The Earthquake Rose

When a magnitude 6.8 earthquake shook Olympia in 2001, Jason Ward (A shop Owner) discovered that a sand-tracing pendulum had recorded the vibrations in the picture. Seismologists speak that the “flower” at the center reflects the higher-frequency waves that arrived first, the outer, larger-amplitude oscillations record the lower-frequency waves that arrived later. You never think about an earthquake as being artistic, it’s violent and destructive. But in the middle of all that chaos, this fine, delicate artwork was created. The following two images are close-ups of the design made by the quake. The second is contrast enhanced to help you see more detail. Is it possible that there is beauty in the midst chaos and destruction? You be the judge.

Wubbo Ockels Superbus

In the Netherlands registered a bus that can travel at speeds up to 250 km / h The ceremony was attended issuing registration numbers and Minister of Infrastructure of the Netherlands Melanie Schultz van Hogen Maas Geesteranus. Melanie then swept behind the wheel Wubbo Superbus. It is assumed that these “buses” will run between the major cities of the country by a dedicated lanes are built next to the existing highways. Wubbo Ockels Superbus boasts of having 16 doors and is capable of carrying up to 23 passengers with an exceptional level of comfort.

Daredevil Nik Wallenda Completes tightrope walk near Grand Canyon

Daredevil Nik Wallenda completed a record-breaking 1,400-feet-long tightrope high wire walk over a portion of the Little Colorado River Gorge in Northeastern Arizona on Sunday 23 June, 2013 without a safety net or harness. The walk, which was live streamed by Discovery Channel, was 1,500 feet above the Little Colorado River Gorge near the Grand Canyon. Using the same 2-inch-thick steel cable he used to cross the Niagara Falls last year. Nik Wallenda performed the stunt on a 2-inch-thick steel cable, 1,500 feet above the river on the Navajo Nation near the Grand Canyon. He took just more than 22 minutes, pausing and crouching twice as winds whipped around him and the rope swayed.  Winds blowing across the gorge had been expected to be around 30 mph. Nik great-grandfather, Karl Wallenda, fell during a performance in Puerto Rico and died at the age of 73 and many other family members, including a cousin and an uncle, have perished while performing wire walking stunts. He was performing with his family and has dreamed of crossing the Grand Canyon when he was a teenager. Sunday's stunt comes a year after he traversed Niagara Falls earning a seventh Guinness world record.

A Wild Idea

My colleague said that when they had dreams of a floating house just as the one appeared in Pixar movie “Up”. But a team from National Geographic has built a real “Up” using 300 helium-filled weather balloons and managed to get the house 10,000 feet up into the air. National Geographic Channel and a team of scientists, engineers and two world class balloon pilots effectively launched a house measuring 16 feet by 16 feet and 18 feet high, using 300 eight-foot colored weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles. The launch is inspired by the Pixar film “Up” set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted.  The house and balloons measured more than 10 storey’s high and reached an altitude of over 10,000 feet, flying for roughly one hour.  The record will be part of a new National Geographic Channel TV series has made a record of this experiment and you’ll find it in “How Hard Can it Be” series.

First Double Decker cable car in Mount Stanserhorn in Switzerland.

A new cable car system lets guests enjoy fresh air and great scenic views around Mount Stanserhorn in Switzerland. It seems that double-decker cable car has an open upper deck and riding to the top of the 1,900-meter Mount Stanserhorn with the fast wind in your hair, the stunning blue sky above you and a fantastic 360° panorama. That is the novel concept of the new cable car to replace the one from Kälti to Stanserhorn. I am sure it must be a crazy idea? Perhaps today we can see that it was a thoroughly viable one and so-called “CabriO” cable car is the world’s first cable car with a roofless upper deck. The very comfortable double-decker is the very newest in cable car technology. The lower level has space for 60 peoples, and an elegant staircase leads up to the sun deck, which has room for about 30 peoples. The riders can enjoy 360° panoramic views and fresh mountain air. The cable car moves on two side-mounted support cables a latest technological innovation of Garaventa AG, a central Swiss cable car company.

