From Around The World

May 14 2013

Cmdr Hadfield To Planet Earth

The very first music video from Space in the ISS! Astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield sings David Bowie’s Space Oddity.

Hadfield, commander of the ISS, rose to fame after embracing social media, from Facebook to Twitter, with a little technical help from Evan, his 27-year-old son. He sent missives from space, posted breathtaking photos and sang a duet with the Barenaked Ladies. In a video filmed aboard the station, Hadfield donned jeans and a T-shirt to cover the Bowie classic, Space Oddity.

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By Roshan • From Around The World, Music, Video Clip • 0

Apr 22 2013

Help Find Sunil Tripathi

In the midst of the Boston Marathon bombings, the search for the suspects and the death of one of the suspects, shooting incidents, death of a police officer and the successful hunt for the other, another story loomed it’s head in the news. For a few hours, hundreds of thousands of people received a message about the identity of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers that was painfully false. The story is of a Brown University student Sunil Thripathi, an American youngster of Indian origin who was falsely identified as being one of the bombers. Sunil a 22-year-old Brown University philosophy student who went missing on March 16, became a trending name on Reddit and Twitter worldwide, as a young woman who went to school with thought she recognized him from one of the photos released by the FBI. Redditors also picked up on the supposed likeness, and by the evening Reddit and Twitter (on which “Sunil Tripathi” would soon trend worldwide) had exploded with the theory.

Sunil’s family, who live in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania and describe him as “kind, gentle, and shy,” had launched a social-media campaign to find him; their Facebook page garnered nearly a quarter million views in the first week of his disappearance. As the police search for Sunil expanded, his story began to make national news last month with mentions from Fox News, ABC News, the Boston Globe, and other outlets. By the same evening the Tripathi family began to be flooded with calls, Facebook posts, and harassing emails raising the allegation. The family suspended the Facebook page at around 10 p.m., flagged the messages, and reached out to law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. National & local news stations had caught wind of the story spreading on the internet and soon roughly a dozen news vans had parked themselves at the Tripathi residence in Radnor eager to question the family. (All of this, even though Sunil’s Tripathi’s name was never once mentioned on the Boston police scanner prior to the initial suspicions on Twitter.)

After hours of fevered speculation, early on Friday morning NBC’s Pete Williams batted down the rumors, and broke the news that authorities had identified brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as the primary suspects. The moderator of the Reddit page that was based on finding & identifying the bombers issued a public apology and asked each & every user who had remove any and all links about him. However Sunil’s sister says that other than some individuals, the family had yet received any apologies from news organizations whose employees helped push the erroneous ID. The Tripathi family’s nightmare continues. Sunil Tripathi remains missing; authorities do not suspect foul play, and an FBI forensic analysis turned up zero clues to his whereabouts. The family has launched another campaign on Facebook encouraging supporters to write messages of love and encouragement on their hands and post the photos online.

Hope he is found alive and well and can return to his family safely.

By Roshan • From Around The World • 0

Mar 16 2013

Our Closest Star System

Astronomer Kevin Luhman announced the discover of the binary brown stars WISE 1049-5319 (full designation name WISE J104915.57-531906) making them the closest brown stars and star systems to our Solar System. They are just 6.5 lights years from our sun. The pair orbit each other at a distance of about 3 AU[1] with an orbital period of about 25 years. Luhman discovered the brown dwarfs from images made by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE); the discovery was announced in 2013. Luhman is from Pennsylvania State University and is a researcher in Penn State’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds.

WISE 1049-5319 appears in the sky close to the galactic plane which is densely populated by stars; the abundance of light sources makes it difficult to spot faint objects. This explains why an object so near to the Sun was not discovered in earlier searches. The second component of the system was discovered also by Luhman in 2013. Its discovery image in i-band was taken on the night of 23 February 2013 with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) at the Gemini South telescope, Chile.

Brown dwarfs are substellar objects too low in mass to sustain hydrogen-1 fusion reactions in their cores, unlike main-sequence stars, which can. They occupy the mass range between the heaviest gas giants and the lightest stars.

