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15 Pictures Of 'The Most Alien-Looking Place On Earth'

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Socotra

One hundred and fifty miles off the Horn of Africa lies a tiny archipelago of islands known as Socotra.

Because of its extreme isolation from other land masses, Socotra has very unique plant life, a third of which can be found nowhere else in the world.

Not only are the plant endemic to Socotra, but they look weird as can be, causing people to refer to it as "the most alien-looking place on earth."

Socotra is part of Yemen, which is currently undergoing some serious political strife. But you wouldn't know that from the surreal beauty of Socotra.



Because Socotra is one of the most isolated land masses in the world, as well as its extreme temperatures and dryness, Socotra's flora is incredibly unique and unusual-looking. A third of all plant life on the island can only be found on Socotra.

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One of the most distinct plants on the island is the Dragon's Blood Tree. It gets its name from its crimson red sap, which has been prized for centuries for its purported medicinal qualities. The people of Socotra still use it today as a cure-all for many daily health problems, as well as for dying fabric.

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The First Chapter Of This Book Will Change Your Understanding Of Soldiers In Combat

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Marines combat memorial

"Redeployment," the new collection of short stories by Marine veteran and author Phil Klay, is receiving a lot of positive attention from reviewers and book critics.

We spoke with Klay recently about his book, which goes much deeper than stories of battle and heroism. Instead he dives deeper, offering stories like the religious leader trying to minister to Marines facing mounting casualties, the alienation some veterans feel as they return home, and the loneliness a soldier can feel in the war zone.

With the permission of his publisher, Penguin Press, we are printing the first chapter of his book here:

Redeployment

We shot dogs. Not by accident. We did it on purpose, and we called it Operation Scooby. I’m a dog person, so I thought about that a lot.

First time was instinct. I hear O’Leary go, “Jesus,” and there’s a skinny brown dog lapping up blood the same way he’d lap up water from a bowl. It wasn’t American blood, but still, there’s that dog, lapping it up. And that’s the last straw, I guess, and then it’s open season on dogs.

At the time, you don’t think about it. You’re thinking about who’s in that house, what’s he armed with, how’s he gonna kill you, your buddies. You’re going block by block, fighting with rifles good to 550 meters, and you’re killing people at five in a concrete box.

The thinking comes later, when they give you the time. See, it’s not a straight shot back, from war to the Jacksonville mall. When our deployment was up, they put us on TQ, this logistics
base out in the desert, let us decompress a bit. I’m not sure what they meant by that. Decompress. We took it to mean jerk off a lot in the showers. Smoke a lot of cigarettes and play a lot of cards. And then they took us to Kuwait and put us on a commercial airliner to go home.

So there you are. You’ve been in a no‑shit war zone and then you’re sitting in a plush chair, looking up at a little nozzle shooting air-​conditioning, thinking, What the fuck? You’ve got a rifle between your knees, and so does everyone else. Some Marines got M9 pistols, but they take away your bayonets because you aren’t allowed to have knives on an airplane. Even though you’ve showered, you all look grimy and lean. Everybody’s hollow-​­eyed, and their cammies are beat to shit. And you sit there, and close your eyes, and think.

The problem is, your thoughts don’t come out in any kind of straight order. You don’t think, Oh, I did A, then B, then C, then D. You try to think about home, then you’re in the torture house. You see the body parts in the locker and the retarded guy in the cage. He squawked like a chicken. His head was shrunk down to a coconut. It takes you a while to remember Doc saying they’d shot mercury into his skull, and then it still doesn’t make any sense.

You see the things you saw the times you nearly died. The broken television and the hajji corpse. Eicholtz covered in blood. The lieutenant on the radio.

You see the little girl, the photographs Curtis found in a desk. First had a beautiful Iraqi kid, maybe seven or eight years old, in bare feet and a pretty white dress like it’s First Communion. Next she’s in a red dress, high heels, heavy makeup. Next photo, same dress, but her face is smudged and she’s holding a gun to her head.

I tried to think of other things, like my wife, Cheryl. She’s got pale skin and fine dark hairs on her arms. She’s ashamed of them, but they’re soft. Delicate.

But thinking of Cheryl made me feel guilty, and I’d think about Lance Corporal Hernandez, Corporal Smith, and Eicholtz. We were like brothers, Eicholtz and me. The two of us

So I’m thinking about that. And I’m seeing the retard, and the girl, and the wall Eicholtz died on. But here’s the thing. I’m thinking a lot, and I mean a lot, about those fucking dogs. And I’m thinking about my dog. Vicar. About the shelter we’d got him from, where Cheryl said we had to get an older dog because nobody takes older dogs. How we could never teach him anything. How he’d throw up shit he shouldn’t have eaten in the first place. How he’d slink away all guilty, tail down and head low and back legs crouched. How his fur started turning gray two years after we got him, and he had so many white hairs on his face that it looked like a mustache.

So there it was. Vicar and Operation Scooby, all the way home.

Maybe, I don’t know, you’re prepared to kill people. You practice on man-​­shaped targets so you’re ready. Of course, we got targets they call “dog targets.” Target shape Delta. But they don’t look like fucking dogs.

And it’s not easy to kill people, either. Out of boot camp, Marines act like they’re gonna play Rambo, but it’s fucking serious, it’s professional. Usually. We found this one insurgent doing the death rattle, foaming and shaking, fucked up, you know? He’s hit with a 7.62 in the chest and pelvic girdle; he’ll be gone in a second, but the company XO walks up, pulls out his KA‑BAR, and slits his throat. Says, “It’s good to kill a man with a knife.” All the Marines look at each other like, “What the fuck?” Didn’t expect that from the XO. That’s some PFC bullshit.

