A baby boy, who was named Akshat, has registered his name in the Guinness World Records for having a total of 34 fingers and toes. He is just over the age of one and hails from the Bareilly district in Uttar Pradesh.
Showing posts with label World News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World News. Show all posts
Thursday, July 21, 2011
UP boy makes world record for 34 fingers
Monday, February 23, 2009
Indians have a reason to cheer - OSCAR
The Indian Oscar
Unlike the earlier Oscars this years Oscar gave lot to rejoice for Indians. A bunch of awards for Slumdog Millionire and Smile Pinky in short documentary section. ‘Smile Pinky’ is a 39 minute-long documentary about a cleft-lip girl and her struggle for joy in an alienating society. Though both the films, Slumdog Millionire(Danny Boyle) and Smile Pinky( directed by Emmy-nominated producer Megan Mylan), the film crew contains mostly Indians.A R Rahman got 2 oscars for Slumdogs music(best original song(Jai Ho) and original score). Kerala born Resul Pookutty bagged Oscar in Best Sound Mixing category for his work on Slumdog Millionaire. Pookutty hails from Vilakkupaara in Quilon district, Kerala.
READ THE STORY OF A R RAHMAN ... CILCK HERE
THE OSCAR LIST
Smile Pinky
Made in Bhojpuri and Hindi, the film is directed by Emmy-nominated producer Megan Mylan, and also talks of Ghutaru, a similar social outcast due to his facial deformity.
The curing surgery is simple, but seemed out of bounds until Pankaj, a social worker travelling village to village, crosses their path. The film was shot in the village and G S Memorial Plastic Surgery Hospital where Pinki was actually operated by plastic surgeon Subodh Kumar Singh.
Resul Pookutty
The name Resul Pookutty has become almost synonymous with sound direction in Hindi films, especially after the success of Sanjay Leela Bansali's `Black.' Resul was recently in Thrissur in connection with the second Thrissur International Film Festival.
Resul hails from Vilakkupara in Anchal in Kollam district and it was fate that landed him in tinsel town, that too in Bollywood movies.
Joining the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune "was a turning point in my life." Resul passed out from the Institute in 1995 and moved to Mumbai, the dreamland of Indian commercial filmmakers.
"That was a natural immigration as a graduate of the institute. Ninety-five per cent of the technicians of the Mumbai film industry are alumni of FTII, Pune," points out Resul. "After my graduation from Pune, my interest to specialise in sound became clear, and today I feel I am successful, both aesthetically and commercially," he says.
Importance of sound
Until recently sound artistes were merely considered as sound recorders without much significance in the industry, but Resul's generation totally changed it into sound direction. Rajat Kapur's `Private Detective' was his maiden work and after that his career graph accelerated. His recently released films include `Black' and `Mathrubhumi - a national without women' by Manish K.J. (this film, an Indo-French venture, eamines the issue of female infanticide). `Missed Call' by Mridul Vinay and `Mixed Doubles' by Rajat Kapur will be released soon.
AR Rahman's Journey to Oscars
The Mystic Master
Music and spiritual surrender are the two big themes of AR Rahman’s life. As he returns with the Golden Globe, SHOMA CHAUDHURY explores how the public gift and private search intersect to create magic
 |
BEFORE THE gift, there was the prophecy. After their first child — a girl — was born, an array of astrologers told the disappointed Tamil music composer, RK Shekhar and his wife Kasturi, that they would soon be gifted with someone extraordinary: a son whose name would illumine the world, a musical genius whose soul would arc across the sky.
Dileep Kumar was born just over a year after on January 6, 1966. The name — AR Rahman, mysteriously wrapped in instant and acetylene fame — would come later, but by the time he was three, the signs were firmly in place. He was, indeed, the fortunate one: he could play the harmonium before he could speak; and soon after his birth, his father inexplicably began to prosper. The word spread. His sister Kanchana, the elder one, music coursing in her blood too but born without prophecy, remembers her father taking the little boy to Sudarshan, a reputed music director, when he was four. “I hear your child can play anything,” Sudarshan challenged him, “let’s see if he can do this.” He played a particularly complex piece, then covered the harmonium with his veshti to make the playing more difficult — a kind of surrogate blindfold — and handed over the harmonium to the young boy. The calm little boy executed it perfectly. Humbled, Sudarshan leapt up and embraced the child.
The virtuosity has never abated since. On January 11, 2009, watched by elated countrymen across the world, Rahman became the first Indian to win the Golden Globe — a coveted precursor to the Oscars — for his musical score in the acclaimed Hollywood film, Slumdog Millionaire. This may be just one more crest in the stream of awards and recognitions that have lapped around him — a Padmashree, four national film awards, 12 Screen awards, 21 Filmfare awards, among innumerable others — but the excitement around the man Time magazine called “the Mozart of Madras” has never been higher, his name never more luminous.
In Chennai though, away from the champagne speeches and applauding lights of Los Angeles, a more profound underlayer of Rahman’s music reveals itself. It is three days after the award, the maestro is yet to come home. The city is unusually quiet; the shops are closed, the roads are empty. It is Pongal and everyone is on holiday. Rahman’s studio — AM Studios — the most state-of-the-art, hitech studio in all of Asia, usually bustling with dozens of musicians and directors and sound engineers, is empty too. The four-storey white and lilac and parquet building has the aura of a prayer house, zinging with the vibration left by an intense concentration of human energy. In the heart of the studio is a large room that can host a 30-piece string orchestra. Facing it, in a glassed-off control room sits a massive mixing console — a Neve 88R, estimated to cost Rs 4 crore — a console with such a daunting array of knobs it could tune the universe. Elsewhere in the building, small soundproof rooms house gleaming pianos, synthesisers, violins, harmoniums, and drums. In a large, airy room on the roof, instruments of every conception sit waiting for the imaginations that will finally unlock their sound.
 |
A world to win A visbily moved Rahman accepts the Golden Globe award |
The silence is a kind of serendipity: it allows one to sense what very few people know. Rahman’s music — always new, groundbreaking, wildly intuitive, experimental, a kind of sound that masters of cinema craft like Baz Luhrmann, Shekhar Kapoor and Danny Boyle say “they had never heard before” — is deeply rooted, in fact, “sourced”, from Rahman’s idea of divinity.
