Upside-down pyramids offer a jungle eco-retreat

Sitting among the canopy of a jungle forest near Yelapa, Mexico, these V-Houses by Heinz Legler are quite possibly an eco-adventurer’s paradise.

The treehouse-like structures are lofted 16 feet above the ground and open on all sides to offer panoramic views of the tropical surroundings. Although the rooms measure only 16 feet by 16 feet, a slanted ceiling and open walls make the treehouse seem larger — blurring the lines between indoors and outdoors.

And to top off this eco-dream of a jungle retreat, the V-Houses were designed with modular components, made with sustainable materials, and have incorporated solar panels, composting toilets, and a greywater system.

The Java Jive

This "Everything You Wanted to Know About Coffee, but Were Afraid to Ask" website combines two of the author's great passions: learning about the world (geography) and enjoying a hot, bitter beverage (coffee)!

Not only does it taste good, but coffee is an excellent jumping-off point for understanding natural resource conservation and exploitation, equity in international trade, the geographic displacement of environmental problems, and global patterns of colonization and post-colonial economic relationships.

A moment in time

Dutch artist Peter Jansen creates polyamide and bronze sculptures that look like a split second in time. They don’t actually move, but they look like they are in motion.

Perhaps appropriately, he started out as a physics student rather than as an artist.

Click on LINK at the end of the Neatorama article to see more of his sculptures.

A building with only one side?

BIG Architects have unveiled an incredible new library that will serve as a multifunctional cultural center for Astana, Kazakhstan.

Named Nursultan Nazarbayev after the first President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the new library will encompass not just books, but space and time as well.

The design comprises 4 archetypes - the circle, the rotunda, the arch and the yurt - which all merge into the form of a Möbius strip.

In designing the structure BIG also used high-tech modeling to calculate the thermal exposure of the building envelope and maximize shading.

Light up your life... with your next drink

Brighten up your next Star Trek After Hours Party with the ElectraPour.

It lights up the stream of liquor by activating an interior red LED light when the liquid passes through the spout.

When you follow the link, have a look at the video to see it in action.

Laughing 'til it hurts

I can't believe that "Dad at The Comedy Barn" - one of the funniest videos of all time, and one of my favourites - only ranked #2 on this list of 10 of the Weirdest Laughs Ever Caught on Camera.

So, for your consideration, I have included that video here once again, but be sure to follow the link to see the other 9 candidates.

Start baking for Pride 2010 now!

This cake's designer may not necessarily have had Gay Pride in mind when she created it, but it sure would be fun to see at the next Pride Brunch that I get invited to - hint, hint!

Water flowing uphill? It's just WRONG!

Crowds at the Chelsea Flower Show have been queuing up 10-deep to see part of the Daily Telegraph's Silver Gilt award-winning garden - a fountain in which water apparently runs uphill. It is a sight which defies logic, and has become probably the most memorable image of this year's show.

A set of four glass ramps positioned in a square clearly show water travelling up each of them before it pours off the top, only to start again at the bottom of the next ramp.

Inventor James Dyson, he of the bagless vacuum cleaner, has stolen the headlines from the gardeners at this year's Chelsea Flower Show with his "Wrong Garden". Mr Dyson says his inspiration was a drawing by the Dutch artist MC Escher - an optical illusion that shows water going uphill and round and round the four sides of a square perpetually.

Space + Light = Time

The Good Afternoon Clock uses beams of light, projected from the interior of the ring, to indicate hours, minutes, and seconds.

It’s a product of the Mile Project and was exhibited at the Salone Satellite international design fair in Milan in 2008.

Unfortunately, this appears to be a one-of-a-kind item, so it’s not yet available for retail sales.

"I am not dumb!"

Helen Keller — inspiration to generations and inspiration for an entire genre of schoolyard humor — and her teacher and friend Anne Sullivan in a clip from 1930 in which they describe the way in which Helen learned how to speak ... It’s a fascinating little clip which pays homage to a woman who, even beyond her amazing circumstances, was a radical socialist, suffragist, and supporter of birth control, who was friends with the likes of Mark Twain and who worked tirelessly to champion the rights of both the downtrodden and the physically disabled.

It's alive ... It's ALIVE!

A hoax video purportedly showing Michael Jackson emerging from a coroner's van was an experiment aimed at showing how quickly misinformation and conspiracy theories can race across the internet, German broadcaster RTL said Tuesday.

The video was posted by RTL on YouTube for a single day a week ago and received 880,000 hits. The broadcaster has since removed the video from YouTube, but it has been picked up by other websites around the world.

"We wanted to show how easily users can be manipulated on the internet with hoax videos," spokesman Heike Schultz of Cologne-based RTL told The Associated Press.

Upstaged by a cheeky local

You have probably already seen this image, since it appeared on the internet, but here is a link that provides the whole story about it.

I think you will agree that it qualifies for Cute Overload! LOL

The mysterious Maracaibo Beacon

There's something strange in the air where the Catatumbo River flows into Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela...

For 140 to 160 nights out of the year, for 10 hours at a time, the sky above the river is pierced by almost constant lightning, producing as many as 280 strikes per hour. Known as the "Relampago del Catatumbo," this lightning storm has been raging, on and off, for as long a people can remember.

In fact, the lighting, visible from 40 kilometers away, is so regular that it's been used as a navigation aid by ships and is known among sailors as the "Maracaibo Beacon."

First Earth ... Think Again

FIRST EARTH is a documentary about the movement towards a massive paradigm shift for shelter -- building healthy houses in the old ways, out of the very earth itself, and living together like in the old days, by recreating villages.

It is a sprawling film, shot on location from the West Coast to West Africa. An audiovisual manifesto filmed over the course of 4 years and 4 continents, FIRST EARTH makes the case that earthen homes are the healthiest housing in the world; and that since it still takes a village to raise a healthy child, it is incumbent upon us to transform our suburban sprawl into eco-villages, a new North American dream.

Chocking up over 300,000 hits on YouTube even before its official release, FIRST EARTH is not a how-to film; rather, it's a why-to film. It establishes the appropriateness of earthen building in every cultural context, under all socio-economic conditions, from third-world communities to first-world countrysides, from Arabian deserts to American urban jungles. In the age of environmental and economic collapse, peak oil and other converging emergencies, the solution to many of our ills might just be getting back to basics, focusing on food, clothes, and shelter. We need to think differently about house and home, for material and for spiritual reasons, both the personal and the political.

Laughing in the Face of Racism

The repentant former KKK leader Johnny Lee Clary explains how Reverend Wade Watts, an NAACP leader, disarmed him by being cool, funny and brave, engaging in some first-rate psy-ops. Be sure to listen through to the end for the chicken story.

Depression's Evolutionary Roots

Two scientists suggest that depression is not a malfunction, but a mental adaptation that brings certain cognitive advantages.

Maybe it's NOT just a Mid-Life Crisis!

Life may begin at 40, but research suggests that 44 is the age at which we are most vulnerable to depression.

Data analysis on two million people from 80 countries found a remarkably consistent pattern around the world.

The risk of depression was lowest in younger and older people, with the middle-aged years associated with the highest risk for both men and women.

Video ad embedded in magazine

Shades of Blade Runner, Necromancer or Star Trek ... The current issue of Entertainment Weekly has a tiny video screen embedded in a two-page CBS ad that auto-plays when you turn the page. The screen is controlled by a slim PCB sandwiched between the pages. Have a look at the video to see what I mean.