Interesting & Funny

Singles

This 1992 classic features Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Jimi Hendrix and The Smashing Pumpkins. Its exclusive tracks from legendary Seattle rockers propelled this album to more than two million sales. There is truly something here for all grunge and alternative rock genre fans. Clueless

Standout tracks on this soundtrack include Radiohead's acoustic version of "Fake Plastic Trees" and "The Ghost in You" by Counting Crows. The soundtrack, an eclectic mix of rap, alternative, dance and ska, garners attention to this day, and for good reason.

Vanilla Sky Romeo + Juliet

This soundtrack is a 90s music-lover's dream. Songs include "Lovefool" by the Cardigans, "Exit Music for a Film" by Radiohead, and "Number 1 Crush" by Garbage. Another hidden gem is a soulful cover of "When Doves Cry" by Quindon Tarver. Garden State The Great Gatsby

Ever the divisive director, Baz Luhrmann succeeds in mixing classic literary sources with modern settings and music. The Great Gatsby caused quite a stir for its flashy, over-the-top visuals, but a palpable uproar over its soundtrack, which includes Jay-Z, Beyonce, Lana Del Rey, Florence and the Machine, Gotye, Nero, Jack White and Sia. The soundtrack is quite the departure from the 1920s setting of the movie, but excellent all the same.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Jennifer Carpenter, the actress who played the titular character in 2005 film "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," reports that her radio would turn itself on in the middle of the night several times while filming the movie. Not only that, but it would also play a section of a Pearl Jam song that recited, "I'm still alive," over and over again. We hope this is just a case of faulty electronics, because that is seriously eerie.

A man who displayed signs of mental health problems as a teenager has been locked up by his parents for 30 years. Dong Hai,46, was caged in a five square metre stone shelter in his parent's back yard when they grew frightened that he could hurt someone. 

Dong Watou and his wife Xiao Hong from Longhai, southeast China's Fujian Province said they had appealed to hospitals for help when their only son grew distressed and they feared for his mental health. They visited hospitals in the province but were turned away.

The couple spent all their savings on medical treatment in a year and had to stop their son's treatment. As time goes on the couple, who are now nearly 70 years old, say their greatest fear is what will happen to Hai when they die. Hai hasn't stepped outside the bare hut for the past 30 years Food is passed to him through a hole in the wall and each day Hai's father uses a scoop, which is tied on top of a long bamboo pole, to shovel out excrement.

Now they are doing odd jobs in maintaining the life. Last year Dong Waitou worked as a watchman in a village construction lot, and was beaten by a drunk driver. Now his right leg still has a long scar and he can't do heavy jobs. His family find it hard to make ends meet.

Although there is money to be had, poor people seem to have trouble taking all that they can get. It's very easy to remain poor if you don't actively do something about it. So what is it that they are doing wrong? Here’s a list of ten mistakes that poor people make that serve to keep them poor forever:

1. Delay action: You probably have good intentions to save and get a budget together, but intentions can't replace action. When is the right time to get your financial house in order? Right now. Delaying savings and investments can cheat you out of valuable interest earnings. Put this off too long, and you may find yourself penniless without a plan.

2. Using credit irresponsibly: Credit cards represent real money that eventually must be paid back. Maxing out your balance for a cute pair of shoes might seem like a good idea at the time, but you'll likely end up paying more than they are worth in interest fees. Irresponsible credit use will also wreck your credit rating. If you have a poor rating, you'll be subject to high interest rates when you want to buy a house or a new car. These high rates can translate into thousands of dollars over the life of a loan, cheating you out of money that would still be yours if you'd only used credit responsibly.

3. Frivolous spending: What's more important, going out to eat this Friday night, or being able to buy diapers for your child? It seems like an easy answer, but many people have trouble prioritizing their needs versus wants. If you're working with a limited budget, first buy the things you absolutely need, then create a savings fund to gather money for the things you really want: a your own home, nice vacation or college education.

4. Living in a world of make believe: Don't ignore money problems. Yes, they are real and no, they will not go away if you ignore them. Forgetting about credit card payments will only serve to make your debt higher. Get real about how much you owe and make a plan to pay it down.

5. Not being ambitious: A job at McDonalds may provide a steady paycheck, but if you're out of school and still working the drive-thru, you're simply not doing enough. Don't be complacent; get out there and pound the pavement. A better job and more money is there to be found: you simply have to look for it and be willing to put forth the effort.

6. Lack of planning: College and retirement have two things in common: both require lots of money and can be foreseen well in advance. Why do some people end up scrambling when these events come
around? Because they failed to plan for them. After a child is born, you'll have approximately 18 years to create a college fund, and retirement savings can start as soon as you receive your first paycheck! Plan ahead and save for major monetary events in your life to avoid wrecking your finances.

