from the website Natural Cures.

First, preview the vocabulary below.  Then watch the video and read the text at the same time.  You can read either on-screen or below.  It’s your choice.

Vocabulary:

affect:  make a change in (something)
boost:  make better
digestion:  the body’s system that makes use of the food you eat/
digestive:  having to do with your body’s making use of the food you eat.
sleep apnea:  a condition where you stop breathing for a short time
asthma:  a condition where you can’t breathe well
while:  but
holistic medicine:  a system of medical treatment for the whole body, not just one part
lymphatic:  having to do with the movement in the body of a clear fluid called lymph.
toxins:  poisons from the environment
thoracic duct:  the main pipeline of the lymphatic system
node:  a knot-like mass of tissue
bolsters:  makes (it) work better
Ayurvedic:  of the ancient Hindu art of medicine
break down:  make into smaller, harmless pieces
intestine:  the lower part of the digestive system
colon:  the bottom part of the digestive system
bowel movement:  waste food exiting the body
pancreas:  the gland that puts a digestive fluid into the intestine
pancreatic enzymes:  digestive fluids produced by the pancreas
pregnant:  having a baby growing inside
circulation:  the movement of blood throughout the body
drainage:  slow removal
aortic:  from the left part of the heart
uterus:  the part of a woman’s body where a baby grows
liver:  the organ in the body that makes chemicals and drugs harmless
kidneys:  the organs that remove waste from the blood
fetus:  the tiny baby inside the uterus
heartburn:  a burning sensation in your stomach
acid reflux:  a condition in which stomach acid comes up
chronic:  happening all the time
switch:  change
spine:  backbone
flip:  turn over
dim:  very little light
glaucoma:  abnormally high fluid pressure in the eye
carpal tunnel syndrome:  a painful disorder of the wrist and hand

Everyone knows how important sleep is for keeping in good physical and mental health.  However, how long you sleep is just as important as the way you sleep.  The position you sleep in can affect your health, help keep your skin looking young, and boost your digestive health.  There are a few ways you can sleep – on your front, your back, your left side, and your right side – and they all affect your health.  Sleeping on the back can be harmful for people with sleep apnea or asthma because it can make it harder to breathe.  Sleeping on the right side is likely to make digestive problems worse, while sleeping on the left side may boost digestion.  Sleeping on the left side is believed to greatly boost health and even save lives.  In holistic medicine, the left side of the body is the controlling lymphatic side, and while you’re sleeping on this side, your body will have more time to filter toxins, lymph fluid, and waste through the thoracic duct and the lymph nodes.

Here are six ways sleeping on your left side is good for your health.

1.  It bolsters the lymphatic system 

Ayurvedic medicine says that sleeping on your left side lets your body better filter lymph fluid and waste through the lymph nodes.  This is because the left side of our body is the stronger lymphatic side.  Western studies also found that sleeping on the left side can help the body break down waste materials from the brain.  However, sleeping on the right side can lower the lymphatic system’s power.

2.  It may improve digestion.

When it comes to digestion, sleeping on the left side may be better than the right because of gravity.  Lying on the left side lets food waste easily move from the large intestine into the lower colon, meaning you’re more likely to have a bowel movement when you wake up.  Sleeping on the left side lets the stomach and pancreas hang naturally because our stomach lies on the left side of the body.  This can make sure the body keeps creating pancreatic enzymes and will help other digestive processes.

3.  It is good for your heart.

Doctors advise that pregnant women sleep on their left side to boost circulation to the heart.  Even if you’re not pregnant or a woman, sleeping on the left side may help take some weight off the heart.  Gravity can help lymph drainage toward the heart and aortic circulation away from the heart.

4.  It’s ideal for pregnant women.

Sleeping on the left side doesn’t only boost pregnant women’s circulation.  It can also ease weight on the back, keep the uterus from squeezing the liver, and raise blood flow to the uterus, kidneys, and fetus.  For this reason, doctors tell pregnant women to spend as much of their sleep time as possible on their left sides.

5.  It may reduce heartburn.

A study written in The Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology found that lying on the left side can help lower acid reflux signs.  This is because our stomach lies on the left side.  Lying on the right side may worsen these signs.  The help comes very fast.  If you’re feeling heartburn after a meal, try lying down on your left side for ten minutes.

