Momentin kur i ka njoft paret !

Foto #1 5 euro iu doken t'mdhaja
Munet me ble njeri qka do me to

Foto #2 5 euro iu doken shum t'vogla edhe i kunderpergjigjet BEKIMIT qa pom vyn 5 euro sen s'muj me ba me to

HAHA

Kafeneja Jonë - Te Oki

Kafeneja Jonë - Te Oki (njohur edhe vetëm si Kafeneja Jonë apo OKI) është një serial satiriko-komik, prodhim i CMB Productions që transmetohet nga RTK-ja.

NgjarjaE tërë ngjarja në këtë serial komiko-satirik zhvillohet përbrenda një objekti të caktuar i cili objekt është një kafene. Daljet skenike nga objekti janë të rralla e të dorës së dytë. Në këtë serial luajnë një kast aktorësh të njohur që më parë. Seriali në fillim xhirohej në një lokal tjetër. Producent është Arzana Kraja, regjisor është Ilir Bokshi, kurse skenaristë janë Astrit Kabashi dhe Ilir Gjocaj. Ky serial është krijuar nga CMB Productions.

Vote u're favourite actor

VOTE U'RE FAVOURITE ACTOR ?

GO GO GO !

Chelsea FC

Favourite footboll team of ORHAN

R.I.P Elez

HAHAHA Legjend u kan elezi , Shiko videon per me shum !

fans do u like our fanpages

FANS ?
DO U LIKE OUR FANPAGES ?
COMMENT

Vedati

LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE VEDAT LEGJENDEN

bekim labinot

This photo has been taked in Prishtina ,
Fatos Kryeziu says : I was here with my father hyhyhy in prishtina just walking and sure going shopping !
I love all my fans . <3
Support me , i will support YOU
much love for all

smile hyhy

This photo goes only for people that smile HHYHHYHYHYHYHYHYHY

FC Kafeneja Jone

Orhani - GoolKeeper
Naimi-Mbrojts
Labinoti Mbrojts

Fetahi - Mbrojts
Ministri - Mbrojts
Melja - Mesfushor
Bikimi - Mesfushor
Shqiponji - Mesfushor
Avnia - Mesfushor
Ganja - Mesfushore
BACA LAMë - SULMUESS

In next episod you are going to see

In next episod you are going to see
ORHAN VS FEKA BATTLE
WHO THINGS WINN ?

Nita , piq me a cafe

NITA , CAN U PIQ ME A CAFFEE

SHARE COCA COLA WITH

SHARE COCA COLA WITH Kafeneja Jone

WHERE ARE U
FAMILY COL LOS TERRORITAS

Labinot-Koka

HELLO ABETARE , Lexim is here ! HAHAHA 

Can you train yourself to get by on less sleep?

(Copyright: Thinkstock)

Margaret Thatcher did it. So did Salvador Dali. They survived the day with only a few hours of sleep. The question is whether you can force yourself to do the same. 

We waste a third of our lives sleeping – or that’s how some people see it. When there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day, you yearn to be like the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was said to get by on just four hours sleep a night, or the artist Salvador Dali who wasted as little time as possible slumbering.
There is a quite a range in the number of hours we like to sleep. As Jim Horne writes in Sleepfaring, 80% of us manage between six and nine hours a night; the other 20% sleep more or less than this. But how easy is it to change your regular schedule? If you force yourself to get out of bed a couple of hours early every day will your body eventually become accustomed to it? Sadly not.
There is plenty of evidence that a lack of sleep has an adverse effect. We do not simply adjust to it – in the short-term it reduces our concentration, and if it’s extreme it makes us confused and distressed, and turns us into such poor drivers that it’s the equivalent of being drunk. The long-term effects are even more worrying. Repeatedly getting less sleep than you need over the course of decades is associated with an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
But what about those people who do happily appear to manage on fewer hours than the rest of us?  Why does it not seem to make them ill?
Firstly, you can console yourself with the fact that there are plenty of myths about people’s bold claims. Napoleon allegedly said that sleep was only for weaklings, but in fact he got plenty of shut-eye.
But there are a few very rare individuals who can manage with only five hours sleep a night without experiencing deleterious effects. They are sometimes known as the “sleepless elite”. In 2009, a team led by geneticist Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California San Francisco discovered a mother and daughter who went to bed very late, yet were up bright and early every morning. Even when they had the chance to have a lie-in at the weekend (a tell-tale sign that you are sleep-deprived) they didn’t take it.
Tests revealed that both mother and daughter carried a mutation of a gene called hDEC2. When the researchers tweaked the same gene in mice and in flies, they found that they also began to sleep less – and when mice were deprived of sleep they didn’t seem to need as much sleep in order to catch up again. This demonstrates that genetics play at least some part in your need for sleep; unfortunately the sleepless elites’ enviable state of affairs isn’t available to rest of us, because at the moment we are stuck with the genes we have (that’s my excuse anyway).
But while it might not be possible to train yourself to sleep less, researchers working with the military have found that you can bank sleep beforehand if you plan well in advance. At the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research they had people go to bed a couple of hours earlier than usual every night for a week. When they were subsequently deprived of sleep they didn’t suffer as much as the people who hadn’t had the chance to bank sleep in advance.
This does involve a lot of effort, so in general what you need to do is work out your personal sleep requirement and then try to stick to it. In his book Counting Sheep Paul Martin describes a method of working this out. You probably need to do it while you’re on holiday because you need to wake up naturally, rather than rely on an alarm clock. Every night for two weeks you go to bed at the same time and see what time you wake up by yourself next morning.  For the first few nights you might well be catching up on missed sleep, but after that the time you wake up gives an indication of the length of your ideal night’s sleep.

Does skipping breakfast make you put on weight?

(Copyright: Thinkstock)

It’s a plausible theory, until you look through the evidence. Then things become a little messy.

