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Honey? You've got shit all over your nice shirt. This is the Poo Emoji Button-Up Shirt available from Betabrand. It's currently on sale for $80 (from $88), which is still entirely too much to pay for a shirt with no sleeves. If I'm paying $80 for a shirt, you better believe it's gonna have long sleeves, and you better believe at least one of those sleeves is going to be concealing a hidden blade like in Assassin's Creed. Will I stab myself trying to put my coat on? Probably. Will my mom have to take to to the hospital? Probably. Will she make me promise to never carry a hidden blade again but I'll do it again anyways and the same thing will happen? Yes. My life is an endless cycle, like the symbol of a snake eating its own tail. Except if you look closer it's not a snake, it's a penis, and it's tail is balls. Keep going for a bunch of closeups as well as a shot of the poop emoji shoes they're also selling.

We're used to our gadgets being passive objects. They respond to typed or tapped commands, but we don't expect them to be aware of their surroundings.

Announcements and demonstrations at this week's Computer Electronics Show make it clear that that's going to change, and soon. As our devices have more and better sensors, they're going to be increasingly aware of the world around them, and will interact with the world and with us in more sophisticated ways.

Tablets and smartphones won't just take pictures, they'll be able to identify objects in a shot and judge their size and distance. Computers won't just respond to taps on a keyboard or touchscreen, they'll respond to gestures, voice commands, and the motion of people around a room. And vehicles — both on the ground and in the air — will increasingly understand the world around them and react intelligently to obstacles. This will mean smartphones that can take precise size measurements with a single click, personal drones that can take breathtaking aerial shots, and dramatically safer cars.

Computer vision is going 3D

The original Kinect sensor, released in 2010, was groundbreaking.  (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

When we look at the world around us, our brains automatically build a 3D model of our surroundings. They identify objects like people, animals, and pieces of furniture and figure out how big and far away they are. The cameras on our digital devices don't do that — they just take flat, 2-dimensional images. But that's going to change soon.

Microsoft has been a big innovator in this area. The company introduced the Kinect sensor for Xbox in 2010. It combines a traditional camera with an infrared range-finding sensor to capture images with depth.

Microsoft built the Kinect to allow a new generation of games that use gestures instead of a traditional controller. But the technology has proven to have other applications too. It has sparked a renaissance in the robotics community. Kinect's cheap hardware and powerful software makes it superior to a lot of the industrial-grade sensors researchers had been using previously. Kinect has been used by robotics researchers at NASA, the University of California at Berkeley, Disney, and many other places.

Kinect is cheaper than a lot of other sensors, but it's not cheap enough to become truly ubiquitous. Five years after Kinect was announced, a standalone sensor still costs at least $150.

Intel is trying to one-up Microsoft by building Kinect-like 3D sensors that are small and cheap enough to integrate into mobile devices. Intel announced the technology, dubbed RealSense, last year. And it has been aggressively promoting it at CES this week.

Intel has been vague about how much RealSense hardware costs, since they're trying to sell to gadget makers such as Samsung and LG rather than the general public. But the company claims they'll be cheap enough to reach a mass market (for example, the first product to incorporate a RealSense camera, a Dell tablet, costs $400). If things go according to Intel's plan, within a few years all of our tablets and laptops, and perhaps even our smartphones, will have fancy 3D cameras instead of boring old 2D ones.

Good software makes 3D cameras more powerful

People play a Kinect game at CES in 2012. (David Becker/Getty Images)

Being able to capture 3D images is pretty cool in its own right — Intel says you'll be able to turn everyday objects digital models suitable for 3D printing, for example. But what makes technologies like the Kinect and RealSense really powerful is software that helps app developers recognize the people and objects in a scene.

With a RealSense-equipped tablet, you can take a photo of a room and have it automatically compute the size of objects in the shot. You'll be able to automatically erase the background from a photo or video or apply different effects to the foreground and background.

Both platforms also include software to track the movements of people and understand their gestures. Kinect software, for example, can "track thumbs, 25 joints of up to six people, and heart rates by scanning a face." It can also understand two people talking at the same time.

Microsoft and Intel envision a future where people control their computers using gestures rather than keyboards or touchscreens. It's not clear that this is something PC users actually want — keyboards and mice are pretty efficient input methods. But it could be useful in a lot of other situations.

BMW, for example, is working on technology to let drivers use gestures to control accessories. Right now, BMW is using an ordinary camera, but a RealSense camera could make the gesture-recognition capabilities more sophisticated. Similarly, putting a RealSense camera in home entertainment system could allow people to control their TVs with Minority Report-style gestures instead of a remote control.

The technology could also have major industrial applications. Mounting RealSense cameras in a warehouse or assembly line could allow a company to track employees and equipment as they move around, turning on lights and equipment as needed and gaining insight into how to improve efficiency.

