Lava Rust by janet little We stopped at a beautiful stretch of coastline on the east coast of Iceland, where waves crash against a tremendous sea stack. Once again, it was raining and windy, so I took to pointing my camera downwards at details on the beach at the base of the cliffs, where I found this scene reminiscent of a lava flow. http://flic.kr/p/akbLGW
“Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the Bed Bugs bite”,- this age old rhyme may sound cute while tucking your kids into bed at night, but now it has turned out to be a frightening reality. These pesky tiny insects that feed on human blood have made a comeback and are very common than ever before.
We need to get more educated and vigilant and learn everything thing we can to defend against them and in worst case scenario, prevent a bed bug infestation in our homes. These creepy parasites have a lot of secrets that you never heard of before and will make you surprised.
Here are ten facts you never heard about bed bugs:
Most folks think bed bugs only live in hotels and motels. But the reality is that bed bugs can thrive anywhere – apartments, hospitals, college dormitories, family homes, schools, office buildings, trains, planes, buses, cars, and just about any place where humans live. In fact, it’s been reported that bed bug infestations are relatively common in single-family homes and apartments/condos with infestation rate of 89 percent and 88 percent respectively.
People often say bed bugs are found only in dirty places, overcrowded cities or third world countries. That’s not true. Bed bugs are found in all towns and cities of the world. In fact, incidences of bed bug infestations are three times higher in urban areas than in the countryside.
All bed bugs care about is access to lots of people. It doesn’t matter if you take a shower every day, or wash your clothes regularly. You may still have bed bugs clinging on your clothes or luggage.
In short, any densely populated areas or places like high-end hotels, shopping malls, dorms, movie theaters, are all at risk of being infested with Bed Bugs. Clean places won’t deter them.
See Also: The Importance of Personal Hygiene for Healthy Living
Unlike mosquitoes, flies or other insects, bed bugs aren’t yet confirmed to be spreading any diseases when bitten other than itchiness and red bumps on the skin. However, doctors report that they can cause some mental problems.
Some people become so obsessed and fearful of them that they can’t get good sleep for weeks, miss work, spend hours on the internet about the subject and become paranoid. Bed Bugs are also said to aggravate the symptoms of allergy and asthma patients.
Bed Bugs aren’t truly nocturnal creatures. It is true that most people report bed bug bites while sleeping during the night and they get scared when light, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t bite you in the daytime.
Bed Bugs are opportunists and crave for blood, and if they are hungry, they will come out and bite you during the day. Even more so, bed bugs are attracted to the body warmth of humans and to the carbon dioxide we exhale.
Often, people wonder why they can’t feel the moment they are being bitten by bed bugs. The saliva of bed bugs works as an anesthetic which numbs the area of the bite and helps increase of blood flow in the area, making the feeding process smooth and almost painless.
After the feeding process is over, the bed bugs hide for 5-10 days in secluded places to digest the blood, mate and lay eggs. Also, bed bugs typically feed for 3 -12 minutes and gain as much as six times their body weight while feeding.
Bed Bugs can live without a blood meal for days or even months. Adult bed bugs are found to survive for as long as 550 days straight without food. It’s an unbelievable feat indeed!
This means they can live in your mattresses, luggage, and furniture as long as they can to get in contact with humans again. Bed bugs can survive in extreme temperatures (zero to 122 degrees) making them harder to eradicate without a professional pest control service.
Most people say you can get rid of a bed bug infestation in your home if you throw away your bed, mattress, clothes, linens, carpets, and furniture. Well, that may help a little, but it won’t entirely help you get rid of them.
The answer lies in bed bugs’ dislike of extremely high temperatures. So, exterminators use a combination steam, chemicals, and dry cleaning to destroy bed bugs in your rooms and furniture. If your clothes get infested with bed bugs, just wash them in very hot water for around half an hour to kill them.
See Also: The Six Best All-Natural Cleaners for Your House
Bed Bugs aren’t only smart; they are elusive too. They know when to stay out of view during the daytime and hide in the cracks and crevices in the walls, furniture joints, beds and mattresses, carpets, in picture frames, behind wallpapers and switchboards and electrical appliances. If your infestation level is low, you will miss the signs. In this case, you should consult a trained professional.
