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I don't know about you but I need to come up for air from calling Congressmen. Here's a bit of light diversion. I was watching the movie Zulu on TCM a few of weeks ago and it got me to musing about the "edge of civilization" genre. I thought it would be good weekend fun to make a list. Here's a few more to get things started and to focus on what I mean by the type. Gunga Din - Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Sam Jaffe Fort Apache - John Wayne, Henry Fonda Guns at Batasi -...

Someday, people will realize that they can demand better buildings and cities, and they will do so. Extraordinarily rich and powerful people will sense a market in flux, will shudder, see their fortunes heading for the door, and tap their politicians on the shoulder. Architects will start making places people like. Look for a tipping point. It could have happened during the redesign process after Sept. 11, 2001. It did not, but it could have. Someday it will. When it does happen, it will not be because millions suddenly read a book called “A Theory of Architecture” (2006) by architectural...

The Men Who Stare at Goats, the latest George Clooney fiasco, is like getting stung by a wasp on the inside of your eyelid. You are blinded to all reason and the agony lasts for days. Despite Mr. Clooney’s easygoing charm and obvious good looks, his film choices point to an appalling lack of both intelligence and taste. He just doesn’t seem interested in narrative movies that make sense, and even worse, he has an exasperating tendency to turn his projects over to buddies and basketball cronies, whether or not they have any talent. (In George Clooney movies, talent is...

I thought I'd be domestic for a bit and explore state parks in Montana. Obviously it's a state famous for mountains and glaciers and geysers (well, most of those are in Wyoming, but still), so I wondered what would be at the "state park" level. Found some next stuff. Each picture comes with a link to the page on the Montana state parks Web site. 1. Giant Springs State Park 2. Medicine Rocks State Park (click this one for full-size 3. Lewis and Clark Caverns (Montana's first state park) A very good image of the caverns (I can't share this...

This is how one would imagine mother nature would express her sentiments about our inability to reduce global warming.

Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Whitney Isleib has inadvertently stepped into a Halloween controversy by reportedly dressing up as soon-to-be incarcerated rapper Lil' Wayne in black-face. Photos of the blonde-haired cheerleader turned hip-hop impresario were posted to Facebook and eventually made their way to sports blog Deadspin.com. Offensive or just plain fun? Dallas fans are split. (CBS/KTVT) Photo: Dallas Cheerleader Whitney Isleib. "If she wasn't a Dallas cheerleader would it really matter? It's Halloween, you know. You get to go how you want to go" Cowboys fan Laura Pyhrr told CBS 11 Dallas at Sunday's game. Another fan was less sure. "I'm...

Sunshine today! The Royal Terns are coming in in large flocks, ahead of cold weather. The Grackles were pleased to see me, as usual. The males are getting over their fear of me. Grackles may be pests in urban areas, but around here they stay in the marshes and on the beach.

Recently, a new hypothesis about the origin of the image seen on the Turin Shroud has been presented by Prof. Luigi Garlaschelli1 during a press release. The results of the experiments based on this hypothesis were shown and the explanations and photographs are available on the author web site2. Starting from these data and some complementary explanations kindly furnished to me by Prof. Garlaschelli, it is now possible to begin to examine the plausibility of this hypothesis. The hypothesis of Prof. Luigi Garlaschelli (L.G. in the rest of the text) can be briefly but accurately summarized. A medieval artist originally...

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/sports/Cheerleaders_of_the_NFL.html

BC comic strip Sunday, November 1, 2009 A commentary on Obamacare? Discuss.

The site was found by accident when the Suez Canal was being constructed in 1860. Workers quarrying Santorini's volcanic ash discovered the ruins, but serious excavations at the site didn't begin until 1967. An unfortunate collapse of the roof in 2005, which killed a British tourist, caused the site to be closed. It's scheduled to be reopened sometime after 2010. Greek bureaucracy has brought the repairs of the building to a halt, which has caused Santorini's tourist trade to suffer. Akrotiri is referred to by some as the "Minoan Pompeii" because of the similarities of the destruction by volcano and...

