The Express Tribune hi five - November 29

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ining Brain tra -3 2 PAGES of salt The story PAGE 4 flicks Princess PAGE 6 at coffee flo Chocolate PAGE 8

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

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 29, 2015

Hi-light Hi light

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The human brain is by far the most complex organ in our body, it is also the most adaptable. You have the power to enhance and sharpen your brain according to your will and make it perform great feats. This week we bring to you some great brain boosting techniques to help you sharpen your mind and broaden your mental capabilities.

This activates the non-dominant area of your brain, although most people use both sides of their brain for different tasks most of the time. Try brushing your teeth with your non dominant hand and balancing yourself on one foot while you do it. You can also try writing with your non-dominant hand.

Math is the basis of all things logical and technological. Without math, we would still be stuck in the primitive era. It has been shown to be especially adept at increasing fluid intelligence. Trying doing geometric proofs or simple math problems — they are great for enhancing your critical thinking skills.

There are plenty of mind-boggling puzzles you can attempt, such as Sudoku, crosswords, anagrams, and the like. They improve brain function and help in mental stimulation. Logic puzzles helps your brain is deductive reasoning and teaches you to organise your thinking.

Lateral thinking puzzles train your brain to think outside the box.

Mathematical functions aren’t the only thing you should focus on. You should also work on sharpening your memory, and this can be done by regularly exercising your powers of recall and what better way to do that than by memorising a poem or a song.

This isn’t to say that you should fabricate lies. Instead, try writing a story or two.

Telling stories enhances your creativity and imagination. It also enables you to learn how to think on the spot and improvise.

The average child has a vocabulary of 20,000 words which reaches 30,000 words later. But no matter how fluent you are in your native language, there are bound to be words in the dictionary you don’t know the definition of. So make a resolution to learn at least two to three new words every day and try to use the words in regular conversation for best retention.

Times New Roman and Arial might look neater than your handwriting, but that shouldn’t stop you from penning your class notes or lists of things to do. Recent research shows that writing by hand engages the brain in learning a new language, especially if the written language is vastly different from your native tongue.

Take old photo albums out of boxes. As you flip through their pages, try to recall everything you can about the events those pictures show. Call to mind the dates, names of people and other relevant details to reinforce your long-term memory.

Question everything. If you don’t know something, look it up. Your quest for knowledge will help you become a more well-rounded person and enable your brain to take in more information.

This one won’t only get your body moving, but also your brain working. So what if you’ve got two left feet, learning how to dance, especially during childhood, will improve memory, cognition and emotional knowledge. Dancing also integrates several brain functions all at once; rational, musical, emotional and kinesthetic. This integration of multiple brain function and its reliance on your working memory allows the brain to create new neural pathways and connections.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 29, 2015

3 Humans use only 10% of their brain.

The 10% myth (sometimes elevated to 20%) is mere urban legend, one perpetrated by the plot of the 2011 movie Limitless, which pivoted around a wonder drug that endowed the protagonist with prodigious memory and analytical powers.

You must speak one language before learning another.

Children who learn English at the same time as they learn French do not confuse one language with the other and learn to compartmentalise them.

‘Left brain’ and ‘right brain’ people differ The contention that we have a rational left brain and an intuitive, artistic right side is fable: humans use both hemispheres of the brain for all cognitive functions. The left brain/right brain notion originated from the realisation that many (though not all) people process language more in the left hemisphere and spatial abilities and emotional expression more in the right.

Goldfish have three second memories.

Although they do have a shorter memory span, the average memory span for a goldfish is not as short as three seconds.

We have five senses.

Sure, sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch are the big ones. But we have many other ways of sensing the world and our place in it. Proprioception is a sense of how our bodies are positioned and nociception is a sense of pain. We also have a sense of balance.

DESIGN BY EESHA AZAM What would you like to see in Hi Five? Send an email to hifive@tribune.com.pk and let us know!

Hi-light

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 29, 2015

Trivia

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Fun Facts about Horses Horses can sleep both lying down and standing up.

Q: Why did the basketball player go to jail?

A: Because he shot the ball

Horses can run shortly after birth.

Domestic horses have a lifespan of around 25 years.

A 19th Century horse named Old Billy is said to have lived 62 years.

The horse skeleton is comprised of approximately 210 bones.

Q: Why do basketball players love doughnuts?