Some common signs of high bedbug infestation are black fecal spots found in the bed or mattress linings, bedbug skins, or if you are lucky (or unlucky), you can find an actual bed bug.
Don’t use any of the Do-It-Yourself bed bug eradication techniques you read on the internet. Don’t attempt to fumigate your rooms or house or use a bug bomb or a fogger even if it claims about their effectiveness.
The truth is most of these remedies don’t work, and some of these methods will scatter the bed bugs to areas of your dwelling or your neighbor’s house that previously weren’t. So, it’s better to call a trained professional to help contain and deal with the problem.
Since the 1990s, due to changes made in pesticides and insecticides regulations, lifestyle changes and the massive increase in domestic and international travel, bed bugs have made a steady comeback, and their populations have grown exponentially. Though the situation is manageable, we all have to accept the fact that bed bugs are here to stay and they will be with us every time we travel.
The post 10 Things You Never Knew About Bed Bugs appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
The building is part of a group of houses built in the eighteenth century in the district of Arenal, outside the ancient city walls, facing the medieval shipyards and next to the river Guadalquivir. Consisted of two floors and mezzanine, while the lower destined to storage, the higher to owner’s house.
The house aim of the intervention has a very elongated, substantially rectangular plan with two long party walls called “medianeros”, and facades to Calle Dos de Mayo and Calle San Diego.
Before his recovery the house was divided into two dwellings by a thick wall parallel to the main façade and was in a state of total ruin, to which survived only his two facades. Inside the house a series of double arches supported by robust stone columns (some from Roman times) defined their internal space.
Therefore, the only constructive elements that have been incorporated into the project have been the facades, the party walls and the arches, to which the addiction of a new one replacing the old bearing wall, enabled the construction of a single space.
The key decisions can be summarized in just two: building a narrow services strip (ladder, lift, toilets, storage, etc) resting on one of the party walls; and opening a skylight overhead flooding the whole space with natural light, from the deck to the ground floor.
Natural light hence becomes the main subject that builds the interior, smooth and continuous, intimate and introverted space.
The new construction is solved with metal structure left in sight, in which pillars and lightened metal slabs define and organize the different spaces while draw a subtle and delicate calligraphy that contrasts with the presence of preexisting thick walls.
Last week ArchDaily attended the 2016 World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Berlin. Following his opening keynote address, we talked to Ben van Berkel of UN Studio who spoke of his interest in using technology in architecture to improve not only user experience, but to affect qualitative aspects of design itself. Together with his partner Caroline Bos, Van Berkel recently published Knowledge Matters, a book positioned “to help architects to run a better studio and to share knowledge.”
Ben Van Berkel: What motivates me at the moment in architecture is to design with knowledge and information. So it’s not any more that I design building forms alone; I’m more interested in how, with new technology, we can develop a sustainable and hopefully healthy environment.
Think about it: when it comes to the environment we are for 80% of our time indoors. And think about the bad air. We are often indoors and the way how we with new technology can improve that is my fascination. And of course I’m interested in the technological side and improvement and expansion of that, but I’m also interested in the cultural side. So the expansion of the profession needs to dare stretch up much more than we ever did before. Because all of these technologies are available right now. On the cultural side we can refer to design, fashion, literature, art and all those aspects of the cultural side so that we can further use it in the integral way of how we can improve our architecture.
The way that I’m inspired by these latest ideas of improving the profession is by teaching a lot, reading a lot – I go easily from neuroscience towards the way in which today the technology of a car has improved by maybe having 40 sensors. Meanwhile, why do we have only one sensor in a building? To regulate our temperature. That technology is not available yet in architecture. So I often read a lot and reflect a lot on the way how we can improve.
Knowledge Matters
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A lot of times I feel like I want to emotionally disconnect from this world. Rush home after a long day at work, shut the door and soak in a bubble bath with my headphones on – inside my own little world, far away from everything and everyone.
But you can’t live like this you tell me, this world needs selfless and caring souls who can lead others to help heal and save our planet so that humanity doesn’t end up being remembered (or forgotten) as the doomed race who destroyed itself through their selfish acts.
