Wednesday 24 October 2007

EACH STEP-POUNDS KNEES WITH 4X B WT


//////////////////CLOUDY APPLEJUICE HAS CANCER PREVENTING FACTORS cf CLEAR APPLE JUICE




//////////////////MIDDLE AGE MEN MIGRAINES CAN INCR RISK OF HEART ATTACKS





////////////////1 IN 12 BRITONS SUFFER FROM ASTHMA





/////////////////Serotonin - Natural Happy Drug
Body's "on" switch.
Makes you alert and awake.
Is a "feel-good" neurotransmitter which helps your brain's neurons transmit signals more freely.
Many antidepressants are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) which artificially increase your effective serotonin levels by trapping it in your synapses longer than usual. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and Effexor are SSRIs.Melatonin - Puts Your Body In Resting And Healing Mode
Body's "off" switch.
Tells your body to shut down for sleep and begin repairing.
Stimulates the immune system, is associated with anti-aging and the human growth hormone, and acts as an antioxidant.During the night cycle your melatonin levels are high, but when the sun comes up and hits your eyes your eye's retinas and brain's pineal gland to begin breaking down the melatonin and creating serotonin to wake you up. At night as the light levels begin to decrease they begin converting serotonin into melatonin. You also have a natural mid-afternoon melatonin spike which is why in many parts of the world it's standard practice to take a mid day siesta. Why You Need Sunlight You need sunlight in order to make the right levels serotonin to keep you alert and in a good mood. You also need serotonin in order to make enough melatonin to sleep well. If you end the day with a healthy level of serotonin then your body will convert that serotonin into melatonin when darkness comes in order to send you into a solid deep sleep at night. However if you consistently spend the day inside without sunlight, then your daytime serotonin levels will eventually whither away leaving you with a shortage of nighttime melatonin and also make you feel generally crummy during the day. This leads to insomnia and possibly chronic depression. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is related to having too little sunlight, in fact not getting enough sunlight during the summer months has longer term effects and will make it more difficult to have healthy emotions and sleep during the winter months. What To Do
Spend at least a half hour in the sun each day, the best time to do this is in the morning or late afternoon. When the sun is low in the sky the light is filtered more by the atmosphere so you won't get a sunburn and the light angles are such that they can more easily bounce indirectly into your eyes. Mid-day is the worst time because of sunburn risks.
Get at least two hours of relative darkness before going to bed. The best thing to do is watch the sun go down and do some stargazing before sleep. Absolutely the worst thing for you to do is watch TV or stare at a computer screen before going to sleep. If you do that you won't have given your body enough darkness time to convert very much serotonin into melatonin, you will probably go to sleep with too much serotonin and lay there not very tired. Your body will start making melatonin to put you to sleep but since you're already laying down you'll use it up as you make it, so instead of sleeping you lay there restlessly. You need to build up sleep pressure before you lay down by getting a few hours of darkness.If your lifestyle works with the sun instead of against it you'll have much better rest at night and generally be more alert during the day.




/////////////////////UK UNIV FEES=£20 PER HR=£3000 PER YEAR




//////////////////////RD EXTRACTS=




///////////////////WORST PLACE TO BRING UP CHILDREN=READING,OXFORD-??




///////////////////SARCASM CENTRE=PREFRONTAL CORTEX

Participants with prefrontal damage were impaired in comprehending sarcasm, whereas the people in the other two groups had no such problem. Within the prefrontal group, people with damage in the right ventromedial area had the most profound problems in comprehending sarcasm. The ventromedial area is the inferior (rear) part of the prefrontal cortex, and includes the cortex on top of the orbits of both eyes and the inside part of the frontal lobes.
The findings fit what we already know about brain anatomy. The prefrontal cortex is involved in pragmatic language processes and complex social cognition, thus it followed that participants with prefrontal damage had faulty “sarcasm meters.” At the same time, damage to the ventromedial area, which is involved in personality and social behavior, will disrupt not only understanding sarcasm but also understanding social cues, empathic response and emotion recognition. The authors write, “Understanding sarcasm requires both the ability to understand the speaker’s belief about the listener’s belief and the ability to identify emotions.”




////////////////////DULL MENS CLUB=A SHEARER




///////////////general principle behindspecific occurrences




////////////////
What are the TWO British systems of government?

