valleyoftheKings

2005-08-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

2005-08-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

Raja Minangkabau Yang Terakhir (1804-1849)

2005-06-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

Ahh...ni lah Atok aku

Lost Landmark

2005-06-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

There was once a very tall tree that stood in Changi. The tree must have been very significant as the tree had been marked on maps and had been used as a landmark for nearly a century before. The famous Changi tree marked the eastern approach to the Straits of Johore and was felled in 1942 to prevent the Japanese artillery from using it as a ranging point during World War II.

Does my neighbor's motorcycle have to be that loud?

2005-06-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

At times, engineers try to achieve just the right sound or noise for a particular product. The product, whether it's a vacuum cleaner, lawnmower, or motorcycle, needs to be quiet enough so as not to cause stress, yet has to have enough sound to seem powerful. For example, muffler technology has the ability to greatly reduce the noise a motorcycle produces, yet many engineers and manufaturers feel that consumers would not purchase the product if it does not sound "powerful" enough.

Why would it be dangerous to drop a coin off the Menara Kuala Lumpur

2005-06-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

A coin falling from the top of the Menara would prove extremely dangerous to a person walking at ground level. The coin would accelerate until it reached a terminal velocity of about 175km/h or 109 mph. If the falling coin were to hit someone, a very large force would result, possibly breaking the person's skin or even resulting in a serious head injury.

2005-06-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

In 1965, forty years ago on June 3rd, astronaut Edward White made the first U.S. spacewalk. Tethered to his Gemini IV capsule, White is pictured above holding a compressed gas "zip gun" for maneuvers in his right hand. His spacewalk began over the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii and ended 23 minutes later above the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, the term spacewalk is a bit deceiving as White was falling freely in low earth orbit alongside his capsule manned by fellow astronaut James McDivitt. In free-fall, White was able to control his motions by firing bursts from his gun until its supply of compressed gas ran out. He ultimately returned, exhausted, to the two-man Gemini capsule.

Saturn's moon, Rhea

2005-05-31T18:54:00.000-07:00

The spot was first noticed last year by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Cassini's flyby of Rhea in April imaged in the spot in great detail. Astronomers hypothesize that the light-colored spot is the result of a relatively recent impact on the surface of the icy moon. The impact that likely created the crater also splashed light-colored material from the interior onto the darker surface. Rhea spans 1,500 kilometers across and is the second largest moon of Saturn after Titan. Rhea sports several other light colored surface features that are, as yet, not well understood.

2005-05-31T18:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.atlan.org/

Stars do not Tell

2005-05-31T18:52:00.000-07:00

Astrology, the age-old 'science' of predicting people's futures by casting their horoscopes based on the positions of the stars, the planets and the moon, is a lot of moonshine. That is the conclusion of two 20th-century French researchers, Michel Gauquelin and his wife Francoise, who spent 20 years investigating the subject. They examined the birth data of more than 40,000 people throughout Europe to try to find cor-relations between birth signs, jobs and personalities.
Their computerised findings were published in 1983, and their rejection of astrology is total. There was not one piece of evidence, they concluded, to show that it was anything but a sham - despite the efforts of astrologers to prove otherwise. 'It is now quite certain,' stated the Gauquelins, 'that the signs in the sky which preside over our births have no power whatsoever to decide our fates, to affect our heredity or characteristics, or to play any part, however humble, in our lives.'

2005-05-24T01:59:00.000-07:00

A teaspoon of tea leaves contains more of the stimulant drug caffeine than a teaspoon of ground coffee. but tea has a less marked effect on the body because it is more diluted in use. As a result, a cup of tea contains only about 60 per cent as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. Caffeine, which is also found in cocoa and in cola drinks, can in large doses cause anxiety, irritability, restlessness and heart palpitations.

2005-05-24T01:54:00.000-07:00

Eskimos eat more fat than any other people in the world, but heart diseases, are rare among them. Reason is that the fats the Eskimos eat in their traditional diet of fish and seal blubber are of a type known to doctors as unsaturated - liquid at room temperature. Most vegetable fats are of the same type. The fats that can lead to heart disease - because they build up in the walls of arteries, restricting the flow of blood and putting extra strain on the heart - are known as saturated fats which are solid at room temperature. Animal meat and eggs are particularly rich in saturated fats.

2005-05-24T01:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.amityvillemurders.net/murders.html

2005-05-24T01:51:00.000-07:00

Dried milk was used as long ago as the 13th century - by the cavalry of the Mongol emperor, Genghis Khan (about1162-1227). The Mongol soldiers dried mare's milk to a powder in the sun to preserve it. Then, at the beginning of each day's journey, they put some of the powder in a water bottle hung on the saddle. The horse's jogging acted like a whisk, turning the mixture into a thin porridge by nightfall.

