Friday, November 7, 2014

China opens record breaking 4,000 ft long bridge

This is a stunning bridge.  It epitomises what the Chinese are doing these days.  Michael Snyder's article emphasises their skills, dedication and determination.

This is more than an eyeopener;  it's time to wake up to what is going on in the world.


Note  that the person below is 1102 feet above the ground and is sweeping the dirt off this twenty first century
Engineering marvel with a broom that was designed centuries ago.   He has no safety line.  Blasting and  coating this steel superstructure in a couple of decades  will be an interesting  project.
Aizhai  Bridge in Hunan province is 336 m (1,102 ft.) high and  has a 1,176 m (3,858 ft.) span. It connects two  traffic tunnels in the mountains, cutting the time needed to traverse the canyon from 30 minutes to 1  minute.

Construction  took five years.  Work finished at the end of last  year, making it the world's longest and highest  suspension bridge.  A  brave worker puts the final touches on the Anzhaite  Bridge .  The  bridge, which connects to two tunnels, was built to ease  traffic. 

Drivers can take in the stunning views of the Dehang Canyon.   There is a shot of people  and traffic during the  opening  ceremony.   Vehicles  motor along a two-way, four-lane motorway.  Pedestrians walk along it on a special walkway under  the road.   

  
 
 

Street Art by DALeast

DALeast is a Chinese born artist that lives and works in Capetown, South Africa. The 29-year-old, who keeps his real name a secret, has been making art since he was three. His unusual paintings, which are sometimes hundreds of feet across, looks three dimensional and appears to have been created out of thousands of tiny metal shards.

DALeast showed an interest for drawing since he was two or three. When he grew up, he studied Sculpture in the Fine Art Institute in his hometown Wuhan, but dropped out in the fourth year – one year before he was supposed to complete. DALeast was disillusioned by the conservative mind sets and teaching methods. While in his first year of study, he joined a graffiti crew called JEJ, which is one of the first generation active graffiti crews in China. The teacher hated him because he would often neglect class work, instead spending his time on the streets painting walls.


Once, just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, police broke into a house he was staying in and arrested him and his graffiti crew. They thought they were terrorists after they saw the group all night bombing and tagging.

DALeast spends six months of the year travelling and has tagged walls on nearly every continent. His works can be seen in Cape Town, Miami, New York and London's Brick Lane, as well as his native China.


The Colorful Past - BMW Museum

Looking for a car BMW's hard not to express admiration. Interesting design and impeccable quality has always been and will be hallmark of the famous German automaker. As time goes by, people's tastes are changing and, therefore, inevitable and change the car's design. At the expiration of a few decades already be hard to remember how he looked like a car. To avoid this situation, in 1972 the company Bayerische Motoren Werke was decided for the establishment of the museum BMW.


Now, visiting Munich – the capital of Bavaria, tourists rush to not only see the sculptures, fountains and traditional values, but also to touch the history of the Bavarian automaker. Ignites interest and the fact that the museum was a place near the BMW plant and central office building.


BMW Museum offers visitors the opportunity with a huge screen to try to create a dream car. Also noteworthy is the kinetic sculpture, which is a steel ball suspended from the ceiling by fishing line. When take a while, they begin to line up in the body of the car. About a thousand people annually cross the threshold of the museum, famous in addition to exhibits, and even its interesting architectural forms.


38 Museum BMW: a Colorful Past the Key to a Bright Future 47 Museum BMW: a Colorful Past the Key to a Bright Future 57 Museum BMW: a Colorful Past the Key to a Bright Future. The pride of the museum is its exhibits, including a wide variety of models of cars, motorcycles, by the way, they set aside a special room, as well as aircraft engine and different parts. Here you can meet even the famous sports car of James Bond (BMW Z3).

Friday, September 19, 2014

Our Model Of The Solar System Has Been Wrong This Entire Time!