This all sounds good in theory but I already have difficulty coping with my own hectic life (and emotions.) I love and care for my family and friends, I think that should suffice. Besides, at the end of most days I feel drained, only wishing for an escape from all the madness. How can I possibly develop the capacity to care about the suffering of some strangers?
To care for someone who is similar to us or gives us something in return doesn’t require much efforts. The challenge is to love someone who makes you want to run away. To forgive and love others who have betrayed us. To find the strength to reach out to people even in the midst of our storms, when we rather retreat and take care of our own needs instead.
True compassion is developed when we open our hearts and regain access to our empathetic abilities, to be able to feel what the other is feeling. Real love isn’t lazy, it’s characterized by our willingness to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. To see through their eyes when our first impulse may be to spit out our frustration at them or ignore them.
When we apply this greater understanding to our life, we are able to reflect this kind of love inside and outside of our home and truly change the world into a better place. Only then can we develop genuine love for each other that isn’t superficial and won’t evaporate as soon as frictions arise.
Life’s bitter experiences as well as our pursuit of happiness and material gains may have shrunk our sweet core to the size of a shriveled raisin. But compassion can be cultivated (psmag.com) and trained. It’s a practice. The more we practice, the more it will become part of who we are. Similarly, the less we water the seeds of altruism, the bitterer we become.
What are some ways we can expand our own empathetic potential and fully embody compassion?
In the risk of sounding naive, I believe that all human beings are naturally sweet
Humans are social creatures by nature, we are hard wired to care and connect with each other.
“Over the last decade, neuroscientists have identified a 10-section “empathy circuit” in our brains which, if damaged, can curtail our ability to understand what other people are feeling. Evolutionary biologists like Frans de Waal have shown that we are social animals who have naturally evolved to care for each other, just like our primate cousins. And psychologists have revealed that we are primed for empathy by strong attachment relationships in the first two years of life.” (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
Everyone has this ability to feel empathy, as neuroscience shows, empathy is an important characteristic of the human brain. It’s what renders humans humane.
Once you accept that others couldn’t give you the love or compassion you really wanted because their heart at the time was not capable of it, you will also understand that they projected their inner conflict or suffering onto you. If you walk around with a backpack full of bricks, mad at the whole world, you won’t be able to strengthen your natural empathetic abilities.
Recall the times you treated someone unfairly. The negative you see in others also exist in you.
Similarly, turn down the volume of your negative inner voice and forgive yourself for past mistakes, they were meant to strengthen and guide you.
As you forgive yourself, you gain the ability to also forgive others, you become free of an enormous burden that weighs you down. Through forgiveness you make room for peace and love to enter in, which can only benefit you. Let it go, the choice is yours.
If we don’t learn to master our emotions they become a significant obstacle impeding our growth. Instead of reacting immediately to emotional triggers, take deep breaths until your heart rate returns to normal.
Know that negative emotions come and go. Don’t resist them, instead let them pass without blindly identifying with them or reacting to them. They will dissolve on their own. In hindsight you’ll be glad that you didn’t act on these feelings.
The expression blinding rage is accurate. Intense negative emotions prevent us from seeing things from an objective point of view, including our opponent’s perspective. Through the practice of mastering our emotions we discover that we are more than our anger, fear or pain.
We free our inner voice underneath our irrational thoughts. Seeing beyond our emotions, we can cut to the core of the issue. Our understanding blossoms, we tap into our empathetic awareness.
Everyday, everywhere, you encounter people who feel much worst. A lot of times you wouldn’t even suspect that they do.
Most people are resilient, they rarely show their emotional or physical pain in public. Our capacity to feel hurt, sadness, loneliness and pain as well as joy and other positive feelings are our common bonds as human beings. People feeling tremendous sadness will likely choose to hide it from the world because they know that no one really cares or that they will be judged. By showing genuine kindness or interest towards them, we allow them to be seen and heard.
Through this empathetic bond, we can also remove our masks and reveal our feelings and experiences to another person in pain, creating a mutual understanding. This in turn will defuse our own feelings of loneliness, anger, and pain.
By choosing to focus on our similarities we create a deeper connection with others, can help them alleviate their pain, while bridging differences.
