Pools mean parties, exercise, relaxation, romance and the list goes on. Those who love the water know that a cool pool looks good and somehow blends with the landscape, environment, and the climate.

This pool in Algarrobo, Chile holds about 66 million gallons of water and built over 20 acres of land. When you see this pool, you will think you are seeing a mini-ocean. The Guinness World Book of Records gives it the title of being the largest pool in the world. The deepest point is at 115 feet and you might not want to swim here but kayaking is the in thing.

Aside from the comfy teak decks, romantic sunbeds, and pool concierge, the underwater music is just awesome. There are also spa pools in the roof complex overlooking the Victoria Harbor. You can also get some pool side tai chi lessons from the renowned master William Ng.

The main pool at the Viceroy hotel in Miami, Florida stretches 205 feet, making it the longest pool in Florida. They also have a big hot tub good for 80 persons. The hot tub is the world’s largest. The design of the pool wants to reflect the Miami River flowing through the downtown of the city, and it was able to achieve that as the pool passes through the condos of Icon Brickell.

This pool in Belgium is the deepest recreational pool in the world at 108 feet. It is one of the most famous diving facility because of its funky and playful design. It is a dive pit that features flat platforms, big windows for visitors, and even underwater caves for divers to explore.

The Tank is a one of a kind $30 million pool in the heart of the Sin City. You can swim with 16 kinds of sharks, stingrays, and about 300 varieties of fish. Okay, you cannot really swim, swim with them but there is a three-storey slide which will shoot through the 200,000 gallon tank in 8 seconds.

Some of the hottest events in the New York Times Square happen in this indoor pool. The lighting sets up the mood and the night gets wild when party goers make most of the 40 foot bar connected to the pool. There is a projector for movies, stadium seats, and a big shared sauna close to the DJ’s booth. Aside from the cool pool, celebrity sightings are very frequent.

At this pool in Darwin, Australia, visitors can get into the “cage of death”. It is a two person acrylic cage dropped from a monorail and gives you access to come face to face with 18 foot crocodiles. There is also another section of the pool where people can watch the crocs from afar. If you can not take being in the water with the big creatures there is also a pool where you can view baby crocodiles.

This is the only pool in the world where people can be lifted to ground level with water elevator. It is a big wet play ground. The 25,700 square foot destination has free form pools connected by a manmade rushing river that carries people at lazy river flows to white water crazy speeds. There are also slides to enjoy, scuba pool, and a Tarzan pool where you can swing from rope to rope.

Where in the world will you see a glass-encased staircase. If you are going down you can see the people in the swimming pool and they can also gawk at you. The excellent interior and exterior concepts are by Clodagh.

The Hayman Island Resort features a saltwater pool with a central fresh water pool. Yes, it is a big pool within a bigger pool the seven times the size of an Olympic pool. The resort is just near the Great Barrier Reef and it is the one of its kind in the southern hemisphere.

We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth
—Virginia Satir, family therapist

Hugging is healthy. It helps the body's immune system, keeps you healthier; cures depression, reduces stress, induces sleep. It's invigorating and rejuvenating, has no unpleasant side effects, and hugging is nothing less than a miracle drug.

Hugging significantly increases your body's production of endorphins.Hugging is all natural. It's organic, naturally sweet, no pesticides, no preservatives, no artificial ingredients, and 100% wholesome. Hugging is practically perfect: no moving parts,no batteries to wear out, no periodic checkups, low energy consumption, high-energy yield, inflation-proof, non-fattening, no monthly payments, no insurance requirements, theft-proof, nontaxable, nonpolluting, and, of course,fully returnable.

There are several types of hugs:

1. The A-frame hug - this involves only the heads touching of each person. It is more formal in nature and generally used on new acquaintances or in a business setting.

2. The Heart-Centered hug - it is considered to be the highest form of hugging. This involves full body contact by both parties. This form of hugging acknowledges each other from deep within. It is usually reserved for very close friends and family.

3. The Self hug - this involves you hugging yourself. This hug allows you to show yourself love and compassion. It gives you a sense of self- worth.

Young Arab women wait in an upmarket medical clinic for an operation that will not only change their lives, but quite possibly save it. Yet the operation is a matter of choice and not necessity. It costs about 2,000 euros (£1,700) and carries very little risk.

Sonia wants to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. She is a slender young brunette studying at art college in Paris.

Although born in France, Arab culture and traditions are central to Sonia's life. Life was strict growing up under the watchful eyes of a large traditional Arab family.

