Guardian.co.uk picture editor, Eric Hilaire, selects the best shots from this year's wildlife photography awards.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Bright Lights, Big City
A couple videos featuring Christmas light traditions in Baltimore. I also have a Baltimore related music post today: A Baltimore Christmas
From 34th Street in Hampden, the annual Christmas decorations extravaganza.
From Mount Vernon Square, the annual lighting of the Washington Monument.
From the harbor, the annual parade of lighted boats.
From 34th Street in Hampden, the annual Christmas decorations extravaganza.
From Mount Vernon Square, the annual lighting of the Washington Monument.
From the harbor, the annual parade of lighted boats.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
SantaLeaks
From The New Yorker, leaked facts about Santa.
Secret cables from the North Pole
by Ben Greenman
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Solstice\Eclipse Images
This is a fill in the blank quiz:
Below is a photograph of the eclipsing moon above the _______________.
If you don't know the answer, it is one of the photographs on the blog post from Boston.com linked to below, and the caption tells what it is. I have to admit that I did not recognize it until I read the caption, even though I have photographed this before.
Below is a photograph of the eclipsing moon above the _______________.
If you don't know the answer, it is one of the photographs on the blog post from Boston.com linked to below, and the caption tells what it is. I have to admit that I did not recognize it until I read the caption, even though I have photographed this before.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Lunar Eclipse
For all of those—like me—who slept through last night's lunar eclipse here is a video.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Rochefoucauld Grail - Follow Up
The Rochefoucauld Grail. which I blogged about back in November, has sold for £2.39m ($3.71m). Here is the story from the Independent.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Chelsea Hotel
Last month's post NYC Buildings contained a photograph I took of the Chelsea Hotel. The guardian.co.uk has a set of pictures representing the "The 10 best Chelsea hotel moments", including Edie Sedgwick (pictured below) setting fire to her room. I am not sure "best" is the most appropriate word here, since a couple of the incidents involve death, and a couple others mayhem. Maybe it should be the 10 most notorious moments.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
A Social Network Christmas
From Igniter Media A Social Network Christmas. Not quite as poetic as the King James, but it does cover the main points. (You might need to scroll down. I cannot get the video to move up.)
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Picture ot the Day - 12/16/2010
From the campus of George Washington University earlier today. George himself accented with snow.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Return of the Missing Head
The recent episode where the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were accosted with shouts of "off with theirs heads" reminds me that there was a time when this actually happened, as does this story. For almost 200 hundred years the head of Henri IV of France went missing. Henry was assassinated in 1610, but it seems his head did not become detached from his body until 1793 when revolutionaries made off with it. I guess a it is much easy to carry off just a head as opposed to the entire body.
According to this article from the BBC, the head has now been recovered and returned—although probably not reattached—to the rest of the body.
[Added 12/18/10. A video from the BBC on Henri's head.]
According to this article from the BBC, the head has now been recovered and returned—although probably not reattached—to the rest of the body.
[Added 12/18/10. A video from the BBC on Henri's head.]
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Other Aubrey
What Aubrey Bodine is to black and white photography, Aubrey Beardsley is to black and white illustration. Beardsley was one of the most successful book illustrators of the 19th century. From The Independent, here is a selection of his work, as well as a couple other illustrators.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
More Yosemite
I previously posted a series a Yosemite photographs by Mark Boster. Here is a video of Boster photographing in Yosemite.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Picture ot the Day - 12/11/2010
I am just wondering if drinks are served during the service here. That would probably warm the welcome.
The Antikythera Mechanism
A Lego recreation of an ancient Greek device used to predict eclipses. More videos and information at the guardian.co.uk here.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Images of the Brain
The New York Times has an article and a set of illustration from the new book, Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Included is this image that looks like a detail from a Gustav Klimt painting, but is actually an image of the Neocortex of the brain.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
At Home
I recently read Bill Bryson's latest book At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Bryson currently lives in a former Church of England rectory built in the middle 1800's. Going room by room through the house, he writes about the history of each type of room. Starting with pre-historic dwellings in Great Britain, he covers a lot of ground. His treatment is rather episodic, and sometimes he stretches to connect the history he wants to tell with the room he is relating it to. He briefly covers many topics, but his stories are always interesting, and often very entertaining.
