bloodlines

America itself is well-known for being a melting pot of different

ethnic groups and cultures, but nowhere is this diversity more
pronounced than in Queens, New York. Here, second-generation
Puerto Ricans live with third-generation Greeks and first
generation Koreans.
Also they are curious about their ancestral roots. National
Geographic's Genographic Project, known also as the Family
Tree, set out to trace the origins and common ancestry of the
various immigrants in this community by using a simple DNA
test. The study was well supported by local residents, but often
there was something which intrigues us all: the history of our
ancestry.
Here are two Queens residents' stories.

1. Richard 38
My great-grandfather Tomas came to America from Poland when
he was fifteen. His mother had become ill and died, and his father
remarried to be able to take care of his seven children. Tomas
didn't like his stepmother, so he ran away to Belgium, from there
he Arrived in America with nothing and he got a job. Then one
day he saw an announcement in a newspaper . It was from his
brother in New York who was looking for him. Tomas got in
touch and they had an emotional reunion in New York, where
Tomas subsequently settled.

2. Tanja 29
I'm a first generation American. Both my parents came here from
Jamaica, where getting a good education is a must. My mother
always says that people may take everything away from you, but
they can never take away your education. My father was a nurse
in Jamaica, but he had an ambition to be a doctor in the US; My
parents have a strong work ethic. My mum has always worked as
a nurse, but at the same time has always been very involved in
our lives also, helping with our studies and following our careers
with interest. Both my sister and I have followed them into the
medical profession and now I'm working as a doctor in Queens.

Once upon a time

Once upon a time there lived in Germany two brothers who loved
a good story - one with magic and danger, royalty and villains. At
school they met a wise man who led them to a treasure – a library
of old books. Inspired, the brothers began collecting their own
stories. Soon they produced their own book of fairy tales.
The brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, named their story
collection Children's and Household Tales and published it in
Germany. The collection has been translated into more than 160
languages. The Japanese have built two theme parks devoted to
the tales. In the United States the Grimms' collection helped
create Disney as a media giant. Such fame would have shocked
the humble Grimms.
Wilhelm continued to reshape the stories up to the final edition
of 1857. He make them more acceptable to children and their
parents.
But the core of these stories was left untouched.
Appropriate technology
even if the term ‘appropriate technology’ is a relatively new one,
the concept certainly isn’t. In the 1930s Mahatma Gandhi claimed
that the advanced technology used by western industrialised
nations did not represent the right route to progress for his
homeland, India. He wanted the poor villagers of India to use
technology in a way that empowered them and helped them to
become self-reliant.
The term ‘appropriate technology is not just technology which is
suited to the needs and capabilities of the user, but technology
that takes particular account of environmental, ethical and
cultural considerations. That is clearly a much more difficult
thing to achieve. Often it is found in rural communities in
developing or less industrialised countries. But It also has its place
in the developed world.

Wherever it is deployed, there is no guarantee, however, that so-

called ‘appropriate technology’ will in fact be appropriate.

Hip hop
I first heard rap at a party in Harlem . It sounded like a broken
record. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard.
 For the next 26 years, I avoided rap music. I heard it booming
out of cars and alleyways from Paris to Abidjan, but I never
listened. In doing so, I missed the most important cultural event
in my lifetime. This known as hip-hop.
Hip-hop began in the mid-1970s, in an almost bankrupt New
York City. The bored kids came up with a new entertainment.
In poor urban communities around the world, rap
music is a universal expression of the injustice of
wealth distribution. We want money to help our parents,'
Assane, a nineteen-year-old DJ from Dakar in Senegal tells me.
'We watch our mothers boil water to cook and have nothing to
put in the pot. Rap doesn't belong to American culture,' he says.
'It belongs here. It has always existed here, because of our pain.
That is why, after 26 years, I have come to embrace this music
tried so hard to ignore. Much of hip-hop, particularly the
commercial side, I hate. Yet I love the good of it.

Hydroelectric dam
Kai Kensavaong will never again walk along the muddy lanes, in
the village in southern Laos where she was born. Her old home
now lies at the bottom of a reservoir of brown water created to
feed a hydroelectric power plant, the first to be funded by the
World Bank for over twenty years.
The World Bank stopped financing hydroelectric dam projects
twenty years ago because of criticism that such projects were
harming local communities and the environment. But Nam
Theun 2 dam on the Mekong River is the showpiece for the
bank’s new policy of supporting sustainable hydropower projects.
Seventeen villages in the flooded area have now been rebuilt.
The power company has promised to double their living
standards within five years. According to the World Bank, 87 per
cent of those resettled believe life is much better than before as
they now have electricity, clean water, new roads and greater
access to schools and health care.

