Dreaming

Dreaming is the perception of sensory images during sleep, in a sequence which the sleeper/dreamer usually perceives more as an apparent participant than an observer. Dreaming is stimulated by the pons and mostly occurs during the REM phase of sleep.

People have proposed many hypotheses about the functions of dreaming. Sigmund Freud postulated that dreams are the symbolic expression of frustrated desires that had been relegated to the subconscious, and he used dream interpretation in the form of psychoanalysis to uncover these desires. Scientists have become skeptical about the Freudian interpretation, and place more emphasis on dreaming as a requirement for organization and consolidation of recent memory and experience. See Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams

Sleeping

           
Sleep is a natural state of bodily rest observed throughout the animal kingdom. It is common to all mammals and birds, and is also seen in many reptiles, amphibians and fish. In humans, other mammals, and a substantial majority of other animals which have been studied — such as fish, birds, ants, and fruit-flies — regular sleep is essential for survival. However, its purposes are only partly clear and are the subject of intense research.

Hours by age


Children need a greater amount of sleep per day than adults to develop and function properly: up to 18 hours for newborn babies, with a declining rate as a child ages. A newborn baby spends almost half of its sleep time in REM-sleep. By the age of five or so, only a bit over two hours are spent in REM.Age Average amount of sleep per day
Newborn up to 18 hours
1-12 months 14–18 hours
1-3 years 12-15 hours
3-5 years 11-13 hours
5-12 years 9-11 hours
Adolescents 9-10 hours
Adults, including elderly 7-8 (+) hours
Pregnant women 8 (+) hours


[

Albert Einstein

"My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary".

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new".

"A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem".

"If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut".

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value".

Aristotle

"Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil".

"Without friends no one would choose to live".

"Cruel is the strife of brothers".

"Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely".

"The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions".

Patriotic

"seldom have so few done so much for so many"
winston churchill

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty".
Thomas Jefferson

"You will never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race".
George Bernard Shaw

"Who saves his country violates no law".
Napoleon Bonaparte

Marriage

All marriages are happy. It's living together afterwards that is difficult.

Love is blind -- marriage is the eye-opener.

If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings.

Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal.

The best part of married life is the fights. The rests is merely so.

Attitude

"The Olympics-a lifetime of training for just 10 seconds!"
                                       -Jesse Owens
    

Interesting Facts

   Roses as Symbols of Love

Roses as Symbols of Love
By Joanne Elliott

An estimated 1.2 billion cut roses are purchased in the U.S. every year. That’s around 4.8 roses for every man, woman and child! Valentines day is the time of year when the most roses are sold, with Mothers’ Day in a very distant second. On February 14th, an annual estimation of 1.3 million roses are bought. Would you believe that the sale of roses themselves accounts for almost 40% of Valentines Day gift sales overall?

It is believed that giving a rose to someone is a statement of pure love. But do you know about the real symbolism behind different colored roses? You may be surprised ...

* Red Roses

Would you believe that although red is color of choice for roses, the majority of meaning translations are actually negative? In Christendom, the red rose is seen as a symbol of the Jesus’ blood and the agony which he endured during the crucifixion. In Greek mythology, the red rose represents passionate desire. This is derived from the myth which told of Aphrodite spilling blood onto a white rose when trying to help her wounded lover Adonis. In Persia it is believed that if the petals fall from red rose cut in an English garden it is a superstitious omen of bad luck. However, in modern culture, the red rose has become almost universally accepted as an expression of deepest love and respect.

* Pink Roses

There is also a great deal of dispute as to the difference in meaning for pink roses. The most prominent interpretation of pink roses in general is grace and gentility. Deep pink roses are often used to say ‘thank you’, as they symbolize gratitude and appreciation. Light pink roses have a slightly different meaning, as they convey admiration and sympathy. There is also a negative connotation of pink roses which heralds from the stories of ancient Roman Gods. When Rhoanthe unfairly tried to become the goddess of the hunt and the protectress of woman, Apollo turned her into a rose. Therefore, if Roman mythology is to be believed, pink roses are symbols of pain, suffering, and death.

* White Roses

White roses have been symbols of reverence and humility ever since Medieval Christian Europe. In those times, Mary was often represented by a white rose to represent her purity. In Wales, white roses are seen to mean innocence and silence, and are often placed on the grave of a young child. Meanwhile, some native American cultures see the white rose as representing security and happiness, so this is why they are traditionally worn at weddings.

* Yellow Roses

In modern culture, yellow roses apparently represent joy, gladness, freedom and contentment. However, in Islamic folklore the meaning is really quite different. It is believed that the yellow rose is a symbol of deceit, treachery, and adultery. Obviously these are quite different interpretations of the same thing, which show the transitional nature of color symbolism and representation theory.

