Here's an on-set shot of Carrie Fisher in her iconic "bikini Leia" mode, along with her stunt double, catching some rays during the filming of Return of the Jedi.

Bikini Leia and her stunt double nap in the Tatooine sunshine (via JWZ)

The Google Earth Alphabet has upper and lower case and numbers and punctuation formed inadvertently by geographic features visible from space.

Upper case

Lower case

Numbers and punctuation

(via Making Light)

Our friends at Good have a post up with striking images by photographer Mathieu Young. These photos were shot during harvest time (last year) in California's Mendocino County region, where an awful lot of marijuana is grown.

"On the one hand it seems like an illicit activity," Young told Good. "But on the other hand, you have a bunch of people who are living off the land, which is beautiful."

Picture Show: The Harvest [GOOD]
Full gallery here, in larger rez: The Harvest [ mathieuyoung.com ]

I was doing a little work in the back yard yesterday when I cam across a praying mantis. I don't see too many, and this one was a handsome specimen so I took a couple of photos. I also shot a video, but he didn't do much other than lick his foreleg for a while. Maybe I'll upload it later on.

Hayley and Rachel went out this Hallowe'en dressed, respectively, as Cory Doctorow (as depicted in the XKCD webcomic) and a floppy disk. GREAT costumes, folks!

Look, it's Michael Geist! (Thanks, Rachel!)

Two years ago, I blogged Flickr users andibob909's steampunk wedding and now they're about to have a baby! I learned this by admiring the awesome Darth-Vader-and-Death-Star pregosaur costume. That is one lucky foetus and one awesome mom-to-be!

Darth Vader and the Death Star

A Japanese property developer has rebuilt a 100-year-old English country church at 3/4 scale on the 22nd floor of a tower in central Osaka. The developer hopes to capitalise on the Japanese vogue for being married in traditional English churches, offering a low-cost, local alternative to flying to England.

On the same floors as the reproduced church are photographic studios and restaurants, while a hotel and honeymoon suites are above.

The Grade-I listed church is one of the few with a thatched roof in England.

Reverend Will Pridie said the developers had visited the church and took laser measurements to enable the new one to be built...

"We are a very tiny village and congregation. I think everyone is just astonished that anyone would do such a thing - especially when you consider it is 21 floors up."

English church rebuilt in Japan

(Image: BBC)

Photographer Julia Baum spent four years photographing suburban tract comes in Sta Clara, CA. The houses were all built in the 1950s to look identical, but over the years, their owners have modified them in a very pleasing, very vernacular way to personalize them.

As I take a second look at these neighborhoods, I've found vast differences in what was once a uniform typology. Over the past 50 years these Houses have transformed from modest white cubes into a vibrant display of personality and present a rebellion against conformity. My work asserts that human individuality cannot be contained. Inevitably it shines through even the most average facade.

Houses (via Kottke)

About the image I blogged earlier this week, shot by Monica Szczupider who was a volunteer at the chimp rescue center where the scene took place. If the story of "Dorothy," the deceased chimp in the photo, doesn't break your heart -- man, you don't have one. Szczupider recalls:

Her presence, and loss, was palpable, and resonated throughout the group. The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy's chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return. Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration. But perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures."

The Story Behind Our Photo of Grieving Chimps (via Laughing Squid)

Lee sez, "Kevin Van Aelst, who photographs household objects to explain basic life processes. He uses gummy worms for DNA, clothes for the heart and other things you'd find around the house."

While the depictions of information--such as an EKG, fingerprint, map or anatomical model--are unconventional, the truth and accuracy to the illustrations are just as valid as more traditional depictions. This work is about creating order where we expect to find randomness, and also hints that the minutiae all around us is capable of communicating much larger ideas.

Kevin Van Aelst (Thanks, Lee!)

All images by Koichi Mitsui

Koichi Mitsui is a professional photographer in Japan. When he's not on the job shooting for magazines and ads, he wanders around Tokyo taking pictures with his iPhone 3GS. "The iPhone has a single-focus lens with no zoom, and this simplicity keeps me devoted to only composition and the perfect photo opp," Mitsui says. Keep reading for a selection of his work with tips on how you can take amazing photos with your iPhone, too.