We’re often told that breakfast is an essential part of a healthy diet, especially if you are watching your weight. Some schools run breakfast to ensure that as many pupils as possible eat this all-important first meal of the day. But not everyone can stomach an early morning meal. In Europe and US between 10% and 30% of people skip breakfast, with teenage girls most likely to give it a miss, saying they’ve not got time, don’t feel hungry or that they’re on a diet.
Missing breakfast for dietary reasons runs counter to a great deal of advice. The logic goes that missing an early morning meal will leave you hungry for the rest of the day, tempting you to snack on high-calorie foods, and resulting in weight gain.
It’s a plausible theory, until you look for evidence that people who skip breakfast consume any more calories than anyone else. The impact skipping breakfast has on weight is harder to study systematically than you might expect. The first problem is how to define that first meal of the day. How much food counts as a real breakfast? Do you have to eat it seven days a week to be defined as a breakfast-eater? And how early in the day does it need to be eaten? For example, when the US Department of Agriculture conducted a systematic review on the topic they found that most studies defined breakfast as food eaten before ten in the morning. Anyone who ate at 10.05 was considered to have skipped breakfast, which could skew the results.
Another difficulty is that what is eaten for breakfast varies from country to country. In Scandinavia it might include smoked fish, in Germany cold meats, and in the UK boxed cereals, which can often contain more sugar and salt than people realise (the Consensus Action on Salt and Health group says some cereals are saltier than seawater). This makes the impact of eating breakfast more difficult to study on a global level because the nutritional benefits will depend on what you include in the meal.
But if we stick to looking at calories consumed, there have been many attempts to study the impact of eating breakfast on a person’s weight.  A review of studies conducted before 2004 found that on the whole breakfast-skippers do not consume more calories during the rest of the day to compensate. People who ate breakfast tended to have a diet that was more nutritionally balanced, but it wasn’t more calorific. The findings on weight are a little more complex. Four studies found that children who didn’t eat breakfast had on average a higher body mass index, but another three studies found it made no difference. The advantage of those first four studies was that they had taken more trouble to control for factors which might skew the results. So the evidence begins to tip slightly towards a link between missing breakfast and increased weight.
To muddy the waters, a US review in 2011 cited five studies that found an association between breakfast-skipping and weight gain: three that found it made no difference, and one which found the opposite – that amongst overweight children, the breakfast-eaters weighed even more. And to confuse the issue even more, a meta-analysis which pooled the results of nineteen studies conducted in Asian and Pacific regions found a relationship between increased weight and missing breakfast. A European systematic review had similar findings, but one study found the relationship between breakfast-skipping and weight only existed for boys.
Does size matter?
What happens when you turn the question round? Seven studies found that overweight children are more likely to skip breakfast. But this highlights the problem with these studies – they are cross-sectional. They take a snapshot in time. They don’t prove causation. We can’t know which came first – the excess weight or the breakfast-skipping. Perhaps these children are missing breakfast because they are already overweight and are trying to eat less.

Will we ever… understand why music makes us feel good?

(Copyright: Thinkstock)

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues.

Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all.
We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug.
But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing?
The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.
This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.
Why should we care, though, whether our musical expectations are right or not? It’s not as if our life depended on them. Ah, says musicologist David Huron of Ohio State University, but perhaps once it did. Making predictions about our environment – interpreting what we see and hear, say, on the basis of only partial information – could once have been essential to our survival, and indeed still often is, for example when crossing the road. And involving the emotions in these anticipations could have been a smart idea. On the African savannah, our ancestors did not have the luxury of mulling over whether that screech was made by a harmless monkey or a predatory lion. By bypassing the “logical brain” and taking a shortcut to the primitive limbic circuits that control our emotions, the mental processing of sound could prompt a rush of adrenalin – a gut reaction – that prepares us to get out of there anyway.
We all know that music has this direct line to the emotions: who hasn’t been embarrassed by the tears that well up as the strings swell in a sentimental film, even while the logical brain protests that this is just cynical manipulation? We can’t turn off this anticipatory instinct, nor its link to the emotions – even when we know that there’s nothing life-threatening in a Mozart sonata. “Nature’s tendency to overreact provides a golden opportunity for musicians”, says Huron. “Composers can fashion passages that manage to provoke remarkably strong emotions using the most innocuous stimuli imaginable.”

Ten extraordinary Pentagon mind experiments

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  t’s been 30 years since the first message was sent over initial nodes of the Arpanet, the Pentagon-sponsored precursor to the internet. But this month, researchers announced something that could be equally historic: the passing of messages between two rat brains, the first step toward what they call the “brain net”.Connecting the brains of two rats through implanted electrodes, scientists at Duke University demonstrated that in response to a visual cue, the trained response of one rat, called an encoder, could be mimicked without a visual cue in a second rat, called the decoder. In other words, the brain of one rat had communicated to the other.
  "These experiments demonstrated the ability to establish a sophisticated, direct communication linkage between rat brains, and that the decoder brain is working as a pattern-recognition device,” said Miguel Nicolelis, a professor at Duke University School of Medicine. “So basically, we are creating an organic computer that solves a puzzle."
  Whether or not the Duke University experiments turn out to be historic (some skepticism has already been raised), the work reflects a growing Pentagon interest in neuroscience for applications that range from such far-off ideas as teleoperation of military devices (think mind-controlled drones), to more near-term and less controversial technology, like prosthetics controlled by the human brain. In fact, like the Arpanet, the experiment on the rat “brain net” was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).
  The Pentagon’s expanding work in neuroscience in recent years has focused heavily on medical applications, like research to understand traumatic brain injury, but a good portion of the past decade’s work has also been on concepts that are intended to help the military fight wars more effectively, such as studying ways to keep soldiers’ brains alert even after days without sleep. Under the rubric of “Augmented Cognition,” Darpa has also pursued a number of military technologies, like goggles that would monitor a soldier’s brain signals to pick up potential threats before the conscious mind is aware of them.
  Now, such work may get an even bigger boost: President Barack Obama is set to announce an initiative that could funnel billions of dollars to the field of neuroscience. That could mean more money for the Pentagon’s forays into brain science.
  While some of the applications might be a generation away, or may never arrive, like mind-controlled drones, others, like the brain-monitoring goggles, are already in testing (though probably not ready for use in the field).  That’s raising questions from ethicists, who are pushing for the government to begin now to think about “neuro ethics.”
  In a 2012 article published last year in the journal Plos Biology, Jonathan Moreno, a professor of medical ethics, and Michael Tennison, a professor of neurology, argued that many neuroscientists don’t think about the contribution of their work to warfare, or consider the ethical implication of such work.
  The question they raise is what choice future soldiers might have in such cognitively enhanced warfare. “If a warfighter is allowed no autonomous freedom to accept or decline an enhancement intervention, and the intervention in question is as invasive as remote brain control,” they write, “then the ethical implications are immense.”
  Whether this era will come to pass, remains to be seen. But, for now, expect many more advances in the world of neuroscience to come from the Pentagon.
  Visitors to the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, can hear Sharon talk in more detail about the Pentagon’s growing interest in neuroscience in her talk A Manhattan Project of the Mind on 12 March.
  If you would like to comment on this article or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
  
  

Are mobile phones dangerous in hospitals?

Is there any evidence that signals do, or ever did, disrupt medical equipment? Claudia Hammond explores the evidence and encounters mixed reception. 

