Africa - the fieriest continent - The Globe and Mail

A series of visualizations of tens of millions of fires detected worldwide from space since 2002 shows how fire affects our environment, according to NASA. The visualizations show the observations made by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (Modis) instruments on board NASA satellites, United Press International reports. Modis data show Africa has more abundant burning than any other continent with about 70 per cent of the world’s fires. Fires are comparatively rare in North America, making up just 2 per cent of the world’s burned area each year, the NASA release said.Vote for the lopsided guy“Having perfectly set eyes and lace front wigs a level jaw is supposed to make you more attractive, popular and dominant than someone with wonky ears and a crooked smile,” Nick Collins writes for The Daily Telegraph. “But being somewhat lacking in the looks department could in fact equip someone with the skills to be a better leader, a new study suggests. The public tends to elect politicians with symmetrical faces … because we feel they are more clean-cut, trustworthy and commanding. Leaders like Sir Winston Churchill, however, may have turned out to be more popular and successful because they had spent their lives trying to overcome the disadvantage of having lopsided features.” Carl Senior of Britain’s Aston University, who led the study, explained: “When symmetrical people are growing up in the playground, everyone views them in a positive light. If you are a symmetrical-looking man, you appear a more dominant, attractive individual so society assumes that to be the case. The asymmetrical group has to develop more positive social skills to compensate for these perceived shortcomings.”Tell yourself the truth“New research suggests self-talk to boost self-esteem may backfire full lace wigs and cause depression, if the message is untruthful,” Psych Central reports. “However, investigators discovered high and low performers felt fine when they assessed themselves accurately – probably because the high performers recognized their strengths, and low performers acknowledged their weaknesses and could try to improve their future performance. ‘These findings challenge the popular notion that self-enhancement and providing positive performance feedback is beneficial to emotional health. Instead, our results underscore the emotional benefits of accurate self-assessments and performance feedback,’ said lead author Young-Hoon Kim of the University of Pennsylvania.”Mr. Penguin waddles alone“A Belgian who walks the streets of Brussels dressed as a penguin has announced that he wishes to be buried at sea in Antarctica in a coffin decorated with penguins,” The Sunday Times of London reports.chinese hair “Alfred David, 79, has been obsessed with penguins since 1968, when he was nicknamed Mr. Penguin by colleagues after a car accident left him walking with a waddle. … But his devotion has come at a cost: After learning that he was planning to change his name to Mr. Penguin, his wife left him.”Vanity down the pipes“The long, strange tale of Moammar Gadhafi is at an end, after the former Libyan leader was shot and killed in his hometown of Sirte,” Melissa Bell blogs for The Washington Post. “At the hospital, Libyan officials ran a number of tests, including on hair samples for DNA, to prove the identity of the dictator who had been on the run for the past two months. The hair was not Moammar Gadhafi’s. The slain leader was wearing a wig. … Given [his] flamboyant dressing style and audacious displays of wealth … it is not surprising that Gadhafi would still wear a wig, even when running for his life and hiding in a sewer system.”Thought du jour“Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character and one of the best instruments of success. Without it, genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.”– Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773), English statesman