Sinkholes - frightening yet fascinating.They are holes created by the chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks. They are everywhere! They can form slowly or instantly, making them all the more intriguing and intimidating.
The Devil's Sinkhole. This was the original site for a limestone dig near Hawthorne, Florida. The Devil's Hole (sometimes referred to as the "Devil's Toilet Bowl" by the locals) is a fun spot for an afternoon dip. There is a rope swing, and two stands to jump from.
Sinkholes, also known as a sinks, shake holes, swallow holes, swallets, dolines or cenotes are common where the rock below the land surface is limestone, carbonate rock, salt beds, or rocks that can naturally be dissolved by ground water circulating through them - otherwise known as the karst processes.. As the rock dissolves, spaces and caverns develop underground. Sinkholes are dramatic because the land usually stays intact for a while until the underground spaces just get too big. If there is not enough support for the land above the spaces then a sudden collapse of the land surface can occur.Sinkholes may vary in size from 1 to 600 meters (3.3 to 2,000 ft) both in diameter and depth, and vary in form from soil-lined bowls to bedrock-edged chasms. Sinkholes may be formed gradually or suddenly, and are found worldwide. The different terms for sinkholes are often used interchangeably.Sinkholes may capture surface drainage from running or standing water, but may also form in high and dry locations.
This is a sinkhole in a parking lot at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA, USA
Prepared and Eaten Alive - JAPAN, CHINA, TAIWAN, KOREA
A great deal of you may already know about the customs of eating live food but for the rest of you:
I must warn you that if you have a weak stomach, or you are a vegetarian or just plain disgusted of even the thought of eating anything alive - I suggest you stop reading and go find something else on this blog to read because I for one could barely make this post, lol, since I'm so used to the western way of eating, you know, making sure it's good and dead before cooking and eating it. But as usual, since I'm so darn curious and is always interested in all aspects of cultures from around the world, I just had to add this!
Now, scientists claim the live fishes served feel no pain, but I've always wondered how they tested that theory... were they a fish once and lived to tell about it? Or was it because the fish didn't squeal like a banshee as they were being eaten alive? Anyways...
Us westerners 'distance' ourselves from our food sources a great deal. So much so that most of us don't even have a clue as to how the meats that eventually end up on the shelves of our local supermarkets came to be.
In all fairness, Japanese tradition holds that we should be grateful to the animals who gives us sustenance, and to acknowledge our relationship to them. Whether I agree with this ideology or not is really irrelevant (even though I'm still not sure how eating them alive acknowleges this), but showing respect to the way certain cultures do certain things is what it's all about. After all, I'm sure some of them are just as grossed out about our 'Big Macs' and 'Whopper' burgers and mcnuggets and God only knows what else.
I don't know if I can really eat food that stares right back at me, or twitches or flaps around.. I don't know. Maybe if I try not to make eye contact or something... As long as they don't start with cows or pigs.... I think I'll be ok...
Ikizukuri (Live sashimi), JAPAN
In Japanese cuisine, ikizukuri or ikezukuri(生き作り/活け造り, “prepared alive”) is the preparation of sashimi from a living sea animal such as fish, shrimp, lobster and octopus. Ikizukuri usually begins with the customer selecting from a tank in the restaurant, the animal they wish to eat. The chef, who is often a sashimi chef takes the animal out of the tank and filets it, but without killing the animal, which is served on a plate, sliced, with the heart still beating. Other variants of ikizukuri involve temporarily returning a filleted fish to an aquarium, to swim around until recovered for a second course of soup. Ikizukuri of fish consists of thin, sheet-like slices or finger-sized pieces sometimes garnished with lemon wedges, a decoration of ginger, or nori (seaweed). Squid and small octopus are usually wrapped around a chopstick and eaten whole.
Ikizukuri is a controversial method of preparing food, both in Japan and elsewhere.
Typically ikizukuri style is used with fish like carp or snapper, octopus, squid, lobster or shrimp. This is a very old technique, at least 2000 years old, first brought to the West a decade ago by Nobu Matsuhisa.
