The History of Valentine's Day

Every February, across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint and why do we celebrate this holiday? The history of Valentine's Day -- and its patron saint -- is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.

One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men -- his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first 'valentine' greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl -- who may have been his jailor's daughter -- who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed 'From your Valentine,' an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It's no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.

While some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine's death or burial -- which probably occurred around 270 A.D -- others claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to 'christianize' celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification.

The boys then sliced the goat's hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine's Day around 498 A.D. The Roman 'lottery' system for romantic pairing was deemed un-Christian and outlawed. Later, during the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds' mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of February -- Valentine's Day -- should be a day for romance. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. The greeting, which was written in 1415, is part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England. Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

In Great Britain, Valentine's Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of the century, printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one's feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine's Day greetings. Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began to sell the first mass-produced valentines in America.

According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.)

Approximately 85 percent of all valentines are purchased by women. In addition to the United States, Valentine's Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.

Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages (written Valentine's didn't begin to appear until after 1400), and the oldest known Valentine card is on display at the British Museum. The first commercial Valentine's Day greeting cards produced in the U.S. were created in the 1840s by Esther A. Howland. Howland, known as the Mother of the Valentine, made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as "scrap".

INVESTMENT CLOCK

The investment Clock – My friends at Bourse Communications investor relations services sent this over yesterday. It is the Investment clock first published in the Evening Standard in London in 1937. The World is probably a little bit after four. In December this clock was published in the Herald Sun and it was half past one. Here are Bourse Communication’s comments on the clock…as good (better) than anything I could write:



“Financial markets continue to be in a daily tailspin, their direction dependant on the receipt of good or bad news. The stock market remains vulnerable as many companies struggle to maintain earnings in a recessionary cycle and even the Aussie dollar has fallen substantially against the greenback- Investors should now be asking themselves, what time is it?

Investment experts have often looked to a well respected technique called The Investment Clock to work out what they should do with their money next and in order to determine where we are in the current investment cycle.

We were first introduced to The Investment Clock concept as share broking rookies in the early 1980s and were often struck by how accurate it was at predicting what might lay ahead. The real difficulty was determining exactly where the hand on the clock should be placed at any given point in time.

The Investment Clock has been around since it was established and first published in London's Evening Standard in 1937.

While not flawless, the clock often provides a useful guide for making investment decisions.

HOW TO DETERMINE THE TIME

‘The economic climate at Twelve O’clock is boom time’. At One O'clock interest rates are rising. By Two, share prices start to fall and by Three commodity prices are decreasing as un-employment levels increase. At the moment, we are seeing commodity prices fall as part of the current cycle.

At Five O’clock, real estate beings to feel the pinch and at Six O'clock it is recession time.

At Seven O'clock the Reserve Bank begins to cut interest rates to kick-start the economy and by Eight share prices, anticipating an improving economy, begin to rise.

Commodity prices perk up at Nine O'clock and, as unemployment falls, real estate makes a comeback at about Ten or Eleven O'clock.

So, what's the time right now?



We're probably well past Four O'clock, where commodity prices and overseas reserves have already begun to fall. Our currency is presently under enormous pressure and this could be followed by the labour market contracting, money getting tighter and further falls occurring in real estate. These are the classic signs of a bear market in full swing with investor sentiment on knifes edge.

Importantly, however, time does not always divide up evenly on The Investment Clock, like a real timepiece. The actual times between Three and Six can be indirectly determined by special factors like demand for commodities, driven by China and India.

The US Central Bank and our own Reserve Bank now have a vital job - to cut rates enough to prevent a recession without letting the inflation genie come any further out of the bottle.

It is entirely your subjective judgment as to exactly what time it is now on The Investment Clock, yet this decision could prove to be very significant in terms of what might be ahead for investment markets and how this will impact on investors benefiting from getting the time right.

The following factors need to be considered in selecting the current time on The Investment Clock:

* Share prices are continuing to fall
* Many companies are finding it hard to maintain earnings and possibly their dividends over the next year or so
* Capital is now hard to raise, unless the company has or is close to achieving an earnings profile
* Investor sentiment continues to be precariously placed, with 'fear' well and truly taking over from 'greed'
* Commodity prices have now fallen significantly
* The property market is under huge pressure with clearance rates at auctions hovering around 50% and many vendors unable to sell due to unrealistic price expectations
* Retailers are having the worse time in many years as consumers have stopped spending
* The Reserve Bank has now dropped the cash rate by 300 basis points. Further easing is likely to occur up to March/April 2009
* Employment begins to be an issue with a downsizing in the labour market a real possibility
* Greater scrutiny of executive pay and a higher level of accountability expected
* Fund managers are waiting with baited breath for a signal to move from a cash weighted position back into the share market
* The inauguration of the new president in the US may well herald the commencement of the recovery cycle
* No one can accurately pick the bottom of the market. Those that get close to picking it will benefit greatly in the years ahead”

Google Chrome has Microsoft's code inside

A great post over at Scott Hanselman's blog goes into some detail of the Microsoft code Google has included in Chrome. It's all street-legal: the code was made available under a very permissive open source licence back in 2004, and may be the first of Microsoft's steps in that direction.
Hanselman is a senior program manager at MS, and clearly enthusiastic about the whole business. He also writes a mean blog--if you've got any curiosity about some of the gnarly bits inside Chrome, including how it works securely with multiple versions of Windows, then give this the once-over.
Even more interesting than Chrome's internals is this statement:
"One of the reasons I wanted to work for ScottGu was because of Microsoft's always improving attitude about releasing source. It's a big company and sometimes moves slow, but more people "get it" now than before."
I do so hope this is true. Can't happen quickly enough.

