St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park (U.S.)

Stuff I thought was interesting from March 31st through April 8th:

• 2 more glaciers gone from Glacier National Park – Yahoo! News – Glacier National Park has lost two more of its namesake moving icefields to climate change, which is shrinking the rivers of ice until they grind to a halt, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.
• France24 – N.Korea leader sets world fashion trend: Pyongyang – The trademark suit sported by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is now in fashion worldwide thanks to his greatness, Pyongyang’s official website said Wednesday.
• SETI@50: the Wow! signal | COSMOS magazine – The most famous signal in SETI history was detected on the night of 15 August 1977 at the Ohio State University Big Ear Observatory. Has anything happened since?
• Scientists discover first multicellular life that doesn’t need oxygen – The discovery of the new species, which live buried in sediment under the Mediterranean seafloor, is significant in that it marks the first observation of multicellular organisms, or metazoans, that spend their entire lifecycle under permanently anoxic conditions.
• Avatar Dances in Fern Gully’s Dune – An image depicting plot similarities between a series of “hero saves persecuted peoples” films.
• Crisis in Kyrgyzstan – The Big Picture – Boston.com – Widespread anti-government protests in Kyrgyzstan recently turned violent, with groups of opposition protesters attempting to storm some government buildings, and clashing with riot police.
• Stuart Redler
• Landscape Photography by Yorkshire Landscape Photographer Tim parkin
• Using coloured filters with black & white film

Chinese boy has 31 fingers, toes

A Chinese boy with 31 fingers and toes is set to undergo an operation to remove the extra digits.

The six-year-old boy, whose name has not been released, has 16 toes and 15 fingers.

The condition is known as polydactyly.

‘Man with the golden arm’ saves 2million babies in half a century of donating rare type of blood

An Australian man who has been donating his extremely rare kind of blood for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies.

James Harrison, 74, has an antibody in his plasma that stops babies dying from Rhesus disease, a form of severe anaemia.

Parents don’t act on cyber-safety fears

Most Australian parents are concerned about the safety of their children online. But new research shows that parents don’t back up their concerns with meaningful actions, and that in any event they might well be concerned about the wrong risks.

Volcanic Eruption in Iceland

Chile: The Earthquake Picture I never Sent

“I never sent this poorly-focused photo of the earthquake survivor. The preconception of what makes a good photograph, the aesthetics, the layers of composition, and the sharpness or lack of it, all became reasons not to choose it. It was some time later when I realized that the sadness of the out-of-focus man with his pet is still transmitted as pain and devastation even through the picture’s technical defects, and banishes all the photographic concepts I hold true in my own little world. I blame Reason for overcoming Emotion.”

Chinese consumed millions of gallons of toxic sewage oil: study

Chinese cooking oil siphoned from restaurants’ waste tanks and stripped out of raw sewage is being resold on the cheap and has for years tainted approximately one out of every ten meals cooked in the eastern nation, according to a recent study.

World’s Biggest Cities Merging into “Mega Regions”

The world’s mega-cities are merging to form vast “mega-regions” which may stretch hundreds of kilometres across countries and be home to more than 100 million people, according to a major new UN report.