Gale Banks (legendary Southern California hotrodder and auto engineer) shares this photograph of the old Los Angeles Subway Terminal. This image of unknown date and origin is remarkable to me, as an LA resident, in part because our city is not thought of as a "subway city." Throughout the 20th century, the growth emphasis here was all about freeways and cars, and public transportation sucks.

Gale's personal story about this "internet-found" photo follows...

The host of NPR's awesome news quiz/comedy extravaganza, "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!", has put up his annual Halloween display. It is a nativity scene of evil. I heart it. Image via Peter Sagal's Twitter account. Which you should be following.

Look at this photograph and just try to tell me the answer is no.

This incredible image was shot for National Geographic by Monica Szczupider, and shows chimpanzees at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon. They're observing as the body of an elder troop member named Dorothy is taken to burial. She died at 40 years of age, which is pretty old for a chimpanzee.

The photo appears in the November issue of National Geographic Magazine, in the "Visions of Earth" section. [ Thanks, Marilyn Terrell ]

Ape Lad sez, "2719 Hyperion, a great blog about Disney parks and imagineering, has been posting a series of photos of gravestones from the Haunted Mansion grounds with an explanation of who each is named after."

One of Disney's legendary "Nine Old Men"of animation, Marc Davis also stands as one of the most influential and creative forces in the history of theme park design. His clever and highly detailed concepts were the basis for the audio-animatronic vignettes of both Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, and his unrealized designs for Walt Disney World's Western River Expedition are among the great lost treasures of Disney Imagineering. He also contributed to other celebrated attractions including the Enchanted Tiki Room, the Jungle Cruise and It's a Small World.

13 Tombstones (Thanks, Ape Lad!)

Above: a contestant in a "Howl-o-ween" costume contest dressed as Nacho Libre, by Flickr user Gwen (shared under a CC license). More images like this on the Flickr blog today, and you'll want to nose around in the Dogs in Costumes Flickr Group Pool, too.

Related BB post: Kfetch

"Before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome."

myparentswereawesome.tumblr.com [via Dangerous Minds, thanks Tara McGinley!]

Marilyn sez, "Why did the ancient Egyptians go to such trouble to mummify animals? A 17-foot, knobby-backed crocodile, buried with baby croc mummies in its mouth, for example, or tiny scarab beetles and the dung balls they ate. An antelope, a kitten, a baboon. Some were pets, some were sacred animals, and some were just"gourmet jerky for the hereafter." But which were which? Here's a story about zooarchaeology: the study of ancient animal remains. I like the last photo in this gallery, showing a mummified baboon from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. An x-ray revealed missing canines, which may indicate the animal was a pet, with teeth removed to 'prevent nipping royal fingers'".

Animal Mummies (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Over at Gizmodo, Wilson Rothman has a great post up about a new book on the photography and the creative process of Norman Rockwell. Ron Schick edited and compiled the collection.

Gizmodo's Wilson calls Rockwell "the original king of Photoshop," despite the obvious fact that Rockwell reigned on those corny Saturday Evening Post covers long before Adobe (or image editing software of any kind) emerged. Snip:

The book is not about painting. Rockwell's oil-on-canvas work feels like an afterthought for Schick, who mostly documents Rockwell's photography and art direction. Throughout the book, you see a painting, then you see the photographs he took to make that painting. In most cases, many shots comprise the different elements, and are joined together only in paint. It's almost sad: Vivid interactions between people, remembered jointly in the country's collective consciousness, may never have taken place. Even people facing each other at point blank range were photographed separately, and might never have even met.

The Gizmodo post has more amazing side-by-side photos.

Here's an Amazon link for the book: Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera.

Troy had heard the reputation that the 555 California Building's security guards had for hassling photographers, so he tried out the experiment of photographing (legally) the building, and was met by potty-mouth security guards who threatened to break his "fucking camera" and punch him in the face. A rep from property managers Voranado Realty later apologized and said that this wasn't "typical of our security team."

No photography, they stated clearly. Why, we responded. Safety, they said.