By Roshan • From Around The World • 0

Mar 3 2013

Transformers Has Nothing On This Apartment

A Tiny Apartment Transforms Into 24 Rooms by videobash

By Roshan • Apartments, From Around The World • 0

Feb 23 2013

Meet The Smallest Exo-Planet We Know

NASA announced the discovery of the smallest he smallest extrasolar planet ever discovered around a main sequence star, with a mass and radius slightly greater than that of Earth’s Moon. Kepler-37b, along with two other planets, Kepler-37c and Kepler-37d, were discovered by the Kepler space telescope, which observes stellar transits.The planet, about 210 light-years away from Earth, is slightly larger than the Earth’s moon, with a diameter of about 3,900 kilometres (2,400 mi). NASA states that it is most probable that the planet does not have an atmosphere and cannot support life. Furthermore, the planet is most likely composed of rocky materials.

By Roshan • From Around The World • 0

Feb 4 2013

Preacher Rapes & Kills Daughter, Goes Free

This kind of stuff really gets my goat. How the fuck does this kind of thing still happen? Fayhan al-Ghamdi is a Saudi religious scholar who had raped his five-year-old daughter in 2011 December and tortured her to death in 2012. Now the judge has ruled (last Saturday) – the father has been ordered to pay “blood money” to the mother following a short term in jail! And he is free to go about his life as he chooses to! What the fuck?

A statement released by the group said the man’s daughter, Lama, was admitted to hospital on 25 December 2011 having sustained multiple injuries including a crushed skull, a broken arm and ribs and extensive bruising and burns. According to the victim’s mother, hospital staff told her that her “child’s rectum had been torn open and the abuser had attempted to burn it closed”. Lama died in October 2012. Apparently her father doubted – listen to this – the girl’s virginity and thus abused her! Despite the brutality of the crime, the activists say a judge has ruled: “Blood money and the time the defendant had served in prison since Lama’s death suffices as punishment.” The group claim the ruling is based on national laws in Saudi that a father cannot be executed for murdering his children as husbands cannot be executed for murdering their wives. In the trial the father, who is a regular guest on Islamic television networks, reportedly confessed to using cables and a cane to inflict Lama’s injuries.

The judge ruled that the fine and the time that the man had spent in prison after his arrest were enough punishment. Islamic law specifies that the ‘blood money’ can be paid in lieu of the death penalty. Since the victim was a girl, the fine for the preacher, one Fayhan al-Ghamdi, was reduced to half the usual amount! Ghamdi confessed to the crime and said he used a cane and cables to beat his daughter up. The justification the man gave for this was that he doubted that his 5-year-old daughter, Lama Ghamdi, was a virgin. He also forced her into undergoing a medical inspection.

By Roshan • From Around The World, Religion • 1

Nov 29 2012

RIP Zig Ziglar

A person who’s image I see at work every single day since July, has passed away yesterday. Zig Ziglar, American author, salesman, and motivational speaker – and someone’s whose image & quotes are on the wall in the training room at my office and in some of my training slides – and who had been suffering from pneumonia, died at a hospital in the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas. He was 86 years old.

Born Hilary Hinton Ziglar in Coffee County, Alabama to parents John Silas Ziglar and Viola Ziglar, Zig served in the U.S. Navy during World War II (circa 1943 to 1945). Ziglar later worked as a salesman in a succession of companies. In 1968 he became a vice president and training director for the Automotive Performance company, moving to Dallas, Texas. As of 2010, Ziglar still traveled around taking part in motivational seminars, despite a fall down a flight of stairs in 2007 that left him with short-term memory problems.

Hilary Hinton “Zig” Ziglar (November 6, 1926 – November 28, 2012)

There are 6 people whose images and a quote each are on the training room wall. 2 are Indians – the other 4 are Ziglar, William Arthur Ward, Peter Drucker & Steve Jobs. The 4 Americans are now all dead, which means the 2 Indians better be careful!

By Roshan • From Around The World • 0

Nov 7 2012

A Profession In Cuddling

From Yahoo! Lifestyle:

Jackie Samuel can make 260 dollars a day and cuddles with up to 30 men a week – including pensioners and war veterans. However, her business ‘The Snuggery’ has not gone unnoticed and her college has threatened to expel her while others have called her a prostitute. “I think I was born knowing how to snuggle. Snuggling is healthy, spiritual and fun,” the Daily mail quoted her as saying.

“I think clients come to me for all different kinds of reasons. Some of my older clients, their wives have passed away, and they just need someone to be with, like someone to experience touch with. “Some of the younger clients are between relationships, some are in problematic relationships, and some people are just really curious and they come to just find out what it’s going to be like,” she said. The 29-year-old advertises her services online and charges 60 dollars an hour. The cuddling can take place anywhere around her cottage in Rochester, New York, but most clients opt to use her large double bed.

The clients are banned from touching parts of her body covered by underwear, which she wears under pyjamas. The business has done so well she has even hired another snuggling professional, Colleen. Her apprentice has yet to take on a client by herself but has joined Jackie on two occasions in what they have termed a “double cuddle”. Despite her strict rules on sexual activity, Jackie has received a barrage of emails and phone calls slamming her as a prostitute. “Some have said I am worse than a prostitute because they think snuggling is more intimate than sex. I’ve been told I’m monetizing love,” she added.

By Roshan • From Around The World • 0

Oct 26 2012

Elephant Dung Coffee

Thailand’s more elite resort chains is releasing “one of the most expensive and exclusive” varities of coffee in the world. The coffee is ground by hand and brewed at 93 degrees Celsius in a syphon machine “using technology developed in 1840 in Austria.” According to the resort’s press release, the result is a “very clean and flavourful taste,” which is a curious way to describe coffee brewed through beans picked from elephant feces! No you didn’t read that wrongly. Yes, it’s elephant dung coffee!!

The Black Ivory blend, made from coffee beans digested and excreted by Thai elephants, is billed as producing a particularly smooth cup. “Research indicates that during digestion, the enzymes of the elephant break down coffee protein,” the Thai-based hotel group, which is selling the pungent brew at around $50 for two cups, said in a statement sent to AFP on Thursday. “Since protein is one of the main factors responsible for bitterness in coffee, less protein means almost no bitterness.” —– Oh really!

At $1,100 per kilo — roughly $27 a cup — it really ought to be the cleanest, most flavorful taste on the planet. Elephant caretakers dig through the dung of the elephants in their care to extract & retrieve coffee beans digested by graceful pachyderms.

By Roshan • Coffee, From Around The World • 2

Jun 11 2012

115 Year Old ‘Marriage’ On The Rocks

After 115 years together as a ‘married’ couple Bibi and Poldi’s relationship looks to have come to a painful end. Yes 115 years, making all human marriages pale in comparison. Bibi & Poldi are turtles! Bibi, the female, and Poldi, the male, have lived in the Klagenfurt, Austria based zoo for the past 36 years, and were previously located at the Basel Zoo in Switzerland.

The 115-year-old Giant Tortoises have been together since they were young, eventually growing up to become a bonded pair. But now it seems that Bibi cannot stand the sight of her partner. Each of these two reptilian residents of Austria’s Reptilienzoo Happ weighs 100 kilos, and could kill the other if they wanted to. Bibi has been biting off chunks of Poldi’s shell and attacking him in their shared enclosure. After all these years! Sigh, women!

Finally, the zoo staff decided to move Poldi to a separate enclosure where he can safely avoid being turtle-pecked by Bibi. The staff has called in animal behaviorists to provide marriage counseling for the pair in the form of aphrodisiac foods and bonding games, but to no avail. I dunno if they played Barry White or not! The staffers have no idea what drove the tortoises apart, but they still hope to bring these crazy kids back together.

Here’s the quarrelsome twosome.

By Roshan • From Around The World • 1

May 22 2012

Please Take a Moment To View The Details

By Roshan • Cool Stuff, From Around The World • 4

May 3 2012

A Salute To Balut

That is a balut egg. A balut is a fertilized duck embryo that is boiled and eaten in the shell. Popularly believed to be an aphrodisiac and considered a high-protein, hearty snack, balut are mostly sold by street vendors in the regions where they are available. It is commonly sold as streetfood in the Philippines. They are common, everyday food in countries in Southeast Asia, such as Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. They are often served with beer.

I remember watching a program on freakiest food on AXN. While this certainly is one of the weirdest looking and yuckiest ever food, I would like to try some. Egg = good, duck = good!

By Roshan • Cool Stuff, Food, From Around The World • 4

Mar 23 2012

The Great Blue Hole

Part of the Lighthouse Reef System, The Great Blue Hole lies approximately 60 miles off the mainland out of Belize City. A large, almost perfectly circular hole approximately one quarter of a mile (0.4 km) across, it’s one of the most astounding dive sites to be found anywhere on earth. Inside this hole, the water is 480 feet (145 m) deep and it is the depth of water which gives the deep blue color that causes such structures throughout the world to be known as “blue holes.”