On New Year’s Day, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performs a concert to send to the world a message of hope, friendship and peace.
During the concert, we are dazzled, not only by the beautiful waltzes, polkas and marches, but also by the graceful ballet performances and breathtaking images of Austrian landscapes.
The table is thus organized: Order on entry; London Time; Countries going into year 2011 at this point in time:
1. Friday 10:00 a.m. Kiribati
2. Friday 10:15 a.m. New Zealand (Catham Islands)
3. Friday 11:00 a.m. New Zealand and Antarctica
4. Friday 12:00 p.m. Kiribati, Marshall Islands
5. Friday 12:30 p.m. Norfolk Island
6. Friday 01:00 p.m. Australia
7. Friday 01:30 p.m. Australia (Adelaide)
8. Friday 02:00 p.m. Australia, Russia
9. Friday 02:30 p.m. Australia (Darwin)
10. Friday 03:00 p.m. Japan, South Korea
11. Friday 03:15 p.m. Australia (Eucla)
12. Friday 04:00 p.m. China
13. Friday 05:00 p.m. Indonesia
14. Friday 05:30 p.m. Myanmar, Cocos Islands
15. Friday 06:00 p.m. Bangladesh, Russia
16. Friday 06:15 p.m. Nepal
17. Friday 06:30 p.m. India, Sri Lanka
18. Friday 07:00 p.m. Russia, Pakistan
19. Friday 07:30 p.m. Afghanistan
20. Friday 08:00 p.m. United Arab Emirates
21. Friday 08:30 p.m. Iran
22. Friday 09:00 p.m. Russia, Iraq
23. Friday 10:00 p.m. Greece, Israel
24. Friday 11:00 p.m. Austria, Germany
25. Saturday 00:00 a.m. U.K., Portugal
26. Saturday 01:00 a.m. Cape Verde, Greenland
27. Saturday 02:00 a.m. Brazil
28. Saturday 03:00 a.m. Brazil, Argentina
29. Saturday 03:30 a.m. Canada (St. John’s)
30. Saturday 04:00 a.m. Canada
31. Saturday 04:30 a.m. Venezuela
32. Saturday 05:00 a.m. U.S.A., Canada
33. Saturday 06:00 a.m. U.S.A., Canada
34. Saturday 07:00 a.m. U.S.A., Canada, Mexico
35. Saturday 08:00 a.m. U.S.A., Canada
36. Saturday 09:00 a.m. U.S.A., French Polynesia
37. Saturday 09:30 a.m. France (Taiohae)
38. Saturday 10:00 a.m. U.S.A.
39. Saturday 11:00 a.m. American Samoa, U.S.A., Niue
Remaining the most widely read of the Victorian novelists, Charles Dickens is unsurpassed in His creation of distinctively cruel, comic and repugnant characters.
Born in Portsmouth in 1812, Charles Dickens was the second child of a clerk in the Navy Pay-Office. His childhood, like many of those portrayed in his novels, was not a particularly happy one, owing in the main, to his father’s inability to stay out of debt. This led, in 1824, to his father imprisonment in Marshalsea prison and Dickens being sent to work in a blacking warehouse. Memories of this time haunted him for the rest of his life.
In defiance of his parents’ failure to educate him, Dickens worked hard, becoming first a clerk in a solicitor’s office, then in 1834 a reporter of Parliamentary debates for the Morning Chronicle. It is from here that Dickens’s talent for portrait and caricatures stemmed, and his Sketches by Boz, which appeared in the Monthly Magazine and the Evening Chronicle, became immensely popular. Following on from this was The Pickwick Papers (1836-7), which made Dickens’s character’s the centre of a popular cult. With the serialization of Oliver Twist (1837-9) Dickens began his indictment of the cruelty that children suffer at the hands of society. While working on Oliver Twist, Dickens learned of the death of his beloved sister-in-law, Mary. The grief he displayed at this news seems to underline the less than loving relationship he had with his wife Catherine, from whom he was finally separated in 1858.
