+03:00

Just think how easy is to pay your weekly shopping or the bills with a card or how safe it is to travel to any corner of the world having with no other concern in your mind than to enjoy your trip. Millions of locations worldwide accept credit cards issued by different banks under the surveillance and with the assistance of famous brands such as Visa, Master Card, American Express or Maestro.
OK these are the advantages of having a card and a bank account. When it comes to making the right choice things get pretty difficult. Banks or other financial institutions have their own policies, different fees, rewards or bonuses.
Why losing your time or pay extra-money? You can enter a specialized web site, such as creditcard.org.uk, that helps you choose the most suitable credit card offers for you.
Personally I believe e-payments and all sort of e-transactions are the future and everybody should benefit from the advantages of these services. Specialized sites are increasingly important and useful. creditcard.org.uk provides the visitors looking for a card on the web with a wide range of choices, comparisons of interest rates, a list of prices and the possibility to apply on-line for one of the products. I was very pleased to see that the comparison includes details such as rewards offered by the issuer. For example a Sainsburys Platinum Card brings you a Sainsburys Voucher and a Virgin Credit Card comes with Virgin discounts.
Particularly interesting are the reviews on banking products and the links found at the bottom of the home page that can be accessed with a simple click.

Romanian Film Director Takes the Palme d’Or at Cannes

2007-05-28T15:07:00.000+03:00

For the first time in the 60 years history of Cannes Film Festival a Romanian director is awarded the top prize at this prestigious European contest.
"It looks a little like a fairy tale. One year ago, we didn't have an idea for this project. Six months ago we didn't have the money to make it and finally, we were just hoping to be in Cannes in any kind of competition" said Mungiu, receiving the prize from Jane Fonda. "You don't necessarily need a big budget or a lot of stars to make stories," he added. He took Palme d’Or for his second feature (the first one was “Occident” released in 2002) “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days”. Mungiu believes this is good news for low budget productions and young directors "You don't necessarily need a big budget or a lot of stars to make stories."
Cristi’s family was in Iasi, his hometown in Romania, watching TV when he was announced as the winner of Cannes grand prix. They are very proud of him especially because he is the first Romanian after so many years to take a prize of such importance.
Oleg Mutu, the image director, says becoming a winner at Cannes is the result of their efforts during the last few years.

The Plot
In broad lines the film film tells the story of a young woman seeking an illegal abortion during the year 1987, when the communist regime in Romania began to loose its strength. “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days” is the story of two students who share the same room on a campus in Iasi. The action proceeds in 1987. Gabiţa (Laura Vasiliu) and Otilia (Anamaria Marica, winner of a BAFTA prize) are sexually exploited and abused by a doctor, Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). The plot is based on strong sexual images and on the terrible practice of illegal abortion before the fall of the communist regime. In 1987 it was against the law to seek an abortion and Bebe blackmails the two women just to cover such an action he was about to undertake. According to AFP the director presents the most shocking scenes such as rapes or the abortion and even shows a foetus.

Romanians at Cannes
Many good Romanian film directors have been awarded important prizes at Cannes during the recent years – Corneliu Porumboiu “Calatorie la oras” (Trip to the city), Cristi Puiu’s “Moartea domnului Lazarescu” (Mr. Lazarescu’s Death). The first prize a Romanian ever took at Cannes was awarded to Ion Popescu Gopo. In 1957 his “Short History” was awarded the prize for the best short film. In 1965 Liviu Ciulei’s “Padurea Spanzuratilor” was awarded the prize for the best direction.

This is not the last Romanian success at Cannes and all the signs forecast good chances for the young directors and producers who come now to overpass the “heavy artillery” of the cinema.

Remember Childhood or Your Great Bachelor Party?

