Category: Our Planet

  • 4 out of 10 people who get doctorates in Norway are foreign citizens

    4 out of 10 people who get doctorates in Norway are foreign citizens

    4 out of 10 people who get doctorates in Norway are foreign citizens

  • Toronto’s Buds are Blooming

    Toronto’s Buds are Blooming

      Photos by Saide Kardar  via Samsung phone (8)

  • photo of the day – katydid nymph’s yoga

    photo of the day – katydid nymph’s yoga

    Andreas Kay is a photographer who shares the wonders of the Amazon rainforest with us… In this photo he captured a moment that is much like a starching yoga pose of a katydid nymph. continue reading …

  • Iranian Scientist at Melbourne university turned carbon dioxide back into coal

    Iranian Scientist at Melbourne university turned carbon dioxide back into coal

    Lead author, Dr Dorna Esrafilzadeh, a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in RMIT’s School of Engineering, developed the electrochemical technique to capture and convert atmospheric CO2 to storable solid carbon. To convert CO2, the researchers designed a liquid metal catalyst with specific surface properties that made it extremely efficient at conducting electricity while chemically activating the surface.…

  • Simple life Was Only Necessary

    Simple life Was Only Necessary

    Through much of human history, frugal simplicity was not a choice but a necessity – and since necessary, it was also deemed a moral virtue. But with the advent of industrial capitalism and a consumer society, a system arose that was committed to relentless growth, and with it grew a population (aka ‘the market’) that…

  • A Simple but Fantastic Illusion

    A Simple but Fantastic Illusion

    You can not believe your eyes after looking at this picture that simply shows a brick wall. A wall that has crack in it and there is a small stone sitting there. right? Wrong.  They say usually it takes about 30 seconds to find out the illusion here… I don’t think so … Just look…

  • Fact-Resistant Humans Killing the Earth

    Fact-Resistant Humans Killing the Earth

    Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study reports. The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as…

  • Secularism in the Last Six Centuries

    Secularism in the Last Six Centuries

    The religious implications of secularism are often misconstrued, too. Secularisation did not mean godlessness; for the most part, early modern Europeans were profoundly Christian. It was rather that the boundary between the religious and the secular became more distinct than before. As the 17th-century English philosopher Sir Thomas Browne put it, humans live ‘in divided…

  • Happy New Year

    Happy New Year

  • A Family Portrait That left on the Moon

    A Family Portrait That left on the Moon

    On April 20, 1972, Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke took his first steps on the Moon. He was 36 at the time and is the youngest human in history to ever walk on the lunar surface. But that’s not the only achievement of Duke’s that lives on in American history. While he was on the…

  • Dancing Kid in Iranian Religious Mourning Parade

    Dancing Kid in Iranian Religious Mourning Parade

    “Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our…

  • How Did Humans Spread Out Over the Earth?

    Most of human history is prehistory. Of the 200,000 or more years that humans have spent on Earth, only a tiny fraction have been recorded in writing. Even in our own little sliver of geologic time, the 12,000 years of the Holocene, whose warm weather and relatively stable climate incubated the birth of agriculture, cities,…

  • #ImNoAngel

    The female body image debate is just as important for men as it is for women. This week has been particularly good for bringing the idea of female body image acceptance into the fore. That’s good news for all of us – not just women struggling with their perceptions of their appearance. In the past…

  • Slow TV Movement

    Slow TV Movement

    The concept started with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s coverage of the, at that time, longest professional rail fan driver’s eye view, showing the complete 7-hour train ride. It was followed by the live coverage of 134-hour voyage of a ship Both events received extensive attention in both Norwegian and foreign media, and were considered a…

  • The Greatest Enemy of Truth

    The Greatest Enemy of Truth

    Apart from being one of the most revered scientists to ever live, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was also an active supporter of various social causes such as the early American civil rights movement. He was and continues to be uniquely of science and of popular culture. Image source Big Think

