SimCity Evolution.
by Olivier Huard.
Brown capuchin monkey
Picture: HotSpot Media (via Pictures of the day: 14 May 2013 - Telegraph)
long play teaser for the upcoming Riddick 3.
Spoiler Alert…even though you know what he does for a living…
beautifulpicturesofhealthyfood:
Crispy Parmesan Asparagus…RECIPE
Shamans of the Amazon - DMT, Ayahuasca, & Terrence McKenna
Kurt Braunohler raised $6,000 on Kickstarter to “hire a man in a plane to write stupid things in the sky”
kurt had the right idea
nybg:
A terrarium inside of an aquarium! So gorgeous, though I am a bit afraid of what might happen if the spider makes a run for it. To learn more about how terrariums work, check out this amazing Wardian case that has only been watered once in 53 years. ~AR
The “Island Vessel Vivarium” is a terrarium inside an aquarium. Designed by artist Alberto J. Almarza, show-cased at the Geek Arts / Green Innovators Festival in April 2010. Glass blower: Pittsburgh Glass Center.
“As a passionate nature lover, there is nothing more gratifying than observing this active and thriving little ecosystem as if seen through a magnifying glass.” ~Almarza
Living ingredients include moss, violets, a spider, and a centipede for the terrarium, and for the aquarium: Java moss, banana plant, barnacles, ghost shrimp, and zebra danios.
Or you could go the mad-scientist route and create a mini-Atlantis in there.
Justice is Served: Detroit Sees Robocop Statue Come To Life
After years of crowd-funding and rallying support (from everyone but their own mayor), the city of Detroit is preparing to welcome it’s newest citizen: a bronzed statue of Paul Verhoeven as the ever-impressive Robocop.
The statue, petitioned by some of Michigan’s nerdiest and most admirable citizens, was created as a labor of love after the idea of a permanent monument to the mechanized policeman was shot down by mayor Dave Bing. Given the state of Detroit’s reputation regarding violence and crime, many thought the statue to be in poor taste, and with their debt sinking deeper into the red as days go by, no one can be sure whether such an expensive and elaborate project will reflect well on the Motor City.
Though there’s no word yet on where in city the statue will reside, here’s to hoping that the glistening testament to justice will serve Detroit well, and also that a placard is erected below it which reads: “Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening.”
World’s ‘Most Beautiful’ Eternal Flame Reveals New Gas Source
Nestled behind a waterfall in western New York state is an eternal flame whose beauty is only surpassed by its mystery. It is one of a few hundred “natural” eternal flames around the world, fed by gas seeping to the Earth’s surface from underground, said Arndt Schimmelmann, a researcher at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind.
But even within this rarefied group, this flame is special. Perhaps lit by Native Americans hundreds or thousands of years ago, it is fed by a new type of geologic process that hasn’t been recorded before in nature, Schimmelmann told OurAmazingPlanet.
Typically, this type of gas is thought to come from deeply submerged, ancient and extremely hot deposits of shale, a kind of rock. Temperatures have to be near the boiling point of water or hotter to break down the large carbon molecules in shale and create smaller molecules of natural gas, Schimmelmann explained.
A curiosity “nobody believed in”
In this case, though, the rocks that feed the flame are only warm — “like a cup of tea” — as well as geologically younger than expected, and shallow, Schimmelmann said. Those findings suggest the gas is being produced by a different process, whereby some sort of catalyst is creating gas from organic molecules in the shale, he said.
“This mechanism has been proposed for many years, but it was a curiosity that nobody believed in,” Schimmelmann said. “We think there’s a different pathway of gas generation in this location and that there probably is elsewhere as well.” If that’s true, and gas is naturally produced this way in other locations, “we have much more shale-gas resources than we thought,” he added.
Originally, Schimmelmann and his colleague Maria Mastalerz, of the Indiana Geological Survey, were tasked by the U.S. Department of Energy to estimate the total amount of methane that seeps out of the ground in parts of the eastern United States. To help, they recruited Giuseppe Etiope, a researcher at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy, and world expert on natural gas seeps and eternal flames, Schimmelmann said.
A flame eternal
Etiope guided the researchers to the aforementioned eternal flame in Chestnut Ridge Park in western New York, calling it “the most beautiful in the world,” Schimmelmann said. They also looked at a “permanently burning pit” in Cook Forest State Park in northwestern Pennsylvania, although this eternal flame is not as special because it’s supplied by an old gas well, Schimmelmann said. The team reported their findings on the New York eternal flame in a studypublished in the May issueof the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology.
Their results were consistent with estimates that about 30 percent of all methane emitted worldwide comes from natural sources such as these gas seeps. When possible, it can actually be beneficial to set fire to these gas seeps to create “eternal flames.” Fire converts methane to carbon dioxide, whichtraps about 20 times less heat than methane in the atmosphere, Mastalerz told OurAmazingPlanet.
However, “macro seeps” that can be lit and form eternal flames remain rare. In most cases, gas percolates through soil — where methane-eating bacteria convert it into carbon dioxide, Schimmelmann said — or it comes out in a location that can’t sustain combustion. In the case of the New York flame, gas percolates in a naturally hollowed-out chamber, where the flame flickers eternally.
The New York gas seep also features the highest concentration of ethane and propane of any seep in the world, according to the study.
http://www.livescience.com/29510-eternal-flames-natural-gas-source.html
