Happy birthday Hawaii!

President Barack Obama is associated with two main places in the United States: Chicago, where is studied and began his political career, and the State of Hawaii, where he was born and spent his childhood and adolescence.

Six years ago, the Hawaii turned 50 years being the fiftieth state of the USA. It is the only one to have a royal palace and its own language. 

Hawaii is one of the most remote population centres on Earth, but now most of the islands are uninhabitated. The biggest are Kauai, Oahu, Maui and Hawaii (also called Big Island to avoid confusion with the state as a whole). Here there is a great variety of natural beauty, lava fields, rainforests, plants, animals and the world's biggest volcano. 

Hawaii's highest mountain, Manua Kea, is higher than Mount Everest if you measure from its base on the sea floor and there are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet. Hawaii's inhabitants think that there is a lot of Hawaiian influence in Barack Obama.

Giraffe Hero

The mission of the Giraffe Heroes Project is to move people to stick their necks out for the common good, and to give them tools to succeed. Founder Ann Medlock's strategy for the Project was simple—she would find unknown heroes, commend them as “Giraffes” with a capital G, and get their stories told on radio, television, and in print. Giraffe stories would show the public that there was headway being made on the problems of the world, that there were individuals who had solutions—and the courage to move into action. The stories would feed people’s souls, inform their attitudes, and get them moving on public problems that mattered to them.

Aitan Grossman, is an American 12 year-old boy who loves music but doesn't like global warming. He tries to solve the problem of the climate crisis using his love for music.
Aitan composed and wrote a song he called "100 generations", which he sent out to schools around the world, asking students everywhere to join the chorus. With the aid of friends, their music teacher and his own father, Aitan recorded his song, posted it on YouTube and formed the nonprofit organization KidEarth to funnel money from sales and donations into the environmental movement.
The main thing that Aitan did, however, was to invite and ecourage other children to sing and record the song. From all over the world, the children responded. 
He has three goals: to raise awareness of this problem that is endangering the Earth, to get his song recorded by lots of children and to inspire kids that if they want to do something, they can get it done. 
He chose the theme of a hundred generations because he wanted to get across that while nature is eternal, humankind can cause its destruction.

The importance of languages

We live in a multilingual world that is becoming increasingly globalized so it's very important to know more than one language.
There are three main reasons for this:

• an additional language can help you in your career;
• you gain an awareness of other cultures;
• it helps increase your knowledge of your language.

More and more job ads are now specifying that they want a second, a third and sometimes a fourth language too, because knowing more than one language opens up your prospects in an important way.
The second reason that it's important to know more than one language is that it increases cultural awareness and allows you to communicate with different people. Many countries with high immigration levels have trouble with a lack of integration and this is often because of the language barrier, so people end up being segregated, staying in communities where their own language is spoken.
Finally, people should learn an additional language to better know their own language and because that's good for the brain. Some people believe that learning more languages leads to confusion, but it isn't true because if you learn languages with similar roots, learning one helps you learn the others, take Italian, Spanish and French, for example. Overall there can be no denying that learning languages is wholly positive for everyone. If more people were multilingual, the world would be a more prosperous place.

The story of Gelert

This story is about a prince who lived in a castle, named Llewelyn. The story takes place in Wales and in the Middle Age. The prince loved hunting and for this he had a faithful dog called Gelert. Llewelyn loved also his family, in fact he had a son but his wife died because of childbirth. The action begins when the prince left his dog alone with his son to take care of him while he was fighting in a battle. So, the dog stayed near the fire to look after the baby. Next, the prince returned at his castle, tired but victorious. But when he opened the dor, he found the cradle of his son on the floor and all the room was full of blood.
After that, Llewelyn saw his god Gelert near the cradle with all the blood on his body, so he tought that the dog killed his son and for this reason, the prince killed Gelert.
The story ends when Llewelyn found the dead body of a wolf in the room, so he understood that Gelert didn't killed his son, but the dog protected him from the wolf.
It was too late, so the prince bruied Gelert out of the castle, near the river.

