Underwater world an eye-opener for scientists

Mysterious sea creatures, including giant sea spiders the size of dinner plates and jelly fish with six meter tentacles, have been found in the murky depths of Antarctica waters, Australian scientists said Tuesday.
Australian experts taking part in an international program to take a census of marine life in the ocean at the far south of the world filmed and captured specimens from up to 1,981 meters (6,500 feet) beneath the surface, and said many may never have been seen before.
"Some of the video footage we have collected is really stunning -- it's amazing to be able to navigate undersea mountains and valleys and actually see what the animals look like in their undisturbed state," Australian scientist Martin Riddle, voyage leader on the research ship Aurora Australis, said.
Among the bizarre-looking creatures the scientists spotted were tunicates, plankton-eating animals that resemble slender glass structures up to a yard tall "standing in fields like poppies,"

Riddle said.
"Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters -- we have collected huge worms, giant crustaceans and sea spiders the size of dinner plates," Riddle added.
The voyage was part of an international effort to chronicle sea life in the icy ocean and monitor the impact of global warming and other environmental changes on Antarctic waters.
The expedition's three ships, the Aurora Australis, France's L'Astrolabe, and Japan's Umitaka Maru, returned to Australia last month with decks full of sea creatures taken from east Antarctic.

Experts believe the species will help them analyze how rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels make the oceans more acidic, a factor scientists predict will make it harder for some marine organisms to grow and sustain their calcium carbonate skeletons.

video here

Gorillas in Jungle stereograms

Food in Thailand

Hole in the ground

This image by Kurt Wenner was created at Waterloo train station in London. The woman, although she appears to be lying on a very convincing sofa, is in reality just lying on the ground.

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China to the US: Take Our Women!

An interesting piece of history was discovered in a document that the State Department’s historical office released. It was a conversation transcript between China’s Chairman Mao Zedong and US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

“You know, China is a very poor country,” Mao said. “We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands.”

Mao circled back to the offer a few minutes later. “Do you want our Chinese women?” he asked. “We can give you 10 million.”

Kissinger noted Mao was “improving his offer,” and the chairman is on record then saying, “We have too many women … They give birth to children and our children are too many.”

“It is such a novel proposition,” Kissinger replied. “We will have to study it.”

The conversation occurred in 1973 in Beijing, China and as far as we could find… the promised10 million Chinese women were not given to the US.

Farmer finds fortune in frogs

Frogs may turn into princes only in fairy tales, but in real life one farmer living in Vietnam has found that frogs can also easily turn into huge profits.

Once a poor farmer, Le Son became a millionaire from raising frogs after mastering the craft of raising the amphibians at a frog farm in the central province of Ha Tinh.

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Son said the current price for one kilogram of frogs at the market is VND35,000 (US$2.1). To produce 1,000kg of frogs, Son said about six sq.m are required and the cost of feeding the frogs is extremely low. But diseases posed the greatest threat.

Handshake Saves Mans Life

A chance handshake with a doctor in a restaurant saved a man’s life when the doctor diagnosed him with a life threatening brain tumor. The doctor knew from the spongy feeling hand and the man’s large facial features that he had the symptoms of acromegaly which is a tumor at the base of the brain, which if untreated could be fatal.

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Creative Sitting Spoon

The orange, purple and green cauliflowers

Scientists have developed amazing variants of vegetable where the traditional white florets have been changed to a garish orange, purple and green.

The "rainbow cauliflowers" are said to taste the same as the normal varieties, but add a splash of colour to the dinner table.

Some scientists have even claimed that they are healthier for you.

Andrew Coker, a spokesman for the plant company Syngenta - which is developing the plants in Europe - stressed that the colourful cauliflowers were not the result of genetic engineering, but came after decades of traditional selective breeding.

hey retain their colour even after cooking. "The pictures may look garish, but they are really are this colourful," said Mr Coker.

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Two signs - Different results

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: “I am blind, please help.” There were only a few coins in the hat.
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”
The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”
What he had written was: “Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.”
Both signs told people the boy was blind. While the first sign simply said the boy was blind, the second sign pointed the fortunate ones to their positive possibilities.
Moral of the Story: Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. Invite the people towards good with wisdom.
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