2007-05-28T00:15:00.000+03:00

I surely do.
I’ve got at home, actually right here in front of my eyes, the most wonderful picture of myself as a child. And yet I feel there is something missing. It is that decaying colour the old pictures get after a decade or so and the yellowish back side of the photo paper. This is of course the case with the traditional photos.
Looking on the web for a better new way to preserve the snapshots I’m taking now with my digital photo camera - and I really want to take some wonderful pictures at my wedding party - I have come across a method of keeping the digital frames just as they were at the moment I took them. This is the very place that offered me the chance – for the first time – to keep my visual memories just as they are. One can purchase one of the many digital photo frames that range from 7" to 10" and enjoy the best moments such as wedding parties or the trips to Paris for the rest of their life using the accounts that allows customers to use the website.
Moreover digital framez provides the customers and the internet surfers with online live help. Digital picture frame might be the equivalent of the classical wooden frame that my grandma used 25 years ago but I really consider having one of them right near my LCD just to remind me that I’ve lots of other pictures to download from my digital camera and that the incredible items and applications and options a camera offers need a really good frame to display the pictures I take.

HOT NEWS - RALU FILIP HAS PASSED AWAY

2007-05-23T09:29:00.000+03:00

Ralu Filip, 48, passed away last night from a fatal heart attack. His name is synonymous with the well known Romanian National Audio-Visual Council (NAC/CNA in Romanian) and many of his decisions and actions have been repeatedly disagreed with by both people working in the Romanian media and politicians.
He worked for a few years as a lawyer and between 1990-2001 worked as a journalist for "Curierul National". He was appointed as a member of the NAC by the Romanian Parliament for the 2001-2008 period and then appointed President of NAC for the 2002-2008 period.
Among his long disputed decisions are the regulations imposed on TV and radio stations for the protection of children and the report on the influence of the media upon civic and electoral behaviour, a regulation that was passed shortly before the 19th of May referendum.

His contribution to the developement and the imposing of European regulations in the Romanian media is appreciated by all the active actors on the market.

A Post Can Worth a Fortune

2007-05-23T00:06:00.000+03:00

It is quite a difficult thing these days to find a source of reliable information on the web where unknown yet very friendly people and excellent professionals share with you some very valuable knowledge and data in the domain of finance and business.
So a couple of days ago I was looking for some information on different aspects concerning some investments I intend to make and I finally found the information I had been searching for quite a long period.
The new Finance Markets site is the right place to look for the information you need. Basically this resourceful web page is an online publication, owned by a UK registred company, which brings crucial information about financial markets closer to the user who is directly interested in economics, investment, banking or insurance. No matter how much time do you have you will definitely find an answer or a piece of advice for your problem in one of the different sections of the site (Finance News, Finance Forums or Finance Blog).
In this regard the Finance Forums are particularly interesting and useful. Honestly speaking I did not expect to find such a service available – for free – on a site like this. Joining one of the forums is very easy and the threads and replies users and administrators post can provide answers even for those who are not particularly keen to look for them on a million other sites. That means that in the case of the Finance Forums the problems and questions are directly and clearly dealt with in a few very clear lines. If you feel like posting a topic on pensions or credit cards for example feel free to do it and expect to get a reply as soon as possible. And above all this news and information is free and available 24/7 with a simple mouse click and a login. The interface of the forums makes life easier for the users as the menus are simple and very accessible even for those looking for tips or information in various domains that other similar sites lack – and I tell you I have seen quite a lot of them lately. Finance Forum is the UK finance forum that provides you with the opportunity to ask and answer questions, to help and to share information on various topics concerning economy.
To cut a long story short let me say that for example you have access to up-to-date news about the UK as well as European, American or Asian financial markets and the way how the changes and movements in each of the domains mentioned above can influence your decision on spending money or investing it for a good profit.

THE MOST STUPID GUY EVER IS TAKING A BATH!!!!

2007-05-21T22:09:00.001+03:00

Can you imagine a person who's more stupid than him? Honestly I think I have just seen THE most stupid guy ever!!!
Do not try to this at home when you are taking the next bath in a tub!!!

OMG it hurts me only seeing him!!!! Did he do it for money?

Romanian President Traian Basescu Is a Record Holder

2007-05-20T16:09:00.000+03:00

The record for the World's "Fastest Presidential answer to a citizen’s request" has just been accepted by the World Records Academy.

