Propeller Island Hotel (Berlin, Germany)
Every room at this hotel is artistically themed and there is even a vampire themed room for True *lo** addicts where one can sleep in a coffin or even in a cage. A mirror room may be too overwhelming for sleeping but ideal for late-night naked dance party. There are also mind bending rooms with slanted walls, a castle room, danger-zone tubular room, a topsy turvy room with furniture hanging from the ceiling, a circular room with a twirling bed, the possibilities are endless.
Jail Hotel (Switzerland)
Want to feel the thrill of being wanted by the state without having to actually serve a sentence? Come on over to the Jail Hotel for a full captive experience minus the handcuffs.
Capsule Hotel (%$^uoka, Japan)
If you think the pods in the Matrix were cramped, we've got a surprise for you. This "hotel" is almost like a human locker where one can be suited in Japanese garb and be placed inside a capsule in which to rest. The rooms can cost up to $40 a night but there are amenities such as TV and wireless.
Sphere Hotel (on the artificial island between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE)
This sphere hotel in construction be a ball overhanging on the side of a cliff. Guests can gain access to the hotel via helicopter and the ocean views will be priceless. With 200 rooms and 14 floors guests will be able to relax suspended in nature. The hotel will also be eco friendly and take advantage of solar energy.
Athenaeum Hotel (London, UK)This is an 8 story hotel that also doubles as a vertical garden made by Patrick Blanc who converted his career from botanist to artist.
Tianzi Hotel (Hebei, China)
The hotel stands as three gigantic Chinamen representing Fu Lu Shou which symbolizes good fortune, prosperity and longevity. It is also notably the "biggest image building" according to the Guiness World Record.
Ice Hotel (Jukkasjarvi, Sweden)
This structure is made complete out of ice and snow that brings together an ambitious art project and hospitality together.
Pipe Hotel (Danube river, Germany)
This is probaboy one of the smallest hotel rooms ever. The Germans elegantly design a pipe into a modern and minimalist room.
Kumbuk River Resort (Kumbuk River, Sri lanka)
In this Sri Lankan river town a 2 story eco friendly villa stands as an elephant. One can stay inside this 40 ft. elephant and experience the depths of the jungle inside this wild sanctuary.
Hotel Strada (Sexten/ Sesto, Italy)
This hotel is almost camouflaged into the topography of the environment. The architecture of this hotel is a curious study of lines and curves and how man made extensions can blend with nature's dimensions.
La Claustra Hotel (Gotthard Mountain, Switzerland)
The hotel is an underground cavern embedded inside the rock and looks almost like a glamorous sculpture. Hidden within the rocks of nature, it can also double as a secret getaway or a laboratory.
Salt Hotel (Bolivia)
This hotel certainly doesn't lack flavor. The hotel is built entirely out of salt, the 15 bedrooms, dining room and the living room. Salt bricks were made with salt and water to make a cement like substance which allowed such a basic natural resource to be erected into this amusing structure.
Dog Bark Park Inn (Cottonwood, Idaho)
You can sleep in the dog house in style at this two story bed and breakfast. Literally shaped like a dog it is cozy dog-themed inn for animal lovers.
Delivering thrust to the high-speed effort is a Eurojet EJ200 jet engine usually reserved for the Eurofighter Typhoon, an aerial combatant that costs more than several Veyrons. Also propelling the *lo**hound SSC is a 882-pound hybrid rocket, a blend of a solid propellant rocket and a liquid propellant rocket. Combined with an 789-horsepower powerplant that serves as a starter and auxiliary power unit, total power output is in excess of 131,000 horsepower, which begins to sound quite ludicrous even for its task. In comparison, 131,000 horsepower is the equivalent of over 109 Veyron 16.4 Super Sports, each of which develops around 1200 horsepower. And, in case you were curious, there are three different brakes to help slow the speeding missile: disc brakes, air brakes, and a very large parachute.
Fully fueled, the *lo**hound SSC is expected to weigh 14,158 pounds, and need 42 seconds to reach 1000 mph. Targeted terminal speed is 1050 mph (Mach 1.4), although real-world scenarios can never be fully accounted even with the most powerful computers. Nevertheless, we wish nothing but the best of luck on this highly engineered endeavor.
With the model phase out of the way, the first 0-300-mph tests are expected to commence in 2012. Royal Air Force fighter pilot Andy Green will once again be in the c**kpit after pushing the previous Thrust SSC to 763 mph in 1997.
Zabriskie Point is a part of Amargosa Range located in east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park in the United States noted for its eroded landscape. It is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago long before Death Valley came into existence.
Glacier Bay is located in south-eastern Alaska, United States. It runs north northwest to south south-east for about 65 miles between two pinchets of Alaska. It ranges from 3-20 miles wide. Glacier Bay and the surrounding land is the site of the Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Glacier Bay contains sixteen glaciers, twelve of which reach shorelines and calved to produce icebergs.
The Rane Sixy-Eight. The big news is that Serato buffs will be able to use 4 decks, creating four channel mixes, and enabling much simpler swap outs between dj's. There are two USB ports on the back of the mixer so two computers can be attached simutaneously. The mixer is slightly reminiscent of the Pioneer M800 which a lot of my friends prefer. The FX processor on the 68 looks a lot more user friendly and intensive (including a rotating button dedicated to EQ. Here's hoping that they make multiple decks available for the 57sl and the SL3 Users!
Introducing the first professional DJ mixer with two USB 2.0 High Speed ports with support for real-time connection of two computers. Two DJs can work in parallel and/or seamlessly transition from one DJ to another.
Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions.
251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. [1] Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world. [2]
55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM).
The LPTM lasted 100,000 years. [3]
Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known technology can stop it.
The bottom line: BPs Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.
The oil giant drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble.
Ryskins methane extinction theory
Northwestern University's Gregory Ryskin, a bio-chemical engineer, has a theory: The oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas. He has documented the scientific evidence that such an event was directly responsible for the mass extinctions that occurred 55 million years ago. [4]
Many geologists concur: "The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region "boils over," ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO2, H2S) into the atmosphere, and flooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The air-methane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide..." [5]
The warning signs of an impending planetary catastropheof such great magnitude that the human mind has difficulty grasping it-would be the appearance of large fissures or rifts splitting open the ocean floor, a rise in the elevation of the seabed, and the massive venting of methane and other gases into the surrounding water.
Such occurrences can lead to the rupture of the methane bubble containmentit can then permit the methane to breach the subterranean depths and undergo an explosive decompression as it catapults into the Gulf waters. [6]
All three warning signs are documented to be occurring in the Gulf.
Ground zero: The Gulf Coast
The people and property located on the greater expanse of the Gulf Coast are sitting at Ground Zero. They will be the first exposed to poisonous, cancer causing chemical gases. They will be the ones that initially experience the full fury of a methane bubble exploding from the ruptured seabed.
The media has been kept away from the emergency salvage measures being taken to forestall the biggest catastrophe in human history. The federal government has warned them away from the epicenter of operations with the threat of a $40,000 fine for each infraction and the possibility of felony arrests.
Why is the press being kept away? Word is that the disaster is escalating.
Cracks and bulges
Methane is now streaming through the porous, rocky seabed at an accelerated rate and gushing from the borehole of the first relief well. The EPA is on record that Rig #1 is releasing methane, benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other toxic gases. Workers there now wear advanced protection including state-of-the-art, military-issued gas masks.
Reports, filtering through from oceanologists and salvage workers in the region, state that the upper level strata of the ocean floor is succumbing to greater and greater pressure. That pressure is causing a huge expanse of the seabed-estimated by some as spreading over thousands of square miles surrounding the BP wellhead-to bulge. Some claim the seabed in the region has risen an astounding 30 feet.
The fractured BP wellhead, site of the former Deepwater Horizon, has become the epicenter of frenetic attempts to quell the monstrous flow of methane.
The subterranean methane is pressurized at 100,000 pounds psi. According to Matt Simmons, an oil industry expert, the methane pressure at the wellhead has now skyrocketed to a terrifying 40,000 pounds psi.
Another well-respected expert, Dr. John Kessler of Texas A&M University has calculated that the ruptured well is spewing 60 percent oil and 40 percent methane. The normal methane amount that escapes from a compromised well is about 5 percent.
More evidence? A huge gash on the ocean floorlike a ragged wound hundreds of feet longhas been reported by the NOAA research ship, Thomas Jefferson. Before the curtain of the government enforced news blackout again descended abruptly, scientists aboard the ship voiced their concerns that the widening rift may go down miles into the earth.
That gash too is hemorrhaging oil and methane. Its 10 miles away from the BP epicenter. Other, new fissures, have been spotted as far as 30 miles distant.
Measurements of the multiple oil plumes now appearing miles from the wellhead indicate that as much as a total of 124,000 barrels of oil are erupting into the Gulf waters daily-thats about 5,208,000 gallons of oil per day.
Most disturbing of all: Methane levels in the water are now calculated as being almost one million times higher than normal. [7]
Mass death on the water
If the methane bubblea bubble that could be as big as 20 miles wideerupts with titanic force from the seabed into the Gulf, every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will immediately sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists participating in the salvage operation will die instantly.
Next, the ocean bottom will collapse, instantaneously displacing up to a trillion cubic feet of water or more and creating a towering supersonic tsunami annihilating everything along the coast and well inland. Like a thermonuclear blast, a high pressure atmospheric wave could precede the tidal wave flattening everything in its path before the water arrives.
When the roaring tsunami does arrive it will scrub away all that is left.
A chemical c**ktail of poisons
Some environmentalist experts are calling whats pouring into the land, sea and air from the seabed breach a chemical c**ktail of poisons.
Areas of dead zones devoid of oxygen are driving species of fish into foreign waters, killing plankton and other tiny sea life that are the foundation for the entire food chain, and polluting the air with cancer-causing chemicals and poisonous rainfalls.
A report from one observer in South Carolina documents oily residue left behind after a recent thunderstorm. And before the news blackout fully descended the EPA released data that benzene levels in New Orleans had rocketed to 3,000 parts per billion.
Benzene is extremely toxic and even short term exposure can cause agonizing death from cancerous lesions years later.
The people of Louisiana have been exposed for more than two monthsand the benzene levels may be much higher now. The EPA measurement was taken in early May. [8]
Doomsday
While some say it cant happen because the bulk of the methane is frozen into crystalline form, others point out that the underground methane sea is gradually melting from the nearby surging oil thats estimated to be as hot as 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Most experts in the know, however, agree that if the world-changing event does occur it will happen suddenly and within the next 6 months.
So, if events go against Mankind and the bubble bursts in the coming months, Gregory Ryskin may become one of the most famous people in the world. Of course, he won't have long to enjoy his new found fame because very shortly after the methane eruption civilization will collapse.
Perhaps if humanity is very, very lucky, some may find a way to avoid the mass extinction that follows and carry on the human race.
Perhaps.