scum of the earth

manchester was chosen to host the uefa cup final on wednesday evening between glasgow rangers and zenit st petersburg and approximately 150′000 rangers fans travelled to the city centre, the majority without tickets for the game itself. anticipating the arrival of a huge amount of ticketless supporters, manchester city council set up a number of large screens around the centre of the city, the intention being to ease some pressure on the bars around town and provide places for fans to congregrate and create a decent atmosphere.

the frightening grid of nezahualcoyotl

while we’re on the subject of aerial geometry, check out the insane aerial views of nezahualcoyotl, mexico state’s 2nd most populous municipality. this particular area consists of hundreds and hundreds of rows of densely packed housing occasionally sliced by a main road. just looking at these photos makes me claustrophobic but i can’t help admiring the patterns created by the hardcore “pack ‘em in tightly” urban planning.

i hope those pillars are strong

below is the recently (2003) extended runway at funchal airport in portugal. the original 1400m runway was notoriously short and, as a result, sometimes dangerous for landing planes. the runway extension won the iabse’s ‘outstanding structures award’ and rightly so: due to an obvious lack of land, engineers have supported the extension on 180 pillars, each 70m high. on the last photo you can see the presumably noisey car park that now lives under the end of the runway.

the world’s most controversial boardgames

how different would christmas day be if, after dinner, your dad gathered the family around the table and opened a game like ‘war on terror’ or ’serial killer: the board game’? amazingly, this may have happened for some as all of the board games below have been / are still available to buy and each one has caused some degree of controversy, the reasons for which will quickly become apparent. some of them are pretty horrible and their inclusion in this list does not in any way condone their creation.

3 frightening flagpoles

is it just me or are these immense structures slightly scary?
the 3 largest flagpoles on earth…
gijeong-dong flagpole, north korea
in the 80s, the south koreans built a huge 328ft tall flagpole in daeseong-dong, an area extremely close to the north korean border. the north koreans then proceeded to build their own larger version about a mile […]

top 5 ‘deserted city’ scenes in film

there’s a relatively easy way to give the audience a chill during a film: slip in a shot of a deserted city centre, a city centre that’s notoriously busy in real-life, the scene preferably culminating in the camera panning out to prove the crew didn’t just manage to clear 10ft of road for 5 seconds.
it’s […]

incredible engineering: the maeslant storm surge barrier

the maeslant barrier (maeslantkering), a huge storm surge barrier at the mouth of the port of rotterdam in the netherlands, is the largest hydraulic engineering structure on earth and, according to hard-fact bible wikipedia, ‘the largest moving structure on earth’. it was opened in 1997 as the final part of the delta works, an enormous […]

5 strange magazines

sick of reading the same old magazines month in, month out? fancy a subscription to something a bit more riveting for christmas?
i’ve done some of the leg-work for you…
1. miniature donkey talk
‘the talk of the donkey world’

2. sheep!
‘the voice of the independent flockmaster’

3. a bear’s life
‘celebrating the masculine lifestyle’

4. the girl watcher
‘a guide […]

scarecrows of the world

the top-notch photo above was taken by robert b haas and shows a shrimp farm in ecuador covered in coloured flags - apparently one of the more effective methods available to ward off birds. click on the little bugger for a larger version. i also demand that you check out his other photos on the […]

the wheel of death

the last time i saw any footage of a circus it consisted of a high-wire act and a couple of clowns smashing custard pies into each other’s faces. it seems that since then the action’s moved up a notch.
this act in particular is ridiculous.
it’s called the wheel of death and it scares me shitless.

there are […]