On the flight, I thought about that, too.

It’s so funny. You’re sitting there with your rifle in your hands but no ammo in sight. And then you touch down in Ireland to refuel. And it’s so foggy you can’t see shit, but, you know, this is Ireland, there’s got to be beer. And the plane’s captain, a fucking civilian, reads off some message about how general orders stay in effect until you reach the States, and you’re still considered on duty. So no alcohol.

Well, our CO jumped up and said, “That makes about as much sense as a goddamn football bat. All right, Marines, you’ve got three hours. I hear they serve Guinness.” Oo-​­fucking-​­rah. Corporal Weissert ordered five beers at once and had them laid out in front of him. He didn’t even drink for a while, just sat there looking at ’em all, happy. O’Leary said, “Look at you, smiling like a faggot in a dick tree,” which is a DI expression Curtis loves.

So Curtis laughs and says, “What a horrible fucking tree,” and we all start cracking up, happy just knowing we can get fucked up, let our guard down.

We got crazy quick. Most of us had lost about twenty pounds and it’d been seven months since we’d had a drop of alcohol. MacManigan, second award PFC, was rolling around the bar with his nuts hanging out of his cammies, telling Marines, “Stop looking at my balls, faggot.” Lance Corporal Slaughter was there all of a half hour before he puked in the bathroom, with Corporal Craig, the sober Mormon, helping him out, and Lance Corporal Greeley, the drunk Mormon, puking in the stall next to him. Even the Company Guns got wrecked. It was good. We got back on the plane and passed the fuck out. Woke up in America.

marines IEDExcept when we touched down in Cherry Point, there was nobody there. It was zero dark and cold, and half of us were rocking the first hangover we’d had in months, which at that point was a kind of shitty that felt pretty fucking good. And we got off the plane and there’s a big empty landing strip, maybe a half dozen red patchers and a bunch of seven tons lined up. No families.

The Company Guns said that they were waiting for us at Lejeune. The sooner we get the gear loaded on the trucks, the sooner we see ’em.

Roger that. We set up working parties, tossed our rucks and seabags into the seven tons. Heavy work, and it got the blood flowing in the cold. Sweat a little of the alcohol out, too. Then they pulled up a bunch of buses and we all got on, packed in, M16s sticking everywhere, muzzle awareness gone to shit, but it didn’t matter.

Cherry Point to Lejeune’s an hour. First bit’s through trees. You don’t see much in the dark. Not much when you get on 24, either. Stores that haven’t opened yet. Neon lights off at the gas stations and bars. Looking out, I sort of knew where I was, but I didn’t feel home. I figured I’d be home when I kissed my wife and pet my dog.

We went in through Lejeune’s side gate, which is about ten minutes away from our battalion area. Fifteen, I told myself, way this fucker is driving. When we got to McHugh, everybody got a little excited. And then the driver turned on A Street. Battalion area’s on A, and I saw the barracks and I thought, There it is. And then they stopped about four hundred meters short. Right in front of the armory. I could’ve jogged down to where the families were. I could see there was an area behind one of the barracks where they’d set up lights. And there were cars parked everywhere. I could hear the crowd down the way. The families were there. But we all got in line, thinking about them just down the way. Me thinking about Cheryl and Vicar. And we waited.

When I got to the window and handed in my rifle, though, it brought me up short. That was the first time I’d been separated from it in months. I didn’t know where to rest my hands. First I put them in my pockets, then I took them out and crossed my arms, and then I just let them hang, useless, at my sides.

After all the rifles were turned in, First Sergeant had us get into a no‑shit parade formation. We had a fucking guidon waving out front, and we marched down A Street. When we got to the edge of the first barracks, people started cheering. I couldn’t see them until we turned the corner, and then there they were, a big wall of people holding signs under a bunch of outdoor lights, and the lights were bright and pointed straight at us, so it was hard to look into the crowd and tell who was who. Off to the side there were picnic tables and a Marine in woodlands grilling hot dogs. And there was a bouncy castle. A fucking bouncy castle.

We kept marching. A couple more Marines in woodlands were holding the crowd back in a line, and we marched until we were straight alongside the crowd, and then First Sergeant called us to a halt.

I saw some TV cameras. There were a lot of U.S. flags. The whole MacManigan clan was up front, right in the middle, holding a banner that read: OO‑RAH PRIVATE FIRST CLASS BRADLEY MACMANIGAN. WE ARE SO PROUD.

I scanned the crowd back and forth. I’d talked to Cheryl on the phone in Kuwait, not for very long, just, “Hey, I’m good,” and, “Yeah, within forty-​­eight hours. Talk to the FRO, he’ll tell you when to be there.” And she said she’d be 301852there, but it was strange, on the phone. I hadn’t heard her voice in a while.

Then I saw Eicholtz’s dad. He had a sign, too. It said: WELCOME BACK HEROES OF BRAVO COMPANY. I looked right at him and remembered him from when we left, and I thought, That’s Eicholtz’s dad. And that’s when they released us. And they released the crowd, too.

I was standing still, and the Marines around me, Curtis and O’Leary and MacManigan and Craig and Weissert, they were rushing out to the crowd. And the crowd was coming forward.
Eicholtz’s dad was coming forward.

He was shaking the hand of every Marine he passed. I don’t think a lot of guys recognized him, and I knew I should say something, but I didn’t. I backed off. I looked around for my wife. And I saw my name on a sign: SGT PRICE, it said. But the rest was blocked by the crowd, and I couldn’t see who was holding it. And then I was moving toward it, away from Eicholtz’s dad, who was hugging Curtis, and I saw the rest of the sign. It said: SGT PRICE, NOW THAT YOU’RE HOME YOU CAN DO SOME CHORES. HERE’S YOUR TO‑DO LIST. 1) ME. 2) REPEAT NUMBER 1. And there, holding the sign, was Cheryl.

