Earthquakes

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Deadliest Earthquake:The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake or Jiajing earthquake is the deadliest earthquake on record, killing approximately 830,000 people. More than 97 counties in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Gansu, Hebei, Shandong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Anhui were affected. An 840-kilometre (520 mi)-wide area was destroyed, and in some counties 60% of the population was killed.

Cyclones & Hurricanes

Cyclone

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Cause:The terms “hurricane” and “typhoon” are regionally specific names for a strong “tropical cyclone”. A tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a low pressure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds and flooding rain. Cyclones develop over warm seas near the Equator. Air heated by the sun rises very swiftly, which creates areas of very low pressure. As the warm air rises, it becomes loaded with moisture which condenses into massive thunderclouds. Cool air rushes in to fill the void that is left, but because of the constant turning of the Earth on its axis, the air is bent inwards and then spirals upwards with great force. The swirling winds rotate faster and faster, forming a huge circle which can be up to 2,000 km across. At the centre of the storm is a calm, cloudless area called the eye, where there is no rain, and the winds are fairly light.

Deadliest Cyclone:The oldest and the worst cyclone on record is that of October 1737 which hit Calcutta and took a toll of 300,000 lives in the deltaic region. It was accompanied by a 12 metre high surge. A violent earthquake coinciding with this storm enhanced the destruction.

Avalanches

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Cause: Major causes of avalanches are weather, snowfall, temperature, wind direction, snow pack conditions, slope angle, slope orientation, terrain, and vegetation. Avalanches only occur when the stress on the snow exceeds the shear, ductile, and tensile strength either within the snow pack or at the contact of the base of the snow pack with the ground or rock surface.

Deadliest Avalanche: The 1970 Ancash earthquake or Great Peruvian Earthquake was an undersea earthquake that occurred on May 31 of that year. Combined with a resultant landslide, it was the worst catastrophic natural disaster ever recorded in the history of Peru. The quake destabilized the northern wall of Mount Huascarán, causing a rock, ice and snow avalanche and burying the towns of Yungay and Ranrahirca. The avalanche started as a sliding mass of glacial ice and rock about 3,000 feet (910 m) wide and one mile (1.6 km) long. It advanced about 11 miles (18 km) to the village of Yungay at an average speed of more than 100 miles per hour. The reported death toll from the earthquake and avalanche totalled 74,194 people, although some estimates place it as high as 80,000.

Tornadoes

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Cause:Tornadoes form in unusually violent thunderstorms when there is sufficient instability and wind shear present in the lower atmosphere. They are caused when a cloud of the right size precipitates rapidly releasing heat, which causes it to rise, and creates a vacuum under it. The warm moist air is forced upward (either by the heat of the sun, a cold front, or other weather disturbances). If the atmosphere is unstable strong upward currents called updrafts lift the air until water vapor condenses forming clouds and precipitation.

Deadliest Tornado: The deadliest tornado in world history was the Daultipur-Salturia Tornado in Bangladesh on April 26, 1989, which killed approximately 1,300 people. The tornado was estimated to be approximately one mile wide, and had a path that was about 50 miles long, through the poor areas and slums of Bangladesh. Approximately 80,000 people were left homeless by the storm, and 12,000 people were injured by the storm.

Tsunamis

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Deadliest Tsunami:The earthquake that generated the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 is estimated to have released the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). By the end of the day more than 150,000 people were dead or missing and millions more were homeless in 11 countries, making it the most destructive tsunami in history.

Floods

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Cause: Heavy rainfalls are one of the major causes of floods. Floods can be caused by the overflow of huge volumes of water, from rivers, lakes, oceans, heavy rains downpours, hurricanes, cyclones, or tsunamis or unexpected event such as dam breakages.
Deadliest Flood: Throughout history, floods have proven to be the deadliest natural disasters and China boasts 6 of the world’s top 10 deadliest floods and landslides of all time. The 1931 Central China floods are a series of floods that occurred during the Nanjing decade in the Republic of China era. It is generally considered the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded, and almost certainly the deadliest of the 20th century (when pandemics are discounted) and in China. The human casualties are estimated from 3.7 million to 4 million.

Sinkholes

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Cause: A sinkhole is a large depression in the Earth’s surface, often shaped like a well or a funnel, that can be up to several miles in diameter. A crack in underground limestone is often the first step in the formation of a sinkhole. A sinkhole may also be caused by a dramatic event, such as the collapse of a cave roof. Most commonly, sinkholes occur in urban areas due to water main breaks or sewer collapses when old pipes give way.

Most Disastrous: Whole buildings have been sucked into sinkholes and on February of 2007 entire roads were knocked out and part of a poor Guatemala City neighborhood plummeted some 30 stories into the Earth. The reportedly 330-foot-deep (100-meter-deep) sinkhole swallowed about a dozen homes and claimed the lives of three people.

Landslides & Mudslides

Landslide

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Mudslide

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Cause: Landslides are caused by disturbances in the natural stability of a slope. They can happen after heavy rains, droughts, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Mudslides develop when water rapidly collects in the ground and results in a surge of water-soaked rock, earth and debris. Mudslides usually begin on steep slopes and can be triggered by natural disasters. Areas where wildfires or construction have destroyed vegetation on slopes are at high-risk landslides during and after heavy rains.