When I was a volunteer working in hospital radio in my teens, patients who wanted to call their relatives had to wait until a heavy payphone on wheels was trundled up to their bedside. When it wasn’t being used by another patient, that is. Then came mobile phones and for a short time people were able to keep in touch with their families as much as they desired, until many hospitals around the world banned the use of mobile phones on hospital wards, fearing they might cause essential medical equipment to malfunction.
Lots of patients flouted the rules and so did some staff. In a survey in 2004, 64% of doctors confessed to leaving their phones switched on in high-risk areas, such as operating theatres or high dependency units.
Many hospitals are now relaxing the rules when it comes to wards and corridors, but it’s taking some time. In the Canadian province of Quebec the first hospital lifted restrictions only six months ago.
Is there any evidence that mobile phone signals do, or ever did, disrupt equipment? In a paper published in 2006 the eminent epidemiologist Martin McKee pointed out that although the use of evidence-based treatment was on the increase, evidence was sometimes lacking when it came to other hospital activities. Mobile phones were a prime example. He examined practices in eight European countries and found that all had a ban of some kind, with France even bringing in legislation against mobile phone use in hospitals.  
In some early studies, there was minimal interference in 1-4% of equipment tested, but only if they were within a metre of a phone. This might sound like a small number, but if it’s a vital piece of equipment keeping someone alive then it could be critical. Yet the authors of a 2007 paper on the topic could not track down a single death caused by the use of a mobile phone.   
Interference from a phone depends on three things – the intensity of the signal, the frequency of the signal and the degree to which equipment is shielded.  Whenever a phone is switched on it transmits a signal hoping to make contact with a base station in order to send and receive calls or texts and with smartphones, emails and other data. Once these electromagnetic waves are being transmitted, any length of wire in a piece of medical equipment can act as an antenna. In principle, even the wire linking a patient to a monitor could do it. It’s the resulting electric current which could disrupt the equipment. In the newest kinds of devices the internal wires have been shortened in order to avoid this.
A few studies have recorded flickering screens and in one case an old infusion pump stopped working. In another study interference was observed in 20% of the tests, but only 1.2% was considered clinically important.
A Dutch study of second and third generation phones tested 61 medical devices used in critical care, and found that 43% were affected by phones. These ranged from ventilators turning off, to syringe pumps stopping and external pacemakers losing the correct pace.  But the phones were very, very close – the median distance was just 3cm. Also instead of using real phones, they used a generator which simulated a worst-case scenario, where a phone transmits with increased power in the hope of getting a signal. (To save on battery power phones transmit at weaker power whenever they can.) In real life, provided the signal in a hospital is good then phones won’t be transmitting at this rate.

Punk’s luxury legacy and the frisson of rebellion

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• Talk about punk, and you’re liable to start an argument. It’s been forty-odd years since Legs McNeil plastered downtown New York City with posters reading, “Watch Out! Punk is coming!”, and still, the history and the meaning of punk remains bitterly contested. Was punk a musical phenomenon? An attitude? A Situationist riposte to the all-encompassing grimness of 1970s Britain? Did Malcolm McLaren invent punk? Did The Ramones? If a squatter in present-day south London covers a beat-up jacket with studs, that’s punk, right? But what if Karl Lagerfeld puts studs on a $5,000 Chanel jacket? Is that punk, too?
  These questions, and others, are raised by the opening of Punk: From Chaos to Couture, the new show at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The exhibition is one of the highlights of the Met’s year. According to Andrew Bolton, the curator who conceived the show, the museum is anticipating attendance on par with its blockbuster Alexander McQueen exhibition two years ago. And the influence of From Chaos to Couture has already been seen on the runway, with mohawks at the Fall ’13 Fendi show, tartan everywhere from Versace to Junya Watanabe, and biker jackets pretty much ubiquitous. Bolton and his team have made the weather, fashion-wise.
  But does the punk aesthetic still have force? That was the question that kept recurring to me, as all those punk-inspired looks made their way down the catwalk. I posed the question to Bolton: Does a studded jacket mean anything, in this day and age?
  “I think it depends on how you define punk,” Bolton says. “If you define punk as a political phenomenon that emerged at a particular moment in England, then of course, it’s lost that meaning,” he says “I doubt that anyone looks at a studded jacket now, and thinks of garbage strikes,” he adds, referring to the wave of industrial action in 1970s Britain that left rotting rubbish to pile up in the streets.
  As for Bolton, he defines ‘punk’ in terms of how it looks. From Chaos to Couture catalogues the key formal elements of punk, and documents their influence on high-end fashion. That’s all. The show is agnostic on its larger meaning. As a breakdown of those formal elements ¾ the DIY and the destruction, the use of found materials and hardware such as safety pins and studs ¾ the show is rigorous and interesting. But it’s not very helpful if you’re wondering whether a studded jacket can still be considered subversive. Or if you suspect that subversion is the essential thing about punk, aesthetics be damned.
  Anarchy in the UK
  If, as Bolton says, we all have to define punk for ourselves, then here goes. With all due respect to the legends mooching around New York club CBGBs in the early seventies, I’m going to define punk British-ly, because it was in Britain, and particularly in and around Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s shop Sex on the King’s Road in London, that punk obtained coherence as a confrontational stance against the mainstream. Punk music, punk fashion, and punk politics spoke with one voice. It was a bottle smashed in the face of convention, and what’s remarkable is how much of the early punk fashion still has the capacity to provoke.
  “Look at that T-shirt Malcolm and Viv made, of the two cowboys,” notes the British jeweller Tom Binns. In Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s famous image, the cowboys are naked from the waist down, save for their boots. “Imagine, today, you’re walking down the street and you see someone in that shirt. You’d still be shocked! They were really going for it back then.”

Hollywood seeks divine inspiration with biblical epics

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• It was an intriguing image and it caught Twitter users' imagination – a massive wooden replica of Noah's Ark under construction in suburban New York. "I dreamt about this since I was 13," tweeted Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky, whose epic film of Noah’s life is set for release next March. "And now it's a reality."This enormous set is a rare extravagance in the age of CGI pictures. And in more ways than one, it looks back to an older style of movie-making. It heralds a flood of Hollywood films on biblical themes.
  There are two planned Moses pictures in the works, with Ang Lee and Ridley Scott rumoured as directors. Then there’s a Cain and Abel story in development. Sony Pictures Entertainment confirmed last year they’d given approval for production to go ahead through Will Smith’s production company. Other religious films are also being incubated.
  Hollywood’s interest in biblical epics is to some extent cyclical – in the 1950s and early 60s they were a staple. Legendary filmmaker Cecil B DeMille made a big impact with The Ten Commandments in which Charlton Heston played Moses. Other biblical hits from the time included Solomon and Sheba, David and Bathsheba and Ben-Hur. These films dominated the box office.
  But not all the religious films from the era resonated with an audience. One of the best-known – The Greatest Story Ever Told – didn’t do well commercially. And several didn’t meet with the approval of reviewers. The New York Times critic wrote that the biblical epic King of Kings, narrated by Orson Wells, had “the nature of an illustrated lecture.”
  Recently interest in religious-themed films has been heightened as the Hollywood studios have, once again, come to realise there’s a potentially huge audience for biblical fare. Not necessarily earth-shattering news when you take into account that a Gallup poll conducted last year found more than 75 per cent of Americans identify with a Christian religion.
  But what’s got Hollywood’s attention in the past few weeks is the just-completed American TV series The Bible on the History Channel. This miniseries – which dramatised the Bible in five two-hour programmes – became a surprise blockbuster. It reached an audience of more than 13 million with its first episode – an unusually large viewing figure for a miniseries on cable TV.
  Reality TV impresario Mark Burnett, who co-produced the series with his wife actress Roma Downey, clearly thinks there’s a demand for religious entertainment. “We believe in the Bible, we believe in Jesus and that’s the number one subject right now in America. And that’s great!” he says.
  The success of the History Channel’s The Bible has animated studio executives. Paul Degarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com, says: “I think that’s maybe the foremost thing on their minds right now: that if done properly Bible-based movies could potentially be moneymaking and profitable.”
  Gods and superheroes
  But catering to the growing interest in biblical adventures presents the Hollywood studios with a challenge: how to create a movie that will engage both secular audiences as well as those who strongly identify with their religious background? Screenplays have to be thoughtfully composed to reach audiences everywhere. It’s not an easy feat if you’re trying to reach a worldwide audience that includes people who practice very different religions.
  Making the right kind of religious films is difficult for the studios as Toby Miller, author of Global Hollywood 2, confirms. “It’s a big issue in overseas sales,” he says. “How Christian can you get? How Old Testament can you get? ”
  
   

Reader Q&A: Panama activities beyond the canal

The San Blas Islands off Panama’s northern coast are renowned for their white-sand beaches. (Jane Sweeney/Getty)

Last week, we called on our Facebook fans to weigh in with their top tips from the world of travel. Responses poured in for BBC Travel reader Troy Kasting, who asked, “Besides the Panama Canal, what is there to do when travelling to Panama?”

