New Seven Wonders Of The World

There are different sorts of seven wonders like there’s the wonders of ancient world, medieval world and the recent one which is USA’s seven wonders. New Seven Wonders of the World was a project to update the seven wonders of the ancient world, which only has one wonder that currently exists. The Official New Seven Wonders of the World campaign started in 2001.

In 2007, more than 100 million people voted to declare the New Seven Wonders of the World. The following list of seven winners is presented without ranking, and aims to represent global heritage.
The new seven wonders are: Chichen Itza, Christ the Redeemer, Colosseum, Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, Petra, Taj Mahal and also the only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World, was granted an honorary site.

India's Taj Mahal, a tomb built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite wife. Is one of the most well-known of the chosen sites, and was built in 1653.

Jordan's Petra - the famed Rose City - also made the list. Petra was chosen by the BBC as one of "the 40 places you have to see before you die".

Peru's Machu Picchu (macho peko), 2,430m (8,000ft) up a mountain slope, and is the remains of an Inca city. The Incas started building the "estate" around AD 1400.

The Great Wall of China was a popular winner. built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire has concluded that the entire Great Wall, with all of its branches, stretches for 8,851.8 km (5,500.3 mi) making it the world's longest manmade structure.

The Colosseum in Rome, where gladiators once fought, is the only European building to make the list. Stonehenge, the Acropolis and The Kremlin all lost out. The Colosseum was completed in 80 AD and capable of seating 50,000 spectators.

Brazil's Statue of Christ the Redeemer, which gazes down over Rio de Janeiro, is one of three winners from Latin America. Christ the Redeemer statue has been looming over the Brazilians from upon Corcovado Mountain in an awe-inspiring state of eternal blessing since 1931. The 130-foot reinforced concrete-and-soapstone statue was designed by Heitor da Silva Costa and cost approximately $250,000 to. The statue has become an easily recognized icon for Rio and Brazil. It took five years to construct the 635 tonne statue.

Chichen Itza (checken litza) built by the Maya civilization in 600 AD is located in Mexico. The genius and adaptability of Mayan culture can be seen in the splendid ruins of Chichen Itza. This powerful city, a trading centre for cloth, slaves, honey and salt, and acted as the political and economic hub of the Mayan civilization.

And last but not least the Great pyramid of Giza, which was built in 2560 BC. Initially at 146.5 metres (480.6 ft), the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years, the longest period of time ever held for such a record.

Farnams Photography

Farnams Photography is a photography site, the photos in this site are from New Zealand.

Please check it out using this URL: http://www.farnamsphotography.blogspot.co.nz/


This is a brief description of the site:

My name is Farnam and I enjoy taking pictures of beautiful landscapes and sceneries, and fortunately there are a lot of sceneries in New Zealand to take photos. New Zealand is situated in the South Pacific Ocean. The country runs roughly north-south with mountain ranges down much of its length. In a couple of days' drive, you can see everything from snow-topped mountain ranges to sandy beaches, lush rainforests, glaciers and fiords, and active volcanoes. These environments lend themselves to many outdoor pursuits such as skiing, diving, hiking, kayaking, horse riding and sailing. New Zealand is a land of immense and diverse landscape. Youll see things here that you will not see in the same country anywhere else in the world. Much of these landscapes are protected by National Parks with thousands of kilometres of walks and trails opening their beauty to the public.

How do websites make money??

The websites that most of us use today, are free and even when you register or sign up it's free. But no one would make something that wouldn't make them money. To answer this question I have researched about this and this is how it works:

The great thing about an income generating website is that you do not even need to sell anything directly yourself.

You create a website about any subject you want, you attract loads of free visitors to it from search engines, some of whom will click on adverts and links to other sites. This bit is where the answer comes: you get paid either for every advert click or whenever someone buys something from one of the other sites you provide a link to.

Now just take a look at this link which is from the Time Magazine: Time Magazine list of the 50 best websites. Out of 50 of them, 36 are advertising supported, 18 of those rely on Google and 7. This list is the short answer to the question we wanted to find out.

Spiders pretending to be ants??!

What?? Spiders pretending to be ants??!! I didn’t believe it either when I first saw it, and that’s why I have written this to persuade you to believe it. And it’s not a lie.

Either they want to hide from predators, or just like the taste of ants, or just want to disguise themselves as an ant. Lots of spiders look so similar to ants that you can barely tell the difference, until they eat you!
Hope this helped and these images are some proof:









In the first picture, there is something really interesting, it looks like there are two spiders, but in fact it’s just one. It’s has over sized jaws to spar with other males and show off to the females, but since the ants don’t have monstrous fangs, the jaws themselves are disguised as an entire second ant.

