According to a survey conducted by iMotormag, nearly one in four Brits picked the Allegro as the worst car, even though production of it ended 25 years ago.
The world's ten worst cars are as follows:
1.Austin Allegro
2.Morris Ital
3.Talbot Sunbeam
4.Austin Princess
5.Hillman Imp
6.Rover 200
7.Triumph Acclaim
8.Rover 800
9.Morris 1800
10. Triumph TR7Another incredible news
Thu, Apr 3 09:15 AM
Of all stinging invectives, being called a liar is near the top. Fact is, though, if bona fide lie detectors existed, we'd all be guilty as charged.
According to an oft-cited 1996 University of Virginia study led by psychologist Bella DePaulo, lying is part of the human condition. Over the course of one week, DePaulo and her colleagues asked 147 participants, aged 18 to 71, to record in a diary all of their social interactions and all of the lies they told during them. On average, each person lied just over 10 times, and only seven participants claimed to have been completely honest.
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The truth, according to social psychologist Leonard Saxe, director of the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University, is that the right pressures or incentives will cause anybody to lie.
To be fair, most of the time we're just trying to be nice. (When your girlfriend asks if she looks good in her new dress, most guys--if they know what's good for them--say yes.) Indeed, according to DePaulo's study, such "false-positive" fibs are delivered 10 to 20 times more often than spurious denials of culpability.
Thankfully, too: "We lie less frequently to our significant others because we're more invested in those relationships," says Jeffrey Hancock, associate professor of communications at Cornell University.
For all the Elliot Spitzers, Jeffrey Skillings and Bill Clintons in the world, studies show that men and women lie with equal frequency. One difference, according to a 2002 University of Massachusetts study conducted by psychologist Robert Feldman: Women are more likely to lie to make other people feel good, while men tend to lie to make themselves look better.
How to catch liars in the act? Traditional polygraph tests, around in some form or fashion since the early 1900s, use sensors to detect fluctuations in blood pressure, pulse, respiration and sweat in response to probing questions. Two problems with polygraphs: First, they only work about 80% of the time, according to the American Polygraph Association. Second, it's not like we are going to carry all that hardware to a business meeting or a bar.
While there is no surefire on-the-spot way to sniff out dissemblers, there are some helpful clues and tactics for uncovering untruths.
Skilled liars don't break a sweat, but the rest of us get a little fidgety. Four possible giveaways: shifty eyes, higher vocal pitch, perspiration and heavier breathing. Of course, not everyone who doesn't meet your gaze is a liar.
"Certain behavioral traits, like averting eye contact, could be cultural and not indicative of a liar," says Joseph Buckley, president of John E. Reid & Associates, which has provided interview and interrogation training to more than 500,000 law enforcement agents to date. The company is also the creator of the Reid Technique, a nine-step interrogation process employed by many U.S. law enforcement agencies.
Another clue: imprecise pronouns. To psychologically distance themselves from a lie, people often pepper their tales with second- and third-person pronouns like "you," "we" and "they," says Hancock.
Liars are also more likely to ask that questions be repeated and begin responses with phrases like, "to tell you the truth," and "to be perfectly honest," says Reid.
When telling the truth, people often make hand gestures to the rhythm of their speech. Hands emphasize points or phrases--a natural and compelling technique when they actually believe the points they're making. The less certain will keep gesticulations in check, says Hancock.
Something about the phone seems to bring out the liar in us. In one week-long study of 30 college students, Hancock observed that the phone was the weapon of choice, enabling 37% of all the lies, versus 27% during face-to-face exchanges, 21% using Instant Messaging and just 14% via email. Little surprise, perhaps: Most phone calls don't leave a record behind.
Will we ever come clean? Not likely. The subjects in DePaulo's study confessed that they would tell 75% of the lies again if given the opportunity. Chances are, they'd get away with it.
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Sun, Jul 27 12:58 PM
New Delhi, July 27 (IANS) More girls are taking to engineering studies these days. The enrolment of girls in technical institutes in the country has gone up from 22 percent in 2002 to 125 percent this year, with most preferring system engineering and information and communication, says a survey by an industry body.
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India (Assocham), which conducted the survey, said the emergence of the knowledge economy has motivated more girls to acquire engineering skills.
The survey was carried out under the Social Development Foundation on 'Rising Trend of Women towards the Technical Education' and covered over 20 engineering schools, including the National Institutes of Technology (NITs).
'Their views were sought and it was discovered that females' participation in acquiring engineering skills since 2002 onwards was more towards system engineering followed by information and communication, environmental and electrical engineering,' the survey says.
However, aerospace and material engineering are not preferred by women in India.
