Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village 1967.

“Just got here from the West,” the gangly 19-year-old told Manny Roth, owner of the Greenwich Village nightclub “Cafe Wha?” “Name’s Bob Dylan. I’d like to do a few songs? Can I?”

Sure, Mr. Roth said; on “hootenanny” nights, as he called them, anybody could sing a song or two, and this was a hootenanny night, a bitterly cold one, Jan. 24, 1961. And so Mr. Dylan took out his guitar and sang a handful of Woody Guthrie songs.

The crowd “flipped” in excitement, Mr. Dylan later said.

Shenzhen completely shell-shocks with its technological splendor. My co-founders and I had never seen an electronics market that expanded for blocks with every kind of electrical and technical component known to man the way it does in Hua Qiang Bei. It is like being Neo in the scene in the Matrix where you get to choose your weapons and they zoom out in organized shelves, except it’s not so organized. We got to live out our most demanding and out-of-reach maker fantasies by living in this town where parts, supply chain, and manufacturing are deeply accessible.

During the reign of the second emperor of Qín, Qín Èrshì 秦二世 (reign 05a-2), there lived two officials. One was the powerful but unscrupulous Lord ZHÀO Gāo 赵高. The other was the virtuous Lord KUĀNG Hóng.匡洪, whom the emperor had honored by presenting an elegant sword to him, the famous and wonderful Cosmos Sword (Yǔ zhòu fēng 宇宙锋).

Unscrupulous Lord Zhào, seeking closer alliance with the house of Kuāng, arranged that his beautiful daughter, ZHÀO Yànróng 赵艳容, should marry KUĀNG Fú 匡扶, the dashing son of virtuous Lord Kuāng.

In the state of Jìn 晋 in the Chūnqiū春秋 period (period 04d), there lived a great general named WÈI Jiàng 魏绛, who went off to war and remained away for fifteen years.

Also in the state of Jìn there lived two officials. The civil official, named ZHÀO Dùn 赵盾, was virtuous, but the military official, named TÚ Àngǔ 屠岸贾, was evil. The virtuous Zhào and the evil Tú were enemies.

A neighboring king gave the king of Jìn a miraculous but vicious dog (shén'áo 神獒), which was passed on to the evil TÚ, who trained it to attack a dummy dressed as Zhào. When the dog was fully trained, Tú started a rumor that there was a traitor in their midst, and that the dog was capable of detecting the traitor.

Long ago, England was ruled by a king named Canute. Like many leaders and men of power, Canute was surrounded by people who were always praising him. Every time he walked into a room, the flattery began.

"You are the greatest man that ever lived," one would say.

"O king, there can never be another as mighty as you," another would insist.

"Your highness, there is nothing you cannot do," someone would smile.

In a small town, a person decided to open up a brothel, which was right opposite to a church. The church and the congregation started a campaign to block the brothel from opening with petitions and prayed daily against his business.

Work progressed. However, when it was almost complete and was about to open a few days later, a strong lightning struck the brothel and it was burnt to the ground.

As far back as I can remember, the pickle jar sat on the floor beside the dresser in my parents' bedroom. When he got ready for bed, Dad would empty his pockets and toss his coins into the jar. As a small boy, I was always fascinated at the sounds the coins made as they were dropped into the jar. They landed with a merry jingle when the jar was almost empty. Then, the tones gradually muted to a dull thud as the jar was filled.

I used to squat on the floor in front of the jar and admire the copper and silver circles that glinted like a pirate's treasure when the sun poured through the bedroom window. When the jar was filled, Dad would sit at the kitchen table and roll the coins before taking them to the bank. Taking the coins to the bank was always a big production. Stacked neatly in a small cardboard box, the coins were placed between Dad and me on the seat of his old truck.

How to Explain God was written by Danny Dutton, age 8, from Chula Vista, California, for his third grade homework assignment "Explain God".

"One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth. He doesn't make grown-ups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way He doesn't have to take up His valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just leave that to mothers and fathers.

He was a blacksmith and a most wretchedly wicked man. He knew everything that was blatant and blasphemous in infidelity. He hated everything that was good, and loved everything that was bad. He studied to make himself an irritation to all who believed God, never sparing his wife who did the best she could in the patience and Kingdom of Jesus. This man was given up as altogether beyond moral recovery, and so indeed he seemed. Prayer was made as though he had no existence; churches were opened and shut, but never with reference to him; The Gospel was preached and mercy offered, but no one connected him with God's Message to the world.

