LanguagesAndMore : Messages : 22623-22652 of 22787

Saudi Arabian University Pays Big Bucks To Recruit Brazil's Best And Brightest

Founded in 2009, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is vying to become one of the world's top universities. It is trying hard to attract students from overseas, notably Brazil, by showering them with perks that are unheard of elsewhere.

FOLHA DE S. PAULO/Worldcrunch, May 16th, 2012

Read more...

<http://www.worldcrunch.com/saudi-arabian-university-pays-big-bucks-recruit-brazils-best-and-brightest/5341>

========================================
* If links above do not work, please delete spaces, copy & paste link/s onto your browser.

#22624

From: "Harlan" <harlan@...>
Date: Thu May 17, 2012 10:48 pm
Subject: Idiomizer Now On Facebook

idiomizer

Idiomizer, our wiki idiom site in 40+ languages, now has a Facebook Page with
featured idioms, humor and articles about the science of language. If you like
it, "like" it.
http://www.facebook.com/Idiomizer

#22625

From: "TAJ" <allwaysgreatbear@...>
Date: Fri May 18, 2012 3:48 pm
Subject: How do you find Idiomizer Not on Facebook?

allwaysgreat...

I tried to get to Idiomizer through Wikipedia and it did not come up. Can you
put a link in the Links file in the left side Menu opitions in the Group here...
I could not find one.  It seems like it would be a great site... I don't do
Facebook though. Thank you for any information you might have.

#22626

From: "TAJ" <allwaysgreatbear@...>
Date: Fri May 18, 2012 3:51 pm
Subject: Pardon me -- I did find the Idiomizer Link in the Links section here

allwaysgreat...

Thank you for posting the link to Idiomizer... thanks for you work there too..

#22627

From: "Harlan" <harlan@...>
Date: Sat May 19, 2012 12:42 pm
Subject: Re: How do you find Idiomizer Not on Facebook?

idiomizer

Hi, Taj.  I put it in links.

--- In LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com, "TAJ" <allwaysgreatbear@...> wrote:
>
> I tried to get to Idiomizer through Wikipedia and it did not come up. Can you
put a link in the Links file in the left side Menu opitions in the Group here...
I could not find one.  It seems like it would be a great site... I don't do
Facebook though. Thank you for any information you might have.
>

#22628

From: "arif uk" <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Sat May 19, 2012 4:07 pm
Subject: Re: Pardon me -- I did find the Idiomizer Link in the Links section here

pepper.buoy

Try this:
<http://www.idiomizer.com/idioms>
(From Harlan)

- arif

--- In LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com, "TAJ" <allwaysgreatbear@...> wrote:
>
> Thank you for posting the link to Idiomizer... thanks for you work there too..
>

#22629

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Sat May 19, 2012 4:53 pm
Subject: Does Shakespeare work better outside Britain?

pepper.buoy

Does Shakespeare work better outside Britain?

International perspectives enrich our understanding of Shakespeare's tales of comedy and violence

Bridget Escolme, The Guardian, Saturday 19 May 2012

Read more…

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/19/shakespeare-outside-britain-international/print>

========================================

#22630

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Sat May 19, 2012 4:53 pm
Subject: The battle of the book reviews

pepper.buoy

The battle of the book reviews

Professional critics are no more reliable than Amazon ratings, a study shows. So do we really need them?

Lionel Shriver, The Guardian, Friday 18 May 2012

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/18/battle-book-reviews/print>

========================================

#22631

From: LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun May 20, 2012 4:40 am
Subject: Birthday Reminder

LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com

Reminder from:		LanguagesAndMore Yahoo! Group

Title:		Josney's Birthday

Date:		Sunday May 20, 2012
Time:		All Day
Repeats:		This event repeats every year.

Yahoo! Greetings:		Send a Yahoo! Greeting
Yahoo! Shopping:		Browse Yahoo! Shopping Gift Guide

Get reminders on your mobile, Yahoo! Messenger, and email. Edit reminder options

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#22632

From: Josney Silva <josney.faryj@...>
Date: Sun May 20, 2012 2:55 pm
Subject: Re: [LAMI.US] Birthday Reminder

josneywat2

Thank you!

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 1:40 AM, <LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Reminder from: � LanguagesAndMore Yahoo! Group

�

Title: � Josney's Birthday

�

Date: � Sunday May 20, 2012

Time: � All Day

Repeats: � This event repeats every year.

�

Yahoo! Greetings: � Send a Yahoo! Greeting

Yahoo! Shopping: � Browse Yahoo! Shopping Gift Guide

�

Get reminders on your mobile, Yahoo! Messenger, and email.
Edit reminder options

Copyright � 2012 �Yahoo! Inc.�All Rights Reserved | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

Josney

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.
Mahatma Gandhi

Reply | Messages in this Topic (11)

#22633

From: "arif uk" <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Sun May 20, 2012 5:04 pm
Subject: Re: Birthday Reminder

pepper.buoy

Happy Birthday Josney!


