China traffic jam: 100 km long, 13 days old

Believe it or not: A traffic jam that's entered 13th day! Stretches 100km; may take as long as mid-Sept to clear

Beijing: Baffled by the world's longest traffic jam, the Chinese government has mobilised hundreds of policemen to clear the 100-km long stretch of the Beijing-Tibet highway, riddled with vehicles for 13 days, with the pile-up almost reaching the outskirts of the capital. There have been no reports of road rage, and the main complaint has been about villagers on bicycles selling food and water at 10 times the normal price.  The snarl up on the highway, on a section that links the capital to the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia was triggered by road construction and repair. While all sorts of vehicles appeared to have been caught up in the jam, it was mostly caused by lengthy coal carrying trucks, which brings fuel for the industries around the capital.    The traffic jam was currently noticed about 60 km outside Beijing and officials hope to clear it in the next few days with the deployment of large traffic police at various places. The government has mobilised hundreds of policemen to clear the massive pile-up that has caused embarrassment here.    In the worst-hit stretches of the road in northern China, drivers pass the time sitting in the shade of their immobilized trucks, playing cards, sleeping on the asphalt or bargaining with price-gouging food vendors. Many of the trucks that carry fruit and vegetables are unrefrigerated, and the cargoes are assumed to be rotting.      On Sunday, the eighth day of the near-standstill, trucks moved just over a kilometer (less than a mile) on the worst section, said Zhang Minghai, a traffic director in Zhangjiakou, a city about 150 kilometers (90 miles) northwest of Beijing. China Central Television reported Tuesday that some vehicles had been stuck for five days.    No portable toilets were set up along the highway, leaving only two apparent options -- hike to a service area or into the fields. At several places, drivers, sick and tired of the snarl up, were bitter and angry as temperatures soared during the day and dipped in the nights. Many complained that local vendors were fleecing them for food and water, charging heavy rates, by selling water for 10 yuan as against 1 yuan.    The jam which some in Beijing say was not new in that particular section has also brought the spotlight back on China's soaring auto sales. The congestion is set to peak in five years, when the total number of cars is expected to nearly double, the Beijing Transportation Research Centre said in its new report.    If people continue to purchase vehicles at the current rate of 1,900 new cars a day, the total will reach seven million in 2015 in Beijing alone, reducing average speeds in the city to below 15 km an hour, the report said.      Traffic arrangements built up over generations in the U.S. are lacking in much of China, said Bob Honea, director of the University of Kansas Transportation Research Institute, who has visited China. "We'll see this problem more and more often. It's true of every developing country," he said.

Panoramic photography

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Two-shot vertical panorama of Trump International Hotel Tower Chicago "Taken overlooking shipwreck beach on Zakynthos, one of the Ionian Islands off the coast of Greece. The boat towards the bottom is actually a full size boat, just to give you an idea of the immense size this photo captures." -Eric Byers(Photographer) Vertical panoramic of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Vertical panoramic of the Quicken Loans Arena aka the `Q' in Cleveland Ohio. Home to Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Photo by Mike Madsen. This is Bridal Veil Falls along the Richardson Highway near Valdez, Alaska. This photo was published as a poster by Galaxy of Graphics a couple of years ago. Photograph by MikeJonesPhoto "Created with 3 vertical panoramic photos and retouched in blue luminosity for greater contrast in the sky" - Juan Ceballo Rogue Photograph by PABLOPER The Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkish: Sultanahmet Camii) is a historical mosque in Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey and the capital of the Ottoman Empire (from 1453 to 1923). The mosque is popularly known as the Blue Mosque for the blue tiles adorning the walls of its interior. It was built between 1609 and 1616, during the rule of Ahmed I. Like many other mosques, it also comprises a tomb of the founder, a madrasah and a hospice. While still used as a mosque, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque has also become a popular tourist attraction. Photograph by Luciano Corrêa "Tijolo" The Empire State Building as seen from the NW corner of 34th and 5th Ave, New York City, New York. Photo by Hendricks NY  Nine total photographs stitched together using PTGui  Five photographs stitched together by Phil Wels The Rockefeller Center in New York City by slazza Photograph by Marching Fishes Vertical panoramic of New York City from the top of the Rockefeller Center by sleepychinchilla Photograph by manyfires Multnomah Falls is a waterfall on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge, located east of Troutdale, between Corbett and Dodson, along the Historic Columbia River Highway. The falls drops in two major steps, split into an upper falls of 542 feet (165 m) and a lower falls of 69 feet (21 m), with a gradual 9 foot (3 m) drop in elevation between the two, so the total height of the waterfall is conventionally given as 620 feet (189 m). Multnomah Falls is the tallest waterfall in the State of Oregon.

