lunedì 29 marzo 2010

How to impress people with the knowledge of giraffes during a conversation.

FACT N.1
Male giraffes are up to 5.5 mt tall at the horn tips, and weigh between 800 and 1,930 kg.
FACT N.2
Wild giraffes have a lifespan close to 13 years while those in captivity live up to 25 years.
FACT N.3
Giraffes have been used as examples for introducing ideas in evolution, especially to illustrate the ideas of Lamarck.
FACT N.4
Girafarig the herbivore pokemon is a giraffe.

domenica 28 marzo 2010

Hackney Today + organic whole food market




Curious New England: The Unconventional Traveler's Guide to Eccentric Destinations

The Museum of Bad Art.

Is a privately owned museum whose stated aim is "to celebrate the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum". It has two branches, one in Dedham,Massachusetts, and the other in nearby Somerville. Its permanent collection includes 500 pieces of "art too bad to be ignored", 25 to 35 of which are on public display at any one time.

MOBA was founded in 1994, by antique dealer Scott Wilson and "Bone Juggling Dog In Hula Skirt" is one of my favorite masterpiece.


via_museumofbadart.org

venerdì 26 marzo 2010

Oscillation Responsive Device

Today in Hoxton.




mercoledì 24 marzo 2010

Joseph Capgras psichiatra

La Sindrome di Capgras è un raro disordine neurologico a causa del quale una persona crede che chi gli sta accanto nel suo ambiente familiare, parenti o amici siano stati rimpiazzati da degli impostori a loro identici.

lunedì 22 marzo 2010

One hundred proofs the Earth is not a Globe.

The Flat Earth Society is an organization that seeks to further the belief that the Earth is flat rather than a sphere. The modern organization was founded by Englishman Samuel Shenton in 1956.

Some actual headlines from Flat Earth News during the '70s and early '80s:
  • "Sun Is a Light 32 Miles Across"
  • "Galileo Was a Liar"
  • "Nikita Krushchev Father of NASA"
  • "The Earth Is Not a Ball; Gravity Does Not Exist"
  • "The Earth Has No Motion"
  • "Science Insults Your Intelligence"
  • "World IS Flat, and That's That"
  • "Australia Not Down Under"
  • "Whole World Deceived Except the Very Elect"


The most recent world model propagated by the Flat Earth Society holds that humans live on a disc, with the North Pole at its center and a 45 mt high wall of ice at the outer edge. The resulting map resembles the symbol of the United Nations, used as evidence for their position.



sabato 20 marzo 2010

The Nature of Existence, Vol II.

Every day of the year, in ports all over the world, vast cargo ships sail in, unnoticed by almost all of us who rely on their merchandise. However, at the perimeter of harbours, you’ll often find a curious group of people standing around in waterproof clothing, armed with binoculars and pads. These cargo ship spotters keep a meticulous track of the activity on the water. They are interested in the ships’ length, provenance, engines and ownership. Society tells us that there is nothing wrong spending time in art galleries admiring seascapes - and yet cargo ship spotting has a bad name in many quarters. It’s seen as obsessive and strange.

via_alaindebotton.com

Cream Sandwich Biscuits, Peanut Flavor

The oldest and most prestigious aeronautical race in the world will start from the UK on 24th September 2010

Up to 22 teams from 11 countries around the world will compete in the 54th Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett. Taking off at dusk from Ashton Court in Bristol, the team which flies the furthest distance from the start point wins the race.

more info here.


TEDDY WAYNE'S
UNPOPULAR PROVERBS.

BY TEDDY WAYNE

- - - -

OPPORTUNITY.

When God closes a door, he opens a window, one just high enough to hurl yourself from and finally put an end to your intractable credit-card-debt problem.

via_mcsweeneys


e vent'anni sembran pochi poi ti volti a guardarli e non li trovi piu'




Put yogurt in your diet.

What is a yogurt?

Yoghurt or yogurt is a dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk. Fermentation of lactose produces lactic acid, which acts on milk protein to give yoghurt its texture and its characteristic tang. Dairy yoghurt is produced using a culture ofLactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus salivarius subsp. thermophilus bacteria. Milk is heated and cooled for an hour. While it is heated, the bacteria are added for fermentation. Soy yoghurt, a non-dairy yoghurt alternative, is made from soy milk.

People make and eat yogurt.


A Hidden Landscape. VOSTOK, ANTARCTICA


Lake Vostok lies in the heart of the Antarctic continent hidden beneath 4 kilometers of ice. As big as Lake Ontario in North America, Lake Vostok is one of the world's biggest freshwater lakes. Lake Vostok has been covered by the vast Antarctic ice sheet for up to 25 million years. The lake was named for the Russian research station that sits above its southern tip - a place where in 1983 the temperature fell below -129°F (-89°C), the coldest ever recorded temperature on Earth. More than 145 lakes have been identified beneath the thick Antarctic ice sheet. Most of these lakes, covered between 3-4 kilometers of ice, are several kilometers long. One of these lakes, Lake Vostok, is an order of magnitude larger than all other known lakes.
Bacteria found in refrozen lake water at the bottom of the Vostok ice core could be part of an indigenous ecosystem below that's been living in the cold, dark waters for millions of years. Lake Vostok has been isolated from open exchange with the atmosphere for several million years. No one knows how any organism, cut off from air, sunlight or any apparent source of life-sustaining energy, could survive in its frigid waters or under such crushing pressure of more than 360 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level.

via_ldeo.columbia.edu

venerdì 19 marzo 2010

Welcome to Tanzania.

List of tallest buildings in Dar Es Salam.


1 Benjamin William Mkapa Pension Towers

2 Bank of Tanzania North Tower

3 PPF Office Tower

4 NIC Life House

5 Extelecoms House

6 NIC Pension Plaza II

7 United Bank of Africa

8 IPS Building

9 New Africa Hotel

10 Sukari House

11 Kempinski Kilimanjaro Hotel


Encounters with animals. The giant cuttlefish.


A nice place for family vacation Vozrozhdeniya Island.


Vozrozhdeniya Island,is a former island, now a peninsula, in the Aral Sea. It became a peninsula in 2002, due to ongoing shrinkage of the Aral Sea. It is now shared by Kazakhstan andUzbekistan.

Located in the central Aral Sea, Vozrozhdeniya Island was one of the main laboratories and testing sites for theSoviet Union’s Microbiological Warfare Group. In 1948, a top-secret Soviet bioweaponslaboratory was established here, which tested a variety of agents, includinganthrax,plague,brucellosis, andtularemia.

In the 1990s, word of the island's danger was spread by Soviet defectors, includingKen Alibek, the former head of the Soviet Union's bioweapons program.It was here, according to just released documents, that anthrax sporesand bubonic plaguebacilli were made into weapons and stored. The main town on the island wasKantubek, which lies in ruins today, but once had approximately 1,500 inhabitants.

The laboratory staff members abandoned the small island in 1992.Many of the containers holding the spores were not properly stored or destroyed, and over the last decade many of these containers have developed leaks. As the water level of the Aral Sea continues to recede, the area will eventually connect further with the surrounding land.

via_wiki