This book reminded my of Witold Rybczynski 1987 book Home: A Short History of an Idea. Rather than going room by room, Rybczynski gives a chronological history of the home. Each of his chapters begins with a painting of a home from a specific time period, and then he discusses how the painting relates to changes in the concept of what constituted a home during that time period. This is the first book that I every read by Rybczynski, but he has since become one of my favorite writers. I have read many of his other books, and seen him speak twice. I would recommend anything that he has written.
Going back to Bryson's book, one of the episodes that he relates is the creation of the London sewers. I was already familiar with this from Stephen Halliday's book The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis. In short, following the rise of the flush toilet in the early 1800's, the Thames River became on massive cesspool. The smell became so overwhelming that the Parliament had to be shut down. Joseph Bazalgette took on the task of creating a sewer system that would remove all the waste from London. In the process, he created the embankments that currently line the Thames through London, and built one of the technological wonders off the 19th Century. A century and a half later, the sewer Bazalgette build is still the backbone of the system London uses to dispose of sewage. All of this as a way of introducing this video which is a modern day descent into the sewer Bazalgette build. I am including the link to this video because, knowing the history, I thought it was interesting. That being said, it is very gross. So if you are squeamish you might want to skip it. On the other hand, this may be the only place you will ever see a discussion of affluent effluent.
This book reminded my of Witold Rybczynski 1987 book Home: A Short History of an Idea. Rather than going room by room, Rybczynski gives a chronological history of the home. Each of his chapters begins with a painting of a home from a specific time period, and then he discusses how the painting relates to changes in the concept of what constituted a home during that time period. This is the first book that I every read by Rybczynski, but he has since become one of my favorite writers. I have read many of his other books, and seen him speak twice. I would recommend anything that he has written.
Going back to Bryson's book, one of the episodes that he relates is the creation of the London sewers. I was already familiar with this from Stephen Halliday's book The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis. In short, following the rise of the flush toilet in the early 1800's, the Thames River became on massive cesspool. The smell became so overwhelming that the Parliament had to be shut down. Joseph Bazalgette took on the task of creating a sewer system that would remove all the waste from London. In the process, he created the embankments that currently line the Thames through London, and built one of the technological wonders off the 19th Century. A century and a half later, the sewer Bazalgette build is still the backbone of the system London uses to dispose of sewage. All of this as a way of introducing this video which is a modern day descent into the sewer Bazalgette build. I am including the link to this video because, knowing the history, I thought it was interesting. That being said, it is very gross. So if you are squeamish you might want to skip it. On the other hand, this may be the only place you will ever see a discussion of affluent effluent.
The Birds of America
An original double elephant folio edition of John James Audobon's The Birds of America has sold at auction for $11.5, making it the most expensive print book ever sold. I bought a series of books that reproduce the original 4 volumes on ebay a couple years ago for much less, but it is probably not even baby elephant size. Here is an article with a video about the book.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Picture ot the Day - 12/7/2010
The remains of the two burned out buildings on the west side of the 800 block of Charles Street. I believe the very first Donna's was the one in this building. I would go take pictures of the buildings that burned on the Block, but it is too cold, and I need a nap. Note the icicles that froze on the stop light.
Monday, December 6, 2010
"The Star-Spangled Banner" sold for $506,500
An 1814 first-edition copy of the lyrics and music of "The Star Spangled Banner" sells for over a half million dollars.
Happy St. Nicholas Day
This link is from the Smithsonian Libraries' Facebook feed, but I really like this illustration, which looks like it may be from the Wiener Werkstätte. So I have cribbed it, as well as the link to their blog post.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Two James Franco Films
Recently I have seen two films starring James Franco films. Both deviate from the structure of a normal narrative film. It is always risk to try to do this, but both directors still succeeded in creating engaging, and thought provoking films.
Yesterday I saw 127 Hours, based on the true story of Aron Ralston, who, while hiking alone in the Utah, fell into a crevice, and had his arms pinned under a boulder that fell on it. He was there 127 hours before he cut off the arm to escape. Much of the press on this film is about people passing out from the scene of the amputation, and something like this seems to have happened when I saw the film. Shortly after the critical scene there was a big commotion in theater, with people jumping up and calling for medical assistance. The film continued running, and after a couple minutes everyone settled down. I am not sure what happened, but an ambulance was outside when I left the theater.
It is a very intense film, and there is something in the primitive part of the brain that really does not like to see body parts being cut off. At the same time I would not consider it a sensationalistic film. The Ralston character is very well developed, with most of the film dealing with the lead up to the accident, and then his struggle as he is trapped for five days. The films actually works better because practically everyone in the audience knows what is going to happen in the end. While this lessens the shock when the amputation happens, it does increase the tension throughout the film, partly because everyone is hoping they don't pass out.