My articles 2014/2015!

My articles 2014/2015

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Political Correctness

Political correctness (or PC for short) means using words or behavior which will not offend any group of people. Most people think it is important for everyone to be treated equally, fairly and with dignity. Some words have been used for a long time that are unkind to some people. Sometimes these words have now been replaced by other words that are not offensive. Such words are described as politically correct. The term is often used in a mocking sense when attempts at avoiding offense are seen to go too far.
This term has been used since the early 1970s. It started being used in the modern negative sense in the late 80s in America.
Politically correct words or terms are used to show differences between people or groups in a non-offensive way. This difference may be because of race, gender, beliefs, religion, sexual orientation, or because they have a mental or physical disability, or any difference from what is considered the norm.

Some of the new politically correct words are often criticized for being rather ridiculous. Some examples of these are the terms ending in challenged. For example, someone who is very short might be described as "vertically challenged", or a dog may be called "non-human companion".

My intelligences

TV series

My favourite TV series is "The Returned" (the original name is "Les Revenants"), a French supernatural drama TV series created by Fabrice Gobert, based on the film "They came back". 

It is set in a small French mountain town and talks about some dead people that reappear, apparently normal and alive. They are Camille, a 15-year-old girl who died in a bus crash four years ago, before reappearing in the present; Simon, a young man who was to marry a girl, Adèle, before his death 10 years ago. Though he was told he committed suicide, he has his doubts, as he has been unable to remember his mental state leading up to his death; "Victor", a boy who reappears and follows Julie, believing her to be the "fairy" his mother spoke of that would look out for him if she were gone. His real name is Louis, and he was killed 35 years ago by one of two intruders who also killed the rest of his family. On the day of Camille's bus accident, the driver swerved to avoid Victor, who was standing in the road. Victor has the ability to make others see visions, including the manner of someone else's death; and then Serge, a serial killer responsible for the murder of several women, whose modus operandi included eating the internal organs of those victims he stabbed. He was killed seven years ago when his brother Toni decided to put an end to any more killing by knocking his brother out and burying him alive.

They try to resume their lives like nothing happend but meanwhile strange phenomenoes happens: the water level of the reservoir mysteriously lowers, revealing the presence of dead animals and a church steeple and strange marks appear on the bodies of the living and the dead.

A second season of 8 episodes is in production. The story will continue six months after the flooding, with the town being restored under the control of the authorities. Altough rumors of the dead returning have spread but the authorities don't believe them. Meanwhile, an unknown man called Berg arrives in town to know more about the situation and soon after a new wave of Revenants appear.

The story of chocolate

Chocolate is a food made from the seeds of a cacao tree, the Theobroma cacao . It is used in many desserts like pudding, cakes, candy, and ice cream. It can be a solid form like a candy bar or it can be in a liquid form like hot chocolate. The taste of chocolate is often described as sweet because chocolate makers usually add a lot of sugar and milk for taste.

Making chocolate is a process that has many steps. First, the cocoa beans are collected and put in piles or containers to make them ferment. Fermentation makes the sugar in the beans turn into alcohol. Then the beans are dried and cleaned. Chocolate makers must cook the beans, and then crush them to make the cocoa butter and the chocolate liquor come out of them. Then the chocolate maker mixes different ingredients together to make the different kinds of chocolate, but the chocolate maker is still not finished. One of the last things to be done is something called conching. Before chocolate is conched, it feels very rough in the mouth, instead of smooth. Conching means crushing the chocolate very finely and keeping it warm so that it is liquid. Conching for several hours makes good chocolate. The last step in making chocolate is called tempering. The chocolate is heated, and then shaken, and then cooled a few times.

