Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Italian painter born at Vinci, next to Florence, died at Chateaux de Cloux, in France, near Ambroise. He is mostly known as a painter, having authored the "The Virgin and the Child with St. Anne", "Mona Lisa", (also known as "La Giaconda"), "The Last Supper", "St. John the Baptist", "The Madonna Of The Rocks", etc.

Leonardo da Vinci was a savant sketch artist, a wonderful colourist, excelling at mixing mild tones with the technique of chiaroscuro. He was also a sculptor, a physicist, an engineer, philosopher, writer, poet and musician. He was distinguished in all these branches of art and science.

Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most complete and accomplished geniuses of the Renaissance. Legend has it that he died in the arms of King Francois the 1st (the alleged scene serves as an inspiration for the painting "The Death of Leonardo" by Giroux). 

 Anatomical Study (heart and vessels) by Leonardo da Vinci, 1500

  The heart is a hollow muscle that pumps blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions. It is found in all animals with a circulatory system (including all vertebrates).^[1]

The term cardiac (as in cardiology) means "related to the heart" and comes from the Greek καρδιά, kardia, for "heart".The vertebrate heart is principally composed of cardiac muscle and connective tissue. Cardiac muscle is an involuntary striated muscle tissue found only in this organ and responsible for the ability of the heart to pump blood.

The average human heart, beating at 72 beats per minute, will beat approximately 2.5 billion times during an average 66 year lifespan. It weighs approximately 250 to 300 grams (9 to 11 oz) in females and 300 to 350 grams (11 to 12 oz) in males.^[2] 

Indonesia War Over Atjeh: The Last Stand of Mecca Porch | Ricardo Side

Aceh (/ˈɑːtʃeɪ/; [ʔaˈtɕɛh]) is a special region (Indonesian: daerah istimewa) of Indonesia, located at the northern end of Sumatra. It is close to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India and separated from them by the Andaman Sea. Aceh was first known as Aceh Darussalam (1511–1959) and then later as the Daerah Istimewa Aceh (1959–2001), Nanggroë Aceh Darussalam (2001–2009) and Aceh (2009–present). Past spellings of Aceh include Acheh, Atjeh and Achin. The province of Aceh has the highest proportion of Muslims in Indonesia, mainly living according to Sharia customs and laws.^[4]

Aceh is thought to have been the place where Islam was first established in Southeast Asia. In the early seventeenth century the Sultanate of Aceh was the most wealthy, powerful and cultivated state in the Malacca Straits region. Aceh has a history of political independence and fierce resistance to control by outsiders, including the former Dutch colonists and the Indonesian government. Aceh has substantial natural resources, including oil and natural gas—some estimates put Aceh gas reserves as being the largest in the world. Relative to most of Indonesia, it is a religiously conservative area.^[5]

Aceh was the closest point of land to the epicenter of the massive 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which triggered a tsunami that devastated much of the western coast of the province, including part of the capital of Banda Aceh. Approximately 170,000 Indonesians were killed or went missing in the disaster, and approximately 500,000 were left homeless.^[6] This event helped trigger the peace agreement between the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), mediated by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, with the signing of a MoU on August 15, 2005. With the assistance of the European Union through the Aceh monitoring mission as of December 2005, the peace has held.

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The Price of Freedom: The Unfinished Diary!

The value of a thing is not determined by what you can do with it, but by what price you are willing to pay for it.

Freedom means that we take full responsibility for ourselves, our people, and our country; freedom means that we maintain the distance that separates us from others; freedom means that we are no longer afraid of hardship, difficulties, privation or death: he who has learned how to die can no longer become a slave or a colonial subject.

He who wants to be free must always be ever ready to go to war and to die for his freedom.

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The Battle For God-Karen Armstong

Armstrong's central case rests on the confusion between mythos and logos, using these in the technical sense suggested by Johannes Slok.^[2] Myth concerns "what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence...Myth was not concerned with practical matters but with meaning".^[3] By contrast "Logos was the rational, pragmatic and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world". In religion, logos appears in legal systems and practical action. By the eighteenth century, "people in Europe and America began to think that logos was the only means to truth and began to discount mythos as false and superstitious." Armstrong suggests that fundamentalists have turned their mythos into logos using the mindset of the modern scientific age.^[4]

The first part of the book, "The Old World and the New", compares the progression of the three monotheistic faiths between 1492, when Columbus discovered America, and 1870, when "The Franco-Prussian War had revealed the hideous effects of modern weaponry, and there was a dawning realisation that science might also have a malignant dimension."^[5] It traces the way Jews and Muslims modernized during this period.

