The Express Tribune hi five - December 9

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ions? the illus t o p s u Can yo PAGE 2 ing! are mov s e r u t ic ep Ahh! Th PAGE 3 late paper p n w o r u Make yo GE 4 A mask! P have u don’t E 6 o y e p o G Ih obia! PA cheroph

Optical illusions

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 9, 2012

Hi light

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Optical illusions This week we look at some cool optical illusions! On Page 2, we look at some simple optical illusions. Do they look like normal pictures? Look harder! Did you look at the cover and see the background move? No, we haven’t invented magic paper! These are called peripheral drift illusions. These are just normal pictures that have been created in a way that they fool your eyes and brain. The pictures aren’t really moving, your mind just thinks they are! Check out the others on Page 3!

Caution:

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Some of the pictures in this issue can cause dizziness. If you start feeling unwell, immediately cover one eye with your hand and then leave the page.

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appears that this lady has mastered the art of levitabuildings are somewhere in Egypt. Can you tell 1 Ittion...

3 These or has she? which building is in front?

move your nose towards the dot and you will 5 Slowly notice the magic!

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at the black light bulb for at least 30 seconds. Then 6 Stare immediately stare at a white wall or paper. You should

Do you see the man? Try covering the right side of his face, you will end up with some pretty confusing results.

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This looks like a normal picture... No wait! Whats wrong with their legs!

see a glowing light bulb!

it’s an upside7 Look, down cat! But do you see something else?

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 9, 2012

Hi Light

This picture immediately draws you inside it, and at the same time produces a feeling you’re flying right trough the tunnel!

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Can you see the waves?

This checkered picture consists of squares but appears to wave.

Can you see the square in the middle moving?

The circle will jump to life as soon as you tilt your head, and move your eyes across the image!

Credits: WWW.MOILLUSIONS.COM WWW.RITSUMEI.AC.JP/~AKITAOKA/INDEX-E.HTML

What would you like to see in Hi Five?

Send an email to hifive@tribune.com.pk and let us know!

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 9, 2012

4 How to make a cat mask from a paper plate!

Ever wonder what you can do with a disposable paper plate? It can actually become quite the funky mask for your next theater performance. All you need are some art supplies and a lot of imagination!

ToffeeTV’s Ayesha Mehmood teaches you how to make a cat mask from a disposable paper plate!

: d e d e e n s e i l p Sup • One complete paper plate • One paper plate with the corners cut off (for the eyes and ears) • Paint brushes, paint and some water • Scissor • Glue stick • 2 Rubber bands • A pencil (for markings) • Pipe cleaners, yarn or string (for the nose) • Single hole punching machine

First, turn the complete paper plate and, using the pencil, draw the eye sockets, eyebrows and nose. You may also want to pencil three dots on each side of the nose, to guide you when you have to put in the whiskers.

Next, use the second plate you have, and cut out the ears and the eyes.

You can make the pupils of the eyes in whatever shape you want your cat to look.

You will need to use the scissor and pinch out small holes in the eyes as well as the eye sockets, so you can see through them. Be sure and ask an adult to supervise when you are working with the scissors.

You can paint the face of the color around your outlines so the shape begins to appear, as in Step 3.

Next, you can use the hole punch or a pencil to pierce through the three dots on each side of the nose. You can twirl pipe-cleaners or string and push them through these small piercings to act like whiskers. If you don’t find pipe-cleaners and want the strings to be more firm, try dipping the string or yarn in some glue. Be sure and fasten the pipe-cleaners, string or yarn from the back with tape or glue, so they remain firm.

Finally, you need to use a single hole punching machine, or a pencil, to poke two holes across the side of the plate (which is now your face), and attach rubber bands through them, as in Step 4 Be creative with this little cat that you have just made and enjoy your next theatrical performance of Meri Billi!

Want to watch other fun activities like this? Log onto toffeetv.com!

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 9, 2012

World wide weird Get your weekly dose of the unusual and funny from across the globe!

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City birds smoke out parasites

Nuke the moon

Birds are lining their nests with cigarette butts to repel pests and keep themselves warm, according to research.

