Japon malı bir sürü ilginç, bir kısmı çok faydalı, bir kısmı ıvır zıvır, bir kısmı komik mal ... mutlaka bir bakın
Yıllar önce bir arkadaşımızın babası Japonya’ya giderken “Televizyonlu Kol Saati” sipariş verdiğini hatırlıyorum, “daha icat etmemişler oğlum” diye geri geldiydi tam bu arkadaşımızın dükkanı ... yeni ve ilginç icatlar
Türkiye’ye sipariş edebiliyorsunuz ... çok pahalı değil, sevkiyat ...
Posted by Alex on December 1, 2008 at 2:48 am
Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one.
- Confucius
There's no denying that diamonds are a traditional symbol of romance and love. Why, a man needs a diamond ring to ask the woman of his dream to marry him, right? But was it always that way? Did you know that someone worked very, very hard to make diamond rings de rigueur in marriage proposals? Or that diamonds aren't actually very rare at all? Or that they make lousy investments?
Here 10 Facts About Diamonds You Should Know:
If you ask a hundred people what they think of first when they hear the word "diamond," I bet you get 99 who say a diamond engagement ring.
Truth is, the majority of diamonds mined today are used for industrial purposes - and that may also be the very first use of diamonds by humans.
Harvard physicist Peter Lu and colleagues found that ancient Chinese used diamonds to polish ceremonial burial axes in the late stone age or over 4,500 years ago.
The axes, which are made from corundum (or ruby in its red form and sapphire in other colors), were polished to a mirror finish. Corundum is the second hardest naturally occurring substance on Earth and close examination of these axes revealed that they could've been made only with diamond abrasives. (Source)
It's quite fitting since today, 80% of mined diamonds (about 100 million carats) are used for the industrial purposes of cutting, drilling, grinding, and polishing.
"Diamonds are the hardest substance on Earth" is practically a mantra for jewelers trying to impress you with its physical properties if you're not swayed by its beauty. Too bad it's not true: while diamonds are the hardest natural mineral substance, it is not the hardest substance known to man.
In 2005, physicists Natalia Dubrovinskaia and colleagues compressed carbon fullerene molecules and heating them at the same time to create a series of interconnected rods called Aggregated Diamond Nanorods (ADNRs or "hyperdiamond"). It's about 11% harder than a diamond. (Photo: ESRF)
We can't talk about diamonds without talking about De Beers, the company that single-handedly made the diamond industry what it is today. De Beers was founded by Cecil Rhodes, who also founded the state of Rhodesia which later became Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Rhodes Scholarship is also named after him, and funded by his estate.
Rhodes started by renting water pumps to miners during a diamond rush in 1867 at Kimberley, South Africa. He expanded into mines and about twenty years later became the sole owner of all diamond mining operations in the country.
Rhodes built De Beers into a diamond cartel (well, they prefer "single-channel marketing" and since they're one company, they're technically a monopoly). De Beers mines diamonds, then handle their sales and distribution through various entities (in London, it's known as the innocuously named Diamond Trading Company; in Israel, it's simply called "the syndicate"; in Belgium, it's called the CSO or Central Selling Organization.)
If you want to buy diamonds from De Beers, you've got to play by their rules: diamond are sold in events known as "sights." There are 10 sights held each year, and to buy, you have to be a sightholder (these are usually diamond dealers whose business is to have the stones cut and polished and then resold at diamond clearing centers of Antwerp, New York, and Tel Aviv).
The diamonds are sold on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. A sightholder is given a small box of uncut diamonds priced between $1 and $25 million. De Beers set the price - there is no haggling and no re-selling of diamonds in uncut form. It is rare for sightholders to refuse a diamond package offered to them, for fear of not being invited back. And those who dare to purchase diamonds from other sources than De Beers will have their sightholder privilege revoked.
In the early days, De Beers controlled about 90% of the world's diamond supply. Today, its monopoly on diamonds has been significantly reduced. It is estimated that the cartel now controls about 60 to 75% of the world's diamond trade (source)
De Beers was actually named for the brothers Johannel Nicholas de Beer and Diederik Arnoldus de Beer, whose farm Cecil Rhodes bought when diamond mines were discovered on it.
Diamonds are actually quite rare in the past but not any more. While it's true that the process of extracting diamond is quite laborious (mines move many tons of dirt per carat of diamond found) and that gem-quality diamonds are relatively few (only about 1 in 1 million diamonds are quality one carat stones, only 1 in 5 million are 2-carat; and 1 in 15 million are 3-carat), diamonds are not rare in an economic sense because supply exceeds demand. (Photo: mafic [Flickr])
To maintain the high prices of diamonds, De Beers creates an artificial scarcity: they stockpile mined diamonds and sell them in small amounts.
