The end of the world...?

'It's not the end of the world.'

Have you ever heard this English expression? We say it to someone who is upset or disappointed, and it means, 'Don't worry. This situation is not as bad as you think it is'.

But today, perhaps this expression has a more literal meaning: an ancient calendar produced by the Mayan people stops on 21.12.12, which some people believe signals the end of the world. Others believe not that the world will end, but that great changes will happen.

Above: today's Google doodle.

This idea is sometimes called 'the 2012 phenomenon'. It was the subject of a movie, titled simply 2012; Google has today changed its logo to a picture of the Mayan calendar; and it has been written about in newspapers all over the world. In some countries, it was even reported that people were panic-buying essential items such as salt and torches.

So far, the world looks unchanged. But what would you do if today was the last day of your life? Why not leave us a comment? :)

Human Rights Day

Did you know that 10 December is Human Rights Day?

Click for photo source

On this day in 1948, the United Nations published a list of 30 rights which should apply to every human being, such as freedom of speech and movement. You can read the list of human rights in simple English by clicking here. Political conferences and cultural events are held all around the world on 10 December.

Although the list was written 64 years ago, there are still many places in the world where people do not have these rights.

Is it a good list? In Georgia, do people have all of the rights on the list? Do you think it's important to celebrate this event? Why (not)? Why not tell us your opinion below?

Idiom

Confusion Helps Us Learn

When we’re confused by something—say with a movie plot or calculus—we tend to feel uncomfortable, frustrated. But maybe we should embrace the confusion. Because a new study finds that confusion can lead to better learning.

Scientists set up a situation where they purposely confused subjects during a pretend learning session.

The subjects watched an animated tutor and student discuss possible flaws in a scientific study. The researchers had the animated tutor and student disagree with each other on specific flaws.  But to set up a really confusing situation for one group of subjects they also had the pretend tutor and student make incorrect or contradictory statements about the study. Then the subjects had to decide which of the two opinions had more scientific merit.

Subjects who were forced to deal with the incorrect and contradictory statements did significantly better on later tests where they had to spot flaws in studies, as opposed to those subjects who only faced the disagreements between the animated tutor and student. The study will be published in the journal Learning and Instruction.

Researchers note that confusion motivates us to work harder to understand, and so we gain a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of a subject.

© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com

Idiom

Spider invasion spooks Indian village

Panicked villagers in a remote Indian state complained Monday of an invasion of giant venomous spiders that resemble tarantulas but are unknown to local specialists.

Indian media said that a dozen people had been bitten and treated in hospital, with two unconfirmed deaths reported.

"Initially we thought it was a prank, but later on we saw swarms of this peculiar kind of spider biting people," Ranjit Das, a community elder in the town of Sadiya in the northeastern state of Assam, told AFP by telephone.

Authorities have swung into action by fogging and spraying insecticides in the area, 600 kilometres (370 miles) east of Assam's main city of Guwahati, and a team of scientists have been dispatched to investigate.

"We visited the spot and found it akin to the tarantula, but we are still not sure what this particular species is," said L.R. Saikia, a scientist from the department of life science of Dibrugarh University in Assam.

"It appears to be an aggressive spider with its fangs more powerful than the normal variety of house spiders," he told AFP.

Specimens have been sent outside Assam for identification by arachnologists, he said.

An stunning Olympic moment

Derek Redmond and dad finish 400m

What made this moment at the 1992 Games special was it brought into focus not just one athlete's near-heroic desperation but a more universal theme: the nature of parenthood

Olympians could fill a pool with their tears, on a quadrennial basis. The nature of the competition ensures that however many dream of glory, most will only experience disappointment. At that moment, the bitter taste not just of a single defeat but of four years of wasted effort can simply be too much for some to handle. More than that, quite a few athletes can't even win without tears. But no Olympic emotional outburst is ever likely to dislodge Derek Redmond's in the minds not just of Britons but of anyone old enough to remember the 1992 Games. What made this moment special was that it brought into focus not just the near-heroic desperation of a single professional athlete but a much more universal theme: the nature of parenthood.

"I still get people coming up to me in the street because of what happened," said Redmond in February 1993, six months after the 1992 Olympics. "But as nice as it is to know that they care, I would like to put it all behind me and not be remembered just for that."

