A gaping volcano, a sheer cliff, dragons and goblins and gates to heavenly kingdoms – all opening before you as you walk down these sidewalks, those lucky sidewalks that got to bear these wonderful chalk drawings that come to life before you eyes!
Source:::: ba-bamail.com
Natarajan
Airport workers were startled to find a green snake making its way up the stairs. Source: Twitter
AN UNEXPECTED passenger tried to board this flight to Sydney this morning …..
Passengers boarding a Virgin plane at Gold Coast Airport were diverted to the rear of the plane when airline workers discovered a snake had scaled its way up the stairs to the front door.
Luckily they didn’t have a hiss-y fit over the surprise visitor.
It just so happened that Assistant Minister for Defence, Stuart Robert, was one of the passengers boarding the plane and he took to Twitter to announce the breach of security, not the first time a snake has tried to slip its way onto a flight.
“A snake had just slithered up the front steps, so we actually boarded, then, through the back steps,” he told ABC.
“But within five minutes they had come along and a couple of airport guys had brought a bag and a couple of snake catching rods and quickly gathered up the little sucker and put him in the bag, and I guess deposited him out where he belongs.”
“It was probably enjoying the nice warm steel as part of the front stairs and wasn’t quite aware what all the fuss was about really,” he said.
“Now it may have just climbed up there I guess when people were happily boarding the aircraft, but you have to admire how good the airline staff are in terms of rapidly diverting plans, sorting out the snake, replotting the aircraft in terms of when it is going to take off.
“But I dare say the poor little snake didn’t make it to Sydney.”
It’s not the first time a snake has tried to hitch a free ride, with a python boarding a Qantas flight from Cairns to PNG in 2013. Source: Supplied
Source:::::: http://www.news.com.au
Natarajan
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will spend a year aboard the International Space Station.
Media photograph the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft as it launches to the International Space Station with Expedition 43 NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) onboard.
Liftoff was at 3:42 p.m. EDT Friday, March 27, 2015 (March 28 Kazakh time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
As the one-year crew, Kelly and Kornienko will return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-18M in March 2016.
The goal of the mission is to help scientists better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space.
Source:::: http://www.earthskynews.org
Natarajan
This story deserves some kind of award for being the world’s longest-running hoax. This one started way back in 1917, perpetrated by two young girls, Elsie and Frances, aged 16 and 9. They took five photographs of themselves in the woods, but something weird happened when these images were developed: the girls were surrounded by fairies.
Right off the bat, the girls received support from a peculiar source – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock Holmes creator was a keen spiritualist and complete believer in fairies, so he immediately accepted the pictures as genuine despite skeptics pointing out that they were faked.
Interest in the pictures lasted for a few years, but eventually died down. By then, the two cousins grew up and went on with their lives. Every now an then, a newspaper would track one of the girls down and do a story on the once-famous Cottingley Fairies. The girls would again claim that the pictures are genuine and interest in the story is briefly rekindled.
By the 1970s new technology allowed careful analysis of the photographs, which had been completely dismissed as fakes. A closer look reveals a series of strings holding the fairies up. However, it wasn’t until 1983 that the girls confessed to the hoax, admitting that the fairies were nothing but cardboard cutouts from a children’s book.
Source:::: http://www.all-that-is-interesting.com
A World No. 1 badminton player from India?
Ten years ago, anyone who followed Indian badminton even remotely would’ve laughed it off. Yes, India did produce a World No. 1 in Prakash Padukone. Way back in 1980. Yes, another Indian did win the All England title after him. Pullela Gopi Chand in 2001. A feat that got overshadowed by Harbhajan Singh’s hat-trick against Australia at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on the very same day. But nothing as impactful, impressive or even promising in several years after that. (Saina Celebrates World No. 1 Rank with Crushing Win over Hashimoto)
But sport has its own way of scripting history. A promising youngster from Hisar in Haryana, who had badminton players for parents, Saina Nehwal shifted to Hyderabad midway through her school years. Waking up before anyone else in her class to make it to badminton training to Govardhan Reddy, one of her initial coaches, often falling off to sleep on her father’s scooter on her way back, but still managing to maintain her grades in school. That defined Saina’s first few years, as she started playing junior nationals and satellite tournaments across the country. (Want to be the Best, Says Saina Nehwal)
He’d spent all his savings on his daughter’s training, getting her shoes and racquets, but Dr Harvir Singh, an agricultural scientist, knew it would all be worth it. In 2006, Saina finished as a runner up in the Junior World Championships. But it was only in 2008, when she became the first Indian woman to reach the quarter final of the Olympics, is when the world sat up and took notice of Saina Nehwal. When she lost to Indonesia’s Maria Kristin Yulianti in 3 games in the quarter finals in Beijing, many told Saina this was her best shot at glory and fame, and she’d lost it. Saina still remembers those remarks.