Perhaps De Beers chairman Nicky Oppenheimer said it best: "diamonds are intrinsically worthless, except for the deep psychological need they fill." (mental_floss, vol 7 issue 6, p. 21 "Diamond Engagement Rings" by Rebecca Zerzan)
So - diamonds aren't rare on Earth, and it may not be rare in space either. In 2004, astronomer Travis Metcalfe of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues discovered a diamond star that is 10 billion trillion trillion carats!
The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.
Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. (Source)
According to scientists, if you wait long enough, our own sun will eventually turn into one such large diamond star!
Just because they're not rare, it doesn't mean that there aren't exceptional diamonds. There's the 45-carat Hope Diamond (and its famous Curse), the mystical Koh-I-Noor Diamond, and the largest diamond ever found, the 546 carat Golden Jubilee.
But this is Neatorama, so here's a truly fascinating story about the Bokassa Diamond. In 1977, a crazy Central African dictator named Jean-Bédel Bokassa declared himself an emperor and asked Albert Jolis, the president of a diamond mining operation, for a diamond ring (he made sure Jolis knew that nothing smaller than a golf ball-sized rock would do!)
Jolis didn't have the money to buy such a large stone but if he didn't deliver one, his company would lose the mining concession in Central Africa. So he devised a clever ruse: Jolis found a large piece of black diamond bort (a poorly crystallized diamond usually fit only to be crushed into abrasive powder) that curiously resembled Africa in shape. He ordered the diamond polished and mounted on a large ring. A one-quarter carat white diamond was then set roughly where the country is located on the continent.
Jolis presented the "unique" diamond to Bokassa, and the clueless emperor loved it! He thought that the $500 ring was worth over $500,000! Just two years later, when Bokassa was overthrown in a coup, Jolis heard that he went into exile with his prize diamond ring, and noted wryly: "It's a priceless diamond as long as he doesn't try to sell it." (Source)
The 1930s was a bad decade for the diamond industry: the price of diamond had declined worldwide. Europe was in the verge of another war and the idea of a diamond engagement ring didn't take hold. Indeed, engagement rings were considered a luxury and when given, they rarely contained diamonds.
In 1938, De Beers engaged N.W. Ayer & Son, the first advertising agency in the United States, to change the image of diamonds in America. The ad agency suggested a clever ad campaign to link diamonds to romance in the public's mind. To do this, they placed diamonds in the fingers of Hollywood stars and suggested stories to newspapers on how diamond rings symbolized romance. Even high school students were targeted:
N. W. Ayer outlined a subtle program that included arranging for lecturers to visit high schools across the country. "All of these lectures revolve around the diamond engagement ring, and are reaching thousands of girls in their assemblies, classes and informal meetings in our leading educational institutions," the agency explained in a memorandum to De Beers.
The agency had organized, in 1946, a weekly service called "Hollywood Personalities," which provided 125 leading newspapers with descriptions of the diamonds worn by movie stars. [...] The idea was to create prestigious "role models" for the poorer middle-class wage-earners. The advertising agency explained, in its 1948 strategy paper, "We spread the word of diamonds worn by stars of screen and stage, by wives and daughters of political leaders, by any woman who can make the grocer's wife and the mechanic's sweetheart say 'I wish I had what she has.'" (Source)
In 1948, an N.W. Ayer copywriter named Frances Gerety, had a flash of inspiration and came up with the slogan "A Diamond is Forever." It's a fitting slogan, because it reminds people that it is a memorial to love, and as such, must stay forever in the family, never to be sold (see below). Ironically, Gerety never married and died a spinster. (Source)
But equating diamonds with romance wasn't enough. Toward the end of the 1950s, N.W. Ayer found that the Americans were ready for the next logical step, making a diamond ring a necessary element in betrothal:
"Since 1939 an entirely new generation of young people has grown to marriageable age," it said. "To this new generation a diamond ring is considered a necessity to engagements by virtually everyone." The message had been so successfully impressed on the minds of this generation that those who could not afford to buy a diamond at the time of their marriage would "defer the purchase" rather than forgo it. (Source)
Then the clever ad agency went one step further. N.W. Ayers noted that when women were involved in the selection of the engagement ring, they tended to pick cheaper rings. So De Beers encouraged the "surprise" engagement, with men picking the diamond on their own (with the clear message that the more expensive the stone, the better he'll look in the eyes of a woman).
