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Showing posts from November, 2014

5 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Thanksgiving

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HAPPY THANKSGIVING How did the funny-lookin' fowl get stuck with the label "turkey?" Oh boy, this will take some explainin'. Back in the day, the Europeans took a liking to the guinea fowls imported to the continent. Since the birds were imported by Turkish merchants, the English called them turkeys . Later, when the Spaniards came to America, they found a bird that tasted like those guinea fowls. When they were sent to Europe, the English called these birds "turkeys" as well. A Tradition is Born: TV dinners have Thanksgiving to thank. In 1953, someone at Swanson misjudged the number of frozen turkeys it would sell that Thanksgiving -- by 26 TONS! Some industrious soul came up with a brilliant plan: Why not slice up the meat and repackage with some trimmings on the side?Thus, the first TV dinner was born ! Break out the Menurkeys: The first time of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving come together was in 1888 . Scientists say the conflue

What is Modern Slavery?

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What is Modern Slavery? Over the past 15 years, “trafficking in persons” and “human trafficking” have been used as umbrella terms for activities involved when someone obtains or holds a person in compelled service.  The United States government considers trafficking in persons to include all of the criminal conduct involved in forced labor and sex trafficking, essentially the conduct involved in reducing or holding someone in compelled service. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act as amended (TVPA) and consistent with the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol), individuals may be trafficking victims regardless of whether they once consented, participated in a crime as a direct result of being trafficked, were transported into the exploitative situation, or were simply born into a state of servitude. Despite a term that seems to connote movement, at the heart of the phe

15 Medieval Hygiene Practices That Might Make You Queasy

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By Megan Senseney Chamber Pots Chamber pots were containers for collecting urine overnight. Back in old Edinburgh, you always have to be alert for the shout of 'garde loo,' which is French for 'watch out for the water.'  If you're not quick enough, you could find yourself being showered with the contents of chamber pots hurled from tenement windows. Privies and Garderobe In Tudor houses, toilets were a bowl with a slab of wood and a hole carved at the top. Builders set the toilet into a recess or cupboard-like area called a garderobe.   In castles, a slab of wood covers a hole in the floor that took waste products straight into the moat.  Poor people didn't have the luxury of toilets, so they simply relieved themselves wherever they could and just buried the waste matter. Leaves or Moss as Toilet Paper Neither rich nor poor people had toilet paper. Poor people used leaves or moss to wipe their bottoms while the rich used lamb's wool inst

If a book is written...

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Of course playing off the cliche:  " If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? "  But to clarify the meaning, in a nutshell, it's a  philosophical  thought experiment  that raises questions regarding  observation   and knowledge of  reality .  So contemplating on the same plane of knowledge and existence, if a book was indeed written but no one reads it, does the book still have a soul? Having posing this question to other authors, all say "yes!"  The life brought into the story is evidence of the books existence, thereby concluding it does posses a "soul," as it were. Like all living beings giving birth, life breeds life.   But I raise the question of why writers write, and how their existence is influenced by the deepest desire to have their voices heard.  Even through the argument that an artist should only write for her or himself, without worry of an audience, yet still, writers wish t