Deadliest Landslide:The Kansu landslide is the worst in recorded history. An earthquake near the Tibetan border was felt through some 30,000 square miles of western China. Thousands of peasants lived in cave dwellings, carved into the sides of 100-foot-high clay cliffs and hills framing the riverbanks. After the earthquake, these cliffs were sheared off along deep vertical faults and sent falling into river valleys, destroying more than 100 cities, countless villages, and killing more than 180,000.

Deadliest Mudslide :The 1999 Vargas tragedy was a disaster that struck the Vargas State of Venezuela in December 1999. The torrential rains and mudslides that followed on 14 December through 16 killed tens of thousands of people, destroyed thousands of homes, and led to the complete collapse of the state’s infrastructure. The disaster caused estimated damages of USD $1.79 to $3.5 billion. More than 8,000 homes were destroyed, displacing up to 75,000 people. The death toll was considered to be between 10,000 and 30,000 — the exact number of casualties is difficult to estimate as there were no reliable census data, especially about shanty towns and small communities that were completely wiped out; moreover, only some 1,000 bodies were recovered, with the rest swept to sea by the mud or buried in the landslides.

Volcanoes

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Blizzards

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Wildfires

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Cause: The four major natural causes of wildfire ignitions are lightning, volcanic eruption, sparks from rockfalls, and spontaneous combustion.However, many wildfires are attributed to human sources such as arson, discarded cigarettes, sparks from equipment and power line arcs.
Deadliest Wildfire: The October 8, 1871 Peshtigo Fire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, is the conflagration that caused the death of 1,700 people, the most deaths by fire in United States history.  Having occurred on the same day as the more infamous Great Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo Fire is mostly forgotten.

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A Brief History of Virtual Reality

The creation of virtual reality has been slow going, arduous and, up until the mid-‘90s, largely theoretical in nature. In 1965 Ivan Sutherland, an ARPA scientist, published his grand oeuvre “The Ultimate Display.”  In his essay Sutherland predicted all sorts of advances in computer technology: computer mice, drag and drop interfaces and voice recognition software. But most importantly, he wrote about the ultimate display—“a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter.” Sutherland’s essay might have been full of fanciful speculations about the future of digital technology, but his wild (and shockingly accurate) predictions helped plant the seed of VR in the minds of scientists and non-scientists to follow.

In 1968 with the help of one of his assistants, Sutherland created one of the first head mounted augmented reality display systems—what would come to be known through movies and TV as a VR helmet—known to some as The Sword of Damocles because it was so big and heavy that it had to be suspended precariously over the user’s head with a series of cables. The display only showed the users crude outlines of a virtual environment.

Despite the technology’s scientific beginnings, however, VR made its first major strides in fiction. The movie TRON had people imagining the possibilities of interactive gaming to the Nth degree. William Gibson rocked the minds of a generation when he wrote of a cyber-punk society where a brain-computer interface was possible in Neuromancer. Ray Bradbury took the concept of a VR room to its most horrific extreme in The Veldt.

And while VR charged ahead in the realm of fiction, in the field of science it scrambled to keep up.

The first major technical leap forward came in the mid-‘70s in the form of Myron Krueger’s VIDEOPLACE. Using cameras, computers and projectors, people in a VR room were able to see and interact with silhouettes of people in other similar rooms. Compared to the advances that writers and directors of the time were coming up with, VIDEOPLACE was crude, but Krueger’s experiments showed that science was at least trying to move forward with VR.

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So, Virtual reality had bounded forward in one of the five senses—sight—but that left the other four to conquer. Soon scientists were trying to combine systems like VIDEOPLACE with data gloves and tactile interfaces. The leader in this field was Jaron Lanier. In fact, he popularized the term virtual reality. In 1985 Lanier founded a company called VPL Research and began experimenting with all sorts of goggle and glove set ups.

Initially, the video game market, captivated by the possibilities of VR, tried to cash in on the early advancements. Who could forget that seminal scene in the classic movie Wizard where the badass townie unlocks a Nintendo power glove from a carrying case and proceeds to school all those who dare come up against him? Or the phase in the mid-‘90s where you could stand on a giant platform, put on a ridiculously large helmet and box a 16-bit opponent with Nintendo Wii-like controllers?

But all of these attempts to game with VR would quickly fade away—most in less than a year. The tech was too expensive, the equipment was too bulky and the graphics and game play offered weren’t up to par. So, gaming companies quickly cut their losses and left VR to the scientists and the artists, and they had a field day.

Since the late ‘80s virtual reality has been popping up everywhere in movies and TV. The Lawnmower man, VR5, Virtuosity, eXistenZ, and most famously The Matrix imagined worlds where the goggles and gloves were obsolete; it was all about beaming the information directly into the user’s brain.

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Science too kept pursuing the elusive brass ring of VR, but direct to brain transmission was and is still a little invasive for the scientific community (However, this didn’t stop Sony from patenting the idea that information could someday be beamed into a human’s brain earlier this year). Instead, they concentrated on better, less intrusive helmets, more efficient interfaces and more realistic 3D modeling.