A: Because they dunk them

Horses have been domesticated for over 5000 years.

Horses are herbivores.

Horses have bigger eyes than any other mammal that lives on land.

Q: What do you call a pig who plays basketball?

A: A ball hog

Because horse’s eyes are on the side of its head the animal is capable of seeing nearly 360 degrees at one time.

Horses gallop at around 44 km/h.

The fastest recorded sprinting speed of a horse was 88 km/h.

Q: Why did the golfer wear two pairs of pants?

A: In case he got a hole in one

Estimates suggest that there are around 60 million horses in the world.

Scientists believe that horses have evolved over the past 50 million years from much smaller creatures.

Q: How is a baseball team similar to a pancake?

A: They both need a good batter

A male horse is called a stallion.

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? w o n k u o y d Di The story of salt Salt comes from dried-up seas and living ones. It can bubble to the surface as brine or crop out in the form of salt licks and shallow caverns. Below the skin of the earth salt lies in white veins, some of them thousands of feet deep. It can be evaporated from salt ‘pans’, boiled down from brine, or mined from shafts extending half a mile down.

The history of the world according to salt is simple: animals wore paths to salt licks; men followed; trails became roads, and settlements grew beside them. When the human menu shifted from saltrich game to cereals, more salt was needed to supplement the diet. But the underground deposits were beyond reach, and the salt sprinkled over the surface was insufficient. Scarcity kept the mineral precious. As civilisation spread, salt became one of the world’s principal trading commodities.

Salt routes crisscrossed the globe. One of the most travelled led from Morocco south across the Sahara to Timbuktu. Ships bearing salt from Egypt to Greece traversed the Mediterranean and the Aegean. Herodotus describes a caravan route that united the salt oases of the Libyan desert. Venice’s glittering wealth was attributable not so much to exotic spices as to commonplace salt, which Venetians exchanged in Constantinople for the spices of Asia. In 1295, when he first returned from Cathay, Marco Polo delighted the Doge with tales of the prodigious value of salt coins bearing the seal of the great Khan.

As early as the 6th Century, in the sub-Sahara, Moorish merchants routinely traded salt ounce for gold. In Abyssinia, slabs of rock salt, called amoles, became coin of the realm. Each one was about 10 inches long and two inches thick. Cakes of salt were also used as money in other areas of central Africa.

Not only did salt serve to flavour and preserve food, it made a good antiseptic, which is why the Roman word for these salubrious crystals (sal) is a first cousin to Salus, the goddess of health. Of all the roads that led to Rome, one of the busiest was the Via Salaria, the salt route, over which Roman soldiers marched and merchants drove oxcarts full of the precious crystals up the Tiber from the salt pans at Ostia. A soldier’s pay — consisting in part of salt — came to be known as solarium argentum, from which we derive the word salary. A soldier’s salary was cut if he “was not worth his salt”, a phrase that came into being because the Greeks and Romans often bought slaves with salt.

SOURCE: CONTENT.TIME.COM

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 29, 2015

World wide weird

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

Bear sleeping bag A sleeping bag shaped as a gigantic bear has become an instant internet success. It is the work of Dutch artist Eiko Ishizawa. Photos of the sleeping bag started appearing online in 2009, and the artist wrote in 2013 that she’d start selling a limited number of the bears — all of which are handmade — the next year. But the bags started seeing renewed popularity online this week, probably because it’s the time of year when everyone is dreaming of hibernating until warmer weather arrives.

Ishizawa wrote about why she created the bag on her website: “By having the experience of transitional discoveries like finding a bear, realizing a little human face in his mouth, and recognizing details and shape of this commodity, I attempt to create this work as to be a medium for audiences to generate one’s transitional perceptions and fantasies in reality.”

Basically, if you ever wondered what it’s like to be a bear, this is your chance. HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

Camera crazy A narcissistic rat has caused intrigue and revulsion after crawling over a sleeping man on the New York subway and taking a selfie on his phone. The resulting picture isn’t his best angle — as we all know, it is a terrible feeling when we accidentally take a selfie from below — but it is very impressive that he managed to do it. An amused passer-by, Don Richards, filmed the entire incident, showing the rat crawl all over the sleeping man, before he wakes up in shock and shakes it off his phone. After the incident, Mr Richards and the rat-afflicted man swapped the video and the photo. They shared a laugh after the incident, and the man who suffered the rat indignity has seen the funny side. The rats in New York appear to be getting bigger, bolder and more human.