When Rahman, or Dileep as he was known then, was nine, the radiant prophecy seemed to falter. His father, Shekhar died suddenly — on the very day his first film as a music director was released. The golden circle was breached, the family was devastated. Kasturi was certainly overworked, and insufficient sleep had precipitated her husband’s cancer. Although her sister and parents were part of the large joint family, there was no one to turn to. It fell on mother and son to find the money to keep the family together.
Rahman remembers it as a difficult, opaque time when there seemed to be no answers. His mother made some money by renting out musical instruments, but by the time he was 11, Rahman was more often out of school than in, repeatedly called away from the playground by his mother to record music for a fee. It should have felt like an escape: he was never particularly interested in school or playground games, for that matter. In fact, he had such low attendance and marks, he was asked to leave his first school. He went to another local one for a year, and then joined MCC. Barely a term in, when he was about 15, he gave up school altogether. He played the piano and guitar on television shows, and became a sort of “roadie” with different Malayali, Tamil and Telugu composers. For a year, he played with the celebrated Iliayaraja. It should have felt like an escape, but it didn’t.
Kanchana says her brother wanted to be an ordinary boy — sleep late, play carom — and used to resist being woken at seven by his mother to practice the piano. But the mother, fervently knocking at temples, churches, and mosques, was determined to refuel the prophecy. Suddenly, around the time he was 11, destiny came knocking again. The family met Karimullah Shah Kadiri, a Sufi pir (at a railway station, goes the apocryphal story). Karimullah foresaw the boy’s entire future and said Dileep would come to him in 10 years. “That was the turning point,” Rahman admitted in a rare moment of candour to a CNN interviewer. “Everything happened as he said it would.”
ON HIS music teacher John Jacob’s insistence, Dileep applied for a scholarship to study music in Trinity College, Oxford — a crucial interlude that exposed him to western classical music. In 1987, around the time he was 21, moved by everything that had happened to them — dreams, oracles, signs — Dileep, his mother, and two younger sisters converted to Islam (Kanchana would convert a little later).
Two years later, in 1989, he set up Panchathan Record Inn in his backyard — the foundation stone was laid by Karimullah Shah — and began to make jingles for ads. In 1991, legendary director Mani Ratnam took a chance on the untested youngster and invited him to score the music for his new film, Roja. With the divine assurance of a prodigy, Dileep proceeded to break every rule with his debut.
 |
Family man Rahman, seen with wife Saira Banu, wants to spend more time with his children |
Now, on the eve of Roja, seven new names were offered to him: Dileep chose Allah Rakha Rahman, the first of the 1,000 names of Allah. Soon after, Roja was released, and as the pir had prophesied, the Isai Puyal — “musical storm” — AR Rahman was born. Wrapped in instant and acetylene fame.
Like other prodigies across time who have bent the arc of history, Rahman’s debut track was unlike anything anyone had heard before. It sent ripples through the industry and got Rahman the National Film Award for Best Music Director, the first time ever for a firsttime film composer. In 2005, Time magazine picked it as one of Top Ten Movie Tracks of All Time. “Rahman is like a weaver. With Roja, he created this incredibly intricate, complicated sound that no one had ever tried before,” says lyricist and friend Prasoon Joshi. “The Indian music and film industry had always relied on extraordinary melodies and singers, the mukhara and the antara. But Rahman played with the structure, he layered the melody with different strands of sound, he created spaces where one could listen to a single string or enjoy a beat before returning to the voice. He created a river with many side streams you could step into. It was unlike everything that had gone before.”
Over almost two decades since, the experimentation has never stopped. Director Rakeysh Mehra likens Rahman to the great Chinese travelers of 2,000 years ago, who wandered the world gathering influences from faraway lands. Western classical, Indian classical, reggae, hip-hop, rap, rock, pop, blues, jazz, opera, sufi, folk, African beats, Arabian sounds — there is nothing Rahman has not dared to meld together. No new voice he has not dared to use. No texture of sound he has not strained to perfect. The stories are legion. Of how he got Maryem Toller, a Canadian, to sing the hit song Mayya, Mayya, itself triggered by the sound of a man selling water, saying mayya, mayya — Arabic for water — overheard on a Haj trip. Of how he got R&B singer Ash King from the bylanes of London to sing Dil Gira Dafatan for the forthcoming film, Dilli 6, although King didn’t know a word of Hindi, just because he liked the texture of his voice. Of how he spotted Naresh Aiyar, who had been sidelined by judges like Adnan Sami in a Channel V talent contest, and picked him to sing the sublime song Ru ba ru. Of how he spotted Blaaze and Sukhwinder and Madhushree and Vijay Yesudas and scores of other new voices he has launched in the world. Of how he took 17 years to give his sister Kanchana — or Raihanah, as she is called after her conversion — a song of her own in the blockbuster Sivaji, because her voice finally matched the sound playing in his head.
The stories are legion; what is less known is Rahman’s understanding of his own gift. Unlike Mozart, the legendary giant TIME magazine compared him to, whose creative genius seemed to flow from some mercurial, manic yet sublimely flamboyant ego, those who know Rahman say he has absolutely no ego. A little like the shy Srinivasa Ramanujan, the untutored mathematical genius from Chennai who believed his prodigious acumen was channeled to him by his family devi, Namagiri, apparently Rahman too believes he is merely an instrument. As director Shekhar Kapoor puts it, “Rahman does not believe music resides in him, but that he sources it from a field of consciousness that exists eternally. He believes that to access or to be able to reach that ‘field’ you need to be very pious. I believe as long as he continues to believe the music is not his, that he is merely the conduit, he will have no limitations.”
The search for piety — the complete purity that will keep him in touch with his music — has meant a kind of twin journey for Rahman. On the one hand, there has been an ever amplifying outward honing of craft, a restless search for new stimuli, a mastery of technology, a constant self-education, a perfecting of the conduit. Parallel to that has been an ever intensifying private inward journey towards submission and surrender to the will of God — a destruction of ego, an effacement of self.
