Well he didn't use to believe in dog.

ETA: come to think of it, it doesn't make sense to me either. Never mind.

Who does that dog think he is, Jesus?

No, he thinks he's Rin Tin tin

(Recycled Arnold Palmer joke)

He just thinks he's a Good Shepherd.

Wow. How depressing.

Apologies for leaving the pic a little big, but, it's an awesome pic. (It lost some sharpness in the conversion to <175kb)

Better, full-size version over at Wikipedia.

This ain't Seth, or, Richie. This is Gold Dust Gecko, and Gold Dust Gecko don't give a shit.
Attachment 36044

Plastic boat, frigid temps, gnarly whitewater, ~50-75 foot drop into said frigid whitewater...

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Pass.

Just pulling numbers out of thin air, I'd guess there's about a 95% chance that you wouldn't die doing that waterfall thing. Which means there's a 5% chance you would die. I'll pass too.

Well water that is frothy and bubbly and swirling is (I've read) softer on impact than still water.

Which just means you go through and hit the rocks.

Seriously, as Glatt points out, that is basically Russian Roulette. Or natural selection in action. I'll just watch, thanks.

I'm wondering how he got such huge balls in such a tiny boat.

From Nat'l Geographic's Pics of the Year:

First pic just breaks my heart. Flooding (in Asia I think)
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Had to resize these:
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This is the NatGeo Photo of the Year Contest winning entry. It won Best Nature Photo as well as the overall Best Photo of 2011. A dragonfly in a rainstorm.

Entitled "Splashing".
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Amazing.

****CORRECTION****

I think all those pictures but the dragon fly actually came from Boston.com's The Big Picture, '50 Best Photos From The Natural World'.

Sorry for any confusion.

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Just cuz I like Jack.

Light trails from departing (arriving?) plane(s?)...

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awesome! Really clear and crisp.

Looks like just one plane. It's landing, because you can clearly see the forward facing "headlights" on the wing tips. And the central dots from the strobes.

And you can see he was descending too fast, so he flew level for a while. It looks really steep, but I think that's telephoto lens compression.

Plane, schmane. That is clearly the road markings for the new Highway to Heaven.

Looks like Rainbow Road to me, or at least a two lane blacktop back road on the same map.

Mount Rainier (?)

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I found the above image while trying to confirm this image. The file name indicates "ch47onmountrainier", but I could not find any picture of Mt. Rainier-terrain that looked like this.

Whatcha think? Is this is, or, is this ain't Mt Rainier?

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V may know - I think he has hiked it a time or 200

I doubt that's Rainier, as the mountain is in a heavily used National Park. They wouldn't be doing military training there. The sunrise could very well be Rainier, however.

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Almost certainly Mount Rainier. Your picture was taken during the summer, since my picture was taken at the beginning of December. The sun is much further south in my picture. I was probably standing in the same place as the photographer of your shot was, Sunrise Tree Farm. It was a glorious, cold, clear morning. I can see trees in the foreground that look very similar. I didn't have a shot at the sun/mountain/clouds/shadow like that other photographer did. Awesome shot.

As for your second picture, that doesn't look like Mount Rainier to me either. Principally because the summit is covered with glaciers, no glaciers in your shot. Also, it is a National Park, not really training ground for military forces. But, there are sometimes rescues of hikers/climbers who need transport off the mountain, and the National Guard does fly there on such occasions, though rarely.

Thanks V - I knew you'd know. ;)


Oh, and Grav... I'm pretty sure I found the site that hosted that image and :eek:

Assuming you mean the Chinook pic, I checked, and, I got it from Ernie's House of Whoop-Ass.

The sunset one I found in a Google search. No telling.

Haven't we seen that copter photo before? Afghanistan?

I thought the terrain looked somewhat Afghanish.

Ships of the desert, &, ships in the desert.

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"One ... Two ... Three...LIIIIFFFFTTTT"


Probably in the Aral Sea or the Caspian sea; salt-lakes that have shrunk considerably as the Russians diverted water for irrigation, leaving fishing industries, well, high and dry.

