Hey everyoneI really need to start writing blogs more often because now I have soo much to talk about lol Ok let me start a couple days back. On Tuesday we had orientation in the morning but in the afternoon Puran and Bikash took us out to get to kn

Hi everyone I must apologize for the lack of recent posts... nothing new and exciting has been happening here recently. It's funny because now that I have been here for over a month it really feels like I live here so it isn't BRAND NEW anymore. Bu

The journey from Koh Samui to Khao Sok was pretty much a nightmare we were woke up arround 730 by someone who couldn't speak english pointing to a piece of paper that said 800 bus. We had booked on the 12 o'clock bus and had arranged to pick our washi

Here are a bunch of old pictures I haven't put up

We fly home tomorrow but the blog is not complete as I have not been able to get to a computer for ages so I promise to finish it off next week once home.Fingers crossed that all goes well at the shipping agent in the morning with getting the bik

Well here I am in Southern Cross population 1000. There is nothing around here but mines farms and desert. My new boss Jo was at the train station to pick me up when I arrived. She drove me into town and took me to the local coffee shop. Not much varie

Gotta love a city that makes something called a chai espresso The old imagery of hot dog stands and pretzel stands needs to move over...in my many miles of walking already I have come across carts that sell souvlaki sushi tacos and even specialty dri

kind of had a bad couple days in turkey. i wanted to try and paraglide. so i decided at 11am to arrange it with my hotelier in fetihye. he made a call and i was told to be ready for pick up at 1200. OK so good i'll stay here another night and go for the

Premier jour Taupo.. o il ne fait pas spcialement beau L'occasion pour moi de revisiter mes premiers jours en NouvelleZlande

Russia v Ukraine, Isis, Boris Johnson, Cliff Richard and Ebola – there's not much to be cheerful about right now, though the ice bucket challenge is working overtime

Ah. Right. Looks like I picked a bad week to draw inspiration from current affairs for this knockabout comedy column. The news is rarely a warehouse of carefree chuckles but at the moment it's like an apocalyptic playlist on perpetual shuffle, with one harrowing crisis overlapping another. Palestine, Libya, Syria … it's all horrifying and upsetting. Not a single nice thing has happened all year, except the recent stealth launch of Cadbury's Wispa Biscuits, and even "stealth launch of Wispa Biscuits" sounds like a terrible euphemism for breaking wind.

The planet is currently playing host to countless alarming crises. There's the nail-biting tension of Russia v Ukraine, a depressing standoff overseen by facial-expression-avoider Vladimir Putin. I don't know if all the strings connecting Putin's face muscles to his brain were accidentally severed during a tragic smiling accident years ago, but I've seen brickwork convey more emotion.

The all-new iPhones and Apple Watch can be easily avoided but there’s no escaping iOS 8

The past few weeks haven’t been great for Apple. First they were implicated in the stolen celebrity nude photo disaster, which reminded everybody how easily clouds leak. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the iPhone is generally marketed as a diabolical timewasting device with the potential to wreak a grotesque and devastating invasion of your personal privacy. They tend to focus more on all the cool colours it comes in.

Then they launched the horrible-looking Apple Watch, which does everything an iPhone can do, but more expensively and pointlessly, and on a slightly different part of your body. Only an unhealthily devoted Apple fanatic could bear to wear a Apple Watch, and even that poor notional idiot would have to keep putting their iPhone down in order to operate the damn thing. It’ll scarcely be used for telling the time, just as the iPhone is scarcely used for making calls. It’s not a watch. It’s a gaudy wristband aimed at raising awareness of Chinese factory conditions. Or a handy visual tag that helps con artists instantly identify gullible rich idiots in a crowd.

Exaggeration is the official language of the internet. Only the most strident statements have any impact. Oversteer and oversell, all the time

The other day I was talking to a music fan who’d recently gone to see one of Kate Bush’s widely praised live appearances. Naturally I was keen to hear a first-hand account of this era-defining event, so I asked what it was like.

“The first half was great,” she said. “But the second half got a bit boring.”

Products I’ve made up for the sheer giddy thrill of it include Total Farage Plus, which skilfully Photoshops the Ukip leader into whatever you’re looking at

This week it’s the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, an annual opportunity for tech companies to unveil their latest gizmos during January’s traditional slow news week, thereby picking up precious coverage that might otherwise be spent detailing something – anything – more important than an egg whisk with a USB port in the side.

At the time of writing, the show is yet to kick off, although some of the offerings have already been unveiled – such as “Belty”, the world’s first “smart belt”, which monitors your waistline and tells you when it’s time to lose weight, just like a mirror or a close friend might. More excitingly, it adjusts to your girth (again, like a close friend might), and will tighten or loosen itself according to your current level of blubber. No word yet on whether it’s possible to pop a Belty round your neck and order it to squeeze you into the afterlife, but there’s no reason they can’t incorporate that feature in Belty 2.0, except maybe on basic ethical, moral and humanitarian grounds.

