Allison Lapper: model mother and amazing painter

She was born with a rare chromosomal disorder called phocomelia which is not unlike thalidomide, Alison Lapper did not have any arms and had only very short legs. She refers to her condition as: "limb deficiency".

She is a remarkable lady in many respects. She has coped with her disability, put herself through university, raised a perfectly healthy son, established a successful career as a talented artist and won the respect of very many people.

She began life, from a very early age, at Chailey Heritage School, a residential home for the severely disabled, where she would stay until she was 18 years old. At the time, Chailey Heritage was regarded as a centre of excellence for the care of the seriously handicapped. It was here that she met the boy who would become her life-long friend, Pete Hull.

Pete is also severely handicapped, having no legs and very shortened arms. Pete and Alison, when they were old enough, would swim regularly. Pete went on to swim professionally and won a number of gold medals. Although the picture below may look like Pete is diving, he is, in fact, swimming underwater.

Alison lives in Shoreham Beach and receives an income from The Mouth and Foot Painter's Association, an International Cooperative of Artists which produces cards and Calendars. She graduated from Brighton University with a first-class honours degree in Art, and has since had numerous exhibitions of both paintings and photography. Alison's main subject, for her art, is herself. She is very confident with her body and with her sexuality, and very happy to pose nude for the camera as you can see. She is happy with her body and considers it to be different and beautiful. She can be quite outspoken and thinks that people are very often narrow-minded about disability and sex.

Alison is also fiercely independent, refusing to wear any form of prosthetic limb.

In 2000, after a brief relationship with an able-bodied man she says: "I quite unexpectedly, and quite happily fell pregnant, and he ran a mile". Alison became a single-parent to a boy she named Parys.

In the summer of 2003 in Madrid, Spain, Alison attended a Women and Disability Conference where she spoke on motherhood and maternity. Prior to this she visited Buckingham Palace at the Queen's invitation to receive an M.B.E, for her Services to Art.

A sculpture of Alison has won a competition to occupy the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square. The statue will be created by sculptor Marc Quinn and will feature Alison naked and pregnant.

Over the past five years Alison has achieved public recognition as an artist and a champion of the disabled, but it's still being a mother that is the focus of her life.

Possitive attitude

Do you know how to develop a positive attitude??? Here there are 6 easy steps to accomplish that!!!

Tell yourself you can change

“Happiness is not the belief you don’t need to change, it’s that you can change,” Achor says. Take a moment to notice the relationship between change and personal growth. Try this: “Write down the three greatest moments of change in your life that have brought you to being the person you like being today,” Achor advises. They can be obvious milestones, like moving to a new city, or more subtle and personal, like meeting your best friend. Hang your list in your bathroom or above your desk to encourage you to adapt your attitude and stay positive.

Go someplace else.

When you're taxed, it’s easy to blow small negatives out of proportion. But research shows that a new environment can change your perspective for the better. Achor describes an experiment where Yale medical students left class to study ancient paintings at a local art museum. After their trip, as a group they showed a 10 percent improvement in their ability to recognize important medical details, compared to students who didn’t take the same break. “By training their brains to see more vantage points, these students learned to approach problems with a broader and deeper perspective,” Achor writes. Try this: If you're stuck, expose your brain to a new environment—physically go to another place, or read or look elsewhere—to gain a positive change of attitude.

Refuel and re-energize.

Everyone knows that tired plus hungry equals unhappy, but this combination might be more damaging than you think. Your brain interprets lack of sleep as a threat to the central nervous system, Achor writes, which can cloud judgment. Missing one night of sleep can cause you to remember 59 percent fewer positive words, which could make you overly focus on the negative. “If you are well rested and just fed, it will be easier to see the broader range of valuable details, information, and possibilities,” Achor writes. In one well-known Columbia Business School study, judges granted parole to only 20 percent of applicants before lunch time, but to 60 percent after they ate something. Try this: If your attitude is chronically cranky, look at your eating and sleeping habits. A mid-morning snack (like the protein-fat combo of apple with peanut butter) could steady your blood sugar.

Identify both the positive and the negative.

No matter how bleak it may seem, every situation has a silver lining, Achor insists. “I’ve never encountered an environment where positive details could not be found,” Achor writes. Try this: Focus on an object or task and list as many descriptions as you can for 30 seconds. You get three points for positive descriptions, and one for negative. Why include negatives? “Awareness of negatives can motivate us to take action, and the act of looking for them can make our brain even more flexible and nimble,” Achor says.

