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.