A New World Record! Martin Strel swam down the Amazon River 5,268 km

After six hours of swimming/suffering in which he poured out every last ounce of his energy, Martin has crossed the finish line after a seemingly endless final 27 km through huge waves and heavy rain. The unofficial Guinness totals are 5268 KM (3,274 Miles) swam over the course of 66 days.

Slovenian Martin Strel, after braving crocodiles, piranhas, disease and the threat of an imminent heart attack, on Sunday completed a record-setting 66-day, 5,268 km swim down the Amazon River and was taken to a hospital.

Thousands of people were on hand in the Brazilian colonial city of Belem as an exhausted Strel, 52, made his final stroke, and was pulled from the water.

On Saturday, Strel had officially set a Guinness Book of World Records mark when he hit the 5238 kilometre point, the swimmer's support team said on his website www.amazonswim.com.

On Sunday he was back in the water again, riding the early morning tide back upriver 6 miles to end the marathon Amazon swim in Belem at about 11:30 am (1:30am NZT).



It was the most challenging of Strel's big-river swims. He has previously swum 4,004 km of China's Yangtze in 2004, 3,798 km of the US Mississippi in 2002 and 3,004 km of Europe's Danube in 2000.

After arriving in Belem, Strel was placed in an ambulance and medics worked to stabilize his blood pressure, which was at near-heart attack levels, his support team said on the website.

Strel has been suffering from nausea, diarrhoea, dangerously high blood pressure, sunstroke, dizziness and delirium.

Due to his deteriorating health, Strel had been swimming six hours and then resting for six hours in his final leg down the world's most voluminous and second longest river.

On Friday, Strel had to be hauled from the water by his son Borut and others and had difficulty standing. His doctor ordered him not to swim but Strel, obsessed with reaching Belem, insisted on swimming the final few miles at night to avoid the blistering sun.

"I've had enough. I just want to finish and go home," he said on his website.

Nicknamed "fish man," Strel started his latest big-river swim on February 1 at the Peruvian jungle town of Atalaya, where buckets of animal blood had to be poured into the river to distract piranha from making a quick meal of the swimmer.

Strel formally finish his marathon swim down the Amazon four days ahead of schedule on Saturday.

In the last leg of his journey, Strel said the ocean tides coming up river were driving him backward at times.

Along the trip, Strel and his team had several near misses with pirate attacks and often had to steer toward swift flowing currents to avoid being set upon by piranha. This resulted in Strel being swept away in a giant whirlpool once and separated from his team and boat another time.

The team was constantly at risk of parasites and disease in the Amazon such as malaria and yellow fever.

"I think the animals have just accepted me. I've been swimming with them for such a long time that they must think I'm one of them now," Strel said recently on the BBC.

Source: Reuters

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Optische Täuschung

Secrets of Ocean: Bioluminescence

There are living lights in the ocean. They are beautiful, fascinating and critical to the very existence of most marine life. They are also little known and little appreciated, because so few people have the opportunity to see them with their own eyes. The images on this web site provide a rare glimpse of this remarkable phenomenon.

Visible light made by living creatures is known as bioluminescence. Fireflies are bioluminescent. So are a few other land dwellers, like some earthworms, centipedes and fungi. But on land, bioluminescence is rare. By contrast, in the oceans, bioluminescence is very, very common. In fact, it would be difficult to find any place in the ocean where bioluminescence doesn't exist.



In some places in the ocean bioluminescent creatures are so abundant that any disturbance such as a boat, a fish or, as you see here, even a hand passing through the water can produce a shimmering light show. Click on the menu above to see some of the most common sources of bioluminescence in the ocean.



HOW?

All light in the universe comes from the same basic process. When an electron absorbs energy, it moves to a higher orbit. When the electron falls back down to a lower energy state, a packet of energy, known as a photon, is released. Electrons can get excited in a number of different ways. In the sun, a candle flame or an incandescent light bulb, the electrons are thermally excited, which is why we tend to associate heat and light. In bioluminescence the electrons are excited by a very efficient chemical reaction that generates no heat at all. This is why bioluminescence is sometimes called cold light.