Virtual Reality in… Reality

This brings us to today. Current VR technology, while more impressive than anything we’ve had before, still falls short of what we imagined it could be. Technology has evolved in leaping strides, but though we may have advanced inventory software to help enable near-robotic efficiency, organization and workflow, when it comes to VR technology, most systems can only manage to immerse two senses at a time: The VR systems that therapists use to help treat client phobias or PTSD use helmets or small rooms to simulate sights and sounds; The Nintendo Wii allows people to physically interact with a virtual opponent.

But science is getting tired of this plateau it’s been stuck on. In the last few years, researchers in the field of VR have been stretching themselves to hit more of the five senses.
One of the biggest innovations in VR came earlier this year. Sight and sound have always been the go-to senses for virtual reality researchers, but few have ventured into the realm of taste and smell. In March 2009 a team of scientists from the Universities of York and Warwick in the U.K. revealed what they saw as a giant leap forward in VR tech, the Virtual Cocoon. The cocoon not only simulates the looks and sounds of a 3D environment on the inside of a portable helmet, it also has a library of smells and tastes it can feed to the user to correspond to the world they are experiencing.

Which just leaves one last aspect of creating a truly immersive virtual reality system–the ever elusive locomotion? You can create life-like graphics and simulate realistic sounds, you can feed them tastes and smells, but as soon as your test subject takes their first step to explore your virtual world, you’re in trouble, and a virtual world the size of your living room just doesn’t do it for most people. To get around this problem, a company called Cyberwalk has started work on an omni-directional treadmill they call the CyberCarpet. This would allow people to walk in any direction for as long as they want without hitting a wall or walking into traffic. When combined with something like the Virtual Cocoon, we’re the closest we’ve ever been to escaping this troublesome world in favour of an ideal one of our own making.

We may have waited a long time, and the technology might be in its infancy, but we may have our VR rooms and Holodecks sooner that we think.

Special Thanks: This post was made possible in part with help from Jeremy, an expert in dedicated web hosting. We appreciate his help with all the research.

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Thanks to medical imaging technologies, physicians can do a full colon exploration while viewing the images in near real time on the screen. A virtual colonoscopy provides 3D reconstructed endoluminal views of the bowel without the use of a colonoscope. VC is a procedure used to look for signs of pre-cancerous growths, called polyps; cancer; and other diseases of the large intestine. The old system for diagnosis and treatment was discovery with a series of x-rays, or more commonly referred to as a lower GI. However, those images have proven insufficient to detect and prevent tiny polyps in their early cancerous stages. Today, with the advent of medical imaging technology, doctors are able to catch and treat colon cancer at the onset.

In most cases, a colonoscopy procedure takes no more than 30 minutes, but the VC will take only about 10, and the examination does not require sedatives. (Whether or not that’s a good thing is debatable.)

Here’s a quick breakdown of how the procedure would go:

• The patient is placed in a supine position on the examination table
• A thin tube is inserted into the rectum (sorry, can’t avoid it completely), so that air can be pumped through the tube in order to inflate the colon for better viewing.
• The table moves through the scanner to produce a series of two-dimensional cross-sections along the length of the colon. A computer program puts these images together to create a three-dimensional picture that can be viewed on the video screen.
• The patient remains conscious throughout the session, and may be asked to participate with the steadying of the images by taking in a deep breath and holding for a few seconds.
• The scan is then repeated with the patient lying in a prone position.

After the procedure the patient may resume normal activity, but if abnormalities are found and the patient needs conventional colonoscopy.

Be warned though, that just because the colonoscope isn’t going in, doesn’t mean you get to avoid what’s got to come out beforehand. While preparations for VC can vary, you will usually be asked to take some laxatives or suppositories one day before the procedure to clear stool from the colon.

Colonscopy patients have reported that the preparation time is the worst of the ordeal, but that the actual procedure is performed quite quickly and comfortably. Finally, the American Cancer Society recommends the test at age 50 and again at age 60.

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Here are some basic topics you should expect to cover in an online photography class.

1) Understanding your camera’s functions and controls as well as the limits to what it can and can’t do.
Most classes will start by teaching you the functions of your:
•    Aperture
•    Shutter
•    ISO
The above 3 are the key elements to determine the exposure of a photograph.

2) Elements of Exposure
Exposure refers to the total amount of light allowed to fall on the image sensor during the process of taking a photograph. A photograph is considered overexposed when the bright parts of an image look “blown out”. A photo will be described as underexposed when there is a loss of shadow details and the dark areas are indistinguishable from black. Understanding why your images come out too dark or too bright and learning how to properly use a light meter is one of the most basic elements of photography.

3) Depth of field

Understanding depth of field will help you overcome blurry shots. Depth of field refers to the portion of a scene that appears sharp in an image. DOF is determined by the subject’s distance to the plane that is perfectly in focus. For landscape images, you want everything in the scene to look sharp so as you will learn, you will want larger DOF, but a smaller aperture. For portraits, you want to make sure your subject is in focus, so you will use a larger aperture and a smaller DOF.