6.  It may relieve back pain.

People with chronic back pain may feel a little better if they switch to sleeping on their left side.  That is because sleeping on your side can ease weight on the spine.  Feeling more comfortable will raise your chances of getting a good night’s sleep.

If you usually sleep on your back, your front or your right side, you may wonder how to break that habit and start sleeping on your left side.  It will take some time and practice, but you will be able to quickly train your body to sleep in this position.  Here are some tips.  You can try lying on your left side and press a full-length body pillow up against your back.  The pillow will stop you from rolling over during the night.  Try switching the side of the bed you sleep on.  This will make it easier for you to flip to your other side and have the same great sleep.  Another trick is to keep a dim light lit on your right side because your body will naturally want to turn away from the light while you sleep.  It will make it easier for you to sleep on your left side.  Try these small changes as soon as you can.  They will make you sleep better and lead you to better health.

It is important to note that some people, like those with heart disease, sleep apnea, glaucoma and carpal tunnel syndrome, may not get help from sleeping on their left sides.  If you’re not sure about what sleep position would be best for you, it is always a good idea to ask a doctor.

The idea of computers started long before electricity was used.  For example, 2000 years ago people used a device called an abacus, which had beads on a wire that were moved around by hand to do basic math.  This was the only mathematical tool until the 17^th century when the Frenchman Blaise Pascal built a simple mechanical device that could add numbers.  Later that same century the German Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz built a better mechanical device that could add, subtract and multiply numbers.  It wasn’t until a century later that the Frenchman Charles Xavier Thomas built a machine that could do all four basic functions: adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.  Meanwhile, in Cambridge, England, Charles Babbage saw that many long calculations had repetitive actions which could be done automatically.  From this idea he developed a steam-powered automatic mechanical calculating machine, which he called a “Difference Engine.”  He worked on this machine for ten years until he got a better idea, which he called an “Analytical Engine.”  This idea was far ahead of its time and wouldn’t be fully appreciated until a hundred years later.

Automated computing took a big step forward in 1890 when Herman Hollerith and James Powers, who both worked for the United States Census Bureau, developed punch cards which could be read by a computing machine.  These were paper cards in which holes were punched to organize information and store memory.  Because computers worked on a binary system of ones and zeros, a hole in the punch card was a one and no hole was a zero.  This system was used for over fifty years.

World War II speeded up the development of the computer because the military needed mathematical calculations for their long-range weapons.  At the University of Pennsylvania, John P. Eckert, John W. Mauchly, and their associates at the Moore school of Electrical Engineering built the first high-speed electronic computer and called it ENIAC, which were the first letters for Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator.  This machine was a thousand times faster than the generation of mechanical computers that came before, but it was huge and expensive.  It used 18,000 vacuum tubes, required 180,000 watts of power, and took up 1800 square feet (167 square meters.)  ENIAC was used from 1946 to 1955.

Fascinated by the success of ENIAC, the mathematician John Von Neumann thought that a computer should have a fixed structure and not have to be rewired for different calculations.  He thought that there should be a programmed control, which could be changed for different calculations.  This idea, called the “stored-program technique” was adopted by all future computers.  In addition to this, the data and the instruction programs were stored in the same memory, allowing both to be changed when needed.  As a result of these two changes, computers became faster and more efficient.

This new generation of computers used Random-Access-Memory (RAM) which could be accessed continuously.  Punch cards were still used, but after the programming was loaded into the machine, it could perform very fast calculations.  Over the following years computers became much smaller, about the size of a grand piano, and used only 2500 vacuum tubes, which required much less electricity.  However, they needed a lot of maintenance.  This generation of computers, which included EDVAC and UNIVAC, was used for the next 8 to 12 years.