Earlier this year, the Pizza Rat charmed people all around the world, when the massive rodent was filmed trying to carry a huge slice of pizza up some stairs. Rodent-related problems are on the rise in New York. Reuters reported rodent complaints were up to 24,375 as of late October with two months left in the year, compared to 20,545 in 2014 and 19,321 in 2013. TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

Shell-shocked

Jane Keast chose the extra-large egg to have for the couple’s tea but was shell-shocked when the second one rolled out into her frying pan. When she told husband Chris he thought she was joking but ended up reaching for his camera phone when he looked at the pan. The inner-egg was about the size of a 2 pence piece and its shell was still in one piece. Jane ended up cracking it open and found there was no yolk inside, just the egg white. Experts say the rare phenomenon is just a quirk of nature and can occur if the chicken receives a shock during egg production.

Chris, 60, who runs a smallholding near Perrenporth, Cornwall, with Jane, 55, said, “We have got 19 chickens and sell the eggs to neighbours and friends and family but always have a surplus. When I collected the eggs one evening there was this rather large one that I suspected might have a double yolk inside which I have come across before. When Jane later cooked some bacon and eggs for dinner she used the large one. She cracked it open in the pan and shouted for me to come and look and there was a second egg next to the one she had just cracked open. I have never seen anything like it before. It was much smaller than the first egg and perfectly round. Jane cracked the second egg open but it was just the white.” EXPRESS.CO.UK

Caught in a fix Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) inspector Rohan Barker was called to the house in Haverfordwest, Wales, after residents reported that a ginger cat was apparently trapped on the roof during heavy rain — with its head stuck inside a crisp packet. “He looked very wet as it was raining quite heavily,” said Mr Barker. “It was very odd to see that a crisp packet was stuck on his head, which he could not get off. He may well have been eating something from the bottom and then got himself into difficulty. It took quite some time up a ladder to coax the cat into my reach. But eventually I got close enough to bring him down safely, and I just lifted the crisp packet off his head.

It was quite firmly stuck, and would have been difficult for him to get it off himself.

The cat was unharmed but very scared and, as he looked to be in good health, was immediately released. He wouldn’t let me touch him, so there is a chance hes a feral cat and unowned, or he might be owned by someone in the area and so will hopefully make his way back home.” MIRROR.CO.UK

The Cunning Fox and the Clever Stork

By Muhammad Hassan Once upon a time, there lived a very cunning fox who always wanted to cheat and deceive others. He used to speak to other animals sweetly to make them trust him. One day he tried to cheat a stork by first gaining its trust. The fox acted like a very good friend and cared a lot for the stork. One day, he invited the stork to have a feast with him and said that he wanted to treat his friend to delicious food. The happy stork accepted the invitation and remained hungry the whole day in anticipation.

When the stork arrived, the fox apologised to the stork for not being able to make anything due to his illness and offered some soup. The stork, although disappointed, cared for the fox and was happy with the soup. The cunning fox offered the soup in a shallow bowl. The long bill of the stork prevented it from drinking the soup. As the fox easily licked the soup from the plate, the stork wasn’t able to taste even a bit of the soup. The fox then asked the stork, “How is the soup? Don’t you like it?” The hungry stork replied, “Oh it is good, but I have an upset stomach and can’t drink any more soup!” The fox profusely appologised for the error and then the stork left his place, vowing to teach the cunning fox a lesson. A few days later, the fox met the stork again and this time it was the stork’s turn to play a trick on him. The stork welcomed the fox happily and invited him to dinner as a thank you gesture.

The fox was happy and they decided on a date to have the dinner. The stork asked the fox’s favourite food and offered to cook the same for the dinner. The day arrived and the fox reached the stork’s place. The stork served soup to the fox in a narrow jar with a long-neck. The stork was able to drink the soup easily with its long bill, however the fox couldn’t.

The stork asked the fox to enjoy the soup while he served several delicious dishes in long-necked jars. The fox understood what was happening and apologised for his bad behaviour. He promised not to play tricks on his friends ever again.

Share your short stories with us.

