Being blown to bits on a column of fire isn’t the first worry that enters our pretty little heads at night. After all, only about 10 percent of the earth’s population lives within fire-spitting distance of its approximately 1,500 active volcanoes. But for those brave, some might say foolhardy few, it’s a good idea to sleep light and keep the running shoes by the bed.

Volcanoes, simply put, are openings in our planet’s surface which allow hot magma, ash and gases to escape from its core. On average there are 10 volcanoes erupting somewhere on Earth each day. A typical volcano burbles and belches benignly for many, sometimes hundreds of years, lulling those in the shadows into near affection for the hot-tempered old thing. But when her ire is up and a full-scale eruption occurs, what may have been pointed to with a bit of local pride can become as near to hell on Earth as you’d care to get.

Destruction wrought by an aptly termed “mega-colossal” eruption, such as occurred in 1883 in Indonesia when Krakatau blew, can only be described as biblical. On that day 36,000 people were killed in less than 24 hours. The explosion was reportedly heard in London, and the pollution let loose in the atmosphere caused copper-colored sunsets across the world for years.

Around 1645 BC a series of eruptions on what is now the Greek island of Santorini destroyed a vibrant Minoan civilization. Well over half of the island sank into the sea. Plato believed this to be Atlantis, the lost civilization of legend. The locals today are an enterprising lot, with many houses built of the debris from that ancient catastrophe.

Volcanic eruptions have consequences far beyond the immediate vicinity, and if your plan is to elevate yourself above the unpleasantness in your Gulfstream G550, think again. In 1989 a KLM Boeing 747 with 240 passengers onboard encountered ash from the eruption of Mt. Redoubt near Anchorage, Alaska. All four engines failed within 59 seconds. Airspeed indicators failed. Radio, radar, electronic and communication systems overheated. The cockpit filled with smoke. This jumbo jet was essentially a glider for several minutes. The fourth engine finally came back on final approach, and the crew was in the end able to land the plane safely - but not without a few grey hairs and $80 million in damages to the jet.

For clips of the god of fire and all his fury in red hot Hi-Def, click here.

So, how did the climatologist spot the world’s smallest glacier? Good ice sight! We hear the groans and we don’t blame you a bit. Just a little ice-breaker… every pun intended.

Small is not what first comes to mind when considering glaciers, but whether they are a few hundred meters across, or as is the case with the Lambert Glacier in Antarctica which, at 250 miles long and 60 miles wide, is the world’s largest, there is one quality that makes a glacier a glacier as opposed to just a big hunk of ice. Perpetuality.

Glaciers form where the mass of accumulated snow and ice exceeds the rates of erosion, vaporizing, chipping, and melting. Over time the snow is compacted to very dense ethereal blue ice. The density and lack of air due to compression cause all colors but blue to be absorbed, but depending on debris and melt patterns, glaciers can form in various color patterns. One of the most dramatic types is the so-called zebra glacier with alternating black and white vertical stripes.

Seventy-five percent of the world’s fresh water supply is locked up in these massive rivers of ice. Only the world’s oceans contain more total water. Excepting Australia, glaciers occur in mountain ranges all over the world - even in the tropics. We thaw them out at our peril. If the Lambert Glacier were to melt, sea level worldwide would rise 210 feet. Most of the world would become Venice and Venice would become Atlantis and all us “coasters” would wind up looking for beach property in Lebanon, Kansas.

Everything about a glacier is slow, or should be. That’s how we want it. A glacial pace if you will. But lately this process is going a little faster than what is to be desired. Recently an 11 square mile chunk of the Petermann Glacier in Greenland broke off. We’re talking an ice cube over half the size of Manhattan. That’s a big, foreboding splash.

However, in ideal conditions a glacier will maintain itself, accumulation of ice always outpacing ablation, and their slow movement through mountain valleys and over vast artic plains has been, with wind and water, among the most influential forces in shaping the surface of Earth as we know it.

So the next time you stoop to drink from that cool mountain stream or plunk a couple of ice cubes into your scotch, remember what a slow, arduous journey those molecules of H2O have made to quench your thirst, and relish the experience.

