Today is World Cloud Day.

Here's one I made about the importance of women in history.

A cloud is a large collection of very tiny droplets of water or ice crystals. The droplets are so small and light that they can float in the air. I guess, that's how the wordcloud came into existence—each droplet replaced by a word. All air contains water, but near the ground it is usually in the form of an invisible gas called water vapor. When warm air rises, it expands and cools. Cool air can't hold as much water vapor as warm air, so some of the vapor condenses onto tiny pieces of dust that are floating in the air and forms a tiny droplet around each dust particle. When billions of these droplets come together they become a visible cloud.

Therefore, when a multitude of ideas come together, they can be converted into a wordcloud.

There's even a real Cloud Appreciation Society in England. http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

Cloud Lovers, Unite! At The Cloud Appreciation Society we love clouds, we’re not ashamed to say it and we’ve had enough of people moaning about them. Read our manifesto and see how we are fighting the banality of ‘blue-sky thinking’. Members give numerous talks around the country, and share wonderful photos. There's an artist’s project about using face recognition software to look at clouds, a Fifteen Hundred Skies Project group on facebook.

Idioms:

§  a cloud on the horizon: a problem or difficulty which you expect to happen in the future.

§  blue skies ahead: life will be free from troubles.

§  not a cloud in the sky: there is no need to worry.

§  stormy clouds overhead: something bad will happen.

Why do we see pictures in clouds? And why do we make wordclouds?

Museum visitors can unwrap a mummy. A museum in Sweden will digitize its mummy collection in 3D to allow visitors to unwrap a real mummy in digital form. The permanent exhibition is scheduled to open in the spring of 2014. The curators hope it will help visitors gain a deeper understanding into the lives of ancient Egyptian people.

The museum in Sweden will scan six mummies using a process called reality capture technology, where high-resolution 3D digital models can be made by compiling data from photos and X-ray scans.

Museum visitors will be able to explore the mummies as if they were archaeologists. Interactive visualization will make collections more accessible to other museums and researchers. The museum visitors will be able to zoom into very high resolution to see details like carving marks on a sarcophagus and artifacts buried with the body. They should gain a deeper understanding of the men and women inside the mummy wrappings.


In this way, the mummies will become strong mediators of knowledge from our past.

I've always been fascinated by ancient Egyptian culture. All of my books refer to aspects of their past, mostly The God's Wife of Amun. Still Rock Water hints at reincarnation. The second in the series Tidal Surge will be released in July. To interact with a mummy in digital form would be interesting.

The portraits painted on to panels that covered the heads of mummies form part of an exhibition at the city's John Rylands Library. The panels, which have rarely been shown in public, were bequeathed to Manchester Museum by cotton magnate Jesse Haworth in 1921. Rather than traditionally Egyptian, they could be Greek or Roman.

Journey through the underworld

v  When ancient Egyptians died, they believed they were setting off on a journey to the afterlife

v  preserving the body through mummification would help them to travel there

v  The soul would make a dangerous journey through the underworld and overcome demons using magic

v  Once there, they would meet Osiris, lord of the underworld

v  If Osiris judged them to be good, their soul would reunite with their body and they could live in paradise for eternity

Their beliefs were not so different to those of many religions today. In time, the shared technology will allow people around the world to explore this fascinating ancient culture. In the meantime, we can read books and use our imagination.

Today is World cloud day.

Here's one I made about the importance of women in history.

A cloud is a large collection of tiny particles of water or ice crystals. The droplets are so small and light that they can float in the air. I guess, that's how the wordcloud came into existence—each droplet replaced by a word.

All air contains water, but near the ground it is usually in the form of an invisible gas called water vapor. When warm air rises, it expands and cools. Cool air can't hold as much water vapor as warm air, so some of the vapor condenses onto tiny pieces of dust that are floating in the air and forms a tiny droplet around each dust particle. When billions of these droplets come together they become a visible cloud.

Therefore, when a multitude of ideas come together, they can be converted into a wordcloud.

There's even a real Cloud Appreciation Society in England. http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

Cloud Lovers, Unite! At The Cloud Appreciation Society we love clouds, we’re not ashamed to say it and we’ve had enough of people moaning about them. Read our manifesto and see how we are fighting the banality of ‘blue-sky thinking’. Members give numerous talks around the country, and share wonderful photos. There's an artist’s project about using face recognition software to look at clouds, and a Fifteen Hundred Skies Project group on facebook.

