MAD Architects’ City of the Future

Top 10 Unfortunate Product Names

1. Ayds

Ayds (pronounced aids) was a diet candy from the 1980s. The NY Times (1982) reported that the active ingredient in AYDS was phenylpropanolamine - a substance the FDA has now ruled “not recognized as safe”. Here is a bonus - a truly cringe-worthy advert for Ayds:

2. Anusol
3. Vagisil
4. I.beat Blaxx
5. Kagome
6. Jussipussi
7. Sars
8. Gray Poupon

9. Elephant Beautiful Balls
10. Wii

15 Amazing Money Origami

1. T-shirt
2. Hang Glider

3. Puff Daddy George
4. Crane
5. Flowers
6. Doughtnut
7. Suit
8. Fish
9. Owl
10. Snail
11. Pig
12. Ryujin
13. Heart
14. A Guy with a Hat
15. Two hearts

50 Weird Facts about Humans

While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot. (go ahead no one will see you) While doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand.
Your foot will change direction – that is a fact. Pretty interesting, huh? Keep on reading..


1. People with higher number of moles tend to live longer than people with lesser number of moles.

3. When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes just before the camera rolls - it cools their mouths so their breath doesn’t condense in the cold air.

4. Thinking about your muscles can make you stronger.

5. Grapefruit scent will make middle aged women appear six years younger to men. The perception is not reciprocal and the grapefruit scent on men has no effect on women’s perception.

6. The world’s youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

7. The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you’ll have a bad dream.

8. There are more people alive today than have ever died.

9. Women’s hair is about half the diameter of men’s hair

10. Women blink twice as many times as men do.

11. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.

12. Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

13. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

14. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet!

15. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb. The cartoon image of a light bulb over your head when a great thought occurs isn’t too far off the mark. Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping.

16. The brain is much more active at night than during the day.

17. The brain itself cannot feel pain. While the brain might be the pain center when you cut your finger or burn yourself, the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain.

18. The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger. And the nail on the middle finger of your dominant hand will grow the fastest of all. Why is not entirely known, but nail growth is related to the length of the finger, with the longest fingers growing nails the fastest and shortest the slowest.

19. The lifespan of a human hair is 3 to 7 years on average.

20. Human hair is virtually indestructible. Aside from it’s flammability, human hair decays at such a slow rate that it is practically non-disintegrative. Hair cannot be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, or other natural forces and it is resistant to many kinds of acids and corrosive chemicals.

21. The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razorblades. Hydrochloric acid, the type found in your stomach, is not only good at dissolving the pizza you had for dinner but can also eat through many types of metal.

22. The surface area of a human lung is equal to a tennis court.

23. Sneezes regularly exceed 100 mph.

24. Approximately 75% of human waste is made of water.

25. The average person expels flatulence 14 times each day. Even if you’d like to think you’re too dignified to pass gas, the reality is that almost everyone will at least a few times a day.

26. Earwax production is necessary for good ear health. While many people find earwax to be disgusting, it’s actually a very important part of your ear’s defense system. It protects the delicate inner ear from bacteria, fungus, dirt and even insects. It also cleans and lubricates the ear canal.

27. Babies are always born with blue eyes. The melanin in a newborn’s eyes often needs time after birth to be fully deposited or to be darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light, later revealing the baby’s true eye color.

28. Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.

29. After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp.

30. Women are born better smellers than men and remain better smellers over life.

31. Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents.

32. Nails and hair do not continue to grow after we die. They do appear longer when we die, however, as the skin dehydrates and pulls back from the nail beds and scalp.

33. By the age of 60, most people will have lost about half their taste buds. Perhaps you shouldn’t trust your grandma’s cooking as much as you do.

34. Your eyes are always the same size from birth but your nose and ears never stop growing.

35. By 60 years of age, 60-percent of men and 40-percent of women will snore.

36. Monday is the day of the week when the risk of heart attack is greatest. A ten year study in Scotland found that 20% more people die of heart attacks on Mondays than any other day of the week. Researchers theorize that it’s a combination of too much fun over the weekend with the stress of going back to work that causes the increase.

37. Provided there is water, the average human could survive a month to two months without food depending on their body fat and other factors.

38. Over 90% of diseases are caused or complicated by stress.

39. A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it is been decapitated. While it might be gross to think about, the blood in the head may be enough to keep someone alive and conscious for a few seconds after the head has been separated from the body, though reports as to the accuracy of this are widely varying.

40. Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood the number is reduced to 206.

41. We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening.

42. It takes twice as long to lose new muscle if you stop working out than it did to gain it. Lazy people out there shouldn’t use this as motivation to not work out, however. It’s relatively easy to build new muscle tissue and get your muscles in shape, so if anything, this fact should be motivation to get off the couch and get moving.

43. Tears and mucus contain an enzyme (lysozyme) that breaks down the cell wall of many bacteria.

44. It is not possible to tickle yourself. Even the most ticklish among us do not have the ability to tickle ourselves.

45. The width of your armspan stretched out is the length of your whole body. While not exact down to the last millimeter, your armspan is a pretty good estimator of your height.

46. Humans are the only animals to produce emotional tears.

47. Women burn fat more slowly than men, by a rate of about 50 calories a day. Most men have a much easier time burning fat than women. Women, because of their reproductive role, generally require a higher basic body fat proportion than men, and as a result their bodies don’t get rid of excess fat at the same rate as men.

48. Koalas and primates are the only animals with unique fingerprints. Humans, apes and koalas are unique in the animal kingdom due to the tiny prints on the fingers of their hands.

49. One human hair can support 3.5 ounces. That’s about the weight of two full size candy bars, and with hundreds of thousands of hairs on the human head, makes the tale of Rapunzel much more plausible.

50. Cna yuo raed tihs? I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it

+ 51. It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.

Seahorses: World’s Most Romantic Species

Two Potbelly seahorses holding tails at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

If you need inspiration this Valentine’s Day, look no further. Seahorses can teach humans many a lesson when it comes to courtship. They hold hands, uh, tails, change colours, swim snout-to-snout and whirl around in unison for days before engaging in a “true courtship dance” that lasts about eight hours. When one thing finally leads to another, it is the male of the species that becomes pregnant and carries the offspring.
Bright yellow seahorse found in the Turneffe Islands, Belize:

Why seahorses spend so much time courting might shed light on certain, ahem, bigger species’ courtship behaviours too: courting is a form of synchronising of their movements so that both are prepared when the big day comes. This “big day” is when the female is ready to deposit her eggs in the male’s brood pouch – which he has flashed before her during courtship to prove it’s empty, as if to say “no eggs here!”
This Malaysian pygmy seahorse (hippocampus bargibanti) proves that seahorses are masters of camouflage

The eggs then hatch in the male seahorse’s brood pouch for about two to four weeks, depending on the species. The female does not withdraw at this time, but visits her mate every morning to continue the courtship by wheeling around, changing colour and holding her mate’s tail. This support fosters a monogamous relationship, at least during one reproductive phase, that keeps the male motivated to nurture and the female to continue producing eggs.

Offspring survival rates are low: only about 5 of each 1,000 infants reach maturity. This explains why seahorse litters can be large – from a few dozen to hundreds to even 1,500. But seahorse babies’ chances are still better than that of many fish because of the incubation time in the father’s pouch, during which they are protected and receive ample oxygen supply. The male seahorse, though not lactating, even produces prolactin, the same hormone found in pregnant women.

A pregnant male seahorse at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans

When ready to be born, the male seahorse experiences muscular contractions and then expels the “fry” from his pouch, usually at night. Once out, the young seahorses are on their own because seahorse parents, like those of most other fish species, do not take care of their offspring. How could they? They are busy preparing for the next batch of eggs, which is ready by morning and has to be deposited within a few hours, else they would go waste.

Seahorse babies called “fry”:

With this busy a schedule, it is good that there are reproductive “time out” periods during which both male and female seahorses can regain their strength, which they really need to do. The female’s eggs make up one third of her body weight, which the male then needs to receive and provide nutrients for.

Even the plainest seahorse is still fascinating:

Why seahorse females produce eggs and the males are the ones who give birth is still an area that requires much research. Says Heather Hall, fish geneticist at the London Zoo, about seahorse research and visitors’ reactions:

“I spend a lot time saying, ‘Yes, they’re real.’ …I find it incredible, still, that an animal that’s so popular has been so little studied. I expected to be looking at research gaps and filling them in, not starting with a blank sheet of paper.”

This colourful fellow is not a stretched-out seahorse but a Dragonface pipefish, a close relative of the seahorse:

This should change soon as Hall is also the cofounder of Project Seahorse, an international project furthering the study and conservation of seahorses.