In the 1950s computers were built using magnetic tape rather than punch cards to store information in memory.  By the end of the 1960s punch cards were no longer used.  These computers required teams of programmers and maintenance engineers and were therefore very expensive to run.  Only very large organizations such as governments and private laboratories could afford them.  In the 1960s computers continued to decrease in size and became faster and smarter.  The LARC machine, built by the Sperry-Rand Corporation, and the Stretch computer, built by IBM, were examples of this improved computer, which could process 100 million words and carry out calculations in less than one millionth of a second.  These computers were widely used in businesses for accounting, payroll, inventory, ordering supplies and billing.  They were also used in hospitals to keep track of patient records, medications and treatments.  In the 1970s computers shrank even more in size to increase speed and efficiency.  This was made possible thanks to tiny silicon chips which had the hard programming on them.  Email started to be used at this time.   In the early 1980s it became possible to put hundreds of thousands of transistors on a single chip, which brought the price of a computer down enough so that average people could afford them.  As early as the 1970s companies such as Apple Computer and Radio Shack introduced personal computers (PCs) to the public, who bought them mainly to do word processing and play video games such as Pong (1972), Tank (1974), and later Pacman (1980) and Tetris (1984).  Microprocessors with read-only memory (ROM) were introduced to store information that was constantly used, which increased the general efficiency of computers.

No history of computers would be complete without also mentioning the creation of the Internet in the early 1990’s.  It started with commercial networks and research institutes linking their networks together for easy communication.  An English scientist and programmer, Tim Berners-Lee, wrote the first web browser and released it in 1991 to the general public, which made “surfing” the Internet possible.  There are now over one billion websites.

Vocabulary:

device:  a mechanical or electrical thing made for a purpose.
tool:  anything that helps you do something
century:  100 years
mechanical:  like a machine
add: +
subtract: –
multiply: x
divide: ÷
calculations:  mathematical processes such as adding, subtracting, etc.
repetitive:  repeating
automatically:  without you doing anything
ahead of its time:  from a future time
appreciated:  understood
took a big step forward:  became so much better (idiom)
binary:  2 numbers – 1 and 0
speeded up:  made (it) go faster
military:  army, navy, air force, marines, etc.
long-range weapons:  guns and missiles that could bomb things far away
associates:  other engineers who worked with them
generation:  all the computers that were made at the same time with the same technology
vacuum tubes:  devices that control electric current in an airless environment
fascinated:  greatly interested and curious
programmed:  given a set of instructions
adopted:  used
data:  information apart from the programming
efficient:  not making mistakes
accessed:  reached and used
loaded:  inputted
perform:  do
required:  needed
maintenance:  repairing and cleaning
magnetism:  the energy of magnets
process:  handle, do
carry out:  do (idiom)
accounting:  all the money coming in and going out of the company
payroll:  salaries
inventory:  keeping lists and numbers of supplies
billing:  figuring out orders for payment
keep track:  keep a record (list and number of items)
medications:  medicine
treatments:  things a doctor does to make someone well
shrank:  became smaller
silicon chips:  sets of electronic circuits on a small flat piece of silicon
transistors:  devices that increase or switch the direction or flow of electricity
afford:  have enough money for, be able to buy
word processing:  writing
microprocessors:  silicon chips
constantly:  all the time
commercial:  business
research institutes:  organizations, often universities, that do research to discover new things.
linking:  joining, connecting

A placebo is any fake treatment or medicine that makes a person feel better although it has no scientifically proven effect.  It is often just sugar, a saline solution or distilled water.  The word “placebo” comes from the Latin language and means “I will please.”  After taking a placebo, a person often feels pleased because they feel better.  When this happens, it is called “the placebo effect.”  The original study of this effect was published in 1955 by an anesthesiologist by the name of Henry K. Beecher, and he discovered that it only works on about 35% of people.  Scientists who have studied this effect found out that if a person expects that a treatment is going to work, it often does.  They also found that large pills work better than small pills, colored pills better than white pills, injections better than pills, and surgery better than injections.  The strange thing is that positive thinking isn’t the only reason a person feels better; a placebo can actually cause physical changes in the body.  For example, it can change heart rate, blood pressure and chemical activity in the brain.  On the other hand, in from 4% to 26% of patients this change can be negative, such as nausea, constipation or diarrhea.  Placebos are used to study the effectiveness of new drugs.  When a drug company develops a new medicine, to prove that the medicine is effective, they give it to some patients and give a placebo to other patients.  At the end of a period of time, it will compare both groups.  If the results are better with the real medicine group than with the placebo group, it proves that the medicine is effective.  Although placebos can be effective in treating symptoms, they rarely cure a disease.  It would seem as if placebos work only when doctors are tricking patients into believing that it will have a positive effect on their symptoms, but this is not always true.  Even when patients are told that they are taking a placebo, many of them report improvement in their symptoms.  Placebos are not real medicine, but since they can make people feel better and since there are few negative side effects, many people think that doctors should use them more often.

