Contaminated

Whenever Africa is mentioned, most people think of roaming animals and jeep safaris. Whilst Africa has much more to offer than animals, the beauty that nature has bestowed on this continent cannot be overlooked. The animal inhabitants of Africa are amongst the most varied and beautiful in the world. Most of us know that Africa is home to the magnificent giraffe and the impressive cheetah. However, there is also a wider range of animals that live in Africa.

Africa is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. There are 46 countries including Madagascar, and 53 including all the island groups.

Africa, particularly central eastern Africa, is widely regarded within the scientific community to be the origin of humans and the Hominidae tree, as evidenced by the discovery of the earliest hominids, as well as later ones that have been dated to around 7 million years ago including Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Africanus, Homo Erectus, with the earliest humans being dated to ca. 200,000 years ago, according to this view.

 

Driving around with a knowledgeable guide is one of the best ways to visit Namibia and travelling with a small group helps to make such trips affordable. However, because all of our travellers are different, we have developed a wide range of trips to choose from.

Most of these trips concentrate on affordable camping; others use good-value accommodation, while a few private guided trips cater for small, exclusive groups with more flexible budgets. All use knowledgeable local guides: some amongst the best you’ll find in Africa. We don’t cut corners, and won’t fob you off with a guide from outside Namibia who has learned about the country from a book. 

 This amazing pictures can see everybody at:
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Africa_Landscapes_pics

 This amazing pictures can see everybody at:
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Africa_Landscapes_pics 

 

Many African nations are well known, from Morocco in the north through Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania to South Africa. South Africa, which is more developed than many of its neighbors, is making real efforts to develop its tourist trade. Abundant wildlife and areas of natural beauty, as well as availability of affordable high quality local wines makes South Africa attractive to visitors from Europe, Canada and the USA.

 

 This amazing pictures can see everybody at:
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Africa_Landscapes_pics 

 This amazing pictures can see everybody at:
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Africa_Landscapes_pics 

This is some kind of art, but many people are not going to agree with this. This is so disturbing that you cant imagine.Those pictures are in one way scary and creepy, but in other pictures of art like this one are very distrubing. Scary children are not so scary, they are shamed with those dose of "scary and creepy" pictures. Yes, this pictures are made by proffesionals but we must ask ourselves are they such a kind of pervs or simply they are artists with a specialy thinkings.

In the eyes of radical intellectual disturbing sexuality  children are really made wet hell. Sorrow on Monday rump, unformed breast and still silent vagina child, it is time to recall a childhood, which we skarmlivaet Hollywood teeth. This white Negrito under ominous Goat tavern, diggers worms, coddle with cataracts, in the white insects, chumazye proletarians and other horrors behind the faces of young angels beings.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a list of the top ten most embarrassing fashion trends of the past 25 years. These are all clothing and accessory-related, so you won’t find any mullets, or "The Rachels," or rat tails, or Flock of Seagulls, or tramp stamps listed here because I could do a whole list about those. And no 70’s clothes, either, ‘cause my computer would crash. The 80’s were more than enough.

If I missed anything, let me know.

10) Shoulder Pads

I don’t know whose idea it was that women who look like linebackers are more attractive. The shoulder pad, like the padded bra or elevator shoes, were designed to change the way a woman looked, as opposed to accentuating what they already had. I guess sloping shoulders were considered unattractive, but being shaped like Spongebob Squarepants was wicked sexy.

Thankfully as the 80’s waned, these little triangles were being ripped out in droves. I remember going into the laundry room one day and finding a knee-high pile of them on the floor.

9) Hats that don’t fit/bandanna under the hat

Some trends I won’t see as obnoxious or ugly when they first come out, and it isn’t until a few years later will I realize exactly how stupid they were.

This is not one of those.

Like a random bandaid on the face, the whole hat thing probably became popular because a rap artist was too drunk to notice he hadn’t properly dressed. The next thing you know Ludacris is going to piss himself on stage, and we’ll have legions of kids walking around with a wet stain between their legs. Abercrombie & Fitch will begin to sell pre-urinated-on jeans for $220, and Wal-Mart will eliminate bathroom breaks for their Chinese factory workers and just store the jeans under their chairs.

I foresee a great demand for chiropractors in the near future, with everyone walking around with their necks wrenched back because they can’t see otherwise.

8) Leg Warmers

So I saw Footloose the other day. Yup. Lots o’ leg warmers.

