New Year in Scotland
In Scotland, New Year’s Eve is called hogmanay, and is an occasion when young people go about singing and seeking gifts.
Archive for December, 2007
Seems God too is gravitating towards social networking!
Newly launched in cyberspace is a Web site called Godkut.com, which aims to be the world’s most advanced faith-based social network.
Caddys?
The word caddy (or caddie, as its sometimes spelled) comes from France, via Scotland, and is a corruption of “cadet.”
In France a cadet was a rich man’s younger son. Since the eldest son inherited the whole estate, any males born after him often joined the army, which gives us the military sense of cadet.
Eventually cadet came to mean someone who did lowly work, a “go-for” or errand boy – just the kind of person to serve another person who wants only to putter around.
Believe In Yoruself…
The business executive was deep in debt and could see no way out. Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment. He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy.
Suddenly an old man appeared before him.
“I can see that something is troubling you,” he said.
After listening to the executive’s woes, the old man said, “I believe I can help you.” He asked the man his name, wrote out a cheque, and pushed it into his hand saying, “Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time.”
Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.
The business executive saw in his hand a cheque for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the world!
“I can erase my money worries in an instant!” he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed cheque in his safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the strength to work out a way to save his business, he thought.
With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.
Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the uncashed cheque. At the agreed-upon time, the old man appeared. But just as the executive was about to hand back the cheque and share his success story, a nurse came running up and grabbed the old man.
“I’m so glad I caught him!” she cried. “I hope he hasn’t been bothering you. He’s always escaping from the rest home and telling people he’s John D.Rockefeller.” And she led the old man away by the arm.
The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All year long he’d been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced he had half a million dollars behind him.
Suddenly, he realized that it wasn’t the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.
Antarctica – The Iceberg Lagoon
Antarctica is 98% ice, 2% barren rock.
The average thickness of the ice sheet is 7,200 feet; this amounts to 90% of all the ice and 70% of all the fresh water in the world. If the ice cap were to melt, the sea level would rise by an average of 230 feet.
House of newspapers…
There is a house in Rockport Massachusetts, built entirely of newspapers. The Paper House at Pigeon Cove, as it is called, is made of 215 thicknesses of newspapers.
Google Ads Replaced with Malware
Anti-virus firm, BitDefender, has detected a new ad-hijacking Trojan that hijacks Google text advertisements, replacing them with ads containing malware.
The threat, identified as “Trojan.Qhost.WU“, modifies the infected computer’s host file, and redirects queries sent to Google servers to rogue servers that display ads from third parties instead of from Google.
Thought of the day…
When people talk behind your back, what does it mean??
Simple!
It means that you are two steps ahead of them!!
So, Keep moving ahead in Life!!
About IBM’s Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Mark I)
IBM’s Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, also called the Mark I, was completed in 1944 after six years of development with Harvard University. It was the first machine that could execute long computations automatically. Over 50 feet long, 8 feet high, and weighing almost 5 tons, the Mark I took less than a second to solve an addition problem, but about six seconds for multiplication and twice as long for division — far slower than any pocket calculator today.
5 lessons to make us think about the way we treat people (D last lesson)
The Fifth Important Lesson – “Giving When it Counts”.
Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare & serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “Yes I’ll do it if it will save her.”
As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheek. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, “Will I start to die right away”. Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.