3D sensors in drones and self-driving cars

Intel showed off drones equipped with RealSense cameras at this year's CES show. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

The most important applications for 3D cameras and sensors are for vehicles that navigate the world autonomously. Intel sees this as a major application for RealSense. In his CES keynote, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich demoed a drone equipped with six RealSense cameras that was able to navigate around obstacles autonomously. This is a situation where the small size and power consumption of RealSense is important, because there are strict limits on how much weight a drone can carry.

Another technology being demoed at CES this week shows the potential of the technology. Airdog is a small, camera-equipped drone that can be programmed to follow you around and make a video of your surroundings. Airdog is touting it as a way for outdoorsy types to capture footage of their mountain biking and rock climbing exploits. Right now, users have to manually mark out obstacles so Airdog knows to avoid them. But a 3D camera like RealSense will allow drones to detect and avoid obstacles automatically, allowing users to launch them and then forget about them until they land.

BMW and Audi both demoed self-driving cars at CES this week. Safety is critical here, so companies developing self-driving cars have been using sensors that are significantly more powerful — and expensive — than RealSense or Kinect. The sensors on Google's early self-driving cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

These costs are expected to come down as the technology is refined and mass-produced. But sensors suitable for self-driving applications will likely cost thousands of dollars for a while yet. Ford CEO Mark Fields said this week that self-driving cars will come on the market by the end of the decade. But he said Ford probably wouldn't be the company to make the breakthrough first, because Ford is focused on producing affordable vehicles.

So this is going to be a big area of technological progress in the coming decade. Hardware companies will be working to improve the performance of 3D sensors while reducing their cost. Meanwhile, companies in Silicon Valley, Detroit, and elsewhere will be developing software that uses these sensors to understand the world. The result will be a proliferation of devices, from tablets to self-driving cars, that understand and interact with the world around them.

The number of foreign mothers giving birth in Vancouver and Richmond hospitals has quadrupled in the last five years.

In the first nine months of 2014, 232 non-residents delivered babies at Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care hospitals, the majority in Richmond. This accounted for nearly six per cent of all births.

This is a chart of the uninsured rate in America since 2009. And, since 2014, it shows a pretty staggering drop (the data only goes back to 2009, unfortunately, because that's when Gallup started tracking the issue):

(Gallup)

The big thing that changed in 2014 is, obviously, Obamacare. There are lots of ways to judge if Obamacare is working: whether it's helping lower health care costs, if it's improving our access to doctors, and (perhaps the holy grail) if it's making Americans healthier. (The New York Times has an excellent package working through many of these issues). This graph shows that Obamacare is accomplishing at least one of its main goals: expanding health insurance coverage to millions of Americans.

When he’s not hanging out with his best friend Cleo, a little owl named Forbi can be found napping peacefully in the shadows with his buddy Manu, a long-haired bunny, and their human Andre Costa close at hand.

images via GIFsBOOM

via GIFsBOOM, Tastefully Offensive

Fun for all ages?! This product should be 18+ only! Also, that guy has no ass and it looks like his butthole is trying to eat his jeans. The Belfie Stick is allegedly a real product you can pre-order for $80 that helps up your ass-selfie game. Personally, I don't have an ass-selfie game. The stick clamps onto any smartphone and has a Bluetooth enabled controller so you don't have to rely on your camera's timer to take a picture. I imagine it's equally well suited for artistic shots of taints, ballsacks and hoo-has. Personally, I've never taken a picture of my ass, but that's only because I bent over naked in front of a full-length mirror once and peeked at it between my legs and I did NOT like what I saw. I swear it winked at me. Thanks to Laura, who informed me they'd have to turn the Hubble Space Telescope around to be able to take a picture of my ass anyways.

A second day of thick fog in B.C.'s South Coast has forced the cancellation of some flights out of the Vancouver International Airport, as well as float planes and helicopter departures.

Environment Canada has issued an advisory of "near-zero visibility," warning travellers to be careful in the "extensive dense fog."

While the fog slowed drivers in the region, it was full steam ahead for photographers who took advantage of some gorgeous scenes:


Photo courtesy Ryan Neale/Instagram


Photo courtesy Seaside Signs/Instagram


Photo courtesy Haroon Bux/Instagram

Check out more fantastic fog photos:




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In case you were looking for a good comparison in terms of just how cold it is across all of Canada right now, it looks like NASA has provided one for you.

In a tweet sent out on Thursday, this twitter account that uses NASA data noted the Curiosity Rover is currently enjoying a balmier morning than almost any Canadian:

It will be colder than @MarsCuriosity’s location in Gale Crater throughout much the northern US and Canada today pic.twitter.com/BFVTrsa58P

— Mars Weather (@MarsWxReport) January 8, 2015

That's right. A region of a planet with an average temperature of -60°C is warmer than where you live right now. Except for you, southern B.C., you lucky ducks.

Keep warm, Canada!


