funny pictures and bizarre news

1. Mir Mine also called Mirny Mine was an open pit diamond mine located in Mirny, Eastern Siberia, Russia. The mine is 525 meters (1,720 ft) deep and has a diameter of 1,200 m (3,900 ft), and is the second largest excavated hole in the world, after Bingham Canyon Mine. The airspace above the mine is closed for helicopters because of a few incidents in which they were sucked in by the downward air flow.

2. The Big Hole is located in the city of Kimberley which is the capital of the Northern Cape of South Africa. Today the Big Hole is some 1,500 feet wide and over 42 acres in surface. When above ground mining stopped at the Big Hole in 1914, it was some 785 feet deep.

3. The Bingham Canyon Mine is an open-pit mining operation extracting a large porphyry copper deposit southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, in the Oquirrh Mountains. The mine has been in production since 1906, and has resulted in the creation of a pit over 0.75 miles (1.2 km) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres (7.7 km?). According to Kennecott, it is the world’s largest man-made excavation.

4. The Diavik Diamond Mine is a diamond mine in the North Slave Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada, about 300 kilometres (186 miles) north of Yellowknife.

5. The Great Blue Hole is a large underwater sinkhole off the coast of Belize. It lies near the center of Lighthouse Reef, a small atoll 100 kilometres (62 mi) from the mainland and Belize City.

6. Glory Hole – Monticello Dam, California A glory hole is used when a dam is at full capacity and water needs to be drained from the resevoir. Close-up of Monticello Dam. Its the largest in the world, enabling it to consume 400 cubic feet of water every second. The Monticello Glory Hole can be seen at the top left of this photo. Water entering the top shoots out seconds later below.

7. Guatemala Sinkhole. 80 feet in diameter and 15 feet deep, a huge sinkhole opened up in the middle of Montrose Avenue after a water main break flooded the tarmac. A sinkhole is caused when water (usually rainwater or sewage) is soaked up by the earth on a large scale, resulting in the ground collapsing.

Comedians would probably not exist without politicians, whose speeches have always been full of wisdom. Here is our rating of the 10 most stupid things ever said by politicians all over the world.

1. “Queen Elizabeth Taylor.” – Thai Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa, referring to the Queen of England.

2. “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country.” – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, referring to the USA while addressing Columbia University.

With real estate at a premium in Japan builders have to be creative to maximize any space they can get.  So they build things very narrow and just hope no fatties show up.

(March 19) — They’re speedy, agile and extremely competitive. Male sperm, that is. That’s the conclusion of researchers who were able to watch the contentious battle for fertilization firsthand after they created the first glow-in-the-dark sperm.

A team of scientists at Syracuse University, whose work is published in this week’s issue of Science, used genetic manipulation to produce fruit flies whose sperm heads glowed either red or green. By tracking the fluorescent sperm as it traveled through the inside of a female fruit fly, they were able to observe reproductive events from an entirely new perspective.

It’s a step that will transform what scientists know about reproduction, and potentially how doctors treat human infertility.

Scientists used genetic manipulation to produce fruit flies whose sperm heads glowed either red or green in order to observe what happens as the sperm make their way through the female reproductive tract.

One of the pillars of evolutionary science has long been the behavior of different male sperm. When a female mates with several partners, the sperm that successfully fertilizes her egg will determine which traits carry on to the next generation. In this case, female fruit flies were mated with two partners: one with green sperm, the other with red.

The Syracuse scientists are the first to watch the race for fertilization as it happens. Lead researcher Scott Pitnick said the sperm “exhibit highly complex behavior” as they maneuver through the female reproductive tract.

Despite decades of reproductive research, often using fruit fly specimens, scientists remain largely mystified about what goes on between insemination and fertilization. Observing glow-in-the-dark sperm will give researchers the chance to examine every maneuver and reproductive milestone.

And tracking the fate of every single sperm could have implications that extend beyond better knowledge of evolutionary selection in small organisms. The team has already created glow-in-the-dark sperm samples of other animals.

“It’s seeing all the novel observations, the complexity of what sperm do inside the female reproductive tract that no-one has ever been able to observe before,” Pitnick told the BBC. “That’s really knocked us out.”

Though more than eight years have passed since 9/11 transformed Osama Bin
Laden into the world’s most wanted man, the Saudi Arabian warlord remains at
large. The U.S. government’s persistent (and, so far, fruitless) plans to catch
Bin Laden were recently cast in doubt by
Attorney
General Eric Holder’s prediction that he’ll never be captured alive. Here’s
a look back at some of the more radical entrapment schemes people have suggested
along the way:

1. A teleportation miracle
Back in 2005, "Military futurists" at Edwards Air Force Base Research Lab were
reportedly attempting to pioneer Star Trek-like teleportation technology with an
eye to "beaming" soldiers across long distances. One day,

predicted military spokesman Ranney Edwards in the San Francisco Chronicle,
this would allow the U.S. to teleport soldiers into "a cave, tap Bin Laden on
the shoulder, and say: ‘Let’s go.’"