4) Shooting modes and what they do:
•    Auto
•    Aperture Priority/Av
•    Shutter Priority/Tv
•    Manual

5) Types of Lens
•    Zoom Lens
•    Prime Lens
•    Macro Lens
•    Fisheye Lens
•    Telephoto and Ultra Telephoto Lens
•    Wide Angle and Ultra Wide Angle Lens

6) Rule of Thirds

The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. Studies have shown that when viewing images, people’s eyes naturally drift towards the intersection points rather than the center of the shot. The rule of thirds works with our natural way of viewing. Of course many have broken the rule, and created amazing photos. But the rule of thirds is still an important part of creating well-balanced and interesting shots.

7) Effective Photographs

The right place at the right time, Henri Cartier Bresson once said, “The photograph is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event, as well as of a precise organization of forms, that give the event its proper expression”.

Knowing how to create pictures with purpose and compose them in a meaningful way is what makes one photograph stand out from the next. Advertising and fashion photographers have the click down to a science and it’s beneficial to know the science of a perfect photograph. If you have a look at commercial photography websites like Ryan Parent Ottawa photographers you can begin to see how much a picture requires thought and planning.

How you choose to use your photography knowledge is at your discretion but getting great shots isn’t about luck. Sometimes you get lucky but the more skill you have, the less you depend on luck.

8 ) Photoshop
Learning Photoshop in a Level I photography class isn’t always possible. My first photography teacher was apprehensive about teaching us any Photoshop. His view was that we shouldn’t learn how to “fix” pictures, before knowing how to make good ones. By Level II, Photoshop is generally introduced. The more Photoshop experience you gather, the better off you will be in the long-run. Just about every professional photographer needs to be Photoshop proficient unless they work strictly in a darkroom.

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The Image Mill

The joy of the building-sized projection is the massiveness of it all, and nothing’s more massive than Robert Lepage’s image mill, showing this summer in Quebec City. Commemorating and portraying Quebec’s 400 year history, the video occupies a surface about 100 ft X 2 000 ft, roughly equivalent to 25 IMAX screens.

Lepage is a well known artist with a great sense for how to incorporate technology into his projects, and he’s managed to produce a masterpiece of sight and sound with the collaboration of Ex Machina over two years of production at a cost of about $4 million.

If you can’t make it up to Quebec City this summer, the video can be watched in the comforts of your own home, using 6 screens to both maintain the spirit of grandeur and to maintain the video’s otherwise disproportionately wide shape. Simple instructions for how to set up your own mill can be found here. It’s super easy, so give it a try (if you happen to have 6 computers equipped with bid management software handy…)

555 KubiK

Creative Applications created this funky visual experience by meshing the projection images with the building’s existing physical architecture. The video was made in 3D Studio Max, giving an impression of transforming the building itself by presenting very much 3D-oriented visuals.

555 KUBIK_ extended version from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

Pinwall

This is my favorite creation by the geniuses over at UrbanScreen.com. While it may not be as visually impressive as the Image Mill or 555 KubiK (not that it’s not visually impressive), the real hotness of this projection is the interactivity. Bystanders during Viertelfest Bremen in 2007 were able to affect the giant game as seen below. It may not be as fun as building-sized Tetris, but it’s got more style.

Pinwall | interactive facade pinball | urban screening from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

AntiVJ

VJ Crustea is a French dude living in the UK who specializes in fusing electronic music with synchronized visuals. The following is a modest but still very cool building projection from 2006, picking up on the wall’s existing architectural elements as with KubiK, but more piece-by-piece.

He later put his skills into a project called Lightup Bristol started in 2007, creating a much bigger presentation, not competing with the Image Mill in size, but definitely fun for many of the same reasons.

Luminous

Check out the projection realized by The Electric Canvas on the Sydney Opera House in May and June of this year. This building projection’s claim to fame is the 21 days of non-repeating artwork alongside a fantastic festival.

It was the visual backdrop for a spectacle of light and music curated by none other than the legendary Brian Eno, ambient music pioneer and producer for bands like U2 and Coldplay. The audio-visual display is called 77 Million Paintings, and a time-lapse version can be seen here.

Tetragram for Enlargement

Italian visual art contingent Apparati Effimeri put together this castle mapping for the Itinerario Festival this past June. Watch them mess with and melt the Rocca Malatestiana. Impressive.

APPARATI EFFIMERI Tetragram for Enlargment from Apparati Effimeri on Vimeo.

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So here we go folks. What follows is a hysterical collection of internet suicides, homicides, organ failures and of course, everyone’s favourite, genital cannibalism.

Cyber-Homicide

Torture and kill me please.com

So you’re clicking through Craigslist, sipping your morning coffee when this personal ad comes across the screen: “SWF seeks strong single male to share long walks on the beach, dinners by candlelight, and if all goes well, to be brutally tortured until I’m dead.” Interested? Well in 1996 one Robert Frederick Glass, a computer analyst from North Carolina, hit the jackpot when he discovered Sharon Rina Lopatka’s request for just that. When two people have a triad of names they are meant for each other. The 35-year-old woman from Maryland was desperately seeking someone to follow through with her deepest desire to be tortured and killed, a service which Glass was happy to provide. Glass was convicted with voluntary manslaughter for strangling Lopatka to death, in one of the first cases of consensual homicide over the internet.