I decided to challenge this statement and the older of the bunch (left) asked me if I wanted to be punched in the face. No, I replied, I have to go back to work and a black eye would make things awkward for me. He then asked me how I would feel if he broke my camera. I told him I would be bummed, but that I needed an upgrade and if he touched me or my camera I would seek monetary legal action to the extent of a brand new Canon 5D Mark II.

Shortly after, my internal voice of reason set in and I decided to leave. The conversation was going no where and a definition of "safety" was unable to be produced.

One of the security guards did give me a phone number to call for more information, which I called this morning. Strangely, the number has nothing to do with BofA or 555 California, but in fact belongs to a woman in Chinatown who had no idea what I was talking about.

If you're in San Francisco and want to go by 555 this weekend to get a photo, do drop by the comments on this post to let us know whether this is "typical" or not.

"I Will Break Your Fucking Camera"

In 2007 James Gunn posted this gallery of truly frightening before and after photos in which normal little girls are turned into waxen nightmares.

The Creepiest Thing You'll Ever See (Via PonyPonyShow)

David Hlynsky's striking collection of store windows from Communist Europe is a peek into a weird, bleak, and sometimes comical view of consumer culture in a non-consumer society:

Between 1986 and 1990, I made approximately 8,000 color, Hasselblad images on the streets of Communist Europe. I purposely avoided dramatic moments and newsworthy events. In a cityscape without commercial seduction, banality seemed to signify everything. At first I was interested in simple pedestrian traffic. Later I doggedly documented store windows. These seemed to signify the real difference between East and West. Without the garish ad campaigns of the West, these streets felt more neutral... devoid of trumped up and pumped up urgency.

David Hlynsky Communist store windows (Thanks, Zoran!)

Fatlimey sez, "On the Arachnopets board, people enjoy keeping nature's nightmares as pets. and you can read about the owners going all squishy about their pets and their little arachnobabies. This thread is a whip scorpion love story with mysterious dances, spermatophores and 'cute baby whipling' pictures."

Well, I have a pair of adult D. variegatus and this evening I put them together. The male touched many times the female body but she reject him. After that, I left them alone, more "private" and 2-3 hours late i found the male walking out of the cork and the female was behind a "drop", I think it was the structure where the sperm is guarded (I don´t know the english word, sorry)

Damon variegatus male and female sex! :-P (Thanks, Fatlimey!)

Marilyn sez, "Charlie Hamilton James took some incredible photos of flashy Eurasian kingfishers diving and swimming underwater to spear a fish in a stream. The kingfisher's got a translucent membrane that protects its eyes, and you can see its eye very clearly in this underwater photo as it captures its prey. From National Geographic magazine, November issue."

Blaze of Blue (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Last summer, Crafster user Enemyairship debuted this magnificent 7' x 7' Raccoon Mario Rug, hand crocheted from 3.5" granny squares. ZOMGwonderful.

He's made of 386 granny squares, each one representing 1 pixel (3.5" each) that makes up Raccoon Mario. I learned to crochet in February by watching youtube videos and recently watched another video for granny squares and got started on this project right away. I had originally thought that it would take me over 1 month to complete if I made about 10 granny squares per day.

7x7ft Raccoon Mario Rug! (via Wonderland)

Jonathan Worth is a talented commercial photographer (he shot me for a feature in Popular Science a few years back) who was recently asked for his shots by National Portrait Gallery in London, and asked if he could come and take my pic for it, offering to give me the right to use the resulting print for publicity, book jackets and so on.

The National Portrait Gallery's crazy copyright stance sparked an interesting conversation about copyright with Jonathan (who also shot some killer photos!) and in the end, he agreed to license the photos he took of me for the exhibition under a very liberal Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, one of the most liberal licenses, allowing for both commercial uses and remixes.

One of Jonathan's pictures showed me in my office, and I went a little Flickr-crazy marking up the photo with notes explaining what everything was. I tweeted the photo, and lots of people came by to see it -- several thousand, some of whom ended up offering Jonathan paying work. It was a win all around.

This got us to talking about how producers of images and other works that are well-known digitally can use that familiarity to sell physical objects (I give away my books as ebooks to sell the print books), and Jonathan decided to try an experiment, producing 111 prints of the iconic image (without the Flickr notes!). I kicked in the 111-page initial manuscript printing of my forthcoming (April 2010) young adult novel For the Win, which I had just finished a week before. I had printed ten copies of the manuscript to pass around, and I had one copy left, and so I signed every page and handed it off to Jonathan.

