English Recordings

The astrological year thus begins when the Sun moves into Aries on about 20 March and ends when it moves out of Pisces. It is from this basic formula that all astrology is derived: Aries represents the first sign of the Zodiac and is therefore associated with all things youthful and springlike, while Pisces is the sign of ageing and mysticism.
Aries is one of the three fire signs - the others are Leo and Sagittarius - while the remainder are either earth, air or water signs and, it is believed, people who are born to those signs share some of the characteristics of those elements. People born as a Taurus, the sign of the bull, being an Earth sign, are commonly considered to be solid, practical and predictable - but with an occasional bull-like tendency to charge into things.
But while the Sun determines the principal sign, the positions of the Moon and the other planets in the different signs complete the full natal chart, creating a complex and inter-related web which can determine many character traits. To this can be added other factors - the Moon changes signs every two or three days, Saturn every 18 months or so - which can exert influences on our lives, but which are mitigated by where the other planets are at the time and how they relate to each other.
Further aspects come into play. People born at the start of the astrological periods will share some characteristics of the preceding sign, while someone born in the Sun sign of Taurus, but with most of their other planets in, for instance, Gemini, may not be a typical Taurean.
It is this sophisticated and complicated pattern, Mr Fronteras said, that astrologers study and interpret to determine the character of a person and what might be in store for them. "Much of what most people know about astrology is based upon the Sun sign astrology, and that is only about 10 per cent of the whole picture," Mr Fronteras said. As a broadcaster and columnist himself, he is reluctant to criticise the multimillion-pound industry that has grown up around popular Sun sign astrology and those who perpetuate it, such as Russell Grant on television or Jonathan Cainer, reportedly the highest-paid writer on the Daily Mail.

Marlene Houghton, an astrologer for more than 30 years, puts it another way. "Astrology is a metaphysical doctrine, not a science, and cannot be easily judged by the narrow instrument that is science."
So what is astrology? It should never be confused with astronomy, the study of the planets and stars and whose practitioners, such as Sir Patrick Moore, are among the loudest critics of astrology. Astrology is seen by its advocates as a far more complex subject than the broad brush of the "Sun sign" astrology of newspaper columns and television pundits, where personality traits and predictive forecasts are ascribed to the 12 signs of the Zodiac in which people are born.
And it is not, stresses Christine Chalklin, the director of the Astrological School of the BAPS, a belief system. "I get very annoyed when people ask me why I believe in astrology," she said. "It is more like a language which is there to decipher and understand and to use during our lives. And it can have immense value."
Although there are many different sources of astrology, most modern Western "horoscopic" astrology dates from Hellenistic Egypt around 100BC and is different from, say, Hindu or Chinese astrology, although all share the same core practices.
Western astrologers base their study of a person on the calculation of their horoscope (a word derived from the ancient Greek) or "natal chart" - the positions of some of the planets, the Sun and the Moon - at the precise time of birth. These are plotted against the Zodiac (from the Greek word zoon, meaning animal), an imaginary belt in the heavens which includes the Sun's path (the ecliptic) and the apparent paths of the Moon, and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. It is divided into 12 parts, each of 30 degrees and named according to one of the constellations - Aries, Taurus, etc.

A study of 15,000 people claims there is no scientific basis for astrology. The faith of horoscope fans, though, is unshakeable. Terry Kirby explains why they may just be right, after all
There is one very simple answer that those who accept the principles of astrology give to sceptics who condemn it as a load of mumbo-jumbo: don't look at the stars for an explanation, go to the coast and look at the sea.
The massive power of waves and the tides that cause them are, it is universally accepted, a direct consequence of the gravitational influences of the Moon and the Sun upon Earth. We also know that the Moon sometimes determines animal behaviour and has long been linked with aspects of our lives as diverse as a women's menstrual cycle and mental disturbance, hence the word lunatic.
Is it, astrologists argue, therefore completely impossible that the other planets also exert influences on our lives and personalities, to greater or lesser degrees and in varying combinations? And that, having been around in various forms since the ancient Babylonians first began to describe celestial omens 4,000 years ago, astrology deserves more respect than the derision commonly accorded it by the rational scientists and the established churches.
Astrologists were forced on to the defensive once again yesterday after the publication of a German-Danish study of more than 15,000 people - the largest of its kind - which concluded "in no cases did date of birth relate to individual difference in personality or general intelligence". There was "no support" for a link between date of birth and the "Sun signs", the report said, and there was probably "more truth in a comic strip".
"It is the same old story," sighed Adam Fronteras, a former president of the British Astrological and Psychic Society (BAPS) and a regular broadcaster and writer on astrology and other psychic matters. "We've had these reports many times before. Because such research tests one or two factors only, it's a bit like judging a work of art using only one or two colours or a book by reading two pages. Astrology is much more complex than that."

