Last year it was the tallest man with whom he posed for photograph. Recently he met a long-legged Svetlana Pankratova in London’s Trafalger Square to pose for for the launch of the 2009 edition of the Guinness World Records book, which is published on Wednesday.

The world’s smallest man, He Pingping, is 20 years old and just 74.61 centimeters tall. It is told that the shortness resulted from being born with a condition known as primordial dwarfism. Pingpin is told to be a keen poker player and smokes two packets of cigarettes a day.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the long-legged Russian woman, Svetlana Pankratova, has the world’s longest legs. Pankratova, 36, an estate agent from Volvograd, Russia, is 1.96 meters tall. Her legs alone measure 132 centimeters.

Pingping posed for a photograph showing him standing up comfortably between her legs. (Photo Source : WENN)

National Flowers of Canada

The Leaf of Maple is an official symbol of Canada. The maple leaf was first used as a Canadian symbol in early 18th century and till now is depicted on its current and previous flags, the penny, and on the coat of arms.

Each provinces however have their own floral emblems (I don’t have knowledge about floral emblem of Nunavut). Floral emblems of Canadian provinces and territories are given below:

Alberta - Wild Rose

Wild rose was chosen the provincial flower of Alberta in 1930.

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What is your national flower - 3 - Canada

The Bahamas

The national flower of The Bahamas is the Yellow Elder (Tecoma stans)
The flowers have an odd but pleasing fragrance and also provide nectar for bees. The Indians made bows from its wood, and in Mexico a beer was prepared from its roots; it has also been used for a variety of medicines. Also known as: Yellow Bells, Hardy Yellow Trumpet, Trumpet-flower, Yellow Elder.

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What is your National Flower - 2

I am going to post a series of posts about National flowers (floral emblem) of different countries starting with countries with first letter A.

The National Flower of Albania

The floral emblem of Albania is the red and black poppy. The poppy can be found everywhere in this Mediterranean country, and are recognized for their beauty, medicinal value, and seeds.

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What is your National Flower -Albania, Argentina, Australia, and Austria

After almost 50 years at Cambridge University the leading physicist Stephen Hawking, 66, is considering leaving Britain and move to Canada. He attacked the British government for carrying out “disastrous” cuts in science funding totalling $160 million.

Last month, Hawking said the funding cuts would “cause enormous damage both to British science and to our international reputation.” He is now said to be contemplating an offer to join a fellow academic who is leaving Cambridge this autumn to lead a well-funded Canadian science institute. Neil Turok, an authority on mathematical physics, said “the door is open” for Hawking to join him permanently at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ont., which has received $600 million in funding.

Turok decided to leave Cambridge after failing to persuade university authorities, research councils and sponsors to spend $40 million expanding the university’s Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, which he heads, into a Hawking Institute.

That was the rumor; but Hawking’s office said that Hawking had no plans to leave Britain permanently.

A spokesman was quoted as saying that hawking “is not joining the brain drain”.

UPDATE:

The University of Cambridge has poured cold water on reports its most famous physicist might be coming to Canada to work, saying Wednesday Stephen Hawking “has no plans” to leave. (CBC)

It made news when Google ‘forgot’ to change its logo to give a wink to Canucks on the Canada Day. Although the internet giant has a history of recognizing the Canada Day in the past (except for 2003) July 1st of 2008 brought a bit of hollowness for the Canadians when the same old primary-coloured letters appeared on the Google website. Here is the history and corresponding logos:

• 2007 - the L in Google was transformed into an image of the Peace Tower, complete with fireworks.
• 2006 - there was a Canadian flag
• 2005, a simple Maple Leaf did duty as the first O (although Google’s list of holiday logos for that year lists Canada Day as July 2.)
• 2004, the second G was a loon and its reflection with a Canadian flag hanging off the L.
• 2003, forgot the Canadians
• 2002, a moose lurked behind the word Google with a Canadian flag again suspended from the L.
• 2001, the first year the company marked the holiday, there was a beaver, a Canadian flag and even text saying: “Happy Canada Day.”

Do you really care if Google forgets or recognizes the Canada Day!

When Rogers revealed specifics for the services plans for the upcoming iPhone 3G this Friday many Canadians were not happy.

But why?

Rogers has set a mandatory three-year contract. O2 offers an 18-month contract and throws in the iPhone for free and AT&T has a two-year contract.

In the U.S., AT&T offers 450 minutes of voice, unlimited data and 200 SMS messages. But Rogers thinks Canadian don’t even deserve that.

• $60: 150 minutes of calls, with unlimited evenings and weekends; 400 MB of data; 75 sent SMS messages, with unlimited incoming text messages and visual voicemail messages.
• $75: 300 minutes of calls, 750 MB data and 100 sent SMS messages.
• $100: 600 minutes of calls with 1 GB of data and 200 sent SMS messages.
• $115: 800 minutes of calls, 2 GB of data and 300 sent SMS messages.

There is nothing like “unlimited data” to Canadians for whatever amount they pay!

People are really angry and James Hallen has started a petition at RuinediPhone.com. James is planning to send the online petition to Rogers on July 11th, the day the iPhone 3G is available, and also to send a letter to Steve Jobs. The letter was drafted when there were nearly 6,000 petitions which is a fraction of the current 15,664 number at the time of writing this post.

Gone are the days when screensavers save your monitors when old CRTs are replaced by flat panel screens. In an effort to save environment an Australian company, Telstra, has decided to remove all animated logo screesavers from the company laptops and computers and replaced with a black, power-saving screensaver.

Well, it sure is another simple method to make your PC greener if you haven’t already done so.

Looks like a its a conspiracy against Net neutrality! Big service providers are are predicting Internet will essentially run out of bandwidth by 2010 without substantial investment in network infrastructure.

Decades of dealing with the trickle of bandwidth consumed by voice and dialup modems left AT&T twiddling its thumbs. The massive rise of DSL and cable modem service in the 2000s has had AT&T facing a monstrous increase in the volume of data transmissions. And that’s set to increase another 50 times between now and 2015.

AT&T says that video alone will eat up 80 percent of traffic in two years which is just 30 percent now. The BBC has come under fire from service providers like Tiscali, which claim that its iPlayer online-TV service is becoming a major drain on network bandwidth.

Publishers and content creators have argued that Net neutrality should be legislated in order to protect consumers. ISPs reject the neutrality concept itself citing services like voip requires priority by default.

Is it going to cost more to watch videos in YouTube in future?

To set a new Guinness world record and to promote the country’s succulent top export more than a thousand barbecue fanatics in Uruguay grilled up 12 metric tonnes (26,400 lbs) of beef on April 13, 2008.

A grill of nearly 1 mile long was set up and firefighters had to lit six tonnes of charcoal to start the grand ceremony.

Tags: Urugay, BBQ, record