--- In LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com, LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>
> Reminder from: LanguagesAndMore Yahoo! Group
>  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LanguagesAndMore/cal
>
> Josney's Birthday
> Sunday May 20, 2007
> All Day
> (This event repeats every year.)
>
> All Rights Reserved
>  Copyright � 2007
>  Yahoo! Inc.
>  http://www.yahoo.com
>
> Privacy Policy:
>  http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us
>
> Terms of Service:
>  http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>

Reply | Messages in this Topic (11)

#22634

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Sun May 20, 2012 6:33 pm
Subject: Idea: What`s the difference - Latino & Hispanic?

pepper.buoy

Latin? Hispanic?
What`s the difference?
Actually Latino and Hispanic are not synonymous.
Find more...
<http://www.elboricua.com/latino_hispanic.html>
========================================

#22635

From: LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com
Date: Mon May 21, 2012 4:56 am
Subject: Anniversary Reminder

LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com

Reminder from:		LanguagesAndMore Yahoo! Group

Title:		GROUP ANNIVERSARY EVENTS

Date:		Monday May 28, 2012
Time:		All Day
Repeats:		This event repeats every year.
Location:		The Coconut Tree - 9 pm - 2 am Windsor, Ontario - CANADA and/or at other locations to be announced by our Members in their hometown or other locale. More location(s) to be announced on the LanguagesAndMore Calendar. ~ For location(s) access http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LanguagesAndMore and check the CALENDAR
Street:		The Coconut Tree - 9 pm - 2 am - Windsor, Ontario - CANADA - Post/Find the event STREET ADDRESS on the LanguagesAndMore Calendar.
City State Zip:		The Coconut Tree - 9 pm - 2 am - Windsor, Ontario - CANADA - Post/Find the event CITY/STATE/ZIP on the LanguagesAndMore Calendar.
Phone:		Post/Find the event PHONE NUMBER on the LanguagesAndMore Calendar.
Notes:		Tweet this! You are all invited! ~ Host/Post/Attend an event in your hometown! Invite "LAMI-US LANGUAGES" to be your friend on Facebook... Host a location or simply just attend! Announce/Read the event LOCATION on the Group CALENDAR. Access http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LanguagesAndMore for the Calendar. Access http://maps.yahoo.com/dd for driving directions or maps. The day of the event does NOT have to be celebrated on May 28th, but on or near the day/week/month of May 28th. Invite others to go! ~ Kindly post group messages about the anniversary event afterwards! ~

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#22636

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Wed May 23, 2012 4:17 pm
Subject: PPS: Gouttes de pluie - Raindrops

pepper.buoy

Gouttes_de_pluie-Raindrops.pps

Gouttes de pluie enduit avec une cam�ra sp�ciale num�rique.
Les photos ont �t� prises imm�diatement apr�s la pluie.

Raindrops coated with a special digital camera.
The photos were taken immediately after rain.

Beautiful PPS attached!
========================================

1 of 1 File(s)

#22637

From: Josney Silva <josney.faryj@...>
Date: Fri May 25, 2012 2:26 pm
Subject: Visit some planets

josneywat2

http://www.solarsystemscope.com/scope.swf

--

Josney

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.
Mahatma Gandhi

#22638

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Mon May 28, 2012 4:21 pm
Subject: Postgraduate students are being used as 'slave labour'

pepper.buoy

Postgraduate students are being used as 'slave labour'

Koos Couvée, The Independent, Sunday, 27 May 2012

Postgraduate research students are increasingly being used as 'slave labour' to cut teaching costs at universities across the UK, a London conference heard yesterday.

They warned teaching conditions were getting dramatically worse as academic cuts bite and universities are under mounting pressure to cut costs.

PhD students – occupying the precarious first rung on the academic career ladder – are the most vulnerable group amongst teaching staff, working on short-term contracts and increasingly pressured into working for free. Ever more aspiring academics are being used as cheap substitutes for more experienced but expensive senior lecturers. Academics warned that undergraduate students being asked to pay a total of £27,000 in tuition fees for their degrees are becoming more vociferous about being taught by junior academic staff. In one incident a heated dispute arose between students and PhD teaching staff over the marking of essays.

Another PhD student recounted how he was required to supervise 13 undergraduate dissertations involving hours of daily unpaid work. And as a result of dwindling student numbers and funding cuts, a number of former polytechnics have already announced there will be no paid teaching places for PhD students at all in the coming year.

The claims were made as young academics from across the country gathered in London to launch a campaign aimed at improving working conditions for PhD students teaching at British universities. Jenny Thatcher, a 27-year-old PhD student in Migration Studies teaching at the University of East London, where PhD students are hired as hourly paid lecturers, said: "We have become main face of academia, but we don't get any office space, decent pay or job security. And if you consider that undergraduate students are now paying 27,000 for their degrees, that is a cause for great concern, as we are unable to provide proper support.

"The situation also benefits those research students privileged enough to be able to work for free, and it disadvantages women, as many women tend to work part time because of domestic responsibilities and are often not in a position to work for free."

Kerem Nisancioglu, 28, a postgraduate research student at the University of Sussex, said: "Generally, we are given short-term contracts, are paid at hourly rates that are in no way commensurate with the actual workload, nor are they equivalent to the same work carried out by faculty. It feels like our work is not being valued."

Robin Burrett, of the National Union of Students and a PhD student at the London School of Economics, told the conference called to launch a campaign to improve working conditions for postgrad teaching staff, that: "PhD students engaged in teaching work are in a vulnerable position, as the institution they work for is the same institution that will give them a mark at the end of their studies.