Our Model Of The Solar System Has Been Wrong This Entire Time!


solar-systemIf you walk into any classroom today, and likely ever since you were a kid yourself , there is one model being taught regarding the structure of our Solar System.  It’s the model that looks like this:
It’s the traditional orbiting model of the Solar System, or the Heliocentric Model, where our planets rotate around the sun.
While this isn’t entirely wrong, it’s omitting one very important fact. The sun isn’t stationary. The sun is actually travelling at extremely fast speeds, upward of 828,000 km/hr, or 514,000 miles an hour.
Our whole Solar System is orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy. In fact it takes 220-Million Years for the Sun to orbit our Galaxy.
Knowing this to be true, our visual model of the Solar System needs to change, and has been inaccurate this whole time. In fact, our planets are barreling through space with the sun, and literally creating a giant Cosmic DNA Helix, and a vortex similar to our Milky Way Galaxy.
Like this but in space, creating a never ending Sine Wave.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Ice-Cream Paintings

Othman Toma, an artist from Baghdad, Iraq, has put his watercolor skills to the test by painting with a very unusual "paint"- melted ice-cream.
The ice-cream isn't too far from Toma's usual work – he usually paints with watercolors or draws with pencils. 
More info: Instagram | Facebook (h/t: ponlayookm)
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ice-cream-paintings-othman-toma-1

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Beautiful One-Handed Girl

This loving mother, Holly Spring, took up photography after her daughter had struggled early on in life with Hirschsprung's Disease and no left hand. She wants to show her daughter that there are no limits to what she can achieve if she just believes in herself.

"My daughter is my muse and my heart that inspires me to follow my passion and share these unique photos and digital art with you," says Holly.
Her photography won the NZIPP/Epson Iris Portrait Creative Photographer of the Year award in 2014.

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Unique Guinness World Records

Here's a list of the most unique world records recognized internationally, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. Until 2000, the Guinness World Records was known as the Guinness Book of Records and it is the best-selling copyrighted series of all-time. The interesting fact is that it is one of the most stolen books from public libraries in the United States.
Tommy Pastemante from the USA sets the fastest Speed on a Modified Lawnmower (61 mph).

Unique Guinness World Records
Thousands of Michael Jackson's Mexican fans have won the world record for most people to dance to the song 'Thriller' simultaneously in one place. Jamie Panas of Guinness World Records says that 13,597 people performed the dance routine on Aug. 29, which would have been Jackson's 51st birthday.
Unique Guinness World Records
The world's tallest man, Sultan Kosen from Turkey, poses for photographers next to school children at an event in London to promote the Guinness World Records 2010 book. Kosen, who is 2m 46.5cm (8ft 1in) tall, also claims the record for the largest hands and largest feet.
Unique Guinness World Records
Scott Murphy recently set a Guinness World Record for The Tightest Circumference to Roll a 12 Inch Aluminum Frying Pan by Hand in 30 Seconds - 6.87 inches. Scott Murphy accomplished this on July 30th, 2007 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Forks and Spoons Sculpture Art

From chocolate paintings to cross-stitch metal artwork, artists are always coming up with innovative ways to make art from everyday objects. Take, for instance, Gary Hovey, who uses cutlery to make awesome sculptures of animals and wildlife. To create each sculpture, Gary Hovey must cut,  weld and shape numerous stainless steel forks, spoons and knives. The finished product is an intricate, silver wildlife creature forged from flatware.

Monday, May 12, 2014

World’s Strangest & Most Unique Hotels

In this post, you will see more than 20 hotels with concepts that will make you raise an eyebrow or two. If you stay in any of these hotels, even if the trip wasn't that fun, you'd still have stories and pictures about your hotel room to take home with you. Know of anymore one-of-a-kind hotels? Comments section is yours.

Hotel Unique, Sao Paulo Brazil. In the heart of the upscale district of Jardins in São Paulo, Hotel Unique stands out amidst the sky with its sculptural architecture.
Hotel Unique, Sao Paulo Brazil
Attrap' Reves Hotel, France . Atrrap' Reves Hotels in France are actually habitable and eco-friendly plastic bubble domes built using recyclable materials to create interactivity with nature.
Attrap' Reves Hotel, France
Poseidon Undersea Resort, Fiji. If you ever fantasize about what's it like to live underwater, well at this resort in Fiji, you can do all that and more! The rooms are designed in a way to provide deep sea lovers with an endless view of the sea.
Poseidon Undersea Resort
One by the Five, France. The clever design of this one guestroom at One by the Five, creates the illusion that the bed is levitating. The bed is attached to the wall but not to the floor. Don't fall off.

