Photographer Mark Menjivar traveled the states for 3 years for his “You Are What You Eat” project, meeting people and documenting their lives from a surprisingly interesting viewpoint -their refrigerators. Could you tell the picture above belonged to a bartender who goes to sleep at 8 AM and wakes up a 4 PM every day?
Money laundering is the process by which illegally obtained cash is made to appear as if it has been obtained by legal means. The funds are moved into valid accounts or businesses in order to hide or disguise the financial trail that leads back to the criminal activity. In 1996, it was estimated that between 2 and 5 percent of the world’s gross domestic product consisted of laundered money…
With July just behind us the National Weather Service confirms what you probably already knew: It was really seriously totally sweatily hot over the majority of the United States. In fact there were 2,676 tied or broken heat records across the nation, doubling last year’s stats. All told about 60 people died from the heat last month…
Have we been approaching cancer from the wrong perspective?
According to a new scientific paper, cancer might actually be a newly evolved species of parasite based on the fact that the cells depend on their hosts for food, but otherwise act independently and to the detriment of their host…
The United States is home to 6,624 state parks and has an annual attendance of over 700 million. Yet state parks are being threatened by budget cuts and economic downturn. Here’s a list of all state parks set to get the axe. Does your favorite make the cut?
It is worth noting that designating a single piece of land–especially one rich with resources–was quite radical for the early 1900s. Before the United States introduced its federal- and state-level park system, the concept was far from common. Thanks to Republican Teddy Roosevelt, the U.S. now has 41,725 miles of trail, 207,063 campsites, and 7,161 cabins and lodges across the state park system.
In fact, President Roosevelt couldn’t have said it better when he said “I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the nature resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”
One of the difficulties with using solar energy is its inability to produce electricity around the clock. Torresol Energy in southern Spain has solved this problem by storing thermal energy in two tanks of molten salt. This enables the plant to generate electricity long after sundown in order to satisfy the energy needs of the local populace. The molten salt — known as MSES — stores enough thermal energy during the day to create steam power during the night…
Therapy doesn’t always work. Sometimes, it makes things worse. And a study indicates that the only person guaranteed to feel better about life after someone sits down on a psychologist’s couch is the psychologist. In a special report being published next month to coincide with the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the journal American Psychologist has suggested that in their eagerness to help survivors to cope with the terrorist attacks, some mental health professionals may have exacerbated the trauma. Experts greatly over-estimated the number of survivors who might want treatment, and used discredited methods to help those who came to see them…
Despite the recent spate of arrests on their side, Anon released 400MB of NATO data courtesy of big-time cybersecurity firm ManTech last night. This is their way of making good on a promise and reiterating that they “aren’t scared anymore”.
You’ll recall that NATO officially condemned Anonymous early last month. Well, as part of their long attack on ManTech, you’ll find a bevy of stolen NATO reports from the past several years, financial charts, and pictures of personnel both on duty and at rest. Pretty big, and this is only a portion of the gig of data they say they’re sitting on…
Watching my kids learning how to read made me truly appreciate how difficult it can be to distinguish letters of the Roman alphabet. If you think about it, a lot of the letters are truly alike – b and p are the same thing with different rotation, v and w look almost the same and so on. Dyslexics have even greater trouble because their brains constantly “mix up” these letters…
We all learned about the Fibonacci numbers in school. If you need a refresher course, the integers in the Fibonacci sequence start with 0 and 1. Each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two, so the third number in the sequence is 1, the fourth number, is 2, the fifth number is 3, and so on. The Fibonacci spiral is something we see every day in nature but never really pay much attention to. However, an amazing YouTube video called “Nature By Numbers” puts the mathematical sequence into perspective for us…
Air travel may be time efficient, but based on planes’ carbon emissions, it’s not good for the environment. And while purchasing carbon offsets is a good move, it’s just a drop in the bucket. That’s why Google has teamed up with aircraft technology research group the CAFE Foundation to sponsor the NASA Centennial Challenge competition, called the Green Flight Challenge.
The more than $1 million first place prize will go to the team that designs the aircraft that best shows that the emission-free flight is not only possible, it’s practical…
This winning photo of creatures of land and air colliding taken by Bence Máté.
The German Society of Nature Photographers — the trippingly named Gesellschaft Deutscher Tierfotografen — holds a contest every year for the best photographs. Featured in the Guardian are some of the winners with some truly stunning photographs. Check out this year’s winners on display at the Guardian’s website, including this wonderful example by Bence Máté taken in Hungary. Who do you think won this standoff? My bet’s on the bird…