At the heart of this journey are two figures. Arifullah Mohammad al Husaini Chisti ul Kadiri — son of Karimullah Shah, no more than in his 20s or 30s, who took his father’s place as Rahman’s spiritual teacher after his death. Said to be descendants of Hazrat Mohammad, Arifullah’s dargah in Karrapa sharif, Andhra Pradesh, is both pilgrimage and refuge for Rahman. ‘Malik Baba’ Rahman calls him. AM Studios, set up in 2005, is probably named after his initials — Arifullah Mohammad — an educated guess, because even many of Rahman’s closest associates say they don’t know what the initials stand for.
 |
God is music Rahman, seated at his piano, believes his creativity is divinely inspired |
(My brother is the most secretive man in the world,” laughs Raihanah. “If I ask him for a house, he will give it to me. If I ask for a studio, he will give me one, just don’t enter mine, he will say.”) But an observant eye cannot fail to miss it. A small picture of Malik Baba adorns the entrance to the studio that hosts the tuning console for the universe. There are curious palm-marks in auspicious chandan on many windows and walls — quiet signs of faith.
RAHMAN IS the most spiritual person to ever touch my life,” says Mehra. “He has zero ego, there is no ‘I’ or ‘me’ in him.” “It is true. He has a surreal influence on people,” agrees Deepak Gattani of Rapport entertainment agency, who constructs most of Rahman’s extravagantly mounted concerts and has been a friend for 16 years. “He has taught me there is more to life than we normally see. He never has knee-jerk responses to things.” “He is sent by God, kudrat ne unko banaya hai,” says singer Kailash Kher, who has toured with Rahman often. “One day you will see him in Los Angeles, standing with people like Weber and Boyle and the owners of Fox. The next day he might be sitting in a dargah among fakirs and dervishes.” “His spirituality is not something others can understand,” says his sister. “I am in complete awe of him. He is a blessed thing. God considers him a special child. He has surrendered totally — every move, every action, every thought is surrendered to God.”
This surrender has taken many forms. Absolute simplicity. Frequent visits to dargahs. Generous alms to the poor. Sleeping on bare cement or sand if necessary. A sublimation of material desire not related to music. (Rahman apparently loved cars, but never drove anything fancier than an Innova until he finally indulged in a BMW last year, 18 years after monumental commercial success.) Sometimes, for others, the forms of surrender have seemed more irrational and inexplicable. For instance, his daughter was born with a hole in her heart, but Rahman refused to have her operated. Prayers, he believes, can change destiny, so he surrendered to the healing faith of his pir. Miraculously, his daughter was cured when she was two.
(“God always looks after him. It is uncanny. What others have to knock for just comes to him,” laughs his sister. Press for examples and she says facetiously, “You might be traveling abroad and desperate for some good hot food. People like us will have to worry about going out in the cold, catching a taxi, finding a place. But Rahman will just be sitting and praying and then, suddenly, someone will come and ask him, what would you like to eat? North Indian or South Indian?”)
But in other cautious snatches from friends respectful of Rahman’s desire for privacy but willing to share their marvel of him, slowly a small trickle of illustrations pile up. Gattani talks of an unexpectedly stormy night in Bangalore. Thirty thousand people are gathered in the Palace Grounds. Rahman’s pioneering Three Dimensional Concert — staggering in scale — is about to start. A sudden squall catches everyone unaware. The backdrop collapses, the grounds flood. Amidst the panic, an unperturbed Rahman locks himself in his green room for half-an-hour. When he emerges, he tells his associates to ask the crowd what they want — have the show or postpone it. Have it, they say. On cue, the rain stops, the songs roll out. Just as Rahman sings the last bar of Vande Mataram, it starts raining again. “It was astonishing,” says Gattani. At other times, when an important decision is to be taken, Rahman retreats into himself and says he will ask for “permission”. A couple of days later, depending on how the divine consultation has gone, he calls back with either a refusal or a go-ahead. Take his most cherished project — KM Conservatory, for instance, a pioneering school of music he has dreamt of for years. Initialed after the elder pir, Karimullah? Again, no one knows. For a long while, there was talk of partnering with the government. Finally, Rahman said he would seek “permission” for the partnership. It did not come and Rahman went it alone — funneling huge sums of personal money and passion to start the conservatory on his birthday last year.
Malik Baba is the most visible manifestation of this surrender. It is to him that Rahman turns to most. Often, to a critical eye, such faith can seem to skate precariously close to subjugation rather than creative surrender. But it seems to work unerringly for Rahman. “Everyone may not understand it, and it may not work for everyone,” says superstar Aamir Khan, “but Rahman is a very spiritual person, and in a curious way, his complete surrender to his faith opens him up completely. It frees him to work.”
The other figure key to Rahman’s journey is his mother, Kasturi — or Kareema Begum, after her conversion. “Amma”, as she is universally known — a jovial, quintessentially motherly figure — has remained a powerful leitmotif in Rahman’s life. “Their relationship is like the bhakt for his bhagwan,” says Kher. He follows her wishes with unquestioning faith — “aastha” is the evocative word he uses. “If she had asked him not to go to LA to receive the Golden Globe and go to a dargah instead, I am sure he would have done it.” She, in turn, is affectionate, solicitous, the keeper of the prophecy, often traveling with Rahman on his tours abroad. Ask her about her son and she says, “He prays five times a day. He is Allah’s gift.” “Old worldly” her elder daughter calls her, momentarily dismissive, and through the crevices of the brisk praise that follows, you catch a glimpse of the inevitable shrapnel around a blessed sibling — the mistakes of a conservative family, the unintended but painful eclipses, the little neglects, the big oversights, the sisters unconsciously less precious than the boy. “We were there, somewhere in the atmosphere,” jokes one of them.
 |
The foundation Mother Kareema was determined that her son should become a musician |
BUT NOW it is the fourth day after the award, and late in the evening. The maestro has come home and the driveway to his house is swarming with waiting journalists. There is a comforting smell of incense in the air. The windows in his reception are curtained with white veshtis, carpets adorn his walls. It is a decorative detail repeated in all his buildings.