"Universities faced with funding cuts are increasingly in competition with other universities, departments with departments and individual academics with other academics, and PhD students are bearing the brunt of the need to cut costs."

The conference called for the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) and the National Union of Students (NUS) to launch an inquiry into the conditions PhD students face.

Recent research carried out by UCU estimated that over 77,000 academic teaching staff are presently working on hourly paid contracts.

<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/postgraduate-students-are-being-used-as-slave-labour-7791509.html?printService=print>
========================================

#22639

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Thu May 31, 2012 1:25 pm
Subject: Germany may be birthplace of European music and art

pepper.buoy

Germany may be birthplace of European music and art.

29 May 2012, by Charlotte Dormer

Perforated teeth and ornaments from the Aurignacian site of Geißenklösterle.

The remains of the world's oldest musical instruments and human figurines suggest that music and artistic depictions of the human form may have first developed in Germany around 40,000 years ago, say researchers.

This is two to three millennia earlier than previously thought.

Scientists need an accurate timeline of events in Europe to understand the development of human culture.

They get this by carbon-dating objects from archaeological sites. But before this study, there were large variations in the carbon dates from Europe's many stone-age sites.

Now, analysis at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit has used new techniques to remove contamination from the samples, producing more accurate results. The team's findings suggest that the Swabian Jura of southwest Germany was a key site in the development of modern human culture in Europe.

Bird bone flute from the Geißenklösterle

"We started using improved techniques back in 2001, and we noticed something very interesting," explains Professor Tom Higham from the University of Oxford, lead author of a paper published in the Journal of Human Evolution. "When we re-dated objects, the results tended to be a lot older than we previously thought, and this is because we removed contaminants more successfully."

"So we applied the same methods to sites with evidence for the earliest modern humans, sites where the ages you measure are critically important. We found that the dates are much more consistent – the new dating work has made sense of the sites."

Most scholars think that the transition from a Neanderthal-dominated Europe to one populated by modern humans happened 35,000 to 45,000 years ago. Scientists call this the Aurignacian period, when modern humans become widespread all over Europe. Archaeologists have found evidence for more developed artistic expression around this time, rather than just decorative patterns. What scientists don't know is how this spread of people and ideas happened. The findings in Germany help provide an answer.

While modern humans were developing art, music and mythology in the Swabia, parts of central and Western Europe were still populated by Neanderthals. The researchers think that the early humans moved into the Swabian Jura along the Danube corridor, before moving into Italy and France later, which explains why the Swabian artifacts are a little bit older than those from other areas.

"The Danube corridor idea was first proposed around ten years ago. It suggests that people moved along this river corridor at an early date. It's a good idea because people need to be near sources of water,' Higham says. 'There are several early sites along the Danube River which support this idea."

The artifacts found in the German sites include the oldest representation of the human body that has ever been discovered. Professor Nicholas Conard from the University of Tubingen, who was also involved in the new analysis, found the Venus of Hohle Fels in 2008. It was sculpted out of a wooly mammoth tusk. Also found in the mountain caves were fragments of the oldest bone flutes yet unearthed. These instruments were and painstakingly put together over three years.

'When you get people making these types of objects, it tells us a lot about cognitive ability and also the potential for early forms of spirituality and perhaps religion,' Higham says. 'We see very interesting artefacts like the lion men, which were figurines made half-human, half-lion.'

"The flutes have been reconstructed and played and the music has been recorded. They sound like flutes - they really can be played. The people who made these artifacts were not just anatomically but behaviorally similar to us."

Both the flutes and the Venus were once parts of a living creature; this means they can be carbon-dated. Carbon dating involves measuring the amount of the heavy form of carbon, carbon-14, present in tiny samples from the artefacts. Carbon-14 is taken up during the lives of plants, and passed to animals that eat them, but once the plant is dead, that carbon breaks down and isn't replaced. Therefore older bones have less carbon-14, letting us determine their age.

<http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=1238>
==

#22640

From: LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com
Date: Fri Jun 1, 2012 10:21 am
Subject: File - Lami.us has Been Updated for us with FACEBOOK & TWITTER

LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com

Lami.us has been updated with FACEBOOK & TWITTER!

Begin to learn a different language over the internet for FREE...

Free Pimsleur Language Lessons & Rosetta Stone Demos

Computer Languages, Body Language, Sign Language, Speak, Read & Write Foreign
Languages

Speak a different language through free voice calls and free video calls

Skype! http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showforum=140/

For More Visit http://WWW.LAMI.US


www.Lami.us

Reply | Messages in this Topic (24)

#22641

From: LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com
Date: Fri Jun 1, 2012 10:21 am
Subject: File - Lami.us has Been Updated for us with FACEBOOK & TWITTER

LanguagesAndMore@yahoogroups.com

Lami.us has been updated with FACEBOOK & TWITTER!

Begin to learn a different language over the internet for FREE...

