The TEMPLE at BAALBECK

The Baalbeck Platform

Baalbek (Arabic: بعلبك) is a town in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, altitude 1,170 m (3,850 ft), situated east of the Litani River. It is famous for its exquisitely detailed yet monumentally scaled temple ruins of the Roman period, when Baalbek, known as Heliopolis was one of the largest sanctuaries in the Empire. It is Lebanon's greatest Roman treasure, and it can be counted among the wonders of the ancient world. The largest and most noble Roman temples ever built, they are also among the best preserved.

Towering high above the Beqaa plain, their monumental proportions proclaimed the power and wealth of Imperial Rome. The gods worshipped here, the Triad of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury, were grafted onto the indigenous deities of Hadad, Atargatis and a young male god of fertility. Local influences are also seen in the planning and layout of the temples, which vary from the classic Roman design.

The RAMP HOUSE: A Skatable Home by Archivirus

Skateboarders are a fanatical bunch, warriors on wheels who’ll skate whenever and wherever they can. Any urban space will do, but if it’s raining or there isn’t a skate park nearby, what’s a skater to do? Answer: live in the Ramp House, newly completed by Acrhivirus Architecture and Design.

Far from simply having a mini-ramp installed in a living room, the skateboarding factor was incorporated into the very design details, making a home fully capable of being skated – frontside, backside, anyside.                                                                      
Thus, by way of the architect’s imagination, straight lines became curved, and flat surfaces found new meaning as part of a ramp or a bowl.  
                           
The architect designed a home where the living room is no longer just a living room but a mini-ramp that turns into a bowl – which in turn creates a partition with the bedroom and bathroom. Meanwhile, elements like the fireplace and storage units are hidden within the ramp structures.

Psaraki (the architect) also reveals that experts were very much – sorry – on board: “The ramp transitions were made on site by skater friends who had experience skating mini ramps while construction details were drawn after extensive research via the internet and people who might know!”

The final effect? A skater’s dream that wouldn’t alienate those who just want an environment to chill in; a smooth environment where you “can flow from one space to the other, skating or walking”.

Source: scribol | Image: via Archivirus

Age of the PYRAMIDS and SPHINX

Most Egyptologists believe the Great Sphinx on the Giza plateau is about 4,500 years old. But that number is just that - a belief, a theory, not a fact. As Robert Bauval says in "The Age of the Sphinx," "there was no inscriptions - not a single one - either carved on a wall or a stela or written on the throngs of papyri" that associates the Sphinx with this time period. So when was it built?

John Anthony West challenged the accepted age of the monument when he noted the vertical weathering on its base, which could only have been caused by long exposure to water in the form of heavy rains. In the middle of the desert? Where did the water come from? It so happens that this area of the world experienced such rains - about 10,500 years ago! This would make the Sphinx more than twice its currently accepted age. Bauval and Graham Hancock have calculated that the Great Pyramid likewise dates back to about 10,500 B.C. - predating the Egyptian civilization. This raises the questions: Who built them and why?

Source: paranormal.about.com

The GIANT ISOPOD

A Giant Isopod may be one of approximately nine species of large isopods (crustaceans related to the shrimp and crabs) in the genus Bathynomus. They are thought to be abundant in cold, deep waters of the Atlantic. Bathynomus giganteus, the species upon which the generitype is based, is the largest known isopod and is the one most often referred to by the common name "giant isopod".

French zoologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards was the first to describe the genus in 1879 after fishing a juvenile male B. giganteus from the Gulf of Mexico; this was an exciting discovery for both scientists and the public, as at the time the idea of a lifeless or "azoic" deep ocean had only recently been refuted by the work of Sir Charles Wyville Thomson and others. Females were not recovered until 1891.
Giant isopods are of little interest to most commercial fisheries owing to the typical paucity of catches and because ensnared isopods are usually scavenged beyond marketability before they are recovered. However, in Northern Taiwan and other areas, they are not uncommon at seaside restaurants, served boiled and bisected with a clean lateral slice. The white meat, similar to crab or lobster in texture, is then easily removed.

The few specimens caught in the Americas with baited traps are sometimes seen in public aquaria.

Maturing to a length between 19 and 37 centimetres (7.5 and 15 in), and maximally reaching a weight of approximately 1.7 kilograms (3.7 lb) in B. giganteus, giant isopods are a good example of deep-sea gigantism (cf. giant squid); most other isopods range in size from 1 to 5 centimetres (0.39 to 2.0 in). Their morphology is nonetheless familiar to most people as giant isopods closely resemble their terrestrial cousin, the woodlouse: their bodies are dorso-ventrally compressed, protected by a rigid, calcareous exoskeleton composed of imbricate segments. The first of these segments is fused to the head; the most posterior segments are often fused as well, forming a "caudal shield" over the shortened abdomen (pleon) . The large eyes are compound with nearly 4,000 facets, sessile and spaced far apart on the head . There are two pairs of antennae.

The ALBINO SHORT-BEAKED ECHIDNA

The Short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), also known as the Spiny Anteater because of its diet of ants and termites, is one of four living species of echidna and the only member of the genus Tachyglossus. The Short-beaked Echidna is covered in fur and spines and has a distinctive snout and a specialized tongue, which it uses to catch its prey at a great speed. Like the other extant monotremes, the Short-beaked Echidna lays eggs; the monotremes are the only group of mammals to do so.