The new record holder is the President of Romania Traian Basescu, who promptly answered to an emergency citizen request on April 18th 2007 and has issued in less than two hours a Presidential Decree conferring of the National Order 'The Star of Romania’ - to the Romanian born Professor Liviu Librescu, the Virginia Tech (USA) hero.

On the 20th of April, in Israel, a special emissary of the Romanian president presented to Librescu’s widow and sons the Star of Romania medal as recognition of his courage and contribution to science.
Professor Liviu Librescu is the hero ‘who, at the cost of his own life, saved the lives of his students during the massacre at Virginia Tech.’ - according to Jewish War veterans of the USA.
The Certificate for this new world record will reach President Basescu during the next days and his record will be listed in the 2008 edition of the World Records Book, the official publication of the World Records Academy.
’The main point of this story which convinced us to recognize this somehow unusual (but very human-appealling) world record was that a President who knew he has only few hours left before being suspended by the Parliament, a President who has to approve and sign tons of documents during his last few hours as President, left everything behind - as requested by an ordinary citizen (a 23 years old girl, a marketing student!) - and did what a President always has to do in the first instance: served his Country, above anything else, even above his own personal political problems’, said Tom Howard, Head of Records for World Records Academy. He added ‘We all have dreamed about changing the World in better, some still hopes, aren't we? If the young generation still has this dream, it's encouraging, especially when somebody like... a President, does fulfill their dreams.’
’It's kind of 'It could happen to you' story, but this time it wasn't anything material involved, only the noble desire to pay respects to a Hero, and pay them on time! In that movie, during the evening before loosing their restaurant, the goodhearted couple still have the patience and heart to open their cafe and handle a last bowl of soup to a street man (an undercover journalist). This time, possibly being just a-step-to-his-career's end, a President left everything behind and did a notable gesture.’
’No wonder why this President has become so popular among regular citizens in his country, Romania, and why the younger generation widely supports him: if you write a message (in a matter of National Interest) to a President and he do what he was asked to do, simply because the request was right, that's the President I think anybody would LOVE to have!’
The popular support for President Basescu was confirmed by the 19th of May poll which confirmed him as the President of Romania after he had been suspended through the vote of 322 MP’s who joined in a coalition formed of different political parties which belong both to the left and the rigght.

The fact is that Traian Basescu is the first Romanian president who was suspended and had to campaign for his office again after being elected - this time not for a new term but to keep his position.

Do you wanna bet the circus is going on?

2007-05-19T22:56:00.000+03:00

That's my country
and I simply can't stop loving her! :-*

I hope Romania will be conquered one day by Switzerland or Japan - we've never been able to rule this country by ourselves.

Why should you go/should not go today to vote in Romania?

2007-05-19T14:23:00.000+03:00

Here there are 2 reasons to:

1) go/do not go to vote

2)go/do not go to vote

How do foreigners see this poll?
EURONEWS
BBC - this is a must-read
Le Figaro - French
ANSA - Italian

Best wishes and thoughts.
It's up to you.

Blogging for money?

2007-05-17T12:15:00.000+03:00

A few days ago I was surfing on the internet looking for opportunities to get some extra money and I can tell you that the web offers anyone who is interested pretty good chances to make a fortune or at least get some dollars.
You do not have to be a computer genius or a software guru to start making money sitting comfortably at your desk and using the services of some of the best teams working in e-commerce, such as the guys at smorty are. When I started writing my own blog I had no idea about using the resources of this kind of web application and yet I have learned something since the first attempt.
So when it comes get paid to blog or blog advertising one of the best solutions is to look for a site that connects advertisers with bloggers. This is what www.smorty.com does. It is a very easy to use site that gives bloggers the chance to get paid to blog about different products and other aspects that concern the advertisers. Your blog must be at least 3 months old and it must be active. What is more, smorty is free and signing up requires no extra fees or taxes. On their home page they say your application will be reviewed in up to 72 hours but I can assure you they are faster than that.
After your blog being approved it is nothing else easier than to write a post on your blog about a particular subject that you choose from the opportunities at your disposal in your account.
Do not forget that if you want to your post must be approved by an administrator. Oh … there is something else! The anchor text provided is very helpful and you should use it all the time if you want good results and get paid 6$ for each approved post.