Idioms:

§  a cloud on the horizon: a problem or difficulty which you expect to happen in the future.

§  blue skies ahead: life will be free from troubles.

§  not a cloud in the sky: there is no need to worry.

§  stormy clouds overhead: something bad will happen.

Why do we see pictures in clouds? And why do we make wordclouds?

A new discovery highlights ancient women taking the lead role in society. Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed a massive royal tomb with treasures and mummified women from about 1,200 years ago as well as human sacrifices.

It is the first intact royal tomb of its kind.

The fact that very rich grave goods lay alongside the female skeletons, leads archaeologists to believe that this was a tomb of the royal elite. The women in the Wari culture must have been of the highest rank.

There's a theory that much of women's role in the past has been repressed. Some people claim there was a Golden Age in prehistory where the matriarchy ruled, but no evidence has been found to prove or disprove this. However, misogyny rules to this day in many cultures.

The ritual denunciation of women constitutes something on the order of a cultural constant, reaching back to the Old Testament as well as to Ancient Greece and extending through the fifteenth century.

Documents of all the ancient cultures (Greek, Roman, Mosaic, Hebrew, Celtic, Germanic, Assyrian, Christian, Babylonian) depict women as already subordinated to men socially and legally.

Ancient women warriors who led their troops into battle: Amazons, Queen Artemisia, Queen Boudicca, Queen Samsi, Queen Tomyris, Trung Sisters, ...

Great women rulers:

Hatshepsut, Queen of Egypt, 15th century B.C.  Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt, 14th Century B.C.

Sammuramat, Assyrian Queen, 9th Century B.C.  Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, 69-30 B.C.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England and of France, 1122-1202.  Joan of Arc, Leader of the French Army, 1412-1431

Isabella I of Castile, Queen of Spain, 1451-150.  Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, 1519-1589 and so on.

Little is known about the family or tribal structure of ancient mankind. I believe women were once strong and powerful before recorded history. They sat by a fire in their nice warm cave and sent the men out to hunt. This allowed them to chat amongst themselves while they nursed the children, thereby developing the ability to multi-task, while men had to focus on one thing—to find food.

I just read a news article about a woman who was finally granted equal pay by the courts in England. That makes a stark contrast to a current television commercial about aliens, where their positions are reversed and a woman decorates a baby room for a pregnant male.

What if roles were really reversed? Would men be content to do the same work as women but not be paid as much? How did women get into this situation? A woman is the one who brings new life into the world. She should be treated with reverence and respect.

In the legal case on the news, a female classroom assistant received equal pay. This changed the law for all her co-workers. They have endured a seven-year wait. Surely they should receive the same treatment as male manual workers like leisure attendants, road workers, groundsmen, refuse drivers and collectors working at local depots and swimming pools. Despite this, most women see discrimination in the workplace. Pay inequality between men and women is often introduced into domestic politics in many first world countries as an economic problem that needs governmental intervention via regulation.

On International Women's day last March, and 41 years after the Equal Pay act came into force, many women still earn a lot less than men performing the same jobs.

As more women rise up through the workplace ranks, they elevate the standard for others. Now treated as equal in the sports field, female athletes have gained status. However, more is needed if we want to change this inequality in the human race.

Cutlery can influence the way food tastes. How we experience food is a multisensory experience involving taste, feel of the food in our mouths, aroma, and the feasting of our eyes. The study in the journal Flavour suggests the brain makes judgments on food even before it goes in the mouth. Size, weight, shape and color all have an effect on flavor.

A University of Oxford team worked with more than 100 students. Three experiments looked at the influence of weight, color and shape of cutlery on taste. The researchers found that when the weight of the cutlery confirms to expectations, this had an impact on how the food tastes. For example, food tasted sweeter on the small spoons that are traditionally used to serve desserts. Cheese tastes saltier when eaten from a knife rather than a fork; while white spoons make yoghurt taste better.

Past research has shown that crockery can also alter our perception of food and drink. For example, people generally eat less when food is served on smaller plates, which could help dieters.

Taste is one of the main pleasures in life. Every morning, while eating fruit to break my fast, I thank God for my perception. Taste is one of those senses some people take for granted—until they get a cold.

However, the ability to taste food is a life-and-death matter. Failure to recognize food with a high enough caloric content could mean a slow death from malnutrition. Failure to detect a poison could result in near-instant death. And now, as researchers begin to understand some of the nuts and bolts of taste perception; it seems that the sense of taste may also have more subtle effects on health.

