Aubergine - Uncharted powers?

The glossy purple aubergine (called baingun in India) is a family component of Indian curries, Greek moussakas and French ratatouille. The raw vegetable contains 15 Calories per 100g (3.5oz), but its calorific value rises steeply when it is fried: the same portion cooked in oil contains more than 300 Calories because of the extraordinary amounts of fat absorbed.

The aubergine is native to India, but was also a common food in China as long ago as 600 BC, when it was called the Malayan purple melon. Chinese ladies of the time used it as a beauty aid, staining their teeth black with a dye made from its skin. The first varieties that English-speakers came across probably bore egg-shaped fruits - hence its other name of eggplant.

The aubergine was both prized and feared when it was introduced to Spain by Arab traders during the Middle Ages. For centuries it was valued only as an exotic ornament in Europe because eating it was thought to provoke bad breath, madness, leprosy and even cancer.
In African folk medicine, however, the aubergine has long been used to treat epilepsy and convulsions. In South-east Asia it is still used to treat measles and stomach cancer, although there is no scientific evidence that supports its use as a cancer treatment.

Your footwear may reveal your personality

Got a passion for buying sneakers? It could be a good sign, with a poll finding that people who buy three pairs of sneakers or more a year are far more likely to be a leadership type that other people.

Mindset Media, a media company that examines personality traits of different consumers, found that people who buy more than three pairs of sneakers a year are 61 percent more likely to have the qualities of a modern leader.

These qualities were defined as having ideas and vision, and a style with others that is both inclusive and decisive.

The survey of 7,500 people, using market research group Nielsen's online panel, found multi-sneaker buyers were 50 percent more likely to be very assertive and 47 percent more likely to be spontaneous.

Lauren Arvonio, a spokeswoman for Mindset Media, said sneaker buyers were more likely to fly by the seat of their pants.

"It is often said you can tell a lot about a person by the shoes they wear, and now we have some hard data to back that up," Arvonio told Reuters.

"What is interesting is that these personality traits held true across the board, regardless of age, income, or gender."

Previous Mindset Media surveys found that people who pay their credit card bills off each month were more likely to be "highly deliberate," thinking through their actions, but also less modest than others, likely to brag about their habits.

Hybrid car owners were found to be 78 percent more likely to be highly creative than other people and less dogmatic.



Source : Reuters

Cause for celebration

Children receive gits of chocolate coffins bearing their own names, sugar skulls grin merrily, and families enjoy picnics in the cemetery to sing and chat to the corpses there. There are all part of the extraordinary festivities that take place on Mexico's El Dia de los Muertas, the Day of the Dead.

Mexicans believe that on this day the dead return briefly to the land of the living - and since their visit is but a short one, they deserve a joyful reception.

The Day of the Dead - held on what other countries call All Souls' Day - is no more than an enjoyable reminder of the brevity and insignificance of life. The Mexican author Octavio Paz even goes as far as to say that: 'The Mexican frequents death, mocks it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it.'

Such an attitude has its roots deep in Mexico's history. Between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD, long before the rise of the Aztec civilisation there, the Totonaca Indians believed that the 'underworld' of the dead was a parallel world to this. A dead person would repeat his previous existence, even marry the same partner as before. Dying was nothing to be feared; and, as if to prove it, the Totonaca god of death was always portrayed as a skeleton wearing a broad grin.

Village calls off marriages after cow's death

It can only happen in incredible India. All marriages have been put on the hold in a Madhya Pradesh ( a province) village after a cow died. Local custom and belief decree that till such time there's a marriage in the family that owned the cow, no marriage can take place in the community. There's a problem though: There is nobody of marriageable age in the household.

The story begins four months ago when a villager, Chandan Dhanak, while coaxing his cow, Sona (gold), to get inside the cowshed, hit her with a cane. Sona dropped dead, leaving Dhanak, his family and the entire village stupefied. Convinced that Sona died because of a curse, Dhanak and his son have gone on pilgrimage and done Gangasnan (holy dip in river Ganges - a sacred river for Hindus), not once but thrice.

Despite his act of penitence, people in Chhapara village, 82 km from Vidisha district town and 40 km from capital city Bhopal, are not convinced. They insist that the curse can be shaken off only after a marriage is solemnised in the Dhanak household. Meanwhile, ever since Sona's death, all marriages that had been fixed have been postponed.

Vidisha district is known for its conservative society where tradition rules over modernity. So, although the panchayat (a village assembly) has not endorsed the collective community decision, the people say it is the right thing to do. "This is an ancient convention and nothing can change our view," said a villager.