A constitutional democracy - Correct

AND A PARLMNTARY DEMOCRACY



//////////////////
How many local authorities does London have?-33




////////////////07002300=OPENING HRS NOT PHONE NO




///////////////HUMANMETRICS
Jung Typology Test


Your Type is INTJ
Introverted
Intuitive
Thinking
Judging
Strength of the preferences %
100
62
25
44



You are:
very expressed introvert
distinctively expressed intuitive personality
moderately expressed thinking personality
moderately expressed judging personality1-->




/////////////////MARRG=DOTAM=DO OWN THINGS AS MUCH




////////////////////GRUMPY OLD MEN




//////////////////YOGA IN A SUITCASE=SURYAPRANAM=SUN SALUTE






//////////////////MAN WITH A DODGY TIKKA IN A KORMA





/////////////////CHESS=central squares are more valuable than those on the edge of the board and that is why most games have as their long term plan the objective of controlling the center.








//////////////////WEMBLEY STADIUM=90K SPECTATOR SEATS




/////////////////Allegory--a universal symbol or personified abstraction. Example: Death portrayed as a cloaked "grim reaper" with scythe and hourglass, or Justice depicted as a blindfolded figure with a sword and balances. Also a literary work or genre (e.g., John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress) that makes widespread use of such devices.
Alliteration--the repetition of initial consonant sounds in a line or succeeding lines of verse. Example: Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: "Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds/ Towards Phoebus' lodging!"
Allusion--an indirect or oblique reference within a text to another text or work. Hence a subtle artistic quotation or homage. For example, the opening sentence of Cat's Cradle--"Call me Jonah"--alludes to both an Old Testament prophet and the opening line of Melville's Moby Dick.
Apocalyptic literature--writings that aim to reveal the future history of the world and the ultimate destiny of the earth and its inhabitants. Examples: the prophetic books of the Old Testament; Revelations. From the sermons of Puritan ministers to the latest popular work of science fiction, American literature has always had a pronounced apocalyptic tendency.
Assonance--the repetition of similar vowel sounds within a line or succeeding lines of verse. Example: the short i and e sounds in Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra: "then is it sin/ To rush into the secret house of death/ Ere death dare come to us?" Autobiography--An author's own life history or memoir. Example: The Education of Henry Adams. Thoreau's Walden is also an example of autobiography, and Whitman's Leaves of Grass, though it is not specifically an autobiography, contains numerous autobiographical elements.
Blank Verse--a verse form consisting of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's plays are largely in blank verse.
Black humor--comedy mingled with horror or a sense of the macabre; extremely bitter, morbid, or shocking humor. Examples (increasingly common in post-WWII film and literature) include Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle and the recent films Pulp Fiction and Misery.
Catalogue--a traditional epic device consisting of a long rhetorical list or inventory. Homer's catalogue of ships in the Iliad is probably the most famous example, though almost any poem by Whitman will supply a prize specimen or two.
Classicism, classical--referring to the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.
Comedy--film or dramatic work depicting the uphill struggle and eventual success of a sympathetic hero or heroine; usually about ordinary people in difficult but non-life-threatening predicaments. Examples: Shakespeare, As You Like It; Shaw, Pygmalion.
Consonance--repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in a line or succeeding lines of verse. Example: the r and s repetitions in Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream: "Or, if there were a sympathy in choice/ War, death, or sickness did lay seige to it . . ."
Drama--a literary work designed for presentation by actors on a stage. Examples: Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice; Miller, Death of a Salesman.
Dramatic romance--play which adapts the themes, characters, and conventions of narrative romance for the stage. Example: Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Epic--a long narrative poem usually about gods, heroes, and legendary events; celebrates the history, culture, and character of a people. Examples: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Milton's Paradise Lost.
Essay--literally a "trial," "test run," or "experiment" (from the French essayer, "to attempt"); hence a relatively short, informal piece of non-fiction prose that treats a topic of general interest in a seemingly casual, impressionistic, and lively way. Montaigne was the great originator of the form; Emerson was its most influential 19th-century American practitioner.
Fantasy fiction--modern adventure novels or tales that adapt many of the conventions and devices of medieval romance (e.g., imaginary worlds, creatures, heroes). Though often considered a sub-category of science fiction, fantasy literature usually doesn't involve the concern with modern science and technology that distinguishes true SF. Example: Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.
Farce--comedy that makes extensive use of improbable plot complications, zany characters, and slapstick humor. Examples: films by the Marx brothers and the Three Stooges; George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's You Can't Take It with You.