This leads to the modern period described in part two, “Fundamentalism”, when there was a growing adoption of a literalist interpretation of scripture in the United States, which eventually gave rise to The Fundamentals, a series of 12 volumes refuting modern ideas published shortly before and during the World War I, of which 3 million copies were distributed to every pastor, professor and theological student across America by the largesse of oil millionaires. Though this led to a distinctive ideology, it was not till the 1980s that it emerged as a political force.

In Judaism, the growth of Zionism was given its biggest boost by the Holocaust which led to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Although many traditional Jews migrated there, the most conservative rejected the secular interpretation of Zionism and it wasn't until the emergence of Gush Emunim after the Yom Kippur War in 1974 that fundamentalism emerged in Israel as a political force.

In Islam, fundamentalism did not emerge until modernization had taken hold, first in Egypt with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood by Hasan al-Banna. Armstrong traces the development of Sunni fundamentalism under Sayyid Qutb and Shia fundamentalism under Ayatollah Khomeini.

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The God Delusion Richard Dawkins Free Download

The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling^[1] non-fiction book by English biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford,^[2][3] and inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion".^[4]

As of January 2010, the English version of The God Delusion had sold over 2 million copies.^[5] It was ranked No.2 on the Amazon.com bestsellers' list in November 2006.^[6][7] In early December 2006, it reached No.4 in the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list.^[8] It remained on the list for 51 weeks until 30 September 2007.^[9] The German version, entitled Der Gotteswahn, had sold over 260,000 copies as of 28 January 2010.

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Milan In Russian's Hell

MILAN – In football, evening’s like this are called turning points. In one of the hardest places in Europe to travel to, Milan come out 3-2 winners and get back the points dropped against Anderlecht. It needed a big performance from the players who started well and took the game back in hand after some difficult moments.

Milan started with the same 4-2-3-1 that we saw against Parma but with Emanuelson and Montolivo instead of Nocerino and Ambrosini. After kick-off Bojan turned well and Malafeev was called into action for the first time. Bystrov from distance failed to really test Abbiati and it was all Milan for the first 20 minutes. Emanuelson broke the deadlock on 13 minutes earning a free kick and taking it only for the ball to deflect off Shirnov giving Malafeev no chance. Allegri’s team kept pushing forward. Two minutes later a cross from Antonini and Emanuelson hit the side netting on the far post. On 16, El Shaarawy got the ball on the left side and left two defenders in his wake as before placing the ball past the keeper. 2-0 and it could even have been 3 on 19 minutes when Bojan was brought down in the area but no penalty was given. Abbitati was then called into action a few times. Then on 33 minutes he did well to push out a shot from Hulk for a corner. A superlative save came five minutes from the end of the first half from a frightening strike from the same player on the edge of the area. Abbitati pulled off a miracle to stop him celebrating the goal. Then, in the second minute of injury time, Hulk finally got his goal with a violent left footed shot. At half time Milan were up 2-1.

The home side pushed hard early in the second half and on 4 minutes Hulk won another corner and the Rossoneri defense found itrself unprepared. Shirokov brought his side back onto level terms. Pazzini then came on for Bojan and Milan gained more presence in the final third. On 9 minutes, Abate crossed from the right for Boateng but the header was off target. Allegri then brought on Nocerino for Emanuelson beefing up the middle of the field. Zenit dropped and Milan pushed on. With 15 left, Milan went back into the lead. Montolivo crossed from the right and Hubocan deflected the ball past his keeper when trying to get there ahead of Pazzini. Then Abbiati did his job well to ensure that Milan saw out the rest of the game without conceding any further goals. It was big win for the team and it has come right in the nick of time. Now for the derby.

THE NUMBERS

ZENIT-MILAN 2-3

GOALS: Emanuelson (M) on 13', El Shaarawy (M) on 16', Hulk (Z) on 46'fh; Shirokov (Z) al 4', O.G. Hubocan (Z) al 30'sh

ZENIT (4-3-3): Malafeev; Anyukov, Hubocan, Lombaerts (44'st Bukharov), Criscito; Shirokov, Fayzulin (34'st Kanunnikov), Witsel; Bystrov (27'st Zyryanov), Kerzhakov, Hulk. Subs: Baburin, Bruno Alves, Lukovic, Lumb. All. Spalletti

MILAN (4-2-3-1): Abbiati; Abate, Bonera, Zapata, Antonini; De Jong, Montolivo; Emanuelson (19'st Nocerino), Boateng (35'st Yepes), El Shaarawy; Bojan (7'st Pazzini). Subs: Amelia, Mexes, Flamini, Robinho. All. Allegri

REFEREE: Brych (German)

NOTES: Booked: Fayzulin, Anyukov, Hubocan, Shirokov, Bonera, El Shaarawy,