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👁 :519
Christopher Columbus
Catagory:Biography
Author:LARRY ANDERSON
Posted Date:05/19/2025
Posted By:utopia online

As a sailor, sea captain, trader, and explorer, what Christopher Columbus lacked in navigation tools, he made up for with courage,daring, and perseverance as he headed straight west across an unknown ocean. A lot of people think that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America. However, by the time he made his first voyage, in 1492, aboriginal peoples had been living in North America for tens of thousands of years. Even the Vikings, who were also Europeans, had landed in Canada hundreds of years before Columbus was born. Furthermore, Columbus himself never actually set foot on mainland North America, but landed in the Caribbean Islands. Overall, Columbus was wrong about where he was going (Asia), how long the journey was (he thought it was 3,700 km, but it was more than 19,000 km), and where he landed (aboriginal American people became known as “Indians” because Columbus thought he had landed in India). So, why is Columbus the most famous explorer of all time? Partly because what Columbus accomplished was amazing for the time. In those days, Europeans trading with Asia had to sail all the way south around the tip of Africa, then east across the Indian Ocean. Columbus had the daring idea to take a short cut - straight west across the empty ocean, into the complete unknown. It took tremendous determination for a man who was known as a trader - not an explorer to get backing for his plan to sail around the world. The experts said it couldn’t be done. One country after another turned him down until, after years of effort, Columbus finally got the king and queen of Spain to give him the money, ships, and sailors he needed. For Columbus to sail further out of sight of land than anyone ever had done before, trusting in his own calculations and abilities, took a lot of courage. And he would need all of his seafaring abilities to find a safe route home again, using the Trade Winds that blow east across the Atlantic Ocean. While Columbus remained convinced to his death that he had found a route to India, his voyages changed the course of history. Even with all his mixups, Columbus brought back to Europe the news of amazing new lands and peoples. His discovery was the start of a huge movement of Europeans who came to North, Central, and South America to explore, trade, conquer, and occupy. Ultimately, Columbus’s adventuring meant that many changes would take place in the Americas. Whether you believe those changes were good, bad, or a mix of the two, there can be no doubt that Christopher Columbus altered the world through his vision and determination.


Type:other
👁 :317
THE GOLDEN RULE OF HABIT CHANGE
Catagory:Reading
Author:Charles Duhigg(The Power of Habit)
Posted Date:05/17/2025
Posted By:utopia online