She was wearing cammie shorts and a tank top, even though it was cold. She must have worn them for me. She was skinnier than I remembered. More makeup, too. I was nervous and tired and she looked a bit different. But it was her.

All around us were families and big smiles and worn-​­out Marines. I walked up to her and she saw me and her face lit. No woman had smiled at me like that in a long time. I moved in and kissed her. I figured that was what I was supposed to do. But it’d been too long and we were both too nervous and it felt like just lip on lip pushed together, I don’t know. She pulled back and looked at me and put her hands on my shoulders and started to cry. She reached up and rubbed her eyes, and then she put her arms around me and pulled me into her.

Her body was soft and it fit into mine. All deployment, I’d slept on the ground or on canvas cots. I’d worn body armor and kept a rifle slung across my body. I hadn’t felt anything like her in seven months. It was almost like I’d forgotten how she felt, or never really known it, and now here was this new feeling that
made everything else black and white fading before color. Then she let me go and I took her by the hand and we got my gear and got out of there.

She asked me if I wanted to drive and hell yeah I did, so I got behind the wheel. A long time since I’d done that, too. I put the car in reverse, pulled out, and started driving home. I was thinking I wanted to park somewhere dark and curl up with her in the backseat like high school. But I got the car out of the lot and down McHugh. And driving down McHugh it felt different from the bus. Like, This is Lejeune. This is the way I used to get to work. And it was so dark. And quiet.

Cheryl said, “How are you?” which meant, How was it? Are you crazy now?

I said, “Good. I’m fine.”

And then it was quiet again and we turned down Holcomb. I was glad I was driving. It gave me something to focus on. Go down this street, turn the wheel, go down another. One step at a time. You can get through anything one step at a time.

She said, “I’m so happy you’re home.”

Then she said, “I love you so much.”

Then she said, “I’m proud of you.”

I said, “I love you, too.”

When we got home, she opened the door for me. I didn’t even know where my house keys were. Vicar wasn’t at the door to greet me. I stepped in and scanned around, and there he was on the couch. When he saw me, he got up slow.

His fur was grayer than before, and there were weird clumps of fat on his legs, these little tumors that Labs get but that Vicar’s got a lot of now. He wagged his tail. He stepped down off the couch real careful, like he was hurting. And Cheryl said, “He remembers you.”

“Why’s he so skinny?” I said, and I bent down and scratched him behind the ears.

“The vet said we had to keep him on weight control. And he doesn’t keep a lot of food down these days.”

Cheryl was pulling on my arm. Pulling me away from Vicar. And I let her.

She said, “Isn’t it good to be home?”

Her voice was shaky, like she wasn’t sure of the answer. And I said,marinesafghan.JPG“Yeah, yeah, it is.” And she kissed me hard. I grabbed her in my arms and lifted her up and carried her to the bedroom. I put a big grin on my face, but it didn’t help. She looked a bit scared of me, then. I guess all the wives were probably a little bit scared.

And that was my homecoming. It was fine, I guess. Getting back feels like your first breath after nearly drowning. Even if it hurts, it’s good.

I can’t complain. Cheryl handled it well.

I saw Lance Corporal Curtis’s wife back in Jacksonville. She spent all his combat pay before he got back, and she was five months pregnant, which, for a Marine coming back from a seven-​­month deployment, is not pregnant enough.

Corporal Weissert’s wife wasn’t there at all when we got back. He laughed, said she probably got the time wrong, and O’Leary gave him a ride to his house. They get there and it’s empty. Not just of people, of everything: furniture, wall hangings, everything. Weissert looks at this shit and shakes his head, starts laughing. They went out, bought some whiskey, and got fucked up right there in his empty house.

Weissert drank himself to sleep, and when he woke up, MacManigan was right next to him, sitting on the floor. And MacManigan, of all people, was the one who cleaned him up and got him into base on time for the classes they make you take about, Don’t kill yourself. Don’t beat your wife. And Weissert was like, “I can’t beat my wife. I don’t know where the fuck she is.”

That weekend they gave us a ninety-​­six, and I took on Weissert duty for Friday. He was in the middle of a three-​­day drunk, and hanging 

Slaughter passed Weissert to Addis, Addis passed him to Greeley, and so on. We had somebody with him the whole weekend until we were sure he was good. With him was a carnival freak show filled with whiskey and lap dances. Didn’t get home until four, after I dropped him off at Slaughter’s barracks room, and I woke Cheryl coming in. She didn’t say a word. I figured she’d be mad, and she looked it, but when I got in bed she rolled over to me and gave me a little hug, even though I was stinking of booze.

When I wasn’t with Weissert and the rest of the squad, I sat on the couch with Vicar, watching the baseball games Cheryl’d taped for me. Sometimes Cheryl and I talked about her seven months, about the wives left behind, about her family, her job, her boss. Sometimes she’d ask little questions. Sometimes I’d answer. And glad as I was to be in the States, and even though I hated the past seven months and the only thing that kept me going was the Marines I served with and the thought of coming home, I started feeling like I wanted to go back. Because fuck all this.

The next week at work was all half days and bullshit. Medical appointments to deal with injuries guys had been hiding or sucking up. Dental appointments. Admin. And every evening, me and Vicar watching TV on the couch, waiting for Cheryl to get back from her shift at Texas Roadhouse.