  • A Shaolin Monk’s Tips On How To Stay Young

    A Shaolin Monk’s Tips On How To Stay Young

    1. Don’t think too much. Thinking takes energy. Thinking can make you look old. 2. Don’t talk too much. Most people either talk or do. Better to do. 3. When you work, work for 40 minutes then stop for 10 minutes. When you look at something all the time, it can damage your eyes and…

  • Slap Her

    Slap Her

    What happens when you put a boy in front of a girl and ask him to slap her? Here is how children react to the subject of violence against women this video has been shot by http://www.fanpage.it    

  • Rich People Live Longer

    Rich People Live Longer

    It is widely known that countries with high per-capita wealth have long life expectancies, but just how strong is the correlation across the board? In this video from The Gapminder Foundation, Hans Rosling, professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, explores the visual data that details the link between gross domestic product…

  • Brides Race to Win a Wedding Dress

    Brides Race to Win a Wedding Dress

    The 150-metre dash requires competitors to don wedding gowns and running shoes in a sprint through the Serbian capital. Belgrade resident Sanja Cigoja was the first to cross the finishing line out of the 100 ladies taking part, with an impressive winning time of 19 seconds.The winner and two runners-up receive numerous awards including the…

  • Cartoon for Hottest Year Ever; 2014

    Cartoon for Hottest Year Ever; 2014

    All of these  scientific centres and global climate watchers claim that 2014 was the warmest year ever Global Analysis – Annual 2014 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/ 2014 on track to be hottest year on record, says US science agency http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/20/2014-on-track-to-be-hottest-year-on-record-says-us-science-agency climate central.org http://www.climatecentral.org/news/2014-on-track-to-be-warmest-year-on-record-18041 NOAA http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/january/nasa-determines-2014-warmest-year-in-modern-record/#.VL_igUfF9Z8 2014 warmest year in Europe since 1500s http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e92579ae-8580-11e4-ab4e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3PThtypDi

  • Hypereducated Poor

    Hypereducated Poor

    Much political rhetoric these days is devoted to the importance of broadening access to college—and there is plenty of evidence that it’s still better financially to have a degree than not—but in the postcrash world of 2014, a good education may not keep you from hovering near the poverty line. The number of people with…

  • Language of the Future

    That’s what indigenous languages tend to be like in one way or another. Languages “grow” in complexity the way that people pick up habits and cars pick up rust. One minute the way you mark a verb in the future tense is to use will: I will buy it. The next minute, an idiom kicks…

  • We Run But Still Can’t Catch Up

    We Run But Still Can’t Catch Up

    The key is that a society undergoing acceleration gets caught in a feedback loop it cannot escape, whereby acceleration in production, circulation, and distribution (in Rosa’s terms, “technical acceleration”) drives social change. The institutions of society no longer guarantee stable life paths. If in classical modernity people could imagine their lives in intergenerational terms — say, the…

  • Rent a Tiny Country or Village for a Night

    Rent a Tiny Country or Village for a Night

    For a cool $70,000 a night (for a minimum of two nights), you can hire the tiny country of Liechtenstein, which measures around 61.7 square miles and has just 35,000 inhabitants. According to the profile on Airbnb, Liechtenstein can accommodate between 450 and 900 people, has 500+ bedrooms and 500+ bathrooms. The cancellation policy is…

  • When Photos Become History

    When Photos Become History

                http://9gag.com/gag/aEGWw3O

  • An Abstract Architect's Return to Build the Simple Houses

    An Abstract Architect's Return to Build the Simple Houses

    The 7 minutes documentary is about Lloyd Kahn an architect and writer of many books on different forms of buildings. Even though he is 80 years old but his energy, in all aspects of life, is still intact.  His new and final endeavor is back to basics of building the simple houses. In this short…

  • 10 Reasons to be Happy For Our Planet

    10 Reasons to be Happy For Our Planet

    Global life expectancy has increased from 53 to 69 years since 1960 More women are involved in running the world 79% of people in the developing world now access to a mobile phone, vital for communication in the absence of landlines Though it mightseem hard to believe, the long term trend is of fewer people dying in armed…