Dickens followed the success of Oliver Twist with Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41) and Barnaby Rudge (1841).
He travelled to America later that year and while there his advocacy of an international copyright law and support for the abolition of slavery aroused the hostility of the American press.
On his return to England, Dickens wrote Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4) and the hugely popular Christmas Books. After the publication of Dombey and Son in 1846-8, Dickens’s novels became increasingly somber, with his social criticism more radical and his comedy more savage. Between 1849 and his death in 1870, Dickens published David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend. His last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never completed and was later published posthumously.
Public grief at Dickens’s death was considerable and he was buried in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.
Dickens’s last words were alleged to have been:
“Be natural my children.
For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.”
The hummingbird is so light that it can perch on a single blade of grass. Its eggs are the size of a pea and the entire litter fits into one teaspoon.
They can hover in mid-air by rapidly flapping their wings 12–90 times per second (depending on the species). They can also fly backwards, and are the only group of birds able to do so. They can fly at speeds exceeding 15 m/s (54 km/h, 34 mi/h). Hummingbirds do not spend all day flying, as the energy cost would be prohibitive; the majority of their activity consists simply of sitting or perching.
Hummingbirds drink nectar, and, like bees, they are able to assess the amount of sugar in the nectar they eat; they reject flower types that produce nectar that is less than 10% sugar and prefer those whose sugar content is stronger. Nectar is a poor source of nutrients, so hummingbirds meet their needs for protein, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, etc. by preying on insects and spiders, especially when feeding young.
Hummingbirds have long life spans for organisms with such rapid metabolisms. Though many die during their first year of life, especially in the vulnerable period between hatching and leaving the nest (fledging), those that survive may live a decade or more.
Aztecs wore hummingbird talismans. It was believed they drew energy, vigor, and skill at arms and warfare to the wearer.
And Qatar was chosen to host the 2022 World Cup. 
This made Russia the first Eastern European country to host the World Cup, while Qatar would be the first Middle Eastern country to host the World Cup. Blatter noted that the committee had decided to "go to new lands" and reflected a desire to "develop football" by bringing it to more countries.
Her father, Wilhem Kahlo, was a german immigrant who changed his name for Guillermo (the spanish equivalent for Wilhem). He had 2 children from a previous marriage. Her mother was a mexican woman, from spanish and indigenous descent. Their marriage was quite unhappy, still Frida was the third of four daughters.
At the break of the Mexican revolution, Frida is three years old and witnesses violent fights in the streets of Mexico City.
At the age of six, she contracted polio, which left her right leg thinner than the left, and it is believed that she also suffered from spina bifida.
In 1925, Kahlo was riding in a bus when the vehicle collided with a trolley car. She suffered serious injuries in the accident, including a broken spinal column, collarbone, ribs, pelvis and right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot and shoulder. An iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which seriously damaged her reproductive ability.
Although she recovered from her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, she was plagued by relapses of extreme pain for the remainder of her life. The pain was intense and often left her confined to a hospital or bedridden for months at a time. She underwent as many as thirty-five operations as a result of the accident, mainly on her back, her right leg and her right foot.
After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention away from the study of medicine to begin a full-time painting career. Her self-portraits became a dominant part of her life. She once said, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.” Her mother had a special easel made for her so she could paint in bed, and her father lent her his box of oil paints and some brushes.
Drawing on personal experiences, including her marriage to Diego Rivera, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works often are characterized by their stark portrayals of pain. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted, "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."
She went to France in 1939 and was featured at an exhibition in Paris. The Louvre bought one of her paintings, The Frame.
A few days before Frida Kahlo died, on July 13, 1954, she wrote in her diary: "I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return — Frida". The official cause of death was given as a pulmonary embolism, although some suspected that she died from an overdose that may or may not have been accidental. An autopsy was never performed. She had been very ill throughout the previous year and her right leg had been amputated at the knee, owing to gangrene.