Form--metaphorically, the "container" or "mold" of a work of art, as opposed to its material or contents; hence any of the structural patterns or organizing principles that underlie and shape a work. Forms can be traditional and very rigid and specific--e.g., the sonnet in poetry, the sonata in classical music--or vague and flexible, as in most modern works.
Free Verse--poetry without any fixed pattern of meter, rhythm, or rhyme, but which instead exhibits its own natural rhythms, sound patterns, and seemingly arbitrary principles of form. Example: most of the poems in Leaves of Grass.
Genre--a collective grouping or general category of literary works; a large class or group that consists of individual works of literature that share common attributes (e.g., similar themes, characters, plots, or styles). Examples: drama, epic, lyric poem, novel, etc.
Iambic pentameter--popular English verse form consisting of five metrical feet--with each foot consisting of an iamb (i.e., an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: daDUM). Rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter are called heroic couplets (a form associated with Chaucer and Pope). Unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank verse (a form associated with Shakespeare and Milton).
Image--a word or phrase in a literary text that appeals directly to the reader's taste, touch, hearing, sight, or smell. An image is thus any vivid or picturesque phrase that evokes a particular sensation in the reader's mind. Example: Whitman's "vapor-pennants" and evocations of "golden brass" and "silvery steel" in "To a Locomotive in Winter"; Bryant's "lone lakes" and "autumn blaze" in "To an American Painter. . . ."
Irony--originally a deceptive form of understatement (from the Greek eiron, a stock comic character who typically equivocated, misled his listeners, or concealed complex meanings behind seemingly simple words); hence an attribute of statements in which the meaning is different--or more complicated--than it seems. A subtle form of sarcasm, verbal irony is a rhetorical device in which the speaker either severely understates his point or means the opposite of what he says (as when a guest politely describes a host's unimpressive wine as "nicely chilled" or a conspicuously dull person is described as "not a likely Mensa candidate." Dramatic irony arises in situations where two or more individuals have different levels of understanding or different points of view. More specifically, it occurs when the audience or certain characters in a play know something that another character does not--as when Oedipus, ignorant that he himself is the person he seeks, vows to track down Laius's killer.
Lyric--a short, highly formal, song-like poem, usually passionate and confessional, often about love; a song expressing a private mood or an intense personal feeling. The sonnet and the ode are two specific types of lyric.
Melodrama--a film or literary work marked by "good guys" vs. "bad guys," unexpected plot twists, surprise endings, action and suspense. Examples: Most horror movies and detective thrillers.
Meter--the expected pattern or theoretical number and distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse of a given type. For example, in iambic pentameter the prescribed pattern is da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM--five iambs.(See Rhythm.)
Mock epic--a long narrative poem that lightly parodies or mimics the conventions of classical epic. Whitman's elaborate "invocation" of a muse in "Song of the Exposition" is a mock-epic device.
Modernism--European and American literary and artistic movement that arose and flourished during the first half of the twentieth century. Modernism can be understood as in large part an avant-garde reaction to mass culture and to middle-class Victorian values and tastes. Its techniques and aesthetic principles are illustrated in the works of Picasso, Stravinsky, Klee, Proust, Joyce, Eliot, Faulkner, and others.
Neo-classicism--eighteenth-century literary and artistic movement dedicated to the recovery and imitation of classical (i.e., Greek and Roman) styles and models. Neo-classical architectural principles are evident in most of the federal government buildings in Washington, D.C. Joel Barlow's Columbiad (1807--a fulsome poetical extravagance widely admired in its time but seldom read or even mentioned today) is an example of neo-classical epic.
Novel--a long fictional narrative in prose, usually about the experiences of a central character. Examples, Dickens's David Copperfield, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.
Ode--a classical lyric form, typically of medium length with complex stanzas and ornate prosodic effects. Ancient odes were usually written to commemorate ceremonial occasions such as anniversaries or funerals. The Romantic poets wrote odes in celebration of art, nature, or exalted states of mind.
Onomatopeia--literally "name poetry"; in verse, the use of words (e.g., clank, buzz, hiss, etc.) that imitate natural sounds. Example, Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew: "Have I not in a pitched battle heard/ Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang?"
Parody--a literary or artistic work that mimics in an absurd of ridiculous way the conventions and style of another work. Also known as travesty, lampoon, or burlesque. Twain's Connecticut Yankee is in part a parody of Mallory's Morte d'Arthur. Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle parodies everything from calypso lyrics and commercial advertising to detective fiction and Moby Dick.
