Southern flying squirrel emerges from beneath dog dish (Photographs: Karen L. Myers)

Karen heard activity in the dining room ceiling yesterday evening, and the cats were definitely interested.

When I came downstairs this morning, I found the white cat, Petra, had managed to enter the off-limits living room by leaping over the cat gate and had trapped herself inside. A little while later, Karen found the source of all the nocturnal activity.

A flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans—the Southern variety) had gotten itself cornered by the housecats at the dining room fireplace.

We herded the squirrel into the kitchen and in the direction of the backdoor. While it was considering making a break for it, instead of turning the corner, to hide under the Hoosier cabinet, Karen cleverly popped a metal dog dish over it.

All we had to do then was slide the 2010 Master of Foxhounds calendar (still wrapped in cellophane) under the dog dish, and voilá! the squirrel was safely confined and portable.

We took him out to an old stone foundation in the backyard, where I slid the calendar aside just enough to allow an exit.

This is actually the second flying squirrel successfully evicted unharmed in the three years we’ve been here.

Released from captivity, and not permitted to climb my trouser leg, the prisoner bounds away

Delta 4-Heavy rocket launching at Cape Canaveral photographed by Ben Cooper

Getting this spectacular close-range shot of the launch cost a destroyed lens, but the well-secured camera actually survived and so did the trigger, despite it being knocked hundreds of feet away.

From Gizmodo via Karen L Myers.

I knew it all along. Barack Obama is not a US citizen. He is a space alien, probably a robot. Eric Spiegelman has the proof. He compared 130 photos of Barack Obama posing with UN dignitaries at reception recently in this 0:21 video. Can that smile possibly be human?

Impact Crater Wall

Details as small as one meter are visible in some of the 95 pages of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photos just released.

Via John Murrell.

I found this on Pat Burns’s blog today. The original source seems to be Comedy.com back in February.

Michael Yon took this remarkable photo in Helmand province in Afghanistan. The helicopter’s rotors are hitting dust and producing sparks. Good thing there was no fuel leak at the time. Pretty shot of a dangerous situation.

The Daily Mail reports in English a story originating in the center-left El Periódico de Catalunya of Barcelona establishing by topographic analysis that a series of photos by Robert Capa, including the world famous image above of a Loyalist militiaman at the moment of his being shot, were faked.

Comparison of landscape features apparently demonstrates that the Capa photos were actually taken some 30 miles (50 km.) from the actual front lines.

Auden did not call the 1930s a “dark, dishonest decade” for nothing, and pretty much everything originating from the Left does tend to be a lie. Why should anyone be surprised?

Matt Drudge had fun today headlining the above photo of Barack Obama and the roguish Nicholas Sarkozy oggling the assets of 16 year old Brazilian Mayora Tavares, one of an international group of teenagers attending the G8 Summit.

Bild
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UPDATE 7/11:

Several voices on the left (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4) say, Nah! Obama was innocent.

This video provides a better view of the incident. Was President Obama really only helping another young lady descend? Or did his eyes travel a bit, too? You be the judge.

0:42 video

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Ann Althouse relishes the semiotics of girl watching.

(T)he Sarkozy ass-gawking stance says: I admire but I must not act. And Obama is caught at the moment of as-yet-unconstrained pursuit.

Sarkozy holds his arms against his chest in a closed — but not tightly closed — position. The head is turned but upright. He is smiling, but the index finger lying against his lip blocks the edge of the smile from the point of view of anyone standing in front of him, though if the woman were to turn around, she would see it easily. His hand is tipped upward at a jaunty — one is tempted to say phallic — angle. The foot closest to the woman is planted firmly on the ground in the don’t-go-that-way position, yet the other foot angles toward the object of desire. Still, the angled foot remains flat on the floor, and, at a shoulder’s distance from the other foot, it the whole figure of the man a solid immobility.

Now, swivel your eyes over to Obama’s feet. The foot closest to the woman, like Sarkozy’s, is planted and aimed forward, but the other steps off in the direction of the woman, bending the knee upward into a bit of a crotch-squeeze and forming the base of a dramatic tilt of the entire body into a flexible S-shape that leans toward the woman. Obama’s arms hang free, emphasizing the tilt, and either gravity or will causes the left arm to hang inches away from the torso. See how much lower the right hand is than the left? His neck is craned out and around so that the line of sight is directly at the ass. His mouth is open as if to say: That’s what I want.

AND: Yes, I have seen the video, and I stand by my analysis of the still photograph.

MacRanger doesn’t buy the innocent theory either.

(PowerPoint needed for this one. Be patient. It’s a big download.)

A classmate passed along to me this PowerPoint slideshow (originally titled: CarreterasAfganistan1) of 58 photos of military operations in Afghanistan. Good 4th of July viewing featuring remarkable photos of US forces operating in spectacular terrain.