* Orange Roses

Orange roses are actually a genetic blend of reds and yellows. Therefore, the orange rose represents a blend of pure enthusiasm and passionate desire. Excellent!

* Pale Pink and Yellow Roses

Pale pink and yellow roses traditionally signify sociability and friendship.

* Red and Yellow Roses arranged together

Red roses arranged with yellow is said to represent future joviality and happiness in all areas of your life.

* Red and White Roses arranged together

If red and white roses are arranged together it denotes unity, understanding, and common ground. This tradition heralds from the time of King Henry VII where he created a graphic design called the Tudor Rose in 1485. The Tudor Rose is a symbol of a red rose on top of a white rose. These roses were the emblems of the Houses of York and Lancaster, and in creating the Tudor Rose, the War of the Roses was ended.

Love and Friendship

Quotes of the day

Lucky is the man who is the first love of a woman,
but luckier is the woman who is the last love of a man.

It takes a minute to have a crush on someone,
an hour to like someone, and an day to love someone...
but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.

It breaks your heart to see the one you love is happy
with someone else, but it's more painful to know that
the one you love is unhappy with you.

If love is the answer,
can you please repeat the question?

Faith makes all things possible.
Love makes them easy

I believe that to truly Love, is the ultimate
expression of the will to live. A heart that
truly loves is forever young.

Apple-iphone

Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do — again.

Coalition in Pakistan Moves to Impeach Musharraf

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s usually fractious coalition government moved decisively for the first time on Thursday to impeach President Pervez Musharraf, who has been an important American ally in the campaign against terror but who has largely been pushed to the sidelines since his party lost elections in February.

“It has become imperative to move for impeachment against General Musharraf,” said Asif Ali Zardari, the head of the Pakistan Peoples Party, sitting beside Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, at a noisy news conference.

The two, leaders of the main parties in the governing coalition, have barely been on speaking terms in recent weeks, but they joined together in saying that Mr. Musharraf would be required to face a vote of confidence in the National Assembly, By calling for the vote, they were essentially giving the president an opportunity to step down gracefully before having to confront impeachment proceedings.

As president, Mr. Musharraf — who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 — still has the constitutional power to fight back against the impeachment by dismissing Parliament.

But to do so he needs the agreement of the army, said Tariq Azim Khan, a former minister of information in Mr. Musharraf’s government and an ally of the president.

In an indication of the gravity of threat against him, Mr. Musharraf canceled Thursday his planned trip to Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

The sudden cohesion of the coalition and the decision to try to remove Mr. Musharraf comes against the backdrop of a serious economic crisis in the country, a surging Taliban insurgency and popular sentiment that the four-month-old government has failed to deal with the urgent problems facing the country.

It appeared that the two leaders found that the only way they could keep the coalition intact was to attack Mr. Musharraf, something Mr. Zardari had been reluctant to do.

Mr. Zardari, who took up the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party after the assassination in December of his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, is a beneficiary of an amnesty on corruption charges arranged last year and agreed to by Mr. Musharraf.

Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif had been closeted in back-to-back meetings for the last two days on how to keep their coalition together.

Meanwhile, as the impeachment proceedings have appeared increasingly likely, Mr. Musharraf has mobilized his political forces to consider his choices, spending three hours Thursday with his constitutional lawyer, Sharifuddin Pirzada.

After the news of the impeachment plans, a former member of Parliament, Ishaq Khan Khakwani, who resigned from the Musharraf cabinet last year, suggested that the coalition government could not find the answers to Pakistan’s problems in impeachment. Mr. Zardari was unleashing a process that could cause more turmoil, Mr. Khakwani said.

“An elected government was meant to bring stability, unfortunately it is destabilizing Pakistan,” Mr. Khakwani said. “No matter whether impeachment succeeds or not, Mr. Zardari has wriggled out of the deal brokered by Benazir Bhutto.” According to politicians who have seen Mr. Musharraf recently, the president has declared he would not go easily.

Mr. Musharraf argues that he was elected to his current five-year term in a democratic process last October, according to the politicians.

But the ruling coalition government disputes the legality of that vote, which was held by the outgoing Parliament and provincial assemblies — bodies that were dominated by the president’s supporters. Moreover, the coalition says that Mr. Musharraf acted unconstitutionally by declaring a state of emergency last November and dismissing nearly 60 judges, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

The most logical pocket of support for Mr. Musharraf remains the Pakistani Army, which he headed from October 1999 until last November.

