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Why We Celebrate the New Year A legend of China recounts how people along the Yellow River Basin lived a simple, nomadic life, very content and happy. On a cold winter evening a mysterious being attacked the village and destroyed the villager's property. A village meeting was held and precautions taken to protect them from the intruder. Noting happened and people went about their daily routines. Then the mysterious being struck again, causing even greater damage to lives and property. Again, the villagers gathered and prepared for their safety. And again, nothing happened and people went about their normal activity, feeling secure and safe. But the mysterious force struck a third time, causing much loss and great fear among the villagers. An elderly scholar had studied the intrusions, watching the stars and heavenly bodies and recording their movements. He explained that the intruder came when the heavenly bodies were in a particular order and after the sun had appeared 365 times. The villagers studied this theory closely and learned that the intruder feared three things: the color red, illumination and noise. They called the intruder Nien or year. On the following 365th day, preparations were made for the return of Nien. Houses were lit with lanterns, objects were painted bright red and loud noises were made until dawn of the next day. The villagers' plan worked and the mysterious intruder did not appear. It was decided that from then on, a thanksgiving ceremony would be held every 366th evening to thank all the god for their blessings. And that the same preparations would be made for the return of Nien, scaring away the evil deeds of the spirits. Thus we celebrate the new year, chasing away evil with fireworks and celebrating with festivity and food.

Section: Festival The Lunar New Year is the most important festival of the Chinese year. It is the celebration to welcome the start of a new year and a festival of family reunion. Families who live apart come together to celebrate. Although outside the Chinese-speaking world (China, Taiwan, Singapore, and some parts of Malaysia) Chinese New Year is not a public holiday, people still celebrate with a family get-together and a special meal, either on Chinese New Year's Eve or on the first weekend after the Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is a family celebration that takes place in the home. The Chinese place particular importance on caring for the family. This is particularly true at the New Year Festival when the very young are treated specially because of their importance for the future, and the old are honored for their connection with the past. Public celebrations of Chinese New Year happen all over the world; cities with Chinese communities celebrate with Lion and Dragon Dances and parades with traditional costumes. They also welcome the new year with firecrackers. In China many places have traditional celebrations that last for several days. ~~~~~~~~By Sarah Moyse This article is copyrighted. All rights reserved.Source: Chinese New Year (0-7613-0374-X)

The L.A. Times reports that the side effects of hormonal therapy, which involves such drugs as leuprolide (Lupron, Viadur, Eligard), goserelin (Zoladex) and triptorelin (Trelstar), includes a 10 percent to 50 percent increase in the risk of fractures, diabetes, heart disease and sudden cardiac death; a 500 percent increase in hot flashes; and a 267 percent increase in impotence. It also has adverse effects on fats and cholesterol and causes enlargement of the breasts. Wait. It gets worse. The 10-year death rate from prostate cancer was 17.4 percent in those receiving no therapy, compared with 19.9 percent in those receiving hormonal therapy.

grindle All the research I have done indicates that preadjuvant hormone therapy does no good and in fact can cause harm.

Many celebrations and thanksgiving ceremonies were held to show gratitude for the natural blessings that were a part of life. People gave thanks for the beginning of each new year, the time when the maple sap began to flow, the planting and harvesting of the crops, and the ripening of corn, beans, and strawberries, which they celebrated with festivals.

Native people cared about their environment, especially because they depended on it so much.

Hunters asked silent permission from the animals they killed and thanked them for providing food and clothing for the families of the hunters. They hunted in different places so they would not kill too many animals in any area.

Guide Dogs for the Blind provides K-9 Buddies

pets for blind and visually impaired children

pets and prepare children for future use and care of a mobility dog.

used for scouring arsenic, bacteria and cloudiness out of rural drinking water

There, the residual water from boiling the flat, oval-shaped lobes of prickly pear for salads and other dishes was used to clear up cloudy water drawn from the river before use for cooking or drinking.

Mucilage is the clear, gooey, viscous liquid from within the cactus which helps to seal water inside the plant so it can survive desert-dry conditions.

The Ryukyu chain to the southwest was U.S.-occupied from 1945 to 1972, when it reverted to Japanese control, and the Kurils to the northeast are Russian-occupied.

Constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government.

Through the 700s Japan was much influenced by China, and the Yamato clan set up an imperial court similar to that of China.