7. Believing that college is always good: Not everyone is made for college. Some don't have the discipline and some just don't need it. If your child has a tendency to blow off homework for partying, test the waters at a community college before spending big money on a four-year college. Does your child have interest and aptitude in a trade that doesn't require school? Let them get straight to work. Education is expensive: you shouldn't waste money or time on it if it will be of no benefit.

8. Living without health insurance: Insurance may seem like a luxury reserved for the wealthy, but you cannot afford to live without it. One accident or major illness can absolutely ruin your finances for many years to come. Even worse, avoiding the doctor because you lack insurance can allow a small problem to grow large, resulting in a catastrophic health and financial event.

9. Having children too soon: If you’ve just been married, you’ll have lots of people advising you to have kids while you're still young. They'll tell you that money problems will sort themselves out, but in reality, they may not. Children require numerous expenses that can derail your budget and savings before they even start. Get your finances in order, then start planning for a child.

10. What savings? Most people who have trouble with their finances claim to be unable to save any money. They don’t have the discipline to set aside some money for inevitable emergencies. This means if they run into a problem, they may have to apply for high-interest payday loans. Loans of this sort can contribute to a downward spiral of deepening debt.

1. Bored

I’d say this is the most common reason that people cheat.It’s tough to keep that edge throughout a relationship. Things start off grand and then level off and then you both realize that it’s still real life. When you meet someone else, that inaugural excitement of a new relationship kicks back in.

2. Dependence
At first glance, cheating seems like independent behavior. It could be interpreted as doing what you want, when you want. But I would argue that cheating is a dependent behavior. A cheater is dependent because they are not strong enough to break up with their significant other in order to get with the new person.

3. Confusion

Sometimes life or a particular situation can get to you. When the perfect storm of confusion is going on in your head, you make mistakes.

4. Because They Let You

If any girl ever cheated on me, I’d break up with her immediately. Forgiving a cheater is putting up with it, and starts a vicious cycle. That person who cheated may lose respect for you and might continue to cheat-because they know they can get away with it, because you’ll continue to take them back.

5. Nurturing

If someone is mistreating you, then your first instinct is to get away from him or her. But sometimes it’s not that simple-maybe you are raising kids together. If you feel trapped in a bad relationship, it’s only natural that you will run to the open arms of a person who treats you well.

6. Revenge
This is quite simple- an eye for an eye. Cheat on them if they cheat on you. If they continuously hurt you or abuse you in some way, you do it to get them back.

7. Confirmation of Attractiveness

Sometimes when you’re in a long relationship, or if your significant other is taking you for granted, you begin to wonder if you’re still attractive. Perhaps, because you were out on the dating circuit, you felt more attractive when you were single. If you have an affair, you’ve proven that a new person can be attracted to you.

8. The Thrill

Some people just enjoy the thrill of cheating: running around secretly, risking getting caught, and creating thrilling moments with a forbidden romance.

9. They Don’t Consider It Cheating, Even Though You Might Relationships have that grey area, usually right before you become exclusive. He thinks date #4 is when you’re “together,” and you think date #2 is when you’re “together.” If you haven’t talked about exclusivity, someone may think they are well within their rights to see other people, even though the other person in the relationship may not.

Facebook is an online social networking service, whose name stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. It was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Extensive research was done over a 10 day period. An overall analysis was done to discern the reasons why Facebook users update their statuses. 1. Losing a valuable:

Misplacing a valuable after a night out at a party happens to all of us. You ransack your homes, purses, cars and pockets, trying to find that precious possession. You even try to exhaust every number in your phone book to find out that no one has seen what you are looking for. Facebook is the answer to many people’s problems when it comes to losing a valuable. As soon as one posts on the wall status stating they lost something, his/her friends read it. They comment on the status and attempt to help find what is missing. You may not be able to find every person you are looking for in your phone book, but you are bound to find them on Facebook. As such, one cannot dispute the reason why umpteen users update their status to find their lost or misplaced valuable. 2. Busy/Unavailable:

“Somebody is playing pranks calling on me everyday for the last 3 days playing my favourite Arash song, wonder who?”How many times have we been interrupted, while in a meeting or at the dinner table with family members? Better yet, how many of us have been peskily and non-urgently called? There are millions of people, who are frustrated with the not-so-convenient calls or contact attempts. Many Facebook users wish they could get the message across to everyone that they are not to be reached within certain times. They thus turn to Facebook statuses to relay that message. As most friends read the feeds they receive on the home page, everyone is bound to get the message 3. Advocating Political Issues:

