The Express Tribune hi five - June 5 - 2016

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

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 2016

Hi light

2 Everyone likes a good riddle, something to keep the brain juices flowing. But how frustrating is it to stumble upon a mystery that refuses to be solved.

The world is full of many such anomalies and there are thousands of people out there that dedicate their whole lives to cracking them. This week we have brotht to you some titbits about some of the most baffling unsolved mysteries in the world.

The fabled island city, a world power in the 10th millennium that vanished overnight. Plato, the great philosopher, mentioned it in his story, that it attacked Athens, failed and then was sunk very soon after — but he claims it stood in front of the Pillars of Hercules, and we haven’t found much evidence of this supposed city in Earth’s geography.

Two places could’ve been Atlantis, namely the island of Santorini sunk by a volcano or Sicily, which at the time was very similar to the supposed Atlantis. But both of these places were nowhere near the Pillars.

A book created in the early 1400s is almost entirely composed of a language never before seen and never deciphered since. It comes with an array of colourful drawings of strange plant-like creatures and celestial diagrams, but the contents remain elusive with some theorising it might’ve been a book on early medieval medicine. However, due to the amount of star charts, some propose the book to have alien origins. Others believe it was a hoax which seems unlikely since the money and complexity required would’ve been unbelievably high You can find the pages floating around on the internet, but so far nobody has had much luck.

A pair of brother and sister appeared in the UK around the 12th Century. They turned up in a small village with completely green skin, speaking an indecipherable language and refusing to eat anything but bean pods. After a while they learned English and their skin lost its green tinge, claiming they’d followed a river of light, heard the sound of bells and then woke up outside the town of Woolpit. Theories claim the children to be of the fabled Hollow Earth, a parallel dimension or extraterrestrial abduction.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 2016

3

Hi light

An island off the southeastern Pacific Ocean housing the Rapa Nui people who lived over a 1,000 miles with no influence from outside society.

They carved a number of large Moai head sculptures (shown in picture), but they also left behind a series of wooden glyph tablets with an indecipherable language — because of their isolation, it is known to be one of the only independently formed written languages ever witnessed.

A series of three cipher texts rumoured to reveal the location of the biggest cache of treasures ever recorded in US history — thousands of pounds of gold and jewels. To this day only one of the ciphers was cracked with the US declaration of independence turning out to be the key, but it only revealed the county where the treasure lay — the Bedford County in Virginia.

Today, treasure hunters dig through the various hillsides, though it is considered illegal to do so.

A famous puzzle in the field of archaeology, this disc was discovered in 1908 in the Minoan palace of Phaistos. It’s made of a type of fired clay printed with mysterious symbols and hieroglyphics, believed to have been created around second millennium BC. Even though scholars came close to deciphering it, they believe it to be written in a form of ancient Crete called Linear A, but the problem is they still haven’t even decoded Linear A.

A man that kept showing up in history, known to consort with some of Europe’s most famous figures such as Casanova, Voltaire, King Lous XV and George Washington. Some say he was born in the early 1700s, always turning up to set up an alchemy laboratory. He is known to speak 12 languages, can play the violin, paint, has great wealth, and is never seen eating in public and usually sells recipes to remove wrinkles or dye hair. He’s been seen even up to the 21st Century and is always associated with secret societies. It’s certainly possible mankind might have discovered the key to immortality, and even likely they’d keep the secret to themselves simply not to incite chaos.

Design by Sobia Khan What would you like to see in Hi Five? Send an email to hifive@tribune.com.pk and let us know!

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 2016

4 As the name says, sa an electric scooter is a vehicle that runs with electric power. Unlike conventional scooters that run based on gas or oil, electric scoote scooters don’t require fuel to function. Even though it has been gaining popularity lately, it is not a new idea, the history of electric scooters date dates back to almost a century. The initial idea regarding electrically powered vehicles started shaping up in 1895. It was very evident that th electricity was one of the sources of powering motors which in turn convert electrical energy into motion. Since then, there have been numerous developments and electric scooters have adapted themselves to changing faces of technology and are preferred mode mod of personal transportation worldwide.

Unlike gas scooters, which have a complicated design and need fuel for functioning, electric scooters are relatively simple in design and power them themselves with an electric charge. They operate by linking a motor and battery. A motor is similar to the one that is used in a kick scoote scooter. One can control the speed and brakes through a switch that is attached to the handle bar. An electric scooter integrates a very strai straight forward design, comprising of battery, motor and bit of simple wiring. This simplicity factor makes the device really small in size and portable.