The prime minister has refused to go head-to-head with Ed Miliband – and the multi-party debate we are getting will be a 90-minute cry for help on behalf of the democratic system

Last week, Germany chose its entry for this year’s Eurovision: Heart of Stone, performed by Andreas Kümmert, former winner of the German version of The Voice (which is known as The Voice of Germany in its native country, rather than Die Stimme von Deutschland. Presumably the producers didn’t want to put viewers off by making it sound too German).

After wailing his guts out and winning the public vote, Kümmert abruptly announced, on live TV, that he didn’t actually want to “do” Eurovision after all, and awarded his “prize” to the runner-up instead. A chorus of boos broke out. German boos. Buhen.

Nach der Zwangspause wollen nun viele möglichst schnell wieder fit werden. Doch Mediziner warnen davor, es beim Einstieg zu übertreiben - vor allem nach überstandener Krankheit.

Community gardeners and other activists in Berlin are helping the Transition movement to take root in the German capital as part of its worldwide campaign for a sustainable society.

Joint activities, joint projects and improved cooperation: SPIEGEL ONLINE and SPIEGEL WISSEN are looking for the best ideas for creating a vibrant neighborhood. Send us your proposal by August 31!

Waffles for everybody, a children's hotel, a community beer garden: We have narrowed down the Social Design Award submissions to a shortlist of 10. Which one is your favorite? It's time to submit your vote for the Audience Award.

As the flames shot out of the roof of Notre Dame de Paris on Monday evening, a global community of concern quickly formed. It shows that the idea of cultural heritage is much more than just a UNESCO list.

New forms of living, new ideas for cohabitation, new architecture: For the Social Design Award, we are looking for the best projects and ideas for neighborhood-oriented living models. The winner will receive 2,500 euros.

Guest Post: The most essential part of deploying DNSSEC was to understand what it is and how it works.

Drägerwerk is a world leader in the production of ventilators. In an interview, company head Stefan Dräger, 57, discusses the challenges of keeping up with current demand as the corona crisis accelerates.

We explored two measures of inequality that described the full income distribution in cities. One measure is an income gini based on family incomes in 1929 for 33 cities and in 1933 for up to 48 cities in 1933 were spread throughout the country. We also estimated gini coefficients that made use of contract rents for renters and implicit rents for home owners for up to 955 cities throughout the country. We were able to expand to all counties when looking at a top-end inequality measure, the number of taxpayers per family. All three measures varied substantially across the country. We show the correlations between the various measures and also estimate the relationship between the measures and various relief programs developed by governments at all levels during the period.

Family members aren't allowed into hospitals nor can they take part in funerals. Crematoriums are overloaded. The horrors of coronavirus still have a firm hold on northern Italy.

L'Europa è più di una mera alleanza di egocentrici. Non esistono alternative agli Eurobond in una crisi come questa.

Europa es más que una coalición de ególatras. En una crisis como esta no existe alternativa para los eurobonos.

Well-off Brazilians have brought the coronavirus back home with them from their travels. Many of them also employ domestic workers from the country's favelas - who they're apparently unwilling to protect by telling them to stay home. Brazil's poorest class could make easy quarry for the disease.

Joe Castiglione saw his first baseball game in the Bronx.

Most jobs require teamwork. Are some people good team players? In this paper we design and test a new method for identifying individual contributions to group performance. We randomly assign people to multiple teams and predict team performance based on previously assessed individual skills. Some people consistently cause their group to exceed its predicted performance. We call these individuals “team players”. Team players score significantly higher on a well-established measure of social intelligence, but do not differ across a variety of other dimensions, including IQ, personality, education and gender. Social skills – defined as a single latent factor that combines social intelligence scores with the team player effect – improve group performance about as much as IQ. We find suggestive evidence that team players increase effort among teammates.

Scientists believe designer viruses created in the laboratory can help the agricultural industry deal with pathogens and extreme weather. A vast experiment is currently being planned. But can the viruses be controlled?

Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk publicly corrects girlfriend Grimes on Twitter after she explains the origin of their newborn son's unusual first name, X Æ A-12.

Fox News pundit mocks 'experts,' encourages Americans to get out there and 'have some courage'

Californians venturing onto the beach after a month of lockdown are being greeted with the ethereal sight of bioluminescent waves from an algae bloom.

Mark Hatten, an ex-boyfriend of deceased model Anna Nicole Smith, was shot and killed Sunday after an incident with another man in South Carolina.

A Southwest jet traveling from Dallas fatally struck a person as it touched down at a Texas airport Thursday night, authorities said.

Pete Davidson, who recently said he quit using drugs, urged people not to drop off any weed or other illegal substances at his mom’s Staten Island house after a stranger did just that a few days ago.