Springy Flower Pot Desserts

Amazing Man Babies

Next to people who say "like" way too much and 7-layer bean dip, man babies are probably the biggest threat to the survival of the human race. Sure they seem harmful at first glance but what you don't know is that most of them are the result of a failed genetic governement experiement that was trying to create a pill so that people could live forever. Basically they're completely insane, always armed with semi-automatic weapons and they have a unstoppable thirst for peanut butter.

Creative Lunches

Laura Bento loves two things more than anything: to cook and her husband.
One day she decided to do something more than just an ordinary lunch for her husband. The result you see in the pictures. 
Every morning she prepares lunch for her husband, which he carries with him at work. 
These meals are very creative and never repetitive. 
Mini-burgers, sushi, hot dogs, various salads, fruits and vegetables etc. 
In short, they are great, at least on the picture.

AMERICA'S 25 DOUCHIEST COLLEGES

Home of: The Blue-Blazer Douche
Affectations: The side part; the insistence on referring to your school as "the University," our third president as "Mr. Jefferson," the quad as "the lawn," and the Civil War as the "War Between the States."
Overheard in the bleachers: "Well, at least our football players actually go to class and—hey, Dylan, this mint julep is outstanding."
In ten years, will be: A member of an exclusive country club. Maybe a philandering public official. Not unlikely a lobbyist for a tobacco company. Possibly all three.
Honorable-mention blue-blazer institutions: Duke, William & Mary, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Sewanee.


Home of: The Burnt-Orange Douche
Definitely douchey, but we're not totally sure why.


Home of: The quote-unquote College Douche
A peek inside: Known as "the country club of higher education." Or "where Waspy dudes from Roanoke gather to text each other during class."
Affectation: Classes.
In ten years, will be: Plotting the fake murder of your father with the pilot of his private plane, splitting the insurance money, and later being arrested on a fan boat in the Everglades.


Home of: The Womyn Douche
Most popular major: Listening to Regina Spektor with your girlfriend, who you kind of suspect is a lesbian.
Affectations: Comfy Thai meditation pants in gold and puce; pretending not to be that horny; needlepointing the first sentence of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior for lesbian girlfriend.
Favorite pickup technique: Expounding on Spiral Jetty's debt to pre-Columbian cultures.
Well-known male alumni: Not applicable.


Exeter with a 9-Iron but My Dad Got Me in Here" Douche
Overheard at freshman orientation: "It's just like boarding school, except all the nerds are at Yale!"
Typical Saturday evening: Squash match, followed by elephant walk.


Home of: The Fonzworth Bentley Douche
A peek inside: Is it possible to be in the International Leadership Program while also being president of Alpha Phi Alpha while also getting all militant about the white power structure while also promoting a biweekly hip-hop showcase? Yes? Then you're just barely keeping up with the status quo at Morehouse—good luck getting into Yale Law!
Affectations: Yellow V-neck sweater with orange-and-blue bow tie; box-seat double date to Coldplay show at Philips Arena.
Most likely to: Be a lawyer by day, black socialite by night.


Home of: The Excessive-School-Pride Douche
Affectations: Dressing for class each morning as if you were the offensive-line coach; writing prison letters to Maurice Clarett.
Overheard at Buckeye career-building workshop: "You can put 'Won a national championship' on a résumé, right?" 
Most likely to: Suffocate a hapless Boilermakers fan with a giant foam Number One after offhand comment about how the marching band's "Script Ohio" wasn't all that impressive.
Honorable-mention excessive-school-pride institutions: Duke, Michigan, Texas, Penn State, Yeshiva University.


Home of: The Future Marketing Executives of America Douche
Most likely to: Major in communications and take it seriously.
Overheard at the "Winning in a Down Time: How to Brand Yourself" seminar aftermingle: "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!"
Thesis topic: "Those Axe Ads: Totally Funny, Bro."


Home of: The Paul Wolfowitz Douche
Affectations: Horn-rimmed glasses; pipe; well-thumbed copy of The Antitrust Paradox; precocious ideas of mankind as brutish and disgusting.
Core belief: War is good (as long as you don't have to fight in it).
Postcollege career: Talking down to those unlucky enough never to have studied at the feet of Richard Posner; slowly chipping away at the Voting Rights Act.


Home of: The Giant-Sunglasses Douche
Affectations: Audi Q7 (high school graduation present); tertiary connection to Olsen twin; frosted tips. 
Thesis topic: "Steven Spielberg's Gremlins and the Art of the Impossible."
Ten years from now, will be: Living in Laurel Canyon while "producing" a bio-pic on Karch Kiraly and burning endless pounds of the kush.
Honorable-mention crazily expensive institutions: Duke, Tulane, Bennington, Hamilton.


Home of: The moral Douche
Favorite pickup line: "You know, I thought about the seminary, but then I decided it wasn't for me. If you know what I mean."
Douchey alumni: Condoleezza Rice, James Baker, Regis Philbin, Steve Bartman.
Profiles in Studentia: Gerry McDougal,* Chicago. "I was looking for a place that would challenge me academically, but I also wanted to feel bad about masturbating. At Notre Dame, I got both."
*There is no Gerry McDougal.


Home of: The "Show Us Your Tits!" Douche
Most likely to: Inadvertently find an Internet picture of that girl from your Robert Ludlum seminar, sunburned and topless while vomiting a melon-ball shooter through her nose.
Favorite pickup line: "I like your boobs."
Profiles in studentia: Roger McFeelings,* Cincinnati. "I had such an awesome time in Cancún. I got really fucking tan, the girls were hot, and the Ecstasy was almost pure. I was like, I wish Cancún was a college! Then I realized, it is!"
Honorable-mention "show us your tits!" institutions: Duke, any state school in Florida or Arizona, U. of Delaware, Dartmouth.
*We only wish there were someone named Roger McFeelings.


Home of: The Ducks-Unlimited DoHome of: The Ducks-Unlimited DoucheAffectation: Fully loaded black Chevy Tahoe with fishing boat lashed to top and backseat full of Realtree camo hunting gear.Prized possession: White bulldog with notarized papers proving a bloodline to Uga IV.Overheard at Gator Haters: "What happened to duck hunting this morning, boy?" "Fuck, man! We were gonna go, but we raged downtown last night, then went to a late-night, and when I got home to pass out, my wake-up alarm was already going off." "Fuck!"uche
Affectation: Fully loaded black Chevy Tahoe with fishing boat lashed to top and backseat full of Realtree camo hunting gear.
Prized possession: White bulldog with notarized papers proving a bloodline to Uga IV.
Overheard at Gator Haters: "What happened to duck hunting this morning, boy?" "Fuck, man! We were gonna go, but we raged downtown last night, then went to a late-night, and when I got home to pass out, my wake-up alarm was already going off." "Fuck!"


Home of: The Online Douche
Affectations: Futon in mom's basement; agoraphobia.
In ten years, will be: Sending e-mails that say, "Hello Dear Friend, I am Dr. Martin from Congo and I must trust you to be the recipient of $4mil dollarz US currencee."
Alumni: Shaquille O'Neal, Lisa Leslie, George W. Bush.


Home of: The "Yeah, I Did That When I Was 17" Douche
Affectations: White Wayfarers; vintage New York Dolls T-shirt; high-concept hat; complaining about how New York City is so gentrified now. 
In ten years, will be: Still talking about how you did that when you were 17.


Home of: The Kind-Bud Douche
Affectations: Prius; $400 Telemark skis you're not sure what to do with; bong made from recycled Nalgene bottles; white-guy dreads.
Profiles in studentia: Corey Loggins,* Madison, Wisconsin. "I like cookies. And Cheetos. God, Cheetos are good. Have you ever had a Coke slushie? Hey, have you ever stared at the sun and then closed your eyes and then see all those weird blue rainbows? Man, these mountains are beautiful. Trees scare me. Hey, who are you?"
*Yeah, okay, there's no one named Corey Loggins.
Ten years from now, will be: A junior. 
Honorable-mention kind-bud institutions: Duke, University of Vermont, all schools surrounded by forests with furry goblins in them.


Home of: The Snow-Machine Douche 
Affectations: .30-06 with a variable scope; large testicles; free levi sticker on bumper of Dodge Ram dually.
In ten years, will be: Governor of Alaska.


Home of: The Jet Ski douche
Affectations: Forty-six-foot cigarette boat; Bahamian bank account; unlit cigarillo.
Overheard at Sunday brunch: "Let's blow off class tomorrow and hit some jai alai. I've got Dad's gold card, esse!"



 Home of: The "I Went to a Small liberal-arts College in Massachusetts" Douche
Affectations: Quiet sense of superiority; intense desire to be surrounded by 1,700 people almost exactly like you; Choate soccer jacket.
In ten years, will be: Smart policy guy at State Department that no one listens to.
Douchey mascot: Lord Jeffrey Amherst.
Problem with douchey mascot: Distributed smallpox-infested blankets to Native Americans.


Home of: The "not even College Republicans at Other Schools will Talk to You" Douche
Affectations: White robe; hair shirt; Library of Congress–size porn stash.
Ten years from now, will be: Forming your own branch of the Ted Haggard sexuality-reprogramming ministry.


 Home of: The "I Went to a School So Exclusive, Only Six People Know About It and Half of Them Are So Smart They're Clinically Insane" Douche
Affectations: Castrating horses; translating Latin; vows of silence.
A peek inside: The campus is a ranch and alfalfa farm near Death Valley, each class has no more than fifteen men, and students spend their time reading Infinite Jest, Remembrance of Things Past, and a little volume by the college's founder (called The Gray Book) that's all about hearing the "Voice of the Desert." 
Douchey founder: Lucien Lucius Nunn, who moved the college to the middle of nowhere in California in 1917.
Problem with douchey founder: Some people thought he was a little too interested in the young students


 Home of: The Harvard Douche
In ten years, will be: A Harvard douche.
Douches emeriti: Benazir Bhutto, Lou Dobbs, John Quincy Adams, Mira Sorvino.


Home of: The Eating-Club Douche
Affectations: They invented affectations!
A peek inside: Most Ivy Leaguers try (unconvincingly) not to mention which college they went to. Not at Princeton. 
In ten years, will be: Our boss.
Favorite pickup lines: "Hey, didn't I see you at the Cap & Gown Club?" "Hi. My father invaded Cuba."
How to get in: "There is no formula for what makes the best Princeton student. In one year, we may be looking for that talented oboist* to fill out the woodwind section of the orchestra, while another year we may be focused on finding a well-rounded field-hockey player."—cass cliatt, director of media relations
*Seriously, what is it about elite universities and the oboe?
Honorable-mention eating-club institutions: A basketball school in Durham, a university in New Haven, a college in Cambridge.


Home of: The O.D. (Original Douche)
Affectations: Pressed oxford; Goldman Sachs summer-internship tote; always ending the party by taking your shirt off and wrestling a guy named Schmitty. 
A peek inside: They're probably number one. But we'd rather not rank Duke number one at anything.
In ten years, will be: Still trying to re-create the golden age of banking while wearing driving mocs and no socks.


Home of: The "Peace Sign on My Mom's 7 Series" Douche
Affectations: A belief that grades, majors, and course requirements are just another form of cultural hegemony; using the word hegemony.
In ten years, will be: Living with your family in an old house that you quit your job to refurbish yourself (by overseeing a contractor) with painstaking historical accuracy in a formerly decaying section of the city that's recently been reclaimed by a small population of white guys in hand-painted T-shirts who are helping you put together a health care fund-raiser for MoveOn.org. 
Douchiest course offering: English 200: On Vampires and Violent Vixens: Making the Monster Through Discourses of Gender and Sexuality. 
Honorable-mention limousine-liberal institutions: Duke, Reed, Oberlin, Wesleyan, Bard, RISD.

Unsettling Old Photos of the “Living” Dead

Well, I just found something creepier. A lot creepier. It’s a sub-genre of the Victorian mourning portrait, in which photographers clamp and pose the dearly departed in such a way that they look fully awake — usually standing up, eyes either held open by some unknown mechanism (shudder) or with pupils painted over closed eyes, to very, very creepy effect. (There’s nothing lose-your-lunch gross about these — this ain’t rotten.com, after all — they’re just deeply unsettling.)

There’s something just unspeakably creepy about this fireman. At first glance, he looks like a normal, awkwardly-posed guy from the 19th century. But upon closer inspection, you notice a few tell-tale signs: a rigid pose and fingers, a stand not quite completely hidden behind his feet, which is holding him up by some unseen armature on his back, liberal amounts of rouge applied to too-white cheeks, and those blank, blank eyes.

If that wasn’t horrific enough for you, try this one on for size:

The girl’s rigid hands and painted-on pupils — not to mention the edge of a stand behind her left leg — give it away. The owner of the photograph adds: 

If you look closely you can see a base behind the girls feet and a post would go up from that with clamps at the waist and neck and the clothing would be open at the back. The arms would have stiff wires running at the back to hold them in place. Also notice the strange placement of the hands. The pupils are painted on the closed eyelids.

The jury is out on the girl above, but I think this might well be a post mortem photo. (There are lots of “maybe” post-mortem photos on the net, because you can’t always tell.) The eBay auctioneer who’s selling this makes a few compelling speculations: 

I was told by somebody who collects these that this is a post-mortem (death) photo of a girl who was posed standing up with different props. There is a stand behind her which can be seen right behind her feet. Also, there is a second draped prop positioned against her hip. It also appears there is some sort of brace beneath her dress. She appears stiff and her whole body leans backwards slightly.

Oy. This one is horrible for many reasons, not least of which being the distinct possibility that both father and son are dead in this picture. (Why are his hand and face discolored?)

This one is just plain weird, but the telltale signs of rigid limbs and awkward pose — and the need for a pillow to hold up the head — seem to indicate that this is post-mortem.

20 Food Innovations That We Could Have Done Without

Food and beverage companies have long fought the battle of keeping their consumers happy and their products fresh. Evey once in a while, in random acts of desperation, the scheming minds behind our foods can think a bit too far outside the box. Below you'll find 20 food and drink blunders from the ages - lessons that most of us were dupped into trying -- and, sometimes liking. They are twenty inexplicable food ventures that we felt somewhat obliged to bring attention to, just to ask a collective, "Really?":

Crystal Clear Pepsi 


It was a sign of the times; a clear drink to signify purity and infer improved health. Market tested in 1992 and officially released in all its glory in 1993, Crystal Clear Pepsi was backed with Van Halen theme songs and prime-time Superbowl advertising but lacked anything amazingly different in the taste department. Considering the flavor was simply more of the same (but now lacking caffeine), the people wanted their trusted brown Pepsi Cola returned in one piece – they got it.

McRib Sandwich



It’s no wonder that this item hasn’t found a steady place in the world; coming and going like an apparition since 1981. Though it had all the makings of a sure-fire success (a boneless pork patty shaped to look like it has bones, barbecue sauce, onions and pickles served on a six-inch roll), after testing well in Nebraska and other mid-west states, it was obvious that the world wasn’t ready for this fabricated rib-based delight...even if from time to time we have odd (Pavlovian-related?) cravings for them...


Funky Fries




Approaching the ranks of a Fact, Americans love French fries. Ore-Ida decided we liked them enough to party with them by introducing Funky Fries; chocolate, cinnamon and blue-colored French fries – it only made sense. They ran the bold new product with the highest of expectations and a swarm of satisfied customers was never the case. The Funky Fries were honorably retired in 2003; the day the music died.


Lifesaver Soda




Lifesaver candies were invented in 1912 and it took a full 80 years to realize the complete vision – a liquid version of the popular hard candy. Introduced in the same five flavors as the original roll, the product scored well in preliminary taste tests but quickly went flat once it hit shelves. Whether it was the multi-colored cylindrical packaging (reminiscent of the original rolls) or the toxic amounts of sugar mixed with water, consumers were ultimately turned off by the concept of drinking their candy.


Candy Cigarettes




Honesty, integrity and chain smoking are the flagship lessons of any well-rounded upbringing and such lessons have been taught since the 19th century with these props. Whether it is in the form of chalky sugar, bubblegum or chocolate, kids have long imitated the Marlboro man and gotten their sugar fix in the form of candy cigs. Always controversial, but never banned, candy cigarettes can still be found....re-branded as "candy sticks."


