well duh

in a shocking discovery ... a study has found that women who post lots of photos of themselves on facebook are rather vain ...
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good genes

this is andie macdowell's daughter ...

سبحان الله

This NASA image released on May 4, 2010 from the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory shows the cloud associated with the Rosette Nebula, a stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years from Earth. The formation of new stars in galaxies like the Milky Way has declined five-fold in the last three billion years, initial findings of the European Space Agency's Herschel telescope showed.
(AFP/NASA/ESA)

hope they win

Watching her blind aunt and uncle struggle to navigate the steep slopes and scant sidewalks of this hilly city, one Palestinian girl decided to reinvent the stick.
Armed with spare parts that are hard to find in the West Bank, Asil Abu Lil and two classmates patched together an obstacle-detecting cane that has won them a trip to San Jose, California, for Intel Corp.'s international youth science fair.
The three girls are the first Palestinians to participate in the prestigious event.
"Of course, I want to go to America, but this project is important for the blind and we want it to help them," Asil said.
Students from more than 50 countries will compete in next month's International Science and Engineering Fair, vying for the grand prize of $75,000.

The 14-year-old girls built the beeping walking stick for a class project at their United Nations-funded girls' school. The cane uses two infrared sensors, one front-facing and one in the tip of the cane, to detect obstacles and drop-offs. They did so despite difficulties in getting parts because of travel restrictions in the West Bank.
The students produced two prototypes after making multiple trips to Ramallah, about 45 minutes away and past two Israeli checkpoints, to scour electronics stores for proper circuits and sensors.
Although various types of "laser canes" have existed since the early 1970s, the girls' design resolves a fundamental flaw in previous models by detecting holes in the ground, said Mark Uslan, director of the American Federation of the Blind's technology division.
The cane beeps when it passes over a hole or steps going downward.

The girls beat dozens of contestants in the West Bank to win the prize. But even after that, they ran into one last obstacle: There was only enough prize money to allow two girls to make the trip. After drawing lots, Asil was to be left behind as her classmates headed to San Jose.
U.N. workers heard this and pooled money last week to purchase an additional ticket. When Asil heard the news on Monday, she broke into tears, leaping up from the table to embrace her classmates.
"Even when I'll be old, I will remember this time forever," Asil said.
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i concur

according to a recent study ... shania twain is perfect ... apparently it's all about ratios ... lengths and widths and what not ...

سبحان الله

This image provided by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Tuesday Dec. 15, 2009 shows hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds. The festive portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.
(AP Photo/NASA)

Wow

i can't say i understood everything in this article but it blew my mind nonetheless ...

La Cucaracha

my apartment is on the first floor of the building ... consequently i have to deal with the occasional roach from time to time ... don't get me wrong it's not like my apartment is infested ... but every now and then i'll find one ... and more often than not he's already dead ... now why is it that whenever you find a dead roach he is always on his back ... always ... why is that ... every single dead roach i've ever seen is always lying on his back ... is there a scientific reason ... or just a coincidence ... well i couldn't rest until i knew the answer so i turned to google ... and here it is ...

actually it turns out there are a number of possible reasons why this might happen ...

1) Cockroaches are not used to living on a polished marble or vinyl floor. They are more used to a ruguous living plane including leaves and sticks and other vegetable debris. Thus when a cockroach finds itself on its back (by some mistake in its orienteering) it may have trouble righting itself if there is not debris around to grab hold of with its legs.

2) Often we come across dead cockroaches in buildings that have died of insecticide. Most of these insecticides are organophosphate nerve poisons. The nerve poison often inhibits cholinesterase, an enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine (ACh), a neurotransmitter. With extra ACh in the nervous system, the cockroach has muscular spasms which often result in the cockroach flipping on its back. Without muscular coordination the cockroach cannot right itself and eventually dies in its upside down-position.

3) Probably because after they die the muscles in their legs contract due to rigor mortis, pulling their legs towards the body and flipping them onto their backs.

there were also a couple of funny answers ... thought i'd share some of those too ...

1) So they can say goodbye to that great fireball in the sky.

2) You have never seen one die? When he is dead, all the other cockroaches go to the cockroach circus tent and buy a bunch of helium filled baloons! They sing and dance and have a ceremony to help the dead roach enter the next phase of its journey! They then tie the baloons to the cockroaches legs hoping the balloons will carry him off to the great beyond! The ones that you see lying on their backs come from poor cockroach families that couldnt afford enough balloons and managed only to flip the dead cockroach over! They are then embarrased so they untie the baloons and hide them!

now click here to listen to la cucaracha ...

according to recent studies

people who frown in photos are five times more likely to get a divorce than people who smile ...

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سبحان الله

i was browsing yahoo's most popular page today and they had some photos taken with the hubble space telescope ... amazing stuff ... and although the captions talk about things i cannot begin to comprehend ... still it really gives you some perspective ... we're all so caught up in our little bubbles on this planet when we really are just a drop in the ocean ... kind of like that scene at the end of men in black ...


here is the slideshow i'm talking about ...

Outer Space

cool space photos from yahoo ...

one
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five

In The Year 2000

10 futuristic movie gadgets that have become a reality ... here

In Case You Needed An Excuse

According to a recent study, frequent masturbation may help men cut their risk of contracting prostate cancer.

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This image provided by NASA Wednesday April 16, 2008 shows the Southern Pinwheel galaxy, in this composite image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array in New Mexico.