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"Manna Dey, stalwart of the music world, passes away. Flooded with memories and his songs," tweeted Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan. |
In another tweet, Bachchan said: "Strange how we connect events of our life with his songs." |
"Manna Dey passes away. His voice shall linger forever. RIP," tweeted film-maker Mahesh Bhat. |
Actor Manoj Bajpai tweeted: "Manna Dey is no more! A great singer! Let's pray for him! My condolences to his family! His music will live for 1000 yrs. RIP." |
Actress Shabana Azmi wrote: "Manna Dey had a unique voice. He will live on through his songs Ai Meri Zohra Jabeen/ dil ka haal suney dilwala/ poocho na kaise maine. RIP." |
Popular cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle tweeted. "Oh no. Such terrible news to get up to. Manna Dey no more? Less melody in the world." |
Dey, a Bengali, also charmed neighbouring Bangladesh with songs in his mother tongue and in a message on Thursday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said Dey would remain alive forever among music-loving people of the subcontinent. |
"People will never forget his extraordinary melodious voice and unique style," she said. |
A young computer engineer is embarking on a tour of Ireland in 2018 to convince voters to support changes to the abortion law, as the country prepares for a referendum on repealing its ban on the procedure in almost all circumstances. |
Caoimhe Anglin’s journey through every Irish county pitches her into the heart of a battle between secularism and traditional Catholicism. |
We can topple Ireland’s ludicrous abortion law, but it’s not a done deal | Emer O’Toole Read more |
Anglin hopes that by relaying her story of being forced to leave home to have a termination in England in 2016, she can persuade the electorate – particularly in rural Ireland – to support the abolition of the eighth amendment in the Irish constitution. |
“A year ago, when I was experiencing a crisis pregnancy, I felt very alone,” Anglin said. “I wasn’t involved in any campaigns. I was the only person I knew who went through this, right up to the time I had the abortion in Manchester in 2016. I never thought I would get involved. |
“I remember one key moment was on the way over to Manchester at Dublin airport, when I was with my boyfriend. I went to the toilet and saw a much younger girl than me, on her own and in obvious distress, whom I later saw again on the plane to Manchester. I guessed that she was doing the same as me, although she had no one with her. |
“How many girls and women like her have to go through all this almost entirely on their own? It started to dawn on me that I would have to take a stand.” |
The eighth amendment grants Irish citizenship to an embryo at conception, and came about after a referendum in 1983 backed by 67% of voters. Pro-choice groups in Ireland say it creates a legal “chill factor” among medical teams, even in cases where Irish law allows for a termination, such as when a pregnancy would result in the woman’s death. |
Traditionalists accept the referendum is Irish Catholicism’s last stand against overhauling Ireland’s anti-abortion laws. After the church lost its fight to prevent marriage equality in 2015, the referendum has also been billed as a final chance to put the brakes on the full secularisation of Irish society. |
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters in Dublin hold up placards at the March for Choice, a rally calling for the legalisation of abortion in Ireland. Photograph: AFP/Getty |
Under existing legislation, a woman convicted of having an illegal termination in Ireland can face up to 14 years in prison. However, Irish women are free to travel abroad for abortions, and thousands do each year, mainly to England. |
The national plebiscite is expected to take place in May or June, weeks before Pope Francis visits Ireland – the first papal trip to the country since John Paul II’s in 1979. |
Anti-abortion campaigners say a recommendation from a parliamentary committee on 13 December that the eighth should be repealed, and that abortion should be legal for up to 12 weeks after conception, underlines the importance of preserving the amendment. |
Those in favour of repealing the eighth and changing Ireland’s abortion laws, such as Anglin, recognise the necessity of winning hearts and minds far beyond liberal redoubts such as the Irish capital, Dublin. |
Anglin, 28, said after she returned from the Manchester clinic in 2016, she was unwell and initially too frightened to tell her parents. |
By accident, she did tell a friend who was involved in the repeal campaign about what happened. In December 2016, the friend put Anglin in touch with the abortion reform movement. |
“I felt a huge weight had been lifted off my mind and I started telling more people about having an abortion,” Anglin said. “I increasingly found that the response was ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you had to go through that’ or ‘Oh my God, me too’ or ‘My sister went through that, or my aunt, or my best friend etc.’ |
“I was now in this group of thousands upon thousands of women who had this common theme running through all their lives. So, early in 2017, my friend from the campaign suggested we do a project based on the personal stories of women like me, because they add humanity to the issue and they make it more real.” |
Anglin said she was prepared for a “vicious public debate” in the run-up to the referendum, but hoped the Everyday Stories project, for which she is now a key speaker, would help shift opinion towards a yes vote. |
“Given that I have that background in rural middle Ireland, I understand how important it is to go out there into every county, into as many rural towns and even villages to tell my story. I think it’s important that people like myself don’t talk down to the voters who come to listen to what I have to say.” |
