Old Man of the Lake

 The Old Man of the Lake is a 30-foot (9 m) tall tree stump, most likely a hemlock, that has been bobbing vertically in Oregon's Crater Lake since at least 1896. At the waterline, the stump is about 2 feet (60 cm) in diameter and stands approximately 4 feet (120 cm) above the water. Its surface has been bleached white by the elements. The exposed end of the floating tree is splintered and worn but wide and buoyant enough to support a person's weight. Fontinalis, a moss present in the waters of Crater Lake at a depth of 394 feet (120 m), also grows on the Old Man of the Lake, the only place the moss is found near the surface.

History

Joseph S. Diller published the first geology of Crater Lake in 1902, the same year the area became a national park. In his work, Diller briefly describes a great stump he had found in the lake six years earlier. Thus, in 1896, The Old Man floated just as it does now, giving it a documented age of over 100 years.

The Old Man's movements have long been observed. In 1896, Diller established that it could travel by tying baling wire around it and pulling it a short distance. Five years later, Diller observed the Old Man to be 0.25 miles (400 m) from the location he had previously noted. The earliest known photograph of the trunk dates to this period.

As the result of an inquiry from Washington, D.C., the project of recording The Old Man's location was undertaken between July 1 and September 30, 1938. Those observations indicated that it travels quite extensively, and sometimes with surprising rapidity. During the period of observation in 1938, the Old Man traveled at least 62.1 miles (99.9 km). The greatest movements occurred on days of high wind and waves.

Since it can be virtually anywhere on the lake, boat pilots commonly communicate its position to each other as a general matter of safety.

In 1988, submarine explorations were conducted in the lake, and the scientists decided to tie The Old Man off the eastern side of Wizard Island to neutralize the navigational hazard until their research work was complete.

As of January 2012, tour boats regularly pass The Old Man on their journeys to view the sights around Crater Lake. Around thirty feet of the tree's trunk can be seen below the waterline.

Seven Tips for Men to Understand Women Better

A new survey has helped compile seven tips on how men can rise above others in their dealings with women.

1.      Firstly, communication should not be a problem, as for the women there is nothing as appealing as a man, who listens to them. If a man wants to tell them something they wouldn't mind knowing it but face-to-face is always preferable and if that is not possible men can contact them via texts, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. 

2.       Secondly, complimenting women is nice, as sometimes they do need a bit of verbal assurance. Phrases that might help men in a crisis: "Your hair looks awesome tonight!" "Is that a new dress?" "You blitzed it in that tennis match/speech/insert other awesomeness here!" 

3.       Thirdly, a man should not be a penny pincher instead he should pay on his first date if they want to see the lady again. 

4.       Fourthly, they should organise their social life and there are two obvious problem areas there: First, the man who never does anything off his own bat, women may find it nice if they went and did something interesting occasionally. Second, a male who simply does too much, women would like that person to take out some time for them.

5.       Fifthly, some thought should be put by men in the presents that they give to women. 

6.       Sixthly, men should try to get a bit stylish and should invest in a fool-proof man outfit: nice jeans, a T-shirt and unscuffed trainers and for more smart-casual occasions, substitute in a good quality shirt and some leather shoes. 

7.       Lastly, when men don't know the direction of a place they should admit it and not pretend about knowing it.

Snakes

1. The black-necked cobra, which lives mostly in Africa, spits its venom into the eyes of its victim, to cause it blindness.
2. There are no snakes in New Zealand.
3. The venom of the king cobra is so deadly that one bite can kill twenty people or one elephant.
4. The fastest moving land snake is the Black Mamba, which can move up to 7 miles per hour.
5. The King Cobra has enough venom in its bite that it can kill up to 13 adults.
6. The Australian Brown Snake's venom is so powerful that only 1/14,000th of on ounce is needed to kill a human being.
7. Taipan snakes have 50 times more toxic than a cobra snake.
8. Snake venom is ninety percent protein.
9. Snake is a delicacy in China.
10. Most snakes have six rows of teeth.
11. A snake charmer in Bangladesh once found 3,500 poisonous cobras and their eggs hidden underneath the floors of two suburban homes.
12. Sea snakes are the most poisonous snakes in the world.

Allergies as Cancer Prevention

Airborne allergies such as hay fever are among the worst allergies one can experience. While foods that trigger allergies may be readily avoided and many chemical exposures can be reduced, avoiding grass, dust, pollen and mold may be exceedingly difficult. However, scientific research indicates that there may be a bright side to the scourge of spring and summer. Exposure to airborne allergens appears to tinker with the immune system in such a way that the risk of cancer is mitigated in allergy suffers. Preliminary research suggests statistically significant reductions in cancer among human study samples suffering from hay fever due to an immune stimulation effect similar to inoculation.