Check out some of the advice we received from our travel community.
From Brett Atkinson: “Kuna culture in the San Blas islands and bird watching in Boquete.”
From Gis Montt: “Bocas del Toro on the northeast coast [is] quite close to Costa Rica!”
From Group IST: “There is plenty you can do. For example, visiting Coiba Island, identified as a Unesco World Heritage Site, which is the largest island in Central America. The waters adjacent to the island are teeming with marine life. It is surrounded by one of the largest coral reefs in the Pacific coasts of the Americas; it is the beginning of the underwater Cordilera mountain chain that also includes the Cocos and the Galapagos islands. This makes for a unique dive experience you shouldn't miss.”
From Lycia Perini Pinto: “You can wake up in [the] Caribbean and see the sunset in [the] Pacific, also shopping, the Casco Antigo, La Ciudade Vieja, Bocas del Toro, San Blas... it’s a paradise!”
From Lou Rishchynski: “Take the train from Panama City to Colon and experience the Caribbean flavour and culture of the Atlantic side of the isthmus.”
From Lauren Carla Turner: “Pedasi is a beautiful town on the west coast, ideal for a break if you've been backpacking for a while and are looking to chill away from the hustle and bustle.”
From Petal Barker: “Lots of shopping [at] Albrook Mall.”
From Claudia Madalengoitia: “Definitely San Blas and Bocas del Toro... beautiful beaches!”
From Patrick Cuff: “On your way to Boquete, stop in David for some good food, coffee and shopping at the local and street markets. Just about half an hour from David, Boquete is beautiful with many rivers and streams, a temperate climate and a variety of places to eat local or introduced food.”
From Eat Rio: “As others have said, don't miss the San Blas islands -- they are an absolute must. There is also a great guesthouse/lodge called Lost and Found -- it is in the Fortuna Cloud Forest and is a great place for jungle walks, waterfalls [and] wildlife spotting (sloths, amazing birds, all sorts). And it's affordable.”
From Raquel Policart Pol: “Enjoy the local food! Mercado del Marisco (fish market) for countless ceviche options!”

Four ways to be killed by a volcano

Pyroclastic flow boiled the brains and vapourised the flesh of Herculaneum's inhabitants

Active volcanoes are dangerous places. They can wipe out whole cities and kill large numbers of people.

The ghost-like casts from the Roman city of Pompeii are a reminder of the lethal eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, which killed thousands and preserved their bodies in the position of their death. But it wasn't red-hot lava or suffocating clouds of ash that killed them, it was something far more unusual. Lava flows, or the molten rock that oozes from shield volcanoes moves far too slowly to be truly deadly. The real killers are much more frightening.

1: Cooked by super-hot waves of gas

Volcanologist Brittany Brand explains how a volcanic eruption can produce lethal waves of hot gas and ash

The Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were annihilated on 24 August AD79 when Mount Vesuvius erupted explosively, sending fast-moving waves of superheated gas down the sides of the volcano at hurricane speeds. These 'pyroclastic flows' contain gas, ash and rock and can travel up to 450mph (700km/h).
The first wave hit the nearby Herculaneum with temperatures as high as 500 degrees Celsius. The searing heat was enough to boil the brains and instantly vaporise the flesh of its victims so that only blackened skeletons remained.
But how the people of Pompeii died has remained a mystery for many centuries. Volcanologists have now discovered they were killed by a later wave of pyroclastic flow.

Continue reading the main story

Find out more

Pompeii's wave was significantly cooler than the one that swept through Herculaneum, so although the victims bodies remained intact, the heat 'cooked' their flesh instantly. They were preserved by the falling volcanic ash and some of these can still be seen in Pompeii today.

Pyroclastic flows are arguably the most deadly volcanic event because they can travel for miles and are impossible to outrun.
They are produced by explosive 'composite volcanoes', which are made up of alternating layers of lava, ash and rock. When a composite volcano erupts, the rock layer is smashed into tiny dust particles. These particles mix with the hot ash and gases to form a giant mushroom cloud.
As the eruption weakens, this cloud can collapse under its own weight. It then cascades down the side of the volcano as a pyroclastic flow - destroying everything in its path. But that's not the only way they can cause big problems...

Why is sugar so addictive?

Too many sweet treats can lead to a 'sugar crash'

We all know how tempting it can be to have one too many chocolates or an extra slice of cake, even when we know it would be healthier not to. But what drives this craving for sweet treats?

Many scientists suggest that we are primed to desire sugar at an instinctive level as it plays such a vital role in our survival. Our sense of taste has evolved to covet the molecules vital to life like salt, fat and sugar.

When we eat food, the simple sugar glucose is absorbed from the intestines into the bloodstream and distributed to all cells of the body.
Glucose is particularly important to the brain as it provides the only source of fuel to the one hundred billion nerve cells called neurons.
Neurons need a constant supply from the bloodstream as they don't have the ability to store glucose themselves. As diabetics know, someone with low blood sugar can quickly lapse into a coma.
Bizarrely, scientists have found even just the taste of sugar can give our brains a boost. Tests have shown that participants who swill water sweetened by sugar around their mouths perform better on mental tasks than when they gargle artificially sweetened water.

Why do some people binge on sugar?

Eating too much sugar can lead to unhealthy eating patterns. Sugar can be a mood-booster as it prompts the body to release the 'happy hormone' serotonin into the blood stream.
The instant 'lift' we get from sugar is one of the reasons we turn to it at times of celebration or when we crave comfort and reward.
However, the pleasant sugar rush triggers an increase in insulin as the body strives to bring blood glucose levels back to normal. This has the knock-on effect of causing a 'sugar crash' and makes many crave yet more sugar, which can lead to a cycle of binge-eating.

Skylab: Why don't we live in space yet?

Commander Charles 'Pete' Conrad undergoes a dental examination in zero gravity on Skylab

The first US space station, Skylab, was launched forty years ago with a simple but far-reaching brief: expand man's knowledge of the Sun and prove that humans can live and work in space for extended periods. Three separate crews successfully achieved that, so why aren't more of us living in space yet?

On May 14th 1973 NASA launched the Skylab space station into orbit. After a decade defined by lunar exploration and the Apollo programme, space travel was moving into a new age, one of space stations.
"Skylab will represent a milestone of paramount importance in the American space programme," wrote Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, Associate Director of Science at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and Leland F. Belew, Manager of the Skylab programme, in 1973.

