Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth

By Sam Hughes

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.



You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily.

Go to the List >>>

Note: This presentation was first published by Sam Hughes on his own web site. It is encouraged that you check out Hughes' site for the latest on this topic, as well as additional methods he puts on a "less scientifically probable" list, plus a list of natural ways that the Earth might cease to exist. He also provides source information, reader comments, and links to related material.

Sam Hughes's Website: http://qntm.org/destroy

So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do not think this will be easy.

Mission statement

By any means necessary, to render the Earth into a form in which it may no longer be considered a planet. Such forms include, but are most definitely not limited to: two or more planets; any number of smaller asteroids; a quantum singularity; a dust cloud.

To make the list, a method must actually work. That is, according to current scientific understanding, it must be possible for the Earth to actually be destroyed by this method, however improbable or impractical it may be.

Methods are ranked in order of feasibility, with the least likely listed first and the most likely being No. 10.

Current Earth-destruction Status

* Number of times the Earth has been destroyed: 0
* Number of plans currently in progress with the final aim of bringing about the Earth's destruction: 0
* Number of scientific experiments currently underway with the potential to bring about the Earth's destruction: 0
* Minimum amount of time until the Earth is destroyed by natural means (discounting total existence failure): 25 years
* Minimum amount of time until the Earth is destroyed by artificial means: 50 years

What this guide is not

This is not a guide for those whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and many of the methods outlined inside will take many years to even become available, let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other planets; indeed, other star systems.

If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are available and feasible right now. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.

This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore

Method #1

Current feasibility rating: 0/10

You will need: nothing

Method: No method. Simply sit back and twiddle your thumbs as, completely by chance, all 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms making up the planet Earth suddenly, simultaneously and spontaneously cease to exist. Note: the odds against this actually ever occurring are considerably greater than a googolplex to one. Failing this, some kind of arcane (read: scientifically laughable) probability-manipulation device may be employed.

Utter, utter rubbish.

Method #2

Feasibility rating: 1/10

You will need: a stable strangelet

Method: Hijack control of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, New York. Use the RHIC to create and maintain a stable strangelet. Keep it stable for as long as it takes to absorb the entire Earth into a mass of strange quarks. Keeping the strangelet stable is incredibly difficult once it has absorbed the stabilizing machinery, but creative solutions may be possible.

A while back, there was some media hoo-hah about the possibility of this actually happening at the RHIC, but in actuality the chances of a stable strangelet forming are pretty much zero.

Earth's final resting place: a huge glob of strange matter.

Method #3

Feasibility rating: 2/10

You will need: a microscopic black hole. Note that black holes are not eternal, they evaporate due to Hawking radiation. For your average black hole this takes an unimaginable amount of time, but for really small ones it could happen almost instantaneously, as evaporation time is dependent on mass. Therefore you microscopic black hole must have greater than a certain threshold mass, roughly equal to the mass of Mount Everest. Creating a microscopic black hole is tricky, since one needs a reasonable amount of neutronium, but may possibly be achievable by jamming large numbers of atomic nuclei together until they stick. This is left as an exercise to the reader.

Method: simply place your black hole on the surface of the Earth and wait. Black holes are of such high density that they pass through ordinary matter like a stone through the air. The black hole will plummet through the ground, eating its way to the center of the Earth and all the way through to the other side: then, it'll oscillate back, over and over like a matter-absorbing pendulum. Eventually it will come to rest at the core, having absorbed enough matter to slow it down. Then you just need to wait, while it sits and consumes matter until the whole Earth is gone.

Highly, highly unlikely. But not impossible.

Earth's final resting place: a singularity of almost zero size, which will then proceed to happily orbit the Sun as normal.

Source: "The Dark Side Of The Sun," by Terry Pratchett. It is true that the microscopic black hole idea is an age-old science fiction mainstay which predates Pratchett by a long time, he was my original source for the idea, so that's what I'm putting.

Method #4

Feasibility rating: 5/10

You will need: 2,500,000,000,000 tons of antimatter

Antimatter - the most explosive substance possible - can be manufactured in small quantities using any large particle accelerator, but this will take some considerable time to produce the required amounts. If you can create the appropriate machinery, it may be possible - and much easier - simply to "flip" 2.5 trillion tons of matter through a fourth dimension, turning it all to antimatter at once.