 

Sex Facts

• There are approximately 100 million acts of sexual intercourse each day.
• The sperm count of an average American male compared to thirty years ago is down thirty percent.
• An adult esophagus can range from 10 to 14 inches in length and is one inch in diameter.
• Men sweat more than women. This is because women can better regulate the amount of water they lose.
• The average amount of time spent kissing for a person in a lifetime is 20,160 minutes.
• The average adult has approximately six pounds of skin.
• Infants spend more time dreaming than adults do.
• In one day, adult lungs move about 10,000 liters of air.
• The condom made originally of linen was invented in the early 1500's. Casanova, the womanizer, used linen condoms.
• Sex burns about 70-120 calories for a 130 pound woman, and 77 to 155 calories for a 170 pound man every hour.
• Impotence is grounds for divorce in 26 U.S. states.
• There are approximately 45 billion fat cells in an average adult.
• Kissing can aid in reducing tooth decay. This is because the extra saliva helps in keeping the mouth clean.
• During the female orgasm, endorphines are released, which are powerful painkillers. So headaches are in fact a bad excuse not to have sex.
• During World War II, condoms were used to cover rifle barrels from being damaged by salt water as the soldiers swam to shore.
• According to psychologists, the shoe and the foot are the most common sources of sexual fetishism in Western society.
• A kiss for one minute can burn 26.

 

Pregnancy Facts

• The world's first test tube twins are Stephen and Amanda Mays born June 5, 1981.
• Some people drink the urine of pregnant women to build up their immune system.
• The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.
• Every day, over 1,300 babies are born prematurely in the USA.
• During pregnancy, the average woman's uterus expands up to five hundred times its normal size.
• Changing a cat's litter box can be dangerous to pregnant women, as cat feces sometimes carry a parasite that can cause harm to the developing baby.
• A pregnant woman's dental health can affect her unborn child.
• May babies are on avearge 200 grams heavier than babies born in other months.
• When a women is pregnant, her senses are all heightened.
• Studies show that couples that smoke during the time of conception have a higher chance of having a girl compared to couples that do not smoke.

Human Body Parts

• Our heart beats around 100,00 times every day.
• Our blood is on a 60,000-mile journey.
• Our eyes can distinguish up to one million colour surfaces and take in more information than the largest telescope known to man.
• Our lungs inhale over two million litres of air every day, without even thinking. They are large enough to cover a tennis court.
• Our hearing is so sensitive it can distinguish between hundreds of thousands of different sounds.
• Our sense of touch is more refined than any device ever created.
• Our brain is more complex than the most powerful computer and has over 100 billion nerve cells.
• We give birth to 100 billion red cells every day.
• When we touch something, we send a message to our brain at 124 mph.
• We have over 600 muscles.
• We exercise at least 30 muscles when we smile.
• We are about 70 percent water.
• We make one litre of saliva a day.
• Our nose is our personal air-conditioning system: it warms cold air, cools hot air and filters impurities.
• In one square inch of our hand we have nine feet of blood vessels, 600 pain sensors, 9000 nerve endings, 36 heat sensors and 75 pressure sensors.
• We have copper, zinc, cobalt, calcium, manganese, phosphates, nickel and silicon in our bodies.

Amazing Facts of the Human Body

• Our heart beats around 100,00 times every day.
• Our blood is on a 60,000-mile journey.

• Our eyes can distinguish up to one million colour surfaces and take in more information than the largest telescope known to man

Understanding Depression

 

Our Close Proximity Prevents us From Seeing Earth in its Entirety

To completely view our own planet, we must leave its surface and journey into space. From the vantage point of space we are able to observe our planet globally, as we do other planets, using similar sensitive instruments to understand the delicate balance among its oceans, air, land, and life. Viewing Earth from the unique perspective of space provides the opportunity to see Earth as a whole. Scientists around the world have discovered many things about our planet by working together and sharing their findings.

Earth Has One Natural Satellite

Earth's Moon (called Luna) orbits at a distance of 384,000km, with a radius of 1738KM and a mass of 7.32e22kg. However, there are thousands of small artificial satellites which have been placed in orbit around the Earth. Also, asteroids 3753 Cruithne and 2002 AA29 have complicated orbital relationships with the Earth; they're not really moons, the term "companion" is being used.

Because of its size and rocky composition, the moon has also been called a terrestrial planet along with Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. It has no atmosphere, but there is water ice in some deep craters. The moon is the only extra-planetary body that a human has visited.

Early Philosophy had the Earth as the Center of the Universe

Although Aristarchus of Samos, in the 3rd Century B.C., figured out how to measure the distances to and sizes of the Sun and the Moon, and concluded that the Earth orbited the Sun, this view didn't attract followers until Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, published "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres" in 1543.

 

Earth is the Fifth Largest Planet

The diameter of the earth at the equator is about 7926 miles, but that's not the whole story. Because the earth is not a perfect sphere but is slightly flattened at the poles, the diameter of the earth measured around the North Pole and the South Pole is about 7899 miles.

Google More Popular Than Yahoo

• Google overtook Yahoo as the second most popular Internet destination for Web surfers worldwide in November while Microsoft held on to the top spot, ComScore has reported. Slightly more than 736 million people around the world traveled the Internet last month, with 475,713 of them visiting Google websites and 475,262 going to Yahoo online properties, according to industry tracker ComScore.

