Dreams - forgotten one or don't understand the meaning of it? Learn how to retrieve and decipher them with It's True! Sleep Makes You Smarter
Don't move! To remember a dream, try to wake up slowly in the morning, without moving or opening your eyes. Now recall what you were just dreaming about. Get as much detail as you can.
- What colours, smells, objects, people, animals were there?
- What was the 'story' of the dream?
- When is the dream from: your past or present? Maybe it's something in the future?
- How did you move? Were you stuck or could you fly? Did you move normally?
- Where did the dream happen - in a place you know? Did you jump from one place to another?
- What was the 'story' of the dream?
- Most important of all, try to remember how you felt during the dream.
Now it's time to write the dream down. If you already keep a diary, you can use that (some people like to write about their days on one side of an open spread, and about their dreams on the other side). Otherwise, just use a notebook or exercise book. You might like to draw a picture of something from your dream.
When you're recalling the feelings in teh dream, also write about how you feel now, after waking up. Is it different from how you felt before you went to sleep?
Putting the pieces together
Now you're ready for the fun part. Try to link something in your dream with the real world.
- A feeling: you felt trapped an dangry like at the picnic last week.
- An object: you dreamed that your flute suddenly grew to be as tall as you
- A person or an animal: your mum grew horns and said 'moo'
- A place: a caravan park? The middle of an ocean?
Maybe you can't see any links at all: the dream was really weird! If you can't see any links, then maybe you agree with the 'Chuck Out The Junk!' crowd, or the 'Push-Ups for Your Brain' idea. Maybe your dreams just don't have meaning.
If you can see a link, then you have a clue about why your mind created this dream. From here, you can try to find more links. You could write down your link in teh middle of a piece of paper and try to connect it to something else in the dream. Look at your dream 'pictures' and try to imagine what else they could mean. Sometimes it's dun to talk about your dream with someone who knows you well.
Now you can choose your dream theory, based on what you see in your dream:
- Did your dream release a feeling or a useless memory?
- Did you do something in your dream that you really want to do in real life?
- Did the dream show you a new way of looking at a problem, or help you better understand the world?
TOP
Meet
weird and scary bushranger, Michael Howe, in 'It's
True! Bushrangers Lost Their Heads'
Michael
Howe had been a soldier in England but he deserted the army
and then tried to hold up a coach. He was convicted of highway
robbery and his punishment was transportation to Van Dieman's
Land (now known as Tasmania).
He ran
away and joined a gang of 30 escaped convicts led by John
Whitehead. The gang was renowned for its cruelty. One man
who had given the police information about the gang was
tortured by being forced to wear a pair of shoes filled
with bull-ants. Bitten hundreds of times by angry ants,
the man died in agony. The gang stole sheep, burned farmhouses,
and shot people who tried to stop them.
In October
1814 Whitehead was caught by some soldiers and shot dead.
The gang needed a new leader, and Michael Howe stepped forward.
After taking over the gang, Howe soon made some strange
changes. The other gang members had to swear on a prayer
book that they would obey him. He also kept a diary, bound
in kangaroo hide, of the gang's crimes. To make it really
special, he wrote it in blood.
Get in the driver's seat of a Formula One driver - facts
from 'It's
True! Sport Stinks'
Driving
a
racing
car is hard work. And it's dangerous. Since Grand Prix racing
began in 1950, 75 drivers have died in races or at practice.
Racing
around the track is also a pretty intense work-out. A normal
resting heart rate is around 50-60 beats per minute. Formula
One drivers' hearts can pound at over 180 beats per
minute for long periods. Their blood pressure increases
by as much as 50 per cent above resting levels. Racing
car drivers also become very hot and dehydrated during a
race. The cockpit of their car can reach 50 degrees Celsius!
The drivers have to wear a fireproof balaclava under their
helmet, a long-sleeved fireproof vest under their overalls,
and gloves. Drivers can lose as much as 5 litres
of sweat during a race. Imagine what they must smell like
at the end! (It's true that they get paid millions of dollars,
though.)
AN
EARBASHING TIDBIT: The noise in the driver's seat of
a Formula One racing car can reach 125 decibels.
That's as loud as a chainsaw, or like standing right in
front of the speakers at a rock concert!
Make a Viking pizza! Recipe from 'It's
True! The Vikings Got Lost'
We said
that Vikings ate bread. They also made a kind of pizza,
believe it or not. This was mostly made in Denmark and other
countries further south. In the freezing north, growing
wheat or barley for flour wasn't really possible.
INGREDIENTS
Base:
7
cups wheat flour, 3 cups buttermilk, 1 egg, pinch salt
Topping:
chopped meat and cheese OR fruit, nuts, honey OR toasted
stinging nettles (true!)* OR fish and shellfish
Mix
flour, buttermilk, egg and salt, and knead. Shape into small
balls and flatten on a sheet of metal.
