Bet you dint know it :P

Mount Athos or Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain is one of the holiest places on earth. In English it translates to "The Holy Mountain". This peninsula in Greece is the home to 20 odd monasteries. Well, now to the interesting part, women are prohibited in the campus. In fact females of all species are prohibited from entering this holy space. With the exception of cats and chickens. Haha, cats because they help keep the rodent population down and chickens cos their egg yolks are used of paintings :D


Aliki Diplarakou, who won Miss Europe way back in the 1929 dressed as a man and entered Mount Athos, which stood invoilate since the Byzantine Empire.

And ofcors this place has a very stringent entry procedure and is also exempt from the Schengen Agreement which binds many European countries. The monks call this agreement Satanic :)

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Some cool stuff about animals and insects :D

In an attempt to achieve streamlined motion while swimming dolphins shed their skin every two hours and do so continuously all the time, and so have a very flaky, dandruffy skin :P

the fly named after paul allen

A lot of celebrities have animals named after them, Frank Zappa and Shakespeare lead the list with 3 animals named after them. David Attenborough, Harrison Ford and Mick Jagger have 2 animals each named after them. Other famous people sharing names with animals include Mozart, Bush, Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Mandela, Dalai Lama, Barack Obama, Simon and Garfunkel, Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin :D

The Gobi toad lives in the desert and waits every 7 years for rainfall and then they mate and go back into the desert.

I always thought that Tigers belonged to the jungles, where they are the most regal and threatening. Turns out most tigers are in private hands in the USA. Not the zoos, not even entire of Asia. What a shame.

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Jack Nicholson is one of only two actors to have been nominated for an Academy Award for acting (leading or supporting) in every decade since the 1960s, the other is the butler we see in The Dark Knight, Michael Caine.

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Only 20% of the Great Wall of China even remains today. It was built and rebuilt from the 5th century BC to the 16th century and an estimated 2 to 3 million people died in the project to build and maintain the Great Wall. 2100 years the wall protected the Chinese Empire from attacks from various tribes and dynasties. Also at one point in time it was gaured by 1 million men. And just a few months back 290 Km of previously undetected portion of the wall was discovered. lol

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Graham Bell is credited to have invented the telephone but he also invented the metal detector and started the National Geographic Society. There is a nice little story about Bell's metal detector. Turns out American president James Garfiled was shot in an assassination attempt. While one bullet grazed his arm the other was stuck up somewhere near his spine and could not be found. He was getting real sick. So Bell made a metal detector just for finding and removing the bullet. But when put to work the detector malfunctioned and the bullet could not be found. This happened cos of the bed on which the president was lying on had a metal framework and this problem was not identified cos beds with metal frameworks were very rare then. Its also said that the metal springs in the mattress may have caused the malfunction. Anyway, the bullet was not found and the president died after months of suffering and of a massive heart attack. Fancy beds.

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So, Didja Know?

Andy Warhol, was one of the greatest printmaker, he designed the modern coca cola sign you see everywhere. He also designed one of the best album covers ever, Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers. (No. 1 on Vh1's list of Greatest Album covers)
But well the interesting part is this, oh ofcors he was gay, but he also made really weird movies.. more like anti cinema. In his movie "Eat" a guy eats for the full length of the movie. In "Sleep" he shows his friend sleeping through the night. But the movie I wanna watch is this one, called "Chelsea Girls". The movie actually has two parallel stories projected on the screen at the same time, one white and another black, signifying good and bad.
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Have you ever wondered how Dodo's became extinct? Well, the main reason for their extinction was their fearlessness. They were found in the Mauritius and they were never hunted by any animal. They were never the prey and so they dint have the sense of fear of being killed. So when man came into the island with dogs and pigs, the dodos were plundered and hardly ever ran away or resisted. They were easily the most courageous birds. What a shame.
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I really like pigeons. I'll go on to tell why later, but first the case of passenger pigeons. They were found in North America and during migrations their flocks were 300 miles long. There were about 5 billion of them before Columbus found America. Well, now the Europeans started hunting these birds and near it nesting grounds an estimate of 100,000 birds were hunted down everyday. Hunt, Hunt , Hunt. It carried on for quite sometime. The pigeons' strength lay in its numbers. And numbers were dwindling fast. The last flock of 250,000 birds was hunted down on a single day and it seems the hunters knew twas the last flock. I wonder what kind of people can do that. Be the cause of extinction of hapless birds.
Well, turns out the common pigeons we find in our homes are pretty smart. They are hunted by the Peregrine Falcon. The PF is the fastest bird and can reach speeds of 200 mph! But the pigeons does well when chased down by the falcon. 1stly, the falcon uses gravity to gain speed, so pigeons try their best to fly above the falcon. 2ndly the pigeon, since its smaller and slower can take a sharp turn and enter populated neighborhoods and dense forests. 3rdly, and my favorite trick, when the falcon is right above the pigeon and just about the grab its prey, the pigeon stops flying, acts dead and starts falling down just like stone! Now how many birds are smart enough to do that! awesome i say :D
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Coca Cola was first manufactured and sold in bottles in 1884 or summin. It was a drink consisting kola nuts, wine and cocaine. Yes. Cocaine.
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Wondered how Scooby Doo got its name? From the ending of the Frank Sinatra song "Strangers in the Night", where he goes "doo-be-doo-be-doo". Swear :P
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Now, I sincerely believe that Taxi Driver and Clockwork Orange are the two biggest mind screwing movies ever made. John Hinckley, Jr. fell in love with Jodie Foster after watching her in the movie Taxi Driver. He wanted to impress her desperately and wrote her many letters n stuff. She obviously dint respond. So the guy tries to what the protagonist does in the movie. Attempts to assassinate the president to get Jodie Foster's attention. "Failing to develop any meaningful contact with Foster, Hinckley developed such plots as hijacking an airplane and committing suicide in front of her to gain her attention. Eventually he settled on a scheme to win her over by assassinating the president, with the theory that as a historical figure, he would be her equal.", wiki says.
Before the attempt he writes to Foster saying
"Over the past seven months I've left you dozens of poems, letters and love messages in the faint hope that you could develop an interest in me. Although we talked on the phone a couple of times I never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. [...] the reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you."
He does attempt to kill off Reagan and Regan almost dies. But well, Foster aint impressed. hehe
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ah long post, so long. The world is a depressing place.

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Fear

We are crawling
Under the beams
Dodging flashlights
Without being seen
Yet still we crave to see
Through the darkened glass
Of who we want to be
And in fear, of what we become.

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Deep blue sea

I will keep this thought
to myself tonight.

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Pass

blink blink

can’t write,
not now,
and most nights
come to that.
and come to this;
this space
between thoughts
this moment now
used up by things.

blink blink

and it’s
gone.

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