Kahlo's work is remembered for its "pain and passion", and its intense, vibrant colors. It has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.
Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.
Lord Byron (1788 - 1824)
In fiction, folklore and popular culture, a doppelgänger is a tangible double of a living person that typically represents evil. In the vernacular, the word doppelgänger has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person.
The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers are often perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death.
Abraham Lincoln told his wife that he saw two faces of himself in a mirror soon after being elected president, one deathly pale. His wife believed this to mean he would be elected to a second term but would not survive.
Doppelgangers appear in a variety of science fiction and fantasy works, in which they are a type of shape shifter that mimics a particular person or species for some typically nefarious reason.
Doppelgängers, as dark doubles of individual identities, appear in a variety of fictional works from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Double” to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. In its simplest incarnation, mistaken identity is a classic trope used in literature, from “Twelfth Night” to “A Tale of Two Cities”, by Charles Dickens. But in these cases, the characters look similar for perfectly normal reasons, such as being siblings or simple coincidence.
Some stories offer supernatural explanations for doubles. These doppelgängers are typically, but not always, evil in some way. The double will often impersonate the victim and go about ruining them, for instance through committing crimes or insulting the victim's friends. Sometimes, the double even tries to kill the original. In José Saramago’s 2001 novel The Double (original Portuguese title O Homem Duplicado), both men's baser instincts come to the surface and they attempt to take advantage of each other.
American heiress Emmaline Nesbitt has always understood from her mother that as the eldest of four daughters she is obliged to wed. But it seems that no proposals are going to come her way.
Until, at a crowded ball in her family’s home, Julius, an Englishman, makes his way to her side and waltzes her off. The next morning he makes it plain that he wants to marry her, and will marry her no matter what. So it is that Emmaline finds herself on the way to England from America to be with her husband-to-be, her hopes as high as they have ever been.
What greets her when she arrives, however, is a strange house, full of odd guests and eccentric servants. It is a far cry from the glorious place that Julius had described to her. Indeed, as the days go by, her fiancé seems to change beyond recognition and Emmaline becomes more and more unhappy. She cannot see any future to their relationship. But that is before Julius’s past, and the history of his house, make themselves plain to her.
‘Can’t you give me brains?’ asked the Scarecrow.
‘You don’t need them. You are learning something every day. A baby has brains, but it doesn’t know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the lon
(…)
‘But how about my courage?’ asked the Lion anxiously.
‘You have plenty of courage, I am sure,’ answered Oz. ‘ All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.’
(…)
‘How about my heart?’ asked the Tin Woodman.
‘Why, as for that,’ answered Oz, ‘I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes the most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.’
‘That must be a matter of opinion,’ said the Tin Woodman. ‘For my part, I will bear all the unhappiness without a murmur, if you will give me the heart.'
in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
The Waltz Sphären-Klänge (Music of the Spheres), composed by Josef Strauss, is absolutely divine and everybody is blessed to hear.
Musica universalis (lit. universal music, or music of the spheres) is an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies — the Sun, Moon and Planets - as a form of musica (the Medieval Latin name for music). This 'music' is not usually thought to be literally audible, but a harmonic and/or mathematical and/or religious concept. The idea continued to appeal to thinkers about music until the end of the Renaissance, influencing scholars of many kinds, including humanists
Pythagorus was the first to hear the Music of the Spheres, quickly teaching others to partake of the astral bounty. He knew the stars to be attached to crystal spheres revolving about the Earth. These heavenly spheres, eternally revolving, produce harmonious sounds only the truly inspired can hear.
Do you believe in ghosts? Well, whether you believe them or not, they have been a part of our culture and are in our everyday life. For example, the “bless you” said after someone sneezes comes from an ancient belief that ghosts can enter the body during the sneeze.
