A plum is a stone fruit tree in the genus Prunus, which includes almond, apricot, cherry and peach. The fruit is sweet and juicy and it can be eaten fresh or used in jam-making or other recipes. Plums come in a wide variety of colors and sizes. Some are much firmer-fleshed than others and some have yellow, white, green or red flesh, with equally varying skin color.

When it flowers in the early spring, a plum tree will be covered in blossom, and in a good year approximately 50% of the flowers will be pollinated and become plums. If the weather is too dry the plums will not develop past a certain stage, but will fall from the tree while still tiny green buds, and if it is unseasonably wet or if the plums are not harvested as soon as they are ripe, the fruit may develop a fungal condition called brown rot.
 
Plum juice can be fermented into plum wine. When distilled, this produces a brandy known in Eastern Europe as Slivovitz, Rakia or Palinka. The Serbian plum is the third most produced in the world and the alcoholic drink slivovitz is the national drink of Serbia. Their plum production averages 424,300 tonnes per year.

A large number of plums are also grown in Hungary where they are called szilva and are used to make lekvar (a plum paste jam), palinka (a slivovitz-type liquor), plum dumplings, and other foods. The region of Szabolcs-Szatmár, in the northeastern part of the country near the borders with Ukraine and Romania, is a major producer of plums.

Dried plums are known as prunes. Plums and prunes are known for their laxative effect. This effect has been attributed to various compounds present in the fruits, such as dietary fiber, sorbitol and isatin. Prunes and prune juice are often used to help regulate the functioning of the digestive system. Prune marketers in the United States have, in recent years, begun marketing their product as “dried plums”. This is due to “prune” having negative connotations connected with elderly people suffering from constipation.

Various flavors of dried plum are available at Chinese grocers and specialty stores worldwide. They tend to be much drier than the standard prune. Cream, Ginsing, Spicy, and Salty are among the common varieties. Licorice is generally used to intensify the flavor of these plums and is used to make salty plum drinks and toppings for Shaved Ice or baobing.

Pickled plums are another type of preserve available in Asia and international specialty stores. The Japanese variety, called umeboshi, is often used for rice balls, called “Onigiri” or “Omusubi”. The ume, from which umeboshi are made, is however more closely related to the apricot than to the plum.

The mei plum blossoms are considered traditional floral emblems of China. On June 21, 1964, the Executive Yuan of the Republic of China officially designated the mei plum blossom to be its national flower, with the triple grouping of stamens representing the Three Principles of the People and the five petals symbolizing the five branches of the ROC government.

Yoga Nidra refers to yogic sleep and yogic lucid dreaming. It has been practiced as a spiritual practice for millennia by ascetics and yogic practitioners. Of the three states of consciousness of waking, dreaming and deep sleep refer specifically to the conscious awareness of the deep sleep state, referred to as “prajna”. This is the third of the four levels of consciousness relating to the state represented by the M of AUM. The four states are waking, dreaming, sleep, and turiya, the fourth state. The state of Yoga Nidra, conscious deep sleep, is beyond or subtler than the imagery and mental process of the waking and non-lucid dreaming states. As a state of conscious deep sleep, Yoga Nidra is a universal principle, and is not the exclusive domain of any specific tradition.

The practice of yogic relaxation has been found to effectively reduce tension and improve psychological well being of people suffering from anxiety. The autonomic symptoms of high anxiety such as headache, giddiness, chest pain, palpitations, sweating and abdominal pain respond exceptionally well to yoga nidra. Practicing yoga nidra successfully decreases the time required to fall asleep, thereby curing insomnia.

Adherents of the Yoga Nidra as guided visualisation technique hold that half an hour of Yoga Nidra may yield the benefit of up to three hours of standard sleep, although the regular engagement of this practice as a sleep substitute is contraindicated as the bodymind still requires sufficient rest through standard sleep. This tradition of Yoga Nidra should not be conflated with techniques of autosuggestion and autogenous training, though there is a palpable commonality in process if not in application.

Through practice of Yoga Nidra, one achieves true relaxation. During the practice of yoga nidra, one appears to be sleeping, but the consciousness is functioning at the deeper level of awareness. It is sleep with a trace of deep awareness. It is a state of mind in between wakefulness and dream. Normally when we sleep, we loose track of our self and cannot utilize this capacity of mind. Yoga nidra enables the person to be conscious in this state and nurture the seed of great will power, inspire the higher self, and enjoy the vitality of life.

With constant practice of Yoga Nidra people have found that the technique restructures and transforms the whole personality from within. With every session of yoga nidra, one is actually burning the old habits and tendencies in order to be born anew. This process is quicker than other systems that work on an external basis. It is a most powerful method for reshaping the personality.

