4 Estilos dormir de Parejas

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Ridiculously Hard Intelligence Test

 Comment What You Came Up With Below

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Questions I wish I’d asked my mother

Do our mothers remain intrinsically unknowable to us because we have such a vested interest in our own emotional survival that they must remain “mothers” to us and not fleshed-out human beings?

Not too long before my mother died, she told me that when she couldn’t sleep in the night, she would go sit in a striped wing chair near the window of her apartment.

“You just sit there in the dark?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she replied, “I sit there and I review my life, chapter by chapter.” Only because it was she who said this, it came out in her New England accent, still unshakable after five decades of living here, as “chaptuh by chaptuh.”

It wasn’t until after she was gone that I, who had called her daily, seen her weekly, and thought that no mother and daughter could be closer, realized I was missing a few “chaptuhs.”

What had I been thinking? She was 90, so there’d been a lot of time for me to ask her anything I wanted to know — but somehow I still had questions:

Why was there an emotional distance between her and her siblings that couldn’t be explained merely by geography? When had she been the happiest with my father, from whom she was divorced when I was in my 20s? What had it been like to be a single woman, working overseas, approaching 30 and still — unusual in those days — not settled down with a husband and kids?

I’m not alone. A close friend said to me of her mother, who had six children, died at 56 of cancer and “might have been depressed” for years: “I would like to have known who my mother really was.” Another was hungry for details about her mother’s early married life, and yet another said: “I actually sat down and interviewed my mom on digital, grilling her on everything from getting married at 30 (scandalously old in 1961), travelling in Europe on her own, hooking up with my Catholic-Irish immigrant dad to her Ontario Protestant parents’ dismay.”

This daughter came to the same conclusion as others: “I still think, I don’t really know who she is.”

Are we afraid to ask our mothers deeply personal questions, concerned that it might be a breach of their privacy or even come across as judgmental? (Believe me, many mothers, even in “those” days, whenever those days were, were pregnant at the altar, and yet so few have talked about it.)

I wonder too whether our mothers remain intrinsically unknowable to us because we have such a vested interest in our own emotional survival that they must remain “mothers” to us and not fleshed-out human beings, capable of grand passions, great deceits and just plain contrary behaviour.

My mother was a delightful story teller — about growing up in a New Hampshire family that valued education above all, about her college days, about her administrative work overseas in the U.S. Foreign Service and about her fateful marriage to my father, which brought her to Toronto.

She always placed herself in the middle of one startling mishap or another: the time she felt like throwing herself down the college library steps after thinking she would fail her history exam; or a challenging domestic moment when my father, a street savvy newspaperman, rented out a room to Uncle Miltie, one of his cronies, who brought home ladies of the night, much to my mother’s consternation.

But she didn’t dwell on the deep emotional texture of her life, how she kept it together, raised two kids to adore her, remained, by necessity, a self-sufficient woman who lived for almost 30 years as a single woman after her divorce. I do know she regarded her divorce as necessary and was happy after it.

If she had been a wife and mother today, would she have, in the early years, joined the overshare era with one of those sadmommy.com blogs that leave no moment, no matter how banal, unrecorded? Hard to imagine. Unless those blogs disappear into the ether, it’s debatable whether mothers today will leave any air of maternal mystery at all.

I knew who my mother was. I knew her deeply — at a certain point we became each other’s confidants and lifelong supports.

And yet she obviously chose not to tell me certain things, whether from oversight or reluctance, or because we had other things to talk about. Or maybe just because I forgot to ask.

It’s not just emotionally resonant questions I have left, they’re also about her times — her favourite dress, the social mores, what her parents were like in her childhood.

On Mother’s Day, if your mother is still alive, maybe now is the time to start asking those questions. You never know when it will be too late.

 Source : Thestar.com

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Wall of ice destroys homes in Canadian lakeside community

High winds combined with a spring thaw produced a massive wall of ice that blew ashore in the small Canadian lakeside community of Manitoba, causing major damage to a number of homes.

Source : Telegraph.co.uk

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Alexander Armstrong: Don’t blame us for being rather posh

 

Alexander Armstrong, the comedian, has hit out at criticism of "posh" people who have attended public schools as a form of social injustice.

He can trace his ancestors back to William the Conqueror and hails from “the junior end of a grand Irish aristocratic family”.

So, perhaps inevitably, Alexander Armstrong has little patience with what he calls “posh-bashing”.
The television presenter, actor, comedian (one half of the Armstrong and Miller duo) regards attacks on the “posh” as more than inverse snobbery, or a way of sending up a Government with a large quotient of Old Etonians.

For him, posh-bashing is a form of social injustice.
“I do bitterly resent it when people of any kind are attacked because of something that is no fault of theirs — like who their parents are.