Method: This method involves detonating a bomb so big that it blasts the Earth to pieces.

How hard is that?

The gravitational binding energy of a planet of mass M and radius R is - if you do the lengthy calculations - given by the formula E=(3/5)GM^2/R. For Earth, that works out to roughly 224,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules. The Sun takes nearly a WEEK to output that much energy. Think about THAT.

To liberate that much energy requires the complete annihilation of around 2,500,000,000,000 tonnes of antimatter. That's assuming zero energy loss to heat and radiation, which is unlikely to be the case in reality: You'll probably need to up the dose by at least a factor of ten. Once you've generated your antimatter, probably in space, just launch it en masse towards Earth. The resulting release of energy (obeying Einstein's famous mass-energy equation, E=mc^2) should be sufficient to split the Earth into a thousand pieces.

Earth's final resting place: A second asteroid belt around the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: AD 2500. Of course, if it does prove possible to manufacture antimatter in the sufficiently large quantities you require - which is not necessarily the case - then smaller antimatter bombs will be around long before then.

Method #5

Feasibility rating: 5/10

You will need: a light bulb

Method: This is a fun one. Contemporary scientific theories tell us that what we may see as vacuum is only vacuum on average, and actually thriving with vast amounts of particles and antiparticles constantly appearing and then annihilating each other. It also suggests that the volume of space enclosed by a light bulb contains enough vacuum energy to boil every ocean in the world. Therefore, vacuum energy could prove to be the most abundant energy source of any kind. Which is where you come in. All you need to do is figure out how to extract this energy and harness it in some kind of power plant - this can easily be done without arousing too much suspicion - then surreptitiously allow the reaction to run out of control. The resulting release of energy would easily be enough to annihilate all of planet Earth and probably the Sun too.

Slightly possible.

Earth's final resting place: a rapidly expanding cloud of particles of varying size.

Earliest feasible completion date: 2060 or so.

Source: "3001: The Final Odyssey," by Arthur C. Clarke

Method #6

Feasibility rating: 6/10

You will need: a black hole, extremely powerful rocket engines, and, optionally, a large rocky planetary body. The nearest black hole to our planet is 1600 light years from Earth in the direction of Sagittarius, orbiting V4641.

Method: after locating your black hole, you need get it and the Earth together. This is likely to be the most time-consuming part of this plan. There are two methods, moving Earth or moving the black hole, though for best results you'd most likely move both at once.

Very difficult, but definitely possible.

Earth's final resting place: part of the mass of the black hole.

Earliest feasible completion date: I do not expect the necessary technology to be available until AD 3000, and add at least 800 years for travel time. (That's in an external observer's frame of reference and assuming you move both the Earth and the black hole at the same time.)

Sources: "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy," by Douglas Adams; SPACE.com

Method #7

Feasibility rating: 6/10

You will need: a powerful mass driver, or ideally lots of them; ready access to roughly 2*10^32J

Method: Basically, what we're going to do here is dig up the Earth, a big chunk at a time, and boost the whole lot of it into orbit. Yes. All six sextillion tons of it. A mass driver is a sort of oversized electromagnetic railgun, which was once proposed as a way of getting mined materials back from the Moon to Earth - basically, you just load it into the driver and fire it upwards in roughly the right direction. We'd use a particularly powerful model - big enough to hit escape velocity of 11 kilometers per second even after atmospheric considerations - and launch it all into the Sun or randomly into space.

Alternate methods for boosting the material into space include loading the extracted material into space shuttles or taking it up via space elevator. All these methods, however, require a - let me emphasize this - titanic quantity of energy to carry out. Building a Dyson sphere ain't gonna cut it here. (Note: Actually, it would. But if you have the technology to build a Dyson sphere, why are you reading this?) See No. 6 for a possible solution.

If we wanted to and were willing to devote resources to it, we could start this process RIGHT NOW. Indeed, what with all the gunk left in orbit, on the Moon and heading out into space, we already have done.

Earth's final resting place: Many tiny pieces, some dropped into the Sun, the remainder scattered across the rest of the Solar System.

Earliest feasible completion date: Ah. Yes. At a billion tons of mass driven out of the Earth's gravity well per second: 189,000,000 years.

Source: this method arose when Joe Baldwin and I knocked our heads together by accident.

Method #8

Feasibility rating: 7/10.

