Literal.ly is a new blog by Nahum who also owns Oddee.
Literal.ly is made around the idea of taking pictures literally. You get an idea what this means if you visit the site. The picture above is called ‘Facebook.’
Here’s a good Boston Globe report on the first decade of Portugal’s bold experiment with drug decriminalization and increased treatment. Ten years ago, Portugal — whose drug problem had been spiraling out of control — decided to treat drug addiction as a public health matter, not as a criminal matter. They decriminalized possession of drugs, and increased treatment available to addicts, and experienced an immediate, dramatic and sustained drop in negative effects from drug use — though the use of some drugs went up…
Continue reading… “Portugal: 10 Years of Decriminalized Drugs”
Starbucks is now offering the trenta size, which is just one ounce short of a full quart. Sadly, it will not be available for straight coffee — just icy drinks. In this infographic, Andrew Barr of Canada’s National Post points out that this size is larger than the average adult stomach capacity…
Continue reading… “Starbucks Offers Ginormous New Drink Size”
Shani Shingnapur, the world famous temple town in Maharashtra where houses have neither doors nor locks, now befittingly has its first commercial bank branch with no locks on its front door. The public sector UCO Bank is the first to throw open the doors of commercial banking to this unique town of 3,000 people. Bowing to local religious sentiments, the bank last week decided to open the branch without a lock on its front door…
Continue reading… “Bank in India Launches Branch Without Locks”
Photographer Rafaela Persson has lived in Afghanistan since 2008, and spends time getting to know her subjects.
I had an idea to photograph female drug addicts. Afghanistan is the world’s biggest producer of opium, from which heroin is derived. According to a study made by U.N. Drugs and Crimes Office in 2010, the rate of drug addiction in Afghanistan is twice the global average; Afghans have become the leading consumers of their own opium. Approximately one million Afghans, or eight percent of the war-shattered country’s total population is suffering from drug addiction, a 75 percent increase since 2005. What is even more alarming is that studies show that 50 percent of Afghanistan’s opium-using parents give the drug to their own children…
Continue reading… “The Plight of Female Drug Addicts in Afghanistan”
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a United States federal holiday. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around the time of King’s birthday, January 15.
King was the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the civil rights movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King’s honor began soon after his assassination in 1968, and was first observed in 1986.
There are many sides of the to-pirate-or-not-to-pirate debate. From those who think that pirating is wrong on principle, to those who think that pirating a game is a universal right, to those who love to pay money for all of their games but don’t think twice about ripping a copy of StarCraft for a friend, and more.
But there’s one thing that they can all agree on. It’s hard to think of a dumber way to pirate games than to trying to tunnel into a retail store.
But nevertheless, 33 year old Steven Archer was arrested this Thursday in Tennessee for breaking into a vacant building and using it as a base to tunnel into his local GameStop next door….
Continue reading… “Man Arrested for Tunneling Into GameStop to Steal Games”
Iceland Wants to Be Your Friend is an initiative of the Icelandic Tourist Board.
Halló, my name is Iceland. I am an island, full of mountains and glaciers and hot water and sheep and other things. And also many nice Icelandic people, who like to make music, and who are sometimes cold.
(Maybe you have seen me on your tele-vision, or your Inter-nets.) I have heard that many people use the Inter-nets to make friends, and to talk about themselves. So that is what I want to do, too.
TED, the progressive California nonprofit that brings luminaries of technology, entertainment, and design together for the sake of world betterment, has made an unexpected choice for its seventh annual $100,000 TED Prize: JR, a 27-year-old street artist who, under a mysterious cloak of semi-anonymity, has been pasting monumental black-and-white photographs across the urban infrastructure of the world’s poorest slums…
(more award winning art after jump…)
New York City held a design contest for new taxi cabs and have winnowed the finalists down to three designs, none of which are very exciting, but could make the manufacturer of the eventual winner rather wealthy. However, the city reserves the right to reject all three and start the competition over. However…
During CES last week, Panasonic connected a Nordic Track treadmill to the Internet, and the result is a stationary run using Google Maps that feels real.
A Panasonic Viera Connect HDTV displays Google Maps and communicates inclinations of hills and valleys to the treadmill. The machine is smart enough to incline itself at the appropriate times, matching those hills every step of the way…
Continue reading… “Treadmill Allows You to Take a Virtual Run Anywhere on Google Earth”
It’s a tale that has all the trappings of a cult 1960s sci-fi movie: Scientists bring back ancient salt crystals, dug up from deep below Death Valley for climate research. The sparkling crystals are carefully packed away until, years later, a young, unknown researcher takes a second look at the 34,000-year-old crystals and discovers, trapped inside, something strange. Something … alive…
Continue reading… “34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found Buried Alive!”