In 2016, the Olympic and Paralympic Games will take place for the first time in South America, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The Olympic emblem was launched more than a year ago, but I just watched the “brand video” for the Paralympic Games that gives an interesting glimpse of the work involved.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Rio 2016 Logo Design
Saturday, December 06, 2008
FLUSHED WITH PRIDE
The art of the toilet in Japan
Smart young women at Panasonic show off the latest waresDuncan Bartlett
(BBC)
No country takes toilets quite so seriously as Japan.
Machines with heated seats, built-in bidets and a dynamic range of flushing options are almost ubiquitous in homes and public buildings.
A poem recently published by a stressed-out salary man captured their comforting appeal with haiku-like brevity. "The only warmth in my life is the toilet seat," he mourned.
But lavatories here can do much more than keep you warm. One even sends a tiny electrical charge through the user's buttocks to check their body-fat ratio.
The master of the modern convenience is the Panasonic Corporation.
Booming market
At its Tokyo showroom, located in a skyscraper near the BBC's office, a group of smart young women, dressed in uniforms resembling flight attendants, showed me the company's latest wares.
The lids lifted up when I approached. If I stood in front of one, it took a guess at my gender and lifted up the seat as well.
There was a loo that glowed in the dark and another that had built-in loudspeakers.
With manicured fingernails, the demonstrator pushed the control panel beside the seat and gentle light classical music began to play.
Pleasant enough, I thought, although I preferred a pastoral sound effect that provided the impression one was seated upon a white plastic throne surrounded by songbirds in a springtime meadow.
Japanese people do not see cleaning as a demeaning or shameful jobKyoko Ishii, who heads up the public relations department for Panasonic, explained to me that most of the people who choose luxury loos are older women, so this is a booming market in rapidly ageing Japan.
Kyoko says that for this core customer group, the emphasis now is less on the gadgetry and more on convenience and cleanliness.
A new flush has been invented which does away with the need for a tank and saves dramatically on water.
The device costs about £1,950 ($3,000) including installation. But it is not easy to sell outside Japan as bathrooms in other countries are rarely fitted with the right mixture of sophisticated plumbing and electronics.
Clean culture
A visitor to Tokyo recently told me that he was surprised to find Japanese women rather than foreigners cleaning the toilets in his hotel.
Advertisements for toilets are screened on public transportIt is of course often immigrants who take on such jobs in rich countries. But foreign-born workers are rare here as only about 1.5% of the population are made up of non-native Japanese.
However, the low immigration level is only part of the explanation. Japanese people do not see cleaning as a demeaning or shameful job.
School children are trained from a young age to sweep their classrooms and scour the playground for litter.
Lorry drivers wash their trucks at the end of every day. No restaurant ever serves a meal without first offering the customer a cleansing towel.
Recently, I visited a small technology company in Osaka. The president, Mr Sugimoto, is trying to inspire his staff to work harder as recession takes hold.
The Japanese - like the British - do not seem to mind too much when comedians sink into vulgarity and joke about scatological matters
He is noted for his drive and enthusiasm and that came across in a punchy presentation which he showed me on his laptop.
It included photographs of his staff on their knees scrubbing the urinals.
His point was that in preparation for a new project, the whole team had mucked in to clean up the workplace and this was clearly a source of pride to be included in the company's publicity.
Source of comfort
But toilets can raise a smile, too. Television comedies sometimes include scenes of pranksters luring people into loos whose walls then collapse, and the embarrassment this causes the victim is a source of great hilarity.
The toilet then appeared to give a welcoming robotic smile and its seat began to glow an inviting orange colour as it heated up, ready for action
The Japanese - like the British - do not seem to mind too much when comedians sink into vulgarity and joke about scatological matters.
But there is also a dark underground trade in DVDs filmed in ladies' toilets by hidden cameras, and only last week a man was arrested for placing "spycams" in the lavatories of a girls' school.
Most of the time, though, the Japanese are happy to think of a toilet as their comfort and their friend.
The other day, while catching a commuter train to work, I found myself transfixed by an advertisement which was being screened on a TV inside the carriage.
A young girl slowly walked towards a loo, which automatically raised its lid to greet her.
The toilet then appeared to give a welcoming robotic smile and its seat began to glow an inviting orange colour as it heated up, ready for action.
Fortunately, the advertisement ended there. But not before a broad and appreciative smile broke out across the face of the girl.
Read more!
Monday, November 24, 2008
Hotel Atlantis Lightshow Trial Run
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Pioneer Headlight Shoes
Unlike other shoes ,these pioneer Headlight shoes not only
light your path ,but their batteries are charged by your kinetic
energy as you move along.
light your path ,but their batteries are charged by your kinetic
energy as you move along.
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Thursday, October 30, 2008
Abu Dhabi Sky Bridge Hotel
Abu Dhabi Sky Bridge Hotel
Total Area: 110,000m²
Number of Rooms: 264 (80-100m²)
Number of Suites: 40 (250m²)
Conference Area: 5,000m²
Commercial Area: 3,500m²
Restaurants: 2,600m²
Lobby: 4,250m² (108,000m³ volume)
Roof Garden: 5,400m²
Pedestrian Promenade: 11,200m²
Parking Area : 40,000m² x 2
(800 cars x2- 200 per floor)
Labels: Science
Read more!Thursday, July 10, 2008
PETA Pamela Anderson KFC Protest Australia
She’s a well-known supporter of animal rights activist group PETA. And earlier today, Pamela Anderson took a stand for chickens worldwide.
The former Baywatch babe was spotted at a KFC Restaurant in the Southport area of Queensland, Australia as she hand-delivered a signed letter of protest about the treatment of chickens by the KFC company on behalf of PETA.
Click here to find out more!
She told press, “I’ve been in Australia filming Big Brother House, in which my housemates and I are confined and sealed off from the outside world, much like the chickens who are crammed inside barns for KFC.”
She continued, “Fortunately, I won’t be stomped to death, have my legs broken or be scalded to death in a tank of hot water, yet as PETA’s undercover videos have revealed, the chickens raised for KFC’s restaurants in Australia often suffer these abuses.”
One small problem - KFC is one of the major sponsors of the Aussie Big Brother show on which Pammie has been guest starring. Whoopsie Daisy!
Enjoy the pictures of Pamela Anderson out protesting KFC (July 10).
source
Labels: Celebrity
Read more!Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Five Nuns In Town
Sisters Mary Catherine, Maria Theresa, Katherine Marie, Rose Frances, & Mary Kathleen left the Convent on a trip to St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City and were sight-seeing on a Tuesday in July.
It was hot and humid in town and their traditional garb was making them so uncomfortable, they decided to stop in at Patty McGuire's Pub for a cold soft drink.
Patty had recently added special legs to his barstools, which were the talk of the fashionable eastside neighborhood. All 5 Nuns sat up at the bar and were enjoying their Cokes when Monsignor Riley and Father McGinty entered the bar through the front door.
They, too, came for a cold drink when they were shocked and almost fainted at what they saw.
Read more!
It was hot and humid in town and their traditional garb was making them so uncomfortable, they decided to stop in at Patty McGuire's Pub for a cold soft drink.
Patty had recently added special legs to his barstools, which were the talk of the fashionable eastside neighborhood. All 5 Nuns sat up at the bar and were enjoying their Cokes when Monsignor Riley and Father McGinty entered the bar through the front door.
They, too, came for a cold drink when they were shocked and almost fainted at what they saw.
Read more!
Monday, July 07, 2008
Mamma Mia! ABBA Reunites for Film Premiere
Los Angeles (E! Online) - Don't pull out the polyester and platforms just yet, folks. It was just for a movie premiere.
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For the first time in 22 years, all four ex-members of ABBA appeared together at the Swedish premiere of Mamma Mia!, starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth.
The Swedish pop/disco quartet—Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog—didn't perform, but throngs of fans went wild at the sight of all four together again in Stockholm.
They were joined on the red carpet and theater balcony by the stars of the soon-to-be released film. Mamma Mia! is a big-screen adaptation of the highly successful musical featuring ABBA's biggest hits, including "Dancing Queen," "Money, Money, Money" and "Take a Chance on Me."
