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First, from Norway Vøringsfossen Click 'em for full-size. This next one's not big or great, but it shows where the hotel is. Also small, but a good view of the base of the falls. Something tells me it is NOT easy to get down there. Second, from the border of Vietnam and China: Detian/Ban Gioc. Click both for full-size.

Don's Exclusive Weapons (Part 1)

Cast paper sculpture has been in existence since the 1950’s. It should not be confused with papier-mâché, as the two mediums are completely different .

A controversial Christmas billboard which was vandalised will be resurrected today by the church which put it up. The Auckland billboard shows a deflated looking Joseph and a disappointed Mary lying in bed together, with the caption "Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow." It was put up by Auckland's progressive Christian church St Matthew in the City. The vicar says he wanted to lampoon the literal Christian conception story and get people discussing miracles and God. But a few hours after the billboard went up, an angry man with a pot of brown paint covered over Mary...

As far as I know, no one has actually spotted one of the much anticipated tablet devices–from Apple (AAPL) or anyone else–in the wild. But that doesn’t stop publishers from dreaming about what they can do with them once they appear. Link to Vimeo video of the Mag+ in Action! Here’s the latest stab at it, from Swedish media outfit Bonnier Group, best known in the U.S. as the publisher of specialty magazines like Field & Stream and Popular Science. This one just popped up, unbidden, in my inbox, and I’m happy to share it, because I think looking at...

A family spends Christmas Eve in jail. First broadcast on Monday December 19, 1960 on CBS. "Christmas Story" is the eleventh episode in season one. Features Elinor Donahue singing: "Away in a Manger" Will Wright as Ben Weaver. "Christmas Story" is scheduled on TVLand 8:30PM December 24 and 11AM December 25 (Eastern time) Part OnePart TwoPart Three

An infamous Atlanta hotel known for its campy lounge with baby boomer strip dancers has been shut down. The AJC was the first to report the Clermont Motor Hotel was ordered to close by Dec. 31 after a visit by Fulton County health inspectors uncovered a laundry list of violations, starting with, uh, the laundry. "There are several issues that would have to be addressed," "My friend says it's the only hotel in America that hookers can't get into,"Jeffress said Wednesday night as a group of women watched a lone stripper.

...in its first year of operation the museum hosted approximately 85,000 guests... The word "museum" may not even be the most apt descriptor for the complex. The Grammy Museum uses the annual awards as a jumping-off point, allowing visitors to digitally explore genres, regions and the recording studio. It takes a hands-on approach to education, giving the guests the opportunity to record vocals, mix a track and learn the basics of traditional rock 'n' roll instrumentation. ...on Jan. 8 the museum will open "Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer," pairing the intimate looks at the star with rare footage...

Using a tweezers, the controls can be moved. All cables and linkages are in place to work the wing control surfaces as well. Young Park has since carved a pilot's face and hands from solid aluminum and built an articulated pilot to sit in the cockpit?Remember this as you look at the pics........... All the controls work as designed, by cables, chains, linkages and levers.Every single part hand made and fitted.

In the black depths of the frigid Arctic Ocean, scientists on a 2005 expedition found a splash of color: The brilliant, blood-red Crossota norvegica jellyfish (pictured). The creature was spotted by a remotely operated vehicle 8,530 feet (2,600 meters) underwater during a two-month National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expedition to the Canada Basin, the deepest and least explored part of the Arctic waters. Though C. norvegica is not a new species, several new deep-sea animals were discovered during the expedition--some of which were announced in recent research papers in 2009.

A statue of President Barack Obama as a boy erected in a Jakarta park has been targeted in a Facebook campaign by thousands who say it should be removed.Many Indonesians are proud of the fact that Obama lived in Jakarta from 1967 to 1971 with his American mother, his Indonesian stepfather and his half-sister. He went by the name "Barry," attended the local elementary school near where his statue now stands and owned a pet monkey.