Talk to the right people for support.

Venting your dramas to your officemate or your sister might be more harmful than helpful, according to Achor. Continually talking to like-minded people could mean you hear the same perspective on repeat, which discourages problem solving. To get a positive attitude, seek out different viewpoints to recognize all aspects of the issue. Try this: With big decisions—ending a relationship; asking for a promotion—use a three-person reality check, Achor says. “Find someone with a different personality, different economic status, and different age group,” Achor explains. “It covers all of your bases.”

Channel your stress.

Stress makes every bad situation worse. Or does it? Hormones released during stress can boost memory and reasoning ability, says Achor, and teaching yourself to think about the positive aspects of stress can actually improve performance as well as physical and mental health. In one study, managers trained to recognize the upside of stress reported a 23 percent drop in physical symptoms like headaches, backaches, and fatigue. Try this: When you're overwhelmed, pinpoint the real reason. If you're worried about a work presentation, it might be that your stress is about impressing your boss, not talking in front of a group. Aim to direct the stress into a more confident delivery.

Technology inventions

Even though I'm not the biggest fan of technology inventions, I find them really interesting and this year have been four amazing inventions so far.

Google Glasses

Who doesn’t know about the Google glasses? Tech geeks have been eagerly waiting for Google’s Project Glass to complete, and the time has almost come. These glasses are coined as Smartphone’s for your eyes. Google has created an innovative way to keep the users logged in, and you’d potentially be able to do everything with these glasses that you’ve been doing with your Smartphone right from viewing videos, reading mails, text messages, and a whole lot more.

Flexible Displays

In coming days, companies like Samsung will be launching flurry of new Smartphone’s with OLED displays. These displays are flexible and unbreakable and also conserve low battery, making them lot more efficient when compared with older Smartphone models. With this durable and new technology, customers can extend their phone life, and most of them will also be water-resistant.

The new Sony Xperia Z, and Samsung Galaxy S4 are good examples of such displays.

Wireless Charging

Wireless charging will be one of the mainstreams this year; it allows users to charge their ultra-books and phones without wire. So, expect to see a lot of gadgets powered by this technology.

Memristor Technology

Memristors will change the computing industry. With the help of non-volatile memory, chips deliver lower energy consumption, faster speeds, and ultimately smaller computers.

And, of course these are just 5 of the enticing technological releases of 2013. There are many more surprises coming.

3d paintings = cool stuff

3D street art are gaining much popularity these days. some of the most famous brands are already taking the advantages of this publi'c curiosity on this kinf o art to create awareness for their product and here are some of them. They are pretty cool, I really love them and I think this guys make awesome jobs.

CORAL ALERT!!

I found this news on line and it shows how human actions are damaging the enviroment. If we go in the direction we are now, we are lost with no chance of recovery. i think is time for us to help to improve this situation, because is pretty sad to see how our beautiful enviroment is dilapidating.

Coral alert: destruction of reefs 'accelerating' with half destroyed over past 30 years

If we go in the direction we are now, we are lost with no chance of recovery. But if we listen to what the IPCC report tells us, and take that advice, and get on and form the partnerships to do it, we can turn the situation around. But if we wait another 10 years, we'll be too far gone."

About half of the world's coral reefs have already been destroyed over the past 30 years, as climate change warms the sea and rising carbon emissions make it more acidic.

But the trend now looks to be accelerating, said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the scientist in charge of the ocean chapter of the forthcoming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"Our oceans are in an unprecedented state of decline due to pollution, over-fishing and climate change. The state of the reefs is very poor and it is continuing to deteriorate," said Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, of the University of Queensland.

"This is an eco-system that has been around for tens of millions of years and we are wiping it out within a hundred. It's quite incredible."

In addition to working on the IPCC report, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg is leading by far the most comprehensive assessment of the state of the world's coral reefs, the Catlin Seaview Survey (CSS). Its initial findings demonstrate that the reefs are getting "increasingly hammered" from all sides, he said.

"The coral reefs' decline seems to be accelerating rather than decelerating, but I would add the caviat that the ultimate evidence will come in about five years time," he added. That is because the CSS will be the first to provide a detailed worldwide picture of coral reefs, many of which have never been documented before. Only by comparing the result of this survey with the situation as it develops in the coming years can the true picture of the decline be known.