Now more and more of them are undergoing surgery to re-connect their hymens and hide any sign of past sexual activity. They want to ensure that blood is spilled on their wedding night sheets.

The social pressure is so great that some women have even taken their own lives.

With Chinese manufacturers leading the way, there are now non-surgical options on the market as well. One website sells artificial hymens for just £20 (23 euros). The Chinese hymen is made of elastic and filled with fake blood. Once inserted in the vagina, the woman can simulate virginity, the company claims.

It may be the 21st Century but the issue of virginity in Arab culture can still be a matter of life and death, especially for women like Sonia and Nada.

And while hymen repair may be a quick fix, it can't reconcile centuries of ingrained tradition with the attitudes of modern society.

1. The Rubik's Cube - The Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle. In a classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces is covered by nine stickers, among six solid colours (traditionally white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow). For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be a solid colour.

2. Sudoku - number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 sub-grids that compose the grid contains all of the digits from 1 to 9. Japanese people are smart, isn’t it?

3. Fifteen puzzle - who did not play fifteen in childhood? The game is very simple – you should place 15 tiles in order (1 to 15) by making sliding moves and using one empty space.


4. Crossword puzzle – his majesty crossword. It’s a word puzzle, nowadays known in different variations. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers.


5. Sokoban – warehouse keeper in translation, is a puzzle, where the player pushes boxes around a maze, viewed from above, and tries to put them in designated locations.Only one box may be pushed at a time, and boxes cannot be pulled.

6. Nonograms – also known as Paint by Numbers or Griddlers. It’s a picture logic puzzle in which cells in a grid have to be colored or left blank according to numbers given at the side of the grid to reveal a hidden picture.



7. Maze – Maze solving is the act of finding a route through the maze from the start to finish, technically the maze is distinguished from the labyrinth.




8. Jigsaw puzzle – is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of numerous small, often oddly shaped, interlocking and tessellating pieces. Jigsaw puzzles typically come in 300-piece, 500-piece, 750-piece, and 1,000-piece sizes, however the largest commercial puzzle has 24,000 pieces and spans 428 cm by 157 cm!


9. Tower of Hanoi – Towers of Hanoi is a mathematical puzzle. It consists of three rods, and a number of disks of different sizes which can slide onto any rod. The objective of the puzzle is to move the entire stack to another rod, obeying the following rules: Only one disk may be moved at a time; each move consists of taking the upper disk from one of the rods and sliding it onto another rod, on top of the other disks that may already be present on that rod; no disk may be placed on top of a smaller disk.

10. Spot the difference – very famous puzzle, where two images are shown, and the player has to find differences between them. Usually, the image on the left side is original, but the image on the right side contains some differences.

This is ‘prada marfa’, an unusual building located in the desert near Marfa, Texas on an otherwise desolate stretch of highway 90. Behind the glass a selection of shoes and bags.

Did you know that in some elementary schools, after Halloween and Christmas, Earth Day is the third largest celebrated holiday? Or how about that it is now observed in 175 countries and is the largest secular modern day holiday in the world? For more fun facts and to learn how much energy you save when you recycle one aluminum can, read more.

. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to watch a TV for three hours - it's equivalent to half a gallon of gasoline.

. Earth Day is a relatively new holiday and was first celebrated on April 22 in 1970. More than 20 million Americans participated in this first Earth Day celebration

. Earth Day was founded by a senator of Wisconsin and the day is credited for creating the environmentalism movement.

. April 22 is the first official day of Spring in the Northern hemisphere and of Fall in the Southern hemisphere and was chosen to be Earth Day for this reason.

. Never underestimate the importance of recycling: if every newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year. Unfortunately only 27% of all American newspapers are recycled.

. More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tinfoil. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.

. Only 11% of the earth's surface is used to grow food.

. The world's first national park was started in 1872 at Yellowstone National Park in the US.

. The first major international conference on environmental issues was held in Sweden in 1972 and was sponsored by the United Nations.

. The first wildlife refuge was formed on Pelican Island Florida in 1903.

. The patron Saint of ecologists is St. Francis and the first proclamation of Earth Day was made by the mayor of San Francisco in 1970.

. A highlight of the annual Earth Day ceremony at the United Nations is the ringing of the Peace Bell that was given to the UN by Japan. It is made from coins given by school children to further peace on our planet.

Happy Earth Day!

Q. Name the four seasons
A. Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar

The following questions were set in last year’s GCSE examination in England.

These are genuine answers from 16 year olds, not very bright, but entertaining, 16 year olds.

