More incredible Station fire images
Posted by Jay on September 2, 2009 at 8:27 am | PERMALINK | No Comments
Los Angeles county in flames
Posted by Jay on August 31, 2009 at 9:02 am | PERMALINK | No Comments
God’s central control office?
Posted by Jay on July 11, 2009 at 8:55 am | PERMALINK | No Comments
Recent photos from the ISS
Posted by Jay on June 26, 2009 at 2:08 pm | PERMALINK | No Comments
The Boston Globe online has a great page of 35 amazing recent photos from the International Space Station (ISS), taken by astronauts, including this strange beauty from high above Egypt:
Roads and circular fields in the desert in Egypt. (NASA/JSC) Click to enlarge.
Virginia Using Zig-Zag Road Lines to Slow Motorists
Posted by Jay on April 21, 2009 at 12:42 am | PERMALINK | No Comments
Virginia Department of Transportation’s (VDOT) Mike Salmon said:
“It is a low cost strategy to get motorists to slow down as they approach the bike trail and pedestrian path. While at first motorists may be a little disoriented, the main point is to get them to pay attention and slow down through that area.”
[Source: SNAFU-ed .... Situation Normal]
Shokotan in a hazmat suit
Posted by Jay on April 1, 2009 at 5:41 pm | PERMALINK | 2 Comments
Hand dryers from around the world
Posted by Jay on March 31, 2009 at 7:55 am | PERMALINK | 1 Comment
Video of FedEx plane crashing in Japan
Posted by Jay on March 23, 2009 at 8:48 am | PERMALINK | No Comments
Video broadcast on Japan’s TV NHK of yesterday’s FedEx plane crash at Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan:
Sadly, the two pilots were both killed; fortunately, nobody else was killed or injured. [Source: YouTube, via Gizmodo]
Undersea volcano erupts off the coast of Tonga
Posted by Jay on March 20, 2009 at 8:52 am | PERMALINK | No Comments
Weird wind-driven ice invasion in Saginaw Bay
Posted by Jay on March 12, 2009 at 3:12 pm | PERMALINK | No Comments
Cold War era rocket ship playgrounds
Posted by Jay on March 11, 2009 at 10:11 am | PERMALINK | 2 Comments
Roadside Church signs
Posted by Jay on March 8, 2009 at 12:28 pm | PERMALINK | No Comments
Saramago on the kipple that is chaos
Posted by Jay on March 7, 2009 at 1:44 pm | PERMALINK | No Comments
From the great, great Portuguese author Jose Saramago’s amazing novel All The Names comes this passage that echoes very closely Philip K. Dick’s formulation of kipple mentioned before: “There are people like Senhor Jose everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs…
Satellites and computers visualizing human activity
Posted by Jay on March 6, 2009 at 11:11 am | PERMALINK | No Comments
These stunning images are computer visualizations, made by mashing data like air traffic GPS signals from satellites, taxi cab activity, Internet activity, highway use and Internet activity with Google maps’ Mapplet technology…
Giallo pudding
Posted by Jay on March 5, 2009 at 4:35 am | PERMALINK | No Comments
Giallo is the Italian equivalent of pulp fiction + film noir, though, being Italian, sexier. And more lurid. Here’s how Wikipedia defines it:
Giallo (plural gialli) is an Italian 20th century genre of literature and film, which in Italian indicates crime fiction and mystery. In the English language, however, it is used in a broader meaning that is closer to the French fantastique genre, including elements of horror fiction and eroticism. The word giallo is Italian for “yellow” (see Wiktionary: giallo) and stems from the origin of the genre as a series of cheap paperback novels with trademark yellow covers.
Giallo Fever, written by Edinburgh-based “PhD student and self-employed computer guy” Keith Brown, is a great blog devoted to all things Giallo. I especially appreciate Mr. Brown’s in-depth analysis, accompanied by a fantastic assortment of screen shots, of many very obscure films that I and probably most people in the United States have never heard of. As an example, check out Mr. Brown’s post…
WWI technology special
Posted by Jay on March 4, 2009 at 2:39 pm | PERMALINK | 2 Comments
With our economy racing back to the 1930s, pretty soon these gadgets might be new again. So let’s reconsider a few of these bygone technologies and see how they might be re-purposed for life in the 21st Century.
In the days before radar existed, this was the only way to detect incoming aircraft. These days it could be adopted by the NSA to listen in on Al Qaeda chatter…
All aboard the Hentai train
Posted by Jay on March 4, 2009 at 1:08 pm | PERMALINK | 4 Comments
Nah, on second thought, better take the bus. C’mon Japan, WTF? Hentai as a form of city planning, or just trying to “cute up” old Godzilla’s image? For those of you who are (even more) confused, Wikipedia can bring you up to speed: “Hentai is a Japanese word that, in the West, is used when referring to…
Masahisa Fukase’s The Solitude of Ravens
Posted by Jay on March 3, 2009 at 1:06 pm | PERMALINK | No Comments
The Art of Memory has a beautiful post, Weaving the feathers of a blackbird with breath and strings, featuring images from Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase’s (b. 1934) 1970s book, The Solitude of Ravens. I’ve put together a small composite of the photos that TAoM has posted — click on it to see them individually and larger…
Today is ‘Wear Your Old Lady’s Army Shoes to School’ Tuesday
Posted by Jay on March 3, 2009 at 7:15 am | PERMALINK | No Comments
Michaux’s Images du monde visionnaire
Posted by Jay on March 2, 2009 at 5:34 pm | PERMALINK | 1 Comment
Henri Michaux (1899-1984), notes Wikipedia, “was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian poet, writer and painter who wrote in the French language. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism. Michaux travelled widely, tried his hand at several careers, and experimented with drugs, the latter resulting in two of his most intriguing works, Miserable Miracle and The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones.”…