Being eco-friendly and not leaving a carbon footprint is one of the biggest benefits of electric scooters. They don’t Be burn fuel and pollute the environment by emitting dangerous fumes. Electric scooters are seen as very promising b alternatives to mainstream mode of transportation such as the ones that run using fuel. Since they utilise electricity for functioning, there is no dependency whatsoever on fuel when you use e-scooters. This also results in saving the fast-depleting natural resources, such as oil and gas. Taking advantage of the simple design of an electric scooter, it’s much easier to ride it than a conventional gas scooter. It’s certain that more and more people will switch to electrically powered vehicles in coming days and years; therefore, it can safely be assumed that electric powered vehicles are the future of personal transport.

SOURCE: ELECTRICSCOOTERSGUIDE.COM

By Nisma Chauhan Ramazan is probably the toughest month of the year for many, giving up on our sweet and sour treats bought from the nearest street shops certainly seems like a herculean task. Nevertheless, we succeed every year. But with this year’s scorching summers, the long fasting hours can take a toll on our health. Hence, staying hydrated and energised is key towards beating the heat and these simple tips can help you regain your strength to last an all-night cricket match.

We are often told to gulp down gallons of water at sehri to stay hydrated throughout the day. But little do we realise that we can’t store water like camels can. Too much water will only make us feel fuller and prevent us from eating healthy food to gain our energy. Perhaps, it can also make us feel nauseous. Thus, an ideal intake of water is 10 glasses throughout the day when not fasting. Drinking a glass before going to sleep and then immediately after waking up for sehri can further help you feel fresh.

Summer is not only special because of the holidays but also because of the juicy fruits it has in store for us. From peaches, to apricots to mangoes, all of the summer fruit offerings are packed with nutrition and help us survive the heat. Traditionally, we only have a bowl of fruit chaat at iftaar limiting the energy these fruits can provide us with, but having fruits during sehri is more effective, leaving us with enough vitamin throughout the day. If possible, go for fruit and vegetable juices as well.

This can be quite tricky but it most certainly doesn’t require you to give up on all your candies. Instead, lowering your sugar intake will serve the purpose. Sugary food takes time to digest and also makes us feel hungry for longer. Even though, the best option is to consume natural sugar for a quick rush, such as honey and sugarcane, but if that’s not possible, then limiting the candies eaten per day can also help a great deal.

Apart from eating the right things, activities after iftaar also help you stay energised. Games, such as cricket or football, speed up the metabolism, which not only digests all the greasy dishes consumed during iftaar but also keeps you up and about. The more you sweat the more time you have to indulge in cold water showers, keeping your body hydrated and fresh.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 2016

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

Casper-ing about A new video just starting to go viral shows a young orangutan who looks like he’s aping a ghost, complete with white sheet. The paranormal primate’s performance was recently filmed at the Twycross Zoo near Birmingham, UK. The video shows spectators went bananas when the orangutan busted out the ghost moves.

‘Oh I’m a ghost’, one family can be heard saying. There was one chilling moment: When the orangutan lost his sheet, thus temporarily destroying the ghostly illusion.

HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

Clawed bandits A special ‘gull mugging’ squad is being set up in a seaside town to look at attacks by birds on humans.

Council bosses in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, say the new online ‘gull mugging’ reporting form will allow victims to report attacks direct to the authority. Officials say they will then be able to use this evidence to get a clearer picture of the scale of the problem. Scarborough has been fighting a losing battle against rising gull colonies for more than 20 years since it stopped doping the birds with a narcotic bait and humanely destroying them. Ideas included using a cannon whose boom was supposed to disperse the birds but this in fact agitated them so much that the resort’s skies ended up looking like scenes from the Hitchcock movie The Birds. Environmental health chiefs tried to re-introduce a cull but were blocked at every turn by animal rights campaigners and then came up against legal barriers. House-holders whose properties do not have enough outdoor space for wheelie bins are also being targeted by the flocks, which tear rubbish bags apart with claws and beaks in search of scraps. MIRROR.CO.UK

5

Crash and turn

A woman in Florida was left seriously shaken up after a flying turtle crashed through her car’s windshield. Nicole Marie Bjanes was driving at 75 miles per hour on I-4 in Deltona when the reptile suddenly smashed through her front window, bounced off the passenger seat and landed on the dashboard. “As soon as it hit the windshield, of course I was a little freaked out and hysterical,” Bjanes said. She posted photographs of the aftermath to Facebook soon after, and the images are now going viral. Florida Highway Patrol officers confirmed that the turtle had been thrown airborne after being struck by another vehicle in front. Incredibly, Bjanes only suffered minor injuries and was treated for minor cuts by EMTs at the scene. The turtle was unscathed and placed in a nearby pond, where it swam away.

HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

Cereal eater Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and eating champ Matt Stonie just turned it into a career move. Watch Stonie milk the moment as he devours nearly 3 pounds of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal with a gallon of 2% milk. The video had accumulated nearly a million views. Maybe that’s because many of us can relate to overdoing it a bit with the sweet cereals. But not like this: According to the video, Stonie downed 7,700 calories, 586 grammes of sugar and 206 grammes of fat in polishing off two 23.6-ounce boxes. His time of 17 minutes 6.24 seconds might not seem impressive but he thinks nobody in their right minds would want to prove him wrong for a while. Stonie is nearing the presumed defense of his Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest title on July 4, so it’s good to see he’s staying in shape and not forgetting breakfast. HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 2016

6 People like to joke that the only thing you really ‘learn’ in school is how to memorise. As it turns out, that’s not even the case for most of us. If you go around the room and ask a handful of people how to memorise things quickly, most of them will probably tell you repetition.

That is far from the truth. If you want to memorise something quickly and thoroughly, repetition won’t cut it; however, recalling something will. The problem is that recalling something requires learning, and we all learn in different ways. Below are some universal steps to mastering the art of recalling so that you can start memorising a tonne of data in a short amount of time.

Before we start, you need to establish something: Are you an auditory, visual or experiential learner?

If you’re an auditory learner, then the most effective way for you to grasp information is by hearing it. As you can imagine, visual learners favour seeing something in order to learn it, and experiential learning types are more akin to learning from events and experiences (or doing something with the material). Most of us are a combination of at least two of these categories, but I will denote which step is most favoruable to your most agreeable learning style so that you can start to memorise things quickly and efficiently.

To optimise your memorisation session, pay close attention to which environment you choose. For most people, this means choosing an area with few distractions, though some people do thrive off of learning in public areas.

Figure out what is most conducive to your learning so that you can get started.

Now that you have everything written down in one set of notes, separate them into sections. This is ideal for visual learners, especially if you use colour coding to differentiate between subjects.

This will help you break everything down and start compartmentalising the information being recorded in your brain.

Before you start trying to recall everything from memory, write and re-write the information. This will help you become more familiar with what you’re trying to memorise.

Doing this while listening to your tape recorder can also help you retain a lot of the data. This is most useful for experiential learners.

This is especially useful if you’re trying to memorise information from a lecture.

Use a tape recorder to track all of the acquired facts being spoken and listen to it. If you’re trying to memorise a speech, record yourself reading the speech aloud and listen to yourself speaking. Obviously, this is most helpful for auditory learners, but it’s also handy because it ensures that you’re getting more context from a lecture that will help you learn the information faster.

For each line of text, repeat it a few times and try to recall it without looking. As you memorise each set of text, be cumulative by adding the new information to what you’ve just learned. This will keep everything within your short-term memory from fading.

The most effective method is to teach the information to someone else. You can do this in a variety of ways. You can lecture the knowledge to someone sitting right in front of you and explain everything extemporaneously. If what you’ve learned needs to be recited verbatim, then do this in front of someone as well in order to get a feel for what it will be like to recite the text to the intended audience.

Now that you can recall entire sections, write everything down from memory. This will reinforce everything you have just learned by applying it experientially.

While doing unrelated tasks, go over the information again by listening to your recordings. This is certainly auditory learning, but it will still supplement everything you’ve shoved into your short-term memory.

Finally, let your mind breathe. Go for a short time without thinking about what you just learned and come back to it later on. You’ll find out what you really know, of course, and this will help you focus on the sections you might be weakest at.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 2016

7

Movie Review

By Sameen Amer

The Angry Bird Movie fell short of delivering anything note-worthy The smartphone era has bestowed us with an infinite supply of timewasting techniques, but few of these digital offerings have been nearly as successful as Angry Birds. The massively popular video game — that involves slinging multicoloured birds at es green pigs sheltered by various structures se — has developed into a lucrative franchise on, and turned into a pop culture phenomenon, and, has now, inevitably, spawned an animated film. he Angry Expanding on the premise of the game, The etween Birds Movie sheds light on how the rivalry between uctant the birds and the pigs started. The film’s reluctant hero is Red, a grumpy outcast who doesn’t get along mmunity of with the other residents of Bird Island, a community happy-go-lucky flightless birds. Following a rage episode at a child’s nger management birthday party, a court orders Red to take anger da and attended by classes, which are run by the neurotic Matilda speedster Chuck, explosive Bomb and giant Terence. But their therapy session is interrupted one day, when a boat carrying a group of green pigs, led by the bearded Leonard, arrives at the island. The birds welcome the newcomers and treat them as their honoured guests, ail from Piggy Island. but Red is suspicious of the explorers who hail When no one pays heed to his warnings, he sets out to find out what

the pigs are really up u to. With Chuck and Bomb’s help, Red must uncover the pigs’ nefarious plan and save the bird community, using the very v attributes that initially made him a pariah.

