Star Wars Meets Hello Kitty!!!

The below images are Photoshop illustrations of Star Wars / Hello Kitty characters by a talented artist named Joseph Senior. And, by talented, we mean UNBELIEVABLY FREAKING AWESOME!!!!
If these were actual toys, I’m sure they’d sell out in an instant. Mr. Lucas… You should hire this guy, team-up with the Hello Kitty people and make a fortune together!!

Hello Storm Trooper Kitty

Hello Darth Vader Kitty

A Very Feminine Hello Boba Kitty

Hello C3PO

Hello Rebel Pilot Kitty

Hello Boushh Kitty

Hello Snow Kitty

Hello H2K2

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Amazing Anara Tower

Anara Tower is the most cool and nice architecture on the world. Located in Dubai. The 125-story skyscraper is about 700 meters tall and vies for the tallest spot. The building will also host 300 residential apartments.

Interesting Underworld Exploration: Caving With Stephen Alvarez

Buzz up!

Cave systems are the last underground frontier to be explored; they hold secrets that took thousands of years to form and can be damaged by the slightest touch. Cave conservation is necessary to keep the underground playground unspoiled, to keep the cave ecosystem and bio-network from collapsing. Many cavers don’t reveal cave locations for fear that others will damage or destroy the ecosystem. Cave photographer Stephen Alvarez captures and shares those previously unseen moments and unique environments in the uncharted underworld of caves.

Caving with Stephen Alvarez

Imagine living for subterranean adventures where you are attached to a rope and slowly lowered 450 feet down into a dark underground world. This underworld has been in the making for a millennium, yet remains mostly untouched by man. Few people explore the vast and uncharted underground of caves, but National Geographic adventure photographer Stephen Alvarez is a caver by trade.

Hanging by a rope in the pitch-blackness, Alvarez coordinates other dangling cavers. At the same precise instant, all of them ignite magnesium flash powder. In that split second, while the cave is brightly lit, Alvarez captures the image with his camera.

On the upper right, a caver starts his 1,234-foot descent into Sótano de las Golondrinas in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The cave’s entrance is the second deepest in the world, but it offers a tiny bit of light into the otherwise dark pit.
Caving with Stephen Alvarez

Alvarez thrives on the underground danger that he and fellow cavers explore throughout the world. Since most people will not experience this same adventure, Alvarez shares the delicate ecosystems with us through his photo documentaries. Due to time restrictions, only the main tunnel beyond the cascade in Mageni was explored. On an island off Papua New Guinea, white-water rivers disappeared into a limestone cave that had numerous uncharted and unexplored side tunnels.

This is the Walls of Jericho in Tennessee. It is a 98-foot decent into a pit, Hytop Drop. Deep inside the earth, it has a large, bowl-shaped natural amphitheater which is nicknamed the Grand Canyon of the South.

This is deepest known cave pit in the continental United States. Fantastic Pit in Georgia’s Ellison’s Cave descends 586 feet straight down into the darkness below.

The limestone is both slick and razor sharp, surrounded by underground raging rapids. Unlike the bat in the bottom picture, most of the time, cavers can see only as far as their headlamps cut into the darkness. With Alvarez along and shooting images, they all work together to light it up and capture that blink of time.

This photo adventure shoot was of Majlis al Jinn Cave, Oman. It was to determine if Oman’s 50-story deep cavern could be safe for tourists.

A shaft of sunlight shines down into the pit. Caves maintain the same temperature all year, tending to feel cool in the summer and warm in the winter. On the bottom left is Iron Hoop Cave, a long, horizontal river cave in Alabama. On the right, razor-edged limestone pinnacles are sharp enough to kill a man in Borneo’s Tardis Cave.

To get this panoramic composite which is four images of Rumbling Room in Tennessee, the cavers had to descend a 68-foot shaft. The cavern is 350 feet high, so they communicated via hand-held transceivers for the precise second to illuminate Rumbling Falls Cave.

In Handprint Cave in Belize, ancient Mayans took pigment and blew it on the walls around their hands to create negative handprints. Alvarez has been all over the world. He started his photojournalist magazine career with Time Magazine to photograph Mammoth Cave. Then, for National Geographic, his worldwide adventures and photo shoots of exotic and uncharted underground locations catapulted him to fame.

Photojournalist Stephen Alvarez photographs much more than adventuring inside the dangerous yet delicate cave ecosystems. Alvarez produces global stories about culture, exploration, religion, and the aftermath of conflict. His images have won awards like Pictures of the Year International, Communication Arts, and have been exhibited at Visa Pour L’Image in Perpignan, France. He spends a great deal of time exploring the underground. When above ground, Alvarez lives with his family in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Tiger Shark Barfs Up Human Leg

Bahamian investment bankers catch 12 foot tiger shark with human leg in its mouth, human remains in stomach.

