Pixies are variously described in folklore and fiction. They are said to disguise themselves as a bundle of rags to lure children into their play and are fond of music and dancing. They are usually depicted with pointed ears, and often wearing a green outfit and pointed hat. Sometimes their eyes are described as being pointed upwards at the temple ends. Pixies are said to be helpful to normal humans, sometimes helping needy widows and others with housework.

They are often ill clothed or naked. Lack of fashion sense has been taken to mean that Pixies generally go unclothed, though they are sensitive to human need for covering. Pixies are said to be invisibly small, and harmless or friendly to man. Yet in some of the legends and historical accounts they are presented as having near human stature.

Many Victorian era poets saw them as magical beings. By the early 19th Century their contact with “normal humans” had diminished. Some Pixies are said to steal children or to lead travelers astray. Pixies are said to reward consideration and punish neglect on the part of larger humans. By their presence they bring blessings to those who are fond of them.

Pixies are drawn to horses, riding them for pleasure and making tangled ringlets in the manes of those horses they ride. Their mythology seems to predate Christian presence in Britain. They were subsumed into what passed as Christianity with the explanation that they were the souls of children who had died unbaptized. Pixies are said to be uncommonly beautiful, though there are some called pixie who have distorted and strange appearance. One Pixie is said to have some goat-like features. Another is said to be coltish in character.

Before the mid 19th Century Pixies and Faires were taken seriously in much of Cornwall and Devon. Books devoted to the homely beliefs of the peasantry are filled with incidents of Pixie manifestations. Some locales are named for the Pixies associated with them. In Devon, near Challacombe,a group of rocks are named for the Pixies said to dwell there. In some areas belief in Pixies and Fairies persists.

Idioglossia refers to an idiosyncratic language, one invented and spoken by only one or a very few people. Most often, idioglossia refers to the “private languages” of young children, especially twins. It is also known as cryptophasia, and commonly referred to as twin talk or twin speech. Children who are exposed to multiple languages from birth are inclined to create idioglossias, but these languages usually disappear at a relatively early age.

Poto and Cabengo are a pair of identical twin girls (real names Grace and Virginia Kennedy, respectively), who used a secret language up to the age of about 8. Poto and Cabengo is also the name of a documentary film about the girls made by Jean-Pierre Gorin and released in 1979.

They were apparently of normal intelligence and developed their own communication because they had little exposure to spoken language in their early years. They were left in the care of a grandmother, who met their physical needs but did not play or interact with them. The grandmother spoke only German, while the parents spoke English. They had no contact with other children, seldom played outdoors, and were not sent to school.

Their father later stated in interviews that he realized the girls had invented a language of their own, but since their use of English remained extremely rudimentary, he had decided that they were in fact retarded and that it would do no good to send them to school. When he lost his job, he told a caseworker at the unemployment office about his family, and the caseworker advised him to put the girls in speech therapy. At Children’s Hospital of San Diego, speech therapist Alexa Kratze quickly discovered that Virginia and Grace, far from being retarded, had at least normal intelligence, and had invented a complex idioglossia.

Their language was spoken extremely quickly and had a staccato rhythm. These characteristics transferred themselves to the girls’ English, which they began to speak following speech therapy. Linguistic analysis of their language revealed that it was a mixture of English and German with some neologisms and several idiosyncratic grammatical features.

Many speech and hearing experts, as well as psychiatrists, offered speculation as to why the girls had not picked up English, as most idioglossic twins do as they go along whether or not they retain their personal language. Kratze pointed out that the girls had had very little contact with anyone outside their family, and that contact within the family had been minimal at best. These factors contributed to the girls’ developmental disability, even if they had been born with normal intelligence.

Once it was established that the girls could be educated, their father apparently forbade them to speak their personal language. He was quoted in Time magazine as saying “They don’t want to be associated as dummies. You live in a society, you got to speak the language.” Asked if they remembered their language, the girls confirmed that they did, but their father quickly stepped in to chide them for “lying”. They were mainstreamed and placed in separate classes in elementary school. However, they were still affected by their family’s emotional neglect.

Forgiveness is typically defined as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense or mistake, and ceasing to demand punishment or restitution. The concept and benefits of forgiveness have been explored in religious thought, the social sciences and medicine. Forgiveness may be considered simply in terms of the person who forgives including forgiving themselves, in terms of the person forgiven, or in terms of the relationship between the forgiver and the person forgiven.

In some contexts, forgiveness may be granted without any expectation of restorative justice, and without any response on the part of the offender. In practical terms, it may be necessary for the offender to offer some form of acknowledgment, apology or restitution, or even to just ask for forgiveness, in order for the wronged person to believe himself able to forgive.

Most world religions include teachings on the nature of forgiveness, and many of these teachings provide an underlying basis for many varying modern day traditions and practices of forgiveness. Some religious doctrines or philosophies place greater emphasis on the need for humans to find some sort of divine forgiveness for their own shortcomings. Others place greater emphasis on the need for humans to practice forgiveness of one another, yet others make little or no distinction between human and divine forgiveness.

In Buddhism, forgiveness is seen as a practice to prevent harmful thoughts from causing havoc on one’s mental well-being. Buddhism recognizes that feelings of hatred and ill-will leave a lasting effect on our mind karma. Instead, Buddhism encourages the cultivation of thoughts that leave a wholesome effect. In contemplating the law of karma, it is realized that it is not a matter of seeking revenge but of practicing forgiveness, for the victimizer is truly the most unfortunate of all.

When resentments have already arisen, the Buddhist view is to calmly proceed to release them by going back to their roots. Buddhism centers on release from delusion and suffering through meditation and receiving insight into the nature of reality. Buddhism questions the reality of the passions that make forgiveness necessary as well as the reality of the objects of those passions. If we haven’t forgiven, we keep creating an identity around our pain, and that is what is reborn. That is what suffers.

The need to forgive is widely recognized by the public, but they are often at a loss for ways to accomplish it. For example, in a representative sampling of American people on various religious topics in 1988, the Gallup Organization found that 94% said it was important to forgive, but 85% said they needed some outside help to do it. However, not even regular prayer was found to be effective. The Gallup poll revealed that the only thing that was effective was meditative prayer.

Recent work at the International Forgiveness Institute has focused on what kind of person is more likely to be forgiving. A longitudinal study showed that people who were generally more neurotic, angry and hostile in life were less likely to forgive another person even after a long time had passed. Specifically, these people were more likely to avoid their transgressor and want to enact revenge upon them several years after the transgression.

Studies show that people who forgive are happier and healthier than those who hold resentments. One study has shown that the positive benefit of forgiveness is similar whether it was based upon religious or secular counseling as opposed to a control group that received no forgiveness counseling.

Inner Light is a concept which many Quakers use to express their faith and beliefs. Each Quaker has a different idea of what they mean by Inner Light, and this also varies internationally between yearly meetings, but the idea is often taken to refer to God’s presence within a person, and to a direct and personal experience of God. Quakers believe that God speaks to everyone, and that in order to hear God’s voice, it helps to be still and actively listen for it.

They believe not only that individuals can be guided by this Inner Light, but that Friends might meet together and receive collective guidance from God by sharing the concerns and leadings that he gives to individuals. In a Friends meeting it is usually called “ministry” when a person shares aloud what the Inner Light is saying to him or her.

It is important to note that many Friends consider this divine guidance distinct both from impulses originating within oneself and from generally agreed-on moral guidelines. In fact, a person can be prompted to say something in meeting that is contrary to what he or she thinks. In other words, Friends do not usually consider the Inner Light the conscience or moral sensibility but something higher and deeper that informs and sometimes corrects these aspects of human nature.

Historically, Friends have been suspicious of formal creeds or religious philosophy that is not grounded in one’s own experience. Instead one must be guided by the Inward Teacher, the Inner Light. This is not, however, a release for Friends to decide and do whatever they want. It is incumbent upon Friends to consider the wisdom of other Friends, as one must listen for the Inner Light of others as well as their own. Friends have various established procedures for collectively discerning and following the Spirit while making decisions.

Friends are not in complete agreement on the importance of the Inner Light in relation to the Bible. Most Friends, especially in the past, have looked to the Bible as a source of wisdom and guidance. Many, if not most of them, have considered the Bible a book inspired by God. But Quakers have generally tended to regard present, personal direction from God more authoritative than the text of the Bible.

Early Quakers did not believe that promptings which were truly from the Spirit within would contradict the Bible. They did, however, believe that to correctly understand the Bible, one needed the Inner Light to clarify it and guide one in applying its teachings to current situations. In the United States in the nineteenth century some Friends concluded that others of their faith were using the concept of the Inner Light to justify unbiblical views. These “Orthodox” Friends held that the Bible was more authoritative than the Inner Light and should be used to test personal leadings. Friends remain formally, but usually respectfully, divided on the matter.

In the context of reality, people face the difficulty of telling whether the world we are living in is virtual or real. Such a confusion leads people to investigate the possibility that we are living in a simulation.

Whether are we living in a simulated reality or a real one may be indistinguishable in principle. The relativity principle in physics, which is mainly about the relativity of motion, states that motion has no absolute meaning. To say if something is in motion or rest one must have some reference frame. Without a reference frame, one cannot tell the state of being in rest or in uniform motion.

Similar things happen for reality, meaning that without a reference world, one cannot tell the world one is living in is real or not. Therefore, there is no absolute meaning for reality. The principle of relativity of reality is a generalization of the principle in special relativity, and may be called ‘super relativity principle’. Similar to the situation in special relativity or general relativity, there are two fundamental principles for the relativity of reality:

• All worlds are the same real.
• Simulated events and simulating events coexist.

The first principle says that the reality is relative and thus observer dependent. For a world, one calls it reality or virtuality depending on whether one lives in it. One calls the world one lives in reality, and other worlds virtuality. For example, if one lives in world A, one calls it reality and the other is world B virtuality. However if one’s consciousness is transferred from world A into world B, then, one shall call world B reality and world A virtuality.

The second principle states a fact sometimes known as a coexistence principle. Nowadays, there are mainly two kinds of simulators available, computers and human brains. For computers, suppose there is a glinting ball in the simulated world of a computer. The counterpart of it in the simulating world is the combination of zeros and ones (high and low electrical levels) of the running computer’s circuits. In fact, for anything in the simulated world, there is its counterpart in the simulating world.

For human brains, suppose there is an apple in someone’s imagination, the counterpart of it in the material world is the biochemical reactions in one’s brain. In fact, for anything in one’s imagination, there is its counterpart as a biochemical reaction in the material world. Essentially, simulated events and simulating events coexist, but that doesn’t mean that simulated events and simulating events exist in the same form. Actually, they can be quite different in existence form. Taking the above-mentioned apple in someone’s imagination as an example, its existing form in the simulated world is a apple, while the existing form of its counterpart in the simulating world is biochemical reactions in someone’s brain.

Olive oil is a fruit oil obtained from the olive, a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin. The wild olive tree originated in Asia Minor and spread from there as far as southern Africa, Australia, Japan and China. It is commonly used in cooking, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and soaps and as a fuel for traditional oil lamps. Olive oil is used throughout the world, but especially in the Mediterranean.

Over 750 million olive trees are cultivated worldwide, 95% of which are in the Mediterranean region. Most of global production comes from Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

Olive oil is produced by grinding olives and extracting the oil by mechanical or chemical means. Green olives produce bitter oil, and overripe olives produce rancid oil, so for good extra virgin olive oil care is taken to make sure the olives are perfectly ripened.

First the olives are ground into paste using large millstones or steel drums.If ground with mill stones, the olive paste generally stays under the stones for 30–40 minutes. A shorter grinding process may result in a more raw paste that produces less oil and has a less ripe taste, a longer process may increase oxidation of the paste and reduce the flavor. After grinding, the olive paste is spread on fiber disks, which are stacked on top of each other in a column, then placed into the press.

Pressure is then applied onto the column to separate the vegetal liquid from the paste. This liquid still contains a significant amount of water. Traditionally the oil was shed from the water by gravity, since oil has a lower specific weight than water. This very slow separation process has been replaced by centrifugation, which is much faster and more accurate. The centrifuges have one exit for the heavier watery part and one for the oil. Olive oil should not contain significant traces of vegetal water as this accelerates the process of organic degeneration by micro organisms. The separation in smaller oil mills is not always perfect, thus sometimes a small watery deposit containing organic particles can be found at the bottom of oil bottles.

The oil produced by only mechanical means as described is called virgin oil. Extra virgin olive oil is virgin olive oil that satisfies specific high chemical and organoleptic criteria suchs as low free acidity, no or very little organoleptic defects. Sometimes the produced oil will be filtered to eliminate remaining solid particles that may reduce the shelf life of the product. Labels may indicate the fact that the oil has not been filtered, suggesting a different taste.

There is a large body of clinical data to show that consumption of olive oil can provide heart health benefits such as favourable effects on cholesterol regulation and LDL cholesterol oxidation, and that it exerts antiinflamatory, antithrombotic, antihypertensive as well as vasodilatory effects both in animals and in humans.

World production in 2002 was 2.6 million tons, of which Spain contributed 40% to 45%. In 2006, Turkey accounted for about 5% of world production, similar to the Spanish province of Jaén alone, well known for the biggest olive groves in the world. Of the European production, 93% comes from Spain, Italy, Greece.

Behavior refers to the actions and reactions of an object or organism, usually in relation to the environment. Behavior can be conscious or unconscious, and voluntary or involuntary. The complexity of the behavior of an organism is related to the complexity of its nervous system. Generally, organisms with complex nervous systems have a greater capacity to learn new responses and thus adjust their behavior. Behaviors can be either innate or learned.

Human behavior can be common, unusual, acceptable, or unacceptable. Humans evaluate the acceptability of behavior using social norms and regulate behavior by means of social control. In sociology, behavior is considered as having no meaning, being not directed at other people, and thus is the most basic human action. Animal behavior is studied in comparative psychology, ethology, behavioral ecology and sociobiology.

Behavior became an important construct in early 20th century psychology with the advent of the paradigm known subsequently as behaviorism. Behaviorism was a reaction against so-called faculty psychology which purported to see into or understand the mind without the benefit of scientific testing. Behaviorism insisted on working only with what can be seen or manipulated.

Behavior as used in computer science is an anthropomorphic construct that assigns life to the activities carried out by a computer in response to stimuli, such as user input. Also, a behavior is a reusable block of computer code or script that, when applied to an object, especially a graphical one, causes it to respond to user input in meaningful patterns or to operate independently.

In environmental modeling and especially in hydrology, a behavioral model means a model that is acceptably consistent with observed natural processes. It is a key concept of the so-called Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) methodology to quantify how uncertain environmental predictions are.

In traditional Chinese culture, qi (or “chi”)  is an active principle forming part of any living thing. It is frequently translated as energy flow, and is often compared to Western notions of vitalism as well as the yogic notion of prana. The literal translation is “air” or “breath”. The earliest way of writing qi consisted of three wavy lines, used to represent one’s breath seen on a cold day.

Theories of traditional Chinese medicine assert that the body has natural patterns of qi that circulate in channels called meridians. Symptoms of various illnesses are often believed to be the product of disrupted, blocked, or unbalanced qi movement  through the body’s meridians, as well as deficiencies or imbalances of qi in the various organs. Traditional Chinese medicine often seeks to relieve these imbalances by adjusting the circulation of qi in the body using a variety of therapeutic techniques. Some of these techniques include herbal medicines, special diets, physical training regimens, massage to clear blockages, and acupuncture.

It has been hypothesized that the alleged therapeutic effects of acupuncture can be explained by endorphin-release, by relaxation or by simple placebo effects. The NIH Consensus Statement on acupuncture in 1997 noted that concepts such as qi “are difficult to reconcile with contemporary biomedical information but continue to play an important role in the evaluation of patients and the formulation of treatment in acupuncture.”

More recent investigations point to connective tissue mechanotransduction, in other words a domino effect caused by the specific twisting and knotting of the fabric of the body. The connections with electric conductivity were studied in the United States in the late 19th Century, and are currently the subject of more active research.

There are many uses of the term “qi” in acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, but it’s an imprecise concept of which the best, non-poetic translation is probably “stuff”.

The traditional Chinese art of geomancy, the placement and arrangement of space called feng shui, is based on calculating the balance of qi. The retention or dissipation of qi is believed to affect the health, wealth, energy level, luck and many other aspects of the occupants of the space. Color, shape and the physical location of each item in a space affects the flow of qi by slowing it down, redirecting it or accelerating it, which directly affects the energy level of the occupants. Feng shui is said to be a form of qi divination.