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A group called the Poison Squad created their own slogan for eating weird food. (FDA)

The next time you sit down for a midday snack, remember: eating can be an act of courage —especially if you're willing to experiment. These brave souls sat down to dinner, ate something weird, and saved lives in the process.

1) Harvey Wiley assembled a team to eat poison. It's the reason you don't have borax in your applesauce.

Harvey Wiley, at center, and the Poison Squad, getting ready to chow down on borax. (FDA)

Harvey W. Wiley was an intellectual who taught Greek, Latin, and Chemistry. So, naturally, he assembled a group of young men to eat poison.

In 1882, Wiley became chief of the US Department of Agriculture's Chemical Division, and he quickly became an advocate for food standardization and regulation in a country that lacked both. Along with activists like Alice Lakey, he led a movement to make food safer. In 1902, that included establishing what the press called "The Poison Squad."

Food manufacturers frequently used boric acid and other untested chemicals as preservatives. Wiley thought that might be a problem, so he came up with a unique solution. As The Washington Times reported, he assembled a squad of hearty young men (only men were allowed) to eat dinner with him, and after dinner, the bold youngsters consumed a capsule of boric acid. Wiley continually monitored their health for suspicious symptoms or any weight changes. On Christmas, they got turkey. It was a good deal, except for the eating poison part—at least one mother claimed that being in the Poison Squad killed her son, though most anecdotal reports claim that everyone survived the tests.

More important than the Christmas feast, the strange experiment got results. The borax made even vigorous young men sick, and similar tests were conducted on copper sulfate, salicylic acid, and formaldehyde. Wiley's long battle with the food industry ultimately led to better regulation and the creation of the FDA. And the men became celebrities with their own theme song:

On Prussic acid we break our fast;

we lunch on a morphine stew;

We dine with a matchhead consomme,

drink carbolic acid brew;

-The Song Of The Poison Squad by S.W. Gillilan

2) Captain Cook tricked his crew into eating more than three tons of sauerkraut. It kept them alive.

Captain Cook, pondering sauerkraut. (Wikimedia Commons)

You may be familiar with scurvy, a sailor's disease that stems from a vitamin C deficiency. It can cause heart problems, make your teeth fall out, or even kill you. And back in the days of long sea voyages, it wasn't easy to prevent. The citrus cures were well-known, but it wasn't always practical to bring fresh fruit on long journeys at sea.

In 1768, Captain James Cook was facing the threat of scurvy on a trip and so stocked his ship with both fruit and a less well-known food: 7,200 pounds of sauerkraut.

Captain Cook had an obsessive focus on sauerkraut as the solution to scurvy. He believed that the fermented cabbage was uniquely suited to keeping his crew healthy. Cook didn't know it at the time, but cabbage is rich in vitamin C, and the fermentation process helps boost vitamin C levels even higher.

Unfortunately, Cook's crew wasn't interested in eating sauerkraut all day, so he had to trick them. As he wrote in his journals, he "had some of [the sauerkraut] dressed every day for the (officers') cabin table." The crew wanted to eat what the officers were eating, so they ended up eating the unlikely dish.

Cook's trick didn't necessarily transform the world of scurvy treatments — at the time, wort was still being used. But Cook's sauerkraut definitely helped his crew have a higher survival rate than many of their peers.

3) Charles Townshend ate turnips so you don't have to

These aren't just turnips. They're progress. (Shutterstock)

Did Charles "Turnip" Townshend eat a lot of turnips? Probably, though we can't know for sure. What we do know is that the British Secretary of State loved feeding turnips to his animals. Alexander Pope said Townshend was obsessed with talking about turnips and, most importantly, he popularized the use of turnips in British crop rotation.

Those crop-rotation techniques helped preserve nutrient-rich soil and dramatically increase production — in addition to giving animals a new food (Townshend fed turnips to his cows). Though Townshend didn't necessarily invent crop rotation (similar rotations were already used in Holland), his powerful perch in English society helped make the technique a hit. The turnip didn't just make everyday life better. In the eyes of the turnip's staunchest advocates, the root increased agricultural productivity so much that it gave the British enough time and resources to kickstart the Industrial Revolution.

Charles Townshend helped change agriculture, but all he got was a snarky "Turnip" nickname (instead of being immortalized as a band name, like his agricultural peer Jethro Tull). Sometimes, the food has to be its own reward.

4) Mary Hunt bought a moldy cantaloupe, and it helped mass-production of penicillin take off

Moldy cantaloupes saved lives. What have you done today? (Shutterstock)

In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. But that wasn't the end of the story. There were several crucial advances on penicillin in the years that followed — and one involved the purchase of a moldy cantaloupe.

After Fleming's discovery, many scientists tried to develop better means of producing penicillin. As techniques for using the mold developed, demand increased, especially during World War II. The only problem was that the new wonder drug was still taking far too long to produce.

