Extreme Body Modifications !!

Like other body modifications, tattoo art, once seen as counter culture, has become mainstreamed with intriguing, if not, dizzying creative designs. These images are courtesy of bmezine.com.

Check out more pics on body modifications after the jump.

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Amazing Art With Crayons

His most iconic portraits include Barack Obama...

.... and a naked Marilyn Monroe, made primarily of peach-coloured crayons.

An artist creates sculptures using up to 250,000 colouring crayons.

Herb Williams, 36, uses so many crayons he has a personal account with manufacturer Crayola and has the company on speed dial .

His works include animals, household items, and celebrities, such as this sculpture of Johnny Cash, the Man in Black .

The smaller works sell for around £650, while the larger pieces have a price tag of £40,000 .

He lists artists such as Damien Hirst, Banksy and Duchamp among his influences and describes his work as "post-post-post-pop"

The married father-of-two from Tennessee, United States, said: "I'm one of the only individuals in the world with an account with Crayola and have more cases of crayons in my studio than anyone should have a right to own".

The crayons are delivered in single-colour boxes of 3,000 sticks and fill his studio from floor to ceiling .

His work can be bought online at HERE

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Poisonous Bite Of A Dangerous Rattlesnake

A man was bitten by a Northern Pacific rattlesnake (the snake was originally identified as a Western Diamondback rattlesnake, but that species is not found near Yosemite) just after his 13th birthday.

He was located on a trail in a hiking area near Yosemite National Park, California. The bite occurred when he was sitting on a small boulder at a distance of 4.5 miles from the trailhead with his cabin group at camp. He had his arms dangling at his side, and a 5 foot long rattlesnake bit him in the middle of his left palm.

From this point, an amazing rescue took place, taking 4 hours to transport him the 4.5 miles to the trailhead. The camp director had previously called the hospital, and a helicopter was waiting at the trailhead. During the 30 minute helicopter ride he was going in and out of consciousness, having trouble keeping his eyes open. They arrived at the Modesto, CA hospital, where the doctor in the emergency room decided that his case was too severe to treat at that medical center. He told him this, which was the last thing he heard before going unconscious.

Although he was unconscious for approximately the next 24 hours, he have heard about the following events from his parents.

He  was taken from the Modesto hospital to the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, the trauma center for Northern California. His snake bite was determined to be too severe for Modesto to deal with. At the UC Davis hospital he underwent a fasciotomy, which involved the doctors cutting open his arm from the palm up to about the middle of his biceps. This was to relieve the extreme pressure that had built up in his arm from the rattlesnake venom, making his arm as hard as a rock until the fasciotomy.

He  spent the next 35 days in the UC Davis hospital, had 8 surgeries performed for cleaning out the dead tissue from his arm, and finally had a skin graft from his leg to close up his arm, which had remained open for 30 days after the fasciotomy until the skin graft surgery. That is 10 surgeries in total at UC Davis.

He  was released from the hospital, had 4 months of intense physical therapy, and flew to Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina for a follow-up surgery. This was a vascular flap surgery, during which they took a chunk of skin and muscle from his  back, attached its blood vessels to the ones in his  arm using microsurgery, and then stitched it to his  arm. Although 2 emergency surgeries were required within 24 hours on account of blood loss, the vascular flap was a success, and after 6 more months of physical therapy, his  hand had had a significant improvement in mobility from when he left UC Davis and could move each finger only 2-3 millimeters.

His  hand now has fully mobility and is about 80% as strong as it was before, thanks to his Dad and he resuming their rock climbing after a 1 year break due to the lack of strength in his left hand. He use it for about 90% of the things he used to do with his left hand (he was  right handed). 13 surgeries, $700,000 worth of helicopter flights, surgeries, and hospital stays, and 20 months later, he was very happy with the outcome of this experience and his good fortune of getting through all this without any significant loss.

 
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World's Most Ancient Underwater Reef Discovered

A 650-million-year-old underwater reef, 10 times higher than the Great Barrier Reef, has been discovered in the middle of Australia's outback.

The ancient reef, formed nearly 100 million years before the first known animal life evolved, is the only one of its age in the world. Scientists believe it may hold evidence of the earliest examples of primitive animal life.

The reef was discovered by three Melbourne scientists in the Northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Formed hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the earth, it existed for five to 10 million years in a tropical period sandwiched between two ice ages.

The scientists, from the School of Earth Science at Melbourne University believe the reef could also explain the extent of climate change in earth's early history. 

"Some of the complex organisms we have seen in the reef have never been discovered previously," associate Professor Malcolm Wallace, told The Times Online. "There is nothing like these fossils in any modern setting but they have structures that are similar to some animals." 

The oldest known animal fossils are 570 million years old. The Flinders Ranges reef is 80 million years older than that and was, he said: "The right age to capture the precursors to animals."