2005-05-24T01:20:00.001-07:00

An apple a day does not keep the doctor away. A medium-sized apple supplies only 10mg of vitamin C; an orange has five times as much. Apart from 12g of sugar, apples have little other than about 2g of dietary fibre.

Brown bread is better then white - particularly whole meal ones. Whole meal bread contains more iron, vitamins and dietary fibre. Ordinary brown bread are between the two.

White eggs are just as nutritious as brown ones. The colour of the shell is a characteristic of the breed of chicken. It has nothing to do with nutritive value.

Margarine is just as fattening as butter and as Qassidi. In Britain and in many other countries, margarine must by law contain no more than 16 per cent water, the same as butter. So all margarines contain 84 percent fat - just as butter does. Margarine is also no less nutritious than butter. It has as much vitamin A added as there is in butter, and it has more vitamin D.

Carots help you see better in the dark. People whose eyesight is normal but who are short of vitamin A cannot see in dim light - an ailment known as night blindness. Carrots are rich in carotene, which forms vitamin A in the body. Carrots will not, however, help if the inability to see at night is due to other causes.

Honey, often thought to be particularly health-giving, has no exceptional value. It consists only of fructose (fruit sugar), glucose (grape sugar) and water. Vitamins are present in such small amounts that they make no worthwhile contribution to the diet.

The belief tha brown sugar is better for health than white has no scientific foundation. White sugar is 99.9 per cent pre sucrose. Brown sugar is 98 per cen sucrose and 1 per cent water, leaving room for only minute traces of mineral salts and protein. the difference is therefore ngegligible.

2005-05-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

The bloated feeling and the thirst that may sometimes follow a meal in a Chinese restaurant seem to be caused by nothing more exotic than salt. At one time doctors believed that the feelings were caused by the addition of monosodium glutamate, a preservatiuve and taste-enhancer which is traditionally used in Chinese food. Now, however, many doctors believe that the feelings are caused by the high salt content of Chinese meals. The feelings persist until the body gets rid of the salt overload several hours later.

2005-05-24T01:14:00.000-07:00

The idea that spinach promotes strength - one made popular by the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor - is based on a mistake. The misconception arose in 1870, when a misplaced decimal point in a set of published food tables made spinach appear to contain ten times as much iron as other vegetables. In fact, it has much the same. Furthermore, the iron in any vegetable is less valuable than a similar quantity of iron in meat, because the body is less efficient at absorbing iron from vegetables. Only between 2 and 10 percent of the iron in vegetables is absorbed, compared with 10 to 30 per cent of the iron in meat.

2005-05-24T01:13:00.000-07:00

2005-05-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

Genetics probably play the largest part in longevity, but there is evidence that people can live longer at high altitudes than at sea level. At Vilcabamba, a Peruvian village about 2750m up in the Andes, birth certificates show 9 people out of 819 aged more than 100. In the U.S, the average is 3 per 100,000. Mountain people, medical researchers have found, are less likely than lowlanders to sufer from leukaemia, hyptertension, arteriosclerosis, heart attacks and high blood pressure. On the other hand, they get more tuberculosis, bronchitis and pneumonia.

2005-05-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

Doubling a child's height on his 2nd birthday gives a close estimate of his final adult height. A boy of 2 is 49.5% of his adult height; a girl, 52.8%

You grow by about 8mm every night when you are asleep, but shrink to your former height the follwing day. During the day, the cartilage discs in the spine are squeezed like sponges by gravity while you stand or sit. But at night, when you lie down to sleep, the pressure is relieved and the discs swell again. For the same reason, astronauts can be temporarily 50mm taller after a long spaceflight.

The focusing muscles of the eye move about 100,000 times a day. To give the leg muscles the same exercise would involve 80km a day. That'd be more than 80 rounds in the stadium.

The stomach's digestive acids are strong enough to dissolve zinc. But the cells in the stomach lining are renewed so quickly-500,ooo cells are replaced every minute and the entire lining every three days - that the acids do not have time to dissolve the lining.

Human bones is as strong as granite in supporting weight. A block the size of a matchbox can support 9 tonnes-4 times as much as concrete

Labour of Love

2005-05-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

Twenty thousand men laboured for nearly 20 years to bring the Taj Mahal at Agra, to its final shining glory of perfection beside the Yamuna river. The building, a mausoleum of pure white marble, was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the body of his beloved second wife, Mumtaz Mahal (known as the 'the Exalted of the Palace')
She bore him 14 children, dying in childbirth in 1630 at the age of 39.