Coors Rocky Mountain Sparkling Water





“The World’s Most Refreshing Beer” has been brewing with Rocky Mountain spring water since 1873. Over 100 years later, Coors branched out from brew and paid tribute to the quality H2O by releasing a sparkling water in original, lemon-lime and cherry flavors. Since the Coors logo remained proudly front-and-center, it wasn’t worth the risk of being caught behind the wheel in the name of hydration. Sales reflected the concern and Coors decided to stick to their strengths by continuing to distribute the mountain water (only when mixed with hops and barley).


Circus Peanuts Candy





Off the top of your head, name one person that eats the Circus Peanuts candy – you can’t. Typically sold in generic white bags at Middle-American truck stops, these chalky banana clusters of orange sugar must know someone of substantial rank to remain on shelves today. It’s likely that the bags still in circulation are from the original 1800s batch and our grandparents are slowly plucking them one-by-one.


Celery Jello





Somewhere in the 1960s the folks at Jello decided to go green and introduce a series of vegetable gelatins that were schemed to go well with salads. Italian Salad, Mixed Vegetable and Seasoned Tomato were the most accepted of the four but Celery played the lone anchor. Whether it surprises you or not, the flavors flopped and were soon yanked from circulation never to be seen again – by popular demand, it appears this 80 calorie treat will stay gone.



Bigg Mixx Cereal




If you swept the floors of a 1990 Kellogg’s cereal factory and gathered up all the leftover scraps, you’d have the Bigg Mixx cereal – a fine collection of Kellogg brand All-Stars that found themselves branded together in a bowl of bastards and represented by a chicken-wolf-moose-pig mascot. It seemed a demand at the time but customer response didn’t support the Bigg Mixx or the playful mascot. Kellogg’s took the hint and soon pulled the oversized mix that was simply ahead of its time.


Gerber Singles




Baby food crossed demographics in 1974 when Gerber, infamous for their baby foods, released a pureed single-serving meal in a jar for the adults. Aside from larger quantities, the basic ingredients and packaging remained close to the original baby formula and caused much confusion and resistance amongst an older audience. Though everyone has snuck their taste and can admit that baby food isn’t all bad, consumers agreed that mass quantities of pureed veggies should be reserved for infancy.


Heinz Ketchup Potato Chips




The potato chip industry must have been getting stale when Herr’s introduced the Heinz Ketchup flavored potato chip. Though there appears to be a cult following, this tomato pasted snack has its naysayers – rightfully so. Ridged for your pleasure, cooked in vegetable oil and slathered with Heinz’s signature sauce, this bite captures the essence of a pre-dipped French fry. Of course, local markets rarely carry such a bizarre product but trust in cyberspace to provide the most obscure of snacks.


Orbitz Drink




Leave it to the Canadians to combine good intentions with a lack of substance. Developed by Clearly Canadian, this non-carbonated sugar water came on the scene in 1996 with the novel addition of strange floating gelatin balls. Reminiscent of a lava lamp from the 70s haze, Orbitz debuted this disaster beverage in Orange-Vanilla, Raspberry-Citrus, Blueberry-Melon-Strawberry and Pineapple-Banana-Cherry-Coconut flavors. Clearly, no flavor under the sun was refined enough to persuade the consumer that this science project was worth the dollar fifty and the shelf life was short lived.


Colgate Kitchen Entrées




One of history’s most bizarre brand extensions surfaced when a trusted oral care supplier boldly developed microwavable entrées – the next logical step. The intention behind Colgate’s Kitchen Entrees was to provide a method of dirtying your teeth while simultaneously offering a solution for cleaning them. The consumer wasn’t taking oral advice from Marie Calendars and they weren’t about to start using Colgate for their entrée needs; the disconnect won out and the product failed soon after its debut.


New Coke




A little revitalization never hurt anyone – except Coca Cola. In 1985, in an attempt to refresh the brand buzz and improve overall sales, Coke altered the recipe to their world famous cola and dubbed it simply the New Coke. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Though sales of the new endeavor maintained, they never flourished and consumers proved that nothing beats the original. Coke heard the call and pulled the plug. By returning to the original recipe, Coke ultimately saw an increase in sales thanks to nostalgic customers embracing their long lost friend and celebrating the return in large quantities.


Flower Pez




In an effort to capture the patronage of the peaceful “Flower Children” of the 70s, the execs at Pez released a flower-flavored candy. Yep, this flower treat (not flour) came complete with a psychedelic dispenser and melted in your mouth like LSD. The petal flavored sugar cubes had a rough go once in circulation. Whether the target market refused to participate in capitalist commerce or the product simply lacked in appeal, the flower Pez was soon nipped in the bud.


Oscar Mayer Cheesedogs




There are some that would argue a hotdog is its own sin – machine separated pork, turkey, beef and chicken leftover parts (all smashed into one rod) seems too much to bear. However, most can gag one down with a healthy smothering of real American ketchup. Ignoring the popular hotdog condiments, Oscar Mayer upped the ante by pre-filling their dogs with cheese and leftover cheese parts. Just 13g of fat per wiener, this product stretched the limits of creation.


Smucker’s Goobers




The classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich has been around as long as the wheel. Easy to make and a perfect mix of salty and sweet, the PB & J is a timeless lunchtime delight. In an attempt to eliminate a step in the process and a few extra knives to be cleaned, Smucker’s Goobers creatively combines peanut butter and jelly in one jar. Yes, the idea makes sense on paper but quickly loses its appeal when the two separate ingredients inevitably combine into one mutilated gel.


Liverwurst




Some exotic foods should remain that way – exotic and far from home. Commonly referred to as Kentucky Pâté, Liverwurst is German creation that made its way to the states and eventually mass produced by a handful of companies. Generally spreadable by nature, this pork based mush requires a touch of pork liver to give it its distinctive liver taste. Despite its international presence, it will take more than a dash of basic spices to make this a strong household product in the US.


Heinz Colored Ketchup



America’s favorite condiment experienced a facelift in October of 2000 when Heinz added food coloring to their signature recipe to produce green, purple, pink, orange, blue and teal colored ketchup. Once again, illustrating that any variance from the classics will alienate loyal consumers, Heinz saw no substantial support for their bold experiment. As of January 2006, these crazy condiment concoctions have been discontinued.


Easy-Cheese




Originally marketed by Nabisco in 1966 under the name Snack Mate, Easy Cheese is a processed cheese currently made and distributed by Kraft. The cheese substitute is canned in a signature dispenser and offered in a variety of party flavors like American Cheese, Mild and Sharp Cheddar, Swiss, Nacho, Roasted Garlic & Cheddar and Bacon & Cheddar. Commonly referred to as Spray Cheese or Aerosol Cheese, this cracker topper has found a cult following in some circles and an angry mob in others.

Cute Exotic Baby Animals Born at Zoos Around the World

Tiny Tiger Triplets Say - "Roar!"

Born June 2nd,Amur Tigers are the largest of all cat species, reaching 11 feet and up to 650 lbs in adulthood.

Meet a Medditerranean Miniature Donkey

Born July 16th amidst heavy thunder and lightening, the UK's Wingham Wildlife Park named it's newest Mediterranean Miniature Donkey foal "Storm."

Little Loggerheads Weather the Storm at Sea World

Rough seas caused by Hurricane Bill prevented this tiny week-old trio baby Loggerhead Sea Turtles from safely trekking to the ocean from their nest.

Boisterous Baboons Show Their Stuff

Visitors enjoyed the antics of a pair of baby baboons as they got up to some "monkey business".

Everyone's Pulling for Denver's Tamarin Orphans

Zoo keepers and veterinary staff at Denver Zoo are working around the clock to care for emperor tamarin twins, orphaned after the death of their mother.

Baby Elephant Shower Time

Watch a tiny elephant calf enjoying her first wash.

A Squirrelly Little Monkey

Squirrel Monkey clings tightly to mom's back.

Romping Snow Leopard Kittens

Well technically they're cubs... but the newest little Snow Leopards sure look like curious kittens to us.

Double Giraffe Calves for the Binder Park Zoo

The first baby was 6' tall and the second 5' 6", but what's six inches when you're almost two yards tall at birth?

Cheetah Cub Charms in Cincinnati


Watch as the playful little girl unleashes a furious attack on her blanket in this video.

Baby White-Cheeked Gibbon Along for the Ride

This tiny White-Cheeked Gibbon was born April 3rd and still spends most of his time clinging tightly to mom, 21 year old Indah.

Up Close and Personal with a Baby Barbary Macaque


This baby macaque was born in the last few weeks at Apenheul Primate Park in the Netherlands.

Four's Company at the Denver Zoo

The July 9th birth of quadruplet red panda cubs is extremely rare; this marks only the fifth recorded birth of quadruplets at an accredited U.S. zoo.

Rare Ducklings Born at the Louisville Zoo

After 26 days in the incubator, two tiny ducklings were born and are doing well.

A Healthy 251 lb Baby!

After 22 months of pregnancy, mother elephant Christie gave birth to a high-spirited female calf weighing in at 251 lbs or 114 kg.

A Belgian Birth with Stripes

Antwerp Zoo welcomed a new zebra foal to it's ranks. While camouflaged well against its mother, the striking stripes and lanky frame make it a standout among visitors.

Baby Meerkats at the Belfast Zoo

Newest playful meerkat pups emerge from the den and explore their surroundings, as their relatives keep a characteristic meerkat lookout. 

A Furry Little Backpack

A baby Ring-tail Lemur takes in its surroundings from the safety of mom's back.

Meet the Columbus Zoo's Newest Little Langur

San Diego Zoo confirms: 5th Panda Baby!

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When Is a Hedgehog Not a Hedgehog?

This little fellow was born on June 24th to one of the only breeding females in the United States.

Fledgling Flamingo in the Sun

A Caribbean Flamingo chick basks in the sun while mom watches affectionately. 

Bright Eyed and Bushy Tailed

In June the Bronx Zoo welcomed a happy and healthy baby Coquerel's Sifaka Lemur .

Baby Koala Ventures out of the Pouch

We see a sleepy Koala joey at the stage when it first ventures out of its mother's pouch.

Orphan Pups Find a Home at the Mystic Aquarium

Three playful sea lion pups, all rescued separately from harbors in Southern California, have found their way to the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut.

Looking Fierce!

This "ferocious" young cub was born in May.

Smile and Say Cheetah!

Johari, a 2-month-old African cheetah, shows off her pearly whites at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park.

Alien or Aardvark?

This newborn aardvark at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo most certainly wins the award for wrinkliest baby.

A South American Tapir in King Arthur's Court

This beautifully camouflaged baby tapir was recently born at the UK's Marwell Zoo.

The 10 Most Shocking Olympic Gender Scandals

Gender scandals happen way more often than you'd think. Like that one time the fastest “woman” in the world was killed in a bank robbery and found to have a penis…

Dora Ratjen

For the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, Adolf Hitler wanted to show the world the supremacy of the Aryan race. German, Dora Ratjen, notable for her deep voice and her refusal to share the shower room with the other female athletes, was Germany's entry for the women's high jump. She came in fourth. Britain's competitor, Dorothy Tyler, who won a silver medal, remembers her. “I had competed against Dora and I knew she was a man,” she says. “You could tell by the voice and the build.” Ratjen was discovered to be a man on his way back from the European Championships at a train station in Germany. Although Ratjen was wearing a skirt, two women spotted him with a five o'clock shadow. A doctor was summoned and Ratjen's sex was revealed. In 1938 Ratjen was barred from further competition. 

Stella Walsh

At one point, Stella Walsh, a Polish-American sprinter, was the fastest woman in the world. She won gold in 1932 and silver in 1936 for the 100m sprint. During her career, she set more than 100 national and world records and was inducted into the American Track and Field Hall of Fame. She lived her entire life as a woman, and even had a short-lived marriage to an American man. In 1980, Walsh was killed by mistake during an armed robbery at a shopping mall in Cleveland, Ohio. The postmortem revealed she had male genitalia. She was also found to have both male and female chromosomes. 


Sin Kim Dan

Dan broke the women's records for 400m and 800m in 1961/62. She was the first woman to run 400m in less than 52 seconds. In 1963 in Moscow, other female sprinters refused to run against her because she looked like a man. At that same time a South Korean man claimed that she was his son who had disappeared during the war. Obligatory sex-testing for international athletics was introduced in 1966, and for whatever reason, Sin did not compete after that. 


 Edinanci Silva

Born with both male and female sex organs, the Brazilian judo player had surgery in the mid-90s so that she could live and compete as a woman. According to the IOC, this made her eligible to participate in the games and she competed in Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens in 2004. In Sydney, she beat the Australian Natalie Jenkins, who raised the issue of Silva's gender in a press conference, constantly referring to her as “he” 


Tamara and Irina Press

Sisters Tamara and Irina Press won five track and field Olympic gold medals for the Soviet Union, and set 26 world records in the 1960s. Their careers suddenly ended at the time that gender verification was introduced. Critics have suggested that the Presses were actually male, or perhaps hermaphrodites. 


Heidi Krieger

It is believed that as many as 10,000 East German athletes were caught up in a state-sponsored attempt to build a race of superhuman communist sports heroes and force-fed cocktails of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. One of them was Heidi Krieger, a shot putter. When she was 16, her coach put her on steroids and contraceptive pills and she gained weight, built muscle and started to develop body hair. By 1986, aged 20, she was European champion and an Olympic shotput gold medalist. In the mid-90s, Krieger underwent gender reassignment surgery and changed her name to Andreas. 


Ewa Klobukowska

Eda was a Polish sprinter who won the gold medal in the women's 4x100 m relay and the bronze medal in the women's 100 m sprint at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Klobukowska was the first Olympic athlete to fail a gender test. Having registered “one chromosome too many”, she failed an early form of the chromatin test in 1967 and was subsequently banned from competing in professional sports. 


Santhi Soundarajan

Santhi Soundarajan, a middle distance runner from India, won a silver medal at the 2006 Asia Games. She was stripped of her medal after she failed a verification test. 


Mary Edith Louise Weston

Mary Edith Louise Weston of Great Britain was the best shotputter from 1924 to 1930, and the best javelin thrower in 1927. She still holds Great Britain's shot put record. Mary Edith Louise Weston became Mark Weston in the mid-1930s. 


 Iolanda Balas

After mandatory gender testing was implemented in the 60's, high jumper Iolanda Balas refused to compete in the Olympic Games. She went to the Budapest games - but only as a spectator, wearing an Ace bandage. She was suspiciously, according to Rumanian track officials, suffering from a “calcified right tendon,” and was said to never be able to compete again.

17 of the World's Biggest Liars

50 Great Photographers You Should Know

Lots of wonderful things happen around us all the time; being able to see is easy, but being able to capture that very moment is probably the hardest part. A good photo comprise of many things, not only you must hit the shutter at the right time and moment, the perspective, composition and color coordination plays a big role too.

Being a good photographer is not easy, let alone getting to that professional level. This weekend, we want you introduce you some of the greatest photographers around the globe and their awesome portfolios. We hope you’ll be able to get some sort of inspiration from their work. In no particular order, here’s 50 Great Photographers You Should Know. Full list after jump.

CirilJazbec

“Do everything for what you dream or think that is in your strenghts! There are hiding geniality, strength and magic in the courage.” CirilJazbec

David Lindsey Wade

David Lindsey Wade made a few important choices during his prime teen rebellious years. Raised by a pair of artist, his way of challenging his parents (who were already a bit off the grid) was to embrace his attraction to speed and excitement through his passion for machines.

Senol Zorlu

egofoto.net presents selected photographers by senol zorlu. The focus liew on potraying people, places and their cultures. egofoto is an independent and headstrong project. The photos display the expression of a personal view of people and instances.

Lee Towndrow

Lee Towndrow was a designer upon starting out. Made album covers. Was moved by kissing robots to become flame*artist. Built a darkroom, made bread (the kind you eat). Moved to Buenos Aires to try to grow up. Learned Spanish, loved, lost. Worked with great artists. Became a photographer.