Click on the audio recording below to hear the lesson.

Vocabulary:

fake:  not real
treatment:  what a doctor does to make a patient better
effect:  result
saline:  salt
distilled: pure
anesthesiologist: a doctor who gives patients anesthetics for pain
injections:  medicine given in liquid form under the skin
surgery:  cutting the body open to fix what’s wrong
positive:  believing that it will work
negative:  bad
nausea:  feeling like throwing up
constipation:  not being able to poo
diarrhea:  liquid poo
prove:  show that it is true
effective:  giving a good result
symptoms:  the effects on the body of a disease
cure:  make well
side effects:  results that are apart from relieving symptoms

Pronunciation Exercise: Listen and repeat the above vocabulary on the audio file below.

If the world were reduced to just 100 people, then one person would represent 1% of the population and 100 people would represent all of the population.  In other words, the same percentages would be true.  Here are the numbers.

There would be 50 men and 50 women.

There would be 14 Americans (North and South), 11 Europeans, 15 Africans, and 60 Asians.

There would be 27 people aged 0 to 14, 16 people aged 15 to 24, 40 people aged 25 to 54, 9 people aged 55 to 64, and 8 people over the age of 65.

There would be 12 native Mandarin speakers, 6 native Spanish speakers, 5 native English speakers, 4 native Hindi speakers, 3 native Arabic speakers, and 70 people who spoke the other 6500 languages.

There would be 31 Christians, 23 Muslims, 15 Hindus, 7 Buddhists, and 16 people with no religion.

There would be 86 people who could read and write and 14 who could not.

There would be 15 people who made less than $2.00 US a day, 56 people who made between $2 and $10 a day, 13 people who made between $10 and $20 a day, 9 people who made between $20 and $50 a day, 6 people who made between $50 and $90 a day, and 1 person who made over $90 a day.  In other words, one person would control 50% of all the money in the world.

There would be 21 people who were overweight, 63 people who had a healthy weight, 15 people who were malnourished, and 1 person who was starving to death.

There would be 87 people who had clean water and 13 who didn’t.

There would be 77 people who had shelter and 23 who didn’t.

There would be 44 people who had Internet access and 56 who didn’t.

There would be 75 people who had a mobile phone and 25 who didn’t.

There would be 7 people who attended college and 93 who didn’t.

Are you surprised by any of these numbers?

Click on the audio recording below to hear the lesson.

Vocabulary:

reduced:  lowered, made less
represent:  equal, be the same as
percentages:  numbers out of 100
Mandarin:  the official language in China
Hindi:  the official language in India
control:  have, be able to use
overweight:  fat, heavier than normal
malnourished:  not getting enough good food
starving:  having little or no food
shelter:  a home with a roof
access:  ability to use
mobile:  able to be carried
attended:  went to

Pronunciation Exercise: Listen and repeat the above vocabulary on the audio file below.

Statistics thanks to Gabriel Reilich

What researchers have discovered about left and right brain thinking is not as simple as most people believe.  There’s a general belief that right-brained people are creative and left-brained people are logical, but this is not 100% true.  When the brain is examined in relationship to language, which is both creative and logical, studies have shown that both hemispheres are active.  It’s basically true that the logical parts of language such as grammar, vocabulary and literal meaning are mostly processed in the left brain, and the creative parts of the language such as intonation, emphasis and figurative meaning are processed in the right brain.  However, this is only true for 95% of right-handed people and 81% of left-handed people.  For that 5% of right-handed and 19% of left-handed people, this isn’t true.  Therefore, when you hear or read about the differences between right and left brain activity, you should understand that it’s only a generality and that there are lots of people for whom it’s not true.  Understanding this, however, let’s look at a typical right-handed person’s brain to see where different types of thinking are happening.

In a typical right-handed person, the right hemisphere is used for understanding new experiences and the left is used for routines or things you’ve done many times before.  The right brain is where creativity and imagination take place.  It’s also the center for holistic thinking, intuition, feelings and daydreaming.  The left brain is where logical and analytic thinking take place.  It’s also the center for mathematics, detailed thinking, reading and writing.