You Can’t Extinguish a Bad Habit, You Can Only Change It. HOW IT WORKS: USE THE SAME CUE. PROVIDE THE SAME REWARD. CHANGE THE ROUTINE. Dungy’s system would eventually turn the Bucs into one of the league’s winningest teams. He would become the only coach in NFL history to reach the play-offs in ten consecutive years, the first African American coach to win a Super Bowl, and one of the most respected figures in professional athletics. His coaching techniques would spread throughout the league and all of sports. His approach would help illuminate how to remake the habits in anyone’s life. But all of that would come later. Today, in San Diego, Dungy just wanted to win.From the sidelines, Dungy looks up at the clock: 8:19 remaining. The Bucs have been behind all game and have squandered opportunity after opportunity, in typical fashion. If their defense doesn’t make something happen right now, this game will effectively be over. San Diego has the ball on their own twenty-yard line, and the Chargers’ quarterback, Stan Humphries, is preparing to lead a drive that, he hopes, will put the game away. The play clock begins, and Humphries is poised to take the snap. But Dungy isn’t looking at Humphries. Instead, he’s watching his own players align into a formation they have spent months perfecting. Traditionally, football is a game of feints and counterfeints, trick plays and misdirection. Coaches with the thickest playbooks and most complicated schemes usually win.Dungy, however, has taken the opposite approach. He isn’t interested in complication or obfuscation. When Dungy’s defensive players line up, it is obvious to everyone exactly which play they are going to use. Dungy has opted for this approach because, in theory, he doesn’t need misdirection. He simply needs his team to be faster than everyone else. In football, milliseconds matter. So instead of teaching his players hundreds of formations, he has taught them only a handful, but they have practiced over and over until the behaviors are automatic. When his strategy works, his players can move with a speed that is impossible to overcome.3.6 But only when it works. If his players think too much or hesitate or secondguess their instincts, the system falls apart. And so far, Dungy’s players have been a mess.This time, however, as the Bucs line up on the twenty-yard line, something is different. Take Regan Upshaw, a Buccaneer defensive end who has settled into a three-point stance on the scrimmage line. Instead of looking up and down the line, trying to absorb as much information as possible, Upshaw is looking only at the cues that Dungy taught him to focus on. First, he glances at the outside foot of the opposite lineman (his toes are back, which means he is preparing to step backward and block while the quarterback passes); next, Upshaw looks at the lineman’s shoulders (rotated slightly inward), and the space between him and the next player (a fraction narrower than expected). Upshaw has practiced how to react to each of these cues so many times that, at this point, he doesn’t have to think about what to do. He just follows his habits. San Diego’s quarterback approaches the line of scrimmage and glances right, then left, barks the count and takes the ball. He drops back five steps and stands tall, swiveling his head, looking for an open receiver. Three seconds have passed since the play started. The stadium’s eyes and the television cameras are on him. So most observers fail to see what’s happening among the Buccaneers. As soon as Humphries took the snap, Upshaw sprang into action. Within the first second of the play, he darted right, across the line of scrimmage, so fast the offensive lineman couldn’t block him. Within the next second, Upshaw ran four more paces downfield, his steps a blur. In the next second, Upshaw moved three strides closer to the quarterback, his path impossible for the offensive lineman to predict. As the play moves into its fourth second, Humphries, the San Diego quarterback, is suddenly exposed. He hesitates, sees Upshaw from the corner of his eye. And that’s when Humphries makes his mistake. He starts thinking. Humphries spots a teammate, a rookie tight end named Brian Roche, twenty yards downfield. There’s another San Diego receiver much closer, waving his arms, calling for the ball. The short pass is the safe choice. Instead, Humphries, under pressure, performs a split-second analysis, cocks his arm, and heaves to Roche.That hurried decision is precisely what Dungy was hoping for. As soon as the ball is in the air, a Buccaneer safety named John Lynch starts moving.Lynch’s job was straightforward: When the play started, he ran to a particular point on the field and waited for his cue. There’s enormous pressure to improvise in this situation. But Dungy has drilled Lynch until his routine is automatic. And as a result, when the ball leaves the quarterback’s hands, Lynch is standing ten yards from Roche, waiting. As the ball spins through the air, Lynch reads his cues the direction of the quarterback’s face mask and hands, the spacing of the receivers—and starts moving before it’s clear where the ball will land. Roche, the San Diego receiver, springs forward, but Lynch cuts around him and intercepts the pass. Before Roche can react, Lynch takes off down the field toward the Chargers’ end zone. The other Buccaneers are perfectly positioned to clear his route. Lynch runs 10, then 15, then 20, then almost 25 yards before he is finally pushed out of bounds. The entire play has taken less than ten seconds.Two minutes later, the Bucs score a touchdown, taking the lead for the first time all game. Five minutes later, they kick a field goal. In between, Dungy’s defense shuts down each of San Diego’s comeback attempts. The Buccaneers win, 25 to 17, one of the biggest upsets of the season.At the end of the game, Lynch and Dungy exit the field together. “It feels like something was different out there,” Lynch says as they walk into the tunnel. “We’re starting to believe,” Dungy replies.


Type:other
👁 :417
The Story of Aladdin, or The Magic Lamp Part 3
Catagory:Fiction
Author:Translated BY MALCOLM C. LYONS( THE ARABIAN NIGHTS TALES OF 1001 NIGHTS)
Posted Date:05/17/2025
Posted By:utopia online

