<div class="IPBDescription">bloody insomnia</div> i cant sleep so this is my thread of the random... just keep me alive so i dont die of exaustion or boredom
The history of the potato has its roots in the windswept Andes Mountains of South America. It is an austere region plagued by fluctuating temperatures and poor soil conditions. Yet the tough and durable potato evolved in its thin air (elevations up to 15,000 feet), climbing ever higher like the people who first settled the region.
The tough pre-Columbian farmers first discovered and cultivated the potato some 7,000 years ago. They were impressed by its ruggedness, storage quality and its nutritional value. Western man did not come in contact with the potato until as late as 1537 when the Conquistadors tramped through Peru. And it was even later, about 1570, that the first potato made its way across the Atlantic to make a start on the continent of Europe.
Though the tuber was productive and hardy, the Spanish put it to very limited use. In the Spanish Colonies potatoes were considered food for the underclasses; when brought to the Old World they would be used primarily to feed hospital inmates.
It would take three decades for the potato to spread to the rest of Europe. Even so the potato was cultivated primarily as a curiosity by amateur botanists. Resistance was due to ingrained eating habits, the tuber's reputation as a food for the underpriveleged and perhaps most importantly its relationship to poisonous plants.
The potato is a member of the nightshade family and its leaves are, indeed, poisonous. A potato left too long in the light will begin to turn green. The green skin contains a substance called solanine which can cause the potato to taste bitter and even cause illness in humans. Such drawbacks were understood in Europe, but the advantages, generally, were not.
Europe would wait until the 1780's before the potato gained prominence anywhere. About 1780 the people of Ireland adopted the rugged food crop. The primary reason for its acceptance in Ireland was its ability to produce abundant, nutritious food. Unlike any other major crop, potatoes contain most of the vitamins needed for sustenance. Perhaps more importantly, potatoes can provide this sustenance to nearly 10 people on an acre of land. This would be one of the prime factors causing a population explosion in the early 1800s. Of course, by the mid-1800's the Irish would become so dependent upon this crop that its failure would provoke a famine.
While in Ireland the potato gained acceptance from the bottom up, in France the potato was imposed upon society by an intellectual. Antoine Augustine Parmentier saw that the nutritional benefits of the crop combined with its productive capacity could be a boon to the French farmer. He was a pharmacist, chemist and employee of Louis XV. Parmentier discovered the benefits of the potato while held prisoner by the Prussians during the Seven Years War. He was so enamored by the potato that he determined that it should become a staple of the French diet. After failing by conventional means to convince Frenchmen of its advantages, he determined upon a surreptitious means of making his point.
Parmentier acquired a miserable and unproductive spot of ground on the outskirts of Paris. There, he planted 50 acres of potatoes. During the day, he set a guard over it. This drew considerable attention in the neighborhood. In the evening the guard was relaxed and the locals came to see what all the fuss was about. Believing this plant must be valuable, many peasants "acquired" some of the potatoes from the plot, and soon were growing the root in their own garden plots. Their resistance was overcome by their curiosity and desire to better their lot with the obviously valuable new produce.
Soon the potato would gain wide acceptance across Europe and eventually make its way back over the Atlantic to North America. As time passed, the potato would become one of the major food stuffs of the world. But not without a few bumps in the road. The 1840's saw disastrous potato blight. This terrible disease was caused by a fungus known as Phytophthora infestans. With the devastation of potato crops throughout Europe came the destruction and dislocation of many of the populations that had become dependent upon it. The Potato Famine in Ireland would cut the population by half (through both starvation and emigration). An effective fungicide was not found until 1883 by the French botanist, Alexandre Millardet.
Today, the potato is so common, plentiful and pervasive in the Western diet that it is taken for granted. We forget that it has only been with us for a few hundred years. For a new appreciation of the potato, check out our sections on its cultivation and preparation
At one time potatoes were restricted to cooler climates, but new varieties have come out that will grow in almost any part of the world.
Most soils will grow potatoes, but they prefer moist, acidic soil (pH slightly less than 6). If you find your soil is not acidic enough try adding pine needles into the mix. But don't go overboard, because very acidic soil makes for small potatoes.
To fertilize soil before planting, use well-composted manure. Fresh manure will burn the tubers.
5-8 pounds of potato seeds should be sufficient to plant a 100 foot row. Potatoes are perenial. Left in the ground they will come up year after year. Nevertheless, they are usually treated as an anual, as the edible part of the plant is the root and the plant must be dug up to obtain it.
Cut seed potatoes so that one or two eyes are on the surface of the potato, leaving some of the meat of the potato for initial energy for the plant. Plant with the eyes facing upward about 5 inches deep and 12-14 inches apart. Potatoes are typically planted 2 weeks or so before the last killing frost of the spring.
Generally store-bought potatoes have been sprayed with a chemical that inhibits sprouting. So they do not make good seed potatoes. Yet they can produce a crop. For best results obtain your favorite variety from a seed store.
As the potatoes grow keep weeds to a minimum, but do not hoe too deeply near the plants as the roots and tubers are relatively shallow. Remove and destroy insects as soon as they appear. Some typical pests include: the Colorado potato beetle, red slugs and blister beetles. Where crops are small, hand picking the pests is effective and safe. However, where this is not practical, sprays may be used - consult your local authority as to what chemicals are legal and effective. Where air is particularly moist and cool, early blight can kill the vines.
Blight appears first as purple blotches on the leave. The blotches turn brown and rot. This disease can be prevented by spraying chlorothalonil or mancozeb on a weekly basis from the time the plants are six inches high.
Scab is another disease that attacks potato plants. It is usually dealt with by planting resistant varieties (e.g. Norchip, Norland and Superior) and careful treatment of the soil. Do not put lime in soil before planting potatoes. Soil should be kept moist, but well-drained.
Harvest potatoes when most of the tops have withered. They can be left in the ground for 4-6 weeks and even longer. Be sure to store them in a dark but dry place to ensure the potatoes do not turn green. See Safety Precautions.
The potato is part of the nightshade family and as such does have some disagreeable traits. One should never eat anything green from a potato. The leaves and stem are poisonous. Potatoes should be stored in dark, but dry places. Light will cause the formation of solanine on the skin of the potato. Though not likely to cause serious harm, green skinned potatoes can taste bitter and may result in temporary digestive discomfort.
When confronted by green skin on a potato, simply peel it away. Keep as much of the rest of the skin as possible. For this is where most of the vitamins reside. Potatoes are one of the most nutritious staple crops discovered by man. With milk in the diet, it can be a sustaining and healthful source of energy, vitamins and minerals both in times of want and in times of plenty.
You can convert physical units of energy, such as barrels, tons, cubic feet, into Btu, thus producing a practical way in which to compare different fuels.
One Btu is approximately equal to the energy released in the burning of a wood match.
There are about 3,000 "petroleum products" or products made from crude oil. Besides providing fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, and heating oil, crude oil is used to make products including: ink, crayons, bubble gum, dishwashing liquids, deodorant, eyeglasses, records, tires, ammonia, and heart valves.
All crude oil is not the same. Crude oil is called "sweet" when it contains only a small amount of sulfur and "sour" if it contains a lot of sulfur. Crude oil is also classified by the weight of its molecules. "Light" crude oil flows freely like water while "heavy" crude oil is thick like tar.
