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The inhabitants of the village in southern Italy Maierato experience the fright of their lives when a mountain slope to move and slide down. The landslide was caused by heavy rains. - You Tube
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February 16, 2010 1:00 pm |
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Here’s Felix Baumgartner’s plan: Float a balloon to 120,000 feet. Jump out. Break the sound barrier. Don’t die. Simple, right?
If Baumgartner, a world famous base jumper and skydiver, pulls off the feat, he’ll set the record for the world’s highest jump and become the first person to break the sound barrier with his body alone. During the jump, he’ll also collect data on how the human body reacts to a fall from such heights, which could be useful for planning orbital escape plans for future space tourists and astronauts.
Dubbed the Red Bull Stratos and sponsored by the energy drink company, the jump will send Baumgartner to the stratosphere in a small space capsule, lifted by a helium-filled balloon. Once he reaches 120,000 feet after three hours of ascension, ground control will give him the “all clear” sign and he’ll pop open the door and jump, as video cameras on the capsule and his suit record his descent. Within 35 seconds or so, Baumgartner will hit supersonic speeds and break the sound barrier. No one really knows what will happen at that point, but the scientists seem confident that he’ll maintain consciousness. He will free fall for roughly six more minutes, pulling his chute at about 5,000 feet and coasting for 15 minutes back to solid ground. - Pop Sci
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January 22, 2010 12:59 pm |
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December 30, 2009 11:50 am |
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A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled. Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing sight to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor or a shock wave - although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet. The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate.
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December 9, 2009 12:49 pm |
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December 3, 2009 12:50 pm |
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hese were the stunning scenes over the Scottish borders as thousands of starlings gathered to roost .
In a beautiful natural display of formation flying, they took the shape of a whale soaring through the skies at Gretna Green.
The image captures what bird experts call a 'murmuration’ of starlings, which is when the birds return en masse to their winter roost from a day's feeding which can be as much as 20 miles away.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1232385/Stunning-natural-display-thousands-starlings-form-shape-whale.html#ixzz0YSkN8dWw
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December 1, 2009 11:21 am |
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November 25, 2009 6:38 am |
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You saw a couple in an intimate love position, right?
Interestingly, research has shown that young children cannot identify the intimate couple because they do not have prior memory associated with such a scenario.
What they will see, however, is nine (small & black) dolphins in the picture!
So, I guess we've already proven you're not a young innocent child. Now, if it's hard for you to find the dolphins within 6 seconds, your mind is SO corrupted that you probably need help!
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October 8, 2009 4:53 pm |
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A "speaking piano" reciting the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court at World Venice Forum 2009. Unfortunately it's all in German, but what the piano says is all English, and it's really neat to watch.
UPDATE: Astera on hackaday wrote a rough translation:
Pretty amazing, how all of a sudden the words of the Declaration become understandable to a European Environmental Criminal Court. Wien Modern was one out of ten cultural institutions asked for an artistic contribution to the event in Palazzo Ducale in Venice.
The ambitious goal was to make this message audible with musical means, without falling back to a simple setting.
Berno Polzer: I think, its partially understandable, partially not. And it plays well with the limits of our construction abilities. That is, we hear sounds that obviously arent normal Music, but neither they are language, and one could say that sometimes, a bridging happens. Personally, I think you can understand individual words even without knowing the text, and the Eureka moment happens when you see the text, and suddenly, the language is there.
Yet another bridge: Miro Markus, an elementary school student from Berlin, narrated the text for the performance: Youth as a hope for the older generation.
The Austrian composer Peter Ablinger transferred the frequency spectrom of the childs voice to his computer controlled mechanical piano.
Peter Ablinger: I break down this phonography, meaning a recording of something the voice, in this case -, in individual pixels, one can say. And if I have the possibility of a rendering in a fairly high resolution (and that I only get with a mechanical piano), then I in fact restore some kind of continuity. Therefore, with a little practice, or help or subtitling, we actually can hear a human voice in a piano sound. - YOUTUBE
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October 7, 2009 6:49 am |
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