Vicar’d sleep with his head in my lap, waking up whenever I’d reach down to feed him bits of salami. The vet told Cheryl that’s bad for him, but he deserved something good. Half the time when I pet him, I’d rub up against one of his tumors, and that had to hurt. It looked like it hurt him to do everything, wag his tail, eat his chow. Walk. Sit. And when he’d vomit, which was every other day, he’d hack like he was choking, revving up for a good twenty seconds before anything came out. It was the noise that bothered me. I didn’t mind cleaning the carpet. And then Cheryl’d come home and look at us and shake her head and smile and say, “Well, you’re a sorry bunch.” I wanted Vicar around, but I couldn’t bear to look at him. I guess that’s why I let Cheryl drag me out of the house that weekend. We took my combat pay and did a lot of shopping. Which is how America fights back against the terrorists.

So here’s an experience. Your wife takes you shopping in Wilmington. Last time you walked down a city street, your Marine on point went down the side of the road, checking ahead and scanning the roofs across from him. The Marine behind him checks the windows on the top levels of the buildings, the Marine behind him gets the windows a little lower, and so on down until your guys have the street level covered, and the Marine in back has the rear. In a city there’s a million places they  can kill you from. It freaks you out at first. But you go through like you were trained, and it works.

In Wilmington, you don’t have a squad, you don’t have a battle buddy, you don’t even have a weapon. You startle ten times checking for it and it’s not there. You’re safe, so your alertness should be at white, but it’s not.

Instead, you’re stuck in an American Eagle Outfitters. Your wife gives you some clothes to try on and you walk into the tiny dressing room. You close the door, and you don’t want to open it again.

Outside, there’re people walking around by the windows like it’s no big deal. People who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died. People who’ve spent their whole lives at white.

They’ll never get even close to orange. You can’t, until the first time you’re in a firefight, or the first time an IED goes off that you missed, and you realize that everybody’s life, everybody’s, depends on you not fucking up. And you depend on them.

Some guys go straight to red. They stay like that for a while and then they crash, go down past white, down to whatever is lower than “I don’t fucking care if I die.” Most everybody else stays orange, all the time.

marine carries mascot for goodluck

Here’s what orange is. You don’t see or hear like you used to. Your brain chemistry changes. You take in every piece of the environment, everything. I could spot a dime in the street twenty yards away. I had antennae out that stretched down the block. It’s hard to even remember exactly what that felt like. I think you take in too much information to store so you just forget, free up brain space to take in everything about the next moment that might keep you alive. And then you forget that moment, too, and focus on the next. And the next. And the next. For seven months.

So that’s orange. And then you go shopping in Wilmington, unarmed, and you think you can get back down to white? It’ll be a long fucking time before you get down to white.

By the end of it I was amped up. Cheryl didn’t let me drive home. I would have gone a hundred miles per hour. And when we got back, we saw Vicar had thrown up again, right by the door. I looked for him and he was there on the couch, trying to stand on shaky legs. And I said, “Goddamn it, Cheryl. It’s fucking time.”

She said, “You think I don’t know?”

I looked at Vicar.

She said, “I’ll take him to the vet tomorrow.”

I said, “No.”

She shook her head. She said, “I’ll take care of it.”

I said, “You mean you’ll pay some asshole a hundred bucks to kill my dog.”

She didn’t say anything.

I said, “That’s not how you do it. It’s on me.”

She was looking at me in this way I couldn’t deal with. Soft.

I looked out the window at nothing.

She said, “You want me to go with you?”

I said, “No. No.”

“Okay,” she said. “But it’d be better.”

She walked over to Vicar, leaned down, and hugged him.

Her hair fell over her face and I couldn’t see if she was crying. Then she stood up, walked to the bedroom, and gently closed the door.

I sat down on the couch and scratched Vicar behind the ears, and I came up with a plan. Not a good plan, but a plan. Sometimes that’s enough.

There’s a dirt road near where I live and a stream off the road where the light filters in around sunset. It’s pretty. I used to go running there sometimes. I figured it’d be a good spot for it.

It’s not a far drive. We got there right at sunset. I parked just off the road, got out, pulled my rifle out of the trunk, slung it over my shoulders, and moved to the passenger side. I opened the door and lifted Vicar up in my arms and carried him down to the stream. He was heavy and warm, and he licked my face as I carried him, slow, lazy licks from a dog that’s been happy all his life. When I put him down and stepped back, he looked up at me. He wagged his tail. And I froze.

Only one other time I hesitated like that. Midway through Fallujah, an insurgent snuck through our perimeter. When we raised the alarm, he disappeared. We freaked, scanning everywhere, until Curtis looked down in this water cistern that’d been used as a cesspit, basically a big round container filled a quarter way with liquid shit.

The insurgent was floating in it, hiding beneath the liquid and only coming up for air. It was like a fish rising up to grab a fly sitting on the top of the water. His mouth would break the surface, open for a breath, and then snap shut, and he’d submerge. I couldn’t imagine it. Just smelling it was bad enough. About four or five Marines aimed straight down, fired into the shit. Except me.

Staring at Vicar, it was the same thing. This feeling, like, something in me is going to break if I do this. And I thought of Cheryl bringing Vicar to the vet, of some stranger putting his hands on my dog, and I thought, I have to do this.

I didn’t have a shotgun, I had an AR‑15. Same, basically, as an M16, what I’d been trained on, and I’d been trained to do it right. Sight alignment, trigger control, breath control. Focus on the iron sights, not the target. The target should be blurry.

I focused on Vicar, then on the sights. Vicar disappeared into a gray blur. I switched off the safety. There had to be three shots. It’s not just pull the trigger and you’re done. Got to do it right. Hammer pair to the body. A final well-​­aimed shot to the head.

