Blue whales are the largest animals ever known to have lived on Earth. These magnificent marine mammals rule the ocean at up to 100 feet long and upwards of 200 tons.
Did you know that a blue whale's member can reach a length of up to 8 feet? That's taller than a professional basketball player!
Also, a blue whale's heart is the size of a car, and each of it's lungs the size of a bathtub. Their mouths can hold 100 people inside, and they eat 4 tons of fish every day. That's as much meat as 64,000 hamburgers!
Cramped
cages. Extreme temperatures. Filthy surroundings. No doubt about it:
Our industrial food system treats animal welfare as an afterthought. As a
commentary on today's “modern” farming, a London architecture student
has created a thought-provoking design for a chicken farm that strips
the birds of their mobility—and their brains.
Royal
College of Art student André Ford created the installation, dubbed The
Centre for Unconscious Farming. It’s a pretty grim affair, made of a
massive steel frame that would contain up to 1,000 birds. In it the
chickens are completely immobilized—their feet are removed (to save
space), and the birds receive food, water and oxygen through an
intricate network of tubes. In order to eliminate the suffering that
chickens would face under such conditions, Ford proposes that the birds’
cerebral cortex be removed, leaving the brain stem (and key homeostatic
functions) intact. The chickens would continue to grow, but would
basically spend their lives in a coma.
Ford asserts his concept isn’t just a bid for attention:
“In
the past six years we have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the
demand for meat. Higher welfare systems are available, but this project
looks at addressing the inherent problems with the dominant system that
produces the majority of our meat—the system that will be increasingly
relied upon… We do not, and cannot, provide adequate welfare for those
agricultural products and therefore welfare should be removed entirely.”
Currently,
about 95 percent of broiler chickens produced in the U.S.—about 8.44
billion birds annually—are raised in commercial farms, which frequently
consist of dark sheds where thousands of animals are packed together
ingesting ammonia fumes in extreme temperatures. The animals are bred to
grow quickly, which often leads to heart and lung troubles, as well as
crippling leg deformities. Compassion in World Farming estimates that
tens of millions of birds die before slaughter from heart failure,
disease, or injury during transport.
Ford is not the
first to propose extreme measures in light of our unrelenting demand.
Agribusiness “philosopher” Paul Thompson has suggested breeding blind
broilers, since studies show that they respond better to the stress of
packed sheds.
“There are numerous differences between
the current dominant production systems and the one I am proposing,”
Ford told Wired UK,“but the fundamental difference is the removal of
suffering. Whether what I am proposing is an appropriate means to
achieve the removal of suffering is open to interpretation.”
The 1978 "SupaidÄman"
movie isn't a bootleg; it's the product of Marvel licensing their characters
out to Toei, a Japanese production company, to be used however they
wanted. It is, however, completely insane. Instead of Peter Parker, this series focused on Takuya Yamashiro,
a motorcycle racer whose father, a "space archaeologist," equipped him
with a transformation-inducing wristband that gave him control of a
giant fighting robot that he used to fight the kaiju army of Professor Monster
in episodes with titles like "Becoming Splendid: To the Murderous
Machine of Transformation" and "To the Flaming Hell: See the Tears of
the Snake Woman." We are pretty sure that these facts make it the most
awesome thing ever sent out on the airwaves.
iTunes has not always been property of Apple inc. This software that seems to never reach it's maximum upgrade has a story that backs all the way to the 1990s.
SoundJam MP was an early Mac OS compatible MP3 player and Rio-compatible hardware synchronization manager that was released in July 1998 and was available until June 2001.
Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid developed SoundJam MP with assistance from Dave Heller. Prior to working together on SoundJam MP, Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid had worked for Apple in the 1990s as system software engineers assigned to the Copland operating system, a project that was abandoned before completion.
Apple, Inc. purchased SoundJam MP in 2000 and further developed the code to create iTunes version 1.0.
Source: at http://www.omg-facts.com/page/3#Do03I3STspkJCpo8.99
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was a polar explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic, and one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Away from his expeditions, Shackleton's life was generally restless and unfulfilled. In his search for rapid pathways to wealth and security, he launched many business ventures and other money-making schemes, none of which prospered. His financial affairs were generally muddled; he died heavily in debt.
In 1914, he ran an ad in a London newspaper for a Trans-Antartic exploration. The ad read: “Men wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success. – Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Source: at http://www.omg-facts.com/page/3#Do03I3STspkJCpo8.99
The Son Doong Cave in Vietnam is by far, the largest cave in the world. The cave is over 5.5 miles long, is home to a jungle, river, and could easily fit a 40-story skyscraper within it! Incredibly, the cave wasn't discovered until 1991. However, the man was frightened by the massive drop at the entrance of the cave, so he didn't further explore it.
It wasn't until 2009 that a team of British Cavers decided to explore it. Now, in 2014, a tour company called Oxalis is running trial tours of the cave! The drop that the man was afraid of at the entrance of the cave is being turned into an 80 meter rappel experience for tourists to enter the cave!
Visitors of the cave have seen some of the most beautiful sights that Vietnam has to offer. The fact that the cave remained undiscovered for so long only makes the tour of the cave that much more magical. The roof of the cave collapsed centuries ago, which allowed outside life to grow in the cave! It wasn't long before the jungle started to form what is now known as the Garden of Edam!
Chen Si is a Chinese good Samaritan who has stopped more than 144 people from jumping off of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China.
Since 2003, Chen Si has spent every weekend on the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, a notorious spot from which to commit suicide. Si patrols the bridge on foot and on his motorbike, looking for people who might be contemplating suicide.
To Si, these are people "who look depressed, those whose psychological pressure is great" and whose "way of walking is very passive with no spirit, or no direction." He then approaches them and tries to talk to them. Occasionally they are already over the railing, and he has to grab them and pull them back over.
If we had more people like Si, the world would be a much better place.
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