They even gave clueless men a guideline: American men should spend two months wages, whereas Japanese men should spend three. Why? Because they can:
But the guidelines differed by nation. A "two months' salary" equivalent was touted in the United States, whereas men in Great Britain got off the hook with only one month. Japan's expectation was set the highest, at three months. I asked a De Beers representative why the Japanese were told to spend so much compared to the Americans or the English.
"We were, quite frankly, trying to bid them up," he answered. (Source: The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire by Tom Zoellner)
In 1939, when De Beers engaged N.W. Ayer to change the way the American public view diamonds, its annual sales of the gem was $23 million. By 1979, the ad agency had helped De Beers expand its sales to more than $2.1 billion (Source).
De Beers is quite famous for never lowering the price of diamonds. During the Great Depression, the cartel drastically cut supplies and stockpiled diamonds to prop up their price. But do diamonds make good investments?
Unless you're a certified diamond seller, the answer is no: you won't be able to sell a diamond ring for more than what you pay for it. And the reason is simple: with diamonds, you buy at retail and sell at wholesale, if you can sell it at all.
In 1982, Edward Jay Epstein wrote an intriguing article for The Atlantic, titled "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?" In it, he wrote about an experiment to determine a diamond's value as an investment.
The [Money Which?] magazine conducted another experiment to determine the extent to which larger diamonds appreciate in value over a one-year period. In 1970, it bought a 1.42 carat diamond for £745. In 1971, the highest offer it received for the same gem was £568. Rather than sell it at such an enormous loss, Watts decided to extend the experiment until 1974, when he again made the round of the jewelers in Hatton Garden to have it appraised. During this tour of the diamond district, Watts found that the diamond had mysteriously shrunk in weight to 1.04 carats. One of the jewelers had apparently switched diamonds during the appraisal. In that same year, Watts, undaunted, bought another diamond, this one 1.4 carats, from a reputable London dealer. He paid £2,595. A week later, he decided to sell it. The maximum offer he received was £1,000.
Why is there no active after-market for diamonds? It is estimated that the public holds about 500 million carats of gem diamonds - if a significant portion of the public begins selling, then the price of diamond would plummet. To prevent this from happening, the diamond industry spent a huge sum in making diamonds "heirloom" properties to be passed down for generations, keeping the price of diamond artificially high (so people wouldn't be tempted to unload them for fear of losing money) and discourage jewelers from buying diamonds from the public.
The idea of making artificial diamond isn't new. H.G. Wells proposed exactly such a thing in his story "The Diamond Maker" in 1911. Since then, scientists have come up with ways to create synthetic diamonds and diamond simulants like cubic zirconia - but experts could always tell them apart. Until now.
In the past decade, scientists have perfected a technique called Chemical Vapor Deposition, where carbon gas cloud is passed over diamond seeds in a vacuum chamber heated to more than 1,800 degrees. In a matter of days, they are now able to "grow" diamonds that are virtually indistinguishable from natural ones, even to the experts:
Seeking an unbiased assessment of the quality of these laboratory diamonds, I asked Bryant Linares to let me borrow an Apollo stone. The next day, I place the .38 carat, princess-cut stone in front of Virgil Ghita in Ghita's narrow jewelry store in downtown Boston. With a pair of tweezers, he brings the diamond up to his right eye and studies it with a jeweler's loupe, slowly turning the gem in the mote-filled afternoon sun. "Nice stone, excellent color. I don't see any imperfections," he says. "Where did you get it?"
"It was grown in a lab about 20 miles from here," I reply.
He lowers the loupe and looks at me for a moment. Then he studies the stone again, pursing his brow. He sighs. "There's no way to tell that it's lab-created." (Source)
But if you think that the price of diamond will fall precipitously, think again. Companies that make cultured diamonds like Apollo and Gemesis aren't stupid: they're not going to kill the goose that laid the diamond egg by flooding the market with cheap stones.
Whether you love or hate them, diamonds are endlessly fascinating. I'll be the first to acknowledge that we haven't touched topics like blood diamonds, J. Walter Thompson's brilliant campaign to insert diamond engagement rings into Japan's wedding custom, and so on.
Bu aralar sürekli birilerinin evinde bulunan krokiler aklıma ilkokul yıllarımı getirdi. Habire ev ile okul arasının krokisini çizerdik.
Ansiklopedi diyorki : Bir yerin başlıca özelliklerini gösteren taslak çizime kroki denir...
Zamanında anlamlı ancak artık hiçbir anlamı kalmamış olan şeyler içinde en başta olanı krokidir aslında.
