Posts Tagged ‘how to’

The Chinese Calendar

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Before their implementation of the Western solar calendar system, the Chinese almost exclusively followed their own lunar calendar for working out the times of planting and harvesting and festival holidays. Though people in China today use the Western calendar for almost all business, governmental and practical matters of daily life, the old arrangement still serves as the basis for working out numerous seasonal holidays. This coexistence of two calendar schemes has long been acknowledged by the people of China.

However, this does not only happen in China, it also occurs in most other Eastern countries, like Thailand, and most Arabic countries.

A lunar month is determined by measuring the period of time needed for the moon to complete its full cycle of 29 and a half days, a standard that makes the lunar year a full eleven days shorter than its solar counterpart. This difference is corrected every 19 years by the addition of seven lunar months.

The 12 lunar months are further divided into 24 solar divisions characterized by the four seasons and times of heat and cold, all of which bear a close relationship to the yearly cycle of agricultural work.

The Chinese calendar – very much like the Hebrew calendar- is a combination of the solar and lunar calendars in that it strives to have its years concur with the tropical year and its months coincide with the synodic months. It is not surprising that a few similarities exist between the Chinese and the Hebrew calendar.

For example, an average year has 12 months, a leap year has 13 months. An ordinary year has 353, 354, or 355 days, a leap year has 383, 384, or 385 days. When determining what a Chinese year will be like, one needs to make a number of astronomical calculations.

First of all, you have to work out the dates for the new moons. In these cases, a new Moon is the completely black Moon (that is to say, when the Moon is in conjunction with the Sun), not the first visible crescent, as is used in the Islamic and Hebrew calendars. The date of a new moon is then the first day of a new month.

The reason why the majority of countries which had their own calendars had to dump them in favour of the Western, Julian calendar that we use today, is business. First the British and then the Americans ran international business and they used the Julian calendar.Anyone who wanted to work with them had to follow suit. This is why national policy often varies from local custom in Third World countries.

The government desires to deal on the International markets, but the ordinary family in the country can not. So, the government took up the Julian calendar but the people only pay lip service to it. I live in Thailand and people here do not even use the 24 hour day divided into two halves. Their day has four sections of six hours each and the first part starts at 6AM, not midnight. Therefore, they have four 4 o’clocks a day, for instance and no 7 o’clocks. They are also 543 years ahead of us, although this is more common, for example in Muslim countries.

Visit our new website on astronomy entitled Astronomy Today

Astronomy For Beginners

Friday, January 1st, 2010

Although astronomy is the oldest science, it continues to be at the forefront of not only scientific thought, but that of the public at large too. Who has not looked up at the galaxy while walking home late at night and wondered? Having said that though, the ancient people of certainly the northern hemisphere, but probably both, knew the movements of the stars and planets better than most of us do nowadays.

They knew even then, thousands of years ago, that the majority of stars appear to rise in the Eastern skies at night and travel on circular paths. They also noticed that some ‘stars’ were ‘wanderers’ (we call them planets) and that sometimes they travelled ‘against the flow’.

They also named groups of stars that we now call constellations or even galaxies and knew that those visible in the winter were different from those visible in the summer.and that others were visible all year round. The average common man of 5,000 – 10,000 years ago almost certainly knew more about the movement of the heavenly bodies than the average common man of today does. (I mean men and women here, of course).

They discovered how to work out or at least find the extremities of the sunrise and went to extraordinary lengths to mark those positions with massive stone structures, such as Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, probably to facilitate the location of certain positions of the sun or other planets or stars, which may have been vital to their religious beliefs or crop cycles.

In 1609, Galileo invented the first artificial device for looking at the stars and planets. It was the first astronomical telescope and through it he was able to observe things millions of miles away that no one had ever seen before. Because of the conclusions he came to from his observations, he had trouble with the Roman Catholic Church and was often in serious danger for his life, so radical were his discoveries.