Yerba buena is a rambling aromatic herb of western North America, ranging from maritime Alaska southwards to Baja California. The plant takes the form of a sprawling, mat-forming perennial, and is especially abundant close to the coast.

The plant’s most common name, the same in English and Spanish, is an alternate form of the Spanish hierba buena (meaning “good herb”). The name was bestowed by pioneer Catholic priests of Alta California as they settled an area where the plant is native. It was so abundant there that its name was also applied to the settler’s town adjacent to Mission San Francisco de Asís.

In 1846, the town of Yerba Buena was seized by the United States during the Mexican-American War, and its name was changed in 1847 to San Francisco, after a nearby mission. Three years later, the name was applied to a nearby rocky island. Today millions of commuters drive through the tunnel on Yerba Buena Island that connects the spans of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge.

In general, in most Spanish speaking countries, the term “yerba buena” refers to the particular local species of mint, which varies from region to region. The term has been used to cover a number of aromatic true mints and mint relative. All plants so named have medicinal properties, and some have culinary value as teas or seasonings, as well. Perhaps the most common variation of the plant is spearmint.

In parts of Central America yerba buena often refers to Mentha citrata, a true mint sometimes called “bergamot mint” with a strong citrus-like aroma that is used medicinally and as a cooking herb and tea. In Cuba, yerba buena generally refers to a popular plant also known as large apple mint, foxtail mint, hairy mint, woolly mint or, simply, Cuban mint.

In Puerto Rico a close relative of traditional culinary savory, Satureja viminea, is sometimes used. In Peru the name is sometimes applied to a shrubby aromatic marigold known as huacatay or “black mint”. In this case, despite some similarities of flavor, the herb in question is in the Sunflower family and is quite unrelated to any of the mints or mint-relatives with which it shares a name.

Douglas Firs are medium-size to large or very large evergreen trees, 60-350 feet tall. The name honours David Douglas, the Scottish botanist who first introduced them into cultivation in 1826. The needles are flat and linear, generally resembling those of most firs. The cones are distinctive in having a long three-pointed bract that protrudes prominently above each scale.

A California Native American myth explains that each of the three-ended bracts are a tail and two tiny legs of the mice who hid inside the scales of the tree’s cones during forest fires, and the tree was kind enough to be the enduring sanctuary for them.

The best-known species are the Green Douglas Fir on the Pacific coast, and the Interior Douglas Fir in the interior west of the continent extending from the southern Rocky Mountains to Alberta, Canada. Other less widely used names include Douglas Tree, and Oregon Pine. It is the state tree of Oregon.

The height of the tallest Douglas Fir ever documented was the Mineral Tree in Mineral, Washington, at 394 feet, measured several times between 1911 and 1925 by Richard McCardle, a University of Washington forester. The tallest living individual is the Brummitt (Doerner) Fir in Coos County, Oregon, at 326 feet tall. Only the Coast Redwood reaches greater heights based on current knowledge of living trees.

The wood is used for structural applications that are required to withstand high loads. Douglas Fir is used extensively in the construction industry. Other examples include its use for homebuilt aircraft. Very often, these aircraft were designed to utilize Sitka spruce, which is becoming increasingly difficult to source in aviation quality grades.

Douglas Fir is the most commonly marketed Christmas tree species in the United States, where they are sold along with firs like Noble Fir and Grand Fir. Douglas Fir Christmas trees are usually trimmed to a near perfect cone instead of left to grow naturally like Noble and Grand firs.

Anekantavada is one of the most important and fundamental doctrines of Jainism. It refers to the principles of pluralism and multiplicity of viewpoints, the notion that truth and reality are perceived differently from diverse points of view, and that no single point of view is the complete truth.

This is to contrast attempts to proclaim absolute truth with the parable of the “blind men and an elephant”. In this story, each blind man felt a different part of an elephant (trunk, leg, ear, etc.). All the men claimed to understand and explain the true appearance of the elephant, but could only partly succeed, due to their limited perspectives. This principle is more formally stated by observing that objects are infinite in their qualities and modes of existence, so they cannot be completely grasped in all aspects and manifestations by finite human perception. Consequently, no single, specific, human view can claim to represent absolute truth.

Anekantavada encourages its adherents to consider the views and beliefs of their rivals and opposing parties. Proponents of anekantavada apply this principle to religion and philosophy, reminding themselves that any religion or philosophy, even Jainism, which clings too dogmatically to its own tenets, is committing an error based on its limited point of view. The principle of anekantavada also influenced Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to adopt principles of religious tolerance and satyagraha.

Some modern authors believe that Jain philosophy in general and anekantavada in particular can provide a solution to many problems facing the world. They claim that even the mounting ecological crisis is linked to adversarialism, because it arises from a false division between humanity and the rest of nature. Modern judicial systems, democracy, freedom of speech, and secularism all implicitly reflect an attitude of anekantavada.

It is believed that the Jain tradition with its emphasis on anekantavada is capable of solving religious intolerance, terrorism, wars, the depletion of natural resources, environmental degradation and many other problems. Referring to the 9/11 tragedy, John Koller believes that violence in society mainly exists due to faulty epistemology and metaphysics as well as faulty ethics. A failure to respect the life and views of others, rooted in dogmatic and mistaken knowledge and refusal to acknowledge the legitimate claims of different perspectives, leads to violent and destructive behavior.

Koller suggests that anekantavada has a larger role to play in the world peace. According to Koller, because anekantavada is designed to avoid one-sided errors, reconcile contradictory viewpoints, and accept the multiplicity and relativity of truth, the Jain philosophy is in a unique position to support dialogue and negotiations amongst various nations and peoples.

Some have cautioned against giving undue importance to non-violence as the basis of anekantavada. It is pointed out that Jain monks have used anekantavada as a debating weapon to silence critics and prove the validity of the Jain doctrine over others. This method of analysis becomes a fearsome weapon of philosophical polemic with which the doctrines of Hinduism and Buddhism can be pared down to their ideological bases of simple permanence and impermanence, respectively, and thus can be shown to be one-pointed and inadequate as the overall interpretations of reality which they purport to be. On the other hand, the many-sided approach is claimed by the Jains to be immune from criticism since it does not present itself as a philosophical or dogmatic view.

Kets are a Siberian people who speak the Ket language. They are thought to be the only survivors of an ancient nomadic people believed to have originally lived throughout central southern Siberia. Today’s Kets are the descendants of the tribes of fishermen and hunters who have adopted some of the cultural ways of those original Ket-speaking tribes of South Siberia. The earlier tribes engaged in hunting, fishing, and reindeer breeding in the northern areas.

Shamanism was a living practice among the Kets into the 1930s, but by the 1960s almost no authentic shamans could be found. It shared characteristics with those of Turkic and Mongolic peoples. Additionally, there were several types of Ket shamans differing in function, power and associated animals. Also, there are examples of the use of skeleton symbolics. These have been interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, although they may symbolize the bones of the loon, the helper animal of the shaman, joining air and underwater world, just like the shaman who travelled both to the sky and the underworld. The skeleton-like overlay also represented shamanic rebirth among some other Siberian cultures.

The mythology of Kets has been compared with that of Uralic peoples, assuming that they are modelling semiotic systems in the compared mythologies. Among other comparisons, the mythologies of Ob-Ugric peoples and Samoyedic peoples are mentioned. Other authors have discussed analogies between similar folklore motifs, purely typological considerations, and certain binary pairs in symbolics. These may be related to a dualistic organization of society as some dualistic features can be found in comparisons with these peoples.

However, for Kets, neither dualistic organization of society nor cosmological dualism has been researched thoroughly. If such features existed at all, they have either weakened or remained largely undiscovered. There are some reports on a division into two exogamous patrilinear moieties, folklore on conflicts of mythological figures, and also on cooperation of two beings in the creation of the land, the motif of earth-diver. This motif is present in several cultures in different variants. In one example, the creator of the world is helped by a water fowl as the bird dives under the water and fetches earth so that the creator can make land out of it. In some cultures, the creator and the earth-fetching being, sometimes named as devil, or taking shape of a loon, compete with one another.

A polymath is a person whose knowledge is not restricted to one subject area. In less formal terms, a polymathic person may simply refer to someone who is very knowledgeable. Most ancient scientists were polymaths by today’s standards.

The term Renaissance man is used to describe a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields. This idea developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti that “a man can do all things if he will.” It embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance Humanism which considered man empowered, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. Thus the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments and in the arts.

Since it is considered extremely difficult to genuinely acquire an encyclopaedic knowledge, and even more to be proficient in several fields at the level of an expert, not to mention to achieve excellence or recognition in multiple fields, the word polymath may also be used with a potentially negative connotation as well. Under this connotation, by sacrificing depth for breadth, the polymath becomes a “jack of all trades, master of none”. For many specialists, in the context of today’s hyperspecialization, the ideal of a Renaissance man is judged to be an anachronism, since it is not uncommon that a specialist can barely dominate the accumulated knowledge of more than just one restricted subfield in his whole life, and many renowned experts have been made famous only for dominating different subfields or traditions or for being able to integrate the knowledge of different subfields or traditions.