The latest cable car vision is to enhance the experience during the journey and offering the guests a new dimension in the new kind of cable car, and off course it was a great challenge for engineers, architects and builders and fact that the project was almost completely Swiss made from the initial idea down to the last screw. The investment volume for the new cable car project amounts to 28.1 million Swiss francs. Launched in 2010, the recapitalization was so successful that it was oversubscribed within a short time and some seven million francs mainly from locals flowed into the project.  The ride up to Stanserhorn is also a journey through local history. One witness is the old-timer funicular from Stans to Kälti. When it opened in 1893, it broke the record for the world’s longest funicular. Indeed, pioneers have enjoyed an affinity with Stanserhorn for some 120 years.

The new CabriO cable car in figures:

Length:                                2,320 meters

Base station:                     711 meters above sea level

Mountain station:             1,850 meters above sea level

Capacity:                             60 people

Conveying capacity:       465 guests per hour

Speed:                                 8 meters per second

Journey time:                    6 minutes, 24 seconds

Investment:                        CHF 28.1 million



No Exams till Grade Four

In Japanese schools, the students don't get any Exams until they reach grade four (the age of 10) because the goal for the first 3 years of schools is not to judge the child's knowledge or learning, but to establish good manners and to develop their character.  These are beautiful little children and there is nothing wrong with this kind of schooling. Learning manners (which you have not) and building their character (which, again, you are lacking) Our world would be a better place with learning these 2 basic principles. Should be introduce in every school around the world.

Desert Rose

It is the name given to rosette formations of the minerals gypsum and barite with sand inclusions. The 'petals' are crystals flattened, fanning open along characteristic gypsum cleavage planes. The rosette crystal habit tends to occur when the crystals form in arid sandy conditions, such as the evaporation of a shallow salt basin.Desert roses are mineral formations that are found on the surface and are awesome examples of the natural power of the shaping forces of wind, water and pressure in dry, arid regions.Desert roses are only found in deserts, which is how they got the name.

 

The Man Who Doesn't Sleep For 33 Years

Thai Ngoc or Hai Ngoc is born 1942 a Vietnamese insomniac. According to Vietnamese news, he is known for his claim of being awake for 33 years. Thanh Nien also claimed that Ngoc acquired the ability to go without sleep after a bout of fever in 1973, there was no apparent cause. I don't know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not. But I am still living healthy life and running farm normally like others. Proving his health, the elderly resident of Que Trung commune, Que Son district said he can carry two 50kg bags of fertilizer down 4 kilometers of road to return home every day. His wife said, "My husband used to sleep well, but these days, even liquor cannot put him down. When Ngoc went to Da Nang for a medical examination; doctors gave him a clean bill of health, apart from a minor decline in liver function. Ngoc currently busy with farming and taking care of chickens all day. His 6 children live at their house in Que Trung. Hai Ngoc often does extra farm work or guards his farm at night to prevent theft, he is also busy in three months of sleepless nights to dig two large ponds to raise fish farm.

Taisia Sidorova, Develops Artistic Talent After Losing Half Of Brain.

There is something called God’s gift. Some people are blessed with an inherent ability to learn things more quickly than others; some are showered upon the gift of intelligence while some excel in sports or other activities. We normally call such people “gifted”. Such people are in a different league than normal people. However, there is one girl who is not gifted but still gifted. I don't think this new ability is a compensation, as they say. It is more like "using what is left". I think that before the accident she was using more the left hemisphere and now there is no other choice than to use the right hemisphere (which is the one responsible with space, distance, colours, movement vision). Loosing the logic and analytic part, she now uses the artistic one - because that's all she has now. And, from my point of view, this is a positive fact, you can call it "a gift from God", I do agree.

Taisia Sidorova from St. Petersburg suffered a horrific car crash. That accident not only broke her skull into fragments and chunks but the doctors gave up saying there wasn't much chance of survival. Twenty one (21) year old girl stayed in coma for while after the doctors removed the left hemisphere of her brain. That part of the brain is apparently responsible for logic and analysis. The doctors had to place a protective plate inside her head after removing the analytical half.