Wild birds have long protected their nests from mite invasion by importing chemicalemitting plants. But now birds living in cities seem to have adapted similar behaviour, filling their nests with up to 48 cigarette butts to make use of the repellent properties of tobacco.

The nicotine and other chemicals in discarded filters act as a natural pesticide that repels parasitic mites. At the same time, the cellulose butts provide useful nest insulation.

Scientists in Mexico City studied nests of house sparrows and house finches that each contained, on average, about 10 used cigarette butts.

Birds who stored larger numbers of butts saw their nests significantly less infested by mites.

Dr Constantino Macias Garcia, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and his team wrote in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters: “This novel behaviour observed in urban birds fulfils one of the three conditions necessary to be regarded as self-medication: it is detrimental to parasites.” SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

You could easily skip by it in an archive search: a project titled “A Study of Lunar Research Flights.” Its nickname is even more low-brow: “Project A-119.”

But the reality was much more explosive.

It was a top-secret plan, developed by the US Air Force, to look at the possibility of detonating a nuclear device on the moon.

It was hatched in 1958 — a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a nuclear arms race that would last decades and drive the two superpowers to the verge of nuclear war. The Soviets had also just launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first satellite. The US was falling behind in the space race, and needed a big splash.

“People were worried very much by (first human in space Soviet cosmonaut Yuri) Gagarin and Sputnik and the very great accomplishments of the Soviet Union in those days, and in comparison, the United States was feared to be looking puny. So this was a concept to sort of reassure people that the United States could maintain a mutually-assured deterrence, and therefore avoid any huge conflagration on the Earth,” said physicist Leonard Reiffel, who led the project.

The basic plan, Reiffel explained, was for an intercontinental ballistic missile to be launched from an undisclosed location, travel some 240,000 miles to the moon, and detonate on impact. Various news reports since 1958 have said project leaders considered using an atom bomb the same size as “Little Boy,” the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, near the end of World War II. Reiffel had some brilliant minds on his team. One of them was an up-and-coming graduate student named Carl Sagan. Sagan went on to become one of the world’s most renowned astronomers, creating the book and popular TV series Cosmos.

But after working on the moon program, Reiffel said, Sagan violated security when he mentioned the stillclassified project on a job application. “He did formally break the classification status of the project”, Reiffel said of Sagan, who subsequently died in 1996.

By 1959, Project A-119 was drawing more concern than excitement. “We didn’t want to clutter up the natural radioactivities of the moon with additional bits of radioactivity from the Earth,” Reiffel said.

The project was abandoned. “Project planners also weren’t sure of the reliability of the weapons, and feared the public backlash in the US would be significant,” Reiffel said. SOURCE:: SECURITY.BLOGS.CNN.COM

Putting two paws on the wheel Not only will these dogs give you a paw shake at home but they will also demonstrate a few tricks on the road by maneuvering the car through traffic.

Yes, you heard that right. A New Zealand animal welfare group has spent eight weeks teaching three of its shelter dogs a very handy skill — driving.

The Auckland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) says it wanted to show how intelligent dogs were to encourage more people to adopt them. They selected three dogs from a group of seven and gave them daily training exercises to familiarise themselves with the mechanics of driving.

After just eight weeks Porter, Monty and Ginny were put behind the wheels of an adapted Mini Cooper and reportedly managed to put it in gear, accelerate and steer.

So far, the dogs have been driving with the help of an assistant inside the car, but their next challenge is to drive solo on live television.

Auckland SPCA chief Christine Kalin said: “They will hop in, start the car, put it into gear, use the accelerator. It’s an off-road raceway track and at all times we have a remote capacity to stop the car should we need to.”

Ms Kalin described the three pooches as “highly adoptable”, adding: “They are very intelligent, but they aren’t any more special than any of the other SPCA dogs. Our dream would be throughout our major cities and across Australasia will be people will be proud of owning a rescue dog.” SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

Two peas in a pod Bao Lulin had no idea that the search for her mysterious double would lead to the discovery of an identical twin she never knew she had.

Lulin, who works as a waitress in Jiuyang, China, said that for over three years, customers repeatedly mistook her for someone else — a mysterious woman named Yanfei.

