Friday, June 29, 2012

Best Movies of 2010


 2010 may not have started off as a particularly good year for movies but the initial disappointment was compensated by a few great titles in between and the last-quarter flurry of quality films. The highlights of 2010 include record breaking titles from the animated film industry and one of the highest publically rated movies of all time (Inception).
Here’s a list of the best 2010 had to offer. Didn’t find your favorite 2010 movie in the list? Feel free to mention it in the comment section below.
Inception

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Another 5 Mysterious Islands in Fiction


5. The Island of Creation
First appeared in: God of War II (2007) by Cory Barlog, James Balrog, David Jaffe, and Marianne Krawczyk
The main location during the hit video game’s mid-section appears both on the PlayStation 2 version of the game, and the compilation God of War Collection for the PlayStation 3. As number 1 on the previous list was an island from Greek mythology, it is perhaps fitting that number 10 on this list should also come from Greek mythology, albeit a more modern version of that mythology. Here, anti-hero Kratos meets up with various figures from Greek mythology, including Theseus and the Sisters of Fate.

Stunning Sports Moments


5. Formula 1
2007 Formula One Championship – Brazilian Grand Prix
The 2007 formula one season marked the first season without veteran driver Michael Schumacher. The season was marked by intense competition between three premier drivers – Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Räikkönen. The Brazilain Grand Prix was the last race of the season, and it was the first time since 1986 that three drivers were in contention for the championship with only a single race remaining. The event was marked by treacherous weather, and was started under safety car conditions. Lewis
Hamilton was the favorite with 107 points, followed by Fernando Alonso on 103 points and Kimi Räikkönen on only 100 points. Without some dramatic event, it seemed clear that either Hamilton or Alonso would win, with Räikkönen not being in contention. However, Hamilton slipped to the back, from 2nd, after a gearbox

Monday, June 18, 2012

Terrible Decisions of the 20th and 21st Centuries


5. Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Though Harry Truman was under extreme pressure to end the war and reduce American casualties I think his decision to drop two atomic bombs on August 6th and August 9th, 1945 was in error. The Japanese were already defeated. According to Army Air Force General Henry H. (Hap) Arnold, “It always appeared to us, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.” President
Eisenhower declared in an interview with Newsweek: “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
4. Elite within the Democratic Party

Some Nearly Extinct Household Items


5. Window and Floor Fans
Before everyone had window air-conditioners, and then central air-conditioning, people did one thing in the summer months. They sweat. Summer months, especially July and August, were something that had to be endured. Unless you went to a public place like a movie theater, there was no air-conditioning. If it was 95 and humid outside, your house was even hotter and more uncomfortable. Trying to sleep at night was a real difficulty. The old window fan that rattled away and sucked in slightly less hot air from the outside, during the night, was a staple of all households. Many other rooms had floor fans that you could plug in and circulate
the hot humid air around the room at your feet. Or as a kid you could turn it on and lay on the floor with your

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Innovative technology for charities



5. Oaktree Foundation
Charity’s version of Menudo, the Oaktree Foundation is an aid and development organization run exclusively by young people under the age of 26. Listed achievements from a website littered with bad spelling include a 2006 Make Poverty History Concert (with Eddie Vedder and, of course, Bono), an End Child Slavery campaign and Schools 4 Schools, an Australian school program raising awareness of global
poverty. Oaktree also supports the Adidome Modular Training program in Ghana, which combats Trokosi

Fascinating Sealed Documents



5. Dr. David Kelly’s Post Mortem
Sealed Until: 2073
David Kelly worked for the U.K Ministry of Defense as an expert in bio-weapons. He was also one of the key UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. In 2003, he became concerned about the US/UK claims of WMD in Iraq in the build-up to the Iraq war. The trouble started when Kelly became an anonymous source for a BBC journalist, who quoted his doubts about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. After Kelly’s identity was leaked, a Parliamentary committee, tasked with investigating the intelligence on Iraq, asked
Kelly to testify, which he did. During his testimony Kelly denied any knowledge of the quotes. Several days after his testimony, he went for a walk, as he did almost every day. In a wooded area about a mile away from his home he ingested up to 29 tablets of painkillers then cut his left wrist. The British government

Predatory Insects in the Garden


 We are all familiar with the house fly, which feeds on decaying organic matter (among other disgusting things), and is pretty much harmless to other insects. However, there are around 120,000 species of flies in the world (many are yet to be discovered) and some of them are accomplished predators. Robber flies are among these; they have extremely sharp eyesight and can fly at high speed, catching other insects in mid air. They have stabbing mouthparts (proboscis) which inject a powerful neurotoxic venom and digestive juices
into the victim, liquifying its innards, which the fly sucks afterwards.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Most gruesome medieval torture devices


5. Scold’s Bridle
This portable instrument of torture was popular in England and Scotland during the 1500′s, but was seen as late as the nineteenth century. The scold’s bridle (also known as branks) was a cage that was locked around a woman’s head as punishment for nagging and gossiping too often. Attached to this iron muzzle was a curb-plate inserted into a woman’s mouth to, literally, subdue her treacherous tongue. Most of these metal curb-
plates were spiked, averaging in length of about half an inch to an inch. The smaller spikes were a mild discomfort while the longer ones pierced the tongue and caused the victim to bleed continuously.
To make matters worse, some curb-plates had an additional round gag at the end which, when the device was worn, rested in the back of the mouth, irritating the throat. Some of these gags were shaped as animal heads to symbolically refer to her crime (e.g. donkey meant fool).

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Wonderful japanese street fashion

Japanese street fashion has a variety of trends and styles. Youth were more elaborate in their dressing patterns and make-up. Bright colors, eccentric patterns, hand-made garments, heavy jewelry, mixing and matching jeans and tank tops with traditional wear like kimonos, is their way of making statements about their cultural influences and way of life.

Weird painful rites of initiation

5. Sepik Scarification

The tribes living along the Sepik river in Papua New Guinea have used the tradition of scarification to mature their boys into men for decades. The ceremony requires the youth to be cut along his back, chest and buttocks in elaborate patterns, to mimic the coarse skin of a crocodile. It is thought that this reptilian divinity consumes his youth during the bloody process, leaving behind a man in his place.
Before he can be treated as a man, though, the boy is subjected to humiliation in a ritual that can take weeks. In fact, the boys are referred to as women and regarded that way in order to psychologically toughen them.
The scarification, parallel to the taunts, strengthens them physically because it requires a vast amount of discipline to go through the ritual, withstanding hundreds of cuts. The raw wounds are cleaned after the