The Express Tribune hi five - February 28

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Your Proofness: Dilaira Dubash Master Storyteller: Hurmat Majid Creativity Analysts: Jamal Khurshid, Essa Malik, Talha Ahmed Khan, Mohsin Alam, Maryam Rashid, Hira Fareed, Nabeel Khan, Sobia Khan and Umar Waqas

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 28, 2016

Hi light

2 Over the years a large bulk of good music has come from strong female artists such as Christina Aguilera and Whitney Houston. These women have made waves in the industry for a long time; in fact they are even considered legends in their own rights. But this week, we have brought to you the success stories of all the glittery ladies ruling the pop music scene at the moment.

One On ne of o the most recognisable figures in contemporary music, Beyoncé rose to fame as th he ce e the central member of pop-R&B group Destiny’s Child before embarking on a multiplatin n platinum, record-breaking solo career in 2001. Booming record sales, Grammy awards, movie e roles and marriage to rapper/CEO Jay-Z combined to heighten her profile in the 20 000 00ss Billboard named her female artist of the decade, while the RIAA acknowledged 2000s. that th at, tthrough 64 gold and platinum certifications, she was the decade’s top-selling artist. that, O On ce e sshe released her fifth solo album in 2013, it was evident that the singer/songwriter/ Once danc ncce wasn’t merely an entertainer but a progressive artist as well. dancer

Within a few short years, Demi Lovato went from a Disney starlet to a pop star with many hit singles e es to her credit, a judge position on the US version of Simon Cowell’s popular talent search show The X Fa act c orrr,, and an nd a spokesperson spok sp okes ok esp p for mental-health issues. Born in 1992 in Dallas, Texas, she was raised in a Factor, hous seh e ol old d thatt includ ng household included her mother and two sisters, the youngest of whom launched her own acting ccareer ca re eer iin n 20 008 0 . Demi Dem started out as a child actress, starring as a cast regular on Barney and Friendss 2008. be efo fore e ffin indi ding h er w a onto the Disney Channel with a brief role in As the Bell Rings. before finding her way L ova vato t ’s deb ebut a lb bu Don’t Forget, featuring songs co-written by the Jonas Brothers, was released ed d Lovato’s debut album,

by H olly ol l wo w od Recor ord d several months after the premiere of Camp Rock, a 2008 Disney Channel movie oviie Hollywood Records starri ing g Lovato o and tthe Jonas siblings. Don’t Forget debuted at number two, confirming Lovato’s starring status as a star iin n he n’. her own right, and was followed in 2009 by the chart-topping ‘Here We Go Again’.

Me ean anwh w ile, e, Lovato Lov ovat ato ccontinued to act, appearing in a popular sequel to Camp Rock and starring in her at err Meanwhile, ow wn Di D sney ser e ie es So o try tr own Disney series Sonny with a Chance. The 2011 album Unbroken made waves in the music industry an nd her latest late t stt alb lbum Confident debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 in 2015, with first-week ek and album sa ale less of o 98, 8 00 000 0 un unit is sales 98,000 units.

Taylor Swift is the rarest of pop phenomenon: a superstar who managed to completely cross over from country to the mainstream. Other singers performed similar moves — notably Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, who both became enduring mainstream icons based on their ’70s work — but Swift shed her country roots like they were a second skin. This was a necessary molting to reveal she was perhaps the sharpest, savviest, populist singer/ songwriter of her generation, one who could harness the ambiance and turn it personal and, just as impressively, perform the reverse. These skills were evident in her earliest hits, especially the neo-tribute ‘Tim McGraw’, but her second album, 2008’s Fearless, showcased a songwriter discovering who she was and, in the process, finding a mass audience. Fearless wound up having considerable legs not only in the US, where it racked up six platinum singles on the strength of the Top 10 hits ‘Love Story’ and ‘You Belong with Me,’ but throughout the world, performing particularly well in the UK, Canada and Australia. Speak Now, delivered almost two years later in the autumn of 2010, consolidated that success and Swift moved into the stratosphere of superstardom, with her popularity only increasing on 2012’s Red and 2014’s 1989, a pair of records that found her moving assuredly from country into a pop realm where she already belonged.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 28, 2016

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Hi light

The glamourously gaudy, self-made post-modern diva, stitched together from elements of Madonna, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, Lady Gaga was the first true millennial superstar. Making proper use of the Internet, Gaga generated countless minisensations through her style, videos and music, cultivating a devoted audience she dubbed ‘Little Monsters’. But it wasn’t just a cult that turned her 2008 manifesto The Fame into a self-fulfilling prophecy: Gaga crossed over into the mainstream, ushering out one pop epoch and kick-starting a new one. She quickly made turn-of-the-century stars such as Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears seem old-fashioned, which is quite a trick for any artist to pull off, specialised in repurposing the past (particularly the ’80s) for present use, creating sustainable pop for a digital world.

