Hail Of A Day

Our favorite reader photos from 2008 - “On duty…” by The Bear - Los Angeles Times

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25 Pounds.  But who wants to eat this nasty looking monstrosity?  Looks like a fossilized heart with an anteater’s head at the top.

Lebanese farmer Khalil Semhat holds his giant potato in the … - Yahoo! News Photos

Funny pictures of kids being scared by Santa experiences.  I love this one below, cause he looks just as scared.  To me, as a parent I would have much rather had a photo like the one below (for the long-term novelty) than a generic, forced-smile photo of my kids with a creepy Santa.

Scared of Santa photos — chicagotribune.com

Every time I get ready to throw away some nasty looking, old bananas, my wife swoops in and shames me for wasting them.

“You can make good banana nut bread out of them.” she always says.

Well, I have to tell you, we’ve hit new lows in our house as far as rotten bananas go.  I don’t even want to eat the bread that these bananas go into. I mean, come on, this is ridiculous.  There are leper colonies that look healthier than this. (are there still leper colonies in this world??)

This is one of the funniest photos I’ve ever seen.  It’s the profile pic of a friend of a friend on Facebook.  I wrote her and told her, “I don’t know you, but that’s the best facebook profile picture, ever.”

She wrote back, “It’s the best picture that exists. It’s an anteater, but for a reason I’m not sure of, it is standing on it’s back legs and standing in front of what appears to be a curtain….as if he’s on stage. It’s strange, but it makes me laugh a lot. It looks a bit like he’s doing a modified “heisman” — which I decided is appropriate for facebook!”

She said to another guy about the photo…

“i always interpreted his expression as “you’ve caught me without my hat and cane, please excuse me” — at which point he scurries behind the curtain…but your take on it makes it perfectly apropos for my profile pic (i mean, if you take his hand to mean the trendy-figurative use of the “heisman”). ah, love a new perspective, thanks!”

PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR CAPTIONS IN THE COMMENTS SECTION.  The winner will receive an anteater pelt.

Have you been watching the new hit show, Fringe?  It’s a a great drama.  My wife and I have been noticing that the head of the FBI agency below has a tendency to lower his forehead, show the whites of his eyes, suck in his cheeks, and…give a dead-on impression of Zoolander’s “Blue Steel”.  You be the judge.

Supposedly (and this is a big supposedly), this thing is real.  It washed up on the shore in near Long Island New York.  Nobody knows what it is.  I’m sure it’s a hoax, but you never know.

A few funny comments I saw about this on the blog I found it on:

“Sorry everybody, I won’t nude sunbathe again.”
“Is that thing flipping us off?”
“It puts the lotion on it’s skin…”
“Should’ve basted every 30 minutes like Martha told you. Now look- the rump’s all dry.”

No, Lizzie Grubman’s still alive. This is an actual monster, some sort of rodent-like creature with a dinosaur beak. A tipster says that there is “a government animal testing facility very close by in Long Island,” but unless the government is trying to design horrible Montauk monsters that will eat IEDs and fart fire at bad Iraqis, we’re not sure why they would create such an unthinkable beast. Our guess is that it’s viral marketing for something. Ali Lohan’s new album perhaps.
Good Luck With Your Hell Demons: Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk

Fly

EO Newsroom: New Images - Smoke Plume

Can you guess what is shown in this photo? What is the plume extending upward from the ground? Why is the top of the plume brighter than its bottom? What is the bright object in the lower righthand corner of the picture, and what is the dark, cone-shaped feature that seems to be leaving the plume and converging on the bright object? Examine the picture carefully, look at the high-resolution version if you want to, and see if you can figure out the answers to these questions. Then, read the caption below to test yourself.

What is the Plume?
This is a photograph of the Space Shuttle (STS-98) launch on February 7, 2001, at 6:13 p.m. eastern time. The whitish plume is the pillar of smoke and steam left behind by the solid rocket boosters. Looking carefully, you can see a very bright dot at the top of the column of smoke, which is the flame still visible at the base of the solid rocket boosters. Even as the Space Shuttle is blasting into orbit, lower-level winds have begun to twist its pillar of smoke.

Why is the top part of the plume brighter?
This photo was taken near sunset, when the sun was relatively low on the western horizon. In the photo, you are looking eastward. The top portion of the plume is much brighter because it is being illuminated directly by sunlight, whereas the bottom portion of the plume lies within the Earth’s shadow.

What is the bright object?
The bright orb in the lower righthand corner of the picture is the full, sunlit face of the moon which has already risen above the eastern horizon.

What is the dark feature?
The dark, cone-shaped feature extending downward and eastward from the pillar of smoke is its shadow, known as the Burgeron Effect (not uncommon when launches are around sunrise or sunset). The shadow exists in the air because there are aerosol particles in the air that reflect and scatter sunlight everywhere except where the sunlight is being blocked by the pillar of smoke. Thus, that part of the sky appears darker.

Why does the shadow point at the moon?
Because the launch took place on the evening of a full moon, any shadow cast would have to appear to end at the moon since the Earth, moon, and sun were naturally in alignment. Remember, you are looking eastward at the moon and the sun is above and behind you in this perspective.

Photo courtesy Patrick McCracken, NASA Headquarters. This photo was taken using a Kodak digital camera with a 2X telephoto lens.

I submit to you a look a like that occurred to me the other day.  General Akbar of Star Wars fame and the hit rapper Lil’ Wayne.

Tags: StarWars, Lil’ Wayne

Stormtroopers v. London cops - Boing Boing

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Pictured: Jumbo jet splits in two as it tries to take-off | Mail Online

Tags: jumbojet