CHAIRMAN MAO’S UNDERGROUND CITY « Viceland.com In 1969, Chairman Mao commanded the construction of a second Beijing beneath the surface of the original city, designed to accommodate all six million of its then inhabitants, so that if nuclear war did kick off, folk would still have somewhere to hang out and play Mah Jong while the rest of us burnt to death in a shower of atomic rain. War never came, but the city is still there. To be fair to the crazy Chairman, by that time he was lost in the midst of those closing dark days of China’s brutal cultural revolution and the onset of motor neurone disease had shifted his ongoing descent into madness up to warp speed. It’s pretty hard to get down there now, but by a few deft strokes of magical luck, during my last visit to Beijing I got put in touch with a mate of a mate of a person who knew a guy who heard a story of a bloke with a mate who had an access point down into the tunnels built incongruously into the back room of his small house in the centre of the Hutong district of town.
the simple image sharer 15 Coolest Google Earth Finds Dubbed the "Badlands Guardian" by locals, this geological marvel (Google Earth coordinates 50.010083,-110.113006) in Alberta, Canada, bears an uncanny resemblance to a human head wearing a full Native American headdress--and earphones, to boot. Of course, The Guardian was produced naturally. A synthetic wonder that can be truly appreciated only from above, this giant man-shaped lake (-21.805149,-49.089977) is located near Bauru, Brazil. This heart-shaped island in the Adriatic became a hit on Google Earth for Valentine's Day. This fingerprint can be found in Hove Park, near Brighton and Hove in the UK. Rhett Dashwood, a graphic designer from Australia, created the first Google Maps alphabet, featuring all 26 letters, using satellite images of natural features and buildings. Lion, at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo located at Whipsnade, near Dunstable in Bedfordshire, England. Some of the sights you find in Google Earth are just plain mysterious. So here's a giant Ipod Shuffle! Too late now, huh?
TasteKid | Find similar music, movies, books Bananas and Monkeys Original source unknown. (But the story appears to have some basis in fact.) Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Now, put away the cold water. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water.
Field Guide to the Loner: The Real Insiders Miina Matsuoka lives by herself in New York City. She owns two cats and routinely screens her calls. But before you jump to conclusions, note that she is comfortable hobnobbing in any of five languages for her job as business manager at an international lighting-design firm. She just strongly prefers not to socialize , opting instead for long baths, DVDs, and immersion in her art projects. Loners often hear from well-meaning peers that they need to be more social, but the implication that they're merely black-and-white opposites of their bubbly peers misses the point. Contrary to popular belief, not all loners have a pathological fear of social contact. James McGinty, for one, is a caseworker who opted out of a career as a lawyer because he didn't feel socially on-the-ball enough for the job's daily demands. Solitary Pleasures Research by psychotherapist Elaine Aron bears out Guyer's hunch, demonstrating that withdrawn people typically have very high sensory acuity.
30 Fantastic Geeky Tricks to Get The Most From Your Mac If you’re one of those Mac users that loves to dig in and play with hidden features and settings, this post is for you. Below you’ll find 30 tips and tricks to help both seasoned and beginner Mac users to get the most out of their OS X experience. We’ll cover everything from obscure Terminal commands to keyboard shortcuts that every Mac user should know and use. Let’s get started! Dock Tricks Recent Items Stack Stacks are quite the handy addition to your Mac’s dock and the good people at Mac OS X Hints figured out a way to make them even more useful by creating a stack that automatically contains your most recent applications. These can of course be found under the Apple menu as well but it’s much more convenient to have them right in the dock. Recent Items Stack To accomplish this feat, simply copy and paste the line below into Terminal. defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }' Stacks List View Stationery
70 Things Every Computer Geek Should Know. | Arrow Webzine The term ‘geek’, once used to label a circus freak, has morphed in meaning over the years. What was once an unusual profession transferred into a word indicating social awkwardness. As time has gone on, the word has yet again morphed to indicate a new type of individual: someone who is obsessive over one (or more) particular subjects, whether it be science, photography, electronics, computers, media, or any other field. How to become a real computer Geek? Little known to most, there are many benefits to being a computer geek. You may get the answer here: The Meaning of Technical Acronyms USB – Universal Serial BusGPU – Graphics Processing UnitCPU – Central Processing UnitATA- AT Attachment (AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI)SATA – Serial ATAHTML – Hyper-text Markup LanguageHTTP – Hypertext Transfer ProtocolFTP – File Transfer ProtocolP2P - peer to peer 1. One of the best list of default passwords. 1A. 2. 3. 4.