Unusual places to stay

PRISON HOTELS
Built in 1905, This is more a reality jail experience than a hotel.
‘Reception’ is a dark corridor where a former prison guard
explains the rules and then fires his gun in the air to show you he
is serious. After a meal of bread and sweet Russian tea, guests are
given five minutes to wash before making up their own bed from
a wooden bench and thin mattress. Mind you, for $12 per night,
what do you expect?

PERIOD HOTELS
Virginia City in Montana, was a ghost town until it began to be
restored in the 1950s for tourism. The town operates now as a
large open-air museum. The rooms feature period Victorian
furniture and downstairs the saloon has a true Wild West feel.
the city only comes to life at weekends, when actors walk around
in period costumes, such as sheriffs, cowboys and gold
prospectors.

CAVE HOTELS
During the Renaissance they developed into more sophisticated
rooms with stone walls, vaulted ceilings and balustrades. But in
recent history they are best known as the poor homes of the
peasants who lived there with their animals until as late as 1952.
Now, however, they have been renovated to provide hospitality in
a historical setting. the rooms are comfortably furnished with
antique furniture. Prices start at $300 per night.

ART HOTELS
A modern art gallery is a place where you can lose yourself in an
artist’s vision of the world. A hotel is essentially a place where you
can spend the night. The hotel is a collection of individually
designed rooms – the upside-down room, the all-orange room, the
mirror-filled room – . However, the rooms can be small and
claustrophobic and often you have to share a bathroom with
other guests. But if you don’t mind that, it may be the next best
thing to spending the night in a gallery

Madagascar a world of its

own
Madagascar is an island – the world’s fourth
largest. Nature has blessed Madagascar with
exceptional riches.
But its rare beauty hides the Bad situation of its
people. The typical Madagascan lives on about a
dollar a day. Since the first humans arrived in
Madagascar loggers and developers have
destroyed nearly 90 per cent of the island’s
original forest habitat.
that Madagascar’s population is growing by
three per cent a year, this tension between rich
land and poor residents is increasing day by day.
Needing money, the new government sell wood
from trees which had already been cut down or
had fallen during the cyclones. Yet in reality they
did little to control the loggers who continued to
rob the forests. The main targets are the
rosewood tree and the ebony tree.
The locals are caught in a trap. Poverty and the
high value of rosewood at $3,000 per cubic metre
it is ten times as valuable as oak.
Olivier Behra believes that the only solution is to
give local people economic alternatives. He has
stopped deforestation by encouraging the locals
instead to collect medicinal plants, which they
never imagined had any value, and sell them
overseas to companies like Chanel.

From hero to zero

In January 2008, hours after saving his plane

from crashing at Heathrow Airport, flight captain
Peter Burkill was being praised as a hero. Only
days later, when reports appeared in the press
accusing him of freezing at the controls, he
became a villain. How did this extraordinary
transformation come about?
Peter Burkill was the pilot on flight from Hong
Kong and responsible for the lives of its 152
passengers. But 35 seconds from landing, two of
the plane’s engines failed. Burkill let his co-pilot
John Coward take the controls while he help the
plane reach the runway. The plane stop without
turning over. The passengers escaped without
serious injury.
British Airways banned peter from speaking
about the events until the full investigation by
Air Accidents Investigations Branch (AAIB) was
complete. Overnight Burkill’s life changed.
He begged the company to clear his name, but
they refused. Even when they published their
own internal report which cleared him of any
wrongdoing, it was only read by the senior
management. No word of it reached his close
colleagues and rumours circulated that crew
members were afraid to fly with him.
The official AAIB report was finally published in
2009.
Then Peter Burkill left the company he had
served for 25 years. He began applying for jobs
with other airlines, but he was not invited to a
single interview.
BA said that he was and always had been
welcome in the company and in September 2010
invited him to come back . Burkhill accepted their
invitation.