Random acts of kindness

A random act of kindness is a selfless act performed by a person or people wishing either to assist or to cheer up an individual person or people. The phrase may have been coined by Anne Herbert, who says that she wrote "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty" on a place mat at a Sausalito restaurant in 1982 or 1983. Either spontaneous or planned, random acts of kindness are encouraged by various communities.
International Random Acts of Kindness Week is February 9-15, 2015. People take this week to step out of their normal routine or comfort zone and attempt a new random act of kindness each day of the celebratory week. They post and share their stories, photos, videos and ideas on social media channels.

-Examples of events

• Caffè sospeso is a tradition in the working-class cafés of Naples where a person who has experienced good luck financially pays for two coffees, but receives and consumes only one, the second being left until a person enquires later whether a sospeso is available.
• In 2006, the Free Hugs Campaign was made popular by a music video on YouTube.
• Started in February 2014, the Feed the Deed campaign has inspired over 10,000 random acts of kindness around the world.
  

New year's resolutions

Happy New Year! These New Year's resolutions are popular every year.

-Popular new year's resolutions

• Lose weight
• Volunteer to help others
• Quit smoking
• Get a better education
• Get a better job
• Save money
• Get fit
• Eat healthy food
• Manage stress
• Manage debt
• Take a trip
• Reduce, reuse and recycle
• Drink less alcohol

-My new year's resolutions

• Travel a lot
• Learn something new
• Making experiences of life
• Meet new people
• Work on one thing a time until finished
• Save money
• Be less nervous
• Spend less time on internet
• Be organized
• Enjoy life

Religion symbols

-Jainism

Jainism is a pantheistic religion that teaches non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice rely mainly on self-effort in progressing the soul on the spiritual ladder to divine consciousness. Any soul which has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state of supreme being is called jina which means conqueror or victor.

Jainism is also called Shraman (self-reliant) Dharma or the religion of Nigrantha (who doesn't have attachments and aversions) by ancient texts.

Jainism was revived by a lineage of 24 enlightened ascetic leaders called tirthankaras culminating with Parshva and Mahavira. In the modern world, it is a small but influential religious group with about 4.2 million followers in India, and growing immigrant communities in North America, Western Europe, the Far East, Australia and elsewhere.

Jains successfully sustained this ancient religion to this era and have significantly influenced and contributed to ethical, political and economic spheres in India. Jains have an ancient tradition of scholarship and have the highest degree of literacy in India; Jain libraries are the oldest in the country. Tamil Jains and Tulu Jains who are native to their region residing in places of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Palindromes

A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward or forward. Allowances may be made for adjustments to capital letters, punctuation, and word dividers. Famous examples include "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!", "Amor, Roma", "race car" and "No 'x' in Nixon".

The word "palindrome" was coined by the English playwright Ben Jonson in the 17th century from the Greek roots palin ("again") and dromos ("way, direction").

Palindromes as a form of wordplay have been created for many centuries. For example, the ancient Greeks are known to have often inscribed the following into their fountains:

                                         Nipson anomemata me monan opsin.

 The Romans were also admirers of palindromes, and produced such sentences as:

                                      In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.

TOP PALINDROMES:

Don't nod
Dogma: I am God
Never odd or even
Too bad – I hid a boot
Rats live on no evil star
No trace; not one carton
Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
Murder for a jar of red rum
May a moody baby doom a yam?
Go hang a salami; I'm a lasagna hog!
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas!
A Toyota! Race fast... safe car: a Toyota
Straw? No, too stupid a fad; I put soot on warts
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
Doc Note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod
No, it never propagates if I set a gap or prevention
Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna
Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus
Kay, a red nude, peeped under a yak
Some men interpret nine memos
Campus Motto: Bottoms up, Mac
Go deliver a dare, vile dog!
Madam, in Eden I'm Adam
Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo
Ah, Satan sees Natasha
Lisa Bonet ate no basil
Do geese see God?
God saw I was dog
Dennis sinned
Notizie su: http://fun-with-words.com/