I Like Flamenco.

I practiced the Baile style of flamenco dancing for four years.

I recently discovered a wonderful flamenco video.

My brain is tired.

Good night.

==

I bought a book about American sign language a while ago.

The author is a Japanese deaf-mute.

She is married to an American physically unimpaired
person.

It is amazing how he is is able to communicate to her.

I learned a lot of things from this book.

===

Please tell me your favorite English word and
proverb.

I decided to make a new blog.

I want to make the title in English.

So please tell me some wonderful English.

to carry much conviction among modern scholars
to fine for something
Blast it!, or blast them! (in plural)
to discover something in time
to tarnish their reputation in retaliation
to spook the fish
to sweep aside an attempt to reopen the question
to hustle for a living
to dim prospects of stable government being established
to lop off the branches
to make one’s mark as a man of letters
to rake up the past
to set aside an hour to tour the entire museum
to sense some ploy
to harass Danish settlement on the Shannon
to land a job
to pile up revenue at the customshouses
to plod on in the old rut
to leave the character of a conscientious person
to siphon off some votes
to resurface
to have no personal compunction about something
to soak up water
to unearth remains of an 18th-century cemetery
to rinse the specimens
to abrogate the laws of Parliament
to put in some hair conditioner
to have shot one’s bolt
to assail the new social order

As sure as I'm standing here, there is a tradition that Japanese people eat fried chicken on Christmas, and I joined them last night.

A Lang-8 friend wrote about it, and he said that he wondered why they do that. So, I started to wonder why.

There seems to be an anecdote: One day, a foreign person who lived in Japan went to KFC in Aoyama, Tokyo, and said that he'd decided to eat chicken instead of eating turkey because it would be hard to come by turkey in Japan. The executive of marketing at KFC got the hint from the foreign person's words, and started a campaign saying, "Let's eat KFC chicken on Christmas!" in 1974.

Thanks to the marketingprowess! Most Japanese people now believe that Westerners celebrate Christmas with a chicken dinner instead of the more common ham or turkey.

I think that another of our misconceptions, a "Christmas Cake," began a similar way. Shops that sell cakes were so busy that it made their heads spin, and they were crowded by the fathers of their families picking up a cake on their way home from work on Christmas Eve.

Japanese people are great lovers of festivals and celebrations. Despite the fact that only 0.05 % of the Japanese population is estimated to be Christian, it seems that they couldn't help accepting the celebration on Christmas.

The funny part is that they change the origin into a complete Japanese style!

(^v^) /

It is early days, however, and with solar power still too costly to be able to harness the power of African sun, it is hydropower that is seeing the most investment - although critics worry about the environmental impact and the fact that the rainfall is too variable.
In Uganda, however, the government has finally given the green light for a 30m-high dam on the Nile just below the favourite white-water rafting hangout of Bujagali Falls. An international consortium is pumping £400m into the hydropower project, the biggest-ever foreign investment in east Africa. Similar dams are planned for the Niger and Volta rivers.
Without doubt, the most powerful weapon in Africa's electricity arsenal is the river Congo, which sends 42.5 million litres of water pouring into the Atlantic every second - a flow second only to the Amazon.
The idea of a huge power plant on this river has been described by some as a "Marshall plan for Africa". The 40,000 megawatts of potential electricity from the so-called Grand Inga, would be more than twice the projected capacity of the Three Gorges Dam in China, and could literally light up the continent. But it comes with a giant price tag - $40bn compared to the $12bn spent on infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa since 1985. And on top of that the Democratic Republic of Congo is still recovering from a civil war, and is a long way from shaking off its reputation as "corruption central". All in all, it looks like it could be some time before the African joke - "What did we do before we used candles? We had electricity" - becomes obsolete.