Bugün kroki yerine kullanılacak şey basit bir teknolojidir. Üstelik ultra galaktik cihaza da gerek yok, bazı telefonlarda bile var: GPS. (meraklısı için http://www.how-gps-works.com/)
Ben bu aralar değişik kişilerin evlerinde bulunan, define haritası şeklinde adımla sayılarak yerleştirilmiş şeyleri gösteren ve ansiklopedik olarak kroki olarak tanımlanan sayfaları çizenlere seslenmek istiyorum; “o kadar basit bir teknolojiyi niye kullanmadınız?” “neden bir tane GPS’li cep telefonu almadınız?”, “bu gömdüklerinizi bulmak için her seferinde ağaca sırtını ve 20 adım Güney’e, sonra top ağaca doğru 30 adım Kuzey demek size yakışıyor mu?”
Pavyon gibi yanıp sönen ışıkları siyah beyaz fotoğraf karesinde görünce fena durmuyor Boğazköprüsü ...
Geleneksel Keys Takvimi yayınlandı, www.keys.com.tr
7 Steps to Zap Your Creativity
Do you find your life a little routine, like you're stuck in a rut? Does it seem like you barely have time for work and life commitments, let alone creative outlets?
It's unfortunate but it seems for many of us, the daily grind of doing what we need to do in order to survive often saps us of our creativity. Instead of being sapped, how would you like to be zapped?
How would your life be different if you were more creative? What would you do differently if you had the time and energy to tap into your creativity? Would you enjoy your job more? Would you find ways to enhance your business? Would your personal relationships be rejuvenated? Would you increase your skill in your favorite hobby? Would you be happier and more alive? Would you feel like you were living more of your potential?
I know for myself, when I am more creative, my life takes on a new energy. I feel enthusiastic, excited, and energized. When ideas pop into my head, I can either enjoy them for what they are or implement them in my life.
Everyone has a creative wellspring within them. If you've been sapped but want to be zapped, here's how to tap into that creativity inside you.
Look closely
Observe the world around you. Pay attention, search for details, and notice what's new and different in your environment rather than assuming nothing has changed.
Creativity is born out of curiosity so look for patterns in the sky, compare two trees standing side by side, watch people as they move and talk. Keep a notebook with you to jot down your observations, making comparisons, and noting what interests you. Take notes when you're stopped in traffic, running on the treadmill at the gym, or sitting at the coffee shop.
Listen intently
Use your ears as sharply as you use your eyes. Listen for unusual sounds in your surroundings and pay attention to dialogue between people, traffic sounds, and the sound of silence.
Did you know the letters in "listen" also spell "silent"? Get silent and listen to your inner sounds. What creative ideas are trying to come through the noise in your head? What can you hear around you when you silence that inner dialogue? Creativity stems from your inner thoughts and may even come from that place where we are all connected in consciousness. Stay open to creative ideas with your ears wide open.
Ask wisely
Did you know that dumb questions evoke smart answers? Well, there's really no such thing as a dumb question but creative people ask lots of questions: "How come? Why is that like that? What's important here? What's missing? What's next? How can I do this another way?"
Great questions provoke great solutions. Ask other people, from the experts to everyday folks. Then ask yourself. Put your inner creative juices to work.
Brainstorm often
Collaborating with others can generate new ideas that you might not come up with on your own. Release any judgment, turn off the editor, and don't censor any ideas that arise. Focus more on the process than the outcome because that's where the ideas will start flying. When you want to brainstorm on your own, use mind maps to pull ideas from the right brain as well as the left.
Be childlike
Children are highly creative. They make up songs, tell stories, and invent characters. They're open, playful, and curious. Highly creative people know how to have fun and to laugh at life and themselves. They don't take anything too seriously, knowing life is a joyful game. They exude passion, playfulness, and pleasure. In a childlike state, how can you be anything but creative?
Change often
Find one thing to change every day. Break your routine, change the way you do something, listen to a new radio station, take a different route to work. Is your life tiring or inspiring? Notice how other people do things and experiment with new ways of doing ordinary things in extraordinary ways.
Solve problems
A creative mind loves problems. That's when it pulls out all the stops to come up with solutions. Don't put a limit on your ideas; pull from the past. Experience, experiment and improvise... explore and invent. Take risks, learn from mistakes, keep creating, and never give up.
Silah taşıyormuş gibi cep telefonunuzu, anahtarlarınızı ve diğer eşyalarınızı taşımak istiyorsanız işte aradığınız çözüm ... hırsız için hakikaten iyi bir yöntem hatta hırsız sizin böyle bir giydiğinizi fark ederse zaten silah olduğunu sandığı için yanınıza bile uğramaz ama sanki çok abartmamışlar mı?