But mankind was not intimidated, and since then we have gone on to build ever bigger and ever better telescopes with which we can even detect radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, infrared waves and gamma waves from outer space. Forty years ago, we even travelled to our Moon. and we have sent probes to eight of the nine planets in our Solar System, as well as to several comets and asteroids.

Where are we going next? That decision was always up to the government of the United States and the old Soviet Union, but now there are other players in the field. What will China or India want to explore with their possibly slightly different outlook on life? Or will it be just a question of financial benefit?

The world may be in a state of flux and power may be moving from its traditional seats in the West, but it has not lessened interest in questions that scientists think can only be answered in space. These are exciting times for the science of astronomy, but then man has always found astronomy exciting.

Fascinated by astronomy? Then why not pop along to our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com

The Three Ways to Treat Acne

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Acne is horrible. However, it’s not something that cannot be tackled. There are heaps of acne skin care products around. We can pigeonhole acne skin care products into 3 broad categories -

* Deterrent or general acne skin care products; * Over-the-counter, specialised acne skin care items; * Prescription only acne skin care items.

The general acne skin care products are the ones that are used as an acne-prevention measure. These include cleansers, make-up removers and similar items that help prevent acne. In the real sense, these acne skin care products are those that should be part of your daily schedule anyway. However, some of these are more orientated to work like an everyday acne skin care product.

These acne skin care items work against the causes of acne e.g. limiting the production of sebum/oil and preventing the congestion of skin pores. Essentially, these acne skin care items prevent the oil from getting blocked in pores and consequently impede the escalation of the bacteria that lead to acne. Broad-spectrum acne skin care products also take in exfoliation products like skin peels. These work by exfoliating dead skin cells, hence reducing the likelihood of pore-blocking and bacteria increase.

Then there are specialised acne skin care products that are available over-the-counter i.e. without the requirement of a prescription. These include items like vanishing creams which remove the extra oil from the skin. Most of these acne skin care products are based on benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid, both of which are the thwarters of bacteria (and hence acne too). You must start with a product that has a lower concentration of benzoyl peroxide (e.g. 5%) and see how your skin reacts to it.

Alpha-hydroxy-acid based moisturizers are also popular as acne skin care products. You might have to try a few, before you discover the acne skin care product that is most successful for you. If nothing seems to work, you should contact a dermatologist.

Prescription-only acne skin care products are the ones that are prescribed by a dermatologist. These include ointments that can be rubbed on the affected area or oral antibiotics or just any topical medication. Dermatologists might also recommend a minor surgical procedure to remove the contents of pustules. However, never try to squeeze or do this by yourself, it can lead to the everlasting damage of your skin.

Your general practitioner could also prescribe a hormone-based treatment (since hormonal changes are also known to cause acne). Such acne skin care products are known to be very efficacious in some circumstances. So, with all those acne skincare items, combatting acne is really not all that arduous.

Are you experiencing problems treating acne scars? If you are or you’d like to know more about acne, please go to our website called http://treating-acne-scars.com

Using Illumination to Fantastic Effect.

Monday, October 12th, 2009

When you are considering the interior design of a dwelling or room, lighting is most likely the most important aspect of the changes to the interior decoration. After all, it is the element that generates the mood of the room. You can create moods from intimacy to austere clinicism just by the power of your light bulb or turning a dimmer switch.

Still, if you would like to be sure that the effect of the illumination is the one you are looking for, it is essential that you be acquainted with the four principal kinds of lighting.

Ambient illumination: This is the general lighting for the entire room. In most rooms it is the typical light in the centre of the ceiling be it a fluorescent tube or an incandescent bulb. It is suggested that you make use of one or more dimmers in order to enjoy more flexibility in creating effects for each occasion.

Local lights: These lights are used to supplement or even temporarily take the place of the ambient illumination. Local lights are most commonly standard lamps, table and wall lights and are generally used in order to facilitate such activities as reading, cooking, and shaving. The concentration of the light is local and it has to be properly worked out so it won?t strain the eyes.

Accent lights Accent lights are sources of light for showing off ornamental items, normally placed so as to highlight an objet d?art . Quite literally to show it in its best light.