You will need: a big heavy rock, something with a bit of a swing to it... perhaps Mars

Method: Essentially, anything can be destroyed if you hit it hard enough. ANYTHING. The concept is simple: find a really, really big asteroid or planet, accelerate it up to some dazzling speed, and smash it into Earth, preferably head-on but whatever you can manage. The result: an absolutely spectacular collision, resulting hopefully in Earth (and, most likely, our "cue ball" too) being pulverized out of existence - smashed into any number of large pieces which if the collision is hard enough should have enough energy to overcome their mutual gravity and drift away forever, never to coagulate back into a planet again.

A brief analysis of the size of the object required can be found here. Falling at the minimal impact velocity of 11 kilometers per second and assuming zero energy loss to heat and other energy forms, the cue ball would have to have roughly 60% of the mass of the Earth. Mars, the next planet out, "weighs" in at about 11% of Earth's mass, while Venus, the next planet in and also the nearest to Earth, has about 81%. Assuming that we would fire our cue ball into Earth at much greater than 11km/s (I'm thinking more like 50km/s), either of these would make great possibilities.

Obviously a smaller rock would do the job, you just need to fire it faster. A 10,000,000,000,000-tonne asteroid at 90% of light speed would do just as well. See the Guide to moving Earth for useful information on maneuvering big hunks of rock across interplanetary distances.

Pretty plausible.

Earth's final resting place: a variety of roughly Moon-sized chunks of rock, scattered haphazardly across the greater Solar System.

Earliest feasible completion date: AD 2500, maybe?

Source: This method suggested by Andy Kirkpatrick

Method #9

Feasibility rating: 8/10

You will need: a single von Neumann machine

Method: A von Neumann machine is any device that is capable of creating an exact copy of itself given nothing but the necessary raw materials. Create one of these that subsists almost entirely on iron, magnesium, aluminum and silicon, the major elements found in Earth's mantle and core. It doesn't matter how big it is as long as it can reproduce itself exactly in any period of time. Release it into the ground under the Earth's crust and allow it to fend for itself. Watch and wait as it creates a second von Neumann machine, then they create two more, then they create four more. As the population of machines doubles repeatedly, the planet Earth will, terrifyingly soon, be entirely eaten up and turned into a swarm of potentially sextillions of machines. Technically your objective would now be complete - no more Earth - but if you want to be thorough then you can command your VNMs to hurl themselves, along with any remaining trace elements, into the Sun. This hurling would have to be achieved using rocket propulsion of some sort, so be sure to include this in your design.

So crazy it might just work.

Earth's final resting place: the bodies of the VNMs themselves, then a small lump of iron sinking into the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: Potentially 2045-2050, or even earlier.

Source: "2010: Odyssey Two," by Arthur C. Clarke

Method #10

Feasibility rating: 9/10

You will need: Earthmoving equipment

Method: Hurl the Earth into the Sun. Sending Earth on a collision course with the Sun is not as easy as one might think; even though you don't actually have to literally hit the Sun (send the Earth near enough to the Sun (within the Roche limit), and tidal forces will tear it apart), it's surprisingly easy to end up with Earth in a loopy elliptical orbit which merely roasts it for four months in every eight. But careful planning can avoid this.

This is impossible at our current technological level, but will be possible one day, I'm certain. In the meantime, may happen by freak accident if something comes out of nowhere and randomly knocks Earth in precisely the right direction. Earth's final resting place: a small globule of vaporized iron sinking slowly into the heart of the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: Via act of God: 25 years' time. Any earlier and we'd have already spotted the asteroid in question. Via human intervention: given the current level of expansion of space technology, 2250 at best.

Source: "Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers," by Grant Naylor

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The Diamond Ring Hotel of Abu- Dabi

In this project realezovano highest in the world wheel of review, reports newspaper "khalidzh the Times". It will appear in the territory of the constructed gigantic tourist complex "The Diamond Ring" and will be opened in 2008. It is expected that dubayskogo the wheel will become more famous than the gigantic wheel of review "London Ay", that is been one of the most popular attractions and symbol of Great Britain





















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Grand Canyon Skywalk

"canyon by itself impresses. But if you can leave above the canyon, then here this - actually, it is actually freightening ", says the author of idea David tszin' (illustration MRJ Architects). This idea was borne in 1996 in the head of businessman on the name David tszin' (David Jin), who arrived in the canyon from Las-Vegasa to the excursion with its family. After infecting by idea, Tszin' assembled the group of the investors, who politely agreed to isolate into project $10 of millions and more. Moment, it is necessary to say that was selected that being suitable, since people, which lives next to the large canyon - Indians from the tribe Of valapai (Hualapai Nation), about 2 thousand people - exactly obtained government Grants and they gathered, on the whole of $40 of millions in order to convert the western part of the canyon (4 square kilometers) into the popular tourist center. But on the bottom of canyon - Colorado river for this it is necessary to build new hotels and cafe, to bring into order airport and so on.