Press
topping into each one and cook in a hot oven for about 10
minutes.
Tap
it and if it sounds hollow, it's ready!
*Toasted
stinging nettle sounds a lot worse than it is. It's not
too different from spinach or other greens on a modern pizza.
Of course, if you put raw nettles on your pizza they
will bite you back ...
Make
your own knock-knock jokes like in 'It's
True! You Can Make Your Own Jokes'
Knock
Knock
Who's
there?
Venice.
Venice
who?
Venice
dis door going to be opened?
MAKE
YOUR OWN!
1)
Write a list of names on a piece of scrap paper:
-
People
you know
- Names
in magazines or newspapers
- Names
from TV programs
2) Take
another piece of paper. Head it up at the top like this:
Look
at your list of names. Say each name to yourself. When you
find a name that sounds like another word, write the name
in List A. Write the word that the word sounds like in List
B.
For
example:
|
LIST
A |
LIST
B |
|
Lena |
lean
a |
|
Willy |
will
he |
|
Carrie |
carry |
|
Jonah |
do
you own a |
All
knock-knock jokes follow this pattern:
Knock
knock
Who's
there?
__________
__________
who?
(Use
one of your names from List A to fill in the gaps.)
PUNCHLINE
When
you get to the punchline, find a funny ending for the List
B word or phrase. For example, the 'Jonah' joke might end:
'Jonah
red sports car? Better run, it's rolling down the hill.'
Use
the lists to make up more jokes.
(You
can also use surnames, cities, countries, animals and food
in List A)
See
how Mount Everest messes with climbers' heads in 'It's
True! Everest Kills'
In 1933
on Mount Everest's North Ridge, British climber Frank Smythe
sat for a rest, broke his mint slice in half and offered
it to the companion who'd been climbing with him for hours
... Trouble was, there was no one there! He was alone, as
he had been all day.
In 1978
during a solo climb, Reinhold Messner became aware of
an invisible companion directing him through difficult sections.
Later, he chatted away to the 'young girl' beside him who
told him the weather would hold and he'd reach the summit
- and he did.
In 1988,
British climber Stephen Venables was forced to spend a night
alone on Everest's South Summit - and he imagined that a
lovely old man appeared and rubbed his feet and someone
else offered him a hot bath!
In 1996,
Australian Michael Groom felt he was guided by the presence
of his dead mate, Lobsang Sherpa. Groom and Sherpa had summitted
three years earlier, but Sherpa had fallen and died on the
way down.
Think
you've seen a UFO? Then read this section from 'It's
True! Hauntings Happen and Ghosts get Grumpy'
Most
UFOlogists (people who study UFOs) would agree that 95 per
cent of UFO sightings turn out to be natural or man-made
objects. Once UFOs have been investigated and identified,
they are called IFOs - Identified Flying Objects.
The
things most commonly mistaken for UFOs are:
the
planet Venus, stars, aircraft lights, weather balloons,
kites, satellites, shooting stars, the moon, saucer-shaped
clouds lit by rays from a setting sun, strange electrical
effects, such as ball lightning or St Elmo's Fire ( a halo
of light that appears around pointy objects suchh as ships'
masts or church steeples in bad weather.)
Other
strange (but true) IFOs include:
an owl
that had eaten some glow-in-the dark fungi, city lights
reflecting from the white stomachs of a flock of geese and
a swarm of insects affected by St Elmo's Fire!
If
you think you've spotted a UFO:
There
are several sites on the internet where you can report your
experience. You could start with:
The
Australian UFO Research Network http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~auforn/Report_Form.html
Sci
Fi http://www.SCIFI.com
or email UFO@www.SCIFI.com
Experienced
UFOlogists will review selected encounters and publish their
findings at the UFOlogy Centre.
Write a top secret note like in 'It's
True! Your Cat could be a Spy'
Make
your own invisible ink to write a top secret note! The simplest
kind is lemon juice. You dip a toothpick or small stick
in juice, write your message (in code, of course) and let
it dry. To read your secret message you need to heat the
paper. Use an iron to make your message visible - the letters
will appear brown.
Gross
and astounding ways animals protect themselves from 'It's
True! Animals are Electrifying'
In the fight for survival, all living organisms have developed
ways of defending themselves and protecting their young.
Sometimes the young have defences of their own. Many animals,
even small ones, are ferocious fighters and have ingenious
weapons.