Natural light: This is the one we get free though skylights, windows and doors. This light is controllable for part of the day by shades, curtains, drapes, blinds or awnings, but clearly varies with the time of the day, the season and the weather. Some locations see huge variations in natural light according to the season, eg monsoon, snow, etc.

It is doubtless easiest, if you consider a house room by room. Commence by analyzing what the room is used for. Retirees will probably want to take advantage of the daytime natural light for hobbies and reading, while a working couple with school-age kids, will be more active in the evening, when additional illumination might be more essential. Write down what you do and where you do it. Do you have a favourite fireside chair for reading the paper, do you read the paper during daylight hours or after work? Be courageous in your selection of illumination, but also bear in mind that illumination can have a strong influence on our perception of dimensions, making a room look larger or smaller than it is in reality.

There are lots of ways to light a room but they all come from one of two perspectives: the lighting is either practical or aesthetic. Yes, they are both used to allow you to see more effortlessly, but highlighting the pages of a book or a shaving mirror is not quite the same as using a low light to highlight a statue of the Madonna in an alcove.

In a short synopsis, you could use the few lines below to give you preliminary thoughts when you are considering changing a room?s illumination:

i] Place a standard lamp behind armchairs: they should be between three and five feet high. ii] Use an accent light to high or even low light a canvas. iii] Use an accent light to underline the contours of bookshelves. iv] The ambient light ought to be modifiable. v] Use local illumination to swathe the walls with a low light or glow (can be recessed into the floor).

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Acne Does Not Equal Zits

Friday, October 9th, 2009

There are several different forms of acne, depending on how or why the acne arose. Some of the types of acne are: acne conglobata (chronic boils); acne fulminans (an extreme form of conglobata); acne cosmetica (caused by cosmetics); acne keloidalis nuchae (from shaving); acne medicamentosa (caused by starting or stopping a medication); acne rosacea (redness on the face); baby acne; hormonal acne; cloracne and the common variety: acne vulgaris (better known as ‘puberty spots’). We will concentrate on acne vulgaris.

Acne vulgaris could be defined as: ‘an inflammatory disease of the skin, caused by changes in the pilosebaceous units (skin structures consisting of a hair follicle and its associated sebaceous gland). Acne lesions are commonly referred to as pimples, spots or zits’ (according to Wikipedia).

Acne is most often found in Western teenagers, although it does occur in every country in the world, so there could be a genetic weakness to it. It is possible that it may be an exceptional reaction to quite average levels of testosterone. For most sufferers, the condition lasts only until adulthood, probably only a few years or at most ten. For others, however, it can be a life-long recurring affliction. It most often affects the face, upper-chest, upper-arms and back. However, an occasional spot is not the same as acne.

Acne vulgaris appears in various forms, which include: whiteheads, caused by pores which are totally blocked, trapping sebum (oil), bacteria, and dead skin cells, causing a white spot on the top; blackheads, resulting from pores which are only partially blocked, allowing some of the trapped sebum, bacteria, and dead skin cells to slowly drain to the surface (the black colour is not a result of dirt, but is a reaction of the skin’s own pigment, called melanin, with the oxygen in the air); papules, which are inflamed, red, tender bumps with no head and pustules, which are like whiteheads, but are inflamed, and appear as red circles with a white or yellow centre.

Whiteheads do not often last for a long time; blackheads do last a long time and pustules are what people call spots or zits. Severe acne vulgaris is distinguished by nodules and cysts. A ‘nodule’ is a much larger and more painful kind of pustule and can often last for months. Nodules are large, hard lumps just under the skin’s surface. They frequently result in scarring and should never for any reason be squeezed, since this could cause them to last for months longer.

A ‘cyst’ may look similar to a nodule, but it is full of pus and has been described as having a diameter of at least 5mm and, again, can cause scars and cause irritation. Squeezing an acne cyst can cause a more severe infection and more acute inflammation which can last quite a bit longer than if it had not been squeezed. Skin experts have methods of lessening the swelling and preventing scarring with both nodules and cysts. It is just a myth that acne sufferers are not careful about cleanliness.

