I’ll be honest and say that I’ve always been confused about whether the Netherlands and Holland were simply different names for the same place. I even had a roommate from France who kept saying “When I was living in Holland…” which is correct, but reinforced my erroneous belief.It probably wouldn’t have hurt to read a Wikipedia page or something, but admit it — you never did either.
At Cebu City Zoo in the Philippines, they’re trying to make the zoo more “interactive” — you can now get a massage from four 20ft Burmese pythons. The massage consists of simply putting the pythons — totally 250 kilograms (550 pounds) — on top of you and letting them sliver all over your body.In case you were wondering, yes, a Burmese python is totally capable of killing you through constriction, and can deliver a pretty mean bite as well.
Colby Brown’s progression as a photographer, and his org The Giving Lens, exemplify how to leverage social media to build real community.THERE IS A CLASSIC FEEL to Colby Brown’s photography. He can stick with familiar, iconic landscapes — Thailand, Patagonia, the Tetons, the Himalaya — and still have his images tell original stories.
“You can poop in my hat,” he said.We were camped at the deserted Highland Beach, 100 miles into a 150-mile kayaking trip in the Gulf of Mexico, paddling from Florida’s Everglade City to the Flamingo Visitor’s Center and back.I had a suspicion then, which has since been confirmed, that this was my relationship test.
THE TERRIBLE ATTACKS that occurred in Boston last week had a minor geographic sidenote — a startling number of Americans took to social media proclaiming that the bombing suspects were from the Czech Republic, confusing the country with the Russian region of Chechnya. The mistake was so widespread that the Czech ambassador issued a statement declaring that his country was not, in fact, Chechnya.
While humankind has made its mark on the planet, many areas remain protected, and for good reason — the 57,268,900 square miles of Earth contain such biodiversity that one can’t fathom everything that’s out there. The menagerie of plants and animals sharing space on our world is overwhelming. Equally impressive is the array of geological formations, waterways, and forests providing habitat for such a diverse collection of species.
Big game hunters on trips to Africa often referred to the “Big 5” — the five most difficult African animals to hunt on foot: the lion, the elephant, the Cape buffalo, the leopard, and the rhinoceros. Fortunately, these days, the Big 5 is used less as a to-kill list and more as a to-photograph list for safari-goers in Africa.
