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Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” says “the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.” If you remember the movie, it is Professor Higgins who makes her say this in the speech exercise he designs to break her Cockney accent. Audrey Hepburn as the coarse-mouthed flower seller Eliza, and Rex Harrison as the arrogant phonetics instructor Henry Higgins, immortalised Bernard Shaw’s characters from his play Pygmalion.

However, the little trip down memory lane mentioned above is just nostalgia. Also, the film trivia supplied has no connection to the rain-lashings I experienced in the last fortnight. I was, of course, not in Spain but in my home country India, where the gentle raindrops had assumed gigantic proportions and had become a torrential downpour.

The aqua assault was not restricted to the plains either. The mountains, the valleys, the plateaus and the beaches — every inch of Indian soil was water drenched and soaking wet. And there were puddles, puddles everywhere. A place so watery I had not seen in a long while.

Soon, I got accustomed to it and stopped jumping every time lightning streaked across the thunderous sky. Do Indian homes have lightening conductors? asked the voice in my head. Thoughts of electrocutions dampened the hypnotic urge of stepping out in the rain. An umbrella became an extension of my one hand and balanced the handbag bulging with hand-towels in the other. Drastic situations called for drastic measures, you see.

Dainty stilettos remained in their shoe-bags as flat, rubber soled ballet pumps, became my regular footwear. Within days I turned into an expert at smelling out houses with a clothes dryer versus those with a clothes line.

A big, four-wheel drive vehicle turned out to be my automobile of choice and I memorised the timings in the morning and evening, when it was suicidal to be on Delhi roads. Despite all necessary precautions, if and when stuck in a traffic jam, I learned to make long and useless conversations on the cell phone. With the mobile talk-time in India being possibly the cheapest in the world, I swapped from food recipes to life histories on my cellular handset. I also became an avid listener of the very many FM radio stations on offer, and became compulsively fidgety with the audio settings in any car. Every few seconds I had to switch channels, much to the annoyance of my co-passengers.

At every traffic signal I got emotionally blackmailed into parting with my hard earned money but I came home laden with overpriced trinkets, baubles, ill-printed bestsellers, magazines and so on.

Seeing the age old city of Delhi after a rain-wash is another eye opener. The foliage acquired a bloom and verdant greenery that is otherwise overlooked. The boast of it being the greenest city in Asia attained a tinge of truthfulness as I suddenly noticed the vast parks, the lush lawns and the canopy of closely planted trees.

By the end of my two week sojourn in the wetlands of India I became familiar with the erratic nature of rainfall. Water jets spraying at me did not bother me and I began to find music in the sound of raindrops falling on my head.

But incessant rain made me wistful for a bit of sunshine. I could not wait to get back to my country of residence. Landing at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, glittering in sunlight, made my wish come true. Instantly!

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple reshaped technology and society when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone seven years ago. Now, the trend-setting company is losing ground to rivals that offer what Apple has stubbornly refused to make: smartphones with lower prices and larger screens than the iPhone.

The void in Apple’s lineup is a major reason why the company’s quarterly revenue may be about to fall for the first time in more than a decade, much to the dismay of investors who are worried that Apple is losing its verve and vision.

Wall Street vented its frustration after Apple reported late Monday that it sold fewer iPhones than analysts anticipated during the holiday season. Apple compounded that disappointment with a forecast raising the possibility of a slight revenue decline in the current quarter. It would be the first time that Apple’s quarterly revenue has dropped from the previous year since 2003.

Apple has been relinquishing market share to Samsung and other companies that primarily make devices running Google’s Android operating system. Those competitors offer a broader selection of designs and prices than the iPhone and the iPad.

That trend is one of the reasons that Apple’s revenue growth hasn’t exceeded 6 per cent in any of the past three quarters. By contrast, Apple’s quarterly revenue was consistently increasing by at least 20 per cent two years ago and even exceeded 70 per cent during the 2011 holiday quarter.

Apple remains in stellar shape financially, coming off a $13 billion profit in its most recent quarter — more than all but a handful of companies make in an entire year. The Cupertino, California, company also is sitting on nearly $159 billion in cash.

But Apple’s stock is unlikely to bounce back to its previous high unless the company’s growth accelerates.

The challenges facing Apple have been most glaring in the smartphone market.

