The most important holiday in Viet Nam is the Lunar New Year (also called Tet Holiday). Since it is based on the lunar calendar, it comes about one or two months later than the Western New Year. The Vietnamese New Year season traditionally lasts about a month; however, so that working life will not be […]
Surveys often reveal that more than half of all the teenage entrepreneurs that have recently emerged in the United States are firstborn children, and many are from immigrant families. Some are content with modest revenues, others are primarily after big money – but most are driven simply by the desire to shape their own destinies. […]
Two main techniques have been used for training elephants, which we may cal respectively the tough and the gentle. The former method simply consists of setting an elephant to work and beating him until he does what is expected of him. Apart from any moral considerations, this is a stupid method of training, for it […]
If you look around the area where you live, you may notice many different kinds of spiders. The world has anywhere from 40.000 to 120,000 different species of spiders. In any ordinary field, two million spiders may be hard at work. They thrive in the hottest jungles and the coldest polar regions. They have been found even […]
Generally, people are classified into three categories according to their attitudes towards money: misers, spenders, and economizers. Misers seem almost obsessed with the idea of saving, so they accumulate money in banks if their income is large, or in the house – stuffed in mattresses or under the living room rug – if they are […]
Alfred Nobel, the great Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man of many contrasts. He was the son of a bankrupt, but became a millionaire; a scientist with a love of literature; an industrialist who managed to remain an idealist. He made a fortune but lived a simple life, and although cheerful in company he […]
Notting Hill Carnival is held in London each August bank holiday, and is the largest and most colourful street event in Britain. The festival celebrates the traditions of the British black community, who emigrated to Great Britain from the West Indies in the 1950s. They brought with them the Caribbean idea of the carnival, with […]
Nearly all religions include the belief that human beings survive death in some form. For many people, such as the Balinese, a funeral symbolizes the passage from one life to another, rather than the end of a person’s existence. In Bali, a cremation is therefore a time of joy and celebration. On the morning of […]
Statistics show that rapid population growth creates problems for developing countries. So why don’t people have fewer children? Statistics from the developed countries suggest that it is only when people’s living standards begin to rise that birth rates begin to fall. There are good reasons for this. Poor countries cannot afford social services and old […]
Most headset stereos have one thing in common: they can cause hearing loss. Studies have shown that sound levels from the machines can reach 115 decibels or more – roughly equivalent to standing 100 feet from a commercial jet at the moment of take-off. At that level, permanent hearing damage can occur after just 15 […]