The Panchathan Record Inn — Rahman’s private studio, his sanctum sanctorum — is a lush, comfortable room draped in rich red curtains, alternated with white. Computers, consoles, instruments and hi-tech gizmos strew the room like books might in another’s study. It is past midnight before we meet; a journalist’s deadline looms over the meeting like a vengeful shadow and in an unfortunate inversion, Rahman is game for a long conversation, but I am in a hurry. The encounter is briefer than it should have been. Still, none of the conversations around him has prepared one for the man himself. Neat, boyish, he is incredibly youthful, light-hearted — calming in an odd way — and disarmingly open. Every account of him has steeled one to meet a man of few words — the secretive brother one has to tease things from. Instead, Rahman is willing to talk about everything. And is, often, unexpectedly funny.
As we retrace his life, it is suddenly cast in more complex light than music, prayer and simple surrender. “I did not convert overnight, nor did anyone force me,” says Rahman.
“It was a long process. I was really intrigued by the whole Sufi thing and had gone very deeply into it, puttingx aside three hours every day to learn Arabic. I was drawn to Sufism because they have no regulation, no rules, no distinction between Hindu-Muslim — they just look straight into your heart and see your love for the auliyas, the noor of the Prophet.”
THE SURRENDER, too, has a complicated relationship with the music. “When you are in a creative field, particularly something like film or music,” says Rahman, “you can be tossed between highs and lows, good reviews and bad reviews. To maintain equilibrium, you have to detach yourself and abandon yourself merely to the service of music — look at it all from a different perspective. For this, the destruction of the ego is very important. At the same time, there are ironic counterpoints. If you don’t have an ego you can switch on and off, you cannot make music, you cannot do something extraordinary. You have to be committed to the idea of excelling the standards you have set yourself, fulfilling expectations. So, there is a good ego and a bad ego. Something like music also draws you away into another energy field — money, fame, women. For a long time, these impulses used to pull me in separate ways — the desire to renounce and the desire to achieve. You can never perfect these things, but finally now, I feel I am walking in sync, with both impulses hand-in-hand.”
Over the years, Rahman admits to many moments of stasis and saturation — phases when he felt enough is enough, he had done it all and would like to renounce the world. Each time, he laughs, something would come and uplift him, raise the scales. When Roja was offered to him, he was fed up with everything he had been doing: the jingles, the recordings for other music composers in Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil. “I revered Mani Ratnam and it was my dream to work with him. I thought this would be the last soundtrack I would make, so I just did what I pleased. I wanted to have fun. There were no walls in my head, no limitations. All the young people were listening to Western stuff those days, even me, so I thought, what’s the problem, are we not experimenting enough? And I let myself go.”
THE INSTANT and meteoric success brought its own counter stasis. “I thought, this is it,” says Rahman. “I have won the National film award, now I can just live off the earnings of my studio.” But then the excitements and challenge of the Hindi film industry came calling. Rangeela first; then a flood of other Hindi films. When the stasis of that threatened, there was the spike of Elizabeth, Bombay Dreams and Lord of the Ring. The western world came calling. By the time that threatened to pale, the KM Conservatory had been born, and Rahman’s Foundation Against Global Poverty — committed to eradicating poverty in India, Africa, and now, he chuckles, even America. “With all of this, I struggle less with the desire to renounce. I have found new meaning, a new sense of duty towards living, not only towards these projects, but to my wife and kids, and even my music. I see music now as being all about love, a service to humanity — it is about sharing joy with fellow human beings,” says he.
For many years, Rahman’s family — wife Saira Banu, daughters Kathija and Raheema, and son Rumi, were rarely seen publicly around him. “I plan to take them around with me much more now,” says he. “Be it in my studio, my tours abroad, or on my spiritual journeys. I don’t want them to feel separate. My father was such a huge influence because we were always around him. Without him, there would have been no music in our life.”
Typical of Rahman, his encounters with the western world too have yielded deeper things than success and awards. “After my first National Film Award, the Golden Globe has mattered the most to me because I wanted to bridge that vacuum — the fact that no Indian had won these international film and music awards. But as an individual, there is only so much of fame you can take in. Very quickly you detach yourself from it, you are only there as a representative of something else, not as an individual.”
What the forays into the western world have yielded for Rahman then is an expanded consciousness. “When I went to London first for Bombay Dreams, I was living isolated in this house, making music, meeting nobody. I used to pray five times a day and try to keep my fast. All around me were these pubs and drunk kids would piss under my window. Each time I went out, I would come back and bathe. But slowly I realised love can transcend all these segmental issues. You need to find a larger perspective which bridges all these worlds — west and east, Muslim and non-Muslim, or whatever else divides us.”
Bridges — that is an apt metaphor for Rahman and his music. In a jostling, frenetically commercial world — brimful of quick encomiums and sudden deaths — it has become difficult to gauge the true merit of things. Is Rahman the Mozart of our times? We may not be sure yet, but of this we can be certain: his music offers a way to bridge that huge void between the known and the great unknown from which earthly beauty stems.
A BLOCK AWAY from Rahman’s home, his new sense of “duty towards the living” is illumining a new generation. As the maestro was flying back across the continents with the globe — literally — in his hands, on the day of the Pongal holiday, you could have chanced on a handful of young boys and girls on the first floor of AM Studio. Students of Rahman’s dream project, the music school, KM Conservatory, they pored over their computers and music sheets. Occasionally, the strains of music wafted out from adjoining practice rooms. It would be difficult to find a more eclectic group: Anurag Sharma, 16, had given up on school and traveled with his mother (another keeper of prophecy?) all the way from Delhi to rent a room in Chennai for the opportunity of studying music in Rahman’s school. Ashrita Arockiam, a 23- year old post-graduate in English from Hyderabad, was straining to put together a scholarship to study music abroad, when the opportunity to do a similar course suddenly bloomed on home ground. Saurav Sen, 32, a computer engineer from Kolkata, gratefully gave up his job, and exchanged it for a year cocooned in music.
mix of foreign and Indian faculty, exposure to Western and Indian classical music, training in music technology, and a chance to workshop with many of the great musicians across the globe is only a part of the grooming the students from the Conservatory get. Three of the 40 chosen for the full-time foundational course — all of them had to audition before they were selected — are already apprenticing with Rahman. “We put together a concert every week,” says young Anurag, “whenever he is here, Rahman sir sits in on the session. It is amazing to be able to do that.”
