Landscape Light Sculptures, Wonderfully Mysterious!

Artist Barry Underwood photographs wonderfully mysterious light installations that he installs on-site in forests, mountainsides, or near lakes and rivers. Via his artist statement:

"By reading the landscape and altering the vista through lights and photographic effects, I transform everyday scenes into unique images. Light and color alter the perception of space, while defamiliarizing common objects. Space collapses, while the lights that I install appear as intrusions and interventions. This combination renders the forms in the landscape abstract. Inspired by cinema, land art, and contemporary painting, the resulting photographs are both surreal and familiar. They suggest a larger narrative, and yet that narrative remains elusive and mystifying."

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2012 - INFOGRAPHIC

Is anyone else terrified of the Black Friday festivities that are about to commence? People turn into selfish, vile entities of greed during the shopping process (I guess that’s why it’s called Black Friday). I decided to attend Black Friday last year just for the fun of it, to see what all the hype was about. And good gosh, I was absolutely horrified. While I was examining a pair of shoes (the last size 7′s I might add) some women came and actually snatched them out my hand! Luckily I was too full of Thanksgiving turkey to really care, but the nerve!! I’m sure any other day this lady wouldn’t dare to have done that, but because it’s Black Friday she suddenly had reason to be rude?!

Therefore, I will never brave Black Friday shopping again. Cyber Monday offers a safer, more civil shopping experience that can be enjoyed from home, local coffee shop, or any other place with internet. Today’s inforaphic offers some interesting stories and information about Cyber Monday and Black Friday. Good luck to all you brave shoppers out there, get those deals and stay strong!

What your Pee and Poop are Telling You About Your Body - INFOGRAPHIC

Far from crude, this infographic has a lot of information that could let you get a picture of your health.

Too refined to talk about poop? Well, you might not want to let the subject be completely ignored… Your poop can tell you if there is something seriously wrong with you.

The author asserts the three S’s that could save your life : size, shape, smell and shade. If you ever turn around after relieving yourself too see any of these 4 S’s strikingly unusual, you might want to see a doctor. No, I’m not advocating that you carefully inspect your excrement regularly. Just that you keep an eye out for oddities. These can be indicators of serious problems. Don’t let them go unnoticed.

The World’s Quietest Place!

can you stand the silence?! The longest anyone can bear Earth’s quietest place is 45 minutes.

The ‘anechoic chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s quietest place. It’s 99.99 per cent sound absorbent and if you stay there too long you may start hallucinating. The longest that anyone has survived in it is just 45 minutes.

Steven Orfield, the company’s founder and president, explained that the room is so silent that whoever goes becomes the sound of the area. “When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You’ll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly”, he adds.

Sea Gypsies: The Life Of The Bajau Laut People

The Bajau Laut people of the south-western Philippines and Indonesia live their entire lives on the sea. Known as “sea gypsies” or “sea nomads”, they inhabit amazing villages built on stilts in the middle of the ocean.                                                      

Many Bajau people do not set foot on land except to trade fish and sea cucumbers for rice and (ironically) water, build new boats, or bury the deceased. In fact, they sometimes report feeling “landsick” when they do!

Even when their fragile, driftwood settlements are decimated in the typhoon season, or ransacked by pirates, they just take to their boats and start to build a new house.

These amazing people are so at home in the water that their bodies have physically adapted to it, giving them better underwater vision and the ability to hold their breath for up to five minutes while free-diving for their dinner.

Sweden’s classroom-free school, Vittra Telefonplan – The Future of Education?

Facts:
• No classrooms.
• Each student receives a computer from the school which is used as a major tool for learning.
• Students are free to work independently.
• The ‘village’ is a tiny house meant for group work, and ‘organic conversation furniture’ allows the kids to interact with each other as well.
• Grades are not awarded!

(click photo to enlarge)

Goal:
they believe that by breaking down physical class divisions, children can be taught to live with intellectual curiosity, self-confidence and communally responsible behavior. According to the principal of the school, Jannie Jeppesen, the design is intended to allow ‘curiosity and creativity’ to flower in the children.


Official Website

A spider in Brazil can cause erections that lasts for hours

The Brazilian wandering spiders appeared in Guinness World Records 2012 as the world's most venomous spider. Its venom can cause priapism in humans. Priapism is a potentially painful medical condition, in which the erect penis or clitoris does not return to its flaccid state, despite the absence of both physical and psychological stimulation, within four hours. A component of the venom (Tx2-6) is being studied for use in erectile dysfunction treatments.

The eight-legged creature - also known as the armed spider, banana spider or Phoneutria nigriventer - is native to South and Central America.

