Skin brushing

Ever heard of skin brushing? For centuries, the Japanese would vigorously brush their skin with loofah sponges prior to bathing. Greek athletes would use special spoon-like skin scrapers to encourage circulation and get rid of the dirt and grime of exertion. The Cherokee Indians would use dried corn cobs to enhance beauty and durability of the skin, and the Comanche Indians would scrub their skin with sand from the Texas river bottoms. Even animals do it, lying in swamps and ponds or rubbing themselves against the earth or trees.
The skin, of course, is the largest organ in the body, and is responsible for one-fourth of the body's detoxification every day. Toxicity gathers beneath the skin's surface from soap, skin creams, anti-perspirants, even synthetic fibers worn next to the skin. Skin brushing daily helps with circulation and keeping your pores open, also helping the skin look and feel healthier and more resilient. It helps digestion, tightens skin, increases cell renewal, removes dead skin layers, and even helps to remove cellulite by breaking up the compounds that create it. Just use a natural brush once or twice a day on your dry skin, right before showering if possible, using long strokes across your skin, always towards your heart. Try it for a few weeks, you'll notice a big difference!

Coral Castle!

Coral Castle, or Rock Gate, is a structure composed of a number of megalithic (mostly limestone formed from coral) stones, each weighing several tons. It was created by Latvian American Edward Leedskalnin north of the city of Homestead, Florida. It is currently a tourist attraction due to urban legends that claim Leedskalnin created it using magnetism or supernatural abilities. He originally built the castle in Florida City, Florida in 1923, naming it Rock Gate Park. The city borders the Everglades and at the time was a very remote location. The castle remained there until 1936 when Edward moved and spent three years moving his structures with him. He continued work on the castle until his death in 1951, spending a total of 28 years building it, never allowing anyone to see him working on it. When asked why he built it, he would vaguely answer that it was for his "sweet sixteen," going along with the lore about him being jilted by his sixteen year old fiancee in Latvia just one day before the wedding. Carved into the rocks at the front gate are signs reading "Ring Bell Twice" and "Adm. 10c Drop Below" as Leedskalnin would conduct tours for any visitors. When asked how he made the castle, he would simply say "It's not difficult if you know how." When he became ill in 1951, he put a sign on the gate reading "Going to the Hospital" after which he took a bus to a hospital in Miami. He was discovered to be suffering from advanced stomach cancer and died in the hospital three days later. At this time the castle fell to the hands of Edward's closest relative, a nephew named Henry. He sold it to Julius Levin of Chicago, Illinois who owned the property until he sold it to Coral Castle Inc. in 1981, who remain the owners today. The new owners changed the name from Rock Gate Park to Coral Castle and turned it into a tourist attraction.
The grounds of the castle consist of 1000 tons of oolitic limestone in the form of walls, carvings, furniture, and a castle tower. What is so unique and mysterious about the structures is that they're made entirely without mortar, set on top of each other using their weight to keep them together. They are so precisely and skillfully crafted that no light passes through the joints. The stones that make up the perimeter wall have a uniform height, and even with the passage of time and Florida's hurricanes, the stones have not shifted. There are a number of interesting features that make up the castle's structures, including a sundial, telescope, obelisk, barbeque, water well, fountain, celestial stars and planets, as well as an array of furniture. The revolving gate is a famous structure of the castle being that it fits within a quarter inch of the walls and is so well-balanced that a child can open it with the push of a finger.
Theories surrounding Leedskalnin's methods for creating the castle often lead towards the supernatural; Leedskalnin's own fascination with magnets and teenagers' accounts of seeing the blocks of coral apparently move "like hydrogen balloons." Yet nothing seems to suggest anything more than the fact that Edward Leedskalnin was an advanced and creative engineer who simply knew the mechanics of weight and leverage well enough to create a delightful and unusual accomplishment.

Tut tut it looks like...dancing?

Tutting is a form of interpretive dance based on imitating the shapes of ancient egyptian heiroglyphics. The dance focuses on synchronized, robotic movements and is named after the egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun. The dance can involve poses of the entire body or simply the fingers. It combines elements of "roboting"--starting and finishing moves on a dimestop to appear animatronic, "popping"--quickly contracting and relaxing muscles to cause jerks in the dancer's body, "boxing"--creating and manipulating box-like or rectangular shapes with the hands and arms, and "liquiding"--making the joints appear as hinges that can be manipulated by other body parts during a dance sequence. The illusion of creating a hinge or a shape are an application of a concept mimes use called "fixed point"--imagine how a mime keeps the appearance of an invisible wall or a rope by always keeping one hand on it. "Tutters" create the illusion of a shape in the same manner during a dance--by always maintaining at least one side of the shape, assembling it, and disassembling it as part of the dance.
One of the most well-known dancers of this style in the hip-hop world is known as Mr. Wiggles. Here is a video of him dancing:

This is just a samsung commercial, but it's a cool example of finger tutting.