Not. Of. This. Earth.

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Last September, from ISS.
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Hey look! There I am. I'm the one waving.

Saturn's moon, Enceladus, lit, on the right of the picture, by sunlight; lit, on the face, by sunlight reflected by Saturn. Please notice the ice plumes jetting from a sub-surface sea at the lower left of the picture.

Better explanation (and better, larger pic) here: APOD

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That is beautiful.

The semi-local weather dude said the other night that our area has had only six days of sunshine this year.

'Splains why I'm liking this pic, I guess. Ordinarily, I would be bitching about this pic representing 100 degrees and 900% humidity, but right now it's looking pretty damn good. Even w/the rain in the background...

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"Ohhhh, it's a double rainbow, all the way across the sky, well almost."

I would kill to be in that water right now.

OMG I need a vacation. I. Need. A. Vacation.

But, what's a vacation?

Our weatherman said that if we don't get any more snow we are in the top 10 of Least Amount of Snow in the Area since like, the beginning of time.

I believe it. It's amazing what a how a day of sunshine makes me feel human again.

My great great grandfather's van, approximately 112 years ago.

you didn't take that picture??


heh. Nice one, any story you're willing to share?

it reads

J BOORER
Please place your books and perodicals
on the carriage and we well return
them to you with the Russian
translation written in the margins

I don't really have any details. The J Boorer in question was a wheelwright and haulier. The photo was in (in a corner of) a magazine illustration for an article about that part of London (Woolwich). I found it while looking through a lot of my late father's papers this afternoon. Both my parents died in 2010 and I am now the custodian of a lot of family stuff including my father's family-history related research. If I had the time I'd really like to make a proper family album with pictures of the individuals, their parents and offspring arranged in order, and pictures of the property I have which can be identified as associated with specific people, and any stories or other information. Or do it online, probably at one of the genealogy websites so that other people can benefit from it. I have no children or nephews/nieces to pass this stuff physically onto, but am in touch with cousins' children to whom I will leave the stuff.

:D

The fine art of piloting VTOL

This is my grandmother back in the 20's. I love this picture. That car is great. Check out the farmer in the background working the field with horses.
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yes wonderful picture.

I notice in the picture of the car that the wheels are wirewheels. and that each wheel has about 18 spokes supporting the car, so.. say 76 wires are enough to support the entire dynamic weight of the car. Wow.

I'm no mechanical engineer, but I think there's some tensegrity action going on, where even the horizontal spokes are helping to support the weight of the car by holding the rim in a circular shape so the forces can be transferred down to the ground.

Maybe tensegrity is the wrong word to describe it, but it's a similar phenomenon, where all the parts of the system work together.

I had a minor epiphany about bicycle spokes recently.

The weight of the bike goes down the forks, to the hub of the wheel, and then [epiphany] is not supported from beneath by compression, but is suspended from the top of the wheel rim, by tension on the spokes. The rim then carries the weight down to the contact point with the ground, and all the other spokes are under tension to keep the rim from bulging and losing its circular shape.

Is that a Ford?

Yep. Model A. And it looks brand new to me. I assume it's a new car pose. According to Wikipedia, the Model A was sold from 1928 through 1931, so that narrows down the date of the photo a bit.

:devil:

http://i.imgur.com/nVdbT.jpg

Would it be bad form to mention that your Gram is a hottie?

She was probably a flapper. Or at least dressed like one.

Very cool pic...

"Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."

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The US space program used to be pretty fucking cool.

Glory days.:(

Yeah, no more shots like that one for a while...

omg is that for real? What a beautiful picture. Where'd you find it Grav?

Eye candy. Lots of eye candy.

I searched through my browsing history, and I have no idea.

I did a TinEye search and it returned squat.



ETA: I got that in an email. I think all the pics in that email were from twistedsifter.com. I couldn't confirm the owl pic, they have a weird(-ish) layout.