The first natural gas engine was built in 1860.
Natural gas provides about 25 percent of the energy consumed in the United States.
More homes in the United States are heated with natural gas than any other energy sources.
When natural gas is burned it produces mostly carbon dioxide and water vapor. These are the same substances emitted when people breathe.
Natural gas is odorless in its natural state. A sulfur-containing organic compound called mercaptan is added prior to distribution to give it an odor and also help detect possible leaks.
If all the family vehicles in the United States were lined up bumper to bumper, they would reach from the Earth to the moon – and back.
The amount of fuel consumed in family vehicles in the United States each year is enough to cover a regulation-size football field to a depth of about 40 miles.
An average integrated paper mill in the United States uses enough energy to supply the residential energy needs of an average U.S. city of 100,000 persons. Or, the 310 major paper mills in the United States consume about as much energy as all the households in California and Texas combined.
The largest coal producing state is Wyoming, with 339 million tons production in 2000, out of the total of 1,074 million tons produced in the United State.
The coal mining industry is now recognized as one of the safest, with a lower rate of injuries and illnesses per 100 employees than the agriculture, construction or retail trades.
Labor union members account for only about 40 percent of the coal mining industry’s work force.
Railroads account for nearly two-thirds of total U.S. coal shipments.
Nine of every 10 tons of coal used in the United States are for electricity generation.
When coal is burned in a steam electric power plant, the steam turns a turbine which drives a generator which produces electricity. During this process, about 2/3 of the energy in the coal is used up to make electricity, or becomes waste heat, and only 1/3 winds up being delivered to users as electricity.
The coal industry has reclaimed in excess of 2 million acres of mined land over the past 20 years – an area larger than the State of Delaware.
From <a href='http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/funfacts.html' target='_blank'>http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/funfacts.html</a>, visit them for Energy Ant's coloring book.
Up until the late 1800's the wave picture of light was the prevalent theory, as it could explain most of the experiments done on light. However, there were a few notable exceptions. One such exception was that associated with blackbody radiation, which is the characteristic radiation that a body emits when heated. It was known that this radiation changes in nature as the temperature changes, and experiments on ``blackbodies'' (perfect absorbers and emitters) show the following typical curves of the intensity of the radiation (energy emitted per unit time per unit area) vs. the wavelength at a fixed temperature T , as in When the wave picture of light was applied to this problem, however, it failed - it predicted that the intensity, I , for a given temperature should behave as
I (1)
which agrees with the experimental data for long wavelengths but diverges for short wavelengths, unlike what really happens. In 1900 Planck devised a theory of blackbody radiation which gave good agreement for all wavelengths. In this theory the molecules of a body cannot have arbitrary energies but instead are quantized - the energies can only have discrete values. The magnitude of these energies is given by the formula
E = nhf, (2)
where n = 0,1,2,... is an integer, f is the frequency of vibration of the molecule, and h is a constant, now called Planck's constant: h = 6.63 x 10- 34 J s . (3)
Furthermore, he postulated that when a molecule went from a higher energy state to a lower one it emitted a quanta (packet) of radiation, or photon, which carried away the excess energy.
With this photon picture, Planck was able to successfully explain the blackbody radiation curves, both at long and at short wavelengths. However, it was a radical departure from the conventional picture of light emitted from a blackbody, and at the time many people felt it was simply a calculational trick invented to obtain the right answer
<!--QuoteBegin--dr.d+Sep 11 2003, 12:35 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (dr.d @ Sep 11 2003, 12:35 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> The history of the potato has its roots in the windswept Andes Mountains of South America. It is an austere region plagued by fluctuating temperatures and poor soil conditions. Yet the tough and durable potato evolved in its thin air (elevations up to 15,000 feet), climbing ever higher like the people who first settled the region.
The tough pre-Columbian farmers first discovered and cultivated the potato some 7,000 years ago. They were impressed by its ruggedness, storage quality and its nutritional value. Western man did not come in contact with the potato until as late as 1537 when the Conquistadors tramped through Peru. And it was even later, about 1570, that the first potato made its way across the Atlantic to make a start on the continent of Europe.
Though the tuber was productive and hardy, the Spanish put it to very limited use. In the Spanish Colonies potatoes were considered food for the underclasses; when brought to the Old World they would be used primarily to feed hospital inmates.
It would take three decades for the potato to spread to the rest of Europe. Even so the potato was cultivated primarily as a curiosity by amateur botanists. Resistance was due to ingrained eating habits, the tuber's reputation as a food for the underpriveleged and perhaps most importantly its relationship to poisonous plants.
The potato is a member of the nightshade family and its leaves are, indeed, poisonous. A potato left too long in the light will begin to turn green. The green skin contains a substance called solanine which can cause the potato to taste bitter and even cause illness in humans. Such drawbacks were understood in Europe, but the advantages, generally, were not.
Europe would wait until the 1780's before the potato gained prominence anywhere. About 1780 the people of Ireland adopted the rugged food crop. The primary reason for its acceptance in Ireland was its ability to produce abundant, nutritious food. Unlike any other major crop, potatoes contain most of the vitamins needed for sustenance. Perhaps more importantly, potatoes can provide this sustenance to nearly 10 people on an acre of land. This would be one of the prime factors causing a population explosion in the early 1800s. Of course, by the mid-1800's the Irish would become so dependent upon this crop that its failure would provoke a famine.
While in Ireland the potato gained acceptance from the bottom up, in France the potato was imposed upon society by an intellectual. Antoine Augustine Parmentier saw that the nutritional benefits of the crop combined with its productive capacity could be a boon to the French farmer. He was a pharmacist, chemist and employee of Louis XV. Parmentier discovered the benefits of the potato while held prisoner by the Prussians during the Seven Years War. He was so enamored by the potato that he determined that it should become a staple of the French diet. After failing by conventional means to convince Frenchmen of its advantages, he determined upon a surreptitious means of making his point.
Parmentier acquired a miserable and unproductive spot of ground on the outskirts of Paris. There, he planted 50 acres of potatoes. During the day, he set a guard over it. This drew considerable attention in the neighborhood. In the evening the guard was relaxed and the locals came to see what all the fuss was about. Believing this plant must be valuable, many peasants "acquired" some of the potatoes from the plot, and soon were growing the root in their own garden plots. Their resistance was overcome by their curiosity and desire to better their lot with the obviously valuable new produce.
Soon the potato would gain wide acceptance across Europe and eventually make its way back over the Atlantic to North America. As time passed, the potato would become one of the major food stuffs of the world. But not without a few bumps in the road. The 1840's saw disastrous potato blight. This terrible disease was caused by a fungus known as Phytophthora infestans. With the devastation of potato crops throughout Europe came the destruction and dislocation of many of the populations that had become dependent upon it. The Potato Famine in Ireland would cut the population by half (through both starvation and emigration). An effective fungicide was not found until 1883 by the French botanist, Alexandre Millardet.
Today, the potato is so common, plentiful and pervasive in the Western diet that it is taken for granted. We forget that it has only been with us for a few hundred years. For a new appreciation of the potato, check out our sections on its cultivation and preparation
At one time potatoes were restricted to cooler climates, but new varieties have come out that will grow in almost any part of the world.
