What is the backwards and uncivilized Middle East doing now to thank us for our work "stabilizing" their region, with explosives? They are dying from a brand new virus that researchers now say is "deadlier than SARS." How long before you, too, are dead?
GoGirl and Shewee are two different brands of female urination devices (“FUD”) that allow women and girls to pee while standing up. I was first introduced to these kinds of devices a few years ago and the one I bought turned out to be a lifesaver at an outdoor concert I was attending (the portable toilets lines were too long and they became too disgusting to use).
LIDAR scanning has recently become cost-effective enough for archaeologists to use on large historical sites, and they're taking full advantage. A helicopter sojourn last year has revealed a massive urban site below the jungles near Angkor Wat in Cambodia that likely housed thousands of people. New canals, temples and other man-made structures were discovered during a two-day scan, which emitted up to 200,000 laser pulses per second and would have taken years if done by traditional excavation methods. The technique can scope out features as small as a footprint, and is also being used in cities around the Egyption pyramids and other archaeologically interesting regions -- marking another way that Indy-style archeologists are becoming obsolete.
McDonald's Singapore is selling a "Durian Crunch McFlurry" that combines soft-serve ice-cream with everyone's favorite stinkily delicious T-Rex-testicle-looking fruit. It sells for S$2.80 or about USD2.23. Singapore sports many spectacular shave-ice dessert places that combine durian with things like kidney beans, sweet corn and candied fruit (serving durian cold suppresses some of the eye-watering perfume), and I'd have one of those over anything McHorrible's produces any day.
Japan, inventor of the world’s first bullet train, recently unveiled plans for an even faster and more radical train model: a floating train, powered by magnets, that will travel 100 mph faster than current bullet trains (about 300 mph). The maglev train, standing for “magnetic levitation,” will run between Tokyo and Osaka, an estimated distance of 315 miles, cost $64 billion, and be completed by 2045.
High-speed rail has already revolutionized national and international transportation in many parts of the world - for example, China has a maglev that already goes 270mph – and now high-speed is transitioning into hyper-speed. Last year, we reported that Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and co-founder of both PayPal and Tesla Motors, shared with the public his desire to patent a new mode of transportation – the “Hyperloop” that would get passengers from San Francisco to LA in only 30 minutes.
So what might the future hold for train travel? And, more importantly, how will it affect our cities and the people who live in them?
For more on the maglev train and the future of rail, read on.
The “Hyperloop” would, according to Musk, “never crash, be immune to weather, go twice as fast as an airplane, four times as fast as a bullet train, and – to top it off – run completely on solar power.” While this sounds like a too-good-to-be-true idea straight out of a science fiction novel, our friends at Business Insider believe that there’s no reason the Hyperloop couldn’t become reality with enough political and financial backing – but that’s quite the caveat.
In fact, magnetic levitation technology in trains has been tossed around in the scientific community – and even proposed as an alternative to air travel – for decades.
In 1972, physicist R.M. Salter detailed an underground tube system that could transport people from Los Angeles to New York City in a mind-boggling 21 minutes. The Very High Speed Transit System (VHST) would consist of “electromagnetically levitated and propelled cars in an evacuated tunnel” underground that would function as a sealed vacuum and zip back and forth across the country – at about 14,000 miles per hour.
Not only would the VHST’s travel time between LA and NYC be 5 hours shorter than a plane’s, its tunnel component would also eliminate possibilities of sabotage, right of way costs, surface congestion, grade separation problems, and noise pollution.
So if scientists were already thinking in hyper-speed in 1972, why has it taken so long for the technology to become a reality?
Salter blamed political issues. He wrote, “History has shown that some obvious projects, such as tunneling under the English Channel proposed in the time of Napoleon, can be delayed for centuries because of political pressures” – and, of course, money.
So although the likelihood that hyper-speed could soon become the new means of travel sounds unlikely, it still offers lots for the imagination. High-speed and hyper-speed rail has the very real capability of bringing cities together like never before. What’s more, it would necessitate a whole new kind of infrastructure to support it. What would such a hyper-speed station look like? How would it affect other types of transportation, or change the face of our cities? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
A Japanese website has finally exposed the real reason why so many Japanese kids have been showing up at school wearing eye patches: They've contracted pink eye after engaging in the intimate act known as "eyeball licking."
A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting is a funny and truthful book about being a parent, and as a bonus, it's told in cartoons. Guy Delisle, a French Canadian cartoonist and animator, is best known for his award-winning graphic travelogues about Jerusalem, Pyongyang, Burma, and Shenzen.
This book is closer to home -- it contains 190 pages worth of light-hearted stories about his relationship with his adorable, smart kids. To give you a taste, our friends at Drawn & Quarterly gave me one of the stories to share with you. It's about Delisle, his daughter, and a box of Shredded Wheat. Enjoy!
Artificially added nutrients may not make a food “healthy,” but they do stave off several debilitating, and sometimes fatal, diseases of malnutrition. Here are a few of those maladies.
Soy sauce is tasty, but apparently it can also be deadly at high levels. Kids, here's why it's dumb to drink a quart of soy sauce as a dare:
After the man drank the soy sauce, he began twitching and having seizures, and the friends took him to an emergency room. That hospital administered anti-seizure medication, and he was already in a coma when he was taken to the hospital where Carlberg was working, the University of Virginia Medical Center, nearly four hours after the event.
"He didn't respond to any of the stimuli that we gave him," Carlberg said. "He had some clonus, which is just elevated reflexes. It's a sign that basically the nervous system wasn't working very well."
The team immediately began flushing the salt out of his system by administering a solution of water and the sugar dextrose through a nasal tube. When they placed the tube, streaks of brown material came out. Within a half hour, they pumped 1.5 gallons (6 liters) of sugar water into the man's body.
The man's sodium levels returned to normal after about five hours. He remained in a coma for three days, but woke up on his own.
Tia Ghose of LiveScience has the post: Link (Photo: Shutterstock)
I don't drink coffee, but if this Coffee-mate creamer in Thin Mint and Samoa flavors even does a half-decent job of making my cup of Joe actually taste like a Girl Scout Cookie, I'll start sipping it down every chance I get. If only I could dunk Girl Scout Cookies in my Girl Scout coffee.
Take a long, deep breath and look out on the bountiful expanse, for we are at the top of this roller-coaster ride we call America. Our apex comes in the form of the Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe, and though our swift decline will accompany a deep rumble in our bowels, we should have no regrets. This is what we were always meant for.
Faces have a lot to tell about a person’s health, but it comes as a bit of a surprise that there is a way to estimate a person’s body mass index (BMI) by simply analyzing various characteristics in a mug shot.
Researchers at West Virginia University, Morgantown published a study in Image and Vision Computing describing the development of a computer vision algorithm that does just that. The software compares various distances against each other, such as the length of the face vs. cheek width, and spits out the BMI. They tested the algorithm on over 14,000 faces with known BMIs and showed that the approach is fairly effective and can be improved to produce more effective results. Besides being used for medical applications, the researchers envision the same technology being applied to help you parse through potential mates on online dating sites.
British Designer Ryan MacEachern decided to take his diet to the next level by using some design to spice things up. This project explores the nutritional values of the diet and presents it in a contrasting way, it juxtaposes the dull and boring appearance of the food he was eating by presenting the data using colourful vibrant foods. Enjoy!
The weekend is about to begin and it's time to check some super splendid photography, just for fun! I thought it would be great to share with you some landscapes that will take your breath away, like these below!
These images are the work of various talented photographers. You should really check their portfolios out, simply by clicking each image. The best part is that you can actually buy these! Wouldn't it be awesome to have some of these hanging on your wall? I hope you enjoy these. Cheers! ;)
In the early 1980s, Frenchman Franck Goddio was working in finance. But rather than searching for treasure in spreadsheets, he began looking elsewhere: underwater. With a passion for underwater archaeology, Goddio quit his finance gig, founded the Institut European d'Archeologies Sous-Marine, and started searching for shipwrecks.
His results were impressive. Goddio excavated Spanish galleons, trading ships from the British East India Company, and Napoleon Bonaparte's flagship, among others. But it was an expedition he undertook in 2000 that really put him on the map, so to speak: He managed to locate Thonis-Heracleion, an ancient port city (built circa 800 B.C.!) that's now completely submerged off the coast of Egypt. The hyphenated name hints at its cosmopolitan nature: The Egyptians called it Thonis, the Greeks, Heracleion after a massive temple to Heracles that once stood at the site.