A perfect example of people advocating on behalf of a controversial yet political issue was the 2011 Federal Election in Canada. Facebook statuses were flooded with various reasons why a political figure in their riding should win the election. This created an intellectual debate amongst friends, who would agree or disagree with the status. Of the possible 700 friends present on my Facebook, 505 live in Canada. Of the 505, 201 were involved in a political debate and updated their statuses to advocate their political beliefs. 4. Games:

Various games on Facebook, such as CafeWorld, Farmville and Kingdoms of Camelot are addictive. Facebook users are quick to modify their facebook status to notify others of their need to advance in their favourite game. Whether they are building a barn in Farmville, a city in Cityville or a hotel room with excellent accessories in Hotelville, users are prone to be impatient when it comes to waiting for their requests to be accepted. They flood their walls with requests and update their status specifying their missions and needs. They share rewards to boost their requests. 5. Death:

As individuals encounter a loss, they sometimes try to inform others. Facebook status is exercised by various users to update information such as funeral arrangements and death announcements. Furthermore, various users provide ways others could show their condolences and support. As many Facebook users login to facebook once a day, they are prone to read the comment and receive the message. 6. Bored:

The worst possible reason to update your facebook status is because you are bored. There have been various times where many Facebook users wrote that they wish it was not raining outside or they are too tired. They write small little things and details that purposely try to catch attention. Furthermore, they hope to start a conversation with another person to pass the time. This reason for updating a Facebook status usually shows a bad impression on the person writing it. Facebook users are advised not to do so as it cries for attention in a negative way. 7. Exciting Occurrences:

Many Facebook users utilize their statuses to share good fortune. They wish to celebrate the joy they’ve experienced and to let everyone know. Whether you found a new job or got recently engaged, Facebook status is there to: 1) help you get the proper recognition amongst friends and 2) allow you to be a bit narcissistic. Sometimes you need that attention and would like to scream out what happened to you. This is usually okay as long as you don’t do it repeatedly. 8. Outrageous Occurrences:

There have been times where Facebook users have not agreed with a specific news story or event and have actively voiced their opinions. Whether a fan favourite was voted off survivor or an excellent actor did not win an award he/she deserved, facebook users utilize their statuses to continuously voice their disgust. They create debates that attempt to bring awareness amongst the populace. People no longer have to individually talk on the phone about what happened. Facebook status provides timeless opportunities to share opinions. 9. Favourite Quote:
Facebook users flood their statuses with random quotes they read or heard in the news, on the streets , in a book or in their workplaces. These quotes are meaningful to them and are sometimes used to provide incite about different occurrences that are going on in the world. One Facebook user used Socrates’ quote “The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know” to voice his disagreement. They received popular recognition as they provided room for a discourse amongst their 1000+ friends. 10. You are stuck:

You just got dressed, showered and are ready to party. Your car breaks down and you are not able to drive to the location. You scramble to find a ride by calling all those who are going. The cars are full and no one is able to offer you a ride. You turn to your Facebook status to make it clear to others that you are stuck, in need and need to be helped out of a dire situation.

Beowulf’s poet adapts certain motifs found in Danish mythology to relay a directed moral to his audience. The poet expects his audience to possess a general knowledge of these myths and he uses them to contrast the actions and choices of the mythical characters with the characters in his own poem. There are two important myths that he incorporates into his poem: those of Freyja’s Brísingamen, and Thor and the World Serpent.

The first of the myths is that of the Brísingamen, a necklace owned by the goddess Freyja. In the poem, there is a brief mention of Brosinga Mene, wherein the poet alludes to a decision made by Hama to forego earthly treasure for eternal reward (Beo 1195-1201). This allusion “ the pursuit of treasure with damnation.”

Finally, and arguably most importantly, there is the connection between Beowulf and the Dragon and Thor and the World Serpent. It is suggested by some scholars that the poet uses Beowulf’s character as an analogy to Thor. Numerous similarities may be found: their battles with giants, the loss of hope experienced by their people after their deaths and their final battles with serpents. The use of these Danish myths, although Christianized, adds an interesting perspective on the poet and his own views on the salvation of “heathens.”

Main differences between the original Greek myth and the film

From as early as 1935 science journalists were making humorous associations between the comic strip character Popeye, Iron and Spinach. In 1981 consultant hematologist T.J. Hamblin published a paper in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) entitled Fake which made the traditional humorous association between Popeye, Iron and Spinach and claimed (without any references to support the story) that a 19th century data error led to a tenfold exaggeration of the iron content of spinach - which was then perpetuated by generations of other scientists who blindly accepted the Victorian data as accurate.
According to Hamblin's 1981 BMJ paper it was not until the 1930's that German scientists discovered the error. 

Eugenics is the bio-social movement which advocates practices to improve the genetic composition of a population, usually a human population.

It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human hereditary traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of more desired people and traits, and reduced reproduction of less desired people and traits

The body of Betty Hudson was found, having been shot three times, in her home of Prentiss, Mississippi, . She was discovered by firemen who had been summonded to a house fire. To date, no one has been arrested for her brutal murder.

This 10-year old cold murder case is going to be discussed at the Homicide Cold Case Symposium in Gulfport, MS, in hopes that other's within the field may bring something new to the case that will support an arrest and conviction.

Investigators have recovered the bullets and matched them to a murder that happened in Vicksburg, MS, some months later.

Betty Hudson, a prominent Jefferson Davis County woman, had no known enemies. She was a member of the Mississippi Federation of Women's Club/GFWC - Twentieth Century Club of Prentiss, Mississippi, dedicated to civic activities and her church and described as "kind and gracious to everyone".

So how did she end up murdered? Betty was shot twice in the chest and once in the back of the head. On April 20, 1998, her body was found in her fire-damaged brick home just outside the city limits on Highway 42 East. It has been determined by Law Enforcement that the fire was likely set in an attempt to cover the crime or destroy evidence.

Surviors include her husband, Woodley Hudson, a local businessman and pharmacist; two sons, Phil and Jeffrey; one grandchild and her brother-in-law, Joey Hudson, former pharmacist and recently unseated member of the House of Representative for the State of Mississippi.

Her case is considered a "cold case" but there have been recent hints that the case will be reevaluated by the media and by the investigators.

Mysterious Burial Site of Mahsuri in Phuket
One of the earliest written record of Phuket was found in the Kedah Annals of Malaya. Though it is commonly believed the the name Phuket had originated from the Malay name, Bukit, which means Hill, it was not the original name of the island. Furthermore, its mention in Malayan literature was intriguing, since other than the Malaya names bestowed on the island, Phuket and Ujang Salang, there is no evidence of early Malay inhibitants.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon occurs when a person, after having learned some (usually obscure) fact, word, phrase, or other item for the first time, encounters that item again, perhaps several times, shortly after having learned it.

The Kurds are considered an ancient autochthonous population. Although Kurdistan came under the successive dominion of various conquerors, including the Armenians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, and Persians, they may have remained relatively unmixed by the influx of invaders, because of their protected and inhospitable mountainous homeland.

A Maryland woman treated for a snake bite received another shocker: a $55,000 medical bill.

Jules Weiss had stopped to take a photo at an overlook along the George Washington Parkway. On the way back to her car, she felt something bite her.

"It felt just like a bee sting," Weiss told local station NBC4. "There were two fang marks with liquid coming out."

The former emergency medical technician had suffered a copperhead snake bite. Within an hour, she said, her foot turned “grayish” and started to swell.

She went to Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., where she received three IV bags of antivenom over 18 hours. Then, the scary part: a whopping $55,000 bill for treatment.

“It’s not a number I can really wrap my head around,” Weiss said. Health insurance would bring the cost down to a few hundred dollars, according to NBC4. But the woman’s insurance had just lapsed. Antivenom involves milking individual snakes and is a costly treatment.

The Bethesda Hospital told NBC4 it can cost as much as $40,000 to get the antivenom.

That’s not the only pricey treatment for an animal attack: Last year, a woman in Arizona stung by a scorpionreceived a bill of $83,000 for the antivenom treatment — a staggering cost of $40,000 a dose. Even after insurance, Marcie Edmonds still owed the hospital $25,000.

Vietnamese authorities are trying to reintegrate a father and son to their home village after they allegedly fled war four decades ago to live deep in the forest, an official said Saturday.

Ho Van Thanh, 82, and his son, Ho Van Lang, 42, emerged bedraggled from the remote mountainous region on Wednesday in an emaciated condition, wearing loincloths made from tree bark.

The former communist soldier Thanh ran away with his then two-year-old son Lang in 1972 from a communist village in central Quang Ngai province.

He was grief-stricken following the death of his mother and two of his other children in an American bombing, local official Hoang Anh Ngoc told AFP.

"The son is afraid of the crowds. He will not talk to strangers... but he talks inside their family," Ngoc said, adding authorities will spend about $2,300 to build the men a house near their relatives.


While the older man is frail and under medical supervision, Ngoc said officials still have to "keep our eyes" on Lang to prevent him escaping back to the forest where the pair lived in a hut five metres off the forest floor, reportedly surviving on foraged fruits and corn they cultivated.