Most soils will grow potatoes, but they prefer moist, acidic soil (pH slightly less than 6). If you find your soil is not acidic enough try adding pine needles into the mix. But don't go overboard, because very acidic soil makes for small potatoes.
To fertilize soil before planting, use well-composted manure. Fresh manure will burn the tubers.
5-8 pounds of potato seeds should be sufficient to plant a 100 foot row. Potatoes are perenial. Left in the ground they will come up year after year. Nevertheless, they are usually treated as an anual, as the edible part of the plant is the root and the plant must be dug up to obtain it.
Cut seed potatoes so that one or two eyes are on the surface of the potato, leaving some of the meat of the potato for initial energy for the plant. Plant with the eyes facing upward about 5 inches deep and 12-14 inches apart. Potatoes are typically planted 2 weeks or so before the last killing frost of the spring.
Generally store-bought potatoes have been sprayed with a chemical that inhibits sprouting. So they do not make good seed potatoes. Yet they can produce a crop. For best results obtain your favorite variety from a seed store.
As the potatoes grow keep weeds to a minimum, but do not hoe too deeply near the plants as the roots and tubers are relatively shallow. Remove and destroy insects as soon as they appear. Some typical pests include: the Colorado potato beetle, red slugs and blister beetles. Where crops are small, hand picking the pests is effective and safe. However, where this is not practical, sprays may be used - consult your local authority as to what chemicals are legal and effective. Where air is particularly moist and cool, early blight can kill the vines.
Blight appears first as purple blotches on the leave. The blotches turn brown and rot. This disease can be prevented by spraying chlorothalonil or mancozeb on a weekly basis from the time the plants are six inches high.
Scab is another disease that attacks potato plants. It is usually dealt with by planting resistant varieties (e.g. Norchip, Norland and Superior) and careful treatment of the soil. Do not put lime in soil before planting potatoes. Soil should be kept moist, but well-drained.
Harvest potatoes when most of the tops have withered. They can be left in the ground for 4-6 weeks and even longer. Be sure to store them in a dark but dry place to ensure the potatoes do not turn green. See Safety Precautions.
The potato is part of the nightshade family and as such does have some disagreeable traits. One should never eat anything green from a potato. The leaves and stem are poisonous. Potatoes should be stored in dark, but dry places. Light will cause the formation of solanine on the skin of the potato. Though not likely to cause serious harm, green skinned potatoes can taste bitter and may result in temporary digestive discomfort.
When confronted by green skin on a potato, simply peel it away. Keep as much of the rest of the skin as possible. For this is where most of the vitamins reside. Potatoes are one of the most nutritious staple crops discovered by man. With milk in the diet, it can be a sustaining and healthful source of energy, vitamins and minerals both in times of want and in times of plenty. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> that was completely random and unexpected.....
you win!!!!
/busts out the cookies
PS: i actually read thru it... i learned a lot lol <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Right now I am taking Remeron. The first day I tried it was yesterday and it worked to my amazement. After 30 minutes I felt sedated, drowsy, and kind of tired. Whenever I got out of my computer chair my arms and legs would feel like bricks and the side effects are sometimes even greater for people who are susceptible to dinky drugs. For example: some people and a lot have reported that they couldn't help but sleep for 2-4 days straight, because it made you really sleepy; others gain weight. My doc said he would write me a note If I had to miss school for 2 days or whatnot. This makes me conclude that this drug isn't a wimpy drug like my last drug, which was L-tryptophan and some other similiar tryptophan crap. After a while, like a couple weeks your body will get use to it and in the long run it is suppose to help you, so it is best taking it for a couple months or so?
"Remeron has a tetracyclic chemical structure that causes it to act differently from other common antidepressants (SSRIs, MAOIs, and tricyclics). While stimulating norepinephrine and serotonin release, Remeron also has the unique ability to block two specific serotonin receptors, thus causing fewer serotonergic side effects (such as decreased interest in sex, nausea, nervousness, insomnia, and diarrhea). In studies, the use of Remeron, compared with tricyclic antidepressants, also resulted in fewer anticholinergic symptoms (blurred vision, dry mouth, indigestion, and constipation), cardiovascular symptoms, and cognitive disturbances. Additionally, Remeron has a relatively high safety margin in case of overdose and a low tendency to cause seizures. It causes no significant changes in vital signs (heart rate, blood pressure, or body temperature) or ECG."
I just hope this works, because if it doesn't I will have to try something else, which is a pain in the ****, because I would have to go to the doctor's and wait for hours. It costs somewhere near or more than prozac, around 290 for 60 pills I think. They come in 7.5 mg, 15mg 30mg, and 45mg.
This is the story of a talking potato named Jamal. Jamal was a very happy potato, frolicking in the rainbow woods of happy happy land where everyone is in a state of constant bliss. One day Jamal the potato learned about blackbody radiation and also some fun energy facts. Jamal didn't think this was very useful to him because he's just a talking potato. Frolicking resumed shortly thereafter. 37 hours later, Jamal stopped by the river of joy to play with his fish friends. Oh, how happy they were to see him. Jamal gave them cake and scraps of paper in which to doodle on. The fishes were so enthusiastic about this random act of kindness that all seven of them dies of cardiac arrest. Jamal was in trouble. He went back to his little cottage on the grassy knoll and brought forth his shovel. he intended to dig holes in his yard and dispose of the corpses. All talking potatoes know that if nobody knows, you can't get arrested and sent to death row to await execution. Jamal took a sack with him as he trundled back to the crime scene. He gathered the bodies of his fishy friends and deposited them in the sack, saying a short prayer for each of them and walked back to his cottage. As he started to cover up the hole Sean Connery came strolling by and happened to notice this little potatoes activities. Jamal saw him and tried to explain that he was burying a time capsule, which future generations may uncover and learn about the time period that Jamal lived in. Mr. Connery knew better, and the grabbed Jamal and baked him in his oven at home. Jamal is a very tasty talking potato.
-ThoraX
(i made this up as i typed... purely spontaneous. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> )
Wow, this is all a wonderful bunch of useless knowledge... <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Then again, thats what we get out of high schol as well... <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Heres another useless fact: This is my 300th post. Yay! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Anna Leonowens is world famous as the governess in the Court of Siam due to the popularity of the musical The King and I. Many people believed that they were watching a true story. Not only regarding the antics of the King but also the importance of Anna in the court. The film, starring Yul Brynner, so insulted the Thai people, that it was banned from being shown in Thailand on grounds of historical and cultural distortions. Now, a remake of the movie is being filmed. Can Hollywood make amends for past misdeeds or will history repeat itself?
It proved easy for historians to demolish Anna as a trustworthy historian because both her books are filled with glaring errors. Even the title of the most famous is inaccurate for, as King Mongkut's correspondence makes clear, she was hired not as a governess, which implies a broad range of duties, but merely as a teacher of English. In the text she makes elementary blunders regarding Thailand's past, offers an explanation of Buddhism that is either hopelessly confused or shamelessly lifted from other writers, and identifies a picture of Prince Chulalongkorn (her most prominent student) as that being of a princess. Though she claims to have spoken fluent Thai, most of her the examples she offers are incomprehensible even with all possible allowances made for clumsy transliterations.