Jonathan is selling his prints on a sliding scale depending on which manuscript page you get with it -- high numbers are cheaper -- and the one-of-a-kind super-premium offering is page one accompanied by a 100cm x 140cm special edition print that include the contact-sheets from the shoot (proceeds from this go to a local school raising money for new buildings).

I think that this is just too cool for words. Jonathan's a professional shooter who's also an artist, and the portrait shots are fantastic enough. But he's also experimenting with new business-models for photography that leverage, rather than fight, the Internet. I don't receive any of the money from this -- Jonathan did the work and sank in the capital, so it's his reward to reap.

Etsy: Photographs by Jonathan Worth

Blog: Giving things away Pt II

We've been following artist Shepard Fairey's work here on Boing Boing for some time now. A disclaimer, first: I love his work, we have mutual friends, he strikes me as a stand-up guy.

Last year, Pesco was among the first to blog the Obama "Hope" poster which quickly grew far more popular than anyone anticipated. The iconic artwork spawned street cottage industries worldwide, and became an official element in the presidential campaign.

Then, the Associated Press (the same DRM-happy copyright bullies who threaten their own affiliates and try to shake down bloggers over 5-word excerpts) threatened Fairey over claims the poster was based on an AP photo, and violated their copyright. Fairey and his supporters fought back. They argued the poster was permitted under the concept of fair use because the artwork was significantly changed from the reference photo. Additionally, they added, the poster was not based on the specific photo the AP claimed -- but on a different image that required more cropping and alteration, further supporting the fair use argument.

On Friday, that high-profile case took a turn nobody expected that I did not anticipate. Fairey confessed to having made false statements to a federal judge about exactly which AP photo he used. He also admitted having fabricated evidence. Snip from his statement:

The new filings state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used as a reference and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong. In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images. I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment and I take full responsibility for my actions which were mine alone. I am taking every step to correct the information and I regret I did not come forward sooner.

The attorneys representing Fairey will soon step down. Nobody knows what will happen in the case. The question of which photo was used was a minor, tangential issue before -- but Friday's revelation is not minor. As David Kravetz says in his account at Wired News, "Everybody agrees the case is now tainted and that Fairey's courthouse actions could undermine his case, even if he did not commit copyright infringement." But for those who believe in the merits of the original fair use argument, there is still hope.

Read Kravets' story (some interesting links between this case and that of the BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy), and check out Marquette University professor Bruce Boyden's blog post here. Here's Shepard's mea culpa. Here's the AP's statement - and a note on that: I found it odd that many news organizations were sourcing that statement and a subsequent report from the AP as if they were regular wire service items, without regard for the fact that the AP is also a plaintiff in the case, and therefore inherently biased.

Photographer Chris Jordan has published a series of images identified as dead albatross on Midway Atoll whose bodies are filled with bits of plastic they ingested.

Midway Island is an anemic little line of sand and coral reefs, way out in the middle of the Pacific. Now, I don't know Mr. Jordan personally, and haven't fact-checked the story behind the photos -- but presuming it's all as presented, this really is a horrifying set of images. Birds that live as far away from civilization as you can imagine, their innards packed with petroleum flotsam? Wow.

The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

Midway (chrisjordan.com, Thanks, Susannah Breslin and Sean Bonner!)

Flickr user Megpi made this beautiful "impressionist cake." ZOMG.

impressionist cake (via Craft)

Wired Science rounds up the winners of the past 35 years' worth of Nikon prizes for excellence in microscopic photography. These are just stunning. Shown here: 2001: Fresh water rotifer feeding among debris (200x), Darkfield. / Harold TaylorKensworth, UK.

35 Years of the World's Best Microscope Photography (Thanks, @timoreilly!)

Painter and photographer Laura Levine is one of several photographers whose work is on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum's Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present. She says: "The exhibition and companion book include two of my favorite portraits, of Bjork and R.E.M. To mark this event, I am making signed fine art prints of both these images available through a special offer."

UPDATE: Here's a link to a many more rock and roll photographs by Laura. They include interesting background stories.

