Victoria Cowle has an IQ of 162, higher than higher than Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates. This puts her in the top 1% of British minds and qualifies her to enter Mensa next year. 

Only those with an IQ of 148 and above – the top 2 per cent of the population – qualify for Mensa. The average IQ across the western world is 100. This result has already granted her scholarships to four prestigious schools. 

Read more about her incredible results in the DailyMail


Cheers to prodigal children, the world needs more great minds!
-D-
[DailyMail]

Have a safe and happy weekend.

Cheers to a beer that rises to the occasion, will you?
-D-

If the news from Japan has your head spinning and you just can't make sense of the issues with the nuclear plant, take a break from it all and watch this. In this video Hank Green of the Vlogbrothers explains how nuclear reaction works and what a "meltdown" really is.
 Cheers to making sense of it all. DFTBA
-D-

Have a fun, happy and safe St.Patty's day folks! 

Cheers to cheers and cheers! Raise a glass to the living; make a toast to the dead!
-D-

Spring is finally just around the corner and the bikes are slowly taking back to the streets. I know, as both a cyclist and a motorist, the pros and cons of this scenario. I would just like to remind readers that cyclist are vehicles in Ontario, and most other Provinces and States. They must legally travel on the shoulder of the road or face fines upwards of $100.
This being said I would like to remind Ontario drivers that you must give cyclists a minimum of 1.5M when passing. That's about 3 1/2 feet. It's not much, but as someone who's witnessed injuries and known families who've even lost loved ones due to cyclist collisions, I can't stress how important it is. 

If you can't pass, just wait; You can mash the pedal and regain your speed and not have shaved more than a few seconds off your commute. Show some respect to bikes please. Keep in mind that your car, if it's not a uselessly large Hummer-type, takes up about 2/3 of the lane width on an average road. You can pass if you hug the yellow line, don't be afraid to give bikes some room. It's bad enough we're in the filth, the salt, the broken glass and the garbage...give us the dignity of making it home safe. It's the least we ask. 

Cheers to all the cycle-friendly drivers out there. We do appreciate it. 
-D-

As rebuilding goes, it does help to have an abundance of people in a relatively small space. This being said, i feel Japan is going to go down in the record books as being the rebound-country! Nowhere on Earth has a population been so efficient and so productive when it comes to rebuilding and restructuring the human geography of the country. Japanese workers have been incredibly diligent and have pulled through this tragedy in such an incredible manor it shames most other countries.

Cheers to a population of people who know how to get things done. There's no time to mope and whine, just time to rebuild!
-D-
[Imgur]

"This product image shows the new Pepsi bottle made entirely of plant material. The bottle is made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Ultimately, Pepsi plans to also use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business. The new Pepsi bottles are scheduled to begin appearing in 2012.PepsiCo/AP"

That's right, Pepsi Co. is set to abolish plastics by 2012. The new bottles will have a much shorter life on our planet and require less energy to decompose or recycle making them a huge advantage for the environment. The "plastic" of the bottles will be made from organic materials only and will have a much less devastating effect on the natural world.

Cheers to Pepsi for spending the needed time and money on research for such products. The Earth thanks you and so do we!
-D-
[CSMonitor]

Recently I showed you just how many satellites orbit our planet and just how dense this network has become. [Who's up there?] So it's no surprise that today there are networks of space lawyers who deal with collisions all the time. You might think that it's a bit much, but this video (below) shows just how devastating a piece of aluminium the size of a cherry can be to a 10cm thick piece of solid aluminium:

In the video you also see the increase in satellite traffic over the years. Amazing stuff.

Cheers to the physics of space, when you halve the gravity and reduce the friction to near 0 levels, amazing things happen.
-D-

Alex Koloskov, a photographer/artist, has put together a comprehensive how-to for "splash photography" wherein he explains how he made this amazing image, and many more. You might think that this is just a Pixar style animation, nothing but a rendered image, but you'd be wrong. Though this isn't just a live image (it's a stitch) it's real in most ways.

By photographing, manipulating, and rephotographing water splashes he is able to make these images from many samples of real water. So the image looks real, because it is...  in a way.

Watch the video below and see just how the process is done, and check out Koloskov's blog entry at Pixiq.

Cheers to incredible art derived from simple reality.
-D-
[Pixiq]

The Dalai Lama announced Thursday his plan to retire as political head of the exiled Tibetan movement, saying the time had come for his replacement by a "freely elected" leader.

For those who are unaware of the Lama's scandal over the years, let me grossly over-simplify the mess. The Dalai-class is a sort of priest-hood. They used to rule Tibet. Tibet is now contentiously governed by the communist government of China. Tibet has long yearned to be free and the Dalai Lama was set to be the ruler of the land if it was given up by the Chinese Gov.
Unfortunately the Chinese rule seems not entire dissimilar from the reign of these religious leaders who used to keep slaves and live in prosperity while the peasant class worked for a pitiful living.

The announcement that the Dalai Lama is stepping down then is a victory for the middle and lower classes. Though he will continue to be a spiritual leader, he will no longer push political supremacy on the people of Tibet. Is this then just a reaction to the violent protests in the Middle East overthrowing their regimes? Is the Dalai Lama simply retreating before things turn ugly?
We will never know whether this is the case, but what is for sure is that Tibet is one step closer to a free democracy! What they've always deserved.

Cheers to democracy spreading like wildfire; It's about time!
-D-