Mexican Clover or Richardia grandiflora is a persistent groundcover that can make area lawns in southern Florida appear to be dusted with snow. The viney ground cover plant has flowers about 0.8 inch long and forms thick mats, spreading by seeds.

Although Mexican Clover is not in the clover family, the flower heads remind one of spent red clover seed heads. The flowers form in a terminal cluster from a four leaf bract. Each flower consists of six narrow lobes joined at the base to form a tube. The petals are white with shades of pink or lavender and are funnel-shaped.

The range is continuous from the Carribean through Mexico and Central America and it blooms in any month that lacks frost. It is grown as forage and a cover crop in the southern states, responds well to mowing, minimizes the need to irrigate and fertilize, spreads quickly and adds color.

Each flower typically produces three nutlets which function as a food source for small animals and insects. In addition, Mexican clover serves as a significant nectar source for butterflies and bees.

The wild man or woodwose is a mythological figure that appears in the artwork and literature of medieval Europe. Images of wild men appear in the carved and painted roof where intersecting vaults meet in the Canterbury Cathedral, in positions where one is also likely to encounter the vegetal Green Man. The wild man, often armed with a club, was a link between civilized humans and the spirits of natural woodland.

The image of the wild man survived to appear as supporter for heraldic coats-of-arms, especially in Germany, well into the 16th century. Early engravers in Germany and Italy were particularly fond of wild men, wild women, and wild families, with examples from Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer among others.

As the name implies, the key characteristic of the wild man is his wildness. Wild men were seen as beings of the wilderness, and as such represented the antithesis of civilization. Scholar Dorothy Yamamoto has noted that the “wilderness” inhabited by the wild man does not truly indicate a place totally beyond human reach, but rather the liminal zone at edge of civilization, the place inhabited by hunters, criminals, religious hermits, herdsmen, and others who frequent the margins of human activity.

Other characteristics developed or transmuted in different contexts. From the earliest times wild men were associated with hairiness. By the 12th century they were almost invariably described as having a coat of hair covering their entire bodies except for their hands, feet, faces above their long beards, and the breasts and chins of the females.

The medieval wild man concept also drew on lore about similar beings from the Classical world such as the Roman faun and Silvanus. There are several folk traditions about the wild man that correspond with ancient practices and beliefs. Notably, peasants tried to capture the wild man by getting him drunk and tying him up in hopes that he would give them his wisdom in exchange for freedom. This suggests a connection to an ancient tradition in which shepherds caught a forest being in the same fashion and for the same purpose.

The Narayanastra is the personal missile weapon of Vishnu in his Narayana form. This astra (“weapon” in Sanskrit) lets loose a powerful tirade of millions of deadly missiles simultaneously. The intensity of the shower increases with resistance. The only defense is showing total submission before the missiles hit, which will cause them to stop and spare the target.

Ashwathama, a Kuru warrior-hero in the epic Mahabharata unleashes the weapon on the Pandava forces. Lord Krishna, who is the Avatara of Vishnu tells the Pandavas and their warriors to drop their weapons and lie down on the ground, submitting completely to the power of the weapon. The secret of the weapon was known by only three warriors: Drona, Aswatthama, and Krishna. It was also said that the weapon can be used only once in a war and if tried to use it twice it would devour the user’s own army.

When targeted, the Pandava hero Bhima refuses to surrender, thinking it cowardice, and attacks the downpour of fiery arrows. The Narayana weapon concentrates its shower upon him, and he is steadily exhausted. He is not killed, however, as Krishna and his brothers restrain him in time.

A role-playing game, or RPG, is a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvise. Their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game.

Most role-playing games are conducted like radio drama. Only the spoken component is acted. In most games, one specially designated player, the game master (GM), creates a setting in which each player plays the role of a single character. The GM describes the game world and its inhabitants, and the other players describe the intended actions of their characters. Essentially, the GM describes the outcomes. Some outcomes are determined by the game system, and some are chosen by the GM.