WHY?

There are so many bioluminescent creatures in the ocean, because their ability to make light helps them to survive. Some use their light to help them find food, some use it to help them find mates, some use it to defend themselves against predators and some, like this Viperfish, use light for all these purposes.




Real fish:

Fish from "Finding Nemo"















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Brilliant Idea: How to Protect Car From Theft

Protect your car from theft :-) Simple set special pictures nearby wheels. This looks like the car has no wheels.



Real tips to protection of car:

Tip #1 Park Your Car in the Garage or Behind a Locked Gate.

Tip #2 Park in Your Driveway

Tip #3 Install a Car Alarm -- Especially if It's in an Apartment Parking Lot (or on the Street) .

Tip #4 Better Yet Get a Lojack or Onstar Type Service.

Tip #5 NEVER Leave Your Car Running Unattended.

Tip #6 Get Theft Insurance

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Six Degrees of Separation - Six Steps to US President?

Can you reach US President in 6 steps?

Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that, if a person is one "step" away from each person he or she knows and two "steps" away from each person who is known by one of the people he or she knows, then everyone is no more than six "steps" away from each person on Earth. Several studies, such as Milgram's small world experiment have been conducted to empirically measure this connectedness. While the exact number of links between people differs depending on the population measured, it is generally found to be relatively small. Hence, six degrees of separation is somewhat synonymous with the idea of the "small world" phenomenon.

Stanley Milgram was an American researcher in experimental social psychology at Harvard University in Boston, USA. Beginning in 1967, he began a widely-publicized set of experiments to investigate the so-called "small world problem." This problem was rooted in many of the same observations made decades earlier by Karinthy. That is, Milgram and other researchers of the era were fascinated by the interconnectedness and "social capital" of human networks. While it is unknown how directly Milgram was influenced by Karinthy's work, the similarities between the two authors are remarkable. However, while Karinthy spoke in abstract and fictional terms, Milgram's experiments provided evidence supporting the claim of a "small world." His study results showed that people in the United States seemed to be connected by approximately six friendship links, on average. Although Milgram reportedly never used the term "Six Degrees of Separation," his findings likely contributed to the term's widespread credence. Since these studies were widely publicized, Stanley Milgram is also, like Karinthy, often attributed as the origin of the notion of Six Degrees.

Now think: how can you reach US President in 6 Steps?...

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Suit Against Microsoft: Question's Price $5 million

A woman from Washington State, Dianne Kelley, has filed a class-action suit against Microsoft Corp. over their "deceptive and unfair" use of the 'Vista Capable' stickers, demanding $5 million. She cites violations of Washington's Consumer Protection Act, Ch. 19.86 RCW, as well as the corresponding Consumer Protection acts in the other U.S. states.

What the suit claims, is an established fact: Microsoft started a "Windows Vista Capable" campaign about a year before the release of Windows Vista, in order to assure computer buyers they will be able to upgrade to Windows Vista when the operating system would be released.

"We feel as a company we went beyond what we've ever done to try to educate people so that they understood and could make the right purchase decision,” said Linda Norman, a Microsoft associate general counsel, pointing out that Microsoft had created different logos. ‘Vista Premium Ready’ is one such example, but the distinction was never actually made in practice.

The problem is that "Windows Vista Capable" meant in most cases "able to install a bare Vista OS." Most of these PCs can't run properly or can't run at all other versions that the Vista Home Basic, "which has been described by one reviewer as 'the most pointless edition of Windows that Microsoft has ever released'."

"Later, beginning in October 2006, Microsoft embarked on its 'Express Upgrade' promotion, under which purchasers of PCs Microsoft certified as 'Windows Vista Capable' were promised a free or reduced-price upgrade to 'Vista' when it became available. In fact, the version of Vista made available to many of these purchasers is Home Basic and thus is lacking features that Microsoft has touted in Vista as radical improvements over previous operating systems," the suit reads.