But before the stasis of this can set in, a new scale is waiting for Rahman: the dream of creating India’s first symphonic orchestra. “We are a country of a billion people, bursting with talent,” says he, “why doesn’t India have a single orchestra?” KM could well be the womb for that. And in nurturing all of this with love, he might finally overcome the difficult opacity of his own teenage years.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Top 10 Most Beautiful Bridges in the World
Bridges are stylish: from classical to modern, they are as much a work of art as they are marvels of engineering. To celebrate the wonders of "classic" bridges, here are Neatorama's picks for the Top 10 Most Beautiful Bridges in the World:
10. Khaju Bridge
Photo: twocentsworth [Flickr]
Khaju Bridge at night. Photo: Jovika [Flickr]
The Khaju Bridge (Pol-e-Khajoo) in Isfahan, Iran, was built in the 17th century by Shah Abbas II. The bridge also serves as a dam, with sluice gates under the archways. When the gates are closed, the water level behind the bridge is raised to irrigate gardens alongside the Zayandeh River.
The Khoju Bridge has two stories of arcades, marked by the distinctive intersecting arches decorated with richly colored tiles. At the center of the bridge, there are two large pavilions, called the Prince Parlors, that were originally reserved for the Shah.
9. Pont du Gard
Pont du Gard. Photo: zak mc [Flickr]
Pont du Gard, an aqueduct spanning the Gard River in southern France, is a masterpiece of Roman engineering. It wasn't built to transport people (though there is a pedestrian footbridge on it) - instead, it was part of a complex aqueduct system that carried water over 30 miles (about 50 km) to the ancient Roman city of Nemausus (now Nîmes).
The wedge-shaped stones, known as voussoirs, were arranged in three levels, the top-most being the water conduit. So precise was the engineering that the entire system descends only 56 ft. (17 m) vertically - over 30 miles! - to deliver 5 million gallons (20,00 m3) of water to the city.
8. Bridge of Sighs
The Bridge of Sighs. Photo: Eugenia y Julian [Flickr]
In the 19th century, Lord Byron named a Venetian limestone bridge across the Rio di Palazzo connecting the Doge's prison to the interrogation room in the main palace, the Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri). Supposedly, the prisoners would sigh when they look out the window - with stone bars no less - to see their last view of beautiful Venice before their imprisonment, torture or execution.
In reality, Doge's prison held mostly small-time criminals. Also, the bridge was built in 1600 by Antonio Contino, after the days of the inquisitions and summary executions. Legend has it that if lovers kissed on a gondola underneath the Bridge of Sighs at sunset, their love would last for eternity.
7. Iron Bridge
Iron Bridge. Photo: johnmuk [Flickr]
Iron bridge at night. Notice how the bridge and its reflection make a perfect circle.
Photo: Mark Haythorne [Flickr]
In the 18th century, Shropshire was rich in iron and coal - indeed, there were more iron factories within two-mile radius of the town than any other city in the world. It was also there that iron was first smelt with coke. So it was only natural that the bridge would be made out of iron, a stronger alternative to wood. (Photo of the railing: zorro [Flickr])
Architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard proposed a single arch bridge that would let boats pass underneath, but he died before the bridge was built. The construction of the Iron Bridge was carried out by a local master ironworker named Abraham Darby III. About 400 tons (363 tonnes) of cast iron was used, with about 800 separate castings. The Iron Bridge has 5 arch ribs, each cast in two halves. It only took three months to put the parts together (which they did using screws instead of bolts!).
The ease and speed of the Iron Bridge's construction helped convince engineers of the versatility and strength of iron, and helped usher in the Industrial Revolution era. Darby, however, didn't fare so well: he severely underestimated the cost to build the bridge, and remained in debt for the rest of his life. (Source)
6. Covered Bridges
The West Montrose Covered Bridge on the Grand River, Ontario, Canada. It's known locally as the Kissing Bridge. Photo: gojumeister [Flickr]
Pisgah Covered Bridge in southern Randolph County, North Carolina. It was washed away by a flood in 2003, but rebuilt with 90% of the original wood. It's now one of two historic covered bridges left in the state. Photo: jimmywayne22 [Flickr]
Thomas Malone Covered Bridge in Beaver Creek State Park, Ohio.
Photo: c0reyann [Flickr]
Covered bridges are simply that: bridges that have enclosed sides and roof. Though technically the Bridge of Sigh, Ponte Vecchio, and the Wind and Rain Bridges in this list are covered bridges, this term usually means simple, single-lane bridges in rural settings.
Before they are made famous by the 1995 Clint Eastwood film The Bridges of Madison County, "kissing bridges" or "tunnels of love" have been the pride and joy of many small towns across Europe and especially Northern America where more than ten thousands of such bridges were built.
In the 19th century, timber was plentiful and cheap (or, in many cases, free). So it's natural that these bridges were made of wood. But why were they covered? Well, lovers aside, the real reason was much more practical: the wooden beams of the bridge lasted longer when protected from the elements.
Unfortunately, due to neglect, theft of lumber, vandalism, and fire, most covered bridges in the United States and Canada have disappeared.
5. Ponte Vecchio
Ponte Vecchio. Photo: G|o®g|O
Ponte Vecchio at night. Photo: MrUllmi [Flickr]
The Ponte Vecchio is a medieval bridge over the Arno River. Actually, it's much more than a bridge - it's a street, a marketplace, and a landmark of Florence, Italy.
The Ponte Vecchio that we know today was built in 1345 by Taddeo Gaddi after an older span was destroyed in a flood. To finance the bridge, lots along the roadway were rented out to merchants, especially butchers and tanners, to hawk their wares.