The first two have to be fired quick, that’s important. Your body is mostly water, so a bullet striking through is like a stone thrown in a pond. It creates ripples. Throw in a second stone
soon after the first, and in between where they hit, the water gets choppy. That happens in your body, especially when it’s two 5.56 rounds traveling at supersonic speeds. Those ripples can tear organs apart.

If I were to shoot you on either side of your heart, one shot . . . and then another, you’d have two punctured lungs, two sucking chest wounds. Now you’re good and fucked. But you’ll still be alive long enough to feel your lungs fill up with blood.

If I shoot you there with the shots coming fast, it’s no problem. The ripples tear up your heart and lungs and you don’t do the death rattle, you just die. There’s shock, but no pain.I pulled the trigger, felt the recoil, and focused on the sights, not on Vicar, three times. Two bullets tore through his chest, one through his skull, and the bullets came fast, too fast to feel. That’s how it should be done, each shot coming quick after the last so you can’t even try to recover, which is when it hurts.

I stayed there staring at the sights for a while. Vicar was a blur of gray and black. The light was dimming. I couldn’t remember what I was going to do with the body.

From REDEPLOYMENT by Phil Klay. Reprinted by arrangement of Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Random. Copyright (c) 2014 by Phil Klay.

NOW: Read our interview with author Phil Klay

Join the conversation about this story »








21 Bizarre Pictures From China’s Theme Park Full Of World Landmarks

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Before British photographer Luke Casey settled in Hong Kong, he spent three and a half months traveling by boat. It was only later that he realized how much faster he could see the world — sort of — by visiting one theme park in nearby Shenzhen.

Window of the World features incredibly detailed reproductions of 130 major tourist attractions, some life-size and some much smaller, squeezed into 118 acres.

Created in 1994, the park has become a popular destination in itself.

“I have always found tourist destinations interesting in that for the majority of visitors, it is simply about getting your photo with that landmark, buying a souvenir and then getting back on the bus,” Casey told Business Insider. “Why visit those places for real when you can get all those photos and souvenirs in one place?”

There are approximately 150 replicas of world sights in Window Of The World. Here you can see Basilica Di San Marco in the park's replica of Venice's Piazza San Marco.



Part of the allure is seeing all of the landmarks in one place. Here you can see the riverside view of Piazza San Marco, with the Eiffel Tower in the background.



At 354 feet, the park's version of the Eiffel Tower is one third the size of the real thing.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider






The Perfect Explanation Of How Sunscreen Could Save Your Life

13 Weird Psychological Reasons Someone Might Fall In Love With You

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Endless Love

There's no shortage of advice on where to meet the right person, how to make people like you, and how to build a successful relationship.

Sometimes, though, people are attracted to each other for seemingly arbitrary reasons, such as what color you wear or whether you have a pet.

What might influence someone to fall for you? We pored through research on the psychology of attraction and found some fascinating reasons why people fall in love.

If you do something thrilling together.

In 1974, Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron wanted to test the connection between sexual attraction and anxiety. In their study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, they placed men under two conditions. The first walked across a high, shaky bridge. The other was on a low, sturdy bridge. Afterward, they met a female experimenter who asked them a series of questions and gave the men her phone number "just in case."

The men who met the woman after walking on the high bridge were more likely to call her than the men who met her on the low bridge. Psychologists call this phenomenon the "misattribution of arousal." The high bridge created a sense of arousal from the anxiety, but men mistakenly thought it was from the attraction to the woman.

This is why many people like to do exciting things on first dates, such as visiting amusement parks, skydiving, or riding motorcycles.



If you prime them to feel more attracted to you.

Priming is an implicit memory effect, which means that the stimuli you are exposed to can influence your response to later stimuli. For example, if people take a multiple choice test with words that have to do with "oldness" like "Florida," "gray," and "weak," they tend to walk slower afterward.

Yale psychologist John Bargh performed an experimentin which participants held warm or cold beverages and had to rate whether someone's personality was warm or cold. Participants who held warm beverages judged the person to have a warm personality, because their minds were already primed to think that way.

If you take someone on a coffee date instead of an ice cream date, they may feel more warmly toward you.



If you live close to them.

It's not only important to be close to someone emotionally — you should also strive to be close physically. According to an experiment at MIT, the proximity of students' dorm rooms increased how close they felt to one another.

This is because they had more passive interactions, like brief meetings as they passed one another in the hallway, which made them feel more intimate.

It's known as the mere exposure effect, which states that familiarity plays a huge role in attraction.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider






11 Video Games From The 1980s That Are Better Than Games Today

Meet The Six 'Rich Kids Of Beverly Hills' Before Tonight's Season 2 Premiere

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rich kids of beverly hills

This Sunday, E!'s hit reality show "#RichKids of Beverly Hills" will return for a second season.

The hour-long, "Rich Kids Of Instagram" Tumblr-inspired show features six friends from 90210 who drop thousands of dollars on clothes, shoes, cars, and partying like it's their job  because that's exactly what it is for some of these "funemployed" 20-somethings. 

Get to know the cast and catch up on season one here before this weekend's season two premiere, which takes the "Rich Kids" to China.

Season two of "#RichKids of Beverly Hills" premieres this Sunday at 10 p.m. ET on E!

Meet 25-year-old Dorothy Wang, who was born and raised in Beverly Hills — "The best city in the world."

 

 

 



Dorothy says "Growing up, my parents never talked about money. It wasn't until it was printed in Forbes that I knew how much money we had."