Q. Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink
A. Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists

Q. How is dew formed
A. The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire

Q. What causes the tides in the oceans
A. The tides are a fight between the earth and the moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins the fight.

Q. What guarantees may a mortgage company insist on
A. If you are buying a house they will insist that you are well endowed

Q. In a democratic society, how important are elections
A. Very important. Sex can only happen when a male gets an election

Q. What are steroids
A. Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs

Q. What happens to your body as you age
A. When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental

Q. What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty
A. He says goodbye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery
.

Q. Name a major disease associated with cigarettes
A. Premature death

Q. What is artificial insemination
A. When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow

Q. How can you delay milk turning sour
A. Keep it in the cow

Q. How are the main 20 parts of the body categorised (e.g. The abdomen)
A. The body is consisted into 3 parts – the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels: A, E, I, O and U

Q. What is the fibula?
A. A small lie

Q. What is the most common form of birth control
A. Most people prevent contraception by wearing a condominium

Q. Give the meaning of the term ‘Caesarean section’
A. The caesarean section is a district in Rome

Q. What is a seizure?
A. A Roman Emperor.

Q. What is a terminal illness
A. When you are sick at the airport.

Q. What does the word ‘benign’ mean?
A. Benign is what you will be after you be eight

Q. What is a turbine?
A. Something an Arab or Shreik wears on his head

See the rest here

Women Are More Talkative

One popular stereotype claims that women speak tens of thousands of words per day, while men manage to utter only a few hundred. In fact, there’s virtually no difference between the number of words spoken by men and those spoken by women. A 2007 study at the University of Arizona monitored 396 college students and found that both the men and the women spoke an average of about sixteen thousand words per day, without any statistically significant difference between the sexes. In the June 2007 issue of Science magazine, researcher Matthias Mehl reported that the study’s three chattiest subjects actually happened to all be men, each of whom uttered about forty thousand words per day.

Men Are More Competitive

In many societies, the stereotype is that men are competitive and women are collaborative. Some studies of Western subjects confirm this bias, but a study conducted by professors from Columbia University and the University of Chicago found surprising results in cultures that haven’t been subjected to this bias, such as the Masai, a patriarchal tribe from Tanzania, and the Khasi, a matrilineal group from India. In the patriarchal society, the men were more competitive than the women were, but in the matrilineal society, it was the women who were more competitive. The researchers interpreted their findings as evidence that there is no biological basis for competitive drive, and that differences between the sexes are merely social biases, reflecting the fact that young girls and boys are socialized differently.

Women Are More Emotional

Many studies have shown that there’s no difference in the experiences of emotion between men and women, but since women are already perceived to be the more emotional sex, they consistently score higher than men on tests of emotional expression. According to a study published in the February 2004 issue of Sex Roles: a Journal of Research, male and female subjects were equally likely to express feelings of sympathy or lend support to friends, but often the circumstances surrounding the outward expression of emotion are highly dependent on the context, such as whether the subject is being watched by onlookers.

Men Are Better at Math

It’s been established that boys tend to do better on math tests and are more likely than girls to choose math-centric career paths, such as engineering, technology, and computers. The real problem, though, is not an actual biological handicap, but the perception that girls are inferior at math. Many tests, like one professors at the University of Texas and New York University conducted, found that when they tested groups of people who were primed to think about the bias against women, the women scored poorly, but in groups that were primed to think about gender-neutral subjects, the score gap disappeared. This “stereotype anxiety” is a well-known psychological phenomenon in testing, and many researchers now believe it accounts for much of girls’ lower performance on math tests.

Women Are More Intuitive

Many women pride themselves on their powers of intuition, but new research reveals that intuitive, empathic thinking isn’t solely the province of ladies. A study conducted at the University of Hertfordshire in Great Britain tested subjects’ ability to decipher real smiles from fake ones. Although more women than men reported that they were “highly intuitive,” there was virtually no corresponding improvement in performance. Men detected 72 percent of the real smiles to women’s 71 percent. When asked specifically to decipher the expressions of the opposite sex, men did even better. They detected 76 percent of false female smiles, while women picked out only 67 percent of men’s fake smiles. Intuition is traditionally considered a female attribute, but research such as this shows that men’s and women’s abilities are just about even.


Read more here.

Showing Chinese sweatshop workers slumped over their desks with exhaustion, it is an image that Microsoft won't want the world to see.

Employed for gruelling 15-hour shifts, in appalling conditions and 86f heat, many fall asleep on their stations during their meagre ten-minute breaks.

