Monday, March 29, 2010

Friday, March 26, 2010

picture of the day

He Pingping, 73 cm tall (2 feet 5 inch), of China looks up at Sultan Kosen, 246.5 cm tall (8 feet 1 inch), of Turkey in Istanbul on January 14, 2010. (REUTERS/Osman Orsal)



He Pingping just passed away on March 13th.
(July 13, 1988 – March 13, 2010)

Thursday, March 25, 2010

picture of the day

woke up this morning from a dream where i had just received a text message from my friend christa that said "i love you but i hate your stinky feet." i got really concerned about it, didn't understand if she was joking or serious. for some reason i thought she was really serious and then i got all paranoid that i have stinky feet and that she was mad at me because of it and maybe everybody thinks i have stinky feet... and then i thought... wait... christa doesn't have a cell phone... and then i woke up.

so random.

i found this image from the Life Magazine photo archive doing an image search for "feet."
it was taken in 1942 by Fritz Goro... and seemed to be from a collection of scientific research on feet, posture & balance. pretty interesting & weird photographs.

here's a few others from the collection:





Wednesday, March 24, 2010

picture of the day

this pic was taken by my friend katy @ the shedd aquarium in chicago. i wasn't there, but her pictures were incredible. this little guy is called a sea dragon!! thought he was so cool i had to look up some more about these fascinating little creatures online...

Sea dragons are some of the most ornately camouflaged creatures on the planet. Adorned with gossamer, leaf-shaped appendages over their entire bodies, they are perfectly outfitted to blend in with the seaweed and kelp formations they live amongst.

Endemic to the waters off south and east Australia, leafy and weedy sea dragons are closely related to seahorses and pipefish. Leafies are generally brown to yellow in body color with spectacular olive-tinted appendages. Weedies have less flamboyant projections and are usually reddish in color with yellow spots.

Sea dragons have very long, thin snouts; slender trunks covered in bony rings; and thin tails which, unlike their seahorse cousins, cannot be used for gripping. They have small, transparent dorsal and pectoral fins that propel and steer them awkwardly through the water, but they seem quite content to tumble and drift in the current like seaweed. Leafies grow to a length of about 14 inches (35 centimeters), while the slightly larger weedies can grow up to 18 inches (46 centimeters) long.

As with sea horses, sea dragon males are responsible for childbearing. But instead of a pouch, like sea horses have, male sea dragons have a spongy brood patch on the underside of the tail where females deposit their bright-pink eggs during mating. The eggs are fertilized during the transfer from the female to the male. The males incubate the eggs and carry them to term, releasing miniature sea dragons into the water after about four to six weeks.

Sea dragons survive on tiny crustaceans such as mysids, or sea lice. It is not known if they are preyed upon by other animals. They are, however, frequently taken by divers seeking to keep them as pets. In fact, such takings shrank their numbers so critically by the early 1990s that the Australian government placed a complete protection on both species. Pollution and habitat loss have also hurt their numbers, and they are currently listed as near threatened.

weedy sea dragon

leafy sea dragon

and just because i love it so much, here is another picture from katy of a seahorse:


Wednesday, March 17, 2010

picture of the day

NASA:Visible Earth

On August 7, 2003, the Aqua MODIS instrument acquired this image of Ireland on the first day this summer that most of the island hasn´t been completely obscured by cloud cover. Called the Emerald Isle for a good reason, Ireland is draped in vibrant shades of green amidst the blue Atlantic Ocean and Celtic (south) and Irish (east) Seas. Faint ribbons of blue-green phytoplankton drift in the waters of the Celtic Sea, just south of Dublin.

Dublin itself appears as a large grayish-brown spot on the Republic of Ireland´s northeastern coast. This large capital city (population 1.12 million) sits on the River Liffey, effectively splitting the city in half. Northern Ireland´s capital city, Belfast, also sits on a river: the River Lagan. This city, though its population is only a fifth of the size of Dublin´s, is also clearly visible in the image as a grayish-brown spot on the coast of the Irish Sea.

happy st. patrick's day!

Monday, March 15, 2010

picture of the day

Harvey Tulcensky, c 1925
click here for a preview of "Real Photo Postcards-Unbelievable Images from Harvey Tulcensky"
book overview: It may be hard to believe, but there actually was a time when the postcard image was not a clich . To reach it, you'll have to set your clock back to the end of the nineteenth century, when an Act of Congress allowed Americans to mail a card for just one cent. A few years later, Kodak introduced an easy-to-use and affordable folding camera that put postcard power into the hands of ordinary citizens, setting off a craze. Real Photo Postcards is a collection of the most outlandish and idiosyncratic, beautiful and even occasionally bizarre images of this early postcard period. Painstakingly assembled from the collection of Harvey Tulcensky, one of the world's most avid collectors of these original postcards, Real Photo Postcards includes images of natural phenomena (floods, storms, fires), Main Street America, rural life, political parades, and wacky "exaggeration" cards (such as a photographically manipulated giant rabbit!). Together these cards show an oddly personal and intimate perspective of America at the turn of the 20th century.