Lake Retba in Senegal
A boat floats on what looks like a huge strawberry milk-lake.
The wooden vessels were photographed from the air bobbing on Lake Retba, in Senegal.
From above the mass of water - which spans one square mile - looks staggeringly similar to a giant milkshake.
And just like the Dead Sea swimmers are even able to FLOAT on the water with ease.
The bizarre colour is caused by high levels of salt - with some areas containing up to 40% of the condiment.
Michael Danson, an expert in extremophile bacteria from Bath University, said: “The strawberry colour is produced by salt-loving organism Dunaliella salina.
“They produce a red pigment that absorbs and uses the energy of sunlight to create more energy, turning the water pink.
“Lakes like Retba and the Dead Sea, which have high salt concentrations, were once thought to be incompatible with life - hence the names. But they are very much alive.”
Salt collectors can often be seen scouring the expanse to remove the valuable mineral - but first have to coat their skin with sheer butter.
This helps protect their skin from exposure to the intense salt levels in the three metre deep lake.
Salt crystals cling to the bodies of miners who work the lake everyday to extract its contents.
And towering piles of collected salt litter the shoreline.
Villagers then process it before selling and using the valuable mineral. (via)
(via theatlantic)
Jogjakarta, Indonesia
Why Joan Rivers reads obits: “That’s how I meet new men. The minute it says ‘Sadie Schwartz’ I know, ‘Go to that funeral.’”
Montreal police arrest 12 as hundreds march in post-Grand Prix protest
Protesters sent a clear message Sunday night that while the Canadian Formula One Grand Prix may be over, their nightly demonstrations will continue.
After a weekend of violence and arrests that put Quebec’s student protests back on the international stage and brought claims of police “profiling,” several hundred marched in a downtown demonstration that almost immediately was declared illegal.
Windows were smashed, notably those at the offices of the Caisse de depot pension manager and at the National Bank.
A police cruiser was also damaged and police said they made 12 arrests — nine for bylaw infractions and three for alleged criminal offences, including assault. It was the 48th consecutive night that protesters gathered in Montreal. (Photos: Gazette; Reuters; AFP/Getty Images)
DAILY PIC: With just minutes left in my visit to the great Documenta art festival, in Kassel, Germany, I discovered my favorite work: an abandoned old house repurposed and reinhabited by Theaster Gates and a crew from Chicago, with help from locals. They furnished various bedrooms with stylish beds and tables and wardrobes, all made from found scrap. (It was some of the best design work I’ve seen —like Martino Gamper’s deluxe DIY, only done out of necessity.) Other rooms were rehabbed as video lounges or performance spaces.
When I stopped by, Gates and some colleagues were performing classic free jazz – cello, doublebass, voices, guitars … as well as paper ripped beside a mike. At first, I was annoyed at such obvious modernist cliches. And then I realized that this wasn’t about producing great musical art. It was about the sociability that allowed the music to happen — more like Risk played in a hippie-house than Ornette Coleman playing a gig.
Gates sees art as a genuine solution to problems. He won’t let a neglected building, or silent space, get the better of him. One way or another, artmaking can be used to fill both.The Daily Pic, along with more global art news, can also be found on the Art Beast page at TheDailyBeast.com.
(via newsweek)
![theatlantic:
U.S. Military Admits Major Mistakes in Iraq and Afganistan
When President Obama announced in August 2010 the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq, he complimented the soldiers who had served there for completing “every mission they were given.” But some of military’s most senior officers, in a little-noticed report this spring, rendered a harsher account of their work that highlights repeated missteps and failures over the past decade, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
There was a “failure to recognize, acknowledge and accurately define” the environment in which the conflicts occurred, leading to a “mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions, and goals,” says the assessment from the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. The efforts were marked by a “failure to adequately plan and resource strategic and operational” shifts from one phase of the conflicts to the next.
From the outset, U.S. forces were poorly prepared for peacekeeping and had not adequately planned for the unexpected. In the first half of the decade, “strategic leadership repeatedly failed,” and as a result, U.S. military training, policies, doctrine and equipment were ill-suited to the tasks that troops actually faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5gkeqf35b1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
U.S. Military Admits Major Mistakes in Iraq and Afganistan
When President Obama announced in August 2010 the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq, he complimented the soldiers who had served there for completing “every mission they were given.” But some of military’s most senior officers, in a little-noticed report this spring, rendered a harsher account of their work that highlights repeated missteps and failures over the past decade, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
There was a “failure to recognize, acknowledge and accurately define” the environment in which the conflicts occurred, leading to a “mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions, and goals,” says the assessment from the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. The efforts were marked by a “failure to adequately plan and resource strategic and operational” shifts from one phase of the conflicts to the next.
From the outset, U.S. forces were poorly prepared for peacekeeping and had not adequately planned for the unexpected. In the first half of the decade, “strategic leadership repeatedly failed,” and as a result, U.S. military training, policies, doctrine and equipment were ill-suited to the tasks that troops actually faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
Make A Splash
It’s Monday. Let’s do this.
Artwork by David Hockney: A Bigger Splash (1967), courtesy of MNZ.
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(via nprfreshair)
Mouth IV, near Shanghai, from Yangtze, The Long River
