More pics here.
Traffic in Moscow
Comments Off on Traffic in Moscow
Dazzle Camouflage
Dazzle camouflage, also known as Razzle Dazzle or Dazzle painting, was a camouflage paint scheme used on ships, mainly during World War I. It consisted of a complex pattern of geometric shapes in contrasting colors, interrupting and intersecting each other. At first glance it seems like an unlikely form of camouflage, drawing attention to the ship rather than hiding it. Dazzle camouflage had a very specific purpose, however, which was to make it difficult to estimate the target ship’s speed and heading and so disrupt the performance of the visual rangefinders used for naval artillery at the time. In other words, its purpose was confusion, rather than concealment.
Comments Off on Dazzle Camouflage
Spanish hospital transplants right hand to left arm
MADRID (AFP) – A hospital in Spain has successfully transplanted a man’s right hand onto his left arm, changing the location of the thumb in the process, a spokesman said on Monday.
The unidentified 63-year-old man had lost his left hand in an accident four decades ago and three years ago he suffered a stroke which paralyzed the right side of his body.
Comments Off on Spanish hospital transplants right hand to left arm
Rare condition gives toddler super strength
ROOSEVELT PARK, Mich. — Liam Hoekstra was hanging upside down by his feet when he performed an inverted sit-up, his shirt falling away to expose rippled abdominal muscles. It was a display of raw power one might expect to see from an Olympic gymnast.
Liam is 19 months old.
But this precocious, 22-pound boy with coffee-colored skin, curly hair and washboard abs is far from a typical toddler.
“He could do the iron cross when he was 5 months old,” said his adoptive mother, Dana Hoekstra of Roosevelt Park. She was referring to a difficult gymnastics move in which a male athlete suspends himself by his arms between two hanging rings, forming the shape of a cross.
Liam has a rare genetic condition called myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy, or muscle enlargement. The condition promotes above-normal growth of the skeletal muscles; it doesn’t affect the heart and has no known negative side effects, according to experts.
Liam has the kind of physical attributes that bodybuilders and other athletes dream about: 40 percent more muscle mass than normal, jaw-dropping strength, breathtaking quickness, a speedy metabolism and almost no body fat.