Head of the ANAS Institute of Geology's - Mud Volcano Department - Adil Aliyev told APA today that they received information about a volcano that erupted in Baku, Shabran region of Azerbaijan. Employees of the Institute of Geology have been sent there and will carry out research in the area.
Aliyev said that they didn’t have exact information how much area the volcano eruption covered and how long it lasted: “We have received information from the region that the volcano erupted. We should clarify whether it was eruption or not because we sometimes receive false information from the people. Thus, relevant researches should be carried out. Exact information will be available after the researches.”
Azerbaijan and its Caspian coastline are home to nearly 400 mud volcanoes, more than half the total throughout the world.
In 2001, one mud volcano, located 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Baku, made world headlines when it suddenly started ejecting 15 meters high flames.
In the Spring of 2001, volcanic activity under the Caspian Sea off the Azeri coast created a whole new island.
Mud volcanoes are one of the visible signs of the presence of oil and gas reserves hidden deep beneath land and sea in the Caspian region. They are essentially channels for releasing pressurized gas and mineral water and interesting because of their comparison to Mars. NASA geologists studying Mars have concluded that mud volcanoes of Azerbaijan are similar to uplands of the planet for their structure.
Featured image: Mud volcano in Azerbaijan. July 2009 - Interfase
The Bwiti cult and other secret cults from West Africa use Iboga
to communicate to their dead ancestors. In many ways its effects and use
are similar to the better known Ayahuasca from South America but the
effects of the Iboga can be stronger and last much longer.
It is the yellowish root that contains the active alkaloids; the
root bark is shaved and eaten directly or as a powder drank in an
infusion. Cult Shamans use the Iboga Root Bark to seek information from
the spiritual world and they may consume this for a full day before
asking advice from the ancestors.
Much research has been done with using Ibogaine (The active alkaloid
in Iboga) for drug addiction therapy. The results have been spectacular
with about a 90% success rate when taken in one high dose by an opiate
or even alcohol addict it drastically reduces the withdrawal symptoms
and gives the patent an insight with clear visions into his or her own
life, revealing the personal cause of the addiction. This in turn
enables the patient to go for months without a relapse.
I don't do NSFW (not safe for work) warnings. If you don't work around other adults,get a real job or start your own company.
Here's Erwan's Facebook post from the other day, copied here and posted with his permission (along with a few edits).
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Yesterday my wife Jessika posted this graphic on Facebook....and somebody reported her for "pornography." This world is really filled with utterly pathetic people, who can't enjoy art, who can't enjoy beauty, who can't enjoy pleasure, who can't enjoy nature, who can't enjoy freedom—theirs or others; who can't...enjoy much in life.
You have a body, you were born naked, and you have sexual desires and they are healthy and beautiful. I'm sorry for you if you have learned to feel shameful for having a body and sexual desires, if you have learned to judge and repress them, because you're going to miss out on a lot in life.
Pornography means visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings. Pornography can be extremely disgusting when violence, defilement, and destruction are associated with it, and when indeed all notions of sacredness and deep connection have been removed from the act of physical love.
By posting this artistic expression, Jessika intended to stimulate erotic, aesthetic, emotional and spiritual feelings altogether. Why? Because so many people need to see love, including physical love, in a healthy way again; without shame, and actually with confidence and appreciation...and respect and depth. This is how it should be. It is easy to look at anyone and guess who's having good sex and who's not. One of the primary reasons why people are unhappy and depressed in life is because their sexual life SUCKS. And it often sucks not because they don't have a functional body that can't do it, but because they're morally and ethically dysfunctional, along with a warped perception of sexuality and their own body that prevents them from enjoying it. BOOM.
