Italy, the logical choice for Pakistani fans

“Venceréis pero no convenceréis.” You will win but you will not convince. It’s a phrase first uttered by Miguel de Unamuno during the Spanish Civil War. Since then it has become part of the Spanish football lexicon. And it’s a phrase that has repeatedly been referenced during Spain’s Euro odyssey this year. As the national team has stuttered through the tournament, their legions of minions have decreased. There are still those who continue to think of la Seleccion as “their” team.
But the casual fan/glory hunter has found a new bandwagon for this tournament: Germany. It makes sense too. Germany have been everything that Spain should’ve been: gloriously attacking, aggressive and ruthless with panache. They are the prime examples of a young, exuberant and supremely talented team realising what they are capable of. They have not been as reactive as they were two years, but their ability to entertain hasn’t suffered due to this slight change in ideology.
The third team – whom Germany takes on tonight (and are expected to stomp over) – hasn’t been garnering the sort of attention the two favorites have. Cesare Prandelli’s Italy are a flawed team but they are the only team in the competition who can say with confidence, that every one of their matches has been entertaining. And one would think that of the three remaining teams in the competition, they should be the ones that appeal to the Pakistani fan more than any other.
Just look at the evidence: the Azzurri went through a sharp decline over the second half of the last decade, culminating in the disgrace of summer 2010. Since then, now under new administration, they have slowly climbed back up the international ladder and restored the pride associated with the national team. They have done this by employing methods that are alien to their history. Devoid of what were once their most prized and distinctive assets (world class defenders), they have changed their philosophy, and have challenged – and surprised – the best in the world. The team – which has defied most expectations – is one which has a curious inventory: a couple of old dogs in the middle of their swansongs; a bunch of failed wunderkinds who are finally showing a bit of consistency; a handful of journeymen footballers who wouldn’t have ever expected to make the national team; and one eccentric prodigy who is capable of anything.
During this time, their country has gone through an economic and political meltdown, and even the sport has not escaped the financial and moral corruption that is rife in society. Allegations of match-fixing weakened the team, but they have soldiered on in their attempts to restore their reputations. Surely if anyone can have sympathy and fraternity with the Italians, it has to be the Pakistani cricket fan.
But even beyond that, there is much to like about them. There is, of course, the joy of watching Gig Buffon and Andrea Pirlo roll back the years. Pirlo’s performance in the quarter-final versus England was reminiscent of Zidane against Brazil six years ago: a veteran showing the kids – and the world – who the boss is. Then there are the likes of Cassano and Montolivo – anointed successors to Baggio and Totti, respectively, in their youth.
To see them, finally, achieve what their talent deserved makes one believe in the power of second chances. Then there are Marchisio and Bonucci who could never be considered wonderkids; but they have shown how desire and ambition can trump talent, or the lack of it. But more than anyone else, this is Cesare Prandelli’s team. Here’s a man who was willing to opt out of the tournament that he has prepared two years (if not his whole lifetime) for, if it meant cleaning up the game in his country. His words and his actions – such as making the players train on land confiscated from the Mafia – have been designed to restore honour and dignity to the national team. And what the world has seen from Italy over the past three weeks shows that he may well have succeeded in that aim.
He has also moved away from the caution that had dogged Italy from 2006 to 2010; his acceptance of mavericks has been unique in modern football. He’s got players amongst whom he has got one who burnt his house down with fireworks, another who admitted that if he wasn’t a footballer he’d be a criminal, one who claims to have slept with 600 to 700 women, and a man who changed a Serie A season as an 18-year old. And that’s just his regular front two.
The subs are a whole different kettle of fish altogether. Tactical innovation and diversity, a propensity for mavericks, a last hurrah of a great generation, underdogs in their remaining matches and the football equivalent of the our cricket team: supporting Italy should be the obvious decision to make for a Pakistani. But with no guarantees of glory or consistency, perhaps we might be better off restricting our heartbreaks to one sport. Forza Italia? No. Viva Espana!
By: Hassan Cheema
Courtesy: Dawn News
http://dawn.com/2012/06/28/italy-the-logical-choice-for-pakistani-fans/

Camera bag

Even camera can`t catch him

Speed master Shoib Akhtar.
No one has break his record of worlds fastest ball in cricket.. Even Australian bowlers Dirk Nannes, Brett Lee and Shaun Tait have failed after several attempts to break his record. Now the speedster has decided to encourage county cricket in Pakistan and will be seen soon in grounds coaching young cricketers throughout the country.

Take it easy !