The beauty of the NC Mountains - Fall of 2009.

Is This The World's Best Body Art? Stunning Eye-Deceiving Images Reveal An Artist At The Top Of His Game [Stunning Pics in URL] DAILY MAIL REPORTER 01st November 2009 Body art is an art form that stretches back thousands of years, although for one American artist, it is as relevant today as it ever was. Craig Tracy paints stunning images on people's bodies before photographing them in unique poses. The resulting collection of masterpieces could be regarded as some of the best body painting in the world by an artist at the top of his game.

I met another photographer on a forum, turns out he lives not far from the swamp. He rode over today and we went shooting. The tide wasn't really right, had to improvise and go looking for models. There is always something just waiting to be a picture!

Everyone else may have seen this but it's new to me! This kid is great!

Former actor and present White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi was directly involved in planning the controversial conference call hosted by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) flack to encourage tax-supported artists to create propaganda for President Obama, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The emails reveal that Modi worked with now-former NEA national communications director Yosif Sargant in planning the August 10 conference call that was first revealed by Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood.com web site. Participants in the conference call were encouraged to use their talents...

Vilano Beach begins North of St. Augustine Inlet and runs to South Ponte Vedra. There are large deposits of Coquina clam shells, the main ingredient in Coquina rock, the material used for the Spanish forts here. On the white sand areas there are black streaks of Titanium ore. Ponte Vedra was once home to a Titanium mining operation. The "red shell" has been a traditional place to test beach buggies and 4WD vehicles, it is easy to bury your wheels up to the hubs if you get off the hard pack.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5ab_1256677143

Sometimes it’s tough to watch the news; it’s boring, it’s ugly and it reminds us that we aren’t safe where we live. It also demonstrates to us that bankruptcy is just a paycheck away for many, that the weather’s never what we want it to be, and that traffic is always terrible. Enter the hot newsgirl. Suddenly, it doesn’t really matter how bad the news is, or even how boring it is, that’s not what’s drawing your attention anymore. The cute, quirky, oddly inviting, yet overly feminine, reporter has you completely soothed and mildly entranced before you even realize that...

Maybe Freepers need a forum devoted to movies, stage, acting, and the arts.

The Grackles recognize the car now, LOL, I think I've started them on the welfare wagon!

Back when Norman Rockwell ruled Saturday evenings, Adobe wasn't even a gleam in some nerd's eye, but a new book shows that the painter was, nevertheless, a photoshop god. Very few Gizmodo readers were even born when Rockwell painted his last Saturday Evening Post cover, but we all know them. You hear that name and suddenly you can picture those overly detailed, cartoonishly dramatic but ultimately kinda corny depictions of American life. Well, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, written and compiled by Ron Schick, has given me immense newfound respect for the man, for the meticulous photography, the real people...

Does anyone recall seeing a thread here a few days after Hurrican Katrina, that linked to a website created by someone who lived in N.O., was a photojournalism student and was here on a student visa? His photos and detailed captions were awesome! They were the quality one would see in Time Life books or NatGeo. The most important part of it all, however, was that he told of out right lies the media were showing to the American public. He was disgusted because he was watching members of the news media who he had idolized up until that point,...

This is a two-fold story about an adaptive sports rehabilitation program for severely disabled US soldiers who are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. The first half focuses on a river rafting trip down the Salmon River in Idaho, the second focuses on the medical facility where these men have been rehabilitated. It is a story of how these men reach a point where they can embrace life again and feel a reason to go forward despite their permanent, often horrifying injuries. The three soldiers on the river trip are Major Anthony Smith, 39, an African American man who...

Those of you who have gazed on the various images I've posted here will remember that I have a particular fondness for columnar basalt: the geological formation found at Devil's Tower, the Devil's Postpile, Svartifoss waterfall in Iceland, New York's Palisades, Giant's Causeway in Iceland, etc. There's actually a good list here, with some I hadn't known about before (I know, what a surprise!) Basalt Now, this picture and this feature might not constitute actual unusual geology; in fact, itÂ’s probably rather conventional, though it does result from a fortuitous combination of geological processes; and as you might guess, it...