At this question, Aladdin lowered his eyes, embarrassed. His mother, however, answered in his place. ‘Aladdin is an idle fellow,’ she said. ‘While he was alive, his father did his best to make him learn his trade but never succeeded. Since his death, despite everything I have tried to tell him, again and again, day after day, the only trade he knows is acting the vagabond and spending all his time playing with children, as you saw for yourself, mindless of the fact that he is no longer a child. And if you can’t make him feel ashamed and realize how pointless his behaviour is, I despair of him ever amounting to anything. He knows his father left nothing, and he can himself see that despite spinning cotton all day as I do, I have great difficulty in earning enough to buy us bread. In fact, I have decided that one of these days I am going to shut the door on him and send him off to fend for himself.’ After she had spoken, Aladdin’s mother burst into tears, whereupon the magician said to Aladdin: ‘This is no good, my nephew. You must think now about helping yourself and earning your own living. There are all sorts of trades; see if there isn’t one for which you have a particular inclination. Perhaps that of your father doesn’t appeal to you and you would be more suited to another: be quite open about this, I am just trying to help you.’ Seeing Aladdin remain silent, he went on: ‘If you want to be an honest man yet dislike the idea of learning a trade, I will provide you with a shop filled with rich cloths and fine fabrics. You can set about selling them, purchasing more goods with the money that you make, and in this manner you will live honourably. Think about it and then tell me frankly your opinion. You will find that I always keep my word.’ This offer greatly flattered Aladdin, who did not like manual work, all the more so since he had enough sense to know that shops with these kinds of goods were esteemed and frequented and that the merchants were well dressed and well regarded. So he told the magician, whom he thought of as his uncle, that his inclination was more in that direction than any other and that he would be indebted to him for the rest of his life for the help he was offering. ‘Since this occupation pleases you,’ the magician continued, ‘I will take you with me tomorrow and will have you dressed in rich garments appropriate for one of the wealthiest merchants of this city. The following day we will consider setting up a shop, as I think it should be done.’ Aladdin’s mother, who up until then had not believed the magician was her husband’s brother, now no longer doubted it after hearing all the favours he promised her son. She thanked him for his good intentions and, after exhorting Aladdin to make himself worthy of all the wealth his uncle had promised him, served supper. Throughout the meal, the talk ran upon the same subject until the magician, seeing the night was well advanced, took leave of the mother and the son and retired. The next morning, he returned as he had promised to the widow of Mustafa the tailor and took Aladdin off with him to a wealthy merchant who sold only ready-made garments in all sorts of fine materials and for all ages and ranks. He made the merchant bring out clothes that would fit Aladdin and, after putting to one side those which pleased him best and rejecting the others that did not seem to him handsome enough, said to Aladdin: ‘My nephew, choose from among all these garments the one you like best.’ Aladdin, delighted with his new uncle’s generosity, picked one out which the magician then bought, together with all the necessary accessories, and paid for everything without bargaining. …cont


Type:other
👁 :337
THE CHALLENGE
Catagory:Reading
Author:Dean Graziosi (Millionaire Success Habits)
Posted Date:05/16/2025
Posted By:utopia online

You have been exposed to the success habits of the world’s richest as well as most fulfilled human beings on the planet. Now it’s time for you to reach new heights. You can have everything you’ve dreamed about wealth, a great job, a terrific business, and incredible relationships. It doesn’t have to be a “wonderful thought” anymore, it can be your reality and all of it is within reach. So what’s holding you back? Well, if you’re like a lot of people, you read these words, got inspired, started dreaming about what’s possible, and glimpsed where you might go. Maybe you even had a clear and powerful vision. Your thoughts might have included all the positive things that could happen if you don’t let the villain within sabotage you, if you change your story from limiting to limitless. You can envision how this type of change would affect your life. You get the Success Habits, the Happiness Habits, the Success Hacks. It all makes sense, and you’re inspired by the stories I’ve told you stories of people just like you who have transformed their lives. Some of my stories might even have made you think, “If this guy can do it, I surely can” So why the heck would you or anyone ever struggle to get started? Because the idea of making changes in your life can be overwhelming and scary. Your subconscious found a place to be safe and doesn’t want to stray. But safe doesn’t mean happy, fulfilled, or financially prosperous. And that’s just what’s going on below the surface! On a conscious level, you’ve got a lot going on. You’ve got bills to pay, jobs to do, chores to tackle. As much as you want to start making these Success Habits part of your life, you’ve got to take action. You’ve got to do stuff. I get it. I’ve been stuck in that place between thought and action. The good news is, I know how to get unstuck, and I’m going to share that with you right now so this book isn’t just a good inspirational read, but your road map to action.


Type:other
👁 :668
Aeneid
Catagory: History
Author:ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD HISTORY
Posted Date:05/16/2025
Posted By:utopia online

Virgil’s Aeneid is arguably the most influential and celebrated work of Latin literature. Written in the epic meter, dactylic hexameter, the Aeneid follows the journey of Aeneas, son of Venus, after the fall of Troy. According to an ancient mythical tradition, Aeneas fled the burning city and landed in Italy, where he established a line of descendants who would become the Roman people. Virgil (70–19 b.c.e.) draws on the works of numerous authors, such as Lucretius, Ennius, Apollonius of Rhodes, and, especially, Homer. Virgil consistently adopts Homeric style and diction (a good example of this is the first line of the poem: “I sing of arms and a man . . .”). He also re-creates entire scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Books 1 to 6 of the Aeneid show such close parallels to the Homeric epics that they are often called the “Virgilian Odyssey.” Books 7 to 12, meanwhile, closely echo the Iliad. Virgil’s use of Homeric elements goes beyond mere imitation. Virgil often places Aeneas in situations identical to those of Odysseus or Achilles, allowing Aeneas’s response to those situations to differentiate him from (and sometimes surpass) his Homeric counterparts. Virgil constructs his epic in relation to the Roman people and their cultural ideals. He defines Aeneas by the ethical quality of piety, a concept of particular importance for Rome at the time of the Aeneid’s composition. The Aeneid also contains several etiological stories of interest to the Roman people, most notably that of Dido and the origin of the strife between the Romans and the Carthaginians. The Dido episode is one of the most famous vignettes of the Aeneid. Dido, the queen of Carthage also known by her Phoenician name, Elyssa—aids Aeneas and his shipwrecked Trojans in Book 1. Through Venus’s intervention, Dido falls desperately in love with Aeneas and wants him and his men to remain in Carthage. But a message from Jove reminds Aeneas that his fated land is in Italy. Immediately, he orders his men to depart. Dido is heartbroken over Aeneas’s leaving: She builds a pyre out of Aeneas’s gifts and commits suicide on it, prophesying the coming of Hannibal before she dies. When Aeneas descends to the Underworld in Book 4, Dido’s shade refuses to speak with him. Dido’s character shows a great deal of complexity. She appears first as an amalgam of Alcinous and Arete as she hospitably receives her Trojan guests but soon becomes a Medea figure, well acquainted with magic and arcane knowledge. Dido is a sympathetic character throughout the epic, though much of how Virgil describes her would have brought to the Roman reader’s mind the Egyptian queen Cleopatra (associated withMark Antony and the civil war). Interpretations of the Aeneid are numerous and far from unanimous. The Aeneid’s composition coincides with the end of the civil wars and the beginning of Augustus’s regime. Virgil ostensibly endorses the new princeps by referring to him as the man who will usher in another golden age. Yet several elements of the epic might suggest that Virgil did not wholeheartedly support Augustus. Much of the debate centers on the war in Italy that occupies the second half of the epic, in which some scholars see a reference to the Battle of Perusia in 41 b.c.e., an event Augustus would have preferred to forget. Scholars also point to the end of the Aeneid, where Aeneas kills Turnus as he pleads for his life, as unambiguously criticizing the new leadership. This anti-Augustan view of the Aeneid has, however, met with opposition. Many scholars find more evidence of the Iliad than of Augustus’s campaign in the latter half of the Aeneid. Others suggest that in killing Turnus, Aeneas acted appropriately for his cultural circumstances. The Aeneid has also been proposed to represent, not Virgil’s view of Augustus, but rather the condition of the Roman people. Virgil seems to offer conflicting evidence for his perspective on Augustan Rome and may intentionally leave the matter ambiguous so that the reader may decide for him- or herself.The Aeneid was highly anticipated even before publication and has since enjoyed immense popularity. Quintilian regarded Virgil as nearly equal to Homer and credits him with having the more difficult task. Latin epic writers after Virgil looked to the Aeneid as their model. Statius even acknowledges that his epic, the Thebaid, cannot surpass that of Virgil. The Aeneid became a standard school text of the ancient world and was a critical part of a good education. Virgil, however, considered the work unfinished. At the time of his death he famously called for the Aeneid to be burned rather than published. Augustus saved the Aeneid from the flames and ordered its publication.


