Reference Spot

Blood Falls, a Natural Time Capsule Containing a Unique Ecosystem

This five-story, blood-red “waterfall” pours ever so slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valley. Geologists first discovered the frozen waterfall in 1911, and believed the red color came from algae. Its true nature turned out to be more spectacular.

Roughly two million years ago, a small body of water containing an ancient community of microbes was sealed beneath the surface of the Taylor Glacier. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, the microbes have remained isolated inside a natural time capsule, in a place with no light, oxygen, or heat.

The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the seepage its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the microbial subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

More photos of Blood Falls can be seen on Atlas Obscura

mediumaevum: Fell pony - one of the breeds used as campaign...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:47:53 -0400

mediumaevum:

Fell pony - one of the breeds used as campaign riding horse, or light cavalry during the Middle Ages.

ironelk: Today my art history professor gave some words of wisdom: Nude is when your clothes are...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:46:48 -0400

ironelk:

Today my art history professor gave some words of wisdom:

Nude is when your clothes are off. Naked is when your clothes are off and you’re up to something

Photo

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:45:16 -0400

hard-sophoclean-light: First half of the XVI century helmets...

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:45:03 -0400

hard-sophoclean-light:

First half of the XVI century helmets from Art Institute of Chicago. English, Italian and German.

suicideblonde: Keira Knightley photographed by Ellen von...

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:41:49 -0400

suicideblonde:

Keira Knightley photographed by Ellen von Unwerth for Harper’s Bazaar UK, September 2012

paper-dragons: The Mansoojat Foundation The Mansoojat...

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:39:18 -0400

paper-dragons:

The Mansoojat Foundation

The Mansoojat Foundation is a UK registered charity founded by a group of Saudi women with a passionate interest in the traditional ethnic textiles and costumes of Arabia.

Where We Go In The Future Is Determined
By Where We Have Been In The Past.

The Mansoojat Foundation’s mission is to revive and preserve the traditional ethnic designs and costumes of the various regions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; to promote and conduct academic research important for the understanding of the history and culture of the region, and to raise public awareness for the appreciation of this unique heritage.

s-p-o-o-k-y-n-o-i-r: studythesnow: rjmckinnon: frostedsammy: ...

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:19 -0400

s-p-o-o-k-y-n-o-i-r:

studythesnow:

rjmckinnon:

frostedsammy:

i don’t normally post porn sorry

I do, and this is much better.

The pen is mightier than the penis

Holy
Fuck

peashooter85: Engraved Colt Cloverleaf revolver with mother of...

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:37:29 -0400

peashooter85:

Engraved Colt Cloverleaf revolver with mother of pearl grips. Named the cloverleaf because it used a four shot cylinder that looked like a clover.

Estimated Value: $7,500 - $10,000

"Women unwittingly courted blindness too, in their quest for beauty. The ancient Egyptians, Romans..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:43:04 -0400

“Women unwittingly courted blindness too, in their quest for beauty. The ancient Egyptians, Romans and Persians tried to make their eyes glitter by using drops of antimony sulfide. The drops often dried up the tear ducts, and evenly destroyed their vision. In the 16th and 17th centuries, women used eye drops made of belladonna (also known as deadly nightshade) to dilate their pupils. While it had the desired effect of making their eyes look dewy, interested and excited the drops also robbed them of the normal pupil-shrinking reflect that keeps bright light away from the delicate retina. Modern experts believe that by continually dilating their pupils, these women might have predisposed themselves to the potentially blinding condition of glaucoma.”

- Beauty Extremes by LaNae Valentine, Ph.D.
(via mirousworlds)

odditiesoflife: Fire Tornadoes The fire tornado or fire devil,...

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:42:28 -0400

odditiesoflife:

Fire Tornadoes

The fire tornado or fire devil, one of nature’s rarest phenomenon, is caused when a column of superheated, rising air comes into contact with a wildfire. Basically its a tornado composed of fire instead of dust.