The nominations for the 67th annual Golden Globes were announced on Tuesday morning (December 15), bringing recognition to both newcomers and long-established Hollywood talents. "Up in the Air" received six total nods, followed by "Nine" with five and "Avatar" and "Inglourious Basterds" with four each. In the television categories, "Glee" topped all others with four nominations, followed by several programs with three nods, including "30 Rock," "Big Love" and "Dexter." In the Motion Picture - Drama category, James Cameron's "Avatar" and Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air" will face off against Iraq war drama "The Hurt Locker" and "Precious," a...

Here is an interesting video report on seven-year-old British prodigy Kieron Williamson, a young painter being compared to Picasso. He only began painting at age six, but his work is already drawing the rarified comparisons, and people from all over the world are paying a thousand dollars to own a painting by him. As for his view on his paintings, Williamson said he has no favorite because "they are all good." . . . (VIDEO)

We suppose it must be difficult to keep your daily grind fresh and interesting when you're herding sheep in the wide-open pastures of Wales. In this video, a group of intrepid Welsh shepherds nicknamed the Baaa-studs (wordplay!), come together to plumb the previously unexplored creative possibilities of their ancient craft, all in service of a viral campaign for Samsung. Though the video was admittedly "helped enormously" in postproduction, the Baaa-studs are genuine shepherds, their canvas an actual Welsh hillside, and their medium real sheep.

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ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Classic pop rock band Chicago and Grammy-Award-winning songwriter Bill Champlin have parted ways after nearly three decades together. "Bill Champlin is no longer in Chicago. He was a long-time band member and we wish him all the best as he embarks on his new solo project, for which he's worked long and hard.," a statement from Chicago's management said Monday "After 28 years with Chicago, singer-songwriter-keyboardist Bill Champlin is parting ways with the classic jazz/rock band to focus once again on his solo career," Champlin's publicist Judi Kerr said of the split.

Ice Sculpture of New York

The facade of the I.M. Pei-designed National Gallery East Wing is now crumbling. Catesby Leigh reports in the Wall Street Journal that the building, constructed using an experimental curtain wall system that the architect described as "a technological breakthrough for the construction of masonry walls," has become unstable. The clean lines and solid geometrical forms of the building's design simply could not be interrupted with unsightly expansion joints. I.M. Pei quite simply was shackled to his own modern design, constrained to have large uninterrupted geometries of stone, a technological solution was an absolute necessity. The earlier Main Building, designed by...

It may be a little early to start this, but this is http://www.findagrave.com's annual list of notable people who have died during the current year(more info on each person at source link): Michael Jackson; musician, entertainer Patrick Swayze; actor, dancer Walter Cronkite; communist sympathizer (it doesn't say that on the site) Farrah Fawcett; actress Dom DeLuise; entertainer Edward Kennedy; US Senator and ... Paul Harvey; news commentator Beatrice Arthur; actress Ed McMahon; television personality Ricardo Montalban; actor Soupy Sales; comedian Karl Malden; actor David Carradine; actor Mary Travers; vocalist James Whitmore; actor Les Paul; musician Jim Owens; college football coach...

Residents of Colorado Springs, Colo., have a mystery on their hands: Who came up with the idea to erect a sign reading "Welcome to Obamaville" on the site of a homeless tent camp in the city? The sign, which was visible from the Cimarron Street ramp to Interstate 25, clearly conveyed a political jab at rising unemployment under President Barack Obama, for it read in full, "Welcome to Obamaville – Colorado's fastest growing community."

For Old Timers or fans of old time movies, list your favorite movies made before 1950. Include the date of the movie. Please don't list any movies made after 1950. Thanks!

The First Lady made her entrance at the Neighborhood Ball on Inauguration night wearing a custom chiffon gown by then 26-year-old Jason Wu.