In fact, over washing can exacerbate acne. There are many, many fake ‘cures’ on the market and many, many old wives’ tales, but any good dermatologist would advise you that there is no known cure for acne and that the patient should follow a religious regimen of cleaning until the acne just ‘goes away’ of its own accord.

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Strategies for Preventing Acne

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Most sufferers of acne try to cure their itchy skin with creams, face washes, special soaps, lotions and treatments. However, the best way to cure acne is by altering your diet and avoiding acne-causing items such as fried food. A healthy regimen, rich in organic unprocessed foods like vegetables, fruits, grains and beans is the first recommendation for curing acne.

Foods containing trans-fatty acids, milk, milk products, margarine, shortening and synthetically hydrogenated vegetable oils, as well as oily foods, should consumed. It seems that the high occurrence of acne in the United States is made worse by the average American diet. Americans typically eat fried food in large quantities, often cooked in the most damaging of fats and oils.

However, not all fats are bad, but the fats that average Americans eat make them more prone to get acne and other skin problems. Products that can cause are ice cream, cheese, bacon, chocolate and milk. Furthermore, acne can’t really be treated using creams and soaps because the basic cause of the problem lies underneath the skin.

Pimples, spots and blemishes are caused by bacteria and other irritants lying below the skin’s oil glands and hair follicles, which are generally caused as a result of improper hygiene, squeezing and poor diet.

This poor diet could be caused by too high an amount of such items as processed, fatty, fried and sugary foods in your diet. A diet that is healthy for your skin emphasizes raw and lightly cooked vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables that contain valuable trace minerals and are rich in fibre. Fresh green vegetables are essential. You should also include in your diet lean protein sources and complex carbohydrates, like rice, whole-grain bread and potatoes.

These fibre-rich foods should help ensure a clean gastrointestinal tract, which is so important in the management of acne. Eat three healthy meals every day in order to supply you with sufficient vital nutrients and to decrease your desire for sugary or greasy fried foods.

You should eat lots more food that is rich in vitamin A, such as apricots, watermelons, and broccoli, along with lean beef, nuts, lentils and whole grains, because they are rich in zinc, which is also be useful in reducing acne breakouts. It’s also vital to drink lots of water to help clean the poisons out that contribute to acne.

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Your Guide To Bread Machine Mixes

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

Do you use bread machine mixes when you want to make yeast bread in your automated bread-making machine? If you do, why do you? Because you think it’s easier? It is so easy to make gourmet bread quickly from easy-to-follow bread recipes and so much more flexible too. If you use bread machine mixes you are limited to the bread machine mixes you can find in the shops ” no matter how many of them there are there.

On the other hand, a good bread machine recipe book is infinitely more flexible than bread machine mixes. A good bread machine cookbook might give you 150 or so recipes originating from several countries, but it will also inspire you to adapt those recipes, encouraging you to be creative and invent your own style of bread.

Bread machine mixes are really quite limiting and you have no say about what the bread machine mix contains either: preservatives, colouring, MSG, salt or Heaven knows what. OK, it tells you on the label, but you cant remove them, if you only use bread machine mixes.

Making bread is really quite easy. Or to put it correctly, the ingredients to making bread are really quite simple. To bake a very basic loaf of bread, you only need: flour, water, yeast, sugar, salt and fat or oil. The difficult part about making bread is the mixing. It can take four hours to mix the bread mixture together; to wait for it to rise; to knead it; wait for it to prove; knead it again and bake it.

But, if you have a bread making machine you can put the hard bread mixing, proving, kneading cycle on automatic and if you have a bread-making recipe book you will be funished with numerous recipes to guide and encourage you.

What could be easier? You look in the bread-making machine cookbook for an scrumptious recipe; you put the everyday ingredients into the bread mixing bowl of the bread machine and you put the yeast into a time-release box on the top of the bread machine; set the timer and just go about your daily life or even go to bed!