If you want a loaf of sweet bread or a cake, starting with ice cream can save you a lot of time. Because ice cream contains many of the ingredients you need for these recipes—sugar, eggs, and fat—you can save yourself some time with just a few scoops.
All you really have to do is melt the ice cream, add flour, baking powder, and salt, and bake at about 350 degrees. When finished, you have bread! I've also heard that melted ice cream works as a substitute for the liquids you need for cake mixes and produces a more rich and moist cake. Check out the recipe at the Hungry Housewife for bread, and the post at WonderHowTo for additional possibilities.
There’s a certain fascination in visiting cemeteries that you don’t encounter elsewhere. Morbidity, an unnatural peace, a sense of time stood still, of memories quietly turning to dust beneath your feet… the mood of a graveyard can be hard to describe. Perhaps it’s the closeness of architectural beauty to a very human sense of decay; maybe it’s that intangible quality in the air we call ‘atmosphere’. For whatever reason, cemeteries remain oddly-compelling places for exploration. Here are 8 of the best for doing just that:
Hidden in wooded Iosofatova Valley near the old Tartar capital of Bakhchysaray, the Karaite Cemetery is as spooky as they come. Beneath slender Oak trees, thousands of broken tombstones lie at mournful angles, covered in a near-indecipherable Hebrew script. The ground is uneven, the graves shrouded in moss and lichen and – on a quiet day – a disquieting silence seems to settle over everything, giving the place an other-worldly atmosphere. For the best part of a millennium, the Karaites brought their dead here; to a sacred grove known as ‘Balta Tuymez’, a place that still seems to tingle with magic. Standing there in the shadow of the plateau as the sun goes down, it’d take a brave visitor not to feel just the faintest shiver.
Tucked away in Prague’s ‘gothic’ quarter, this irregular, crumbling cemetery seems to have sprung from the pages of an Eastern European folktale. Densely packed, built over uneven ground and guarded by tall iron railings, it almost feels abandoned – despite being crammed right in among a glut of hotels and tourist cafes. While it’s exact date of construction has now been lost to time (the earliest legible grave dates from the early 15th century), it’s likely the Old Jewish Cemetery was built around 600 years old; a fact not lost on Hitler, who ordered its preservation with the ghoulish idea of building a museum to Judaism there. Morbid as the thought may be, the site still retains a peculiar beauty. On a wet and gloomy day, with grey clouds pressing down, it’s almost easy to imagine the last 200 years haven’t happened and you’re seeing it as it was in 1787, on the day the gates shut for the final time.
During the Industrial Revolution, London’s population exploded. Faced with a shortage of graves, the city commissioned seven new cemeteries to be built around the edges. Now long since overfilled themselves and swallowed up by housing developments and redbrick estates, these graveyards retain a peculiar charm: not least due to the frantic efforts of Mother Nature to reclaim them. Stretching from famous Highgate Cemetery in the north (where Karl Marx and Douglas Adams share their final resting place), to West Norwood below the river and Tower Hamlets to the East, the seven are in differing stages of decay – with Tower Hamlets now so spectacularly overgrown you feel as if you’ve stepped onto an old Hammer Horror set. Quiet, crumbling and virtually hidden, the Magnificent Seven are a perfect antidote to the frenetic pace of London life.
It sounds like a reverse horror story: a city of corpses, now overrun with the living. But Cairo’s City of the Dead is real enough: traditionally an ancient resting place, the vast necropolis became a temporary homeless shelter in the sixties, as internal slums were cleared and the poor chased out the city. With nowhere else to go, people began converting the mausoleums into makeshift homes – with the result that this large graveyard is today more alive than most cities. Shops, hotels and brothels all operate from within its walls, servicing half a million people in what’s been described as one of the biggest slums in Egypt. Fascinating it may be, but the authorities are desperate to pretend it – along with nearby ‘Garbage City’ – doesn’t exist: don’t expect getting there to be easy.