"With the movement over millions of years on Australia's tectonic plates, the reef has been turned 90 degrees skywards from its once horizontal position," said Professor Wallace's colleague Jonathan Giddings. "This has exposed the whole depth of the reef. These tectonic forces have resulted in very ancient history being pushed up to the present. 

"Today's advances in satellite imagery are helping us to see the reef very easily," he said. "Geologists had seen this mass before but had not really recognised it as being once a reef."

"This reef is much too old to be made of coral, " said Professor Wallace. "It was constructed by microbial organisms and other complex, chambered structures that have not been discovered before." 

The escarpment of the reef would have been 1100 metres at its highest point, ten times higher than the 100 metre high escarpment of the Great Barrier. The section of the reef that has been preserved is 20 km wide, but there is evidence that it extended across around 100 kilometress, comparable to the Great Barrier which stretches for 2,600 kilometres.

Source

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The Most Alien Looking Place In The World

Socotra Island: you have to see it to believe it

We covered some otherwordly places before (see, for example, Bolivian Salt Lake, or The Richat Structure), but this island simply blows away any notion about what is considered "normal" for a landscape on Earth.

Imagine waking up on the Socotra Island and taking a good look around you (let's say your buddies pulled a prank on you and delivered you there, and lets also assume that you don't have any hangover from abuse of any substances). After a yelp of disbelief, you'd be inclined to think you were transported to another planet - or traveled to another era of Earth's history. 

The second would be closer to the truth for this island, which is part of a group of 4 islands, has been geographically isolated from mainland Africa for the last 6 or 7 million years. Like the Galapagos Islands, this island is teeming with 700 extremely rare species of flora and fauna, a full 1/3 of which are endemic, i.e. found nowhere else on Earth.

The climate is harsh, hot and dry, and yet - the most amazing plant life thrives there. Situated in the Indian Ocean 250 km from Somalia and 340 km from Yemen, the wide sandy beaches rise to limestone plateaus full of caves (some 7 kilometers in length) and mountains up to 1525 meters high.

The name Socotra is derived from a Sanscrit name, meaning "The Island of Bliss"... Is it the beaches? The isolation and quiet? or the strange and crazy botanical allure?

Alien-looking plants: H. P. Lovecraft's secret inspiration?

Was the famous Chtulhu myths creator aware of these forbidding mountains with their hauntingly weird flora (think of plant mutations from his "The Color out of Space") ? We almost tempted to call Socotra the other "Mountains of Madness" - the trees and plants of this island were preserved thru the long geological isolation, some varieties being 20 million years old... 

We begin with the dracena cinnibaris or Dragon's Blood Tree, the source of valuable resin for varnishes, dyes, and "cure-all" medicine; also (predictably) used in medieval ritual magic and alchemy -

The branches spread out into the sky and from below appear to hover over the landscape like so many flying saucers... and from above they have a distinct mushroom look:

There is also the Desert Rose (adenium obesium) which looks like nothing so much as a blooming elephant leg. Dorstenia gigas - apparently does not require any soil and sinks roots straight into the bare rock.

Somewhat similar to the weird Dorstenia gigas, is this "bucha" vegetable, found as far north as Croatia. I hope it's not pregnant with anything malignant inside this sack. John Wyndham (with his "The Day of the Triffids") would've loved it. Also found in Socotra's landscape is the ever-strange and extremely rare Cucumber Tree (dendrosicyos socotranum) - and yes, it's related to what's sitting in a pickle jar in your fridge.

Want to see some fairy-tale (and possibly haunted) shipwrecks? There are diving tours available... Hopefully some IMAX crew would film it in all its glory one day.

Al Hajarah, Yemen - Walled city in the mist.

Computer game designers take note - this mysterious city in the foggy Yemen's Haraz Mountains can surely fire up imagination of anybody who decides to explore it.

Dune? Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique? Pack your bags, for this is on our good old planet Earth, no interstellar visa required.

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Amazing Paralympic Cyclist

Juan Jose Mendez of Spain competes in the Men's Individual pursuit (LC4) in the Track Cycling event.

Michael Teuber of Germany competes in individual pursuit (LC4) Track Cycling event at Laoshan Velodrome during day three of the 2008 Paralympic Games.

Michael Milton of Australia competes in the Men's Individual pursuit (LC 3) Track Cycling event at Laoshan Velodrome during day three of the 2008 Paralympic Games.

Jan Boyen of Belgium competes in the Men's 1km time trial (LC2) Track Cycling event at Laoshan Velodrome during day three of the 2008 Paralympic Games .

Juan Jose Mendez is a paralympic track cyclist who's missing his left arm and left leg. He competes in the men's individual pursuit event in Beijing, China.

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