In 1565, Duke Cosimo I de Medici ordered an architect named Giorgio Vasari to construct a roofed passageway. Soon after, jewelers, goldsmiths, and merchants of luxury goods pushed out the butchers out of Ponte Vecchio. Centuries of haphazard additions gave the bridge's distinctive, irregular appearance today.
During World War II, after having survived many floods, the bridge faced its gravest threat: German bombers were blowing up bridges in Florence. It was a direct order from Hitler that spared Ponte Vecchio from certain destruction.
It is said that the word "bankruptcy" came from Ponte Vecchio. When a merchant failed to pay his debt, the table ("banco") he used to sell his wares was broken ("rotto") by soldiers. Not having a table anymore ("bancorotto"), meant the seller was bankrupt.
4. The Wind and Rain Bridge
Chengyang Bridge. Photo: mazakii that genius [Flickr]
The wind and rain bridges were a type of bridge built by the Dong people (a minority ethnic group) in China. Because they live in the lowlands and the valleys with many rivers, the Dong people are excellent bridge builders. They are called "wind and rain" bridges because the covered bridges not only let people cross the river, but also protect them from the elements.
The Dong people don't use nails or rivets to build these bridges - instead, they dovetail all of the wood. The largest and most magnificent is the Chenyang Bridge, spanning the Linxi River near the Dong village of Maan. The bridge is about 100 years old, and like all wind and rain bridges, it was built without a single nail.
3. Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge. Photo: Dennis Gerbeckx [Flickr]
Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise. Photo: LemonSunrise [Flickr]
In 1855, engineer John Roebling started to design a bridge that at the time would be the longest suspension bridge in the world, with towers being the tallest structures in the Western Hemisphere: the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
Today, the Brooklyn Bridge is one of the main crossings of the East River and one of the most heavily trafficked bridges in the world. But in the late 19th century, it took Roebling more than 14 years to convince the city to build the bridge.
After he got approval, Roebling was surveying a site when his foot was crushed by a ferry. Three weeks before the scheduled groundbreaking, he died of tetanus. His son, an engineer named Washington Roebling took over the project.
In 1872, while working on caissons to set the foundation for the towers, Washington fell ill with caisson disease (a decompression sickness commonly known as "the bends") that left him barely able to see, talk, or write. His wife, Emily Warren Roebling, rose to the occasion - she learned engineering on the fly and for nine years went to the job site to deliver her husband's directions. Washington himself was said to watch the construction from his room through a binocular.
When the Brooklyn Bridge was opened, Emily was honored with the first ride over the bridge. She held a rooster, a symbol of victory, in her lap. Washington himself rarely visited the bridge till his death in 1926.
One interesting note about the Brooklyn Bridge: it stood fast while other bridges built around the same time had crumbled. Engineers credit Roebling for designing a bridge and truss system six times as strong as he thought it needed to be!
2. Tower Bridge
Tower Bridge at twilight. Photo: Diliff [wikipedia]
Tower Bridge at night. Photo: Andreas L [Flickr]
It's funny to think about ancient traffic jams, but that was why the Tower Bridge in London, England was built. By the end of the 19th century, the development of the eastern part of London caused such a load on the London Bridge that the city decided to build a new bridge.
Construction of the Tower Bridge started in 1886, led by architect Sir Horace Jones and engineer Sir John Wolfe Barry. The design was a bascule (draw) bridge with two towers built on piers, so the bridge wouldn't interefere with the port facilities nearby.
A year after construction was started, Jones died and his replacement, George D. Stevenson along with Barry decided to modify the design a little bit. Instead of the original brick facade design, the Tower Bridge had a more ornate Victorian Gothic style meant to harmonize it with the nearby Tower of London.
When the bridge opened in 1894, the public was aghast. H. Heathcote Statham, Fellow of the Royal Insitute of British Architect, wrote the familiar sentiment as thus: "The Tower Bridge … represents the vice of tawdriness and pretentiousness, and of falsification of the actual facts of the structure." (Source: Waddell, J., Bridge Engineering, Google Books)
But over time, people warmed up to the bridge. Indeed, the Tower Bridge grew to be one of London's most recognizable landmarks. Even one of its loudest critics, architectural critic Eric de Maré conceded: the British people "have grown fond of the old fraud … and we must admit that it has carried on its task with admirable regularity and efficiency." (Source: Dupré, J., Bridges; 1997 Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers)
1. Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge in HDR as the first big storm of the season hits San Francisco.
Photo: vgm8383 [Flickr]
Golden Gate Bridge at sunset. Photo: mischiru [Flickr]
Golden Gate Bridge at night. Photo: justinwyne [Flickr]
The Golden Gate Bridge is such an iconic symbol of San Francisco (and of suspension bridge in general) that it's hard to imagine a time when it didn't exist. But before it was built, most people thought it was an impossible task.
The Golden Gate Bridge faced tough opposition: the Department of War thought it would interfere with ship traffic and the Southern Pacific Railroad opposed it as competition to its ferry service. At first, even the public didn't like the bridge … because Strauss' original design was deemed too ugly! But Strauss finally won, and after 22-years of drumming up support, the bridge was built. (Photo: SF Museum)
Strauss insisted that the project take worker's safety seriously. It was the first major bridge project that used hard hats and a safety net. During the course of construction, 19 people were saved by the net to become members of the Halfway to Hell Club. (Source)
The color of the Golden Gate Bridge is actually not red - it's an orange vermillion called International Orange. The color was chosen specifically because it complements the bridge's natural surrounding yet enhances its visibility in the fog.
Construction took more than four years, at a cost of $27 million. The Golden Gate Bridge actually came in $1.3 million under budget (though 5 months late). For his work, Strauss got $1 million … and a lifetime bridge pass!
Friday, October 3, 2008
57% men, 64% women in Asia Pacific not satisfied with sex: Survey
As much as 57% of men and 64% of women in the Asia Pacific region are not very satisfied with their sex lives, reveals an Asia Pacific survey conducted in India and 12 other countries.