Company Logos and their Meanings

Ever wondered what company logos mean and whats the significance behind them? Wonder no more!

You might think the arrow does nothing here. But it says that amazon.com has everything from a to z and it also represents the smile brought to   
the customer's face. Wow, that is quite deep.

 

Am not sure how many of you have noticed a hidden symbol in the Federal Express logo. 
Yeah, I am talking about the 'arrow' that you can see between the E and the x in this logo. The arrow was introduced to underscore speed and precision, which are part of the positioning of the company.

 The old logo of Baskin Robbins had the number 31 with an arc above it. The new logo took this idea to the next level. The pink parts of the BR still form the number 31, a reference to the 31 flavours.

 

 Carrefour is one of the biggest European retailers, and its also French for crossroads. The logo symbolizes this word via two opposite arrows. They also added the first letter of the name, because if you look closely youll see the letter C in the negative space between the two arrows.

 

 At first, this logo might not make much sense. But if you look closely, youll see the number 1 in the negative space between the F and the red stripes. I also love how this logo communicates a feeling of speed.

 The NBC (National Broadcasting Company) is one of the biggest American television networks. I think most of you have already seen the peacock in this logo. The peacock has 6 different tail feathers, referring to the six divisions at the time that this logo was created. The peacocks head is flipped to the right to suggest it was looking forward, not back.

 
Sony Vaio is a well known brand of laptops. But did you know that the name Vaio logo also had a hidden meaning? Well, the first two letters represent the basic analogue signal. The last two letters look like a 1 and 0, representing the digital signal.

 

Toblerone is a chocolate-company from Bern , Switzerland . Bern is sometimes called The City Of Bears. They have incorporated this idea in the Toblerone logo, because if you look closely, youll see the silhouette of a bear.

 
Unilever is one of the biggest producers of food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. They produce a huge amount of different products and they wanted to reflect this in their logo. Each part of the logo has a meaning. For example: the heart represents love, care and health - feeling good, a bird is a symbol of freedom. Relief from daily chores “ getting more out of life.

Paul Rand (who designed the iconic IBM logo in 1972) designed this 'eye bee M' logo in 1981. I like that they are quite relaxed about the logo, unlike certain other companies who do not like the logo to be tampered with in any way even for internal promotions

The SUN Microsystems logo is a wonderful example of symmetry and order. It was a brilliant observation that the letters u and n while arranged adjacent to each other look a lot like the letter S in a perpendicular direction. Spectacular.

 

The above are two magazines from the Readers Digest stable. Again, the attempt to communicate what it is about quite figuratively through the logo catches my attention.

This was a logo created for a puzzle game called Cluenatic. This game involves unravelling four clues. The logo has the letters C, L, U and E arranged as a maze. and from a distance, the logo looks like a key

Eighty-20 is a small consulting company which does sophisticated financial modeling, as well as some solid database work. All their work is highly quantitative and relies on some serious computational power, and the logo is meant to convey it. People first guess that 20% of the squares are darkened, but that turns out to be false after counting them. The trick is to view the dark squares as 1's and the light squares as 0's. Then the top line reads 1010000 and the bottom line reads 0010100, which represent 80 and 20 in binary. Kinda like the surreal green screen of The Matrix, they want us to read stuff in binary

  

Kingdom Of Tonga

Tonga (pronounced [ˈtoŋa]) - officially the Kingdom of Tonga (Tongan: Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga) - an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprises 169 islands, 36 of them inhabited.[4] The Kingdom stretches over a distance of about 800 kilometres (500 miles) in a north-south line. The islands that constitute the archipelago lie south of Samoa, about one-third of the way from New Zealand to Hawaiʻi. George Tupou V (Tongan: Siaosi Tupou V, full name: Siaosi Tāufaʻāhau Manumataongo Tukuʻaho Tupou V), (born 4 May 1948) is the current King of Tonga.