Legwarmers were a part of that whole "I got farted on by a rainbow" 80’s trend. I’ve never worn them, so I don’t know how effective they were at actually warming the leg, but I’m pretty certain they were worn more as a fashion statement than with purpose.

7) Shirts with stupid sayings on them

It’s like somebody let Spencer’s Gifts out of the mall and out into the public, and now that it’s free, it’s not going away.

I’ve talked about these before, and I am guilty of exploiting this trend from time to time. While there’s nothing really wrong with slogan shirts, especially when you’re just lounging around, there’s this invisible line that goes from innocuous to annoying to really, mind-crunchingly stupid. And this whole semi-recent crop of sayings shirts are all in that third category.

Imagine walking around telling the same people the same joke over and over again. And what’s worse, the joke is terrible. Now look at your shirt.

6) Zubaz

You know how they say when something is so traumatic, you can forget about it? You know what I mean. Repressed memories and all that jazz. Well, I forgot about these, and I was happier because of it.

Then I saw Rex (Diedrich Bader) in the movie Napoleon Dynamite sporting an American Flag version of these, and it all came rushing back.

Zubaz. Clown pajama pants. That you wear out in public.

I don’t know what it was, and maybe it was just me, but every guy I knew who wore these was either a jerk or a meathead. Maybe the Zubaz company secretly injected you with a jolt of testosterone when you slid them on or wearing them somehow made you feel like The Boz. I don’t know. But the author of Napoleon Dynamite saw it.

5) Half Shirts / half sweaters / half jackets

I’m combining these even though they could each be their own category. Anyway, I’m not sure if this has been scientifically proven or not, but I’m pretty certain if a straight guy wore a half shirt (crop top/bellyshirt/whatever) out in public sometime during his lifetime, he is haunted by nightmares where he is turned magically into Prince. This can only be cured by therapy. And if it’s not dealt with, it really happens.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

And as far as half sweaters and half jackets are concerned… I guess what irks me the most is the transparency of the outfits. People wear jackets and sweaters because they’re cold. But in the case of the cropped sweater/jacket, they’re wearing it to be fashionable, and that’s it.

4) Parachute Pants

I was in grade school when these were the rage. The coolest thing ever was to wear parachute pants along with one of those red and black Michael Jackson jackets and try to moonwalk in the gravel during recess.

I still remember the sound of nylon scraping against nylon when one walked in these things. At the height of the parachute pant craze, the recess bell would ring and the air would be filled with swish-swishing of the nylon-clad running for the door.

I’m still not sure what the purpose of all those pockets were, though I had a friend who always had something in every single pocket, including that impossibly small one by the ankle. He always grimaced when he sat down.

3) Spandex bodysuits

I don’t think I need to explain too much here.

Almost every metal band from the 80’s decked themselves out from head to toe in full-body spandex. And because of it, they had legions of screaming women clawing over each other just so they could reach up toward their package and squeal like pigs on fire.

This is one of those things where it seemed so normal back then, but I look at now and just start laughing. Especially when I think about those guys at the concerts who weren’t in the band, but wore the spandex anyway.

2) Baggy Pants/clothes that are falling off

Twenty years from now, a lot of people are going to be showing pictures of themselves to their children, and their kids are going to say, "Daddy, why were your pants falling down? Why are you showing your underwear?"

"Well, son," they’ll say, patting junior on the head. "It was the fashion back then."

And the child will sit there for a moment, scratch his head and say, "It was the fashion to look like an assclown?"

1) Grills

If you don’t think this is the stupidest fashion trend of the past twenty-five years, and maybe of all times, you’re wrong.

In case you don’t know what Grills are, read this. Basically it’s cosmetic teeth so you look like that Jaws guy from the James Bond movies.

Dentists around the world simultaneously slapped themselves in the forehead when this first became popular. They are obviously horrible for your teeth. Which of course makes them so much more popular.

But even more bothersome is how people seem to ignore how much of an idiot you look like when you wear these. Of all the stupid, weird, and idiotic fashions of the years, it’s kind of troublesome that the stupidest ones are the most recent.

Pervitin, a stimulant commonly known as speed today, was the German army’s — the Wehrmacht’s — wonder drug.

On May 20, 1940, the 22-year-old soldier wrote to his family again: "Perhaps you could get me some more Pervitin so that I can have a backup supply?" And, in a letter sent from Bromberg on July 19, 1940, he wrote: "If at all possible, please send me some more Pervitin." The man who wrote these letters became a famous writer later in life. He was Heinrich Boell, and in 1972 he was the first German to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in the post-war period.

