Interesting Information

By its very definition, charity is selfless. Whether it’s dropping a few pennies in a collection box or shipping our old T-shirts off to Africa, a spot of charity is a quick and easy way to net some karma. At least it would be if it didn’t usually harm the very people we’re trying to help. Take our practice of sending old clothes to Africa. Objectively, it makes sense: People living on under a dollar a day probably don’t have much of a clothing budget, so why not redistribute the stuff we’re not using? In fact, it makes so much sense that millions of us pack and ship off our novelty Christmas jumpers every year - resulting in the complete collapse of the African textile industry. Think about it: If you flood a market with free goods, you’ll bankrupt the traders and manufacturers trying to sell them. And that’s exactly what’s happened here. Across the continent, whole communities have lost their livelihoods in exchange for your old Slayer T-shirts.

On February 15, 2013, an asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the southern Ural region of Russia and exploded. The event was witnessed by thousands of people and became the largest known airburst since the 1908 Tunguska event. The blast produced a light brighter than the Sun, and the shock wave was felt by people all over the area. The energy of the explosion was equivalent to 20-30 of the atomic bombs used at Hiroshima. The asteroid was not detected by the authorities before the airburst, and the event surprised many people. It wounded 1,500 and damaged over 7,000 buildings. The meteor was caught on tape by multiple sources, which shows a giant fireball in the sky - followed by an enormous explosion of light. It was reported that the meteor made the ground hot, and the city smelled like gunpowder after the explosion. The event was an extremely rare occurrence and the only time in history that a meteor has been known to cause human injury.

On October 8, 1871, the Midwestern United States experienced an enormous firestorm that burned 6,100 square kilometres (2,300 sq mi) of land around Peshtigo, Wisconsin. The event is the deadliest fire in US history and killed 1,500 to 2,500 people. On the same day, the United States experienced the Great Chicago Fire, the Port Huron Fire, the Holland Fire, and Manistee Fire. The 1871 firestorm was caused by strong winds and forest fires. After gaining enough energy, the blaze quickly developed into a massive wall of fire that reached a speed of 160 kph (100 mph) and produced tornado-style winds. The fire was so hot that sandy beaches were turned to glass, and people were incinerated. The fire jumped over the waters of Green Bay and destroyed 12 separate communities in the area. It tossed rail cars and houses into the air and left thousands of people with nothing.

At first glance, international adoption seems like a good thing. Western parents get a kid to raise, and said kid gets taken out of their third-world orphanage and into a world of comfort. Win-win, right? Yep, especially if you happen to be a human trafficker. It all comes down to supply and demand. Right now, there’s a demand in our culture for third-world orphans - with the result that a horrifying supply chain has grown up to cater to our needs. In Ghana, a 2009 raid on orphanages found that over 90 percent of the children had at least one living parent. In 2007, a French charity called Zoe’s Ark was stopped while attempting to fly 103 “Sudanese war refugees” out of Chad - only for authorities to discover that none of them were Sudanese, none were war refugees, and nearly all of them had been forcibly taken from their parents.

It’s now pretty much irrefutable that our planet is getting hotter. Temperatures are soaring, sea levels are going up, and we’re now comfortably cruising toward an apocalypse of our own making. So it makes sense that you’d want to do something about it. But I’ve got some bad news: Chances are, whatever you’re doing isn’t helping. Take carbon offsetting. The idea goes that you pay a little extra for your flight, and in return your airline plants a tree or whatever. Sounds good, except for the part where it doesn’t make any sense. See, we in the West produce a lot of emissions - so much so that offsetting them all would require the rest of the world to start producing negative carbon. In other words, offsetting is no help at all, just like recycling. Yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, but recycling has become a global market. That means that suppliers of recycled goods follow the money - even if it involves shipping their produce across the world, at ozone-shredding energy costs

Volunteering for organ donation is shorthand for showing you think about other people. Each year in the US, 9,000 people die waiting for a transplant, and it’s not like you’ll need your liver in heaven or Jannah or wherever. So by all means, sign up, but for the love of God make sure you’re healthy beforehand, because the hospital sure won’t. In the early 2000s, organs from a deceased alcoholic were sent to around 40 patients. Within two years, eight recipients had come down with Hepatitis C, a disease you may recognize as one you really don’t want to have. According to the Wall Street Journal this happens more often than we’d like to think. One woman donated a kidney, unaware she was infected with the parasite Strongyloides. The man who received it felt fine for three months, then began vomiting blood and quickly expired. All told, at least 97 serious infections from donated organs were recorded in a 2007 study, with many more thought to go unreported by hospitals. The troub

