Happy May Day and Int’l Labour Day to all

It’s May Day, and for all those living outside of North America it is also International Workers or Labour Day. In Greece workers hold massive rallies in protest to labour laws, while people all over the country celebrate the Festival of Flowers, a celebration with ancient roots. It is also the start of the warmer six months of the year in the northern hemisphere, after often bitterly cold winters, and this was cause for celebration with bonfires and dancing.

This year, of course, May Day comes in the midst of an economic crisis and hard times, so governments across the European continent are bracing for large protest marches and potential violence. Athens' annual May Day March, which by tradition starts outside parliament in the city's main square, predictably will once again end in clashes between police and hard-core protesters. 

In Greece, strikes and protests are a national pastime with their own rituals and culture. Small protests over specific issues occur on an almost daily basis, but the biggest ones are amorphous gatherings of people with many different causes and grievances: anti-American, anti-globalization, anti-capitalist, anti-war, pro-worker, pro-immigrant, pro-animal rights. Sometimes different protests, organized by different groups in roughly the same geographic area, will meld together and then separate again, like globs of oil floating in water. 

The history of traditional May Day celebrations in Europe dates back to before the time of Christ, when it was considered a pagan holiday. May is derived from the Greek goddess Maia.

In Greece, aside from the protests it is also a day for celebrating flowers, and what better way to celebrate then making flower wreaths. According to tradition, women and young girls go from house to house and literally steal flowers, or flower pots from their neighbours and use those flowers to make wreaths, which they then hang on their front porches for prosperity and luck. The flowers stand for the birth of life and nature as well as a blessing for a bountiful season.

Other people, usually enjoy small road trips to the countryside to have a break with a picnic. In some places in Greece, young ladies in traditional costumes collect flowers and exchange nature’s goods and then go from house to house offering sweets to their neighbours.

Also it is a day to make garlands. Making garlands has been a traditional custom in Europe dating back to ancient history, and continues to be an important part of the May Day customs even today. In earlier times, women would gather flowers before daylight and start making the garlands. The significance of the garlands is that it is representative of the ushering in of summer.

Another custom for May Day was the gathering and erecting of the maypole. Villagers would go into the woods, gather just the right section of tree trunk, decorate it with flowers and garlands, and then take back to the village set it up somewhere in the center of town and then people would dance and sang around the maypole to celebrate May Day. At the end of the day, people would light up a bonfire and then accept a challenge to leap over it for luck. But before everyone does so, they wet their clothes for safety and jump over the fire in order to ward off the winter and bring in the warmth of the summer. 