The Facts You Didn't Know About Stalking

Stalking facts at a Glance:
1.  A common technique of stalkers is to kidnap, injure, or kill the victim’s pet, knowing that this will often devastate the victim emotionally.
2.  Victims of stalking often say it would be better to be murdered than have to go through the horrendous mental anguish of being stalked.
3.  Slashing the victim’s tires or vandalism/destruction of the victim’s home and property is standard behavior for stalkers.
4.  Friends and family who support the victim are themselves in danger. The stalker views these people as obstacles to what he wants and will turn his wrath on them as well. Cases exist where relatives or a new boyfriend of the victim have had their home burned to the ground.
5.  For someone being stalked, everyday things such as answering the phone or going out for a ride alone can no longer be done without constant fear.
6.  Stalkers have been known to hire private detectives to help track down the victim when they’ve moved to another state.
7.  Victims often are subjected to being followed, continual drive-bys of their homes and workplaces, and being inundated with unwanted phone calls, answering machine messages, letters, emails, notes left on doors and car windshields, and so forth. It is, for all intents and purposes, an act of terrorism.

Zombies: The Truth Behind The Fiction

The center of the zombie world is the island of Hispaniola, in the West Indies. Many peasant workers there believe that evil sorcerers called bokors have the power to bring their dead loved-ones back to life as unthinking puppets. The bokors are then said to use these unfortunates as their slaves. It is true that this Caribbean idea of zombies does exist, and that zombies can be found regularly walking the streets of the islands. Some people know members of their family or friends who have been turned into zombies, and as a precaution many poor peasant workers place heavy stone tablets on top of their loved-ones’ coffins to stop bokors snatching the bodies.

The reality is truly frightening, although it does not involve otherworldly powers. Psychiatric experts agree that the people identified as zombies by Haitian folk do have problems and suffer from a variety of serious mental health disorders. Some commentators have suggested that the idea of zombies was the way in which Haitian culture could explain these naturally unwell people. Others think it is something much more sinister. It is believed that by using natural, native resources, Haitian bokors can actually induce these mental illnesses.

Ball Cutter Fish Kills Fishermen by Biting off Their Testicles

Man-eating predators have always been part of legend and folk-lore. But here we have news of a real-life monster, interested in only one part of the human anatomy – the testicles.

The monster in question is in fact a 40lb fish called Pacu, found in the waters of Papua New Guinea. The Pacu are notorious for having eaten up the testicles of swimmers and anglers caught unawares, leaving them to bleed to death. This has led to the creatures being nicknamed ‘Ball Cutter’ fish. Initially, the villagers could only describe the monster-fish as something mysterious, like a ‘human in the water’. They finally got to see the predator up-close when a Pacu fish was recently caught by Jeremy Wade, a 53-year old British Fisherman, as a part of his TV series called River Monsters. The muscular fish was hard to catch, but Wade managed to track it down, reel it into his boat and wrestle it into submition. When he opened its jaws up with his hands, the teeth of the Pacu were found to be quite similar to human ones.

The Pacu fish are actually native to the Amazon, and were introduced to Papua New Guinea only about 15 years ago. Traditionally vegetarian, the fish used their molar-like sharp teeth to crack open nuts (no pun intended) and seeds. When veggie food wasn’t available in their new surroundings, they had to resort to eating meat. I suppose this is when they discovered a particular liking towards the meat of human testicles.

New Study Reveals We Are Happiest At Age 33

Forget the old adage that your schooldays are the happiest of your life - a study has found that 33 is the age at which people are most content. Seven out of 10 people over the age of 40 picked the year they turned 33 as their happiest in a survey by website Friends Reunited.

More than half of those surveyed - 53 per cent - said life was more fun and 42 per cent said they felt more optimistic about the future.

One in three said their happiness stemmed from having children while one in five said happiness came from success at work.

Having a Facebook 'friend' request turned down - or even just ignored, hurts just as much as real-life rejection, claim psychologists

Being ignored or snubbed online leads people to feel 'numb', 'distanced' and 'withdrawn', researchers found. The finding suggests that for many of us, the internet is as 'real' a place as the real world.

'Most people would probably expect that being ignored or rejected via a remote source like the Internet would not hurt as much as being rejected in person. Yet, our studies show that people may experience similar psychological reactions to online exclusion as they do with face-to-face exclusion. ‘ said Joshua Smyth, professor of biobehavioral health and of medicine at Penn State.

However, the researchers caution that these findings may be related to the types of individuals who participated in their study.

‘These studies were conducted with college-aged students who have grown up with the Internet and other related technology, ‘ Filipkowski said. ‘These findings may not apply to individuals who have much less experience with technology and remote communication.'

Chemical in fake tan and make-up is linked to obesity and diabetes

Chemicals called phthalates in plastics, cosmetics and toys are the latest reasons why one may have higher chances of developing diabetes, a study reveals. A study in Sweden has found that people with 'modest' levels of the chemicals in their blood are twice as likely to develop diabetes.

Phthalates are used as a softening agent in plastics but they can be used in cosmetics such as self-tan and perfumes.

The researchers analysed data from 1,000 people aged over 70, of which 114 developed diabetes. After taking into account factors known to cause type 2 diabetes, including obesity and high cholesterol, they found people with higher levels of phthalates were more likely to develop diabetes, the journal Diabetes Care reported.