Eat my balls.com

This next case takes the age-old expression “Dude, WTF is wrong with German people?” to another level. Bernd Jürgen Brandes was parusing the web pages of The Cannibal Café, as you do, when he came across this ad: “looking for a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed.” Finally! He must have thought, as he made his way over to Armin Meiwes’ place for dinner, a dinner where he was to become the main course What took place on that March night in 2001 can only be described as THE MOST HORRYFING AND TWISTED SHIT I HAVE EVER READ ABOUT IN MY ENTIRE F$*%ING LIFE. Despite my desire to cry while projectile vomiting into my keyboard, only the words of my editor echoing in my brain, “It’ll be hilarious,” kept me going.

I’ve created this menu to help paint a picture of the soiree, which would later earn Meiwes the cute nickname of “The Rotenburg Cannibal,” without going into too much detail. The only problem is we’ve left the aforementioned “details” to your imagination, which will probably make things much, much worse.

Meiwes’ Menu

Appetizers

1. Severed German Sausage for 2
2. Sausage sautéed with salt, pepper, and garlic
3. Burnt sausage for the family dog

Main Course

1. 20 kg of Frozen Limb Leftovers, to be Micro waved and Enjoyed Over 10 Months

For those who want the full story (for the love of all that is good in this world, don’t do it!) read here.

Amidst the stabbing, the bleeding, the eating and the dying, there is one truly funny moment I would like to share. While Brandes was hopped up on booze and painkillers, bleeding to death in a bathtub while Sparky the dog ate his sautéed wiener, Meiwes was sitting nearby reading a book about Star Trek. Let it sink in…Oh yeah, and one more thing. Meiwes is presently serving a life sentence in prison, where he has since become a vegetarian.

Beware the slave master.com

John Edward Robinson, who was once a Boy Scout from Cicero, Illinois, grew up tall and strong to become the first internet serial killer. Using his computer he would get in touch with women through chat rooms under the user name “The Slave Master.” Over the next five years some of the women he would meet for sex, or for false job opportunities he would advertise on the net, disappeared. Some of their bodies were discovered by police on his farm in Kansas, and Robinson would eventually be convicted for the murders of eight women. He is currently in prison with nothing but the death penalty to look forward to. Hilarious!

Video Game-ocide

Game till you drop.com

Have videogames become that good, or has reality become that crappy? Whatever the case, for a few unfortunate souls, the human body simply couldn’t keep up with the virtual lives they created for themselves through their MMORPGs (short for Emm Emm Oh Are Pee Gees).

- Lee Seung Seop, who’s addiction to Starcraft had already cost him his girlfriend and his job, dropped dead after playing for 50 hours straight in an internet cafe. He would have needed a diaper just like the slot junkies in Vegas casinos, only he never stopped to eat or drink anything. The police estimated that the 28-year-old South Korean’s heart simply gave out from exhaustion.

Game till other people drop.com

- World of Warcraft was the drug of choice for the South Korean couple who left their 4-month-old daughter at home unsupervised while they played for four hours at a nearby internet café. As they smashed virtual skulls with their virtual war hammers, their real-life baby suffocated and died before they returned. During an interview that I made up Joe Pesci refused to appear in the theatrical re-enactment of the tragedy entitled “Home Alone 3.”

Punchline-ocide

Who’s laughing now.com

Martin Cassidy, a well-known and well-liked British comedian from Blackburn died from…wait for it… inhaling too much laughing gas while watching internet porn.
RIP Martin. Died with a smile on his face and a pile of wood in his knickers. While this was allegedly an accident, if you had to go, could you think of any better way? HaFapHaFapHaFap_________.

Suicide

They double-dog dared me.com

During an online chatroom session at PalTalk, 42-year-old engineer Kevin Whitrick engineered a gallows and hung himself to death for all to see. Whitrick’s death was the first internet suicide broadcast via webcam. When he voiced his intentions to members of the chatroom, many thought he was bluffing and began to egg him on. One user actually watched him stand on a chair, punch a hole in the ceiling, toss a rope over a joist and around his neck and said “’F***ing do it, get on with it, get it round your neck. For F***’s sake he can’t even do this properly’” It wasn’t until Whitrick stepped off the chair and turned blue that people realized he wasn’t f***ing around. The chatroom wasn’t completely filled with a**holes, however, as many people called 9-1-1 and tried to talk him out of it.

Mass Suicide

Are you thinking what I’m thinking.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

Most notably in Japan, there has been a rise in the number of deaths as a result of Cybersuicide pacts. A suicide pact is when a small group of people agree to end their lives together. The first recorded case of a suicide pact organized over the internet occurred in October 2000 in Japan. Over the course of the next five years, and estimated total of 175 people commit suicide as part of online pacts.