Aşağıda yazılı şehirler için bir yerden bir yere gidiş taksi ücretlerini, günün hangi saatinde ne kadar bekleyeceğinizi öğrenebilirisiniz http://www.worldtaximeter.com/
Olur ya bir işiniz falan düşerse
Amsterdam
Barcelona
Berlin
Boston
Chicago
Dublin
London
Los Angeles
Madrid
New York
Paris
Prague
Rome
San Francisco
Singapore
Sydney
Toronto
Yüzlerimiz konusunda araştırmalar, anketler, deneyler, iki kişinin ortalaması yüzler, iki kişinin çocuğunda beklenen yüz ...
The Captain wasn’t always just the choice of sorority girls looking to blend spiced rum with Diet Coke; in the 17th century he was a feared privateer. Not only did the Welsh pirate marry his own cousin, he ran risky missions for the governor of Jamaica, including capturing some Spanish prisoners in Cuba and sacking Port-au-Prince in Haiti. He then plundered the Cuban coast before holding for ransom the entire city of Portobelo, Panama. He later looted and burned Panama City, but his pillaging career came to an end when Spain and England signed a peace treaty in 1671. Instead of getting in trouble for his high-seas antics, Morgan received knighthood and became the lieutenant governor of Jamaica.
2. Johnnie Walker
Walker, the name behind the world’s most popular brand of Scotch whisky, was born in 1805 in Ayrshire, Scotland. When his father died in 1819, Johnnie inherited a trust of a little over 400 pounds, which the trustees invested in a grocery store. Walker grew to become a very successful grocer in the town of Kilmarnock and even sold a whisky, Walker’s Kilmarnock Whisky. Johnnie’s son Alexander was the one who actually turned the family into famous whisky men, though. Alexander had spent time in Glasgow learning how to blend teas, but he eventually returned to Kilmarnock to take over the grocery from his father. Alexander turned his blending expertise to whisky, and came up with “Old Highland Whisky,” which later became Johnnie Walker Black Label.
3. Jack Daniel
Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel of Tennessee whiskey fame was the descendant of Welsh settlers who came to the United States in the early 19th century. He was born in 1846 or 1850 and was one of 13 children. By 1866 he was distilling whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Unfortunately for the distiller, he had a bit of a temper. One morning in 1911 Daniel showed up for work early and couldn’t get his safe open. He flew off the handle and kicked the offending strongbox. The kick was so ferocious that Daniel injured his toe, which then became infected. The infection soon became the blood poisoning that killed the whiskey mogul.
Curious about why your bottle of J.D. also has Lem Motlow listed as the distillery’s proprietor? Daniel’s own busy life of distilling and safe-kicking kept him from ever finding a wife and siring an heir, so in 1907 he gave the distillery to his beloved nephew Lem Motlow, who had come to work for him as a bookkeeper.
4. Jose Cuervo
In 1758, Jose Antonio de Cuervo received a land grant from the King of Spain to start an agave farm in the Jalisco region of Mexico. Jose used his agave plants to make mescal, a popular Mexican liquor. In 1795, King Carlos IV gave the land grant to Cuervo’s descendant Jose Maria Guadalupe de Cuervo. Carlos IV also granted the Cuervo family the first license to commercially make tequila, so they built a larger factory on the existing land. The family started packaging their wares in individual bottles in 1880, and in 1900 the booze started going by the brand name Jose Cuervo. The brand is still under the leadership of the original Jose Cuervo’s family; current boss Juan-Domingo Beckmann is the sixth generation of Cuervo ancestors to run the company.
5. Jim Beam
Jim Beam, the namesake of the world’s best-selling bourbon whiskey, didn’t actually start the distillery that now bears his name. His great-grandfather Jacob Beam opened the distillery in 1788 and started selling his first barrels of whiskey in 1795. In those days, the whiskey went by the less-catchy moniker of “Old Tub.” Jacob Beam handed down the distillery to his son David Beam, who in turn passed it along to his son David M. Beam, who eventually handed the operation off to his son, Colonel James Beauregard Beam, in 1894. Although he was only 30 years old when he took over the family business, Jim Beam ran the distillery until Prohibition shut him down. Following repeal in 1933, Jim quickly built a distillery and began resurrecting the Old Tub brand, but he also added something new to the company’s portfolio: a bourbon simply called Jim Beam.
6. Tanqueray
When he was a young boy, Charles Tanqueray’s path through life seemed pretty clear. He was the product of three straight generations of Bedfordshire clergymen, so it must have seemed natural to assume that he would take up the cloth himself. Wrong. Instead, he started distilling gin in 1830 in a little plant in London’s Bloomsbury district. By 1847, he was shipping his gin to colonies around the British Empire, where many plantation owners and troops had developed a taste for Tanqueray and tonic.