For clips of glaciers, slip-sliding along in cool, crisp High Definition, click here.

Some see it as a positive result of third-wave feminism, while others think it is just another example of the seemingly unquenchable thirst we have for public displays of brutish manners and train-wreck spectacle. WHATEVAH!, as the bad girls say. There is no doubt that the four-wheeled, all-female, rough-and-tumble sport known as Roller Derby is back.

Grassroots-organized regional teams are battling it out on tracks both banked and flat all over the world. A new campy, DIY feminine sensibility has emerged, and you are more likely to see the ladies in mini skirts and glittery tights than the unflattering and often masculine uniforms of former days.

Beginning as a simple endurance race on wheels, roller derby has evolved by happy accident and shrewd promotion to the organized mayhem its fans love. It was Leo Seltzer, a failed Hollywood publicist in cahoots with writer Damon Runyon, who in the ’30s modified skating races by emphasizing physical contact and teamwork which resulted in the sport enjoying a resurgence of popularity today. So much so that it has passed the acid test of importance to popular culture… they’ve made a movie about it. “Whip It,” directed by former naughty girl Drew Barrymore, tells the story of a beauty pageant drop-out who joins a roller derby team and finds independence and, wonder of wonders, true love.

But it is those good old days - when rival queens of the oval track, “Blonde Bomber” and “Banana-Nose,” or Joan Weston and Ann Calvello, respectively, elbowed each other to fame and fortune - that a new generation of punk-hip young ladies are sardonically taking inspiration from today. Contemporary fans can watch Brandi Iron, Broadzilla and Janis Choplin block, jam and pivot in such festive matches as Season’s Beatings, Spanksgiving and Cinco de May-hem.

And although teams almost always leave the track with a concussion or two and as rough as it looks, the only fatalities associated with the game occurred way back in 1937 when the bus carrying a team and crew blew a tire, rolled over and caught fire, killing 19.

So if a human demolition derby played by savvy, witty, athletic young women in quasi-ironic post-feminist attire is what you’ve always longed to attend, watch for a match coming soon to an arena near you. Trust us, it’s as fun as it sounds. In the meantime, we have clips of the athletes in question - in brutally crisp High Definition - here.

We humans seem to be the only species with an overwhelming desire to decorate our skin. Since Adam and Eve donned those fig leaves, we have come up with increasingly strange ways to alter, if not improve upon, nature’s offerings.

Ink, work, tats - or for those of us less lingo-hip… tattooing. It is an ancient practice. Otzi the Iceman, a fellow who lived about 7,000 years ago, emerged from a melting Alp a decade ago sporting over 57 tattoos on his body. No Mom-On-A-Red-Heart for this guy. Anthropologists tell us that ancient man wasn’t just bored when he ambled into the local tattoo tent. He used tattoos as marks of status, and to protect against dangers both on and off the earth. Sailors of the 18th Century brought the practice back from Tahiti. Since then, it has been associated with those who sail, from Popeye to the current tars of the Royal Navy, where there is even a tattoo to mark deserters.

In many cultures, a pretty picture in pastels just won’t do the trick. For those who really mean business, there is the practice of scarification - cutting the skin and keeping the wound from healing for a time sufficient to produce a permanent mark. The Maori literally consider themselves naked if they don’t have the facial scars called Moko. It is said that the process can release endorphins, causing a state of euphoria - which may explain the use of scarification in religious and passages rites. Turns out you can get high on pain! What seems to separate the practice from a pathological disorder is purpose.

Today, the limits are those of one’s own imagination and the skill of the tattoo artist. And yes, it can get a bit odd. Take the fellow who has a plate on his pate serving up two fried eggs, sausage links, and what appears to be a generous serving of baked beans… his favorite breakfast. Then there is the guy who illustrates the lure of the cliché; he has eyes in the back of his head. In the category of “Traveling By the Seat of Your Pants,” one peripatetic sport has a map of the world on his posterior. A serious looking fault line lies just east of Africa.