Pastoralism--A cultural outlook that values (or at least sympathizes with) the disciplines and routines of rural living over those of urban life. In pastoral literature the author typically adopts the perspective of a country dweller in order to expose the numerous shams, absurdities, and nuisances of life in the city or the court. Examples of traditional pastoral include Virgil's Eclogues and Spenser's The Shepherde's Calendar. Pastoral elements can also be found in Walden and "Leaves of Grass."
Plot--in narrative or dramatic works the sequence of events or episodes that link up to provide a sense of unified action.
Post-modernism--catch-phrase or jargon term used extensively in film and literary studies to identify certain trends in contemporary media and fiction. Post-modernist works tend to be highly self-referential and are typically saturated with irony and allusion. Such works also tend to subvert traditional models of unity and coherence and instead try to capture the sense of discontinuity and apparent chaos characteristic of the electronic age. Post-modernism is typically associated with writers like William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, and John Barth, with film-makers like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino, and with so-called deconstructionist forms of criticism.
Prosody--the technical analysis of all the sound elements (e.g., rhythm, alliteration, rhyme) in poetry or speech.
Rhyme--the use of the same or similar sounds either internally or at the ends of lines in order to produce an audible echo effect; when this effect is regularly repeated over the course of a poem or stanza and obeys a precise and predictable formal pattern, it is called a rhyme scheme. To avoid rhyming notes that are too blatant or insistent, modern poets sometimes use near rhyme (e.g., bald, cold; brim, stream), which produces a subtler musical effect.
Rhythm--in prosody, the actual number and distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse of a given type when it is naturally spoken. (As opposed to the ideal or theoretical number and distribution as specified by the metrical form.) (See Meter.)
Romance--a literary genre typically involving fantastic or perilous adventures. Medieval verse romances were usually about knights and ladies, sorcerers and dragons, daring deeds, and secret love. Example: the tales of King Arthur and his knights.
Romanticism--an intellectual and artistic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Originating in Europe, where it was associated with Rousseau, Wordsworth, Goethe, and other artists and philosophers, the influence of Romanticism eventually spread to America, where it found adherents in figures like Bryant, Emerson, and Thoreau. Valuing imagination over intellect, passion over reason, and artistic self-expression over reverence for tradition, the Romantics reacted to what they viewed as the excessive rationalism and classicism of the European Enlightenment.
Satire--a genre or mode that exposes and ridicules human vice and folly. Its characters are usually braggarts, bullies, shady tricksters, and scalawags--often detestible and seldom commendable or sympathetic. Examples: Swift's Gulliver's Travels; Orwell's Animal Farm.
Science fiction--prose fiction usually set in the future or in some remote region of the universe; often adapts the characters of conventions of ancient myth or medieval romance to the modern age of science and technology. Example: Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Beneath the Sea; H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
Sonnet--a lyric form consisting of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter (usually divided into an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet) and exhibiting a regular rhyme scheme. Example: Bryant's "Sonnet--To an American Painter Departing for Europe."
Symbol--an object, sign, or image that is used to stand for something else, as a flag may be used to symbolize a nation. Whitman uses the hermit-thrush as a symbol of American poetry; Henry Adams uses the dynamo as a symbol of vast, inhuman power.
Symbolism--the systematic use of recurrent symbols or images in a work to create an added level of meaning. Example: most of the characters and incidents in Melville's Moby Dick can be interpreted symbolically. Similarly, the raft, the river, the towns, and "the territory" combine to provide a pattern of symbolic meaning in Twain's Huckleberry Finn.
Theme--a controlling idea or a subject for philosophical reflection in a literary work. Themes can be mythical and archetypal (e.g., the fall of man, symbolic death and rebirth, a quest for knowledge) or moral and psychological (passion vs. reason, the futility of anger, the vanity of selfishness, the need for love, etc.). Thus the same themes can be found in works by different authors in different eras in a variety of genres and styles.
Tragedy--drama or film portraying the doomed struggle and eventual downfall of an admirable but flawed hero. Usually about powerful leaders or extraordinary individuals torn between opposing goals or difficult choices. Examples: Sophocles, Oedipus the King; Shakespeare, Hamlet.
Tragicomedy--drama or film in which the serious actions, harsh truths, and threatening situations of tragedy are combined with the lighter tone and generally happy conclusions of comedy. Example: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure; M. Nichols, Carnal Knowledge.
Utopian literature--prose fiction which aims at a richly detailed and generally realistic depiction of an ideal society or alternative world. Strictly speaking, utopian literature depicts attractive alternatives; whereas dystopian literature presents nightmarish or hellish visions of the future. Examples: Huxley, Brave New World; Orwell, 1984.