When restaurants in the West started serving it, ikezukuri experienced an inevitable backlash from animal rights groups. After a Japanese chef demonstrated the technique on a Los Angeles television station, he received hundreds of angry calls, including death threats.
Lobster Ikizukuri
Live Squid Sashimi
Drunken Shrimp and Ying Yang Fish, CHINA and TAIWAN
Drunken shrimp is a popular dish in portions of China based on fresh-water shrimp that are often eaten alive, but stunned in a strong liquor—baijiu (白酒)—to make consumption easier. Different parts of China have different recipes for it. For example, the shrimp are sometimes made drunk and then cooked in boiling water rather than served live, and in other recipes cooked shrimp are marinated in alcohol after they are boiled.
However, in some parts of China, for example, Shanghai, drunken shrimp is not only served raw -- it's alive. A bowl of live shrimp is served “swimming” in very strong rice wine.
The point of the rice wine serves many purposes apparently: it would sanitize the shrimp, mellow out the shrimp, eventually kill the shrimp and flavor the shrimp. This dish seems simple enough: Get shrimp, add alcohol. Wait a few minutes.. then eat.
The alcohol/rice wine is suppose to relax them. I've also read that it is best to start devouring your drunken shrimps once they seem a bit.. you know, drunk. The idea being they will be less resistant (even though I don't see why WE need anymore advantage over these things). However some enthusiasts say the taste is better the more active the shrimp is. The flavor is in the fight and so on and so on.
Ying Yang fish or Yin Yang fish (also called dead-and-alive fish) is a dish (mostly Ying Yang Fish and Carps) where the fish's body is deep-fried but still has a fresh and moving head. It is popular in China, but it originated in Taiwan where chefs use it to show customers how fresh the food is. Cooking of this dish is now prohibited in Taiwan.
Drunken Shrimp in Shangahi
Drunken Shrimp in Guilin
It involves serving LIVE shrimp doused in that strong Chinese liquor, baijiu.
Annual Chinese Competition
Demonstrates how to 'semi' cook and prepare a live fish (Ying Yang Fish) and snake.... The mouth of the fish has to still be moving when you eat it or the chef fails.
Sannakji, KOREA
Sannakji or sannakji hoe is a variety of hoe, or raw dish, in Korean cuisine. It consists of live nakji (hangul: 낙지, a small octopus) that has been cut into small pieces and served immediately, usually lightly seasoned with sesame and sesame oil. The nakji pieces are usually still squirming on the plate. It can also be served whole.
Because the suction cups on the arm pieces are still active when the dish is served, special care should be taken when eating sannakji. The active suction cups can cause swallowed pieces of arm to stick to the mouth or throat. This can also present a choking hazard for some people, particularly if they are intoxicated. One must thoroughly chew so that no piece is big enough to stick to one's throat. Some people like the feel of the pieces wriggling as swallowed, and so will not completely chew up the particles. Those who are new to eating sannakji should completely chew it up into tiny particles before swallowing.
Sannakji (live octopus) in Seoul, Korea
Try Eating a WHOLE Octopus all at once
Ok, I think I've seen enough 'live' food squirming around on a plate for one day. It's fascinating these different ways of eating... fascinating.
If any of you ever watched that show FEAR FACTOR, I'm sure you've seen episodes of westerners eating live worms.... uh, to win money of course but it shows maybe we can all do this "eating it raw and still moving" thing. Some of us also eat live oysters. So, I guess in a way, we are not so different from these cultures.
1900, Congress made gold the monetary standard for U.S. currency. They set its value at $20.67 an ounce. This same month back in 2008, gold futures hit an all-time high, topping $1,000 an ounce!
1906, A powerful earthquake and a full day of aftershocks rock Taiwankilling over 1,200 people. This terrifying day of tremors destroyed several towns and caused millions of dollars in damages.
1937, Nearly 300 students at The Consolidated School of New London, Texas were killed by an explosion of natural gas at their school.
1944, Britain announces that all travel between Ireland and the United Kingdom is suspended, the result of the Irish government's refusal to expel Axis-power diplomats within its borders.
1959,Barbie dolls arrived in stores. Today, there are more Barbie dolls than people in the United States!
1964, Elizabeth Taylor married her fourth husband, Richard Burton. Filmdom's most famous co-stars had met on the set of Cleopatra a year earlier. They divorced in 1974 and remarried in 1975, but the second marriage only lasted one year. Taylor split from her eighth husband, Larry Frotensky, in 1996, and has not remarried - yet!
1971, An earthquake set off by a series of calamities—a landslide, flood and avalanche-- resulted in the destruction of the town of Chungar, Peru, and the death of 600 of its inhabitants.
1972, Francis Ford Coppola directed The Godfather. It was the first of a trilogy based on Mario Puzo's novel about a crime family. It won three Oscars. A few years ago, a hat Al Pacino wore in the movie sold at an auction for $16,100!
1989, Exxon Valdez runs aground. The worst oil spill in U.S. territory begins when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, runs aground on a reef in Prince William Sound in southern Alaska. An estimated 11 million gallons of oil eventually spilled into the water. Attempts to contain the massive spill were unsuccessful, and wind and currents spread the oil more than 100 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 700 miles of coastline. Hundreds of thousands of birds and animals were adversely affected by the environmental disaster.
1992, A 6.8-magnitude earthquake near Erzincan, Turkey, and an unusually powerful aftershock two days later kill at least 500 people and leave 50,000 people homeless. Erzincan was a provincial capital city of 90,000 people 600 miles east of Istanbul in Central Turkey. The people of the area were no strangers to earthquakes--deadly quakes had struck the area in 1047, 1547, 1583, 1666, 1784 and 1939. It was a Friday evening during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when the 1992 earthquake struck; most people in Erzincan and the surrounding area were sitting down for their evening meal. Seventeen seconds of powerful jolts and rocking began at 7:19 p.m., bringing down buildings and all electricity in the region.
One casualty of the quake was the minaret on top of the Demirkent Mosque—it toppled and fell, killing 27 people.
2003, The United States, along with coalition forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiated war on Iraq.
(7) Ghost Towns of the American West are what come to mind for many when they think of abandoned settlements. However, there are fascinating abandonments all over the world. Some of these have a clear historical reason for being deserted, while the abandonment of others remains a mystery. Here are six more amazing examples of urban deserts.
(6)San Zhi, Taiwan is an abandoned settlement on the outskirts of Taipei, Taiwan. A mysterious series of accidents led this would-be tourist town to go unused upon its completion. Further, regional beliefs also kept the abandoned settlement from demolished – for fear of angering spirits dwelling in the complex.
(5)Near Genoa, Italy is a small abandoned village. What would cause people to leave such a beautiful place? To be fair, though, the ruins left behind are aesthetically compelling in their own right. The structures are remarkably intact and provocative.
(4)Promyshlennyi, Russia was abandoned with the fall of the Soviet Union, cut off from communication with and support from the government. When utilities and electricity stopped working, people simply left to find a home an work elsewhere, leaving buildings behind and many belongings in the wreckage.
(3)New York, USA has a surprising number of abandoned airfields – directly in and around the city. Given the relative density of the city and its surroundings it seems unusual that these have been left unused for so long. Each of these anomolous airfields has its own story.
(2) Tere-Hole, Siberia is a lake with a recently dicovered treasure in the middle: a ruin dating back 1500 years. Located in a vast wilderness of lakes, this long-abandoned stronghold is 600 by 450 feet. Excavations this year may reveal ancient artifacts.
(1)Pripyat, Ukraine was once a thriving city of 50,000, but was abandoned following the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. For a long time the amazingly preserved city – rapidly abandoned by the populace – was a virtual museum, a snapshot of the times. Pripyat has since been looted and only images and architecture remain. The site will be unfit for human habitation for hundreds of years due to nuclear fallout.