Dhanak has been pleading with the villagers not to postpone or put off their children's marriages, but in vain. Nor is anybody willing to relax the rules of the 'ancient convention' and thus spare him from solemnising a marriage in his house, regardless of the fact that there is nobody in the family whose marriage can be immediately solemnised.

Dhanak finds himself in a fix as his elder daughter and son are already married and his younger daughter is only 15. Village Sarpanch (judge) Balbir Singh, in an effort to resolve the piquant situation, has come up with a solution: He has suggested that the marriage of Dhanak's granddaughter (his elder daughter's child) could be solemnised to break the curse. She is 20 years old.

Singh told The Pioneer that in spite of his efforts to root out superstition, the villagers remain rooted in their beliefs. "These will go with time. I know superstitions are stumbling blocks for society to develop, but they cannot be removed overnight," he added.

Deputy Director of Social Justice Department PC Rajak said there were no marriages in the village in the last marriage season. After this, he contacted Singh who has come up with a possible solution. According to Rajak, if all goes fine, "Dhanak's grand daughter's marriage will be solemnised in the next season".

Source : The Pioneer

Predictions and dreams

Before amniocentesis - the scientific analysis of fluid from a pregnant woman's uterus - was developed in the 1930s, superstitions offered the sole means of predicting the sex of an unborn child. Around 4000BC in Egypt, two types of wheat were watered with the woman's urine. The child's sex was determined by which sprouted first.

The Egyptians devised guidelines for interpreting the images seen in dreams around 2000BC. A papyrus states: 'If a man sees himself in a dream looking at a snake - good, it signifies [many] provisions,' and 'If a man sees in a dream his bed on fire - bad, it signifies the rape of his wife.'

Rice - A white truth

Rice is believed to have originated in southern Asia - it is known to have been cultivated in India and China for more than 6500 years. Yet it did not make an appearance in Europe until around AD 1000. It reached England's shores during Elizabethan times, when it was imported from Spain.

Rice cannot be grown in the cold British climate and a large proportion of the rice now eaten in Britain comes from Carolina in North America. On a world scale, however, 90 per cent of all rice is still grown and consumed in Asia.

In some oriental cultures, rice is the symbol of life and fertility. Perhaps that is the origin of the widespread custom of throwing rice at newly married couples.

Do men go through their own form of pregnancy?

Some men go through a range of sympathetic physical changes during their wives' pregnancies known as couvade, from the French word for hatching, fatigue, backache, weight gain, and persistent toothaches apparently stem from the emotional conflicts of impending fatherhood.

Some cultures, recognizing this phenomenon, developed elaborate rituals to help men through the difficult times. Only recently have Western cultures given men a formal role in pregnancy. Fathers-to-be are now encouraged to participate in prenatal care and delivery.

What's the difference between sexual attraction and love?

Almost everybody, scientist and nonscientist alike, agrees that sexual attraction is different from true love; but it is also apparent that love, even after decades with the same partner, need not exclude sexual attraction. Love itself, if it is considered a desire for more than sexual intimacy, seems to be not one state but several. For example, the feeling of a young couple that they can do nothing alone can mature into a relationship in which each is relatively independent.

Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg suggests that love has three basic elements: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Typically, says Sternberg, passion is the key ingredient in the early stages of courting, but as the relationship matures, intimacy and commitment grow in importance.

The French writer Madame de Stael's definition of love is far more peotic. "Love is a symbol of eternity," she wrote almost two centuries ago. " It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end."

Do adopted children face special health risks?

Infants who spend their first few months in institutions, however technically good the care, have more fevers and respiratory infections than normal. These institutionalized children may also lag in growth and weight gain. Fortunately, most of the babies show a dramatic improvement once adopted into a loving home.
If the birth mother of an adoptive baby has received little or no prenatal care, the result can be a low-birth weight child susceptible not only to physical complications but to certain intellectual ones as well. Some physicians believe that a stressful pregnancy can cause attention-deficit disorder, a condition that impairs the child's ability to concentrate and therefore to learn.
A long-term health problem for adoptees can result from their lack of medical history. When a doctor asks people who have been adopted whether their parents had diabetes or heart disease, in most cases the adoptee can't answer. What could be vital in diagnosis or treatment is unknown.
It is often the need for medical information that prompts adoptees to undertake a search for their birth parents. Not all these searches have happy endings, but in 1986 one mother happily donated a kidney to the daughter she had despaired of ever seeing again after giving her up for adoption 20 years earlier.

