When it comes to volcanoes, most of us have only seen the usual pictures of fiery rocks and spewing molten lava. Have you ever seen photographs of an electric storm and lightning bolts above a volcano? After lying dormant since 7400 BC, see what the Chaitén volcano looked like when it recently erupted in southern Chile. The photographs are truly spectacular.
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First daughter Jenna Bush exchanged vows with Henry Hager over the weekend at President Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch, disappointing some who wanted to see the first White House wedding in 37 years. Mental Floss has highlighted the most memorable 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. nuptials including the wedding of President James Monroe’s daughter Maria who at 17 wed 21-year-old Samuel L. Gouverneur, her first cousin. Another eyebrow raising union occurred in 1886 when 49-year-old sitting President Grover Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom, who he had known her entire life. Cleveland had also acted as the bride’s legal guardian up until shortly before getting hitched. Scandal in the White House? Shocking.

If you like watching stars (of the celestial kind), you will be glad to know that last night Microsoft launched a new Web 2.0 visualization software that allows your computer to be a virtual telescope. WorldWide Telescope as it is known, combines images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey among others. No extra hardware or software required, simply download the application here. Thank you Bill Gates!
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Did you know that man’s large scale destruction of mangrove forests has actually made things worse in Myanmar? It appears that more than 50,000 acres of mangrove forests had been destroyed in the 1990’s to make way for agriculture and shrimp ponds. Mangrove forests provide a natural buffer to rising tides and storms and protect people. Would the magnitude of destruction have been less if the mangrove forests were still there?
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This may sound odd, but a man actually cut his car up into half in protest that it was clamped just outside his home in England. He claims that only part of the rear wheel was on the pavement but the authorities thought otherwise and decided to clamp it.
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Did you know that foods as diverse as nutmeg, rye bread and the fish, Sarpa salpa can theoretically make you high? In fact, the medical journal, Clinical Toxicology, reports that the ancient Romans knowingly hallucinated off of Sarpa Salpa heads. This probably means that your grocer could at least in theory be a drug dealer, although getting arrested for selling Stilton cheese is unlikely to happen any time soon.

It is one thing to talk about going green and another to actually do something about it. A global survey was conducted in fourteen countries to track the behavior of individual consumers when it comes to matters of the environment. The survey looked at the size of peoples homes, the amount of energy consumed for heating and cooling, the number and types of appliances and electronic devices used, the modes of transportation employed, the types of food consumed, consumption habitats of non-essential items, and one’s beliefs regarding the environment. See the results here.
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Scientists from Cornell University have created the first genetically modified embryo. The embryo was produced to study how early cells and diseases develop, and then destroyed after five days. The technology could be used to correct genes from diseases such as haemophilia, cystic fibrosis, and cancer.

“Is someone in the bathroom?” Probably not a good question to ask at the Lewis residence in Neceda, Wisconsin, where for more than two months, a mother and her two children shared their lavatory with the gruesome remains of a dead 90-year-old woman. Mother, Tammy Lewis, was advised by a senior member of her religious sect that the corpse would come back to life if they prayed hard enough. One wonders how they shared that toilet in a house with only one bathroom, but perhaps that’s the least pertinent question to ask.

Vintage footage of Bill O’Reilly losing it on Inside Edition has resurfaced on the web. The clip shows O’Reilly freaking out over a broken teleprompter. This one’s an oldie but videos of obnoxious newscasters going insane are always amusing. Catch it while you can through, as CBS has removed the clip from Youtube due to a copyright claim.

