the world’s most astounding agricultural engineering project

the rice terraces of the philippine cordilleras, if laid out end to end, would stretch halfway round the globe. if this ingenious feat had been accomplished in recent times the clearly enormous task would have seemed more than impressive, however the fact that it was completed thousands of years ago without the use of modern apparatus and machinery takes the terraces and integrated irrigation systems to a whole new level.

man vs mountain: avalanche control structures

one of the places i’d refuse to set up home would have to be at the bottom of a mountain with a history of avalanche activity. unfortunately for some that choice doesn’t seem to exist and after reading a post over at the highly recommended blog pruned yesterday the frightening world of avalanche survival systems nearly became an obsession, for a couple of reasons.

3 beautiful and bizarre natural phenomena

red tide, the common name for ‘algal bloom’, is caused by high levels of phytoplankton accumulating to form dense, visible clouds near the surface of the water. due to the varying colouring of the phytoplankton’s pigments, these algae blooms range in colour too.

these rocks rock

the title was just too tempting. sorry.
1. meoto iwa
situated just off the coast of mie, japan, meoto iwa (wedded rocks) are meant to signify marriage, the larger being male and the smaller female. the rope connecting the rocks (the shimenawa) weighs over a ton and is replaced throughout the year during various ceremonies.

2. kjeragbolten
wedged between […]

11 phenomenal images of earth

below are 11 incredible photos taken from space which illustrate just a few of earth’s fascinating geographical features and nature’s frightening unpredictability.
click on all pictures for humongous versions.
1. sri lankan coast, 26th december 2004

(above) the ocean rapidly retreats 400 metres on the south-western coast of sri lanka, just 5 minutes prior to the arrival of […]

an incredibly green roof

designed by architects emilio ambasz & associates, the acros fukuoka building in fukuoka city, japan houses a number of offices, retail space, a 2′000 seat theatre and a museum.
it was built on the last available green space in the city so the design needed to keep as much of that greenery as possible whilst still […]

impact craters on earth

on earth there are close to 100 impact craters with a diameter of 0.1km or more, many of them either so eroded or large that they can only be recognised on satellite images. for the uninitiated, impact craters are formed by the hypervelocity impact of a meteoroid, asteroid or comet on the earth’s surface (or […]

the 10 plagues in modern society

i’m not religious in the slightest but i thought it might be interesting to see if modern society had experienced anything even similar to the 10 biblical plagues (horrific events magically caused by god). so below are all the plagues listed, accompanied by the results of my search.
1. (exodus 7:14-25) rivers and other water sources […]

the secret life of plants (1979)

watch this.
this documentary is extremely hard to get hold of and has just (9th july) been uploaded to google video. it’s a 1979 documentary about plants and was one of the very few at the time to use time-lapse photography. on top of that, there’s a soundtrack by stevie wonder.

imdb entry is here.

albinism in popular culture

(the reason for this post is simple: the other night an albino starred in one of my dreams. seems as good a reason as any)
for starters, wanna read something brilliant?
“i read that the condition (albinism) was often a product of incest. otherwise, there’s a million to one chance, because you need identical genes to mix”
there […]