For as little as 34p an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company.

This photo and others like it were smuggled out of the KYE Systems factory at Dongguan, China, as part of a three-year investigation by the National Labour Committee, a human rights organisation which campaigns for workers across the globe.

The mostly female workers, aged 18 to 25, work from 7.45am to 10.55pm, sometimes with 1,000 workers crammed into one 105ft by 105ft room.

They are not allowed to talk or listen to music, are forced to eat substandard meals from the factory cafeterias, have no bathroom breaks during their shifts and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.

The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They 'shower' with a sponge and a bucket.

And many of the workers, because they are young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC claimed.

Microsoft is not the only company to outsource manufacturing to KYE, but it accounts for about 30 per cent of the factory's work, the NLC said. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Logitech and Asus also use KYE Systems.

Read more here.

Elephants are the only mammal that can’t jump

First of all, just so you know, it is true that adult elephants can’t jump – if by jumping we mean the state of having no feet on the ground at the same time after propelling oneself from a stationary position. But contrary to the popular myth that it is is the only mammal that can’t, it is joined by a few others. Firstly, the sloth is unable to jump which suits its lazy lifestyle rather well. Also, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses also cannot jump, though unlike elephants, when they run it is possible for them to have all four feet off the ground.

The Fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was an apple

Nowhere in the Bible is the fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden referred to as an apple. The fruit is called the “fruit of the tree” (that is, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), and neither the fruit nor the tree is identified by species. In Middle English, as late as the 17th century “apple” was a generic term for all fruit other than berries but including nuts.
However, in continental European art from that period representing the Fall of Man the fruit is often depicted as an apple. The apple myth comes from a Latin word likeness: Latin mălus = “bad”, mălum = “an evil”, mālus = “apple tree” and “mast of a ship”, mālum = “apple (fruit)”.

You can extend your penis or widen its girth with special devices or medications

This is patently untrue and the source of millions of spam emails sent around the world every day. Vacuum pumps, pills, stretching techniques: none of them make one iota of difference to the size of your manhood (and consequently the engine size of your car). The only way to enlarge your penis is to have enhancement surgery. This is, obviously, extremely expensive, extremely painful, and extremely gruesome.

Jihad is an “Islamic war on the western world”

Jihad is not an “Islamic war on the western world” but rather a verb meaning to struggle or to strive. One can have an internal jihad, family jihad, or religious jihad, which may or may not include violence towards non-Muslims.
A comparison may be made with the term “crusade”, which is sometimes considered by Muslims to mean Western violence against Islam, when it is more often used as a metaphorical struggle; for example, “a crusade against drugs”.

Goldfish have a memory of only three seconds

The notion that goldfish have a memory of only three seconds is completely false
They have been trained to navigate mazes and can recognize their owners after an exposure of a few months.

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves

In fact, it freed little or no slaves. Why? Because the emancipation proclamation – 1862 – declared the freedom of all slaves in the confederate states – that is, the states over which Lincoln and the Union government had no control. Furthermore, it did not free slaves from any of the states that were already under union control. This would be like Australia trying to declare a law binding on New Zealanders, when they are two separate nations. The emancipation proclamation was, effectively, worthless. It was not until the Thirteenth Amendment, December 6, 1865, that slavery was officially abolished in full.

Shaving cause hair to grow back thicker or coarser or darker

Shaving does not cause hair to grow back thicker or coarser or darker. This belief is due to the fact that hair that has never been cut has a tapered end, whereas, after cutting, there is no taper. Thus, it appears thicker, and feels coarser due to the sharper, unworn edges. Hair can also appear darker after it grows back because hair that has never been cut is often lighter due to sun exposure.

Sugar cause hyperactivity in children

Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children Double blind trials have shown no difference in behaviour between children given sugar full or sugar-free diets, even in studies specifically looking at children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or those considered “sensitive” to sugar. In fact, it was found that the difference in the children’s behaviour was all in the parents’ minds.

There is a dark side of the Moon

There is no dark side of the Moon; every part of the Moon’s surface (except perhaps deep craters near the poles) is illuminated by the Sun roughly half of the time. The phrase uses the word “dark” in the less-frequent sense of “unknown” or “obscure” to refer to the far side of the Moon, which because of tidal locking is never visible from Earth.

The Great Wall of China is the only manmade structure visible from space.

It is commonly claimed that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the Moon. This is false. None of the Apollo astronauts reported seeing any man-made object from the Moon. The misconception is believed to have been popularized by Richard Halliburton decades before the first moon landing.