On the outskirts of Paris hides a historical curiosity: the world’s oldest pet cemetery. Built in 1899, at the height of fashionable decadence in France, this enclave of the obedient and the dead caters exclusively to the rich and animal obsessed. Among Cimetière des Chiens‘ notable residents is original show-biz dog Rin Tin Tin and the pet lion of a wealthy feminist – but what marks this cemetery out is its abundance of statues. Dogs, cats, horses and even monkeys stare down at visitors, as if still waiting for their owners to come and reclaim them after all this time. Strange, oddly chilling and not a little silly, Paris’s vast monument to its house-trained dead is a bizarre alternative to its more-famous cousins.
Spreading over 2,000 acres, the Wadi Al-Salaam necropolis may be the largest in the world. In the boiling heat of the Iraqi desert, processions of mourning families drive their dead from hundreds of miles around to be interred here – updating their ancient traditions to our automotive age. With every inch of ground covered in ramshackle mausoleums, the actual number of residents here is anyone’s guess. Estimates stretch from the hundreds of thousands into the tens of millions; with war, tribal violence and the ever-present spectre of extremism bringing dozens more every single day. At their height of the US-led intervention, this sprawling city of the dead became a focal point for resistance forces, resulting in pitched battles among its broken streets. Now it lies silent once again; a bleached skeleton left to bake and crumble in the noonday sun.
Once an ancient human settlement, Chellah was abandoned in the twelfth century. With the living gone, its empty rooms and hidden passageways soon filled with the emissaries of the dead – as the Almohad Dynasty made use of its disused buildings. Now even the dead have seemingly moved on, leaving only tourists – that strangest of species – to wander its Roman boulevards. Looking now more like an abandoned fort than anything else, Chellah nonetheless almost overflows with mystique; especially around sunset, when the walls can seem to burn a brilliant red. On quiet days you can imagine no human has set foot here in 2,000 years. On busy days, you may be slightly surprised to discover these ancient catacombs are now home to an occasional jazz festival, of all things.
Twelve miles north of the ancient city of Persepolis, the tombs of four Achaemenid Kings sit, carved into a vast mountain face. Impossibly large, these crude monoliths – badly damaged by the passing centuries and ancient looting – resemble prototype designs for Petra’s more-intricate facade in neighbouring Jordan. However, Naqsh-e Rustam predates its more-popular successor by over 1,000 years. Looking for all the world like the home of a race of giants; the tombs give visitors a fleeting glimpse back through time – to a civilisation that was ancient when Rome was just a twinkling in Romulus’s eye. Impressive, awe-inspiring and fairly thrumming with history, Naqsh-e Rustam should be high on anyone’s list of destinations to visit when the political landscape finally calms down.
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From entomologist, blogger and insect photographer Alex Wild comes this remarkable image of a trapjaw ant, torn asunder to reveal the wriggling, 8-inch parasitic worm living inside. (The ant, by comparison, measures about half an inch long.)
A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting is a funny and truthful book about being a parent, and as a bonus, it's told in cartoons. Guy Delisle, a French Canadian cartoonist and animator, is best known for his award-winning graphic travelogues about Jerusalem, Pyongyang, Burma, and Shenzen.
Soy sauce is tasty, but apparently it can also be deadly at high levels. Kids, here's why it's dumb to drink a quart of soy sauce as a dare:
Born Of An Atom Bomb.
(Images: Serhii Piddubchak, reproduced with permission)
(Images: Andreas Praefcke, cc-3.0; Postdlf 1, 2, 3, cc-sa-3.0)
(Images: Panyd, cc-sa-3.0; C. G. P. Grey, cc-3.0)
(Images: Bertramz; Blago Tebi; Rgoogin; cc-sa-3.0; Eduard Spelterini; John Prendergast)
(Images: Sarah Elzas (website: ToucanRadio.org), cc-nc-nd-3.0; Leo Reynolds (website) cc-nc-sa-3.0; John Kroll 1, 2, 3, cc-nc-3.0)
(Images: Wurzelgnohm, public domain)
(Images: Davide Cesare Veniani; L. Mahin; cc-sa-3.0)
(Images: Ggia; Fabienkhan; cc-sa-3.0; Roodiparse; Roozbeh Taassob; public domain)
