Movember: The Hardest Thing About Having A Moustache

Another incredible video from the one & only Anton Taylor to promote Movember!!!

Swedes Develop Invisible Bike Helmet

You know what kind of sucks about riding a bike? Other than all that pedaling? Bike helmets. Sure, they keep that overrated "brain" from getting splattered, but they take a lot of the open-air-joy out of things, and they're not comfortable. A pair of Swedish women have developed a remarkable solution: the invisible bike helmet.

Tired of strapping ugly, uncomfortable styrofoam-and-plastic turtle shells to their heads, the pair came up with a pretty revolutionary solution that does manage to give you full head protection without, remarkably, wearing anything on your head.

I'd like to just come out and tell you the secret of how their Hövding helmet works, but this video does such a nice job of building suspense I kind of don't want to ruin it. So I won't post any pictures showing the operation, and don't follow that link to their site if you don't want to spoil a minor surprise.

Once you see how it works it all makes sense, and is a very clever solution that draws from a number of technologies that are well-established and familiar.

See video here

If you're so jaded that the tiny joy of a mild surprise doesn't appeal to you, click away.

Regardless of how wrong they are about discounting cars in the future, they've done a pretty impressive job with the design and engineering of this, and I wish them all sorts of luck.

Rapper Jay Z Found Dead Inside At 43

BROOKLYN – The world mourns today as Shawn Carter, AKA Jay Z, was found dead inside at the young age of 43.

While the official cause of death is still being investigated by Rap Genius editors and urban studies Ph.D.s, many have speculated that Jay Z killed himself inside.

“One minute he was doing great, producing lyrical dynamite full of incisive social commentary and witticisms,” remembers Christopher Wallace, AKA The Notorious B.I.G, whose soul remains alive despite his death in 1997.

“The next, he was an empty suit, laying face-down in a puddle of champagne and corporate sponsorships.”

“Picasso Brooklyn Nets Rothko Barclays Bugatti Samsung,” said Jay Z in catatonia above a snare drum and Justin Timberlake accompaniment. “MoMA MoMA Upper West Side.”

Carter was born December 4, 1969 in Brooklyn, which has also lost its unique soul and sound. The borough is survived by low-rise condominiums, secondhand plaid shirt retailers, and beards.

Jay Z is survived by his wife Beyoncé Knowles and his daughter Blue Ivy, who will never have the opportunity to live a fulfilling and invigorating life of successful crack dealing and will ultimately end up majoring in English at NYU before dying inside at 21.

A funeral will be held at the Barclays Center next week. Jay Z will perform tracks off Magna Carta Holy Grail from his open casket, which is sponsored by Samsung.

ULTIMATE FAILS 2013 - SO FAR

Lets be honest, we all love doing stupid things and we all love watching others fail at doing them, it’s human nature! So no matter how bad your day has been, this video will be 18 minutes of joy in your life. Couple of cringe worthy ones…

Marijuana Market Poised To Grow Faster Than Smartphones

Legal marijuana is among the fastest-growing markets in the United States, and it's growing at a rate poised to outpace the expansion of the global smartphone market, according to a new report obtained exclusively by The Huffington Post.

Researchers surveyed hundreds of medical cannabis retailers, processors, dispensary owners and industry leaders over the course of six months this year, and estimated that more than $1.43 billion worth of legal marijuana will be sold in 2013. The report also predicts that figure to grow by 64 percent, to $2.34 billion next year. By comparison, recent figures show the smartphone market expanded by 46 percent from 2012 to 2013.

"Cannabis is one of the fastest-growing industries," said Steve Berg, a former managing director of Wells Fargo Bank and editor of the report, the second edition of the State of Legal Marijuana Markets. "Domestically, we weren't able to find any market that is growing as quickly."

While it's important to note that smartphones surged in popularity long before medical marijuana became a viable industry, and global sales numbers for 2012-2013 don't offer a direct comparison to 2013-2014 domestic estimates, Berg said his goal was to illustrate just how rapidly the cannabis market is expanding by offering familiar data points. The U.S. smartphone market, according to research group IDC, is growing at an annual rate of 7.3 percent.

"Entrepreneurs and private investors are flocking to cannabis markets," Berg said. "Those who really understand market dynamics will reap large rewards."

Medical marijuana is currently legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Next year, Washington and Colorado will begin implementing laws that permit the sale of pot to all adults, and Berg noted that those states will obviously play a major role in the growth of the cannabis market. Colorado alone is predicted to add $359 million to its existing market in 2014.