Television footage showed authorities apparently taking the pair against their will from their forest hut several hours' walk from their home village, with the frail old man carried in a hammock by local people while the son was pictured with restraints around his hands.

The pair were "were dressed only in loincloths made of tree bark", Tuoi Tre newspaper said Friday, adding they were found with several handmade tools including axes made from war-era shells.

The pair can speak little of their ethnic Kor language.

The men were first brought back home by a younger son in 2004, Dan Tri online newspaper reported Friday quoting local authorities, but they could not adapt to living in the village and returned to their forest home.

The pair "preferred their independent life to that of the traditional Vietnamese family", the report said.

The younger son visited them once every year, providing some necessities.

But they were recently spotted by local residents and reported to the authorities who drew them from the forest on Wednesday.

After being captured Lang reportedly "chewed betel nut and smoked continuously, glancing at everybody around him with a dull look", according to the Tuoi Tre report.

Ancient Greeks and Romans used aluminum salts as dyeing mordants and as astringents fordressing wounds; alum is still used as a styptic. The metal was first produced in 1825 in animpure form by Danish physicist and chemist Hans. Friedrich conducted a similar experimentin 1827 by mixing anhydrous aluminum chloride with potassium and yielded aluminum. He isgenerally credited with isolating aluminum. Further, Pierre Berthier discovered aluminum inbauxite ore and successfully extracted it. Frenchman Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Devilleimproved W?hler's method in 1846, and described his improvements in a book in 1859, chiefamong these being the substitution of sodium for the considerably more expensive potassium.

Francis Bacon, a man who rose to eminence by betraying his friends, asserted, no doubt as one of the ripe lessons of experience, that 'knowledge is power'. But this is not true of all knowledge. Sir Thomas Browne wished to know what song the sirens sang, but if he had ascertained this it would not have enabled him to rise from being a magistrate to being High Sheriff of his county. The sort of knowledge that Bacon had in mind was that which we call scientific. In emphasising the importance of science, he was belatedly carrying on the tradition of the Arabs and the early Middle Ages, according to which knowledge consisted mainly of astrology, alchemy, and pharmacology, all of which were branches of science. A learned man was one who, having mastered these studies, had acquired magical powers. In the early eleventh century, Pope Silvester II, for no reason except that he read books, was universally believed to be a magician in league with the devil. Prospero, who in Shakespeare's time was a mere phantasy, represented what had been for centuries the generally received conception of a learned man, so far at least as his powers of sorcery were concerned. Bacon believed – rightly, as we now know – that science could provide a more powerful magician's wand than any that had been dreamed of by the necromancers of former ages.

The renaissance, which was at its height in England at the time of Bacon, involved a revolt against the utilitarian conception of knowledge. The Greeks had acquired a familiarity with Homer, as we do with music hall songs, because they enjoyed him, and without feeling that they were engaged in the pursuit of learning. But the men of the sixteenth century could not begin to understand him without first absorbing a very considerable amount of linguistic erudition. They admired the Greeks, and did not wish to be shut out from their pleasures; they therefore copied them, both in reading the classics and in other less avowable ways. Learning, in the renaissance, was part of thejoie de vivre, just as much as drinking or love-making. And this was true not only of literature, but also of sterner studies. Everyone knows the story of Hobbes's first contact with Euclid: opening the book, by chance, at the theorem of Pythagoras, he exclaimed, 'By God, this is impossible', and proceeded to read the proofs backwards until, reaching the axioms, he became convinced. No one can doubt that this was for him a voluptuous moment, unsullied by the thought of the utility of geometry in measuring fields.

It is true that the renaissance found a practical use for the ancient languages in connection with theology. One of the earliest results of the new feeling for classical Latin was the discrediting of the forged decretals and the donation of Constantine. The inaccuracies which were discovered in the Vulgate and the Septuagint made Greek and Hebrew a necessary part of the controversial equipment of Protestant divines. The republican maxims of Greece and Rome we're invoked to justify the resistance of Puritans to the Stuarts and of Jesuits to monarchs who had thrown off allegiance to the Pope. But all this was an effect, rather than a cause, of the revival of classical learning which had been in full swing in Italy for nearly a century before Luther. The main motive for the renaissance was mental delight, the restoration of a certain richness and freedom in art and speculation which had been lost while ignorance and superstition kept the mind's eye in blinkers.

The Greeks, it was found, had devoted a part of their attention to matters not purely literary or artistic, such as philosophy, geometry, and astronomy. These studies, therefore, were respectable, but other sciences were more open to question. Medicine, it was true, was dignified by the names of Hippocrates and Galen; but in the intervening period it had become almost confined to Arabs and Jews, and inextricably intertwined with magic. Hence the dubious reputation of such men as Paracelsus. Chemistry was in even worse odour, and hardly became respectable until the eighteenth century.

