Environmental Graffiti

We’re not sure if there’s been a movie entitled, ‘Attack of the Killer Veggies’, but judging by the mass of strange, creepy and downright weird images of vegetables sneaking around online, there should be.

Some of the outlandish veg we’ve found for your perusal are convoluted freaks of nature, while others have been manufactured by the hand of humans, either way, this collection of your not-so-average common and garden vegetables should please everyone – yes, including your vegetarian friends heard saying “vegetables have feelings too.”

1. Alien Veggies >

2. Petrified Pumpkins >

3. Raucous Roots >

Fire fighters are well used to being called out to rescue kitties in distress from trees that prove too scary, but a lizard? That’s a new one.

Firemen were summonsed by the RSPCA, in the UK, after some distressed residents in Cove, Hampshire, reported an iguana stuck up a tree. After arranging an aerial platform for the rescue and the presence of an animal rescue expert the fire brigade started their 45 ft ascent up the tree to find… a branch.

Bemused rescuers realized by the time they were 25ft up that the green-colored ‘iguana’ was nothing more than a weather-beaten algae-covered branch.

Real Green Iguana

Image by Roland Müller-Hasselbeck

The animal rescue advisor at the scene Colin Horwood said: “The branch bore a striking resemblance to an iguana when seen from the ground.

“I have never seen anything like it.

“We take all animal rescues seriously but in this case it was a good intent false alarm.”

Firefighters attending the rescue had thought the call was entirely credible as they knew the RSPCA had rescued another iguana in the area just the week before.

Source 1, 2

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Image by sourabhj

An enterprising fun fair operator in southern India has devised the ultimate in zero emission rides – a man-powered ferris wheel. Four or five men take turns spinning the ride, using their full body weight for optimum effect, sending passengers flying round.

It makes for riveting viewing, although we’re not quite sure who’s having more fun, the operators or the passengers. Can’t see it being passed for use in regulated fun fairs, no matter how low the emissions are! You can just imagine the reaction of health and safety officers the world over; they must be reaching in shock and horror for their clipboards and complaint forms as we speak.

Source Nothing To Do With Arbroath

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It’s no secret that our obsession with plastic bottles is turning into a bit of an environmental crisis, and no wonder, in the US alone 70 million bottles are purchased every day, yet only a measly 10 million are recycled. So, it’s good to see someone doing something useful with the bottles instead of adding to the giant mounds of garbage threatening to suffocate the planet.

Artist Jasmine Zimmerman has created a translucent sun dome from hundreds of empty recycled bottles, and intends to travel through various boroughs of New York with it to spread the word about reusing and recycling.

Jasmine says, “This year, Americans will drink more than 30 billion single-serving bottles of water. In the course of our busy lives this year, we will throw out more than two million tons of polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles – an unintended byproduct of our everyday convenience.”

The aims of the bottle house are simple:

• To serve the communities of New York after the festival, traveling to various locations, bringing the garden to the people.
• To build community through a social, educational collective exchange in the creative process.
• To transform and repurpose an overlooked material that harms our planet and environment into one that will grow vegetation.

The Bottle House was on show at Seattle’s Music and Art Festival, Bumbershoot 2008, which ran from 31 August to 1 September this year.

Source 1, 2

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Image by roboppy

Written by new contributor, Sonia Dong

The wonders of the natural world never cease to amaze. Imagine: a fruit that when eaten, renders sour foods sweet. It’s like the Midas touch of food, and it actually exists.

wikimedia commons

Dubbed Miracle Fruit, this small red berry hailing from West Africa is the star performer at ‘flavour tripping parties’ organized by Franz Aliquo in the United States. Bartenders have also been experimenting with the fruit to create new cocktails, and UK art magazine Cabinet has included it on the menu at their events.

At the ‘flavour tripping’ events, partygoers pop a red berry in their mouths, and for the next hour, limes taste like candy and vinegar like apple juice. Other choice eats at these parties include bananas, mustard, cheese, dark beer and cheap tequila.

Image by Andrew Yang

The flavour-altering berry (or Synsepalum dulcificum, if you want to be technical), contains a protein called miraculin. When miraculin comes into contact with acids, the result is a sweet, sweet taste in your mouth. We want.

Source: NY Times

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Image by: Gemini Observatory

Written by new contributor, Jonathan Fincher

Do you see that photo above? As far as photos of our universe go, it’s pretty blurry and not all that spectacular, except for one little detail: this is the first photo of a planet orbiting a star outside of our solar system. Ever.

The image was taken by three University of Toronto scientists using the Gemini North telescope trained on the distant star (lovingly named ‘1RXS J160929.1-210524′). Up until this point, the only planet-like objects scientists had clearly observed in space did not appear locked in orbit around a star much like our own sun. This could shake up some widely held astronomical theories though, since the supposed planet is located farther from it’s ’sun’ than researchers thought possible. That is, if continued observation can confirm that this large mass actually is orbiting the star. According to scientist, Dr. David Lafrenière:

“Of course it would be premature to say that the object is definitely orbiting this star, but the evidence is extremely compelling. This will be a very intensely studied object for the next few years!”

Source: Gemini Observatory

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About the author: Jonathan grew up travelling throughout the world and has made a point of continuing that whenever possible. For the time being, he’s based in Oregon, where the weird and wonderful seem to thrive. He probably knows more about video games than the environment but still finds it interesting and loves to learn more about it.

Deep beneath the waves, far down on the ocean floor are scenes often associated with the stuff of nightmares – translucent fish with wide black eyes capable of seeing in the dark, shell fish with bioluminescent skeletons and colossal squid, so huge that no one has yet to picture them. All these creatures, though bizarre, are somehow quite expected but it’s doubtful whether many people would imagine a lake lying down there, too.