Free Pimsleur Language Lessons & Rosetta Stone Demos

Computer Languages, Body Language, Sign Language, Speak, Read & Write Foreign
Languages

Speak a different language through free voice calls and free video calls

Skype! http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showforum=140/

For More Visit http://WWW.LAMI.US


www.Lami.us

Reply | Messages in this Topic (24)

#22642

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Fri Jun 1, 2012 3:55 pm
Subject: Orange prize for fiction 2012 goes to Madeline Miller

pepper.buoy

Orange prize for fiction 2012 goes to Madeline Miller

Surprise victory for The Song of Achilles makes debut novelist fourth consecutive American writer to win the prize

Mark Brown, arts correspondent
The Guardian, Wednesday 30 May 2012 19.12 BST

The Orange Prize For Fiction 2012

`A captivating love story` … Joanna Trollope on Madeline Miller`s The Song of Achilles. Photograph: Tal Cohen/Tal Cohen/Writer Pictures

A debut novelist`s retelling of one of the most enduring Greek myths, the story of Achilles and the battle for Troy, is the surprise winner of the Orange prize for fiction.

Madeline Miller won the award for The Song of Achilles, a gripping and touching love story between exiled princeling Patroclus and Achilles, strong, beautiful and the son of a goddess. Miller becomes the fourth consecutive US novelist to win the prize, now in its 17th and final year of being called the Orange prize, following the mobile services company`s decision to end its sponsorship earlier this month.

The novelist Joanna Trollope, chair of this year`s judging panel, acknowledged that the choice of winner would raise some eyebrows. ``It was in some ways a surprise to us,`` she said. ``But it fulfils [the award`s] criteria of inventiveness and originality. For my generation this might be a familiar story but I don`t think it is so familiar for a lot of younger readers. Miller handles it with extraordinary lightness - and it is fresh.``

Despite the inevitable tragedy of the story, Trollope said, she found it ``in a curious way, uplifting. It shows what the human heart is capable of. It was the most captivating love story of all of them.``

The judges took about three hours to reach their decision before agreeing, at midnight, to award the prize to Miller. It came down to two books, and the final decision was not unanimous, but there were ``graceful surrenders``, said Trollope, who was joined on the panel by writers Lisa Appignanesi and Natalie Haynes, journalist Victoria Derbyshire and broadcaster Natasha Kaplinsky.

Trollope described the final judging meeting as ``almost painful``, owing to the strength of the six books on the shortlist. Miller took the prize over bookies` favourite Foreign Bodies by 84-year-old Cynthia Ozick, State of Wonder by former Orange winner Ann Patchett, The Forgotten Waltz by Man Booker winner Anne Enright, Esi Edugyan`s Booker-shortlisted Half Blood Blues and British novelist Georgina Harding`s highly praised novel of postwar Romania, Painter of Silence.

``To be candid, if this had been a weaker year any one of them could have won,`` Trollope said. ``It was an extremely strong shortlist and I hope the breadth and the adventurousness of the settings and the subject matter puts to bed for ever the idea that women only write about domestic things. They are all to be commended.``

While Miller`s triumph completes a four-year run for American authors, coming on the heels of wins by Téa Obreht, Barbara Kingsolver and Marilynne Robinson, Trollope was quick to dismiss the suggestion that authors from other nations should look to their laurels. ``Ten or 12 years ago, it would all be Canadians,`` she said. ``Nations have their moment in the sun; I don`t know why it happens. We`ve got some astonishing young British writers coming up, too.``

It took Miller, who is the fourth debut novelist to win the prize, 10 years to write The Song of Achilles. Born in Boston, she grew up in New York and Philadelphia, and has taught Latin, Greek and Shakespeare since graduating from Brown university. She currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she teaches Latin and writes. As well as the £30,000 prize money, she can expect a significant spike in sales as the result of her win.

There was a poignancy to the presentation ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London, since this year is the last the prize is awarded under the name of its outgoing sponsor, but Trollope insisted the change would be an opportunity for the prize.

``Never a door shuts but another opens. Orange have been absolutely amazing but apart from parenthood and oneself there`s really no relationship that you`re stuck with. It is very much `the king is dead, long live the king.```

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/30/orange-prize-2012-madeline-miller/print>
========================================

#22643

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Fri Jun 1, 2012 4:32 pm
Subject: PPS: Art - India al oleo

pepper.buoy

Art - India al oleo.
Art - India, oil paint.
Lovely PPS attached!
========================================

1 of 1 File(s)

India-al-oleo.pps

#22644

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Sat Jun 2, 2012 3:25 pm
Subject: Mayan Words in Hitchiti-Creek Language Suggest Ancient Connection

pepper.buoy

Mayan Words Among Georgia’s Indians?
January 3, 2012 by Gary C. Daniels
Mayan Words in Hitchiti-Creek Language Suggest Ancient Connection
The Hitchiti language, one of many languages spoken by Creek Indians, was spoken in Georgia and Florida during the Colonial Period by tribes including the Hitchiti, Chiaha, Oconee, Sawokli, Apalachicola and Miccosukee. Based on the number of place names derived from the Hitchiti language, scholars believe this language was once spoken over a much larger area of Georgia and Florida than it was during colonial times.
Read more...
<http://lostworlds.org/mayan-words-georgias-indians>
========================================

#22645

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Mon Jun 4, 2012 1:57 pm
Subject: So, what did the Muslims do for the Jews?

pepper.buoy

So, what did the Muslims do for the Jews?
By David J Wasserstein, 24 May 2012, The Jewish Chronicle Essay

[David J Wasserstein is the Eugene Greener Jr Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. This article is adapted from last week`s Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion at the School of Oriental and African Studies]

Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world; but it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion; and second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity - also in Christendom - through the medieval period into the modern world.