He never had a chance. Redmond travelled to two Olympics and both ended with injury-induced heartache, once in the most public circumstances. For all his ability as an athlete – and he was considered likely to win a medal in Barcelona – he will forever be remembered for tearfully completing his 400m semi-final using his father as a crutch. His body never gave him the opportunity to redefine the way the world perceived him: two years after the Barcelona Games, following an 11th operation on his achilles tendon, his athletics career was over. This was his last race of any significance.

Redmond had missed the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh with a hamstring injury, and withdrew from the 1988 Seoul Olympics minutes before his first heat having failed to recover from tendinitis, having had two painkilling injections that morning in an effort to make it on to the track. The following summer, still plagued by injuries, he came close to giving up sport altogether. What the world witnessed in 1992 was a man who had been continually brought low by injury simply refusing to submit yet again.

His body had given him some hope: in the first round Redmond had run his quickest 400m for four years. "I was feeling absolutely 100% before the race," he told me in 2006. "I'd had two really good rounds without even trying and the night before the semi-final I'd talked with my father and my coach and we'd decided I was going to push a bit harder and try to get a good lane for the final.

"On the day everything went smooth. I got a really good start, which was unusual for me. I think I was the first to react to the pistol. My normal tactics were to get round the first bend and then put the burners on for 30m, accelerate hard. But by the time I'd got upright I was almost round the bend, much further than usual, and I decided not to bother, to save my energy in case I had to fight for the line. About three strides later I felt a pop."

It was his hamstring. Redmond collapsed to the floor, clutching his leg. Most athletes would have been quietly carried off the track and towards medical attention, but as the Red Cross workers approached Redmond instead pushed himself back to his feet. "I got up quicker than I got out of my blocks," he said. "I said to myself: 'There's no way I'm going to be stretchered out of these Olympics.' I didn't know where I was. I really, really believed I could still qualify."

Bizarrely, the reason Redmond first started limping around the track was a belief that if he limped fast enough he might still overtake four people and qualify for the final. "Believe me, at the time I thought I was running," he said later. "It's only when I see the playback I realise I wasn't actually running very quick at all."

Meanwhile, Redmond's father Jim was fighting his way on to the track. "When I saw Derek hit the deck, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me," he told the Guardian. "I'm very involved in his training so I knew just how fit he was. All I can remember after that is telling the coach, Tony Hadley [not the lead singer in Spandau Ballet], to look after my camera. The next thing I knew, I was on the track."

Jim told his son to stop, in case the injury might heal in time for him to compete in the relay. Derek refused. "Well then," Jim said, "we're going to finish this together." And finish it they did, slowly, and with the younger man's anguish becoming visibly greater with every pace.

Back in Northampton Redmond's mother, Jennie, was watching events unfold on television, weeping. She later told the press that the last time she had seen her son so unhappy was when he didn't get the bike he wanted for his sixth birthday. Redmond's 28-year-old sister Karen was nine months pregnant; as she watched her brother's world collapse she started to feel contractions.

Back in Barcelona, father and son batted away a succession of officials who tried and failed to convince them to clear the track. Jim, it turned out, was as much bouncer as buttress. "I'd never heard my dad using four-letter words," Derek said the following day. "I learned a few new ones."

"Even now, it's hard to say how or why I did it," said Jim. "It was a spontaneous reaction, as if I had seen him hit by a car. I certainly didn't run down to help him finish – if anything it was to stop him. I could accept the fact that my son was injured, but not that he was going to carry on in pain, causing himself even greater damage."

"After I crossed the line I was taken to the doctors and I was crying like a baby the whole time," Redmond told me. "I had no idea how the crowd had reacted until I saw the video – they were the last thing on my mind. It could have gone one of two ways: they'd either think 'what a complete prat' or 'good on him'. Luckily they chose the second one."

Not everyone. Though the Redmonds were pictured on the front page of the following day's newspaper, the Guardian's athletics correspondent at the time, John Rodda, who was covering his ninth and last Olympic Games for the paper, decided that the incident merited only a mention in the 18th and penultimate paragraph of his main report, calling it "a display of histrionics which the crowd saw as courage but must have bewildered many".

