The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan [4]
5. Defense players can intercept passes any way they like, but they cannot charge, intimidate, or move closer than three feet, or 90 centimeters, toward the player with the ball. Moving in too close is called obstruction, and results in a penalty pass.
6. A game has four 15-minute quarters, with 3 minutes between the first two and the last two, and a luxurious 5 minute break at halftime.
7. Netball is a no-contact sport, which means players cannot push, trip, knock, bump, elbow, hold, or charge each other. Although a player should attempt to intercept the ball while it is being passed, grabbing the ball while another player holds it is considered a foul. Breaking the personal contact rule results in a penalty pass for the opposing team, and a penalty shot should any of this—or any untoward attempt to move the goalpost—happen within the goal circle.
Korfball is another basketball-like game. Korf is the Dutch word for basket, and like netball, the korfball basket is suspended on a ten-foot pole, with no backboard. Popular in Belgium and The Netherlands, and with players in Asia, too, korfball is one of the few sports in which women and men play together; each team consists of four women and four men.
Palm Reading
ANALYZING THE SHAPE of people’s hands and the lines on their palms is a severalthousand year old tradition. Once the province of Gypsies and mysterious magicians versed in astrology and perhaps even the so-called “black arts,” chiromancy (from the Greek cheir, “hand” and manteia, “divination”) is now more of a diverting amusement that can be performed for fun by anyone willing to suspend their disbelief and entertain, for a moment, the idea that a person’s hand is an accurate indicator of personality.
A palm reader usually “reads” a person’s dominant hand by looking at the hand’s shape and the pattern of the lines on the palm. Often a palm reader will employ a technique called “cold reading”—using shrewd observation and a little psychology to draw conclusions about a person’s life and character. Good cold readers take note of body language and demeanor and use their insight to ask questions or make smart guesses about what a person is hoping to know. In this way, the reader appears to have knowledge the person whose palm is being read doesn’t have, and may even seem to have psychic powers.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HAND
As with so many things we know today, palmistry has its roots in Greek mythology. Each part of the palm and even the fingers were associated with a particular god or goddess, and the features of that area gave the palm reader clues about the personality, nature, and future of the person whose palm was being read. The pointer finger is associated with Jupiter; clues to a person’s leadership, confidence, pride, and ambition are hidden here. The middle finger is associated with Saturn, originally a god of agriculture, and its appearance communicates information about responsibility, accountability, and self-worth. The ring finger is associated with the Greek god Apollo and its characteristics shed light on a person’s abilities in the arts. The little finger is associated with Mercury, the messenger, and tells of a person’s strengths and weaknesses in communication, negotiation, and intimacy.
Another method of reading the hand is to take note of its shape. In one tradition, hand shapes are classified by the elements: earth, air, water, and fire. Earth hands are said to have a broad and square appearance, with coarse skin, a reddish color, and a palm equal in length to the length of the fingers. Air hands have square palms with long fingers, sometimes with prominent knuckles and dry skin; the length of the palm is less than the length of the fingers. Water hands have an oval palm with long, conical fingers, and the length of the palm is equal to the length of the fingers but usually less than its width. Fire hands have square palms with short fingers and pink skin.
Other traditions classify the hands by appearance