Phones in less affluent parts of the world are selling for less than $200. By comparison, iPhones sold for an average of $637 in Apple’s most recent quarter. Even Apple’s cheaper iPhone 5C is just $100 less than the high-end 5S.

Meanwhile, a variety of Android phones boast screens measuring 5 (12.7cm) to 6.5 (16.5cm)inches diagonally, while the latest iPhones are all four inches (10.2cm).

Apple’s insistence on catering to the upper end of the smartphone market with only one choice of screen size is undercutting the company’s growth, International Data Research analyst Ramon Llamas said.

“There is a gap where Apple is not playing, and it’s clear that many users want some of these other things in a phone,” Llamas said.

As a result, Apple’s share of the smartphone market fell from nearly 19 per cent at the end of 2012 to about 15 per cent last year, according to IDC. Samsung remains the market leader with a 31 per cent share at the end of last year, up a notch from 30 per cent in 2012.

Apple tried to widen the iPhone’s appeal with the cheaper 5C, which was essentially a recycled version of the iPhone’s previous generation. To make the 5C look like something new, Apple dressed it up in a brightly coloured array of plastic casings.

In Monday’s conference call with analysts, Apple CEO Tim Cook made it clear that the 5C didn’t sell as well as the company anticipated, though he didn’t provide specifics. Cook hailed the 5S model as the star performer in the company’s holiday quarter.

With the 5S leading the way, Apple sold 51 million iPhones in the fiscal first quarter. Even though that set a record for the company, it represented a letdown because analysts had projected 55 million.

Analysts suspect that many of those iPhones are being bought by repeat customers who love the mobile operating software and other services, as well as the cachet that comes with the Apple brand. Cook said Apple still attracts a “significant” number of first-time iPhone buyers.

Jobs carefully cultivated Apple’s luxury image before he died in October 2011, and Cook has given no indication he will risk tainting it with an inexpensive smartphone sporting lower-quality parts.

“Our objective has always been to make the best, not the most,” Cook said Monday.

NEW YORK — Google Glass is getting glasses.

Google is adding prescription frames and new styles of detachable sunglasses to its computerised, Internet-connected goggles known as Glass.

The move comes as Google Inc. prepares to make Glass available to the general population later this year. Currently, Glass is available only to the tens of thousands of people who are testing and creating apps for it.

Glass hasn’t actually had glasses in its frame until now.

Glass is basically a small computer, with a camera and a display screen above the wearer’s right eye. The device sits roughly at eyebrow level, higher than where eyeglasses would go.

It lets wearers surf the Web, ask for directions and take photos or videos. Akin to wearing a smartphone without having to hold it in your hands, Glass also lets people read their e-mail, share photos on Twitter and Facebook, translate phrases while travelling or partake in video chats. Glass follows some basic voice commands, spoken after the worlds “OK, Glass”.

The gadget itself is not changing with this announcement. Rather, Google plans to make various attachments available. Starting Tuesday, the Mountain View, California, company is offering four styles of prescription frames and two new types of shades available to its “explorers” — the people who are trying out Glass. The frames will cost $225 and the shades, $150. That’s on top of the $1,500 price of Glass.

Users can take the frames to any vision care provider for prescription lenses, though Google says it is working with insurance provider Vision Service Plan to train eye-care providers around the US on how to work with Glass. Google says some insurance plans may cover the cost of the frames.

Isabelle Olsson, the lead designer for Google Glass, says the new frames open the spectacles up to a larger audience.

She demonstrated the new frames to The Associated Press last week at the Google Glass Basecamp, an airy loft on the eighth floor of New York City’s Chelsea Market. It’s one of the places where Glass users go to pick up their wares and learn how to use them. Walking in, visitors are greeted, of course, by a receptionist wearing Google Glass.

“We want as many people as possible to wear it,” she said.

To that end, Glass’s designers picked four basic but distinct frame styles. On one end is a chunky “bold” style that stands out. On the other is a “thin” design — to blend in as much as possible.

Olsson said Google won’t be able to compete with the thousands of styles offered at typical eyeglasses stores. Instead, Glass’s designers looked at what types of glasses are most popular, what people wear the most and, importantly, what they look good in.

The latter has been a constant challenge for the nascent wearable technology industry, especially for something like Google Glass, designed to be worn on your face. When Google unveiled Glass in a video nearly two years ago, it drew unfavourable comparisons to Bluetooth headsets, the trademarks of the fashion-ignorant technophile.