Most observers, though, were genuinely moved by what they witnessed. On his way from the stadium Redmond met Linford Christie, Britain's team captain. The pair were far from friendly, and their enmity had become public after Christie criticised the 4x400m relay team that won gold at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo. "These guys are not my sort of guys," he said. "I don't like their attitude." Christie added that the four – of whom Redmond was one – should have toned down their celebrations because they had "mucked up" their individual events. Redmond replied: "There's a saying going around among the athletes that Linford is the most balanced runner in Britain because he's got a chip on both shoulders. For once in his life he was upstaged in Tokyo and he didn't like it."

But that day, in the bowels of Barcelona's Estadi Olímpic, Christie approached his team-mate and the pair wordlessly embraced. "Tears started and we both broke down," said Redmond. "I know it sounds soppy but it was Mills and Boon sort of stuff. I've changed my views of him completely. It shows that this sport isn't just about coming here and making money."

Perhaps not, but as it happens Redmond's courage that day allowed him to enjoy a second career as a motivational speaker. That wasn't the only lasting effect of those injury-plagued years, however: in Barcelona the swimmer Sharron Davies, another British athlete who had endured a disappointing Games, sought out Redmond to express her sympathy. The pair married two years later (but divorced in 2000). More long-lasting, it transpired, are the chronic stomach ulcers induced by Redmond's use of painkilling medication. "I would never encourage anyone to do what I did," he said, "but I didn't need encouragement. I went out and did it myself."

At the 1992 Olympics the athletes had access to a rudimentary computerised messaging system. This allowed them to log on to one of the Olympic computers, which were distributed around the athletes' village, and send someone else a message that they would be able to pick up when they next logged on – a kind of electronic mail, if you will. It's never really caught on. Anyway, in the days after the race Redmond received scores of messages from his fellow competitors, including this from a Candian competitor he had never met:

"Long after the names of the medallists have faded from our minds, you will be remembered for having finished, for having tried so hard, for having a father to demonstrate the strength of his love for his son. I thank you, and I will always remember your race and I will always remember you – the purest, most courageous example of grit and determination I have seen."

It is as true today as it was 19 years ago.

• © 2012 Guardian

Idiom of the week

Idiom of the week

Mystery of horse taming 'solved' by gene study

Horses were domesticated 6,000 years ago on the grasslands of Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, a genetic study shows.

Domestic horses then spread across Europe and Asia, breeding with wild mares along the way, research published in the journal PNAS suggests.

The work, by a Cambridge University team, brings together two competing theories on horse domestication.

The matter has been hotly contested by scientists.

Archaeological evidence suggests horses were tamed in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe (Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan).

Experts think they were used for riding, and as a source of meat and milk.

However, these archaeological clues- such as traces of horse milk found in ancient pots from the western Eurasian Steppe - are at odds with evidence from mitochondrial DNA.

These studies suggest domestication happened in many places across Europe and Asia.

The new study looked at nuclear DNA samples taken from 300 horses living in eight countries in Europe and Asia.

Genetic data was fed into computer models developed to look at different scenarios for domestication.

Dr Vera Warmuth from the Department of Zoology at Cambridge said: "It shows that horse domestication originated in the western part of the Steppes and that the spread of domestication involved lots of integration of wild horses."

The theory explains why evidence from mitochondrial DNA - which contains genes inherited solely from the mother - suggests horses were domesticated many times, in different places.

In fact, it appears that wild mares were used to re-stock herds of existing domesticated horses, perhaps because they did not breed easily in captivity.

This is the case with Przewalski's horse, which is the closest wild relative of modern horses.

BBC © 2012

Kenya's Rift Valley, where everyone runs

Kenya produces some of the world's very best distance runners, but the possibility of winning Olympic gold is not the only incentive for the country's athletes.

On the drive up into the lush hills of Iten, 2,600m (8,530ft) above sea level, we pass groups of children on their way to school.

The odd one is dawdling in a way that would seem familiar anywhere in the world, but most are running - and running fast - with a carrier bag of books swinging from one hand.

One 13-year old boy called Kenneth tells me how he runs back and forth to school every day and even runs back home for lunch.