///////////////////LARGEST STADIUM


USA
Race-use
Speedway
Indianapolis Speedway
250 000
BUILT 1909
all-seater




////////////////////S AF=RAINBOW NATION=RECONCILIATION




///////////////////The Stripper's SecretFlaunting your fertility makes for big tips. The showgirl's guide to maximizing income.
Unlike their sisters in the animal kingdom, human females don't openly advertise their ovulation. But even without a human version of the baboon's bright pink behind, signs of fertility sneak out, according to several studies. Subconsciously, women dress more provocatively and men find them prettier when it's prime time for conception. And a report from the University of New Mexico demonstrates that the cyclic signs have economic consequences.
Psychologist Geoffrey Miller and colleagues tapped the talent at local gentlemen's clubs and counted tips made on lap dances. Dancers made about $70 an hour during their peak period of fertility, versus about $35 while menstruating and $50 in between.




/////////////////////Gamma Ray Delay May Be Sign of 'New Physics'
September 28, 2007Editor's note: [Field: 'editors_notes', -EncodeNone] -->

The MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov) telescope is located in the Canary Islands. (Winston Ko/UC Davis photo)
Delayed gamma rays from deep space may provide the first evidence for physics beyond current theories.
The MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov) telescope found that high-energy photons of gamma radiation from a distant galaxy arrived at Earth four minutes after lower-energy photons, although they were apparently emitted at the same time. If correct, that would contradict Einstein's theory of relativity, which says that all photons (particles of light) must move at the speed of light.



///////////////////SELF AWARENESS IS HOLY GRAIL OF NEURO SCIENCES




/////////////////////CAPGRAS DELUSION




/////////////////////SPRAIN=RICE



/////////////////FACE AREA OF BRAIN=FUSIFORM GYRUS-INSIDE TEMPORAL LOBE




//////////////////////AMYGDALA=EMOTIONAL CENTRE OF BRAIN




//////////////////////False Awakenings and Lucid Dreaming
October 15th, 2007
A false awakening occurs when you're dreaming and believe you've woken up when in actuality you are still dreaming and only dreamed of waking up. You "wake up" and begin to go about your daily routine — visit the bathroom, brush your teeth, get dressed, etc. — until eventually you realize you're still dreaming.
At that point, you may slip into a completely new dream or you may wake up from the dream for real this time. Or, even more intriguingly, you may have another false awakening and believe you've woken up when instead you're still dreaming and once again only dreamed of waking up.




/////////////////////RED WINE OD=LIVES LONGER BCOS OF RESVERATROL




/////////////////////EXCITED=GET A KID IN A CANDY STORE




//////////////////PHANTOM LIMB-TRY MIRROR RX





/////////////////////SYNESTHESIA=MINGLING OF SENSES=ANGULAR GYRUS




/////////////////kiki-booba METAPHOR-RAMACHANDRAN-TED




/////////////////SIPAHH STRWS-CHANGES TAST OF MILK-SNSBRY





//////////////////Casimir effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In physics, the Casimir effect or Casimir-Polder force is a physical force exerted between separate objects due to resonance of all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening space between the objects. This is sometimes described in terms of virtual particles interacting with the objects, due to the mathematical form of one possible way of calculating the strength of the effect. Because the strength of the force falls off rapidly with distance, it is only measurable when the distance between the objects is extremely small. On a submicron scale, this force becomes so strong that it becomes the dominant force between uncharged conductors. Indeed at separations of 10 nm — about a hundred times the typical size of an atom — the Casimir effect produces the equivalent of 1 atmosphere of pressure (101.3 kPa).
Dutch physicists Hendrik B. G. Casimir and Dirk Polder first proposed the existence of the force and formulated an experiment to detect it in 1948 while participating in research at Philips Research Labs. The classic form of the experiment used a pair of uncharged parallel metal plates in a vacuum, and successfully demonstrated the force to within 15% of the value predicted by the theory.