Certainly, it would be rather well create some new sights. On the whole, the Indian organization Grand Canyon West as corporation Grand Canyon Resort, that were decided to increase the attendance of canyon by 250%, to bring it to 500 thousands, and that 3 million people per year, the undertaking caught the fancy, and they gave good. The development of design studied engineers from company Lochsa Engineering and specialists from firm MRJ Architects. "when we encountered the idea of this project, to us she seemed by such wild, that we could not refuse", acknowledged architect Mark Johnson.



As a result the glass bridge Grand Canyon Skywalk in the form of horseshoe, which comes out above the canyon to 20 and more appeared (thus far on the paper) it was meter. , in order to draw investors, David has himself the entire heap of the pictures of bridge (photo John Gurzinski/Las Vegas Review-Journal). It is understandable that the "vitreousness" of bridge is deceptive - with the building were used more than 450 tons of steel constructions, in particular - twigs with the diameter of 6,5 centimeters. On its surface the bridge can simultaneously accept 120 tourists, but drafters say that this number does not show true "load capacity", strength and reliability Skywalk. According to them, "celestial path" can maintain the weight into 36,5 thousand tons, equivalent to 72 aircraft Boeing 747

The Invisible Grip: The Art of Lying?

Esquire Magazine


WHEN I WAS VERY SMALL, my dad could always tell when I was lying. When I was about six years old, he told me God whispered it to him. Even though the guy never went to church or seemed particularly religious, I had to respect that. He had an in with God. I wanted to hear it. I figured if I knew when it happened, the precise moment, I'd hear the voice of God, too.

I decided to watch my dad's eyes for a sign — some twitch of recognition, some little break in his concentration, anything — that would tell me when he was hearing the voice of God. I told him easy lies, the ones I always told him: that my brother did it, or that my neighbor, a little asshole named Charlie Iker, made me do it — broke the vase, left the gate unlatched, cracked the storm window. At first I didn't even want to blink, for fear I'd miss the moment when God spoke. But the truth is, I got nothing. No sign. Bubkes. In fact, the more I looked at his eyes, the more I began to realize that my dad had no idea that I was lying. None. He looked straight back at me, waiting to hear the next thing I would tell him. In fact, he was hanging on my words. There was no voice of God. My father wasn't listening to anyone but me. He had no idea when I was lying, especially if I stared him down the whole time.

The trick, I soon realized, was simply to look him in the eye as I spoke. So it was that I became an atheist and a proficient liar in one fell swoop. Such were my salad days.

A PERSON'S GAZE has weight, resistance, muscularity. Clearly, there are people who use their eyes well. You know them: the sales rep, the fundraiser, the tyrannical supervisor. Their eyes force the question. These people may be as dumb as streetlamps, but they are an undeniable presence in the room. They know they must be dealt with. You know it, too.

It is a very particular skill set. The eye-contact specialist is like the one guy in the game of pickup basketball who knows only how to box out for a rebound. Relentless and a little annoying, he uses his skill, presses his opponents with the fundamentals. It may not work every trip down the court, but eventually things bounce his way. Over time, this habit — establishing and maintaining eye contact — creates favorable situations and produces results. The eye-contact specialist gets talked to first, dealt with most promptly, and responded to most thoroughly. He's always first in line for a reason.

And for the one who's being looked at, eye contact sends a message, signaling acknowledgment, connection, and attention, signaling something, I suppose, like empathy. Being seen is, on some level, being felt. It's nice to be acknowledged. Even so, why does eye contact, wielded freely, always feel like a weapon to me? Why do I want to smack people who stare at me deeply while I'm talking about mixed drinks or V-6 engines, about the names of banks or the price of a gallon of gasoline? Maybe the true signal is less subtle, less friendly than "I'm paying attention to you." Whether he admits it or not, that person is participating in one very large bet that you will blink first. That guy, the one who's looking at you — straight at you, right into you — is getting something that you are not. It's called the upper hand.