Each run takes 40 minutes, but he has long, lean legs and says he likes it.

Like a lot of children living in the hills of western Kenya when he grows up, he wants to be an athlete. Why? Because, he tells me, then he could afford to help his family and his whole village.

With heroes like David Rudisha who holds the 800m world record, the children see that athletics can be an escape from poverty, but runners here are so good that the competition is stiff.

The times that would guarantee you a place on the national team of many European countries would leave you as one of many runners-up in Kenya.

But this exceptional pool of talent brings athletes another opportunity.

An hour from the green, peace of Iten I pull over by a line of single storey white-washed building with rusty corrugated iron roofs.

The fence which keeps the cows away is draped with shiny tracksuits - purple, red and black - drying in the sun. This is a training camp for the young people with one aim in mind - to use their running talent, not to go for gold, but to get them a scholarship to an American university.

It is early but they have already been for a 45-minute run into the hills and soon they are putting their damp tracksuits back on before jogging across the road, and ducking through a gap in the fence to get to the track - a bumpy, grassy field, marked out with chalk.

Then they begin their training session sprinting diagonally across the track, then jogging slowly round the edge, then sprinting across once more - again and again.

After 30 minutes they begin their stretches and tell me of their plans.

Nowami wants to be a nurse, Beatrice, a molecular scientist and Susteen a TV news anchor, but they know that what the Americans want them for is their speed.

Provided they train hard enough as well as passing their exams and satisfying the strict criteria for visas, they can go to the US.

The best runners here have very slim, long lower legs, so slim they almost look fragile.

Scientists have found that this does bring an advantage, as does living and training at such a high altitude, but the athletes are not keen on the suggestion that it is down to genetics.

They do not like the implication that this means they do not have to try. And they certainly do try.

In fact one athlete told me that the motivation to run your way out of poverty is so strong, that if Kenya were to become a rich country he believed it would stop producing such fast runners.

I go to another village where three primary schools are holding a competition. They are determined to include all children in the sports day, not just the best, but coaches and even an Olympic Gold medallist - Asbel Kiprop - have come to see who shows promise.

The children are told to line-up by age.

They are very excited. Every single one wants to run.

The seven-year olds go first, flinging off their shoes and then sprinting 70m across the bumpy field.

I do a bit of running myself, or maybe I should call it jogging, so I had come in my running shoes, thinking I might join in.

I was planning to wait to run with the older children, but that was until I saw how fast the seven-year olds went.

So I asked the eight-year olds if I could be in their race. Their enthusiasm results in several false starts, with me already lagging behind because I was a bit slow on the off.

Then I started sprinting as fast as I could, leaping two fresh cowpats and desperately trying to breathe enough of the thin air to keep going.

Within 10 seconds all but one of the 30 children were way in front of me. There was just one smaller one who I thought I might be able to catch up with.

They had warned me the competitive spirit was strong here and it must have rubbed off on me because I have to confess that I do not usually try to beat eight-year olds at games, but found myself using every bit of energy I could find.

I caught up and crossed the line possibly just in front of him, although to be honest I think it was probably a draw.

I can try blaming the fact that I was carrying a microphone and I am not used to the altitude. Alternatively I can just acknowledge they were really fast.

They enjoyed beating me, and did not seem surprised they had done so.

As I left the coach offered me a few words of consolation. "In this field of children today," he said, "I guarantee you there are gold medallists of the future."

No wonder I could not beat them.

By Claudia Hammond

BBC, Iten

BBC © 2012

Idiom of the week

Which is the best musical instrument?

The Big Question: There are 14 or 15 musical instruments in an orchestra, three or four in most rock bands. But which is the king? Richard Morrison launches our debate...

I once asked Anne-Sophie Mutter, the great violinist, what had made her choose the fiddle. “I didn’t,” she replied. “It chose me.” That’s how it is with prodigies. At the age of three or thereabouts they connect with an instrument in a way that seems beyond intuition. It’s as if everything about them—temperament, intelligence, physique, upbringing—catapults them towards mastering a musical tool in astonishingly little time. Typically, an infant prodigy on the violin or piano will go from zero to concerto in two years.

