While testing a new angina treatment, researchers in Merthyr Tydfil discovered (purely by accident) that the new drug had erection-stimulating side effects. This discovery would go on to form the basis for Viagra.
Alaric was the first barbarian to successfully capture the city Rome in 410 A.D. Although his troops spared most of the residents and the architecture (Alaric was a known lover of beauty and literature) they pretty well looted the place.
Interestingly enough, a vision of his some 15 years before had predicted that he would successfully capture Rome. After the capture, he traveled south with the intention of crossing over into Africa, but was hindered by storms along the Mediterranean coast.
His descendants, the Visigoths, migrated to the Iberian peninsula, and eventually became the Spaniards; an indication of their heritage lies in the fair hair and blue eyes of the Northern Spaniards. See also Stilicho below.
[He] was an eminent Harvard psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Pulitzer Prize winner whose clinical work focused on dreams, nightmares and adolescent suicide. In 1990, he turned the academic community upside down because he wanted to publish research in which he said that people who claimed they had been abducted by aliens, were not crazy at all. Their experiences were genuine.
Mack initially suspected that such persons were suffering from mental illness, but when no obvious pathologies were present in the persons he interviewed, Mack's interest was piqued.
"What are the other possibilities?" asked Mack. "I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can't account for in any other way. It seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry."
"Do I question my own sanity? Absolutely, every day, because the world says you're crazy for having these experiences. But if it was only me who had had intimate experience with female aliens, producing hybrid offspring, I would say I'm certifiable, put me away, I'm crazy. And that's how I felt when I initially had these experiences.
My wife thought I'd lost it. But then I began to look at the experience outside myself and realised that hundreds, if not thousands, of people reported that exact same experience. And that gave me sanity. That gave me hope. I knew I couldn't be fantasising about this."
1. He was sent a letter informing him that there was to be an inquiry into his research. It was the first time in Harvard's history that a tenured professor was subjected to such an investigation.
John Mack decided to fight back and hired a lawyer, Eric MacLeish. There followed 14 months of stressful and bitter negotiations.
Eventually Harvard dropped the case and a statement was issued reaffirming Mack's academic freedom to study what he wished and concluding that he "remains a member in good standing of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine".
2. He was killed by a car in 2004, in north London, shortly after leaving a Tube station. At the time he was visiting the city to deliver a lecture on his Pulitzer Prize research in 1977.
3. [He had] the support of Laurance Rockefeller, who also funded Mack's Center for four consecutive years at $250,000 per year.
The extension of a new world view that derives from our experience of the interdependence and interconnectedness of all living things, together with a recognition of the fragility of the earth's ecosystems, will be an important step in the preservation of the planet.
But blowing the traditional Western mind is not enough. Leadership and action on behalf of life and the environment will be required. We will need to take risks and expose our vulnerabilities. Perhaps it has always been so, but I am struck by how many of the political and intellectual leaders I admire for their efforts on behalf of human life have spent time in prison.
Facing up to the established order, taking a stand with one's whole being, exposing one's vulnerability, and risking the loss of personal freedom all seem to inspire both leaders and their followers.
Herodotus of Greece wrote:
1) Companies hire inexperienced and unqualified people to handle HR, but expect them to perform at higher levels than they are qualified.
2) Companies do not invest in HR as they do in other departments.
3) Many small to medium size companies have HR people that are strategic partners.
When looking for a top-notch program that would prepare me to be an HR leader, I found that there weren't many programs that were forward-looking. [Bob Filipczak]
Many HR people I know (and I am an HR person so I know a lot of them) have a very narrow perspective - they know HR but they do not know business. I believe HR people are better off with a business degree than an HR degree.
If HR can demonstrate and take ownership for the aggregate human capital investment of the business and show how the productivity and ROI of the investment can be improved...they'll have a lot of influence in the management of the company and be "at the table." [mahendrakumardash]
The majority of people in HR are so wrapped up in politics and diversity programs they have no interest or time for activities that add value to the company's bottom line. They are "policemen" and view employees with contempt … I follow the works of Jeff Pfeffer, Dr. John Sullivan and David Ulrich, but I see no evidence of their theories in practice in Canadian business. [Frank DiBernardino]
Thank you, Ginro
Toque
Cross of St George Witanagemot Club
Wonko
Guthrum
English National Anthem for now
Petition for Anthem 1
Petition for Anthem 2
English Claim of Right 2008
The Telegraph today - England Arise"In the early years of the last century socialists in England used to sing a hymn about their liberation from exploitation and under-representation: its title and opening line serves as the perfect envoi today. "England, arise! The long, long night is over!"
Labour might never govern in England again, which would serve it right, given the contempt it has shown for the English. It might well precipitate the end of the Union itself.That was a process started in 1997 by Labour; and it has a logical conclusion of separation which would, once an English parliament were created, be clearly in sight.
The Conservative Party has its head in the sand on this issue, as on so much else: which is odd, given the sheer misery such a process would cause for Labour.
The Tories' prevalent and infantile cast of mind associates English nationalism with racism and other forms of evil.
Since the creation of an English nation would create an English citizenship equal to all who legally reside in that country, whatever their origins, such fears are groundless.
At the moment, the word "English" when applied to people is a badge of ethnicity; after independence it would become a badge of nationhood."
Some historyGeorge was probably first made well known in England by Arculpus and Adamnan in the early eighth century.
The Acts of St George, which recounted his visits to Caerleon and Glastonbury while on service in England, were translated into Anglo-Saxon.
Among churches dedicated to St George was one at Doncaster in 1061.
George was adopted as the patron saint of soldiers after he was said to have appeared to the Crusader army at the Battle of Antioch in 1098.
Many similar stories were transmitted to the West by Crusaders who had heard them from Byzantine troops, and were circulated further by the troubadours.
When Richard 1 was campaigning in Palestine in 1191-92 he put the army under the protection of St George.
England has been wiped off a map of Europe drawn up by Brussels bureaucrats as part of a scheme that the Tories claim threatens to undermine the country's national identity.
The story really isn't the point here though - its the individuality, its the eccentricity (in England's that's a virtue) - there is a line in the Lord of the Rings when Gandalf tells Frodo that what's worth fighting for is all the absurd Bolgers and Boffins and Bagginses- that's the same sense you get from Wallace and Gromit.
These two characters are crackers, they are mad, their lives revolve around inventions, cheese (particularly Wensleydale) and tea- but in some sense they are the essense of the whole of Western civilisation. Civilisation isn't just Michelangelo and Machiavelli, its Wallace and his efforts to get to the moon, its loving Wensleydale and its a dog knitting in a chair and rats with shades over their eyes, its merry eccentricity which is a value all to itself.
The absurdity of life is in many ways its essence - when we talk about freedom often we lose sight of the fact that freedom isn't just a political issue - its a personal issue as well.