The Incredible Fart
You have probably heard of snakes that hiss or rattle their
tails to warn off predators. Well, there are two types
of snake found in North America that prefer to fart at
their enemies instead. Both have odd names - the Sonoran
Coral Snake and the Western Hook-nosed Snake - and they
are fairly small. But the farts, which polite scientists
call “cloacal popping” and just mean the sound
coming from the reptile’s excretion sac, are loud
enough to be heard one or two metres away. The snakes can
fire off a few in quick succession and they sound very
like human farts. It must be a handy excuse for bushwalkers
in the area who’ve eaten baked beans for breakfast.
Bums away!
There’s a small black and yellow beetle, called a Bombardier
Beetle, found in most parts of the world that can shoot a
scalding hot chemical spray out of its backside. It’s
called a Bombardier Beetle because it can fire off 20 or
30 rounds in quick succession, popopopopopopopop! The mixture
is strong enough to stun other insects and send bigger predators,
like frogs, hopping away gasping for clean air.
High velocity vomit
Even more gross is the defence of the fulmar, a seabird found
in the cool to cold parts of the world. These birds defend
their nests by making coughing noises and lunging at intruders,
such as otters and other birds like skuas, ospreys and
sea eagles. They also spew out jets of foul-smelling stomach
oil. It’s the only way young chicks can defend themselves
when their parents are away foraging at sea for up to 20
hours at a time.
From their first moments out of the egg, hatchlings have
the ability to vomit oil, and their aim is very good. At
four days old they can spew nearly half a metre, while older
chicks have a range of about one and a half metres. Apart
from its bad smell, the stomach oil clings to the feathers
or hair of a predator, makes it matted and destroys the insulating
properties. The would-be attacker can become waterlogged
and drown.
Slimebag
Now here’s a real slippery customer that lives in cold
waters up to 10,000 metres deep. It’s a long (up to
80 centimetres) eel-like seafloor-dweller called a hagfish
that has no scales, no bones and no jaws, just a gaping mouth
and raspy tongue. Because it can produce bucket-loads of
gooey muck when in trouble, it is also known as a slime eel.
The slime is produced in glands along both sides of the creature’s
body. It comes out of the fish in concentrated form and then
swells up when it seeps into the water. The goop is reinforced
with tiny fibres that make it strong and difficult for an
attacking fish to pull off. The result is a cocoon of slime
that completely covers and protects the hagfish. That makes
it a real slimebag.
The slime
can suffocate an attacker by clogging its gills, but the
hagfish
itself ‘sneezes’ out any slime
that gets in its own nostrils. When danger passes, it ties
itself into a knot and then pushes the knot down its body
to wipe the slime away.
Squirting blood
The horned lizard, which lives in the deserts of the US and
Mexico, has several ways of defending itself against predators
like snakes, larger lizards and hawks. First it stays very
still so that its dirt colours blend into the surroundings
and make the lizard hard to see. If this doesn’t
work, it tries hissing and puffing up to look bigger and
more menacing, showing the spikes on its body that give
the reptile its name. If that fails, it has one last chance.
The lizard shoots blood out of its eyes.
How does
it do this? By increasing the blood pressure in its head
and sinuses (pinch your nostrils shut and then try to blow
your nose to give you an idea how it works). This ruptures
tiny blood vessels and the blood squirts out through the
lizard’s tear ducts. It’s a gruesome sight.
The lizard can fire a jet of blood and hit an attacker up
to a metre away. The lizard’s blood contains irritants,
so a direct hit in an attacker’s face will sting.
Even if the blood doesn’t hit, the squirting eye takes
the predator by surprise and gives the lizard time to escape.
Find
out what explorers ate - and try a few recipes from 'It's
True! Burke and Wills Forgot the Frying Pan'
English people in the nineteenth century were possibly the
worst cooks in the history of the world. A standard dish
was boiled cabbage with boiled mutton (the meat of old
sheep).
Out in the bush,
though, there weren’t any cabbages.
Most explorers set off on their travels with bags of flour
(for making Damper), barrels of salt meat and boxes of tea,
salt and sugar. Vitamins? Forget it. No one knew about vitamins
back then.
BOILED SALTED MUTTON OR PORK
1 Soak some salted meat in water. Drain off the salt water,
throw it away and soak the meat again.
2 Put it in a pan, cover with water and boil until the meat
has given up. Serve.
DAMPER,
EXPLORER-STYLE
1 Mix some flour with water and a little salt until you
have a heavy dough.
2 Mould the dough into flat, round pieces and spread them
out on strips of bark.
3 Bake in the ashes of your fire.
4 Take a really deep breath and eat it. It should taste
like a wodge of partly boiled cardboard.
How
to Find Your Own Fossils
(From 'It's
True! Dinosaurs Never Died' by John Long)
FINDING
DINOSAUR FOSSILS ISN’T EASY, BUT HERE ARE
A FEW HANDY TIPS.