The marijuana industry's growth coincides with a widespread shift in the public's attitude toward the substance. A Gallup poll conducted last month found that for the first time in history, more than half of Americans think pot should be legal for both medical and recreational purposes. A CNN documentary that aired this summer explored marijuana's benefits for a mainstream audience. And individuals are increasingly using the plant's medicinal properties to treat symptoms even in children: A coalition of conservative Mormon mothers in Utah recently began lobbying for safe access to cannabis oil for their epileptic children.

"There has been a seismic shift in public attitudes towards marijuana," Berg said, explaining that as public opinion changes, laws are likely to follow. "Younger voters will become a bigger proportion of the overall voting base. It begins with shifts in attitudes and that translates to initiatives."

The report predicts that 14 more states will legalize marijuana for recreational adult use in the next five years, creating a potential $10.2 billion cannabis market by 2018.

Berg added that his research only examined the sale of cannabis itself, whether wholesale to retailers or directly to consumers. He said that the market for ancillary products, such as security equipment, grow tools, apps and paraphernalia, has the potential to drive growth still further.

"This industry is professionalizing and seeing an influx of professionals from other industries," he said. "More and more investors are coming in and financing these businesses, which have more and more markets to serve."

The federal government, however, has yet to catch up to this rapid evolution. Even in states that permit marijuana use, cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, and the Controlled Substance Act classifies marijuana as having no medical value. Federal raids against dispensaries in California over the past two years have shuttered hundreds of businesses and hindered the industry's growth.

Still, Berg remains optimistic, pointing to Attorney General Eric Holder's recent assertion that the Justice Department would not interfere with the implementation of adult use laws in Washington and Colorado.

"Federal acceptance of marijuana is not going to happen in one fell swoop," he said. "It will happen incrementally, with important steps along the way."

Broadway Bomb 2013

In an epic fail, New York Police Department try their best to stop the BROADWAY BOMB, an annual event that has nothing to do with terrorists and everything to do with thousands of skateboarders shooting down eight miles of Manhattan streets.

The cops looks like a bunch of morons running around with an oversized chevron!!!

This Town Wants to Warn You About Its People-Eating Vortex

For decades, a small city in New York has been the subject of some very bizarre rumors. Locals have long whispered that if you visit at just the right time, a certain area in their neighborhood park will disappear you into thin air. Now the town has officially acknowledged the strange anomaly.

Watertown, New York is the last place you'd expect to find a creepy, supernatural mystery. After all, they're mostly known as the birthplace of the safety pin and those air fresheners for your car that are shaped like trees - both safe, friendly things. But now, it seems that they're finally ready to admit that they're becoming more well known for their local park's nasty habit of eating people.

Last week, the city officials erected a sign in the park warning locals of the "vortex". As it turns out, the Mayor himself felt compelled to acknowledge the rumors after digging up some recently declassified information linking Watertown to the infamous Area 51 base in Nevada.

"Area 51 in Nevada when it was taken over by the CIA in the mid 50's was codenamed "Watertown," Mayor Jeff Graham told local reporters. "And that was because the then director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, was a Watertown native."

Locals say that the strange anomaly causes people to seemingly disappear, only to reappear later... usually. Some believe it's just a fun urban legend, while others give stern warnings to stay as far away from Thompson Park as possible. Either way, the new sign's dedication ceremony drew a crowd of hundreds. The Mayor has since attempted to put the rumors to the test, with admittedly little luck.  "I keep bringing people up here I'd like to disappear but it never happens so we'll keep trying," he said.

Don't worry, if you want to check out the sign for yourself, you can rest easy knowing that they placed it well out of the vortex' reach........or did they?

David Attenborough Narrates Miley Cyrus's VMA Twerk-formance

Shut it down folks – this is the best thing you'll see on the Internet today. Seriously, this here is fantastic.

I'll admit: As someone who is woefully out of touch with those spheres of pop culture that encompass Miley Cyrus, this is actually the first time I've watched the footage of her infamous performance with Robin Thicke. It had to happen sooner or later. I'm just so very glad that it happened like this.

Click here to see the video

Shark Deterrent: Western Australian Wetsuits - A World First

WA researchers have unveiled world-first wetsuits designed to protect surfers, swimmers and divers from shark attacks by using scientific discoveries about how the predators see and detect prey.

The shark deterrent wetsuits come in two different strategic designs - one that blends the wearer with background colours in the water and the other that makes the wearer highly visible but uses disruptive patterns unlike the appearance of a shark's normal prey.