The AP SHOW survey reveals that in India discussion about sexual experience is still a major concern among couples. Sex ranks seventh out of the seventeen life priorities for men, while for women it ranks near the bottom at fourteen.
Family life is clearly the most important aspect of life for both men and women. Other life priorities include being a spouse, work or career, being a parent, financial well-being and physical health. The same life priorities appear on the top of women’s list.
The survey reveals that sexual satisfaction is strongly associated with satisfaction in overall physical health, and love and romance.
The key findings of the survey are:
· As much as 57% of men and 64% of women in the Asia Pacific region are not very satisfied with their sex lives
· Greater satisfaction with sex is strongly associated with greater satisfaction with life overall
· For men and women, greater satisfaction with erection hardness is linked to greater satisfaction with sex
· Satisfaction with erection hardness is associated with satisfaction with sex, love & romance, family life, and role as spouse/partner – for men and women
· Men with suboptimal erections have sex less often, are less satisfied with sex and other aspects of the sexual experience, and are less positive about life overall
Addressing the situation in India, Dr Rupin Shah (andrologist, Lilavati Hospital), said, “In India, the survey showed that adults who are less than satisfied with sex are less likely to be satisfied with life overall.”
“There is also a clear link between satisfaction with erection hardness and satisfaction with sex for people in India. I ask our physicians to reach out to their patients and help them realize that sexual health is as important as any other aspect of their overall health and wellness. Taboos about the subject should be set aside to ensure the health needs of men and women in the Asia Pacific are well met,” he said.
The AP SHOW survey confirms the importance of sexual health to overall wellness in life. The survey also reveals that sexual dissatisfaction is high among men and women,” said Dr Rosie King, sexual health physician, Sydney Centre for Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Sydney, Australia.
The survey, conducted among 3,957 sexually-active men and women (2,016 males and 1,941 females) from the general public aged between 25 and 74 years, was designed to gather information on attitudes towards sexual health in Asia Pacific, a region characterized by diverse cultural beliefs and practices.
The AP SHOW survey reveals that in India discussion about sexual experience is still a major concern among couples. Sex ranks seventh out of the seventeen life priorities for men, while for women it ranks near the bottom at fourteen.
Family life is clearly the most important aspect of life for both men and women. Other life priorities include being a spouse, work or career, being a parent, financial well-being and physical health. The same life priorities appear on the top of women’s list.
The survey reveals that sexual satisfaction is strongly associated with satisfaction in overall physical health, and love and romance.
The key findings of the survey are:
· As much as 57% of men and 64% of women in the Asia Pacific region are not very satisfied with their sex lives
· Greater satisfaction with sex is strongly associated with greater satisfaction with life overall
· For men and women, greater satisfaction with erection hardness is linked to greater satisfaction with sex
· Satisfaction with erection hardness is associated with satisfaction with sex, love & romance, family life, and role as spouse/partner – for men and women
· Men with suboptimal erections have sex less often, are less satisfied with sex and other aspects of the sexual experience, and are less positive about life overall
Addressing the situation in India, Dr Rupin Shah (andrologist, Lilavati Hospital), said, “In India, the survey showed that adults who are less than satisfied with sex are less likely to be satisfied with life overall.”
“There is also a clear link between satisfaction with erection hardness and satisfaction with sex for people in India. I ask our physicians to reach out to their patients and help them realize that sexual health is as important as any other aspect of their overall health and wellness. Taboos about the subject should be set aside to ensure the health needs of men and women in the Asia Pacific are well met,” he said.
The AP SHOW survey confirms the importance of sexual health to overall wellness in life. The survey also reveals that sexual dissatisfaction is high among men and women,” said Dr Rosie King, sexual health physician, Sydney Centre for Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Sydney, Australia.
The survey, conducted among 3,957 sexually-active men and women (2,016 males and 1,941 females) from the general public aged between 25 and 74 years, was designed to gather information on attitudes towards sexual health in Asia Pacific, a region characterized by diverse cultural beliefs and practices.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Will the Big Bang test end the world on Wednesday?
 |
LONDON: If critics are to be believed, the end of the universe will begin coming Wednesday when a Welsh miner's son launches the world's biggest scientific experiment to know how the universe was born.
The well-known Welshman physicist, Lyn Evans, dubbed Evans the Atom, will this week switch on a giant particle accelerator designed to unlock the secrets of the Big Bang.
On Wednesday, Evans will fire up the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile-long doughnut-shaped tunnel that will smash sub-atomic particles together at nearly the speed of light.
Built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the collider lies beneath the French-Swiss border, near the institution's headquarters in Geneva, at depths ranging from 170 feet to 600 feet.
The aim of the 4.4 billion-pound (over $7.7 billion) experiment is to recreate the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang - the birth of the universe - and provide vital clues to the building blocks of life.
It will track the spray of particles thrown out by collisions in a search for the elusive Higgs Boson, a theoretical entity that supposedly lends weight, or mass, to the elementary particles. So important is this mysterious substance that it has been called the "God Particle".
Scientists also hope to shed some light on the invisible material that exists between particles - dubbed "dark matter" as no one knows what it really is - which make up most of the universe.
But a handful of scientists believe that the experiment could create a shower of unstable black holes that could "eat" the planet from within, and they are launching last-ditch efforts to halt it in the courts.
One of them, Otto Rossler, a retired German chemist, said he feared the experiment may create a devastating quasar - a mass of energy fuelled by black holes - inside the earth. Jets emanating from it would grow and catastrophes such as earthquakes and tsunamis would occur at the points they emerged from the earth.
"The weather will change completely, wiping out life, and very soon the whole planet will be eaten in a magnificent scenario - if you could watch it from the moon. A Biblical Armageddon. Even cloud and fire will form, as it says in the Bible."
He said that attempts were still being made in the European Court of Human Rights to halt the experiment on the grounds that it violated the right to life. The court has, however, already rejected calls for a temporary delay in the project.
Walter Wagner, an American scientist who has been warning about the dangers of particle accelerators for 20 years, is awaiting a ruling on a lawsuit he filed a fortnight ago in his home state of Hawaii.