Find the right rocks
Dinosaurs lived in the Mesozoic Era, so rocks 225 to 65 million
years old are the ones to go for. We also know that most
dinosaur fossils are found in sedimentary rocks deposited
in ancient rivers or lakes.
Find a rock mapper
You might be able to get hold of a map of your area showing
rock types, but the map will only be helpful if you know
someone who is trained to read a geological map correctly.
Geologists can often be contacted through your local natural
history museum, or through geology departments at most
universities. Be sure to ask for a specialist in Mesozoic
sedimentary rocks!
Get the OK from the landowner
You need permission to look for fossils on their land.
Pack the correct tools
You will need hammers and chisels, and possibly a pick for
digging large holes, plus wrapping paper, plaster of paris
and cloth to pack your finds.
Know what to look for
Remember, fossilized bones often look nothing like modern
bone. They can be black or brown in colour, and may have
turned to stone, because of minerals seeping into them.
WHAT TO DO IF YOU FIND FOSSIL BONE
Take a small piece of the bone, wrap it up carefully and
bring it in to your local museum. If you have found a real
dinosaur bone, the museum palaeontologists will want to see
the site and organise the excavation properly. They know
how to dig it up without damaging any of the bones. Fossilised
bones are often very brittle and easy to break.
CAN FOSSIL-HUNTING BE A JOB?
Jobs in palaeontology do not come up very often, and they
are mostly in museums or universities. Micro-palaeontologists
study micro-fossils and help mining companies searching for
oil, gas or mineral deposits. Studying fossils also helps
us to understand climate changes.
IN A CAR
Carry woollen blankets, a torch and drinking water in your
car.
IF
YOU ARE IN A CAR IN A BUSHFIRE:
• Pull over to the side of the road into a clear area.
• Wind up windows and close all vents.
• Keep the engine running.
• Turn on headlights and hazard lights.
• Cover up skin with long pants, shirt, sturdy boots, broad-brimmed
hat and gloves.
• Get down below window level and cover up with a woollen blanket.
• Stay down low inside your car until the fire front passes.
WHAT NOT TO DO . . .
•
Don’t get out and run.
•
Don’t park in long, dry grass or scrub.
•
Don’t drive near bushfires or into smoke.
•
Don’t wear shorts or thongs.
AROUND
THE HOUSE – IF YOU LIFE IN A BUSHFIRE PRONE AREA
Prepare a box of items that will help you survive in case
of fire, including:
• Long-sleeved overalls or long-sleeved shirt and trousers.
• A wide-brimmed hat or hard helmet.
• Sturdy footwear such as boots, preferably leather.
•
Gloves – not rubber or synthetic.
• A mask or large handkerchief to filter the smoke.
• Goggles or glasses to protect eyes.
• A water bottle.
• A torch, a portable radio and spare batteries.
• Woollen blankets.
BEFORE BUSHFIRE SEASON
• Remove leaves, dead branches and any rubbish around the house.
• Clear leaves and twigs from roof and gutters.
• Keep grass short.
• Make a firebreak or cleared area around your home.
• Make a Bushfire Survival Plan.
• For help making a Bushfire Survival Plan visit www.cfa.vic.gov.au
or get a copy of Living in the bush Bushfire Survival Plan
workbook from your nearest CFA office.
IF A FIRE IS APPROACHING
• To report a fire phone 000.
• Have suitable clothes and boots ready for all family members.
• Fill sinks, baths and buckets with water and turn off gas
and power.
• Close all windows and doors, and block any gaps.
• Plug downpipes with rags and fill all gutters with water.
Hose down the house.
• Leave vehicles in a clear area, not in a garage.
•
Don’t let animals out of paddocks . . . they are safer
where they are.
• Stay alert for spot fires and extinguish them immediately.
• Avoid radiant heat until the front of the fire has passed.
There are lots
more survival tips in the book …
Facts
about Frogs from 'It's
True! Frogs Are Cannibals' by Michael
J. Tyler
Chapter
1
of skins and skeletons
the bare, bony facts
Frogs don’t look bony. You’d think they were
just gristle and skin, but they do have a skeleton. It’s
not too different from any other land animal’s skeleton,
with skull bones, backbones and tailbone. But some frogs
have green bones, no one knows why.
We know from fossils that frogs have lived on this planet
for 230 million years – since the time of the dinosaurs.
(Humans have existed for only one million years.) The fossil
frogs aren’t too different from the ones we have today,
so it seems that the original frogs were well designed for
life on Earth.
Frogs and toads belong to the group of animals we call Amphibia.
This doesn’t mean they go in and out of water all
the time. It means they have a double life: the first part
is spent in water (as tadpoles), and the second on land.
Unlike their cousins, the newts and salamanders, they are
tailless amphibians.