So scientist Howard Florey and his team traveled to the agricultural research center in Peoria, Illinois in search of a more productive strain of mold. Following the discovery that corn steep liquor improved production, the scientists searched for other plants that might be used to make lots of penicillin.

And that's where "Moldy" Mary Hunt came in (most reports identify her as a lab technician). In 1941, she bought a moldy cantaloupe from a local fruit market. Hunt refrained from eating it (fortunately). Further testing revealed that the cantaloupe mold yielded significantly more penicillin than Fleming's — and after a few more improvements, mass production was on its way.

Guitar Hero (image via bzdug)

Six people die every day of alcohol poisoning— a total of 2,221 people per year — a new report from the CDC finds.

Alcohol poisoning happens when a person drinks too much alcohol in a short amount of time. The amount of alcohol in the bloodstream exceeds the body's ability to process it. That makes blood alcohol levels skyrocket and can lead to coma and death. And the CDC report shows that the problem disproportionately impacts men, American Indians, and costs the country billions each year in health care costs. Here's why the government thinks it's such a big problem.

Who’s drinking excessively?

Most alcohol poisoning deaths happen among the middle-aged, between 35 and 64. Men are far more likely to die of alcohol poisoning than women. Nearly 70 percent of alcohol poisoning related deaths were among non-Hispanic whites.

American Indians and Alaskan natives had the highest number of alcohol poisoning deaths per million people of any race, in the CDC report. This group also has a higher intensity of binge drinking rates than other races. However, American Indians and Alaskan natives often live in geographically isolated areas, which ups the chance they won’t be discovered before death or they won’t have access to emergency medical help.

What leads to alcohol poisoning?

The majority of people who die from alcohol poisoning aren’t killed by alcoholism, or necessarily alcoholics. On average, about 30 percent of deaths from alcohol poisoning list alcohol dependence as a contributing cause of death.

More commonly, alcohol poisoning happens to binge drinkers. Binge drinking is drinking a lot in a short amount of time (four drinks for women and five for men). But binge drinkers commonly consume much more, on average eight drinks per binge. This puts a person's blood alcohol level well over the legal limit for driving. Binge drinkers are generally frequent drinkers, too. A recent study found that two-thirds of those people reported binge drinking 10 or more times per month.

How big of a problem is it?

In 2006, excessive drinking is thought to have cost the US $223.5 billion The CDC calculated those costs by looking at health care and criminal justice expenses, costs of motor vehicle crashes and losses in workplace productivity.

The data doesn’t take into account the mental and emotional tolls on the excessive drinkers or those around them. Excessive alcohol use is a major risk factor for domestic violence and sexual assault. Even without those factors, the cost of excessive alcohol use is up there with the expenses for smoking, which comes in at over $289 billion each year.

Museum of Islamic Art

Photograph by Zeqiant Wang, National Geographic Your Shot

A modern spin on Islamic architecture characterizes the exterior of the I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. As a form of practice, Your Shot member Zeqiant Wang tries to capture the museum from different angles and in different light, here shooting in the early evening. I had already been waiting there for two hours when I saw a Qatari man in traditional clothes walk by, Wang writes. I got my camera ready fast. The walking posture of the man is perfect and can be called beautiful.

Wangs picture recently appeared in Your Shots Daily Dozen.

This photo was submitted to Your Shot. Check out the new and improved website, where you can share photos, take part in assignments, lend your voice to stories, and connect with fellow photographers from around the globe.

This morning, for the first time ever, Netflix's chief content officer Ted Sarandos — the man who essentially serves as the streaming service's programming head — appeared for a press conference at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. (For more on what this event is and why I'm there, see here.) Netflix has appeared at the event before, but Sarandos hasn't opted for the sorts of executive sessions typical of other major networks.

There's good reason for this, actually. Unlike the broadcast and cable networks, Netflix is not bound to release any real data beyond raw subscriber numbers, which it does in quarterly earnings statements. It doesn't have to say how many people are watching its shows or what the demographics of those viewers are.

Thus, it has much of the programming freedom of a pay cable channel like HBO — in that it can pick up shows that appeal only to niche demographics without having to answer questions about why the network continues to support those shows, despite their anemic ratings. (HBO, for instance, just picked up the low-rated series Girls for a fifth season before the fourth season even debuted, largely because the show reaches a demographic that doesn't have a lot of other natural draws on the network.)

But not having hard data also necessarily means that any discussion with Sarandos will turn into a discussion of the refusal to release that data. Though the executive released a slew of premiere dates and announced a Marco Polo renewal, most questions were about why the streaming service refuses to release numbers and what its various programming strategies are. His answers don't just speak to Netflix in general, but to the future of television as a whole.

Why Netflix doesn't release viewer numbers

The chief reason Netflix doesn't report ratings numbers is because it isn't beholden to either advertisers or cable companies. It doesn't have to charge different rates, based on the demographics of the audience watching or when those viewers are watching the program.