As unlikely as it sounds there are a handful of underwater lakes and rivers boasting their own mini ecosystems.

How do underwater lakes form?

Underwater lakes are brine pools. And believe it or not, even though people often refer to the ocean as the briney blue, while it’s constituted of salt water it is not brine. Brine refers to water with an extremely high concentration of salt, higher than that of normal sea water. It is produced through salt tectonics, or the movement of large salt deposits.

The lake featured was discovered in the Mexican Gulf. During the Jurassic period the waters here were shallow and became cut off from the ocean. The area soon dried out, leaving a thick layer of salt and other minerals up to 8km thick. When ocean water returned after the region rifted apart, the super-saline layer at the bottom of the Gulf became an underwater lake. Now brine, which is continually released from a rift in the ocean floor, feeds the lake.

During an expedition in the Gulf of Mexico, in 2007, Natural Marine Sanctuaries captured these images of a 10-inch-deep brine channel at the base of East Flower Garden Bank.

Only bacteria can survive in these hypersaline lakes but mussels, anenomes and shrimp seem to thrive around them. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that focuses on the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere has captured some wonderful images of life around the edge of a brine lake.

“Deep-sea mussels living on the “shore” of the Brine Pool. These mussels use methane as their primary source of food, but also filter small particles from the water. The red worms in the bottom left corner are a newly described species of polychaete. The large fish in the middle of the picture is a deep-sea eel. Such fishes commonly visit the Brine Pool, where there is more abundant food than elsewhere on the deep-sea floor.” NOAA

Here’s hoping underwater explorers and marine biologists find more of these underwater brine lakes; we need more cool pics!

Source 1, 2, 3

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Not too many people still get their milk delivered to the doorstep but those who do have recently been waking up to a surprise with their morning milk. When they go to the doorstep they’ve found extra bottles intricately decorated with cows, sheep or mice. For months, residents have been trying to figure out who their secret deliveries are from… has the infamous graffiti artist, Banksy decided to target milk bottles instead of walls? Was the great graffiti King getting bored?

A resident in the West Midlands town of Stourbridge, in the UK, discovered one of the bottles outside her house on Monday. She spoke to the Daily Mail:

“I had heard something about this from a friend, but nobody knows who is doing it. The milkman came to collect the bottles, but I didn’t want to give him the one with the picture on it, I’m going to keep it. It might be worth something one day.”

Another resident said her son had been trying to get up really early to catch the artist at it. “But it’s like Santa – you never see them.”

Now the secret’s out. The milk bottle artist, and ex-lecturer, has been revealed to be Charlotte Hughes-Martin, a 30-year-old artist from the area. Motivated by a desire to show how ‘domestic, everyday objects can be things of beauty too’, she has happily been delivering the alternative milk bottles for months.

Charlotte says: “I like to give people a surprise and make them do a doubletake when they step outside their front doors in the morning to pick up their pints of milk,” she said.

“I’ve been etching the bottles for months, then, every so often, I’ll head out one morning and drop them off at random houses all around the area.

“Everyone should be able to enjoy art in their everyday life and I just love the idea that my designs could bring a smile to someone’s face as they make a cup of tea in the morning.”

We wonder does she do requests. Can we have manta ray please?

Source: Daily Mail

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Images by: European Space Agency

No matter how often we hear about the developed world becoming more like Big Brother every day, it’s not until you see images like these from ESA that you get creeped out. How much are we being watched, traced, listened to, recorded? Anyone who has ever read George Orwell’s novel, 1984, might have seen it coming.

The computer-generated image above was released by the European Space Agency earlier this year, which shows the Earth looking more and more like our hula-hooping buddy, Saturn. The image highlights trackable objects orbiting the Earth; all 12,000 of them, and that’s just an estimation. Around 11,500, floating at an altitude of 800 to 1,500 kms, are thought to be military, scientific, commercial and navigational in nature but only around 7% are in working order. The rest are mostly telecommunications satellites and orbit in the direction of the Earth’s rotation, or geostationary orbit as it’s known. They sit about 35,786 kms high.

Another image shows the differentiation between the satellites more clearly. Red depicts debris; the white dots are operating satellites and the outer ring is composed of satellites in geostationary orbit, which means they always sit on the same spot over the Earth.

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking objects in orbit since 1961 but now there is real concern that, with so much material floating around up there, it may cause damage to existing satellites and, worse still, working astronauts. Even though much of the debris is too small to follow, their velocity can cause untold damage. Once a tiny speck of paint that had come loose from a satellite punched a quarter-inch hole in the window of a space shuttle! Imagine going all the way into space, carrying out your given mission and then succumbing to the wrath of a speck of paint. Nightmare.

More of a worry though is, not just what’s going to happen to the existing unwanted bits and bobs orbiting Earth but what the powers that be plan to do with future satellites. There’s a real danger of the space above our planet turning into the largest dumping ground in the ‘verse. And, what’s worse is, when all those aliens people are expecting to visit do finally pop round for a chinwag, they’ll have problems figuring out which planet’s Earth and which is Saturn with all those rings.

Source 1, 2, 3, 4

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A wall of sand gathers on the horizon, swiftly gaining momentum and mass, devouring everything in its path. As it approaches, those in the know scramble to their homes for protection, others cover their heads and mouths, and wait for the tempest to subside. For several hours, yellow engulfs the city. Then suddenly, the impetuous force behind this meteorological phenomenon calms. The mile-high cloud of dust once again settles on the land, back where it belongs.

The following are some of the most amazing images of it captured on camera.

1. Desert Sandstorms >

2. Cities Devoured by Sand >

3. Satellite Images of Sandstorms >