The last photo is a Myrmarachne plataleoides, also called the Kerengga. It’s a jumping spider that copies the Kerengga or weaver ant in morphology and behavior. This species is found in India, Sri Lanka, China and many parts of Southeast Asia.
A good thing about these ant-like spiders is that they don’t bite people.
The body of the M. plataleoides appears like an ant, which has three body segments and six legs, by having constrictions on the cephalothorax and abdomen. The males resemble a larger ant carrying a smaller one.

Posted by Farnam

The Life Of A Cicada

Cicadas have an amazing life, but we only know them as the annoying insect in our backyard.

The adult insect, known as an imago, is usually 2 to 5 cm (1 to 2 in) long, although some tropical species can reach 15 cm (6 in), e.g. Pomponia imperatoria from Malaysia. Cicadas have well-known eyes which are set wide apart on the sides of the head, short antennae protruding between or in front of the eyes, and front wings. Also, commonly overlooked, cicadas have three small eyes.

Cicadas live underground as nymphs for most of their lives, at depths ranging from about 30 cm (1 ft) down to 2.5 m (about 8.5 ft). The nymphs feed on root juice and have strong front legs for digging.

Cicadas are commonly eaten by birds, and sometimes by squirrels.

After mating, the female cuts slits into the bark of a twig, and into these she deposits her eggs. She may do so repeatedly, until she has laid several hundred eggs. When the eggs hatch, the newly hatched nymphs drop to the ground, where they burrow. Most cicadas go through a life cycle that lasts from two to five years. But some species have much longer life cycles, such as the North American specie named Magicicada, which goes through either a 17-year or, in some parts of the world, a 13-year life cycle. These long life cycles might have been as a response to predators, a predator with a shorter life cycle of at least two years could not reliably prey upon the cicadas.


In the final nymphal instar(the development stage of insect), they make an exit tunnel to the surface and emerge. They then molt (shed their skins) on a nearby plant for the last time and emerge as adults. The abandoned exoskeleton remains, still clinging to the bark of trees.


Cicada nymphs suck xylem from the roots of various species of tree, including oak, cypress, ash, and maple.


Around 220 cicada species have been identified in Australia.
Cicadas have been eaten in China, Malaysia, Burma, Latin America, the Congo and in the United States. In North China, cicadas are skewered, deep fried or stir fried as a delicacy
Shells of cicadas are employed in the traditional medicines of China.

This video explains what I have just said in a video:

The World Cup

The FIFA World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams.
This important event is held every 4 years, the current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month.

A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s).
The 19 World Cup tournaments have been won by eight different national teams. Brazil has won five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. The other World Cup winners are Italy, with four titles; Germany, with three titles; Argentina and inaugural winners Uruguay, with two titles each; and England, France, and Spain, with one title each.
The World Cup is the world's most widely viewed sporting event.

OK let’s go into the history of it and how it was found.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.

Due to the success of the Olympic football tournaments, FIFA, with President Jules Rimet the driving force, again started looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 28 May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam decided to stage a world championship itself. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions and to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host country of the inaugural World Cup tournament.
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip across the Atlantic Ocean for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition. Rimet eventually persuaded teams from Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. In total thirteen nations took part: seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America.

The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.


The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football, but re-joined in 1946 following FIFA's invitation.
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982, and then to 32 in 1998, allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part.

Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, while a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
From 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the World Cup winner. It was originally simply known as the World Cup, but in 1946 it was renamed after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who set up the first tournament. In 1970, Brazil's third victory in the tournament entitled them to keep the trophy permanently. However, the trophy was stolen in 1983, and has never been recovered.

After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed; the new trophy is 36 cm (14.2 in) high, made of solid 18 carat (75%) gold and weighs 6.175 kg (13.6 lb).
From the 1938 World Cup onwards, host nations received automatic qualification to the final tournament. This right was also granted to the defending champions between 1938 and 2002, but was withdrawn from the 2006 FIFA World Cup onward, requiring the champions to qualify.

There are two stages in the world cup: the group stage followed by the knockout stage.
In the group stage, teams compete within eight groups of four teams each.
The other teams are assigned to different "pots", usually based on geographical criteria, and teams in each pot are drawn at random to the eight groups. Since 1998, rules have been applied to the draw to ensure that no group contains more than two European teams or more than one team from any other confederation.