In designing Google Glass, Olsson and her team focused on three design principles with the goal of creating something that people want to wear. These were lightness, simplicity and scalability. That last one means having different options available for different people — just as there are different styles of headphones, from in-ear buds to huge aviator-style monstrosities.

Google Glass currently comes in five colours — “charcoal”, a lighter shade of gray called “shale”, white, tangerine and bright blue “sky”. The frame attachments out Tuesday are all titanium. Users can mix and match.

“People need to be able to choose,” Olsson said. “These products need to be lifestyle products.”

NEW YORK –– Vitamin supplements marketed for infants and children often contain more than the recommended amount of individual vitamins, according to a new study.

Researchers found that in all but one case, the average vitamin content of those supplements exceeded what’s recommended.

“What we did is compare what’s on the labels for (children’s vitamins) to the recommended daily allowance or adequate intake,” Michael Madden told Reuters Health.

Madden is the study’s lead author from the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Erie, Pennsylvania.

The recommended daily allowance (RDA) or adequate intake of vitamins is set by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which provides independent advice to US policy makers.

The RDA is the amount of a certain nutrient the average person should consume daily to meet the body’s needs.

For the new study, Madden and his colleagues pulled information from labels of dietary supplements from a government database in July 2013.

They reviewed the labels of 21 supplements intended for use among infants younger than 12 months old and 172 supplements intended for use among kids between 12 months and four years old.

Overall, the researchers looked at nine individual vitamins in the supplements intended for infants and 14 vitamins in the supplements intended for older kids.

They found vitamin D was the only vitamin that wasn’t listed in amounts above the RDA in products made for both age groups.

The average vitamin C level in the supplements was about equal to the RDA for kids younger than 12 months old. But in supplements made for older children, vitamin C levels were about five times the recommended amount.

Biotin, a vitamin that helps turn food into fuel, is often taken with hopes of making skin, hair and nails healthier. The researchers found the average amount of biotin in children’s supplements was between five and nine times the RDA.

They note in JAMA Paediatrics that the IOM recommends children not exceed the RDA for many of the vitamins included in the study.

The IOM says there are not enough data about potential side effects among children in those age groups for some vitamins and that kids should get those vitamins from food.

Duffy MacKay, however, said the IOM recommendations have not been updated in several years. Also, the new study did not distinguish between multivitamins and supplements that contain a single vitamin.

MacKay is senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade association representing dietary supplement manufacturers and ingredient suppliers, in Washington, DC.

“There are reasons why some of the vitamins would contain more than the RDA,” he said. For instance, single vitamin supplements could be made for kids who are deficient in that particular vitamin.

He also pointed out that the new research is based on a survey of supplement labels and did not identify or associate any health concerns with the use of the children’s products.

“I think parents should take a look at the product label and they should assess the levels with the daily recommended amounts and go into the healthcare provider and have a dialogue,” MacKay, who was not involved with the new study, said.

Dr Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, cautioned that the new study assumes the supplement labels are correct.

“That may not be true,” he said, adding that his own hospital has found large inconsistencies on supplement labels.

Offit, who was not involved with the new research, also said RDAs tend to be overestimates of what the average person needs and parents should make every effort to get their children the vitamins and nutrients they need in the food they eat.

“Be very careful about what you put in your child’s mouth,” he said. “You know that if you have a reasonable diet you should get the vitamins and nutrients you need.”

Madden said it is a good idea for parents to talk with their children’s doctors before giving them vitamins.

With an indelible link to the Middle East and Gulf region in particular, the latest “Y62” generation Nissan Patrol was initially launched in Abu Dhabi back in 2010, while the latest face-lifted and updated 2014 version made its debut at the recent Dubai motorshow. First introduced in 1951, the first two Patrol generations were basic, rugged, capable and utilitarian off-roaders in the vein of the Land Rover or Willys Jeep, but by 1980 became bigger and better kitted; by 1987 adopted coil spring suspension for added refinement and off-road ability and has since become more luxurious.

The flagship Nissan SUV, the vast Patrol is a “big beast” in more ways than one, and inherits a huge and loyal Middle East following as a large family vehicle, while previous generations are thoroughly durable off-road and tuner cult car favorites in the Gulf. While more basic versions of the rugged previous generation Patrol continue in some markets, the larger, more refined and luxurious new generation has made a big impact in the regional market, and with 15,500 examples sold in 2012 and an anticipated final tally of 20,000 for 2013, commanded a 32 per cent market share in the Gulf by August 2013.