///////////////////WESTERN BUDDHIST ORDER




//////////////////
What proportion of voting adults do current statistics show have used illegal drugs
at one time or another?=1/2



/////////////////////IMDB=Banaras, Bombay, and strong women characters, 19 October 2007
Author: VirginiaK_NYC from New York, NY
As anyone who has seen a trailer for this movie knows, Rani Mukherjee is a girl from a fine Banaras family on the economic downslide, who goes to Bombay intending to make money to help them out and finds herself in business as a high-class professional escort.When her younger sister, Konkona Sen Sharma, comes to Bombay to take up her own job in an ad agency, we see the two of them in a tonga on Marine Drive, the Queen's Necklace fulfilling its promise to swirl the city in glamor. When some ladies of the night pass by the carriage, Konkona makes an unthinking provincial girl's harsh comment, and her sister rebukes her sharply for her lack of compassion.In this passage of perfect dialogue, you have the main tension driving the story, and one of its many moments of good acting between well-drawn women characters. What is going to happen if the younger sister finds out what her big sister has done in order to secure her own future? Will Rani's sacrifice separate her forever from her sister's love and respect, and from a chance at acceptance in romance and marriage?I gather this is a Hindi movie theme known to the Indian audience. LCMD is far from perfect -- there's a mixing of story types going on probably, the old-style melodrama and something more modern and psychological -- but the good things about it make it more than worth seeing. There are four striking women characters (Jaya as mother, and Hema Malini in a special appearance that blesses the whole movie, including a dance that should have been much longer) who all seem relatively "real" in relation to Hindi movie women. They relate to each other in a decent, normal way (in small roles we have a less-nice girl and also a friend in Bombay as well).Another good thing: the parents are less than respect-worthy without being "bad" Hindi movie parents -- father clearly is an upper-class slacker who'd rather develop "symptoms" than get a job, rent out a room, sell the property and live within his means; and mother is interestingly ambivalent about what her daughter is doing in order to be sending home the cash.The cinematography of Banares and Bombay is worth the trip to the theaters, and the clothes are worth taking notes on, both the subtle and stunning cotton traditional clothes of the family in Banaras and Rani's high-style nicely top-of-the-city wardrobe. You might be reminded of India as the home of the most wonderful textiles on the planet.If the story is still Bollywoodized and Bollywood-y (how did a villain know the thing he knows? why don't we see a bit more of Rani's "work life"? why do we need a song that is actually set in Switzerland -- though maybe that's ironic/postmodern?), it nonetheless is a rich enough, fresh enough, and engaging enough experience, with great performances. As it really is about its women, the men are fine but you wouldn't focus on them in thinking about the movie. If you see the movie, you may find it raises good questions -- it it progressive? regressive? what do we mean by these things? -- worth talking and thinking about.




//////////////////A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
—Winston Churchill