Well, that's my preferred hand. So I did my thing. For four weeks I tried to use eye contact to get what I wanted, with real abandon. It was no small trick. By nature, my eyes drift. I tend to look past people when I talk. I look out the window, examine the horizon. I'm sure this has cost me connection with some people who take it as a sign of being evasive or shifty. When I paid attention to it, I found that my tendency was to click in, lock eyes for a second or less, then look upward or outward into the distance. It's just not my rhythm to stare.

That was the first lesson: Eye contact is not the same as staring.

People don't like the dumb indifference of a stare. My first attempts at maintaining eye contact were so self-conscious that I took to picking a point on the person's face — as close to the eyes as possible — and gazing at it as calmly as possible. That was a disaster. I wasn't looking at people so much as I was at a blemish they happened to know very well.

If I stared at a point, say, between someone's eyes or at a mole just above an eyebrow, people knew it right away. I did this at a Smoothie King at the airport, and the girl behind the counter stood it for about seven seconds before she asked me, "What are you looking at?" She ran her finger along her eyebrow. She scooped my immune booster in a tizzy.

So I tried to concentrate on eyelashes, but this made my own eyes jump as I talked. My head bobbed, too, and I was hit with a sense of motion sickness. Women constantly excused themselves after talking to me to check their faces in the mirror. I was forced to apologize, telling them that I was just spacing out, not paying attention — the direct opposite of what I was hoping to convey in the first place. It was as if I had become a mirror in which people saw their own tiny imperfections, magnified by my glance.

Both parties in a conversation are caught almost constantly in the true focus and precise direction of a glance. I had to go for the eyes. There is no faking it.

THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN people in my life who were good at using their eyes. My tenth-grade English teacher. My shift boss at a Mexican restaurant back in 1986. My friend the newspaper reporter. My accountant. My girlfriend. I don't know if I trusted each of these people because they looked straight at me or if they looked straight at me because I trusted them. Yet each could lock and hold my glance for minutes at a time, while I was feeling sick after fifteen seconds. What exactly did they see? How did they do it?

It was clear that the idea of eye contact is not simply to point your eyes in a given direction. You have to use your eyes. I had to have a move. I sucked it up and started to lock in on the pupils. It took some doing, but I found I could make my- self relax and hold the glance if I simply stopped working to figure out what the other person was thinking. I had to force myself to stop reading every twitch, every sideways glance, every brush of the hair. I had to stop treating the world like a poker game, in which every movement might be a tell. When I walked in the door, when I stuck out my hand, when I said "How are you?" I turned my gaze toward the pupil of the person's eye. It really was a process of searching it out, looking at the black of the eye only, holding my glance there, and waiting until the eye color registered in my periphery.

It worked, too. Women held my glance longer; men moved faster. This worked with waitresses. With clerks at hotel desks. It worked with bartenders. Even with cabdrivers, whom I looked at in their rearview mirrors. I began to gain better control over these transactions by searching out their eyes. It took only a few seconds, but I could plainly see what they were looking for. Here is what I saw: No matter how much attention they appeared to be giving me, no matter how slowly they spoke or how long they paused after greeting me, it was evident that these people were initially treating me like every other schmoe who walked in off the street — trying to figure me out and see how fast they could get me what I wanted before moving on.

The eye contact changed all that. I'd compare it to using a Sawzall for the first time, that moment you realize you could cut through pretty much any wall in the world if you had the right blade. With my eyes, I calmed them, slowed them down, and did so without knocking them over or humiliating them. I used my eyes to upset the speed and indifference of their routines and simply register my presence by asking them to do a double take. It worked every time. They didn't know me, but then, suddenly, it seemed they did. I thought of it as a kind of dominance, holding them in the kind of invisible grip you might have once seen employed by a villain in a DC comic. I got discounts I didn't deserve, a room facing the water. I was warned off the calamari and onto the crab cake. The desk clerk perked up when I arrived at the hotel and stood up straighter when I checked out.

I tried it with people who knew me well, too, people who see me all the time. The Indian guy at the local gas station. The woman I've worked with for seven years. A guy I play cards with on weekends. In each case, upon greeting them, I'd search out their pupils and hold my eyes on theirs for a minimum of three beats. Just as with people I didn't know, time seemed to slow down and routine moments became unpredictable. Not just because three beats is an eternity when you have nothing to say except "What's happening?" but because it meant they had to look at me at least once, and often two or three times, before they spoke.