Lyndon Wade

Lyndon Wade’s Vibrant compositions often depict subjects in a kind of suspended animation; their halted motion suggests a larger narrative in the space of a single incident.

Kalle Gustafsson

Henrik Knudsen

YURI YASUDA

Koen Demuynck

Interesting photography.

Sarah Cheng-De Winne

Sarah Cheng-De Winne is a freelance photographer-artist specializes in portraiture, fashion and conceptual photography and keen to discover new ways of representing identities through photography.

Dimitris Theocharis

Luigi Bussolati

Edlo Kawa

Cornelia Adams

Founded 20 years ago by Cornelia Adams, as an agency representing photographers whose work appeared as editorials in magazines.

Simon Hoegsberg

We’re All Gonna Die – 100 meters of existence. This image is 100 meters long (100mX78m) is surely one hell of a work.

TOM KAN

Thomas Kettner

Thomas Kettner, photographer and BFF board member from Stuttgart, Germany. His talent: beauty, hair and fashion for women and men.

Andrew G. Hobbs

New Zealand born photographer, arrived in London from Sydney in 1992 to pursue a career in the international portrait market which has included covers for Esquire, Rolling Stones, The Sunday Times Style, editorial for i-D and etc.

Aaron Ruell Photography

Timothy Hogan

Joel Rhodin

Florian Ritter

Kazuha Matsumoto

Ben Hassett

Francois-Xavier Marciat

Francois-Xavier Marciat . Photographer . Expo . Photography . Landscapes and lovely vues . Belgium

Nicholas Samaras

Nicholas Samaras is a new underwater photographer, but he made an impressive entrance in underwater photography area in Greece and out of his country borders.

Alex Prager

Cinematic and darkly playful The Big Valley is a series of highly saturated staged portraits by Los Angeles based artist, Alex Prager.

Erik

Björn Lofterud

Quentin Shih

A Chinese photographer based in Beijing, China, specializes in fine art, editorial, fashion, advertising photography.

Mike Walsen

Robin Skjoldborg

Michael Didonna

Ryan Pavlovich

Alessandro Rocchi

Alessandro Rocchi is an Italian photographer based in Pesaro (on Adriatic sea) near rimini and ancona. He does commercial work as well as ‘art’.

Gilles Abenhaim

Natasha Gudermane

Simon Powell

Working mainly with models, Simon is renowned for his ease of style and real approach to commissions. He is passionate about his work and brings much more to shoots than just a photograph.

Adam Von Mack

Seb Janiak

Carlo Bellavia

Carlo Bellavia’s portfolio is presented in the official website through a gallery of his most beautiful photos.

Martin Amis

Zhang Jingna

Something Beautiful, a photography exhibition by Zhang Jingna

Cristof Echard – Photographe

Vitor Shalom

Hirano Aichi

Alexandra Hager

Bagrad Badalian

Hervé lefebvre

Hervé Lefebvre, specialist advertising photographer, is proud to present a selection from his current portfolio of different commissions (clients, magazines and agencies) and invites you also to preview some of his private work. His studio is based in Bordeaux.

Pierre Choiniere

Pierre Choiniere is a photographer based in Montreal.

Nobuyuki Kobayashi

Born in Japan in 1970. AFter graduating “The Technical School of Photography”, gained experience as a publishing and editing -related photographer before turning freelance in 1993.

Michael David Adams

12 Electrifying Light Graffiti Images

As a photographic phenomenon, light graffiti is growing in popularity around the world. The concept is different for every photographer and each has his or her own method to capture their artistic expression. The technique involves moving a light source against the backdrop of a night sky or dark room while adjusting the camera’s shutter speed. The end result? A colorful design so spectacular you’ll wonder if it’s real. From a flower garden to a stick man, check out 12 pieces of graffiti that leave no traces behind. 

Greek God
 

In 1979, “Poseidon” was crafted outside of the United States Courthouse in downtown New York City. Artist Eric Staller enlarged a photo of the Greek sculpture “Poseidon Soter at Artemisium” and mounted it on a board with a single strand of holiday lights. He then turned the lights off and on while lowering the light-enhanced Greek god cutout to the ground. To capture this image, he used a tripod and left the camera’s shutter open for several minutes. 

Flowers
 

Tom Skinner lives in London and has recently begun dabbling in light graffiti, capturing his creative works of art with his Ricoh Caplio GX100 digital camera. This garden of “flowers” was created using light torches while the exposure time on his camera was extended to 120 seconds. Skinner has done many similar works of art using robot, heart and animal shapes.


Spirals
 

In May 2008, Patrick Lange used the skyline of Frankfurt, Germany, as the backdrop for this multicolored light graffiti. Using a compact digital camera and a small fan with blinking lights, Lange set the shutter time to five seconds and simply moved the fan around in front of the camera to produce this work of art. 



Tropical Island
 

Imitating the scenery of a tropical island, Gabriel Tse and Nathan Crum made this image appear as if it is an actual drawing. These two light graffiti artists have created truly unique works of art by simply tweaking the exposure times for their different designs. 


Swirls
 

Eric Staller describes his masterpieces as “architecture of light.” Inspired by old Busby Berkeley films and the movie Metropolis, Staller created this “Lightubes” photo in 1977 by making circle shapes with a lit sparkler attached to the end of a string, while running toward and away from the camera. 


Abstract Sky
 

Jesper Eiby and Malte Dan Baden Hansen shot this photograph by lowering the shutter speed on the camera—taking a total of 15 seconds to capture the image. To generate this design, the two photographers lit the top of paint rollers with four small lights and, with the camera lens open, were able to craft this masterpiece. 


People
 

Inspired by the well-known Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso, Gabriel Tse and Nathan Crum re-created unique structures and characters reminiscent of the Cubist artist’s works—except in light form. With a Nikon D80 camera, they shot this image in February 2008. 


Gas Pump
 

Based in Hampshire, England, Marc Bowyer-Briggs is a light artist as well as a photographer who specializes in shooting weddings and other big events. This gas pump graffiti image was taken using his Olympus E-420 camera, by simply moving a source of light in front of a nearby gas pump. 


Happy
 

This photograph, taken on January 16, 2009, uses light graffiti to spell out the word “happy.” To create it, a Canon EOS 400D camera was secured to a tripod with the shutter speed adjusted to a slower setting while a different colored light was used to draw each letter of the word. 


Stick Man 
 

This stick figure certainly looks deep in thought in this picture taken during summer 2008 with a Canon EOS 400D camera. It required an unusually long exposure time of 70 seconds. 


Light Tunnel
 

Another spectacular shot by UK-based Bowyer-Briggs, this piece required the help of a friend. Marc lit the walls with a gelled torch while Vass spun some ignited wire wool within the arches. This is one of Marc’s favorite creations yet. 



Fireworks
 

Using her Fujifilm FinePix S5700 camera and keeping the shutter open for 4 seconds, Dana Parker designed this crisscrossing image by swirling lit sparklers around at night. Parker says she found it quite difficult to do, and thinks that anything more extravagant would be especially challenging.

The 7 Greatest Talking Animals Of All Time

#7 Goat Calls For His Mom - Losing track of your mom in public can be a traumatic experience, even for a goat.


 

 

 

#6 Talking Raven Thinks Highly Of Himself - Yes it's true, Ravens sound more human than any other animal on this planet.

 


 

#5 Pug Says "I Love You" - He can also say "I'm having a extremely hard time breathing through this face."



 


#4 Talking Elepant Speaks Korean - You'd figure the world's largest land mammals would have something to say after all these years.

  



 
#3 Talking Dog Wants His Momma - He doesn't really want his momma, he wants some Beggin' Strips ... you know, because dogs don't know it's not bacon.
  
 


  


#2 "Oh Don Piano" Cat - It's amazing how much this cat actually sounds like Keith Richards.
 


 
 
 

#1 Einstein The Amazing Talking Parrot - Einstein is basically the parrot version of Michael Winslow.

Top Ten Beverage Mascots

Boy, drinks are delicious, right? Oh yeah, nothing screams relaxation like a tasty beverage. Yet, did you ever stop and think about just how many of these drinks have mascots? No. Probably not. Well, for the sake of argument, let’s just say that ten of the most popular beverages have a anthropomorphic ‘thing’ as their spokes… thing. Seriously! For this list we’ll focus on the “soft” drinks and follow it up with a list of Alcoholic Beverage Mascots in the future. Oh, and we stuck to North American mascots (sorry, no Pepsi Man), so grab your glass, and take a look at these ten famous beverage mascots.

10. The California Dairy (Milk) Cows

Since 2000 these Happy Cows have been mugging for the camera and doing a moo-velous job (sorry) selling California dairy.




9. Donald Duck Orange Juice

Introduced on it’s packaging by Citrus World beverages in 1940, comes everyone’s favorite severe-anger-issues duck. No, not Daffy. That’s just silly.




8. Sprite and the Sun Fizz

In 1998, Sprite released an ad that has become something of a Pop-Culture historical phenomenon. I’m not even going to explain it’s hilarity, all you have to do is watch.




7. The Icee Polar Bear

In the 1960’s, the ICEE machine was first introduced, and it’s mascot was created as a Polar Bear. Makes sense, but who knew they’d become so widely available at K-Marts, Wal-Marts, Sears, and Burger Kings? Not me, that’s not who.




6. The Great Root Bear

The Great Root Bear has been the popular mascot for A&W Root Beer since 1974. The Great Root Bear’s role as mascot was reduced in the late 1990’s as A&W became more known as a burger chain, but he is still used to this day.




5. The 7-Up Cool Spot

In the 90’s, 7-Up’s Cool Spot was the anthropomorphic red dot on the pop can. He’s not around much any more, but he did spawn a video game!




4. Nesquik Bunny (”Quiky”)

Since 1973, this sugared-up animated rabbit has been gracing the adverts and packages of this powdered and liquid chocolate milk mix, as well as the pre-bottled Yoo Hoo evil twin. Tasty. 



3. Coca Cola Polar Bears

The Coca Cola Polar Bears were introduced in 1993 and have become one of the most popular advertising campaigns for one of the most popular beverages. In fact, they became the mascot quite accidentally, as a one time commercial was so popular that they continued to come up with new ideas for the Bears, which are seen primarily in the winter.




2. Punchy

This slyly violent Hawaiian Punch mascot has been offering, “How about a nice Hawaiian Punch?” and then clobbering them silly since 1962. He gets #2 on the list purely for his violent nature.





1. Kool-Aid Man

Starting in 1954 as the oddly-named (duh) “Pitcher Man”, his name was thankfully changed to the “Kool-Aid Man” in 1975. And he’s been causing massive building damage ever since. 

9 Real (or Fake) Edible Aphrodisiacs

From oysters to avocados—we’ve all heard the rumors about the so-called aphrodisiac properties of certain foods. While a few are based on folklore, health experts say that some foods are better for sexual function than others. “Diet plays an important role in sexual function, including sex drive,” says Debby Herbenick, PhD, associate director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University. But which foods have greater libido-boosting powers than others? We sorted through fact and fiction to bring you the answers. 

Real: Oysters

 

Everyone has heard about the so-called aphrodisiac properties of oysters, but will a dozen on the half-shell really do anything for your sex drive? Perhaps, says Jessica Baye, a registered dietician and clinical nutrition manager for MCGHealth in Augusta, Georgia. Here’s why: “Oysters contain high levels of zinc,” she explains. “Zinc stimulates the hormone testosterone, an essential sex drive hormone.” Try incorporating oysters in a romantic dinner with your partner, suggests Baye. But take extra care when shucking them; oyster shells are sharp and a deep cut in the hand—and subsequent trip to the emergency room—would definitely spoil the mood.


Fake: Bananas
 

You may have heard about the libido-boosting properties of bananas, but does eating one as an afternoon snack mean you’ll have better sex that night? Sorry, this one’s a myth, says Pepper Schwartz, PhD, a Seattle-based psychologist and chief relationship expert at PerfectMatch.com. “There’s a whole school of thought about things that are shaped like genitals being turn-ons,” she says. “A banana is shaped like a penis, but other than that, there aren’t any aphrodisiac properties here.”


Real: Wheat Germ
 

Wheat germ is a great source of vitamin E, which could help you in the bedroom. “Vitamin E is often called the main sex vitamin,” says Lauri Grossman, DC, the chair of the Department of Medicine and Humanistic Studies at the American Medical College of Homeopathy. “It's a powerful antiaging antioxidant that protects cell membranes from free-radical damage and is required for the synthesis of hormones.” It also helps female bodies balance estrogen. Too much estrogen, explains Dr. Grossman, can cause PMS, anxiety, bloating, headaches, muscle aches and mood swings—all things that put a damper on a woman’s sex drive.


Fake: Avocados 
 

According to legend, the Aztecs referred to avocado trees as "testicle trees,” and folklore has long associated avocados with an improved libido. Is there any truth to it? “I’m sorry to say, it’s a myth,” says Dr. Schwartz. “There is nothing that suggests that avocados can do much for your sex drive.” She says that the vitamins and minerals they contain may have some relationship to increased libido, but you’d have to eat a ton of avocados to get the effect.


Real: Chocolate
 

You’ve already heard about the antioxidant properties of dark chocolate, but does it really have any aphrodisiac effects? Maybe. “Chocolate has a multitude of qualities that put it in the category of aphrodisiac,” says Baye. “Because it has a high fat and sugar content, it's often considered forbidden to eat. For some people, eating chocolate makes them feel ‘naughty’ and can cause an endorphin rush, similar to a runners’ high.”

Chocolate also contains tryptophan, an essential amino acid that plays a role in the production of serotonin. “Increased levels of serotonin are associated with feelings of being relaxed and satisfied,” she says. Baye also points to an Italian study that showed a correlation between daily chocolate consumption and an increase in libido. Though the study’s outcomes were largely inconclusive, she and other experts believe that a little chocolate now and then can’t hurt—and may even help—your sex drive.


Fake: Pumpkin Seeds
 

You may have heard the rumors about pumpkin seeds being “nature’s Viagra” for women—and what a great concept, right? The idea of eating a few pumpkin seeds, which are a healthy source of magnesium and iron, and feeling “in the mood” shortly after almost sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately, it is. Dr. Schwartz says don’t go out and stock up on pumpkin seeds just yet. “There’s no science behind this, or anything that really proves this,” she says. “It’s widely believed, but it’s never been tested.” Bottom line: If you like pumpkin seeds, snack away, but know that they may not do anything for your sex drive.


Real: Hot Chile Peppers
 

Can spicy foods rev up your libido? Yes, says Dr. Schwartz. “Anything that starts a sweating reaction, whether it’s in your palms or your forehead, starts it everywhere,” she explains. “Spicy foods, like hot chile peppers, get your blood flowing—and increased blood flow is an arousal mechanism that gets your juices going.” The easiest way to add spice to your favorite foods without going overboard is by sprinkling a bit of crushed chili flakes on your meal at dinner, suggests Dr. Schwartz. 


Real: Champagne
 

While it’s true that alcoholic drinks can reduce your inhibitions, do they really increase your sex drive? Most won’t, says Dr. Schwartz, who notes that many alcoholic beverages actually have the reverse effect: They’ll give you a buzz, but quickly leave you with little energy or a lack of the blood flow that you need for arousal. Champagne, however, is the exception, she says. “Champagne is the perfect arousal drink,” she explains. “Because of the carbonation, you don’t have to drink as much and you feel the effects a lot quicker.”


Fake: Almonds
 

According to folklore, the scent of almonds makes women feel amorous. But this one’s better off left in fairytale land, according to Dolores Kent, MD, a gynecologist and cosmetic surgeon in Los Angeles. But here’s the interesting news: An ingredient in almonds might actually be beneficial for your overall sex drive. “Almonds contain L-arginine, a substance that is found in some medicated creams and gels that you apply to the genitals to increase arousal,” she says. While it’s not clear how many almonds you’d need to eat to reap the same libido-boosting effects, Dr. Kent says it wouldn’t hurt to snack on almonds every once in a while in the name of better sex (and health).