But they are the one-in-a-million kids. What about the rest of us? What draws us to play, or to love hearing, some instruments above all others? Why are 40m children in China learning the piano, a European instrument that has scant connection with Eastern culture? What accounts for the guitar’s dominance in Western popular music? Why do composers express their most melancholy thoughts on cellos?

These questions go beyond music. They touch on the essence of identity, aspiration, expression, history and politics, as well as what Jung called our collective unconscious. And science plays a huge part as well. When we describe a quiet flute as “soothing”, we are really commenting on the sine-wave purity of its vibrations. Similarly, the “rousing” or “joyous” timbre of a trumpet attests to its jagged array of harmonics.

In any case, does that necessarily convey joy, or a call to action? How you interpret any sound depends on its context and your knowledge. In Mahler’s symphonies and song cycles a trumpet fanfare often signifies death, grief or tragedy—but only if you know that for Mahler (whose miserable childhood was spent near an army barracks) a bugle-call was a reminder of the eight siblings who died in his youth.

What complicates matters further is the sheer variety of instruments. We began creating them ridiculously early (the earliest extant flute is 67,000 years old) and have never stopped. Recently I’ve been to concerts featuring virtuoso on both a six-stringed electric violin and the hang, a Swiss-invented steel drum of beguiling sensuality. Neither existed 20 years ago.

Take a look, if you have the strength, at the 12,000 entries in the “New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments” (1985). Then consider that the next edition will have 20,000. The standard symphony orchestra, parading a mere 14 or 15 varieties of instrument, begins to look as limited as a supermarket cheese counter.

Most of the 20,000 instruments are local riffs on universal archetypes. Almost every culture has its version of the flute, drum, guitar/lute and fiddle family. There are wide variations in the way they are tuned, constructed or played. But the biggest differences come in the social functions they fulfil. Many instruments, particularly in Eastern cultures, have religious roles. Others are associated with an elite craft, passed down from master to pupil like a trade secret.

Sometimes the same instrument can fulfil totally different roles in different cultures or ages. In Western art music, the violin is the instrument that the greatest composers—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky—often entrusted with their deepest thoughts. But in the folk cultures of America, Ireland and eastern Europe, it is a wild invitation to a knees-up.

Similarly, in many countries—particularly under totalitarian regimes—the oom-pah of massed brass instruments is a sinister sound, linked to military might and political oppression. But in Britain the cornets and euphoniums of brass bands are aural badges of pride for the embattled working class: the instruments on which miners and mill-workers let off steam, almost literally, after their 14-hour shifts. Though the mines and mills have gone, those associations linger.

What’s fascinating today is how the popularity of certain instruments mirrors the cultural differences between West and East. In the United States and western Europe, guitar is the instrument of choice for most youngsters, and there are obvious reasons for that. Its most famous exponents enjoy iconic status as entertainers, balladeers, individualists, rebels or folk-heroes as well as (or, in some cases, instead of) being good musicians. The guitar is a good traveller across musical styles in a way that, for instance, the oboe isn’t. It’s an easy instrument to learn—at least, if you need just three chords to satisfy your musical urges. And you can buy a reasonable guitar for one-tenth of the cost of a reasonable violin.

Yet in the Far East the violin and piano are the instruments most likely to be thrust at a toddler by any self-respecting tiger-mother. Why? Precisely because neither can be truly mastered without putting in hours of disciplined, repetitive practice each day for years—a discipline that seems beyond the channel-flicking attention-spans of most Western children now. But isn’t there also something very symbolic about this? By striving to become the world’s foremost exponents of Western instruments, aren’t these Asians saying something significant about their general ambitions for themselves and their nations?

Ultimately, nominating the best musical instrument is like nominating the best position for sex. There’s no “best”. It all depends on who’s performing and how inspired they are. I was once moved to tears by a tuba—played by an autistic teenager who communicated more through this tangle of silver piping than he could ever achieve with words. In his poem “Snow”, Louis MacNeice mused that the world is “crazier and more of it than we think, incorrigibly plural”. Nothing demonstrates that better than the array of 20,000 instruments that humanity has found reasons to invent. We should cherish them all. Yes, even a world without bagpipes would be a poorer place.

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, May/June 2012

Another idiom explained: