World History

I have another blog named Arloo. Arloo is all bout interesting and fun articles about Myanmar and other stuffs. It is updated daily. Want fresh news, articles and opinions? This is the right place.

Among my blogs, it is the most popular now. Maintaining blogs is not an easy task but I really enjoy it. And blogging about my country, Myanmar is even more rewarding. If you have time, just check it out! (Arloo)

Wanna know what the largest organism on earth is? It is all here. You'll find largest organism in each category. Interesting! (Link)

The largest organism found on Earth can be measured using a variety of different methods. It could be defined as the largest by volume, mass, height, or length. Some creatures group together to form a superorganism, though this cannot truly be classed as one large organism and is usually only common amongst insects.

This guy has some great ideas! And the results turn out to be genuine thoughts of ordinary people. Ji Lee says, "I printed 50,000 of these speech bubble stickers. I place them on top of movie posters, ads and signs all over New York City. Passers are invited to fill them in. I go back and photograph the results." (Link)

Nigerian Islamic judges have ordered that a teenager from Niger have his hand cut off after he confessed to stealing a motorbike, court officials said on Monday. The implementation of Islamic law in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria -- and in particular the use of amputation -- has been criticised by Nigeria's federal government and human rights activists. (Link)

I just don't understand why some people in this modern world stick to the rules of ancient times. Its really not good to hear someone being cut off his hand for stealing a motorbike.

This guy arrives at the Pearly Gates. He has to wait to be admitted, while St. Pete leafs through his Big Book.

He's checking to see if the guy is worthy of entry or not. Saint Peter goes through the books several times, furrows his brow, and says to the guy, "You know, I can't see that you did lots of good in your life but, you never did anything bad either.

Tell you what, if you can tell me of one REALLY good deed that you did in your life, you're in."

The guy thinks for a moment and says, "Well, there was this one time when I was drivin' down the highway and I saw a Biker Gang assaulting this poor girl. I slowed down my car to see what was going on, and sure enough, that's what they were doing. There were about 50 of 'em torturing this chick.

Infuriated, I got out my car, grabbed a tire iron from my trunk and walked straight up to the leader of the gang. He was a huge guy with a studded leather jacket and a chain running from his nose to his ear. As I walked up to the leader, the Gang formed a circle all around me.

So I ripped the leader's chain off his face and smashed him over the head with the tire iron. Then I turned around and yelled to the rest of them, 'Leave this poor, innocent girl alone, you slime! You're all a bunch of sick, deranged animals! Go home before I teach you all a lesson in pain!"'

St. Peter, extremely impressed, says, "Really? Wow, when did all this happen?"

"Er.. about two minutes ago." (Link)

Microsoft Windows Vista will break down into seven different editions.

Windows Vista Starter Edition: Target for low cost PC. 32-bit version. Allow only three applications to run simultaneously. Does not support network connection.

Windows Vista Home Basic Edition: Aimed at single PC homes, the baseline version of Windows Vista editions.

Windows Vista Home Premium Edition: Include everything from Home Basic edition, as well as home entertainment, Tablet PC, Mobility Center functionality.

Windows Vista Professional Edition: Like Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Professional is for business use. It include better network protocols support.

Windows Vista Small Business Edition: For small business without IT staff. Superset of Vista Professional Edition, and includes backup, fax and scanning utilities.

Windows Vista Enterprise Edition: Superset of Windows Vista Professional Edition, also include Virtual PC, multilanguage user interface, and Secure Startup/full volume encryption security technologies ("Cornerstone").

Windows Vista Ultimate Edition: Optimized for individual, super set of both Vista Home Premium and Vista Professional Edition. Include Game Performance Tweaker, maybe include Podcast creation utility and online services (music, movies, services and customer care). Aimed for high end users.

Read the details at Windows Vista Product Editions Revealed .

It is really a big deal if you buy a free internet phone software company for billions of dollars.

Making one of its riskiest bets yet, eBay (EBAY) said Monday that it will buy Internet voice service Skype. That could eventually pit eBay against phone companies and VoIP services such as Vonage.
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Buying Skype "is a lot more of a stretch than any of the other acquisitions they've done," says David Edwards, equity analyst at American Technology Research.

EBay will pay $2.6 billion for Skype, which can be used to make free, high-quality voice calls from one computer running Skype software to another, anywhere in the world. Customers need a PC with a microphone. For a fee, Skype users can call regular telephones and vice versa. (Link)

1. Be neat and error free.
Catch all typo's and grammar errors. Make sure to have someone proofread your resume, preferably someone attentive to details. Even the smallest error could land your resume in the electronic recycle bin.

2. State specific objectives.
Form a solid, clear objective that will help you carry a focused message throughout the resume. The objective summarizes your skills and emphasizes your strengths.

3. Why does the employer need you?
Focus on highlighting accomplishments that will arouse the interest of employers who read resumes asking themselves: "What can this candidate do for me?" Remember that the goal is to get the interview.

4. Make a good first impression.
On average, employers spend less than 30 seconds scanning each resume. Most employers are more concerned about career achievements than education. Place the most interesting and compelling facts about yourself at the beginning, such as a list of accomplishments in order of relevance.

5. Emphasize your skills.
Use a skill-based resume format that is organized around the main talents you have to offer. Prioritize everything. (Read More here)

A long time ago, there was a marvelous civilization of very clever people. They were called Sumerians. This civilization probably began around 5000 BCE. In the beginning, they were an agricultural community. They grew crops and stored food for times of need. As time went by, they invented things they needed, like the wheel, sailboats, and the written language.

Ancient Sumer was a bustling place of three or four hundred people. (Just kidding.) The ancient Sumerians built cities along the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. Archaeologists believe that their largest city, the city of Ur, had a population of around 24,000 residents!

In the cities of Sumer, long docks were built along the sides of the rivers so that ships could easily dock and unload the goods they had to trade. Ships brought food, drinks, clothes, jewelry, wine, and other goods up and down the rivers. Banquets were held with music and dancing. Poets would recite verses about great kingly deeds. Golden cups filled with sweet delicious date wine would be lifted in toast to their host. (Read more at Mr.Donn's)

Absolutely Great website for both students and teachers. (Link)

Why did Cro-Magnon man crawl on his belly through dangerous mazes in deep dark caves? How did the "Upright Man" travel from Africa to America without a boat? Who were the Neandertals? Did man live at the same time as dinosaurs? Find out here! Explore the life and times of Early Man! For those in a hurry, click on the Cheat Sheet for a very quick look at 3 million years of man's history! (Read More Here)

In early Sumerian history, priests were also the kings of the city-states. Gilgamesh was one of the most heroic priest-kings of this time. He was the priest-king of Uruk which was located on the Euphrates River approximately fifty miles northwest of Ur.

The oldest written story in the world delineates Gilgamesh's legendary deeds. In the story, Gilgamesh is characterized as being both human and divine. Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu travel the world performing heroic acts. (Link)

Sargon I ruled the Mesopotamia region for approximately fifty years. When he died, the empire crumbled. The individual city-states again rose to power.

About 1800 B.C., the Amorites migrated to Mesopotamia and constructed their own city-states. One of the city-states built was named Babylon, and it was ruled by a king named Hammurabi. As Hammurabi rose to power, he began conquering the city-states of Mesopotamia.

He,too, began uniting the city-states, but he was much more successful than Sargon I because he made many new reforms that improved society. For example, he improved the irrigation system, tax system, and government housing system. He also united the people under one religion, but the reform for which Hammurabi became renowned was his code of law.

Hammurabi provided uniformity among the city-states by enacting a code of law. The code of law provided consistent justice and covered many aspects of daily life.

Hammurabi of Babylon was a great ruler; the time he reigned is often referred to as the "Golden Age of Babylon" due to the many accomplishments and reforms. (Link)

The people who established the world's first civilization around 3500 B.C. in southern Mesopotamia were known as the Sumerians.

The Sumerians learned to control the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers by constructing levees and irrigation canals. As a result, a stable food supply existed, and the Sumerian villages evolved into self-governing city-states.

At the center of each city-state was a temple surrounded by courts and public buildings. Radiating from the all-important city center were the two-story houses of the priests and merchants, or the upper class; the one-story homes of government officials, shopkeepers, and craftspeople; and the lower class homes of farmers, unskilled workers, and fishermen. The city-state also included the fertile farming land outside the city wall.

Since there wasn't any building stone and very little timber in Sumer, the people constructed their homes, public buildings, and city walls out of sun-dried mud brick.

The Sumerians took great pride in their city-states. Many times city-states would war with each other because boundary disputes existed. Sometimes a city-state would attack a neighboring city-state just to prove its strength. (Read complete article here)

Neither the Bible nor science give us an absolute picture of how the human races arose. The Bible contains no explanation of when or how races came to be. Science tells us that the genetic differences among the races are very small. Such minor genetic differences can be easily explained through selective breeding using microevolutionary processes. Read the excellent article here!

By Dr. Robert Gange

Perhaps of all the creatures on earth, nothing is more unique than human life. In some senses, human life is unique in a self-evident way. But there is another sense in which man has been called a social animal and has been relegated to the status of being simply a more sophisticated, but otherwise, comparable animal to other forms of life that walk the earth.

Is man truly unique in a separate, distinctive way? Or - is man simply one step up, or some evolutionary graduation above typical animal life?

When we look at the things that man does on the planet, it is clear that he is in control. It is clear that it is man who sends radio signals through space while apes make sounds to a jungle. There is a clear distinction between man and all other forms of animal. But yet, there are clearly parallels between man and other life forms that suggest common origin. This has given rise to the idea that perhaps man and ape evolved from some common ancestor.

When we pursue some of the scientific evidence and some of the competing ideas that suggest man is not simply a graduation above other animals, we find that he is truly a regal creature, with uniqueness and distinction set apart from everything else.Read more here!

"Making Man Out of Monkeys" by David N. Menton, Ph.D.

The bitterest pill to swallow for any Christian who attempts to "make peace" with Darwin is the presumed animal ancestry of man. Even many Christians who uncritically accept evolutionary dogma as "God's way of creating" try to elevate man and his origin above that of the beasts. Evolutionists attempt to soften the blow by assuring us that man didn't exactly evolve from apes (tailess monkeys) but rather from ape-like creatures. This is mere semantics, as may be seen from the fact that many of the presumed animal ancestors of man have been given scientific names which include the word pithecus (derived from the Greek meaning ape) just like many living apes. The much touted "human ancestor" commonly known as "Lucy," for example, has the scientific name Australopithecus afarensis (meaning southern ape from the Afar triangle of Africa), though evolutionists often refer to this ape as a "woman"! But what exactly is the evidence for the ape ancestry of man and how compelling is it?Read more?

I found a great article here. It explains about The Scientific Evidence For the Origin of Man.

One of the most fundamental beliefs of evolutionism is that man has evolved from beasts through time, chance and natural selection. Some insist that evolutionism does not teach that man evolved from apes but rather from "ape-like" ancestors. This argument is specious as virtually any of the presumed "hominid ancestors" of man would be classified as apes were they alive today. An ape is defined as merely a tailess monkey. The research dealing with mans evolution from the apes begins with the assumption that man did in fact evolve from the apes. No observations or interpretations are allowed to question this apriori assumption. What has been sought in paleoanthropology (the study of human and "prehuman" fossil record) then are the transitional stages from ape-like animals to man. Transitional forms have proven as elusive here however, as between any other class of plants or animals. The missing links remain missing.(Link)

How Humans Evolved uses the broad perspective of behavioral ecology, drawing on Robert Boyd’s expertise in evolutionary theory and Joan Silk’s specialty in primate behavior in a uniquely integrative text. For the Third Edition, the authors have revisited many chapters in depth, added new supplemental readings, and incorporated the latest archaeological findings, including coverage of the fossil cranium Sahelanthropus tchadensis, whose dating was announced in the summer of 2002. (Link)

Steven Kreis says "Welcome to A Student's Guide to the Study of History. I have written this guide as an aid to high school and college students who are either taking history classes or who intend to major in history as undergraduates." Visit his website here!

The study of history means reading. There's no escaping that simple fact. And reading history can be a satisfying experience, regardless of what you might have heard. It all depends on the book you are reading.

Okay, so it's the beginning of the term and you've been given your first reading assignment. Let's say you are enrolled in my 20th Century Europe course and you have been asked to read Modris Eksteins' The Rites of Spring. How do you begin?

1. Pick up the book, look at the covers. See anything interesting?

2. Who wrote the book? Does the publisher give you any information?

3. When was it written? Do you think this makes a difference? Why?

4. Scan the Table of Contents. See anything you like?

5. Read the Preface and Introduction.

6. Are there any illustrations? footnotes? a bibliography?

7. Can you determine the general thesis of the book?

8. Read the first sentence. Does it hold your attention? Or, do you then put the book down and say, "I'll start reading this tomorrow"?

9. Does it look like a good book? worthy to be read?

10. Why might your instructor have assigned this particular text?

That's actually quite a bit of investigative work on your part and you haven't even really started to read your assignment. Still, this is something you must do. Reading involves engagement. Reading is not passive. You must make the effort. If you don't, disaster, and that's what we're trying to avoid. (Link)

Below is taken from Steven Kreis "The History Guide" You can read more here!

Well first off, by studying history you can study anything for the simple reason that everything has a history: ideas, wars, numbers, races, windsurfing, coal miners, pencils, motherhood and yes, even toilet-training. I first began to appreciate the study of history as an undergraduate studying political philosophy at Boston University. I was pretty keen on Plato, Aquinas, Dante, Hobbes, Locke, Godwin, Marx, Mill and a host of other "greats." But what I soon discovered was that my lack of understanding of history, i.e. the actual historical context in which these writers conceived and executed their theoretical work, made my understanding of their philosophy one-sided. Sure, I knew what they had to say about liberty, or the proletariat, or monarchy or the franchise. But what was the historical environment that gave rise to their ideas? Ideas are not akin to balloons hanging from the ceiling of Clio's den, waiting to be retrieved by a Marx, a Mill or a Plato. Ideas have a history. They undergo a process of development. They change, are modified, are distributed or are forgotten only to reappear years, decades or perhaps even centuries later.

The main problem as I see it, is not history itself. The study of history can be fun. But there's only one thing that can make our first experience with history a miserable thing indeed: and that's a poor instructor. I was fortunate. I managed to have a number of excellent history instructors throughout my high school years and this was at a time when I was leaning toward the physical sciences, geology and biology to be exact. I might not have been an excellent history student, but I do remember having excellent history teachers.

So why do I study history? or why do I teach history? Well, for me it's a form of selfishness. I wish to improve myself. And by improving myself I also improve others. This classical pedagogical method is called the Socratic method. If your instructor isn't at least familiar with it, then I'm afraid your historical education is going to suffer as a result.