Ten things we don't understand about humans

WHAT A STRANGE CREATURE YOU ARE
We belong to a remarkably quirky species. Despite our best efforts, some of our strangest foibles still defy explanation 

But as science probes deeper into these eccentricities, it is becoming clear that behaviours and attributes that seem frivolous at first glance often go to the heart of what it means to be human.

1.Blushing

Even Darwin struggled to explain why we would evolve a response that lets others know that we have cheated or lied

In a species with a reputation for cunningly manipulating others to maximise personal gain, blushing is pretty difficult to explain. Why would humans evolve a response that puts us at a social disadvantage by forcing us to reveal that we have cheated or lied?

It is a question that Charles Darwin struggled with. He pointed out that while all people of all races blush, animals - other primates included - do not. When it came to explaining the evolution of "the most peculiar and the most human of all the expressions", he was at a loss. That has not stopped others from trying.

One suggestion is that blushing started out as a simple appeasement ritual: a way to show dominant members of the group that we submit to their authority. Perhaps later, as our social interactions became increasingly complex, it became associated with higher, self-conscious emotions such as guilt, shame and embarrassment. This would seem to put individuals at a disadvantage, but blushing might actually make a person more attractive or socially desirable.

Noting that women blush more than men, neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego, suggests that blushing might have evolved as a way for women to demonstrate their honesty to men and so enlist their help in rearing offspring. "Blushing is telling you that I can't cuckold you. If you ask me about infidelity I can't lie - my blush gives me away," he says.

Primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, also thinks blushing could have emerged as a way to foster trust. "If you were to go hunting with a partner with a face of stone, so you could never tell what he wants, you would feel uncomfortable and wouldn't be sure if you could trust him," he says. Once blushing became associated with embarrassment, anyone who did not blush might have been at a disadvantage because we are less likely to trust someone who appears never to feel ashamed about anything.

2. Laughter

The discovery that laughter is more often produced at banal comments than jokes prompts the question, why did it evolve?

"Do you have a rubber band?" No, it's not a joke, but it was enough to make someone in a Baltimore shopping mall laugh. It is one of more than 2000 instances of natural laughter recorded by psychologist Robert R. Provine of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and his team, during their classic 10-year study, the results of which Provine published in his book Laughter: A scientific investigation. Their most striking finding: laughter is more often prompted by banal comments than amusing jokes. That makes it even more mysterious.

Provine thinks laughing began in our pre-human ancestors as a physiological response to tickling (Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol 13, p 215). Modern apes maintain the ancestral "pant-pant" laugh when they are tickled during play, and this evolved into the human "ha-ha". Then, he argues, as our brains got bigger, laughter acquired a powerful social function - to bond people. Indeed, Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford has found that laughing increases levels of endorphins, our body's natural opiates, which he believes helps to strengthen social relationships.

"But there's a big difference between 'laughing with' and 'laughing at'," Provine notes. Laughing at someone can encourage them to conform socially or it can push them away. There's also a big difference between natural, "emotional" laughter and conversational, embarrassed, nervous and aggressive laughter, points out Matthew Gervais at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has analysed these different types. He thinks the latter forms of "forced" laughter probably evolved later, to fine-tune our manipulation of social situations .

So where does humour fit in? It may be playing more of a role than Provine thinks, according to Thomas Flamson at UCLA. He suspects that laugh-inducing comments like the rubber-band question might not seem like jokes to eavesdropping researchers, but many could still be funny to the right person. Such shared in-jokes would boost laughter's ability to generate camaraderie. Even Provine believes humour is important. He has found that on average, men are funnier than women, and his analysis of personal ads indicates that women generally request humour, while men offer it. This suggests that the ability to make others laugh has evolved at least in part through sexual selection.

3. Pubic hair

Scent radiator, warmth provider, or chafe protection? The answer to why humans have clumps of hair in private places is still open for debate

We may be the naked ape, but on one measure of hairiness humans trump all other primates. While most of them have finer hair around their genitals than on the rest of their body, adult humans sport an impressively thick bush of pubic hair.

It has long been assumed that pubic hair is a remnant of a furrier period in our evolutionary history, and that the real question is why the rest of the body lost its hirsuteness. Earlier this year, though, Robin Weiss of University College London pointed out that our pubic hair clearly became thicker than that on the rest of our bodies at some point in our evolution . And this must have happened for a reason. So what drove the evolution of pubic hair?

There's no accepted explanation, but many potential advantages have been suggested over the years. Perhaps the most popular is that since thicker hair gathers in regions where we have apocrine (scent) sweat glands as well as eccrine (cooling) ones, it may serve to waft odours that signal sexual maturity. It may also act as a visual signal of adulthood, along with growing breasts and widening hips in girls and deeper chests and beards in boys. Various other benefits could have made it worth keeping. A thick bush not only protects the genitals during sex and at other times - reducing chaffing while walking, for example - it also helps keep our most sensitive regions warm and free of draughts.

So when did it evolve? Based on studies of the evolution of pubic lice by David Reed at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, Weiss suggests some time around 3.3 million years ago. This is when human lice diverged from a closely related species found on the thick body hair of gorillas. This, Weiss suggests, could signal that while the rest of our bodies were naked by that time, we had evolved thick enough pubic hair for the lice to jump species and take hold.

  4.Teenagers

Even our closest relatives, the great apes, move smoothly from their juvenile to adult life phases – so why do humans spend an agonising decade skulking around in hoodies?

No other species has teenagers. Even our closest relatives, the great apes, move smoothly from their juvenile to adult life phases. So why do humans spend an agonising decade or so skulking around in hoodies? Traditionally, the teenage years have been seen simply as a sort of reproductive apprenticeship, but a better understanding of adolescence has spawned some more interesting explanations.

David Bainbridge of the University of Cambridge, author of Teenagers: A natural history, says there are two big clues. The first is when adolescence evolved. Evidence from growth in the bones and teeth of fossilised hominins indicates that it emerged sometime between 800,000 and 300,000 years ago. This, he notes, pre-dates by a "fascinatingly short period" the great leap forward in human brain size, when our ancestors' brains underwent the last big expansion to reach today's size.

The second clue comes from neurobiology and brain imaging, which show that there is a wholesale reorganisation of the brain during the teenage years. "The brain is roughly the same size at 20 as it is at 12, yet we can do so much more with it," Bainbridge says.

For Bainbridge, adolescence is less about achieving sexual maturity than about developing a mind capable of negotiating the psychological and social landscape that makes human life so different from that of other animals. "Without teenagers we would never have become fully human," he says. "They are the most important part of human life."

Without teenagers we would never have become fully human. They are the most important part of human life

Anthropologist Barry Bogin of Loughborough University, UK, has a slightly different take on it. His explanation stems from the observation that during adolescence, girls and boys undergo their own characteristic patterns of growth and development . For girls, the teenage growth spurt occurs early, so that they look sexually mature several years before they reach full reproductive maturity. "They get into the networks of adult women," says Bogin, which allows girls not only to practise skills they will require later but also, crucially, to build coalitions. Humans, he points out, have evolved a form of cooperative breeding in which success depends on sharing childcare among both family and non-family members.

Boys, by contrast, are sexually mature long before they develop their manly physique (see graph). This, argues Bogin, allows teenage boys to acquire sexually selected attributes that appeal to potential mates, such as linguistic creativity, humour and artistic talent, in a relatively safe environment because their boyish stature means that fully grown men do not consider them a threat.

"I see adolescence as a trade-off," Bogin says. By investing time during the second decade in acquiring greater cognitive, practical and material resources both girls and boys improve their chances of successfully reproducing later. "It's all about value added."

5.Dreams

Today, most researchers reject Freud's belief that dreams are expressions of our unconscious desires – but if that's the case, what are they for?

"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." So said Sigmund Freud. Today, most researchers reject his belief that dreams are expressions of our unconscious desires, but the fascination with why we dream is stronger than ever.

Dreams are not meaningless, and they are certainly not useless. For a start, they are crucial for processing emotions. "Dreams modulate the emotions - they keep them within a certain range," says Patrick McNamara of Boston University. New research has found that naps consolidate emotional memories - and the greater the amount of rapid-eye-movement (REM) dream sleep, the greater the processing of these memories .

One idea is that REM dreams allow us to relive powerful emotional memories, but without the rush of stress hormones that accompanied the real experience . In this way, we keep the memory but the emotion accompanying it gradually lessens.

REM dreaming also helps other types of memory and problem solving. People are better able to recall lists of related words and the connections between them after a night's sleep than after the same time spent awake during the day.

It has recently become apparent that not all dreaming occurs in REM sleep, and there are hints that non-REM dreams have their own special function. By waking students during both REM and non-REM sleep, McNamara and colleagues have discovered that REM dreams are more story-like, with more emotion, more aggression and more unknown characters than non-REM dreams, which often involve friendly social interactions . McNamara thinks that by simulating aggressive encounters, REM dreams help us cope with real aggression, whereas non-REM dreams support cooperative behaviour.

The content of dreams can be influenced by external factors such as scents, or even the Earth's geomagnetic field, but there seem to be some reoccurring themes. Many REM dreams contain unknown males, usually in aggressive social interactions with the dreamer. The discovery of universal themes could herald a return to the study of the meaning of dreams, this time based on science. "It suggests that a certain kind of dream interpretation may be possible," McNamara says.

6.Altruism

People still debate whether humans are genuinely altruistic by nature, but if we are, most agree it doesn't make evolutionary sense

If you believe there is no such thing as altruism, you are in good company. In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins writes that we must "try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish". Even if we are nice to members of our family, that doesn't count because there is a pay-off, at least in biological terms: they share some of our genes, so by helping them we indirectly further our own genetic immortality. Meanwhile, other acts of seeming altruism are often just reciprocity. If you scratch my back, then I scratch yours - no matter how much later - that's not selfless either.

This all makes good evolutionary sense, since spending time and energy helping someone without any return puts you at a distinct disadvantage in the survival stakes. The only trouble is that in recent years evidence has amassed that people do commit acts of genuine altruism. In experimental game-playing situations, for example, many people will share money with a stranger even when there is nothing in it for them. This has led biologists to conclude that altruism is a part of human nature. What they cannot decide is how or why it evolved.

People with a certain version of a gene called AVPR1 are more altruistic than the average 

According to Robert Trivers of Rutgers University in New Jersey, pure altruism is a mistake. He argues that natural selection favoured humans who were altruistic because in the small, close-knit groups in which our ancestors lived, altruists could expect reciprocity. However, in our globalised world where many of our interactions are with people we do not know and may never meet again, our altruistic tendencies are misguided: they are unlikely to be reciprocated and are therefore maladaptive .

Others disagree. They accept that altruism cannot be a product of genetic evolution, but argue that ever since our ancestors began to shape their own environment through culture, we have evolved by a process of genetic and cultural co-evolution. As well as favouring traits that benefit individuals, this can also select traits that benefit one group over another - and that is how altruism evolved. Altruism is crucial for social cohesion. And groups that are more cohesive are more likely to survive in interactions with other groups.

At a mechanistic level, gene-culture co-evolution makes sense. There are clear social mechanisms that promote altruism: for example, fear of punishment, reputation building, ideas of fairness and inculcation by religious or authority figures. There are also indicators that altruism has biological roots. Brain imaging reveals that it stimulates the reward centres of our brains. What's more, it would appear that people with a certain version of a gene called AVPR1 are more altruistic than the average. Their brains are more susceptible to the effects vasopressin, a feel-good hormone implicated in social bonding . Of course some might argue that if random acts of kindness give us a mental buzz, then this is not pure altruism after all.

7.Art

Sexual display, learning tool or form of social glue? Art still refuses to be pinned down

Explaining the peculiar human urge to create works of art in terms of evolutionary survival is a challenge. Darwin suggested art has its origins in sexual selection, and Geoffrey Miller at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque has run with the idea. He thinks that art is like a peacock's tail - a costly display of evolutionary fitness.

Miller's studies show that both general intelligence and the personality trait of being open to new experiences correlate with artistic creativity. He has also found that when women are at their monthly peak in fertility, they prefer creative over wealthy men . But Miller admits sex alone may not explain the evolution of art. "It might have originated for some other function, and acquired the sexual display function later," he says. So what other purpose might art serve?

Evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides at the University of California, Santa Barbara, think the drive to seek out aesthetic experiences could have evolved to push us to learn about different aspects of the world - those that our brain's hard-wiring has not equipped us to deal with at birth (SubStance, vol 30, p 6). In a similar vein, Brian Boyd from the University of Auckland in New Zealand believes art is a form of intellectual play, allowing us to explore new horizons in a safe environment .

Another idea is that art is a social adaptation. Ellen Dissanayake at the University of Washington in Seattle suspects that it is all about making an object or event "special" by appealing to the emotions through, say, colour or rhythm. She thinks this process helped increase our ancestors' chance of survival by bonding a group together. This "making special" could have started in magical or supernatural rituals, and later become more aesthetic.

None of this explains where our aesthetic sense comes from. Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, suggests we could be biologically primed to find certain images, such as symmetrical designs, more aesthetically pleasing - more beautiful - simply because our brain can process them more quickly. However, he adds that we respond positively to some art not because it appeals to us aesthetically, but because seeing it or, better still, owning it is an indicator of status. Miller goes even further. "It takes quite a lot of counter-intuitive education to distinguish good from bad contemporary art," he says. "Most people don't have the time to acquire such elite aesthetic taste - which is a form of fitness display in its own right."

8.Superstition

Many of us have superstitions – odd, reassuring habits that make no rational sense – but there may be an underlying reason for such behaviour

Barack Obama likes to play basketball on the morning of an election. Golfer Tiger Woods always wears a red shirt when competing on a Sunday. Most of us have our own superstitions, even though we know rationally that they cannot work. Yet superstition is not entirely nonsensical.

Our brains are designed to detect structure and order in our environment, says Bruce Hood at the University of Bristol, UK. We are also causal determinists - we assume that outcomes are caused by preceding events. This combination of sensing patterns and inferring causes leaves us wide open to superstitious beliefs. "But there are very good reasons why we have evolved these capabilities," Hood adds. Spotting and responding to some uncertain cause-and-effect relationships can be crucial for survival.

Our ancestors would not have lasted long if they had assumed that a rustle in the grass was caused by wind when there was even a small chance it was a lion. And it is worth making false-positive mistakes to get these relationships right. Kevin Foster of Harvard University and Hanna Kokko from the University of Helsinki, Finland, used mathematical modelling to show that whenever the cost of believing a superstition is less than the cost of missing a real life-or-death association, superstitious beliefs will be favoured by evolution .

Religion offers another possible evolutionary benefit of superstition. "[Religious faith] involves a susceptibility to believe in a spirit world and its efficacy - even if it doesn't actually work," says Dunbar, who is a leading proponent of the idea that religion is adaptive. He thinks religion's main function is to persuade a community to toe the line, so promoting cohesion. This is achieved in part by tapping into our natural propensity to believe in supernatural beings that can influence our fate.

Although it is in our nature to be superstitious, cultural and environmental factors clearly influence how superstitious an individual actually is. For example, when we feel we are losing control over our lives, we tend to become more superstitious. One study found that people living in high-risk areas of the Middle East, such as Tel Aviv, are much more likely to carry a lucky charm than other people. Another showed that the growth rate of evangelical churches in the US jumps 50 per cent with the downturn of each economic cycle. Nobody is immune. "We can all shift our supernatural inclination depending on the circumstances," says Hood. "There are few atheists in a plane that is plummeting from 30,000 feet."

9.Kissing

The urge to kiss is not brought about by genes, so why do we find it so pleasurable to share saliva?

Kissing - in the amorous, lip-locking sense - is not practised in all cultures, so the urge to pucker up cannot be in our genes. Still, you have to wonder why so many of us do it and why it feels so darn good. There is no shortage of speculation.

One idea is that our first experience of comfort, security and love comes from the mouth sensations associated with breastfeeding. Added to this, our ancestors probably weaned their babies by mouth-to-mouth feeding of chewed food, as chimpanzees and some mothers do today, reinforcing the connection between sharing spit and pleasure.