Her worst errors occur in The Romance of the Harem, when, one historian suggests, "her store of pertinent facts were running low." In this she claims that the King threw wives who displeased him into underground dungeons below the Grand Palace and, most horrific, that he ordered the public tourture and burning of the consort and a monk with whom she had fallen in love, a spectacle Anna claims to have witnessed with her own eyes.
But there were no underground dungeons at the Grand Palace or anywhere else in Bangkok, and there could not have been in that watery soil. Nor was there any public burning, or, if there was, it escaped the attention of every other foreign resident, many of whom also wrote accounts of the same period. Anna simply invented such tales, perhaps to add some spice to what would otherwise have been a rather tepid work, just as she also exaggerated her own influence.
New light has thrown doubt on the authenticity of not only the story but also of Anna's background.
The Truth About Anna
Anna claimed she was born in Wales in 1834, which would have made her 28 when she arrived in Bangkok in 1862. Though not wealthy, her family was distinguished; her father was an army captain and her mother came from an ancient Welsh family. When Anna was six, she and a sister were left behind while her parents were posted to India where, shortly afterwards, her father was killed in battle on the northwest frontier.
Anna said she completed her education in Wales and at the age of 14 or 15 sailed for India. There an unpleasant surprise awaited in the form of a new stepfather to whom she took an intense dislike. One reason was he wanted to marry her off to a wealthy merchant twice her age, while she in turn had fallen in love with a dashing young army officer named Thomas Leonowens. To escape the situation she went on a long tour of the Middle East with a well-known scholar, the Reverend Percy Badger, and his wife, presumably friends of the family. According to the distinguished traveller Dame Freya Stark, who wrote an introduction to a 1952 edition of The Romance of the Harem, she returned from the trip "with a character already strongly formed, both for tolerance and independence." She was independent enough to defy her stepfather and elope at the age of 17 with her young officer. They were blissfully happy, despite the death of their first two children in infancy; two more, a boy and a girl, were born and survived in London, where the couple lived for three years.
In 1857, Leonowens, by then a major, was posted to Singapore and it was there Anna heard the bad news that a small fortune left to her by her father had been lost in the collapse of a bank during the Indian Mutiny. Worse was to come. A year late Major Leonowens suffered a stroke on a tiger hunt and died, leaving her with two small children and no money. She started a small school, bringing in enough to send her daughter Avis back to England but not much more. A new challenge came with an invitation from King Mongkut to go to Siam. With characteristic pluck off she went, accompanied by her young son, Louis. A refined gentlewoman, marked by personal loss but brave and determined to bring light to less fortunate lives - that is the image of Anna drawn by herself, by all the actresses who have portrayed her on stage and screen and even by historians who accuse her of wilfully maligning a great man.
The first person to question the image, almost accidentally, was Dr W.S. Bristowe, an academic whose specialty was spiders but who also wrote on other subjects. Dr Bristowe was a frequent visitor to Thailand and in the early 1970s he decided to writer a biography of Louis T. Leonowens, founder of the company that still bears his name. Not many people read the book that resulted, entitled - perhaps inevitably - Louis and the King of Siam, which is unfortunate, for Dr Bristowe's deft detective work on Anna's past revealed an extraordinary story.
It began in London with a routine check to ascertain the exact date of Louis' birth. He found nothing, either for Louis or for Avis. Nor, when he looked further, could he find anyone named Thomas Leonowens who had served in the army, in either India or England. Nor did the army know anything about the man Anna claimed to be her father. Strangest of all, Welsh archives failed to yield any mention of Anna herself.
Dr Bristowe now set about tracking down the elusive Anna with all the enthusiasm he normally gave to a rare species of spider. Here is what a diligent search of Indian office records eventually revealed. Anna was born, not in Wales but in India, not in 1834 but in 1831. Her father was Thomas Edwards, a cabinet-maker from Middlesex who enlisted in the Bombay infantry and went to the subcontinent in 1825. There he married Mary Anne Glassock, the daughter of a gunner in the Bengal Artillery and a local mother who, in all likelihood, was Eurasian.
The couple had two daughters, Eliza and Anna, and Thomas died three months before the birth of the latter, leaving his wife penniless. When Anna was two months old, her mother remarried, this time to a corporal who not long afterwards was demoted to private. Here the record blurred, but somehow - possibly through the assistance of a charity - Anna and Eliza were sent to her father's relations in England, where they presumably received an education.
They returned to India in their early teens and entered a home which Dr Bristowe claims "must have appalled them," for the life of a private soldier at the time was a squalid one of "drunkeness and fornication." Eliza was married off at 15 to a 38-year-old sergeant and something similar was clearly planned for Anna. Instead, at 14 she went off to the Middle East with the Reverend Badger. How she met the clergyman (later to become a noted oriental scholar) is uncertain.
Anna married when she was 18, not to a dashing young officer but to a 22-year-old clerk whose name was not Leonowens but Thomas Leon Owens. He did not seem to hold any job for long and the couple moved about frequently. Dr Bristowe never did pinpoint the precise birth dates of Louis and Avis and finally concluded they must have taken place on board a ship. At some other unknown time Leon Owens changed his name to Leonowens, and the doctor did find a record of his death - of apoplexy - in Penang, on May 8, 1859, where he was listed as a "hotel keeper."
According to Dr Bristowe, Anna was already busily burying her past when she arrived in Singapore, so successfully not even her own children penetrated her disguise. Among other things, this required a complete break with her sister Eliza back in India, a step she may have been doubly glad she took - given the social prejudices of the time - if word ever reached her that Eliza's eldest daughter married a Eurasian named Pratt. As thorough as ever, Dr Bristowe traced that family, too, and made the engaging discovery the youngest child of the union - that is, Anna's grand-nephew - became the actor Boris Karloff, of Frankenstein fame.
There is also evidence to suggest Anna's performance may not have been flawless during her five years in Bangkok. The capital's small British colony of merchants and consular officials never asked her into their circle, despite her position at court. The only respectable foreigners willing to take her at her word were American Protestant missionaries, particularly the formidable Dr Dan Beach Bradley, their senior member. These men and women gave her the friendship she needed so badly.
The inventions and distortions of her books may have been partly designed to boost sales, as Prince Damrong, one of King Mongkut's sons, suggested to Dr Bristowe in a 1930 meeting. It could also be argued, they were also possibly aimed at convincing her missionary friends that Anna Leonowens was truly a virtuous Christian woman, worthy of their trusting kindness.
After leaving Thailand, Anna spent some years in America, where her books were written, and eventually settled in Canada with her daughter. There she died in 1915 at the ripe old age of 85 (not 82 as her family and friends thought), still playing, by now with accomplished skill, a role that might have challenged the best of her later impersonators.
Anna lived in Halifax from 1876 to 1897. During her time in Nova Scotia, she pioneered many social programs and cultural institutions. One such achievement was the establishment of the Victoria School of Art, now known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She died in Montreal in 1915.