Living within the confines of ourselves, our problems are magnified. When we dedicate ourselves to help another person or simply lend a listening ear, our own preoccupations become less urgent. When I open my eyes to the world around me, gratitude springs up within me as I discover that my little problems are nothing compared to so many people on this planet.
Those ice walls between yourself and others are no longer needed
To effectively manage the ego is an ongoing process. Recognize your fears or past hurts (writing them down helps) – what your ego is trying to protect you from.
Accept your own shadows and vulnerabilities. The ego can loosen its grip it has on you once you have accepted your imperfect and beautiful flawed self. Gradually let your protective walls around your heart melt.
Flip your painful experiences around and transform them into a positive testimony. You can help other learn from your new insights and may prevent them from going through what you’ve been through.
The pain you are trying so hard to run away from could be the catalyst for changing lives. By acknowledging your pain, you understand yourself better, and in turn develop compassion towards yourself and others.
If we reconnect with our true empathetic nature, we will be able to feel the suffering of others as if it were our own. In doing so, we will treat each other differently. Someone’s ethnic background, culture, or social status won’t hold much significance in our eyes; compassion will stem from a heart of understanding. The key to solving problems such as violence, inequality, abuse, and environmental destruction is to awaken our empathy already hard wired inside our brain.
In our own quest for happiness, we forget that other peoples’ wellbeing are an integral part of that happiness.
As the Dalai Lama observes, the world doesn’t need anymore successful people or new technologies. But people who are brave enough to embrace their vulnerabilities, who take active steps toward healing and recovering from their painful past, who choose to understand and forgive instead of hate. By reconnecting with our true authentic selves instead of wanting to polish our egos, we can reconnect with our empathetic abilities and heal our world. As we heal the world we also heal ourselves.
True compassion brings to an end the separation between ourselves and others. The day we stop caring about one another is the day we lose all trace of our humanity. A heartfelt gesture, whether big or small, has ripple, multiplying effects. Imagine the impact we can have if we all choose to be more compassionate and giving, starting in our own backyard.
I believe that recovering human empathy is the main solution to create a new earth as well as health and happiness for each individual. As we help others achieve happiness, we reap happiness for ourselves.
The post How to Reconnect With Your Natural Empathetic Abilities appeared first on Change your thoughts.
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OMA, led by partner Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, have been chosen as the “Creative Mediators” for the 12th edition of Manifesta, which will be held in Palermo in 2018. The practice will assemble an interdisciplinary team to investigate the role of governance in the Italian city, and address how contemporary urban centers are affected by tourism, gentrification, migration and climate change. They will also work “with specialists from the fields of contemporary art, sociology, music, cinema and architecture” to develop a series of “interactive, interdisciplinary, performative and artistic interventions.”
The previous incarnation of Manifesta, which took place this year in Zurich, enabled a group of Swiss students to design a floating pavilion on Lake Zurich. The Mayor of Palermo (who has held the position twice before), Leoluca Orlando, has said: “After being listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, with its Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale, Palermo has confirmed its nomadic and migrant vocation.” He expects [Manifesta 12 “to be another milestone in the development path of Palermo; a social and economic enhancement based on culture and the arts, addressing the issue of human mobility.”
Pestellini Laparelli, himself Sicilian-born, most notably developed the Monditalia exhibition as part of OMA/AMO at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. “In the current political climate,” he has said, “Palermo’s history and character make[s] it the ideal laboratory to re-imagine, from a Mediterranean perspective, the liberal values we share, and to address crucial issues for the present and future of the European city.”
The concept for Manifesta 12 and the team of specialists will be announced beginning of 2017.
News via OMA
Fully exposed to spectacular sunsets and impressive thunderstorms, the Beach House embraces the prairie skies and changing waterscapes. This 2,000-square foot residence was designed to echo the stone and wood cottage vernacular of this beachside community. Harmonizing with the surrounding landscape, cedar and fir were used both inside and out, and emit the natural aesthetic of an age-old building material.
With a playfulness of scale, low rooflines introduce the visitor to lofty interior spaces that celebrate a panoramic view and an ocean-like horizon line of water and sky. The interior is extended outward across the deck with a wall of windows that open to create what feels more like a screened-in porch with a dramatic roof overhang and the summer breeze sweeping through it.