When the UK press began dubbing Adele ‘the next Amy Winehouse’ in late 2007, the hype didn’t touch upon the heavy singer/songwriter influence found in the Londoner’s music. Influenced by Roberta Flack and Suzanne Vega as much as Jill Scott, Adele soon became a phenomenon in her own right; her second album, 21, eventually sold an estimated 30 million copies worldwide, making her one of the few sales successes in an age of digital streaming.

The album proved to be both a critical and commercial success, becoming one of the longest-running number one albums in history and spending over 18 weeks at the top spot. The glow of 21’s success was dimmed somewhat when Adele was forced to cancel her tour after suffering a hemorrhage on her vocal chords. She underwent surgery for the hemorrhage in November of 2011. Both Adele and 21 received many end-of-year honuors, and in February 2012, as album sales began to creep closer to 10 million copies, she won six major Grammy awards.

In October 2012, Adele announced that she had recorded the theme to the 23rd Bond film Skyfall. By early 2013, 21 had registered sales of over 25 million copies.

Although she promised she was in the early stages of creating her third album, 2013 and 2014 came and went without fresh material. In the summer of 2015, reports of an imminent third album started to surface and in October, the rumours were confirmed by Adele and her label. Preceded by the single ‘Hello’ — a single that debuted at number one in both the UK and US, becoming the first song to sell over a million downloads in the first week of release — 25 debuted worldwide in late November 2015.

Design by Hira Fareed What would you like to see in Hi Five?

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

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 28, 2016

Trivia

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Q: What did the plant do in math class?

A: It grew square roots Q: What kind of animal should you never play cards with?

A: A cheetah Q: Why do bananas have to put on sunscreen before they go to the beach?

1. Love Yourself Justin Bieber

5. My House Flo Rida

2. Stressed Out Twenty One Pilots

6. Hello Adele

3. Sorry Justin Bieber

7. Pillowtalk Zayn

4. Work Rihanna featuring Drake

8. Me, Myself & I G-Eazy x Bebe Rexha

A: Because they might peel Q: Which flower talks the most?

A: Tulips, of course, because they have two lips.

Q: What did the mushroom say to the fungus?

A: You’re a fun guy [fungi].

9. Roses The Chainsmokers featuring Rozes 10. Stitches Shawn Mendes

Q: What type of music are balloons scared of?

A: Pop music SOURCE: BILLBOARD.COM

MOVIE EDIT TOUCH This one shows that a Windows Phone at least has the potential to match Android and iOS in the app stakes. It’s a generously featured video editor that works much like iMovie, allowing you to make frame-by-frame edits, join clips up with neat transitions, add titles and soundtracks and export the results as HD movies. It’s fast, well behaved and powerful.

REPLAY Designed for Instagrammers, but suitable for anyone with pictures and videos sloshing about on their iOS device, Replay is about creating videos — fast. You decide on a selection, pick a theme and you have an instant masterpiece.You can make a few tweaks, such as style, pace, font, filters, cuts etcetra. For the most part though, this is all about letting an app take the strain, turning a pile of photos into a promo, or random baby videos into something guaranteed to make everyone blub.

CLIPS If you want a bit more control over your iPhone videos, but don’t fancy delving into the likes of iMovie, Clips is where it’s at. After importing videos and optionally selecting background music, you end up in the edit screen. You rearrange clips by dragging them up or down, and trim them using grab handles.

Split, speed, crop and dissolve commands are a swipe or tap away, and completed movies can be shared or re-edited. It’s just about perfect, which is why it’s hugely annoying that Google has bought out the developer and put its apps on life support. Grab them all before February 2016, iOS users.

ADOBE PREMIERE CLIP With Premiere’s pedigree on the desktop, it’s a bit odd to see the name used on mobile for such a comparatively simple product. But Premiere Clip gives you a straightforward means of arranging clips and exporting the result. It’s designed for speed, so it isn’t particularly feature-rich, but is a decent download for anyone heavily immersed in Creative Cloud — or Android owners wanting something quick, simple and free.

SPLICE Given its impressive feature-set, you might sit down with Splice and wonder what the catch is. This entirely free (and ad-free) app enables you to import and arrange your clips, each of which can be individually edited. You can add text, transitions and filters, speed can be adjusted and there are three audio tracks (including one for voiceovers). Destructive trimming within clip edits is the only real niggle, but otherwise Splice is great for quickly editing movies on your iPhone.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 28, 2016

Get your weekly dose of unusual and funny news from across the globe!

Topsy-turvy Building and designing a new house of your own might seem like quite an experience, and for a group of architects in Taiwan it certainly was.