Another idea is that kissing has its origins in foraging. The story goes that our ancestors were first attracted to ripe, red fruit, then co-opted this attraction for sexual purposes, developing pronounced red colouration on the genitals and lips. "Instead of reinventing the wheel you use the same template for other kinds of attraction," says V. S. Ramachandran at the University of California, San Diego. Since red lips are most obvious in Caucasians, he suggests kissing may have started at northern latitudes and then spread culturally around the world. Without solid evidence, however, even Ramachandran is wary of his own idea, acknowledging that kissing may have arisen independently several times throughout human history.

When it comes to the physiology of kissing we are on slightly firmer ground. Our lips are among the most sensitive parts of our bodies, packed with sensory neurons linked to the brain's pleasure centres. Kissing has been shown to reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol and increase the bonding hormone, oxytocin.

There may even be a link between kissing and the way we assess our biological compatibility with potential partners. In recent years it has become apparent that we are most attracted to the smell of sweat from people whose immune system is most dissimilar from our own - with whom we are likely to produce the healthiest children. And of course kissing lets us get up close and personal enough to sniff that out.

10.Nose-picking

Many of us do it, but eating bogeys offers little nutritional reward – could there be a health reason for the unappealing habit?

In 2001, Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, India, won an IgNobel prize for their research into nose-picking. They reported that almost the entire sample of 200 adolescents from four Bangalore schools admitted they engaged in the habit, at an average of four times a day. However, only nine pupils - 4.5 per cent - owned up to eating their nasal debris .

Given the social stigma attached to eating bogeys (also known as boogers), this figure is probably an underestimate. But even if numbers are lower than experience suggests, this still begs the question of why anybody should choose to eat their own snot.

"There isn't any significant nutritional content in nasal mucus," says Andrade. Moreover, he and Srihari found nothing to distinguish the bogey-eaters from the others, and they neglected to ask them why they did it. It is possible that ingesting nasal detritus might help build a healthy immune response - after all, researchers investigating the hygiene hypothesis have built a large body of evidence indicating that lack of exposure to infectious agents can increase one's susceptibility to allergic diseases.

It is possible that ingesting nasal detritus might help build a healthy immune system

Unfortunately, it seems the only research on the matter dates back to 1966, when Sidney Tarachow of the State University of New York found that people who ate their bogeys found them "tasty" .

15 Stunning Sunrises and Sunsets

Some of the quietest and most calming moments in the day are when the sun rises and sets over the landscape—and photographers have a special knack for immortalizing these magical occasions. From a purple sunset over Ocean City, Maryland, to the multicolored sunrise on the Balearic Islands, these 15 landscapes were the perfect setting for a picture like no other. Take a look at these eye-catching photographs and you too might be inspired to start capturing your own special dawn or dusk moments.


Port de Pollença, Spain


On the morning of March 15, 2009, Spain’s Balearic Islands were home to this magnificent multicolored sky. With a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H camera, photographer Miquel shot this sunrise in a small fishing village on the island of Majorca. According to his fans, he captured this image as “not only a photographer, but a magician of light and color and imagination.”



Seattle, Washington


In July 2006, Amy Barr was sitting on her porch overlooking the Cascade Mountains in Washington. Having just returned home from the airport earlier that morning, she decided to stay awake despite her jet lag and exhaustion, and good thing she did! Using her Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, she was able to capture this orange and yellow sunrise along with a couple of other beautiful photos.



St. Augustine, Florida


In the flatlands of Florida, St. Augustine stands out as one of the most cultured destinations in the state. James Watkins was able to photograph this outstanding scenery over the Atlantic Ocean in January 2009. If you look closely you can see the planet Venus in the sky as the sun sets. Watkins said “every five minutes the sky was going through a different color cycle and it was amazing.”


County Wicklow, Ireland


Commonly called “The Gateway to the Garden of Ireland,” Bray in County Wicklow has many attractions such as scenic drives, the Blessington Lakes, aquariums, gardens, waterfalls and farms. Among all of these activities, walking along the beaches and cliffs remains the most popular. This seascape image was shot above the Irish Sea as the sun was setting over the water near Bray Head.



Sado Island, Japan


Paolo Negri captured this beautiful sunset shot on the island of Sado in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture. Photographers often scope out this area, which is on the sixth largest island of Japan, while tourists take ferries and hydrofoils back and forth among the islands as the sun rises and sets.



Lorain, Ohio


Lakeview Beach is a common spot for sun-gazing along Lake Erie in Northern Ohio. In 2008, Howard McGuire snapped one of the first sunsets of summer with a Nikon D40 camera, which resulted in a sky filled with a gorgeous mix of blue, purple, orange and yellow set above placid water along the lake’s shoreline.



Ocean City, Maryland


Amanda Lockwood was definitely “in the right place at the right time,” as she says, to capture this purple sunset over Assawoman Bay in Ocean City, Maryland. In the winter of last year, while Lockwood was sitting on the docks, this photo op was right in front of her—and later sparked an interest in nature photography.



Ojochal, Costa Rica


Frank Scott, a guide for Costa Rica Photo Tours, has been interested in nature photography for a number of years. One morning, Frank noticed this unique cloud pattern near his home in Ojochal and decided it was the perfect shot. Even though Hurricanes Caesar and Mitch blew through the area, this tree still stands tall—and is often a perch for toucan and aracari birds


Florence, Italy


Setting his camera directly in front of Italy’s Ponte Vecchio bridge to observe the beautiful summer sunset, this photographer captured not only one of nature’s best phenomenons but also a historic Italian landmark. Built during the Middle Ages, Ponte Vecchio is one of the few remaining bridges that is still lined with an array of shops as it spans the River Arno.



Worthing, United Kingdom


Brian Spicer has been interested in photography since the 1970s and loves experimenting with older film cameras (though recently he has invested in digital cameras and is learning how to use image altering software programs). One evening, along the low tide beaches of West Sussex, Spicer was able to digitally record this purple landscape with his Canon EOS 40D.



San Francisco, California


The Golden Gate Bridge attracts millions of people each year, and on this particular afternoon, photographer Mitchell Funk went to the area to observe the beautiful sunset scenery. Floating out on the Pacific Ocean in his boat, Funk captured the full span of the famous bridge just after dusk. The New York City native began his photography career in 1966 and now works on projects in both New York City and San Francisco.



Botswana, Africa


As a travel and wildlife photographer, Steve Allen has been shooting nature scenes for over 37 years, traveling to 78 countries and all seven continents. Recently, Allen traveled to Botswana, Africa, to capture a variety of animals in their surroundings, including these giraffes set in the forefront of a Chobe National Park sunset.



Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany


Horst and Daniel Zielske, a German father and son photography duo, watched this magnificent combination of colors appear one morning in their native land. Inspired, they took this photo of a bare tree during sunrise at Jasmund National Park on Germany’s largest island, Rügen. The two also enjoy taking photographs of buildings and streets—especially in the rain.



Phoenix, Arizona


Born and raised in Southwestern Minnesota, Morey Milbradt has been taking pictures since 1991, and is now a freelance photographer. Milbradt had the idea of shooting a palm tree against a brilliant sunset background before actually taking this photograph. Generally, he enjoys taking photographs of wilderness landscapes throughout the Midwest.




Piha, New Zealand


Piotr Zurek is a professional photographer and blogger who resides in Auckland, New Zealand, and has a passion for travel and photography. On the afternoon of February 18, 2009, Zurek was enjoying his normal coastal view when this moment appeared before him. His Nikon D700 helped him memorialize the spectacular reflection of a sunset off the water so others could enjoy it as well.

25 Breathtaking Photos of “Play with Fire”

“Don’t play with fire!” that’s what we have been told since we were kids. Maybe this is why we could be easily shocked by the performance of the play of fire. We can’t help wondering: does it burn the performers’ mouths or lips? Does it hurt? The combination of the beauty of the scene and the wonders in our head makes the performance.

The followings are some photograghs we collected featuring plays with fire. The freeze of the fire makes strong image, giving us illusion that we are looking at drawings. Even though we are not feeling the heat, we could see the great beauty of the play with fire.

10 Bible Scenes Recreated in Lego

David kills 200 men and removes their foreskins



"David and his men went out and killed two hundred Philistines. He brought their foreskins and presented the full number to the king so that he might become the king's son-in-law."

1 Samuel 18:27


Samson slaughters 1000 men with donkey's jawbone



"Then Samson said,"With a donkey's jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jawbone I have killed a thousand men."

Judges 15:16


Josheb-Basshebeth kills 800 men with spear



"Josheb-Basshebeth, a Tahkemonite, was chief of the Three; he raised his spear against eight hundred men, whom he killed in one encounter."

2 Samuel 28:8


40,700 Aramaeans killed in battle



"David killed seven hundred of their charioteers and forty thousand of their foot soldiers"

2 Samuel 10:18


Moses turns the river to blood in Egypt



"Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood."

Exodus 7:20


Seven kingdoms massacred



"They took the city and put it to the sword, together with its king, its villages and everyone in it. They left no survivors. Just as at Eglon, they totally destroyed it and everyone in it."

Joshua 10


Jesus crucified



"So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull. Here they crucified him, and with him two others - one on each side and Jesus in the middle."

John 19



Stephen stoned



"They all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him"

Acts 7


Eternal suffering for unrepentant in Hell



"If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."

Revelation 20v15


Armageddon



"The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh."

Revelation 19

8 Scary, Bizarre, and Gag-Inducing Natural Beauty Treatments

Oh, the astonishing lengths we'll go to slow the march of time. In the universal quest to thwart the aging process, people will try anything. And we do mean anything. Jabbing botulinum toxin into your forehead, it seems, is for amateurs. We bravely sought out the most exotic (read: beyond weird) natural beauty concoctions money can buy, several of which made us want to throw up a little. While these treatments are ostensibly "natural," in the broadest sense of the word, their eco-friendliness—and indeed, their efficacy—are highly debatable. Venture forth if you dare. 

Bird poop facial

Smearing your visage with nightingale excrement sounds about as fun as, well, getting pooped on by a flock of birds with bowel-control issues. The aptly named uguisu no fun, a Japanese powder made from songbird feces, was used by 18th century geishas and kabuki actors to wipe the heavy white makeup off their faces. Don't pooh-pooh the doo-doo just yet, however. Rich in the amino acid guanine, the rarified droppings are said to impart a soft, porcelain-white mien, but it'll cost you. At Shizuka New York Day Spa, for instance, a 50-minute facial will run you $180. 


Human placenta extract


Trying to regain the ruddy, fulsome skin you had as a baby? You're not aiming high enough; aspire for a complexion so creamy it's positively embryonic. In the kind of scrambled, Escheresque logic that appeals to the criminally insane and hallucinogen enthusiasts, word on Hollywood Boulevard has it that the same nutrient-rich placenta that sustains a fetus in utero will work miracles on sagging skin. EMK Placental has brewed up an entire range of products from postnatal issue—including face masks, eye gels, and hair serums—that celebs like J.Lo, Eva Longoria, and Madonna are rumored to partake of. 

Before you start raiding maternity wards, however, note that the Environmental Working Group places placental extract at the top of its list of cosmetics ingredients to avoid, largely because studies have shown that the boatload of hormones involved may be enough to spur breast growth in toddlers.


Fish pedicure


A pumice stone seems positively pedestrian when you can have a hundreds of itty bitty fish feasting away at your foot calluses. All the rage in Asia, the exfoliation treatment harnesses the toothless chompers of tiny carp, known as Garra rufa, to nibble away at dead, flaking skin. As expected, PETA isn't the least bit amused. "Confining thousands of fish to a tiled pool in a beauty salon—in 94°F water—is anything but harmony with nature! In fact, it's exceptionally cruel," it notes in action alert. "Furthermore, these fish's lives are very much at risk. In fact, 7,000 of these helpless animals were reportedly cooked to death recently after an Yvonne Salon staff member left the heat on in the animals' tub."


Bull semen conditioner
 

Some things you just can't make up. Case in point, a conditioning treatment made out of bovine sperm. Offered by Hari's, an upscale salon in London, the Aberdeen Organic Bull Semen Treatment combines the semen of Aberdeen Angus bulls with Katera root to create a protein-rich hair mask that drenches follicles in gobs of moisture. The result: shiny, full-bodied locks that have its devotees heralding it "Viagra for hair." 


Bull semen conditioner
 

Some things you just can't make up. Case in point, a conditioning treatment made out of bovine sperm. Offered by Hari's, an upscale salon in London, the Aberdeen Organic Bull Semen Treatment combines the semen of Aberdeen Angus bulls with Katera root to create a protein-rich hair mask that drenches follicles in gobs of moisture. The result: shiny, full-bodied locks that have its devotees heralding it "Viagra for hair." 


Snake-venom wrinkle cream


Simulated viper’s venom may be a little less au naturel than anything else on this list, but it's by no means any less mind-boggling. Syn-Ake (geddit?) is the key constituent of UltraLuxe 9, an anti-aging potion by Beverly Hills dermatologist Sonya Dakar, whose A-list clientele includes Drew Barrymore, Fergie, Ben Kingsley, and Gwyneth Paltrow. The $185-per-ounce cream works by blocking the neurotransmitters that tell muscles to contract, just not on a level that leaves you completely paralyzed.



Gold face mask


Hey if you're going to splurge, you might as well go for the gold—24 karat gold, to be exact. Originated by Japanese company UMO, the Midas facial involves gilding your face with gold leaf, which is said to diminish wrinkles and fine lines, stimulate cell growth, lighten age spots, and revitalize your countenance. 


 Leech therapy


This ancient physician's art entered the annals of Strange Things Celebs Do in 2008 when actress and ageless beauty Demi Moore gushed to David Letterman about her trip to Austria, where she suckled a quartet of medical leeches to detoxify her blood. "Really? Leech. Actual...leeches? Like the blood-sucking..." Letterman asked. "Yes. Blood," Moore replied. "I'm feeling very detoxified right now."


Sheep embryo injections


From "Heart of Glass" to "Baa Baa Black Sheep," the quest for the Fountain of Youth has Blondie's Debbie Harry singing a different tune. After reading about an open-heart surgeon who did fresh cell replacement using injections from the embryo of black sheep, Harry was hooked. "I don't really have a problem with experimentation," she told The Insider in 2007. "And so I experimented."

The Greatest Hoaxes That Fooled The World

John Darwin, the so-called ‘Canoe Man’, who paddled out into the North Sea in his red kayak in March 2002, in order to fake his own death and receive £250,000 in insurance and pension payouts, is not the first instance of an elaborate hoax. Since time began man has been busy fooling other people into believing all manner of things...


...and while the technologies have gotten smarter, the tricks haven't necessarily become more complicated. 

In 1917 two girls returned from playing in their garden with a camera and apparent proof of fairy life. It wasn't until the late 1970s that the so-called Cottingley fairy photographs were definitively debunked when Elsie Wright confessed their fairy friends had been nothing more than paper cutouts


But the idea of fairies persisted; for an April Fool's Day prank in 2007, the fake corpse of a fairy was created by London illusion designer Dan Baines. After convincing many it was real, he sold it in an internet auction for nearly £300


With the rise of the internet and video sharing websites, thousands of strange and mysterious pieces of footage surface every day. "The creepy gnome" which apparently stalks the streets of Salta, Argentina was caught on video by teenagers. However the subsequent appearance of two different "takes" of the same encounter has lead to it being widely discredited as a hoax


In 1995, Ray Santilli claimed he possessed film footage from the 1947 Roswell UFO incident of an alien autopsy. It wasn't until 2006 that Santilli announced that the film was not entirely genuine, although he maintained that it was a reconstruction of real events, rather than a complete fabrication


The creation of one of the most famous monsters in the world can be directly traced to "The Surgeon's photo" of the Loch Ness monster, or Nessie. However it was revealed in 1994 to be nothing more than a toy submarine outfitted with a sea-serpent head


The "Montauk monster", an unidentified creature that washed ashore in New York, in July 2008, prompted debate over whether it is was a concocted hoax or real animal. The predominant theory stands that it is a water-damaged racoon corpse or a complex latex creation


On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin claimed to have captured a female Bigfoot on film. Many years later, Bob Heironimus, a friend of Patterson's, claimed that he had worn an ape costume for the film...