Sources of information: Background historical research was mainly done by Dr. W.S. Bristowe, an English scholar. The above information was extracted from an article written by William Warren and published in the fascinating Traveller's Tales - Thailand. A copy of this book can be bought on-line at a discounted price at amazon.com.
<a href='http://www.thaistudents.com/kingandi/owens.html' target='_blank'>link</a> Can you sleep now?
LikuI, am the Somberlain.Join Date: 2003-01-10Member: 12128Members
It's impossible to drink a gallon of Milk in an hour, you throw it up.
It's impossible to eat six saltine[SP?] crackers in 1 Minute, without drinking anything. This is a fun bet, my friend's managed to make $20 of this! ^_^
Comments
The tough pre-Columbian farmers first discovered and cultivated the potato some 7,000 years ago. They were impressed by its ruggedness, storage quality and its nutritional value. Western man did not come in contact with the potato until as late as 1537 when the Conquistadors tramped through Peru. And it was even later, about 1570, that the first potato made its way across the Atlantic to make a start on the continent of Europe.
Though the tuber was productive and hardy, the Spanish put it to very limited use. In the Spanish Colonies potatoes were considered food for the underclasses; when brought to the Old World they would be used primarily to feed hospital inmates.
It would take three decades for the potato to spread to the rest of Europe. Even so the potato was cultivated primarily as a curiosity by amateur botanists. Resistance was due to ingrained eating habits, the tuber's reputation as a food for the underpriveleged and perhaps most importantly its relationship to poisonous plants.
The potato is a member of the nightshade family and its leaves are, indeed, poisonous. A potato left too long in the light will begin to turn green. The green skin contains a substance called solanine which can cause the potato to taste bitter and even cause illness in humans. Such drawbacks were understood in Europe, but the advantages, generally, were not.
Europe would wait until the 1780's before the potato gained prominence anywhere. About 1780 the people of Ireland adopted the rugged food crop. The primary reason for its acceptance in Ireland was its ability to produce abundant, nutritious food. Unlike any other major crop, potatoes contain most of the vitamins needed for sustenance. Perhaps more importantly, potatoes can provide this sustenance to nearly 10 people on an acre of land. This would be one of the prime factors causing a population explosion in the early 1800s. Of course, by the mid-1800's the Irish would become so dependent upon this crop that its failure would provoke a famine.
While in Ireland the potato gained acceptance from the bottom up, in France the potato was imposed upon society by an intellectual. Antoine Augustine Parmentier saw that the nutritional benefits of the crop combined with its productive capacity could be a boon to the French farmer. He was a pharmacist, chemist and employee of Louis XV. Parmentier discovered the benefits of the potato while held prisoner by the Prussians during the Seven Years War. He was so enamored by the potato that he determined that it should become a staple of the French diet. After failing by conventional means to convince Frenchmen of its advantages, he determined upon a surreptitious means of making his point.
Parmentier acquired a miserable and unproductive spot of ground on the outskirts of Paris. There, he planted 50 acres of potatoes. During the day, he set a guard over it. This drew considerable attention in the neighborhood. In the evening the guard was relaxed and the locals came to see what all the fuss was about. Believing this plant must be valuable, many peasants "acquired" some of the potatoes from the plot, and soon were growing the root in their own garden plots. Their resistance was overcome by their curiosity and desire to better their lot with the obviously valuable new produce.
Soon the potato would gain wide acceptance across Europe and eventually make its way back over the Atlantic to North America. As time passed, the potato would become one of the major food stuffs of the world. But not without a few bumps in the road. The 1840's saw disastrous potato blight. This terrible disease was caused by a fungus known as Phytophthora infestans. With the devastation of potato crops throughout Europe came the destruction and dislocation of many of the populations that had become dependent upon it. The Potato Famine in Ireland would cut the population by half (through both starvation and emigration). An effective fungicide was not found until 1883 by the French botanist, Alexandre Millardet.
Today, the potato is so common, plentiful and pervasive in the Western diet that it is taken for granted. We forget that it has only been with us for a few hundred years. For a new appreciation of the potato, check out our sections on its cultivation and preparation
At one time potatoes were restricted to cooler climates, but new varieties have come out that will grow in almost any part of the world.
Most soils will grow potatoes, but they prefer moist, acidic soil (pH slightly less than 6). If you find your soil is not acidic enough try adding pine needles into the mix. But don't go overboard, because very acidic soil makes for small potatoes.
To fertilize soil before planting, use well-composted manure. Fresh manure will burn the tubers.
5-8 pounds of potato seeds should be sufficient to plant a 100 foot row. Potatoes are perenial. Left in the ground they will come up year after year. Nevertheless, they are usually treated as an anual, as the edible part of the plant is the root and the plant must be dug up to obtain it.
Cut seed potatoes so that one or two eyes are on the surface of the potato, leaving some of the meat of the potato for initial energy for the plant. Plant with the eyes facing upward about 5 inches deep and 12-14 inches apart. Potatoes are typically planted 2 weeks or so before the last killing frost of the spring.
Generally store-bought potatoes have been sprayed with a chemical that inhibits sprouting. So they do not make good seed potatoes. Yet they can produce a crop. For best results obtain your favorite variety from a seed store.
As the potatoes grow keep weeds to a minimum, but do not hoe too deeply near the plants as the roots and tubers are relatively shallow. Remove and destroy insects as soon as they appear. Some typical pests include: the Colorado potato beetle, red slugs and blister beetles. Where crops are small, hand picking the pests is effective and safe. However, where this is not practical, sprays may be used - consult your local authority as to what chemicals are legal and effective. Where air is particularly moist and cool, early blight can kill the vines.
Blight appears first as purple blotches on the leave. The blotches turn brown and rot. This disease can be prevented by spraying chlorothalonil or mancozeb on a weekly basis from the time the plants are six inches high.
Scab is another disease that attacks potato plants. It is usually dealt with by planting resistant varieties (e.g. Norchip, Norland and Superior) and careful treatment of the soil. Do not put lime in soil before planting potatoes. Soil should be kept moist, but well-drained.
Harvest potatoes when most of the tops have withered. They can be left in the ground for 4-6 weeks and even longer. Be sure to store them in a dark but dry place to ensure the potatoes do not turn green. See Safety Precautions.
The potato is part of the nightshade family and as such does have some disagreeable traits. One should never eat anything green from a potato. The leaves and stem are poisonous. Potatoes should be stored in dark, but dry places. Light will cause the formation of solanine on the skin of the potato. Though not likely to cause serious harm, green skinned potatoes can taste bitter and may result in temporary digestive discomfort.
When confronted by green skin on a potato, simply peel it away. Keep as much of the rest of the skin as possible. For this is where most of the vitamins reside. Potatoes are one of the most nutritious staple crops discovered by man. With milk in the diet, it can be a sustaining and healthful source of energy, vitamins and minerals both in times of want and in times of plenty.
You can convert physical units of energy, such as barrels, tons, cubic feet, into Btu, thus producing a practical way in which to compare different fuels.
One Btu is approximately equal to the energy released in the burning of a wood match.
There are about 3,000 "petroleum products" or products made from crude oil. Besides providing fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, and heating oil, crude oil is used to make products including: ink, crayons, bubble gum, dishwashing liquids, deodorant, eyeglasses, records, tires, ammonia, and heart valves.