Taste is the sense by which the chemical qualities of food in the mouth are distinguished by the brain, based on information provided by the taste buds.

The five qualities are salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami, the last being the Japanese term for a savory sensation. Salty and sour detection is needed to control salt and acid balance. Bitter detection warns of foods containing poisons—many of the poisonous compounds produced by plants for defence are bitter. The quality sweet provides a guide to calorie-rich foods. And umami (the taste of the amino acid glutamate) may flag up protein-rich foods. Our sense of taste has a simple goal. When food is in the mouth, we must decide whether to swallow or spit it out. The important decision is made based on these taste qualities.

Some of the other main pleasures in life:

Getting a good night's sleep.

Smiling at a stranger.

Finding money in a pocket or stashed away in your purse that you had forgotten about.

The wind in your hair.

                                                               A big strong hug.

                                                               Watching the clouds go by.

                                                               Lying in bed, listening to soft rainfall.

                                                               A good hearty laugh.

These are some of my favorite things. Do you have any to add?

In the UK, around 5 million larches have been hit by a tree-killing disease which has spread into mid and north Wales. But experts are keen to point out that it poses no risk to human or animal health and that affected trees still have use to industry. In the short term £500,000 will be spent by NRW cutting down trees around the edges of infected areas as the disease spreads tree to tree through airborne spores. A further £1.7m will be used to remove infected trees and replant areas. New forest roads will also be constructed so areas can be cleared.

It is natural to wonder what purpose disease plays in God's creation. If each part is important, disease or pathogens must struggle to survive and multiply, just as humans do.

Infectious diseases have long been known to cause devastating illnesses in humans, crops, and livestock, but until recently pathogens were assumed to have little impact on wild plant and animal populations, except in rare and sometimes spectacular die-off events. During the past two decades, it has become increasingly apparent that parasitic organisms are not only a common and integral part of ecosystems, but they also influence the abundance of wild populations, can cause extinctions of their hosts, and serve as drivers of evolution (Hudson et al. 2002).

In humans and domesticated plants and animals, substantial efforts have been made to reduce pathogen transmission or to eradicate pathogens from populations altogether. The most commonly adopted strategies include culling (for animals, plants, and disease vectors), behavioral modifications including quarantine and social distancing, and vaccination. Quarantines and social distancing have been applied successfully for human pathogens, including SARS and HIV.

Source.

Biologists and economists use the term ecosystem services these days. This refers to the many ways nature supports the human endeavor. Forests filter the water we drink, for example, and birds and bees pollinate crops, both of which have substantial economic as well as biological value.

If we fail to understand and take care of the natural world, it can cause a breakdown of these systems. A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics like AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades don’t just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature. AIDS, for example, crossed into humans from chimpanzees in the 1920s when bush-meat hunters in Africa killed and butchered them.

Disease, it seems, is largely an environmental issue. Sixty percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans originate in animals. And more than two-thirds of those from wildlife.

Teams of veterinarians and conservation biologists are in the midst of a global effort with medical doctors and epidemiologists to understand the ecology of disease. It is part of a project called Predict, which is financed by the United States Agency for International Development. Experts are trying to figure out, based on how people alter the landscape (with a new farm or road, for example) where the next diseases are likely to spill over into humans and how to spot them when they do emerge, before they can spread. They are gathering blood, saliva and other samples from high-risk wildlife species to create a library of viruses so that if one does infect humans, it can be more quickly identified. And they are studying ways of managing forests, wildlife and livestock to prevent diseases from leaving the woods and becoming the next pandemic.

It isn’t only a public health issue, but an economic one. The World Bank has estimated that a severe influenza pandemic, for example, could cost the world economy $3 trillion.

Emerging infectious diseases are either new types of pathogens or old ones that have mutated to become novel, as the flu does every year.

Diseases have always come out of the woods and wildlife and found their way into human populations. The plague and malaria are two examples. Experts say emerging diseases have quadrupled in the last half-century largely because of increasing human encroachment into habitat, especially in disease hot spots around the globe, mostly in tropical regions. Modern air travel and a robust market in wildlife trafficking increases the potential for a serious outbreak in large population centers.

The worldwide program One Health Initiative, involving more than 600 scientists and other professionals, advances the idea that human, animal and ecological health are inextricably linked and need to be studied and managed holistically.

EcoHealth also scans luggage and packages at airports, looking for imported wildlife likely to be carrying deadly viruses. And they have a program called PetWatch to warn consumers about exotic pets that are pulled out of the forest in disease hot spots and shipped to market.