"Why should your background be held against you? It is so short sighted. There are plenty of reasons for disliking people, but this tribal aversion to anyone with a posh voice is very boring.”
His words echo a complaint made by the Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who said that sniping at his privileged background had made him consider decamping for America where he would be judged on what he did, rather than which school he went to.

Their concerns have been raised at a time of growing consciousness of what might be described in shorthand as “posh”, with an Etonian Prime Minister accused of having too many of his own kind in Cabinet (George Osborne, St Paul’s, son of a baronet; Nick Clegg, Westminster, son of a banker) and perhaps more importantly in kitchen cabinet: his new policy chief is Jo Johnson, the Old Etonian brother of Boris, the Mayor of London, and around him are the “chumocracy”, which includes Edward Llewellyn, his school friend turned chief of staff and Jesse Norman, another Old Etonian policy adviser.

Beyond politics, the perception that a privileged background and public school education is the key to public life has created resentment.

Our top model is not Croydon’s Kate Moss, but Cara Delevingne, granddaughter of a knight, educated at Bedales; the Archbishop of Canterbury is an Old Etonian, while Cumberbatch (Harrow) spoke out because of criticism that British acting is dominated by public school products: Dominic West (Eton); Damian Lewis (Eton); Eddie Redmayne (Eton); and Emma Watson (The Dragon School); Sienna Miller (Heathfield St Mary’s School), among others.

Armstrong’s own fightback against stereotyping on account of his parentage (well-to-do upbringing in rural Northumberland and public school — Durham, not Eton) has, he admits, been rather more modest. Xander, as his friends know him, has chosen Toff Media as the name for the production company he has set up with comedy partner, Ben Miller.

But he clearly feels the slight deeply. The perception that he is too upper class for popular taste has, he says, cost him in career terms. “I’m not anticipating an offer to appear in Shameless [Channel 4’s drama set on a Manchester council estate],” he joked.

More concrete was the BBC’s initial rejection of Armstrong and Miller’s sketch show format after their Edinburgh Festival triumph in 1996, because the Corporation said it wanted to steer clear of any more Oxbridge comics.

The pair met when undergraduates at Trinity College, Cambridge, as part of a Footlights generation that included Rachel Weisz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins.
Instead, the duo turned to Channel 4, where there were no metal detectors for silver spoons in the mouth, and built a reputation with four series before returning to the BBC in 2007.

Indeed, Armstrong’s is now one of the most ubiquitous faces on the small screen: he played Caroline Quentin’s husband in Life Begins and Reggie Perrin’s next door neighbour in the Martin Clunes remake, along with an appearance in the Dr Who Christmas special and stints as a presenter in shows including The Great British Weather.

He even has another high-profile chairing job — on the BBC teatime quiz, Pointless, which is in its seventh series. It has become the “new Countdown”, attracting audiences of 3 million, and is beloved of the same late-afternoon set who once tuned in to Carol Vordeman and Richard Whiteley.

Ironically, in 2007, Armstrong declined the chance to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Whiteley.
The reason we are meeting is to talk about a spin-off book from the quiz show, The 100 Most Pointless Things in the World, with its lists of “pointless things”: jukebox musicals, inappropriate caravan names and game show hosts.

Armstrong, though, is far too well-mannered to insist on dwelling at length on a book.
Instead, he chatters away on whatever subject comes up. Where most television presenters tend to pick their words carefully and explain, “I wouldn’t want to offend anyone”, he leans back in his chair, balances one long leg on the knee of the other, and holds forth. We could be the two RAF pilots in one of the best-loved Armstrong and Miller sketches, chewing on our pipes and the state of the world in the mess room, except that we are not talking as they do in street slang (“So iz you say you iz gonna shoot uz up wi dem gunz?”).

A question about the “pointless things” that Armstrong and his co-presenter and co-author Richard Osman left out of the book leads us on to politicians.

And then, just as effortlessly, to David Cameron, whom Armstrong has played twice in Channel 4 dramas (though there is no real physical resemblance, with Armstrong’s large ears and bony face a world away from the Prime Minister’s neater, smoother, rounder features).

The first time was in The Trial of Tony Blair, and then again more recently in Hacks (albeit under the transparent disguise of being called David Bullingdon). Did he get any feedback from the PM?
“Not directly,” he replies, “but Liz Murdoch did say to me afterwards: “I enjoyed your David Cameron.” She left a dot dot dot afterwards, which I suppose was because Hacks was rude about the men in her family.”

I wait for him to apologise for dropping this humdinger of a name, but instead, he remarks sagely: “Very balanced, Liz. The most balanced of them all. She can take a joke.”