While I may suck at eye contact naturally, there are people who are worse, much worse, in every ring of my life. The more I practiced, the more hapless they seemed. It's the law of dominance, I think, that the more dominant you become, the more you want to stay dominant. I found I liked backing people down. I began to look at them long enough that I began to sense when they were about to look away. The truth is, instead of them seeing me, it ended up that I could really see them. They were just like I was, a little afraid of eye contact, a little leery of connection. I meant well, so I pressed on. People gave me apologies I didn't ask for. They invited me to lunch.

Sometimes I pushed it too far. The gas-station guy, so used to staring out his windows at the world passing by, was alarmed by my glance after four beats. "Yes?" he said. "Yes?" And I held my gaze, because I had nothing to lose. He reached under the counter, and I thought for a moment that he was pulling out a gun. But he pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds. "Here," he said. "Take one. You may have one, of course."

I took one, too, just for good measure. It seemed a small sort of bullying. I could do far worse with my eyes. Anyone can. The tool can always become the weapon.

WITH ANY GESTURE of influence, the danger lies in not knowing what you are after. I fell into an easy routine after several weeks of making eye contact. One afternoon, while negotiating the price of an antique gold watch I was buying for my son's birthday, I was staring into the eyes of a jeweler, trying to figure out what color his eyes were, when he suddenly dropped the price by $75, to $200. I'd been threatening him somehow and hadn't known it. I didn't break away. I didn't look down. While I hadn't expected as much, now I had to see where I could go from there.

His eyes jumped back and forth, from the counter to the watch to me, then back again, in reverse. His eyes were green, I decided. Green.

"Two hundred," I said. "Flat price. No tax, right?"

He nodded and looked back at me then, long and hard. We were in agreement, though neither of us said a thing.

My eyes are brown.

Andrew Gower and Paul Power, Owners of JagEx, Runescape

No wonder they are making money off these pixel lovers over a java game; richer than the Royal Duo! I can place a bet of 5 bucks [its all i got] that they will keep making money!



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Have it your way, make an avatar or test a hairstyle! Online Doll Maker

Make your own bad-ass avatars with almost billions of options! Use them for forums to better describe yourself to others or even in chat rooms!


The fun thing about this game is the number of choices given to you. For every catagory, there wre more than 50 choices! Such as 50 hairstyles [50 for boys and 50 for girls] 50 different shoe types, capes, swords, cd players and even ipods to choose from. You can have dress-up games with your kids or even in your forums to kill some time.

Test out a hairstyle on your 'doll' before going out and actually taking it then saying the style looks bad on you! Or even try shirts and shoes on and how they look on a doll alike you! Options are endless and so is the navigation. There is 3 options available for doll creaters

1. No mouse [keyboard]
2. Click and Drop
3. Click and Drag

Personally, I used them all 3 during my sample run and came up with the following!



If I had little bit more time, it would've been Neo from the Matrix! [I am close!]

Remember, you can save your doll in picture format, print it, get html code or other codings to post in relative places! So why not give it a try?

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Painted Ceiling for a Smoking Area

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Vonage Forums, just like the service, Excellento!

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The User Review Section: All you need to know about what consumers think about Vonage

The Vonage Forums, from trouble shooting to help per each country where the serivice is available. Help on the net plus valuable resources and tips on usage.

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In this photograph orbiting telescope Hubble imprinted beautiful spectacle - this the remainders of the killed star in the center of fogginess Cassiopeia A, which exploded 300 years ago.















