From the strand of a lowly worm for more than 4,000 years materializes the queen of textiles, silk. More than ten million farmers in China raise silk which is more than half of the world’s consumption. For more than 2,000 years China kept the methods of silk production a secret. Imperial law decreed death by torture to anyone who disclosed this it.

A touch of silk on ones skin evokes the very thread of history, a shimmering fabric of far away places. Over the centuries the undisputed queen of textiles is silk.

Silk is used on everything from silk sheets to silk-based Chinese cold creams. Damaged arteries have been replaced with a prostheses of silk and teeth have bee realigned with silk braces. Luxurious rugs, tapestries and clothes have been woven from silk ever since the second century B.C. Silk has been incorporated in tennis racket strings, flyfishing lines and parachutes. French bicycle racers love the smooth ride and better traction of silk tires. Skiers love silk socks and undergarments because they are warm and keep moisture away from the body.

This thread is lightweight yet stronger than a comparable filament of steel. Silk has been a lifesaver to surgeons who have used its easily knotted strands in sutures.

This yarn of life is extruded by the unassuming caterpillar. It is a continuos filament as long as a mile. Imagine how many silk worms it takes to make a yarn. I takes 110 cocoons to make a tie, 630 to make a blouse and a heavy silk kimono is the work of 3,000 worms who had to consume 135 pounds of mulberry leaves.

Actually it starts not from worms but from caterpillars. These caterpillars are voracious eaters that increase their body weight 10,000 times in their under 28 day life. After their final molt they begin cocooning. The liquid silk is extrude from two silk glands at the rate of about a foot a minute.

Acres of mulberry trees are needed and the leaves must be picked, chopped and almost spoon-fed to young larvae every few hours.

Snowglobes are a wonderful Christmas present and they are so easy to make. You’ll need a circle of wood; the size depends upon the size of the globe you will be using. You can use a globe which goes to a light fixture, found at a hardware store, or you can use a clear glass bowl from a store which sells dishes or from a craft store. The wooden circle should be about 2-3 inches wider than the mouth of the bowl. Decorate your wooden stand the way you want: you can spread glue, then artificial snow, then a Christmas tree with presents under it, or you can place a tiny train set on the wooden piece, but however you decide to make it, be sure that you have enough room to put the bowl over the top without damaging the scenery. Glue the bowl to the wood with wood glue, hot glue or white glue, which should be as white as dental veneers.  Allow to dry, then decorate the portion of the globe where the bowl meets the wood, by surrounding with pine branches, pine cones, small bells, or whatever you select.

Additional ideas: Place strands of gold beads around the wood piece where the glass meets. You could also place berries, tiny gifts, or drapery tie-back cord in gold or silver.

Scenery: You can put in small, snow-covered houses, paint the wood silver and place mini ice-skaters or an glue an L-shaped picket fence with various size trees lining it.

Bamboo, the giant grass is the world’s most useful plant. Many of its botanical cousins: rice, corn and Kentucky bluegrass may have a few uses, but it is bamboo that has been the raw material to fashion implements in peace and war. No growing plant has so many varied uses as bamboo. There are well over 1,000 uses for bamboo.

Bamboo has given man the tools to work with, instruments to make music, toys to divert his children and weapons with which to fight his fellow man. Bamboo provides us with paper, a stylus to write with and a brush to make ink line drawings.

No other living think grows to tall in so little time. The commonest bamboo of Japan called madake grows almost four feet in 24 hours. Plants range in size of field grass to giants of 120 feet and a foot in thickness.

One peculiarity of bamboo is that it flowers only at long intervals of 30,60, or even 120 years apart. Once it flowers the bamboo dies. The grove can survive because the fallen seeds will take root but the grove now takes time to regrow.

The Chinese were the first to appreciate the beauty and usefulness of bamboo. They learned how to split and glue bamboo which gives it a strong, slender and springy usefulness. This application makes it a fantastic fishing rod that can cast an artificial fly a great distance even against a breeze.

Europeans import bamboo from China and use it in horticulture, as supports for tomatoes, melons, hops and fruits. Scandinavia imports it for ski pole. And to marked the borders of roads, buried under snow and is used in furniture making.

In India, bamboo is used in place of steel as reinforcement for concrete. It is laminated with plastic under pressure to make building walls, windmill blades and boat hulls. It replaces steel bolts in construction. Paper of many kinds from heavy brown kraft to fine coated printing stock is made in India. In fact, 66 percent of all paper used in this country comes from these useful grass.

The Japanese utilize bamboo for decoration. Baskets, flutes, bows and arrows, plant pots, pipes, boxes, benches, chairs, flower stands, dolls, scarecrows and garden fences are created from bamboo in Japan.

On June 6, 1925 with the remaining assets of the Maxwell Motor Company, Walter Chrysler founded the Chrysler Company. In order to compete with the many brands that General Motors had, Chrysler founded at the medium high end the De Soto brand and at the low end was the Plymouth. The Dodge Brothers automobile company was purchased. By adding the Imperial in 1955, Chrysler now had five brands of cars to meet GM’s five brands.

Chrysler has been on a financial roller coaster throughout its years. The Airflow models of the 1930’s was not well accepted and it was the Plymouth which was not an Airflow model that got them through the depression years. The first wind tunnel ever created was used to develop these models but they brought Chrysler down the financial roller coaster when the models did not sell well.

Through the 1940’s and 1950’s the only innovation was the recessed headlights. Other than these headlights it was a quiet period without new automotive ideas from this company.

In 1955, the development of the forward look brought them such classics as the 1957 Plymouth and the Imperial. However, over production and quality problems brought the company down financially.

In the 1960’s they produced muscle cars namely the Plymouth Barracuda, Plymouth Road Runner, and Dodge Charger. These models were racing successes at NASCAR and their engineering image improved.

Around 1970, a devastating gas crisis plummeted the sales of larger cars and trucks made by Chrysler. With no strong compact lines as back up Chrysler in desperation to avoid bankruptcy petitioned the United States government for $1 billion dollars in loan guarantees. The loans were approved.

They invented the minivan of which Chrysler brands are still in the forefront and the development of a few innovative cars allowed Chrysler to repay at a fast pace the loans by the early 1980’s.

In recent years, the PT Cruiser has caught the imagination of many and has improved sales.

The Cayman Islanders enjoy a standard of living among the highest in the Caribbean. With no direct taxation, the Cayman Islands is a thriving offshore financial center. More than 40,000 companies were registered in the islands as of 2000, including almost 600 banks and trust companies; banking assets exceed $500 billion.

The three islands–Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman together contain only about a hundred square miles of land. That would make the area 1.5 times the size of Washington, D.C.

The seas here is clear as gin. There are miles of virgin reefs, spectacular coral canyons, abundant underwater wildlife. The green moray eels are a tourist favorite. There are countless school of fish and all are so accustomed to humans that tourists feel very comfortable viewing and touching the fish.

The island of Grand Cayman was severely damaged in a near-miss by the Category Five Hurricane Ivan in September 2004, destroying many buildings and damaging nearly all. Power, water and communications were all disrupted

Christopher Columbus became the first westerner to visit the Cayman Islands on May 10, 1503 and named them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles there.

The Cayman Islands remained largely uninhabited until the 17th century. A variety of people settled on the islands: pirates, refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, shipwrecked sailors, deserters from Oliver Cromwell’s army in Jamaica, and slaves. The majority of Caymanians are of African and British descent, with considerable interracial mixing.

No matter what kind of software you use (including construction accounting software), networking matters.

The connecting of two or more computers in a home, school or business is called “networking”. We do this to easily share files, software programs, and printers on a ‘remote’ computer. The network is created using software installed on each computer system in the new network, and hardware that will vary depending on your own requirements and needs. There are special home network creation programs and kits with a CD you can easily buy online or in a store that will walk you through each step. Windows XP does include a ‘network setup wizard’ that will help an experienced computer user easily set up the network. There are various ways to connect the network: patch cabels, wireless WiFi, Power-line Networking, and Phone-line Networking.

Often driving tips vary depending on who you ask. When there are cold frosty mornings the right answer needs to be known immediately to prevent car damage.

Although many believe they should get their engine warmed up by racing (racing games) it in the morning the problem is that an idling engine can’t get lubrication to the necessary metal parts and without lubrication those parts wear out prematurely. Idle that car for not more than 30 seconds and save wear and tear on moving parts.

Below freezing starts can damage an engine. To avoid this use a multi grade oil either 5W-30 or 10W-30. These oils are formulated to resist thickening in cold weather and this leave more oil available for lubrication.

In preparing for winter cold have the cold-cranking power of the battery checked by your mechanic which is the major reason there are cold weather stalls.

Antifreeze should not be used at full concentration because when water is added the freezing point is actually lowered. Silicates and phosphates in the antifreeze require water to keep them in a solution to do their job.

Do not under inflate your tires for more traction before traveling on slippery roads. On icy roads one needs more traction and stopping capabilities which is accomplished with inflated tires.

The most serious problem in icy conditions occurs with drivers inexperienced with snowy icy road conditions. If your car has traction control there will not be a problem. Apply the emergency brake just a few notches until it begins to grip. This will make the braking system equal on both driving wheels and will cause to turn at the same speed. But be careful in using that emergency brake because too much braking can damage it.

Skidding is a frightening problem and it is hard to know at this panicky time. The easy answer is no matter which direction the car is skidding turn the wheel in the direction you want to go.

“Street-fighter” is a motorcycling term commonly used when referring to a race-replica styled motorcycle that has been customized by subtraction as opposed to addition. This style of motorcycle customization grew as a backlash against a perceived “dishonesty” in modern race replica motorcycles, which use a significant amount of bodywork, primarily for sake of improved aerodynamics and greater top speeds. Many riders, particularly in Europe, started removing body panels and fairings to expose the inner workings of these motorcycles for a more “honest” visual style that celebrated the mechanical substance behind the day-glow racer plastic panels. Exposing the motorcycle’s frame, engine, and other gritty internal workings was also, in many cases, seen as practicality. A minor tip-over in a parking lot can cause literally thousands of dollars to repair or replace relatively fragile fiberglass fairings; many riders who consider themselves to be “hard core” often anticipated the inevitability of dropping their vehicle, and decided that it was more sensible to remove the bodywork before it could be damaged.