The bread making machine will stir the ingredients and consult the timer. Our bread-making machine has a timer that can be set for sixteen-hours in advance. That means that, if you want your gourmet, yeast bread ready for, say, 7:30 AM, the bread-making machine will mix the flour, water, salt oil and sugar at once, then add the yeast at say, 5 AM, knead, prove and bake the bread and ring the alarm at 7:30 to let you know that your gourmet food is waiting for you.

Except that you won’t need the alarm to let you know that. The aroma of freshly-baked bread will permeate your house and you will be very much aware of the fact that your bread making machine is just about ready to serve one of the best loaves of bread you’ve ever had in your life! And you will never ever look for bread machine mixes again. You’ll be overflowing with ideas for your own bread machine mixes in no time at all and you’ll be giving bread away as presents so that you can try out your next very own bread machine mixture.

Bread machine mixes: who needs them?

Do you use bread machine mixes or do you want bread machine recipes? If you want recipes, please pop along to: http://bread-machine-mixes.the-real-way.com

Are Acne Scars Permanent?

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

Acne scars are an awful reminder of the having suffered pimples or even acne before. They are unbearable because of their apparent permanence and their non-complimentary look. Normally speaking, acne scars are quite difficult to treat, but tissue regeneration is not unusual these days with all the fantastic technological developments.

In general terms, by acne scars, we are talking about the healed lesions resulting from an acne infection. While most scarring is temporary and will probably disappear on its own over time, scarring from the more severe forms of acne can become permanent.

Acne scars can be prevented if the patient visits a doctor when it is in the incipient stage, particularly if nodules or cysts accompany the red pustules on the skin’s surface. If the breakouts of acne have marked your skin, you will have to approach the issue from a different perspective, which most of the time involves surgery.

Laser resurfacing is one way of removing the damaged skin parts and stimulating the organic regeneration of the tissue underneath. This procedure only requires local anaesthetic and can take between a few minutes and an hour depending on the extent of the damage.

Fractional laser therapy is one of the most recent forms of eliminating acne scarring. It involves surgical intervention at deep skin layers. The therapy is better than both dermabrasion and laser resurfacing in terms of quality and involves a very reduced healing period. Nevertheless, fractional laser therapy is within the reach of only those few fortunate people, who can afford it, since it is the most expensive acne treatment available so far.

It can be that additional sessions are necessary to improve the condition of the superficial layers of skin, before they can start the deep level treatment of the acne scar. The doctor may inject collagen into the scars in order to raise the normal skin level or she/he may suggest micro-dermabrasion for the same purpose. Trying to perform chemical peels for acne treatment at home is a bad policy given the risk of aggravating the condition by irritating the scars even more.

As for the types of acne scars, they can be grouped by the way they look. Scars can result because of an increase of tissue or due to a loss of tissue They both have an adverse impact on the way the face looks. Specialists’ evaluation of the nature of the scars is a very important factor in deciding on the adoption of one form of treatment or the other.

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How to Choose Bathroom Lighting Accessories

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

There is a wide choice of lighting fixtures on the market and they make great bathroom accessories. The sorts of lighting include the soft touch and the highlights. It is up to you to choose the right lighting to suit your bathroom, but you should keep in mind that lighting contributes hugely to the ambiance of any room.

How to choose bathroom lighting: It depends on your needs. Some people will have physically-restricted lighting resources, because their wiring system may be inaccessible. Others may have a more flexible situation. Nevertheless, people can enjoy lighting that enhances the atmosphere and mood in their bathroom, thanks to technological advances. You can now choose from different light bulbs and fittings that are suitable for your needs, no matter what those needs may be.

How do I choose the right style for my bathroom? When choosing a style for your bathroom, you should think about the choice of fixtures and light bulbs. Lighting enhances the character of any room, which is something to keep in mind too. If you have a hard time seeing, you may want to select more powerful lights. On the other hand, if your eyesight is still good, you may enjoy fluorescent lights, which are softer in nature.