The knowledge gained by coordinated effort in 20 countries in the last couple of years should allow us to sleep a little easier.

I still don't understand the point of disease. Nor do I understand any type of evil.

Maybe Mother Nature is trying to create a balance between all living things. Mankind's growth is exploding. Soon, no part of the planet will be safe from our population needs. Maybe the trees are fighting back.

The dire effects of worldwide weather changes continue. While rescue efforts continue in the flooded areas of India, Malaysia has declared a smog emergency in the dry heat. Thick haze from forest fires in Indonesia continues to shroud parts of Malaysia. On Monday, officials ordered schools closed in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor state.

Can you imagine how it must be if every breath you took threatened to choke you? Mothers must worry about the long term effect on their children.

In Singapore, air quality continued to improve after last week's record haze as wind conditions changed. Officials warned against complacency, saying the situation could deteriorate again if monsoon winds carrying smoke and particulates from Indonesia's island of Sumatra changed direction.

So, the smoke blows away from Singapore, giving them relief, only to hit the residents of Indonesia.

I'm familiar with both places. I stayed in Singapore for three weeks in the 80s and became familiar with the polite people in their clean city. I can picture their relief as they go about their daily lives. In the 70s, I spent two weeks in Bali, a province of Indonesia. My mother and I visited the temples and traveled along the roads beside rice fields. Who could forget the Balinese people who show great reverence to everyone they met?

The Indonesian authorities are working to control the blazes but so far cloud-seeding has not produced enough rain. The smog is being blamed on illegal land-clearing fires burning near the provincial capital of Indonesia's Riau province, Pekanbaru. Indonesian authorities say close to 100 forest fires are still burning out of control on the island of Sumatra, casting a thick pall of smog across hundreds of square kilometres. Palm oil companies are suspected of illegally starting widespread forest fires in Indonesia in order to clear land for palm oil plantations.

The smoky haze may be life threatening to vulnerable people—different to traffic pollution but equally toxic. The immediate effects of smog can include problems with breathing, wheezing, coughing and watery eyes. In the longer term, prolonged exposure to air pollution of any kind can have an impact on human health and reduce life expectancy. Masks may be sufficient to keep out some particles, but other gases would go straight through them.

I don't want the wind to blow the smog on anyone. If only I could send the drenching rain from India in Indonesia's direction. Don't think there's nothing you can do, because you can—just by using the power of the mind. I once concentrated on a cyclone off the Australian north-west coast and it disappeared overnight. If each of us wishes the fire to die, it must have an impact especially since government leaders throughout the world are working toward pollution control.

Indian floods add more proof about global weather changes. Early monsoon rains in India this year are believed to be the heaviest in 60 years. Officials warn that the death toll in flash floods and landslides in the north could climb to 1,000.

More than 600 people are confirmed dead. More than 40,000 are stranded in the mountains of Uttarakhand state. Although rescue workers are said to be uncoordinated in the poor weather, survivors are being airlifted from the worst-hit areas and special trains are carrying people to safety. Search and rescue efforts have been stepped up as more downpours are expected in the difficult mountainous terrain.

Tourists and pilgrims were among those caught up in the floods, which washed away homes, roads and bridges. Relatives of those still missing are awaiting news. Medicines and food are being flown to the affected areas.

The rainy season generally lasts from June to September, bringing rain which is critical to farming. Agriculture means food for the masses. Must the Indian race accept the loss of life in some of the population in order for the whole to survive? This way of thinking is repugnant to the western approach. Each person is precious and must be given every opportunity to live a full life.

Please, spare a moment to send your prayers and good wishes to those who are trapped in hazardous terrain while floodwater climbs higher. I can't imagine how they must feel, cold, hungry and without shelter.

Details of a debt owed by Errol Flynn to a Northampton menswear shop have emerged, 53 years after his death. He wrote to ask for more time in which to pay his debt.

After recently discovering Shakespeare owed taxes, this doesn't come as a surprise. People back then led similar lives to ours. Scrimp and save, try to balance paying the bills with enjoying life. Rich or poor, we all play the game of life.

When I lived in Australia, I knew a former equerry to Prince Philip in England. I won't name him. In his youth, he socialized with many stars, Errol Flynn and David Niven among them. He told stories of wild drinking parties. I don't think he liked Errol much. After reading about Flynn's penchant for underage girls, I can see why.