A specific genre of video game is also referred to as a role-playing game. These games do not involve “role-playing” in the sense used in traditional role-playing games. They take their name from the settings and game mechanics which they inherit from early role-playing games. Due to the popularity of video games, the terms “role-playing game” and “RPG” have both, to some degree, been co-opted by the video gaming industry. As a result, games in which players play the roles of characters are sometimes referred to by the retronyms “pen and paper role-playing games” or “tabletop role-playing games,” though neither pen and paper nor a table are strictly necessary.

Teleology is the philosophical study of design and purpose. A teleological school of thought is one that holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists.

As a school of thought it can be contrasted with metaphysical naturalism, which views nature as having no design or purpose. Teleology would say that a person has eyes because he has the need of eyesight, while naturalism would say that a person has sight because he has eyes.

Individual human consciousness, in the process of reaching for autonomy and freedom, has no choice but to deal with an obvious reality in the collective identities which divide the human race and which set different groups in violent conflict with each other. The totality of mutually antagonistic world views and life forms in history has been observed as being goal driven, that is, oriented towards an end-point in history. The objective contradiction of subject and object would eventually sublate into a form of life which leaves violent conflict behind. This goal oriented, teleological notion of the historical process as a whole is present in a variety of 20th Century writing.

It has been argued that a narrative understanding of oneself, of one’s capacity as an independent reasoner, one’s dependence on others and on the social practices and traditions in which one participates, all tend towards an ultimate good of liberation. Social practices may themselves be understood as teleologically orientated to internal goods, for example practices of philosophical and scientific enquiry are teleologically ordered to the elaboration of a true understanding of their objects.

Science concerns itself with physical causality and is well able to function within the bounds of naturalism, indeed, it has frequently to counter appeals to undemonstrable modes of causality. Yet teleological ideas still find refuge in the unpenetrated beginnings and endings of things. It has been claimed that within the framework of thermodynamics, the irreversibility of macroscopic processes is explained in a teleological way.

Teleological arguments in the field of chemistry have once again often centred around the fitness of materials to form the complex molecular bonds of life. Biology has always been susceptible to teleological thought, even after Darwin proposed survival as the only observable final good.

Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, coined the term cybernetics to denote the study of teleological mechanisms. Cybernetics is the study of the communication and control of regulatory feedback both in living beings and machines, and in combinations of the two.

Human development theory is a theory that merges older ideas from ecological economics, sustainable development, welfare economics, and feminist economics. It seeks to avoid the overt normative politics of most so called “green economics” by justifying its premise strictly in ecology, economics and sound social science, and by working within a context of globalization.

Like ecological economics it focuses on measuring well being and detecting uneconomic growth that comes at the expense of human health. However, it goes further in seeking not only to measure but to optimize well being by some explicit modelling of how social capital and instructional capital can be deployed to optimize the overall value of human capital in an economy, which is itself part of an ecology. The role of individual capital within that ecology, and the adaptation of the individual to live well within it, is a major focus of these theories.

The most notable proponent of human development theory is Amartya Sen, who asked, in Development as Freedom, “what is the relationship between our wealth and our ability to live as we would like?”

This question cannot be answered strictly from an energy, feminist, family, environmental health, peace, social justice, or ecological well being point of view, although all of these may be factors in our happiness. If tolerances of any of these points of view are violated seriously, it would seem impossible to be happy at all.

Accordingly, human development theory is a major synthesis that is probably not confined within the bounds of conventional economics or political science, nor even the political economy that relates the two.

A jester is a member of a profession that came into popularity in the Middle Ages. Jesters are always thought to have worn brightly colored clothes and eccentric hats in a motley pattern. Their hats were especially distinctive. Made of cloth, they were floppy with three points, each of which had a jingle bell at the end. The three points of the hat represent the donkey’s ears and tail worn by jesters in earlier times. 

The jester was a symbolic twin of the king. All jesters and fools in those days were thought of as special cases whom God had touched with a childlike madness; a gift, or perhaps a curse. Mentally handicapped people sometimes found employment by capering and behaving in an amusing way. In the harsh world of medieval Europe, people who might not be able to survive any other way thus found a social niche.