(Graphic, NSFW Photos Below.)
The shocked fishermen couldn’t believe their eyes. Upon reeling in the 12ft beast off the coast of the Bahamas Islands, they saw what appeared to be a human leg in its jaws.
The investment bankers decided to take the monster back to shore, where local authorities opened up the animal to find a severed right leg, two severed arms, and the torso of an adult black male.
Humprey Simmons, one of the investment bankers who caught the tiger shark, described the scene when the shark was caught. He stated that: “We tied the rope around his tail fin and pulled him towards the boat. We were going to cut the hook out of his mouth and let him go when he regurgitated a human foot – intact from the knee down.”
After seeing the leg, Mr Simmons and his friends said they feared the shark may contain more body parts because it was “unusually heavy.” He went on to say that: “While pulling up my line, I noticed that it was extra heavy. There was so much stink coming from the shark’s belly and the belly was so huge that we thought that there might be more bodies inside.”
Mr Simmons added that the body was that of a “black man, of heavy build and heavy structure. He had neither clothes nor any identifying marks.”
The body is believed to that of missing sailor Judson Newton. Mr. Newton was last seen attempting to swim to shore from a broken down boat in August. Police say that partial fingerprints on the remains do match Mr. Newton, but they are still awaiting results of DNA testing for final confirmation.
The 43-year-old Newton had been out boating with friends off New Providence Island on August 29, 2010 – when their boat stalled. He and one other friend decided to swim to land to find help, but neither of the men were seen again. Three other men were later found aboard the boat by a rescue crew.
Samuel Woodside, one of Newton’s friends, said Newton was a “strong swimmer”, so he had been surprised when he had been told that his friend had probably drowned.

A Turtle Nests on a Queensland Beach

Outfoxing foxes has resulted in many more baby turtles being given a chance at life in central Queensland.

Climate Change and Sustainability Minister Kate Jones said fox-baiting programs have led to a dramatic turnaround in the marine turtle populations in the Bundaberg region.

"Since comprehensive fox-baiting programs were introduced we've seen a remarkable turnaround," Ms Jones said.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s as many as 90 per cent of turtle nests were destroyed by foxes.

Less than five per cent of nests now fall victim to the feral dogs, Ms Jones said.

During the latest nesting season at the protected turtle hatchery of Mon Repos staff and volunteers recorded about 1600 turtle nests with about 200,000 eggs laid.

"No clutches were destroyed by foxes along the Woongarra Coast this year," Ms Jones said.

"A few hatchlings were eaten on the beach by foxes.

"Without fox control, large numbers of these nests would not have survived and most of the eggs would have been destroyed."

The Bundaberg coast, south of the Burnett River, hosts the eastern Australian shoreline's biggest population of nationally threatened marine turtles including loggerhead, flatback and green turtles.

Mon Repos beach on the Bundaberg coastline also supports the largest loggerhead turtle population within the South Pacific Ocean region.

Ms Jones said the benefits of the fox baiting program would be seen on the adult turtle population over the next decade.

"Loggerhead turtles take 30 years to mature so the impact of protecting turtle nests from foxes in 1990 will not be seen on the nesting beaches with increased numbers of resulting adults until one generation later, in about 2020," she said.

Wighty Houdini croc captured

After twenty three days since he was first spotted at Cockle Bay on Magnetic Island, the crocodile we've called Wighty Houdini was captured this morning at Ned Lees Creek on Magnetic's west coast and Magnetic Times was on hand to document the drama as it unfolded.

The 3.5 metre estuarine croc which had been relocated from the tip of Cape York to Barramundi Creek in a National Park, about 50kms south of Townsville was fitted with a satellite tracker as part of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Croc's in Space program - a research project designed to understand the movements of saltwater crocs. The project went pear-shaped however when Wighty (named after a local who first reported him) and Houdini (following an amazing escape from an EPA netted creek) decided, a month or so after his release into the Haughton River delta, a place with a low density of the critters, to make his way north, in what could have been an attempt to return 1000kms home to Bamaga on the tip of Cape York.

Instead of simply passing by, for reasons unknown, W.H. arrived at Magnetic Island where he began to explore the creeks and beaches and, in so doing, making life both exciting for locals and tourists but having a massive impact on businesses reliant on water sports.

It was therefore very sad to learn that Pleasure Divers in Arcadia actually closed their doors for business yesterday after suffering extensive losses since being prevented from taking divers into the water.

Magnetic Times spoke this morning to Dave Swinburn, Pleasure Divers' Manager who happened to learn of Wighty's capture and showed up to witness the moment.

Dave, an Englishman, has worked for four years in Australia and is on a Migration Sponsorship visa by which he needs to be working in Australia to stay in the country - his long term dream. Dave told Magnetic Times, "At the moment I'm a bit indifferent (to WH's capture). We closed our doors yesterday. Whether we recover is another matter.

"I've been on the phone to the department about compo. It was their fault - they put him there"

Yesterday Magnetic Times asked Member for Townsville Mike Reynolds if he would support a compensation claim against losses but his only answer was, "If a business owner wishes to proceed with a claim it will be their responsibility to make such a claim to the Queensland Government."

Magnetic Times is presently seeking comment from the EPA on compo but MI's Community Development Association President, Lorna Hempstead has suggested a way through the problem.

She wrote to Mike Reynolds this morning prior to the capture suggesting natural disaster funding as a possibility.

"It would seem that this might be a sensible way for Island businesses and the government to sit down and consider compensation over the income lost due to our crocodile problem, wrote Lorna Hempstead.

"While the EPA officer made a 'wrong call' in the light of subsequent events, I have no doubt that the relocation was done with the best of motives. However, it has gone wrong, and it is the State Government's officers, so it is the Government's problem.

"This event had a clear date of commencement, and will have a closure - hopefully very soon. All affected businesses would be able to demonstrate business loss, and TEL can provide information on the overall drop in tourist numbers, the reach of the negativity of the media reporting and the costs to remediate this with a marketing campaign. Could you advise the most direct course of action for the business community please?

Dave Swinburn said, "Hopefully the government will do their job and look after its constituents. If they don't what's the point of them being there?"

A rally to protest the government's seeming intransigence on the issue will be held at Alma Bay at 1pm on Sunday.

Following is a Magnetic Times photo essay on the capture of the now infamous croc, Wighty Houdini who is now on his way to an EPA holding pen before being offered to zoos and croc farms.