All crude oil is not the same. Crude oil is called "sweet" when it contains only a small amount of sulfur and "sour" if it contains a lot of sulfur. Crude oil is also classified by the weight of its molecules. "Light" crude oil flows freely like water while "heavy" crude oil is thick like tar.
The first natural gas engine was built in 1860.
Natural gas provides about 25 percent of the energy consumed in the United States.
More homes in the United States are heated with natural gas than any other energy sources.
When natural gas is burned it produces mostly carbon dioxide and water vapor. These are the same substances emitted when people breathe.
Natural gas is odorless in its natural state. A sulfur-containing organic compound called mercaptan is added prior to distribution to give it an odor and also help detect possible leaks.
If all the family vehicles in the United States were lined up bumper to bumper, they would reach from the Earth to the moon – and back.
The amount of fuel consumed in family vehicles in the United States each year is enough to cover a regulation-size football field to a depth of about 40 miles.
An average integrated paper mill in the United States uses enough energy to supply the residential energy needs of an average U.S. city of 100,000 persons. Or, the 310 major paper mills in the United States consume about as much energy as all the households in California and Texas combined.
The largest coal producing state is Wyoming, with 339 million tons production in 2000, out of the total of 1,074 million tons produced in the United State.
The coal mining industry is now recognized as one of the safest, with a lower rate of injuries and illnesses per 100 employees than the agriculture, construction or retail trades.
Labor union members account for only about 40 percent of the coal mining industry’s work force.
Railroads account for nearly two-thirds of total U.S. coal shipments.
Nine of every 10 tons of coal used in the United States are for electricity generation.
When coal is burned in a steam electric power plant, the steam turns a turbine which drives a generator which produces electricity. During this process, about 2/3 of the energy in the coal is used up to make electricity, or becomes waste heat, and only 1/3 winds up being delivered to users as electricity.
The coal industry has reclaimed in excess of 2 million acres of mined land over the past 20 years – an area larger than the State of Delaware.
From <a href='http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/funfacts.html' target='_blank'>http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/funfacts.html</a>, visit them for Energy Ant's coloring book.
Up until the late 1800's the wave picture of light was the prevalent theory, as it could explain most of the experiments done on light. However, there were a few notable exceptions. One such exception was that associated with blackbody radiation, which is the characteristic radiation that a body emits when heated. It was known that this radiation changes in nature as the temperature changes, and experiments on ``blackbodies'' (perfect absorbers and emitters) show the following typical curves of the intensity of the radiation (energy emitted per unit time per unit area) vs. the wavelength at a fixed temperature T , as in When the wave picture of light was applied to this problem, however, it failed - it predicted that the intensity, I , for a given temperature should behave as
I (1)
which agrees with the experimental data for long wavelengths but diverges for short wavelengths, unlike what really happens. In 1900 Planck devised a theory of blackbody radiation which gave good agreement for all wavelengths. In this theory the molecules of a body cannot have arbitrary energies but instead are quantized - the energies can only have discrete values. The magnitude of these energies is given by the formula
E = nhf, (2)
where n = 0,1,2,... is an integer, f is the frequency of vibration of the molecule, and h is a constant, now called Planck's constant:
h = 6.63 x 10- 34 J s . (3)
Furthermore, he postulated that when a molecule went from a higher energy state to a lower one it emitted a quanta (packet) of radiation, or photon, which carried away the excess energy.
With this photon picture, Planck was able to successfully explain the blackbody radiation curves, both at long and at short wavelengths. However, it was a radical departure from the conventional picture of light emitted from a blackbody, and at the time many people felt it was simply a calculational trick invented to obtain the right answer
The tough pre-Columbian farmers first discovered and cultivated the potato some 7,000 years ago. They were impressed by its ruggedness, storage quality and its nutritional value. Western man did not come in contact with the potato until as late as 1537 when the Conquistadors tramped through Peru. And it was even later, about 1570, that the first potato made its way across the Atlantic to make a start on the continent of Europe.
Though the tuber was productive and hardy, the Spanish put it to very limited use. In the Spanish Colonies potatoes were considered food for the underclasses; when brought to the Old World they would be used primarily to feed hospital inmates.
It would take three decades for the potato to spread to the rest of Europe. Even so the potato was cultivated primarily as a curiosity by amateur botanists. Resistance was due to ingrained eating habits, the tuber's reputation as a food for the underpriveleged and perhaps most importantly its relationship to poisonous plants.
The potato is a member of the nightshade family and its leaves are, indeed, poisonous. A potato left too long in the light will begin to turn green. The green skin contains a substance called solanine which can cause the potato to taste bitter and even cause illness in humans. Such drawbacks were understood in Europe, but the advantages, generally, were not.
Europe would wait until the 1780's before the potato gained prominence anywhere. About 1780 the people of Ireland adopted the rugged food crop. The primary reason for its acceptance in Ireland was its ability to produce abundant, nutritious food. Unlike any other major crop, potatoes contain most of the vitamins needed for sustenance. Perhaps more importantly, potatoes can provide this sustenance to nearly 10 people on an acre of land. This would be one of the prime factors causing a population explosion in the early 1800s. Of course, by the mid-1800's the Irish would become so dependent upon this crop that its failure would provoke a famine.
While in Ireland the potato gained acceptance from the bottom up, in France the potato was imposed upon society by an intellectual. Antoine Augustine Parmentier saw that the nutritional benefits of the crop combined with its productive capacity could be a boon to the French farmer. He was a pharmacist, chemist and employee of Louis XV. Parmentier discovered the benefits of the potato while held prisoner by the Prussians during the Seven Years War. He was so enamored by the potato that he determined that it should become a staple of the French diet. After failing by conventional means to convince Frenchmen of its advantages, he determined upon a surreptitious means of making his point.
Parmentier acquired a miserable and unproductive spot of ground on the outskirts of Paris. There, he planted 50 acres of potatoes. During the day, he set a guard over it. This drew considerable attention in the neighborhood. In the evening the guard was relaxed and the locals came to see what all the fuss was about. Believing this plant must be valuable, many peasants "acquired" some of the potatoes from the plot, and soon were growing the root in their own garden plots. Their resistance was overcome by their curiosity and desire to better their lot with the obviously valuable new produce.
Soon the potato would gain wide acceptance across Europe and eventually make its way back over the Atlantic to North America. As time passed, the potato would become one of the major food stuffs of the world. But not without a few bumps in the road. The 1840's saw disastrous potato blight. This terrible disease was caused by a fungus known as Phytophthora infestans. With the devastation of potato crops throughout Europe came the destruction and dislocation of many of the populations that had become dependent upon it. The Potato Famine in Ireland would cut the population by half (through both starvation and emigration). An effective fungicide was not found until 1883 by the French botanist, Alexandre Millardet.
Today, the potato is so common, plentiful and pervasive in the Western diet that it is taken for granted. We forget that it has only been with us for a few hundred years. For a new appreciation of the potato, check out our sections on its cultivation and preparation
At one time potatoes were restricted to cooler climates, but new varieties have come out that will grow in almost any part of the world.