Less than two years ago Hiroshi Maeue, a 38-year-old Japanese man was sentenced to death, for arranging multiple Cybersuicide Pacts. The reason he was still alive when he got caught was due to the fact that he would trick victims into committing suicide with him, and when they would arrive on location he would turn around and murder them. This manoever is known as “The Ultimate Psyche!” Three people were killed by Maeue in this manner, all of which was filmed by the man doomed to share the same fate as his victims.

So there you have it folks. I hope that while reading this you laughed as hard as I did while writing it. My fireballs are charged and I’m off to drink some whiskey now.

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Smallpox

They were brave warriors who vastly outnumbered their European invaders. They were no match however, for Old World diseases like smallpox, which wiped out 90 to 95% of the native population inhabiting the Americas. In the last hundred years, smallpox has caused the deaths of over 300 million people across the globe. Throughout the 18th century it killed over 60 million people in Europe alone. And according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 15 million contracted the disease and two million died as recently as 1967 (source).

Smallpox, which only exists in humans, has been decimating populations for thousands of years. It is said to have begun in Egypt nearly four thousand years ago, and as people began to travel the world they began to spread the disease to India, China, Japan, Europe, America, and even Australia. It causes sufferers to have fluid filled blisters in their throats, mouths, and on their skin. Depending on the constitutions of the carrier, smallpox would lead to blindness, disfigurement, and death. Of the two types of smallpox, Variola major and Variola minor, the former causes most of the casualties as the rashes are more extreme and the fever much higher.

In 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner in England discovered that by inoculating a young boy with the fluid from a cowpox lesion, the young boy became immune to smallpox. He is credited with the world’s first “vaccination,” as the word comes from the Latin word “vacca” meaning cow. Smallpox was declared eradicated on May 8th, 1980.

Cholera

When a human eats food or drinks water that has been infected with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, he or she can be dead in less than 4 hours without the proper treatment. The cholera disease attacks the lining of the small intestine and causes incredible amounts of diarrhea, vomiting, fever, dehydration, a critical drop in blood pressure, exhaustion and death.

The first outbreak of cholera reared its nasty head in 1817 in Calcutta, after the great Kumbh festival at Hardwar in the Upper Ganges of India. The festival attracted thousands of people from all over the country. Pilgrims from the Lower Bengal brought the bacterium to the party, and as they relieved themselves in the Ganges River, which was shared by everybody during the three month festival, they started a pandemic which would spread to the four corners of the earth. Travellers were literally bringing boatloads of the disease from port to port as they sailed the oceans from country to country. During the 19th century alone Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America all reported death tolls from the hundreds of thousands, to the millions as a result of cholera. India got hit the hardest however, with estimated deaths of nearly 40 million people.

Influenza

The prize for the Most Globally Devastating Epidemic goes to the influenza or Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919. Just as World War I was coming to an end, thousands of people around the world were suddenly getting sick with what they believed at the time to be a common cold. In less than two years, an estimated 20-100 million people around the world were dead from type A influenza, wiping out 2.5% to 5% of the world’s population. It was widely believed that this was mother nature’s response to the death and destruction which occurred during the Great War. The end of the war certainly helped to spread the disease, as millions of infected soldiers brought it back to their home countries when the fighting was over. By 1919, 25% of Americans were infected with influenza.

The disease was widely spread in the air from coughing and sneezing, from contact with saliva, feces and blood. Symptoms included fever, muscle aches (especially in the back and legs), headaches, coughing, and overall weakness. As was mentioned earlier, it is for these reasons that many people perished without any treatment. They thought they had a common cold, and in less than a day, they’d be gone. Severe pneumonia was also a symptom of influenza infection, which would easily claim the lives of the already weakened victims.

Black Death

In the four years between 1347 and 1351, 75 million people died as the result of a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, or the plague. Stories vary as to where the disease started, but some believe that it began in the lungs of the bobac variety of marmot in China. Fleas would then bite the marmots, and would subsequently infect every animal they would bite afterwards, especially rats. These diseased rats and fleas would follow merchants in ships as they sailed along trade routes across Asia and into Europe.

One group sailing towards Europe was a Tartar army from central Asia, who in their attempts to conquer a small city in the Crimea, were all but wiped out from some mysterious disease. As they departed in defeat they hurled the corpses of their infected soldiers into the heart of the city via catapults. A group of Italian merchants who were living in the city at the time quickly left the city and made their way back home in twelve vessels. Not only were most of the sailors dead or dying by the time they reached Sicily, but they had brought enough infected fleas and rate to spread the plague throughout Europe and into Northern Africa. Out of 40 million people living in Europe at the time, 25 million perished.

The plague manifested itself in three forms: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. Sufferers of the bubonic plague would develop swollen lymph nodes or buboes on their necks, armpits, and groin. These skin bubbles would ooze blood, puss, and would turn black as the skin decays. Sufferers would usually die within a week. Pneumonic plague would infect the lungs causing victims to suffocate or drown, and the septicemic plague is a form of blood poisoning which rots the extremities and turns the skin black.