Adorned with Western Red Cedar, roof planes transition to wall surfaces. Horizontal siding clads the front and back facades as a subtle twist on traditional shiplap planking of surrounding cottages. The cedar was left exposed to allow the wood to silver with age.
The interior further showcases the versatility of wood design applications but also introduces an aesthetic of raw steel and concrete: solid fir roof beams are anchored with custom steel rafter ties; and a board-formed concrete feature wall is constructed with a built-in staircase and fireplace.
Product Description. Western Red Cedar was selected for its top-performing durability, structural ingenuity and relatively low maintenance. The No.1 Blue Ribbon, Perfection, CCA treated, 18″ Western Red Cedar, resquared & rebutted (R&R) shingles and horizontal 1” x 4” boards used on the exterior of the Beach House were not finished with a paint or stain to allow the wood to silver with age, conveying a subtle, modern twist on traditional ship plank of the surrounding cottages.
Are you thinking of putting up a hammock in your home? Do you know how to set up a hammock?
If you are interested in incorporating hammocks into the interior design of your home or using hammocks as seating, you should strongly consider some of the following interior design tips for incorporating these items into interior spaces:
Finding an ideal size area for your hammock to hang is one of the first steps of interior design. You may have a great space for your hammock but if you have to hang the hammock using extensively long ropes, this can cut off a large area in a particular room and make the room look much smaller than it has to be. Measure the distance inside your room from wall to wall or from the pillar to the wall where you would like to hang your hammock and make sure that it can hang comfortably.
Measure the distance inside your room from wall to wall or from the pillar to the wall where you would like to hang your hammock and make sure that it can hang comfortably.
There’s nothing wrong with putting up your hammock in a few different spots without tying it. Just ask a few family members to hold it in place so that you can see how well it works with your space. Hammocks are great for corner areas as well as for accent pieces in the center of a room but sometimes it can be difficult to see how they will be functional until you put them in a few places. Figure out the area that looks best for the flow of your room and which area will present the most functional space for your hammock to hang.
Hammocks are great for corner areas as well as for accent pieces in the center of a room but sometimes it can be difficult to see how they will be functional until you put them in a few places. Figure out the area that looks best for the flow of your room and which area will present the most functional space for your hammock to hang.
See Also: Easy Decorating Tips for Bachelors
If you are going to be hanging your hammock from a wall and you need to install a hammock hanger, always make sure to use appropriate wall studs. Finding the studs ahead of time will make sure that your hammock simply doesn’t fall out of the wall the moment that you sit down inside of it. Rather than risking your drywall you could also consider getting a hammock stand that will hold each end of the hammock and lay it out inside your space. These metal hammock stands work particularly well at setting up indoor hammocks without having to drill any type of holes or find studs. If you are nervous about the idea of finding studs or you simply want a hammock that can be moved throughout your interior space, a hammock stand setup could be a worthwhile investment.
Rather than risking your drywall, you could also consider getting a hammock stand that will hold each end of the hammock and lay it out inside your space. These metal hammock stands work particularly well at setting up indoor hammocks without having to drill any type of holes or find studs. If you are nervous about the idea of finding studs or you simply want a hammock that can be moved throughout your interior space, a hammock stand setup could be a worthwhile investment.
If you are nervous about the idea of finding studs or you simply want a hammock that can be moved throughout your interior space, a hammock stand setup could be a worthwhile investment.
Depending on where you set up your hammock inside, you can accent your hammock as you would any other piece of furniture. Add a comfortable blanket, a few accent pillows and consider setting it up in an area where you could comfortably read or watch TV.
A hammock can be an excellent accent piece for your room. By finding a hammock that is colored in a fashion that matches your furniture or wall colors, a hammock can naturally tie in with the rest of your décor.
See Also: Top 10 Tips for Buying Stylish Furniture on a Budget
Keep some of these top ideas in mind when setting up a hammock or hammock chair inside and coordinating it with your current design scheme.
The post 5 Interior Design Tips for Hammocks and Hammock Chairs appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
Happy Thanksgiving! On this day of gratitude, we’re so thankful for America’s special places, like Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. From one coast to another, our nation is full of incredible parks and public lands to explore with family and friends. Sunrise photo courtesy of Douglas Croft.