For Garth Brooks, Retirement Ends Friday Night Garth Brooks officially emerges from retirement Friday night. LAS VEGAS (December 11, 2009)--Garth Brooks' retirement ends when he sings his first note Friday night at the Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas. It’s the first of a handful of weekends that he'll be performing each year for as many as five years. The weekends are selected based on his three daughters' school and sports schedules. Brooks says these acoustic shows will be different each night. Sometimes he'll have guest performers with him, including his wife, Trisha Yearwood and sometimes it will be...

The photo, dubbed 'Partners' was taken by photographer Bragi J. Ingibergsson on a Canon EOS 5D camera in Hafnarfjördur in Iceland. Judges praised Mr Ingibergsson's "vision and perseverance to give an ordinary scene significance and a sense of wildness". As well as winning the Planet Earth category, he also walked away with the overall prize as the judges commended the shot's "simple and quiet nature".

The German artist Simon Schubert uses only sheets of paper when he folds it into two-dimensional art works. His work contains mostly of things that have sharp edges so it makes it possible to fold, like stairs, hallways and buildings.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 NEWS OF THE WEEK IN REVIEW 17 18 19 20 21 22 NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 & 34 35 ROTOGRAVURE SECTION 36 37 38 39

While looking for something else, I stumbled across this guy's Panoramio collection. So I provide a sampling. He's got 17 pages worth, pretty good. He does some HDR (high dynamic range) -- I think I included one of those. Enjoy. (Click 'em for full-size.)

My favorite pond has been dried up for a while but rain over last weekend took care of that. It doesn't take any time for the marsh birds to move in, when the pond is dry they have to go quite a way for fresh water.

McNaughton's response to liberal criticisms of "One Nation Under God". (follow the link)

Only a few years before her time spent with our beloved agents/actors Don Adams..., she was a model and a commercial actress. This commercial for Top Brass Dandruff prevention was what people recalled of her early days in acting.

In a particular part of Florida the White Ibis is known as the Chokoloskee Chicken. There is at least one FREEPER near Chokoloskee, they are a wild and rowdy bunch down there! North Florida FREEPERS, on the other hand, are genteel and cultivated! It's cloudy, wet and windy. Everything is hunkered down and waiting out the weather. The onshore wind has pushed the water way up in the marsh and the birds are hanging out on little islands.

Here is what President Obama said about Springsteen: Finally, we honor the quiet kid from Jersey ... who grew up to become the rock 'n' roll laureate of a generation. For in the life of our country only a handful of people have tapped the full power of music to tell the real American story -- with honesty; from the heart; and one of those people is Bruce Springsteen... It's no wonder that his tours are not so much concerts, but communions. There's a place for everybody -- the sense that no matter who you are or what you do,...

Seemingly unaware of the beast towering over it, the tiny rodent grabbed at scraps of meat thrown into the African Leopard's enclosure. But instead of pouncing on the tiny intruder, the 12-year-old leopard Sheena kept her distance. After a few minutes she tried to nudge the mouse away with her nose, but the determined little guy kept chewing away until he was full.

Irish folk singer Liam Clancy, called the "best ballad singer I'd ever heard in my life" by singer Bob Dylan, is dead at the age of 74, his manager said.

This Is A PowerPoint Presentation Of Really Old Pictures From Late 1800's and early 1900's

St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming the company is violating several of its digital camera patents. Filed in the United States District Court in Delaware, the lawsuit claims that Apple’s iPhone camera infringes on four separate patents including the ‘459, ‘219, ‘010 and ‘899 patents the company holds. St. Clair is not new to the patent infringement lawsuit game. In 2001, it sued Sony for infringing the same patents and won a $25 million judgement against the company. In 2003, it sued Canon and was awarded $34 million in damages. Since then, St. Clair has...

I take a lot of photos, I've completely worn out 4 cameras in the last 8 years. I've gone through as many printers, all of them really too expensive to feed on my budget. I installed a constant ink supply system recently, and I've tested it enough to predict that it will last. My greatest expense item is now the photo paper. Print quality is excellent, I might get better results from a pro print shop, but not much better if at all. I'm a big fan of HP printers but those little cartridges are just too expensive!This is still...