By the fourth century, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the Roman empire. One aspect of this success was opposition to rival faiths, including Judaism, along with massive conversion of members of such faiths, sometimes by force, to Christianity. Much of our testimony about Jewish existence in the Roman empire from this time on consists of accounts of conversions.

Great and permanent reductions in numbers through conversion, between the fourth and the seventh centuries, brought with them a gradual but relentless whittling away of the status, rights, social and economic existence, and religious and cultural life of Jews all over the Roman empire.

A long series of enactments deprived Jewish people of their rights as citizens, prevented them from fulfilling their religious obligations, and excluded them from the society of their fellows.

This went along with the centuries-long military and political struggle with Persia. As a tiny element in the Christian world, the Jews should not have been affected much by this broad, political issue. Yet it affected them critically, because the Persian empire at this time included Babylon - now Iraq - at the time home to the world`s greatest concentration of Jews.

Here also were the greatest centres of Jewish intellectual life. The most important single work of Jewish cultural creativity in over 3,000 years, apart from the Bible itself - the Talmud - came into being in Babylon. The struggle between Persia and Byzantium, in our period, led increasingly to a separation between Jews under Byzantine, Christian rule and Jews under Persian rule.

Beyond all this, the Jews who lived under Christian rule seemed to have lost the knowledge of their own culturally specific languages - Hebrew and Aramaic - and to have taken on the use of Latin or Greek or other non-Jewish, local, languages. This in turn must have meant that they also lost access to the central literary works of Jewish culture - the Torah, Mishnah, poetry, midrash, even liturgy.

The loss of the unifying force represented by language - and of the associated literature - was a major step towards assimilation and disappearance. In these circumstances, with contact with the one place where Jewish cultural life continued to prosper - Babylon - cut off by conflict with Persia, Jewish life in the Christian world of late antiquity was not simply a pale shadow of what it had been three or four centuries earlier. It was doomed.

Had Islam not come along, the conflict with Persia would have continued. The separation between western Judaism, that of Christendom, and Babylonian Judaism, that of Mesopotamia, would have intensified. Jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance in many areas; and Jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult.

But this was all prevented by the rise of Islam. The Islamic conquests of the seventh century changed the world, and did so with dramatic, wide-ranging and permanent effect for the Jews.

Within a century of the death of Mohammad, in 632, Muslim armies had conquered almost the whole of the world where Jews lived, from Spain eastward across North Africa and the Middle East as far as the eastern frontier of Iran and beyond. Almost all the Jews in the world were now ruled by Islam. This new situation transformed Jewish existence. Their fortunes changed in legal, demographic, social, religious, political, geographical, economic, linguistic and cultural terms - all for the better.

First, things improved politically. Almost everywhere in Christendom where Jews had lived now formed part of the same political space as Babylon - Cordoba and Basra lay in the same political world. The old frontier between the vital centre in Babylonia and the Jews of the Mediterranean basin was swept away, forever.

Political change was partnered by change in the legal status of the Jewish population: although it is not always clear what happened during the Muslim conquests, one thing is certain. The result of the conquests was, by and large, to make the Jews second-class citizens.

This should not be misunderstood: to be a second-class citizen was a far better thing to be than not to be a citizen at all. For most of these Jews, second-class citizenship represented a major advance. In Visigothic Spain, for example, shortly before the Muslim conquest in 711, the Jews had seen their children removed from them and forcibly converted to Christianity and had themselves been enslaved.

In the developing Islamic societies of the classical and medieval periods, being a Jew meant belonging to a category defined under law, enjoying certain rights and protections, alongside various obligations. These rights and protections were not as extensive or as generous as those enjoyed by Muslims, and the obligations were greater but, for the first few centuries, the Muslims themselves were a minority, and the practical differences were not all that great.

Along with legal near-equality came social and economic equality. Jews were not confined to ghettos, either literally or in terms of economic activity. The societies of Islam were, in effect, open societies. In religious terms, too, Jews enjoyed virtually full freedom. They might not build many new synagogues - in theory - and they might not make too public their profession of their faith, but there was no really significant restriction on the practice of their religion. Along with internal legal autonomy, they also enjoyed formal representation, through leaders of their own, before the authorities of the state. Imperfect and often not quite as rosy as this might sound, it was at least the broad norm.

The political unity brought by the new Islamic world-empire did not last, but it created a vast Islamic world civilisation, similar to the older Christian civilisation that it replaced. Within this huge area, Jews lived and enjoyed broadly similar status and rights everywhere. They could move around, maintain contacts, and develop their identity as Jews. A great new expansion of trade from the ninth century onwards brought the Spanish Jews - like the Muslims - into touch with the Jews and the Muslims even of India.

A ll this was encouraged by a further, critical development. Huge numbers of people in the new world of Islam adopted the language of the Muslim Arabs. Arabic gradually became the principal language of this vast area, excluding almost all the rest: Greek and Syriac, Aramaic and Coptic and Latin all died out, replaced by Arabic. Persian, too, went into a long retreat, to reappear later heavily influenced by Arabic.

