Fruits and Vegetables Carving. How To Amaze Guests.

Watermelons, turnips, pineapples and many other fruits and vegetables can be carved and combined into either elegantly simple or very elaborate center pieces or accents for your picnic table or indoor party decorations.

The art of carving foods is an Eastern custom that has been adopted by creative food preparers around the world. In Thailand and Japan food carving is considered part of the presentation of the meal. The stunning designs that can be created makes the food the center of attention when you serve your guests. No need to worry about what else is on the table.

Some of the more elaborate carvings can take hours to get just right, but practice makes it go faster and soon you'll find yourself designing your own patterns for watermelons, radishes and any fruit or vegetable that can hold it's form when carved.


















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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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