My kids love to play with the usual plastic junk as much as any child obsessed with colorful, shiny objects, but like many a parent, I’ve grown weary of giving them stuff that won’t teach them anything and will just end up at Goodwill (or a landfill) in six months’ time. Roboquad - This quadruped robot from Wowwee (which offers a number of fun robo-companions) was the biggest hit with both kids. You can use a remote to order him around the house, step by step (or dance, which the kids like to see at least 10 times a day), or put him in a semi-autonomous mode to blip and beep and explore on his own. Ice Shattering Mammoth Dig - A huge hit with the kids. Digital Speed Sensing Baseball - Why play ball with a normal baseball when you can use this one, which has a speed sensor built in. R2-D2 Interactive Droid - I was hoping this miniature R2 unit would get higher marks, but adults liked him more than the kids. read more
Indian artist Gopal Swami Khetanchi was so inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting Mona Lisa that he decided to pay tribute to its creator by painting Mona Lisa in Indian clothes and jewellery. One of his main aims in recreating the masterpiece with an Indian flavour was to take it to the people for appreciation as they do not get to see such paintings in real life. His paintings of Mona Lisa have become a rage for the people of Rajasthan. read more
Pascal Cotte, the French constructor of a multi-spectral camera, shows the results of the multi spectral digitalization of ‘The Lady with an Ermine’. Engineer and inventor Pascal Cotte virtually strips away centuries of sometimes sloppy restoration work to provide a digital image of a painting as it may have left the artist’s studio - an abiding question among art historians and art lovers about such masterpieces. Cotte was called in by the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow in southern Poland, which is home to a collection built up over the centuries by the eponymous Polish princely family. Though a major piece in the Czartoryski collection, nagging doubts persisted over how much of ‘Lady with an Ermine’ was da Vinci’s own hand and how much was that of his assistants’. But Cotte’s scan confirmed the existence of fingerprints which had fuelled Polish experts’ long-held belief that the majority of the work was da Vinci’s, she said. Franck and Cotte believe da Vinci may originally have painted the ferret-like animal lower down the portrait of the woman thought to be Cecilia Gallerani, who was the mistress of the Duke Lodovico Sforza of Milan. read more
Nowadays, at any rate, the smiles of Indonesian people leave foreigners, be they first-time tourists or expatriates, guessing. The bureaucratic labyrinth they have to go through is full of people with broad, smiling faces, but the hospitality can quickly turn to hostility if the prospective investors refuse to provide "grease" money. Culture and Tourism Minister Jero Wacik is right in asking ordinary people to flash their smiles in support of the government’s effort to boost tourism with Visit Indonesia Year 2008, which will be inaugurated by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Jan. Long proclaiming itself to be a friendly nation, Indonesia raised many eyebrows across the world when thousands of people went on a rampage and looted shops during the May 1998 riots, or killed each other in the ethnic conflict between the indigenous Dayak and migrant Madurans, and in the sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians in Ambon and Poso. In many cases, nationalism has been hijacked to justify hostility to foreign investors, ironically at a time when Indonesia badly needs them to help the country overcome unemployment and eventually poverty. Foreign investors will commit to long-term involvement if both the Indonesian people and regulations are inviting and generous in terms of incentives. read more