The project began two years after five people were killed by sharks in two years along the WA coastline, making the State the shark attack capital of the world.

Hamish Jolly and Craig Anderson, both keen surfers and ocean lovers, were awarded a $20,000 State Government grant to work with University of WA shark scientists to design the wetsuits based on science of shark vision, neurology and behaviour.

Mr Jolly said that initial results of testing the wetsuits in the ocean with wild sharks had been extraordinary and had given them the confidence to release the wetsuits for sale.

"There's been a lot of anecdotal stuff about it and attempts at this, mostly trying to make the wearer look like a sea snake or putting stripes on the wetsuits, but what we have done is to put the science to the anecdotes," he said.

The "cryptic" wetsuit is designed to hide the wearer in the water and uses colours and shapes that, from a predatory shark's perspective, make the wearer difficult to see. Mr Jolly said the cryptic design was more geared towards divers. The "warning" wetsuit, which is more geared towards swimmers and surfers, uses bold patterns and shapes to overtly present the wearer as unlike any shark prey or even as an unpalatable or dangerous food option.

The wetsuits' designs have been patented by Mr Jolly and Mr Anderson's company Shark Mitigation Systems.

Professors Shaun Collin and Nathan Hart, from UWA's Ocean Institute, helped translate the latest scientific knowledge of shark sensory systems into specific designs that disrupt the visual perception of sharks.

Earlier this year, the research team spent more than four days testing the new wetsuit designs off the northern WA coast. Mr Jolly said in one encounter a tiger shark circled a dummy covered in the "cryptic" design, which helps make the wearer less visible to the shark, for six minutes before deciding to attack a dummy covered in traditional black neoprene."We have had a handful of engagements like that. We need to do more. All the early evidence is that it's working," he said, adding that testing would go on for many years and they could not say the wetsuits provided fail-safe protection.

Source: http://au.news.yahoo.com

Nazare - Biggest Waves Ever Ridden???

Big wave surfing by Brazilian surfers in Nazaré in Portugal has dominated the news yesterday. Hours after an epic session went down where Maya G. broke an ankle and lost consciousness, footage emerged of what looks like Carlos Burle and friends riding what could arguably be the biggest waves ever ridden in history.

Click here to see this insane video

Betty White Spoofs Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball Video

Thankfully this video is twerk-free, but 91-year old Betty White couldn't help spoofing the young singer while promoting her new show.

Betty put the 25-second video together as a promo for the launch of her “Off their Rockers” show on Lifetime Television in the US. She says she’s “Got some great ideas from recent pop culture events that really got the kids talking!”

Maya Gabeira Almost Drowned Today In Giant Nazaré, Portugal

Top Brazilian surfer Maya Gabeira almost drowned today in giant Nazaré in Portugal, she took two 70 footers on the head according to reports.

Maya Gabeira, 26, who is from Rio de Janeiro, was unconscious after taking off on a giant wave at Praia do Norte in Nazaré and being held under for a long time, before getting slammed by walls of white water. She was unconscious when they got her to the beach, say reports.

Reports are sketchy, with some saying she remains unconscious in hospital, but a correspondent from http://surfeuropemag.fr says she was rescucitated on the beach before going to hospital. Authorities have apparently confirmed that she is going to be okay.

She was part of the Zon North Canyon, which sees surfers trying to beat the world record of Hawaiian Garrett McNamara, which he broke at Nazaré. Here is a news report from Portugal on the incident.

Sweden Runs Out of Garbage

Imagine a world where pollution is a non-issue, cities are pristine, healthy environments to live in, and little to no entanglements from discarded trash injures wildlife or clogs the oceans. In Sweden, this is almost a reality, yet it’s causing a paradoxical predicament for the recycle-happy country that relies on waste to heat and provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes.

The Scandinavian nation of more than 9.5 million citizens has run out of garbage; while this is a positive – almost enviable – predicament for a country to be facing, Sweden now has to search for rubbish outside of its borders to generate its waste-to-energy incineration program. It’s namely Norway officials who are now shipping in 80,000 tons of refuse annually to fuel the country with outside waste.

The population’s remarkable pertinacious recycling habits are inspiration for other garbage-bloated countries where the idea of empty landfills is scarce. In fact, only 4 percent of all waste in Sweden is land-filled, a big win for the future of sustainable living. By using its two million tons of waste as energy and scrapping for more outside of its borders, this country is shown in international comparisons to be the global leader in recovering energy in waste. Go Sweden.