Why has the number of divorces risen so much in recent decades?

Througout the Western world the divorce rate generally climbed in 1960s and 1970s, then leveled off in the 1980s. This reflects the passage of the post - World War II baby boom generation through its twenties, the decade of life when people are most likely to get divorced.

One key cause is a change in values. More people today evidently feel that commitment to staying married and raising children together is less important than personal fulfillment and happiness. Other factors contributing to the high divorce rate include the increased economic independence of women as more of them work, and the declining influence of family, ethnic, and religious ties that reinforce the commitment to marriage.

Along with these social changes, the divorce laws have been greatly modified. They make it much easier to dissolve a marriage; often mutual consent is all that is legally required.

Can witch doctors really kill people by black magic?

Some deaths that credulous people attribute to black magic may really be due to natural causes, accidents, or even murder.

But scientists who have investigated otherwise unexplained deaths following voodoo rituals, for example, contend that the victims, deeply convinced of their enemies' magical powers, were actually frightened to death. The awful terror provoked by touching an object thought to be imbued with black magic could affect the brain centres that control breathing and heart contractions, perhaps triggering a fatal heart arrhythmia.

Can the birth order of a wife and husband affect their marriage?

Birth-order roles may play a part in how adults relate to each other in marriage. Two firstborns who marry will have to remember that both can not simultaneously insist on being the boss. They will have to temper their aggressive instincts with consideration and tolerance for each other, perhaps setting up in advance a system for problem solving of agreeing on areas of responsibility.

When two youngest children marry, both will have to remember that they cannot revert to the role of dependent baby, demanding everything be done for them. In fact, youngest children may have to remember, whatever the birth order of their spouses, that they cannot expect to be fussed over and pampered the way they were by older sibling.

Middle children have often learned the art of compromise to preserve family harmony. They must remember to speak up for their own desires and not to compromise themselves into unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

When does gambling become a disease?

A willingness to accept risk is a healthy expression of our need to grow, change, solve problems, help ourselves and others. Even people who bet regularly, but not excessively - so-called social gamblers - are as well adjusted as nongamblers, studies show. Social gamblers are people who can "take it or leave it."

Getting high on risk, much like getting high on drugs or alcohol, is at the heart of compulsive gambling. Win or lose, the compulsive gambler craves the action. As one put it, "I don't feel alive unless I am gambling."

In the 1950's, behaviorist B. F. Skinner's experiments with pigeons showed that persistence (addiction) develops when reinforcement (winning) is so variable as to be unpredictable. Almost all compulsive gamblers have had at least one big win and believe they're bound to have another - soon.

Are a blnd person's other sense more acute than a sighted person's?

There is no physiological evidence to suggest that the senses of touch, taste, smell, or hearing are superior in the blind. It is true, however, that persons who lose one sense almost always become more adept at using the sense they have left, giving the impression that these remaining senses are inherently more acute.

How do arranged marriages differ from ones based on love?

While most couples in Western societies marry for love, people in many other parts of the world follow the tradition of having marriages arranged. Even in the West, unions arranged by the couple's families occur among some ethnic groups.

Arranged marriages appear to be more durable than ones based on love. In part, this is because the society usually frowns on the breakup of an arranged union and makes getting a divorce difficult. And in such cultures, women often cannot work and support themselves. But some scholars also believe that partners themselves tend to be more satisfied in the long run, because each goes into the marriage without expecting personal happiness. Since the wife and husband commit themselves to marriage and family rather than romance, they tend to stay together even when they are incompatible.

Furthermore, spouses whose marriage has been arranged usually have strong ties to large families on both sides. This provides a ready source of close family friends, who make up for any lack of companionship in the marriage and provide support and advice when the couple has difficulties.

Keep on trucking

In the space of a year, American truckers may travel 800 000 km. (500 000 miles) in their 18 wheel 'big rigs' - the equivalent of driving round the world more than 20 times.

The speed limit in the USA is only 88 km/h (55 mph) and typical coast-to-coast journey can be 5000 km (3000 miles) each way. So truckers often work in pairs: one sleeps while the other drives. Husband-and-wife teams are not uncommon.
Many trucks have a specially designed living space attached to the back of the driver's cabin. These 'sleepers' can be up to 3 m (10 ft) high and 2.4 m (8 ft) square. Their fittings may include a television, cooking facilities, shower, toilet and bed. The trucks' fuel consumption is enormous too: a large rig uses 30 litres of diesel per 100 km (9 mpg).