Originally Shah Jahan, who ruled India from 1628 to 1658, had planned to build a matching mausoleum in black marble on the opposite bank of the river to house his own body. But the project never got off the ground. Instead he was buried beside his wife in the shrine he had built for her.

2005-05-03T21:35:00.001-07:00

Beauty and The Beast

2005-05-03T21:35:00.000-07:00

The exquisite dome that crowns the Taj Mahal in India owes its shape to one of the most blood-soaked leaders in history. In 1401 Tamerlane, a 14th century Tartar warlord who was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, burnt the great mosque in Damascus, Syria, to the ground. Inside it at the time, according to a contemporary historian, were 30,000 women, children, priests and refugees.
Far from wishing to forget this act of carnage, he had the unique bulging dome of the mosque copied at Samarkand for his own magnificent tomb, the Gur Amir, parts of which still stand.
From there the style spread northwards (where it eventually became the onion shape characteristic of the domes of Russian churches as well as on the Palace of the Kremlin) and southwards across the Himalayas. It caught on in India after one of Tamerlane's descendants. Baber, overthrew the Sultan of Delhi in 1526 and founded the Mughal empire. It was one of Baber's dynasty, Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal. The shape of the gliterring white dome, completed in 1648, derives directly from the mosque that Shah Jahan's ancestor had reduced to a blackened heap nearly 250 years before

2005-05-01T21:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.bushrevealed.com/

King Garfield

2005-05-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

To kill a cat in ancient Egypt brought immediate death. To the Egyptians, cats were sacred to Bast, the cat-headed goddes of pleasure, and cat funerals were so numerous that the animals' cemeteries are still used by modern Egyptians as a source of rich fertiliser.

The Rising Son

2005-04-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

It is a fallacy that people's height depends solely on their genetic makeup. What they eat makes a difference, too. Western food, for instance, has transformed Japanese patterns of growth. In 1900, the average height of 12-yr-old Japanese children was 1.34m. The influence of the West brought about a dramatic change, firstly in the children of Japanese immigrants to the USA, who ate more proteins, particularly in the form of meat. By 19578, these children were far taller than their homeland counterparts. By the 1970s, however, the Japanese in Japan had caught up with those living in the USA. Japaneses men and women now average 1.69m and 1.56m in height respectively, only slightly shorter than Britons and Americans.

2005-04-29T08:43:00.000-07:00

A university creative writing class was asked to write a concise essay containing the following elements:

1) Religion
2) Royalty
3) Sex
4) Mystery

The prizewinner wrote: "My God," said the Queen, "I'm pregnant. I wonder who did it?"

Buddhism

2005-04-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

Founded about 2500 years ago by Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who lived from about 563 to 483 BC in northeast India. Known as Buddha which means 'the Awakened One', its main writings are contained in a number of sacred books called the Pali Canon (Pali is the Indian language in which thy are written), and in a vast collection of Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese ssacred texts. There are now some 256 million believers, mainly in Southeast Asia and the Far East.

Teachings:

Four Noble Truths
1. There are hardships in life
2. The cause of this is 'Desire'
3. Hardships can be left by leaving 'Desire'
4. Leaving 'Desire' can be done by following the 'Eight Fold Path'

The Noble Eight Fold Path
Right view
Right intention
Right speech
Right action
Right livelihood
Right effort
Right mindfulness
Right concentration

Before fulfilling the Noble Eight Fold Path, the followers were taught to cleanse themselves from any forms of 'Desire'.
But.
Before carrying out any actions, one must have the heart to do it, in other words, the 'desire' or 'willingness' must be present in order for the actions to be carried out. Are not the absences of these become a barrier between the Four Noble Truths and the Eight fold Path?

Explanations anyone?

The Nine Satanic Sins

2005-04-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

-Stupidity

-Pretentiousness

-Self-deceit

-Herd Confromity

-Lack of perspective

-Forgetfulness of Past Orthodoxies

-Counterproductive Pride

-Lack of Aesthetics

The Eleven Satanic Rules of The Earth

2005-04-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
3. When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
9. Do not harm little children.
10. Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.
11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

Will the real Father Christmas please stand up

2005-04-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

The original Santa Claus lived nowhere near the North Pole. If he existed at all, he lived in the Mediterranean. Santa Claus is a corruption of the Dutch name Sinte klaas, for St Nicholas, who seems to have been a 4th-century bishop of Myra in Turkey. St Nicholas was the patron of children and unmarried girls. Tradition says that he gave bags of gold to three daughters from a noble but poor, family as their dowries, thus saving them from a life of prostitution. As the legend developed in the Netherlands, the three bags of gold were replaced by a bulging sack of presents which Santa claus distributed to children on December 6, St Nicholas's feast day. Dutch settlers took this custom to North America, where it fused with north European legends about a winter spirit who gave gifts to good children and punished the bad.