Releasing the survey report, Assocham president Sajjan Jindal said: 'System engineering seems to be extremely popular in young females as their intake in this branch by various engineering institutions has gone up to over 40 percent while it was less than 18 percent six years ago.'
According to Jindal, women have been bettering their male counterparts in system engineering.
'The important motive to pursue engineering among the men as well women are the career opportunities and hopes for good salaries and job security that the profession offers,' says the survey.
The survey said 90 percent of women engineers are motivated by their academic performance and 71 percent for career as well as good salary prospects that influence them to opt for engineering.
However, in case of men, 79 percent of them opt for engineering by their academic performance as well as challenges that the work brings in.
The survey said 97 percent of male engineers and 92 percent of female engineers are employed, almost all of them as engineers. However, the unemployment rate among females is found to be 3 percent due to their inability to pursue careers in engineering after their marriage.
The survey points out that 71 percent of male engineers take active part in corporate management but hardly 29 percent of women get involved in management activities.
'Females have lesser involvement in management because of the time factor and also that the management has faith in their male counterparts for their consistent longer hours of work,' said the survey.
The survey says 55 percent of men and 26 percent of female engineers feel they are equally treated in their organization. The perception of disparity was particularly evident among certain professions, particularly architecture and manufacturing, which contain largely business-related disciplines.
The survey also says that most of the women engineers consult their parents, especially father, in order to pursue a career in engineering. The impact of parents on women is stronger than on men (86 percent of women compared to 24 percent men).
In the second season, Ai becomes more expressive and shows more emotions, being more willing to interact with others and with her "clients". In fact, in one scene, she puts up a "V for Victory" sign in front of her target as a way of mockery and torture before sending him to hell; in another, she is seen reading from a fashion magazine while her compatriots watch over their client; and she even showed concern towards a mother who willingly ended her life so that her daughter doesn't have to send her to hell. Also, her emotions and memories are once again released by the suffering of Takuma Kurebayashi, similar to her own situation in the past. This leads Ai to defy her 'employer', who is the Lord of Hell, causing her to be restored to human life - and killed shortly thereafter, when saving Takuma from his tormentors. After Ai's self-sacrifice, her body dissolves into sakura petals and drifts into the sky.
Most episodes are self-contained short stories in which the series narrates the suffering of a different individual caused by one or more antagonists. A website known as 地獄通信 (Hell Correspondence or Hotline to Hell) may only be accessed at midnight by one who harbors a desire for revenge against their tormentor. Should someone submit the name of someone against whom they have a grudge, the Jigoku Shōjo (Hell Girl) will offer them a straw doll with a red string wound about its neck. If the string is pulled, she will ferry the target of the revenge straightaway to Hell, however the client agrees to a pact where those who request her intervention will also be sent to hell at the end of their natural lives.
During each story, the protagonists' dramas are explained in detail from the start of their grudges, through the escalation of their torment until it becomes unbearable and they resort to accessing the Hell Correspondence website. The contents of the site are only a text: "あなたの怨み、晴らします。" (あなたのうらみ、ばらします。) (Anata no urami, barashimasu.) (We will take revenge, on your behalf.)", a text box where the grudge's object must be written, and a "送信" (Send) button. Some time after the post, they are visited by Enma Ai, a young red-eyed girl wearing a traditional sailor school uniform (usually the dark version used only in winter months). She hands them a straw doll, which is actually one of her assistants, with a red string tied to its neck. In the first season, the doll is always black, because it is always the same assistant, but in the second season, the doll may also be red or dark blue, depending on which assistant it is. She then tells them that if they want their vengeance to be delivered, they must remove the string from the doll, and their enemies will be immediately taken to Hell. A black crest-shaped mark will appear on the protagonists' chests, which serves as a constant reminder that once their lives come to an end, they must give compensation for Ai's service by having their own souls also sent to Hell.
Ai is aided by her three assistants: Ichimoku Ren, a young man in casual clothes who takes the form of the blue straw doll; Hone-Onna, a woman wearing a kimono with the obi (sash) tied in front which signifies she is a prostitute and takes the form of the red straw doll; and Wanyūdō, an old man wearing a hat and, at times, a red scarf, who takes the form of the black straw doll. When not actively assisting Ai, the three remain in their straw doll forms. The trio help Ai investigate the true nature of their clients, and also present the victims with the sins they have been accused of before Ai appears to ferry them to hell.
In episode 8 of the first season, two recurring characters are introduced: A journalist named Shibata Hajime - a former scandal-hunter/blackmailer who turned to investigating the stories involving the Jigoku Shōjo; and his daughter Tsugumi. After an encounter with Enma Ai, Tsugumi starts to have visions of what Ai sees and thus the two become more and more involved in Ai's matters. Hajime doesn't agree with Ai's methods to deliver vengeance for her clients, and tries to stop those who contacted Jigoku Shōjo from using her service with Tsugumi's help.