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A billboard erected by Both Lives Matter. Photograph: Both Lives Matter/PA |
The Iona Institute, a Christian lobby group, has acknowledged that the eighth amendment campaign is going to be a decisive struggle to preserve what for them are key religious values in an increasingly secular republic. |
Dave Quinn, journalist, commentator and director of the institute, said the referendum is “of the most crucial importance” to traditional Catholics and other conservative Christians. |
Quinn argued that if the Irish electorate votes to abolish the eighth amendment, “we will have explicitly declared that the unborn have no right to life under our constitution. The legislature, or the courts, would quickly move towards a very permissive abortion regime.” |
Most polls in recent years suggest there is broad support for changing the eighth amendment in some way, but a reluctance among voters to fully liberalise abortion laws along the lines of most other European countries. |
If you do not have a Surface Pro 3, you have my sympathies. Microsoft's Swiss Army Knife-like computer can be a desktop, laptop or tablet, making it an extraordinary value. Not only is it a great choice for home users, but business users too. In other words, the svelte tablet hybrid is good for both fun and work. |
Back in January, we reported that Surface Pro 3 would eventually be learning a new skill -- being a point of sale with the help of PayPal Here. Well, the future is now, as you can buy the Surface Pro 3 and PayPal Here dongle in a special combo package from the Microsoft Store. Will your business jump on the Surface train? |
"As part of Microsoft stores' commitment to providing outstanding choice, value and service for small businesses, starting today, US-based small business retailers will be able to purchase the complete POS solution including Surface, the PayPal Here mobile card reader -- download the PayPal Here app for free -- and specific point of sale hardware accessories at full line Microsoft stores. This not only allows customers to see and experience the full PayPal Here for Surface POS solution set-up before they |
buy, but also gives them an easy go-to support resource for once they implement PayPal Here and Surface in their own businesses", says Angela Lean, Senior Manager, Microsoft Surface. |
Lean further explains, "the PayPal Here app is also now available to customers in the United States through the Windows Store. And, from now until June 15, pay just 1.9 percent per swipe on eligible U.S. swipe transactions, instead of the regular 2.7 percent. The more you sell, the more you'll save. Microsoft store has all the details on this limited time offer. There’s never been a better or easier time for business owners to start accepting in-person credit card and debit card payments from their |
customers, anytime, anywhere". |
It is particularly impressive that Microsoft is choosing to focus on the entire experience. A business owner can walk into a Microsoft Store and walk out with not only the hardware, but an education on how to use it. This is very important, as many business people are not tech-savvy. Microsoft's hand-holding may quell their fears. |
Worried about having the portable point of sale stolen? Fear not. Microsoft is including a lock and stand as a part of the bundle. If you already own a Surface Pro 3, the dongle, lock and stand can be had for a reasonable $164, while the full package starts at $963. You can buy the bundle here. |
If you already have a Windows tablet other than the Surface, the PayPal Here dongle may work with it too. You can buy the dongle on its own, for a paltry $15. You then must download the app here. |
Will your small business embrace this solution? Tell me in the comments. |
The Works Of Humankind. |
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The airliner crashed between two and three hundred feet from my office in the Pentagon, just around a corner from where I work. I’m the deputy General Counsel, Washington Headquarters Services, Office of the Secretary of Defense. A slightly different calibration and I have no doubt I wouldn’t be sending this to you. My colleagues felt the impact, which reminded them of an earthquake. People shouted in the corridor outside that a bomb had gone off upstairs on the main concourse in the |
building. No alarms sounded. I walked to my office, shut down my computer, and headed out. Even before stepping outside I could smell the cordite. Then I knew explosives had been set off somewhere. |
I looked to my right and saw a raging fire and smoke careening off the facade to the sky. |
One of the attorneys who works for me called in sick Tuesday. The satellite office he works in was utterly destroyed. His wife and child will hug him more tightly tonight. |
Another friend, who works for a government contractor in the Army section of the Pentagon that took a direct hit, crawled out of what was his office to safety. |
People walked around in a daze, looking at the gaping hole and flames, appearing uncomprehending. The skies, normally leaden with commercial jets, were empty. Helicopters circled the building and an occasional F-16 streaked by. Sirens blared from what seemed hundreds of emergency vehicles. I lost count of the hook and ladder companies. People left their vehicles in the parking lot and started walking the bridges towards D.C. Hundreds of F.B.I., Secret Service and Defense Department plainclothes |
investigators were deployed in the parking lot, recording witness statements. Photographers by the dozen made their way to as close to the flames as they could bear. |