International Customs on May Day

• ENGLAND - In England, May Day traditions include university students in pagan rituals, playing madrigal music, and dancing at sunrise in celebrations at Durham and Oxford. A Jack in the Green carnival has been revived in towns such as Whitstable, Rochester, Hastings, Bristol, and Oxford, where the traditional figure dressed as a tree leads a parade of Morris dancers and others. Hordes of motorbike riders set off from London each year in the Maydayrun and travel the 55 miles to Hastings to join its Jack in the Green festivities. There is maypole dancing and plenty of singing and dancing in the streets. Other Cornish towns hold a Flower Boat Ritual, where a model boat is taken past decorated houses to the beach and set afloat. Maypole dancing and Morris dancing are popular too.
• GERMANY - Germany has a May Day slogan of ‘Tanz in den Mai’ or ‘Dance into May’. On the eve of May Day, there are traditional pagan ceremonies such as bonfires and maypole decorating. In western areas, males send their girlfriends a tree or maypole adorned with streamers. May Day itself is popular for picnics and other outings.
• FRANCE - In France, men give women a lily sprig, a ritual that started when Charles IX did this on 1 May 1561. A woman traditionally kisses the man who gave her the branch. Vendors set up stalls and sell these sprays and don’t have to pay tax on the profits.
• FINLAND - Finland starts May Day festivities with its Walpurgis Night on the eve of the holiday. The event is one of the country’s three largest celebrations, the others being New Year’s Eve and the midsummer Juhannas, and there are bonfires and plenty of eating, drinking, and partying, with festivities carrying over to the next day. Similar nights are held in Sweden, Germany, Estonia, and Czech Republic. Large picnics are organized in Finnish
• SPAIN AND PORTUGAL - Spain and Portugal have celebrated May Day as a labour day since the end of their dictatorship eras several decades ago. In Italy, traditional May Day celebrations include ‘Concerto del Primo Maggio’, or ‘1 May’s Concert’, attracting a crowd of over 300,000.
• HUNGARY - In Hungary, people dance round ‘May trees’.  In the Jászság (between the rivers Danube and Tisza), May trees are usually decorated with colourful paper ribbons. Some suitors also attach gifts for their sweethearts, such as a bottle of wine. On Palóc territories (Northern Hungary), the man would only erect the trees, leaving it to be decorated by the girl and her mother.
• NORTHERN EUROPE - Scandinavian countries, and Russia all hold annual parades, meetings, and demonstrations to celebrate labour achievements on May Day
• SCOTLAND - In St. Andrews Scotland, some of the students gather on the beach late on April 30th and run into the North Sea at sunrise on May Day. This is accompanied by torch light processions and much enthusiastic celebration
• IRELAND - In Ireland, May Day has been celebrated in Ireland since pagan times as the Feast of Bealtaine and in latter times as Mary's day. Bonfires are lit to mark the coming of summer and to banish the long nights of winter. (Irish Mayday Bank Holiday is now officially observed on the first Monday in May). In modern times May Day is associated with anti-government rallies which are held every year on this date. The Festival of the Fires in Killare, Co.Westmeath marks the celebration of May Day. 
• SWEDEN - In Sweden Mayday is denoted "First of May" ("Första maj" in Swedish) and has been a public holiday in Sweden since 1939. The main events on Mayday are political demonstrations carried out by the working class organisations and political parties historically associated with the working class movement. 
• PACIFIC - In the Pacific and specifically in Hawaii May Day is known as Lei Day and is normally set aside to celebrate island culture in general and Native Hawaiian culture in particular. While it was invented by a poet and a local newspaper columnist in the 1920s, it has since been adopted by state and local government as well as by the residents, and it has taken on a sense of a general spring celebration there. 
• AMERICAS - In the Americas, May Day was also celebrated by some early European settlers of the American Continent. In some parts of the United States May baskets are made. These are small and usually filled with flowers or treats and left at someone's doorstep. The basket giver would ring the bell and run away. The person receiving the basket would try to catch the fleeing giver. If they caught the person, a kiss was to be exchanged.

SUPERSTITIONS

• The month of May was considered an unlucky month particularly for getting married. In Greece they say only donkeys get married in May… nonetheless many people hold their weddings this month.
• Being born in May was thought to produce a sickly child.
• Never buy a broom in May or wash blankets.
• Cats born this month will not be good rodent catchers and even worse, will bring snakes into the home.
• Unlucky days are 3rd, 6th, 7th, 13th, 15th and 20th

SAYINGS and QUOTES

• "A wet May makes a big load of hay. A cold May is kindly and fills the barn finely. "
• “A swarm of bees in May… Is worth a load of hay.”
• "Mist in May, Heat in June… Makes harvest come right soon"
• "If you wash a blanket in May; you will wash one of the family away."
• "Those who bathe in May… Will soon be laid in clay"

Sources:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1450912/Ma y-Day

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1961730.stm

http://www.theholidayspot.com/mayday/history.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers%2 7_Day#Europe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day

X-Files: Mathematician solves math mystery after studying how Jesus walked on water

 

 

Even if some doubt it, religion and science can mix. Today the X-Files examines how a Russian mathematician solved one of the most puzzling math mysteries to date after studying how quickly Jesus walked on water.