I wish I could properly credit these, but the slideshow was evidently one of those virally-distributed emails which arrives anonymously. The file and and some credits offer the clue that it came originally from a Spanish-language source.

Just by good luck, the International Space Station happened to be passing over Sarychev Peak on Matua Island in the Kuril Islands on June 12th at the perfect time to allow astronauts to photograph its volcanic eruption.

NASA Earth Observatory

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

We had so many hunts during the past season that Karen is still catching up on photo essays from months ago.

She just finished this collection of photos from the Blue Ridge Hunt’s December 30th meet at the Monastery at Cool Spring (site of the July 17-18, 1864 battle between Jubal Early’s Army of the Valley District and Horatio Wright’s Union 6th Corps). Two of my own amusing photos of eager hounds peering out of the hound trailer made her cut.

The Wolver Beagles (Middleburg, Virginia) set out Friday morning in the Three Couple Trial

Over the weekend, Karen was photographing all three days of the Spring Beagle Trials held at the Institute Farm in Aldie. She already has posted her photo essay for Day 1 on her brand new commercial web-site.

Shodo, the art of Japanese calligraphy, reaches its fullest artistic development in Sosho (“grass script”) ideograms produced in free and hasty movements with the intention of deliberately embodying a philosophic concept in the kinesthetic action of creation.

The Japanese artist Shinichi Maruyama (b. 1968) combines Sosho calligraphy with photography in an art form referred to as Kusho (“sky writing”), capturing ink and water in mid-air at speeds of 1/7500 of a second .

His first American exhibition of 23 photographs of Kusho images was recently held at Bruce Silverstein’s Gallery on West 24th Street in New York.

Chris Ro published a number of Maruyama’s images.

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic reviewed the exhibition and profiled the artist.

From Elliot Glaser via Andrew Sullivan.

Sondra K. offers photographic evidence of the Change.

Thunderstorm in Norway – Willy Marthinussen

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851), View of the boulevard du Temple, taken 1838 or 1839

The on-line image (released by the government of France) is a bit small (click on photo above for larger image), but shows distantly a man standing being served by a bootblack. To my eye, the most exotic aspects of the scene are all the fairy-tale style chimney pots and the paired allées of trees on each side of the street.

When Louis Jacques-Mande Daguerre made his daguerreotype of the Boulevard du Temple in 1838, the exposure time was so long (probably between 10 and 20 minutes) he was unable to capture the hurrying figures and the moving traffic in this busy Paris Street. Only a man who had to remain still while his shoes were polished by a boot-black, was completely captured on Daguerre’s silvered copper plate. Although, as a contemporary noted at the time, the boulevard in question was “constantly filled with a moving throng of pedestrians and carriages”, the street in Daguerre’s early photograph appeared to be completely deserted “except for an individual who was having his boots brushed.” In fact, the shoeshine man himself must also be included as one of the first human figures to be depicted in photography. But as a German magazine of 1839 observed, the man “having his boots polished . . . must have held himself extremely still for he can be very clearly seen, in contrast the shoeshine man, whose ceaseless movement causes him to appear completely blurred and imprecise.”

Nicholas Jenkins analyzes the photo best, locating the shot, identifying the time of day, and explaining why we can’t see the bootblack.

According to the Gernsheims in L. J. M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype, Daguerre took the images from his laboratory-eyrie in the 350-seat Diorama Building, which stood at 4, rue Sanson, at the intersection with the rue des Marais, and which from the back looked out roughly southwards, high over the rooftops, towards boulevard du Temple.

Read the whole thing.
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From Listverse via Andrew Sullivan.

My wife plays (among many instruments) the Swedish nyckelharpa (literally “key harp,” a folk instrument bowed like a violin, with a set of resonant strings whose pitch is alterable by keys).

Fark took the unfamiliar form of the antique nyckelharpa in the photo above as an occasion for attempts at identification via Photoshop. Karen and I both found the results hilarious.

The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces Blog offers an amusing and eloquent chronicle of human reactions to the abundant bad news in these difficult economic times. Some of these people look to me like they’re suffering enough to deserve those large-figure bonuses they won’t be getting this year.

Pripyat, Ukraine

For Halloween, Web Urbanist has photographs of 24 abandoned towns and cities round the world.

Centralia, Pennsylvania, just down the road from my own Pennsylvania hometown makes the list. Someone burning trash in a stripping pit near the town in 1962 managed to set fire to a vein of coal. The subterranean fire gradually encroached on residences, and in the mid-1980s the federal government ultimately gave Centralians new houses in order to induce them to move away from the hazard. Some diehards angling for larger payoffs refused to move and remain in residence today. When I was a kid, we used to find it terribly amusing to see smoke rising from the ground of Centralia’s cemetery.

The Blue Ridge Hunt out cubbing very early this morning riding through the post-dawn mist of the Shenandoah Valley.