To be fair, Hanno has not been completely forgotten; the Carthaginian sea-captain and original “Navigator” is the titular inspiration for a 2008 song. Long before Pytheas journeyed through the Pillars of Hercules and north, Hanno made his way south along the West African coast. Whereas several explorers are notable for their solo efforts, Hanno amazes with the incredible scale of his undertaking. Hanno’s fleet consisted of 60 ships and 30,000 men and women. Hanno wasn’t merely exploring; he was colonizing. And to that end he was successful: the Carthaginians established several lasting towns and trading posts. Unfortunately, dwindling provisions forced Hanno to abandon his attempt at circumnavigating Africa. However, Hanno’s account did leave scholars with several intriguing references to African geography and animals, like the following:

In the second century B.C., the Chinese weren’t too sure of what lay west of them. So the Han government commissioned its envoy, Zhang Qian, to locate Central Asian kingdoms and open up new markets for Chinese exports. Qian made it as far as Bactria (Afghanistan) where he encountered the remnants of a fascinating culture that had been forced south into India by nomads. The Greco-Bactrians were Hellenic colonists who settled in the area following Alexander the Great’s conquests. They brought grapevine cultivation, European horses, and traditionally proficient artists to the area - which Qian reported to the Han court.

Many vegetarians make their decision not to eat meat based solely on ethics rather than any disdain for the flavour. The growing of meat in laboratories would certainly alleviate these concerns, but the benefits extend beyond morals. The keeping of animals for meat is an enormous strain on the environment, and with the global population skyrocketing, the demand continues to grow. According to a report published by Stanford University, livestock production occupies more than one-fourth of Earth’s land, and contributes to 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions attacking the atmosphere. Recent experiments using stem cells from pigs and cows, cultured in a nutrient-rich bath that allows them to grow, have shown much promise.

The United States’ largest purchaser of beef, McDonald’s, is synonymous with the hamburger. Of course, the company’s vast holdings are less a result of its delicious food than its marketing genius. One such scheme was their Monopoly game. Game pieces affixed to food and drink would either win customers items like free food, or could be collected to win grand prizes like cars and cash. The contest was run by a third-party company called Simon Marketing, whose security chief, Jerome P. Jacobson, skimmed the game pieces for all the best prizes for years. The pieces were redeemed by a large group of associates who would split the proceeds among themselves. Twenty-one employees of Simon Marketing were indicted in 2001 for their role in the scam, which netted them some US$24 million.

Certainly, no one would classify hamburgers as a health food, and dietary wisdom dictates that a serving of meat should be about three ounces, or the size of a deck of cards. But one restaurant in Las Vegas, Nevada, shuns such conventions. Offering up what the founder calls “nutritional pornography,” the Heart Attack Grill’s menu includes such cardiovascularly destructive fare as butterfat milkshakes and fries cooked in pure lard. Their signature Quadruple Bypass Burger has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s most calorific burger. The Quadruple Bypass consists of four half-pound hamburgers, three tablespoons of lard, 20 slices of bacon, eight slices of American cheese, 20 slices of caramelized onion baked in lard, eight tomato slices, one tablespoon of mayonnaise, two tablespoons of ketchup, one tablespoon of mustard, and a bun. It contains a staggering 9,982 calories.

In 2005, neuroscientist Armand R. Tanguay Jr. wowed the world with his bionic eye that attached to the retina and received images from a digital camera mounted on a pair of sunglasses. But the future of bionic eyes looks even stranger - physicist Richard Taylor is developing an “implant” made of self-assembling fractal-shaped nanomaterial that can mimic eye neurons. The biggest problem with cameras is that they don’t provide information in the same structure that the eye is used to. Retinal neurons are branched, like a fractal pattern, and a camera sends signals in a straight line. When a camera is plugged into a blind person’s retina, most of the information is lost in the gap between machine and living tissue. That’s why nearly every retinal implant to this point results in a hazy, grainy, black-and-white image - far from the resolution achieved by the human eye.

