Sunday, November 18, 2012

Orang Rimba - Happiness Lies in the Forest

If you happen to see, please please stop and take some time to watch this video and share it as much as possible.

This video hits me pretty hard. It's about the ongoing deforestation in Indonesia for the palm oil industry and how it affects the ingenious people. Often, we think deforestation are merely trees being chopped down, land being cleared.

What we often miss out are these people and all the animals living in the forests, this is their home. You can't just simply integrate them into cities, they'd rather die. On a similar note, you can't put someone from the city into the rainforest, they'll starve.

I'm not advocating boycott palm products, they are much more industries out there that are causing rainforest destructions. But i think it's wise for the government to earmark lands to be left untouched. These rainforests are the lungs of the earth, if we lose them, we're gonna have a hard time breathing.




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Saturday, September 22, 2012

Ape Genius

Very good, eye-opening documentary.

Broadcast (2008) At a research site in Fongoli, Senegal, a female chimpanzee breaks off a branch, chews the end to make it sharp, then uses this rudimentary spear to skewer a tasty bushbaby hiding inside a hollow tree. The footage represents an astonishing breakthrough for primate researchers: It's the first time anyone has documented a chimpanzee wielding a carefully prepared, preplanned weapon.

But it's only the latest in a slew of extraordinary new findings about ape behavior. The more researchers learn about the great apes—chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans (see Our Family Tree)—the more evidence they find of creative intelligence. What, then, is the essential difference between us and them? "Ape Genius," a NOVA-National Geographic special, explores that provocative question and examines research that is illuminating the ape mind.

The spear-wielding chimps were documented by anthropologist Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University, who also observed the Fongoli colony doing something else never documented before: holding a pool party. Chimps were long thought to be afraid of water, but as charming poolside footage reveals, these hairy bathers swing from the trees and take the plunge in high spirits.

In addition to Pruetz, "Ape Genius" features contributions by other noted researchers, including Brian Hare of Duke University, Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews, Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University, Rebecca Saxe of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Josep Call and Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (For an extended interview with Rebecca Saxe, see The Ape That Teaches.)

Bit by bit, these investigators are converging on an explanation for why the non-human great apes never made the breakthrough into an accelerating human-style culture that builds on the achievements of previous generations. After all, apes are stronger and more agile than we are. They have also shown previously unsuspected talents for reasoning, creative problem solving, and other intelligent traits. Some have even demonstrated rudimentary language abilities (see Kanzi the Bonobo). And their emotional lives seem on a par with ours, as is evident in moving footage of a mother chimp dealing with the sickness and death of her child.

But something has held them back. What?



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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Great cave diver Dave Shaw's last dive

David Shaw was an Australian scuba diver, a technical diver and an airline pilot for Cathay Pacific, who flew the A330-300, A340-300 and A340-600. He is one of only nine people who have dived below a depth of 240 metres (800 ft) on self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.

David Shaw died on 8 January 2005 while seeking to recover the body of Deon Dreyer, a South African diver who had himself died 10 years previously, and whose body Shaw had discovered at a depth of 270 metres (890 ft) of fresh water in Bushman's Hole, South Africa in October 2004


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The world Longest Overseas Bridge - Hangzhou Bay Bridge


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Monday, September 17, 2012

E-mail Order Bride

In Singapore, our order brides are mostly from neighbouring countries such as Vietnam and China. I think largely because they are gentle and good with chores.



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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Still Pumping

A good inspirational video where Arnold Schwarzenegger discusses about what it took for him to be a champion by committing to a goal and pushing through pain and failure and then how he applied this mindset to acting and politics.

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