http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-1840.0.html en http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-1840.0.html#msg50536

]]> 17 Sep 2005 23:40:20 +0100 http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-1840.0.html#msg60965


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Sat Oct 1, 6:06 PM ET
 

NEW YORK - "American Idol" winner Fantasia Barrino reveals in her memoirs that she is functionally illiterate and had to fake her way through some scripted portions the televised talent show, which she won in 2004.

"You're illiterate to just about everything. You don't want to misspell," Fantasia told ABC's "20/20." "So that, for me, kept me in a box and I didn't, wouldn't come out." The 21-year-old R&B singer says she's signed record deals and contracts that she didn't read and couldn't understand. But the hardest part, she said, is not being able to read to Zion, her 4-year-old daughter. "That hurts really bad," she said, adding that she is now learning to read with tutors.

In her memoir, "Life is Not a Fairy Tale," which she dictated to a freelance writer, Fantasia also said she was raped in the ninth grade by a classmate. She says the boy was disciplined, but she blamed herself for the attack. She dropped out of high school that year and became an unwed mother at 17.

Given her command of English grammar and her educational and social background, I would never have guessed this.

The irony is that she's learning to read, something most of us do before our 10th birthday, now that she's a millionaire and almost certainly set financially for life. It's commendable that she's doing so at this point, especially since the motivation appears to be concern for her daughter.

 Still, this once again proves that, just as education is no guarantee of financial success, neither does lack of it necessarily preclude becoming wealthy.

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i love Fantasia. she's pretty and has the best voice ever! especially that song "i believe". i wan't to kill that useless guy right now!!!

i wish i was one of those people that didn't have to go to school and become a millionaire anyway.

]]> 06 Oct 2005 1:35:32 +0100 http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-1840.0.html#msg63345 -------------------------------------
Created: 30/09/2005 11:54  (GMT +3)

Vitaly Matyukhin is an Arkhangelsk resident who has not seen the sun for fifteen years. Neighbors shun his household, while his little son cannot understand why he always have to wrap up in warm clothes before seeing his dad.

Suffering a rare disorder — he cannot stand the heat and sunlight — Matyukhin has been confined to a self-built giant fridge for over 15 years now, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported on Friday.

Matyukhin seems to be the only man in Russia’s northern city of Arkhangelsk who gets no kicks from the extraordinarily warm September weather. Instead, he is looking forwarded to snowy winter days. He leaves his shelter only by night, his neighbors say.

The man is suffering a rare heat exchange disorder and cannot stand temperatures over 5 degrees Celsius. For nearly fifteen years no, Matyukhin has been living in a fridge.

Born in Krasnodar in Russian South, Matyukhin graduated from a construction college.  One fine day, the youth suffered a sunstroke that triggered all his woes.

Doctors could not help him. They consulted their colleagues in other cities across the country and abroad. At some point it transpired that a similar case had been earlier registered in the US. where doctors, too, could not figure out how to alleviate the patient’s suffering. But as the man was able to afford expensive treatment he had a special suit with cold air supplied inside from cylinders made for him.

Mityukhin was never invited to the US. Instead, he was given a paper that vaguely stated he was suffering what was worded as “a heat exchange disorder”, and set out to build a refrigerator where he could live.

He moved to Arkhangelsk, together with his young wife Olga, seeking to escape southern heat.

Upon hearing of Matyukhin’s case Moscow doctors contacted by Moskovsky Komsomolets did not seem surprise. More often, such patients suffer from intolerance to cold, Vladimir Padalko of the Sechenov Medical Academy says. Cases such as that of Matyukhin are, indeed, rare.

Meanwhile, Matyukhin works at home — he has mastered a new profession of a telephone sales agent — and hopes for recovery.

He has divorced Olga and married a local woman.
]]> 09 Oct 2005 0:21:15 +0100 http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-1840.0.html#msg68650
Sleep Position Reveals Your Personality

The position in which you sleep at night--whether it's all curled up in a fetal position or sprawled out across the bed--reveals your personality, Reuters reports of new research from Britain's Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service.

Led by Chris Idzikowski, the team has identified six common sleep positions and the personalities of the people who sleep that way. "We are all aware of our body language when we are awake, but this is the first time we have been able to see what our subconscious says about us," he told Reuters.

The six basic sleeping positions and the personality traits:

Sleep Position No. 1: Crouched in the fetal position: Shy and sensitive

Sleep Position No. 2: Soldier position flat on the back with arms at the sides: Quiet and reserved

Sleep Position No. 3: On the side with legs outstretched and arms down: Social and easy-going

Sleep Position No. 4: On the side with legs outstretched and arms outstretched: Suspicious

Sleep Position No. 5: Flat on the tummy with hands at the sides of the head: Brash and gregarious

Sleep Position No. 6: On the back with outstretched arms and legs: Unassuming and a good listener

Crouched in the fetal position is most common way to sleep, assumed by fully 51 percent of women. The most unusual is on the stomach with only 6.5 percent of respondents saying they sleep this way. Once we adopt a preferred sleeping position, we rarely change it.

]]> 13 Oct 2005 1:19:27 +0100 http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-1840.0.html#msg71311 October 2005 – Page 4

Knocks from the Coffin
by Santiago Crespo

A multitude of curious people, family members of the deceased, judicial authorities, police officers, a medical examiner and the employees of a funeral home were stunned when they heard three loud knocks coming out of a coffin. This curious episode took place on Thursday, November 11th, 2004, in a town called San Pedro, in the Province of Córdoba, Argentina.

Mr. Santiago Nieto, one of the cemetery's employees said he started hearing the noises in the morning. "If you held your ear close to it, you could clearly hear it was banging, not cracking or expanding wood, but three or four clear loud knocks." This case was picked up by a local TV station from Villa Dolores, a nearby town, causing awe among the TV viewers.

"If you're alive, knock three times," were the words of TV anchor Eduardo Suárez, while leaning over the coffin, never turning his camera off. Everyone stood in silence and to their amazement, a few seconds later they could hear... "KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK..."

People started whispering, and some of them started yelling desperately to tell the man in the coffin was alive.

This was immediately communicated to the local judge, Ms. Teresa Recalde, who ordered to open the coffin. It was done and after the medical examiner checked the body, he concluded that not only there were no vital signs, but there was not any sign of the main having been almost buried alive.

Police Sheriff Sergio Yorbandi was explicit about this: "He lay there lifeless, and in the same position his family had put him in the first place."

But the weirdness does not end here. The next day, a local radio station, Cadena 3 (www.cadena3.com) was broadcasting the recording's audio and interviewing the journalist who had witnessed everything, and right after the recording of the three bangs was played, one of their broadcast stations went mute, baffling everyone in the studio.

Ghost or gas? Coincidence or something else?

]]> 15 Oct 2005 4:57:34 +0100