Lulin first realised she had a mysterious look-alike in June 2009, when four elderly women approached her, and one commented, “You have come back from Fujian Province?

Why didn’t you inform us?” Lulin, however, had never seen these women before.

In October, Lulin was again mistaken for Yanfei, but this time she seized the opportunity to question the person about Yanfei’s whereabouts. Armed with an address, she set out to find Yanfei.

Yang Yanfei, also of Jiuyang, was at home when she suddenly heard her mother-in-law shout, “Yanfei, come here now!” When she went outside she saw Lulin, a woman who looked almost exactly like her.

That wasn’t the only surprise. They also discovered that they were both adopted as babies and the reason they looked so similar was that they were identical twins separated at birth.

Moreover, they both got married in 2007, both their husbands have the same name, Bin, and their sons also look almost identical. That’s freaky! SOURCE: HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

Dream bot Like many Japanese, Kogoro Kurata grew up watching futuristic robots in movies and animation, wishing that he could bring them to life and pilot one himself. Unlike most other Japanese, he has actually done it.

His 4-tonne, 4-metre (13 feet) tall Kuratas robot is a grey behemoth with a built-in pilot’s seat and hand-held controller that allows an operator to flex its massive arms, move it up and down and drive it at a speed of up to 10 kph.

“The robots we saw in our generation were always big and always had people riding them, and I don’t think they have much meaning in the real world,” said Kurata, a 39-year-old artist. “But it really was my dream to ride in one of them, and I also think it’s one kind of Japanese culture. I kept thinking that it’s something that Japanese had to do,” he added.

The robot, which took two years to pull together from concept to construction, also comes with a range of customised options from paint scheme to cup holders.

It isn’t cheap. The sticker price for the most basic model alone is around 110 million yen (Rs125.7 million).

“By my building this, I hope that it’ll sort of be the trailblazer for people who can do more than myself to make different things,” he said. “They might be able to make a society that uses robots in a way I can’t even imagine. I expect more from the implications of building it than from the robot itself,” he added. REUTERS

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 9, 2012

Did you know?

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s n i g i r O d r o W Sabotage When someone deliberately destroys or breaks something, it is called sabotage. This word became known in Britain shortly before World War I. At that time there was a railway strike in France; in order to cause disruption, the railway workers loosened or removed the shoes (called sabots) that held the railway lines to the sleepers. Many people think this is where the word sabotage comes from but they are wrong. Sabotage existed as a French word long before this. In France, a sabot was also the name for a large, heavy wooden shoe made of a single piece of wood and worn by workers. The verb saboter (literally, to wear sabots) meant to clatter about in clogs and, figuratively, to do something badly. Sabotage was therefore a word used for clumsy workmanship. Soon the word evolved from defining bad workmanship to deliberate damage.

How to say 'It’s raining cats and dogs' in different languages!

Cool facts A flock of crows is known as a murder.

“Facebook Addiction Disorder” is a new mental disorder identified by Psychologists.

Arabic

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Kab Min ‘Ind el Rab

Afrikaans

:

Ou vrouens met knopkieries reen

Bulgarian

:

Vali kato iz vedro

Czech

:

Padaji trakare

Danish

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Det regner skomagerdrenge

May 29 is officially “Put a Pillow on Your Fridge Day”.

Dutch

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Het regent pijpestelen

Cherophobia is the fear of fun.

Estonian

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Sajab nagu oavarrest

Finnish

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Sataa kuin saavista kaataen

Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.

French

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Il pleut des grenouilles

German

:

Es regnet

Italian

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Piove a catinelle

Billy goats urinate on their own heads to smell more attractive to females.

Japanese

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Doshaburi de aru

An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.

Russian

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Lijot kak iz vedra

The average woman uses her height in lipstick every 5 years.

If you lift a kangaroo’s tail off the ground it can’t hop.

King Henry VIII slept with a gigantic axe beside him.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 9, 2012

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Fun & games

Want to be hi five’s artist of the week?

Send your drawing with your name and age to: hifive@tribune. com.pk

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 9, 2012

Start

Find your way through the maze

End

SOURCE: CLOUDFRONT.NET

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