Ambitious project
Weighing 77.5 tonnes, Skylab was the largest craft yet to be launched into space. It needed to be, to house the well-equipped laboratories and living quarters for three astronauts, suitable for extended periods of time.
David S. Akens, a member of NASA's historical staff, stated at the time that "Skylab is the most ambitious project in space to date".
11 days later, the first crew left Earth, heading for Skylab. They were led by Commander Charles 'Pete' Conrad, a veteran of three previous space missions.
The crew immediately had difficulties to contend with. During the space station's lift-off, a crucial meteoroid shield had been ripped off, along with a solar panel. Temperatures inside the Skylab workshop, which was facing the Sun, had reached a sweltering 52°C.
The crew managed to deploy a parasol sunshade, which lowered temperatures to 24°C. By June 4th, 10 days after they had arrived, the workshop was fully operational.
Collectively, three separate Skylab crews spent 171 days in space - each new crew breaking the previous crew's spaceflight duration record.
It was a remarkable achievement. NASA had begun operations less than 15 years previously, and the first rudimentary designs of Skylab had been sketched out in 1966.

Skylab concept drawing from August 19th 1966

Integrated Space Plan Optimism at NASA continued well into the 1980s, with the launch of the space shuttle. Designed to be reusable, the shuttle could transport crew to any orbiting space station and back again.
In 1989, a US aerospace company, Rockwell International, mapped out where all this would lead. The Rockwell Integrated Space Plan - an immensely detailed vision of humanity's future in space - began with the shuttle programme, and outlined the next 120 years of human space flight.
According to the Integrated Space Plan, an International Lunar Base would be established by 2009. By 2029, mankind was expected to have engineered an operational Mars base.
And around 2100, large-scale human expansion into the cosmos would begin.

Are the days of the record producer numbered?

The music business, like many businesses, is shrinking. Jobs that were once vital are deemed extraneous: every artist does everything for themselves, whether that’s booking the gigs, doing the PR, or finding the audience. And, of course, recording their own album. Who needs a producer when you can do the whole thing yourself on your laptop, in the comfort of your own bedroom? What does a producer bring to music?
“No one knows what a producer does,” says Ben Hillier, who happens to be a highly respected one: he’s worked on albums by Depeche Mode, Elbow, Blur and The Horrors. “That’s because you can do the job in lots of different ways, from recording everything, helping write the songs, playing the instruments, to just setting the band up with good assistants and engineers and walking off to have a long lunch.”
Dan Carey has produced artists as varied as Bat for Lashes, Lily Allen, The Kills and Kylie Minogue. “How do I do the job? That depends. With acoustic or indie bands, I might turn all the lights off, put on a smoke machine and a laser, just to get them to play in a different way. It’s a lot to do with the experience of playing, a feeling that produces a sound.”
Production line
In times past, such techniques never fell under scrutiny. Bands used to hole up with a producer for a few months, often at a residential studio, and be left to their own devices – and vices – until they came up with an album. (The classic example is the two and half years, two studios and three producers it took for The Stone Roses to record Second Coming). But in these busier, more penny-pinching days, that’s rare. Instead, an artist will work with a producer for a week or ten days, before being snatched away to go on tour, or do promotion. A month or so later, they’ll come back.
“I’ve made albums in a fortnight,” says Carey. “No one wants to pay for weeks and weeks of studio time any more. You can’t mess about, you have to decide what you’re doing, do it and it’s done.”
But shorter working periods mean less time for band and producer to get into the zone, that special space where surprises happen and true creativity can fly. It’s hard to be truly experimental on a time-is-ticking shift. Added to which, jumpy record companies will now demand to hear tracks long before they’re finished – which, says Hillier, can be a disaster. “The biggest fear in a record company is a failure and people have a remarkably narrow imagination. If someone hears an unfinished but really exciting idea, a rough mix, they’ll say, ‘Hmm, not enough bass drum’. And that kills confidence, which is what music is all about.”
In the 80s and 90s, there would be an A&R [artists and repertoire] department to protect the band from such interference. A&R men - they usually were men – were big characters, minders-come-PRs who ‘got’ the artist and sold the idea of their album within the record company before it had even been finished. Now, says Hillier, the producer has to do that. “You have to cue up a track, explain why it’s exciting, what’s so amazing about it before you play it. If you do that, then it will always get a better reception.”

Sculpture of ancient Rome: The shock of the old

It must have been bliss to be an archaeologist during the 18th Century, when the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered. Take the Villa of the Papyri outside Herculaneum: 85 sculptures were uncovered at this site alone between 1750 and 1761.
But it could be awkward too. Imagine how the excavators must have felt when they unearthed the most infamous of these sculptures in the presence of the king of Naples and Sicily on a spring day in 1752. Carved from a single block of Italian marble, it showed the wild god Pan making love to a goat. With his right hand, Pan grabs the nanny goat’s tufted beard, yanking forward her head so that he can stare deep into her eyes. The king was not amused.
Unlike most of the 18th-Century finds from Herculaneum and Pompeii, the sculpture was hidden away, available to view only with the monarch’s permission. Yet, from the moment of its discovery, the statue generated curiosity as well as horror. It quickly became a fashionable sight for Englishmen gallivanting around Europe on the Grand Tour. The 18th-Century English sculptor Joseph Nollekens produced a terracotta replica from memory – though his bug-eyed animal is far more surprised by Pan’s attentions than the Roman goat, which seems almost complicit.
Without realising, Nollekens had stressed the scene’s undertones of bestiality and rape – even though the original may have appeared much less violent to the Romans. Different cultures view the same things in different ways. Art that we consider shockingly erotic or violent was commonplace in the Roman world.
Now, the sculpture of Pan and the goat is setting pulses racing once again. On loan from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, where it is usually shown in the ‘Secret Cabinet’ alongside other erotic material from the ancient Roman world, the statue features in the British Museum’s major exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, currently on show in London. A discreet label forewarns visitors that the exhibition “contains sexually explicit material”.
Grim gardens
Today it is tempting to view the sculpture as a piece of vile erotica – but I’m not so sure. The Villa of the Papyri also contained a library full of hundreds of scrolls, suggesting that the man who owned the sculpture was sophisticated and well-read.
Perhaps he was also a provocative pervert who enjoyed scandalising his guests. But even a cursory acquaintance with the Roman world suggests that this wasn’t necessarily the case. Today some people decorate their gardens with gnomes. The Romans preferred sexier, gutsier, more bloodthirsty subjects. Elsewhere in the British Museum’s exhibition, we encounter two sublime marble sculptures depicting tense stags hollering with fear as they are overcome by snarling hunting dogs. The hounds gnash at the ears of their prey, using their claws to gouge deep into flesh.
These sculptures aren’t lewd, but they are extraordinarily violent. While we can appreciate the way in which the sculptor arranged a chaotic subject into coherent forms, they still seem like strange choices for garden ornaments, by our standards. So does a nearby marble statuette of a pot-bellied Hercules, clearly the worse for wear following a drunken banquet, about to take a pee.
But the Romans couldn’t get enough of this sort of stuff. One of my favourite Roman sculptures is the Hanging Marsyas. This presents the bearded satyr, Marsyas, bound to a tree. He is about to be flayed alive as punishment for challenging the lyre-playing god Apollo to a musical contest (inevitably, he lost). Several sculptures depicting this scene have survived, including a handful carved from purple-veined marble, which offers a grisly sense of the bloody flesh about to be revealed by the torturer’s knife.