Street-fighter motorcycles typically start out as “sport-bikes”, typically Japanese models with high-RPM inline four cylinder engines and aerodynamic bodywork. The first step in creating a “street-fighter” is to remove the fairings. Once inside this boundary, because modern motorcycles are relatively complex, there is often quite a bit of visual “clean up”, to hide any number of plastic wires, rubber hoses, and so forth. Most custom builders also replace the OEM headlight, which is normally integrated into the front fairing, with a headlight or set of lights designed for an un-faired motorcycle. Polishing the frame is another way to differentiate your street-fighter motorcycle, and can be done with relatively cheap buffing equipment and oven cleaner on most frames based on aluminum extrusions and castings. Additional changes can include everything from custom wheels, single-sided rear swing-arms, aftermarket exhaust, rear fenders called “huggers”, and custom paint, to name just a few.

The street-fighter phenomenon has gained enough momentum with enthusiasts in the past decade that most of the major manufacturers now offer models that pay homage to the category. Some of the more well-known “OEM” street-fighters include the Ducati Monster®, the Aprilia Tuono®, and the Triumph Speed Triple®.

Calgary was founded as a North-West mounted police outpost and linked to the East by rail in 1883, Calgary presently flourishes from proximity to the vast deposits in Canada’s Oil Patch.

Calgary is a city in the province of Alberta, Canada. It is situated towards the south of the province, in a region of hills and high plains east of the Rocky Mountains and sits at an elevation of about 1000 meters above sea level. As of 2002, the metropolitan population was 993,200. By 2005 the population is expected to reach over 1.2 million. It is the largest city in Alberta and the third largest in Canada.

Calgary’s high-rise banks and oil company skyscrapers, sandwiching the towers of investment and insurance companies, are home base for a flamboyant collection of Canadian millionaires. Calgary’s economy is largely centered on the petroleum industry,with agriculture and high-tech industries contributing to the city’s rapid economic growth. Calgary is Canada’s wealthiest city, and Alberta is also the wealthiest province (based on per capita income)

Geophysicists are the big high tech professionals of Calgary. A thousand or more are headquartered in glass-walled beehives downtown. They extrapolate the data from seismic explosions in the field. Their mission is to reveal the earth’s stratigraphy. Their computers and their analysts can detect locations for oil and gas that would otherwise never be suspected.

Calgary is world famous for its Calgary Stampede, a large festival and rodeo in July of each year and has quite a history. For the year 2000, the attendance to the 10-day rodeo and exhibition totaled 1,218,851 people. During Stampede Week, the city’s residents dress in western attire, and nearly all businesses decorate their stores and offices western style. The Calgary Stampede is often called “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.”

Honolulu is the capital city of the state of Hawaii, the 50th state in the Union. The city is on the island of Oahu, one of the eight major islands in the chain. Of the roughly 1.2 million people in the state, about 875,000 reside on Oahu, and roughly 400,000 live inside the Honolulu city limits.

Locals are from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and mixed bloodlines, as a result of a series of immigration waves that have occurred since the island chain was first discovered by the Western world back in 1778. Over the past two centuries, the islands’ culture, weather, and lifestyle have drawn in, and refused to release, people from all over Asia, the Americas, and Europe, resulting in a true melting pot environment. Local culture, food, and the local pidgin dialect all reflect the many different groups of people who have come to call the islands home.

Along with a mixed ethnic heritage, local residents also lay claim to the concept of “Hawaiian Time”, which refers to an unerring ability to ignore the anxieties that come with paying too much attention to the exact time of day. Local business attire consists of nice Aloha-print short-sleeved shirts and slacks. Everyone is, in some way, a part of your extended family; titles like “Aunty” and “Uncle” are applied to all family friends and most acquaintances.

Honolulu proper is the primary center of business and government for the state, and houses the main shipping port as well as a significant military presence. The town of Waikiki is known worldwide for its beach and for its tourist-friendly atmosphere. Honolulu also is home to the University of Hawaii’s main campus.  There also are many volcanoes near Honolulu.

Some of the more popular tourist destinations for visitors to Honolulu include the Iolani Palace, Kawaiahao Church, Bishop Museum, the Pali lookout, Punchbowl (The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific), the Aloha Tower, Ala Moana Shopping Center, Diamond Head, Tantalus, the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, and Honolulu’s own Chinatown. Most visitors also make the short trek out to the North Shore of Oahu, home to a seemingly endless string of some of the most beautiful beaches and best surf spots on the globe.

If you ever get the opportunity for an extended stay, be careful: most people that visit find it hard to put both feet back at the airport once they have arrived.