Tokyo world’s costliest city, Karachi cheapest

PARIS: Tokyo has regained the unenviable title of the world’s most expensive city for expatriates, while the eurozone crisis has made many European cities cheaper according to a survey published on Tuesday.
At the other end of the scale, the survey by the Mercer group named Karachi as the least expensive city, with living costs around three times cheaper than in the Japanese capital.
The report, published annually to help companies assess compensation allowances for expatriate workers, compared the cost of over 200 items in 214 cities, using New York as a reference. The items on the list included housing, food and transport.
Tokyo pushed the oil-boom Angolan capital Luanda into second place to retake the top spot in the survey. Another Japanese city, Osaka, came third, the Russian capital Moscow in fourth, and Geneva fifth.
Cities in the eurozone slid in the rankings as the euro has slid against the US dollar during the debt crisis. Paris dropped 10 spots to 37th, Rome fell eight to 42nd, and Athens tumbled 24 to 77th.
London slipped from 18th in the table last year down to 25th place.
In contrast, appreciation against the US dollar helped push Australian and New Zealand cities up, with Adelaide jumping 19 spots to 27th.—AFP

The Jindo Moses Miracle

Wow!!The Jindo Moses Miracle♥One of the world's most amazing natural phenomenons, occurs twice a year forseveral hours. It creates a land path between Modo and Jindo Island (South Korea).

Mystery Clock

What makes us laugh?

A simple question with a surprisingly complex answer – understanding laughter means understanding fundamental issues about human nature. 

Why do we laugh? Well it's funny you should ask, but this question was suggested by reader Andrew Martin, and it is a very interesting one to investigate. For what at first seems like a simple question turns out to require a surprisingly complex answer – one that takes us on a journey into the very heart of trying to understand human nature.
Most people would guess that we laugh because something is funny. But if you watch when people actually laugh, you’ll find this isn't the case. Laughter expert Robert Provine spent hours recording real conversations at shopping malls, classrooms, offices and cocktail parties, and he found that most laughter did not follow what looked like jokes. People laughed at the end of normal sentences, in response to unfunny comments or questions such as "Look, it's Andre," or "Are you sure?". Even attempts at humour that provoked laughter didn't sound that funny. Provine reports that the lines that got the biggest laughs were ones such as "You don't have to drink, just buy us drinks," and "Do you date within your species?". I guess you had to be there.
Brain triggers
So if we want to understand laughter, perhaps we need to go deeper, and look at what is going on in the brain. The areas that control laughing lie deep in the subcortex, and in terms of evolutionary development these parts of the brain are ancient, responsible for primal behaviours such as breathing and controlling basic reflexes. This means laughter control mechanisms are located a long way away from brain regions that developed later and control higher functions such as language or even memory.
Perhaps this explains why it is so hard to suppress a laugh, even if we know it is inappropriate. Once a laugh is kindled deep within our brains these ‘higher function’ brain regions have trouble intervening. And the reverse is true, of course, it is difficult to laugh on demand. If you consciously make yourself laugh it will not sound like the real thing – at least initially.
There is another fundamental aspect to laughing. All humans laugh, and laughter always involves a similar pattern of whooping noises. Deaf people who have never heard a sound still make laughing noises. The laughing noises produced by humans share many of the acoustic properties of speech, further evidence laughter is hijacking the brain and body apparatus that we use for breathing and talking.
But this does not fully answer the original question. Even if we identified the precise brain areas associated with laughing, even if we were able to make someone laugh by stimulating part of their brain (which can be done), we still don’t know what makes people laugh. Yes, we know about the effect, but what about the cause, that is, the reason why we laugh in the first place?
What these observations show is that laughter is both fundamentally social, and rooted deep within our brains, part and parcel of ancient brain structures. We laugh because we feel like it, because our brains make us, and because we want to fit in socially. All these things are true. But biologists distinguish at least four fundamental types of answer you can give to explain behaviour: "why did it evolve?"; "how did it evolve?"; "How does it develop across the lifespan?" and  "how does it work?".
By: Tom Stafford
BBC.com/future

 