Egypt’s powerful street art packs a punch

More than two years after protesters toppled Hosni Mubarak, Cairo is still ablaze with fiery visual reminders of Egypt’s revolution. On the edge of Tahrir Square – the nerve centre of dissent – the burned-out tower block that once housed the headquarters of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party stands blackened and empty. It forms a jarring juxtaposition with the coral-pink walls of the Egyptian Museum, the dusty storehouse of the country’s most precious antiquities, next door.
Around the corner, there is a different kind of monument to the revolution. Mohamed Mahmoud Street – which intersects with Tahrir Square from the east – is as colourful and vibrant as the sombre hulk of the NDP building is charred. Almost every square centimetre of the walls that flank the street has been covered with bright, cacophonous paint. These murals are some of the best examples of the inimitable street art movement that has flourished since the protests against Mubarak began.
 “There was very little street art in Egypt before the revolution,” says Mia Gröndahl, a writer and photographer who has lived in Cairo since 2001, and whose book Revolution Graffiti: Street Art of the New Egypt was published in the UK last month. “So few pieces, in fact, that people weren’t aware of it. But Egypt had the artists waiting to come out of the closet and express themselves honestly and politically.”
Most of these artists were forged in the fire of the 18-day demonstrations against Mubarak in early 2011, when at least 846 people were killed. Emboldened by the ferocity of the protesters, several artists started painting slogans and murals commenting upon the tumultuous events that were convulsing their country. While other young protesters hurled bricks, Egypt’s fledgling street artists picked up paintbrushes and spray cans. “By the summer of 2011,” Gröndahl writes in her book, “people [had] started to talk about the walls of Egypt being under an ‘art attack’.”
Mad graffiti weekend
Two years ago this month, during a collaborative event known as the “Mad Graffiti Weekend”, Ganzeer, a graphic designer, created an unforgettable stencilled mural of a large tank aiming its cannon at a boy on a bicycle who is balancing a tray of bread upon his head. Over time, the mural was added to, retouched, painted over and defaced, in response to events such as the “Maspero Massacre” of October 2011, when security forces and the army killed more than 25 Egyptian Copts who were peacefully protesting about the destruction of a church.
One memorable character to appear on the wall – a pot-bellied panda bear with drooping shoulders and a melancholy expression – has disappeared beneath subsequent layers of paint. Despite this, though, the Sad Panda, a resigned witness to ongoing mayhem that has since appeared on various walls around Cairo, has become one of the most recognisable visual motifs in the country’s new lexicon of street art. His negative body language offers a kind of pacifist rebuke to the violence and uncertainty that have engulfed Egypt since 2011.
“People in Egypt love street art,” Gröndahl tells me. “There is an old heritage of expressing yourself in images here, so they are no strangers to it. It has become an integrated part of the continuous struggle for freedom. The graffiti reminds people that the revolution isn’t over yet.”
Revolution Graffiti documents the urgency and self-confidence of contemporary Egyptian street art. Most of the images reproduced in the book make the work of celebrated British graffiti artists such as Banksy appear insipid by comparison. Street art, by definition, should be by the people, for the people: in Egypt it has proved a strident yet eloquent instrument of protest.

Reading 0 -2 Man City

Manchester City started the post-Roberto Mancini era with a dominant win at Reading to secure second place in the Premier League.

Brian Kidd was tasked with lifting City following Mancini's departure and he oversaw a fine display by the visitors.
Sergio Aguero opened the scoring in the first half, despatching a low effort into the corner.
Substitute Edin Dzeko sealed victory late on, latching on to David Silva's ball to score from close range.
The margin of victory could have been greater but for a number of fine saves from Reading goalkeeper Alex McCarthy.
The hosts had a couple of chances themselves, with Adrian Mariappa's header cleared off the line by Carlos Tevez, while Joe Hart saved well from Jem Karacan, but ultimately they could have few complaints with the scoreline.
A pleasing performance and victory was much needed for City after a testing couple of days.

Arsenal 4-1 Wigan

Wigan's eight-season tenure in the Premier League came to an end as they were hammered at Arsenal, who moved back into the Champions League places.

Lukas Podolski headed the Gunners in front early on before Shaun Maloney's free-kick levelled the game.
Realistically Wigan had to win to keep their survival hopes alive.
But Theo Walcott's low strike, a lobbed second from Podolski and Aaron Ramsey's angled strike ensured Wigan will be playing in the Championship next term.

Arsenal are now fourth - a point ahead of Tottenham with one game to go and the Gunners know a win at Newcastle on Sunday will guarantee a place in next season's Champions League.

Wigan's defeat also means that Sunderland and Aston Villa can now also rest easy heading into the final weekend.
All the pre-match debate was about how well Wigan could recover from their historic FA Cup win over Manchester City just three days earlier, but manager Roberto Martinez picked the same starting line-up at the Emirates Stadium.
It was clear in the early stages that there were some weary legs and Arsenal were keen to capitalise, creating a chance for Santi Cazorla, who headed wide from Walcott's cross wide.
It seemed more mental fatigue than physical tiredness that gifted Arsenal the opener.
Podolski easily outmuscled James McArthur in the area and as the rest of the Latics defence stood still, the Germany international had a free header to turn in Cazorla's floating corner.

The Gunners were posing the biggest threat as they whizzed the ball around in Wigan's half with Kieran Gibbs almost getting on the end of a misplaced Bacary Sagna shot.

"Believe" has been Wigan's mantra in recent weeks and despite Arsenal's pressure, the visitors kept trying to hit on the counter-attack.
Maloney went down under what seemed like little pressure from Mikel Arteta and referee Mike Dean gave the Latics a chance as the referee pointed for a free-kick just outside the area.
The forward then managed to get the ball up and over the wall to beat Wojciech Szczesny despite the Gunners keeper getting a hand to the ball.
Wigan seemed to have cast aside their earlier stiffness and after the break only a good save from Szczesny denied Arouna Kone at close range.
If Martinez's side needed a reminder of Arsenal's threat, it came when Walcott played a ball across the face of goal for Cazorla and Latics keeper Joel Robles was forced into a double save before Tomas Rosicky's skidding shot went wide.
Arsenal regained the lead through Walcott after a superb low cross from Cazorla was turned home by the England forward despite Robles getting something on the ball.
The floodgates then opened as Wigan's weariness returned.
Paul Scharner played Podolski onside to allow the German forward in to lob over Robles before Ramsey fired in from a tight angle to complete the win that turned Wigan's tears of joy from Saturday into tears of anguish.
And in failing to keep their hopes of staying up alive, Wigan became the first team to win the FA Cup and suffer relegation from the top flight in the same season.