The king herself

Today she is in the Royal Mummy Rooms at the
Egyptian Museum , she is Hatshepsut, the king
herself.
She was one of the greatest builders in one of
the greatest Egyptian dynasties. She built
hundreds of statues of herself and left her
history.
But after her death, her stepson Thutmose III
started erasing her memory, ordering all images
of her as king to be removed from monuments
and temples. her statues were smashed and
thrown away. Images of her as queen were left
undisturbed, but wherever she proclaimed
herself king were destroyed. Why?
Hatshepsut was the eldest daughter. But her
father also had a son by another queen, and he
thutmose II became pharaoh when his father
died. Thutmose II married his sister, Hatshepsut.
They had one daughter; The second wife gave
birth to a son whom the hatshepsut could not
have.
When Thutmose II died, Thutmose III, was still a
young boy and Hatshepsut assumed control as
the young pharaoh’s queen regent. And so began
one of the most intriguing periods of ancient
Egyptian history. At first, Hatshepsut acted on
her stepson’s behalf. But then, she began
performing kingly functions. After a few years
she assumed the role of ‘king’ of Egypt for next
21 years.
After Hapshepsut’s death, thutmose III took his
revenge, wiping his stepmother’s name as
pharaoh out of history. But in the long term it is
she, the King Herself, who has achieved greater
fame
A universal language

A universal language People love to compare and

contrast. We all find this kind of comparison
entertaining. Proxemics, the study of different
standards of personal space, is one example.
How close I stand to someone when I am
speaking to them depends not only on my
relationship to them, but also on my culture. This
is important because if the person I am with is
not used to standing as near as I do when we are
talking to each other, they might feel
uncomfortable. In some countries the distance
between humans are different. Clearly it is
important to know a little about eating customs,
tipping and the rules concerning basic greetings
– whether you should bow or shake someone’s
hand. But, we are not so different. Focussing on
these similarities – the things that we all have in
common – is a much more profitable route than
focussing on the differences.

Who’s a clever bird, then?

In 1977 Irene Pepperberg, decided to investigate
the thought processes of another creature by
talking to it. For that she would teach a one-
year-old African grey parrot named Alex I
thought if he learns, I could ask him questions
about how he sees the world.’
Most researchers thought this study would be
failure. ‘Some people actually called me crazy for
trying this,’ she said.
Alex learnt how to pronounce almost one
hundred English words, including the names of
food. He could count to six. Pepperberg wanted
to get inside his mind and learn more about him.
She couldn’t ask him what he was thinking
about, but she could ask him about his
knowledge of numbers, shapes and colours.
In one demonstration, She held up a green key
and a small green cup for him to look at. ‘What’s
the same?’ she asked.
Without hesitation, Alex’s said: ‘Colour.’ ‘What’s
different?’ Pepperberg asked.
‘Shape,’ Alex said. The thoughts – were his.
Many of Alex’s skills, such as his ability to
understand the concepts of ‘same’ and
‘different’, are rare in the animal world.
And then, Alex spoke up. „Talk clearly!’ he
commanded, when one of the younger birds
Pepperberg was also teaching mispronounced
the word green.
1. immigration

immigration, process through which individuals become

permanent residents or citizens of another country.To begin with,
let's look at the four types of immigration status that exist:
citizens, residents, non immigrants and undocumented. The
characteristics of each status are explained below. i know some
great actors and actresses which were immigrants for example
According to the New York Daily News, Actress Emma Watson
was in immigration in order to became star and started her new
life. people always chooses this way to became more productive.
because Place and environment create a man.

3. Virtual reality and augmented reality

Virtual reality is not a new challenge for the world, this is our
future today, we have been convinced of this since the well-known
social network changed its name to Metavers. The virtual world is
a prerequisite for many people to simplify their lives, help many
people solve their physical problems and simplify their lives, but
in my opinion we should not lose the perception of physical reality
and close contact with people without all the virtual imaginations.
4. Graffiti

graffiti, form of visual communication, usually illegal, involving

the unauthorized marking of public space by an individual or
group. Although the common image of graffiti is a stylistic symbol
or phrase spray-painted on a wall by a member of a street gang,
some graffiti is not gang-related. If am the mayor of the city, I
think there should be special spaces for graffiti painting,

Fully legalizing graffiti painting can have bad consequences, you

can not touch private property without permission and even
painting, like graffiti on ancient historic buildings, but I think
there should be a separate space for this interesting sequence,
because in many cases it is so attractive and beautiful to tourists.
To the great delight, there must be a separate space where artists
can showcase their talents, and people interested in doing so can
enjoy this beauty.

5. Big project

La Scala
There are few places as associated with pure, refined class as La
Scala. The name itself evokes an immediate sense of artistry.
Why? Milan’s famous opera house has become one of the most
famous monuments to the art form of opera, which is about as
important to Italian culture as La Scala itself. This structure has
catapulted obscure musicians into fame, defined legacies, and set
the tone for European performance arts. For this, La Scala is one
of Italy’s most venerated structures. It’s a celebrity in its own
right.
It was founded in the late 18th century, La Scala was designed by
neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini. Piermarini set about
creating an opera house with a neoclassical façade, popular in the
time period, built with columns, pilasters, pediments, and
Classical geometric ratios.