For perhaps a majority of the film Franco is the only actor on screen, although you could argue that the Utah landscapes of the film are almost an separate character. The sparse, but stunning, appearance of the setting, does something to balance out the gruesomeness of the story. Also Franco creates a very likable, and carefree character that you really have to root for. If any one character can be said to carry a whole film, I think you have to say that Franco carries this one, so he might get nominated for an Oscar.
Danny Boyle, who directed last year's Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire, might also get nominated again for this picture. He uses a lot of split screen and fast cut, odd angle editing to create the tension of the film. It may be that this is a little too out of the mainstream for the Oscars, but we will have to wait and see.
About a month ago I saw Howl. In this film, Franco plays Allen Ginsberg. The film goes back and forth between scenes that recreate an early taped interview by Ginsberg, narrative scenes that include other Beat characters, like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, and a recreation of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's obscenity trial for publishing Ginsberg's poem "Howl".
This film is not as good as 127 Hours, but it is an interesting look at Ginsberg, and American society in the 1950's. The cutting back and forth between the different scenes of the film does not get to confusing, and at 90 minutes I think it is the right length to deal with what is being covered. If it had been much, longer I think the jumping back and forth would have become overwhelming.
Yesterday I saw 127 Hours, based on the true story of Aron Ralston, who, while hiking alone in the Utah, fell into a crevice, and had his arms pinned under a boulder that fell on it. He was there 127 hours before he cut off the arm to escape. Much of the press on this film is about people passing out from the scene of the amputation, and something like this seems to have happened when I saw the film. Shortly after the critical scene there was a big commotion in theater, with people jumping up and calling for medical assistance. The film continued running, and after a couple minutes everyone settled down. I am not sure what happened, but an ambulance was outside when I left the theater.
It is a very intense film, and there is something in the primitive part of the brain that really does not like to see body parts being cut off. At the same time I would not consider it a sensationalistic film. The Ralston character is very well developed, with most of the film dealing with the lead up to the accident, and then his struggle as he is trapped for five days. The films actually works better because practically everyone in the audience knows what is going to happen in the end. While this lessens the shock when the amputation happens, it does increase the tension throughout the film, partly because everyone is hoping they don't pass out.
For perhaps a majority of the film Franco is the only actor on screen, although you could argue that the Utah landscapes of the film are almost an separate character. The sparse, but stunning, appearance of the setting, does something to balance out the gruesomeness of the story. Also Franco creates a very likable, and carefree character that you really have to root for. If any one character can be said to carry a whole film, I think you have to say that Franco carries this one, so he might get nominated for an Oscar.
Danny Boyle, who directed last year's Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire, might also get nominated again for this picture. He uses a lot of split screen and fast cut, odd angle editing to create the tension of the film. It may be that this is a little too out of the mainstream for the Oscars, but we will have to wait and see.
About a month ago I saw Howl. In this film, Franco plays Allen Ginsberg. The film goes back and forth between scenes that recreate an early taped interview by Ginsberg, narrative scenes that include other Beat characters, like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, and a recreation of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's obscenity trial for publishing Ginsberg's poem "Howl".
This film is not as good as 127 Hours, but it is an interesting look at Ginsberg, and American society in the 1950's. The cutting back and forth between the different scenes of the film does not get to confusing, and at 90 minutes I think it is the right length to deal with what is being covered. If it had been much, longer I think the jumping back and forth would have become overwhelming.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Milestones in Reading
A set of images from the LA Times depicting advances in reading technology over the centuries.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Picture ot the Day - 12/02/2010
I missed the holiday lighting of the Washington Monument in Baltimore tonight. After it was over I did get this photograph. The lights are LED, and in various shades of blue, from greenish to light blue, even though that does not really show up in this photograph.
See related photographs at the Baltimore Sun.
See related photographs at the Baltimore Sun.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Eat Drink Art Design
Photographs of objects from the exhibition Eat Drink Art Design at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. These are some of the pieces that struck me the most, including this one by Keith Haring.
Note: Once the slide show opens, if you click at the top where it says "Show Info" the descriptions should appear with the photographs.
Note: Once the slide show opens, if you click at the top where it says "Show Info" the descriptions should appear with the photographs.
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