Dorothy is currently "funemployed and fabuluxe," but "when I grow up I want to be the Asian sensation of the world."



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13 Fascinating Facts About The Majority Of Russians

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vladimir putin wavesEighty-three percent Russians approve of Vladimir Putin as president, a number that has soared from 54% last year since his annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine as well as the Sochi Olympics.

Westerners may wonder why Russians so happily approve of a man who is becoming an international pariah.

And that might get them wondering what else Russians think and what Russians are like anyway.

Taking care to avoid unfounded stereotypes, we've turned to data from polling centers, the World Health Organization, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Pew Research Center to identify facts about the majority of Russia's 144 million citizens.

The average Russian adult consumes 15 liters of pure alcohol annually, far more than the 9-liter average in America. Heavy drinking has been blamed for alarmingly high early death rates for Russian men.

Source: WHO and Reuters



56% of Russians aren't pleased with the quality of their drinking water, the worst of the 36 nations ranked by OECD.

Current data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development



60% of Russians think their country is moving in the right direction.

August 2013 Levada Center Poll



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Inside TMZ's Awesome Office Space And TV Studio

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TMZ OFFICE STUDIO

The TMZ office in Los Angeles is unique in the way that the celebrity gossip website's work space also functions as a TV studio for the show.

TMZ on TV, which airs mainly on Fox-owned stations, features "in-studio" segments that are taped during a morning staff pitch meeting — led by the site's founder and show's executive producer, Harvey Levin — at TMZ's headquarters.

TMZ is an insider term ("thirty-mile zone" or studio zone), referring to the movie studio area of downtown Hollywood.

San Fransisco-based Rapt Studio recently refurbished TMZ's very public workspace  see what it's like to work in the fast lane.

If you've ever watched TMZ on TV, you're already familiar with the show's pitch meeting format.



San Fransisco-based Rapt Studio designed the real life work place/TV studio in Los Angeles. The celebrity-inspired workspace is built around a 9,000-square-foot newsroom, connecting brand and culture to its environment.

Rapt Studio 

 



TMZ's trademark red and black color scheme is apparent upon arrival.



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Sex Therapist Reveals How To Bring Back The Passion In Your Relationship

A 24-Year-Old Transport Engineer Is About To Free Her City From Car Ownership

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Sonja Heikkilä

By now it's become clear that Scandinavians and Nordic nations do a lot of things better than other countries. They have the smallest gender gaps, among the highest test scores, and the lowest levels of inequality.

Now, they're set to rub their transportation superiority in our faces.

Finland's capital, Helsinki, is about to launch a program that could virtually eliminate car ownership and give its residents the ability to plot an on-demand commute from their phones.  

It's mostly the vision of Sonja Heikkilä, a 24-year-old Helsinki transportation engineer.

Her idea was to create a real-time marketplace for customers to choose among transport providers and piece together the fastest or cheapest way of getting where they need to go. The providers' services would be distilled into an app through which a customer could plan a route.

In her master's thesis, Heikkilä used the character of Taneli, a 34-year-old married father of four young children, to demonstrate how the whole thing works. Helsinki already has a dial-up bus service called Kutsuplus (Finnish for “call plus”), which for more than a year has been letting riders dial up a minibus on their phone, choose their route, and select whether they want their own private ride, according to Wired. Here's what the Kutsuplus app looks like

Heikkilä's vision combines minibus shuttle service with city bicycles and ride-sharing to all but eliminate the need for cars:

[Taneli] usually bicycles with his own bike to a station, ascends a bus, and carries the bicycle with him in the bus or leaves his own bicycle at the station and continues the trip with a city bike.

In case the conditions are not satisfying for bicycling, Taneli finds a car or ride-sharing service with the help of a platform that he uses through the mobile phone. In addition, a daily demand responsive transport service, such as Kutsuplus, fetches [his son] and his classmates from preschool and conveys them [home], where they can continue spending the afternoon together. 

"One app would allow to plan the entire route, including all modes," she told Business Insider in an email. "However, there would be several competing apps, as there would be several private companies running the mobility operator business."

Heikkilä said the idea came about because Helsinki is growing too fast for its current transportation options, with a population projected to increase 40% in the next 35 years.

As a result, many people are forced to own a car, but 95% of a car's life is spent parked at home or at work, according to Heikkilä. Widespread car ownership also runs counter to Finland's environmental ambitions. Plus, there's been a generational shift in attitudes about cars. 

"First of all, the young want to be connected at all times," she said. "They value convenience and spontaneity. They are also very familiar with technology and expect systems to function well. Additionally, the phenomena of sharing economy and 'servicizing' [organizing and selection of a service is bought and performed by a third party, and customers receive merely the outcome of the actions] are rising. The city of Helsinki wants to meet these changing requirements." 

Right now, the city has a monopoly on public transit, but the public sector moves too slow to adapt to changing transport demands, Heikkilä said. At the same time, Helsinkians are uncomfortable with full-on privatization. The transportation engineer hopes to combine the best of both worlds.

"We want to allow the emerging mobility operators to sell all mobility services, including public transit," Heikkilä said. "The core of our work is to determine what the public sector and the city of Helsinki can do to enable and promote the emergence of this kind of mobility service ecosystem and mobility operator market." 

Heikkilä credits Sampo Hietanen of ITS Finland, a not-for-profit public/private sector association that promotes transportation innovation, with having pioneered the concept of "Mobility As A Service" in Finland. In a presentation earlier this year, Hietanen predicted transport would be hit by a "tsunami wave" of change on par with the digital revolution in communications. Soon, commuters will be able to purchase mobility plans, as they would a cell phone service, at rates according to their needs.