Big in the Middle East

Available in a limited number of markets, the 2014 Patrol is very much aimed at its biggest Middle East market, and is considered as a regional “brand image driver” for Nissan. As such, the latest face-lifted Patrol was researched and developed with Middle East customer feedback in mind and 13,000 hours of regional testing. According to Nissan, the Patrol’s comfort levels and how it conveys a sense of power was well received, while respondents preferred a greater variety of colours and a sportier look, which the 2014 model addresses with what is, for the most part, a subtle but effective aesthetic and interior refresh.

With a hulking sense of proportion and presence, the 2014 is a more chiseled-looking machine, whose most noticeable changes include a more sculpted front bumper design with sharper creases and fog-light surrounds, and a sportier and moodier light cluster redesign that includes LED elements. The 2014 model noticeably uses more chrome elements to its re-styled grille, which replaces the black honeycomb background with chrome slats, and chrome side port surrounds. Rear lights lose the clear casing and gain chrome surrounds, while new multi-spoke 20-inch alloy wheels are another highlight for upscale trim versions, and are particularly fetching in two-tone black and silver.

Smooth delivery

With its naturally aspirated 5.6-litre V8 engine carrying over unchanged for 2014, and developing a mighty 400HP at 5,800rpm and 413lb/ft torque at 4,000rpm — as driven — the Patrol is a brisk mover for a nearly 2.8-tonne full-size SUV, and will make the 0-100km/h dash in an estimated 6.5-seconds. Running a direct fuel injection system and driven through a seven-speed automatic gearbox to efficiently utilise its engine, higher spec 400HP Patrol versions’ estimated 16.8l/100km city and 11.76 highway fuel consumption figures are restrained for its class. However, with such weight and power, spirited throttle inputs increase consumption, and it is no wonder that the Gulf is its most popular market.

Silky smooth, progressive and happy to be revved hard, the Patrol’s engine is highly refined rather than a rumbling V8, and with good throttle control, one precisely dials in power. With its enormous weight one works the engine and gearbox with meaningful throttle depressions for brisk, eager off-the-line, flexible mid-range and revvy high-end delivery. Smooth and timely shifting, the seven-speed gearbox well-compliments the engine’s refinement and while gears can be sequentially selected through the lever, there are no steering-mounted gearbox shifters. Entry-level spec Patrols receive 315HP engines without direct injection and a choice of five-speed automatic or six-speed manual gearboxes.

Refined ride

With sophisticated independent double wishbone suspension all-round combined with active hydraulic dampers, the Patrol is smooth, refined and well-controlled through corners for its size. Sprung for a combination of comfort over cracks, bumps and unevenness on straights, the Patrol’s dampers however firm up through corners to reduce body roll and maintain poise. Certainly not a vehicle to wantonly throw through narrow hairpins, the Patrol however availed itself well on fast but tightly winding routes. Highway stability was similarly reassuring, while its adaptive dampers impressively reigned in the pitch and dive often associated with vehicles of this class, size and weight on hard acceleration and braking.

With vice-like four-wheel-drive grip, the Patrol effectively puts its power down, turns in well for a tall and heavy vehicle and grips hard through fast corners. Steering is generally geared high and is light, but has reasonably good precision, and comes with automatically variable assistance levels. Ride quality smooth, with high levels of refinement from noise, vibration and harshness, despite the big alloy wheels and relatively low tyre sidewalls. Upscale Patrol versions receive a host of optional driver and safety assists, including intelligent cruise control with distance control, brake assistance with collision warning, lane departure warning and prevention, and blind spot warning and intervention systems.

Rugged road-tripper

Well-equipped for off-road driving, the Patrol’s independent suspension keeps tyres in contact with ground, and lockable four-wheel-drive and locking rear differential retains traction over loose surfaces, while low gearbox transfer ratios allow high power driving at crawling pace. Generous approach, ramp and departure angles are complemented by electronic hill descent control and automatically optimised driving modes for road, rock, sand and snow. A hugely capable tow vehicle, the Patrol holds a production vehicle Guinness World Record for towing a 170.9-tonne cargo plane over 50-metres in August 2013. One however feels that high-end Patrols should be offered with entry-level models’ smaller 18-inch wheels and higher profile tyres for off-road driving.