Generally, the left and right sides of our brains see the world in different ways, but they work together.  The right brain sees the whole picture and then concentrates on the details while the left brain starts with the details and puts them together to make the whole picture.  The left brain thinks in words and the right brain thinks in pictures.  It’s an interesting fact that the right brain controls the left part of the body, including the left eye, and the left brain controls the right side of the body, including the right eye.

We continue to learn more about the brain as time goes on, and many neuroscientists say that all this right-left brain information is outdated.  However, one thing remains true.  We need both parts of our brains to process the world around us.

Click on the audio recording below to hear the lesson.

Vocabulary:

researchers:  scientists who are looking for answers
creative:  making new thoughts
logical:  mechanical, truthful thinking
literal:  dictionary meaning
intonation:  the voice going high and low
emphasis:  strong words that are higher and louder
figurative:  what the words really mean, which is different from the dictionary meaning.
processed:  thought about and understood
activity:  action,  thinking
generality:  mostly true but not totally true
typical:  average, normal
hemisphere:  half of the brain
routines:  habits, things you do repeatedly
creativity:  the making of new thoughts
holistic:  the whole picture, not just part of it
intuition:  knowing something without any evidence
analytic:  breaking down a whole thing into its parts
take place:  happen
generally:  it’s mostly true that
concentrates:  looks more closely
details:  little things that seem unimportant
neuroscientists:  people who study the brain
outdated:  no longer true

Pronunciation Exercise:  Listen and repeat the above vocabulary on the audio file below.

© 2014 Ambien Malecot

Before there was money, people bartered for things. In other words, they traded one thing for another thing, such as chickens for a pig.  Then in 1200 BCE people in China and India started using cowrie shells, which were small, shiny and colorful.  These beautiful shells came from the shallow waters around the Indian and Pacific Oceans.  Meanwhile, in the Americas wampum, a string of beads made from small white shells, was used as money.

A couple centuries later the first metal money, made of bronze or copper, was made in China and looked like the cowrie shells that people were already using as money.  The Qin Dynasty brought the round coins with square holes in the middle to all of China, and these coins continued to be used for the next 2000 years.  In Europe in around 600 BCE, coins were made from silver and gold.  This kind of money was first made in Lydia, present-day western Turkey, and from there it quickly spread to the Greeks, Persians, Macedonians, and then the Romans.

The first paper money in the world was made in China during the Song Dynasty.  It didn’t replace the older money but was used with it.  Europeans were only using coins up to the year 1600, made from the gold and silver they got from the Americas.  The first banknotes were issued in Sweden by Stockholms Banco in 1661, and many other European banks started using them too.  However, the system was imperfect because the value of all the different banknotes was not standard.  Then in 1816 England made gold the standard of value, and English paper banknotes could be exchanged for this precious metal.  The first paper money in North America, which was really IOUs, was issued by colonial governments to make trade between America and Europe easier since it was such a long journey, and people had to wait for their money for months.  By the start of the 20th century almost all countries had a gold standard backing their legal tender notes.  Because the United States won World War II, her currency, the dollar, was adopted by many other countries as the standard for their currencies.  Each currency was worth a fixed amount in US dollars.  For example, the French franc was worth 20 cents US.  This continued until 1971 when the US government stopped backing the US dollar with gold.  After this many countries stopped making the US dollar their standard.  Most of the world’s currencies became unbacked by anything except their ability to buy things.  For this reason, and the laws of government, money still had value.  The next time you reach for any money, you may look at it a little differently now that you know it’s history.

Click on the audio recording below to hear the lesson.

Vocabulary:

BCE:  Before Common Era (before the year 1)
shell:  the hard exterior of an animal
century:  hundred years
bronze:  a combination of copper and tin
coins:  small round metal money
banknotes:  paper from a bank that promises payment
imperfect:  not perfect
standard:  equal for everybody
precious:  expensive
IOU:  I owe you, a promise on paper to pay someone later
issued:  given to the people
colonial:  controlled by a European country
trade:  the buying and selling of goods between countries
journey:  trip
backing:  supporting
legal tender notes:  paper money supported by government
currency:  paper and coin money
adopted:  accepted and used
fixed:  exact and unchanging

Click on the audio recording below to hear the vocabulary pronunciation.

