If you’ve ever smelled sulfur you understand why I call it hell.
This is Kawah Ijen on Java island, Indonesia, a unique location that sulfur calls home. Ijen crater is a yellow-greenish pit where locals that people go down in every day and come out with over 80 kilos of sulfur on their backs. personally I don’t know how they can handle the stinky fumes, but i guess hunger can drive a man to do anything. Near the crater there’s a beautiful acid lake, but as you might imagine, it has no inhabitants, the sulfur made sure of that.
You probably need a bike to make your way through the streets of this city.
This is Shibam, one of the must-see cities of Yemen, situated in the middle of the desert it stands out like a skyscraper oasis surrounded by a thick, stone wall. It is indeed a sight to behold, but its beauty is not the topic of this story, its tightness, on the other hand, is. All the buildings are very slim yet, at the same time, seem to be glued to one-another, it looks like someone had a limited amount of space to build on and tried to get as many buildings in. The streets are extremely narrow and dark because of the tall buildings but they are extremely full of life, full of tourists and merchants that fit into the picture perfectly.
Kind of like the statues on Easter Island aren’t they?
Manpupuner is a mysterious site in the northern Ural mountains, made out of seven rock towers bursting out of the flat plateau, also known as the “7 strong men“. Manpupuner is a very popular attraction in Russia, but not on an international level and information regarding its origin is scarce. We now however that their height and abnormal shapes make the top of these rock giants inaccessible even to experienced rock-climbers. Manpupuner is very hard to reach, it lies in a very harsh environment, but once there you’ll be able to enjoy a view unique in the whole world.
People who have visited this incredible site, say they have no cravings for water, food or rest, they just want to contemplate the 30-80 meter rock towers, where natives say spirits used to gather in ancient times.
For all you gamers out there I’m not talking about Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series.
This is Manoharan, a 27 year-old guy that performs one of the most growse-yet-cool stunts I’ve ever seen. He gets thin snakes through his nostrils and pulls them out through his mouth. Snake Manu, as he likes to be called, has already claimed a place in the Guinness Book of Records for another “most worms eaten in 30 seconds”, managing to gobble down 200 live earthworms, each measuring more than 10 cm.
Snake Manu says he started by entertaining his colleagues in school by inserting pieces of chalk through his nose and pulling them out through the nose and when he was 18 he started experimenting with snakes, his first try was with a half-dead water snake.
He says his favorite snakes are the baby cobras, because they are lightning fast and extremely poisonous. he has also used common kraits, sand boas and rat snakes.
He has also started to eat the snakes he inserts through his nose since an incident when a snake go stuck in his trachea and he had to choose between being bit by it or biting it. He chose the latter ( smart choice).
I know, I know, these are hardly oddities, but these furry critters caught my eye while I was surfing the web and I couldn’t resist not posting something about them. Although being too fat is as bad for animals as it is for us humans, unlike us they look cute enough to hug to death. But all cuteness aside, if you have an overweight pet, do something about them, start getting them to exercise, they may not understand but you’re doing them a big favor, probably even saving their lives. Overweight pets die prematurely, do to hart complications and in the best cases they lose the use of their limbs.
By Spooky onMay 7th, 2008 Category: Auto, Pics, Tech
Now that’s as real horse power as you’ll ever get!
When you first look at the Naturmobil it resembles a normal, modern stagecoach, but as soon as you see the horse in the back, standing on some kind of treadmill, you start to sense something is fishy. The Naturmobil is the ultimate horse-powered vehicle, because unlike other modern cars it’s powered by an actual horse. Naturmobil is a symbol of helping to save the environment and proves how easy it is to build a vehicle that doesn’t need fossil fuel, all you need is a strong horse and a bit of imagination. That brings us to how the Naturmobil functions: you get the horse in the back on the conveyor belt, a pneumatic system lifts the front a little so the horse starts walking naturally. The power of its walking goes into a 36-gear gearbox and makes the car reach a speed of 25-30km/h, but on a long straight road it can even reach 70-80km/h. And don’t worry about the horse, the vehicle’s official site says, sensors in the suspension sense when the temperature of the horse gets to high, or it gets to tired, a DC motor steps in and runs Naturmobil at a constant speed. The horse also has several food and water recipients and even a doo-doo disposal system, so he’s quite comfortable.
I’m really a fan of environment-friendly vehicles, so any prototypes, no matter how wacky they are, have my deepest appreciation!
As you’ve probably seen in many of my posts, I always like to congratulate Mother Nature whenever I find some of her masterpieces that exceed even the powers of the mighty god Photoshop. This time I’d like to introduce you to the amazing terraced thermal pools of Pamukkale, Turkey. One of the country’s most popular tourist attractions, Pamukkale, which means Cotton Castle in Turkish, is unique in the world, the hot turquoise waters bathing the pearl white calcium pools can’t be found anywhere else. The water from the hot springs runs off the plateau and the calcium that it contains deposits in the pool, giving the whole landscape that cotton look. That’s how Pamukkale was formed over millions of years, but as we’ve grown used to do, we humans have started to ruin everything in just a few years. Due to excessive tourism, the pools have started deteriorating and they’re currently closed to the public to preserve what’s left.
Even so, Pumakkale is a site worth visiting even if just to take some photos of the breathtaking scenery and to use the springs’ thermal waters, that are said to cure the eyes, asthma, rheumatism and more.
The women of the Padaung tribe in northern Thailand hold the record for the longest necks in the world. According to tribal custom, even before they reach puberty, girls must start wearing iron coils around their necks and more and more are added through the years. The Padaung women say they only feel initial discomfort, as the distance between the ear lobe and the collar bone is stretched to 10 inches, double the average.
Not a monument like I originally thought, but cool nontheless
Commissioned and unveiled last year by the Discovery Channel to promote one of its reality shows, London Ink, this giant swimmer swims his way through the grass on the South Bank of the river Thames, near Tower Bridge. first time I saw this work of art I thought it was meant to symbolize something like the British ambition or competitive spirit, not a lousy advertisement scheme. Oh well, at least it looks cool.
That’s what I’d say this man is doing through his performances.
Johan Lorbeer is a German performing artist that became famous in his home country through his Still Life street shows. Through a very ingenious optical illusion, Lorbeer makes it seem like he is defying gravity just by leaning off buildings. Try to guess how he pulls this stunt off and learn if you guessed right by looking at the last photo.
Although he is clearly a brilliant artist and has been performing for quite some time, Johan Lorbeer is still semi-unknown on an international level. Here’s a link to his personal page.
Believe it or not, this little beauty was built by 18 year-old Ben J.Poss Gulak who used Google StretchUp to draw up the plans, since he couldn’t afford professional software. Even though he had some help from motorcycle modders and robotics experts, he deserves to be congratulated.
Unveiled for the first time at the Toronto National Motorbike Show, Uno has two wheels but not one in front of the other, but right next to each other. It’s an electric vehicle with two micro-gyro engines, much like the Segway, one for forward and back and the other for turning. It only has one control, the on/off switch, everything else is done by leaning.
Ben came up with the idea of an eco-friendly vehicle when he was in China where “the smog was so thick, we never saw the sun.”
Don’t look at the photos and video if you’re a big animal lover, it’s “a little” hard to take in…
This “bay of blood” set somewhere in the Faroe Islands is where hundreds, sometimes thousands of pilot whales are literally butchered alive by hungry locals. The hunt known as Grindadrap is centuries old and it hasn’t changed much since then, except for the power-boats, radios and echo-sounders which make life a lot easier for the butchers. They round the poor whales into the shore with the power-boats and when they get really close, the locals plunge into the waves and start hooking them to death in a horrific manner. Then they drag the carcasses to shore and start skinning them and splitting the meat and blubber between all the islands’ inhabitants.
The Faroes economy relies only on economic fishing, but that doesn’t give them the right to slaughter 544 Atlantic white sided dolphins in a single day, like they did in 1988.
recently, studies have shown that the meat and blubber of pilot whales contain high amounts of mercury, PCBs, DDT and dieldrin. For what they do every year these animals deserve to get much more than mercury poisoning. Read More »
That’s right folks there’s such a thing as a World Pizza Championship.
It’s hosted in Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy and it gathers tens of professional pizza makers from allover the world. The most impressive challenge of the entire contest is the pizza tossing, an acrobatic event involving the pizza dough. As you can see from the pics, these guys are true masters tossing giant pies into the air or spinning them on their fingers like basketballs and there are even synchronized-dancers performing with pizza dough. Must really cool to watch these guys go all out to take the title of best pizza maker in the world. So, if you’re ever in Italy…
Apparently there are those who think the Fuhrer was a hero.
Some of these people live in the Ukraine, where an Adolf Hitler action-figure has gone on sale. The $200 doll is compared to Barbie by sales-women in Kiev and, just like the famous blond, it comes complete with accessories and several changes of clothes. Although any form of Nazism or fascism is prohibited in the Ukraine, the dolls are already on sale and will be mas-produced starting this summer. This is a result of growing extreme right political sentiment and increasing xenophobia and racism.
It looks like some Ukrainians, especially the young ones, have forgotten that Hitler killed 3 million of them during WWII, including 1.5 million Jews. He wanted to turn the country into slave populated buffer zone with Russia, now they think he was a hero…that’s sad.
The doll comes with a spare head that gives Hitler a kinder face…because he was such a kind person?!?
