As Long As This Volcano Remains Deadish, Do Anything You Want

In 1979, artist James Turrell purchased this 400,00-year-old, 3-km-wide Roden Crater in Flagstaff, Arizona. For the past 30 years, James has been working to transform it into a “massive naked-eye observatory, designed specifically for the viewing of celestial phenomena. He says he’s planning to open the crater for public viewing in 2011. But he had also promised a 2005 opening, so maybe somebody’s leg is just being pulled. Nevertheless.

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Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway

Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway is made up of about 40,000 interlocking mostly hexagonal basalt columns that naturally formed from some ancient volcanic eruption. It got its name because, according to “racist” legend (that totally isn’t true but fun to repeat), a Scottish giant battled an Irish giant, and the brawl resulted to these formations. Why, of course!

Thousands of tourists are currently trying their very best to make this natural wonder as crappy as every other thing man has laid his hands on.

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Weird North American And European Town Names

Yes, there is indeed a village called “Fucking” in Upper Austria, it is indeed spelled like that and this is no joke. You might have come across Fucking before in your life, as comedians pick it up once in a while and Fucking seems to be one of the favourite things to look at online with the “Google Earth” virtual sightseeing community. So eventually I realised that there’s no way to get around Fucking being Austrian myself and doing a website on the country…

Here’s more strange town names.

Welcome To Hell

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Sometime in 1971, somebody made a huge oil-drilling fuck-up right at the heart of the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan. That beautiful mistake is now called the Darvaza Crater (The Burning Gates), burning for 35 years now, still perfect for spontaneous barbecue parties. Or hotdogs. Yum!
The video of the Darvaza Crater in action below. While more photos courtesy of John Bradley.

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Dubai Is Building “Jurassic Park”

Restless Planet

Called Restless Planet, a new $1-billion theme park in Dubai, UAE featuring over 100 animatronic dinosaurs of 40 different species is scheduled to open late in 2008.

…the park is the star attraction of a large Las Vegas-style entertainment and business development called City of Arabia. While the details are being kept pretty quiet, the creators of the development, the Ilyas and Mastafa Galadari Group, have released promotional videos showing a T.rex charging at visitors and pterodactyls flying overhead.