The most demographically desirable audience to a broadcast network (and its advertisers) is upscale, young professionals, usually white. (Men, who watch less television than women, on average, are also at a premium.) You can see how the networks have slowly gravitated toward this audience in what they put on the air, too. The same is true, to a lesser degree, for cable channels.

But it's largely not true for Netflix. All Netflix cares about is whether it can get you to pay a subscription fee for its content. If you're paying only to watch one of its original programs in particular, then, paradoxically, that program becomes even more valuable.

If, say, Marco Polo only has 200,000 viewers (a massively small audience for a network or cable show), but every one of those viewers is only watching Marco Polo, then a renewal still makes sense. That scenario is obviously unlikely, but it's the most extreme example of how the service handles questions of renewal and cancellation differently from a traditional network.

Consider, also, the fact that Netflix picked up A&E's canceled series Longmire, along with AMC's canceled series The Killing. Demographically, neither series made sense for their networks, Sarandos said. This probably means they skewed too old. But both shows had dedicated audiences, who are fairly likely to grab Netflix subscriptions just to watch new seasons. That, again, is a win for Netflix.

But this also speaks to the danger of the Netflix way of thinking — or, really, the modern television way of thinking. Because when it comes right down to it, what Netflix and a lot of places (including many traditional cable networks) are saying is that the idea of a show is more valuable than the show itself.

TV shows as advertisements

During the press conference, Sarandos said, "You don't have shows that penetrate the culture at the level that these shows have had without having a lot of people watching."

This is probably true! It's hard to imagine the impact Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards have had without lots and lots of people watching. But "lots and lots" is increasingly a variable number.

Sarandos was even pressed on this point, when asked about HBO shows that have clearly penetrated the culture, without a lot of viewers. Again, think of Girls, a show that has been written about and discussed essentially everywhere, while basically petering out around 1 million viewers for its most-watched first-run episodes. Sarandos's answer was that HBO had maybe penetrated the consciousness of people on the coasts, but not all over the country, like Orange had. And maybe he's right! But we'll never know.

The simple fact of the matter is that 1 million viewers is still a lot of people if they're amplifying the name of your show over social media and in the traditional media (which occasionally seems fueled by think pieces about Girls and Netflix shows). It's a drop in the bucket of traditional viewership metrics, but that doesn't matter if you can see them all as free marketing.

And that's really what's happening here. Just like a traditional cable channel, Netflix makes most of its money by luring in people to watch reruns of things that came from other networks. In December, CBS's David Poltrack claimed that the two most popular shows on Netflix are The Blacklist and Once Upon a Time, both big network hits that people probably want to catch up with in their spare time. (Indeed, Netflix paid a staggering $2 million per episode for The Blacklist.)

We'll never know if Netflix turns a profit on House of Cards or Orange Is the New Black. And even 10 years ago, that would have been seen as suspect. But we've grown so used to the idea of original programming serving as a loss leader that gets you in the door to watch the stuff the network actually makes money on that this now makes a perverse sort of sense. Orange Is the New Black isn't just a TV show; it's, in a very real way, an advertisement for Netflix as a programming brand. And that makes it, in some ways, invaluable.

Similarly, Netflix's upcoming Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Tina Fey and Robert Carlock's follow-up to 30 Rock, was destined for a quick cancellation on NBC, but it can live forever on Netflix, where being in business with someone like Tina Fey is almost certainly of premium value.

I don't expect that this era of the idea of shows being more valuable than the shows themselves can last forever, but it's working very well for Netflix and Amazon, right now. The same even goes for HBO, which refuses to announce numbers for its own online service. The world of TV is just a stark reminder of the pop cultural world of 2015. There is no mass audience anymore, just a series of niches, some larger than others.

Rock star Neil Young announced Tuesday his high-resolution music player Pono to the general public after delivering some 20,000 devices to Kickstarter supporters.

The announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is a major step in Young's years-long crusade to upgrade digital music to higher audio quality.

"It really means a lot to me. It means I can listen to music again," said the singer-songwriter known as a solo artist and as a member of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

"For 15 years, I couldn't listen to music because I only heard what was missing."

Young has been a key figure in a small group of music lovers who has decried the quality of digital music since the advent of MP3, even though many specialists contend the human ear cannot detect the missing data in most digital recordings.

The Pono Player is now being sold online and through about 80 US retailers for $399. The Pono Music website will offer downloads of about two million songs in resolution above that of MP3.

Pono and his supporters are promotion digital music's highest quality format, which samples the music data at 96,000 times per second, far more than what if offered in most formats.

Young said he did not have a marketing plan or sales target.

"I don't have any idea how many we will sell," he said.

"I'm only interested in the sound of music. If people want to talk to their friends, that's our marketing plan."