The other major benefit of better lighting would be better security. In some of the continent's crime-ridden slums, women cannot walk at night for fear of being attacked and some stallholders refuse to stay open after dusk for fear of being robbed. With fewer shadows for criminals to lurk in, the streets could become safer.
While the Lighting Africa initiative could make a real, immediate difference to the lives of many, experts including Professor Eberhard warn that it should not distract attention from the wider problem of generating more electricity for the continent.
"In my view, probably the most critical challenge is getting power to businesses so they can power the economy," he says. Take Nigeria. Despite being the world's eighth-largest oil exporter, power is such a problem that the National Electric Production Authority (Nepa) is known as Never-Ever Power Always. Thirty years ago, Nigeria had 79 generating stations, now only around 15 are still working.
The frequent power cuts - or "lights out" as they are called locally - mean companies have to invest in generators. That electricity costs around 10 times that of the grid. It is a burden on small businesses, not to mention a turn-off for outside investors.
The World Bank estimates that lack of reliable power is clipping more than 2 per cent off the annual growth rates of the worst-hit African countries.
There are moves afoot to crank up the power. The idea of bio-fuels is catching on, with production experiments taking place in many countries. South Africa has started constructing the continent's first ethanol plant, and the Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has created a new ministry devoted to biofuels and renewable energy.

The World Bank and its IFC private investment arm has a pot of $12m (£6m), which will serve primarily as seed money to grow the ideas of interested businessmen and entrepreneurs.
"The technology is already out there ... but what the World Bank can do is use its muscle to drum up interest and do this on a very large scale," says Walt Patterson, author of the recently-published Keeping The Lights On and a fellow at London's Chatham House.
Lighting Africa officially launches on 4 September, when organisers will unveil a competition for the design and delivery of low-cost, green lighting products for low-income consumers in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 350 companies have already expressed an interest - from Africa-based small businesses to multinationals like Philips.
Perhaps key to the appeal, is the World Bank calculation that the so-called "energy poor" in Africa spend about $17bn each year on fuel-based lighting. "It's a sleeping giant from a market perspective," says the IFC's Mr Sturm. "The poor, even the poorest of the poor, can be a profitable market."
Again, the parallels are drawn with mobile phones. In Kenya, for example, mobiles rocketed from almost zero to nearly six million users in the decade since the technology was introduced. It will be in the first wave of countries that Lighting Africa will target, along with Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, before the project is rolled out more widely.
"We're working with manufacturers to bring down the costs of LED lighting ... and then the real challenge is on marketing and finding the avenues to distribute these products," says Vijay Iyer, an energy specialist at the World Bank.
For the fisherman plying the waters of Lake Victoria, that day cannot come soon enough. The men work at night, using lights to attract shoals of fish to the surface before trapping them in nets. Currently they use kerosene lamps, spending $1,000 a year on fuel. But with an LED light, they could eliminate that expense and pocket more cash to feed their families and send their children to school. And those children could study at night, improving their grades and, so some development experts believe, help raise the educational standards.

It is with a view to plugging the gap that the World Bank is set to unveil its Lighting Africa initiative. The target is to get 250 million Africans supplied with clean-energy lighting by 2030.
Many of the continent's poorest people are dependent on kerosene lamps or candles, and typically spend at least a 10th of their income on lighting their shacks. The lamps often kick out more smoke than light, and there are frequent stories of huts going up in flames as they get knocked over. People with a bit of extra cash may invest in a small diesel generator, but the extra illumination and the reduced danger does not quite compensate for the noise and the polluting fumes.
The future, according to the World Bank, is LED lighting. In the UK, LEDs (light emitting diodes) are more commonly thought of as the tiny red and blue dots of light on household remote control units, but the new generation of LEDs give out useable white light. And these devices could help switch on the lights in Africa, in the same way that mobile phones have changed the continent.
"When the cellphone arrived, suddenly it made no sense to wire countries up to the landline network," says Mr Sturm. "I think you can have the same impact with LED lighting."
LEDs are very efficient, in that they use a very small amount of power (typically one watt) but produce enough light to read by. They can also be recharged with mechanically-operated chargers such as hand cranks or pedal power, which makes them particularly suitable for African villages far from the grid.
Energy experts say that with the slow uptake of electrification,LEDs are good for the short term. "There's definitely room for targeted rural initiatives. They are starting from such a low base. In rural areas, we are talking about a 2 per cent access rate," explains Anton Eberhard, a former electricity regulator and professor at the University of Cape Town.