Type:other
👁 :398
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Catagory: History
Author:Brian HaughLon((LOST CIVILILATTONS)
Posted Date:05/15/2025
Posted By:utopia online

The Dead Sea Scrolls are, without doubt, the most significant and exciting manuscript find of the last 100 years. The cache of scrolls and scroll fragments were discovered in 11 caves in the area of Qumran, 13 miles east of Jerusalem, close to the Dead Sea in Israel. This extraordinary library of Jewish documents dates from between the third century B.c. and A.D. 68, and consists of scrolls made from animal skins (parchment), a few of papyrus, and one extremely unusual example in copper. The texts are written using a carbon-based ink, and are written mostly in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic (a Semitic language allegedly spoken by Jesus), and a small number in Greek. Research into these mysterious documents and their authors has been ongoing since their initial discovery in the late 1940s and has thrown some fascinating light, not only on the Bible, but also on a shadowy brotherhood of men and women known as the Essenes. In 1947, Bedouin goat hearders were searching for a stray goat among the cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea when they came upon a hitherto unexplored cave. Inside the cave, the Bedouins discovered a number of ancient clay jars along the walls, which were filled with manuscripts and wrapped in linen. In all, seven clay jars were recovered from the cave (known as Cave 1) and thus began the nineyear-long investigation of the caves around the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. During the search for scrolls, archaeologists often had to deal with the problem of local Bedouins plundering the caves, eager to make a profit by selling the manuscripts to Arab antiqities dealers in Bethlehem. Eventually, however, the investigations produced approximately 800 documents from 11 different caves at Qumran. A few of these caves, particularly Cave 4, appear to have functioned as permanent libraries with built-in shelves. Although some of the Qumran Scrolls were written during the time of Jesus, none of them refer directly to him, or to any of his apostles. This may be because the scrolls as a whole only consist of a fraction of what was probably once a huge library of manuscripts, most of which is now lost. One of the most fascinating aspects of the scrolls is that they contain the oldest group of Old Testament texts ever found, the only other Hebrew document of similar antiquity is the second century B.c. Nash Papyrus from Egypt, which contains a Hebrew text of the Ten Commandments. The Dead Sea Scrolls can be separated into two categories-the biblical, which consist of copies of the actual books of the Hebrew Scriptures and commentaries on these texts, and the nonbiblical, which consist of the prayer books and rules of life of the community that wrote the scripts. In the Biblical texts, every book of the Old Testament is represented, apart from the Book of Esther and the Book of Nehemiah. There are prophecies by Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel as well as traditional stories involving Biblical figures such as Noah, Abraham, and Enoch, none of which are recorded in the canonical Hebrew Bible. Some of the most important texts discovered in the caves at Qumran include the Great Isaiah Scroll, which contains the entire 66chapter book of Isaiah; a commentary on the Book of Habakkuk-one of the books of the Old Testament Minor Prophets; a book of community rules known as the Manual of Discipline, consisting mainly of a summary of the responsibilities of the Master of a sectarian Jewish community and his disciples; and the controversial Temple Scroll. The Temple Scroll is the longest and probably the best-preserved of all the Dead Sea Scrolls, and focuses on the ideal design and operation of a new and perfect temple, including its laws and sacrificial procedures. The question of who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and subsequently hid them away in the caves around Qumran is a controversial issue. Researchers have christened the probable authors of the text, a small Jewish group who lived at the nearby settlement of Qumran, the Dead Sea Sect. The Dead Sea Sect are often identified as the Essenes, credited with introducing monasticism, and one of the three leading Jewish sects discussed by Jewish historian Josephus (c. A.D. 37-c. A.D. 100), the others being the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Essenes do appear in other contemporary sources, such as Josephus Flavius, Philo of Alexandria, and Pliny the Elder, though they are not mentioned at all in the New Testament. Apparently the Essenes left Jerusalem in protest at the way the Temple, the central institution of Judaism, was being run, and set themselves up in the Judean Desert, away from what they saw as the worldliness of Jerusalem. They became an ascetic monastic community, though there seems to have been women among them, and were strict observers of the Torah, or the Written Law (usually the the first five books of the Hebrew Bible).