(Click on pictures for larger images.)

Seeing this photo posted by MeaninglessHotAir on YARGB, my wife and I both said “Chicago!” but no, it was an insurance ad in Columbus.

Photos taken by Hal Brindley in Kruger National Park, South Africa

The Telegraph recently ran some terrific pictures of a leopard taking down a croc.

Via Darren Naish, Steve Bodio, and Karen L. Myers

After Charles Johnson demonstrated that the photograph of Iran’s recent missile test had been Photoshopped, for the sake of world peace, and in defense of the Free World, the blogosphere was obliged to retaliate upon the mullahs.

Noah Schachtman, at Wired, has collected many of the best, and Gizmodo is running a contest with the winners to be announced on Tuesday.

My own favorites (so far):

Are We Lumberjacks?

Farc (good but slow to load)


BoingBoing

Snapped Shot

Alexey Titarenko’s time-lapsed photos produce images of a city inhabited by ghosts.

Hat tip to Cory Doctorow.

From the duck, forwarded by Karen L. Myers.

Russia occupies 1/6th of the Earth’s surface, and as English Russia points out, though 65% of Russia is covered with permafrost, Russia has a land area larger than France or Germany lying south of the French Riviera. The photos of Russia the resort area of the city of Sochi on the Black Sea, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics, and the nearby Krasnaya Polyana.

via MeaninglessHotAir at YARGB.

Timcheh Amin-o-Dowleh, Kashan Bazaar

Ahshin Memarian photographs the Old Bazaar in Kashan, Isfahan, Iran.

Kashan rugs

Mr, Memarian is a rug dealer. His commercial web-site is here.

Hat tip to Nevada Girl.

Photo:Winfried Rothermel, AP

A seasonal display by a farmer at Hartheim-Feldkirch in southwestern Germany.
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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Coconut crab Birgus latro

Native to the Indian and Western Pacific Ocean regions, the Coconut Crab is the largest terrestrial arthropod on earth. Despite its intimidating appearance, it is quite edible.

Earliest posting found here, via Kottke and New Shelton.

Hezbollah Logo (You wouldn’t want to wear this on Thursday!)

Media Circus subjects terrorist organization logos to criticism by a graphic designer and photographer. Isn’t offense to the eye the whole idea?

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

I have no idea who took these. I received them in an email today. Click on the picture above for larger images.

I think this picture is a hoax, but all this is worth a look anyway.

Snopes calls the photo “undetermined,” but agrees with me that it is quite evidently a created artwork.”

When an airplane travels at a speed faster than sound, density waves of sound emitted by the plane cannot precede the plane, and so accumulate in a cone behind the plane. When this shock wave passes, a listener hears all at once the sound emitted over a longer period: a sonic boom. As a plane accelerates to just break the sound barrier, however, an unusual cloud might form. The origin of this cloud is still debated. A leading theory is that a drop in air pressure at the plane described by the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity occurs so that moist air condenses there to form water droplets. Above, an F/A-18 Hornet was photographed just as it broke the sound barrier.

Many photographs of airplanes breaking the sound barrier. link

Nebula NGC 2392 - the Eskimo

Daily Mail: Ten Best Hubble Photographs.

Mauna Kea Volcano, Hawaii, April 2002

Launched in 2001, the Project for On Board Autonomy (Proba) satellite was designed as a technology testbed with a lifetime of a couple of years. Five years on, it has exceeded all expectations and has been used extensively as an Earth observation satellite, providing crucial pictures to environmental researchers across the world. The size of a small tea chest, Proba has taken more than 10,000 pictures of more than 1,000 places on Earth using a compact high resolution imaging spectrometer. The device, which was part-funded by the British National Space Centre, weighs 14kg and is the smallest of its kind to fly into space. It can see details on the surface of the Earth at a resolution of 17m and has helped scientists monitor landfill operations, track the role of woodland as sources and sinks of carbon dioxide, identify Roman buildings and assess different land use strategies in central Namibia’s savannahs.

13 photo slideshow at the Guardian.

A spooky nebula for Halloween.

photo

Hat tip to Karen Myers.

State Street, Chicago 1949

The great director Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) actually started his career as a freelance photographer.

The Chicago Tribune serves up 8 Kubrick photos taken in Chicago in the summer of 1949, which demonstrate that Kubrick could handle lighting and compose a shot. Interesting stuff for the cinéaste.
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Hat tip to Frank Dobbs.

Jewish children with teacher, 1911

The Library of Congress is exhibiting the photography of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944). These remarkable images were made as magic lanterns slides, and were displayed in color using a set of red, green, blue filters. The LOC has been able to produce new digital colored images by a process they are calling digichromatography, and their results are very impressive.
————————————Hat tip to Chuck.

Le Monde publishes eleven photos taken over a period of two decades.
———————————————Hat tip to Erik.