Film-maker Chris Tangey of Alice Springs Film and Television was filming a wildfire in Curtin Springs, Australia, when a small twister touched down causing it to build into a spinning flame. Just 300 meters away was a 30 meter high fire swirl which “sounded like a fighter jet” despite there being no wind in the area. The tornado that Tangey caught on camera reportedly lasted for more than 40 minutes.

bohemea: I need you, and nothing else will do. When chaos...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:38:20 -0400

bohemea:

I need you, and nothing else will do.

When chaos overwhelms a part of your life that you usually dominate, like Don does his workspace, a natural urge to control something, anything, takes over. When my life becomes chaotic, I crawl inside myself and make strange lists, like Ted admits with his Gilligan’s Island-margarine pairings. During the darkest times in my past, my house was impeccably clean because, while I couldn’t control what was happening to me, I could absolutely control the space around me.

Taking control over another person is tricky. It can be an exciting, freeing experience for both, or it can be a warning of potential abuse; control must be given as freely as it is taken, and trust must exist on both ends. For Don and Sylvia, their short game of dominance and control was exciting and cathartic, but ultimately, with too much time for Sylvia to consider the truth of their play, an ending.

What a gift though, to read another person well enough, like Don did Sylvia, to know that she needed, for a spell, to lose control; to not know what was going to happen next, but trust that she was going to enjoy it. Don, in turn, was able to know with complete certainty, that while his work was muddled and confused with new people and change and challenges, there was something beautiful waiting for him, something even more beautiful than Megan because Sylvia was waiting on Don’s order. She existed only for him.

We’ve seen Don’s dominance take over with nearly all his relationships. We’ve heard him tell more than one woman to stop talking. We’ve seen his need to control take an abusive turn with Betty, and a filthy worded role play scene with Megan. What we ultimately see with Don though, with the women he cares about – Betty; Megan; Sylvia – is a boyish need to keep things as they are, even if the woman is miserable. “Please,” Don begs Sylvia as she calmly explains to him that their relationship is damaged and doomed. Don doesn’t want to stop playing; he doesn’t want the beautiful, smart, lovely woman to leave him.

After shaming, ignoring, shoving and calling Betty a whore, when she finally tells him it’s over, he lowers his head in a darkened room and weeps. A strong shouldered man, broken because the beautiful woman he loved tells him he’s not good enough. When he and Megan fight at the HoJo after she turns down his delicious orange sherbet offer, he violently kicks in a door, chases her while she grips her hairbrush, like an angered father attempting to control his defiant daughter. When they fall together, and Megan holds an aching limb and cries, Don’s face looks terrified and exhausted. She stands, proud and frightened, and he crawls to her, clutches her, and suddenly, he’s the frightened child.

Every woman Don chooses ends up finding a voice that says, “I don’t need you”, and it terrifies him. For Don, there is nothing more frightening than being insignificant; unneeded; unwanted. He keeps a loose hold on one woman while wrapping himself around another, and when one fails, he grips the one that’s still there, hoping that she doesn’t go away, hoping that he can always return to her and find her, sweetly waiting for him. The foreshadowing image at the end of the episode, while Megan sits on the end of the bed and cries watching the footage of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, and Don sits near her, facing away, looking shame faced and tired, is a glimpse of what it would look like if Don lost Megan too – just a sad lonely man, filled with remorse.

Download free fucking books!

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:14:01 -0400

Download free fucking books!:

saltymarshmallows:

jennifersweetheart:

fieryfalcon:

essiedub:

nachosauruz:

A fuckload of classic literature:

1984 by George Orwell

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Aesop’s Fables by Aesop

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll

Andersen’s Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Dubliners by James Joyce

Emma by Jane Austen

Erewhon by Samuel Butler

For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Grimms Fairy Tales by the brothers Grimm

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard by Joseph Conrad

Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

Swanns Way by Marcel Proust

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Great Gatsby

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Iliad by Homer

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The Odyssey by Homer

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault

The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Duma

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

The Trial by Franz Kafka

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Ulysses by James Joyce

Utopia by Sir Thomas More

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust

Women In Love by D. H. Lawrence

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Click on the motherfucking Hypelinks bitches.