The foursome shot to fame in the mid-'70s and performed together publicly for the last time in 1986. In 2000, they turned down $1 billion to reunite for a concert tour.
source
Labels: Celebrity, Entertainment
Read more!Sunday, July 06, 2008
Tara Reid In Award Ceremony (Black)
Saturday, July 05, 2008
The great stingray migration -thousands of majestic stingrays swim to new seas
Taken by an amateur photographer in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, these photos show the great migration of the Cow-nose Stingrays from the Yucatan Peninsula to western Florida. They travel in compact packs of up to 10,000 individuals, following the counter-clockwise current to their summer feeding grounds.
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Labels: amazing
Read more!Friday, July 04, 2008
12 Things You May Not Know About the Nobel Prizes
Sweden
Scott #2415a-d
Sweden was home to Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and other explosives. He left most of his fortune to endow the annual Nobel Prize awards in the disciplines of physics, chemistry, literature, physiology or medicine, and peace.
Sweden has been a prolific issuer of stamps related to Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Prizes. In 2001, Sweden commemorated the 100th anniversary of the first Nobel Prizes awarded by issuing stamps depicting Nobel and the actual medals.
The 4-stamp set was engraved by master engraver, Czeslaw Slania. He expertly depicted Alfred Nobel in profile view, as well as the fine detail of the medals. This set of stamps is a beautiful addition to any collection due to its historical commemoration and the sheer beauty of the engravings.
If you are like most people, you may be under the impression that only the best of the best get awarded Nobel Prizes. You may think that the carefully thought out opinions by the selection committees would highlight lasting improvements in the sciences and the peace process. You may also be aware that the Nobel Prizes are never given out posthumously. If you believe any of those, like I did, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised.
Here then are some curious facts about the Nobel Prizes, the recipients, and the non-recipients that may challenge your knowledge.
1. Technically, the prize awarded in Economics is not a Nobel Prize, as it was not specified in Alfred Nobel's will. It has been nicknamed the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, and is selected by the same committee that selects the physics and chemistry prizes, but has only been awarded since 1969. It is award in memory of Alfred Nobel.
2. Nomination records are sealed for fifty years, and except for "leaks" in the process, the nominees are not publicly acknowledged. Agents and publicists will often tout a person's nomination, but until the records are unsealed fifty years later, there is no way to confirm or deny this.
In a related story, I've been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the past several years. :)
3. Nominations for the Nobel Prizes can only be made for living persons. However, should a person die after their nomination, they can still be awarded a Nobel Prize. This has occurred two times, most recently in 1961 when Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously, after dying in a plane crash in Africa.
4. Provided that the individual is living at the time of the nomination, anyone can be nominated. Incredulously, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin were all nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize!
5. Amazingly, the person probably most likely to have deserved the Nobel Peace Prize was never awarded one. Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, Indian leader who advocated non-violence in the struggle for Indian independence from colonial rule, never won the award. He was nominated five times, but failed each time. He was assassinated just two days before the nominations for the 1948 prize were due, which, since he was deceased, disqualified him from the nomination and, therefore, the prize.
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee considered selecting Gandhi for the award in spite of the rules, but because he left no legal heirs, they were not sure of who to award the prize to. Instead, the committee elected to withhold the award that year, stating that "there was no suitable living candidate" for the award, a clear reference to the recently-deceased Gandhi.
6. Winning a Nobel Prize will bring lasting fame throughout one's lifetime. Pity poor William Vickrey, who, just 3 days after being selected for the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car, dead of an apparent heart attack.
7. Some prizes are awarded to technology that on later review just doesn't seem to pan out. Consider Antonio Moniz's 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine for leukotomy, the brain-altering operation that was the forerunner of pre-frontal lobotomies.
8. Likewise, the award given to Johannes Fibiger wasn't very prescient. His 1926 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was for discovering that parasites had caused cancerous tumors in laboratory mice, prompting many to believe a cure for cancer was just around the corner. The trouble was, upon further review, the tumors were caused by simple vitamin deficiencies.
9. Julius Wagner von Jauregg won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery that, by purposely injecting syphilitic patients with fever-causing malaria, the patients were sometimes cured. Sometimes, however, the malaria cure was as bad as the original illness.
10. Not all Nobel Peace Prize recipients have backgrounds in diplomacy or political science. For example, the 1970 winner, Norman Borlaug, won for his efforts in plant pathology/genetics which led to better worldwide food supplies, and, so the argument went, a more peaceful world.
11. The United Nations' Peacekeeping forces have won the Nobel Peace Prize, even though rapes, bribery, bullying, and other crimes have been allegedly committed by the so-called peace keepers.
12. At least one Nobel Peace Prize recipient has admitted to embellishing her autobiography, which had obviously helped her to win the prize. Rigoberta Menchú, native of Guatemala and 1992 recipient, acknowledged making changes in her autobiography I, Rigoberta Menchú that details atrocities performed by guerrilla forces in her native Guatemala. While her cause is just, her augmentation of her background, exposed by researcher David Stoll, has given a black eye to her cause. In an effort to ease the situation, the Nobel Prize committee has since declared that her award was not based solely on her autobiography, but on the aggregate of her efforts.
Labels: amazing
Read more!Thursday, July 03, 2008
Friends-on-big-screen
Friends reunited: Jennifer Aniston and the gang set to return for big-screen blockbuster
The highly anticipated film production of TV series Friends has finally been given the go-ahead, MailOnline has learned.
Cast members Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer will reprise their roles for a big-screen adaptation 'within the next 18 months', according to insiders.
The actors have been inspired by the recent success of Sex And The City, which recently hit cinemas worldwide.
source
The highly anticipated film production of TV series Friends has finally been given the go-ahead, MailOnline has learned.
Cast members Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer will reprise their roles for a big-screen adaptation 'within the next 18 months', according to insiders.
The actors have been inspired by the recent success of Sex And The City, which recently hit cinemas worldwide.
source
Labels: Celebrity, Entertainment
Read more!Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Though Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na is based on a fictitious story
Though Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na is based on a fictitious story, it has incidents from real life interwoven in the plot.
The movie, launchpad of Aamir Khan’s nephew Imran Khan , sees the graduation of Abbas Tyrewala from script and screenplay writing to direction.
Abbas, who has written the screenplay for films like Maqbool and Main Hoon Na , had a very original light-hearted romantic story set on a college campus for his directorial debut but he wanted to add realism to it. So he put in incidents from his own college days.
"I treated the film exactly as I remembered my college days…All the events are based on true incidents. Only the basic story is from the realm of fantasy," Abbas tells a news agency in an interview.
The movie’s story revolves around a group of college friends. Imran and Genelia D’Souza play two characters diametrically opposite to each other. The group also has another guy who harbours a secret crush on Genelia. And there is also a girl whose heart throbs for Imran. How love sprouts between Imran and Genelia, two unlikely people, is what the film is about.
Though the film is the launchpad of Imran, it was never intended to be this way. The film was initially meant to be produced by Jhamu Sughand. Aamir Khan came on board as producer much later, when Sughand expressed his inability to produce it. And even though Aamir decided to produce the film, he told Abbas not to treat it as the lauchpad of his nephew Imran.
‘Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na’ releases on July 4.
Labels: Celebrity, Entertainment
Read more!Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Madam Tussauds Will Reveal A Waxwork Of Amy Winehouse ?
Madam Tussauds will reveal next month a wax model of Amy Winehouse. The wax figurine will have Amy’s tattoos and her beehive hairstyle.
When this news come after some guys in Yorkshire village Methley have created a scarecrow having Wino as a model I can only imagine that the wax figurine from Madam Tussauds must be very funny to see.
Below is the good looking and very frightening scarecrow
Source
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Sunday, June 29, 2008
Miley Cyrus - “7 Things” Music Video
Check out Miley Cyrus‘ new music video for “7 Things“, the first single from her upcoming studio album, Breakout.
The music vid was shot in Los Angeles last month with director Brett Ratner (X-Men: The Last Stand, Red Dragon). It features Miley and other heartbroken girls using the lyrics to attack their respective exes.
You can catch the official premiere of “7 Things” on Disney Channel TONIGHT June 28, @ 7:55pm ET/PT. Or watch it below!
Labels: Celebrity
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