strange friendships (54 photos)

bikers in cinema

The Page Turner

happy new year 2012

Megaupload shut down by the U.S. Justice Department :(

Megaupload Limited,^[1] better known for its closed websites including the top-15 file hosting website megaupload.com,^[1] is an online Hong Kong-based company established in 2005 that ran a number of online services related to file storage and viewing. The domain names were seized and the sites shut down by the U.S. Justice Department on 19 January 2012, following their indictment and arrests of the owners for allegedly operating as an organization dedicated to copyright infringement.^[5]
The shutdown led to what activist group Anonymous calls "the single largest Internet attack in its history" in retaliation.^[6] The case itself has not yet been heard at trial.

Satellite Spots Costa Concordia Shipwreck

click the photo to enlarge to 3.243px × 3249px

remember to breathe!

DERINKUYU, an ancient underground city

Girl play piano with no finger on one hand

The art of sleeping in a box

This is a How-to with lots of pictures to make it easy. Start with simply sleeping on your back.

Hubble telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is a robotic telescope located on the outer edge of the atmosphere, in circular orbit around the Earth at 593 km above sea level, with an orbital period between 96 and 97 minutes at a speed 28,000 km / h. Named as a tribute to Edwin Hubble, was launched into orbit on 24 April 1990 as a joint project of NASA and ESA, thus inaugurating the Great Observatories program.
Cylindrically shaped Hubble weighs 11 tons. Its length is 13.2 m and its maximum diameter is 4.2 meters.
The telescope can obtain images with higher optical resolution
0.1 seconds of arc.

The roof is on fire

Japan's nuclear exclusion zone

What does a sudden evacuation look like? After everyone is gone, what happens to the places they've abandoned? National Geographic Magazine sent Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder to the nuclear exclusion zone around Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant to find out. Evacuated shortly after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami led to a nuclear radiation crisis, the area has been largely untouched, with food rotting on store shelves and children's backpacks waiting in classrooms. The area may face the same fate as the town of Pripyat, Ukraine after the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago. This isn't the first time Guttenfelder has gotten a rare glimpse of a place few see, as The Big Picture featured his photographs of North Korea in an earlier post. Collected here are Guttenfelder's haunting images just released of a place abandoned, and of people dealing with the loss.


In this April 7, 2011 photo, local police wearing white suits to protect them from radiation, search for bodies along a river inside Odaka, Japan. Weeks after authorities had searched for victims and started recovery in other tsunami-hit regions, cleanup crews hadn't yet been dispatched around the crippled reactors because of high radiation levels. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)

banned ad for Bienalle at Athens 2011

The art of sleeping in a box

This  is a  How-to with lots of pictures to  make it easy.  

Start  with simply sleeping on your back…. or on your side.

Crawling

Scenes from Iraq

As 2011 ends, Iraqis confront their challenges with neither the presence of US troops, nor the shadow of Saddam Hussein, who was executed five years ago today. He had ruled since 1979, although he'd been a power player in the government since 1968. The American occupation ended officially on December 15, eight years after the 2003 invasion. Sectarian strife still plagues Iraq, and although the violence lessened from near-civil war levels in 2006, the pullout of American forces has seen a return of hostilities. While the number of American casualties of the occupation stands at 4,487, figures for Iraqi casualties have no such certainty. Some estimates put the figure as high as 100,000. Now conflicts new and old wait to be dealt with by a country free to decide its own fate for the first time in generations. Sectarian struggle, problems with water and electricity delivery, and war-ravaged infrastructure are just a few of the issues facing Iraqis today. Gathered here are recent images of Iraq as it looks ahead to 2012. The last four images are portraits by Reuters photographer Shannon Stapleton, who asked ordinary Iraqis for their thoughts on their future after the pullout of American forces.


A man smokes a water pipe at a cafe on Mutanabi Street in Baghdad on December 9, 2011. (Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters)

genesis

FOTOGRAFIAS HISTORICA

2012: Marking the New Year

Around the world people celebrated with fireworks, kisses, blessings, gatherings, cheers, watching the sunrise and plunges into icy bodies of water to welcome in a new year. Here's a look back at how some of them marked the transition.


Fireworks explode in the sky over Bucharest, Romania, at midnight, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012, during street celebrations of the new year. Large crowds gathered downtown Romania's capital taking advantage of the dry weather to attend the celebrations. (Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press)

Stayin' Alive (original rare version)

50 best photos from The Natural World

We share our world with many other species and live in an ever-changing environment. Fortunately, photographers around the world have captured the moments and beauty that allow us to see amazing views of this awe-inspiring planet. This is a collection of favorite photos from The Natural World gallery in 2011, a showcase of images of animals and environment that runs on Boston.com throughout the year. Next week's posts will take a look at the year in photos, so stay tuned. -Leanne Burden Seidel (50 photos total)


Seahorses are displayed at an endangered species exhibition at London Zoo. ( Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)