With the help of breathing exercises practiced in yoga, a twenty one year old man in India has managed to blow out 151 candles in one breath. He says regular practice was responsible for his success. His name is being entered in the Guinness book of world records. Breathtaking eh!
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Because stock markets around the world are turbulent, did you know that Canadians are sitting on forty five billion dollars of safe cash? Economists feel that the overall liquidity position held by Canadian households has been rising at a year over year rate of fifteen per cent. So are people scared, that they haven’t invested it into stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or real estate? Sitting on cash for too long also costs money!
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Semantic web applications have long been predicted to shape the next generation of search, and now the public will finally get the chance to test the new keyword technology as start-up, Powerset, releases its beta version. Powerset claims to change conventional models of search by offering a smarter, more efficient experience through deeper analysis of page indexing. Although Powerset’s index is currently very limited, product director, Scott Prevost argues that the next generation search engine will eventually rival in size the likes of Google and Yahoo.

A Japanese company is developing a vending machine that counts wrinkles and skin sags to check a smoker’s age. The facial recognition technology will be used to prevent under-age smokers, under the age of 20, from buying cigarettes. The system gets it right nine out of ten times, and id. cards will be required for the baby-faced individuals whose age cannot be determined by the machine.

A biologist who discovered a new species of spider decided to name it after his favorite musician and has called it Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi. Neil Young is a Canadian singer and songwriter who became famous in the 1960s.
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If you are someone who is missing out on the generally recommended eight hours of daily sleep, then this Truemor will come to you as good news, provided you take some time off regularly to catch up on lost sleep. The difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount of sleep you actually get is called sleep debt. A new study tells us that if you sleep an extra hour or two every night, you can catch up on lost sleep. But don’t be late to work!
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Ever heard of a pelican diving at someone? That’s exactly what happened to a woman who was swimming off a beach in Florida. Pelicans are large seabirds that usually plunge-dive to catch their prey. Apparently the bird which was diving for fish hit the woman in her face and died of injuries from the impact. The woman needed several stitches, but is recovering from the accident. In a totally unrelated incident, several years ago, a pelican swallowed a pigeon in a London park.
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At a remote beach in Australia, a fifty year old woman saved a thirty seven year old man who was mauled by a shark. As she heard his cries for help, she simply followed her instinct and jumped into the water to rescue him. Don’t you think she deserves an award for saving a stranger?
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Teenagers in eastern Russia wreaked havoc at their school, after they were given soup and drinks laced with ecstasy. Police were called in to investigate, after students stripped off, climbed walls or lay on the floor laughing. Now isn’t learning fun?

A new travel guide warns tourists that the English are overweight, binge-drinking, reality TV addicts. And, The Rough Guide to England does nothing to dispel English stereotypes, claiming that we’re all a bunch of animal-loving, queue-forming tea-drinkers. It seems that the writers are convinced that every English person is Simon Cowell in disguise, concluding that England is both “self-important and irritating.”

Nokia, the world leader in mobility, has officially launched its N95 8GB in Canada. This is a first in North America. Considered by many as the device to own, the N95 which is a 3G device, features integrated Wi-Fi, GPS, 8GB internal flash memory, a five megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, all running on the fast and power saving Symbian operating system. By the way for those who are unfamiliar, Symbian commands well over fifty percent of the worlds market share in operating systems for the smart mobile device market. More after I get mine!
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Starbucks re-introduced its 1971 brown-and-white logo that features a mermaid. “The Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute,” says Mark Dice, of a Christian group called The Resistance. “Need I say more? It’s extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks.”

Read it, if you dare: The County-by-county guide to England’s most haunted places. “Readers may be surprised to see that a tale they had thought belonged to one place is found elsewhere,” the authors Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson say in the foreword to the “Penguin Book of Ghosts.” The village of Prestbury in Gloucestershire is said to be one of the most haunted places in England.

Kill Bill star Uma Thurman sued Lancome on Friday, complaining the company had used unauthorized pictures of her on Canadian advertisements and Asian websites after her contract with them had expired. The cosmetics company gave the “false impression” Thurman was still linked to Lancome. The lawsuit followed a suit filed on Wednesday by Lancome, saying it did not violate its contract.

Do you suffer from insomnia? Learn how to sleep like a baby in 10 easy steps. It is recommended to take regular naps, avoid drugs, get up early, and work out regularly for a better sleep.