© 2014 Ambien Malecot

People all over the world enjoy eating pizza.  Here in Vancouver there are many pizza places where you can buy a single slice if you want a snack or a whole pizza if you want a meal.  The ten most popular toppings you can choose are pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, sausage, bacon, extra cheese, black olives, green peppers, pineapple, and spinach, in that order.  Did you know that pizza is a very old food whose history goes back at least 4000 years?  At that time people added ingredients to a flour and water flatbread to make it more tasty.  In the 16th century in Naples, Italy, flatbread was called pizza, a modern word for the old Latin word “pinsa,” and it was common food for the poor.  When tomatoes were first introduced into Europe from the Americas, many people thought they were poisonous, but by the 18th century it was common for poor people around Naples to put them on pizza.  Pizza was mostly sold outside, but pizzarias sprung up in and around Naples to meet the demand of this popular food.  Even tourists would come from other areas to sample Neopolitan pizza.  The first major type of pizza was called the Marinara, which had tomatoes, oregano, garlic and olive oil.  The second major type, dating from 1889, was the Margherita, which had the colors of the Italian flag – basil leaves for green, mozzarella cheese for white, and tomatoes for red.  The mozzarella cheese was specially made from the milk of the Indian Water Buffalo, and no other cheese was allowed.  In 1984, the True Neapolitan Pizza Association set the rules for a true pizza of Naples.  The dough had to be made by hand and not rolled, it had to be 35 centimeters or less in diameter and no more than .33 centimeters thick at the center, and it had to be baked in a wood-fired oven.  When you eat your next slice of pizza, you can have an appreciation of its long history.

Click on the audio recording below to hear the lesson.

Vocabulary:

slice:  triangle-shaped piece
snack:  a little bit of food
toppings:  things put on top
pepperoni:  a bright red sausage made from pork and beef.
sausage:  a food made from ground meat with a skin around it
spinach: a green-leaf vegetable
flour:  a powder made from wheat or other grains
tasty:  delicious
common:  usual
the poor:  poor people
pizzarias:  pizza restaurants
sprung up:  were built
demand:  wanting
tourists:  travelers
sample:  taste
Neopolitan:  from Naples
oregano:  a savory spice
garlic:  a spicy vegetable
basil:  a savory spice
dough:  the flour and water mixture
in diameter:  across the center
appreciation:  thankfulness

Pronunciation Exercise:  Listen and repeat the above vocabulary on the audio file below.

© 2014 Ambien Malecot

Everyone sleeps and everyone dreams.  This is a fact.  It’s easy to know why we sleep – our bodies need rest – but why do we dream?  Researchers believe they have answers to this question.  They say that while we are awake, going through our day, we have new experiences.  Some of these experiences we want to keep as memories, but most of them are not important, so we need to forget them to make space for new memories.  Our dreams allow us to do this.

When we sleep, we have two different dream states.  The first is called “slow wave sleep” or SWS.  In this dream state, our hippocampus, the part of the brain where our day’s experiences are stored, sends all that information in short and very fast bursts to a different part of our brain called the frontal cortex.  Then the hippocampus shuts down to allow a second dream state called “random eye movement” or REM, which gets its name from the fast eye movement under the eye lids that happens in this dream state.  In these dreams, which seem like real-time movies, the cortex plays back information from the hippocampus along with other memories that are stored in the brain and determines if the new information is useful or useless.  We save the useful information and discard the useless.  REM dreams happen every 90 to 100 minutes and we have 3 to 4 of them every night.  Also, they last longer and longer as the night goes on.  The last REM dream can last as long as 45 minutes.  Researchers say that if there’s strong emotion connected to a memory, then it is usually stored and remembered.  Although our brains are very active during REM sleep, our bodies are paralyzed so that we don’t act out our dreams.  To have an effective night of sleep, we need a balance of SWS and REM dream states.  Although our brains are active at night, by morning most people don’t remember their dreams.

Click on the audio recording below to hear the lesson.

Vocabulary:

researchers:  people who study things to find answers
experiences:  situations that teach us something
states:  conditions, kinds
bursts:  instances of high energy.
shuts down: turns off
random:  with no order or regularity
stored :  kept
determines:  decides
discard:  throw away, get rid of
last:  continue to be
emotion:  feelings
paralyzed:  unable to move
act out:  do what we’re dreaming
effective:  good for you
balance:  equal amount

Pronunciation Exercise:  Listen and repeat the above vocabulary on the audio file below.