//////////////////////THE ONE HUNDRED GREATEST NOVELS OF ALL TIMEWe all love lists . . . well let's stir the waters with an ambitious one highlighting the 100 best novels. Be warned: this ranking is based on cranky and subjective standards. (But aren't they all?)1. Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past“The only paradise is a paradise lost.”2. Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamozov“If God is dead, then all things are permitted.”3. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain“Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.”4. Henry James The Ambassadors"The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have."5. Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote"For the love of God, sir knight errant, if you ever meet me again, please, even if you see me being cut into little pieces, don't rush to my aid or try to help me, but just let me be miserable, because no matter what they're doing to me it couldn't be worse than what will happen if your grace helps, so may God curse you and every knight errant who's ever been born in the world."6. Herman Melville Moby Dick"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"7. William Faulkner Absalom, Absalom!"I learned little save that most of the deeds, good and bad both, incurring opprobrium or plaudits or reward either, within the scope of man's abilities, had already been performed and were to be learned about only from books."8. Leo Tolstoy War and Peace“A thought that had long since and often occured to him during his military activities -- the idea that there is not and cannot be any science of war, and that therefore there can be no such thing as a military genius -- now appeared to him an obvious truth.”9. Henry Fielding Tom Jones“Jenny replied to this with a bitterness which might have surprized a judicious person, who had observed the tranquility with which she bore all the affronts to her chastity; but her patience was perhaps tired out, for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise.”10. Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn“But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. . . . It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer thinks the same.”11. Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."12. Henry James The Wings of the Dove“Never was a consciousness more rounded and fastened down over what filled it; which is precisely what we have spoken of as, in its degree, the oppression of success, the somewhat chilled state - tending to the solitary - of supreme recognition.”13. Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment"I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen."14. Charles Dickens Great Expectations“It ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes. You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so God bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, God bless you!"15. Victor Hugo Les Misérables“What can be done in hell? They sang. For where there is no more hope, song remains.”16. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife"17. Fyodor Dostoevsky The Idiot"And where on earth did I get the idea that you were an idiot? You always observe what other people pass by unnoticed."18. Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises"In bull-fighting they speak of the terrain of the bull and the terrain of the bull-fighter. As long as a bull-fighter stays in his own terrain he is comparatively safe. Each time he enters into the terrain of the bull he is in great danger.”19. Hermann Broch The Sleepwalkers“There are evenings in spring when the twilight lasts far longer than the astronomically prescribed period. Then a thin smoky mist sinks over the city and gives it the subdued suspense of evenings preceding a holiday. And at the same time it is as if this subdued, pale grey mist had netted so much light that brighter strands remain in it even when it has become quite black and velvety.”20. Franz Kafka The Trial“It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.”21. James Joyce Ulysses“History, said Stephen, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”22. Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary"She repeated to herself, "I have a lover! I have a lover!" and the thought gave her a delicious thrill, as though she were beginning a second puberty. At last she was going to possess the joys of love, that fever of happiness she had despaired of ever knowing. She was entering a marvelous realm in which everything would be passion, ecstasy and rapture; she was surrounded by vast expanses of bluish space, summits of intense feeling sparkled before her eyes, and everyday life appeared far below in the shadows between these peaks."23. F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”24. William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury"Did you ever have a sister? did you?"25. George Eliot Middlemarch“Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge.”26. Ralph Ellison Invisible Man"I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!"27. Henry James The Golden Bowl"She kept her eyes on him as if, though unsatisfied, mystified, she yet had a fancy for the bowl. 'Not even if the thing should come to pieces?" And then as he was silent: "Not even if he should have to say to me "The Golden Bowl is broken"?'"He was still silent; after which he had his strangest smile. 'Ah if any one should WANT to smash it--!'"She laughed; she almost admired the little man's expression. 'You mean one could smash it with a hammer?'"'Yes, if nothing else would do. Or perhaps even by dashing it with violence--say upon a marble floor.'28. Stendhal The Red and the Black"A novel is a mirror that strolls along a highway. Now it reflects the blue of the skies, now the mud puddles underfoot."29. Henry James The Portrait of a Lady"Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet."30. Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina "All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."31. Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: 'The horror! The horror!'"32. Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse"What people had shed and left - a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes - these alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking glass had held a face."33. William Thackeray Vanity Fair"A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes."34. Ivan Turgenev Fathers and Sons"Yes, there used to be Hegelists and now there are nihilists. We shall see how you will manage to exist in the empty airless void; and now ring, please, brother Nikolai, it's time for me to drink my cocoa."35. Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire“I am the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure of the window pane”36. Saul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March"I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent."37. Charles Dickens Bleak House"Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it."38. Ian McEwan Atonement"It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you."39. George Eliot Silas Marner"The past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories."40. Fyodor Dostoevsky The Gambler"Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions."41. Honore de Balzac Le Pére Goriot"Our heart is a treasury; if you spend all its wealth at once you are ruined."42. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath"It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat."43. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."44. Jane Austen Emma"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."45. Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags"46. Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights"A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone."47. Joseph Conrad Nostromo"Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates."48. Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn't like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough."49. Truman Capote In Cold Blood"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there.'"50. Henry James The American"On a brilliant day in May, in the year 1868, a gentleman was reclining at his ease on the great circular divan which at that period occupied the centre of the Salon Carre, in the Museum of the Louvre."51. Charles Dickens Oliver Twist"Oliver Twist has asked for more!"52. Nathaniel West Miss Lonelyhearts"What did I do to deserve such a terrible fate? Even if I did do some bad things I didnt do any before I was a year old and I was born this way. I asked Papa and he says he doesnt know, but that maybe I did something in the other world before I was born or that maybe I was being punished for his sins. I dont believe that because he is a very nice man. Ought I commit suicide?"53. John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman"We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words."54. Jonathan Franzen The Corrections"The correction, when it finally came, was not a overnight bursting of a bubble but a much more gentle letdown, a year long leakage of value from key financial markets, a contraction too gradual to generate headlines and too predictable to seriously hurt anybody but fools and the working poor."55. Laurence Sterne Tristam Shandy"Our armies swore terribly in Flanders," cried my Uncle Toby, "but nothing to this."56. Nathaniel West The Day of the Locust"Around quitting time, Tod Hackett heard a great din on the road outside his office. The groan of leather mingled with the jangle of iron and over all beat the tattoo of a thousand hooves. He hurried to the window."57. John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men"Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy. I just like to know what your interest is"58. Joseph Conrad Lord Jim"Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might say--Lord Jim."59. George Orwell 1984"Big Brother is watching you."60. E.A. Poe The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket"It will be seen at once how much of what follows I claim to be my own writing; and it will also be understood that no fact is misrepresented in the first few pages which were written by Mr. Poe. Even to those readers who have not seen the Messenger, it will be unnecessary to point out where his portion ends and my own commences; the difference in point of style will be readily perceived."61. Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited"I am not I; thou art not he or she; they are not they."62. Stendhal The Charterhouse of Parma"On the 15th of May, 1796, General Bonaparte made his entry into Milan at the head of that young army which had shortly before crossed the Bridge of Lodi and taught the world that after all these centuries Caesar and Alexander had a successor."63. Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop"Where there is great love there are always miracles."64. George Orwell Animal Farm"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."65. James Fenimore Cooper The Last of the Mohicans"Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?"66. Graham Greene The Power and the Glory“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”67. Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim"Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way."68. Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep"You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell."69. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."70. Arthur Conan Doyle The Hound of the Baskervilles"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes."71. Jack Kerouac On the Road"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it... and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear?"72. Rudyard Kipling Kim"I have seen something of this world," she said over the crowded trays, "and there are but two sorts of women in it - those who take the strength out of a man and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I am this."73. Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'Urbervilles"My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am!"74. Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."75. Philip Roth American Pastoral"The Swede. During the war years, when I was still a grade school boy, this was a magical name in our Newark neighborhood . . . "76. Robert Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" 'Tanstaafl.' Means 'There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.' "77. Mary Shelley Frankenstein"Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world."78. Jonathan Lethem The Fortress of Solitude"Voices in memory you can't name, rich with unresolved yearning: a song you once leaned toward for an instant on the radio before finding it mawkish, embarrassing, overlush. Maybe the song knew something you didn't yet, something you weren't necessarily ready to learn from the radio. So, for you at least, the song is lost."79. Zane Grey Riders of the Purple Sage"Love of man for woman--love of woman for man. That's the nature, the meaning, the best of life itself."80. William Gibson Neuromancer"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."81. Martin Amis Money"Awful things can happen anytime."82. Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter"A pure hand needs no glove to cover it."83. Agatha Christie The Murder of Roger Ackroyd "It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting."84. William Faulkner As I Lay Dying"I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time."85. Henry James Daisy Miller"The young lady meanwhile had drawn near. She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of pale-coloured ribbon. She was bare-headed; but she balanced in her hand a large parasol with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty. 'How pretty they are!' thought Winterbourne, straightening himself in his seat, as if he were prepared to rise."86. Thomas Hardy The Return of the Native "The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained."87. Thomas Mann The Black Swan "One of the swans, however, pushing close against the bank, spread its dark wings and beat the air with them, stretching out its neck and hissing angrily up at her. They laughed at its jealousy, but at the same time felt a little afraid."88. Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls"If you have not seen the day of Revolution in a small town where all know all in the town and always have known all, you have seen nothing."89. Fyodor Dostoevsky The Possessed"But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that along with happiness, in the exact same way and in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness!"90. Leo Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilych"Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it."91. Thomas Mann Buddenbrooks"Beauty can pierce one like pain."92. Leo Tolstoy The Kreutzer Sonata"It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness."93. Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway"Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing."94. Charles Dickens David Copperfield"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."95. Henry James The Spoils of Poynton"Her relation with her wonderful friend had, however, in becoming a new one begun to shape itself almost wholly on breaches and omissions."96. V.S. Naipaul A Bend in the River"It isn't that there's no right and wrong here. There's no right"97. Frank Herbert Dune"Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now it's complete because it's ended here.'"98. Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure"Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons!"99. Philip K. Dick Valis“What he did not know then is that it is sometimes an appropriate response to reality is to go insane.”100. Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now."








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