Malaria

As far as the animal kingdom is concerned, mosquitoes kill more humans than all the others combined. A tiny bite from this tiny f$%&er is all it takes to infect someone with Plasmodium, a nasty little parasite which multiplies in the liver and then goes on to infect the red blood cells. If gone untreated, malaria can kill its victim in less than two weeks, disrupting the blood supply to vital organs. While the malaria pandemic has spread to the Americas and various parts of Asia, 85-90% of the fatalities occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where the parasite kills over one million people per year. Plasmodium has co-existed with humans for over 10,000 years, but President Obama has declared that the United States, along with its world partners, will work to eradicate malaria by 2015.

Additional: AIDS

In the 30 years scientists first discovered the existence of the AIDS virus, more than 25 million people worldwide have died from AIDS infections. According to World Health Organization (WHO), close to 40 million people are currently infected with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) which is the virus that causes AIDS.

Although the number of people infected with AIDS continues to rise around the world, parts of Africa maintain the highest number of HIV infected. Sub-Sahara Africa accounts for over 60% of all HIV positive cases for the entire world.

Human Immunodeficiency virus is passed from person to person when infected blood, semen, or vaginal secretions come in contact with an uninfected person’s broken skin or mucous membranes.

Since this article was first written, there has only been one swine flu related death outside of Mexico. A 23-month-old toddler passed away in Houston, Texas this week, the family of which has received the “thoughts and prayers” from President Obama. The child was a resident of Mexico, and of the 66 cases of the flu in the U.S. and 13 in Canada, all can be traced back to Mexican visits. If you or anyone you know has been to Mexico recently or has come into contact with someone who has, and you’re experiencing respiratory problems, fever, sever coughing, headaches, vomiting and or diarrhea, you should seek medical attention as soon as possible. If caught early, the swine flu is treatable, it can be stopped from spreading to others, and will hopefully never reach the levels of casualties of pandemics past.

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Most internet users know a little bit about spam, but spammers are evolving and every day it becomes harder to recognize spam.

Spam types

Virus Spam

These are unsolicited emails that arrive with unusual attachments like .exe files. The emails are usually sent by a friend who’s been infected. Before opening, it should always be a policy to ask your friend or acquaintance and find out if they’ve actually sent you something.

Nigeria Spam

If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

Pharma Spam

Buying medication of any kind off the internet is inherently risky- especially buying medication from a company that sends unsolicited emails. Beware.

Penis Enlargement Spam

Come on, really?

Phishing Scams

These emails are the most dangerous, as they are often sent via a spoof email address that looks like a bank or credit card domain name. They pretend to be a bank or credit card company and then they ask you to confirm a change to your account by logging in using your pin number and password through a link they provide in the email. It also copies the websites login page, often making it impossible to distinguish it from the real thing. To avoid this type of spam, all you need to do is remember that banks never send out emails like this. They will call you to confirm changes with your account and will never require you to log in through a link in an email.

Mortgage & Loan Spam

Low interest loans even with bad credit!!! Yep, it’s too good to be true.

Lottery Spam

No, you didn’t win a prize and no, you don’t need to tell them your bank account number to collect.

Software spam

These are people who pirate software then try to sell it to unsuspecting people. It’s the equivalent of buying a Playstation from the back of a truck.

How to fight It

You would think “unsubscribing” would help, but really, it doesn’t. Unsubscribing from these emails will result in more spam. The unsubscribe link in these emails simply confirms to the spammer that the email address is valid. The spammer will then add your address to a database filled with the addresses of other unsuspecting people, for future spamming.

So how do you stop the influx of garbage email? If you’re using a corporate email address then contact your network admin. The company’s email system is likely operating under Microsoft Hosted Exchange or an onsite email server, so the network admin will be necessary to make changes to the server side spam filter.

Alternatively, if you have a home email address there are client side spam filters like Perimitec’s Anti-spam filtering that provide protection against spam when you’re at home. This kind of software has regular updates much like anti-virus software so you need to make sure you’re up-to-date.

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Hybrid vehicles have been around for awhile now, but they tend to only be driven by people who aren’t concerned with performance, leaving all the sports car market stuck with the big gas burners.  Finally, fuel efficiency and performance will meet face to face in the following innovative upcoming eco friendly vehicles, becoming the standard for new and eventually used cars. Buying one of these cars isn’t only trendy, it will also make you one of the few people in North America with an ‘Exotic’ eco friendly car.  The only problem left is trying to find any companies willing to offer auto insurance quotes on these rare gems. I’m guessing replacing a bumper on one of these cars will cost you more than half a dozen regular car bumpers!

Ecotricity’s Electric Lotus Exige

Ecotricity has been planning to launch an electric Lotus Exige for over a year now. The developers are planning on launching the car with a zero to 60 in less than 4 seconds.  The goal is to be as fast as a V12 Exotic sports car with the ability to go 150 miles on a single ‘electric tank’.  This car has yet to come to fruition; hopefully we see it on the streets one day.

Audi R Zero

The Audi R Zero is definitely one of the sexiest prototypes out there.  This exotic beauty features four electric in wheel motors totaling an enormous 1091 horse power.  That is right, over a 1000 HP in this bad boy excelling it from 0-60 in less than 3 seconds.