Truckers are a breed apart. Spending so much time on the road away from their families creates enormous stress, so they have developed their own trucker community, conversing on CB radio and meeting at the many truck stops that dot American highways. They have even developed their own language. For instance, a policeman is known as a 'bear', the brakes are called 'anchors' and small cars are known as 'roller skates'. When a truck carrying dangerous cargo overtakes a small car, it is referred to as a 'suicide jockey blowing the doors off a roller skate'.

Places where people 'talk' in whistles

Fans of the Marx Brothers will know the comic routines in which Harpo - the one who never speaks - communicates with his brothers through a frantic series of whistles and the honking of a horn. But they might be surprised to learn that there are places in the world where people really do speak to one another by whistling as part of everyday life.
The Mazateco Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, are frequently seen whistling back and forth to one another, exchanging greeting, or buying and selling goods, with no risk of a misunderstanding. Mazateco children learn the art of whistling almost as soon as they can talk.
Bilingual tunesters
A Mazateco can 'hear' the word that is intended because the whistler mimics ordinary speech so cleverly. Some of the Mazateco can actually whistle in two languages - their own Indian dialect and Spanish.
The Mazateco never use their fingers when whistling, relying entirely on their lips. When they were shown a photograph of people putting their fingers in their mouths to whistle, as Harpo always used to do, they could make no sense of it.
Although the Mazateco are unique in whistling to communicate over short distances, there are other regions of the world where people also 'talk' by whistling: an area of northeastern Turkey south of the town of Gorele, and La Gomera, on of the Canary Islands. These are both rugged, sparsely populated mountainous regions where people who might otherwise have to walk for two hours to speak with their neighbours simply whistle instead.

Taulipang Indians consider pain a tonic

Adolescence is difficult enough without its onset being greeted by a whipping, having your chin, arms and chest scored with cuts, and having an open basketwork frame of stinging ants pressed against your body.

That is how the Taulipang Indians of the Guianas in South America initiate boys into manhood. And if any boy shows signs of fear or of feeling the pain, his ordeal is repeated. Each part of the ceremony has its significance. The whipping purifies the boy and gives him strength. The cuts on the chin are believed to help to make him expert with his blowpipe, and those on the arms improve his archery. The agony of the ants is said to 'refresh' him, keeping him active and wide awake.

The Taulipang Indians do not reserve these painful encounters with insects solely for puberty rites. Most people voluntarily undergo it whenever they feel in need of an invigorating tonic. Once, an entire village went through the ceremony before an important visitor arrived. The Taulipang also claim that it helps fend off disease and improves their humour and hunting skills.

Why is teenage pregnancy on the rise?

Much of the blame for the alarming increase in teenage pregnancies has been placed on the media and on society's general permissiveness over the past 30 years. Sexually explicit movies and songs extol promiscuity with no reference to its consequences.

The inability of teenagers (and some adults) to grasp the seriousness of having children is also to blame. Many teenagers who feel neglected or isolated see having a child as a quick way of getting attention from friends and family. Many teenage girls think that having a baby means having someone to love. They are unprepared for the long-term sacrifices involved in caring for their babies.

Teenagers who are doing poorly in school are especially at risk of getting pregnant and dropping out. Typically, these teenagers are from lower-income families; they have no goals for the future and feel that motherhood is their only option. Thus, having illegitimate children is no longer widely seen as a stigma. For many girls, having a baby has almost become an accepted rite of passage. Reports on teacher at an inner-city high school: "Back in the 1960's, babies were mistakes. Now, if you haven't had a kid by the age of 18, [they think] there's something wrong with you."

Because many teenage girls are not fully developed physically, they have higher percentages of high-risk pregnancies. Health professionals note that most teenage mothers receive little or no parental care and thus have more birth complications and babies with lower than normal birth weights.

How to talk to someone who is hard of hearing

If you have a friend or family member who is hard of hearing, you can work out effective ways of communicating. If talking to a hearing-impaired person is new to you, here are some tips on being a good communicator.

1. Face the person you are speaking to; be sure you have his or her attention before you start talking.

2. It's best not to eat, chew gum, or cover you mouth while talking: it distorts you speech.

3. If you aren't being understood, don't repeat yourself. Try rephrasing what you've been saying.

4. Speak clearly and at your normal voice level. Never shout.

5. If you are in a noisy area, move to a quieter spot if you can.

6. Try not to stand with bright light behind you; the glare makes it difficult to read your facial expressions and gestures as you talk.

7. Naturalness can smooth over rough spots, so relax and be yourself.

8. With practice, your communication with the hard of hearing will become easy and pleasant.