On commission from the Culture Department, they designed and built an American-style family house with one crucial difference: the home and everything in it — from the car to the appliances to the toys on the floor — are upside down. The colourful home has three floors, a master bedroom and bath and a garage. There is a generous 3,230 square feet of ceiling — or floor space. The car in the garage is attached to the ceiling, an outdoor staircase at ground level leads to the third-floor living room and its ceiling furniture, and the appliances are real, with working lights throughout. The overhead fireplace, though, is an LCD screen of a cosy fire. The designers paid close attention to details: the pasta on the dinner table hangs vertically as do the bathroom towels, and a computer in the study has yellow sticky notes attached. The project is on display at Huashan Creative Park in Taipei, a site that was once a Japanese plum wine factory but has been turned into an arty warehouse with hip restaurants and a theatre showing independent films. MIRROR.CO.UK

Happy mixups Lottery mixups often don’t end well. The tales of people who thought they won but didn’t can be downright heartbreaking. Not this time, though. You can count Marjorie Tyrie of Kent, England, among the happy mistakes. She thought she and her husband had won a mere 1,000 pounds in the National Lottery. During a recent phone call with the Lottery, however, she discovered she had won 1 million pounds. It took some convincing from the agent that she indeed was the winner of an amount with six zeros. “No, it can’t be a million. That means I’m a millionaire,” she told the agent. Tyrie said the windfall will enable her husband, Alan, “to hang up his welder’s mask and take it a bit easier for a while.” She said, “We are going to take our time planning our future.

It’s going to be a really exciting time and we want to make sure that we do all the things we always dreamed of and still have plenty left over to help our two boys and give us a good retirement. This year may have started a little rocky but my gosh, it soon picked up!” HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

World wide weird

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A hairy affair

Ortansa Pascariu, 65, made a garment using her own hair gathered after combing it for more than 20 years. She lives in the small village of Stauceni in the north-eastern side of the country where tradition has it that a woman should never throw away lost hair. So when she decided she wanted to have some good luck, she started to faithfully save it by putting it aside in a bag, and after 20 years started to wonder what she might do with it. After much pondering, eventually she decided to see if she could make it into something, and as a result is now the proud owner of a human hair vest. She said, “I heard from elderly friends that women should not throw their lost hair away after combing. They need to keep it. If not, the elderly say, it is as if you are throwing away your beauty.” Believing what she was told, she said, “I started gathering my hair when I was 40 and by the age of 60 I had managed to gather one kg, which was as much as I needed for a vest. This is hair lost during combing. I used to grow it very long. I had long strands that went from my head to my hips. I made each thread I used in knitting from two hair strands so it is more resistant. I finished the vest in a week. It was strange, but also very pleasant to knit something in your own hair.” Her husband Vasile Pascariu said, “I’ve touched it and it’s like some kind of soft wool. I’m very proud of what she managed to do. It’s really complicated.” After keeping the vest for five years, she then gave it as a present to the local ethnographic museum where it is currently kept. EXPRESS.CO.UK

Star of the show Lego has unveiled its biggest structure in the UK ever — a scale model of the Death Star weapon from the 1977 film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The miniture science fiction battlestation contains an astonishing 650,000 individual bricks and will be the centrepiece a new Star Wars exhibition Legoland Windsor, opening next month. Weighing 860kg, the it took a team of 15 master builders three months to complete model. It depicts the iconic scene at the end of the film, in which 16 Rebel Alliance ships attack the moon-sized space station in an attempt to destroy it. TELEGRAPH.UK

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 28, 2016

Reading corner

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Most of us fantasise about having these superpowers while we play video games, but here is an exact description of what it would actually be like to have these really cool moves.

A bionic arm A bionic arm would be great, wouldn’t it? A giant, oversized, robo-appendage for grappling, swinging and clobbering wrong-doers in the face with all the force of a quickly-swung car engine.

It’d be like being a mad, mechanical, turbo-SpiderMan. Except that it wouldn’t.

It would be horrendous.

First, think of the logistics of having a giant slab of iron and electronics grafted to your shoulder. If the infection and perpetual agony of having wires and cables screwed into your central nervous system didn’t get you, the sheer weight of the thing would.

Supersonic speed It must have made you think along the lines of: ’Ooh, magic shoes that increase my acceleration and top speed to a whole new level. They are great stuff, so let’s take them for a spin and see how far I can get in 30 seconds. I bet I can do at least a couple of miles.’ But you know what? You wouldn’t.

You’d probably last about half that time before your body came apart and scattered itself behind you in a messy line of splatter and meat. Because, again, your body is just not designed to work at that kind of capacity. In a very short period of time, your joints would be resolutely knackered, bone grinding against cartilage fast enough to light a small camp fire. Your muscles would be in agony due to the instant build-up of lactic acid, and unless you were particularly well armoured the air you passed through would be like sandpaper against your skin.