Public Radio International has the whole story. This (albeit short-term) solution is even highly beneficial for the Scandinavian country; Norway pays Sweden to take its excess waste, Sweden burns it for heat and electricity, and the ashes remaining from the incineration process, filled with highly polluting dioxins, are returned back to Norway and land filled.

Catarina Ostland, senior advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, suggests that Norway may not be the perfect partner for the trash import-export scheme, however. “I hope that instead we will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria, or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries” she tells PRI. “They don’t have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste”.

There’s definitely something to be said about being ‘green’. Regardless of its sourcing, hopefully Sweden’s impeccable job of reducing its carbon footprint may serve as an example to other areas of the world that have more than enough trash to utilize and put to sustainable use.

Sources: 

capaitalfm.co.ke

Sweden Waste-Energy Sustainability

Russian Scientist Photographs The Soul Leaving The Body At Death

The timing of astral disembodiment in which the spirit leaves the body has been captured by Russian scientist Konstantin Korotkov, who photographed a person at the moment of his death with a bioelectrographic camera.

The image taken using the gas discharge visualization method, an advanced technique of Kirlian photography shows in blue the life force of the person leaving the body gradually. According to Korotkov, navel and head are the parties who first lose their life force (which would be the soul) and the groin and the heart are the last areas where the spirit before surfing the phantasmagoria of the infinite.

In other cases according to Korotkov has noted that "the soul" of people who suffer a violent and unexpected death usually manifests a state of confusion in your power settings and return to the body in the days following death. This could be due to a surplus of unused energy. The technique developed by Korotkov, who is director of the Research Institute of Physical Culture, St. Petersburg, is endorsed as a medical technology by the Ministry of Health of Russia and is used by more than 300 doctors in the world for stress and monitoring progress of patients treated for diseases such as cancer. Korotkov says his energy imaging technique could be used to watch all kinds of imbalances biophysical and diagnose in real time and also to show if a person does have psychic powers or is a fraud.

This technique, which measures real-time and stimulated radiation is amplified by the electromagnetic field is a more advanced version of the technology developed for measuring Semyon Kirlian aura. Korotkov observations confirm, as proposed by Kirili, that "stimulated electro-photonic light around the tips of the fingers of the human being contains coherent and comprehensive statement of a person, both physically and psychologically."

In this video interview Korotkov speaks of the effect in the bioenergy field with food, water and even cosmetics. And emphasizes one umbrella drink, water and organic food, particularly noting that the aura of the people in the Undies suffers the negative effects of nutrients as technologization distributed in this society. Korotkov also speaks of their measurements in supposedly loaded with power and influence that people have in the bioenergy fields of others. Checking Rupert Sheldrake's experiment of the feeling of being watched : Because a person's bioenergy field changes when someone else directs his attention, even though it is backwards and not consciously perceived. Also a place fields are altered when there is a concentration of tourists. Also warns of cell phone use and their negative radiation often being carcinogenic, which several studies seem to confirm. Korotkov hosting is optimistic that this new scientific field, which is a pioneer, is taking, especially in Russia, where some schools were teaching children to recognize and use energy, and not as a suspect but as a metaphysical quantifiable fact.

'There is some staggering photographic and video evidence demonstrating some of the technologies, particularly shocking is the Oldfield Camera Filter which using a normal camera appears to show ghosts or other worldly entities clearly in photographs! Truly amazing stuff! Harry, the author of 'Harry Oldfield's Invisible Universe' goes on to demonstrate how through various technologies he is able to reveal aspects of this previously unseen universe in all their glory! Three decades of research into this area and considerable practical application enable Harry to present some very convincing evidence that there is far more to the Universe than that which we currently experience with the 5 senses.'

Source: http://www.social-consciousness.com

The Ocean Is Broken!!!

It was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.  Not the absence of sound, exactly.  The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.  And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.  What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.  The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.  "There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.  But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.  No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.  "In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.  "They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."  But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.

North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.  "All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said.  And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.  "Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."  But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.  "And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.  "They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.

"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.  "They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."

Macfadyen felt sick to his heart. That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.  No wonder the sea was dead. No wonder his baited lines caught nothing. There was nothing to catch.  If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.  

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.  "After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.  "We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."  In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.  "Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."

Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.  Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.  "In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.  Not this time.  "In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.  "If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.

"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.  "We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.  "We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.  "Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."
Plastic was ubiquitous. Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.  And something else. The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.

Back in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.  "The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.  Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.  He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.  More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.  Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing - a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.  "I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.  "But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."

Source: http://www.theherald.com.au