According to the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, the secluded scientist, who is unemployed, and who has refused millions of dollars for his findings as well as numerous distinctions from the global math society, finally decided to speak after avoiding the press for the past decade. 

But getting the interview was no easy task. Perelman, who is 44 and who still lives with his mother in a timid apartment complex in St. Petersburg, was persuaded to give the interview by his mother after reporters contacted her and told her that they wanted to interview her son as well as make a documentary about him. That was quite an achievement indeed - no other journalist has managed to ask any question to Mr. Perelman before.

After meeting and speaking with this mystery genius, the reporter said that "Perelman produces an impression of an absolutely sane, healthy, adequate and normal person. He is realistic, pragmatic and clearheaded, but also sentimental at the same time. What the media says and writes about him - that he is off his head - is nonsense. He knows what he wants and he knows how to get it." 

The above-mentioned documentary is not going to be about Grigori Perelman's life. The film will be about the cooperation and the struggle between three major mathematical schools in the world: the Russian, the Chinese and the American ones. These three schools are the most advanced in the world in terms of the path of learning and the control of the Universe.

When asked why he refused from the prize of one million dollars, Perelman responded: "I know how to control the Universe. Why would I run to get a million, tell me?"

Perelman also said that he does not communicate with journalists because they are not interested in science. Instead, they want to know all details about his everyday and personal life. They want to know why the mathematician refused from the million and whether he cuts his hair and nails. The scientist also said that he is offended by the media calling him Grisha, which is a usual short for Grigori.

In the interview, the excerpt of which was published on the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Perelman said that he had been training his brain since his school years. Recollecting the time when he, representing the USSR, received a gold medal at the mathematical competition in Budapest, he said: "We were trying to solve the tasks which required abstract thinking. The distraction from mathematical logic was exactly the point of the daily training. One had to imagine a piece of the world in order to find the correct solution. Do you remember the Biblical story about Jesus Christ walking on water? I had to calculate the speed with which he had to move on the water surface not to fall through."

Since that time, Perelman devoted his activity to studying the nature of three-dimensional space of the Universe. "It's very interesting. I am trying to embrace the boundless. Anything that is boundless can be embraced," he said.

The scientist was working on his dissertation under the direction of academician Aleksandrov. "The subject was not hard: "Saddle surfaces in Euclidean geometry." Can you imagine equal-sized and irregularly spaced surfaces in infinity? We have to measure the cavities between them," the mathematician said.

According to Perelman, every theoretical development of mathematicians has applied relevance. "Why did we have to struggle with the Poincare conjecture for so many years? To put it in a nutshell, the essence of it is the following. If a three-dimensional surface is reminiscent of a sphere, then it can be spread into a sphere. It is known as the Formula of the Universe because it is highly important in researching complicated physical processes in the theory of creation. The Poincare conjecture also gives an answer to the question about the shape of the Universe.

"I've learned to compute hollowness. My colleagues and I are studying the mechanisms that fill social and economic hollowness. Hollowness is everywhere, it can be computed, and this opens large opportunities. I know how to control the Universe. Why would I run after a million, tell me?"

The article went on to say that both Russian and foreign special services are showing interest in Perelman's discoveries. The scientist has learned some super-knowledge which helps realize creation. Special services need to know whether Perelman and his knowledge may pose a threat to humanity. With his knowledge he can fold the Universe into a spot and then unfold it again. Will mankind survive after this fantastic process? Do we need to control the Universe at all?

For those who are not aware the Poincare conjecture is regarded as one of the most important questions in topology -- a geometry-related branch of mathematics that deals with spatial properties. It essentially asserts that any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere. Perelman published his findings on the Internet in 2002 and 2003.

He won the Fields Prize -- awarded every four years since 1936 -- in 2006 and then famously turned down the prize money by saying he did not want to be a figurehead for the mathematics community.

Segments of this article have been reprinted from:

http://kp.ru/daily/25677.3/836229/ 

http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/28-04-2011/117727-Grigori_Perelman-0/