(Photo: Four Seasons Resort)
The Four Seasons Resort at Landaa Giraavaru in the Maldives has an unbelievably beautiful wedding chapel just off the beach. It's surrounded by crystal clear blue waters which are visible not only out of the windows, but straight through the glass floor. Wedding party members travel there by gondola. You can see more photos of this mesmerizing place at Fubiz.
Last Sunday, the US Air Force dropped two 2,000-pound bombs on a building in ISIS-controlled Mosul, Iraq. This was where that terrorist organization kept a large amount of its money necessary to fund current operations. The strike hit perfectly, obliterating the target.
The Department of Defense recently released video footage of the air strike. What you see fluttering around are countless pieces of cash forming swirling clouds of money.
After the debris settled, surveillance footage found many pieces of money on nearby rooftops. You can read more at CNN (auto-start video).
-via Gizmodo
Timo the cat is an internet celebrity, what with his cat hammock, masterful Christmas tree decorating style, and adorable yawning.
But he hasn't forgotten the people who loved him before he was famous. For 3 years, his best friend has been a koi. Oh, he's polite to all of the koi in the pond. But the grey one always gets special attention.
-via Gifsboom
(Photo: Gautier Poupeau/Library of Congress)
In 1820, a farmer dug up a mysterious Greek statue on the island of Melos. He found a remarkably well-preserved statue of what is probably Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty—or Venus, as the Romans called her. This amazing find became known as the Venus de Milo.
She arrived at just the right time. The Academic art movement venerated the majesty of the human body, as well as gave men a good excuse to look at pictures of naked women. The Venus de Milo came to epitomize a neoclassical vision of female beauty.
In the United States, the idealization of this beauty standard led to contests in which men searched for women who had Venus’s precise measurements. Thousands of women were measured in this effort, particularly college students, such as this young lady at Wellesley College. Atlas Obscura traces the history of this movement. One leader was Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent, the gym director at Harvard University:
These measurement cards did not require just height, weight, bust, waist, and hips. There were 60 required measurements per person, including instep, wrist, forearm, armspan, and “ninth rib.” And all this data was being put toward new and novel applications. In 1893, Sargent used composite figures from female students' measurements to sculpt a statue and exhibit it at that year's Chicago World's Fair. This figure came to be known as the "Harvard Venus." Visitors to the fair were invited to examine it, reflect on how their own bodies compared, and submit themselves to be measured for Sargent's data collection project. [...]
By this time, Sargent had collected the measurements of over 10,000 female students, yet he claimed he had still not encountered the ideal woman. “Among the many thousands who have been measured at the gymnasium, not one has fulfilled every requirement,” he told the Times. The closest was Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer and vaudeville star who stood five-foot-four-and-a-half and sported a 35.2-inch bust, 26.2-inch waist, and 37.8-inch hips. Sargent called her the "perfect woman" for publicity purposes, but he was rounding up.
The movement petered out during the 1920s as new beauty standards took hold of American popular culture. It never did find its truly perfect example of the female form, which is reasonable, as my wife would not be born for a few more decades.
This is pretty much daily life down here in paradise. But it's exotic for those of you who are not fortunate enough to live in Texas. So check out what you're missing.
Sherrod Greeson and his friends are students at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. They're also members of the school's championship winning ranch horse team. A few years ago, while they were in class, 2 cows got loose and ran up and down the streets of the city. So Sherrod and his friends got their horses and lassos and captured the cows.
They described the experience to a local reporter, who can't help but laugh and say to them, "I want to be all of your friends."
-via Glenn Reynolds
19 times.
Without Artoo's timely, brave, and skilled intervention on 19 separate occasions, our heroes would have been killed and all hope for a galaxy free from the Sith menace would have been over.
What did he get for it? Well, Amidala thanked him and gave him a cleaning, which is nice.
Artoo may get a better offer from the dark side. At least the Empire pays its soldiers.
(Photo: Southwest Coast National Scenic Area)
Okay, we can dispense with the marketing meeting because I already have the solution to our problem. Women dig shoes, right? Especially shopping for high heeled shoes. So here's what we're going to do: we're going to make the new church look like a shoe!
It's a fool-proof plan that has become a reality in Taiwan. The new church building is 17 meters tall and has 320 enormous blue glass panels that form the body of a shoe. ITV News reports:
Southwest Coast National Scenic Area spokesman Zheng Rongfeng told local media the church would also include 100 "female-oriented" features including chairs for "lovers", biscuits and cake.
What would a church building for guys look like?
Nope, never mind. I don't want to know.
-via The Presurfer
Natasha of the food blog Through the Eyes of My Belly has started publishing her work very recently. It was only last week that she introduced herself to the people of the internet with her bacon and chocolate shot glasses.
I expect to see only wonderful things from Natasha. She's promptly followed up on that culinary marvel with edible shots made of mozzarella cheese and filled with marinara sauce.
To make them, first, she cut a block of mozzarella into large chunks with hollowed-out tops. She rolled these in flour, washed them in egg, then rolled them again in bread crumbs. After freezing them solid for 2 hours, she deep fried the cheese chunks and filled them with marinara sauce. Yummy!