Most soils will grow potatoes, but they prefer moist, acidic soil (pH slightly less than 6). If you find your soil is not acidic enough try adding pine needles into the mix. But don't go overboard, because very acidic soil makes for small potatoes.
To fertilize soil before planting, use well-composted manure. Fresh manure will burn the tubers.
5-8 pounds of potato seeds should be sufficient to plant a 100 foot row. Potatoes are perenial. Left in the ground they will come up year after year. Nevertheless, they are usually treated as an anual, as the edible part of the plant is the root and the plant must be dug up to obtain it.
Cut seed potatoes so that one or two eyes are on the surface of the potato, leaving some of the meat of the potato for initial energy for the plant. Plant with the eyes facing upward about 5 inches deep and 12-14 inches apart. Potatoes are typically planted 2 weeks or so before the last killing frost of the spring.
Generally store-bought potatoes have been sprayed with a chemical that inhibits sprouting. So they do not make good seed potatoes. Yet they can produce a crop. For best results obtain your favorite variety from a seed store.
As the potatoes grow keep weeds to a minimum, but do not hoe too deeply near the plants as the roots and tubers are relatively shallow. Remove and destroy insects as soon as they appear. Some typical pests include: the Colorado potato beetle, red slugs and blister beetles. Where crops are small, hand picking the pests is effective and safe. However, where this is not practical, sprays may be used - consult your local authority as to what chemicals are legal and effective. Where air is particularly moist and cool, early blight can kill the vines.
Blight appears first as purple blotches on the leave. The blotches turn brown and rot. This disease can be prevented by spraying chlorothalonil or mancozeb on a weekly basis from the time the plants are six inches high.
Scab is another disease that attacks potato plants. It is usually dealt with by planting resistant varieties (e.g. Norchip, Norland and Superior) and careful treatment of the soil. Do not put lime in soil before planting potatoes. Soil should be kept moist, but well-drained.
Harvest potatoes when most of the tops have withered. They can be left in the ground for 4-6 weeks and even longer. Be sure to store them in a dark but dry place to ensure the potatoes do not turn green. See Safety Precautions.
The potato is part of the nightshade family and as such does have some disagreeable traits. One should never eat anything green from a potato. The leaves and stem are poisonous. Potatoes should be stored in dark, but dry places. Light will cause the formation of solanine on the skin of the potato. Though not likely to cause serious harm, green skinned potatoes can taste bitter and may result in temporary digestive discomfort.
When confronted by green skin on a potato, simply peel it away. Keep as much of the rest of the skin as possible. For this is where most of the vitamins reside. Potatoes are one of the most nutritious staple crops discovered by man. With milk in the diet, it can be a sustaining and healthful source of energy, vitamins and minerals both in times of want and in times of plenty. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
that was completely random and unexpected.....
you win!!!!
/busts out the cookies
PS: i actually read thru it... i learned a lot lol <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
"Remeron has a tetracyclic chemical structure that causes it to act differently from other common antidepressants (SSRIs, MAOIs, and tricyclics). While stimulating norepinephrine and serotonin release, Remeron also has the unique ability to block two specific serotonin receptors, thus causing fewer serotonergic side effects (such as decreased interest in sex, nausea, nervousness, insomnia, and diarrhea). In studies, the use of Remeron, compared with tricyclic antidepressants, also resulted in fewer anticholinergic symptoms (blurred vision, dry mouth, indigestion, and constipation), cardiovascular symptoms, and cognitive disturbances. Additionally, Remeron has a relatively high safety margin in case of overdose and a low tendency to cause seizures. It causes no significant changes in vital signs (heart rate, blood pressure, or body temperature) or ECG."
I just hope this works, because if it doesn't I will have to try something else, which is a pain in the ****, because I would have to go to the doctor's and wait for hours. It costs somewhere near or more than prozac, around 290 for 60 pills I think. They come in 7.5 mg, 15mg 30mg, and 45mg.
This is the story of a talking potato named Jamal. Jamal was a very happy potato, frolicking in the rainbow woods of happy happy land where everyone is in a state of constant bliss. One day Jamal the potato learned about blackbody radiation and also some fun energy facts. Jamal didn't think this was very useful to him because he's just a talking potato. Frolicking resumed shortly thereafter. 37 hours later, Jamal stopped by the river of joy to play with his fish friends. Oh, how happy they were to see him. Jamal gave them cake and scraps of paper in which to doodle on. The fishes were so enthusiastic about this random act of kindness that all seven of them dies of cardiac arrest. Jamal was in trouble. He went back to his little cottage on the grassy knoll and brought forth his shovel. he intended to dig holes in his yard and dispose of the corpses. All talking potatoes know that if nobody knows, you can't get arrested and sent to death row to await execution. Jamal took a sack with him as he trundled back to the crime scene. He gathered the bodies of his fishy friends and deposited them in the sack, saying a short prayer for each of them and walked back to his cottage. As he started to cover up the hole Sean Connery came strolling by and happened to notice this little potatoes activities. Jamal saw him and tried to explain that he was burying a time capsule, which future generations may uncover and learn about the time period that Jamal lived in. Mr. Connery knew better, and the grabbed Jamal and baked him in his oven at home. Jamal is a very tasty talking potato.
-ThoraX
(i made this up as i typed... purely spontaneous. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> )
Then again, thats what we get out of high schol as well... <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Heres another useless fact: This is my 300th post. Yay! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
#include <iostream>
main()
{
cout << "Imsomnia sucks" << endl; //no really, it does
char StopCharacter;
cout << endl << "Press a key and \"Enter\": ";
cin >> StopCharacter;
return 0;
}
<!--c2--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
#include <iostream>
main()
{
cout << "Imsomnia sucks" << endl; //no really, it does
char StopCharacter;
cout << endl << "Press a key and \"Enter\": ";
cin >> StopCharacter;
return 0;
}
<!--c2--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--ec2--> <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Bettar:
<!--c1--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->
#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
int main()
{
cout << "Imsomnia sucks" << endl; //no really, it does
cout << "Press enter" << endl;
cin.get();
}
<!--c2--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--ec2--> <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
/me goes back to book
It proved easy for historians to demolish Anna as a trustworthy historian because both her books are filled with glaring errors. Even the title of the most famous is inaccurate for, as King Mongkut's correspondence makes clear, she was hired not as a governess, which implies a broad range of duties, but merely as a teacher of English. In the text she makes elementary blunders regarding Thailand's past, offers an explanation of Buddhism that is either hopelessly confused or shamelessly lifted from other writers, and identifies a picture of Prince Chulalongkorn (her most prominent student) as that being of a princess. Though she claims to have spoken fluent Thai, most of her the examples she offers are incomprehensible even with all possible allowances made for clumsy transliterations.
Her worst errors occur in The Romance of the Harem, when, one historian suggests, "her store of pertinent facts were running low." In this she claims that the King threw wives who displeased him into underground dungeons below the Grand Palace and, most horrific, that he ordered the public tourture and burning of the consort and a monk with whom she had fallen in love, a spectacle Anna claims to have witnessed with her own eyes.
But there were no underground dungeons at the Grand Palace or anywhere else in Bangkok, and there could not have been in that watery soil. Nor was there any public burning, or, if there was, it escaped the attention of every other foreign resident, many of whom also wrote accounts of the same period. Anna simply invented such tales, perhaps to add some spice to what would otherwise have been a rather tepid work, just as she also exaggerated her own influence.
