Isn't this the best way to capture the inside of your fridge? Ralf even shared the tools and settings used for this stunt: Nikon D5000 | Sigma Fisheye 8mm | Panoramic Tripod Head homemade | 8 Pictures | ISO 250 | 1,5 sec. | F6,7 | 8mm | PTGui | PaintShop Pro

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Interior view of refrigerator 2012
360° panoramic photography by Ackermann Ralf. Visit us to see more amazing panoramas from Baden-Wuerttemberg and thousands of other places in the world.

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In album Scrapbook Photos (1 foto)

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Reshared post from +Anonymous

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Let me tell you something very shocking. In a case you haven't already noticed you have been fooled. You have being programmed to harm yourself by eating shit, to surround you body with shit, to flood your mind with shit and to do shit to this planet.

Who did this to programming you? Well, sure there are many to blame. You are constantly being lied to wherever you go. There is something terribly wrong with this world and the way it's run. There are definitely "some who are more guilty than others". In the end, though, it is you who is lying to yourself the most, you and you alone. Your own mind has been deceiving you my friend.

If you open any modern spiritual, self-help, a success story or personal development book today you will read that you should follow your intuition to fullfil your dreams, potential and life. You should notice the signs, or little nudges if you will, the universe is giving you and to act on them to progress further on your path. I'm more than fine with that and chances are that you are too. So why the hell don't we do it? I think I've just found the answer in a book I'm reading so let me share it with you.

The book I'm talking about was written Jean Liedloff and it's name is The Continuum Concept (http://www.continuum-concept.org/home.html). It's an older book (1975), some things are outdated, but there are some very good insights in it. And one of the cleverest things in it struck me like a lightning about a week ago.

According Jean Liedloff, the best thing every living creature should be doing to continue the species and ensure thriving is to follow their deepest internal feelings, the intuition within themselves, which guides them. It is not necessarily some artificial supernatural force (or God) that is telling us what to do. It is simply our own expectation of the best life we can possibly have that has been embedded in us during the millions of years of evolution. The problem is that our intellect is trying to interfere with this and to change the way we are behaving.

Intellect is definitely useful in solving everyday's problems but it can be an obstacle preventing us from following the right long-term path. Quote from the book: The less intellect interfered with instinct in the formation of behavioral patterns, the less rigid the structure would need to be on the surface and the more inflexible at its core (in attitude towards self and towards the rights of others, sensitivity to the signals of instinct that favor survival, health, pleasure, a balance of types of activity, an impulse towards the preservation of the species, economical use of the plants and animals in the environment, and so on).

The intellect has been playing tricks on us! Another quote: The more a culture relies upon the intellect to decide policy and rules, the more restraints on the individual are necessary to maintain it. Does this sound familiar to you? Isn't this exactly what is happening in totalitarians' regimes? Isn't this exactly, in a way, what is happening to our society worldwide today?

When something doesn't work we tend to invent more and more intellect-based regulations and to summon orders and restrictions upon us in a desperate attempts to improve systems that are inherently and in their very core, wrong. More and more ridiculous restraints on the individual are necessary to keep these systems going. Think about this next time you hear about today's problems in financial markets, corruption in politics, regulations of the internet (think ACTA), environmental issues, clean energy, healthy foods and the way our medical systems are run. We've been listening to our intellects for too long and created unsustainable systems that we need to get rid of. It's time to start listening to our inner voices again.

I don't know what exactly needs to happen now but I know something will happen and I'm sure this is the way. Something is in the air. I'm thrilled with how everything starts to make sense and how everything seems to be more and more connected. I believe that in the year 2012 we will together change many things on this planet for the better. It's not going to be the end of the world as some people think or want you to think. It will be a huge, global and dramatic change in the minds of billions. We will start listening to ourselves and we will feel our guiding systems again.

It's time to wake up.

_Photo (cc) by katerha http://www.flickr.com/photos/katerha/5907024744/_

Photo (cc) by katerha http://www.flickr.com/photos/katerha/5907024744/

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1) Introduce yourself if you are missing
2) Share this post!

If you are missing in this shared circle, please introduce yourself by adding a comment and I will include you in the next update (next month). Please make sure you always comment on the original post otherwise I won't see your comment. To make 100% sure you have the original post, here's the URL for it: http://goo.gl/ZIADW

I started this initiative in the summer of 2011 (here's the original post http://goo.gl/CX0jP) and my circle has grown from 64 members back then to today's 213. Let's keep it up people!

Special thanks: I'd like to thank these people for sharing and helping me with this initiative: +Rami Saarikorpi, +Greg Panayotou, +Johann Victor, +Dimo S., +Lee Wilkinson, +Tom Striewisch, +Matt Crace, +Robert Bilsland, +Martin Demassieux, +Sharon Cooper, +arjun sheokand, +Marcelo Botta, +Ian James Wood, +Vincèn Pujol, +Niall O'Reilly, +Thomas Schwarz, +Xavier SPERTINI, +Thomas Demolliens, +Fokion Xiotakis.