Haptic technology - or force feedback - is not new. If you’ve played a video game with a vibrating controller, you’ve experienced haptic technology - the rumble pack vibrates simultaneous with action in the game, providing a sensation along with the visual image. In some cases, force feedback is used to make you do something specific by creating a force that you naturally try to counter. Think of it like someone pushing you sideways - your body resists and pushes back towards them in an effort to maintain your balance.

The area between a person’s wrist and elbow serves a very important function. Specifically, it keeps your wrist connected to your elbow. But to Simon Oberding and his team at Singapore University, that area is nothing more than wasted space. What Oberding plans to do with the forearms of the future is turn them into digital displays. He’s developed a prototype that straps onto the forearm and has four separate screens, each of which shows a different set of data. For example, one screen can display GPS directions while another scans YouTube for interesting videos.

Your smartphone is the one thing that never leaves your side because it can do it all. But the best smartphones do everything well. A great handset takes amazing photos, offers a bright and crisp HD screen and has enough speed to help you multitask with ease. There’s also plenty of variety out there when it comes to software and the overall user experience. That’s where we come in. Once you’ve decided on your platform of choice - Android, iOS, Windows Phone or BlackBerry - then it’s time to pick a device. At LAPTOP we test every major smartphone on the market and rate each one based on design, features, performance and battery life to help you make the right call. Here are our top 10 smartphones, ranging from the most sleek and compact handsets to the biggest phablets. Samsung Galaxy S4 The Samsung Galaxy S4 takes Android phones to the next level with an awesome camera, innovative gesture controls and best-in-class multitasking.

Medicine is one of the cornerstones of modern civilization - so much so that we take it for granted. It wasn’t always the case that you could just waltz into a doctor’s office to have them cure what ailed you. In medieval times, for example, things were a lot more dangerous, and a lot stranger. Boar Bile Enemas Enemas in medieval times were performed by devices called clysters. A clyster was a long metal tube with a cup on the end. The tube would be entered into the anus and a medicinal fluid poured into the cup. The fluid would then be introduced into the colon by a series of pumping actions. Although warm soapy water is used for enemas today, things were a little more earthy back then: one of the most common fluids finding its way into a clyster was a concoction of boar’s bile. Even kings were high up on the clyster. King Louis XIV of France is said to have had over 2,000 enemas during his reign - some even administered while he sat on his throne.

Not everyone wants an iPad. In fact, many Apple haters would argue no one needs an iDevice, when there are so many other great options. Happily, if you’re looking for an alternative there truly are plenty of compelling options - many that cost less than Apple’s slates. Google and Amazon offer full-featured slates for US$199. Newcomer Hisense even comes in at a very compelling US$149. Those willing to spend more will find a host of versatile tablets, from models with detachable keyboards to those that offer pen input. There are even kid-friendly specific options for parents who want to raise a tech-savvy child. And while all of those options are Android options, there are Windows 8 tablets hitting the shelves that might worth a second look. Here are our top 10 iPad alternatives. Hisense Sero 7 Pro Hisense Sero 7 Pro features a rear-facing 5-MP camera with a flash and a front-facing 2-MP camera, plus it comes with a microSD card slot for expandable storage up to 32GB. I

Sunny day for a drive Imagine never having to fill your fuel tank again. With the cost of gas these days, that may sound like wishful thinking. But as solar technology becomes more advanced, that dream could soon become a reality. In fact, vehicles that run entirely on solar power are nothing new; the first solar vehicles were built in the 1950s. Those early models weren't very practical, but modern designs have made impressive progress. Solar milestones have been made for just about every form of transportation that you can imagine. There are solar cars, of course, but there are also solar buses, trains, boats, and even a solar helicopter. Here's our rundown of seven modern solar-powered vehicles.

Money, revenge, pure insanity - these are the main reasons why these women committed their crimes. Some operated alone, and some had accomplices, but they had one thing in common: pure evil. Beverley Allitt Beverley Allitt was born in 1968 and started working as a paediatric nurse in 1991. During a period of 58 days, she murdered four children and attacked another nine, who were lucky enough to survive. From an early age, she showed signs of Münchausen syndrome and later Münchausen by proxy, which may explain her actions. Münchausen is a mental disorder in which a person feigns illness or trauma to attract attention. She was finally arrested and tried at Nottingham Crown Court in 1993, pleading not guilty. She received 13 life sentences for murder and attempted murder.