Today, expertise is often associated with documents, certifications, diplomas, and degrees attributing to such, and a person who seems to have an abundance of these is often perceived as having more education than practical working experience. Autodidactic polymaths often combine didactic education and expertise in multiple fields with autodidactic research and experience to create the Renaissance ideal.

Many fields of interest take years of singleminded devotion to achieve expertise, often requiring starting at an early age. Also, many require cultural familiarity that may be inaccessible to someone not born and raised in that culture. In many such cases, it is realistically possible to achieve only knowledge of theory, without practical experience. For example, on a safari, a jungle native will be a more effective guide than a scientist who may be educated in the theories of jungle survival but did not grow up acquiring his knowledge firsthand.

However, those supporting the ideal of the Renaissance man today would say that the specialist’s understanding of the interrelation of knowledge from different fields is too narrow and that a synthetic comprehension of different fields is unavailable to him, or, if they embrace the Renaissance ideal even more deeply, that the human development of the specialist is truncated by the narrowness of his view. What is much more common today than the universal approach to knowledge from a single polymath, is the multidisciplinary approach to knowledge which derives from several experts from different fields collaborating together.

Honey is created by bees as a food source. In cold weather or when food sources are scarce, bees use their stored honey as their source of energy. By contriving for bee swarms to nest in artificial hives, people have been able to semi-domesticate the insects, and harvest excess honey. In the hive there are three types of bee: a single female queen bee, a seasonally variable number of male drone bees to fertilize new queens, and some 20,000 to 40,000 female worker bees.

The worker bees raise larvae and collect the nectar that will become honey in the hive. Leaving the hive, they collect sugar-rich flower nectar and return. In the process, they release pheromones. These pheromones lead other bees to rich nectar sites by “smell”. Honeybees also release pheromones at the entrance to the hive, which enables returning bees to return to the proper hive.

In the hive the bees use their “honey stomachs” to ingest and regurgitate the nectar a number of times until it is partially digested. The bees work together as a group with the regurgitation and digestion until the product reaches a desired quality. It is then stored in honeycomb cells. After the final regurgitation, the honeycomb is left unsealed. However, the nectar is still high in both water content and natural yeasts which, unchecked, would cause the sugars in the nectar to ferment.

The process continues as bees inside the hive fan their wings, creating a strong draft across the honeycomb which enhances evaporation of much of the water from the nectar. This reduction in water content raises the sugar concentration and prevents fermentation. Ripe honey, as removed from the hive by a beekeeper, has a long shelf life and will not ferment if properly sealed.

Honey use and production has a long and varied history. In many cultures, honey has associations that go beyond its use as a food. Honey is frequently a talisman and symbol of sweetness. Eva Crane’s The Archaeology of Beekeeping states that humans began hunting for honey at least 10,000 years ago. She evidences this with a cave painting in Valencia, Spain. The painting is a Mesolithic rock painting, showing two female honey-hunters collecting honey and honeycomb from a wild bee hive. The two women are depicted in the nude, carrying baskets, and using a long wobbly ladder in order to reach the wild nest.

In Ancient Egypt, honey was used to sweeten cakes and biscuits, and was used in many other dishes. Ancient Egyptian peoples also used honey for embalming the dead. In the Roman Empire, honey was possibly used instead of gold to pay taxes. Pliny the Elder devotes considerable space in his book Naturalis Historia to the bee and honey, and its many uses. The fertility god of Egypt, Min, was offered honey. In some parts of post-classical Greece, like Rhodes, it was formerly the custom for a bride to dip her fingers in honey and make the sign of the cross before entering her new home.

In Jewish tradition, honey is a symbol for the new year, Rosh Hashana. At the traditional meal for that holiday, apple slices are dipped in honey and eaten to bring a sweet new year. Some Rosh Hashana greetings show honey and an apple, symbolizing the feast. In some congregations, small straws of honey are given out to usher in the new year.

In Buddhism, honey plays an important role in the festival of Madhu Purnima, celebrated by Buddhists in India and Bangladesh. The day commemorates Buddha’s making peace among his disciples by retreating into the wilderness. The legend has it that while he was there, a monkey brought him honey to eat. On Madhu Purnima, Buddhists remember this act by giving honey to monks. The monkey’s gift is frequently depicted in Buddhist art.

The word “honey”, along with variations like “honey bun” and the abbreviation “hon”, has become a term of endearment in most of the English-speaking world. In some places it is used for loved ones. in others, such as the American South, it is used when addressing casual acquaintances or even strangers.

In many children’s books bears are depicted as eating honey, even though most bears actually eat a wide variety of foods, and bears seen at beehives are usually more interested in bee larvae than honey. In some European languages the word for bear is coined from the noun which means honey and the verb which means to eat (Croatian ‘medvjed’). Honey is sometimes sold in bear-shaped jars or squeeze bottles.