The Swedish city of Gothenburg has already rolled out a similar service, called UbiGo, though on a much smaller scale. The Helsinki plan will eventually operate citywide. 

"We do not want to launch a project on this but truly create a permanent service ecosystem, which companies may enter at any time," Heikkilä said. 

The pilots in certain Helsinki neighborhoods will be launched early next year. Heikkilä said any city that already had a decent public transport system in place could adopt their model.

SEE ALSO: Why Elon Musk Thinks Planes Should Be Taking Off Vertically

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Huge Advances In Biosuit Technology Are Changing Paralysis Forever

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Three years ago, retired Army sergeant Theresa Hannigan lost the use of her legs as a result of her time in the service. Seven years ago, Matthew Tilford suffered a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist below. 

Today, both Theresa and Matthew are walking again thanks to the game-changing technology developed by ReWalk Robotics and Ekso Bionics.

Both companies have developed bionic suits that give people with lower limb disabilities the ability to stand up and walk again. Theresa, who uses the ReWalk, tells us that walking with the bionic suit is "very effortless."

"I noticed it was doing all the work for me," says Ekso user Matthew Tilford. "It was just so natural where I could just stand there and all I had to do was lean left and right and shift my weight a little bit onto one foot or the other."

Produced by Will Wei and Graham Flanagan. Edited by Will Wei. Series editor: Sam Rega.

GAME CHANGERS: Check out more in this series.

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The World's 50 Best Business Schools

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The World's Best Business Schools 2014_2x1Is an MBA that costs two years of your life and $150,000 really worth it?

With increasing global competition and a tough job market, business school may hold the key to getting ahead — if you go to the right one.

For our fifth annual survey of the World's Best Business Schools, we asked thousands of professionals from around the world who have experience hiring MBAs to determine the best business school. They came back with a clear favorite: Harvard University.

Survey participants rated the reputation of the graduates from top business schools around the world on a scale of poor to excellent (1 to 5), with excellent ratings used as a tiebreaker. We included responses only from professionals who said they had experience hiring MBAs at least half the time, as well as other filters to optimize our survey pool.

Click here to see a full analysis of the survey results >

Click here to see a map showing the top 25 schools >

In addition to the usual top American schools, international institutions like the London School of Economics (#8), London Business School (#9), Oxford (#13), and INSEAD (#15) placed in the top 15.

#50 George Washington University (School of Business)

Rated 2.44 out of 5 for graduate reputation. 

Location: Washington, D.C.

Tuition and fees: $101,450 (cost of whole degree)

The D.C.-based school took a tumble from its 22nd place on our list last year. U.S. News, Businessweek, and The Financial Times ranked the school 65th, 54th, and 99th in the world, respectively.

While only 2% of survey participants rated the school as excellent, over 400 people ranked the school's reputation.



#49 Thunderbird School of Global Management

Rated 2.44 out of 5 for graduate reputation. 

Location: Glendale, Arizona

Tuition and fees: $79,027 (cost of whole degree)

More than 40,000 people around the world call themselves T-Birds, as Thunderbird School of Global Management graduates refer to their own. Although the school dropped in the rankings from No. 41 this year, it continues to rank highly for the internationalism of its alumni network.



#48 The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK Business School)

Rated 2.45 out of 5 for graduate reputation. 

Location: Hong Kong

Tuition and fees: $73,575

CUHK Business School launched its MBA program in 1966, becoming the first of its kind in Asia. This school is a newcomer to our list, even though it was ranked No. 27 globally by The Financial Times.

Nearly one in 10 survey participants who rated CUHK Business School marked it as very good.



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QUIZ: Are These Quotes From Communist Leaders Or CEOs?

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Communist Leader or CEO Quiz Steve Jobs Che

Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates are exemplars of capitalism. Che Guevara, Leon Trotsky, and Karl Marx are pillars of communism. Each gets called "revolutionary" — so what do they have in common, aside from massive visions and egos? 

All of them try to change the way regular people live in society, either by putting a computer on every desk or overthrowing the bourgeoisie. 

Maybe that's why the capitalist leaders' language sounds nearly indistinguishable from the communists'. There's that and the fact that leaders — capitalist or communist — can lean on vague, euphemistic language.

To illustrate these points, we've put together the below quiz. See if you can spot which quote came from a Marxist and which came from the corner office.

 

SEE ALSO: 21 Quotes From Bill Gates That Take You Inside The Mind Of The World's Richest Man

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The 15 US Cities Where Poor Neighborhoods Are Expanding Fastest

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raleigh

Poverty is stuck at record levels in America, and it's spreading in neighborhoods that are already blighted and impoverished, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution.

So-called concentrated poverty spurs high crime rates and can worsen health, schools, and housing conditions, according to Brookings. While poverty was once viewed as an urban problem, more and more of America's poor live in the suburbs.

The Brookings report analyzes the poverty levels in metro areas and their distressed neighborhoods, examining the change between 2000 and the period of 2008-2012, which includes an average from a five-year Census estimate and shows the effect of the recession.

Brookings looked at the change in poverty levels in neighborhoods described as distressed, where at least 40% of the population lives under the poverty line, and high-poverty, where at least 20% of the population is impoverished.

To get an idea of which U.S. cities have the fastest-growing rates of concentrated poverty, we ranked metro areas based on the change in poor population in tracts with poverty rates 20% or higher. We also included the change in poor population for the entire metro area. (Metro areas include both cities and their suburban outskirts.)

For the year 2013, the Census set the poverty level at $12,119 for a single person under the age of 65 and $24,028 for a family of four.

15. Salt Lake City, Utah

206% growth in poor population in tracts with poverty rates 20% or higher.

