January 2012 ~ Incredipedia

International Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin

The 28th Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival will start on December 1, 2011 and last to February 29, 2012. The ceremony will be officially launched on January 5, 2012. As it before the festival is held with many winter activities, such as alpine skiing, sledding, winter-swimming, ice sculpture competition, ice & snow carnival, ice lantern exhibition and firework display etc.

The annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival has been held since 1963, interrupted for a number of years during the Cultural Revolution until it was resumed in 1985. Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang province, in northeastern China. It is nicknamed "Ice City" and aptly so for winter January temperatures that average minus 18 degrees Celsius, under the influence of the cold winter wind from Siberia.

In these stunning photographs the festival's amazing sculptures are seen illuminated from the inside after night has fallen - with visitors meandering in between the impressive works.

Those who attend the event can navigate the ice cities on foot or via the festival's horse and carriage rides. As well as walking around and marvelling in awe at the colourful creations, they can also zip down snowy slides or climb up the staircases of ice castles and investigate what's inside.
The Harbin Ice and Snow Festival is one of the world's top ice festivals.

The best collections of ice artworks are exhibited in the following five main places:

Harbin Ice and Snow World - came into being in 1999 and is one of the world's largest ice architecture parks. The inspiration for the ice and snow sculptures there usually is derived from traditional Chinese fairy tales or world famous architectures such as the Great Wall, the Egyptian Pyramids, etc.
Ice Lantern Garden Party - ice lantern in broad sense refers to a series of plastic arts using ice and snow as raw material combining ice artworks with colored lights and splendid music. The specific patterns of ice lantern include ice and snow sculptures, ice flowers, ice architectures and so on.
Sun Island Scenic Area - is the site of the Snow Sculpture Exposition displaying a wonderful snow world. It has the world's largest indoor ice and snow art museum and it opens to the public from November every year.
Zhaolin Park - is a 'must see' during the Harbin Ice Festival because it has a traditional program that shows the most excellent ice lanterns. With water, lights and the natural ice from the Songhua River running through Harbin as the material, the ice lanterns are made by freezing water, piling up ice or snow, then carving, enchasing, decorating, etc.
Yabuli International Ski Resort

Recommended Tours for Harbin Ice and Snow Festival Harbin:

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Yugo 55 - synonym for the brave

The saddest thing is these cars are bad as the picture shows ...

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“Band of Holes” , Pisco Valley, Peru

Length: about 1450 m (4,800 feet)
Width: about 20 m (65 feet)
Estimated number of holes: 6.900
Latitude: 13 ° 42'55 .37 "N
Longitude: 75 ° 52'28 .46 "E
Height of observation: about 950 m (3100 feet)

Most people know about the Nazca Lines, however there is another, less known, unexplained mystery in Peru, near Pisco Valley, in the plain called Cajamarquilla. There is thousands and thousands of man-sized holes that are carved into stones. These holes incredibly stretch over one mile over the hills and valleys, are here for a long time. Local people have no idea who made them or why. It is ridiculous that no one had idea what it is until they have been photographed from above...

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Dutchman Ralf van der Zajden (34) was sitting in a coffee shop and drinking coffee, and talked with people around like any other guest. But in fact, he was born 1500 miles away, in the Dutch city, Scheveningen, near The Hague.

The first time I came to Belgrade in the year 2004. Between the 2007th and 2010th I come on every three months, and in March last year I definitely came in and decided to live in Belgrade. I do not know how to explain why exactly, but the atmosphere makes you feel at home.

He started with iBikeBelgrade, where visitors learn about Belgrade in bicycle tours. But as winter is not exactly ideal for biking, Ralph figured out other ways to do the same job in a manner appropriate to the season. He founded the Academy of Belgrade nightlife! City has become the world's only metropolis that has that kind of "scientific institutions"!

Ralf's Academy teaches you where to eat the best barbecue or burek in the early morning hours, which and where is the best rakia, local branded famous drink...and when you are maximum relaxed and feel like dancing and singing on the table like everybody else around, he teach you how to distinguish the authentic of silicone beauty...

In fact, this is a serious project, and the Academy has three directions in which participants indicate:

1.Kafana Class (culture life in a bar)
2.spirit of Belgrade
3.Belgrade Underground (secret of capital underground)

My intention is to show people why Belgrade is different and better than other European cities. He has some unique things that nowhere else could find.

More and more cheap flights to Belgrade, which suits us. This year Belgrade will be the best city to visit!

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Directed panspermia

Panspermia - the idea that life exist across the whole Universe and it can be transferred from one location to another.

Directed panspermia - the idea that life might have been intentionally spread throughout space and seeded on the surface of other worlds by a guiding intelligence.

In August 1996, teams of scientists found in Antarctica a meteorite that contains fossils blasted off from the surface Mars about 15 million years ago. Than 4kg Stone labeled ALH84001 contains balls of carbon originating from micro-organisms while they were alive. Several tests for organic material have been performed on ALH84001 and amino acids and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) have been found.

The late Nobel prize winner Professor Francis Crick, OM FRS, along with British chemist Leslie Orgel proposed the theory of directed panspermia in 1973. A co-discoverer of the double helical structure of the DNA molecule, and gen HAR1, which separates us from animals, for which Crick found it impossible that the complexity of DNA could have evolved naturally.

The strategy of directed panspermia may have already been pursued by an advanced civilization facing catastrophic annihilation, or hoping to terraform planets for later colonization.