Tips to Protect your WiFi from hackers

1. Disabling the SSID broadcast. To some extent this makes it difficult for the hacker to detect the presence of a WiFi access point.
2. Enable MAC address filter. Each network interface has a unique MAC address, by filtering it, one can to an extent control which machines can use the access point.
3. Turn on WPA/WEP encryption. This ensures that traffic between a legitimate machine and an access point is not readable.
4. Change default admin passwords for access points.
5. Ensure access points are placed securely. In the centre of a room/office etc to minimize its signal strength outside the office.

Even after following the above precautions, your WiFI account could be compromised and hence, the things to look at are:

* Monitor usage of the access point. Have a clear inventory and knowledge about the position of each access point.
* Monitor the usage of the Internet link, to know what traffic is going out. For example, some corporate block e-mail providers like yahoo or hotmail. Hence, even if the access point is compromised, the hacker may not be able to use public e-mail systems.
* Consider a specific security policy for wireless networks. For example, most companies primarily use wired networks in the office as the primary media. Access points are used in common areas like conferences rooms etc. Hence, strict policies can be deployed on wireless networks as compared to wired networks.

SpotM

IT IS better late than never for Yahoo! as the California-based Internet giant plans to launch a social networking site this year, made in India - and for India. "We will be launching our social networking platform SpotM this year," said a Yahoo official who did not wish to be identified. Yahoo already has Internet message boards like Yahoo Groups that allows users to post messages. Through this launch, the company wants to compete with hugely popular social networking platforms Orkut and Facebook. The company's research and devel- opment centre in Bangalore has designed and tested the website. This will only cater to Indian Internet users. Yahoo is expected to roll out an invite-only beta (trial) version soon followed by an open-for-all community later this year SpotM wW enable a "seamless marriage" between mobile and web interface, the official said. It is expected to offer features like anonymous chat that will allow users to chat via a text message while keeping their mobile numbers intact. Gopal Krishna, vice-president and head of audience for the emerging markets is heading the team working on SpotM. Social networking enabled by interactive Web 2.0 technology enables users to not just receive information from the web but also add and share content. It is expected to be one of the biggest drivers of Internet usage in the coming years. In the list of top 10 websites in India measured by Alexa that provides information on we traffic, Google leads followed by Yahoo in terms of both traffic and page views. Interestingly Google's other content sharing sites such as Orkut and You Tube also feature on the list while there is none that Yahoo can claim.

Noah in 2009

In the year 2009, the Lord came unto Noah, who was now living in the
United States , and said, "Once again, the earth has become wicked and
over-populated, and I see the end of all flesh before me.

Build another Ark and save 2 of every living thing along with a few good humans."

He gave Noah the blueprints, saying, "You have 6 months to build the Ark before I will start the unending rain for 40 days and 40 nights."
Six months later, the Lord looked down and saw Noah weeping in his yard
- but no Ark.

"Noah!" He roared, "I'm about to start the rain! Where is the Ark ?"

"Forgive me, Lord," begged Noah, "but things have changed. I needed a
building permit. I've been arguing with the inspector about the need
for a sprinkler system. My neighbors claim that I've violated the
neighborhood zoning laws by building the Ark in my yard and exceeding
the height limitations. We had to go to the Development Appeal Board
for a decision.

Then the Department of Transportation demanded a bond be posted for the
future costs of moving power lines and other overhead obstructions, to
clear the passage for the Ark 's move to the sea. I told them that the
sea would be coming to us, but they would hear nothing of it.

Getting the wood was another problem. There's a ban on cutting local
trees in order to save the spotted owl. I tried to convince the
environmentalists that I needed the wood to save the owls - but no go!

When I started gathering the animals, an animal rights group sued me.

They insisted that I was confining wild animals against their will.
They argued the accommodation was too restrictive, and it was cruel and
inhumane to put so many animals in a confined space.

Then the EPA ruled that I couldn't build the Ark until they'd
conducted an environmental impact study on your proposed flood.

I'm still trying to resolve a complaint with the Human Rights
Commission on how many minorities I'm supposed to hire for my building
crew.

Immigration and Naturalization is checking the green-card status of
most of the people who want to work.

The trades unions say I can't use my sons. They insist I have to
hire only Union workers with Ark-building experience.

To make matters worse, the IRS seized all my assets, claiming I'm
trying to leave the country illegally with endangered species.

So, forgive me, Lord, but it would take at least 10 years for me
to finish this Ark. "

Suddenly the skies cleared, the sun began to shine, and a
rainbow stretched across the sky. Noah looked up in wonder and asked,
"You mean you're not going to destroy the world?"

"No," said the Lord. "The government beat me to it."