7. Campari
Gaspare Campari found his calling quickly. By the time he was 14, he had risen to become a master drink mixer in Turin, and in this capacity he started dabbling with a recipe for an aperitif. When he eventually settled on the perfect mixture, his concoction had over 60 ingredients. In 1860, he founded Gruppo Campari to make his trademark bitters in Milan. Like Colonel Sanders’ spice blend, the recipe for Campari is a closely guarded secret supposedly known by only the acting Gruppo Campari chairman, who works with a tiny group of employees to make the concentrate with which alcohol and water are infused to get Campari. The drink is still made from Gaspare Campari’s recipe, though, which includes quinine, orange peel, rhubarb, and countless other flavorings.
Be Heard. Speak Plainly.
By Dustin Wax
Every semester I get a handful of students who have settled on the idea that the more big words they use, the better. Regardless of whether they know what those words mean or not.
So I get papers elucidating the patriarchal configuration of the social arrangement, rather than telling me about male-dominated societies. Or they pontificate on the topic of inadequate provision of pedagogical resources vis-à-vis the particular requirements of participation in the modern form of governance, instead of describing the failure of schools to prepare kids to be good citizens. And so on.
They learn it, of course, from the bad writing that plagues many of the works assigned to them. But it is because we as a society hold such work in high regard that students ape the style of the complicated stuff instead of the more readable work on their reading lists – which is just a s common as the hoity-toity stuff. They thing writing smart must mean using big words and tortured grammar, mistaking difficulty of a work for some measure of its quality.
If you have to work at it, the thinking goes, it must be worth working at.
Of course, this is nonsense. Yes, there are works of exceeding difficulty that are worth reading – in spite of the difficulty, not because of it. And these works – even the best of them – would benefit greatly from a good strong dose of plainspoken-ness. In fact, the ideas in many academic works may even be stronger if they were expressed more clearly.
The same holds true for all kinds of writing and speaking – for communication in general. If it’s important at all, it deserves to be expressed clearly and plainly, so that anyone can understand it. The language that academics use and students love to imitate is not meant to communicate ideas, it’s meant to hide them, to act as a test to see who belongs and who doesn’t. The same is true of the gibberish that many business people write and speak, leveraging their synergistic solution platforms in order to maximize the extraction of secondary revenues in the blah blah blah.
The problem is that this kind of language buries ideas and muddies thinking. Which, of course, is the point a lot of the time – the business can’t come right out and say they killed 400 people with faulty products and the student can’t come out an say she has no idea what the readings were about or that he hasn’t been to class for weeks.
But if the ideas are important – and if you live a life where they aren’t, get out and start over – they deserve to be shared in all their glory, not hidden behind a veil of words. It’s not too hard to speak or write plainly if you follow a few simple rules.
1. Honor the idea.
Speaking plainly starts and ends with the idea. This could be how to bring about world peace or what Pantone color to use on your office’s stationery – put the idea front and center and let it shine. Don’t damage it by trying to make it appear fancy – if it’s a good one, it doesn’t need help and if it’s a bad one, it doesn’t need saying.
Along the same lines, avoid qualifying yourself too much. While it’s fine to express uncertainly when you’re really uncertain, too often people “soften” their ideas by phrasing them as things that they “believe” or “think” or “feel”. They present facts as opinions and opinions as feelings, making it almost impossible to deal with the actual substance of the idea being spoken. Don’t do that – stand behind what you say and take the risk of being wrong.
2. Be yourself.
Usually when people speak un-plainly, it’s because they are trying to appear to be something – or someone – that they’re not: smarter, better educated, most business-like, cooler, or whatever. They’re hiding their real self behind a screen of words that they would never use otherwise. It’s a bit odd, really – if the idea you’re trying to express is yours, why pretend someone else had it?
3. When given a choice, choose the shorter word.
English is a funny language; there are almost always two or more words that mean the same thing. Usually, one will tend to be longer and more vague, like “civilized”, and the other will be shorter and more direct, like “polite” or “nice” or just “good”. As a general rule, people trying to dress up their ideas in showy clothes go for the longer, vaguer words – which is why the idea itself can be weakened. Use indirect language to express yourself long enough, soon even you will not be able to say exactly what it is you mean! When you have a choice, go for the shorter word – if it sounds too blunt or even rude, chances are it’s the clearest way to say what you intend.
4. Cut the description.
There is a place for description of course: when you’re describing something. But too often people attempt to give their ideas a little extra “oomph” by adding a whole bunch of adjectives and adverbs around it, burying the idea itself beneath a mass of irrelevant detail. Cut to the chase and leave the descriptive language for when its needed.