Christine Lagarde: Dressing all the way to the bank

It was during a particularly gruelling session at one of the emergency summits held to keep the Eurozone from falling apart that – for a very brief moment – Christine Lagarde appeared to be on the verge of losing her famous composure.  But then something stirred in the IMF chief and she reached up to unknot her watercolour scarf, releasing it in one deft movement so it fell loosely over her right shoulder and hung down to her waist.

By liberating herself of a physically confining accessory which has also become her trademark, Lagarde was able to signal a turning point in the conversation toward a more frank,  inclusive tone – in some way akin to a man loosening his necktie or rolling up his shirt sleeves in order to show he's ready to ‘get down to business'.  As if on cue, the ministers who had been looking cheerless suddenly rallied around her and the conversation became upbeat and animated. At a summit where the mood had descended into collective despair, the scarf's reinvention as a distinguished sash reasserted Lagarde’s authority as a leader.
Although making such profound conclusions from a humble piece of cloth may sound fanciful, there are reasonable grounds when the wearer is Christine Lagarde. For eight years – first as a high-ranking minister in the French cabinet and now at the helm of the IMF – Lagarde has relied heavily on scarves to add a distinctive touch to her political uniform.
So central has the scarf become to her signature style that it is on those rare occasions she's not wearing one when Lagarde appears to be really making a statement.  At last year's Berlin summit, when she met with the heads of the other major international financial institutions including the World Bank, the WTO and OECD, her neck looked practically naked despite the heavy grey pearls that swayed under it. Scarfless in a sleek matching grey suit, she looked exceptionally poised and alert at a time when the precariousness of the global economy was once again threatening to undermine her authority.
In the loop
When Lagarde first moved from a career in international law to politics, a bright and strategically-placed scarf helped her cultivate a bolder, more relaxed  image than many of her peers.  Depending on its colour, pattern, length and how you wear it, a scarf can be bourgeois or bohemian, sensible or romantic, timeless or nostalgic.  Her clever use of this ambiguous and adaptable accessory has been as persuasive as it has been prolific: a powerful tool to fine-tune her outfits of sleek tailoring and fastidiously elegant skirt suits.
Twisted, folded, wrapped into a garment, looped, double knotted or even intertwined with a string of pearls, Lagarde finds countless ways to emphasise her individuality through scarves. She has been able to subtly suggest a nonconformist streak in her personality and perhaps in her political beliefs.  Something as seemingly inconsequential as a silk scarf with one side draped longer than the other, for instance, speaks volumes about political figures like Lagarde because asymmetry is not part of their conventional style template.
On the other hand, the outfits favoured by Lagarde are entirely age-appropriate – a cardinal rule in the political realm. She is obviously not out to break any taboos. Instead, she adds a flourish of humanity, femininity and personality to her streamlined, usually monochrome wardrobe of flattering but rather unexceptional attire with her printed neckerchiefs, supple pashminas or ribbon bows.  The overall effect is that she looks unfussy but somehow still memorable, classy and dignified.

Gatsby and the Kardashians: The missing link

While promoting Baz Luhrmann’s new adaptation of The Great Gatsby, the actress Carey Mulligan declared in an interview with Vogue that Daisy Buchanan, the character she plays, is “like a Kardashian,” referring to the family in the American reality TV show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Mulligan went on to explain: “[Daisy] feels like she's living in a movie of her own life. She's constantly on show, performing all the time. Nothing bad can happen in a dream. You can't die in a dream. She's in her own TV show."
The comment attracted a great deal of attention, and Mulligan later clarified it, saying that what she meant was that, like the Kardashians, Daisy is always obliged to look perfect, that this is part of her “business.”
It’s arguable that this interpretation may help to bring Daisy to life on the screen, or may fit into Luhrmann’s larger vision of the story. But as a reading of the character in F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, it leaves something to be desired. In fact, it is almost exactly back to front. Daisy, Fitzgerald tells us, is a “careless person”: that is her great shortcoming. The old-money world of East Egg is a world of effortlessly doing and saying the right thing, because you are privy to the rulebook. Daisy represents the “leisure classes,” which meant just that: such women were expected to be ornamental, but they were also profoundly suspicious of the vulgarity of anyone who tried too hard.
Daisy does not have a “business”  – that is for the likes of Jay Gatsby. Neither is she a celebrity, nor a performer – indeed, in an early draft of the novel, Fitzgerald shows that Daisy was profoundly unimpressed by mere movie stars. At one point in the draft, Gatsby tries to convince Daisy to share her hairdresser with a movie star at his party by telling her “impressively” that it will make her “the originator of a new vogue all over the country.” Daisy responds, “Do you think I want that person to go around with her hair cut exactly like mine? It’d spoil it for me.”  Daisy carefully guards her status, but that is the only effort she takes, and she would have been horrified to have been likened to a Kardashian.
Sensuality and superficiality
There are, however, two characters in the novel who do merit the comparison. The first is Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan’s mistress, who aspires to Daisy’s position in life. Myrtle is in her mid thirties, “and faintly stout,” Fitzgerald tells us, “but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can.” She is not beautiful, “but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.” Myrtle puts on “an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room,” and then airily dismisses it: "It's just a crazy old thing," she says. "I just slip it on sometimes when I don't care what I look like."
Myrtle tries very hard to appear effortless; but the cracks constantly show. When she throws a sordid little party at her apartment, Myrtle becomes “more violently affected moment by moment,” as she minces, flounces and raises her eyebrows at the shiftlessness of the lower orders, trying to pass herself off as a woman of taste and refinement – but her vulgarity cannot be disguised. Myrtle’s living room, Fitzgerald tells us, was “crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles.”

Otherworldly Hawaii, for less

Peering into the improbable, wind-scoured crater of Maui’s Mount Haleakala was the clinching moment for us. This was the grand, otherworldly Hawaii we had hoped to discover, and it was delivering the anticipated scenic wonders in impressive style. Stretched out before our slightly disbelieving eyes was the seven-mile-wide chasm that marks the top of the dormant volcano, dotted erratically with cinder cones and wide, barren lavascapes. It could have been the surface of Mars.