Monica Lind, associate professor of environmental medicine at the Uppsala University, Sweden, said: "Although our results need to be confirmed in more studies, they do support the hypothesis that certain environmental chemicals can contribute to the development of diabetes," according to a university statement.

Sexually Rejected Alcohol-Drinking Flies

A new study at the University of California, San Francisco found that male fruit flies that had been rejected drank, on average, four times more than those that had successfully mated. In the experiment, 24 male fruit flies were put in one of two situations — either in a vial with female fruit flies ready to mate or in one with female fruit flies who already had. Then, after four days, they were given the opportunity to choose between plain food and food that had been spiked with alcohol.

Though researchers expected all of the flies to prefer alcohol-laced food, they found that the males who had successfully mated passed on the boozy food. The rejected males, however, displayed a clear preference for it. On average, the rejected male flies "drank" four times more alcohol than those that had mated.

Why you shouldn't even bother trying to remember last night!

Why you shouldn't even bother trying to remember last night: Drunken blackouts are caused by alcohol switching off brain’s memory function, study shows

It’s often said that alcohol killing off brain cells is behind the blackouts, but according to a study what’s actually happening is that booze is preventing new memories being recorded in the first place.

Yukitoshi Izumi, research professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said: ‘We’ve found that exposure to alcohol inhibits some receptors and later activates others, causing neurons to manufacture steroids that inhibit memory formation.’

The brain cells affected by alcohol are found in the hippocampus and other brain structures involved in advanced cognitive functions. When the hippocampal cells are treated with moderate amounts of alcohol, the key areas for memory formation are unaffected, but exposing the cells to large amounts of alcohol inhibits the memory formation mechanism.

‘Some people may be more vulnerable to alcohol’s effects than others. In other words, just because your friend may be able to drink a certain number of drinks and appear to be functioning fine, it does not mean that you or everyone else can.’ said lead author Reagan R. Wetherill.

‘Blackouts’, where very heavy drinkers wake up and are unable to remember anything that happened, are quite rare, says Weatherill – but their cousin, the ‘brown out’, where details vanish, is much more common.

via

You Won't Believe These Images Are Hand-Drawn!

Despite looking like they have been captured on a camera, these are actually hand-drawn images created by hyperrealist artist Paul Cadden. The 47-year-old, from Scotland, is able to recreate photos in amazing detail, often just using only a pencil.

Hyperrealism was born from the idea of photorealism, which are paintings based on photographs but created in a non-photographic medium. Taking an average of between three and six weeks to produce, Cadden creates about seven pieces each year - which usually come in A1 or A0 sizes - and sell at galleries for up to £5,000 ($7,855) each.

Starbucks Uses Insects In Strawberry Frappuccinos

Starbucks uses cochineal extract, which is the ground-up bodies of INSECTS, as a dye for their popular rose-coloured Strawberry Frappuccinos.

Bugs from mainly Mexico and South America are dried out before they are ground and used in the milky-based Frappuccino drink. As stomach-turning as it may sound, the ingredient is in fact harmless. Commonly used to help liven up the dull hues of jams, meats, cheese, baked goods, alcoholic drinks and more, cochineal extract has been used as a colouring agent in food and drinks for centuries. It has been deemed safe by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration.

Starbucks said it had decided to use cochineal extract to help limit the use of artificial ingredients in its products.

The zombie survival 'Google Map' that will help you find food and guns after the undead apocalypse!

It's well known horror film fact that when a zombie apocalypse arrives, those who want to see off the army of the undead need a variety of supplies to survive. Nearby medical care, weapons and nutrition are the key concerns for anyone hoping to successfully avoid being feasted on by rampant zombie legions. Now, should any remaining humans be overcome by confusion or panic during the zombie invasion, a unique world map has been created detailing all the key locations people need to survive.

The 'Zombie Survival Map' plots petrol stations, grocery stores, and even gun shops in major cities across the world, should the worst happen and the undead take over the planet. The map shows the nearest key locations in the fight against zombies, such as convenience stores, gun shops, and hardware stores.

So Do redheads feel more pain? Scientists set out to discover truth of controversial theory

Numerous studies have suggested that redheads feel more pain. And now a new study from Southampton University Hospital is looking to confirm the theory. The trial includes people with red hair over the age of 30. Researchers are comparing their reactions to tiny electric shocks with those of people with brown or black hair. The trial is set to end in September.

In 2009, a study in the Journal of the American Dentistry Association showed that redheads experience more trepidation at going to the dentist. Past research has suggested that redheads generally require more anesthesia than people of other hair colors.

The Village At The Top Of The World

At a height of 2,195 metres - or 7,200 feet - the Nepalese inhabitants of Nagarkot in the Himalayas can count Mount Everest among their nearest neighbours.

A hardy population of 3,500 people carve out an existence on the slopes of the steep mountains farming for centuries with traditional terraces to stop crops sliding away.

Photographer Anton Jankovoy, from Ukraine, travelled to the amazing district 20 miles east of the Nepal capital Kathmandu and captured these amazingly unreal photographs.