© 2014 Ambien Malecot

For many years historians thought the game of poker came from other games with a similar name, such as the Irish card game of Poka or the French game of Poque.  It is possible that these games influenced the modern game of poker, especially in the area of bluffing.  Because no other card game before the game of poker had the same betting rules, modern thought is that the game of poker originated in the mid 1700s in the southern United States and spread throughout the Mississippi River region by the end of that century.  An English actor by the name of Joseph Crowell reported that the game of poker, as played in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1829, was played with a deck of 20 cards with four players who bet on which person held the best hand.  Poker was played up and down the Mississippi River on riverboats, which became quite lavish to attract players. When the gold rush started in 1849, the game was brought west by adventurous men who moved to California to find their fortune.  It was played everywhere and became part of the social fabric of the early West.  It was a serious game, however.  There are many tales of men losing their ranches or other valuable assets in poker games.  At this point the 52-card deck was used and the flush was introduced to the game.  Later during the American Civil War, 1861 to 1865, the straight was added.  Modern poker became popular after the WSOP began in 1970.  By the 1980s poker was considered a commonplace recreational activity.  There was a boom in new players at the beginning of the 21^st century when on-line poker was introduced and TV poker was made popular by little cameras showing the hole cards of each player to the audience.

Click on the audio recording below to hear the lesson.

Vocabulary:

historians:  people who study history
influenced:  had an effect on
bluffing:  making other players believe you have better cards than you really do
betting:  putting money on a possible result
originated:  started
region:  area
century:  one hundred year period
deck:  collection of playing cards
riverboats:  large boats with a rear paddle wheel powered by steam
lavish:  richly decorated
gold rush:  a migration of people to the gold fields of California
fortune:  riches, wealth
social fabric:  the collection of activities that people do together
tales:  stories
ranches:  land to raise animals
valuable assets:  things that you own that are worth lots of money
flush:   five cards of the same suit: spades, hearts, diamonds, or clubs.
introduced:  done for the first time
WSOP:  World Series of Poker
commonplace:  played everywhere
boom:  explosion, fast increase
on-line:  on the Internet
hole cards:  the two cards that only the player can see
audience:  people watching and listening

Pronunciation Exercise:  Listen and repeat the above vocabulary on the audio file below.

To learn the vocabulary of poker, click here.

© 2014 Ambien Malecot

The first mention of soap dates from about 2800 BCE in ancient Babylon.  It was made by mixing oil from the cassia tree and ashes from a fire and boiling the two together in water.  A white foam would form at the top of the pot, and this would harden into soap when cooled.  In other parts of the world, people started making soap with other plant oils, but the method was the same.  In ancient Rome animal fat rather than plant oil was used.  The process of making soap was expensive, however,  so it was only used by the rich.  In the 8th century when production increased, soap became common in Italy, France and Spain, but people in the rest of Europe rarely used it until the 17th century.  Even in 1672 when an Italian gentleman sent a bar of soap to his German lady friend, he had to include instructions on how to use it.  In the late 18th century,  the use of soap increased because of the industrialized production of bar soap and because people understood that using soap made them healthier because it washed away microorganisms.  Around 1790 Nicolas Leblanc, a French chemist, figured out how to get sodium hydroxide (commonly known as lye) from salt, and used this in place of wood ash to make soap.  Today soap is used by people all over the world.  It is made from palm oil, coconut oil, olive oil or laurel oil.  If combined with sodium hydroxide, a harder soap results, and if combined with potassium hydroxide, a softer soap results.

Click on the audio recording below to hear the lesson.

Vocabulary:

mention of:  writing about
BCE:  Before Common Era (used to be BC)
ancient:  very very old
cassia tree:  a tree native to south China and southern and eastern Asia which produces cinnamon
ashes:  the powder that remains after burning
boiling:  raising the temperature so that bubbles form
foam:  many tiny bubbles
harden:  become hard
method:  the way to do something
process:  the way to make something
the rich:  rich people
production:  the making (of something)
rarely:  almost never
industrialized:  made in large quantities by factories
microorganisms:  tiny tiny animals that live on your skin
figured out:  solved the problem of
sodium hydroxide:  NaOH
potassium hydroxide:  KOH

Pronunciation Exercise:  Listen and repeat the above vocabulary on the audio file below.

© 2014 Ambien Malecot