Many of the Wehrmacht’s soldiers were high on Pervitin when they went into battle, especially against Poland and France — in a Blitzkrieg fueled by speed. The German military was supplied with millions of methamphetamine tablets during the first half of 1940. The drugs were part of a plan to help pilots, sailors and infantry troops become capable of superhuman performance. The military leadership liberally dispensed such stimulants, but also alcohol and opiates, as long as it believed drugging and intoxicating troops could help it achieve victory over the Allies. But the Nazis were less than diligent in monitoring side-effects like drug addiction and a decline in moral standards.

After it was first introduced into the market in 1938, Pervitin, a methamphetamine drug newly developed by the Berlin-based Temmler pharmaceutical company, quickly became a top seller among the German civilian population. According to a report in the Klinische Wochenschrift ("Clinical Weekly"), the supposed wonder drug was brought to the attention of Otto Ranke, a military doctor and director of the Institute for General and Defense Physiology at Berlin’s Academy of Military Medicine. The effects of amphetamines are similar to those of the adrenaline produced by the body, triggering a heightened state of alert. In most people, the substance increases self-confidence, concentration and the willingness to take risks, while at the same time reducing sensitivity to pain, hunger and thirst, as well as reducing the need for sleep. In September 1939, Ranke tested the drug on 90 university students, and concluded that Pervitin could help the Wehrmacht win the war. At first Pervitin was tested on military drivers who participated in the invasion of Poland. Then, according to criminologist Wolf Kemper, it was "unscrupulously distributed to troops fighting at the front."

Thirty-five million tablets

Even then, doctors were concerned about the fact that the regeneration phase after taking the drug was becoming increasingly long, and that the effect was gradually decreasing among frequent users. In isolated cases, users experienced health problems like excessive perspiration and circulatory disorders, and there were even a few deaths. Leonardo Conti, the German Reich’s minister of health and an adherent of Adolf Hitler’s belief in asceticism, attempted to restrict the use of the pill, but was only moderately successful, at least when it came to the Wehrmacht. Although Pervitin was classified as a restricted substance on July 1, 1941, under the Opium Law, ten million tablets were shipped to troops that same year.

Pervitin was generally viewed as a proven drug to be used when soldiers were likely to be subjected to extreme stress. A memorandum for navy medical officers stated the following: "Every medical officer must be aware that Pervitin is a highly differentiated and powerful stimulant, a tool that enables him, at any time, to actively and effectively help certain individuals within his range of influence achieve above-average performance."

"Their spirits suddenly improved"

It took almost six months for the report to reach the military’s senior medical command. But its response was merely to issue new guidelines and instructions for using Pervitin, including information about risks that barely differed from earlier instructions. The "Guidelines for Detecting and Combating Fatigue," issued June 18, 1942, were the same as they had always been: "Two tablets taken once eliminate the need to sleep for three to eight hours, and two doses of two tablets each are normally effective for 24 hours."

Toward the end of the war, the Nazis were even working on a miracle pill for their troops. In the northern German seaport of Kiel, on March 16, 1944, then Vice-Admiral Hellmuth Heye, who later became a member of parliament with the conservative Christian Democratic party and head of the German parliament’s defense committee, requested a drug "that can keep soldiers ready for battle when they are asked to continue fighting beyond a period considered normal, while at the same time boosting their self-esteem."

A short time later, Kiel pharmacologist Gerhard Orzechowski presented Heye with a pill code-named D-IX. It contained five milligrams of cocaine, three milligrams of Pervitin and five milligrams of Eukodal (a morphine-based painkiller). Nowadays, a drug dealer caught with this potent a drug would be sent to prison. At the time, however, the drug was tested on crew members working on the navy’s smallest submarines, known as the "Seal" and the "Beaver."

Alcohol consumption was encouraged

"The military command turned a blind eye to alcohol consumption, as long as it didn’t lead to public drunkenness among the troops," says Freiburg historian Peter Steinkamp, an expert on drug abuse in the Wehrmacht.

But in July 1940, after France was defeated, Hitler issued the following order: "I expect that members of the Wehrmacht who allow themselves to be tempted to engage in criminal acts as a result of alcohol abuse will be severely punished." Serious offenders could even expect "a humiliating death."