Pono raised some $6.5 million Kickstarter to help launch the player, Young said, after he failed to get venture capital backing. The early backers numbered around 20,000.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who is separated from his wife, is dating a Chinese pop star, according to a prominent city columnist and blogger.

"According to extremely reliable sources (this is not gossip), he is currently seeing Wanting Qu, a 31-year-old Chinese popular-music star who has a lot of buzz in Vancouver," reported Frances Bula Tuesday on her blog.

Bula is a respected instructor and journalist who writes for Vancouver magazine and the Globe and Mail.

The mayor's office said late Tuesday that it does not comment on Robertson's personal life, reported The Province.

Last summer, Robertson, 50, announced an amicable split from his wife, Amy Robertson, after almost 30 years together. A few days later, he publicly denied rumours of an affair.

The couple has four adult children.

Qu and the mayor have appeared at numerous city-related events together. In the fall of 2013, they were part of a delegation that travelled to Asia to promote Vancouver. That year, Qu was appointed Vancouver's first tourism ambassador in China.



Wanting Qu posted this 2013 photo to her Facebook with the caption: "A traditional Chinese water painting from a fan of mine who initially did a painting of me and I loved it so I asked if he could do one for my friend Gregor Robertson (who just happened to be the Mayor of Vancouver Canada, Lol!) So artist Jianfeng did an amazing job and Gregor loved it!! So proud of Chinese art!"

Qu was born and raised in Harbin, China, but moved to Vancouver at 16 for school. She studied economics briefly at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University before she jumped into the music industry.

In 2009, she became the first Chinese artist signed by Vancouver-based Nettwerk Management. She's managed by Terry McBride, who worked with Sarah McLachlan, Coldplay, and Avril Lavigne.

Qu, who sings in Mandarin and English, has since become a platinum-selling musician in China. She was the subject of a CBC documentary last summer, but has a relatively low profile in Vancouver.

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Let us get this straight: if breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and porridge is the food that could help predict how long we'll live, should we be eating anything other than oatmeal .. ever?

According to recent results from a massive study by Harvard University of more than 100,000 people monitored for 14 years, those who ate whole grains (like porridge, brown rice, quinoa, etc.) appeared to be the most protected from chronic diseases, and in particular, heart disease. The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The subjects' diets were monitored every two to four years, and even replacing one serving of refined grains (or, for that matter, red meat) per day with a serving of whole grains was linked with a lower mortality rate: 8 per cent in the case of refined grains, and 20 per cent lowered for red meat, according to a Harvard press release.

Of course, it's no surprise that eating whole grains is better for your health — it's at the top of pretty much every nutritionist's 'healthier options' list — but this study is one of the first to widely establish a longer life thanks to the grains.

But don't automatically assume just because something says "whole" means it's good for you. As dietitian (and HuffPost Canada blogger) Abby Langer wrote this week, the brown flavour in whole wheat bread can come from caramel colour, while many of these breads use a lot of sugar for flavour.

And of course, as the U.K.'s National Health Service points out, it's not just porridge doing the heavy lifting, but all real whole grains, as well as bran. So why is porridge getting all the attention? We think it has something to do with how easy it is to consume, not to mention the comfort factor.

Langer recommends opting for quick cooking, unflavoured steel cut, or large flake oatmeal, which, she notes, "takes a while to cook for a reason: it's pure grains."

Below, find a number of recipes for overnight oats, an easy way to prep your grains for the the morning, ready to combat whatever health challenges come your way.

Part of the appeal of Jimmy Fallon is that he really can't ever keep himself together. In his early days on Saturday Night Live, he consistently lost it in sketches, succumbing to his laughter and breaking character on screen. Last night, Fallon completely lost his focus on his talk show The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon when actress Nicole Kidman revealed that once upon a time he had completely denied her on an impromptu date.

Political cartoonists around the world are tweeting their response to the massacre at the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, where armed gunmen killed four French cartoonists.

Ruben Oppenheimer:

#CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/15O4YC2KWg

— Ruben L. Oppenheimer (@RLOppenheimer) January 7, 2015

David Pope of the Canberra Times:

Can't sleep tonight, thoughts with my French cartooning colleagues, their families and loved ones #CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/LqIMRCHPgK

— David Pope (@davpope) January 7, 2015

Carlos Latuff:

Please, RT! #CharlieHebdo attack has another victim! Via @MiddleEastMnt #ParisShooting pic.twitter.com/PNesB88POL

— Carlos Latuff (@LatuffCartoons) January 7, 2015

From France's BFM TV:

Hommage de notre dessinateur @na_dessinateur aux victimes de #CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/2AgMZyc7Yq

— BFMTV (@BFMTV) January 7, 2015

From Chilean political cartoonist Francisco J. Olea: "To arms, companions!"

#CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/jIBbrIShe8

— Francisco J. Olea (@oleismos) January 7, 2015

From Il Mattinale, in Italy:

La #vignetta del #Mattinale di oggi! #CharlieHebdo @forza_italia @simonebaldelli pic.twitter.com/XzxQFjC62q

— Il Mattinale (@IlMattinale) January 7, 2015

Philip DeFranco:

#CharlieHebdo #JeSuisCharlie pic.twitter.com/GPCQK2EbbF

— Philip DeFranco (@PhillyD) January 7, 2015

Martin Vidberg: (The tweet says "How can I draw today? How can I not draw today?" and the text of the cartoon reads "Today I am an editorial cartoonist. Today I am a journalist. Today I draw for Charlie Hebdo.")

Comment dessiner aujourd'hui ? Comment ne pas dessiner aujourd'hui ? pic.twitter.com/cNtJY6e7MK

— Martin Vidberg (@Vidberg) January 7, 2015

Another French cartoon:

C'est un drame pour la France... #CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/lGfNUHfQIZ

— Cyprien (@MonsieurDream) January 7, 2015

From a Dutch cartoonist:

Charlie Hebdo. Nooit opzij. pic.twitter.com/MJwGKPQ8jU

— Joep Bertrams (@joepbertrams) January 7, 2015

James MacLeod:

#JeSuisCharlie pic.twitter.com/FPYIswn625

— MacLeodCartoons (@MacLtoons) January 7, 2015

The text says "Oh no, not them":

#CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/GNh2ZAEArf

— Tommy dessine (@Tommydessine) January 7, 2015

Correction: Francisco Olea is Chilean and not Spanish as originally stated.

The French magazine Charlie Hebdo had faced threats of violence and actual violence for its provocative cartoons of religious figures — including the Prophet Mohammed — for years before Wednesday's shooting attack, which left at least 12 dead.

Stephane Charbonnier, editor-in-chief of the magazine, addressed the threats — and the earlier firebombing of the magazine's offices — in interviews with media outlets in 2012. As he explained to ABC News at the time, standing up to these threats was about standing up for freedom of speech.

"Our job is not to defend freedom of speech, but without freedom of speech we are dead," he said. "I prefer to die than live like a rat."

Charbonnier's words have a special and tragic resonance today: he was among those killed in the attack.

His comments also get to a key point of Charlie Hebdo's work: the point isn't to insult Islam or Muslims in particular; it's to minimize extremists who would attempt to silence or intimidate journalists.

Charlie Hebdo staffer Laurent Leger told BFM-TV in 2012, "The aim is to laugh.… We want to laugh at the extremists — every extremist. They can be Muslim, Jewish, Catholic. Everyone can be religious, but extremist thoughts and acts we cannot accept."

Read more: Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack: remembering the victims.

A new study finds that reindeer populations are on the decline, due in part to climate change. This makes bad news not only for Santa, but for all of us, as the grazing habits of reindeer actually help keep earth’s climate in balance and fewer reindeer in the world may contribute to global warming. The study, published last month in the Journal for Nature Conservation, documents the marked decline of China’s reindeer population—a reduction of over 25% since the 1970s.

Read the rest of Bad news for Santa: Reindeer populations decline as the world’s climate warms

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A newly discovered 5,000-year-old underground city is being hailed as one of the largest in the world – and one of the top archeological finds of all time. The city is located in the historical Cappadocia region of Turkey which lies between Aksaray in the west, Kayseri in the east and Nigde in the south. It is an area rich in history from the Hittite times before 1,700 B.C. and was once a part of the Roman Empire.

Read the rest of Archeologists discover 5,000-year-old underground city that could be the largest ever found

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2014 was Earth's hottest year since records began in 1891, according to new data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA):

(Japan Meteorological Agency)

The global average temperature in 2014 was about 0.63°C (or 1.1°F) hotter than the average during the twentieth century, JMA found. Its data is based on both satellite and ground readings.

All four temperature analyses show the world getting hotter over time

The second hottest year in JMA's records was 1998 — a big El Niño year — followed by 2013, 2010, and 2005. All ten hottest years have come since 1998.

Climate scientists expect the Earth to get hotter over time so long as humans keep adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. There are lots of short-term variations here and there — for instance, El Niño years like 1998 tend to be a bit hotter, while La Niña years are a bit cooler — so not every year will necessarily set heat records. But the overall trend is up.

The JMA is one of four major government agencies worldwide keeping track of global temperature trends. The others are NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States, as well as the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom. All four agencies analyze the data slightly differently — NASA, for instance, ranks 2010 and 2005 as hotter than 1998. But they all show the same upward trend over time.

The other agencies will release their own data in the coming weeks and months — and they may see things a bit differently than JMA does. But a preliminary NOAA analysis also found that it was very, very likely 2014 would turn out to be the hottest year on record in its dataset.

The US was cooler than average, Europe was warmer

According to JMA, much of the continental United States was actually a bit cooler than usual in 2014 (at least, compared with the climate from 1980-2010). The big exception was California, where warm temperatures have been exacerbating a brutal drought.