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Reshared post from +Amara Graps

This is absolutely gorgeous. I love his detailed description of what the photographer did to create the photo too.
http://www.greeksky.gr/files/photos/tips/20101230Sounio24Tutorial.htm

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24 hour 360 degree Little Planet panorama
A web site dedicated to nightscape astrophotography with numerous astro photos of our solar system, stars and constellations combined with beautiful landscapes. Also, tips and suggestions for successf…

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A Human Being

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Albert Einstein

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Tak kdyz uz tak uz – prave dovezli muj prvni vegansky nakup z Tesca a tady je jeho uryvek ;) Samozrejme tam mam spoustu zeleniny a tak, ale tahle fotka se soustredi na nahrazky masovych a mlecnych vyrobku.

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Reshared post from +Carole Lovegan Li Ⓥ

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Lighthouse – Little Planet 360° Panorama

A lighthouse near the Rabo de Peixe fisherman's village. Little planets are a wonderful way to visualize 360-degree panoramas on a flat surface and to share them as photos.

Interactive version of the panorama can be found here:
http://www.360cities.net/image/rabo-de-peixe-lighthouse-azores

Learn how to create these 360-degree images and little planets on your own:
http://howtoshoot360.com

Rabo de Peixe Lighthouse by Jan Vrsinsky

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Fine, get together, and show your anger, frustration, disapproval, … but don't you ever forget that's just step number 1. The second step is to DO something! Start living differently. Start talking to friends and your communities. Get connected with like-minded people and start organizing things, start organizing change and start implementing it!

What is your solution to today's problems? What do you think should be changed and how? What do you want your world to be? What do you want your life to be? These are difficult questions, I know. But if you want power, responsibility comes with it.

Don't worry though, you don't have to think EVERYTHING through. In fact, all you have to do is to simply stop living in fear. Just focus on your area of influence, something you can do really well, and implement it in your life and life of others.

Start creating your bubble of influence and see if you can make it big enough to reach other bubbles of similar nature. Join others in their bubbles. Start getting a critical mass. Dare to dream and change the world.

You cannot change the system. If the system is bad, corrupt and evil, and in many cases it really is, it will simply collapse on its own once we implement a new better one. There is a catch – Nobody will do this instead of us. We are the new system, we are the change.

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TODAY IS THE DAY TO KILL ACTA – Boing Boing
Mark Frauenfelder Cory Doctorow David Pescovitz Xeni Jardin Editors. Rob Beschizza Managing Editor. Maggie Koerth-Baker Science Editor. Jason Weisberger Publisher-at-Large. Ken Snider Sysadmin. Dean P…

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Evolution 2012 – photo by Jan Vrsinsky, feel free to share & reuse

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Reshared post from +Ioannis Tsoukalidis

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Phi (φ) is a Greek letter that represents the golden ratio. In my yesterday's "hour of insight" – that's how I call my evening meditative sessions – I became fascinated by this number. It has so many interesting properties! For a brief moment I suddenly saw a glimpse of the wonderfulness of how everything was connected. The number connects math and beauty, photography with the structure of galaxies and it has very interesting properties on its own. No wonder that Pythagoras, Euclid and other intelectuals have been fascinated by this number for more than three millennia. I cannot share my insight itself very well so let me at least share what I found about this cosmic number.

The value of phi is:
φ = 1.6180339887499…

Wikipedia: Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. But the fascination with the Golden Ratio is not confined just to mathematicians. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics.
(the above, as well as many sentences in this article, are excerpts from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio unless noted otherwise)

First, let me share with you some of it's interesting mathematical properties and then later I will show you real-world occurrences:

1. Definition of phi (φ)
A/B = (A+B)/A = φ

2. Mathematical solution of the above formula
φ = (1+square root of (5))/2

3. Very interesting mathematical property of the number
1/φ = φ-1
i.e. 1/1.618… = 0.618…
but also:
φ * φ = φ + 1
i.e. 1.618…*1.618… = 2.618….

There are many other interesting mathematical properties of this number, for more check out the wikipedia article.

4. The mathematics of the golden ratio are intimately interconnected with the Fibonacci sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, … where every new number is created as a sum of the two previous numbers. If you divide two consecutive Fibonacci numbers, you'll get phi, the higher the number, the higher the precision…
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number

5. Starting with 5, every second Fibonacci number is the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with integer sides. Fibonacci numbers are essential in many computer algorithms including searching, cryptology and pseudo-random generators.

