Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Achilles' heel

In Greek mythology, Achilles (also Akhilleus or Achilleus; Ancient Greek: Ἀχιλλεύς) was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad, which takes for its theme the Wrath of Achilles.
Achilles also has the attributes of being the most handsome of the heroes assembled against Troy, as well as the quickest.
Achilles's death came as divine retribution for his hubristic murder of Troilus. The Trojan boy had spurned his sexual advances and was killed by the enraged hero inside Apollo's temple.Later legends (beginning with a poem by Statius in the first century AD) state that Achilles was invulnerable on all of his body except for his heel. These legends state that Achilles was killed in battle by an arrow to the heel, and so an "Achilles' heel" or Achilles' tendon has come to mean a person's principal weakness.

According to the incomplete poem Achilleis written by Statius in the first century AD, and to no other sources, when Achilles was born Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx. However, she forgot to wet the heel she held him by, leaving him vulnerable at that spot. (See Achilles heel, Achilles' tendon.) In another version of this story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire to burn away the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage

Sunday, April 27, 2008

vancouver

Vancouver is consistently ranked one of the three most livable cities in the world.According to a 2007 report by Mercer Human Resource Consulting for example, Vancouver tied with Vienna as having the third highest quality of living in the world, after Zürich and Geneva. In 2007, according to Forbes, Vancouver had the 6th most overpriced real estate market in the world and second in North America after Los Angeles.In 2007, Vancouver was ranked Canada's second most expensive city to live after Toronto and the 89th most expensive globally, and, in 2006, the 56th most expensive city in which to live among 143 major cities in the world; in the same survey, Zurich and Geneva were ranked as the ninth and seventh most expensive, respectively.In 2007, Vancouver was ranked as the 10th cleanest city in the world.
The 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver and nearby Whistler.

One of my friends has just been to the coastline...cool naa?