• Related slideshow: Treasures of Kauai’s Na Pali Coast

It was day three of our one-week cruise aboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s Pride of America, a seemingly deluxe way to indulge in the spirit of aloha, visiting each of Hawaii’s four main islands in search of a rich, up-close encounter with its unique Pacific flora, fauna, geology and culture. The reality, however, is that the Pride of America – the only vessel permitted to sail purely among the islands – is the budget version of Hawaii touring. And it still comes with no small measure of style.
Consider that flying among the four islands would cost at least $500 per person, and a decent hotel would add around $200 a night. Hawaii is not a cheap place to dine either, so you could easily spend another $75 a day on meals, totalling about $1,800 per person for a week of travel, accommodation and food.
A seven-day cruise on the Pride of America, on the other hand, was advertised from $1,449 per person, which included accommodation in a standard outside stateroom, all meals and the benefit of effortless transportation from island to island. We enjoyed two days on each of Maui, the Big Island and Kauai, returned comfortably to the original port of Honolulu on Oahu, and had plenty of entertainment, comfort and high-quality service along the way.
To start with, nearly all the sailing was done while we slept, giving us maximum time ashore to explore the likes of the 10,023ft Haleakala, a one-time monster of a volcano but now a stunning, sterile ruin. It sports the kind of iridescent bronzes and other metallics you usually only see on Japanese Raku pottery, giving it the look of a mad ceramic artist’s studio (if the artist was a giant and given to fits of random, open-air creativity on a colossal scale).
Each of the four ports of call – Kahului on Maui, Kona and Hilo on the Big Island and Nawiliwili on Kauai – provided easy access to the main sights and attractions nearby. And this being the only ship on the route, none of the ports were swamped with thousands of other cruise passengers arriving for the day, which is often the case in the Caribbean, Mediterranean and Alaska.
Our vessel carried a total of 2,000 fortunate souls, all of whom had the option of walking ashore, taking a ship-organised excursion, jumping in the nearest taxi or hiring a car for the day, which proved most advantageous on Maui and Kauai where the overnight stay encouraged us to be more adventurous. Indeed, being individually mobile was a major advantage for our self-guided tour of Haleakala, where we stopped at multiple points as the whim (and view) took us, and took the long drive through Waimea Canyon – the Grand Canyon of the Pacific – where we were able to avoid the tour buses that occasionally filled up the scenic overlooks.
When we did cruise during the day, on one resplendent afternoon prior to returning to Honolulu, we were afforded views of the majestic, ravine-studded Na Pali coastline of Kauai, which drops precipitously from around 4,000ft to the ocean. Here, humpback whales frolic for much of the winter months and four species of dolphin can be seen year-round.
The voyage quickly became a collection of towering highlights, from the Big Island’s lofty peaks of 13,798 ft-high Mauna Kea and its “noisy neighbour”, the smoking crater of Kilauea, currently the most active volcano on the planet, to the rich rainforests of Maui and Kauai and the breathtaking extent of Waimea Canyon, where an astonishing 300-plus inches of annual rainfall has sculpted a worthy rival to Arizona’s epic crevasse.

David Cameron: EU referendum bill shows only Tories listen

David Cameron has said only his party is offering a "clear choice" about the UK's future in Europe after the Tories published a draft bill outlining plans for a referendum by the end of 2017.

The prime minister said the Liberal Democrats and Labour were not willing to listen to the public on the issue.
Mr Cameron says he has shown leadership on the issue but critics say he is being dictated to by his backbenchers.
MPs will seek to force a vote on the issue of a referendum on Wednesday.
The Conservatives have published a bill aimed at reassuring the party's MPs that, if they win the next election, the party will fulfil the PM's commitment earlier this year to let the public have their say on the UK's future in Europe.
The bill states that voters would be asked the question "do you think that the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union?" in a referendum to be held no later than 31 December 2017.
Many Tories were unhappy plans for an in-out EU referendum were not mentioned in the Queen's Speech - which lays out the government's plans for the next year.
'Compelling choice' But, speaking in the US - where he is on a three day-visit - Mr Cameron said this was not possible because his Lib Dem coalition partners opposed such a step.
Asked whether he had consulted his deputy Nick Clegg before publishing the bill, Mr Cameron said he had discussed the whole issue of the UK's future relationship with the EU "in quite a lot of detail".
"It is well known that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats do not agree about Europe," he said.
"We want a renegotiation, they don't, we want an in-out referendum, they don't.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The publishing of a draft bill looks like an exercise in what Mrs Thatcher used to call 'followership not leadership'. ”

Nick Robinson Political editor

• Read more from Nick

"When the dust settles on this, what people will see is one party, the Conservative Party, offering this very clear, very compelling choice in the national interest, reforming the EU, changing the Britain's relationship with it and giving people the chance of an in-out referendum.

"And the other two main parties saying they don't want to listen to the views of the people on this issue. That is the truth of... what is actually under debate at the moment."
Some Conservative MPs have suggested the prime minister is pursuing the wrong strategy while one, Philip Hollobone, said No 10 had been "in chaos" over the issue in the past few days amid open divisions in the party about whether the UK should remain in the EU or leave.
Up to 100 Conservative MPs could support an amendment to the Queen's Speech on Wednesday, signalling their "regret" that legislation paving the way for a future referendum was not in the programme.
But their actions have been described as "lunatic" and "offensive" by veteran Conservative MP Nicholas Soames.
"This is the most fundamental and important decision this country will have to take for the next generation," he told BBC Radio 4's PM.
"It is isn't just about adding some silly little clause to the Queen's Speech - an entirely, in my view, improper thing to do in the first place."
'Misconception' The prime minister said it was a "complete misconception" to suggest the MPs were opposing the Queen's Speech as a whole by tabling the amendment, and repeated his position that he was "relaxed" about how backbenchers voted.
Ministers, including several who have said they would vote to leave the EU if a referendum was held now, will be required to abstain although the amendment is unlikely to pass because Labour and the Lib Dems are set to vote against.

Continue reading the main story

PRIVATE MEMBERS' BILLS

• MPs put names into a ballot
• Normally the first seven drawn are given a day's debate for their bill
• Most private members' bills - lacking government support - do not become law
• There have to be at least 100 MPs backing a bill to ensure it clears the first few hurdles
• But one with the backing of Tory ministers but not Lib Dems would be likely to fail to get a majority unless a decent chunk of Labour MPs back it

No 10 has dismissed any comparisons between Mr Cameron and former Prime Minister Sir John Major, whose government was damaged by ongoing rows about Europe during the 1990s.

Mr Cameron said he was the first party leader in "30, 40 years" to offer the public a choice on the UK's membership of the EU on the basis of a "reassessment" of what is in the country's national interest.
"The whole reason we are having this debate is because of the act of leadership I took to say it is time now for Britain to renegotiate our relationship, to seek change in Europe and seek a referendum for that change."
The draft legislation could be brought to the Commons for debate by one of the party's backbench MPs in the form of a private member's bill, rather than one sponsored by the government.
The ballot to choose who can bring forward private members' bills will be held on Thursday and, although they have little chance of becoming law, there is non-government parliamentary time open to them to be debated.
'Navel-gazing' Labour says committing to hold a referendum in four years' time is not the "right choice" for the country and internal Tory "machinations" are causing uncertainty at a time when securing economic recovery should be the government's priority.

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It could be the worst solution to change Europe”

Bernard Kouchner French foreign minister

"Our agenda is reform and change within Europe, not exit from the European Union," said shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander.

The Lib Dems said the government had already legislated to seek public approval before any further powers were handed to Brussels, and accused their coalition partners of "navel-gazing" over Europe.
The UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage - who campaigns for a UK exit - described the proposed draft bill as "nothing more than gesture politics".
Former French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner suggested Mr Cameron wanted to stay in the EU and the draft bill was "a political manoeuvre" in response to UKIP's success in recent elections.
He acknowledged Brussels was being held responsible for Europe's economic ills and was extremely unpopular in France itself, but urged countries not "to throw the baby out with the bathwater".
"Don't play with the referendum," he told Radio 4's World Tonight. "It could be the worst solution to change Europe. We have to convince the people. We need Europe."