The Jews moved over to Arabic very rapidly. By the early 10th century, only 300 years after the conquests, Sa`adya Gaon was translating the Bible into Arabic. Bible translation is a massive task - it is not undertaken unless there is a need for it. By about the year 900, the Jews had largely abandoned other languages and taken on Arabic.

The change of language in its turn brought the Jews into direct contact with broader cultural developments. The result from the 10th century on was a striking pairing of two cultures. The Jews of the Islamic world developed an entirely new culture, which differed from their culture before Islam in terms of language, cultural forms, influences, and uses. Instead of being concerned primarily with religion, the new Jewish culture of the Islamic world, like that of its neighbours, mixed the religious and the secular to a high degree. The contrast, both with the past and with medieval Christian Europe, was enormous.

Like their neighbours, these Jews wrote in Arabic in part, and in a Jewish form of that language. The use of Arabic brought them close to the Arabs; but the use of a specific Jewish form of that language maintained the barriers between Jew and Muslim. The subjects that Jews wrote about, and the literary forms in which they wrote about them, were largely new ones, borrowed from the Muslims and developed in tandem with developments in Arabic Islam.

Also at this time, Hebrew was revived as a language of high literature, parallel to the use among the Muslims of a high form of Arabic for similar purposes. Along with its use for poetry and artistic prose, secular writing of all forms in Hebrew and in (Judeo-)Arabic came into being, some of it of high quality.

Much of the greatest poetry in Hebrew written since the Bible comes from this period. Sa`adya Gaon, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra (Moses and Abraham), Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi, Yehudah al-Harizi, Samuel ha-Nagid, and many more - all of these names, well known today, belong in the first rank of Jewish literary and cultural endeavour.

W here did these Jews produce all this? When did they and their neighbours achieve this symbiosis, this mode of living together? The Jews did it in a number of centres of excellence. The most outstanding of these was Islamic Spain, where there was a true Jewish Golden Age, alongside a wave of cultural achievement among the Muslim population. The Spanish case illustrates a more general pattern, too.

What happened in Islamic Spain - waves of Jewish cultural prosperity paralleling waves of cultural prosperity among the Muslims - exemplifies a larger pattern in Arab Islam. In Baghdad, between the ninth and the twelfth centuries; in Qayrawan (in north Africa), between the ninth and the 11th centuries; in Cairo, between the 10th and the 12th centuries, and elsewhere, the rise and fall of cultural centres of Islam tended to be reflected in the rise and fall of Jewish cultural activity in the same places.

This was not coincidence, and nor was it the product of particularly enlightened liberal patronage by Muslim rulers. It was the product of a number of deeper features of these societies, social and cultural, legal and economic, linguistic and political, which together enabled and indeed encouraged the Jews of the Islamic world to create a novel sub-culture within the high civilisation of the time.

This did not last for ever; the period of culturally successful symbiosis between Jew and Arab Muslim in the middle ages came to a close by about 1300. In reality, it had reached this point even earlier, with the overall relative decline in the importance and vitality of Arabic culture, both in relation to western European cultures and in relation to other cultural forms within Islam itself; Persian and Turkish.

Jewish cultural prosperity in the middle ages operated in large part as a function of Muslim, Arabic cultural (and to some degree political) prosperity: when Muslim Arabic culture thrived, so did that of the Jews; when Muslim Arabic culture declined, so did that of the Jews.

In the case of the Jews, however, the cultural capital thus created also served as the seed-bed of further growth elsewhere - in Christian Spain and in the Christian world more generally.

The Islamic world was not the only source of inspiration for the Jewish cultural revival that came later in Christian Europe, but it certainly was a major contributor to that development. Its significance cannot be overestimated.

Source:
<http://www.thejc.com/print/68082>
========================================

#22646

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Wed Jun 6, 2012 6:28 pm
Subject: Off-Topic: Email Hacked? 7 Things You Need to do NOW

pepper.buoy

An excellent article about all the email hacking that has been

Email Hacked? 7 Things You Need to do NOW
Read from Leo`s website:
<http://ask-leo.com/email_hacked_7_things_you_need_to_do_now.html>

You may ask Leo for anything computer or tech related:
<http://ask-leo.com>

Bookmark this site and do not forget to share with your contacts.
========================================

#22647

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Sat Jun 9, 2012 3:00 pm
Subject: PPS: DaFen - 大芬 - Chinese Town of painting replicas

pepper.buoy

DaFen-Painting-Village-China.pps

Enjoy the lovely PPS attached!

DaFen: Town of painting replicas.
DaFen 大芬 (pronounced very close to ta fenn, where da for big or great, strong, and fen for fragrance), is a semi-town or urban village of oil painting.
Know more about this village:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafen_%28town_of_painting_replicas%29>

There is another place called Dafen in the UK. It pronounced as Da Finn. It`s a Celtic name.