Strandbeests

Theo Jansen is an artist and kinetic sculptor from The Hague, Netherlands. He is known for his invention of what he calls "strandbeests" which are large, animal-like skeletons fashioned from plastic tubes that are able to walk on the beaches using the power of the wind. He has been creating these since 1990 and has since been striving to equip them with the ability to better and better resist the elements and avoid obstacles. The creatures are also able to store air pressure that enables them to move in the absence of wind. A couple of his machines are sophisticated to the point where they can detect that they have entered water and walk away from it, and one machine will even anchor itself to the ground when it senses a storm approaching. It's a dream of Jansen's to one day put his creatures out in herds on the beach to live their own lives.
Here is one he called Animaris Gubernare.

Bio-Typing

There's a great amount of our understanding of conversations and social situations that comes from watching and picking up the cues from body language. It's like tone, it more clearly puts words into context. It says things that words don't manage to. It emphasizes and reiterates what we're trying to say, and often gives us away when we're trying to hide our feelings about something. For Johnny Seitz, it's a way for him to immediately distinguish someone's personality, who they are, how they see themselves--and how best to communicate and establish rapport with them. Seitz is an autistic who has a gift for this complex understanding of physical movement, and the system he has developed has enabled him to function socially in a world of people whose minds work entirely differently than his. The autistic mind tends to be very visually driven and greatly detail oriented which leads to a kind of unbiased perception. The inability to read people, known as "mindblindness" is a common trait of autism, but Johnny's technique of observation has enabled not only himself and other autistic individuals to accurately perceive and comprehend people's character by their body language, but hundreds of other people as well. If you think about it, there are few who can say that they've never found themselves awkward or confused by someone they meet, interact with, or just see. Beyond judgment, Johnny Seitz's system can help anyone predict the character traits and break the personality codes of those around them, helping them better understand and facilitate their interactions with accuracy and depth.

The High Line

For years, a section of the former elevated freight railroad in Manhattan, New York lay in disrepair. The High Line was opened in 1934 as a solution to hazards caused by street-level railroads in the city, but the drop in rail traffic during the 50s and 60s led to the gradual demolition of most of the line, and the eventual disuse of it entirely in 1980. It was slated for demolition until 1999, when a couple of neighborhood residents created a community group to push the idea of turning the High Line into an elevated park. In 2004 the NYC government committed $50 million to establish the park, and in 2005 obtained a certificate removing most of the line from the national railway system. Construction began on April 10th, 2006.
Today, the 1.45 mile park integrates elements from its former use, remaining rails and ties, with over 210 species of plants, some of which were inspired by the self-seeded plants that grew on the disused tracks. The park also has long-term plans to host temporary installations and performances of various kinds to maintain a cultural aspect to the area.

Stop oppressive gardening!

Garden gnomes, according to folklore, help tend gardens at night, when they awaken from their ceramic state and touch the gardens with their magic, causing flowers to grow. Gnome Liberationists are people who advocate the "freedom" of garden gnomes, often by stealing them and moving them to new locations. They've been featured in movies, tv, and local news stories. The garden gnome prank is known as gnoming or gnome hunting. One variation is the travelling gnome prank where kidnapped gnomes are sent on trips around the world. The travelling gnome became the basis for Travelocity's advertising. The first Garden Gnome Liberation Front began in France in 1997 during which over the course of the year, stole over 150 gnomes. Organizations formed for the stated purpose of "freeing the ceramic creatures from forced labor in gardens." They argue that gnomes are captured, sold, and kept as slaves, ripped from their Northern Woodland homes, stripped of their freedoms, and forced to tend to the gardens where they are set. A couple of demonstrations performed by the front include repainting "freed" gnomes to make them unrecognizable, and a "mass suicide" in 1998 where 11 gnomes were hung from a bridge with nooses around their necks and a note reading "when you read these few words we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as pretty decorations." It's unknown where and when the prank first started but now it's a worldwide phenomenon.