LONDON, England For Saudi Arabia's lone female cartoonist drawing is more than just satire, it's "a duty." "I think men have put women in an unfavorable position in this part of the world. They've put women in an oppressive situation," said Hana Hajjar, who works for the English-language newspaper Arab News. "I feel it is my duty towards women to speak out on their behalf, because I have the tools and venue to do so," she told CNN. Hajjar's drawings both challenge gender roles and critique political policy, often depicting inequality between the sexes and support for the Palestinian people,...

Apple's VP Industrial Design about the change of design and the new challenges they are faced with. First time to watch and hear details about the development of Apple's product design. You Tube video.

Nothing on the copyrighted website can be clipped to display here. It came to me not as an advertisement, but as an uplifting message. It makes a valid statement about our history and society.

Reader Wayne sent us this photograph and explains, "I was walking along and texting. Not really paying that much attention. Then something caught my eye. I thought I was about to step in dog shit, but quickly realized it was a rat stuck in the sidewalk. A big rat. It had tried to squeeze through a crack in the sidewalk and failed." Update: Another reader created the second photograph in the gallery, adding, "hopefully this makes it a little better!" We are still awaiting a reply from Wayne to ask if he tried to help the little guy (or gal)...

My little pond is all dried up, had to go hunting for models. I got a Big Mac and headed for the beach. I was alternating bites of burger and shooting seagulls from the window, looked over and a little femaled Boat Tailed Grackle was sitting in the window watcheng me eat. My camera bag always has a little ziploc full of dry cat food just for these occassions. She ate some from my hand, but I couldn't use a camera that way. I put a handfull on top of my camera bag, and she settled in for lunch. The...

NEW SPECIES PICTURES: 850 Underground Creatures Found The newfound blind cave fish Milyeringa veritas, seen above, inhabits the same Cape Range aquifers as a blind cave eel found during the same survey of Australia's underground habitats. The only blind cave fish known in Australia, the 2-inch-long (5.1-centimeter-long) species is "remarkably versatile," living in freshwater or seawater in underground coastal regions during various stages of its life, researchers say."

Back in February, my Big Hollywood colleague and super-funny-dude Tim Slagle wrote a series of posts on the Broadway musical “Avenue Q”. The show was going through a mini-crisis/publicity stunt because one of the big punch lines to the song “For Now” was no longer valid: A song called “For Now” has the puppets reassure each other that most things in life are temporary, like hair and sex. Until recently, one of those temporary things was “George Bush.” Knowing that Obama was to be shortly inaugurated, the producers and writers were perplexed for a replacement. I know it should be...

Overall Winner "The Storybook Wolf" This nighttime shot of a wolf leaping into a farm in northern Spain has been named overall winner of the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 competition. The picture, by Spanish photographer Josi Luis Rodrmguez, was selected from more than 43,000 entries. Iberian wolves--a subspecies of the gray wolf--are extremely wary of humans after centuries of persecution. Rodrmguez captured the photograph using motion sensors and an infrared barrier to operate the camera. "This wolf jumping over the farmer's enclosure with the supposed intent of killing his livestock speaks for itself--thousands of years of...

You may think that Princess Beatrice has her father's face and her mother's hair. But as the pictures below show, she also bears a striking resemblance to a young Queen Victoria.[snip] Style queen: Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and her great-great-greatgreat-granddaughter, Princess Beatrice, have similar faces and locks Many more images at the link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1222921/The-throne-clones-How-Royal-Family-inherited-just-titles.html#ixzz0V2a812P6

TOKYO — In a move to promote serious study of Japanese manga, a university in Tokyo plans to open a library with two million comic books, animation drawings, video games and other cartoon industry artifacts. Tentatively named the Tokyo International Manga Library, it would open by early 2015 on the campus of the private Meiji University, and be available to researchers and fans from Japan and abroad. "Manga has been taken lightly in the past and there has been no solid archive for serious study," said Susumi Shibao, a library official at the university told AFP by telephone. "We want...