In this way it was brought about that knowledge of Greek and Latin, with a smattering of geometry and perhaps astronomy, came to be considered the intellectual equipment of a gentleman. The Greeks disdained the practical applications of geometry, and it was only in their decadence that they found a use for astronomy in the guise of astrology. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the main, studied mathematics with Hellenic disinterestedness, and tended to ignore the sciences which had been degraded by their connection with sorcery. A gradual change towards a wider and more practical conception of knowledge, which was going on throughout the eighteenth century, was suddenly accelerated at the end of that period by the French Revolution and the growth of machinery, of which the former gave a blow to gentlemanly culture while the latter offered new and astonishing scope for the exercise of ungentlemanly skill. Throughout the last hundred and fifty years, men have questioned more and more vigorously the value of 'useless' knowledge, and have come increasingly to believe that the only knowledge worth having is that which is applicable to some part of the economic life of the community.

In countries such as France and England, which have a traditional educational system, the utilitarian view of knowledge has only partially prevailed. There are still, for example, professors of Chinese in the universities who read the Chinese classics but are unacquainted with the works of Sun Yat-sen, which created modern China. There are still men who know ancient history in so far as it was related by authors whose style was pure, that is to say up to Alexander in Greece and Nero in Rome, but refuse to know the much more important later history because of the literary inferiority of the historians who related it. Even in France and England, however, the old tradition is dying, and in more up to date countries, such as Russia and the United States, it is utterly extinct. In America, for example, educational commissions point out that fifteen hundred words are all that most people employ in business correspondence, and therefore suggest that all others should be avoided in the school curriculum. Basic English, a British invention, goes still further, and reduces the necessary vocabulary to eight hundred words. The conception of speech as something capable of aesthetic value is dying out, and it is coming to be thought that the sole purpose of words is to convey practical information. In Russia the pursuit of practical aims is even more whole-hearted than in America: all that is taught in educational institutions is intended to serve some obvious purpose in education or government. The only escape is afforded by theology: the sacred scriptures must be studied by some in the original German, and a few professors must learn philosophy in order to defend dialectical materialism against the criticism of, bourgeois metaphysicians. But as orthodoxy becomes more firmly established, even this tiny loophole will be closed.

Knowledge, everywhere, is coming to be regarded not as a good in itself, or as a means of creating a broad and humane outlook on life in general, but as merely an ingredient in technical skill. This is part of the greater integration of society which has been brought about by scientific technique and military necessity. There is more economic and political interdependence than there was in former times, and therefore there is more social pressure to compel a man to live in a way that his neighbours think useful. Educational establishments, except those for the very rich, or (in England) such as have become invulnerable through antiquity, are not allowed to spend their money as they like, but must satisfy the State that they are serving a useful purpose by imparting skill and instilling loyalty. This is part and parcel of the same movement which has led to compulsory military service, boy scouts, the organisation of political parties, and the dissemi- nation of political passion by the Press. We are all more aware of our fellow-citizens than we used to be, more anxious, if we are virtuous, to do them good, and in any case to make them do us good. We do not like to think of anyone lazily enjoying life, however refined may be the quality of his enjoyment. We feel that everybody ought to be doing something to help on the great cause (whatever it may be), the more so as so many bad men are working against it and ought to be stopped. We have not leisure of mind, therefore, to acquire any knowledge except such as will help us in the fight for whatever it may happen to be that we think important.

There is much to be said for the narrowly utilitarian view of education. There is not time to learn everything before beginning to make a living, and undoubtedly 'useful' knowledge is very useful. It has made the modern world. Without it, we should not have machines or motor-cars or railways or aeroplanes; it should be added that we should not have modern advertising or modern propaganda. Modem knowledge has brought about an immense improvement in average health, and at the same time has discovered how to exterminate large cities by poison gas. Whatever is distinctive of our world as compared with former times, has its source in useful' knowledge. No community as yet has enough of it, and undoubtedly education must continue to promote it.

It must also be admitted that a great deal of the traditional cultural education was foolish. Boys spent many years acquiring Latin and Greek grammar, without being, at the end, either capable or desirous (except in a small percentage of cases) of reading a Greek or Latin author. Modern languages and history are preferable, from every point of view, to Latin and Greek. They are not only more useful, but they give much more culture in much less time. For an Italian of the fifteenth century, since practically everything worth reading, if not in his own language, was in Greek or Latin, these languages were the indispensable keys to culture. But since that time great literatures have grown up in various modern languages, and the development of civilisation has been so rapid that knowledge of antiquity has become much less useful in understanding our problems than knowledge of modern nations and their comparatively recent history. The traditional schoolmaster's point of view, which was admirable at the time of the revival of learning, became gradually unduly narrow, since it ignored what the world has done since the fifteenth century. And not only history and modern languages, but science also, when properly taught, contributes to culture. It is therefore possible to maintain that education should have other aims than direct utility, without defending the traditional curriculum. Utility and culture, when both are conceived broadly, are found to be less incompatible than they appear to the fanatical advocates of either.

Apart, however, from the cases in which culture and direct utility can be combined, there is indirect utility, of various different kinds, in the possession of knowledge which does not contribute to technical efficiency. I think some of the worst features of the modern world could be improved by a greater encouragement of such knowledge and a less ruthless pursuit of mere professional competence.

When conscious activity is wholly concentrated on some one definite purpose, the ultimate result, for most people, is lack of balance accompanied by some form of nervous disorder. The men who directed German policy during the war made mistakes, for example, as regards the submarine campaign which brought America on to the side of the Allies, which any person coming fresh to the subject could have seen to be unwise, but which they could not judge sanely owing to mental concentration and lack of holidays. The same sort of thing may be seen wherever bodies of men attempt tasks which put a prolonged strain upon spontaneous impulses. Japanese imperialists, Russian Communists, and German Nazis all have a kind of tense fanaticism which comes of living too exclusively in the mental world of certain tasks to be accomplished. When the tasks are as important and as feasible as the fanatics suppose, the result may be magnificent; but in most cases narrowness of outlook has caused oblivion of some powerful counteracting force, or has made all such forces seem the work of the devil, to be met by punishment and terror. Men as well as children have need of play, that is to say, of periods of activity having no purpose beyond present enjoyment. But if play is to serve its purpose, it must be possible to find pleasure and interest in matters not connected with work.

The amusements of modern urban populations tend more and more to be passive and collective, and to consist of inactive observation of the skilled activities of others. Undoubtedly such amusements are much better than none, but they are not as good as would be those of a population which had, through education, a wider range of intelligent interests not connected with work. Better economic organization, allowing mankind to benefit by the productivity of machines, should lead to a very great increase of leisure, and much leisure is apt to be tedious except to those who have considerable intelligent activities and interests. If a leisured population is to be happy, it must be an educated population, and must be educated with a view to mental enjoyment as well to the direct usefulness of technical knowledge.

The cultural element in the acquisition of knowledge, when it is successfully assimilated, forms the character of a man's thoughts and desires, making them concern themselves, in part at least, with large impersonal objects, not only with matters of immediate importance to himself. It has been too readily assumed that, when a man has acquired certain capacities by means of knowledge, he will use them in ways that are socially beneficial. The narrowly utilitarian conception of education ignores the necessity of training a man's purposes ns well as his skill. There is in untrained human nature a very considerable element of cruelty, which shows itself in many ways, great and small. Boys at school tend to be unkind to a new boy, or to one whose clothes are not quite conventional. Many women (and not a few men) inflict as much pain as they can by means of malicious gossip. The Spaniards enjoy bull-fights; the British enjoy hunting and shooting. The same cruel impulses take more serious forms in the hunting of Jews in Germany and kulaks in Russia. All imperialism affords scope for them, and in war they become sanctified as the highest form of public duty.

Now it must be admitted that highly educated people are sometimes cruel, I think there can be no doubt that they are less often so than people whose minds have lain fallow. The bully in a school is seldom a boy whose proficiency in learning is up to the average. When a lynching takes place, the ringleaders are almost invariably very ignorant men. This is not because mental cultivation produces positive humanitarian feelings, though it may do so; it is rather because it gives other interests than the ill-treatment of neighbours, and other sources of self-respect than the assertion of domination. The two things most universally desired are power and admiration. Ignorant men can, as a rule, only achieve either by brutal means, involving the acquisition of physical mastery. Culture gives a man less harmful forms of power and more deserving ways of making himself admired. Galileo did more than any monarch has done to change the world, and his power immeasurably exceeded that of his persecutors. He had therefore no need to aim at becoming a persecutor in his turn. Perhaps the most important advantage of 'useless' knowledge is that it promotes a contemplative habit of mind. There is in the world too much readiness, not only for action without adequate previous reflection, but also for some sort of action on occasions on which wisdom would counsel inaction. People show their bias on this matter in various curious ways. Mephistopheles tells the young student that theory is grey but the tree of life is green, and everyone quotes this as if it were Goethe's opinion, instead of what he supposes the devil would be likely to say to an undergraduate. Hamlet is held up as an awful warning against thought without action, but no one holds up Othello as a warning against action without thought. Professors such as Bergson, from a kind of snobbery towards the practical man, decry philosophy, and say that life at its best should resemble a cavalry charge. For my part, I think action is best when it emerges from a profound apprehension of the universe and human destiny, not from some wildly passionate impulse of romantic but disproportioned self-assertion. A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than in action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.

A contemplative habit of mind has advantages ranging from the most trivial to the most profound. To begin with minor vexations, such as fleas, missing trains, or cantankerous business associates. Such troubles seem hardly worthy to be met by reflections on the excellence of heroism or the transitoriness of all human ills, and yet the irritation to which they give rise destroys many people's good temper and enjoyment of life. On such occasions, there is much consolation to be found in out of the way bits of knowledge which have some real or fancied connection with the trouble of the moment; or even if they have none, they serve to obliterate the present from one's thoughts. When assailed by people who are white with fury, it is pleasant to remember the chapter in Descartes' Treatise on the Passions entitled 'Why those who grow pale with rage are more to be feared than those who grow red.' When one feels impatient over the difficulty of securing international co-operation, one's impatience is diminished if one happens to think of the sainted King Louis IX, before embarking on his crusade, allying himself with the Old Man of the Mountain, who appears in the Arabian Nights as the dark source of half the wickedness in the world. When the rapacity of capitalists grows oppressive, one may be suddenly consoled by the recollection that Brutus, that exemplar of republican virtue, lent money to a city at 40 per cent, and hired a private army to besiege it when it failed to pay the interest.

Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant, but also makes pleasant things more pleasant. I have enjoyed peaches and apricots more since I have known that they were first cultivated in China in the early days of the Han dynasty; that Chinese hostages held by the great King Kaniska introduced them to India, whence they spread to Persia, reaching the Roman Empire in the first century of our era; that the word 'apricot' is derived from the same Latin source as the word 'precocious', because the apricot ripens early; and that the A at the beginning was added by mistake, owing to a false etymology. All this makes the fruit taste much sweeter.

About a hundred years ago, a number of well-meaning philanthropists started societies `for the diffusion of useful knowledge', with the result that people have ceased to appreciate the delicious savour of 'useless' knowledge. Opening Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy at haphazard on a day when I was threatened by that mood, I learnt that there is a 'melancholy matter', but that, while some think it may be engendered of all four humours, 'Galen holds that it may be engendered of three alone, excluding phlegm or pituita, whose true assertion Valerius and Menardus stiffly maintain, and so doth Fuscius, Montaltus, Montanus. How (say they) can white become black?' In spite of this unanswerable argument, Hercules de Saxonia and Cardan, Guianerius and Laurentius, are (so Burton tells us) of the opposite opinion. Soothed by these historical reflections, my melancholy, whether due to three humours or to four, was dissipated. As a cure for too much zeal, I can imagine a few measures more effective than a course of such ancient controversies.

But while the trivial pleasures of culture have their place as a relief from the trivial worries of practical life, the more important merits of contemplation are in relation to the greater evils of life, death and pain and cruelty, and the blind march of nations into unnecessary disaster. For those to whom dogmatic religion can no longer bring comfort, there is need of some substitute, if life is not to become dusty and harsh and filled with trivial self-assertion. The world at present is full of angry self-centred groups, each incapable of viewing human life as a whole, each willing to destroy civilization rather than yield an inch. To this narrowness no amount of technical instruction will provide an antidote. The antidote, in so far as it is a matter of individual psychology, is to be found in history, biology, astronomy, and all those studies which, without destroying self-respect, enable the individual to see himself in his proper perspective. What is needed is not this or that specific piece of information, but such knowledge as inspires a conception of the ends of human life as a whole: art and history, acquaintance with the lives of heroic individuals, and some understanding of the strangely accidental and ephemeral position of man in the cosmos — all this touched with an emotion of pride in what is distinctively human, the power to see and to know, to feel magnanimously and to think with understanding. It is from large perceptions combined with impersonal emotion that wisdom most readily springs.

Life, at all times full of pain, is more painful in our time than in the two centuries that preceded it. The attempt to escape from pain drives men to triviality, to self-deception, to the invention of vast collective myths. But these momentary alleviations do but increase the sources of suffering in the long run. Both private and public misfortune can only be mastered by a process in which will and intelligence interact: the part of will is to refuse to shirk the evil or accept an unreal solution, while the part of intelligence is to understand it, to find a cure if it is curable, and, if not, to make it bearable by seeing it in its relations, accepting it as unavoidable, and remembering what lies outside it in other regions, other ages, and the abysses of interstellar space.