At FootageBank HD, it is rumored that our boss has a chic little red chair discretely and beautifully rendered somewhere on her lovely self. Though you most likely won’t be verifying that any time soon, you can check out our eye-popping Hi-Def footage of the tattooist art here.

Kissing, as any pre-adolescent human will tell you with one “yuck,” appears to be one of the oddest of all the odd behaviors in which our species indulges. What would make two sane, healthy people expose themselves to each other’s germs so willingly?

Turns out, there is a kiss for just about any emotion, including hate, envy, deceit and greed. Google Judas Iscariot. There was a fellow from whom you would not want so much as a peck on the cheek. Then we have that most mixed of messages conveyed by the air kiss, a slight turn of the head and a smack in mid-air near the cheek. The hostess gets the point.

But for most of us, assuming that our childhood revulsion of all things icky is over, kissing is about as fine a pastime as can be enjoyed by two warm-blooded animals. We’ve been at it for a long time, at least since 1500 BC when kissing is first talked about in early Vedic scriptures. Scientists still aren’t sure whether sucking face is a learned or innately human gesture. An evidential case can be made for both. Many animals appear to be kissing. The “Kissing Gourami” is so named for the obvious reason that it will pucker up like nobody’s business. Thing is, only the males do it, and they aren’t stuck on each other. A fight for territory is likely to ensue, and the behavior is so stressful that sometimes the fish getting kissed immediately drops dead from fright. Talk about passive aggressive.

But as far as we can tell, only humans and Bonobo apes mean reproductive business when kissing. One theory is that the kiss evolved from mothers’ pre-masticating food for infants. Another holds that the male’s saliva becomes full of testosterone when aroused and the female can “taste” it and will encourage the specimen with which she would like her genes to mingle. Otherwise, it’s some version of the dreaded handshake instead of a kiss.

Putting aside all variations of the place-your-lips-on-my-posterior type of kiss, for the last 800 years or so since dentistry has solved the halitosis issue, we look for every opportunity to plant one. A recent study even revealed that people who kissed their partners before leaving for work live longer, get into fewer accidents and earn more money than those who don’t. So pucker up! It’s good for your heart and your wallet.

For clips of smooches in lick-your-lips High Definition, click here.

Slouched in the saddle, squinting into the sunset.  Nothing evokes the spirit of the West like the slow-talking, bowlegged, courtly cowboy.  He has become, along with the Bald Eagle and that green lady in New York Harbor, an icon of American independence and courage.  Fact is, our most American of occupations owes its fashions and customs to the Spanish Conquistadors.  The very name itself is an Anglicization of the Spanish word vaquero.

Although the average person might think all the terms for those who tend to cattle are interchangeable, you wouldn’t want to make that mistake on the range.  A wrangler is in charge of the care and feeding of horses and is traditionally very low down on the cowboy social ladder.  A cattle drive of 3,000 head requires 10 cowboys needing 3 horses each, so the wrangler is an overworked and underappreciated feller.  Next would come the buckaroo.  He breaks and trains horses.  The cowpoke, a little higher up the scale, was the man who prodded the cows at the end of the drive into the train cars at the railhead.  It is the cowboy who is the prince of this romantic group.  The “chase’em, rope’em, brand’em” go-to-guy, with the most highly-developed horsemanship and a way with a lariat as exact as a surgeon with a scalpel.

Cowpunchin’, pokin’ or boyin’, however glamorous, is still one of the lowest paying occupations.  In the early days of the American West, it was a dollar a day and room and board, if you want to call a pot of beans and a cot in a communal bunkhouse that.  Today the average yearly income for ranch workers is about $19,000.  But it has been traditionally one of the most racially and culturally diverse occupations in this country.  Long before desegregation and affirmative action, 15% of the working cowboys were African American.  That’s got Wall Street beat by 10%.  About 25% were Latino.

Well, it’s an honest livin’, so if your 401K is in the toilet or your neighbors are outside with torches demandin’ you divide your bonus with ‘em, you lowdown sidewinder, grab your cell phone, slip out the back door, saddle up and head west.  You’ll probably breathe a lot freer.