Now let's get to the very interesting occurrences of phi and fibonacci numbers in real world:

1. Nature, human body and living organisms

Adolf Zeising, whose main interests were mathematics and philosophy, found the golden ratio expressed in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants and of veins in leaves. He extended his research to the skeletons of animals and the branchings of their veins and nerves, to the proportions of chemical compounds and the geometry of crystals, even to the use of proportion in artistic endeavors. In these phenomena he saw the golden ratio operating as a universal law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Nature
http://blog.world-mysteries.com/science/nature-fibonacci-numbers-and-the-golden-ratio/
Interesting diagrams but perhaps not very trustworthy (feedback welcome):
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi/noframes/read/136026

Fibonacci sequences appear in biological settings, in two consecutive Fibonacci numbers, such as branching in trees, arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruitlets of a pineapple, the flowering ofartichoke, an uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number
http://library.thinkquest.org/trio/TTQ05063/phibeauty2.htm

Leonardo da Vinci's illustrations of polyhedra in De divina proportione (On the Divine Proportion) and his views that some bodily proportions exhibit the golden ratio have led some scholars to speculate that he incorporated the golden ratio in his paintings. Some specific proportions in the bodies of many animals (including humans) and parts of shells are often claimed to be in the golden ratio.

On the other hand, don't confuse this with other apparent manifestations of the golden mean in nature, especially in regard to animal dimensions, which are in fact in many cases fictitious. Not all dimensions in animals and humans are phi-based as some people claim. It is merely a nice proportion to possess and to look at. There is actually a large variation in the real measures of these elements in specific individuals, and the proportion in question is often significantly different from the golden ratio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Disputed_observations
Some examples:
Ideal elbow size vs fingertips to wrist size = phi
Ideal chin to lower lip vs Nose to upper lip distance = phi
Ideal vertical size vs horizontal size of your head = phi
Ideal sizes of human bones in a finger (from tip to wrist) = 2cm, 3cm, 5cm, 8cm.
and many others proportions on your body. Use this principle cleverly when painting a human body and it will look wonderful!
http://jwswj.com/blog/?p=36
http://goldenratio.wikidot.com/human-body
http://www.facialbeauty.org/divineproportion.html
http://www.intmath.com/numbers/math-of-beauty.php
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aldoaldoz/3153622722/in/photostream/

In 2003, Volkmar Weiss and Harald Weiss analyzed psychometric data and theoretical considerations and concluded that the golden ratio underlies the clock cycle of brain waves. In 2008 this was empirically confirmed by a group of neurobiologists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Nature
(disclaimer: I could not verify this finding)

2. Art, Beauty and Design

In connection with his scheme for golden-ratio-based human body proportions, Zeising wrote in 1854 of a universal law "in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Nature
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/16/icloud-logo-infused-with-golden-ratio/
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/golden-section-proportions/
http://www.vodori.com/blog/design-basics-a-guide-to-the-golden-ratio.html
http://www.goldennumber.net/art.htm
http://www.pearsonified.com/2011/12/golden-ratio-typography.php
http://earthbagbuilding.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/golden-ratio/

3. Photography

The golden ratio is sometimes confused with the rule of thirds. The thing is that the rule of thirds is only an approximation of the golden rule. The proper phi ratio is 0.382:0.618, however the rule of thirds approximate this to 0.333:0.666. Close enough but not quite right.
Some articles that talk about this:
http://blog.quickanddirtytips.com/2011/09/29/use-the-golden-ratio-to-take-better-photos/
http://www.petapixel.com/2011/12/02/analyzing-the-catch-using-the-golden-ratio-and-rule-of-thirds/
http://www.photostockplus.com/community/tag/golden-mean-photography/
Thanks to +Jirka Chomát for pointing this out to me!

4. Geometry

The number φ turns up frequently in geometry, particularly in figures with pentagonal symmetry. The length of a regular pentagon's diagonal is φ times its side.
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/GoldenRatio.shtml
http://www.slideshare.net/rogerpitiot/golden-section-7747934
http://www.tokenrock.com/harmonic_nature/sacred_geometry.php
http://hiddenlighthouse.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/sacred-geometry-gods-fingerprint/

5. Architecture

The golden ratio was often employed in the design of Egyptian, ancient Indian, Greek and Roman architecture. (see how http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Pyramids). The Parthenon's facade as well as elements of its facade and elsewhere are said by some to be circumscribed by golden rectangles.
I also saw notices of this number in Mayan architecture however I don't have the links here now (google it).
Some examples:
http://mathematics.factoidz.com/interesting-facts-about-the-golden-ratio-in-nature-art-math-and-architecture/
http://library.thinkquest.org/trio/TTQ05063/phibeauty2.htm
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibInArt.html

This is really an interesting topic however the more time I spend digging the information the more I lose the contact with the moment yesterday so let me stop now. In a case you find anything missing, broken, wrong or if you have more examples and links, please let me know! And share this if you find this fascinating as much as I do! :)

φ

Photo (cc) jaxxson http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaxxon/30554181/

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Romanesco broccoli – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009). Rom…

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Map:
http://webactionnow.com/

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