After reading “The Woman in White”, by Wilkie Collins, were Anne Catherick is first thought to be a ghost because o her white clothes, vague gaze and enigmatic speeches, I decided to investigate famous ghost in literature.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Cold-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge has a change of heart after being visited by several ghosts representing different eras of his life's Christmases. These ghosts (Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come) rehabilitate Scrooge by showing him visions. Scrooge comes to appreciate the true meaning of Christmas.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Though ghosts appear in several of Shakespeare's plays (such as "MacBeth" and "Julius Caesar"), King Hamlet is among the better known of the Bard's ghosts and plays an integral part in "Hamlet". Hamlet may be the central character in the play named after him, but without his father's ghost, there would be no story. King Hamlet appears three times in the play, each time during the night. The ghost tells Hamlet that he was murdered by his treacherous brother Claudius, and asks Hamlet to avenge his death.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
A schoolmaster in love with a local girl finds his plans interrupted by the appearance of the ghost of a Hessian trooper, who rides around in search of his own head.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
This is the nightmarish story of a governess at an English country estate trying to rescue the children under her care from the influence of their former governess and steward, both dead.
Living With Ghosts by Prince Michael of Greece
A slaughtered Renaissance princess. A foul Irish Dragon. A Baroness whose lover was killed by her husband in a duel. The castles of Europe are thick with ghosts, and Prince Michael has seen them all. He doesn't just tell old ghost stories, he claims to have made contact with the dead so they can tell us what happened to them.
· Blushing: Even Darwin struggled to explain why we would evolve a response that lets others know that we have cheated or lied.
· Laughter: The discovery that laughter is more often produced at banal comments than jokes prompts the question, why did it evolve?
· Pubic Hair: Scent radiator, warmth provider, or chafe protection? The answer to why humans have clumps of hair in private places is still open for debate.
· Teenagers: Even our closest relatives, the great apes, move smoothly from their juvenile to adult life phases – so why do humans spend an agonizing decade as teenagers?
· Dreams: Today, most researchers reject Freud's belief that dreams are expressions of our unconscious desires – but if that's the case, what are they for?
· Altruism: People still debate whether humans are genuinely altruistic by nature, but if we are, most agree it doesn't make evolutionary sense (survival of the fittest, right?)
· Art: Sexual display, learning tool or form of social glue? Why humans need Art?
· Superstition: Many of us have superstitions – odd, reassuring habits that make no rational sense – but there may be an underlying reason for such behavior. Or not.
· Kissing: The urge to kiss is not brought about by genes, so why do we find it so pleasurable to share saliva?
· Nose picking: Many of us do it, but eating bogeys offers little nutritional reward – could there be a health reason for the unappealing habit?
Lissencephaly, which literally means "smooth brain," is a rare, gene-linked brain malformation characterized by the absence of normal convolutions in the cerebral cortex and an abnormally small head (microcephaly). It is caused during embryonic development by defective neuronal migration.
Symptoms of the disorder may include unusual facial appearance, difficulty swallowing, failure to thrive, muscle spasms, seizures, and severe psychomotor retardation. Hands, fingers, or toes may be deformed.
The severe malformations of the brain in lissencephaly most likely will not respond to treatment. Normal supportive care may be needed to help with comfort and nursing needs. Seizures may be controlled with medication. Progressive hydrocephalus may require shunting. If feeding becomes difficult, a gastrostomy tube may be considered.
The prognosis for children with lissencephaly depends on the degree of brain malformation. Many will die before the age of 2. Some will survive, but show no significant development beyond a 3- to 5-month-old level. Others may have near-normal development and intelligence. Children with lissencephaly often die from aspiration of food or fluids, or from respiratory disease.
Melusina gave the Count many beautiful children.
But one day, Siegfried's curiosity got the better of him. Wondering what on eart
In Bäringen, Germany, during a wind storm, they say that Melusina is crying for her children.
Another tradition states that, on Christmas Eve, the people shake the leftovers from the tablecloth so that Melusina, sometimes also known as St. Melusina, might also have something to eat.
