Environmental Graffiti

10 Landscapes of Smoke and Mirrors

Mirages have long left us spellbound. Their power to play tricks on our minds endlessly fascinates, while the image of an exhausted traveller in a desert being fooled into seeing an oasis in the distance is part of popular folklore. Modern science has made the way these bewildering optical phenomena work less hazy, but mirages continue to captivate the imagination – and no more so than Fata Morgana, that most bizarre of superior mirages.

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Don’t Wing This! [PICS]

With a new study suggesting that procuring life experiences not possessions leads to greater happiness, what better way to mark the findings than by celebrating an activity that’s truly going make you feel alive – assuming you don’t die trying. Sure, the screwballs that are into wingsuit BASE jumping may look like the human answer to flying squirrels, but we’ll bet they’re having more fun than you are when you’re shopping down at the local mall.

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The Town Where No one is Allowed to Die

The tiny locale of Longyearbyen, Norway, is one of the world's most northerly towns. Here, university students learn to shoot polar bears in self-defense while kindergarten kids have mobility issues caused by heavy snowsuits and residents worry about the effects of global warming on their Icefjord. But if life in Longyearbyen is unusual, it's nothing compared to the prospect of death: the town rule is, if you die here, you will not be buried.

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The Oldest Tree In The World: 9,950 Years Put In Perspective

This tree is apparently 9,550 years old; well, more appropriately, not the tree itself, but the root system, which has obviously supported several different incarnations of this tree. However, since our average lifespan is far south of 100 years, we can’t really gain an appropriate perspective on how [...]

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Group Says Eating Whales Will Stop Global Warming

A Norwegian group has come up with a controversial new idea, save the planet by eating whales. A Norwegian group thinks eating this minke whale is environmentally friendly . Image by Julius Agrippa The attention grabbing idea comes from the High North Alliance, a group that lobbies for [...]

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