Laura Levine fine art and photography prints

Andrew sez, "This is unbelievable from an amateur photographer. The light, the costumers, the overall keyhole shape, it's spectacular. It looks like a lost Leibovitz outtake and it was shot by an amateur with a point & shoot."

The shot depicts three Sleeping Beauty cosplayers dressed as "Merryweather, Princess Aurora and Flora from Disney's Sleeping Beauty at the Georgia Aquarium during Dragon*Con Night 2009."

Dragon*Con 2009 (Thanks, Andrew!)

(Image: Positive Space)

JWZ was nearly hit by a crazy driver while on his bike in San Francisco; the driver then went on to hit his friend, and then took off. JWZ caught up with him and said, "Hey! You just hit that guy!" and the driver said, "Really? That's just terrible," and drove away. But there were witnesses, a paramedic's report, and a photo of the driver's license plate.

I was hit by a drunk driver on my bike when I was 21, and still have knee problems because of it. It was a hit-and-run, and the police caught him later with parts of my bike stuck to his grille. He was a repeat offender, too. But because of Ontario's screwy no-fault insurance and crappy justice system, I wasn't informed of the court date, didn't get to object to him entering a plea and merely losing his license for a few months and paying a $1000 fine. I got a new bike, a change of clothes, and three physio sessions out of it.

I can't think of anything more cowardly and vile than hit-and-run driving. I hope this guy loses his car, his license, and the respect and fellowship of his community.

Monday around 6pm, [info]netik and I were biking West on Harrison on the right side when a car passed me on the left, within a few inches. I had enough time to think, "Hey, that was close", look forward, and yell "Look out!" before the car's mirror hit [info]netik's handle bar from behind and sent him tumbling. The guy kept driving. I chased after the car, pulled up to his window and said, "Hey! You just hit that guy!" He look at me and said, in a calm deadpan, "Really? That's just terrible." And then he drove off.

[info]netik has a giant bruise, but isn't hurt badly, and his bike is ok. Knowing him, had this guy stopped and been even slightly apologetic, there probably wouldn't even have been a police report. But instead, the driver chose to turn it into a felony hit and run, with three witnesses, a paramedic report, and a photo of his license plate.

Enjoy your upcoming lack of a driver's license, loss of insurance, $1,000 to $10,000 fine, and possible jail time, scumbag.

You have a nice day too, Sir.

AP: "Captain Lou Albano dies at 76; wrestler appeared in Cyndi Lauper videos."

He may be best known for his roles in those early MTV classics, but I betcha don't know this, gamers: he also played "Mario" in "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (1989-1991)," a live-action/animated kids' show based on the famous arcade game. Here's a trailer video, which shows Mr. Albano in that role -- and here's the credits, with Albano urging you to "Do the Mario!"

Image: detail of this photo, from LIFE. Related: one with Cyndi Lauper, and another here, 1984 (no photographer credit).

Update: Another YouTube gem. @EvilPRGuy reminds us of this fantastically bad anti-drug PSA Albano did in the '80s (in character as Mario), which warned that if you do drugs, "you'll go to hell before you die."

Photo by Josh Kucera, at True Slant: On the frontiers of commerce: Chinese watermelon sausage. And with that, I am stepping aside from the blog for a nutritious rainy-afternoon lunch, which will not contain anything resembling what's in this photo. (Thanks, Noah Shachtman)

Twitter pal Enth says, "Here is a photograph of several extremely serious men programming an animatronic bear."

And so it is.

Original link from Hey Okay

On Saturday night, I staggered over to downtown Minneapolis for the 5th annual Zombie Pub Crawl, a celebration of creative horror makeup and playful kitsch. I'd gone to the Crawl once before, in 2007. On that outing, it was enough to just show up in (blood covered) street clothes and zombie makeup. This year, however, featured some fabulous new directions in themed zombies. Thanks to the excellent work of my friend and photographer Leah Shaffer, I'm able to bring you a sampling of the Twin Cities' finest in zombie couture...

What do we want?
Brains!

When do we want 'em?

Brains!