Elisabeth Murdoch and her husband, Matthew Freud, are key members of the Chipping Norton set, near the part of Oxfordshire where Armstrong recently moved with his wife and three sons.
In the past, Armstrong has eulogised his own childhood, with his landowning GP father and aristocratic mother, in remote Northumberland. How does Oxfordshire match up?

“It’s definitely more suburban,” he admits, “not actually suburban, of course, but manicured. Very Farrow and Ball. I associate the farms of my childhood with mud and filth and more mud. There’s less of that in Oxfordshire.”

There is a note of apology in his voice. Indeed, he’s making his new home sound something he and Miller would have sent up ruthlessly in one of their sketches. “Yes, we probably would,” he concedes. “Before I had children, I had my cake. I think it would be true to say that I am now going through the phase of my life that might be labelled 'and eating it’.”

Source : Telegraph.co.uk

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Can You Make It Through This Post Without Having Your Mind Blown?

1. Let's start small:

2. Here's something that you never realized:

3. While we're at it, here's some more famous voice actors:

4. Here's the right way to eat a cupcake:

5. Now get ready to have your childhood mind blown:

6.

7. DID YOU KNOW? The "YKK" on your zipper stands for "Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikigaisha:"

8.DID YOU KNOW? 3.14 is PIE backwards:

9.DID YOU KNOW? The dot over over an "i" is called a "tittle:"

10.DID YOU KNOW? Cashews grow like this:

11.And pineapples like this:

12.Before we move on, here's the ending to "Inception" explained:

13.Now let's shrink things down. Here's what velcro looks like close up:

14.Here's what chalk looks like under a microscope:

15. And here's what sand looks like under a microscope:

16.Speaking of sand, there are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth:

Let's go deeper:

17. If you shrunk the Sun down to the size of a white blood cell and shrunk the Milky Way Galaxy down using the same scale, it would be the size of the continental United States:

18.Speaking of things that are huge, a Blue Whale's heart is so big, a small child can swim through the veins:

19.There's enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America in one foot of water:

20.Here's the true size of Africa:

21.And the Pacific Ocean:

22.Let's think bigger: If you dug a hole to the center of the Earth and dropped a book down, it would take 45 minutes to reach the bottom:

23.Here's what Jupiter would look like if it were the same distance to Earth as the Moon:

24.And here's what a sunset on Mars looks like:

Too much? Just breathe:

25.DID YOU KNOW? There are more bacteria cells in your body than actual body cells:

26.DID YOU KNOW? John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States, has a grandson that's alive today:

John Tyler had a son, Lyon, when he was 63. Lyon had a son, Harrison Tyler, at 75.

27.DID YOU KNOW? A compressed spring weighs more than a relaxed one:

28.JUST THINK: We know more about the surface of the moon than the bottom of the ocean:

29.Speaking of the ocean, there are more atoms in a glass of water than glasses of water in all the oceans on Earth:

30.Speaking of time: The Ottoman Empire still existed the last time the Chicago Cubs won a World Series:

31.Keep this in mind, too:

Mind not blown yet? Things are about to get REAL:

32.The Great Pyramid was built circa 2560 BC...

... and Cleopatra lived 69 BC – 30 BC...

... and the first Moon landing was in 1969, AD...

which means Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than she did to the building of the Great Pyramid.

33.Speaking of the pyramids, they were as old to the Romans as the Romans are to us:

34.Should we keep going? The difference in time between when Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus lived is greater than the difference in time between Tyrannosaurus Rex and now:

35.Here's one more: In 1903 the Wright Brothers flew for the first time...

...38 years later, in 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor...

... and 28 years later, in 1969, man landed on the Moon.

That's 66 years.

PHEW! That was intense. Here's a picture of a puppy burrito (puprito) to chill you out:

                                                 Post credit to: Buzzfeed.

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Thousand Year Old World’s Largest Cashew Tree- Maior Cajueiro do Mundo.

In 1994, the Guinness Book of Records set aside a separate column for the world’s largest cashew tree called Maior Cajueiro do Mondo located in Natal, Brazil. The gigantic tree has grown from an amalgamation of two genetic tissues. Such tissues allow the branches of the tree to grow outwards rather than upwards. Gradually, hence, the branches tend to stoop towards the ground and eventually make for a root. This new root further grows into a new tree.

The massive tree occupies 80,000 square feet of land or roughly five acres. It is guessed to be around thousand years old. One can easily climb a tower to view this tree from a vantage point or for that matter, even climb up through the roots.

You can heartily go and pay a visit to this enormous work of nature. However, beware of the orange caterpillars. These gorgeous looking insects are poisonous. They swamp over the tree seasonally and are a size of a finger.

The beauty of this tree is that it produces 60,000 pieces of cashew fruit each year. As for some people it may come as a surprise that a cashew nut is not the fruit but a single nut is attached only to the bottom of the fruit!

                                       [source:www.braziltravelbuddy.com]

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