Les Apaches were a French street gang that operated in turn-of-the-century Paris before the advent of World War I. They were called Apaches because they were so ferocious during attacks that a policeman, upon hearing of their crimes, exclaimed that they were as vicious as Apache warriors. They were stylishly dressed, looking like old-timey French hipsters with fancy, striped shirts and berets, creating their own distinct style that would catch on and end up becoming popular in Bohemian circles. But they weren’t just fashion victims - they could actually fight. They practiced their own

The AC-130 Spectre (that big-ass plane from the Call of Duty games) probably isn’t going to be a new piece of technology to most of the people reading this, due to its aforementioned inclusion in a popular video game series. However, it’s the sheer amount of fire-power this thing possesses, combined with how little any given person can do about it, that we think will be surprising to people. If you’ve played the games, you no doubt know that the AC-130 gunship is able to rain down death from a mile in the sky, literally hitting enemies through windows, and even when they’re within spitting distance of a friendly combatant. Along with this frankly insane amount of firepower it has at its disposal, the AC-130 also packs something colloquially known as “Angel Flares,” a combination of chaff and flares which make the AC-130 all but invincible to all known lock-on technology.

The 1692 Salem Witch Trials are everyone’s favourite example of mob mentality, and although the incident has been discussed to death, it’s worth mentioning. It truly epitomizes what can happen when religious extremism and mobs collide. In fact, this incident made such an impression that - over 320 years later - we still use the phrase “witch hunt” to describe people being senselessly persecuted. No doubt you’ve heard the story: a couple of girls started acting weird (having fits, diving under furniture, contorting in pain, etc.) and claimed witches were responsible for their “sickness.” They pointed fingers at specific women in Salem, and after the doctor confirmed the girls were possessed, the already witch-phobic town went berserk. Salem officials started arresting suspected witches based on the flimsiest evidence (accusations from little girls), and the town went along with the whole thing, relishing in the witches’ destruction.

Exotic particles called neutrinos have been caught in the act of shape-shifting, switching from one flavor to another, in a discovery that could help solve the mystery of antimatter. Neutrinos come in three flavors — electron, muon and tau — and have been known to change, or oscillate, between certain flavors. Now, for the first time, scientists can definitively say they've discovered muon neutrinos changing into electron neutrinos. The discovery was made at the T2K neutrino experiment in Japan, where scientists sent a beam of muon neutrinos from the J-PARC laboratory in Tokai Village on the eastern coast of Japan, streaming 183 miles (295 km) away to the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector in the mountains of Japan's northwest.

It's not often that some event comes along to really show humanity its true place in the universe, but two NASA spacecraft have just managed just that. I'm talking, of course, about the spectacular NASA photos of Earth as it appeared from Saturn —nearly 900 million miles away (1.4 billion kilometers) —as well as a photo of our planet as it appeared from Mercury, nearly 61 million miles (98 million km) distant. NASA took the photos Friday (July 19) using the Cassini spacecraft around Saturn and the Messenger spacecraft around Mercury as part of a global campaign to show the world how the solar system views our planet Earth. The space agency even worked to coordinate campaigns to involve space fans by having them wave at Saturn. The images, by far, are amazing. Earth and its moon stand out as bright pinpricks of light in Messenger's view from Mercury, while our planet is a pale, fuzzy dot nestled between Saturn's rings in the Cassini view. From my perspectiv

fastest growing industries of 2013e created an infographic detailing the seven fastest growing industries in 2013. The report is based on data collected by market research firm Ibis World, which said “these industries are expected to continue their meteoric rise and far outpace the rest of the economy.” Five of these seven sectors relate to emerging forms of technology - green tech, online education, social games, mobile apps, and 3D printing - underscoring the idea that innovation leads to job creation. Furthermore, many of the businesses in these areas are contributing in other ways as well. Development and adoption of green tech is instrumental in curbing the growing dangers of climate change and online education can cut down on the massive amount of student debt in this country, while also giving people the skills they need to find gainful employment. 3D printing has led to a revolution in manufacturing and is causing amazing innovations in healthcare. Information is prol

The first powered airship took to the skies on September 24, 1852, and the golden age of this type of aircraft ended with the tragic Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937. These days, we mostly see airships in the form of floating billboards. However, some have refused to let go of the notion that airships may have an important role to play in the future of air travel. Science fiction authors and filmmakers often feature reinvented takes on airships. And as it turns out, they could be onto something. Manufactured by Montebello, California-based American aircraft company the Worldwide Aeros Corporation, the Aeroscraft is a far cry from the blimps of the past. From its rigid structure to its control of static heaviness (COSH) system, it’s a modern aircraft that incorporates many cutting edge and ground-breaking technologies. The first functioning prototype, a more basic model known as The Pelican, was successfully floated on January 3, 2013 in Tustin, California. The Pelican w