Email them to hifive@tribune.com.pk

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 29, 2015

Reading corner

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Materials:

Directions:

• 1 Sock • Scissors • Polyester stuffing or old rags • Straight pins • String or emrboidery thread • 2 gloves (a pair or mismatched) • Felt-tip marker • Needle • Thread • 3 buttons • Thin ribbon

• If sock isn’t an ankle length sock, cut the length of the sock above the heel.

• Fill sock with stuffing and close opening with pins. To form the head of the toy.

• To form neck, tie string around the stuffed sock, about 1/3 down from heel end.

• Cut two fingers off each glove, cutting into the stuffing.

• Mark where you want arms attached to body.

• Cut a slit for each arm, slightly smaller than the width of the stuffed glove finger. Repeat for legs.

• To attach limbs, insert tab of glove finger into hole and stich it up.

SOURCE: ALLYOU.COM

Princess Flicks Films featuring princesses: Cinderella After her father unexpectedly dies, young Ella finds herself at the mercy of her cruel stepmother and stepsisters, who reduce her to a scullery maid.

Despite her circumstances, she refuses to sink into despair. An invitation to a palace ball gives Ella hope that she might reunite with the dashing stranger she met in the woods, but her stepmother prevents her from going. Help arrives in the form of a kind beggar who has a magical touch.

Ella Enchanted As a baby, Ella receives a visit from Lucinda, her fairy godmother, and is bestowed with a magical talent that requires her to obey anything that she is told to do. This proves to be more of a curse than a blessing, particularly once her mother dies and she is forced to live with the cruel Dame Olga.

Eventually, Ella embarks on a journey to find Lucinda and break the spell, accompanied by the handsome Prince Charmont.

Princess Diaries Shy San Francisco teenager Mia Thermopolis is thrown for a loop when, from out of the blue, she learns the astonishing news that she’s a real-life princess! As the heir to the crown of the small European principality of Genovia, Mia begins a comical journey toward the throne when her strict and formidable grandmother, Queen Clarisse Renaldi, shows up to give her ‘princess lessons’.

Mirror Mirror Snow White, an orphaned princess, is the rightful ruler of her kingdom, but a jealous, evil queen schemes to gain control. When a charming prince rejects the queen in favour of Snow White, she has the princess thrown into the woods to be devoured by a fearsome beast. Rescued by a band of diminutive highway robbers, Snow White vows to take back her realm from the treacherous queen and, with the help of her small rescuers, roars into action.

Do you have a favourite book or movie you would like us to review? Write to us at hifive@tribune.com.pk and tell us all about it.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 29, 2015

Activity corner

Mind Games

Help the minions find a master by locating all the words given below in the puzzle DUL BABLE HANA BABOY

BANONINA POKA BELLO POOPAYE

CHASY SAE GELATO PARATU

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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 29, 2015

Materials:

Ingredients: Instant coffee Chocolate syrup Milk Ice Vanilla Ice cream

2 tbsp 4 tbsp 1/2 cup 4 cubes 1 scoop

• For the bubble mix: - Dishwashing detergent - Warm water - Glycerol or sugar • Acrylic paint • Saucer • Paper • Straw or bubble wand

3 cups 7 cups 1 cup

Directions: • Add two parts bubble mix to one part paint in a saucer.

• Grab your straw or bubble wand and gently start blowing bubbles in the saucer.

• When you have a saucer full of bubbles, lightly press the paper onto them to make a bubble print.

• Try different colours to make a rainbow bubble picture.

What is happening: Method: • Blend instant coffee, milk and chocolate syrup together in a blender.

• Pop the ice cubes in a tall glass and pour the mixture over them.

• Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream to the glass right before serving it.

Remember kids, always get permission from your parents before you start.

It’s always a good idea to have a helper nearby.

Bubbles aren’t always spheres. When you blow lots of bubbles together, you’ll see they press against each other and share a wall. If the bubbles are the same size, the wall will be flat. If the bubbles are different sizes, the smaller bubble will bulge into the larger one.

For lots of bubbles to fit closely together, they are grouped together as six-sided hexagons — another structure that requires the least energy possible. Hexagons easily stack together without any gaps in between.

When you have a print of four or more bubbles together, you can see how the bubbles press against each other to best fill the space. The angles between the bubbles are about 120 degrees. That’s the same as the angle between two sides of a hexagon next to each other.

SOURCE: CSIRO.AU