Official Skatz 10 Million Views Thread

[Suicide King's Tattoos]

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has warned internet providers against the online distribution of the film, which Muslims say is blasphemous.
Read Full Article at RT.com

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[Big Gay Al]

The Longhorn cowfish is one of the strangest-looking fish ever to swim in an aquarium. It's actually not well-suited to life in captivity, thanks to its ability to release ostracitoxin when stressed. This can have bad effects on a tank's other inhabitants. However, the Longhorn cowfish's odd appearance has made it quite popular with saltwater fish keepers. It is a type of boxfish, a group of fish that is related to the more widely recognized Pufferfish family. Most fish stick to the standard, streamlined shape, but all cowfish have a blocky, boxy shape that makes this group unique and easily recognized. The Longhorn cowfish's standard color is yellow ranging to olive with white or blue-white spots, but other morphs exist with orange or green coloration. The fish's defining feature is the set of horns that protrude from the head; they're much longer than the horns of any other cowfish.

Maximum adult size - about 50 cm, or 20 inches.
Weight - Most captive specimens are young and don't weigh more than a few ounces. A large one might weigh in at a pound or two, or .5 to 1 kilogram.

Obviously, longhorn cowfish are not particularly large fish. A 6 inch fish would be considered large at a pet shop. In the wild, the longhorn cowfish is most often found on and near reefs of the Indo-Pacific region, but it also lives in still bays, harbors and estuaries with sand or mud bottoms. Young fish are often associated with Acropora corals.

The longhorn cowfish generally sticks to shallow water from 1 to 50 meters. They may be found in water up to 100 meters deep, but this is not common. Longhorn cowfish range from the Red Sea all the way to Australia and southern Japan, and they also live along Africa's southern Atlantic coast. They are not endangered, and they're common enough to be found in pet stores. Like many popular aquarium fish, longhorn cowfish are not found in the Americas.

Most boxfish are slow swimmers; they can actually be caught by hand. The longhorn cowfish is certainly not an agile hunter, so its diet consists mainly of invertebrates and benthic algae. They have even been observed blowing jets of water into the sand to uncover delectable worms. Larger fish also eat other fish when they can. Between their poisonous flesh and their scaly armor, cowfish are unattractive to many predators. The horns on the head and under the tail are thought to make the fish hard to swallow. Even so, longhorn cowfish are sometimes eaten by larger predators like albacore and bigeye tuna.

Picture of the Longhorn cowfish by Drow male, licensed under GFDL


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[Carl Culture]

Today's picture was taken around 1915 aboard the USS Arkansas. The picture shows sailors peeling potatoes. It is my understanding that this is not the most sought after job in the Navy. Wonder if anyone has any stories of peeling potatoes in the military?






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[Shanita Balke]

From long to short, and everything in between, celebrities like Nicki Minaj, Brandy, Tamar Braxton, Beyonce and many more showed just how versatile black hair can be at the 2012 BET Awards.

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[Adolf Hitler]

Forum: Opposing Views ForumPosted By: Joseph MorganPost Time: 09-17-2012 at 01:16 PM

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[NASA]

This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows a 1.5 meters (5 feet) per pixel view of a large collapse pit (and portions of several smaller pits) in the Tractus Fossae portion of the Tharsis region of Mars. Such collapses usually occur along faults formed by expansion and pulling apart of the planet\'s upper crust. MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-1235, 29 September 2005

Credits: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

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[NASA]

This image portrays a beautiful view of the galaxy NGC 7090, as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is viewed edge-on from the Earth, meaning we cannot easily see the spiral arms, which are full of young, hot stars.

However, a side-on view shows the galaxy’s disc and the bulging central core, where typically a large group of cool old stars are packed in a compact, spheroidal region. In addition, there are two interesting features present in the image that are worth mentioning.

First, we are able to distinguish an intricate pattern of pinkish red regions over the whole galaxy. This indicates the presence of clouds of hydrogen gas. These structures trace the location of ongoing star formation, visual confirmation of recent studies that classify NGC 7090 as an actively star-forming galaxy.

Second, we observe dust lanes, depicted as dark regions inside the disc of the galaxy. In NGC 7090, these regions are mostly located in lower half of the galaxy, showing an intricate filamentary structure. Looking from the outside in through the whole disc, the light emitted from the bright center of the galaxy is absorbed by the dust, silhouetting the dusty regions against the bright light in the background.

Dust in our galaxy, the Milky Way, has been one of the worst enemies of observational astronomers for decades. But this does not mean that these regions are only blind spots in the sky. At near-infrared wavelengths — slightly longer wavelengths than visible light — this dust is largely transparent and astronomers are able to study what is really behind it. At still longer wavelengths, the realm of radio astronomy, the dust itself can actually be observed, letting astronomers study the structure and properties of dust clouds and their relationship with star formation.

Lying in the southern constellation of Indus (The Indian), NGC 7090 is located about thirty million light-years from the Sun. Astronomer John Herschel first observed this galaxy on October 4, 1834.

The image was taken using the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the Hubble Space Telescope and combines orange light (colored blue here), infrared (colored red) and emissions from glowing hydrogen gas (also in red).

A version of this image of NGC 7090 was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Image Processing Competition by contestant Rasid Tugral. Hidden Treasures is an initiative to invite astronomy enthusiasts to search the Hubble archive for stunning images that have never been seen by the general public. The competition is now closed and the list of winners is available here.

ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: R. Tugral

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[Georgie Thompson]

Demba Ba came up with a last-minute equaliser for Newcastle to secure a 2-2 draw and deny Everton three points at Goodison Park.

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[BluffMagazine]

Mohsin Charania made his second major final table of 2012 at the WPT Grand Prix de Paris to reach 7th in the BLUFF Player of the Year Race. Up to this point the BLUFF Player of the Year race has been relatively stable since the World Series of Poker, with the exception being the back [...]

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[Khalid El-Amin]

Move comes as number of international troops killed by Afghans in the uniforms of police and army this year reaches 51.

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