With a commandingly high driving position, cavernous interior and cargo space, and extensive mod cons including Bose sound system and DVD screens, the eight-seat Patrol is an ideal road trip companion. Comfortable and indulgent, the Patrol features adjustable steering and seats and looks best with the new tan leather upholstery. Generously appointed with soft touch textures, shiny metallic accents and highly lacquered woods, the Patrol features big dials and user-friendly layouts. To help maneuver the enormous Patrol, optional equipment includes a Back-up Collision Intervention system and multi-angle Around View Monitor parking system incorporating a parking assist guide that lines to should follow to park in tight spots.

SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 5.6-liter, in-line V8-cylinders

Bore x stroke (mm): 98 x 92mm

Valve-train: 32-valve, variable valve timing, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 7-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive

Drive-train: Locking rear differential and low gear transfer case

Gear ratios: 1st 4.887:1 2nd 3.17:1 3rd 2.027:1 4th 1.412:1 5th 1:1 6th 0.864:1 7th 0.775:1

Reverse / final drive ratios: 4.041:1 / 4.395:1

Power, HP (kW): 400 (294) @ 5,800rpm

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 413 (560) @ 4,000rpm

0-97km/h: 6.5-seconds (est.)

0-160km/h: 17.8-seconds (est.)

Fuel consumption, city / highway: 16.8 / 11.76 liters/100km (est.)

Fuel capacity: 100 + 40 litres

Height: 1,940mm

Width: 1,995mm

Length: 5,165mm

Wheelbase: 3,075mm

Tread, F/R: 1,706 / 1,704mm

Minimum Ground clearance: 273mm

Kerb weight: 2,750-2,800kg (est.)

Gross vehicle weight: 3,500kg (est.)

Tyres: 275/60R20

Approach / departure angles: 26.6° / 25.9°

Steering: speed-sensitive power assisted rack and pinion

Turning radius: 12.1-metres

Suspension: Independent, double wishbone with active hydraulic damping

Brakes, F&R: Ventilated discs

Seating capacity: 8

LOS ANGELES — The Grammy Awards celebrated outcasts and outsiders, including a couple of French robots, white rappers and a country girl singing about gay rights.

The Recording Academy's voters on Sunday night awarded French electronic music pioneers Daft Punk for teaming with R&B legends to make a hybrid album that celebrated both genres, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and Kacey Musgraves for supporting gay rights and New Zealand's Lorde for her simple message to the masses.

Daft Punk and collaborator Pharrell Williams won four awards, including top honours album and record of the year, and best new artists Macklemore and Lewis matched that with four of their own.

New Zealand's Lorde won two awards for her inescapable hit "Royals".

Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo of Daft Punk showed the celebratory feel of their hit, record of the year "Get Lucky", by asking Stevie Wonder to join them with Williams and Nile Rodgers in a colourful performance.

Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories" was the year's event album, capitalising on the growing popularity of electronic dance music. They beat out reigning pop queen Taylor Swift, the favourite to win the award.

The dance music crowd had been waiting for a major win since the Bee Gees' 1977 "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack, the last dance LP to win album of the year.

Rodgers said the duo richly deserved the win after taking years to put the album together as they sought authentic musical moments that can only be recorded live by real musicians.

Macklemore and Lewis have dominated the pop world with three huge hits that were wildly different and rivalled "Get Lucky" in popularity — "Thrift Shop", “Can't Hold Us" and the gay rights anthem "Same Love".

They won three awards during the Grammys' pre-telecast ceremony — rap song and rap performance for the comical "Thrift Shop" and rap album for "The Heist", beating out Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Jay Z and Kanye West in that category before taking major award best new artist.

The Recording Academy's own rap committee tried to exclude Macklemore and Lewis from the genre's categories before being overruled.

Lorde, the teenager whose invitation to ignore all the status symbols of pop music in her song "Royals", was one of the year's out-of-nowhere hits. She took major award song of the year and best pop solo performance.

The singer shyly summed up the experience in just a few words during her acceptance speech: "Thank you everyone who has let this song explode. Because it's been mental."

AMMAN — Kids who regularly plugged into social networking sites before bedtime reported sleeping nearly an hour less on school nights than those who rarely connected online, a new study shows.