Furthermore, you have the option of mood lights, which assist you to produce a relaxing ambiance. Mood lights give similar results as candles. You also have the option of bright or background lighting. You should look into these sorts of lighting seriously, because they have a greater effect than other kinds of lighting. Oil lamps are still available too. These soft, flickering lights create an old-fashion atmosphere, but even better still, lamps create an outdoor atmosphere.

Selecting the right beam of light to use After you have picked the style that you like, it becomes rather easier to decide on the correct width of beam you need. Beams of light can be described as narrow beams, which are between 3 and 25 degrees wide and wide beams, which are over 40 degrees. This range of beams is similar to floodlighting. In point of fact, the forty-degree floodlight is the preferred choice of most people.

What type of effect do you get from lighting? You can even pick the effect. Natural lighting is based on tone, texture, and colour. Florescent lights create a blue-greenish or black-purplish beam. However, there is a wide selection of colours available. Wall lights, which are lights mounted on the walls, are pretty cool as well. Similarly, ceiling lights are mounted on the ceiling and there is a widearray of cool designs there as well such as chandeliers made of pure glass, crystal, plastic or whatever. Standard lights enable you to move the lamp anywhere you like. Virtually any light you pick can be modified further by the type of bulb you choose.

You will find a wide choice of lighting on the Internet, including the fittings to match. You have an advantage online, since you can see images of your chosen lamps, lighting and fixtures. Furthermore, you have the choice of other bathroom accessories to contrast or complement your remodelling. At the end of the day, if you are clever about it, you can buy the items separately to manufacture your very own lights.

No matter what you are attempting to accomplish these days there are many choices. Whenever you are selecting bathroom accessories such as lighting and fixtures always think about what your bathroom is primarily used for first of all. For example, it would not be a good idea to install a fancy stand-up lamp in a kid’s bathroom, you would only be putting your children at risk.

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Dating Advice

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Dating advice is all over the internet, in magazines, books, newspapers and on TV. There’s even an eight year old who wrote a book filled with great dating advice. (That kid is pretty smart and must be really good with the girls, because while basic, all of his dating advice rings true. If you’ve read the book, however, you’d be forced to admit that the eight-year-old boy does know what he’s talking about and he keeps it simple. The important thing in dating is to do just that and not complicate things.

Leave your past behind you. It’ll only get you bogged down. The first thing any dating-counsellor would advise you is that a fresh start is important for a date to go well. Talking to your date about how your ex mistreated you is definitely not the way forward. Sometimes it isn’t even necessary to talk, and a person who has been hurt once may be over suspicious of any new relationship and this could show in their attitude toward their date.

‘Do as you normally do – just be yourself’ is surely the best dating advice there is. Without dobt, people like to excel, to shine and impress their date, but faking it will only make both you and your date feel uncomfortable.

Tempering your expectations to be neither too high nor too low is also very good dating advice. Expecting too much out of just one date or of the person you are dating, is bound to end up disappointing you (both). Let’s face it, your date is only human and so are you; and first dates are notoriously a bit awkward.

A question that crops up time and time again is: who should pay? The general consensus of opinion in dating advice circles is that the one who invites, pays. But, others argue that it is always better to go 50/50 every time to avoid embarrassment. Furthermore, there is yet another school of dating advise though, that reasons that a man is not a gentleman” if he doesn’t offer to pick up the bill. The best thing to do in this scenario would be to settle for something that you and your date are both comfortable with.

Probably texting your date before your meeting is smart dating advise as it puts him or her at ease and allows you to discuss interests or hobbies in a much more informal way and less tense environment than your first date would be. That would allow you to use this as common ground when things get awkward (as they generally do on the first few dates unless there is an instant rapport) and get the conversation going again.

The most important bit of dating advice though, is to remember that no one date is a deal-breaker. No date is the end, so if one doesn’t work out, why worry, there will be others. And if they doesn’t work, there are plenty of other people to go out with.

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