Movie Version Here

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Local Kings of Africa [With Pictures]

Agboli-agbo DEDJLANI
King of Abomey
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IGWE KENNETH NNAJI ONYEMAEKE ORIZU III
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Olowo of Owo
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Fon of Bandjun.
Cameroun



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Sexual urges of men and women

"I never have quite figured out why the sexual urges of men and women differ so much. And I never have figured out the whole Venus and Mars thing. And I never figured out why men think with their head and women think with their heart. And I never yet have figured out how the sexual desire gene gets thrown into a state of turmoil when it hears the words "I do."
One evening last week, my wife and I were getting into bed. Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says, "I don't feel like it. I just want you to hold me." I said, "WHAT???"
So she says the words that I and every husband on the planet dread. She explains that I must not be in tune with her emotional needs as a woman. I'm thinking, "What was her first clue?" I finally realize that nothing was going to happen that night, so I went to sleep.
The very next day, we went shopping at a big, unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on three different, very expensive outfits. She could not decide which one to take, so I told her to take all three of them. She then tells me that she wants matching shoes worth $200.00 a pair to which I say OK. And then we go to the jewellery department where she gets a pair of diamond earrings.
Let me tell you. She was so excited. She must have thought that I was one wave short of a shipwreck, but I don't think she cared. I think she was testing me when she asked for a tennis bracelet because she does not even play tennis. I think I threw her for a loop when I told her that it was OK. She was almost sexually excited from all of this, and you should have seen her face when she said, "I'm ready to go to the cash register."
I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, "No, honey, I don't feel like buying all this stuff now." You should have seen her face. It went completely blank. I then said, "Really, honey, I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while."
And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, "You must not be in tune with my financial needs as a man."
I figure that I won't be having sex again until some time after the Spring of 2008 but godammit it was worth it."

Author unknown

[via Columbus]

Ten big news stories you aren't hearing

Traditional media ignore or downplay significant events
By Thomas Kostigen, MarketWatch


SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- The San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper has printed a list of stories we in the media seem to have largely ignored over the past year. The story is gleaned from an annual list developed by Project Censored, a media research group out of Sonoma State University that tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters.

It's a provocative and eye-opening list that warrants attention, especially from the media. And each year it usually gets it, as Salon comments, out of "guilt."
In a great example of how certain stories play out, San Francisco Bay Guardian reporter Sarah Phelan opens her article by citing the play two news items recently received on the same day they broke: In Detroit, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the Bush administration's warrantless National Security Agency surveillance program was unconstitutional and must end. Meanwhile, somewhere in Thailand, a weirdo named John Mark Karr claimed he was with six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey when she died in 1996.
We all know which story received the most attention.
Here are the Top 10 most ignored stories. I've had to condense them for space considerations, but their headlines should tell enough of a story:

1. The Feds and the media muddy the debate over Internet freedom

The Supreme Court ruled that giant cable companies aren't required to share their wires with other Internet service providers. The issue was misleadingly framed as an argument over regulation, when it's really a case of the Federal Communications Commission and Congress talking about giving cable and telephone companies the freedom to control supply and content -- a decision that could have them playing favorites and forcing consumers to pay to get information and services that currently are free.
Source: "Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, and Why Corporate News Censored the Story," Elliot D. Cohen, BuzzFlash.com, July 18, 2005.

2. Halliburton charged with selling nuclear technology to Iran

Halliburton, the notorious U.S. energy company, sold key nuclear-reactor components to a private Iranian oil company called Oriental Oil Kish as recently as 2005, using offshore subsidiaries to circumvent U.S. sanctions. The story is particularly juicy because Vice President Dick Cheney, who now claims to want to stop Iran from getting nukes, was president of Halliburton in the mid-1990s, at which time he may have advocated business dealings with Iran, in violation of U.S. law.
Source: "Halliburton Secretly Doing Business with Key Member of Iran's Nuclear Team," Jason Leopold, GlobalResearch.ca, Aug. 5, 2005.

3. World oceans in extreme danger

Governments deny global warming is happening as they rush to map the ocean floor in the hopes of claiming rights to oil, gas, gold, diamonds, copper, zinc and the planet's last pristine fishing grounds. Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2005 found "the first clear evidence that the world ocean is growing warmer," including the discovery "that the top half-mile of the ocean has warmed dramatically in the past 40 years as the result of human-induced greenhouse gases."
Source: "The Fate of the Ocean," Julia Whitty, Mother Jones, March-April 2006.

4. Hunger and homelessness increasing in the United States

As hunger and homelessness rise in the United States, the Bush administration plans to get rid of a data source that supports this embarrassing reality, a survey that's been used to improve state and federal programs for retired and low-income Americans.
In 2003, the Bush Administration tried to whack the Bureau of Labor Statistics report on mass layoffs and in 2004 and 2005 attempted to drop the bureau's questions on the hiring and firing of women from its employment data.
Sources: "New Report Shows Increase in Urban Hunger, Homelessness," Brendan Coyne, New Standard, December 2005; "U.S. Plan to Eliminate Survey of Needy Families Draws Fire," Abid Aslam, OneWorld.net, March 2006.

