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Heading abroad? Think twice before you have sex on the beach (or anywhere else in public), because the penalties for being caught could mean the difference between one heck of a night, or 2 years in jail. A German travel review site compiled a list of the various countries, and how they deal with people caught in the act: Sweden: €50 Italy: €300 plus up to 2 years in prison Croatia: €150 plus up to 30 days in prison Romania: Up to 7 years in prison Spain: Up to €75,000 (average fine is €700) Thailand: Up tp $750 Turkey: €200 and up to 2 months in prison Egypt: Up to 3 years in prison Denmark: Up to 4 years in prison France: €15,000 and up to one year in prison Greece: Up to 2 years in prison So, now you know which countries to avoid if you plan to have sex in public! Some major tourist destinations have added manpower to their police force with the sole purpose of catching couples in the act. The Spanish party island of Ibiza issues an on-the-spot fine of €700 ($1000) if you get caugh...

Explanation: How can the same Sun rise three times? Last month on Friday, 2009 July 10, a spectacular triple sunrise was photographed at about 4:30 am over Gdansk Bay in Gdansk , Poland . Clearly, our Sun rises only once. Some optical effect is creating at least two mirages of the Sun -- but which effect? In the vast majority of similarly reported cases, mirages of the brightest object in the frame can be traced to reflections internal to the camera taking the images. Still, the above image is intriguing because a sincere photographer claims the effect was visible to the unaided eye , and because the photographer took several other frames that show variants of the same effect. Therefore, polite readers are invited to debate whether the above image captures a particularly spectacular example of common reflections inside a standard digital camera , shows one of the most spectacular examples of atmospheric lensing yet recorded, or was caused by something completely...

Or, we don't need alien life forms! Telegraph

Free Spirit Spheres, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada Beach Rock Treehouse, Okinawa, Japan Pete Nelson, a leading treehouse designer and builder, has journeyed around the world discovering inspirational treehouse designs. In his book, New Treehouses of the World, Nelson invites his reader on a global tour of more than 35 innovative, contemporary treehouses. Telegraph

Um filme de F. W. MURNAU 23 JUL e 10 SET · 22h00 Projecção de filme mudo com ORQUESTRA E SONOPLASTIA AO VIVO Composição e interpretação: BRUNO MARGALHO - saxofones OSCAR GRAÇA - teclados e laptop NUNO COSTA - guitarra e efeitos CulturSintra

a CulturSintra apresenta de William Shakespeare criação Teatro Tapafuros Jardins da Quinta da Regaleira – Sintra De 2 de Julho a 13 de Setembro 2009 Quinta a Sábado às 22h Domingo às 21h Espectáculo volante Aconselha-se agasalho e calçado confortável Classificação etária Maiores 12 Duração 120 min. Preçário 16 euros (descontos no local M> 65 anos, Cartão Jovem) Bilhetes à venda Quinta da Regaleira e locais habituais Acessos Comboio CP: Sintra (15 minutos a pé) Informações 21 910 66 50 Reservas 707 234 234 (Ticketline)

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Hawking's goal was to understand the mind of God. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis A new book is a bit like a baby universe. The moment of conception is always obscure and its birth uncertain. Then it bursts into the public consciousness and either undergoes swift collapse or experiences a brief, hectic period of runaway inflation before settling down to steady expansion and a continuously cooling reception: either shining on library shelves or surviving as cold, dark matter on the remainder pile. Cosmology books were once especially vulnerable to early failure. Before 1965 – with the discovery of echoes of the big bang in the form of cosmic background radiation – they contained about as much scientific authority as the Book of Genesis, and made their case with considerably less conviction. Even after the confirmation in 1965 that the universe must indeed have experienced a beginning, cosmology books tended to be short-lived. There has been one notable ex...

Alguns dos mais importantes escritores portugueses deixaram o seu nome associado a traduções que ainda hoje são consideradas de referência, dificilmente ultrapassáveis no rigor e na qualidade literária. Dois exemplos, entre outros, são os de Jorge de Sena, com a tradução de «Palmeiras bravas», de um dos mais complexos prosadores do século XX, o norte-americano William Faulkner, e Ruy Belo, com «Moravagine», a obra magna de Blaise Cendrars, escritor francês de origem suíça. Nem sempre as traduções foram no passado, ou são hoje, feitas a partir do texto original. Aconteceu assim, e em alguns casos acontece ainda, com as literaturas em línguas eslavas e as do norte da Europa - sueca, dinamarquesa, finlandesa, norueguesa -, que tinham, e têm, de passar primeiro pelo «crivo» do francês ou do inglês, só então sendo vertidas para português. Não sendo ainda a ideal, a situação - neste particular do respeito pela versão original - registou progressos nos últimos anos e há hoje um...