• Websites of Redmond, Washington-based software giant Microsoft were visited by 501,720 people, the rating tally revealed. Hot video-sharing website YouTube placed tenth in the ComScore Media Metrix rankings but showed the largest surge in visitors, with the number catapulting by more than 2,000 per cent to 107,944. Google's results did not include visits YouTube, which it bought in October. The popularity of Google websites was up nine per cent from the same month a year earlier, while visits to Silicon Valley rival Yahoo grew by five per cent and to Microsoft by three per cent in the same comparison.  

• Online auction pioneer eBay was ranked in fourth place, with the number of visitors slipping by one per cent from November of 2005 to 250,848. Time Warner Network site visits also notched down one per cent, tallying 222,107. The number of people going to the communally-edited Internet encyclopedia site Wikipedia more than doubled to 171,945 in November as compared to that month last year.

Eyelash Invaders

Depending on how old you are, it's pretty likely that you have eyelash mites. These tiny creatures live on old skin cells and the natural oil (sebum) produced by human hair follicles. They are usually harmless, though they can cause an allergic reaction in a minority of people. Eyelash mites typically grow to a third of a millimetre and are near-transparent, so you are unlikely to see them with the naked eye. Put an eyelash hair or eyebrow hair under the microscope, though, and you may find them, as they spend most of their time right at the base of the hair where it meets the skin. Around half the population have them, a proportion that rises as we get older.

Goosebump Evolution

 

Goosepimples are a remnant of our evolutionary predecessors. They occur when tiny muscles around the base of each hair tense, pulling the hair more erect. With a decent covering of fur, this would fluff up the coat, getting more air into it, making it a better insulator. But with a human's thin body hair, it just makes our skin look strange.

Similarly we get the bristling feeling of our hair standing on end when we are scared or experience an emotive memory. Many mammals fluff up their fur when threatened, to look bigger and so more dangerous. Humans used to have a similar defensive fluffing up of their body hairs, but once again, the effect is now ruined. We still feel the sensation of hairs standing on end, but gain no visual bulk.

Photon Detectors

 

Your eyes are very sensitive, able to detect just a few photons of light. If you take a look on a very clear night at the constellation of Andromeda, a little fuzzy patch of light is just visible with the naked eye. If you can make out that tiny blob, you are seeing as far as is humanly possible without technology. Andromeda is the nearest large galaxy to our own Milky Way. But "near" is a relative term in intergalactic space – the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5m light years away. When the photons of light that hit your eye began their journey, there were no human beings. We were yet to evolve. You are seeing an almost inconceivable distance and looking back in time through 2.5m years.

The Internet

The Internet is the fastest-growing tool of communicationever. It took radio broadcasters 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million, television 13 years, and the Internet just 4 years. A NeXT computer used by Tim Berners-Lee was the world’s first web server.

Domain registration was free until the National Science foundation decided to change this on September 14th, 1995. The first ever domain name registered online was www.symbolics.com. All three letter word combinations from aaa.com to zzz.com are already registered as domain names. One million domain names are registered every month. Almost half of people online have at least three e-mail accounts.

According to Message Labs spam accounts for over 60 per cent of all email. Google says at least one third of all Gmail servers are filled with spam. Anthony Greco, aged 18, became the first person arrested for spam (unsolicited instant messages) on February 21, 2005. Yahoo started out as “Jerry and David’s guide to the world Wide Web”. Jerry Yang and David Filo were PhD candidates at Stanford in 1994 when they started the site.

The first internet worm was created by Robert Morris, Jr, and attacked more than 6,000 Internet hosts. Only 4 per cent of Arab women use the Internet. Moroccan women represent almost a third of that figure. Official statistics in the UK say that 29 per cent of women have never used the internet, but only 20 percent of men. 220 million tons of old computers and other technological hardware are trashed in the United States each year.

The United States generates more e-waste than any other nation. An estimated 50-80% of e-waste collected in the United States for recycling is exported to areas such as China, India or Pakistan. In February 2009, Twitter had a monthly growth (of users) of over 1300 per cent several times more than Facebook. Facebook is growing at a dizzying rate around the globe, surging to nearly 500 million users, from 200 million users just 15 months ago, writes The New York Times’s Miguel Helft.

 

Doggie Toy

Doggie Toy rftarsy of 203 kilometers per hour in space travel. Auster ylya Canberra a unique gift for my nephew, a man made ​​of wool, produced bloom is the Doggie in the vacuum has been reached successfully. Doggie person with the helium gas-filled balloons and a camera e been touched by connecting fzamyn a few seconds in the 70-thousand-foot distance.

Cat Chasing Mosquito Survives 11-Story Fall

The 2-year-old cat, named Wasabi, survived but suffered a fractured leg and broken bones. The Juneau Empire reports the cat was chasing the mosquito Monday in her owners' apartment in Juneau, about two blocks from the state Capitol. The mosquito escaped out a window, and Wasabi went after it. Stephanie Gustafson says her mother watched the female cat fall.

Wasabi landed in a parking lot, and Gustafson found her huddled nearby, bloody and wet from rain. The cat underwent an operation, and has pins and wires holding together her fractured leg and broken bones in a joint. She also is sporting a pink cast. Gustafson says Wasabi is expected to heal in about six weeks.