...in spite of this hoax admission, as recent as August 15, 2008, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer claimed that they were hiking in Georgia when they stumbled upon the body of Bigfoot. It was later discovered that the hair was not real, the head was hollow, and the feet were rubber


An illustration of the discovery of The Cardiff Giant, a ten-foot tall stone man in the field of farmer William C. Newell, Cardiff, New York, on October 16, 1869. It was later revealed to be a hoax conceived by George Hull and buried the previous year


The Cardiff Giant is not the only giant to have captured people's imaginations. This image of an apparently over-sized skeleton being unearthed in Saudi Arabia was reported by Bangladesh's The New Nation newspaper in 2004, despite actually being an entry in a photoshop contest posted on the Worth1000.com website


In an intentional April's Fool Day prank, on the 1st of April 2008, the BBC reported footage of penguins flying from the Antarctic to Brazil, which became one of the most viewed videos on the internet


In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks a whole host of hoax images appeared across the internet, including this photograph apparently of a tourist posing for a snapshot on the top of the WTC as a plane approaches from behind. While easily proved as a fake, the image had already spread like wildfire


Another viral hoax is this composition of two photographs which was widely circulated in an e-mail in 2001. The e-mail claimed the photo had been chosen as National Geographic's Photo of the Year


In early 2000, the image of Snowball the monster cat began circulating via e-mail, claiming that the cat's huge size was a result of its mother being found abandoned near a Canadian nuclear lab. In May 2001 Cordell Hauglie came forward claiming that he created the image with his daughter's cat, to email to a few friends as a joke, never intending for it to spread as far as it did


At the other end of the cat spectrum, and apparently for no reason other than sparking controversy, in late 2000 a website described the process of sealing kittens in glass containers - making their bones conform to the container and leading to a uniquely shaped "bonsai kitten". Despite being a spectacularly obvious hoax, people who didn't realise were outraged and demanded the site be removed


A series of front page splashes on the Daily Mirror claiming the veracity of a set of images purporting to show British soldiers of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment abusing Iraqi prisoners, a claim which forced the editor Piers Morgan to resign after it was refuted by the British Army as crude fakes...


...similarly in February 2005 reports appeared claiming that a US soldier had been taken hostage in Iraq. Within hours a toy manufacturer came forward state that the hostage closely resembled its action-figure doll


Konrad Kujau admitted in 1983 to forging the Hitler Diaries in one of the most audacious journalistic hoaxes ever attempted. The 62 volumes were bought by the German magazine Stern for 2.5 million Deutsche Marks


Although many maintain that crop-circles are legitimately unexplainable, many circles are known to be man-made, such as those created by Doug Bower, Dave Chorley, and John Lundberg. Bower and Chorley started the crop circle phenomenon in 1978 and were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 1992 for their crop circle hoaxing


Apparently desperate to avoid her wedding, in 2005, Jennifer Carol Wilbanks disappeared days before her wedding, sparking a nationwide search. Three days later she called her fiance and falsely claimed that she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted. Under further police scrutiny her story fell apart, she pleaded no contest to the charge of giving false imformation to the police and ended up with two years probation and 120 hours of community service, while he ex-fiance married another woman


On April 1st, 1996 a full page ad appeared in six major American newspapers announcing that the fast food chain Taco Bell had purchased the Liberty Bell and renamed it the Taco Liberty Bell


In the first semester of 2009 Czech artist David Cerny caused a diplomatic row after his £350,000 Crown commissioned piece, Entropa, depicted sterotypical attributes of various EU member states. He later admitted that he misled his own government by making the piece with help from his friends instead of artists from the EU's 27 member states as promised



A vast amount of testimonies, photographs and videos supposedly portraying unidentified flying objects can easily be very simply debunked as hoaxes. 

But, of course, some still remain unexplainable...

10 Things They Say Won’t Make You Happy, But Really Will

People often like to say that despite what you think, certain things won’t make you happy. This list is here to tell that they will! Ten things they say won’t make you happy, but really will.

Girls

 


I love pillows


The French have a saying: “a woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows”.

Now ponder that. Now imagine this: you are a tired, tired man. You have not slept for days and days, you have been working (doing exhausting manual labor) whilst being subjected to the audio book of Jane Austin’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, and additionally you have also inadvertently taken two sleeping tablets mistaking them for caffeine pills. Then to you my friend, I offer you not one bed, but an array of beds! In all shapes and sizes, with pillows…massive pillows! Pillows everywhere. Big fluffy pillows and firm mattresses, with tight silk sheets and fresh smelling linen, plump pillows for you to lay your head on… (you pervert)

Now you try telling me that would not make you happy.

Fans/Fame


Yes you do

For some reason certain people think that, having fans fawning over you and telling you how great you are all the time can be a bad thing. Arguments put forward are: you will never be able to live a ‘normal’ life (ignoring the fact that by and large a ‘normal’ life working nine to five sucks), fans will be camping out on your doorstep, and you’ll never even be able to go to the local shop to buy some milk. Well this is great - instead of having to walk to the shop yourself, you just lean out the window and send a fan to do it for you. They’ll probably even pay for the milk for you.


Being a Genius


This is not the only thing that Albert has in common with Gene Simmons

Sometimes you can be so geniusly clever that you go a little bit mental - like Dustin Hoffman in ‘Rain Man’ - and this could potentially not make you as happy as you thought you would be. However this would only happen to people who weren’t true genius’, because if you were a true genius you would spot that you were acting mental and do cool things instead. Like the Japanese university professor who used logic to squidge female students cachungas.


Being Popular for your Money


His dashing good looks always got him the ladies

There’s one thing to be said about hanger-ons or the people that are only there during the good times…they are always there during the good times! You only have fond memories of them because they are always telling you how great and amazing you are. The trick is to not get poor or unsuccessful, and they they will always make you happy. The more astute amongst you, are probably asking what the difference is between fans and hanger-ons? The difference is looks and agenda. Fans worship you for who you are, whilst hanger-ons exploit you.


The original Optimus Prime toy (in box), plus an extra one (to actually play with)


£19.99 from the back of the Argos catalogue

Among a certain kind of man who grew up in the 1980s, it’s very common to hear how owning an original Optimus Prime toy will lead you into a downward spiral, ending in you being comatose with track marks up your arm (from using your arm as a racetrack for the Prime toy), disowned by your friends and family, with a nasty habit of standing outside school gates muttering “Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime! Optimus Prime in the box baby…”. While this may be the case, as the old saying goes (I think): “It is better to have loved and lost, then not to have loved at all. Autobots - roll out!”.


Junk Food


Healthy

Yes, eating too much junk food can be bad for your health. But so can swimming (if you get eaten by a shark). So can driving (if you get crushed by a truck). So can visiting Tokyo (if Godzilla goes on a killing spree - or you eat the deadly Japanese delicacy Fugu from a non-licensed eatery). There are plenty of things that are potentially bad for you, so why focus on one that tastes so good?
Sometimes, the only thing that will satisfy your cravings (other than a variety of massive pillows), is a deep fried, artery-clogging piece of cardiac arrest cuisine. Health fanatics bang on about how it’s just ‘comfort eating’, but there’s a reason why Homer Simpson’s homemade Prozac never contained vegetables.


Celebrating Christmas every day


Where does he get his money from?

The general assumption is that if you do something every day, you will soon get bored of doing it, thus your enjoyment factor of it will go down, and it won’t make you as happy anymore. Whilst that maybe true for television shows such as ‘Trigger Happy TV’, it is not true for Christmas Day - you get presents all day, eat good food, and do nothing! If I wasn’t so weak and was more hardcore I would copy this guy - the so-called Mr. Christmas.


Beauty


Fine


There’s no satisfying some people. “Oooh, beauty won’t make you happy”. Well, cosmetic surgeons across the world, and their newly beautiful patients, beg to differ.
Being beautiful opens doors for you - literally. Angelina Jolie approaches a building and suddenly everybody’s an obliging doorman. Gary Coleman comes along and in a flash the building has reached “Maximum Occupancy”. A more pertinent though (slightly controversial) example would be Angelina comes calling to adopt a baby, no problems. Madonna comes calling and well…
When you look good, things are so much easier. People instantly want to be your friend (even if they secretly resent you), directors want to cast you in their movies (even if you can’t act), and people of the opposite sex choose to see past your glaring emotional problems and focus on your perfect cheekbones (or your pillows as the case may be).


Not going to work 

People who don’t work often moan that they are bored of staying home all day, watching daytime TV, and long to get back to the daily grind. Do not use these people as your example. They are poor and so have to work. What they are actually saying is: “aghh I hate being at home, eating into all of my savings, updating my Facebook status and drinking coffee - when I could be paid to update my Facebook status and drink coffee at a place of employment”. Now this situation is completely different if you are rich - because you will be updating your Facebook status from the beach.


Money

 

Bling bling



We know two things for certain about people who say that money will not bring you happiness:
1) They don’t have much money;
2) If they do have money, they really don’t know how to spend it.
I’ll put it to you this way - would you rather live in a hut with leaves for a roof and a bucket for a latrine, brushing your teeth with twigs whilst subsisting on a diet of rocks? Or, would you rather live in a mansion with a gold roof and a diamond studded toilet that uses vintage 1907 Heidsieck champagne instead of water, whilst indulging in steak and ice cream? Ergo a diamond studded toilet will make you very happy. More so if you are a girl - according to the saying.

The Top 10 Things We're Glad the Recession Killed

With the near constant barrage of unemployment statistics, budget deficits, and bankruptcy announcements, it’s easy to get swept up in all the doomsday rhetoric surrounding the recession. But not all the effects of the economic downtown are bad. Some of them are actually a cause for celebration.

10. The Five Dollar Cup of Coffee


It doesn't take an economics degree to see that the overpriced coffee craze was getting out of control. When the fake money ran out, so did people's desire to fork over more money for a cup of java than a gallon of gasoline, as indicated by the situation Starbucks finds itself in as of late.

9. Junk Mail


Advertisers like to refer to junk mail as "direct mail" but we know better, because this crap is completely useless on the vast, vast majority of the populace. So when money gets tight, advertisers cut back on their direct mailing to save money. Hey ad guys, here's a pro tip: Stop sending useless crap to people who don't want it to achieve maximum savings!

8. Celebutaunt Culture


Back in the carefree days of the early 21st century when tons of credit was readily available, living beyond our means was hip, and being slutty was not only acceptable, but embraced, with "celebutaunts" like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie heralded as the pinnacle of pop culture. Thankfully, the dose of economic reality handed to us recently proved once and for all that your dog does not need its own jewelry.

7. Useless Junk Stores


Another by-product of a society with too much money on its hands is the "Useless Gadget/WTF is This??" store. Places whose entire purpose is to sell you things you never knew you needed.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when the extra money dried up, people came to the realization that they didn't actually need an iPod dock in their shower, and places like the Sharper Image took a nosedive.

6. Cribs-style TV Shows


Can't say I'll miss these types of programs, either. These shows were the apex of the worst aspects of "bling" pop culture -- a trend founded on an obsession for consumerism and vanity. The purpose of each episode was to show the viewer how much better famous people lived than mere commoners.

These shows seemed to have been designed to create a sense of jealously and want in those viewers so they'd go out and spend more money on things they didn't need so they could pretend they were also famous rap stars. Guess it's tough to get people excited about glamour when their house is getting foreclosed on. Funny thing is, all that expensive crap we saw wasn't even theirs.

Production of Cribs ended over a year ago, and we can only hope that other shows of this ilk will soon follow suit. 

5. Hummers


More than any other large SUV on the market, Hummer took a real hit from the economic turmoil of the last few years--so much so that GM has been desperately trying to sell off the brand, but even that is proving difficult.

The "go green" trend that's been sweeping the nation lately also isn't doing those gussied-up Chevy Suburbans any favors either, so it looks like Hummer just might be headed straight to the junkyard very soon.

4. Crazy Gas Prices


Was it only a year ago that a gallon of regular gas cost upwards of four-and-a-half bucks a gallon in California? A lot can happen in a year. Like the near-total collapse of the global economic infrastructure! As much as oil companies like to say that demand dictates the price and that the speculators in the stock market were also to blame, we all know that was almost entirely B.S.

When people ran out of money they could spend on overpriced gas and oil company executives watched their profits go from record-breaking to practically nothing overnight, gas prices were magically sliced in half. Did everyone you know stop driving their cars or even reduce to half as much as they did last summer? Didn't think so.

3. Ridiculous Housing Costs


When a fifty-year-old, three-bedroom shack located in a bad neighborhood in Los Angeles is valued at over $1,000,000, something is obviously really friggin' wrong. And when mortgage prices go up, so does the price to rent those properties.

So now that pretty much all real estate across the country has lost nearly a third of its value over the last two years, some of us can go back to fantasizing about someday actually owning a home.

2. Bling

I'll put it simply: Bling makes me angry. It is the epitome of the "OMG I have too much money and I must buy shiny things" mentality. A culture of excess that champions the largest amount of misuse. A trend founded on wasting money on things which literally serve no purpose whatsoever. Bling, I am glad to see you go. Your spinners are stupid, your jewelry is gaudy, and your precious metal teeth make you look like a loser.

1. The Perception of Total Unaccountability


Before the financial apocalypse, CEOs were faceless entities in ivory towers who we never heard from unless they were barking orders to us from megaphones. If things went wrong, the buck got passed and passed until nobody knew where the buck was or what it represented anymore.

While we're still a long way from full corporate accountability, it's nice to see at least a few major players had their feet held to the fire. If nothing else, it serves as a warning to the rest of the racquetball club that the next person on the hit list might be them, so it might be time to go back and work on that fatally flawed business plan, rather than expecting the taxpayers to foot the bill.

One can hope, anyway.

The 10 Worst Lunch Boxes Ever

Every kid knew it: lunchboxes meant something. And it wasn't just that you were a fan of whatever it was that you sported on your lunchtime luggage. It was your proclamation of identity. A window into your third-grade, paste-eating soul.

So the question was this: with what are you aligning yourself? Star Wars? Marvel Comics? Dukes of Hazzard? Care Bears? Muppets? Pele? They all made a statement -- especially the bad ones, the thoughtless ones, the downright inappropriate ones. So, here, the 10 Worst Lunchboxes Ever, and what they said about the kids who carried them.


10. Disco


What it says: "You might think this is a lame lunchbox now, but just wait until you're a gay kitsch-collector in the late 1990s."


9. Wags and Whiskers


What it says: ""This dog is obviously being abused, and this kitty is silently pleading you to help, help for the love of god. But you can't, because it's my lunchbox." 


8. Junior Nurse


What it says: "I'm either very into entering the medical profession someday, or I really like playing doctor. Want to meet me behind the gym after school to find out which?" 


7. Laugh-In 



What it says: "Hey, here's a show my parents watch that I don't understand! Because I'm six." 


6. Pro Sports/Campus Queen 



What they say: "My mom has no clue what I actually like, but thinks that this looks like a generic idea of what I might enjoy based on clichéd gender roles and utilizing an early crude form of clip art."



5. Rambo 



What it says: "Nothing is over! Nothing! Well, except maybe that point in my childhood where it's still appropriate for me to still be carrying a lunchbox."


4. Bee Gees



What it says: "What I really wanted was a DISCO lunchbox." 


3. Exciting World of Metrics



What it says: "I don't get nearly enough math in class, so I enjoy looking at the same conversion-facts all through my lunch hour, too. It's also fun to count the number of punches I get each day, multiply that by the number of Indian burns, titty twisters, and swirlies I receive, and then tabulate just exactly how much my life sucks on the metric scale."


2. Hi!



What it says: "Hi! I'll give you an apple if you'll touch my belt."



1. Blank 


What it says: "My mom hates me."