In the meantime, brew up a pot of acorn coffee and gnaw on a strip of coyote jerky while you browse here for high-fallutin’, ahem… HIGH DEFINITION clips of cowboys, cattle, the Wild West, and more!

It’s what you might call the “awwww factor” – that irresistible urge to go all mushy and start cooing at any tiny, defenseless creature.  We all know the advantages of being cute.  It keeps you safer on the playground, and, in the case of bear cubs and puppy dogs, might make your mother love you enough to forbid your father from having you for a cocktail snack.  Cute is as effective as claws and fangs when it comes to seeing that a species maintains its chance of survival.

Scientists tell us that it is a simple matter of physiognomy.  One of the reasons we melt at the sight of a baby, whether human, ursus or canine, is those wide googly eyes.  They’re designed to stare you down in the most adorable way until you happily give up that blueberry scone you just laid out five dollars for at Starbucks.  And how could you whack that little puppy with the rolled-up Wall Street Journal for piddling on your new carpet when he is staring up at you like he just brought home a valentine he made at school?  Just pull out the stock page and clean it up.

Survival might also be why so many baby mammals are covered with soft fur.  Sure, there may be the occasional ophidiophile who gets a warm fuzzy feeling from petting the dry scales of a baby rattlesnake, but nothing beats the experience of stroking the downy fluff of a frightened little chick.  An eventual Sunday dinner is the last thing on our minds at a time like that.

And it seems we humans don’t have opportunity to nurture as much we’d like.  In the past when there was a newborn in the house every year, our needs were satisfied.  Now, in the modern world, we substitute pets, and the most popular breeds are those in which the infant-like qualities have through selective breeding been encouraged.  Caring for pets helps us survive as well.  It is a scientific fact that stroking a pet lowers blood pressure and heart rate.  And you don’t have to mortgage the house to send it to college.

Of course, not all babies are beautiful.  The naked mole rat’s offspring isn’t a bit more adorable than its mother.  But for the most part, in the looks department, the offspring has it all over the parent for quite a while.  For stunning HD shots of adorable little babies of all breeds, click here.

Remember how when you used to drop a tomato on the kitchen floor it went splat instead of bounced?  Or consider that indefinable difference in taste of the chicken factory bird as opposed to the cluckers who strutted freely and dined on fat worms and beetles on Grandpa’s lower 40.  If you, like Oliver Douglas, yearn for the fresh air of Green Acres and the grow-your-own experience, then there is a movement for you.

Farm-to-Table, or Slow Food, they call it, and no it doesn’t mean you subsist on a diet of turtle soup and escargot.  They are terms used to describe the effort to transition from industrial agriculture to local, seasonal and sustainably grown food.  You won’t be having red-ripe strawberries in November, but what you do eat won’t have traveled halfway ‘round the world before it arrives limp and exhausted at your table.

Proponents of the Farm-to-Table movement believe that favoring local food consumption directly affects our well-being and is more ecologically sound, although critics claim such issues as transport are not as important if compared to the hidden cost of producing locally.  For example, a tomato grown in a warm country then transported many miles leaves a smaller carbon footprint than one grown locally in a greenhouse, requiring artificial heat.  But then the true locavore would sooner starve than eat any out-of-season food.

Whatever the true cost, the movement is gaining favor among American consumers.  Surveys consistently show that shoppers will pay that little bit extra for food they think helps those closer to home, and there is now a powerful advocate for the Farm-to-Table movement, the new White House chef, Sam Kass.  He is quoted in a recent New York Times article as saying that he preferred to shop for and cook food “mainly from local farms and buying wine from small, sustainable wineries.”  So don’t be surprised if very soon the White House tour includes a Presidential Victory Garden and rooftop chicken coop.  And although that fast-food burger isn’t likely to disappear from the American diet, there may come a time when the beef it is made from was chewing and mooing across town a few days before you chomped into it.

For footage of fresh food and fervent foodies, check out our crisp, mouth-watering High Definition offerings here.

In a fast-paced modern environment, a little verbal shorthand is a good thing.  Suffixes like “ish,” “esque” and “wise” are used to describe what could take a whole paragraph otherwise.  And consider the double-click generation, with their OMGs and LOLs making text messaging and IMing much easier on weary fingers.  Then there’s that word “head,” which, attached after a lot of other words, does the trick in an honest head-on way, every pun intended.  For the most part, the connotations are positive.  The word implies that you are out in front, ahead of the game, or that you might be an expert at something, or at least an enthusiast.  We’re thinking here of words like techno-head, or in the case of the fans of those Grateful fellas, Deadhead.

Then there are the ‘head monikers that require less effort.  Bedhead, for instance, does not connote one end of a queen-size, but instantly brings to mind that fashion-forward look of having just arisen from a very deep slumber.  And while airhead is a military term for a designated area in a hostile territory, it’s more often used these days to describe a person who might have been in an age long past described as “a few bricks light of a load.”

In the grand tradition of name-calling, the “head” add-on can also be used to convey the idea that there is something out of whack with a particular noggin’.   Dunderhead, blockhead, bonehead, jughead, meathead and knucklehead are a few examples.  Conversely, if you want to say that a person is almost too smart for his own good, egghead does quite nicely.

For well or ill, attaching the word to an adjective or a noun is a fairly good way to say that who we really are is lodged in that space between our ears.  So, if you hadn’t already guessed, each of us at FootageBank HD consider ourselves to be a footagehead, with all the associations it implies - that we ourselves are preoccupied with what we do.  And we’re guessing you might be a footagehead too.  That’s why we’re introducing a beachhead in the business of royalty-free footage.

Meet footagehead.  It’s a brand new, no-frills, easy-to-use online footage shop, chock-full of affordable, royalty free 16x9 images captured with the latest tapeless HD cameras.  With 20,000 clips (and growing daily!), footagehead is open and ready for business 24/7.  Preview, purchase and download now at www.footagehead.com.  Of course, we’re still here at FootageBank HD when you need us, but we think you’ll also enjoy heading over to the newest member of our footage family.

The Biggest! The Most! The Best! Try bragging on your own hometown to a New Yorker, and see how far you get. Well, there must be something to all that swaggering civic pride or what are 40 million tourists per year gawking at?

Manhattan Island, the heart of New York City, is just 13 miles long and 2.5 miles wide, but there are about 1,600,000 people bustling about. That works out to be approximately 72,000 per square mile, and all those people are being rude to each other in 170 different languages. Good thing you don’t always understand your neighbor.

Purchased from the Algonquin Indians in 1624 for around $65, a square foot of mid-town pavement in today’s market is worth exactly $12,647.53. Those Dutch boys made a pretty smooth deal.

Laid end to end, the subway tracks would reach to Chicago, and if you stacked up all the skyscrapers, the penthouse would be 70 miles above the earth. Talk about a room with a view. And yet, with over 120,000 cyclists, an extensive mass transit system, and the lowest rate of car ownership in the U.S., New York is statistically the most energy efficient city in the country.

You could plotz deciding where to eat. There are 16,700 restaurants in New York. Oy vey! Forty-six years of eating out every night to sample them all. And what would you say is the number one food exported from New York? Bagels? Cheesecake? As delicious as those New York noshes are, it is chocolate - 234 million dollars worth per year. Sweet revenge on the Dutch and their $65 bargain.

The Empire State Building is the number one tourist attraction in New York.  With its doors opening in 1931 during the middle of The Great Depression, at first the developers couldn’t give away space. A little too high, but after King Kong had his date at the top with Fay Wray, every square foot was rented. The building is struck by lightning over 200 times a year. And in peak tourist season, the wait in line for the 7-minute elevator ride to the observation deck can take over three hours. But we at FootageBank HD don’t like to dwell on the negative. We prefer to put before you Elvita Adams, who in 1979 jumped off the 86th floor and only broke a hip. How, you may ask? Well, the wind blew her back onto the building one floor below. And that is a New York happy ending.

For images from the Battery to the Bronx in Very High Definition, click here. You’ll look. You’ll try. We’ll tawk.