2. An airborne bear squad

Osama bin Laden: An artist’s rendering

According
to Stars and Stripe, an anonymous letter writer informed the
Pentagon, accurately, that a bear’s sense of smell is more acute than a
bloodhound’s. "Trained bears with GPS and day/night cameras around their necks
might be able to hunt down [Bin Laden's] scent," wrote the unnamed amateur
strategist. His proposal involved dropping bears wearing "parachutes that
self-destruct after landing" into Western Pakistan — everyone knows how much
difficulty bears have taking those things off.

3. A robot army of killer bees
The Pentagon has tried

training bees to smell bombs. But a small nanotechnology firm has

reportedly gone further, claiming it could design "little drones that are
the size of bumblebees" with the capacity to hunt down and kill terrorists.
Perhaps the $25
million reward for capturing OBL is part of the revenue forecast?

4. Psychic spies
The British Ministry of Defense reportedly spent $27,000 recruiting psychics to
locate Bin Laden’s hideaway in 2002.

According to the Daily Mail, the Brits recruited 12 amateur
psychics to see whether their sixth sense could be used to "remotely view" the
terrorist’s secret headquarters. Ultimately, it seems, defense chiefs concluded
there was "little value" in mobilizing the would-be mind-readers. 

5. Wildlife distribution technology (a.k.a. Pretending he’s an animal)
Geographers at UCLA triumphantly announced in 2009 they had discovered Osama’s
hiding place using state-of-the-art "wildlife distribution technology." Based on
how animals behave in the wild,

said Thomas Gillespie to the NY Times, we can deduce he is "closest
to the point where he was last reported" and "within a region that has a similar
physical environment and cultural composition." UCLA posited this was a tribal
village named Parachinar. Unfortunately, no one has yet followed up on the
prediction.

Last Month, Apple introduced the iPad to the world. The tablet device, the subject of more rumors than Area 51, provides the functionality of iPhone apps, web surfing, and book reading in a larger handheld device. And with its shockingly low starting price of $499, it’s relatively affordable.

Does Apple’s device have a place in the work setting, though? Should you be snatching up tablets for your employees, or should wait until the iPad adds some more business-friendly features? Does it provide value that a computer or an iPhone doesn’t?

Let’s explore a few practical business cases for the iPad. Hopefully this exercise will help you in deciding whether you should have one as part of your work arsenal. And remember, these are just a few ideas – I’m sure you can think of plenty more:

1. Spreadsheets and Docs On-the-Go: You can purchase iWorks for the iPad ($9.99 per app). That means you can edit docs, fill in spreadsheets, and build presentations. You’re always going to build docs faster in a Mac, but it’s a smart way to edit and make revisions.

2. Social Notetaking: The iPad is compatible with every iPhone app, meaning that you can run Evernote to write down notes in the field, access picture archives from your team, and record voice notes that you can send to others later. Evernote’s one of the best notetaking products on the market, and the iPad will make it far more useful.

3. Portable Screen/Presentation Machine: The device has a crisp display perfect for showing off videos during a presentation. It’s also likely that you can use it as a presentation machine, although you might need an adapter for it.

4. Transferable Customer Display: In a bank, a teller often has to turn his screen towards the customer to show him exactly what’s going on with an account. With an iPad, all the teller or customer service rep has to do is hand it to the customer to review for themselves. Customers can even play with the numbers and options in that type of interface. You could simply build a web app to accomplish this, too.

5. (Nearly) Full Web Access: After the apps, the iPad’s strongest feature is simply its fast and elegant web browsing. The Apple A4 processor helps it load pages rapidly, while the larger screen gives you the opportunity to find whatever you need on the web while on-the-go. 3G access + web browsing is definitely a big win for businesses who have team members that are always on-the-go.

A woman who has directed 300 “female-friendly” sex films is to test the liberal-mindedness of British voters and run for parliament in an election due within weeks.

Anna Arrowsmith, 38, whose works under the name Anna Span include “Be My Toy Boy,” “Hoxton Honey” and “Uniform Behavior,” is standing for the opposition Liberal Democrats in the Kent constituency of Gravesham in southeast England.

Her last-minute selection for the seat after the previous candidate dropped out made headlines across Britain over the weekend as the opposition party met in the midlands city of Birmingham ahead of the election expected in May.

Even the normally august Times newspaper put her picture on its front page above the caption: “The woman who is sexing up the Lib Dems.”

Party leader Nick Clegg said her films were not his “cup of tea” but said she had at least not done anything illegal, a swipe at rival politicians caught up in a long-running scandal over parliamentary expenses.

Arrowsmith, managing director of Easy on the Eye Productions, said her move into politics was a natural diversification after years of campaigning to improve women’s rights in the adult film industry.

“I’m hopefully taking the skills I’ve learned of being a fighter to the national stage at Westminster,” she told Reuters.

Despite a matter-of-fact attitude to her subject matter, she has always remained behind the camera.

“You’ve got to naturally be an exhibitionist and that’s not what I am like. Porn stars would walk along the streets nude, that’s what they enjoy, that’s not me.”