-via Foodiggity
(Photo: Curtin University/Desert Fireball Network)
Prof. Phil Bland of Curtin University is ecstatically happy for a reason. The rock that he holds in his hand is the oldest in the world. It's an extremely rare meteorite that he dates back to 4.5 billion years. That's older than the Earth.
Bland and his colleagues were racing to find the meteorite. It had been spotted in a remote dry lake bed in southern Australia. That lake bed was about to fill with rainwater. So the research team was using every means at its disposal to track down the rumored meteorite. They found the 1.7-kilogram rock just hours before the rain arrived. ABC News reports:
Curtin University team leader Phil Bland hand-dug the meteorite from a 42-centimetre-deep hole in a remote section of the lake bed just hours before the arrival of heavy rains would have washed away any remaining clues.
"It was an amazing team effort, we got there by the skin of our teeth," Professor Bland said.
"It is older than the Earth itself. It's the oldest rock you'll ever hold in your hand.
"It came to us from beyond the orbit of Mars, so in between Mars and Jupiter."
The three-day operation to find the meteorite involved an aerial spotter, a drone, two researchers on a quad bike and local Aboriginal guides Dean Stuart and Dave Strangways looking in the sticky clay.
-via My Modern Met
(Photo: Las Vegas Footgolf)
Kick the ball in the hole and scream "GOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLLL!" Then fall over with a broken leg.
Got it? Now you're ready to play Footgolf. It's played like golf in that the goal is to put your ball into the hole with as few strokes as possible. The main difference is that you kick a soccer ball instead of swinging a club.
Footgolf is a growing sport that is starting to take over some golf courses as the popularity of that sport wanes. In fact, there was even a World Cup in Argentina that drew 230 footgolfers from 26 countries. Atlas Obscura writes about this exciting new sport:
A round of FootGolf takes half the time of a normal round of golf, and the only equipment required is a size 5 soccer ball. The simplicity of the sport has helped attract soccer players and golfers, adults and kids alike. A typical FootGolf uniform features knee-high argyle socks and shorts, with many athletes opting for newsboy caps. Cleats, however, are off limits.
According to Juan Fernandez, director of marketing for the American FootGolf League (AFGL), there are now 450 courses in 49 states. “The golf industry is embracing FootGolf right now; at the beginning they were just looking at us,” says Fernandez, who has worked at AFGL since 2012. “Now they see that FootGolf is here to stay.”
(Photo: NuDown)
The winter apparel company NuDown has developed a new way to stay warm during the winter while permitting variable temperatures. After all, you may want to wear a parka while walking through -10°F temperatures outside. But once you're indoors, the parka becomes way too hot to wear.
NuDown's jackets are inflatable with a hand pump that stores in a side pocket. Just pump in air to increase the insulation inside the jacket. Then release it for warmer environments. Fast Co Design reports:
The jackets are each fitted with a pump that you inflate when you need to—instead of throwing on more bulky layers, just add air. NuDown says 20 pumps will add enough insulation to keep out the chill on chilly days, 30 pumps will give wearers more warmth on blustery days, and 40 or more is supposedly enough for the harshest conditions (the company gives the example of waiting on a windy ski lift). If the coat gets too toasty, deflate it to cool down.
Each pump supposedly adds one degree Fahrenheit of comfort, but for temps dipping below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, NuDown recommends using its Argon Gas Upgrade kit. The add-on will inject your coat with argon, the same gas that's used in double-pane windows and dry suits, since argon is better at insulating than air.
Making a movie trailer is easy, right? Wrong. And you get a distinct sense of this by watching trailers from the 1930s and 40s. They come across as awkward introductions by amateur narrators.
That's because composing a 2-minute movie trailer has become a carefully refined and highly competitive artform. Jack Nugent explains how trailers work as a form of storytelling and how this medium has been repeatedly re-invented as movie studios strive to drive the largest audiences possible to movie theaters.
Content warning: foul language.
-via Joe Carter
Moesha took her seat on the jetliner. Behind her sat a turkey.
Her experience was unusual, but not unique. The New York Daily News reports that Delta Airlines permits passengers who need emotional support during flight to bring their turkeys:
Delta allowed the turkey to gobble on the flight through its compliance with the Air Carrier Access Act, which lets customers travel on the airline with their emotional support animals.
“While we can’t always accommodate all pets, Delta employees made a judgment call based in part on extensive documentation from the customer,” a Delta spokesperson said in a statement, regarding the turkey.
The turkey was spotted in a photo on a seat and also in a wheelchair being moved around the airport.
I'm not surprised. As God as my witness I thought turkeys could fly.
-via Ace of Spades HQ
So at most it will give you a paper cut.
Marco Ercoli is an Italian artist who lives in Rome. Among other media, he creates 1:1 scale sculptures out of stacks of sticky notes. His subjects include guns, a grenade, and even a full-size car. They're vibrantly colorful imitations of the originals.
-via Lustik
(Photo: The Princess of Hair)
Well, now that my wife is a bit less angry over the tie-dye hair incident, it's time to do something new. Mistakes were made, but let's move on to the next newest and awesomest hairstyle trend: glow-in-the-dark rainbow hair. Yes, these are the magificent results of hair dye that glows under black light.
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