Mengapa hanya ada istilah "Brotherhood" tapi tidak dikenal istilah "Sisterhood"?

Ada artikel di salah satu majalah di AS yang isinya sangat lucu dan menarik. Artikel tsb berbunyi sbb.

Suatu malam, seorang wanita tidak pulang ke rumahnya. Esok harinya dia memberitahu suaminya bahwa dia menginap di rumah teman wanitanya. Suaminya menelepon 10 orang teman istrinya yang paling akrab, dan hasilnya tidak seorang pun dari mereka yang mengetahui tentang itu.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the famous 19th-century poet and artist, was once approached by an elderly man. The old fellow had some sketches and drawings that he wanted Rossetti to look at and tell him if they were any good, or if they at least showed potential talent.

Rossetti looked them over carefully. After the first few, he knew that they were worthless, showing not the least sign of artistic talent. But Rossetti was a kind man, and he told the elderly man as gently as possible that the pictures were without much value and showed little talent. He was sorry, but he could not lie to the man. The visitor was disappointed, but seemed to expect Rossetti’s judgment.

Back in the fifteenth century, in a tiny village near Nuremberg, lived a family with eighteen children. Eighteen! In order merely to keep food on the table for this mob, the father and head of the household, a goldsmith by profession, worked almost eighteen hours a day at his trade and any other paying chore he could find in the neighborhood. Despite their seemingly hopeless condition, two of Albrecht Durer the Elder’s children had a dream. They both wanted to pursue their talent for art, but they knew full well that their father would never be financially able to send either of them to Nuremberg to study at the Academy.

BAGI penggemar film-film aksi Hollywood, nama Navy SEALs (singkatan dari sea, air, and land/laut, udara, darat) sudah tak asing lagi. Ketangguhan dan kehebatan pasukan khusus Angkatan Laut AS ini sudah beberapa kali ditampilkan dalam film, misalnya Navy SEALs (1990) yang dibintangi Charlie Sheen, The Rock (1996) yang menampilkan Sean Connery dan Nicolas Cage, serta G.I. Jane (1997) dengan bintang Demi Moore.

Somewhere.

A place. Human cannot even imagine. In like a dream, but real.

Dark. Darker than any darkness. A pitch dark.

Cold. The absence of heat. The cold caused by the absence of life. The cold of death.

The realm of death.

"Amazing Grace" is a Christian hymn written by English poet and clergyman John Newton (1725–1807), published in 1779. With a message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of the sins people commit and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.

Newton wrote the words from personal experience. He grew up without any particular religious conviction but his life's path was formed by a variety of twists and coincidences that were often put into motion by his recalcitrant insubordination. He was pressed into the Royal Navy and became a sailor, eventually participating in the slave trade. One night a terrible storm battered his vessel so severely that he became frightened enough to call out to God for mercy, a moment that marked the beginning of his spiritual conversion. His career in slave trading lasted a few years more until he quit going to sea altogether and began studying theology.

Masih teringat jelas di pikiran saya ketika papa saya membeli sebuah kaset lagu dengan label bertulisan "Top of the Tops, Volume 1" pada suatu hari di tahun 1976, ketika saya masih duduk di bangku SMP kelas 1.

Kaset itu segera menjadi kaset favorit saya karena kompilasi lagu yang ada di dalamnya di susun dengan demikian indahnya. Saya masih ingat dengan lagu pembuka dari album itu, yaitu "Fly, Robin Fly" dan diikuti dengan "That's the Way I Like It" yang keduanya bernuansa disco, sebuah irama yang mewarnai tahun tahun itu hingga dekade 80 an.

Dan ada sebuah lagu yang amat saya sukai dari album kaset tersebut, sebuah lagu yang dinyanyikan oleh penyanyi Inggris yang bernama Lyn Paul, dengan judul yang relatif pendek, hanya satu kata, yaitu: "Love".

Tokyo - An hour before the 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit Japan, I was at home, in my Tokyo apartment, on the second floor of a five-floor ferro-concrete apartment built in the late 1980s and which met all the quake construction codes at the time.

Many buildings in Japan are of similar construction.

You've heard that Japan has the highest amount of earthquake activity in the world. Technically, quakes are happening all the time, but their magnitude is so low we can't feel them. Usually, quakes that we can sense end after :05-:10 seconds.

There's not even time to react. The magnitude 4 and 5 quakes can be distressing. Sometimes they build slowly and end in a jolt. Sometimes it's just one big jolt. We rarely feel aftershocks. Japanese are "used to" quakes, but *not* used quakes of this magnitude.