If you can't stand a simple picture of a couple making love, then probably you have a very poor sexual life, if any sexual life at all, and you're unable to see the beauty, the liberation and energetic empowerment that a healthy, deep and sacred sexual life can bring. And for this reason you are a sad person. And because you can't stand others enjoying sex, very confident with their sexual life, you're utterly pathetic. And I wouldn't be surprised if, actually, you were one of these many people who secretly consume actual pornography, when nobody's around. Sexually frustrated people consume pornography. Sexually fulfilled individuals enjoy their body, their sensations, their pleasure and their physical, emotional and spiritual relationship with their partner with grace, honor and respect...and do not need pornography.
Learn to be happy and confident with your own body and your sexuality. You will make the world a better place, starting with your own internal world, which secretly CRAVES for sexual healing and satisfaction. And above all, learn to let others alone and keep your OBSOLETE "morals" at bay.
If you are one of my Facebook "friends" and have issues with people healthily enjoying the gifts of nature, please-please-please do un"friend" me, do un"follow" me, as there's little chance I could have actually ever met you in person...and if I ever did, I would have zero interest in interacting with you because you might be one these super boring, internally repressed people I avoid like the plague.
Do you hear me? Having an issue with representations of the naked body and sexuality IS having an issue with the naked body and sexuality, and if you're having an issue with the naked body and sexuality then maybe you are the deviant person?! Yes, maybe YOU are!
I don't care who you love and how you love. But you've got to love and let love, love and let live, or at least live and let love.
“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.” ― John Lennon
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Amen, and amen. My 5-day MovNat experience with mon copain Erwan begins right here. Each evening after all the events and awesome Paleo dinner, Erwan and I would drive into town to a restaurant parking lot with WiFi, so I could draft the day's post while he got caught up on business.
I was one of the first people Erwan contacted when he decided to establish MovNat as an international natural movement phenomena that involves challenging movement over ground, in the trees, over rocks and other obstacles, carrying heavy things, swimming, underwater endurance, and even hand-to-hand self-defense combat. Here's a post about our first encounter in 2009: We Live in a Zoo. And here's Ewan in the original 3-minute video that made everyone insanely crazy and excited. You'll probably watch it more than once.
I can honestly say that Erwan Le Corre is among a very small handful of the coolest people I've ever enjoyed the pleasure of befriending. He doesn't have a fake cell in his body, he's impeccably honest, thoughtful and kind—though immensely confident, steadfast, determined.
The North Sentinel Island is among the Andaman and Nicobar Islands which is a group of 572 islands in the Bay of Bengal between Myanmar and Indonesia. These islands were formally a part of the Republic of India. However India has declared a few of these islands including the North Sentinel Island closed to the outsiders in order to preserve the distinct culture of these lands.
The North Sentinel Island is home to the Sentinels, a small tribe who is noted for vigorously resisting attempts of contact by outsiders and has inhabited the island for thousands of years. The island is completely untouched by modern civilization and its inhabitants kill any outsiders who try to get too close to their land. No one has ever gone or left this island without fleeing immediately or being slaughtered by the Sentinelese upon arrival. They drive off fishermen, journalists, anthropologists and government officials with their spears and arrows.
They are said to be directly descended from the first human populations to emerge from Africa, and have probably lived in the Andaman Islands for up to 60,000 years. Possibly no other people on this earth are as isolated, as the Sentinelese. Their present numbers are estimated to be anywhere between 50 and 400 individual. The 28 square mile island is roughly the size of Manhattan and is low-lying, heavily forested and protected by a barrier of coral reefs.
The fact that their language is so different even from other Andaman islanders suggests that they have had little or no contact with the other people for thousands of years. The Sentinelese maintain an essentially hunter-gathering society, obtaining their subsistence through hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plants; there is no evidence of any agricultural practices. Attempts To Contact:
The first real threat to the natives of North Sentinel Island appeared in 1858, when the British established a penal colony at Port Blair on nearby South Andaman Island to pacify the local tribes. They would kidnap a member of an unfriendly tribe, hold him for a short period, treat him well, and then shower him with gifts and let him return to his people.