Two explosions, a few minutes apart, prompted me to start walking. I walked for three miles past office buildings, restaurants and shopping malls. Everything was closing down, public transportation ceased, people were milling about the streets unsure of what to do. Cells phones stopped working, and traffic was total gridlock. As I walked along, I heard the bad news from car radios. Reaching U.S. Route 1, I approached a young man in a pickup and asked him if he was headed towards Alexandria. He gave me a |
ride although he hadn’t planned to travel that way. We traveled five miles in two-and-one-half hours. When he got close, I thanked him, left, and walked the last mile home. |
- - - |
I’m still processing the events of this past Tuesday. On Wednesday I went into work but in the early afternoon we were told to evacuate the building because an unidentified plane was making its way to Washington. It later proved to be a plane chartered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Everyone went home early. |
On Thursday, we were all still numb. We spent almost the entire day consoling each other. |
An attorney I’ve known for fifteen years was killed instantly when the plane went into the building. He had retired two weeks ago and went to work for a government contractor. He was in the Pentagon to pitch a contract to a Lieutenant General. Everyone in the room died from the explosion of jet fuel. |
A woman I met told me that on Tuesday morning she went to get a cup of coffee. When she tried to return to her office, it was gone and two of her colleagues were gone as well. |
Friends of mine had relatives or business associates who worked in the World Trade Center. |
A month ago, while in New York City, my granddaughter and I decided to go to the observation deck of the World Trade Center. As we were riding up the escalator to the mezzanine to purchase the tickets, a thought occurred to me: how misguided the terrorists were who attempted to bring down an indestructible building by setting off a truck bomb in the basement. So much for the works of humankind. |
I have been specializing in adults with ADHD for 22 years. I have found that some parts of the ADHD syndrome could only be talked about after the person had gotten to know me and see me as a person who liked them just as they were and didn’t see them as flawed or defective. After our relationship developed over time and some trust was established, patients were confident enough to reveal a part of their emotional lives that they did their best to keep hidden. This became such a universal experience that it |
is now the first trait I ask about on the checklist after the traditional 18 childhood criteria from the DSM IV… |
“Question # 19: For your entire life have you always been much more sensitive than other people you know to rejection, teasing, criticism, or your own perception that you have failed or fallen short.” |
Over the last 20 years 99.9% of my ADHD patients have not just endorsed this criterion positively; they have underlined it, put stars by it, and added “This is my major problem!!!” |
This is the definition taken pretty much verbatim from an old psychiatric textbook of a technical term called Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). This, in turn, was the hallmark of an unofficial diagnosis called Atypical Depression. In other words, clinicians only saw what they already knew (depression rather than ADHD) and continued to think in terms of mood but just said it was not typical as compared to other mood disorders. The reason that it was not typical was that it was not a mood disorder, it was |
ADHD. |
The term dysphoria is literally Greek for “difficult to bear” which should give you some idea about how painfully your husband experiences your pointing out his short-comings no matter how helpful you try to be. |
People with ADHD nervous systems often state that this RSD is the most disruptive aspect of ADHD in their adult lives. They have found ways to manage the ADHD impairments in their academic and work lives. It is the constant vulnerability to being “wounded” by anyone at any moment that continues to throw them into a tailspin without warning and then disrupt their lives for days with obsessive worry about “what did I do to make them hate me so much?” It does not even have to be real rejection or criticism |
(although that is common enough in the lives of people with unrecognized and untreated ADHD). Perceived criticism and withdrawal of love and respect is just as devastating as the real thing. Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria is often experienced as if it were a physical wound. Patients will hunch over and clutch their chests as if they have just been stabbed with a spear in the chest as they recount episodes in which they have experienced RSD. People tend to react in one of two ways. If they internalize the |
pain they can instantaneously drop into a full Major Depression-like syndrome complete with suicidal thoughts and impulses. The difference, of course is that unlike Major Depression which comes on over weeks to months for no identifiable reason the plunge of RSD is instantaneously complete and clearly triggered by some perceived rejection. Because RSD is always triggered by some event and because the mood shift matches the nature of the trigger, the internalized RSD can be considered a normal mood in every |
way except its intensity. |
The RSD can also be externalized. This usually takes the form of a rage at the person or situation that wounded them so severely. Luckily, this period of rage is usually expressed verbally instead of physically and passes relatively quickly (Dr. Tim Wilens refers to these sudden, short outbursts as a “bottle rocket temper”….fzzzt and it’s over for the ADDer although the rest of us are still getting up off the floor). It should not be a surprise then that informal surveys of persons who are court-mandated to |
anger management classes due to “road rage” or domestic violence have found that 50% of both groups have previously undiagnosed ADHD. The combination of neurologically based rejection sensitivity and impulsivity combine to produce a violent response before the ADDer can see it coming and gain control of the outburst. |
A Viking ship is late in its return home from the newly discovered lands far west. Winter is around the corner and the weather will soon turn ugly. It's imperative that the helmsman maintains the course due East. But where exactly is Home? The sky is becoming more cloudy every passing day. Most nights the stars are not visible and even during the day the sun has difficulty breaking through. Daylight is short and during good part the sun illuminates the sky from below the horizon . . . somewhere. Hanging |
from the top of the knorrship mast a sailor squints his eyes looking for clues in the brightness of the clouds . . . to no avail. Then Leif the Lucky spots an opening in the clouds. He reaches for the pouch hanging from his waist and takes out his Sunstone. Through the crystal he looks at the small patch of blue sky. He turns the rock until it becomes yellow. Next he shouts to the helmsman with his stretched arm pointing starboard . . . towards Home. Bees do it. Ants do it. Did the Vikings do it? Can it be |
that the Vikings used the polarization of skylight as a navigation compass? Did the Vikings find their way to America by looking at the sky through a crystal, the proverbial sunstone? The Icelandic sagas tell the story of how the Vikings sailed from Bergen on the coast of Norway to Iceland, continuing to Greenland and, likely, Newfoundland in the American continent. This remarkable sailing achievement was realized circa 700 -1100 AC, before the magnetic compass reached Europe from China (it wouldn't have |
helped much, anyway, so close to the Magnetic Pole). How did they steer true course in the long voyages out of land sight, especially in the common bad weather and low visibility of those high latitudes? In 1967, a Danish archaeologist, Thorkild Ramskou, suggested that the Vikings might have used the polarization of the skylight for orientation when clouds hid the sun position. They would have used as polarizers natural crystals available to them, the famous sunstones described in the sagas. To find the |
location of the sun they only needed a clear patch of sky close to the zenith to determine the great circle passing through the sun. The pros and the cons of this theory are the following. |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Analysts do not expect there to be significant improvements made to the iPod range |
Few pieces of technology can genuinely claim to be iconic. But Apple's iPod, first launched in 2001, arguably fits the bill. |
With its distinctive click-wheel design, and those ubiquitous white bud headphones, the iPod brought good looks to portable audio technology - with a "cool" factor not seen since Sony's Walkman over a decade earlier. |
And for the record industry, a sigh of relief - the iPod's accompanying music store iTunes paved the way for legal digital music downloading to hit the mainstream, tempting at least some music fans away from the free-for-all of piracy. |
But 12 years, and 26 devices later, the generation-defining iPod range looks like it's about to fade into history without so much as a whimper. |
[Apple] thought: 'If we don't do something, someone else will' Ian Fogg, Mobile analyst, IHS |
"I think all of us have known for some time that iPod is a declining business," said Apple boss Tim Cook earlier this week, speaking during a conference call discussing the company's latest earnings report. |
He announced massive profits - as ever - but noted that iPod sales had dipped: 52% down on this time last year, with further drops expected. |
That's not bad, or even surprising, news for the company. The people who would have previously bought iPods are now more likely to buy iPhones or iPads. |
But it's bad news for the humble iPod - a tiny-but-mighty device that many say was the catalyst that propelled Apple into its boom era of iPhones and iPads. |
Cannibalising sales |
The iPod has been nervously looking over its shoulder for some time. |
When the iPhone was launched in 2007, Steve Jobs joked that it was "the best iPod we've ever made". |
And he was right - with its apps and other smartness, the iPhone meant there was no longer any need to own an iPod as a separate device, so long as you could afford it. |
iPod through the years |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The first iPod, launched in 2001 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption By 2004, it had shrunk a little for the iPod Mini range Image copyright Getty Images Image caption 2005 saw the main product gain added video capabilities Image copyright Getty Images Image caption An approach not everyone thought would work - 2005's screenless iPod Shuffle Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Within a year, the Shuffle had become even smaller Image copyright Getty |
Images Image caption The first iPod Nano was out in 2005. This red limited charity edition is from 2006 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The iPhone-like iPod Touch was released in 2007 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The last major upgrade of the iPod Touch range was in 2012 previous slide next slide |
"One of the things that's very striking is that Apple was doing very, very well with the iPod back in 2006, yet it still chose to create a smartphone which on day one had iPod capability," says Ian Fogg, a mobile analyst from IHS. |
"It wasn't afraid to create a product that would disrupt a successful existing business. It thought: 'If we don't do something, someone else will'." |
Younger users |
As it happened, the iPod held its position as the biggest selling dedicated MP3 player on the market. It still is. |
Despite the iPhone - and other smartphones - offering far more in terms of features and computing power, the iPod was holding its own. |