7 Next-Gen Bandages That Help Heal Wounds

In the halls of Capitol Hill, a rancorous battle rages over how to deliver better healthcare to the public. But in the nation's biotechnology labs—and in a few overseas—scientists and engineers are staging a quieter revolution in basic patient care. In recent years, interdisciplinary teams of nanoscientists, engineers and surgeons have revolutionized the way we treat some of our most basic injuries—cuts, scrapes and wounds. Their work has lead to wound dressings that dramatically speed clotting, prevent scar formation or encourage healing, as well as new interventions that don't look anything like your childhood Band-Aids. In many cases, the new bandages look deceptively low-tech. Some of them are already in use, but the incredible new technologies may not even be visible to the patients who wear them.

ChitoGauze
 

HemCon Medical Technologies manufactures bandages and wound dressings that harness the power of the sea. The company's products use chitosan, a biopolymer made from a component in the exoskeletons of crab, shrimp and other crustacean exoskeletons. The positively charged chitosan attracts the negatively charged outer membranes of red blood cells; when the two come into contact, localized clotting occurs. HemCon's chitosan-coated bandages are already in use in Iraq; its latest product is ChitoGauze.

Gecko Bandage
 

The ability of geckos to scale vertical surfaces comes from the special topography of their feet: nano-size hairs gives their feet an adhesive property. Robert Langer, Jeffrey M. Karp and their colleagues at MIT created a gecko-inspired bandage, covered with synthetic versions of these hairs. The bandage can stick to wet surfaces—like the heart itself—and it biodegrades over time, meaning that surgeons can use it to help repair internal injuries.

QuikClot

The family of QuikClot products make use of kaolin clay, a natural blood-clotter. The tiny particles of aluminosilicate contained in the clay have been known for decades to trigger the body's clotting cascade. Bandages coated with these particles, made by Z-Medica Corporation, have already been used successfully on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan as well by law-enforcement and disaster-preparedness teams in the U.S. The newest product in the family, QuikClot Emergency Dressing, is designed to be used in hospitals and for everyday injuries.

Ultrasound Device

 

Forget bandages—make way for sound. George Lewis, a graduate student in biomedical engineering at Cornell University, developed a pocket-size machine that administers high-energy ultrasound waves. The waves are powerful enough that they can cauterize an open wound and stop it from bleeding—the tool's inventor foresees military medics and EMTs carrying the cell-phone-size devices in their pockets, allowing them to treat severe bleeds in the field.

Scaffold Bandage
 


Scientists at the University of Sheffield have created a superfine, biodegradable bandage that acts as a skin farm over the wound. Doctors take a biopsy of patients' skin cells, which are attached to the scaffold before the dressing is applied over a wound. The skin cells multiply and grow over the scaffold, which eventually dissolves and leaves the patient's own cells in its stead.

Electric Bandage
 


Cut won't heal? Electrocute it. Research has shown that the skin's own microcurrents play an important role in wound healing. Clinical trials have now shown that a bandage that distributes mild electrical current across the surface of a wound significantly speeds healing—even for wounds that have proved resistant to other treatments. The surface of the bandage, a product of biotechnology company Vomaris, is covered in microbatteries which are inert when dry. Wetting the bandage activates the circuit, and small currents are applied over the surface of the wound.

Self-Assembling Gel
 


University of Delaware researchers Joel Schneider and Darrin Pochan have patented a novel hydrogel composed of self-assembling peptides; when the gel is injected into a wound, it becomes rigid. But because it remains porous, the researchers hope it will be able to deliver drugs or regenerative cells into a wound. (Recent research from their labs reveals that living cells can, indeed, be encapsulated in this gel and successfully delivered into a wound.) The gels also have antimicrobial properties.

Top 10 Bizarre Cultural Disorders

Cultural disorders (culture-bound syndromes) are mental disorders or quirks which seem to affect a single cultural group and are, therefore, often unknown outside of their own regions. 

Koro

Koro is a psychological disorder characterized by delusions of penis shrinkage and retraction into the body, accompanied by panic and fear of dying. This delusion is rooted in Chinese metaphysics and cultural practices. The disorder is associated with the belief that unhealthy or abnormal sexual acts (such as sex with prostitutes, masturbation, or even nocturnal emissions) disturb the yin/yang equilibrium which allegedly exists when a husband has sex with his wife, i.e., during “normal intercourse.” Koro is also thought to be transmitted through food. In 1967, there was a koro epidemic in Singapore after newspapers reported cases of koro due to eating pork which came from a pig that had been inoculated against swine fever. Not only did pork sales go down, but hundreds of koro cases followed. 

Windigo



Wendigo Psychosis is a mental disorder in which a person intensely craves human flesh and thinks they are turning into a cannibal (despite an abundance of healthy food available). The most common response amongst the aboriginal communities in which wendigo psychosis was most prevalent, was curing attempts by traditional native healers or Western doctors. In the unusual cases when these attempts failed, and the Wendigo sufferer began either to threaten those around them or to act violently or anti-socially, they were then generally executed. While some have denied the existence of this disorder, there are a number of credible eyewitness accounts, both by aboriginal communities and by Westerners, that prove that Wendigo psychosis is a factual historical phenomenon.

Gururumba



Gururumba is a “wild man” episode in which the suffer (typically a married male) begins by burglarizing neighboring homes – taking objects that he thinks are valuable but which seldom are. He then runs to the forrest for a number of days returning without the objects and with a case of amnesia. The sufferer appears hyperactive and clumsy with slurred speech. This disorder is specific to New Guinea.

Saora Disorder



Among the Saora tribe of Orissa State in India, young men and women sometimes exhibit abnormal behavior patterns that western trained mental health specialists would likely define as a mental disorder. They cry and laugh at inappropriate times, have memory loss, pass out, and claim to experience the sensation of being repeatedly bitten by ants when no ants are present. These individuals are usually teenagers or young adults who are not attracted to the ordinary life of a subsistence farmer. They are under considerable psychological stress from social pressure placed on them by their relatives and friends. The Saora explain the odd behavior of these people as being due to the actions of supernatural beings who want to marry them. 

Berserkers



This fury affecting the Norsemen, which was called berserkergang, occurred not only in the heat of battle, but also during laborious work. Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed impossible for human power. This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and chill in the body, and then the face swelled and changed its color. With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe. When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness followed, which could last for one or several days.

Shenkui



A sufferer of shenkui (a Chinese culture-bound syndrome) shows marked anxiety or panic symptoms with accompanying somatic complaints for which no physical cause can be demonstrated. Symptoms include dizziness, backache, fatiguability, general weakness, insomnia, frequent dreams, and complaints of sexual dysfunction (such as premature ejaculation and impotence). Symptoms are attributed to excessive semen loss from frequent intercourse, masturbation, nocturnal emission, or passing of “white turbid urine” believed to contain semen. Excessive semen loss is feared because it represents the loss of one’s vital essence and can thereby be life threatening.

Ghost Sickness



Ghost sickness is a culture-bound syndrome which some Native American tribes believe to be caused by association with the dead or dying. It is sometimes associated with witchcraft. It is considered to be a psychotic disorder of Navajo origin. Its symptoms include general weakness, loss of appetite, a feeling of suffocation, recurring nightmares, and a pervasive feeling of terror. A symptom of “ghost sickness” is suffocation. This may be associated with a coffin. If you were buried alive with a loved one or friend below ground, you may feel as if you were suffocating. The sickness is attributed to ghosts (chindi) or, occasionally, to witches.

Grisi siknis



Grisi siknis (”crazy sickness”) is a contagious, culture-bound syndrome that occurs predominantly among the Miskito People of eastern Central America and affects mainly young women. Most of the victims are young girls from 15 to 18 years old. The attacks are prefaced by headaches, dizziness, anxiety, nausea, irrational anger and/or fear. During the attack, the “victim loses consciousness” and falls to the ground, subsequently running away. The victim may view other people as devils, feel no pain for bodily injuries and have absolute amnesia regarding their physical circumstances. Some grab machetes or broken bottles to wave off unseen assailants. Other victims are reported to have performed superhuman feats, vomited strange objects such as spiders, hair and coins and spoken in tongues. In some cases the semi-conscious victim will speak the names of the next to be infected, although it is not always accurate. Grisi siknis is highly contagious.

Couvade Syndrome



Couvade syndrome is a medical/mental condition which “involves a father experiencing some of the behavior of his wife at near the time of childbirth, including her birth pains, postpartum seclusion, food restrictions, and sex taboos”. The term originally referred to the medieval Basque custom in which the father, during or immediately after the birth of a child, took to bed, complained of having labour pains, and was accorded the treatment usually shown women during pregnancy or after childbirth. In some extreme cases, fathers can grow a belly similar to a 7-month pregnant woman and gain approximately 25 to 30 pounds (”phantom pregnancy”). Other symptoms include and are not limited to developed cravings, suffered nausea, breast augmentation, and insomnia.


Homosexual Panic



Homosexual panic is a term, first coined by psychiatrist Edward J. Kempf in 1920, describing an acute, brief reactive psychosis involving delusions and hallucinations accusing a person of various homosexual activities. The condition most often occurs in people who suffer schizoid personality disorders who have insulated themselves from physical intimacy. Breakdowns often occur in situations that involve enforced intimacy with the same sex, such as dormitories or military barracks. It was most common during the mass mobilization of World War II when barracks typically provided little privacy with communal showers and often without doors or even cubicles around toilets. Treatment usually involves hospitalization, firstly to remove the person from the situation and also because the condition may lead to suicidal or homicidal acts. Usually members of the opposite sex are selected to treat those suffering from the disorder, and invasive procedures such as injections with needles or suppositories are avoided.

The History Of Coiffure In The XVIII Century

How long does it usually take you to make a hairstyle? I doubt that’s more than 10 minutes in the morning, actually it
takes me around two minutes to make something on my head since my hear is really short. Can you imagine yourself or your friend making you a hairdo from the early morning till very evening before going to the club? Believe me or not, but there were times when this was a reality. And can you imagine that all the other women around have the same hairstyle? Same length of the hair? Same color of the hair? Sounds like hell right, but if you were in the court in the earlier days you would have to keep to the strong rules of the court etiquette.

The history of the coiffures of the XVIII century is amazing. The XVIII century is considered to be “a century of women”. That’s the time of sophistication, mannerism, simplicity and unimaginable complex coiffures at the same time. Hair has always been a reflection of general trends in fashion and Rococo style defines the accents in the XVIII century.

The history of the women hairstyle of the 18th century can be divided into several stages. Till 1713 the aristocratic ladies were still wearing the fontage which form and look by itself was a piece of art.

The new era in headdresses began in 1713, at a ceremonial reception at Versailles, when a Duchess of Shrewsbury appeared before Louis XIV without a fontage with the smooth and slightly curly hair decorated with lace and flowers. Louis liked that, and since he was the leader of European fashion at that time it was a command for the court to follow this new trend in hairstyles. This seeming simplicity became a major fashion tendency of Rococo century.

All the ladies from the paintings by Watteau, Boucher, Patera, de Troyes, Chardin of this time have simple and modest yet graceful coiffures, no matter whether this is a luxury marquise de Pompadour, virtuous Maria Theresia or young Fike of Tserbsta. Just listen to the names of the hair cuts: «Butterfly», «sentimental», «secret», «mollycoddle».

However somewhere from mid 70-ies the hairstyle started “growing up” again. It emerged into a complex structure and was was as high and unimaginable as ever before. Ingenious women used almost everything they could find to make their headdress ,including most popular belts, jewelry, fabrics, flowers, fruit. Of course, their own hair was not enough to make such a piece of art and they used the hair of their servants and even the horse’s mane.

After becoming a Queen Marie Antoinette spent most of the time inventing new hairstyles and clothes. Her personal hairdresser Léonard was bringing all her fantasies into life. Joint work of a hairdresser and the Queen gave the world such masterpieces as «explosion sensitivity», «concupiscent», «secret passion» (just compare with pale «mollycoddle» or modest «butterfly»).

The most stylish womеn managed to wear stuffed birds, statues and even a mini-gardens with tiny artificial tree on their heads. The well known and beloved A-la Belle Poule hair model with the famous frigate also belongs to this time. Such a design could take the whole day and coiffure itself could be weared for several days and sometimes even a week. Not speaking about the fact that it was impossible to sleep, such hairdresses were homes for lots of insects and it was allowed to scratch the head with a special stick.

Over time in the beginning of the 80-ies the bulky and fussy hair models become much more modest. The fashion for the «sails» and «vases» disappears. Only tape and muslin fabric are now being used by fashion-mongers, though the hair models still look pompous.

French revolution has changed it all. New hair cuts were on scene now.

The Biggest Earth’s “Mirror”

 Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is a place people don’t just visit. Rather, they inhale its vastness and colours with every fibre of their being. Salar de Uyuni is a place of superlatives – the world’s largest salt flat, world’s biggest reserve of lithium, the best place on Earth to callibrate satellites – in short: a visual miracle and mirror to the sky. 

Salar de Uyuni is located in Bolivia’s southwestern regions of Oruno and Potosi, near the peak of the Andes at an altitude of 3,650 m. More than 40,000 years ago, the area was part of the giant prehistoric Lake Minchin that has since dried out, leaving behind the two lakes, Poopo and Uru Uru, and the two salt deserts, Salar de Coipasa and Salar de Uyuni. The latter is the larger of the two and at 10,582 sq km (4,085 sq miles) is around 25 times the size of Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats.

Visitors grappling with the vastness of the place and the high altitude are in for a special treat during the rainy season in the winter: The whole desert turns into a shallow pool with a smooth surface, a gigantic mirror in other words.





Considering Salar de Uyuni’s remoteness, it is quite a popular place, and not only with tourists. Miners working in Salar produce a whopping 25,000 tons of salt every year; still a drop in the bucket compared to the overall reserves of 10 billion tons of salt that Salar de Uyuni has to offer.

Salt is harvested the traditional way in Salar de Uyuni: The salt is piled up into small mounds so that the water can evaporate, then it is dried over fire and finally enriched with iodine before it is brought elsewhere for packaging.


Salar de Uyuni also holds half of the world’s reserves of lithium, used to make high-energy density lithium batteries, an untapped resource so far. Let’s just hope that once a mining plant is built, it won’t interfere too much with the magic of Salar de Uyuni.

As is not hard to imagine, Salar de Uyuni provides an excellent target surface for testing and calibration for satellites, or more specifically their remote sensing instruments. The clear skies, dry air, minimal elevation deviation, large, smooth surface and high surface reflectivity during the rainy season make Salar de Uyuni five times better geared for satellite calibration than the ocean’s surface.


Once a year, in November, Salar de Uyuni becomes the breeding ground for three South American flamingo species: the Chilean, James’s and Andean flamingoes. The flamingoes feast on the microbes attracted by mineral and potassium deposits that crust the shallow salt lake like a ring of snow. Says Molly Beer who experienced all of Salar de Uyuni’s highlights during a recent tour:

“The landscape was ever-changing and never expected: the water and the rocks first were red, and then turquoise and green with minerals and microbes. The creatures we came across were unearthly, let alone unlikely in their barren, windswept habitats.”

Elemental ‘Earth Art’ : 15 Epic Landscape Formations

From alluvial fans and massive holes, the sheer scale and splendor of certain magnificent land formations is difficult to capture in words or even images. Here are some of the most profound, stunning and awe-inspiring examples of ‘natural art’ in the world.

Cathedral Caves, New Zealand




The magnificent Cathedral Caves are found in Catlins, New Zealand on the South Island. Featuring two massive caves with distinctive narrow, tall openings, tourists enjoy exploring them from the broad, sandy beach of Catlins. The two caves are actually one cave, so you can enter through the first and exit from the second. Because the caves are in these towering beach bluffs, they can only be accessed for two hours at low tide.

Alluvial Fan, China

This stunning alluvial fan sprays across the Kunlun and Altun mountain ranges, which are located at the Southern end of China’s Taklimakan Desert. Alluvial fans are defined as soft, relatively flat, gently sloping planes of loose rock and sediment, comonly found in mountains and deposited by water. This is one of the largest in the world.