5. Communication is job one.
Sometimes when you’re writing something or speaking, you’ll have the urge to “step up” the language because what you’re saying doesn’t sound pretty enough. This means it’s working. Remember that, unless you’re writing a poem or a ballad, your first priority isn’t to impress people with the beauty of your prose but to communicate an idea to them.
6. Don’t be afraid of “you” and “me”.
Another way that people use language to hide their ideas in a vain attempt to sound impressive is to write in a distant, impersonal tone. While there are some forms of writing where this is necessary – journalism, for example, or clinical reports – a lot of writing and speech can be made more approachable by embracing the first person. Using “I” and “me” gives your readers or listeners something – someone –to attach the ideas you’re expressing to a real person, making them more concrete and more human.
Likewise, you can engage your audience more fully by speaking directly to and about them, instead of about “one” or even “we”. Instead of putting your examples in the third person, address them directly to your reader or listener by using “you”.
There have been volcanic eruptions thousands of times more powerful than Mt. St. Helens. Recent storms have redefined the ranking systems for wind speeds. The hottest place on Earth has hit temperatures 288 degrees hotter than the coldest place on earth.
Yep, it’s an amazing world. Here is a compilation of the most extreme conditions that add a little spice (and devastation) to the planet Earth and its inhabitants.
A recorded wind speed of 318 mph, the fastest ever recorded near earth’s surface, happened on May 3rd, 1999 when an F5-tornado plowed it’s way through parts of Oklahoma leaving behind devastation and disaster.
There are sources that have stated the wind speed only reached 301-302 mph, which would continue to hold the record for the highest wind speed ever recorded near earth’s surface. However,the NWS stationed in Norman, OK reported it to be 318 mph via DOW Radar. There is no other source of wind measurement that can withstand such speeds that we know of.
Prior to this recording, Oklahoma still held the highest wind speed ever recorded in a tornado near Red Rock, OK on April 26th, 1991 with wind speeds of approximately 286 mph.
One interior region of the Antarctic is known as The Dry Valleys. These valleys have not seen rainfall in over two million years. With the exception of one valley, whose lakes are briefly filled with water by inland flowing rivers during the summer, the Dry Valleys contain no moisture (water, ice, or snow).
The reason why the Dry Valleys exist are the 200 mph Katabatic down winds which evaporate all moisture. The dry valleys are strange: except for a few steep rocks they are the only continental part of Antarctica devoid of ice.
Located in the Trans-Antarctic Range, they correspond to a mountain area where evaporation (or rather, sublimation) is more important than snowfall, thus all the ice disappears, leaving dry barren land.
A NASA satellite recorded surface temperatures in the Lut desert of Iran as high as 71 °C (159 °F), the hottest temperature ever recorded on the surface of the Earth. This region which covers an area of about 480 kilometers is called Gandom Beriyan (the toasted wheat).
Its surface is wholly matted with black volcano lava. This dark cover absorbs excessive sunshine, which due to difference of temperature with neighboring elevations forms a wind tunnel. There are reports that no living creature lives in this region. That is why this is arguably the driest place on earth next to the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.
The lowest temperature ever recorded on earth was -129 °F recorded in 1983 at the Russian Base Vostok in Antarctica. Antarctica, a continent owned by no one, covers the southern end of our globe.
In addition to being the coldest place on earth, Anarctica is also the wettest and the driest place on earth.
Most of Antarctica is covered with vast areas of snow and ice which reflect about 75% of the incoming solar radiation. Winter temperatures are also influenced by latitude, elevation and by the shortage of sunlight during the Antarctic winter. In fact, the coldest temperatures are usually during late August before the return of the sun.
As you can see by the image below, this volcanic island in the middle of the Indian Ocean could use the rainfall. They just weren’t expecting to get over 6 ft in a day.
Between March 15-16th, 1952, Cilaos at the center of Réunion, received approximately 74 in (6ft.2″) of rainfall. This is the greatest 24-hour precipitation total ever recorded on earth. The island also holds the record for most rainfall in 72 hours, approximately 155 in (12ft.11″) at Commerson’s Crater in March, 2007.
Positive lightning develops in the same way as typical lightning bolts, but the positive bolt draws electrons upward from the ground.
These lightning bolts tend to be much, much stronger than regular lightning, and may carry as much as a hundred times the energy of a normal flash of lightning.
These “superbolts” of lightning, thankfully, are very rare. Only about five superbolts occur for every ten million normal lightning strokes.
Superbolts can reach way beyond the normal eight to ten miles of a typical lightning stroke. The longest superbolt on record reached from Waco, Texas to Dallas, after having traveled about a 118 miles.