“Using technology in the bedroom may result in sleep loss, delays in initiating sleep, daytime sleepiness and more,” the study’s lead author, Teresa Arora, told Reuters in an e-mail.

“In turn, this may affect daytime performance, particularly at school,” Arora, from Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha, Qatar, said.

The researchers found children between the ages of 11 to 13 slept significantly less when they frequently communicated on a cell phone, surfed the Internet, played video games, watched television, listened to music and even if they used a computer to study before hitting the sack.

Social networking was associated with the biggest loss of sleep. Those who said they usually connected to friends online before getting into bed reported sleeping the least — an average of eight hours and 10 minutes a night — compared with nine hours and two minutes among those who never connected.

Earlier studies have linked sleep deprivation to obesity, depression, difficulty regulating emotions and lower grades. A Chinese study published last month found staying up late may raise teens’ blood pressure.

For the current study, the researchers analysed surveys on sleep and technology habits completed by 738 students at seven randomly selected schools in the Midlands region of England in 2010.

Kids who frequently viewed TV before bed were four times more likely to report waking up several times during the night than non-viewers, and frequent social networkers were three times more likely to wake up a lot.

Children who regularly played video games or listened to music at bedtime had significantly more difficulty falling asleep, the researchers reported in Sleep Medicine.

Teenagers’ sleep schedules naturally tend to shift as a result of feeling alert later at night and having trouble falling asleep. But technology may worsen the tendency to burn the midnight oil, Arora and her colleagues wrote.

The findings came as no surprise to Nanci Yuan, medical director of the Sleep Centre at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, California. She was not involved in the new study.

“The advent of technology has made every age group, but especially teenagers, have difficulties with their sleep,” Yuan, who also studies sleep disorders at Stanford University, told Reuters.

“We’re seeing more sleep-deprivation problems in society as a whole, and we’re seeing it more in teenagers.”

Children from 11 to 13 years old need between 10 and 11 hours of continuous sleep a night for optimal health, she said. She recommended that adolescents shut down all electronics, ideally removing them from the bedroom, at least one hour, and preferably two, before turning in.

“We have to make sleep a priority as important as good nutrition and exercise,” she said.

Christina Calamaro similarly stressed the need to unplug at least an hour before lights out. She has studied the effect of technology on adolescent sleep at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware but was not involved in the current study.

Calamaro called on healthcare professionals to do more to educate parents about children’s need for uninterrupted sleep.

“We need to teach adolescents boundaries with technology,” she said. “We need to really drive home that message to parents about modelling sleep behaviour in their home.”

CUPERTINO, United States — Geeks who brought the Macintosh computer to life became Silicon Valley rock stars on Saturday, with people asking for autographs or photos while celebrating the Apple desktop machine’s 30th birthday.

Members of the original “Mac” team got the star treatment for passionately building a home computer “for the rest of us” at a time when IBM machines dominated in workplaces.

The friendly desktop referred to as the Mac and, importantly, the ability to control it by clicking on icons with a “mouse”, opened computing to non-geeks in much the way that touch screens later allowed almost anyone to get instantly comfortable with smartphones or tablets.

The birthday party was held in a performing arts centre in the Californian city of Cupertino, where legendary late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs first introduced the Mac to the world on January 24, 1984.

“Ever since I can remember I’ve been entranced with how these Macs work,” 16-year-old Tom Frikker told AFP as he worked his way through the crowd, getting original team members to autograph the vintage Mac he brought from home.

“It seems like a work of art,” the teenager continued. “I thought it would be cool to come out and see all these people that I’ve heard about.”

Prior to the Mac, with its “graphical user interface”, computers were commanded with text typed in what seemed like a foreign language to those who were not software programmers.

“The effect the Mac had on the world and on computing is really fascinating,” said Warren Sande, a fibre optic telecom company manager who was a schoolboy when the Apple desktop debuted.

Sande’s 14-year-old son was eager to hear inside stories from those who made the Mac.

“The Mac had no video hardware, a tiny amount of RAM and a floppy drive, and it did stuff that my computer with eight gigabytes of RAM and dedicated video hardware has trouble doing,” Carter Sande said.

“I need to figure out why,” the teenager said. “It is so amazing that they did so much with a tiny amount of hardware.”