Depleted uranium rounds sound exactly like the kind of thing you’d want to stay right the hell away form. Even with the “depleted” bit thrown in there, these things still sound worse than wasps made of anthrax. In a nutshell, depleted uranium rounds are exactly what you’d expect: rounds with a small amount of uranium crammed in them, because the pointy metal thing that flew at you at 400 MPH wasn’t dangerous enough. It’s not what these rounds do to the human body that makes them terrifying though; it’s what they do to armour.

Remains of shipwrecks and rusted machinery stretch out on the rocks of South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope like the carcasses of extinct beasts. Casualties of the extreme weather that gave the area the nickname Cape of Storms, these abandonments have been left to deteriorate as a reminder to sailors of just how perilous the waters can be. While the intersection of cold swells from Antarctica and a warm current of the Indian Ocean is responsible for most of the danger, the former lighthouse - which wasn’t quite tall enough to be of much use - certainly didn’t help. A 5,500-ton Portuguese ship called the Lusitania is among those to have wrecked here. The Cape is also the setting for the myth of The Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever.

The modern ghost town of Kilamba isn’t something you’d expect to find in Angola - indeed, it’s highly reminiscent of China’s ghost town of Ordos City. That’s because it was built by the China International Trust and Investment Corporation, financed by a Chinese credit line and repaid by the Angolan government with oil. The series of 750 eight-story apartment blocks, along with over 100 commercial complexes and a dozen

Honoré Fragonard was a bit of an odd sausage to say the least. The anatomist, who lived from 1732 to 1799, was a pioneer of his day. “Ecorchés” are flayed figures depicting the body without skin - essentially a naked body of muscles. Before Fragonard came along, ecorchés were imagined works of art: paintings and sculptures of the male or female form. Fragonard, however, had other ideas. He created his ecorchés from actual corpses.

Getting into your house, protecting your data, and finding your stuff gets help with sophisticated devices new to the market. Here are eight security products that will help get you indoors, safeguard your valuables, and help you find things. Goji The Goji Smart Lock is a lock for your front door that replaces your deadbolt, and that you can control with your smartphone. Via the Goji app, your phone can receive a picture, text, or app alert whenever someone is at your door. You can schedule access via the app, text, or email, if you want to let a friend inside while you're away. And for people in your life who don't own smartphones, Goji comes with old-fashioned keys and programmable Bluetooth Low Energy fobs. The lock runs on batteries, though, so make sure you have spares on hand.

Months before Hurricane Sandy hurled the Atlantic Ocean into houses and cities along the East Coast, another record-breaking cyclone battered North America, helping push this year's Arctic sea ice to a record low, a new study finds. Arctic sea ice has been declining for decades, reaching a record low in September 2007 and hitting that record again in 2012.  "The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012" arose in Siberia on Aug. 2 and crossed the Arctic Ocean to Canada, lasting an unusually long 13 days. The cyclone hit a pressure minimum of 966 millibars on Aug. 6, the lowest ever recorded for an Arctic storm, professors Ian Simmonds and Irina Rudeva of the University of Melbourne in Australia report in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The pressure reading is only 26 mb higher than Hurricane Sandy's record low of 940 mb. (A typical low-pressure system usually hits around 1,000 mb.) "This pressure minimum and cyclone long

Most Amazing The Pavilion Protects Your Car and and VOLVO Developers The 'NO DEATH' CAR Although solar power is a resource that most of us agree we should be taking far more advantage of, the truth is that solar panels are often just as visually uncool as they are inefficient relative to other sources of energy. However, as manufacturing processes evolve to allow for more adventurous designs, the shift to aesthetically pleasing solar harvesters is gathering momentum, as exemplified by this new device created as an add-on to Volvo's V60 electric vehicle. Designed by Los Angles-based architecture studio Synthesis, the idea is the winner of the international "Switch to Pure Volvo" competition that called for an innovative solution to showcase the automaker's latest electric vehicle. The collapsible pavilion uses integrated photovoltaic panels tensioned over carbon fibre rods to create an attractively futuristic butterfly wing-like covering that bot