Harvard Scientists May Have Just Solved One of the Biggest Environmental Issues of Our Time

Harvard Scientists May Have Just Solved One of the Biggest Environmental Issues of Our Time
  Harvard Scientists May Have Just Solved One of the Biggest Environmental Issues of Our Time Image Credit: Getty
For years, researchers have been attempting to find a viable, biodegradable alternative to plastic.

Plastic is all around us, in the containers we store our food and in the bottles we drink our beverages from. Our groceries and shopping purchases are all brought home in plastic bags, which have earned the distinction of being "the most ubiquitous consumer item in the world," according to the Guinness World Records.

That's all great, except for the fact that plastic is not a biodegradable product. It takes years for plastic to turn into smaller pieces, but it never breaks down into simple compounds that can be harmlessly reabsorbed by the environment. Instead, it becomes a dangerous pollutant, clogging up waterways, damaging the marine ecosystem and entering the food chain.

But it seems we're closer to the solution than we might think. On Monday, researchers at Harvard University's Wyss Institute announced they have created a new bioplastic based off a novel source: shrimp shells.

How it works: The main component is chitosan, a form of chitin, the second most abundant organic compound in the world. It is found in everything from crustacean shells to insect cuticles and butterfly wings.

Usually, shrimp shells would be discarded or used in fertilizers or makeup. But the Harvard researchers have been able to process these shrimp shells to create a material that is strong, transparent and renewable. They've named it "shrilk."

"There is an urgent need in many industries for sustainable materials that can be mass produced," said Wyss director Donald E. Ingber. "Our scalable manufacturing method shows that chitosan, which is readily available and inexpensive, can serve as a viable bioplastic that could potentially be used instead of conventional plastics for numerous industrial applications."

The best part is that not only does shrilk biodegrade in a matter of weeks once it's discarded, it actually releases nutrients into the environment as it breaks down. Researchers have been able to grow a plant in soil that is enriched with chitosan, demonstrating how man-made garbage can actually contribute to the environment.

Image Credit: Wikimedia
Why this is important: Plastic garbage has been a problem for decades, and it's only getting worse. Over the past decade, we have produced more plastic than in the entirety of the 20th century, and half was for single-use products such as soda cups, straws and plastic bags. We use 500 billion plastic bags alone every year.

All that junk is not going anywhere anytime soon. Most plastic trash ends up in the oceans and accumulates in gyres, which are massive whirlpools created by the current. These giant, rotating heaps of garbage cover as much as 40% of the Earth's ocean surface; the biggest one, the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is located off the coast of California and is twice the size of Texas. Researchers predict that these gyres are only going to get bigger in coming years:

Creating plastic is not very efficient, either. Almost 3% of America's total petroleum consumption is due to plastic production, as well as around 2% of total U.S. natural gas consumption. And though we have all been told to do our part and "reuse, reduce and recycle," the latter doesn't really apply to plastic; due to the way they are processed, we can only recover 5% of the plastics we produce.

Given all these difficulties, a new material like shrilk could be a true game-changer, not only in the conservation movement, but in global consumer behavior. It will be many years before something like shrilk can be mass-produced and introduced to average consumers. But given that in our lifetime, we'll never be able clean up all the plastic trash we've already produced, it's certainly the right step to find a suitable alternative — especially if it can return nutritious byproducts to the environment.

Cross-Stitch Metal Art

Lithuanian-born Severija Incirauskaite is one of those artists that makes people appreciate creativity and innovation. This talented textile artist embroiders ordinary objects like pails and spoons, transforming them from cheap metal into multi-faceted, mixed-media artwork. While Incirauskaite's methods are fairly traditional—most of our grandparents were cross-stitching before this woman was born—the finished product is anything but ordinary.
Cross-Stitch Metal Spoons
Source: Cauprotuplem
Severija Incirauskaite
Source: YNot? Blog

Cross-Stitch Metal Car
Source: YNot? Blog

Sunday, April 27, 2014

A Gorgeous Underground Beach In Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Underground Beach Puerto Vallarta
Hidden just off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico are the Marieta Islands. Years of volcanic activity and government military testing resulted in the islands' concave appearance, and a water tunnel leads visitors to its tucked away beach.

