Planet Planning

Lightening Storm

Lightning storm around the Surtsey,

Iceland volcanic eruption.

Public domain ...

MSNBC reports the co-founder of Earth Day, Ira Einhorn, is serving a life sentence for killing his girlfriend and composting her body.

Click the link below tom read the article.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42711922/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Thanks to Anne Hullinger for sharing.

South Dakota Time Lapse Video

This National Geographic site has a time lapse video shot at
Kennebec, South Dakota when it was -25 degrees. Why do
we like weather that cold? It keeps the riffraff out.

Randy Halverson's time-lapse video

Click the link below to view the video.

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/04/01/dakota-skies-time-lapse-video

Nearly Useless Factoids

by Suzanne Kubota

The smallest mammal in the world is the bumblebee bat, so named because it's about the size of a bumblebee.

You know that cardboard sleeve that comes wrapped around your molten latte? There's a word for that. According to MentalFloss, it's called a "zarf."

A penguin keeper in Germany has had to change his usual footwear, black and white boots, to blue ones after they became the object of the affections of a perky little Gentoo in his care.

According to DiscoveryNews, "Cats hold some control over when they are fed and handled, functioning very similar to human children in some households." If you're owned by a cat and this is news to you, please raise your paw.

ImprobableResearch reports "despite the Ig Nobel Prize-winning research - done by groups on two continents - demonstrating that Coca-Cola is NOT an effective contraceptive, people still rely on it to prevent pregnancy."

From NewScientist.com, "in 2004, the Guinness Book of World Records proclaimed the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the quietest place on Earth. It was measured at -9.4 decibels." A negative decibel reading, explains NewScientist means the measured sound is below the threshold of human hearing. That makes it a sound that can't be heard.

"The employed and self-employed enjoy much better sleep than those out of work," reports ScienceDaily.

According to LifesLittleMysteries.com, "ten percent of the weight of a two-year-old pillow can be composed of dead mites and their droppings." Let the spring cleaning begin!

So if you get stepped on by an elephant in the dark, you might be able to tell which kind it was just by the toenail marks left behind. According to the Elephant Information Repository on the web: "it is generally accepted that the African elephant has four toenails on the front feet and three on the back as opposed to the Asian elephants which have five on on the front and four on the back." But you should note, "there has been some disagreement among particular experts and there appears to be a possible range within each species for the number of toenails." Plus there's the issue of both having four toenails

A dim brown dwarf (star) found 75 light-years away has a surface no hotter than a freshly brewed cup of coffee, astronomers say.

From AskMen.com's 5 Things You Didn't Know: Abraham Lincoln we learn that on the way to his first inauguration, the future president's security codename was "nuts."

You've wondered and now you know: According to LifesLittleMysteries.com, drive-thru ATMs are required to have instructions in Braille as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

What do you call a sandwich with two hamburgers, a chicken breast, two slices of cheese, three pieces of bacon, and lettuce, tomatoes, and onion? If you're Burger King, you call it "The Meat Monster." According to Toronto Star, it has 1,160 calories, 69 grams of fat, 24 grams of it saturated fat, 2,300 milligrams of sodium and 1.5 grams of trans fat - and is available, so far, only in Japan. Oh, and my cardiologist would call that "job security."

Thanks to my sister Anne Hullinger for sending this to me.

Tsunami Stone

Good city planning, protecting the public safety.

"The stone tablet has stood on this forested hillside since before they were born, but the villagers have faithfully obeyed the stark warning carved on its weathered face: 'Do not build your homes below this point!' Residents say this injunction from their ancestors kept their tiny village of 11 households safely out of reach of the deadly tsunami last month that wiped out hundreds of miles of Japanese coast and rose to record heights near here. The waves stopped just 300 feet below the stone...

Thanks to my friend Ken Zalga for submitting this article.

Click to read more:

America The Melting Pot?

Richard Florida writes an interesting article about how the United States is no longer the best in the world in welcoming immigrants. A study by the British Council and the Brussels-based Migration Policy Group provides the data.

Florida writes:

"Whether they see immigration as a good thing or a scourge, Americans like to think of their country as an immigrant-friendly place, with borders that are among the most open in the world."

"For those keeping score, Sweden ranked first, Portugal second, and Canada third. The U.S. was ninth! The map below shows the scores for the 31 countries measured by the Index."

Click to read the article

Nice Photos of Paris

Le Flâneur (music by The XX) from Luke Shepard on Vimeo.

• Using more than 2,000 photographs, Luke Shepard, a student at the American University of Paris, created a neat video of his temporary home city (above).

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/04/22/the-morning-dig-a-cool-time-lapse-video-of-paris/