Space Honors the Earth with Meteor Shower

What better way to celebrate Earth Day than witnessing the rain of falling stars? The annual Lyrid meteor shower is expected to be the most prominent on Tuesday, April 22.

Lyrid meteor shower usually creates the rate of 10-20 meteors per hour, but there were times when that number went up to hundred. There is no way of knowing what maximum rate will be produced this year, though. The unfortunate circumstance is that the moon will be half-full at the time which may make it difficult to enjoy the shower to the fullest. The director of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center, Bill Cooke expresses his worry by suggesting not to set high expectations because the moon will spoil a lot of the show. On the other hand, Deborah Byrd, editor of the astronomy and science website EarthSky.org is optimistic in her statement: "The Lyrids are bright, so they can withstand some moonlight". She adds that the best time to observe the Lyrids in the sky is before moonrise, on April 21, or before the dawn on April 22.

Mathematician Johann Gottfried Galle tracked down the source of the Lyrids to Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher in the late1860s, but the first mentioning of this particular meteor shower can be found in 687 BC, in The Chronicles of Zuo, written in China by Qiuming Zuo, recording that "at midnight, stars fell down like rain".

Particles in English Phrasal Verbs: Telicity or Perfectivity - Abstract

     

     This paper deals with the question whether particles in phrasal verbs mark perfectivity or telicity of the given situation. There are many questions unanswered or partially answered regarding the categories of aspect and aktionsart, since neither is clearly defined and differentiated. The notion of phrasal verb lacks uniformity as well. Simply put, perfectivity is the category of aspect which is a verb category which presence varies from language to language; it is not language specific. What perfectivity notes is the completion of the situation denoted by the verb.  Basicaly, aspect deals with the difference between the unlimited duration of a situation (imperfective verbs) and its momentariness, i.e. limited duration (perfective verbs). On the other hand, there is recently recognized category of aktionsart and the notion of telicity. Essentially, telicity can be defined as the property of the verb phrase (or of the sentence as a whole) which indicates that an action or an event has a clear endpoint or a goal; when the goal is reached, the situation comes to an end. A verb phrase that has an endpoint is said to be telic, whereas a verb phrase that does not is said to be atelic. There are some difficulties in establishing clear boundaries between aspect and aktionsart but the two are not to be mixed. Telicity doesn't imply perfectivity and perfectivity doesn't imply telicity. Some verbs can be perfective, with clear completion of the situation, but that doesn't mean that there will be a terminal endpoint. Also, a verb can have a terminal endpoint but still be imperfective.  A phrasal verb consists of a verb and a preposition or adverb that modifies or changes the meaning; 'give up' is a phrasal verb that means 'stop doing' something, which is very different from 'give'. The word or words that modify a verb in this manner can also go under the name particle. In English, phrasal verbs can freely occur with verbal periphrases which focus on the beginning, middle, and ending phases of a given situation. They are also compatible with the imperfective (progressive), perfective (simple past), and perfect aspects. All of this suggests that verbal particles in English do not mark perfective aspect, as was traditionally assumed. The particles actually, typically express a telic notion, which means that they can add the concept of a goal or an endpoint to durative situations which otherwise may not necessarily have a defined endpoint. In other words, the particles may alter aktionsart of the given situation, and are therefore taken to be markers of telic aktionsart rather than perfective aspect. For example, a telic particle will convert an activity into an accomplishment. Particles don't always change the telicity of the verb, though. Sometimes they make the situation telic,  sometimes reemphasize the telicity, and sometimes don't change the telic situation at all, but this depends on the verb and the particle in question.

Me, Myself and Literature

     Since I learned to read and write when I was 4 years old, people would think that starting school was not a big deal for me. I thought that, too. But when children in my class saw that I knew something that they didn't, they acted cold and reserved towards me. The fact that my teacher yelled at me every time I used my knowledge in class, didn't help either. After a while, I was convinced that I was a bad child, and I wanted to give up on learning because I thought that if I showed that I didn't know what other children didn't, they would accept me. Fortunately for me, I decided to tell my parents what I planned to do and what I had to put up with in school. And then, they helped me realize that if learning and reading made me happy, I should do it, regardless what anyone said. That was the day when my dad gave my my first book, Anthology of Epic Folk Tales.

     With that book, I discovered a completely new world, where magic existed. I learned about courage, friendship, love, unselfishness, and started to differentiate good from evil. I loved these tales so much, that not even my teacher could discourage me. Oh, and she gave her best to do so. But the day when I felt that I was worth something, that I was better than her, was the day when she gave us an assignment to write about our favorite folk story. I wrote about my favorite story, Petar bega od smrti, and she accused me of inventing the story myself and when she was about to fail me I took the book out of  my bag, and showed her that I wasn't lying. Knowing that even she who was our teacher didn't know something I did, made me feel so motivated to keep reading. And I did.