The knockout stage is a single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. It begins with the round of 16 (or the second round) in which the winner of each group plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match and the final.

Since the 1958 FIFA World Cup, to avoid future boycotts or controversy, FIFA began a pattern of alternating the hosts between the Americas and Europe, which continued until the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The 2002 FIFA World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan, was the first one held in Asia, and the only tournament with multiple hosts. South Africa became the first African nation to host the World Cup in 2010. The 2014 FIFA World Cup will be hosted by Brazil, the first held in South America since 1978, and will be the first occasion where consecutive World Cups are held outside Europe.
The national football association of a country desiring to host the event receives a "Hosting Agreement" from FIFA, which explains the steps and requirements that are expected from a strong bid.
The Golden Ball for the best player determined by a vote of media members.
The Golden Boot for the top goal scorer.
The Golden Glove Award for the best goalkeeper.
The Best Young Player Award for the best player aged 21 or younger.
The FIFA Fair Play Trophy for the team with the best record of fair play.
The Most Entertaining Team for the team that has entertained the public the most during the World Cup determined by a poll of the general public.
An All-Star Team consisting of the best players of the tournament has also been announced for each tournament since 1998.

Extraordinary journey of Liz Murray

Liz Murray has inspired many people as she overcame her hardship to achieve success. Liz Murray grew up to heroin-addicted and HIV-infected parents. She did not attend school until 8th grade. Her mother also suffered from blindness and mental illness, and died of AIDS when Liz was 15. When her father moved to a shelter, Liz found herself living on the streets, eating from dumpsters and finding shelter on all-night subway routes. She had dismal grades due to poor attendance, but was accepted by the Humanities Preparatory School in Greenwich Village, where she encountered teachers who cared about her welfare. Liz began to read literature and study physics, but still had no stable place to stay. She did her homework in subway stations and stairwells. Because she started high school late (age 17), she doubled her course load and finished high school in two years. She received a New York Times scholarship for needy students and was accepted to Harvard, where she began classes in 2000.


Liz Murray was born on the 23rd of September, 1980. She was born from cocaine-addicted and alcoholic parents who would both get HIV later,although it should be noted that her parents did love her parents as they were highly intelligent but rendered hopeless by their drug dependence and consequent poverty. At a young age her tough life started as she was forced to eating ice cubes and toothpaste after her parents would spend the first-of-the-month welfare cheques on Happy Meals for Liz and her older sister,Lisa,for the first week and spending the rest of the money to buy drugs, "We ate ice cubes because it felt like eating. We split a tube of toothpaste between us for dinner." This tough life even affected her hair as her hair was so lice-ridden, the bugs literally fell from her head.Liz would turn up to school lice-ridden and was bullied for being smelly and scruffy and eventually dropped out. At 15,she left her house to get away from all that madness,and she would end sleeping in friends' apartments, on the subway or street, or in a motel, paid for by her abusive boyfriend.


She kept on living her uncontrolled and wild life until the age of 16, when her mother died of HIV/AIDS, and this caused her to jolt out of that lifestyle, "My mother gave me the gift of clarity. Unfortunately, she died and that's what it took for me to wake up, but I realized my mortality at 16." She learnt a valuable lesson from her mothers' death, "That moment taught me that life was malleable. If I could have a family and a home one night and all of it's gone the next, that must mean that life has the capacity to change. And then I thought, Whoa! That means that just as change happens to me, I can cause change in my life."

This self-motivation cause Liz to make herself a goal to achieve, and this goal was to complete her high school education in just 2 years(as she was 17 at that time), she had to accomplish this goal without a place to live and not having any regular attendance at school for years. She was commited to her goal and she showed this by fitting four years of school into two, all without a home, supportive parents, or even a bedroom in which to study. "High school was a marathon," she says."
She did a year's work a term and went to night classes. A teacher saw her gumption and mentored her. When he took his top 10 students to Harvard, she stood outside the university and instead of feeling intimidated she admired its architecture – and decided it was within her reach. Then she heard that the New York Times gave scholarships.  At that point, the media caught wind of her story."It started with the Times, and then a segment on 20/20, then, 'Hey, we'd like you to go on Oprah!' "


Her father died in 2006, also of Aids. His saving grace was that he encouraged her to read – and stole books from libraries to give her a love of literature. She has written a best selling memoir called 'Breaking Night' which was released in September 2010.

This link will take you to a short interview of Liz Murray,and in this interview she talks about her hardship and amazing journey.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtybvFW0ncY