Dafen - is a village situated east of Llanelli in Carmarthenshire, Wales, part of the Llanelli Rural community. Dafen borders the villages of Felinfoel, Llangennech, Bryn and Pemberton. At the 2001 census the Dafen ward had a population of 3,433. The village has both residential and industrial areas, and Llanelli`s Prince Philip Hospital is located here.
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1 of 1 File(s)

#22648

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Sat Jun 9, 2012 4:16 pm
Subject: Midnight in Peking by Paul French - review

pepper.buoy

Midnight in Peking by Paul French - review
A gripping account of a murder in China 75 years ago
by Rana Mitter, The Guardian, Friday 08 June 2012
Picture of Rana Mitter

Rana Mitter is professor of the history and politics of modern China at Oxford University and presents Night Waves on Radio 3. He is the author of Modern China: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2008)

Pamela Werner, 19, was a loner who spoke fluent Mandarin.

The scandal surrounding the former Chinese Politburo high flyer Bo Xilai has turned from political intrigue to something much more sinister. If the rumours being floated by the Chinese authorities are to be believed, Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, plotted to have Neil Heywood, a British businessman, killed and may even have paid thugs to force him to drink poison. The mixture of high politics, elite lifestyle and murder, all in the setting of a rapidly changing China, has caught the attention of millions of newspaper readers around the world, who couldn't have found Bo's city of Chongqing on a map three months ago.

Midnight in Peking: The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French.

Another murder involving a Briton in China attracted popular attention three-quarters of a century ago. As with the death of Heywood, the circumstances were deeply suspicious. But the details were even more horrific. On the morning of 8 January 1937, the body of a 19-year-old girl was found at the foot of the Fox Tower in Beijing. All the blood had been drained from her body and in a particularly gruesome detail, her heart was missing, ripped out through her broken rib cage.

The victim was Pamela Werner, daughter of ETC Werner, well-known in the British community as a former consul and academic sinologist. Pamela had been an ordinary expatriate schoolgirl, something of a loner, but keen on ice-skating and listening to big bands on the radio. Unusually, though, she spoke fluent Mandarin. Was there a hidden side to her life, people asked, that had led to her terrible death?

An investigation was launched, but it quickly ran into trouble. The Legation Quarter of the city where expatriates under treaty protection tended to live was at the heart of the investigation, and an unusual joint Chinese-British police operation was instigated to get at the truth. Yet over and over again, the police were steered away from details that might throw the spotlight of blame on to the white community. Perhaps it was more convenient, and less embarrassing, to think that crazed Chinese ritual killers might be responsible.

Paul French's narrative of the investigation is spellbinding, drawing the reader from the very first pages into an unwholesome, macabre world where nothing seems to make sense. In a welcome turn away from orientalist cliché, the book makes the westerners in Peking seem like an assortment of oddballs, standing out amid a crowd of Chinese who are getting on with their lives as best they can.

A respectable American dentist turns out to be the leader of a nudist club (and his own consulate thinks him capable of more sinister and abusive activity). An upright schoolteacher is found to have sadistic tendencies and is shipped off to Britain. Even Werner, the scholar who turned detective, comes over as an obsessive (as well he might do with a murdered daughter), a man of violent temper who had broken a young Chinese man's nose for daring to talk to Pamela.

The British authorities in China did their best to try to preserve their mystique of superiority in the face of the murder, thwarting attempts by British and Chinese detectives alike to penetrate into the "badlands" of the city to search for clues in a steamy quarter of brothels and dope dens. As war with Japan loomed, Werner became ever more frantic to find out the truth. A plausible account of what might have happened did eventually emerge, but too late to bring the culprit to justice.

French calls the book a "reconstruction", and that is quite accurate in the sense that history and true-crime shows on TV use the same term to describe a way of putting together known facts in an accessible fashion. But the technique does mean that, although the book is based on archival materials, many never used before, it often verges on the speculative: we're frequently told what a policeman or a doctor was thinking or feeling in a way that sounds novelistic rather than purely historical.

The undeniably gripping plot also draws attention away from the wider context, perhaps inevitably. Titanic events, most notably the invasion of China by the Japanese, sit in the background, and the wider colonial history that brought these foreigners to China in the first place is sketched lightly.

Pamela Werner's murder was so shocking, and the cast of characters surrounding it so baroque, that it's hard to use it to make a wider point (not many foreigners were murderers or even nudists, after all), and the story tends toward evocation rather than explanation, like White Mischief with the Forbidden City rather than the Kenyan highlands as backdrop. Midnight in Peking could be usefully supplemented by a book such as Robert Bickers's Empire Made Me (2003), which tells the tale of a British policeman stationed in Shanghai between the wars, and combines a wonderfully atmospheric account of the city's "noisy stinking streets" with a thoughtful social history of the changes in the substantial British presence in China. And Qian Zhongshu's classic 1947 novel Fortress Besieged (available in English translation) is perhaps the best evocation in fiction of what the tumultuous politics of the 1930s meant for China's own citizens as they coped with the onset of war and the horrors that followed.

There's no doubt that the Werner case does have many of the features of the grimmest sort of fiction, and there was a danger that the story could have been written as a sort of Fu Manchu tale of murder in the mysterious east. Instead, French has created an affecting account of the death of a trusting, vulnerable and no doubt terrified young woman. Seventy-five years after the murder, it's not too much to suggest that the book is a final act of remembrance.

The Chinese themselves, of course, have something of a record of composing "true crime reconstructions" of murders and scandals in high places. Back in 1997, a book appeared entitled Wrath of Heaven (Tiannu) – a novelised version of the true story behind the recent downfall and suicide of Beijing's former mayor. It became a bestseller until it was hastily banned by the Communist party. One can only imagine that someone is currently composing a similar book on the mysterious death of Neil Heywood that has already brought down the high-flying Bo, and that such a book will also evoke a society with too many secrets.