On the flip side, this year saw record warmth in Europe as well as record heat over most of the Pacific Ocean:

(JMA)

What's particularly striking is that 2014 was a record hot year even without a major El Niño. El Niño events, which occur in the Pacific, tend to transfer heat that's stored beneath the ocean's surface up into the atmosphere. That's why El Niño years tend to be hotter than average — and it was a big reason why 1998 was unusually hot. But 2014 managed to hit a record without that boost.

Forecasters say there's still a better-than-even chance that El Niño could reappear in the Pacific Ocean this winter — which would potentially push temperatures up in 2015. Still, that's not yet assured.

So is this the end of the global warming "pause"?

Assuming that 2014 does turn out to be the warmest year on record, Chris Mooney argues at Wonkblog that people should now quit saying that global warming "stopped" back in 1998 — a favorite line of climate skeptics like Senator James Inhofe (R-OK).

short-term fluctuations rarely change the basic picture on global warming

There are a couple of things to unpack here. The idea that global warming had "stopped" has never been very compelling — and not just because 1998 is a cherry-picked year. Scientists have assembled plenty of evidence that adding more greenhouse gases like carbon-dioxide to the atmosphere will heat up the Earth over time. The fact that the planet has been getting hotter over the last century is excellent evidence of this. Short-term blips in the temperature record don't really change this broad understanding. Nor does it ultimately matter whether 2014 is the warmest year on record or second-warmest or third-warmest. It's the long-term trends that count.

What has puzzled some scientists, however, is the fact that global average surface temperatures have risen at a slower pace over the past 15 years than they did in the 20 years before that — despite the fact that greenhouse gases are piling up in the atmosphere at a record pace. This is what's often referred to as the "pause" or "hiatus."

This is a question of some interest to climate scientists and you can see a longer rundown of possible explanations here — possible hypotheses include the idea that much of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases has been stored temporarily in the ocean, or that there's been an outburst of recent volcanic activity that muted the pace of warming in the 2000s.

This debate is certainly noteworthy. For instance, if a lot of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases did go into the ocean recently because of, say, strong trade winds in the Pacific, that might set the stage for more rapid warming in the years ahead. Similarly, analyzing short-term temperature trends might give scientists a better understanding of how quickly the Earth warms in relation to given levels carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere (a concept known as "climate sensitivity").

But, again, the big picture is the same as it ever was — regardless of year-to-year blips or where exactly 2014 ends up on the leaderboard. As we put more carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere, the Earth will get hotter. There will be short-term fluctuations here and there. Some years will be record hot years. Others won't. El Niño years will be a bit hotter. La Niña years will be a bit cooler. But over a long-enough time horizon, global warming is still with us.

Bobby McFerrin has the right idea.

Read more...

Kevin Schmidt changes the blinking lights atop those high TV towers, climbing 1500 feet into the air. And thanks to drone photography, we can enjoy the astounding view without making the queasy climb.

Read more...

Doubling the number of kids also doubles the workload, and Will and Kate want to be prepared.

The royal couple reportedly want to hire a full-time nanny to take care of their second child as soon as it is born in April, a source told the Daily Mail. They had opted against hiring a maternity nurse with Prince George, breaking royal tradition.

"It was really hard work with George and there were lots of sleepless nights," the source told the paper.

The new hired help would join Prince George's nanny, Maria Borrallo, who studied at the prestigious Norland Nanny College and is trained in both self-defense and high-speed driving, Vanity Fair reports.

A source told the publication the Queen will want the new nanny to be British, as Borrallo is Spanish and the couple's housekeeper is from Italy.

But even if the Duchess obeys Will's grandmother's wishes, she's taking a step away from her in another key respect. Kate wants to raise her kids at their new country home, Anmer Hall, instead of Buckingham Palace, according to People.

The 10-bedroom mansion, with an outdoor swimming pool, tennis court and huge acreage, was a gift from Queen Elizabeth.

While it's easy to understand why Kate might want more privacy for her family, some might question her decision to hire someone full-time to care for her child. We say she should take all the help she can get.

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jellekeppens:

{ Predjama castle . Postojna 2013 }

Fukuro no Mise is a cafe in Tsukishima, Japan, with a bunch of domesticated owls that patrons can interact with (have sit on own hand/shoulder, take pictures with). It's extremely popular though, so you have to get in line before they open, pay 2,000 (~$17), then come back at your call time and you get to hang out with the owls for an hour. Will one choose you to accompany you to Hogwarts?! No, you are not a wizard. And definitely not a Gryffindor like you pretend to be. Be honest -- how many times did you have to change your answers on that Buzzfeed quiz before you finally got something other than Hufflepuff? I'm a Ravenclaw. Jk jk, I'm coleslaw. Keep going for several more pictures of one of my dream worlds.