Type:other
👁 :549
When Knowledge Is Power
Catagory:Reading
Author:NAPOLEON HILL(LAW OF SUCCESS)
Posted Date:05/15/2025
Posted By:utopia online

Power is organized knowledge, expressed through intelligent ifforts. No effort can be said to be organized unless the individuals engaged in that effort coordinate their knowledge and energy in a spirit of perfect harmony.Lack of such harmonious coordination of effort is the main cause of practically every business failure. I conducted an interesting experiment in collaboration with the students of a well-known college. Each student was requested to write an essay-"How and Why Henry Ford Became Wealthy." Each was required to describe, as a part of his or her essay, what was believed to be the nature of Ford's real assets and of what these assets consisted in detail. The majority of the students gathered financial statements and inventories of the Ford assets and used these as the basis of their estimates of Ford's wealth. The sources of Ford's wealth included cash in banks; raw and finished materials in stock; real estate (land and buildings); and goodwill, estimated at from 10 to 2S percent of the value of the material assets. One student out of the entire group of several hundred answered as follows: Henry Ford's assets consist, in the main, of two items, i.e., (I) Working capital and raw and finished materials; (2) The knowledge, gained from experience, of Henry Ford himself, and the cooperation of a well-trained organization which understands how to apply this knowledge to best advantage from the Ford viewpoint. It is impossible to estimate, with anything approximating correctness, the actual dollars and cents value of either of these two groups of assets, but it is my opinion that their relative values are: The organized knowledge of the Ford Organization The value of cash and physical assets of every nature, including raw and finished materials 75percent ,25 percent Unquestionably the biggest asset that Henry Ford has is his own brain. Next would come the brains of his immediate circle of associates, for it has been through coordination of these that the physical assets he controls were accumulated.


Type:other
👁 :871
Michael Jordan
Catagory:Biography
Author:LARRY ANDERSON
Posted Date:05/14/2025
Posted By:utopia online

Although he was already an outstanding athlete, in Grade 10 Michael Jordan was told he wouldn’t be picked for the varsity basketball team and would never make it as a college or professional player because he was too short. It now seems incredible that anyone ever told the boy who would become the greatest basketball player in history that he was never going to make it as a professional, but that is exactly what happened to the legendary Michael Jordan. Today, Jordan is described by most experts as the best player to ever pick up a basketball. His list of awards, records, scoring titles, most-valuable-player trophies, Olympic gold medals, NBA championships, and other honors goes on for several pages. When the TV sports channel ESPN conducted a poll of sports journalists, they voted Michael Jordan the number one athlete in any sport of the past one hundred years! Yet in high school, Jordan couldn’t even make the varsity basketball team. He was already an outstanding athlete in basketball, football, and baseball, but when he tried out for the senior basketball team in Grade 10, the coaches told him he was simply too short. He was told that, at 5’ 11” (183 cm), he was never going to make it as a college or professional player. Some people might have taken that judgment to heart and lost their self-confidence, but Michael Jordan took it as a challenge, and decided he would prove the coaches wrong. He took his dedication to the sport to the next level, practicing and working out in every spare moment. In Grade 11, Michael was on the basketball team. In Grade 12, he was named one of the best high school basketball players in the United States. As a star player in university, Michael Jordan had another turning point in his life when he scored the winning basket at the last second in a U.S. college championship game. That boost to his self-esteem never faded, and Jordan says he has never doubted himself since then. Going on to win more championships at the college and professional levels, and setting records that may never be broken, Michael Jordan traces much of his success back to the lesson he learned in high school - when someone tells you that you can’t accomplish something, it simply means that you have to try harder.


Type:other
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