     

     Next book that meant a lot to me was Jonathan Livingston the Seagull by Richard Bach. When I finished it for the first time, I wasn't really sure that I understood it right. Was it really possible to do what you want to do if you believe you can, and keep trying? After reading it over and over again I knew that was true. Freedom was all that mattered. And believing in yourself. And I believed with all my power. Life became even better then.

     When I was a little older I went to the library for the first time, and the first book I took was 20000 leagues under the sea by Jules Verne. Even now, after all this time and after all those books I read, this is still my favorite book. It moved me so much. It made me cry. And what's most important, it made me write myself. Namely, I was so disturbed by the ending that I started writing different ends, different last chapters, the way I wanted the book to end. And I liked it. Soon after I wasn't satisfied with just changing something somebody else wrote. I started writing my own stories, and eventually, my own novel. Even though I never let anyone read what I wrote, I felt accomplished. I also set a new goal for myself - reading all the books that Jules Verne wrote. Surprisingly, when I reached it I was a bit sad. But not for long because I got new books to read, Skellig by David Almond and Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.

     Skellig introduced me to the great number of ways I could use figures of speech, and it made me open more, show my gentle side. Until then I was... well... afraid of people. And after reading this book, I just wasn't anymore. As far as Mortal Engines is concerned... thank you Philip Reeve! I entered my puberty (I was really late) around that time and of course, I considered myself to be the ugliest living thing on Earth, which stopped me from doing a lot of amusing activities. After I had read this book I felt good in my own skin. I was so happy.

     When I went to high school, I showed interest in poetry and my parents gave me works of Branko Miljkovic and Charles Baudelaire translated by Kolja Micevic. I completely found myself in their poems. I didn't find the stories I wrote so fulfilling anymore so I concentrated on writing and translating poems. Soon, I started doing that for my school newspapers.

     There were a lot of books I found amusing, like Song of Ice and Fire by George Martin, Books of Blood by Clive Barker, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling and many others, but the last, should I say, educational one was Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

     My whole life I've been learning from the books I read. They were my guides, my 'other' parents sometimes, and they had a considerable share in forming my personality, my likes and dislikes. It is really sad that kids nowadays don't read as much as (I think) my generation did. Books can be real best friends. I consider myself to be literate, not just because I like to read, but because I can feel what I read and live my literacy the way only I can understand. My way. And that I see as a gift.

Describing a Feeling

Too often, it seems, I think I won’t reach the end… As the years passed by, the world became more alive than I ever was. It troubles me that I can’t remember when I first noticed that. All I know is that it was too long ago for one’s life. Even so, I can’t escape Apathy. I keep letting things go. I do feel safer that way, but recently, The Pulse of the world became too loud. It makes me wish for something, and I don’t know what that something is. And the wishing feeling is becoming too difficult to endure. Such confusion in my Heart makes me believe that finally, the end is going to reach me.

What I Feel Today - A Poem

Nothing is seen for ever or now;

and when the grass is cut and rotten

and eyes are blind and drained

and when the dumbness of air

smothers the birds 

and hardness of mist breaks their necks

and when people die in wars

and hearts break in two

because of a lie or a nightmare

and when the darkness corrupts the sky

and stars are burned down by evaporable blends 

and when every human loses his own way

trapped by insignificance of  his being

and no one has anything to say

it won’t be an ordinary state of things,

just something that I feel today …

Mysterious Ways of Trkki

About Social Issues in the Film Hair

After seeing this fantastic movie called Hair, I just couldn’t stay indifferent about huge differences between the characters’ economical and social standard.  The contrast is obvious at the very beginning of the film. The scene which points to these differences the most is, in my opinion, the one when they are all at the fancy party, both hippies and the rich. Just by looking at them is possible to see the enormous gap between their levels in society, because, hippies are dressed poorly, their outfits are old, worn and dirty, and their hair is a total mess, while others, the rich people, are elegant and sophisticated, wearing their expensive clothes. Of course, such different kinds of people couldn’t be long in the same place without trouble, so, as it was expected, the hippies were soon treated as social parasites and arrested, not even with a chance to speak for themselves, and with no compassion for their hungry stomachs.  In the end of the film, which is very sad in every way, the daughter of the businessman joined the flower children, and understood their desire for freedom and love, but it actually didn’t solve anything. I guess that the message was that we can all live in happiness and peace, but it never worked out in reality. She was just one individual in millions of others… The ones who have everything continued to look down on the ones who have nothing, and considered them to be human junk, similar to animals in their way of life.