California, sigh... In the past five years, Andres has raked over 100 designs into the beaches of the San Francisco Bay area He is currently planning to seek out new beaches around the world in which he can produce his work He believes that the fleeting nature of his artwork is what most captures the imaginations of his fans Telegraph

A thought occurred to me while listening to Clint Mansell and the Sonus Quartet launch into a stunning rendition of Death is the Road to Awe from the soundtrack to The Fountain at a recent Union Chapel gig. I thought, I know who'd love this: people. People would love this. Not just fans of film music, but fans of music. Anyone with ears, really. Mansell's music could, and indeed should, sit comfortably alongside Sigur Ros, Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor, it's as complex, tuneful and experimental as any of them. The reason he isn't considered their peer is simple: he makes film music. The Union Chapel gig sold out with little advertising, but where would you advertise such a thing? The rock press? Film magazines? In music journalism and marketing, context seems massively important, but to the consumer it's virtually meaningless. Movies generate an amazing amount of music, almost all of them have an original score and much of it is just too good not to have a...

After trawling second hand bookshops looking for novels, she'll spend months carefully slicing the paper to create impressive works of art The pieces, which are worth up to £5,000 each, only consist of the pages that have been cut or removed from the book itself She never uses first editions or rare books, but Miss Blackwell had to overcome an initial sense of guilt when cutting up the books "I began feeling guilty about cutting up the books but I had the integrity that I would create something magical from it" More from the Telegraph

Gilda Lopes Encarnação demorou cerca de ano e meio a traduzir "A Montanha Mágica". Está actualmente a traduzir "Os Buddenbrook" Não tarda nada, "A Montanha Mágica" faz 100 anos e só agora surge pela primeira vez em Portugal numa tradução directa do alemão, sem passar por nenhum intermediário. A versão disponível desde os anos 50 era a tradução feita para o Brasil por Herbert Caro, judeu alemão exilado em Porto Alegre, publicada pela Livros de Brasil (que também editou as traduções de Caro de outros dois romances de Mann, "Os Buddenbrook" e "Doutor Fausto"). Uma tradução "meritória" e "competente no que toca à compreensão do original", avalia o escritor e ensaísta Frederico Lourenço. "Mas não é de forma alguma uma obra de arte em língua portuguesa. Isso é que fazia falta." Gilda Lopes Encarnação, tradutora da nova edição, com selo da Dom Quixote, diz que a versão que já existia "não é má porque não é er...

From our Translation Forum

Bo Burnham

The SeaBreacher at the Telegraph

Quase todos os editores têm na sala onde trabalham uma estante repleta para onde relanceiam às vezes um olhar inquieto. São as traduções «encalhadas» à espera de uma revisão que as torne publicáveis. Resultaram de pedidos feitos a embaixadas para indicarem tradutores do sueco, japonês ou persa e que, apesar dos muitos anos no nosso país, produziram textos num português tão fluente como o dos manuais de aspiradores chineses. Mas mesmo quando se teve a precaução de pedir a tradução a alguém que tem o português como língua materna, há catástrofes difíceis de corrigir, traduções do inglês, francês, castelhano ou alemão que passam ao lado, em que onde devia surgir «pálido» está «esbatido» e «furtivo» é confundido com «esquivo». E há também expressões idiomáticas tomadas à letra e alguém desastrado ( fingers and thumbs ) surge «inesperadamente» como tendo «dedos e polegares». Encontrar um tradutor que tenha, para usar a expressão de Umberto Eco, uma «apaixonada cumplicidade» com o livro que ...

One of my favourite André Kertész photographs shows two young men sitting with their backs to a tree, each absorbed in a book. Both are wearing glasses; both use their thighs as a lectern; the one facing forwards is black, the other, in profile (a dead ringer for Woody Allen), is white. Their proximity suggests they know each other and are friends. And given the time and place of the composition, the photo could serve as an icon of the civil rights movement – racial harmony as observed in Washington Square, New York City, 1969. What's equally striking, though, is how separate the two men are, how oblivious to each other's presence (and to the camera). They might be friends but their real companions are their books. The Budapest-born Kertész enjoyed a long life (1894-1985), visited many countries and was involved in several different artistic movements. But wherever he went and whatever the commission, a constant preoccupation was with people reading. In one of his earliest and ...