Here! Have a fuckload of modern literature, too!

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

A Study In Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith

An Abundance of Katherines - John Green

Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer

Bossypants - Tina Fey

Breakfast At Tiffany’s - Truman Capote

Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

City of Bones - Cassandra Clare

Clockwork Angel - Cassandra Clare

Damned - Chuck Palahniuk

Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay

Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris

Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card

Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk

Go The Fuck To Sleep - Adam Mansbach

I Am America (And So Can You!) - Stephen Colbert

I Am Number Four - Pittacus Lore

Inkheart - Cornelia Funke

It - Stephen King

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Lolita - Vladmir Nabokov

Marked - Kristin Cast

Memoirs Of A Geisha - Arthur Golden

My Sister’s Keeper - Jodi Picoult

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

One Day - David Nicholls

Paper Towns - John Green

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief - Rick Riordan

Pretty Little Liars - Sara Shepard

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

Snow White And The Huntsman - Lily Blake

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum

The Giver - Lois Lowry

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks

The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton

The Perks of Being A Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

The Princess Diaries - Meg Cabot

The Things They Carried - Tim O’Brien

The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom

Uglies - Scott Westerfeld

Vampire Diaries: The Awakening - L.J. Smith

Water For Elephants - Sara Gruen

Wicked - Gregory Maguire

Living in the future can be pretty sweet sometimes

Oh my god! There’s more!

DOWNLOAD ALL THE BOOKS!!!

“For me, ‘Dog Days’ symbolizes apocalyptic euphoria, chaotic...

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:23:09 -0400

“For me, ‘Dog Days’ symbolizes apocalyptic euphoria, chaotic freedom and running really, really fast with your eyes closed”

astronomy-to-zoology: Luzon Bleeding-Heart (Gallicolumba...

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:15:09 -0400

astronomy-to-zoology:

Luzon Bleeding-Heart (Gallicolumba luzonica)

is a species of ground dove native to the islands of Luzon and Polillo in the Philippines. They get the name bleeding heart due to a unusual splash of blood red feathers on the centre of the birds chest making it look like the bird has received a wound and is bleeding out, this illusion is enhanced due to a reddish hue of feathers on the bird’s front which almost look blood soaked. This species behaves in a similar fashion to other ground pigeons in that it eats mostly eats seeds, berries and grubs and is very secretive almost never leaving the forest floor.

Numbers stations are mysterious shortwave radio channels of...

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:48:31 -0400

Numbers stations are mysterious shortwave radio channels of indiscernible origin that exist in countries all across the world and have been reported since World War 1. They are identifiable by the unusual contents of their broadcasts: seemingly random sequences of numbers, words, letters, tunes, and Morse code, usually spoken by artificially generated voices of women and children.

The most common theory regarding the purpose of these bizarre stations is that they’re used by governments the world over to secretly transmit encrypted commands and messages to spies. That said, even though numbers stations have been discovered all over the globe and in any number of different languages, no government has ever officially acknowledged their existence. While the espionage theory is a logical one, with no official confirmation of their purpose the jury is still out.

One particularly odd station, UVB-76, has existed since the late 1970s and has broadcast a simple, repetitive buzzing tone 24 hours a day ever since. On very rare occasions, however, listeners have reported a Russian voice interrupting the buzz to read out sequences of numbers and words, always in a consistent format — this happened once in 1997, once in 2002, once in 2006, 56 times in 2010, and 14 in 2011. As with all numbers stations, its true purpose is and will probably remain unknown, but the increase in frequency of whatever it’s doing is certainly odd.

You can listen to well over 100 recordings of numbers stations for free on archive.org but be forewarned that they’re all kind of, well, eerie. They feel like something you shouldn’t be listening to, which stands to reason since apparently you’re not supposed to know they exist.