His successor as military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has repeatedly indicated in the last few months that the army would stay out of politics, a relatively rare phenomenon in a country where the military has ruled for more than half of its 61 years of independence. Mr. Musharraf’s insistence on holding both the main civilian and military leadership posts was a central point to the opposition that built against him in recent years, and he finally relinquished the military post after being reelected to the presidency late last year.

Fridays Headlines

This pictogram depicts Athletics.
Medals of the 2008 Summer Olympics: silver (left), gold (center), bronze (right)

The Games

Opening ceremony
Main articles: 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony and 2008 Summer Olympics national flag bearers

The opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing will be held in the Beijing National Stadium, and begin at 8:00pm CST (UTC+8) on 8 August 2008.[86] The choice of date and time (2008-08-08 8:00) reflects the fact that the number 8 is considered lucky in China.[a]

It has been announced that Canada's Celine Dion[87], Taiwan's Jay Chou[88], Britain's Sarah Brightman and China's Liu Huan[89] would perform during the opening ceremony.

On July 21, NBC announced the Opening Ceremony would include performances by a cast of 15,000 and declared it would be the most spectacular Olympics Opening Ceremony ever produced.[90]

Participating NOCs

Though the qualifying competitions for various sports have been completed, it cannot be certain until the August 8th Opening Ceremony which of the current 205 National Olympic Committees (NOCs)[91] will participate. Most NOCs participate regularly, although various circumstances could cause a nation to be absent from the games, as was the case for six NOCs at the 2006 Winter Olympics. Nevertheless, placements in various qualifying events can help predict which nations and how many athletes will be at the games. Steven Roush, chief of sport performance for the United States Olympic Committee, expects that the United States will bring about 600 competitors to the games, their largest Olympic team thus far. Other delegations will be much smaller; Afghanistan, for example, will be represented by just four competitors.

South African swimmer Natalie du Toit, five time gold medalist at the Athens Paralympics in 2004, has qualified to compete at the Beijing Olympics, thus making history by becoming the first amputee to qualify for the Olympic Games since Olivér Halassy in 1936. Natalia Partyka (who was born without a right forearm) will compete in Table Tennis for Poland.

Below is a list of the all the participating NOCs (where available, the number of competitors per delegation is indicated in parentheses):
Afghanistan (4)
Albania (11)
Algeria (8)
American Samoa (4)
Andorra (5)
Angola (26)
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina (138)
Armenia (25)
Aruba (2)
Australia (433)
Austria (72)
Azerbaijan (39)
Bahamas (19)
Bahrain (11)
Bangladesh (5)
Barbados (8)
Belarus (208)
Belgium (94)
Belize (3)
Benin (3)
Bermuda (6)
Bhutan (2)
Bolivia (6)
Bosnia and Herzegovina (5)
Botswana (2)
Brazil (277)
British Virgin Islands (2)
Brunei (2)
Bulgaria (72)
Burkina Faso (4)
Burundi (3)
Cambodia (6)
Cameroon (3)
Canada (332)
Cape Verde (3)
Cayman Islands (3)
Central African Republic (3)
Chad (2)
Chile (27)
China (639)
Chinese Taipei (80)
Colombia (64)
Comoros (3)
DR Congo (2)
Congo (3)
Cook Islands (4)
Costa Rica (6)
Côte d'Ivoire
Croatia (106)
Cuba (149)
Cyprus (17) Czech Republic (130)
Denmark (83)
Djibouti (4)
Dominica
Dominican Republic (23)
Ecuador (25)
Egypt (103)
El Salvador (11)
Equatorial Guinea (3)
Eritrea (11)
Estonia (47)
Ethiopia (36)
Fiji (6)
Finland (55)
France (323)
FS Micronesia
FYR Macedonia (7)
Gabon (4)
Gambia (3)
Georgia (35)
Germany (439)
Ghana (9)
Great Britain (312)
Greece (159)
Grenada (1)
Guam (5)
Guatemala (12)
Guinea (1)
Guinea-Bissau (3)
Guyana (4)
Haiti (1)
Honduras (25)
Hong Kong, China (34)
Hungary (171)
Iceland (26)
India (57)
Indonesia (24)
Iran (55)
Iraq (4)
Ireland (54)
Israel (43)
Italy (344)
Jamaica (56)
Japan (351)
Jordan (7)
Kazakhstan (132)
Kenya (56)
Kiribati (3)
North Korea (63)
South Korea (267)
Kuwait (6)
Kyrgyzstan (21) Laos (4)
Latvia (49)
Lebanon (5)
Lesotho (4)
Liberia (3)
Libya (7)
Liechtenstein (2)
Lithuania (69)
Luxembourg (12)
Madagascar (4)
Malawi (4)
Malaysia (27)
Maldives (4)
Mali (12)
Malta (6)
Marshall Islands (5)
Mauritania (2)
Mauritius (3)
Mexico (85)
Moldova (31)
Monaco (2)
Mongolia (29)
Montenegro (17)
Morocco (49)
Mozambique (6)
Myanmar (6)
Namibia (9)
Nauru (1)
Nepal (7)
Netherlands (245)
Netherlands Antilles (3)
New Zealand (182)
Nicaragua (6)
Niger
Nigeria (33)
Norway (85)
Oman (4)
Pakistan (21)
Palau (4)
Palestine (4)
Panama (3)
Papua New Guinea (7)
Paraguay (5)
Peru (12)
Philippines (15)
Poland (268)
Portugal (78)
Puerto Rico (22)
Qatar (22)
Romania (102)
Russia (467) Rwanda (4)
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
São Tomé and Príncipe (3)
Samoa (6)
San Marino (4)
Saudi Arabia (16)
Senegal (8)
Serbia (92)
Seychelles (8)
Sierra Leone (2)
Singapore (25)
Slovakia (57)
Slovenia (62)
Solomon Islands (3)
Somalia (2)
South Africa (136)
Spain (287)
Sri Lanka (8)
Sudan (9)
Suriname (4)
Swaziland (4)
Sweden (97)
Switzerland (84)
Syria (7)
Tajikistan (13)
Tanzania
Thailand (25)
Timor-Leste (2)
Togo (1)
Tonga (3)
Trinidad and Tobago (28)
Tunisia (32)
Turkey (68)
Turkmenistan (10)
Tuvalu (3)
Uganda (11)
Ukraine (254)[97]
United Arab Emirates (5)
United States (596)
Uruguay (12)
Uzbekistan (58)
Vanuatu (3)
Venezuela (109)
Vietnam (21)
Virgin Islands (5)
Yemen (5)
Zambia (7)
Zimbabwe (13)