Why Our Monkey Brains Are Prone to Procrastination (No, It's Not Just Laziness or Lack Of Willpower) | Personal Health July 4, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The Misconception: You procrastinate because you are lazy and can’t manage your time well. The Truth: Procrastination is fueled by weakness in the face of impulse and a failure to think about thinking. Netflix reveals something about your own behavior you should have noticed by now, something which keeps getting between you and the things you want to accomplish. If you have Netflix, especially if you stream it to your TV, you tend to gradually accumulate a cache of hundreds of films you think you’ll watch one day. Take a look at your queue. Psychologists actually know the answer to this question, to why you keep adding movies you will never watch to your growing collection of future rentals, and its the same reason you believe you will eventually do what’s best for yourself in all the other parts of your life, but rarely do. After picking, the subjects had to watch one movie right away.
How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History | Threat Level It was January 2010, and investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency had just completed an inspection at the uranium enrichment plant outside Natanz in central Iran, when they realized that something was off within the cascade rooms where thousands of centrifuges were enriching uranium. Natanz technicians in white lab coats, gloves and blue booties were scurrying in and out of the “clean” cascade rooms, hauling out unwieldy centrifuges one by one, each sheathed in shiny silver cylindrical casings. Any time workers at the plant decommissioned damaged or otherwise unusable centrifuges, they were required to line them up for IAEA inspection to verify that no radioactive material was being smuggled out in the devices before they were removed. The technicians had been doing so now for more than a month. "We were not immune to the fact that there was a bigger geopolitical picture going on. The question was, why? Click to Open Overlay Gallery Jon Snyder/Wired The clock was ticking.
How to use Google for Hacking. | Arrow Webzine Google serves almost 80 percent of all search queries on the Internet, proving itself as the most popular search engine. However Google makes it possible to reach not only the publicly available information resources, but also gives access to some of the most confidential information that should never have been revealed. In this post I will show how to use Google for exploiting security vulnerabilities within websites. The following are some of the hacks that can be accomplished using Google. 1. Hacking Security Cameras There exists many security cameras used for monitoring places like parking lots, college campus, road traffic etc. which can be hacked using Google so that you can view the images captured by those cameras in real time. inurl:”viewerframe? Click on any of the search results (Top 5 recommended) and you will gain access to the live camera which has full controls. you now have access to the Live cameras which work in real-time. intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” 2. 3. “? 4.
25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing I read this cool article last week — “30 Things To Stop Doing To Yourself” — and I thought, hey, heeeey, that’s interesting. Writers might could use their own version of that. So, I started to cobble one together. That is, then, how you should read this: me, yelling at me. Then go forth and kick your writing year in the teeth. Onto the list. 1. Right here is your story. 2. Momentum is everything. 3. You have a voice. 4. Worry is some useless shit. 5. The rise of self-publishing has seen a comparative surge forward in quantity. 6. I said “stop hurrying,” not “stand still and fall asleep.” 7. It’s not going to get any easier, and why should it? 8. You don’t get to be a proper storyteller by putting it so far down your list it’s nestled between “Complete the Iditarod (but with squirrels instead of dogs)” and “Two words: Merkin, Macrame.” 9. The mind is the writer’s best weapon. 10. 11. 12. Writers are often ashamed at who they are and what they do. 13. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
2012 March 12 - The Scale of the Universe Interactive Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2012 March 12 The Scale of the Universe - Interactive Flash Animation Credit & Copyright: Cary & Michael Huang Explanation: What does the universe look like on small scales? Tomorrow's picture: dust before galaxies Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important NoticesA service of:ASD at NASA / GSFC& Michigan Tech.