The marine environment of hidden beach Marieta Island, Puerta Vallarta has developed over several years, sans any disturbance from humans or outside nature. As a result, the marine life here is intriguing and holds a huge potential for people who love just this kind of sport. Marieta Islands are one of the best sports for snorkeling and scuba diving owing to the virgin nature of the place, along with its diversity.
The water along the hidden beach Marieta Island, Puerto Vallarta is a crystal clear blue mass of pure bliss. Of the marine wildlife available to view in the place, Humpback whale, sea turtles and dolphins are just a few of the most magnificent examples.Travelers can also enjoy a powerboat trip to thehidden beach, Marieta Island, Puerto Vallarta taking in the scenery along the way.
The Hidden Beach
The hidden beach, Marieta Islands, Puerto Vallarta is an intriguing site in its own accord. The beach remains cut off from rest of the group of islands. And for those who stumble across the place, the surprises held are immense. The beach is considered to possess an abundance of reef fish, with about 103 different species moving around in the clear blue waters of the beach. The whales can also be viewed in their magnificent glory and for some lucky travelers; they may even get to experience the 'whale- music'- unique sound made by these huge creatures just as they dive deeper into the waters.
Marieta Islands
Following winter rains, Puerto Vallarta weather remains pleasant and inviting. The rains also make the water as clear as available on any beach n the world. Accommodation comes easy and in wide range for all kinds of travelers. While the hidden beach, Marieta Isalnds, Puerto Vallarta is still hidden mostly in literal sense, rest of Puerto, Vallarta is a reasonable commercial place receiving tourists from all over the world in large numbers

10 Strange Phobias That Really Exist

Biologically speaking, developing a phobia is as easy as experiencing a traumatic event and consistently relating that event to something (often arbitrary) that was present when the event transpired. So while it's possible for someone to develop an irrational fear of almost anything, one wonders how the afflicted parties of some of the following phobias manage to successfully function in their everyday lives.

Strange Phobias: Barophobia

Strange Phobias Gravity
Source: Edu Blogs
Barophobia, or the fear of gravity, can manifest itself in a few different ways. An individual plagued with this crippling phobia is frightened that the pull of gravity will eventually crush them, or alternatively, that gravity will cease to exist and they will simply float off the face of the Earth. Strangely, a valid type of treatment for this phobia is listed as "exposure therapy". We're not sure how such a therapy would appear, exactly, but we would imagine it would look a lot like pure existence.

Geliophobia

Strange Phobias Laughing
Source: Baba Klix
Geliophobia is the fear of laughter, and can be experienced by hearing others laugh, or by one's own laughter. As with many phobias, symptoms vary in intensity – ranging from shortness of breath or rapid breathing to extreme anxiety, nausea, and uncontrollable shaking.

Caligynephobia

Strange Phobias Beautiful Women
Source: Imgur
Unlike Raj from the Big Bang Theory, who is thought to be suffering from gynephobia (the fear of all women) caligynephobia is the distinct fear of beautiful women; at least the ones the sufferer deems to be beautiful. Some have a constant fear, while others respond fearfully to more direct stimuli. We can't imagine how caligynephobiacs would fare at a Miss America pageant.

Courtney Mattison’s Intricate Porcelain Cor al Artwork

This past week, millions celebrated Earth Day 2014 by completing eco-friendly projects, planting trees and raising awareness for a number of green causes. We thought we'd add our take by featuring an artist whose love for Mother Nature has deeply impacted her work. San Francisco native Courtney Mattison has a passion for the world's oceans. An interest in marine biology and environmental science has greatly shaped her work, providing much of the inspiration and motivation to create handmade porcelain sculptures liker her three-part series titled Our Changing Seas.
Our Changing Seas III Coral Artwork
Source: Colossal
Bleached Coral Artwork
Source: Colossal
Porcelain, glazed stoneware, aluminum and plywood comprise the three exhibitions of Our Changing Seas. Mattison debuted the first, "A coral reef story," in Washington, D.C. in 2011, and followed with a 2014 exhibition in Saratoga Springs, New York. The third piece, aptly named "Our Changing Seas III," is meant to depict the destructive effects of coral reef bleaching, a whitening process that's caused by a combination of natural and man-made variations in the reef environment. Causes might include sea temperature variance, subaerial exposure or water dilution. Thankfully, their effects can often be reversed, at least up to a point.
Porcelain Coral Artwork by Courtney Mattison
Source: Colossal