Things unfold in a fairly obvious way, what with the story being derived from the gameplay of the popular app, but the film’s predictability may not have been as noticeable had there b been more to the story; the premise could have still led to an interesting adventure if the pieces had tog been put together in a refreshing, innovative way. Instead, t e whole thing th th feels forced and unsurprising. the mo The movie, which marks the directorial debut of Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly, tries to be funny by offering silly visual gags for kids but rarely del delivers any memorable quips or chuckles.

Scre Screenwriter Jon Vitti’s script simply isn’t amusing enou The filmmakers squander their impressive enough. line-up of comedic voice talent who can’t do much with bad puns and lazy humour. sou The soundtrack choices too seem odd. A dull song

by Blake Shelton is shoehorned into the proceedings, and Limp Bizkit’s cover of Th The Who’s ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ is just distractingly out of place.

The Angry Birds Movie’s worst aspect, however, is that it doesn’t leave you with a message of love and acceptance. In its effort to valid validate the emotion of anger, the project ends up encouraging viewers to be suspicious of those who are you In an environment where people are already different from you. wh end up on foreign shores seeking safe wary of refugees who haven, further lessons iin the mistrust of immigrants is the last thing the world needs.

Ultimately, The Angry Birds Movie comes off as lazy and unpolished, and makes you wish it had left young viewers with a message of acceptance, not distrus distrust and destruction.

Rating:

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 2016

• Johnny Depp was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1963 to Betty Sue Palmer, a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer.

• He and his family moved frequently during his childhood, living in more than 20 different places before settling in Miramar, Florida.

• Prior to becoming an actor, Depp dreamed of becoming a rock star. He was trying to make it as a musician in Los Angeles when he transitioned to acting.

• When he was 12, his mother gave him a guitar. After playing in several garage bands, the future actor dropped out of high school to pursue music.

• He reportedly went back to school two weeks later, but the principal encouraged him to follow his dreams and be a musician. After enjoying modest local success, Depp and his band The Kids moved to Los Angeles to get a record contract.

• The Kids once opened for legendary punk rocker Iggy Pop, but they struggled to have greater success.

• Depp credits Nicolas Cage with helping him get his first acting job after Cage hooked him up with his first agent. Depp has seemingly never forgotten.

• When Cage fell into financial trouble in 2007, Depp reportedly offered to pay off his debt as a way to say thank you for kickstarting his career.

Sudoku

• He was even listed in the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor, netting a total of $75 million in 2011.

Test your problem solving skills by solving the puzzle in the least possible time and match your answers next week.

• Depp’s most financially successful films have been Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Alice in Wonderland, which have grossed $3 billion and $1 billion, respectively.

• He won a Golden Globe in 2008 for his role in Sweeney Todd.

• His first acting role was in Wes Craven’s 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street.

• He has collaborated with director Tim Burton on eight films, beginning with Edward Scissorhands (1990) and most recently starring in Dark Shadows (2012).

• Depp travels with his Captain Jack Sparrow costume from Pirates of the Caribbean franchise in order to surprise kids at hospitals. He says he’ll “just sneak in and go and surprise a bunch of kiddies. It basically turns into a two, three-hour improvisation and it’s really fun.”

• His quirky and crowd-pleasing performance as the suave pirate Captain Jack Sparrow was modelled after Keith Richards, the guitarist for The Rolling Stones.

• Richards and Depp are friends and spent time together on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which Rolling Stone magazine covered in a 2007 issue.

• Depp’s rock star connections don’t stop there. He’s twice recorded with Oasis, notably playing lead slide guitar on the British band’s 1997 track ‘Fade In-Out’.

• Along with Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall, John Malkovich and Sean Penn, Depp owned the French restaurant Man Ray, located near the Champs-Élysées.

• He has been nominated for the Best Actor Oscar three times, for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Finding Neverland (2004) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).