But the temptations of liquor were apparently more powerful that the Fuehrer’s threats. Only a year later, the commander-in-chief of the German military, General Walther von Brauchitsch, concluded that his troops were committing "the most serious infractions" of morality and discipline, and that the culprit was "alcohol abuse." Among the adverse effects of alcohol abuse he cited were fights, accidents, mistreatment of subordinates, violence against superior officers and "crimes involving unnatural sexual acts." The general believed that alcohol was jeopardizing "discipline within the military."

According to an internal statistic compiled by the chief of the medical corps, 705 military deaths between September 1939 and April 1944 could be linked directly to alcohol. The unofficial figure was probably much higher, because traffic accidents, accidents involving weapons and suicides were frequently caused by alcohol use. Medical officers were instructed to admit alcoholics and drug addicts to treatment facilities. According to an order issued by the medical service, this solution had "the advantage that it could be extended indefinitely." Once incarcerated in these facilities, addicts were evaluated under the provisions of the "Law for Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases," and could even be subjected to forced sterilization and euthanasia.

Executing a bootlegger

The execution of a 36-year-old officer in Norway in the fall of 1942 was intended to set an example. The officer, who was a driver, had sold five liters of methyl alcohol, which he claimed was 98 percent alcohol and could be used to produce liquor, to an infantry regiment’s anti-tank defense unit. Several soldiers fell ill, and two died. The man, deemed an "enemy of the people," was executed by a firing squad. According to the daily order issued on October 2, 1942, "the punishment shall be announced to the troops and auxiliary units, and it shall be used as a tool for repeated and insistent admonishment."

But soldiers apparently felt that anything that could help them escape the horrors of war was justifiable. Despite general knowledge of the risks involved, morphine addiction became widespread among the wounded and medical personnel during the course of the war. Four times as many military doctors were addicted to morphine by 1945 than at the beginning of the war.

Franz Wertheim, a medical officer who was sent to a small village near the Western Wall on May 10, 1940, wrote the following account: "To help pass the time, we doctors experimented on ourselves. We would begin the day by drinking a water glass of cognac and taking two injections of morphine. We found cocaine to be useful at midday, and in the evening we would occasionally take Hyoskin," an alkaloid derived from some varieties of the nightshade plant that is used as a medication. Wertheim adds: "As a result, we were not always fully in command of our senses."

German doctors experimented on themselves

The Nazi leadership was more lenient with those who became drug-addicted as a result of the war than with alcoholics, probably because the Wehrmacht was concerned that it could be sued for damages, because it was in fact responsible for dispensing the drugs in the first place.

 Most computers store data on magnetic hard disk drives, in which the direction – “up” or “down” – of the magnetic moments in a small region of the disk corresponds to a binary bit. Data are read by a magneto-resistance element and written by heating the bit with a laser and then flipping the moments with a magnetic field pulse from a tiny coil.

The cost and complexity of hard drives could be reduced significantly if data could instead be read and written using light alone. While some commercial hard drives now use light to read data from magnetic bits, a technique for writing data using only light had remained elusive.

Now, Theo Rasing and colleagues at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands along with researchers at Nihon University in Japan have shown that a single laser pulse can flip the magnetization of a 5 µm spot on a thin magnetic film from up to down and vice versa – without the need for an external magnetic field.

The pulse was only 40 fs (10-15 s) long – much shorter than the magnetic field pulses used in hard drives, which cannot be made much shorter than about 2 ns. Indeed, the 40 fs switching time had been thought to be impossible because in 2004, a 2 ps lower limit on controlled magnetic switching had been established by another team of physicists.

The laser pulse was circularly polarized, which means that it creates an intense but highly localized magnetic field within the material. The pulse was switched between two polarization states, which flips the direction of the field.

The researchers did their experiments on an alloy of gadolinium, iron and cobalt, which is used widely in magneto-optic data storage devices. The team is now checking to see if the switching occurs in materials with higher coercivity, which could allow an all-optical memory to achieve the same storage density as a conventional hard drive.

Rasing has patented the write process and he is confident that it will be commercialized. However, he admits that anyone wanting to build a hard drive using the technology would have to overcome the significant challenge of how to build a tiny laser that can also produce an intense pulse of circularly-polarized light that can be focussed down to a spot 50 nm in diameter, which is much smaller than the wavelength of the laser light. “But these are solvable problems,” he says.