"In sum, Microsoft engaged in bait and switch," Dianne Kelley claims.

Mary Jo Foley, a ZDNet blogger, pointed out the fact that not even on Microsoft's web page you can find out what exactly "Windows Vista Capable" means:

"Nowhere (that I've found) does Microsoft spell out clearly which versions of Vista will run on Vista Capable machines. [...] why is figuring out which PC is best suited to running which version of Vista such a chore? Isn't there an easier way to help consumers make the right choice? I think it's fair to ding Microsoft for confusing branding/marketing."

The ‘Minimum Requirements’ for Vista are several gigabytes of disk space and at least one gigabyte of RAM. The actual requirements for a full-fledged Vista are at least two gigabytes of RAM, a powerful processor running at least at 3Ghz (P4 equivalent) and a powerful video card, such as a 7xxx series nVIDIA or corresponding ATI.

There is also mention in the suit of Bill Gates himself lending to the deception, when he appeared on the Today Show in January to report that anyone could upgrade to Vista for $99. The suite points out that for $99 you get the stripped down version of Vista known as Home Basic.

"In fact, one can only 'upgrade' to Home Basic for that price, which Mr. Gates and Microsoft know is a product that lacks the features marketed by Microsoft as being Vista," the suit said.

The question is not whether Microsoft was being deceptive, as that's quite clear, but whether it can actually be held legally responsible. Microsoft is a company used to operate right at the very limits of legality in terms of marketing tactics.

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Letters on Water

In collaboration with Akishima Laboratories (Mitsui Zosen), Professor Shigeru Naito of Osaka University has created a prototype device that draws letters and simple shapes on water! The device is composed of 50 water wave generators encircling a 30 cm deep, 1.6 m diameter cylindrical water tank. The wave generators, which are normally used to simulate ocean conditions for shipbuilding, move up and down in a calculated motion controlled by computer software. The cylindrical waves that are produced act as pixels, which are combined to form lines and shapes. The new device, called AMOEBA (for Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin) is capable of spelling out the entire Roman alphabet, as well as some simple Kanji characters.



Each formation remains on the water surface for a few seconds only, but is produced successively every 3 seconds. Similar devices developed by Akishima Laboratories in the past had difficulty producing letters with straight lines (B, F, K, etc.) and took a long 15 minutes to produce each letter. In addition to the ability to create straight lines, the AMOEBA can create a new shape or letter in as little as 15 seconds.

Although the technology is not ready for commercial use, it is expected to find applications in the advertisement industry and in amusement devices that combine acoustics, lighting and fountain technology.




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Look: Flame Can Have Different Colour! (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Purple)

I found in internet these beautiful torches and candles:



Colored flame oils are metal based solutions which burn in 5 different colored FLAME (Red, Blue, Purple, Yellow, Green). Colored flame oils must be used with a special 100% cotton Color flame Wick. Most standard oil lamps and torches will simply NOT burn with color flame oils.



Paraffin oils burn brightly with minimal smoke residue and are perfect for most conditions, these oils are also available in color, (in this case the oil itself is colored, not the flame), and reflect beautifully in Glass oil lamps or other transparent containers.

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Sky Factory: Virtual Window

The Sky Factory creates magical illusions of skies and landscapes for ceiling and wall installation. Our products – SkyCeilings™ and Luminous Virtual Windows™ – dramatically transform closed interior spaces, and the illusions created are so authentic that they trigger genuine psycho-physiological responses of relaxation, vitality, and well-being. Since it’s founding in 2002, The Sky Factory has created over a thousand installations in a wide range of environments: healthcare, commercial and residential.


The Sky Factory sells factory-direct to its worldwide clientele. The company has developed new printing, lighting, and RF-free technology, and has several patents pending. The Sky Factory is headquartered, and manufactures its products in Fairfield, Iowa.





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Ball Lightning (Part 2)

Part 1