  • Around the World With no Backpack

    Around the World With no Backpack

    The story chronicles the 21-day, ultra-minimal trip to Europe taken by Austin-based freelance writer Clara Bensen (ClaraBensen.com) and her date Jeff, whom she had recently met on OkCupid. Despite being in a relationship for less time than most of us go without getting a haircut, the two embarked — at Jeff’s suggestion — on a…

  • We Waste Half of the World Food

    We Waste Half of the World Food

    Food waste or food loss is food that is discarded or cannot be used. The causes of food waste or loss are numerous, and occur at the stages of production, processing, retailing and consumption. As of 2013, half of all food is wasted worldwide, according to the British Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME).Loss and wastage…

  • An Entrepreneur Society

    An Entrepreneur Society

    The modern world is in love with entrepreneurship. Starting your own business holds the same sort of prestigious position as, in previous ages, making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or spearing multiple enemies in battle. However, what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur remains maddeningly elusive. Governments and public bodies do their best to encourage…

  • Google’s Camel View of Desert

    Google’s Camel View of Desert

    It’s given us robot cars and internet-enabled glasses — but when it came to creating a “Street View” of a desert, Google hit on a low-tech solution. It hired a camel. The beast has become the first animal to carry Google’s Trekker camera, which is typically hoisted by humans to capture 360-degree images of destinations…

  • Face of the New Feminist

    Face of the New Feminist

    Emma Watson is the new woman of our society. She is powerful, articulate, independent, successful and above all as she clearly elaborated is not aggressive, isolated, anti-men and unattractive: “I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is…

  • Sidewalk lane for Phone Addicts

    Sidewalk lane for Phone Addicts

    Chongqing city, one of the five major cities in China has a designated lane for people who prefer to talk on the phone or play or even watch their favorite video clips while walking. The drivers of the town welcome the idea because the distraction that cell phone addicts were creating was real and dangerous.…

  • When Potholes Are Funny

    When Potholes Are Funny

    Every city in the world  has potholes. Nobody likes them and they are annoying. They create accidents and simply give ugly face to every street. The two photographers Claudia Ficca and Davide Luciano tried to make fun of potholes through irony:

  • Our Dying Planet

    Our Dying Planet

      A biologist at Duke University, Stuart Pimm, recently published a research article in the journal Science, which claims — that in the past — before humans evolved, only one species went extinct each year per every 10 million years. However, after the emergence of humans, that extinction rate has exploded at a rate between…

  • Iran among Top 10 Countries for Cosmetic Surgery

    More than 23 million cosmetic and non-surgical procedures were performed in 2013, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Iran is among Top 10 countries for cosmetic surgery.  The United States topped the international chart, with almost 4 million people going under the knife or needle, followed by Brazil with more than 2…

  • Eid al-Fitr All Around the World

    Eid al-Fitr and the end of Ramadan 2014 http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/07/eid-al-fitr-and-the-end-of-ramadan-2014/100781/

  • The Blind Barber of New York

    Jeff Laub has been exposed  everywhere. From vanity fair  magazine to GQ to Ask men, from photo report to videos that made by different sites for his famous “Blind Barber” shop.  He likes his job and has a style and really engages with his cool costumers, a successful combination for trendy Brooklyn shop. Here he…

  • The Forgotten History Of Human Zoos

    The Forgotten History Of Human Zoos

    Recently while surfing internet I saw a report on London’s Human Zoo That took a place almost 9 years age. Caged and barely clothed, eight men and women monkeyed around for the crowds in an exhibit labeled “Humans” at the London Zoo. In the meantime through searching human zoo, accidentally I have been introduced to…

  • How to Make Fun of Football

    Even though all the world likes football but still hundreds of millions of people see football as a show of all the fake falls,  crying in pain, complaining and and even biting: