An amazing shot by Philipp Schmidli of a cyclist in front of the moon.
PetaPixel explains the work involved in getting that shot in “Silhouettes in a Giant Moonrise, Captured Using a 1200mm Lens.” (Thanks to Bob Blakely).
Also in the realm of impressive tool use is this:
Orangutan from Borneo photographed using a spear tool to fish at Primatology.net, via Anita Leirfall.
Me, I took a picture of some very cute baby geese, but it didn’t come out.
There’s a giant rubber duck in Sydney Harbor right now:
It’s apparently by Florentijn Hofman, who does this sort of thing.
My only other comment? Seattle, you’re doing it wrong. Where’s our rubber duckie?
Via “Sydney Festival Launches Giant Rubber Duck in the Harbor“, Pedestrian TV. (I believe there’s a typo, and the duck is 13.8 meters, not 138 meters.)
The Telegraph reports that the Gavle Goat for 2012 is up, and surrounded by guards, cameras, flame retardants, and arsonists.
Emergent Chaos has reporters on the ground internet, ready to report on this holiday story of a town, a goat, and an international conspiracy of drunken arsonists. Stay tuned!
This years goat is shown in its pre-fire state. Note the pre-positioned fire extinguishers surrounding it, along with what one might describe as an altogether insufficient fence.
[Update: It turns out that the goat is blogging this year. Mixed English and Swedish.]
Apparently, the project manager who found a vendor for the Vermont State Police car decals failed to consider a few things. Such as the risk that prisoners might want to have a little fun at the expense of the police.
You can see the fun if you study the image carefully here, or in a larger version at MSN Photoblog.
For your holiday amusement:
Thanks, Jeff!
Check out this amazing house by Arquitectura Organica:
Eric Fischer is doing work on comparing locals and tourists and where they photograph based on big Flickr data. It’s fascinating to try to identify cities from the thumbnails in his “Locals and Tourists” set. (I admit, I got very few right, either from “one at a time” or by looking for cities I know.)
This reminds me a lot of Steve Coast’s work on Open Street Map, which I blogged about in “Map of London.” It’s fascinating to watch the implicit maps and the differences emerge from the location data in photos.
Via Data Mining blog and
There’s just something about skinny girls in pouffy skirts…and stormtrooper helmets.
More at http://redandjonny.tumblr.com/
Back in September, a group of Czech artists called EPOS 257 camouflaged themselves as city-workers, went to the Palackeho square in Prague and installed a fence. The fence was left on the square with no apparent intent or explanation.
At first, the city council didn’t know about it, and when there were told, they didn’t know how to deal with it – what if somebody put it there for a reason?
The fence stayed for 54 days before being removed.
It’s amazing how encrusted our nominally public spaces have become, and sad to see that it’s not just the US that suffers from this.
Via Boing Boing, where Maggie Koerth-Baker gave a delightful pointer to this film of Feynman explaining for seven-and-a-half minutes why he can’t really explain why magnets repel each other. Or attract, either.
And trumping him in time and space, Bierce gave us this in 1906:
MAGNET, n.
Something acted upon by magnetism.MAGNETISM, n.
Something acting upon a magnet.The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.