So I saw this scene, and I wondered -- can I find Ship Rock at this resolution? (Click the little picture to see the full-size 250m resolution image, which is about 5 MB, if that's a problem.) Turns out that I could. Can you? Here's Ship Rock from the ground; a place I'd like to visit someday. Likewise click for full-size. Now, here's another volcanic feature that's also in the image; on my last flight to the West Coast, I flew over it.

We didn't see the Sun until mid afternoon, it broke through pretty good them but still mostly cloudy. When the Sun gets really low the reflections on the water start to flame, and the Spartina grass turns golden. I barely caught the Little Blue Heron, they can be hard to see on a bright day. Their feathers aren't at all reflective

First Place: Crown of Thorns An image featuring a water flea's "crown of thorns"--the snaking ridge at top left--took top honors in the 2009 BioScapes microscope imaging contest, announced earlier this month. If water flea parents sense that their habitat is shared by their main predators, tadpole shrimp, the flea offspring sport these pointy crowns--which are unappetizing to the shrimp. Zoologist Jan Michels, of the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel, Germany, added a dye to reveal the tiny animal's exoskeleton (green) and cellular nuclei (blue smudges). The blue-and-red dots are one of the animal's compound eyes, like those of a...

Animators re-create Tiger Woods' auto crash and the events leading up to it. Please click on the YouTube link to see the video. Assuming this was accurately described in the Tweet sent to me as being Chinese, any Chinese-speaking FReepers' interpretation of this would be sincerely welcomed, as would any other interpretations, of course ;-)

As the Tories pledge to curb meddling officials, glorious images of days when childhood was allowed to be fun. A new book presents scenes from a bygone era when men from the council with clipboards did not swoop down on children swinging from lampposts, climbing walls or dangling from the string of a kite. Not to mention practising the noble art of boxing...

Narcissism –noun 1. inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity. 2. Psychoanalysis. erotic gratification derived from admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.

Alec Baldwin, the US actor, has said he has lost interest in acting and considers his film career a failure. "I consider my entire movie career a complete failure," he told the magazine. "The goal of moviemaking is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that." Baldwin has expressed interest in politics in the past but did not say in the interview what he intended to do if he quit acting.

We saw the movie The Blind Side last night. It was wonderful and I encourage you to see it. One of the few movies I have been to that people sat through the credits and didn't move. Oh...bring some tissues.

FORT WORTH - A treasure trove of priceless photographs were recently found dumped under a bridge in South Fort Worth. Among the found photographs were images of President John F. Kennedy's motorcade just moments before his assassination, a young President George H. W. Bush and Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize. The photographs were found underneath Interstate 20 and Oak Grove in South Fort Worth by the Code Compliance illegal dumping team. The location is a well-known dumping ground monitored by the department. Whoever tossed the pictures away apparently had no idea they were throwing...

The detail is astonishing. At first it looks like just another castle surrounded by tiny houses and neat fields. But zooming in on the courtyard one can see figures milling around. They are in fact Allied officers being held in the notorious German PoW camp of Colditz and the photograph is one from an archive of aerial photographs taken by airmen - sometimes flying as low as 50ft - during secret reconnaissance missions in World War II. Until now the pictures have been kept behind closed doors. But they are revealed to the public for the first time today via...

AWESOME VIDEO. IT SAYS IT TOOK THEM OVER 13,000 HOURS TO MAKE THIS. WORKING EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR 8 HOURS A DAY WOULD BE 4 YEARS 5 MONTHS AND 18 DAYS! WOW. AND THATS INCLUDING WEEKENDS! READ DESCRIPTION BELOW! Turn your sound on for this. Read this first, then watch. This is almost unbelievable. See how all of the balls wind up in catcher cones. This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa .. Amazingly, 97% of the machines components...

I found this list and thought it was something that we could be thankful for, on this day before Thanksgiving. Thankful that there are celebrities who are opposed to Polanski being above the law, and who think that he should be prosecuted.