But she knew, as did another man, that this was just the start. In Pullela Gopichand, Saina found the perfect mentor. And in Saina, Gopi found the ward who was forever willing to listen to him, to work as hard as he wanted her to, and follow the path he had chalked out for her future as a world class badminton player.
Under Gopi’s tutelage, Saina blossomed. The Super Series titles started rolling in, starting with the one in Indonesia in 2009. By the next year, Saina had added four more Super Series title to her kitty, and a Commonwealth Games gold and a career high world ranking of 2 to go with that.
More girls around the country started picking up racquets, badminton tournaments started getting televised regularly, and in what is extremely rare for sportspersons in India who are not cricketers, Saina even had endorsements. Yes, she was truly a game-changer.
But there was no time to stand and stare. An Olympic medal had to be won. And win she did in London in 2012, a bronze albeit. A brief split with her coach was pointless, as she later admitted.
“I realised after leaving Gopi Sir that I could not move ahead without his help. So I came back to him, I don’t know what had happened, but I want to say sorry now. This medal is my gift to him,” Saina said after the Olympics.
The episode would return to haunt her in a couple of years though. The two years following her Olympic bronze saw Saina go through a very lean patch. She was losing to lower ranked players regularly, and was sluggish on court. Some or the other injury bothered her throughout. And it was during this time that a young and a very hungry PV Sindhu, also a protege; of Gopichand, was snapping at her heels. It didn’t take the media too long to take their knives out, and start writing ‘The End’ to the career of a girls who had several firsts in Indian badminton.
They say that the mind can accommodate either worries, or faith. Not both. Saina chose the latter. And she had the guts to go with that.
In the summer of 2014, she took the decision of changing coaches in order to improve her game, and try something new. Indian badminton’s most successful partnership was thus brought to an end, as Saina chose Vimal Kumar, former national champion and coach to guide and help her out. It was a bold decision in Saina’s words, a risk that she was taking.
And boy did it pay off. In a new training environment with new players, and under a coach she was exchanging more ideas with, Saina was back. And on top of her game. By the end of the year, India’s shuttle queen had won the China Open Super Series, crawled back from 9th in the beginning of the year to 3rd by the end of it, in the world rankings.
Now on top of the world rankings, the first non-Chinese to do so since Tine Baun in 2010, Saina has shown yet again, that she is still the best India has, and the rest have a lot of catching up to do.
Saina has learnt and honed her talent right here in India, under an Indian coach, and made things work for her, just on the basis of sheer hard work and dedication. Yes, it’s come at a price. Hers is almost a monk-like life with no time or space for anything barring badminton.
But that’s how the best in the world get there, isn’t it?
source…www.sports.ndtv.com
Natarajan
Spider and its web after a drizzle…
Photo Credit ….Senthil Natarajan
Natarajan
We’re getting many comments this month about the return of the Milky Way for late night and early morning stargazers.
View larger. | Shreenivasan Manievannan calls this photo Malibu Stargazer.
Our friend Shreenivasan Manievannan posted this photo to EarthSky Facebook. He wrote that, from this beach in southern California, even with all the light pollution from nearby Los Angeles, the Milky Way rose and was visible to the unaided eye. Thank you, Shreenivasan! Beautiful photo.
We’re getting many comments this month about the return of the Milky Way for late night and early morning stargazers. The best time to see it in the evening is around August, but you can also glimpse it now – stretching across a dark country sky – if you stay up late, or get up early.
Bottom line: Malibu stargazer, a photo by Shreenivasan Manievannan. Visit his page on 500px.com.
source:::: http://www.eartskynews.org
Natarajan
The Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft is seen after having rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Wednesday, March 25, 2015. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) are scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in the Soyuz at 3:42 p.m. EDT, Friday, March 27 (March 28, Kazakh time). As the one-year crew, Kelly and Kornienko will return to Earth on the Soyuz TMA-18M in March 2016.
Most expeditions to the space station last four to six months. By doubling the length of this mission, researchers hope to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight. This knowledge is critical as NASA looks toward human journeys deeper into the solar system, including to and from Mars, which could last 500 days or longer.
Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
source:::: http://www.nasa.gov
Painting with TexturesIn 2001, John Bramblitt lost his eyesight after an epileptic episode. Shortly after, Bramblitt started painting in a most interesting way: By using textured paint, John can tell where he painted and what, allowing him to virtually “see” the painting. The resulting paintings are a thing of beauty, rivaling and even surpassing art created by artists with perfect sight.
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About the Artist:
In this Art Therapy Video from Veria Living, Blind Artist John Bramblitt began to lose his eyesight when he was just 11 years old, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at his work. He uses a special fabric paint that leaves raised lines on the canvas so he can track his progress. For colors, he says each color of paint has a different feel. He knows the colors by touch. Believe it or not, John says the world’s a much more colorful place now that he’s blind.
Source:::: ba-bamail.com and You Tube
Natarajan
Take off with Natarajan 