In season two, the major plot line revolves around Takuma Kurebayashi, a boy who is blamed by his townsfolk for causing disappearances around the town, which was actually caused by the townsfolk who used Jigoku Tsūshin.
Now the swinging bridge
Is quieted with creepers
Like our tendrilled life
When Basho writes:
How reluctantly
the bee emerges from deep
within the peony
is he merely presenting a pathetical fallacy, attributing human emotion to a bee, or is he entering into the authentic experience of "beeness" as deeply as possible? Perhaps both qualities are present. His detailed observation calls for something other than metaphor; it demands literal accuracy. Is the bee inside his mind or outside? The poem moves in part because of tension raised through the underlying question of duality the Zen resolves in silence. The bee, the peony, the poet, all one idea composed of many.
In another poem, Basho finds
Delight, then sorrow,
aboard the cormorant
fishing boat
without having to describe for his audience the nooses tied around the throats of fishing birds to inhibit swallowing. He is initially delighted by their amazing skill and grace, then horrified that they cannot swallow what they catch, saddened by their captivity and exploitation, and perhaps even more deeply saddened by the fishing folk he never mentions. What remains unstated begs for a profound moral equation, although only the poet's compassion is clearly implied.
The best haiku reflect an undeniable Zen influence. It evolved from the earlier linked-verse form known as the renga and was used extensively by Zen Buddhist monks in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the next 200 years, the verse form achieved its greatest popularity and success. Elements of compassion, silence, and awareness of temporality often combine to reveal a sense of mystery. Just as often, haiku may bring a startling insight into the ordinary, as when Buson writes:
Nobly, the great priest
deposits his daily stool
in bleak winter fields
thereby reminding his audience that nobility has nothing whatever to do with palaces and embroided robes, but that true nobility is obtainable in every human endeavor.
Issa reminds the attentive listener:
A world of dew,
and within every dewdrop
a world of struggle
Haiku may be the most widely recognizable poetic form in the world. At play with the form, children quickly discover their own poetic imaginations; almost anyone can learn to make decently readable haiku in no time at all. Just as anyone can learn to write a quatrain or sonnet. The problem remains: to be great, a poem must rise on its own merit, and too much haiku is merely haiku. Haiku written in American English and attempting to borrow traditional Japanese literacy devices usually ends up smelling of the bric-a-brac shop, all fragmentary dust and mold or cheap glitter coating the ordinary, or worse, the merely cute or contrived. Great haiku cuts both ways, sometimes witty or sarcastic, sometimes making Zen like demands for that most extraordinary consciousness, no-mind or ordinary mind.
Haiku should be approached with a daily sort of reverence, as we might approach an encounter with a great spiritual teacher. It is easy to imitate; it is difficult to attain. The more deeply the reader enters into the authentic experience of the poem, the more the poem reveals. When Kikaku writes:
In the Emperor's bed,
the smell of burnt mosquitoes,
and erotic whispers
we must realize first that the burning of mosquitoes clears the air for erotic play; then we may wonder whether the "smell of burnt mosquitoes" might become a kind of erotic incense for the Emperor, a stimulant for his lust. Thus, lust, love and death are joined in primal experience. Is there a buried needle in this verse? Does Kikaku intend for us to think critically of a decadent emperor? And what does that reveal about ourselves? Revealing the relationship between these mundane activities shakes up our polite perceptions like a Zen slap in the face, a call to awaken to what actually is.
Haiku, sprung free from the opening lines of predominantly humorous "linked verse" (renga) created by multiple authors, began to articulate aesthetic qualities such as a sense of beautiful aloneness, sabishisa, and restrained elegance, furyu.
The precise and concise nature of haiku influenced the early 20th-century Anglo-American poetic movement known as imagism. The writing of haiku is still practiced by thousands of Japanese who annually publish outstanding examples in the many magazines devoted to the art. The great age of haiku spans only a little over a hundred years, and yet its poetry is a river that continues to flow. In our own age and language, wonderful haiku have been written by poets as diverse as Gary Snyder, Richard Wilbur, Lew Welch and Richard Wright, to name but a few. In addition to Basho, important haiku poets include Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa, and Masuoka Shiki. Basho is neither the beginning nor the end. Re-encountering these poems is like the leap of Basho's famous frog, a plunge into the sound of water, each brief poem expanding in ever-widening ripples.
Bibliography: Blyth, R. H., A History of Haiku, 2 vols. (1963-64); Higginson, W. J., The Haiku Handbook (1985; repr. 1992); Reichhold, J., A Dictionary of Haiku (1991); Hamill, Sam, The Sound of Water (1995).