Mt. St. Helens, Oregon, United States

This volcanic mountain of St. Helens, part of the Cascade Mountain range that runs through the Pacific Northwest into Canada, is famous for its violent explosion in May of 1980 that devastated the region and sent a cloud of ash and debris around the world. Over 200 square miles of forestland were flattened and turned to ash. A new lava dome has continually grown in the decades since, and with steam escaping daily and mild tremors, scientists keep a close eye on it. As you can see from the lower right image, the land has gradually begun to rebound, with light vegetation and animals beginning to return – until the next eruption.

Brandberg Massif, Africa


Like a giant, knobby mesa, the Brandberg Massif rises out of the Namib Desert in Namibia, Africa. This granite intrusion is riddled with caves full of art and is home to many unusual plants and animals that flourish in the hot, dry environment.

Shoemaker Impact Structure, Australia



Hundreds of millions of years ago – between 1000 and 600, scientists estimate – a meteor crashed into Australia and created this 30km wide basin formerly known as the Teague Ring (it was renamed after a renowned USGS scientist named Eugene Shoemaker). It is arid and harsh, full of dry lakebeds and encrusted with salt.

Great Barrier Reef, Australia


The iconic, massive and complex Great Barrier Reef is just as beautiful from the aerial view as when one is swimming near it. Home to an incredibly diverse array of sharks, fish, plants, coral and other marine wildlife, the Barrier Reef stretches over 2,600km in the Coral Sea off the coast of Australia. It’s the largest reef system in the world, with 900 islands and 2,900 coral reefs. Like the Great Wall of China, this unique structure is one of the few structures made by organisms (in this case coral, not people) that is visible from space.

Grand Canyon, Arizona, United States


Images via Rick Searfoss, Steven Pinker and Cedar City Tourism Bureau

The famous Grand Canyon is one of the most beautiful examples of earth art. Carved over the course of 6 million years by the waters of the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, 4 to 18 miles wide and in places over a mile deep. The steep-sided gorge was once populated by Native Americans and artifacts of up to 12,000 years in age have been found. The Grand Canyon was one of the first lands to be preserved and made a national park .



African Richat



This unique structure in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania can be seen from space. It is 50 miles wide and rather unusual for the fairly featureless Sahara. Though people often refer to it as an impact structure, it’s actually the natural result of hundreds of thousands of years of erosion. Formed from layers of sedimentary rock, fierce winds and shifting sand dunes have worn away at the material, leaving a crater impression behind. It is also known as the Eye of Africa.



Namib Sand Dunes, Namibia


The Namib Sand Dunes are part of the Namib Desert, which is Africa’s 2nd largest desert after the Sahara. The desert is famous for these massive and eternally shifting sand dunes, which are larger than any others on earth and can reach up to 1,000 feet in height. One of the oldest deserts on earth, Namib is home to unusual plant and animal species that can survive the incredibly harsh, arid conditions.

Alien Boulders?


Of course no earth art series would be complete without the requisite conspiracy theory. Rock outcrops and unusual formations that seem difficult to explain away through natural phenomena are popularly held up as proof of aliens, unknown civilizations, government conspiracies and more. Usually, these rock structures – such as the ones shown here, in Oklahoma and West Virginia – can in fact be explained by geological history and even weather, intentional in design as they may appear to be.

Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland


Case in point: Giant’s Causeway. Though it certainly looks chiseled and hewn, this incredible rock bridge is completely natural. 40,000 interlocking basalt columns which are mostly hexagonal. These basalt rocks were formed when molten lava was pushed through cracked chalk beds. As the lava cooled, the liquid basalt contracted into the distinctive shapes that are so famous.



Barringer Meteorite Crater, Arizona, United States


The Barringer Meteorite Crater in Arizona was formed 50,000 years ago when a meteorite impacted land in what is now Arizona. Basically a giant hole, the Meteorite Crater (or Meteor Crater) has 150 rims with stones the size of houses and spans a mile. It’s also 570 feet deep. Remnants of meteoric iron are scattered around the crater for miles.



The Green Bridge of Wales


The Green Bridge of Wales, in Pembrokeshire, was formed through the natural erosion of limestone, of which the arch is made. It’s the largest natural arch in Wales and one of the biggest in the world, to boot. Due to coastal erosion and waves, eventually it will collapse.



Alum Bay, Isle of Wight

The gorgeous waters of Alum Bay off the Isle of Wight are distinctive enough, but the special exhibit on display here is the cliffs. Seen at certain times of day, particularly sunset, the cliffs deceive the eye and appear to be striped in diverse bright colors. In truth the cliff sands do vary in color noticeably, but certain shadows and angles heighten the difference into a dramatic display.

The Himalayas, Asia

The Himalayas, which separate the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau in Asia, are the largest mountains in the world. Mt. Everest, the tallest peak on earth, is found in this astonishing mountain range of icy, jagged peaks and soaring ridges. (Over 100 of the range’s mountains are higher than 7,200m.) The range is over 2,400km long, and its water basin supports 1.3 billion people.

Civil Rights: Pivotal Events

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
A black student, Nathaniel Steward, 17, recites a lesson surrounded by white and black students in May, 1954, at the Saint-Dominique school in Washington, DC, where for the first time in the United States the landmark Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation in state schools is applied.

The Murder of Emmett Till
Two white men in Money, Mississippi, were accused of kidnapping, torturing, and killing Till because the 14-year-old from Chicago had allegedly whistled at one of their wives.

Emmett Till's Killers Celebrate Their Acquittal
Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam celebrate their acquittal in the Emmett Till murder trial, September, 1955. The jury delibrated 67 minutes. "If we hadn't stopped to drink pop, it wouldn't have taken that long," a juror said. One year later, Bryant and Milam admit to Look magazine that they had, in fact, murdered Till. The savage killing shocked much (but hardly all) of the nation and garnered attention around the world.

Mamie Bradley, Till's Mother, Addresses Anti-Lynching Crowd
Mamie Bradley's insistence on showing the media the mutilated body of her son at his open-casket funeral led to nationwide outrage over the 1955 case and helped spark the civil rights movement.

Montgomery Bus Boycott
A Montgomery, Ala., bus is nearly empty during a black boycott of bus companies in 1956. Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat to a white man led to the boycott and a Supreme Court victory.

Elizabeth Eckford Turned Away From Little Rock Central High School
Elizabeth Eckford is turned away from Central High School by Arkansas National Guardsmen, 1957. President Eisenhower later sent the U.S. Army to escort Eckford and other black students to school.

Lunch-Counter Sit-In Volunteers Prepare for Trouble
Sit-in volunteers train for what they may face, 1960. Inspired by a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's counter in North Carolina, blacks across the South began similar protests.

Freedom Riders 
Freedom Riders are protected by the National Guard on a bus from Alabama to Mississippi, 1961. Freedom Riders tested whether states would obey a Supreme Court ruling desegregating interstate buses.

Riots in Montgomery Over Freedom Riders
A mob of 3,000 whites riots outside the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, setting fire to a car and attacking the church -- in which Freedom Riders wait for help from police or state troopers -- with rocks and tear gas.

Mississippians Greet Freedom Riders
A Freedom Rider bus gets a 1961 Mississippi welcome: Rocks, jeers, threats, and eptihets.

James Meredith Registers at University of Mississippi
Escorted by two U.S. Marshals, James Meredith registers for entry at the University of Mississippi, 1962. His enrollment sparked riots that left two dead and required federal troops to intervene.

Medgar Evers's Family Mourns at His Funeral
Myrlie Evers consoles her son Darryl Kenyatta at the funeral of her husband, civil rights activist Medgar Evers, in 1963 Mississippi. Evers's killer was not convicted until 1994.

'I Have a Dream' Speech
A young woman marches at the Lincoln Memorial, Aug. 28, 1963. It was there that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech.

'I Have a Dream': The Speech
The final words of MLK's now-legendary speech ran thus: "When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"

Civil-Rights Fighters Go Missing in Mississippi
A 1964 FBI poster seeks information on missing civil-rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner. The men were murdered by the KKK in Mississippi for registering blacks to vote.

The Nobel Peace Prize, 1964
Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King in Oslo, Sweden, in 1964, when the civil rights leader received the Nobel Peace Prize.

1964 Civil Rights Act
Lyndon B. Johnson shakes hands with Martin Luther King Jr. at the signing of the Civil Rights Act, 1964. It "will not only cost you the South, it will cost you the election," Georgia Sen. Richard Russell told LBJ.

From Selma to Montgomery
Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King, and thousands more march from Selma, Ala., to the state capital in Montgomery demanding civil rights, 1965. That August, the president signed the Voting Rights Act.

Voting Rights Act
President Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. discuss the Voting Rights Act, 1965. The act forbade states from disqualifying voters based on race or color, and increased the feds' role in safeguarding the franchise.

The Lovings Celebrate Their Supreme Court Victory
Mildred and Richard Loving embrace after the Supreme Court rules they can be legally married, 1967. Afterward, anti-miscegenation laws across the country began to be struck down.

Martin Luther King, Jr, Assassinated
Members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference sit in Martin Luther King Jr.'s room at the Lorraine Motel in Mephis, Tennessee, shortly after King's assassination, April 4, 1968.

Aftermath
Martin Luther King Jr. lies in state in Memphis, Tenn., 1968. King's death by an assassin's bullet sparked riots in 60 cities. James Earl Ray pled guilty to murder, but conspiracy theories about King's death persist.

The Riots
A federal trooper stands on guard during riots after the assasination of Martin Luther King, Washington D.C., April 6, 1968. Rioters came to within two blocks of the White House and devastated the city.

6 Weird Alcoholic Drinks from Around the World

So, you’re sick of drinking boring old beer and wine every day? You feel like trying something completely new and exciting? Well, you’ll have a tough time finding more interesting drinks than the six crazy concoctions you’re about to discover:

Chicha


One of the oldest beverages on Earth, Chica is a maize-derived drink prepared in several South-American countries. Discoveries show Chicha has been consumed for thousands of years, since the time of the Inca, but, nowadays its popularity had decreased considerably and only a few villages in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica still prepare it.

Traditional Chicha-makers grind the maize and then chew it to moisturize it. After the human saliva breaks down the starch, the balls of chewed maze are put in large clay vats and warm water is added. After several days of fermentation, Chicha is ready to be consumed. With just 1-3% alcohol, Chicha is not the strongest drink you can try.

Kumis


Very popular among the people living in the plains of Central Asia, Kumis is a fermented drink made from mare’s milk. Described by Herodotus in the 5th century BC, Kumis, just like Chicha, is very old.

To make this unusual dairy product, mare milk is fermented for hours or days, while stirred so it doesn’t coagulate. Traditionally, the mare’s milk was kept in a horse-hide tied to the saddle and bounced around for a day’s ride. Nowadays it is made in wooden vats and, because mare milk is scarce, industrial-producers use cow milk with added sucrose. Kumis is not a very potent drink, containing between 0.7 and 2.5% alcohol.


Lizard Wine


It might sound repulsing, but lizard wine is a very popular drink in China. It’s prepared by adding ginseng and Geko lizards into a clay vat, full of fermenting rice wine. After 12 months, the mixture is strained and green liquor is obtained.

Lizard wine tastes a lot like brandy and is said to improve eye-sight and ward of evil spirits.


Baby Mouse Wine


Very popular in China and Korea, baby mouse wine is a considered a cure for anything from the common cold to liver problems. Think of it as cheap remedy for people who can’t afford to visit a doctor.

Baby mouse wine is prepared by drowning a large number of baby mice in vats full of rice wine. The critters mustn’t be more than 2-3 days old, to ensure the drink ends up being fur-free. The mixture is stored in a dark, dry space for about a year before it can be consumed.

Just one or two glasses of baby mouse wine are enough to get you hammered, but because of its horrible smell and taste, most people shouldn’t have to worry about that.


Snake drinks


Just like baby mouse wine, snake liquors are considered powerful cures for a wide array of illnesses, ranging from impotence to hair loss. These drinks are found in the markets of various countries from south-east Asia.

Odd liquors like snake whiskey and snake sake, contain the most poisonous snakes, including several species of Cobra.



Seagull Wine

The weirdest and probably most disgusting drink on our list is also the simplest. Before I explain how it’s made, keep in mind that it was invented by Eskimos and they don’t really have the luxury of fermenting different types of food in order to get wasted.

Now, as I was saying, seagull wine is so simple you could make it yourself, if you wanted to. But believe me, you don’t. You take a dead seagull, stuff it into a bottle (don’t ask me how), pour water over it and leave it in the sun until it’s done fermenting. That’s it.

Don’t expect a taste similar to the finest whiskey, after all, we’re talking about a fermented seagull. But it packs quite a punch.

Amazing Optical Illusions

Moving Cogs:

Appears to be a sort of perpetual motion which is actually no the case, this illusion is creation of Mr. Shebzukhov from Moscow, Russia.

Scintillation Grid:

It comes with different names, but Scintillation Grid is probably the right name. Thanks to Elke Lingelbach of the Institut fur Augenoptik Aalen in Germany, this optical illusion is available to us. Illusion: Just count the number of black points!



The Amazing Dots:

This illusion is designed by Jeremy L. Hinton of Bristol, UK. What is the point? Just concentrate on the mark ‘X’ and you will see start seeing a green dot rotating instead of pink and then these pink dots will disappear and only green rotating dot will remain.

The science behind it is ‘Negative Retinal Afterimage’ or after image effect.


Dragon Illusion:

Getting millions of hits, this is the most wonderful illusion you will come across. Put it on a table and move around it, you see the head of the dragon move across.

Theory is that on viewing a solid object, brain figures out how the object we are looking at will behave. But dragon gives us wrong impression or to our brain. The thing is shape of it, we misinterpret it by assuming that nose is pointed towards us but actually the head of the dragon is concave.

If you want to make your own Dragon Illusion ,watc this tutorial video:

Square:

The letter ‘X’ seems to be made of different shades of colur actually it is not. It is made of single colur and can you guess which colur is that?

Natural Hallucinogen:

Watch the video, keep staring at the center and when instructed look sideways……

Pin Wheel Illusion:

Everything is given in the video, just play it:

Cafe Wall Illusion:

Appearing to be a chess board like, this classical illusion was first observed by Dr. Richard Gregory.

So is it what you thought: Parallel horizontal lines appears to bend.
Watermelons Illusion:

Not much of an illusion but still an illusion.

Color Perception:

This is the best example of how our perception of color changes by the colors surrounding it. It becomes impossible to differentiate between two identical colors if placed on different backgrounds.

Mona Lisa Illusion:

Two most famous paintings in the world placed up side down. Can you tell the difference?

If you spin the image right way up, you find that one of Mona Lisa looks ghastly. The reason is that your mind is not used to looking pitures up side down, thats why it could not diffrentiate between two pictures.
Motion Induced Blindness:

Similar to Amazing Dots Illusion, the rotation square behind the dots do all the trick. Focus on the pulsating circle in the center and rest of the circles disappear, in reality they are always present. Watch the video:

Motion Induced Blindness - For more funny movies, click here

IN WHICH DIRECTION IS THE TRAIN MOVING ?

Came across this Illusion on Mighty Optical Illusions (http://www.moillusions.com/), on the first sight it looks a piece of trash but when you see the wheels of the train as mentioned by the author, you find that the train is moving to the left also, although at first glance you saw the train moving towards right.Author didn’t gave the explanation, but in my opinion it is some how related to the moving wheel illusion where your brain gives you different results when you focus on different parts of the object.


CHROMATIC ADAPTATION

Fix your gaze on the yellow blue portion for 30 seconds and after wards scroll down and see the image of the sea plane.


You will observe that image of the seaplane seems to be uniform. This is explained by chromatic adaptation.

Consider the example of a dark room, when you enter it you don’t see anything but after sometime your eyes adjust to the level of light and you are able to see a little bit. This allows our eyes to recover from an oversensitivity to a particular stimuli. This adjustment to particular stimuli is called Chromatic Adaptation.
FOCUS AND DISAPPEAR

If you stare at one of the three dots for a while, the other two appear to disappear.

IMMEDIATE CONTRAST EFFECT

The circles inside the cyan square appear to be reddish, while they are the same color as the ones to the right.

ROTATING DISCS

The disks appear to rotate because the concentric gray circles give the impression off spirals.

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