Teleportation Fighters would go like: ‘Hey, I’m over here!’, ‘No, too slow, now I’m over here!’, ‘Ha! Now I’m over here, and there, and everywhere. Imagine a cheeky, irritating scamp teleportation would make you. Except that once again, but for slightly different reasons this time, it wouldn’t make you that at all. Because theoretically, teleportation doesn’t move you around. If we’re going to subscribe to the general gist of Star Trek transporter technology (and the vague method agreed upon by actual science), teleportation doesn’t move you through space as much as it rips you apart, atom by atom, and rebuilds a replica somewhere else. Effectively, you’re killing and cloning yourself each and every time you jump.

Super mushrooms Mario’s mushroominfused growth-spurts seem, on the surface, like the most innocent and benevolent of cartoon superpowers.

Eat an oversized fungus, double in size, become hardier and more resilient. Imagine the actual physical process of rapid body expansion. Imagine all your muscles and bones exploding in size over the space of a second, crunching, stretching and jostling for space within your rapidly over-encumbered physicality. Imagine your skin stretching and contorting in order to accommodate your newfound internal mass. And beyond that, imagine the additional strain put upon your internal organs such as, lungs, heart, liver and kidneys, which are suddenly working quadruple-time to sustain your instantaneous bulk.

SOURCE: GAMESRADAR.COM

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 28, 2016

Activity corner

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Test your problem solving skills by completing this puzzle in the least possible time.

Key to last week’s puzzle.

Help Colin get over Kathrine number 19 by finding all the words below in the puzzle.

ANAGRAM ABUNDANCE HEARTBROKEN DUMPED SMITHEREENS

PRODIGY DISCOVERY LANGUAGE STUDIES FINALLY

DRIVE TRIP JOB TOWN INTERVIEW

About the book: Colin has a thing about girls named Kathrine. The only problem is, it never quite works out the way he expects it to. When the 19th Kathrine lets him go, he decides to get over it by taking a roadtrip that changes his life forever.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 28, 2016

Anyone who is familiar with the Internet knows about Leo’s Oscar misfortunes.

Here are 11 reasons why he should finally get his hand on the golden lady tonight.

1.

It has been a long time coming.

2.

We want to see the Internet’s reaction, almost more than Leo’s reaction when it happens.

3.

The fact that he truly is a brilliant actor who does justice to all his roles.

4.

He’s been a good sport about the whole thing.

5.

The face he made at the Golden Globes when Lady Gaga brushed past him already warrants one.

6.

If not that, his reaction when it was shown to him on tape should get him one of those golden ladies.

7.

He should get one because all of us want to hear his Oscar speech.

8.

He has survived the largest number of memes over the internet.

9.

When Lionel Richie can get an Oscar, so can Leo.

10. He’s still drop dead gorgeous. If not more handsome than he was in the past.

11. Lastly, Leonardo DiCaprio shold get an Oscar because he deserves it for his brilliant performance in The Reverent.

1. The worrier From class notes to exams to hangouts, this one friend takes it upon themselves to lift the weight of the world upon their shoulders. No matter how hard we try we just can’t get them to relax. But then, on the up side, these friends are the reason most of us get stuff done before time.

2. The warrior This person is always angry, they are the ones other friends need to hold back just to prevent them from getting into a fight. They are fiercely protective of their friends and do not hesitate to show that. Even though their anger management issues scare us, we love them for caring so much about us.

3. The geek This friend is into comics, Sci-Fi movies, science and even math. They are fiercely competitive when it comes to class scores and are proud of it. Even though they may not be cool kids they are always the ones we run to when it comes to confirming facts and solving complicated math problems.

4. The security chief These friends responsible for the cancellation of most of our plans because ‘it’s just too dangerous’. Be it going out too late at night or some mildly crowded place, if they don’t approve, the gang has to cancel. In spite of momentary hatred towards them because they don’t let us have fun, we do love them for keeping us all out of trouble.

5. The planner Outings, exam schedules, group study sessions or pajama parties, this one friend is solely responsible for all plans. From coming up with the idea to finding a date/time/venue that suits everyone. They are the ones who keep reminding us all to show up and what to bring along and if it wasn’t for these friends, we’d all be quite lost.

6. The grump This one friend is always grumpy. They live in a constant state of being mad at the world. They make us wonder why we even hang out with that weirdo.

But, if it weren’t for them, your gang would be oh-so-boring.

7. The baby Every group has this one person, through mutual understanding they all treat him/her like a baby. No matter how old they get, someone in the gang would always be opening the soda bottle for them and sitting them down to summarise class notes. The whole group just treats this one friend as their responsibility.

8. The no show This one friend who is always overly enthusiastic while making plans, only to not show up when it’s happening. They always have farfetched excuses and everyone knows it’s a pack of lies. But all of us still let them off the hook, even after telling them we won’t.