Jordan sez, "The IOC, believing that it owns the photos in your shoebox, sent a takedown notice to Richard Giles, AWIA member and rather good photographer. I took notice, as we in Vancouver are about to play host to the 2010 Winter Games. It will be impossible to point your camera at anything in this tiny city without catching some Olympic logo or other."

I hope that the IOC is aware that it's about to show up in one of the most media-savvy towns in the world, and that trying to stop private citizens from posting "unauthorized" photos will be nothing short of a fool's errand. This sort of hostility towards Olympic fans is both wasteful and pointless. Does the IOC not understand why people go to the Olympic Games? (Hint: to come home with once-in-a-lifetime memories. This includes things like... photos) If the IOC has trouble understanding what the Internet does, they can probably find someone to ask. My own consulting rate is quite reasonable.

The Olympics may be the most overrated, corrupt, bullying institution we have on an international level (exempting corporations and organized crime syndicates).

IOC Tries to Take Down Olympic Photos on Flickr (Thanks, Jordan!)

Wonder what healthy baby-poo looks like? Wonder no more: here's a gallery of normal, healthy steaming baby excreta:

This photo guide to baby poop will give you a good idea of what's normal and what's not as your newborn grows, drinks breast milk or formula, and starts eating solids. You'll find out when not to worry and when it's wise to be concerned.

As a general rule, if you see anything completely out of the ordinary in your baby's diaper, play it safe and call the doctor.

Fair warning: These are pictures of real baby poop! Please view only if you're comfortable with that. If not, you can read this description without photos instead.

Baby poop: A visual guide (via Neatorama)

(Image: Diaper pail, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Ingamun's photostream)

Tom sez, "A wonderful selection of suburban playgrounds and parks circa 1970: robot slides, space cruiser climbing frames and more."

These litigation magnets made me the lad I am today. I miss 'em. Sniff.

Playgrounds From the 70's (Thanks, Tom!)

(Image via George Campbell)

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: punk animals.

Punk Animals

This photo-essay at Planet magazine of a purported "new tribe of Ukrainian Amazons," shot by French photographer Guillaume Herbaut, is receiving a lot of attention online. The magazine article is the only source I see for the following background on the women in these photos:

In the Ukraine, a country where females are victims of sexual trafficking and gender oppression, a new tribe of empowered women is emerging. Calling themselves the "Asgarda", the women seek complete autonomy from men. Residing in the Carpathian Mountains, the tribe is comprised of 150 women of varying ages, primarily students, led by 30 year-old Katerina Tarnouska. Reviving the tribal traditions of the Scythian Amazons of ancient Greek mythology, the Asgarda train in martial arts, taught by former Soviet karate master, Volodymyr Stepanovytch, and learn life skills and sciences in order to become ideal women. Little physical documentation existed on the tribe, until recently, when renowned French photographer, met the Asgarda back in 2004 in the midst of the Orange Revolution.

Is this the official Asgarda website? Does anyone know more about them? Are they a cult? A lesbian martial arts club? A planned community? Or manufactured narrative for a sweet series of photos by some French dude in an art magazine? I was inclined to think the whole thing was a hoax, like the "motorcycle ride through Chernobyl" hoax that made the blog rounds years ago, but maybe that's because a tribe of noble Ukrainian girl-warriors sounds too awesome to be true in this cold, cruel world.

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.



Many of you may remember my post on Can't Take It With You, a landmark photo exhibit showcasing Muslims in America that's opening next week in New York. Omar Mullick, the photographer of the exhibit, invited me to the gallery space yesterday and we had a little chat.

Bassam: How are you feeling?

Omar: A little tired, a little happy. We've been working around the clock.

Bassam: So, first things first, where did the title for the show come from?

Omar: It's the opening lines of a Radiohead song called Reckoner. It had a pretty strong impact on me when I heard it. I realized that I was as capable of going to Radiohead or The Brian Jonestown Massacre as I was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for the same notes of transcendence....

Thomas Hawk sez, "I was disappointed after reading about the new Walt Disney Family Museum's opening this week in San Francisco's Presidio via the SF Chronicle to learn that the museum has chosen to prohibit photography. For a cultural institution this is unfortunate. With many public museums moving more recently towards more open photography policies (including the EMP in Seattle just last month) it is disappointing to see a new museum opening with a closed policy. The Walt Disney Family Museum should consider following the lead of most of the other museums in the Bay Area and open their museum up to photographers."