This was chosen because of the firm evidence rather than theory. The eruption that created the La Garita Caldera was the largest known eruption since the Ordovician period, with a VEI magnitude of 8.
The scale of La Garita volcanism was far beyond anything known in human history. The resulting deposit, known as the Fish Canyon Tuff, has a volume of approximately 5,000 cubic kilometers (1,200 cu mi), enough material to fill Lake Michigan (in comparison, the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens was only 1.2 cubic kilometers (0.3 cu mi) in volume).
The area devastated by the La Garita eruption is thought to have covered a significant portion of what is now Colorado, and ash could have fallen as far as the east coast of North America and the Caribbean.
The Mariana Trench (or Marianas Trench) is the deepest part of the world’s oceans, and the deepest location on the surface of the Earth’s crust. It has a maximum depth of about 10.9 km (6.77 mi), and is located in the western North Pacific Ocean, to the east and south of the Mariana Islands, near Guam.
The bottom of the trench is farther below sea level than Mount Everest is above it (8,850m/29,035ft).
The Valdivia earthquake or Great Chilean Earthquake of May 22, 1960 is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, rating 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale. It caused localised tsunamis that severely battered the Chilean coast, with waves up to 25 meters (82 feet).
Coastal villages, such as Toltén, disappeared. Later studies argued that the earthquake actually had 37 epicenters through a 1,350 km (839 mi) north-south line that lasted from May 22 to June 6th 1960.
Elsewhere along the western coast of the United States, Crescent City, California, experienced notable tsunami waves and run-up. The tsunami travel time of the first wave to arrive at Crescent City was 15.5 hours after the occurrence of the earthquake in Chile.
At Crescent City, tsunami waves of up to 1.7 meters (appr. 5.6 feet) were observed and minor damage was reported.
Üreticisi 360 derece demiş ama gerçekte 180 derecelik ayna ... güzel tasarım, üstelik 40 obama parası
Here are some Do’s and Don’t of the James Bond lifestyle:
Do: Have a style all your own. If there is one thing Bond is known for is his signature drink of a vodka martini – shaken not stirred. If you want to stand out in the crowd, it’s best to develop your own tastes. In clothes, drink, books, film and habits, you should be unique and not just go with the crowd. Make something your own and develop an expertise in what you like.
Don’t: Drink too much. Honestly, how many martinis can one man have and still have a steady trigger finger? Enjoy your signature drink, but don’t make it a punchline (or a catchphrase) because you'll drink it a little too often.
Do: Have skills. Bond is ready to adapt to tough situations. He can sit down and play world class poker at the Casino Royale, scuba dive, and converse with a Russian bombshell. The more you know the better you will be able to be flexible and successful in a turbulent situation.
Don’t: Be a manwhore. Saturday Night Live had a skit a few years back in which James Bond found out he had every STD known to man. Bond’s prowess with women, though a box office draw, is not a trait you’d want to emulate.
Do: Be quick witted. While Bond may use a ton of puns, there’s nothing like them to keep a foe off-balance. Not only do you have control of the situation (and the conversation) with a quick wit, but they’ll stay busy thinking of what you’ll say next.
Don’t: Say too much. Whether it’s a state secret, the confidence of a friend, or company strategy, often the best idea is to keep your mouth shut. If you keep your word and don’t turn into a gossip (or a pillow talker), you will gain respect.
Do: Be calm under pressure. In “Casino Royale”, Daniel Craig’s Bond took a serious below-the-belt beating but he didn’t break. You won’t be strapped down in a basement somewhere, but being cool in the face of chaos and argument can show your control of the situation to the people above and below you. Great rewards soon follow.
Don’t: Be blind to your weaknesses. Arrogance, women, knock-out gas? James Bond has had to deal with all of them. You need to understand what your weaknesses are and work to either overcome them or make them negligible.
Do: Respect your tools. Gadgets that were once science fiction on Sean Connery’s dashboard are now real. James Bond was always able to have the right tool at the right time. Before you step into a situation, do a quick inventory of the gadgets, tools and web apps you have at your command that could make solutions come easier.
Don’t: Disrespect the toolmaker. James Bond was always a little dismissive of Q and the boys down in the lab. If someone hooks you up with a great program or Leatherman, give them their respect. They’ll give you something even better the next time.
- Kim arıyordu
- Zor durumda olan bir vatandaş
- Efendim her isteyeni Başkanıma bağlayamam, konu neydi, bir sürü insan SUdan nedenlerle arıyor
- Efendim benimki de sudan ama önemli bir şey söyleyeceğim.