‘We were making art’

The original vision of launching a Macintosh with 64 kilobytes of RAM and a $1,000 price gave way to introducing one with 128 kilobytes of RAM at $2,500.

Members of the Mac team told of being crushed when they got word of the higher price because they had been driven by a belief that they were making a machine that typical people could afford as well as easily use.

Applause erupted from the audience as members of the original Mac team stepped on stage to share memories. Video clips, many starring a young Steve Jobs, were played.

“It wasn’t work, we were making art,” Mac development team member Bill Atkinson said, recalling how Jobs had their signatures engraved inside the Mac because “real artists sign their work.”

The maddening brilliance of Jobs was a thread running through many shared memories.

One worker described an “evolution of Jobs” that started with him bashing a suggestion as idiocy only to claim it as his own days later.

“Sometimes he was exasperating, that man, but there is very little I would change,” early Apple employee Rod Holt said.

“People put themselves into that computer.”

Apple spotlighted the arrival of the Mac with a television commercial portraying a bold blow struck against an Orwellian computer culture.

The “1984” commercial directed by Ridley Scott aired in an expensive time slot during a Super Bowl in a “huge shot” at IBM, Daniel Kottke, of the original Mac team, told AFP.

Mac prowess at page layouts and photo editing won the devotion of artistic types and ignited an era of desktop publishing.

Macs sold decently out of the gate, but Windows machines hit with a low-price advantage for budget-minded buyers. Microsoft released the first version of Windows in late 1985.

Microsoft took the lead in the home computer market by concentrating on software, while partners cranked out Windows-powered machines at prices that undercut the Mac.

A long-running rivalry between Microsoft and Apple has yielded to the mobile age, with Google and its Android operating system targeted as the new nemesis, as lifestyles centre on smartphones and tablet computers.

The original boxy Macintosh, with its mouth-like slit below the screen for “floppy” data disks, has evolved into a line that boasts slim, powerful laptops in the smooth shape of the Mac Pro desktop model.

“Steve would constantly drum into us how much of a dent we would make in the universe,” said Andy Hertzfeld, of the original Mac team.

“Of course we believed him.”

We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War
Edited by Nadje Al-Ali and Deborah Al-Najjar
New York: Syracuse University Press, 2013, 266 pages

It is very life-affirming to see a book of such beauty about Iraq, but this is not art for art’s sake or an attempt to avoid ugly reality.

On the contrary, the writers and artists who contributed to this volume are determined to turn the trauma they face from the violence and destruction of their country into an impetus for creativity — to show the truth, to heal, to resist and build hope for the future.

In the words of Rashad Salim, “Art the world over gives body to the senses, memory to consciousness, and a door to articulate our humanity, understand our tragedies, and imagine deliverance.” (p. 249)

“We Are Iraqis” shows that Iraqis are ready to reclaim their own voice in order to counter the false images spread by the (former) US occupation authority and international media.

Their resistance via various art forms powerfully refutes racist notions about theirs being a culture of violence. Though dispersed around the world, they are coming together to resurrect and enrich their culture, using classical symbols of ancient Mesopotamia or more modern forms to portray their heritage, the ravages of war or both.

This is part of what the book title denotes. It also reasserts a united, but not monolithic, national identity in the face of the sectarian identities that have come to the fore in the last decade.

Few of the writers even refer to their religious background though it may come out in their story, as when Sinan Antoon recalls, not without irony, how he was asked to write about Iraqi Christian literature — a genre he didn’t know existed.

Yara Badday, who is of mixed Shiite-Sunni descent like many Iraqis, addresses the issue head-on while recounting her travels around all parts of Iraq in 2004 and 2009: “I do not see this battleground as a civil or sectarian war. Rather it is an amalgamation of violence and greed with innumerable players both inside and outside Iraq.” (p. 92)

An interview with Ella Habiba Shohat, “Arab-Jews, Diasporas and Multicultural Feminism”, gives a global perspective on racism and sectarianism.

Most of the contributors now live in exile. Some were born abroad; some left Iraq only recently, others during earlier waves of repression, war and sanctions.

Their contributions are diverse: Poems, essays, paintings, even a mini-play expressing the terror elicited by violence. They give voice to memory, outrage, loss, but also coping strategies for surviving chaos or the alienation of exile.

Humour is also used to unmask hypocrisy or the ironies of living in the comfort zones of the very countries that waged war on Iraq.