As a celebration steeped in American history, you might expect it to be a day of remembering our forebears and displaying patriotism. However, in modern times, consideration of the first Thanksgiving is generally relegated to schoolchildren. Although that first celebration was a landmark moment in the history of America, beyond giving thanks for freedom and safety, you won't typically find the flag waving of the Fourth of July or Memorial Day. Instead, the holiday remains centered on family, friends, and food. Some see the holiday as a last bastion of non-commercialization. Beyond a few centerpieces and themed party supplies, Thanksgiving doesn't receive the same marketing push as Valentine's Day, Halloween, or especially Christmas. It feels more pure in this regard. However, the time and money required to create a traditional Thanksgiving spread doesn't make the day completely free of pressure. As a national holiday, Thanksgiving means a day free from school and work for most. Even television seems to conspire to bring families closer together, with spectacles such as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, big football games, and themed marathons on numerous cable channels inviting everyone to gather 'round. Although giving thanks for the many blessings of life is easily interpreted as a religious sentiment, there is no particular creed or belief system associated with the holiday. A community might host an ecumenical service in honor of the holiday. Families often say a prayer over the food before beginning dinner. Churches sponsor holiday dinners as outreach to the poor and lonely. However, all of these actions are founded on the basic, secular premise of giving thanks. From preschoolers making handprint turkeys to adults remembering the most important people and moments in their lives, it is easy to answer, "Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?" Like the Pilgrims did on that long-ago day, we all gather to give thanks for the many bounties life offers.

A man who calls himself an artist ties a dog to a wall inside an art gallery. No, you heard me correctly - we're not talking about the night janitor who caught the starving animal littering the front steps of the gallery and decided to vent a lifetime of frustration by pulling off a ridiculously cruel stunt. We're talking about a man who calls himself an artist. His name is Guillermo Vargas Habacuc and the year is 2007. Guillermo is one of the artists taking part in an art exhibition that takes place at a Costa Rican gallery - pompously called "Centro Nacional de la Cultura" (National Center for Culture). He pays a bunch of kids to catch the street dog, which he cruelly baptizes "Natividad" (Spanish for "birth"). His aim is to make an artistic statement about the fragility and the misery in which all dogs - indeed, all human beings live, and he achieved just that by letting the dog starve to death tied to a wall, in plain view of the exhibition visitors, some of whom demanded futilely that the dog be released.

Many scientists have specified various reasons for global warming effects on the environment and for human life. It is not easy to point one reason for global warming effects, but recently you might have saw many change in global climate. Global warming effects have various consequences such as glacier volume decreasing, rise in sea levels, shrinkage of Arctic and altered fashion of doing agriculture have been named as direct effects on global warming. Secondary global warming effects are extreme weather events, increase in tropical diseases, changes in the timing of seasonal patterns in ecosystems, and drastic economic impact.

Before many times back, many scientist and researchers were hopping that a positive effect of global warming would be increased agricultural yields(outputs), because of the role of carbon dioxide in photosynthesis which might behave in positive manner, but now it resulting in destructions of several crops. In the area of Iceland, due the rising temperatures which have made possible the widespread sowing of barley easily in an effective manner, which was not possible twenty years from now. The net result is expected to be that 33% less maize—the country's staple crop—will be grown. The reduction in rainfall has turned millions of land into deserts.

Insurance industry has been affected very badly with the risk of insurance; the number of major natural disasters has been increased to 300% since 1960s, and insured losses increased fifteenfold in real terms. According to Choi and Fisher (2003) each 1% increase in annual precipitation could enlarge catastrophe loss by as much as 2.8%.

In 2002 about 40% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions stem from the burning of fossil fuels for the purpose of electricity generation. Coal accounts for 93 percent of the emissions from the electric utility industry. US Emissions Inventory 2004 Executive Summary p. 10 Coal emits around 1.7 times as much carbon per unit of energy when burned as does natural gas and 1.25 times as much as oil. Natural gas gives off 50% of the carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, released by coal and 25% less carbon dioxide than oil, for the same amount of energy produced. Coal contains about 80 percent more carbon per unit of energy than gas does, and oil contains about 40 percent more. For the typical U.S. household, a metric ton of carbon equals about 10,000 miles of driving at 25 miles per gallon of gasoline or about one year of home heating using a natural gas-fired furnace or about four months of electricity from coal-fired generation.

Progress in the treatment of cancer in cats and dogs is likely to benefit humans, scientists said yesterday. Forms of bone cancerinvariably fatal in young men and women are now being successfully treated in animals (Our Science Correspondent writes). The researchers are using an anti-cancer compound, PTMC, which in some cases has enabled dogs, cats and horses suffering from bone tumours to live for up to two years after diagnosis, according to Mr Brian Singleton, director of the Animal Health Trust, which funds the research into the diseases.

In August 2007, as part of his installment at the Bienarte 2007 in Managua, Nicaragua, Costa Rican artist Guillermo Habacuc Vargas tied up a stray dog, Natividad, and left it without food or water in the exhibition hall for the duration of the event. Allegedly, the dog later died. Vargas alternatively defended his actions by claiming that the dog would have died anyway, and later that the dog did not die at all. Since the event, several petitions have circulated the Internet, in both English and Spanish, condemning Vargas and urging that the artist be banned from Bienarte 2008.

For Happy Dogs

For Happy Dogs

largest monitor lizard or goanna native to Australia

fourth largest lizard on earth

Found west of the Great Dividing Range in the arid areas of Australia