5. High-tech genocide in Congo

If you believe the corporate media, then the ongoing genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is all just a case of ugly tribal warfare. But that is a superficial, simplistic explanation that fails to connect this terrible suffering with the immense fortunes that stand to be made from manufacturing cell phones, laptop computers and other high-tech equipment.
What's really at stake in this bloodbath is control of natural resources such as diamonds, tin, and copper, as well as cobalt -- which is essential for the nuclear, chemical, aerospace, and defense industries -- and coltan and niobium, which is most important for the high-tech industries.

Sources: "The World's Most Neglected Emergency: Phil Taylor talks to Keith Harmon Snow," The Taylor Report, March 28, 2005; "High-Tech Genocide," Sprocket, Earth First! Journal, August 2005; "Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in the Congo," Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski, Z Magazine, March 1, 2006.

6. Federal whistleblower protection in jeopardy

Though record numbers of federal workers have been sounding the alarm on waste, fraud, and other financial abuse since George W. Bush became president, the agency charged with defending government whistleblowers has reportedly been throwing out hundreds of cases -- and advancing almost none. Statistics released at the end of 2005 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility led to claims that special counsel Scott Bloch, who was appointed by Bush in 2004, is overseeing the systematic elimination of whistleblower rights.
Sources: "Whistleblowers Get Help from Bush Administration," Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Web site, Dec. 5, 2005; "Long-Delayed Investigation of Special Counsel Finally Begins," PEER Web site, Oct. 18, 2005; "Back Door Rollback of Federal Whistleblower Protections," PEER Web site, Sept. 22, 2005.

7. U.S. operatives torture detainees to death in Afghanistan and Iraq

While reports of torture aren't new, the documents are evidence of using torture as a policy, raising a whole bunch of uncomfortable questions, such as: Who authorized such techniques? And why have the resulting deaths been covered up?
Of the 44 death reports released under ACLU's FOIA request, 21 were homicides and eight appear to have been the result of these abusive torture techniques.
Sources: "U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq," American Civil Liberties Union Web site, Oct. 24, 2005; "Tracing the Trail of Torture: Embedding Torture as Policy from Guantanamo to Iraq," Dahr Jamail, TomDispatch.com, March 5, 2006.

8. Pentagon exempt from Freedom of Information Act

In 2005, the Department of Defense pushed for and was granted exemption from Freedom of Information Act requests, a crucial law that allows journalists and watchdogs access to federal documents. The ruling could hamper the efforts of groups like the ACLU, which relied on FOIA to uncover more than 30,000 documents on the US military's torture of detainees in Afghanistan Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, including the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.
Sources: "Pentagon Seeks Greater Immunity from Freedom of Information," Michelle Chen, New Standard, May 6, 2005; "FOIA Exemption Granted to Federal Agency," Newspaper Association of America Web site, posted December 2005.

9. World Bank funds Israel-Palestine wall

In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that the wall Israel is building deep into Palestinian territory should be torn down. Instead, construction of this cement barrier, which annexes Israeli settlements and breaks the continuity of Palestinian territory, has accelerated. In the interim, the World Bank has come up with a framework for a Middle Eastern Free Trade Area, which would be financed by the World Bank and built on Palestinian land around the wall to encourage export-oriented economic development.
But with Israel ineligible for World Bank loans, the plan seems to translate into Palestinians paying for the modernization of checkpoints around a wall that they've always opposed, a wall that will help lock in and exploit their labor.
Sources: "Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bank," Jamal Juma', Left Turn, issue 18; "U.S. Free Trade Agreements Split Arab Opinion," Linda Heard, Aljazeera, March 9, 2005.

10. Expanded air war in Iraq kills more civilians

At the end of 2005, U.S. Central Command Air Force statistics showed an increase in American air missions, a trend that was accompanied by a rise in civilian deaths thanks to increased bombing of Iraqi cities.
Sources: "Up in the Air," Seymour M. Hersh, New Yorker, December 2005; "An Increasingly Aerial Occupation," Dahr Jamail, TomDispatch.com, December 2005 SFBG.
Project Censored then compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, underreported or self-censored by the country's major national news media. See www.projectcensored.org.

[via MarketWatch]