Art historian Nadia Shabout writes about “The Bifurcations of Iraq’s Visual Culture” — the destruction of artworks, museums and educational infrastructure, the emigration of artists, the isolation of artists who remained in Iraq as opposed to the cosmopolitanism of those in exile.

Maysaloun Faraj finds hope in the innovative art that has emerged in exile, which she gathered into an exhibition called “Strokes of Genius”.

Nadje Al Ali writes about a joint exhibition in London, “Sophisticated Ways: Destruction of an Ancient City”, bringing together Hana Malallah, who has always lived in Baghdad, and the more cosmopolitan Rashad Salim, who began to lose faith in modernity after the US invasions. “Modernising Iraq has come to mean ‘sophisticated ways of destruction’.” (p. 154)

Particularly innovative is Wafaa Bilal’s performance art: “I was sequestered in a Chicago gallery with a paintball gun aimed at me that people could shoot over the Internet.”

Acting on his philosophy “of using art to get people to examine their own attitudes… and hence hopefully reach new levels of understanding themselves and others”, he conceived the project “as a way to provoke Americans to consider the technologically remote and removed nature of modern warfare”. (pp. 95-96)

In “A Tale of Two Exiles”, Sama Alshaibi, who inscribes her art on her body, tells of reuniting with the Palestinian branch of her family when it was impossible to visit her Iraqi one.

There are other links to Palestine as when Maysoon Pachachi uses her experience of teaching filmmaking to young Palestinians to start a free, filmmaking centre in Baghdad to document reality and instil critical thinking in the new generation.

The book also includes personal narratives of trying to make a difference. In “The Assassination of Iraqi Academic Life”, Saad N. Jawad gives a moving account of teaching in Iraq for 30 years (1978-2006) “while living through one crisis after another”. (p. 48)

Maki Al Nazzal of Fallujah writes of harrowing trips to Jordan to bring children for medical treatment.

Ferial J. Ghazoul recounts poet Saadi Youssef’s lifetime of cultural resistance, calling him “a beacon for a better tomorrow”. (p. 230) In contrast, Ali Bader’s brilliant account of a conference of 600 Iraqi intellectuals in Erbil leaves little hope for the communists turned capitalists he describes.

Like art itself, this book combines the personal with the political, the material with the visionary, in order to address reality.

Rooted in history, it presents new perspectives for the future. For Iraqis to reclaim their humanity has global implications.

As pointed out by Rashad Salim, “the Iraq situation maps out the worst political, social, and environmental fears that threaten us and our planet. It is not an isolated reality but the extreme of a global trend. Unless understood… as such it won’t change, thus making the locus of the birth of Old World civilisation the herald of our New World civilisation’s end.” (p. 249)

PARIS — Vitamin D supplements have no significant effect on preventing heart attack, stroke, cancer or bone fractures, according to a review of scientific evidence published over the weekend.

Researchers led by Mark Bolland of the University of Auckland in New Zealand looked at 40 high-quality trials to see if supplements met a benchmark of reducing risk of these problems by 15 per cent or more.

Previous research had seen a strong link between vitamin D deficiency and poor health in these areas.

But the new study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, strengthens arguments that vitamin D deficiency is usually the result of ill health — not the cause of it.

Its authors say there is “little justification” for doctors to prescribe vitamin D supplements as a preventive measure for these disorders.

“Available evidence does not lend support to vitamin D supplementation and it is very unlikely that the results of a future single randomised clinical trial will materially alter the results from current meta-analyses,” they write.

Vitamin D is a key component for healthy bones, teeth and muscles.

It is produced naturally when the skin is exposed to sunlight or derived from foods such as oily fish, egg yolks and cheese.

In March last year, British scientists, in a comparison of 4,000 women, found that vitamin D supplements taken in pregnancy made no difference to the child’s bone health.

And in September 2012, researchers at New York’s Rockefeller University saw no evidence that vitamin D supplements lowered cholesterol, a factor in heart disease, at least over the short term.

In contrast, a November 2012 investigation into pregnant women who lived in high-latitude, northern hemisphere countries with long, dark winters found a link between low levels of natural vitamin D and an increased risk of multiple sclerosis in their offspring.

For these women, taking vitamin D supplements to offset the effects of long periods without sunlight could be advisable, according to that research.