In 1880 a large, heavily-armed party led by 20-year-old Maurice Vidal Portman, the British colonial administrator, landed on North Sentinel and made what is believed to be the first exploration of the island by outsiders. Several days passed before they made contact with any Sentinelese, because tribe members disappeared into the jungle whenever strangers approached. Finally, after several days on the island, the party stumbled across an elderly couple who were too old to run away, and several small children. Portman brought the two adults and four of the children back to Port Blair. But the man and the woman soon started to get sick and then died, probably from exposure to Western diseases like smallpox, measles, and influenza, to which they would have had little or no resistance. So Portman returned the four children to North Sentinel Island and released them with gifts for the rest of the tribe. The children disappeared into the jungle and were never seen again.
Since 1967 Indian authorities have attempted to make peaceful contact with the Sentinelese under the auspices of anthropological research. Small parties in the early 1970s were turned away by arrows. A documentary team and some police officers got the same fierce welcome in 1974: The film’s director took an 8-foot-long arrow in the thigh.
Some government-sponsored groups made brief trips to the island in the late 1980s and early ’90s, largely under the direction of the Indian anthropologist T.N. Pandit. Mr. Pandit and his colleagues left gifts of coconuts, knives, cloth, candy, aluminum cookware, mirrors, rubber balls, beaded necklaces, plastic buckets. (video here)
Some Unintentional Contacts:
When a Hindu convict escaped in 1896, he drifted 30 miles on a makeshift raft and washed up on North Sentinel. A search party found his body a few days later on a beach, punctured by arrows and his throat cut.
Other unintentional encounters include on August 2, 1981,a Hong Kong freighter navigating the choppy waters of the Bay of Bengal ran aground on a submerged coral reef. The ship, called the Primrose, was hopelessly stuck. The crew stayed on their boat for a few days, when the saw native people advancing towards their ship, armed with spears, bows and arrows .The captain made a distress call via radio and the crew were airlifted to safety by helicopter.
The last recorded contact with the Sentinelese was in 2006, when the Sentinelese archers killed two fishermen who were fishing illegally within range of the island. The archers later drove off, with a hail of arrows, the helicopter that was sent to retrieve the bodies.
Today anyone with a laptop and internet access can use Google Earth to spy on places that are not meant to be seen by outsiders. But when you look down on North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal, all you can make out is the wreck of the Primrose, still stuck on the reef. You can't see the Sentinelese, their dwellings, or anything else that might shed light on how many people there are on the island, or how they live there. The dense jungle that covers every inch of the island except the beaches conceals everything: Even when viewed from outer space, the Sentinelese remains free from prying eyes. [sources: 1,2,3,4,5]
Just how deadly a killer is marijuana? Here's a GIF showing all of the people who have died after overdosing on pot:
Yeah, not a single person has ever died from a weed overdose. We don't have numbers on pandas, but we're guessing it's about the same. According to one frequently cited study, a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint in order to be at risk of dying.
In a joint letter written to Holder on Friday, law enforcement organizations warned that his move would lead to more crime, violence and even death.
While high driving may be a concern, Colorado, Washington and federal authorities have all taken steps to keep people off the road after using marijuana. The two states both have their own restrictions, and Holder said in his statement that the DOJ would still prosecute individuals or entities to prevent "drugged driving."
The police groups also make a number of additional controversial claims that marijuana use itself leads to violent behavior, suicidal thoughts and interest in harder drugs. Scientific studies have not been able to prove this causation conclusively, however, and research has also suggested that THC has significant therapeutic value to patients suffering from cancer, AIDS or glaucoma.
None of this is to say that the nation doesn't struggle with broader issues of drug and alcohol abuse and overdose. Drug policy reformers and activists gathered around the world over the weekend to discuss the overdose epidemic. In 2010, overdoses were responsible for 38,329 deaths. Sixty percent of those were related to prescription drugs. In the same year, a total of 25,692 persons died of alcohol-induced causes, including accidental poisoning and disease from dependent use.