Google deploying planes over cities for 3D maps

SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc is deploying a fleet of small, camera-equipped airplanes above several cities, the Internet search company’s latest step in its ambitious and sometimes controversial plan to create a digital map of the world.     
Google plans to release the first three-dimensional maps for several cities by the end of the year, the company said at a news conference at its San Francisco offices on We dnesday.
Google declined to name the cities, but it showed a demonstration of a 3D map of San Francisco, in which a user can navigate around an aerial view of the city.
“We’re trying to create the illusion that you’re just flying over the city, almost as if you were in your own personal helicopter,” said Peter Birch, a product manager for Google Earth.
Google’s head of engineering for its maps product, Brian McClendon, said the company was using a fleet of airplanes owned and operated by contractors and flying exclusively for Google.
Asked about potential privacy implications, McClendon said the privacy issues were similar to all aerial imagery and that the type of 45-degree-angle pictures that the planes take have been used for a long time.
Google has used airplanes to collect aerial photos in the past, such as following the 2010 San Bruno, Calif. gas-line explosion, but the latest effort marks the first time the company will deploy the planes in a systemic manner to build a standard feature in one of its products.
By the end of the year, Google said it expects to have 3D map coverage for metropolitan areas with a combined population of 300 million people. The first 3D cityscape will be available within weeks.
Google has for years operated a fleet of camera-equipped cars that crisscross the globe taking panoramic pictures of streets for its popular mapping service. The cars have raised privacy concerns in some countries.
In 2010, Google acknowledged that the so-called Street View cars had been inadvertently collecting emails, passwords and other personal data from people’s home wireless networks.
Collecting the WiFi data was unrelated to the Google Maps project, and was done instead so that Google could collect data on WiFi hotspots that can be used to provide separate location-based services.
The forthcoming 3D city maps will be part of the Google Earth software app available for mobile devices such as smartphones based on Google’s Android software and Apple’s iOS software.
The company also announced a version of Google maps for Android smartphones that allows users to access certain maps without an Internet connection.
Shares of Google finished Wednesday’s regular session up 1.8 per cent at $580.57.
Google’s announcement comes a week before Apple Inc’s developer conference in San Francisco, as competition between the two tech giants continues to heat up, particularly in the fast-growing mobile market.
Apple is planning to replace Google Maps as the built-in mapping service on its iPhone and iPad later this year with technology that it has created in-house, according to media reports. Apple could show off its new mapping software at next week’s conference.
Google’s McClendon said the company would continue to make Google maps services available as widely as possible, on “all platforms.”
In what appeared to be a veiled jab at Apple, he said the integration with Google’s search engine provides a mapping serving that is far more useful than a product that simply uses a “geocoder” – technology that uses geographic coordinates to create a digital map.
Apple began to use its own geocoder technology for the Google-based maps on its smartphones late last year.
Google said on Wednesday that there are currently 1 billion monthly active users of Google maps services and that the Street View cars have driven more than 5 million miles (8 million km) Pho tographing streets all over the world.
Asked if Google had any plans to use unmanned aerial drones to gather photos for its 3D cityscapes, McClendon said it was an interesting question, but noted that drones were still being evaluated by the Federal Aviation Administration.
“That’s a larger can of worms that we’re not going to get into here,” he said.
Source: Dawn News

Remembering Numbers

Numbers can be hard to remember because they’re abstract concepts, but there are several techniques that will make a big difference.

Chunking

Simple but effective. If you have a long number to remember, break it down into manageable pieces, no more than 2-4 digits long. So 3361986010 might become 336 1986 010 To make things even more memorable, look for patterns or associations within each chunk. Eg. 336 makes sense because 3+3=6. 1986 is a date, what happened then that you remember? And 010 is nicely balanced. Or you could even make a % sign out of it.

Rhymes

Radio stations and adverts often use this technique to drill their frequencies or phone numbers into your head. Create a catchy song or rhyme that involves the number you need. Here’s a well known one: ‘In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.’

The Peg System

This technique takes a little bit of work to begin with, but is a much more powerful technique. It involves combining numbers with images. Here’s how to do it:

Step One

Decide on an image you’re going to use for each number from 0 to 9. These images are based on the shape of the number – so there’s a visual clue to help you remember them. Here are some examples you could use:
1 = a pencil, or a sentry, or a magic wand
2 = a swan
3 = a fork
4 = a yacht
5 = a hook
6 = an elephant’s trunk
7 = a cliff
8 = a snowman
9 = a balloon on a string

Step Two

Take a few minutes to get the images lodged in your mind.

Step Three

Now, each time you have to remember a number, invent a story using the respective images. Say you want to remember the number 4489. You could dream up a story which starts with two yachts (44) … then a huge snowman (8) comes along and jumps on them, blows up a balloon on a string (9) and floats off up to the skies. The more surreal the better – just make sure it all happens in the right sequence.
Use this one for:

• Remembering dates
• Memorising PIN numbers
• Remembering important phone numbers.

Airline to seat passengers based on moods

Feeling chatty on a plane but not sure your seatmate wants to hear all about your summer vacation plans?  Not to worry.
First, the Dutch airlines KLM announced it would allow passengers to pick seatmates via social media. Now, air Baltic is stepping it up a notch by offering passengers the ability to choose seatmates according to their mood, reports News.com.au.
The national airline of Latvia calls its "SeatBuddy" system a way to keep the peace in the skies by seating like-minded flyers next to each other.  It will let passengers select from three "flight moods": whether passengers want to work, make new business contacts or simply be left alone. It also takes into account any hobbies or interests fellow travellers might share.
Michael Grimme, air Baltic's senior vice president of sales and marketing in a press release said the goal of SeatBuddy is to improve improve passenger service. "We are launching this as a free-of-charge additional service, and at the same time exploring its future commercial potential.”
Customer information is collected in a secure database and the closest match available on the same flight is identified automatically without disclosing passenger identity or any personal data.
The first test flights are expected to take off at the end of June.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2012/06/05/airline-to-seat-passengers-based-on-moods/#ixzz1www5g8r9