Participation changes

The Marshall Islands and Tuvalu gained National Olympic Committee status in 2006 and 2007 respectively, and are expected to participate in the Games.[98][dead link][99][100]

The states of Serbia and Montenegro, which participated at the 2004 Games jointly as Serbia and Montenegro, will now compete separately. The Montenegrin Olympic Committee was accepted as a new National Olympic Committee in 2007.[100] IOC has promised to recognise the newly independent Republic of Kosovo, but not in time for the nation to compete in the Olympics.[101]

North Korea and South Korea held meetings to discuss the possibility of sending a united team to the 2008 Olympics,[102][103] but the proposal failed, due to disagreements between the two NOCs on the proportion of athletes from the two countries within the team.[104]

On July 24, 2008, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned Iraq from competing in the 2008 Olympic Summer Games due to "political interference by the government in sports."[105][106] On July 29, the IOC reversed its decision and will allow the nation to compete after a pledge by Iraq to ensure "the independence of its national Olympics panel" by instituting fair elections before the end of November. Until then, Iraq's Olympic Organisation will be run by "an interim committee proposed by its national sports federations and approved by the IOC."[107]


The program for the Beijing 2008 Games is quite similar to that of the Athens Games held in 2004. The 2008 Olympics will see the return of 28 sports, and will hold 302 events (165 men’s events, 127 women’s events, and 10 mixed events), one event more in total than in Athens.

Overall 9 new events will be held, which include 2 from the new cycling discipline of BMX. Women will compete in the 3000 m steeplechase for the first time. In addition, marathon swimming events for men and women, over the distance of 10 kilometres, will be added to the swimming discipline. Team events (men and women) in table tennis will replace the doubles events. In fencing, women's team foil and women's team sabre will replace men's team foil and women's team epee.[b][108][109]

The Beijing Organizing Committee have released pictograms of the 35 Olympic disciplines. This set of sport icons is named the beauty of seal characters, due to each pictogram's likeness to Chinese seal script.[110]

The following are the sports to be contested at these Games. The number of events to be contested in each sport is indicated in parentheses.Aquatics
Diving (8)
Swimming (34)
Synchronized swimming (2)
Water polo (2)
Archery (4)
Athletics (47)
Badminton (5) Baseball (1)
Basketball (2)
Boxing (11)
Canoeing (16)
Cycling (18)
Equestrian (6)
Fencing (10)
Field hockey (2) Football (2)
Gymnastics (18)
Handball (2)
Judo (14)
Modern pentathlon (2)
Rowing (14)
Sailing (11)
Shooting (15) Softball (1)
Table tennis (4)
Taekwondo (8)
Tennis (4)
Triathlon (2)
Volleyball (4)
Weightlifting (15)
Wrestling (18)