As Thomas notes in his post, the Disney parks have an exemplary open photography policy, too; one that works superbly for Disney, engaging its fans and customers with its products and resorts. It's a real failure of confidence in their own success to impose a policy like this in the museum.

The New Walt Disney Family Museum's No Photography Policy Sucks (Thanks, Thomas!)

Jeffrey sez, "We're getting more and more excellent panoramic photographers uploading their spherical panoramas to our site - but this one made me splutter with delight. Hundreds, or maybe thousands, of yogis with their feet sticking up in the air, as far as you can see, while the sun rises in the distance. I feel more relaxed just looking at it.... If you right-click on the panorama and then select 'little planet' you get a yoga planet of legs...."

Umag Asanas At Sunset (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

Ethan sez, "I met Joshua Hoffine in Toronto at Fan Expo. He creates stunning horror photography and blogs about the process of creating the photohraphs here."

I guess the test of a good horror photo is whether it makes you scared and uncomfortable without resorting to pure gore. Hoffine's photos qualify.

Joshua Hoffine Horror Blog (Thanks, Ethan!)

Photos, above and after the jump, shared with Boing Boing by Audrey N. Carpio of The Philippine Star. Her first-person account from the ongoing disaster follows, and includes recommendations on how you can help the victims. She shot the photos in this post two days after the typhoon, on a relief drive in a town called Tumana. Link to Flickr set.

Typhoon Ondoy by Audrey Carpio

Typhoon Ondoy, aka Tropical Storm Ketsana dumped 40 cm of rain on the Philippines last Saturday before he/she left to wreak watery havoc upon Vietnam and Cambodia. But Manila and its surrounding environs are still in various states of calamity, with many parts of the city still submerged under dirty brown water and others, while drying out, caked in leptospirosis-inducing mud. The government and its presidentiables have been slow to act upon what could've been their Hurricane Katrina-hero moment but quick to seize upon relief efforts for electioneering. Instead, it is thanks to the generosity and ingenuity of the Filipino people who mobilized themselves through Twitter and Facebook that hundreds of thousands of victims have been fed, clothed and sheltered.

As early as Saturday evening, when people began to realize that floods have flashed rather quickly and videos of drowning trucks emerged on YouTube, relief plans grew almost organically on the networks. Tweets encouraging people to gather food, blankets, and clothing for donations were some of the earliest; by the next day there was an updatable and sharable Google spreadsheet on all the drop-off and volunteer centers; by Monday, almost all status updates and tweets had to do with emergency hotline numbers, relatives of friends who were stranded on a rooftop, and traffic advisories warning which roads were impassable. A Google map of people in need of rescuing was uploaded, although its usefulness is questionable, considering the general low-techness of the National Disaster Coordinating Council's rescue squads they only had 13 rubber boats with which to deploy to the affected barangays †or villages (to put it into perspective, 1.9 million people were inundated with flood water, nearly 380,000 have been evacuated into schools, churches and other emergency shelters, and 246 people have died.

Aaron sez, "George Preti has a fridge full of human body odor samples. John Daly of the National Institute of Diabetes had a refrigerator packed to the gills with amphibian toxins. Ivan Amato, a C&EN editor and avid photographer, is collecting photos of interesting lab refrigerators. If you have any good pics, send them to i_amato@acs.org ."

What's in your fridge? (Thanks, Aaron!)

Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis. From Photoshop Disasters (thanks, Antinous!)

Former BB guestblogger and Japan-based blogger Danny Choo has a neat post up with snapshots from Japanese festivals, shot with a Lumix. Above, one of the game/contest stalls alongside one ceremonial observance. "Kingyo Sukui is where folks try to nab as many goldfish as possible from the tub with a single hoop of thin paper."

Another photo in the gallery shows Sesame Street character dolls on display at a festival vendor stall. Danny jokes that Sesame Street looks a li'l different over there. You have to watch the video clip after the jump to appreciate just how different: now, I'm very ignorant about Japanese media culture, but am guessing that this is a spoof on a comedy show or something.

Japanese Festivals (dannychoo.com)