73% growth in poor population.

In Salt Lake City 19.4% of the residents live below the poverty level, compared to just over 12% for the entire state of Utah. In 2013, Brookings Institution fellow Elizabeth Kneebone told kuer.org the population of poor people in Salt Lake City's suburbs had doubled in an 11-year period.

Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.



14. Atlanta, Georgia

213% growth in poor population in tracts with poverty rates 20% or higher.

90% growth in poor population.

Atlanta is known as the "capital of the new south" and viewed as an economic engine for the Southeast. However, the poverty rate in the city is shockingly high, with more than 24% of the people there living below the poverty line.

Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.



13. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colorado

218% growth in poor population in tracts with poverty rates 20% or higher.

76% growth in poor population.

Nearly 19% of Denver's residents live below the poverty line, compared to about 13% of the state's residents. Like many metro areas on this list, Denver has experienced a surge of poverty in its suburbs in recent years.

Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.



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The 25 Most Famous Harvard Students Of All Time

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Barack Obama smile

Harvard University is one of the most prestigious universities in the world. In fact, The Center for World University Rankings recently ranked Harvard as the best university in the world.

As expected, many impressive people have walked the halls of Harvard since it was founded in 1636. These people have gone on to pursue careers in politics, finance, entertainment, and more.

We've compiled a list of the 25 most famous Harvard students of all time. Some, like Jeremy Lin, graduated as recently as 2010; others, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, graduated way back in 1821.

U.S. President Barack Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988 and eventually became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. During his time at the school, he also played basketball on the black law students' association team.

Source: NPR



Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1969 with a degree in government. He wrote a great senior thesis titled, "The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency, 1947-1969."

Source: Biography.com



Ben Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, graduated summa cum laude in 1975 with a degree in economics. He earned a 1590 out of 1600 on his SATs.

Source: Forbes



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Everything You Missed At This Weekend's Lollapalooza Music Festival In Chicago [PHOTOS]

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Iggy Azalea Lollapalooza

The 10th annual Lollapalooza took place this weekend in Chicago's Grant Park.

More than 130 bands performed on eight stages over the course of the three-day music festival.

Outkast reunited yet again, Malia Obama watched Lorde perform, and Rihanna made a cameo during Eminem's set.

Check out the best photos of the festival and after parties.

Lollapalooza is held in Grant Park in downtown Chicago.



More than 130 bands performed on eight stages over the course of the three-day music festival.



Iggy Azalea performed her hit song of the summer, "Fancy," during the festival's opening day.



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HOUSE OF THE DAY: Richard Gere Drops The Price On His Hamptons Mansion To $48 Million

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Richard Gere Hamptons Mansion $65 million

Richard Gere is having difficulty unloading his North Haven mansion: The actor recently dropped the price on the Hamptons property to $47.5 million, according to Curbed Hamptons.

Gere first listed the 6.3-acre estate in July 2013 for $65 million. The price was later lowered to $56 million.

It's now listed with Douglas Elliman.

The property, known as Strongheart Manor, was built in 1902 and comes with two guest houses, an outdoor fireplace pavilion, and a dock that looks out onto the water. It's been renovated and expanded to include 12 bedrooms and over 12,000 square feet of space.

Welcome to Richard Gere's $56 million Strongheart Manor.

 



It sits on over six acres of land and has covetable views of the bay.

 



Inside, the home has over 12,000 square feet of space with six fireplaces.

 



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The Incredible Winning Photos From National Geographic Traveler's Photo Contest

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08 Merit Divine Makeover.JPG

After sifting through more than 18,000 entries, National Geographic Traveler has announced the winners of its 2014 photo contest

The winners took home some incredible prizes. The grand prize winner won an 8-day National Geographic expedition to Alaska for two, the second place winner won a 5-day National Geographic photo workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and third place won a 6-day cruise for two on a windjammer schooner in Maine. 

We've collected the winners and the merit prize runner-ups here. You can learn more about the photo contest at the National Geographic Traveler.

MERIT PRIZE: This photo of Český Krumlov in Czech Republic was taken from the castle in the town. It is a perfect viewpoint to get a panorama of the historical town.



MERIT PRIZE: This "end-of-the-world" swing in Banos, Ecuador hangs over a deep abyss and is connected to a treehouse that is also a seismic monitoring station. In the background, an erupting Mount Tungurahua can be seen. Minutes after the photo was taken, the area was evacuated.



MERIT PRIZE: While exploring Burrough Market in London, this photographer caught these four women dressed in vintage white dresses eating ice cream in front of a shop.



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The Number Of Farmers' Markets In America Has Exploded — Here's Where They're Really Popular

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There's a growing desire among many Americans to have a closer connection to the food they eat, and one place where that connection is fostered is the local farmers' market.

The USDA's Economic Research Service tracks multiple aspects of how food is produced and consumed in the United States. They recently made a chart showing how the number of farmers' markets in the U.S. has more than quadrupled since the mid-nineties:

us farmers markets

In their blog post showing the chart, the USDA points out that "the growing number of farmers’ markets could reflect increased demand for local and regional food products based on consumer perceptions of their freshness and quality, support for the local economy, environmental benefits, or other perceived attributes relative to food from traditional marketing channels."

The USDA also makes available lots of data on how food is produced and consumed in different parts of the country. Here's a map showing where those farmers' markets are, based on 2013 data, the most recent available. Farmers' markets are pretty widespread throughout the country, with the greatest concentrations in the Northeast, the West Coast, and other urban areas:

farmers markets map

 

SEE ALSO: Here's How All 50 State Economies Are Doing, Ranked From Slowest To Fastest

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