While the medical practitioners believed that the Taisia would be disabled for her entire life, her mother Irina believed in the opposite. The strong willed Taisia finally woke up on New Year’s Eve and out emerged a completely new facet of her life.

She returned home and demanded complete recovery. Two (2) years after that she learnt to hold a pencil and then a brush. She started sketching for therapy and was rated as the topper of her class. Taisia started living a new life. She had not been interested in painting or sketching before the car crash, however, some incidents do have the power to change lives.

The doctors admit that the brain is human body’s exceptionally remarkable part. The part of her brain that was intact grew to compensate for the missing one. This was the logic behind Taisia’s artistic ability. Due to the missing part, Taisia’s vision is limited and so is her right hand’s movement. As a result, she paints with her left hand. Two things I find a bit off here: "It's God's gift" and all the oohs and aahs about the painting(s) and the new found ability. We seem to 'forget' that she did lose half her sight and the use of her right hand. She had the ability and artistic flare to do this before the accident but just didn't have as much time or opportunity as she was busy living. On her road to recovery (I know) in thereby etc art therapy is a huge part as that is how they can truly get to the unspoken. I guess she found a talent through that which was already in her this just gave her the right opportunity for that. Is that a full life I'm not so sure and not sure I would want to call it a gift either. Just my humble opinion but I'm no scientist.
The effects of such a trauma have, in most cases, a negative effect on the (healthy) life expectancy of the individual. To be clear, I'm amazed as well about the ability of the brain to compensate for such damages sustained. But in the end that's all you get, a compensation, not a replacement of the lost left hemisphere. To call this a 'Gift of God' is a bit silly and overly emotional. A 'true' God's gift in this case would be a new left hemisphere growing while at the same time becoming more artistically minded, as peoples abilities are usually determined by their whole brain and the influences both hemispheres are exerting on each other. Since she didn't express an interest or any talent in painting/drawing before the accident and the following therapy, it's unlikely that the talent that has now surfaced, was dominantly present in her. But it most likely was present nonetheless. This is not a special thing by itself since virtually all of us have potential talents present in our brains. Everybody can draw or paint for example, but not everybody can produce a drawing/painting that looks realistic and is considered to be beautiful or artful. The fact that the remaining right hemisphere is compensating for the loss of the left one will almost certainly be the reason for her increased artistic ability. The therapy will most likely have served as a trigger to let her increased talent further develop and surface.
Anyway, she was extremely lucky since most people that suffer this sort of trauma either die or live in a seriously hampered physical/mental condition and that's hardly a 'gifted', let alone 'donated by God', situation.

Incan Girl Who Had Been Frozen For 500 Years.

Well initially this might look to you like any normal girl being treated by a doctor; the girl in the photo is not any normal living girl but the mummy of a 15 year old child who has been dead for about 500 years. She was discovered in 1999 near Llullaillaco's 6739 meter summit. An Argentine-Peruvian expedition found the perfectly preserved body and she was nicknamed "La doncella" which means “The maiden”. According to the Inca she was chosen to go and live with the gods. But in reality she was a sacrifice to the Inca Gods and had been viciously killed in the name of religion.

Scientists say that her organs are unbroken and it’s as if she had died just a few weeks ago. From testing the samples of her hair they could determine the type of diet she was on before her death. This unique discovery leads that the Incan fattened their children before killing them. Months or even years before the sacrifice pilgrimage these children were given diets which were those of the elite, consisting of maize and animal proteins. Guessing from the plight of the body, it is hardly believed that she was drugged and left to die in the mountains.

It would not have taken a great deal of time for her to die due to the high exposure. The Incan high priests took their victims to high mountain tops for sacrifice. As the journey was tremendously long and difficult, particularly so for the younger victims, coca leaves were fed to them to aid them in their breathing so as to allow them to reach the burial site alive. Upon reaching the burial site, the children were given an intoxicating drink to reduce pain, fear, and resistance, then killed them either by strangulation, a blow to their head or by leaving them to lose consciousness in the extreme cold and die of exposure. A lot of Inca children were offered as sacrifice during or after important events, such as the death of the Sapa Inca (who was the emperor) or during a famine. These sacrifices were known as capacocha.