Fatal Kiss

2005-04-25T16:14:00.000-07:00

According to ancient Chinese historians, one Chinese poet, Li Po (AD 705-62), died because of his dedication to his poetic themes of wine and love. He is said to have drowned after leaning out of a boat in a drunken attempt to kiss the reflection of the moon. What a dumbass.

2005-04-25T16:12:00.000-07:00

2005-04-25T16:11:00.001-07:00

2004-11-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave. Go on, try it.

Each King in a deck of playing cards represents a great King from history-

Spades - King David
Hearts - Charlemagne
Clubs - Alexander the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

The average chocolate bar has 8 insects' legs in it.

2004-11-14T13:53:00.000-08:00

2004-11-14T02:00:00.000-08:00

Between 13 and 14 February 1942, Singapore witnessed one of its fiercest battles ever known. Amongst those who fought valiantly in that Battle for Pasir Panjang and lost their lives was a 27 year-old infantry officer, Lt. Adnan Saidi. Adnan Saidi and his 42-man contingent from the 1st and 2nd Battalion of the Malay Regiment fought fearlessly to defend Pasir Panjang Ridge. The ferocious fight put up by the Malay Regiment came for special mention in Lt.Gen. A.E. Percival's Despatch on the Operations of Malaya Command from 8 Dec 1941 to 15 Feb 1942:

"After two hours of heavy shelling and mortaring, the Japanese attacked the Malay Regiment which was holding Pasir Panjang Ridge. The latter fought magnificently, but suffered heavy casualties, and by afternoon the enemy had reached the Gap (Pasir Panjang Ridge)"
At this historic site, Singapore's last stand for defence was made in an epic 48-hour battle, culminating in the only (recorded) fiery hand-to-hand combat against the Japanese Army.

Minangkabau

2004-11-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

According to legend, there was a disagreement between the Minangkabau people and the Javanese. Rather than involve themselves in a war, however, which would cause much needless bloodshed, the two peoples agreed upon having a fight between their buffalos. The Javanese had a huge, strong buffalo, fierce, and powerful. On the other hand, the Minangkabau people had a small calf.
The Javanese were confident that their huge, powerful buffalo would easily defeat this tiny calf. How could a tiny calf beat a huge, ferocious buffalo? What the Minangkabau did was they took the calf away from its mother, and did not feed it any milk for a several days before the big fight. Just before the fight, they attached sharp, iron knives to the tip of their calf's horns. As the buffalo and the tiny calf were let into the ring, the calf, starving of milk, saw the buffalo, and thought it was its mother.
Hurriedly, the calf went to the underside of the buffalo, looking for milk. As it did so, the sharp knives on the calf's horns pierced the under-belly of the huge buffalo. The huge buffalo was killed, and the Minangkabau won the war. This is how the Minangkabau got their name, according to legend, for "minang" means "victory," and "kabau" means "caribou" or "water buffalo" in the Minangkabau language. This is also the source of those buffalo's horn-shaped rooves and hats of the Minangkabau people.
The story also symbolizes the intelligence and strength of the more nurturing system of the Minangkabau culture, represented by the calf looking for its mother's milk, which is able to defeat a more brutish system which on the outside appears strong, represented by the buffalo.

2004-11-13T16:13:00.000-08:00

eclipse

2004-11-13T13:07:00.000-08:00

Here is what the Earth looks like during a solar eclipse. The shadow of the Moon can be seen darkening part of Earth. This shadow moved across the Earth at nearly 2000 kilometers per hour. Only observers near the center of the dark circle see a total solar eclipse - others see a partial eclipse where only part of the Sun appears blocked by the Moon. This spectacular picture of the 1999 August 11 solar eclipse was one of the last ever taken from the Mir space station, which was deorbited in a controlled re-entry in 2001.

2004-08-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language. ][Coca-Cola was originally green. ][The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910. ][Fish that live more than 800 meters below the ocean surface don't have eyes. ][Hydrogen is an explosive gas. Oxygen supports combustion. Yet, when these are combined ..it is water which is used to put out fires.

2004-08-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

Keramat Sultan Iskandar Shah

valley of the Kings

2004-07-16T17:45:00.002-07:00