New light has thrown doubt on the authenticity of not only the story but also of Anna's background.
The Truth About Anna
Anna claimed she was born in Wales in 1834, which would have made her 28 when she arrived in Bangkok in 1862. Though not wealthy, her family was distinguished; her father was an army captain and her mother came from an ancient Welsh family. When Anna was six, she and a sister were left behind while her parents were posted to India where, shortly afterwards, her father was killed in battle on the northwest frontier.
Anna said she completed her education in Wales and at the age of 14 or 15 sailed for India. There an unpleasant surprise awaited in the form of a new stepfather to whom she took an intense dislike. One reason was he wanted to marry her off to a wealthy merchant twice her age, while she in turn had fallen in love with a dashing young army officer named Thomas Leonowens. To escape the situation she went on a long tour of the Middle East with a well-known scholar, the Reverend Percy Badger, and his wife, presumably friends of the family. According to the distinguished traveller Dame Freya Stark, who wrote an introduction to a 1952 edition of The Romance of the Harem, she returned from the trip "with a character already strongly formed, both for tolerance and independence." She was independent enough to defy her stepfather and elope at the age of 17 with her young officer. They were blissfully happy, despite the death of their first two children in infancy; two more, a boy and a girl, were born and survived in London, where the couple lived for three years.
In 1857, Leonowens, by then a major, was posted to Singapore and it was there Anna heard the bad news that a small fortune left to her by her father had been lost in the collapse of a bank during the Indian Mutiny. Worse was to come. A year late Major Leonowens suffered a stroke on a tiger hunt and died, leaving her with two small children and no money. She started a small school, bringing in enough to send her daughter Avis back to England but not much more. A new challenge came with an invitation from King Mongkut to go to Siam. With characteristic pluck off she went, accompanied by her young son, Louis. A refined gentlewoman, marked by personal loss but brave and determined to bring light to less fortunate lives - that is the image of Anna drawn by herself, by all the actresses who have portrayed her on stage and screen and even by historians who accuse her of wilfully maligning a great man.
The first person to question the image, almost accidentally, was Dr W.S. Bristowe, an academic whose specialty was spiders but who also wrote on other subjects. Dr Bristowe was a frequent visitor to Thailand and in the early 1970s he decided to writer a biography of Louis T. Leonowens, founder of the company that still bears his name. Not many people read the book that resulted, entitled - perhaps inevitably - Louis and the King of Siam, which is unfortunate, for Dr Bristowe's deft detective work on Anna's past revealed an extraordinary story.
It began in London with a routine check to ascertain the exact date of Louis' birth. He found nothing, either for Louis or for Avis. Nor, when he looked further, could he find anyone named Thomas Leonowens who had served in the army, in either India or England. Nor did the army know anything about the man Anna claimed to be her father. Strangest of all, Welsh archives failed to yield any mention of Anna herself.
Dr Bristowe now set about tracking down the elusive Anna with all the enthusiasm he normally gave to a rare species of spider. Here is what a diligent search of Indian office records eventually revealed. Anna was born, not in Wales but in India, not in 1834 but in 1831. Her father was Thomas Edwards, a cabinet-maker from Middlesex who enlisted in the Bombay infantry and went to the subcontinent in 1825. There he married Mary Anne Glassock, the daughter of a gunner in the Bengal Artillery and a local mother who, in all likelihood, was Eurasian.
The couple had two daughters, Eliza and Anna, and Thomas died three months before the birth of the latter, leaving his wife penniless. When Anna was two months old, her mother remarried, this time to a corporal who not long afterwards was demoted to private. Here the record blurred, but somehow - possibly through the assistance of a charity - Anna and Eliza were sent to her father's relations in England, where they presumably received an education.
They returned to India in their early teens and entered a home which Dr Bristowe claims "must have appalled them," for the life of a private soldier at the time was a squalid one of "drunkeness and fornication." Eliza was married off at 15 to a 38-year-old sergeant and something similar was clearly planned for Anna. Instead, at 14 she went off to the Middle East with the Reverend Badger. How she met the clergyman (later to become a noted oriental scholar) is uncertain.
Anna married when she was 18, not to a dashing young officer but to a 22-year-old clerk whose name was not Leonowens but Thomas Leon Owens. He did not seem to hold any job for long and the couple moved about frequently. Dr Bristowe never did pinpoint the precise birth dates of Louis and Avis and finally concluded they must have taken place on board a ship. At some other unknown time Leon Owens changed his name to Leonowens, and the doctor did find a record of his death - of apoplexy - in Penang, on May 8, 1859, where he was listed as a "hotel keeper."
According to Dr Bristowe, Anna was already busily burying her past when she arrived in Singapore, so successfully not even her own children penetrated her disguise. Among other things, this required a complete break with her sister Eliza back in India, a step she may have been doubly glad she took - given the social prejudices of the time - if word ever reached her that Eliza's eldest daughter married a Eurasian named Pratt. As thorough as ever, Dr Bristowe traced that family, too, and made the engaging discovery the youngest child of the union - that is, Anna's grand-nephew - became the actor Boris Karloff, of Frankenstein fame.
There is also evidence to suggest Anna's performance may not have been flawless during her five years in Bangkok. The capital's small British colony of merchants and consular officials never asked her into their circle, despite her position at court. The only respectable foreigners willing to take her at her word were American Protestant missionaries, particularly the formidable Dr Dan Beach Bradley, their senior member. These men and women gave her the friendship she needed so badly.
The inventions and distortions of her books may have been partly designed to boost sales, as Prince Damrong, one of King Mongkut's sons, suggested to Dr Bristowe in a 1930 meeting. It could also be argued, they were also possibly aimed at convincing her missionary friends that Anna Leonowens was truly a virtuous Christian woman, worthy of their trusting kindness.
After leaving Thailand, Anna spent some years in America, where her books were written, and eventually settled in Canada with her daughter. There she died in 1915 at the ripe old age of 85 (not 82 as her family and friends thought), still playing, by now with accomplished skill, a role that might have challenged the best of her later impersonators.
Anna lived in Halifax from 1876 to 1897. During her time in Nova Scotia, she pioneered many social programs and cultural institutions. One such achievement was the establishment of the Victoria School of Art, now known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She died in Montreal in 1915.
Sources of information: Background historical research was mainly done by Dr. W.S. Bristowe, an English scholar. The above information was extracted from an article written by William Warren and published in the fascinating Traveller's Tales - Thailand. A copy of this book can be bought on-line at a discounted price at amazon.com.
<a href='http://www.thaistudents.com/kingandi/owens.html' target='_blank'>link</a>
Can you sleep now?
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<a href='http://images.google.nl/images?hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=spoon&sa=N&tab=wi&lr=' target='_blank'>http://images.google.nl/images?hl=nl&ie=UT...sa=N&tab=wi&lr=</a>
It's impossible to eat six saltine[SP?] crackers in 1 Minute, without drinking anything. This is a fun bet, my friend's managed to make $20 of this! ^_^
10 print("Insomnia sucks")
20 end
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booyah