Evans, however, is dismissive of the "doom-mongers".
"There are thousands of scientists around the world who have been preparing this machine and they know what they are talking about, unlike these guys," he is quoted as saying in the Daily Mail.
The well-known Welshman physicist, Lyn Evans, dubbed Evans the Atom, will this week switch on a giant particle accelerator designed to unlock the secrets of the Big Bang.
On Wednesday, Evans will fire up the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile-long doughnut-shaped tunnel that will smash sub-atomic particles together at nearly the speed of light.
Built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the collider lies beneath the French-Swiss border, near the institution's headquarters in Geneva, at depths ranging from 170 feet to 600 feet.
The aim of the 4.4 billion-pound (over $7.7 billion) experiment is to recreate the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang - the birth of the universe - and provide vital clues to the building blocks of life.
It will track the spray of particles thrown out by collisions in a search for the elusive Higgs Boson, a theoretical entity that supposedly lends weight, or mass, to the elementary particles. So important is this mysterious substance that it has been called the "God Particle".
Scientists also hope to shed some light on the invisible material that exists between particles - dubbed "dark matter" as no one knows what it really is - which make up most of the universe.
But a handful of scientists believe that the experiment could create a shower of unstable black holes that could "eat" the planet from within, and they are launching last-ditch efforts to halt it in the courts.
One of them, Otto Rossler, a retired German chemist, said he feared the experiment may create a devastating quasar - a mass of energy fuelled by black holes - inside the earth. Jets emanating from it would grow and catastrophes such as earthquakes and tsunamis would occur at the points they emerged from the earth.
"The weather will change completely, wiping out life, and very soon the whole planet will be eaten in a magnificent scenario - if you could watch it from the moon. A Biblical Armageddon. Even cloud and fire will form, as it says in the Bible."
He said that attempts were still being made in the European Court of Human Rights to halt the experiment on the grounds that it violated the right to life. The court has, however, already rejected calls for a temporary delay in the project.
Walter Wagner, an American scientist who has been warning about the dangers of particle accelerators for 20 years, is awaiting a ruling on a lawsuit he filed a fortnight ago in his home state of Hawaii.
Evans, however, is dismissive of the "doom-mongers".
"There are thousands of scientists around the world who have been preparing this machine and they know what they are talking about, unlike these guys," he is quoted as saying in the Daily Mail.
200 Indian scientists line up for Big Bang effort
When the 27-km long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator, goes live on Wednesday in the Alps along the Swiss-French border, it will kick off one of the largest man-made experiments in history. Interestingly, it’s not just a massive science experiment being conducted by CERN, a French acronym for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, but also one of the biggest IT projects. India's contribution to the $10-billion effort in search of the universe’s missing matter by smashing particles like during the Big Bang is equally impressive. Around 200 of the 2,000 scientists doing the experiment are from India. The entire system comprising 1,232 cryo magnets, each weighing about 32 tonne, is sitting on precision motion positioning systems developed, among other places, at the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore, by the Electronics Corporation of India. Indian institutes like Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, RRCAT, Indore, Benares Hindu University and varsities of Delhi, Jaipur, Punjab have contributed significantly to the experiment and will also be involved in analysing the collision debris.Says Amit Roy, director of Delhi-based Inter-University Accelerator Centre (earlier called Nuclear Science Centre): “About 200 scientists involved in the experiment are of Indian origin. “ “India has also been involved in supplying material to build the tunnel and several Indians have played a key role in the whole project,” Mr Royadded. The monetary contribution by India is $25 million. The prominent Indians who are part of the project include Atul Gurtu of TIFR, an expert on particle colliders, Vikas Sinha of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, who created a chip to process signals, and Vinod Chauhan employed by CERN to lead the group which tested the magnets. Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology director Vinod Chandra Sahni says: “No collisions will take place today. September 10 simply marks the launch wherein two beams will be sent in the tunnel, one clockwise and the other anti-clockwise. The particle smashing at close to speed of light (about 300,000 km per second) will start on October 21. Some particles will collide, triggering new particles that could help scientists understand the universe better.” The tunnel, buried 100 metres underground, is lined with sensors and 1,600 superconducting magnets across eight sectors, which are held at an operating temperature of 271 degrees below zero — colder than outer space. The LHC accelerator, which is accurate to a nanosecond, will be used to slam particles into each other to try to recreate the conditions at the beginning of time — as in the Big Bang. Data from the collision, about 15 petabytes (1 petabyte is quadrillion bytes or 1,000 terabytes) a year will be studied around the world by some 100,000 computers across 50 countries. Within a year, the particle accelerator’s experiments will have spewed enough data to fill a pile of compact discs 12 miles high. India is part of the world-wide computational grid that will help analyse this data. But the massive experiment is not without its share of controversy. Cynics believe that all the particle smashing will create a massive black hole, sucking life out of earth, if things don’t follow the planned script. However, Mr Roy adds: “The scientific community the world over is eagerly looking at the experiment. The claims of this experiment turning out to be a disaster are rather exaggerated and based on wrong calculations.” Brusing aside fears of the experiment going wrong, geeks at CERN believe that they are going to find the so-called God-like particle dubbed Higgs Boson, which will offer clues about dark matter and other missing links of physics. This, in turn, will accelerate our own understanding of life. If they don’t find that, they still hope to lay their hands on something exciting and worthwhile out of the tunnel. Much like one of CERN’s alumni, Tim Berners-Lee, stumbled upon the internet and invented the first web browser in 1989 to initially help physicists worldwide to swap notes!
var imgid = '3465596';var capt = '(FILE) Picutre taken 22 March 2007 shows the magnet core of the world\'s largest superconducting solenoid magnet (CMS, Compact Muon Solenoid) near Geneva.
(Source: Economic Times)
var imgid = '3465596';var capt = '(FILE) Picutre taken 22 March 2007 shows the magnet core of the world\'s largest superconducting solenoid magnet (CMS, Compact Muon Solenoid) near Geneva.
(Source: Economic Times)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