The Ibis was so venerated in ancient Eygpt that they were even mummified and placed in royal tombs. I think there is a reason. If you are trying to grow crops in a river bottom, in a warm climate, you will be plagued with grubs and bugs and other pests, all trying to eat your veggies. The Ibis is eager to help, they love to eat the pests. Egypt owes a major debt to the Ibis clan.

When Dylan Lynch captures a winning shot, it usually involves a hockey game, not a yawning cat. But it was the photo of his tired, three-year-old tabby, Ben, that won him top spot in our Kitty City photo contest. Lynch, a photographer and editor for the Edmonton Oilers and Oil Kings, likes to try out his new equipment on his three feline roommates. “I don’t always have a hockey game going on at my house, so I’ve got to test them on something,” he jokes.

Michelle Obama, First Lady Of Fashion, Is Hailed For Her Style In Print First Lady Michelle Obama's style and wardrobe is celebrated in a glossy new book that will delight her growing band of fashion devotees. Philip Sherwell in New York 24 Oct 2009 Michelle Obama and daughters Malia (L) and Sasha on stage at the Democratic National Convention Photo: GETTY Michelle Obama demonstrated a fresh skill to the American people last week when she completed an impressive 142 swivels of a hula hoop on the South Lawn of the White House at a "healthy kids fair" to promote fitness...

Obama bin Hidin' Obama bin hidin' can't ya see. Let's wake up to this reality. If truth's the thing that sets us free- then what's the need for secrecy? He means well and he's doin his best, but honesty is the real test. Putting it all on the table to share, so good understanding can be put there. God bless our good brother, to shoulder no blame. In his shoes I might do exactly the same.. It's scary - that winning and losing stuff game. It's scary - the risk of losing a name. It's our laziness that created this...

Houston Man to Receive "Ultimate" Top Prize From National Geographic and Energizer. From among 12,500 entries, Bernardo Medina's incredible photo was selected as the Grand Prize Winner in the 2009 "Energizer Ultimate Photo Contest"

In this Oct. 15, 2009 photo, Scott O'Konek, a Minnesota bowhunter displays a 32-point buck he took during a hunt at Camp Ripley, Minn. The buck might have the largest non-typical or asymmetrical rack taken by archery in Minnesota. The buck scored a preliminary antler score of 228. The current record is 225 set in 1989, according to the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association. The deer was an estimated 5 years old and field-dressed at 192 pounds. (AP Photo/Minn. Dept. of Nat. Resources, Beau Liddell)

First, not totally exactly geology, but one of the more amazing iceberg pictures I've ever seen: Next, an offering from Patrick Smith Photography (I had one of these before): this one won some awards and was on the cover of a photography magazine: Finally, Marion Island from space: click for full-size

The White House has released the official Obama family photo...take a look!

Going through a recent paper craft exhibition in Tokyo, simply called ‘Castle on the Ocean’ exhibition, one thing that couldn’t escape an attendee’s attention is a piece of work by a Japanese paper craft genius going by the name Wataru Itou. From the piece of work – a complete city, with all the trappings like a electrical lights and even a train – one would be forgiven for thinking the creator is someone who has been in paper craft for decades.

A picture of a hunting wolf has won the prestigious Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award. Jose Luis Rodriguez captured the imaginations of the judges with a picture that he had planned for years, and even sketched out on a piece of paper. "I wanted to capture a photo in which you would see a wolf in an act of hunting - or predation - but without blood," he told BBC News. "I didn't want a cruel image." With a great deal of patience and careful observation of the wolves' movements, he succeeded in taking the award-winning...

The little pond will be bone dry soon, I'll have to find another place to watch birds for a while. A good heavy rain would be a big help.

Here's some important information for anyone thinking about upgrading to Microsoft's new Windows 7 on an existing machine, or using an existing device or peripheral (such as a printer or camera) with a new Windows 7 PC. Microsoft today released a new version of its Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, which scans a computer to see if it can run the new operating system; along with a Windows 7 Compatibility Center, letting you see if your devices will work with Windows 7. Although many people will get Windows 7 when they buy new PCs, the automated Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser will...