Meet the Thermometer Man

Richard T. Porter has earned the nickname “The Thermometer Man” by putting together a collection of around 5,000 thermometer of various shapes and sizes. More images after the break...





The small village of Onset, in Wareham, Massachusetts, may not be among the world’s top travel destination, but Richard T. Porter has been working long and hard to put this settlement on the tourist map. He spent decades putting together his thermometer collection and opened the Porter Thermometer Museum. The founder, curator and educator of this unusual museum has been featured by Ripley’s Believe Ir or Not, and is in the Guinness Book of Records for the world’s largest collection of thermometers.





After serving in the Korean War, Richard T. Porter returned to the US and began teaching junior high school science. He used thermometers to educate his students, and that’s when he fell in love with them. He began collecting them and also took up repairing broken thermometers and even got a reputation for his skill. Throughout the years he fixed old thermometers from as far as New Zealand.



His thermometer collection kept growing, and in 1990, when he lost his daughter to a brain tumor, he decided to build a thermometer museum, after his daughter made him promise he would do something with his collection. Along with his wife, Richard T. Porter traveled to all 50 American states and 20 other countries, on all seven continents, collecting thermometers. The museum was officially opened in 1993, and has earned Onset the title of “thermometer capital of the world”.





The 83-year-old Thermometer Man knows he won’t be around forever, and has already made arrangements to donate his extensive thermometer collection to the National Weather Museum, in Penn State. Most of his collection has already been moved there, but he still keeps a few of his beloved collectibles around, and keeps busy by giving presentations on thermometers and the hazards of mercury, to schools and other organizations.





Next time you’re looking for the most accurate temperature reading in the world, head over to the Thermometer Museum of Onset, and ask the Thermometer Man himself.

Animal Safari

first Underwater Hanbok Fashion Show, Seoul

 Models perform while wearing a 'hankok', a traditional Korean dress, a creation by designer Park Sul-Nyeo, during the Underwater Hanbok Fashion Show in Seoul on August 22, 2010. The attraction was held as a part of promotional event for a new department stores' opening claiming it was the world's first underwater hanbok fashion show.

Beautiful moss art and grass art

There is something beautiful about moss or ivy crawling organically up the outsides of buildings, but something altogether bizarre and fantastic about surfaces entirely coated with greenery inside and out. Some artists have taken green art to the literal and metaphorical next level by doing just that and changing the way we think about architectural surfaces and structures and their relationship to the natural environment.

 What makes art or design both amazing and green? Sustainability is a factor, but so is style – and the degree to which something is integrated with its environment. From transforming green boxes to rotating dome homes, creative eco-art to exotic eco-landscapes and dizzying tree houses to dazzling tree sculptures, here are twenty of the greatest (and strangest) works of contemporary green art, architecture and design.

Monkey business at Lopburi bhuddist Temple, Thailand

Thailand is a beautiful place to visit, full of wonderful old temples and rich in history. Thai people though are very poor, and money gleaned from tourism makes up a big part of their income. Sometimes the wildlife also attracts tourists, and in one particular place, the locals like to demonstrate how much this means to them.

Every year since 1989, around about the end of November, hundreds of long-tailed macaque monkeys have descended on the Pra Prang Sam Yot Buddhist temple of Lopburi, Thailand. This is because they know that they have an open invitation to eat fruits and vegetables during an annual feast held in honor of Rama, a hero of the Ramayana, who, it is said, rewarded his friend and ally, Hanuman the Monkey King, with the fiefdom of what is now Lopburi.

Organizers of the annual monkey buffet use more than 3,000 kg of fruits and vegetables for the festival. One American visitor reportedly said, “It’s really cool. It is a different thing than anything we have in America. Monkeys just fly everywhere, stealing food. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

These mischievous, long-tailed monkeys are the main attraction for the area and are given free reign to scale buildings and people, snatch glasses off faces and steal wallets out of bags. They may be cute but they’re also nimble. That being said, long-tailed macaques are nutritionally adventuresome and opportunistic, and their annual buffet has, in the past, included grilled sausages, jelly and Coca-Cola.

Few people ever get, in reality, genuine opportunities to interact with wildlife as closely related to ourselves as the monkeys are, so attending this annual party must be something very special for those lucky enough to get to it. Every picture tells a story, they say, and this is a really appealing one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cool Concrete Flooring Art (Interior Design)

The art of applying stickers to walls and windows is quite common in Interior Design, but it is rare to see somebody apply the same effect to a floor. Especially when you do it this way - by making a permanent pattern in the concrete itself. Great Interior Designing!

It is a very cool effect.