More stories by Linda

The word desert often conjures images of undulating sand dunes and vast, arid wastelands, but sometimes there’s more hidden in the driest plains of the world – colors that even the best artist would find hard to create. Yet, when things are left to the divine hand of Mother Nature, she never ceases to amaze. Below are some of the kaleidoscopic colors our globe’s deserts have to offer. Enjoy.

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Since Industrialization, when man moved away from the farm and into crowded, dirty cities, growing food for an ever-increasing urban population has been a problem. Budding farmers created allotments in an effort to grow their own fruit and vegetables, while others built glass enclosures to allow food to grow all the year round. From this, greenhouse designs took on organic qualities of their own, growing bigger, shinier and grander. Here we take a look at 7 of the most amazing greenhouses and biomes in the world.
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As part of the Environmental Graffiti’s partnership with the Sony World Photography Awards 2009, we’ve been given privileged access to these spectacular but sobering images by one of last year's finalists.

Small figures writhe and wriggle through a seething mass of stinking garbage, searching for something so precious that they scour the towering mounds daily.

Images: spiral via DRB

Our uncanny fascination with abandoned places seems endless. Every time we come across photographs of buildings or sites that have fallen from grandeur we gorge on their demise, but not in a crude way.

All images by Hector Garrido

If anyone close to you has lost their mind recently, we might be able to help.

Think back to when you were a kid, watching endless re-runs of Chitty-chitty Bang-bang. Truthfully, how many times did you close your eyes and wish for a flying car? And how many times have you been on a tortuous lengthy road trip wishing you’d flown? Well, very soon, you could have the best of both worlds, just like British inventor Giles Cardozo.

He has painstakingly constructed a flying car, and it works! Amazingly well. Given the not-very-inventive name of ‘Skycar’, this biofuel-powered motor is able to go from 0 to 60 mph in just 4.5 seconds.

Image via Telegraph

It’s no secret that people in the UK are forever complaining about the weather, but it seems this week they were well within their rights. For the first time ever a rare phenomenon usually only seen in extremely cold countries was spotted on the River Otten in Devon.

A massive spinning ice circle caught the attention of Roy Jefferies as he was walking his dog by the river last Wednesday morning.

jennifrog

Waking up to see the world floating past your window would fill most people with a deep foreboding and have them running outside to see what catastrophe had just occurred – was it shock flooding or a nightmarish storm that carried your house away?

Finding your kitchen infested with insects would ordinarily put most people off their food and have them straight on to pest control, but not if they’ve been let loose by designer Sayaka Yamamoto.
One of the design duo BCXSY, Yamamoto created the useful metal bugs to resemble everyday kitchen utensils as part of a project called Little Wonders.

The designs include espresso pots that look like weevils, cricket-shaped corkscrews and fly fish slices.

Image via The Sun

Those with cleanliness OCD and claustrophobia should click away now.

This week, an eccentric British man, named Gordon Stewart, was found dead within a labyrinth of tunnels in his own home. It’s not that he lived in a mansion and therefore needed the tunnel system to get from room to room, far from it. He lived in a normal two-storey house, with mountains, and mountains, and mountains of garbage he’d collected over a 10 year period.

All images John Bradley via English Russia

Few people venture into the heart of the Kara-kum desert, but those who do are drawn by an eerie bright light that illuminates the night sky for miles around. From afar a glowing red light seems to float on the horizon, enticing onlookers ever closer to peer into what seems like Dante’s Inferno.

Illustration of Martin Fugate and his family. Some reports say Martin was not blue but was a carrier of the methemoglobinemia gene.
Image via NClark

If a good friend of usually normal intelligence suddenly insisted they saw little blue men, you’d be inclined to think they had lost all their faculties and would carefully hide all alcohol from sight, that or they’ve been watching too many reruns of the Smurfs.

All images via Triton Logging

It may seem like a pipe dream for someone to come up with a viable solution to stop the endless logging in many parts of the world. Logging that is driven by people’s materialistic needs, usually the very same people who bemoan the loss of our rainforests and the effects of global warming.

It’s the first day back at work for many people so to break you into the daily grind as gently as possible we thought we’d offer you something that isn’t too taxing. Well, we figured you wouldn't want to have to think too much. And for those poor people feeling already overwhelmed, especially if it’s the first time you’ve used your brain for two weeks, give yourself a five minute break and get a load of these silly animal pics.