In societies where freedom of speech was not recognized as a right, the jester could speak frankly on controversial issues in a way in which anyone else would have been severely punished, and monarchs understood the usefulness of having such a person at their side. Still, even the jester was not entirely immune from punishment, and he needed to walk a thin line and exercise careful judgment in how far he might go, which required him to be far from a fool in the modern sense.

In Tarot, The Fool card represents the Spirit, God, and Absolute Being. The depiction includes a man juggling unconcernedly or otherwise distracted with a dog at his heels. This image represents a number of human conditions such as innocence, truth, confidence, freedom from earthly desires or passions but also perversity. Some versions of the dog on most interpretations of the card depict him biting at The Fool. The dog symbolizes the natural world, a path to knowledge and a valuable ally. The Fool is often shown walking off a cliff. This raises the question of whether The Fool is making a mistake or a leap of faith.

The Fool is the spirit in search of experience. He represents the mystical cleverness bereft of reason within us, the childlike ability to tune into the inner workings of the world. The sun shining behind him represents the divine nature of the Fool’s wisdom and exuberance. On his back are all the possessions he might need. In his hand there is a flower, showing his appreciation of beauty. 

The Mayflower was the famous ship that transported the English Separatists, better known as the Pilgrims, from Southampton, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The vessel left England on September 6, 1620, and after a gruelling 66 day journey marked by disease which claimed two lives, the ship dropped anchor inside the hook tip of Cape Cod in Provincetown Harbor on November 21. The Mayflower originally was destined for the mouth of the Hudson River, near present day New York City, at the northern edge of England’s Virginia colony, which itself was established with the 1607 Jamestown Settlement. However, the Mayflower went off course as the winter approached, and remained in Cape Cod Bay. On March 28, 1621, all surviving passengers, who had inhabited the ship during the winter, moved ashore at Plymouth.

The Mayflower has a famous place in American history as a symbol of early European colonization of the future United States. With their religion oppressed by the English Church and government, the small party of religious separatists who comprised about half of the passengers on the ship desired a life where they could practice their religion freely. This symbol of religious freedom resonates in US society and the story of the Mayflower is a staple of any American history textbook. Americans whose roots are traceable back to New England often believe themselves to be descended from Mayflower passengers.

Initially, the plan was for the voyage to be made in two vessels, the other being the smaller Speedwell, which had transported some of the Pilgrims embarking on the voyage from Delfshaven in the Netherlands to Southampton, England. The first voyage of the ships departed Southampton, on August 15, 1620, but the Speedwell developed a leak, and had to be refitted at Dartmouth on August 27.

On the second attempt, the ships reached the Atlantic Ocean but again were forced to return to Plymouth because of the Speedwell’s leak. It would later be revealed that there was in fact nothing wrong with the Speedwell. The Pilgrims believed that the crew had, through aspects of refitting the ship, and their behavior in operating it, sabotaged the voyage in order to escape the year long commitment of their contract.

To establish legal order and to quell increasing strife within the ranks, the settlers wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact after the ship dropped anchor at Provincetown Harbor on November 21.

The settlers, upon initially setting anchor, explored the snow covered area and discovered an empty Native American village. The curious settlers dug up some artificially made mounds, some of which stored corn while others were burial sites. The settlers stole the corn and looted and desecrated the graves, sparking friction with the locals. They moved down the coast to what is now Eastham, and explored the area of Cape Cod for several weeks, looting and stealing native stores as they went. They decided to relocate to Plymouth after a difficult encounter with the local native Americans, the Nausets, at First Encounter Beach, in December 1620.

During the winter the passengers remained on board the Mayflower, suffering an outbreak of a contagious disease described as a mixture of scurvy, pneumonia and tuberculosis. When it ended, there were only 53 persons still alive, half of the passengers and half of the crew. In spring, they built huts ashore, and on March 31, 1621, the surviving passengers left the Mayflower.

On April 15, 1621, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth to return to England, where it arrived on May 16, 1621. In 1623, a year after the death of captain Christopher Jones, the Mayflower was most likely dismantled for scrap lumber in Rotherhithe, London.