Source:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/08/midnight-in-peking-paul-french-review/print>
========================================

#22649

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Sun Jun 10, 2012 1:57 pm
Subject: IDIOT SIGHTING: SO FUNNY

pepper.buoy

IDIOT SIGHTING

I handed the teller @ my bank a withdrawal slip for $400.00
I said `May I have large bills, please`

She looked at me and said `I`m sorry sir, all the bills are the same size.`
When I got up off the floor I explained it to her....

IDIOT SIGHTING
When my husband and I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our car, we were told the keys had been locked in it. We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the driver side door. As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked.

`Hey,` I announced to the technician, `it`s open!`

His reply: `I know. I already got that side.`
This was at the Ford dealership in Canton, MS

IDIOT SIGHTING
We had to have the garage door repaired.
The Sears repairman told us that one of our problems was that we did not have a `large` enough motor on the opener. I thought for a minute, and said that we had the largest one Sears made at that time, a 1/2 horsepower. He shook his head and said, `Lady, you need a 1/4 horsepower.` I responded that 1/2 was larger than 1/4.

He said, `NO, it`s not..` Four is larger than two.`
We haven`t used Sears repair since.

IDIOT SIGHTING
My daughter and I went through the McDonald`s take-out window and I gave the clerk a $5 bill. Our total was $4.25, so I also handed her a quarter.

She said, `you gave me too much money.` I said, `Yes I know, but this way you can just give me a dollar bill back.`

She sighed and went to get the manager, who asked me to repeat my request.

I did so, and he handed me back the quarter, and said `We're sorry but we could not do that kind of thing.`

The clerk then proceeded to give me back $1 and 75 cents in change.

Do not confuse the clerks at McD`s.

IDIOT SIGHTING

I live in a semi rural area.

We recently had a new neighbour call the local township administrative office

to request the removal of the DEER CROSSING sign on our road.

The reason: 'Too many deer are being hit by cars out here!

I don't think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore.'

From Kingman , KS

IDIOT SIGHTING IN FOOD SERVICE
My daughter went to a local Taco Bell and ordered a taco.

She asked the person behind the counter for `minimal lettuce.`
He said he was sorry, but they only had iceburg lettuce.
-- From Kansas City

IDIOT SIGHTING
I was at the airport, checking in at the gate when an airport employee asked,

`Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge?`

To which I replied, `If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?`

He smiled knowingly and nodded, `That`s why we ask.`

Happened in Birmingham , Al a.

IDIOT SIGHTING
The stoplight on the corner buzzes when it's safe to cross the street.

I was crossing with an intellectually challenged coworker of mine. She asked if I knew what the buzzer was for.

I explained that it signals blind people when the light is red.

Appalled, she responded, `What on earth are blind people doing driving?!`

She was a probation officer in Wichita , KS

IDIOT SIGHTING
At a good-bye luncheon for an old and dear coworker who was leaving the company due to `downsizing,` our manager commented cheerfully, `This is fun. We should do this more often.`

Not another word was spoken.

We all just looked at each other with that deer-in-the-headlights stare.

This was a lunch at Texas Instruments.

IDIOT SIGHTING
I work with an individual who plugged her power strip back into itself

and for the sake of her life, couldn`t understand why her system would not turn on.

A deputy with the Dallas County Sheriffs office, no less.

IDIOT SIGHTING

How would you pronounce this child's name?
`Le-a`
Leah?? NO
Lee - A?? NOPE
Lay - a?? NO
Lei?? Guess Again.

This child attends a school in Kansas City, Mo.

Her mother is irate because everyone is getting her name wrong.

It`s pronounced `Ledasha`.

When the Mother was asked about the pronunciation of the name, she said, `the dash don`t be silent.`

SO, if you see something come across your desk like this please remember to pronounce the dash.

If dey axe you why, tell dem de dash don`t be silent.

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Fun Mailing List: <http://u.to/g9NTAQ>

#22650

From: LanguagesAndMore Internet <languagesandmore@...>
Date: Sun Jun 10, 2012 3:00 pm
Subject: VISIT BRAND NEW LAMI GROUP ON FACEBOOK!

languagesand...

VISIT OUR BRAND NEW LAMI GROUP ON FACEBOOK!

www.facebook.com/groups/169475443184004/#

This language group is so brand-spanking new that currently, there are only two members. Let's see how fast we as group team players can make our newest group grow...

Post a message, add a photo or video, etc., ...

www.facebook.com/groups/169475443184004/#

Tell everybody what you think! Thank you!!!

Mme. Lami

#22651

From: Curtis Jacobs <bcj912@...>
Date: Mon Jun 11, 2012 1:08 am
Subject: re:

bcj912

wow this is pretty crazy you should check this out
http://www.finance15elnews.net/jobs/?page=6394330

#22652

From: arif uk <pepper.buoy@...>
Date: Mon Jun 11, 2012 2:20 pm
Subject: Thought For The Day…

pepper.buoy

Russian proverb:
Где дéньги говоря́т, там прáвда молчи́т.
Where money talks, the truth is silent.
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