Venturi Fetish

The Venturi Fetish is one of the more exotic looking electric cars out there.  Although very exotic looking, the Venturi Fetish is one of the slower electric cars available topping out around 100MPH.  The sexy Fetish goes from 0-60 in just shy of five seconds making it fast enough for the average person.   The Fetish is capable of driving around 150 miles without charging. Luckily the batteries are capable of charging in roughly an hour on a 30kW three phase charger or in three hours on your standard power plug.

Citroen C-Metisse Concept

The Citroen C-Metisse was first unveiled in 2006 at the Paris AutoShow. The concept is an interesting mix of performance and technology.  The power plant is a 2.7L 208HP V6 diesel engine coupled with a 20hp electric engine.  What makes this vehicle interesting is that it is capable of running independently on either engine, or in mixed mode depending on your performance needs.

Going from 0-60 in the C-Metisse will take just more than 6 seconds, however the slightly slower speeds are made up with the amazing fuel economy;  36MPG!

Saab Aero-X

Ever wanted to know how a car would perform that ran on a pure ethanol engine? Wonder no more, Saab came out with the Aero-X concept car at the 2006 Salon International de L’auto. This gorgeous dream car is hosts a 2.8L Twin Turbo V6 engine producing 400hp and tearing through 0-60 in 4.9 seconds.  To make the Aero-X really stand out, it doesn’t even have doors! The entire cockpit opens up in a similar fashion to a jet.

Toyota FT-HS

Toyota should not be counted out when considering your next green sports car.  The FT-HS stands for ‘Future Toyota Hybrid Sport’ and looks to make a major dent in the eco friendly sports car market. The FT-HS’s power train is scheduled to produce over 400HP and hit 0-60 in under 4 seconds.  The Toyota HT-HS will combine a 3.5L V6 motor with an electric motor to accelerate the car to ridiculous speeds.  Expect to see this car available at a starting point of roughly $30,000 USD making it not only breathtakingly beautiful, but also affordable, something most of these cars lack.

Tesla Roadster

The Tesla Roadster is probably the most famous eco friendly sports car getting attention from all around the globe. The Tesla Roadster is the first car being produced by Tesla Motors.  The car borrows the basic chassis from the Lotus Elise but aside from the chassis is a unique vehicle.  The Tesla Roadster can accelerate from 0-60 in less than four seconds and is capable of 244 miles on a single charge.  The estimated fuel consumption when compared in terms of energy usage is the gas equivalent of 120mpg making the Tesla Roadster probably the most efficient electric sports car available.

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1. Dancing Sony Robots

Humans do the robot so robots are doing the human. And very industriously at that.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2. Robot Girlfriend

Le Trung, an inventor from Ontario, Canada, spent two years building his fembot named “Aiko”. Le built the attractive robot in order to help with household chores. He claims that he has never had sex with his robot but that her software can be “tweaked” to simulate her having an orgasm. Le hopes to one day sell robots like Aiko to help with house work for the elderly.

Click here to view the embedded video.

3. Bicycle Robot

Newspaper boy of the future!

Click here to view the embedded video.

4. Toyota Robot That Plays the Violin

You can stay in and order food, rent some movies, but in the near-future you can also have a robot perform a private violin concert in the comforts of your own home.

Click here to view the embedded video.

5. Soccer Robots

They go after the ball, they fall, they kick, pass, score and try to keep the ball from going out of bounds. These robots are autonomous, and are equipped with internal camera systems and sensor scans that process information in real time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

6. iCub

Developed to aid in the study of cognition, the iCub is one of the world’s most life-like robots- modeled after a 3.5 year old child who can learn through basic object recognition, can move its eyes, head, legs, hands and arms in a freakishly realistic way and even play the drums. One of the most interesting and unique things about the iCub is that it is an open open-systems platform. “Users and developers in all disciplines, from psychology, through to cognitive neuroscience, to developmental robotics, can use it and customize it freely”, says Professor John Gray, professor in the Control Systems Centre at the University of Manchester, in a TechRadar.com interview. “The hope is that the iCub will develop its cognitive capabilities in the same way as a child, progressively learning about its own bodily skills, how to interact with the world and eventually how to communicate with other individuals.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

7. Rubot: The Rubik’s Cube Solving Robot

Invented by Artificial Intelligence student Peter Edmond, Rubot is the fastest robot to solve a Rubik’s Cube- Rubot can solve the Rubik’s cube in approximately 35 seconds.

Click here to view the embedded video.

8. Fighting Robots

They may look all cute and fun for now, but imagine what could happen when they become life-size and we lose the remote controls…

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9. Asimo The Robot

Made by Honda, Asimo can walk up stairs, run faster than any other robot, and serve you coffee!

Click here to view the embedded video.

10. Domo: The Cleaning Help Robot

Though still a work in progress, Domo is a robot that strives to be much like the Jetson’s robot-maid Rosie, in a not-so-distant future. Domo’s creator, MIT engineer, Aaron Edsinger envisions a robot like Domo to eventually help the elderly or wheelchair-bound people, with household tasks like putting away dishes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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