How would you like a ride in this bad-boy? Cool idea if I may say so, good for business, those New-York cabs all look the same, so any modification to make one stand out is a welcome one. Wonder if it’s really still a working cab, I’d like to take it for a ride.
You may stumble across this merry old man if you walk around Tokyo, especially in the Harajuku district.
Ojisan used to be a postman but he always wanted to be an actor and be in the center of attention. As an opportunity to become a professional entertainer never emerged, he decided to claim the spotlight after he retired. These days he walks around dressed as you can see in the photos, wearing goldfish in plastic bottles as earrings and oversized funny hats and tourists just can’t help but take photos of Ojisan, as memorabilia.
You might just see a huge steel ball, but this tuned mass damper is so much more.
This 728 tons steel pendulum is installed in one of the world’s tallest buildings, the taipei 101 in Taiwan. It helps stabilize the building in case of strong winds and earthquakes, through simple mechanics, when the building moves in a direction it swings in the opposite direction reducing movement by 40%. You can understand how it works by looking at the small GIF image.
It cost #4 million to install the huge damper in the skyscraper but architects and engineers said it had to be done. It spans across 4 of the building’s stories and it was assembled on site because it couldn’t be lifted by a crane, due to its enormous weight.
Here’s a video of the damper in action, on May 12th, when a horrific earthquake hit one of China’s provinces and the tremors reached as gar as Taipei. As the building started to shake, people ran towards the center to see the damper in action, it did it’s job.
Thousands of black plastic balls cover the Ivanhoe reservoir in Los Angeles.
It might not look like serious business, but The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power dropped 400,000 black plastic balls into one of the city’s reservoirs for a reason. The sunlight mixes with the chlorine and bromide in the water creating a deadly mix which some scientist believe may be causing cancer. The balls are meant to shade the water from the dangerous sunlight.
Sure a tart or some kind of lid would have seemed more normal, but the authorities say a tart would have cost to much too manufacture and a metal lid would have taken too long. So, although it looks like an oil spill, this was the best measure and it’s only temporary, the Ivanhoe and Elysian reservoirs will be covered by 3,000,000 black plastic balls for the next four years.
Interacting with some animals seems impossible but this man makes the impossible, possible.
Kevin Richardson is an animal behaviourist that has bonded so much with wild big cats that he isn’t even afraid to sleep with them in the wild. He’s great friends with lions, cheetahs, leopards or hyenas and they all treat him like he’s one of their own. Former student of child psychology, Kevin decided to switch to animals when he decided he could trust a lion over a human every time. He never uses whips, sticks or leashes, just a lot of patience and most importantly respect for the felines.
Although these photos may seem unbelievable, they are very real and Kevin says he can get close to any big cat under a year old and become friends with it, but he feels most safe and comfortable around animals he has known from birth. He has had one accident when a 4-year-old male lion attacked and started biting him, but something about Kevin’s passive reaction made him stop. ever since then Kevin never engages wild animals if he feels there is something wrong.
Known as the Lion Whisperer by most people, Kevin Richardson is a real-life beast master.
Now this is what I call poker for the big boys.
Built in 2007 for the promotion of a movie called Wise Guys On Texas Hold’Em, this giant poker table is 30 feet long and 12 feet wide making it the largest poker table ever built. I don’t know what happened to it after the whole movie promotion thing ended but I’m pretty sure it’s still kept as an attraction or maybe just in case some players want to play at a…whole other level.
One of the most beautiful frozen wonders on Earth, ice flowers are still a mystery to many people.
Ice flowers are formed on new layers of sea ice, from saturated water vapors that come up from under the ice through cracks. In contact with the cold air, the vapors start to freeze and the salt on the surface of the ice begins to crystallize and serves as a nucleus for the frozen vaporized water. Thus, molecule by molecule the ice flowers begin to take shape. They have recently been recognized as the dominant source of sea salt aerosol in Antarctica and scientist suspect they may be the main cause of tropospheric ozone depletion during the polar sunrise.
What’s amazing is that people pay to be close to these man-eaters.
This is Cango Wildlife Ranch in South Africa, a unique endangered animal shelter where people can dive in a pool with crocodiles and get close enough to see their teeth. Anyone over 12 years-old is allowed to dive into the cleverly designed cage that keeps the adrenalin junkies safe from the crushing bite of the crocodiles, but all children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.
There is a small opening at about half the height of the cage where crocs can actually get their noses into the cage, close enough for you to touch them, but thankfully it’s to tight for them to open their mouth. Some activists may complain about how the crocodiles are treated but the organizers at The Cango Wildlife Ranch say that no harm comes to the animals and that they just want to show people how magnificent the crocodile is in its natural environment, so they can understand why it is such a perfect predator.
And when I say sting I mean just that.
I’ve seen many bottles of liquor with all kind of fruits in them, from small prunes to fully grown pears or apples but snakes and scorpions, this is definitely a first. You may have other tastes but to me these drinks look as bad as they must taste and you could pay me, I still wouldn’t try a sip of this stuff. Yuck!!!
This is the world’s largest hourglass.
Unveiled on May 1st 2004 to commemorate Hungary’s entrance in the European Union, The Time Wheel is made out of red granite, steel and bullet-proof glass and it combines one of humanity’s most primitive time measuring devices with a very precise computer. It lies in Budapest near the entrance to City Park. The sand in the hourglass flows from one side of the device to the other for an entire year and the last grains are programmed to flow exactly at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The flow is then turned manually so that it can start measuring time for another year. It takes 45 minutes for 4 people to turn it 180 degrees using metal cables.
The Time Wheel hourglass was designed by Istvan Janaki.
Don’t you love to see original art?
And painting on teeth is pretty original, even if some may find them a bit disturbing. I have to say I’m pretty scared of the dentist, but if I ever have a tooth removed this is definitely what I want to do with it, turn something painful into something beautiful.
It’s not exactly The Splitting of The Red Sea but it’s pretty close.
Jindo Island, in South Korea, is host to one of the world’s most amazing natural phenomenons, called the Moses Miracle. Two times a year, during a low tide, a land path 2.8 kilometers long and 40 meters wide is revealed, uniting the islands of Jindo and Modo for a period of one hour. A festival is dedicated to this natural wonder and people from all around the world attend every year. However the Moses Miracle was largely unknown until 1975, when a French ambassador visited South Korea and wrote about in a French Newspaper.
The legend behind this Korean phenomenon goes like this: a Jindo village was attacked by tigers and all the villagers ran to Modo island for shelter. All, except for a helpless old woman who was left behind, out of despair she prayed to the Sea God, who split the sea and helped her escape the bloodthirsty animals.
The Moses Miracle just took place on May 18th.
I can’t imagine why you’d want to eat something like this.
Sex sells, that we all know, but this is stretching it a little, if you ask me. I stumbled across these photos during one of my frequent web-surfing session and I thought they fit perfectly here. I sincerely wonder if anyone actually eats these things or where u can get them maybe a sex-shop?
Now this guys must have balls the size of watermelons!
Famous Austrian climber and photographer,Heinz Zak threw an incredible highline performance on May 3rd, walking on a string for a full 30 meters, between two giant sandstone towers, in the Czech Republic, the Starosta and Starostova (Mayor and Lady Mayor). Just a few days before this stunt, Zak had an impressive highline performance between two stone towers in Germany. This guy is amazing!
Painful but efficient.
I have to say these Chinese have a rich imagination, the needle technique to force soldiers keep their chin up is taken out of some kind of fairytale and the cross stuck to their backs…must be really uncomfortable at first but I bet it pays of in the end. Sure some may comment on the morality of these methods but they only think about the goal, not the means. Plus they have the Olympics to think about, it seams they cannot afford any imperfections.
Still I’m glad I’m glad to be living in democracy!
