Illustrator Christoph Niemann looks at the identification of leaves in a whole new way. See a collection of leaves from trees you never knew existed, like the Fast Forwood and the Alder Ego. Link -via Swiss Miss

When I die and become Saint Neatorama, I’d like sculptor Al Farrow to make me a reliquary to treasure one of my body parts. Presumably my blogging pinkie. Al has made some 40 unusual reliquaries, mausoleums and monuments out of guns and ammo parts, dedicated to preserving the body parts of fictional saints.

Link – as suggested by Minnesotastan in this Neatorama post by John Farrier (yes, I do read the comments

1st Place Winner:

Water flea Daphnia atkinsoni. This specimen has a "crown of thorns," a defensive trait induced in offspring only when the parents sense chemical cues released by one of their main predators, the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis. The water flea´s exoskeleton (exterior structure, green) and subcellular details within the organism (nuclei – tiny blue dots) are both visible – Dr. Jan Michels, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Germany.

5th Place Winner:

Unicellular alga Penium, treated with the microtubule poison oryzalin – by David Domozych, Skidmore College.

Ma. Ivy Clemente of Pulilan, Philippines, got an honorable mention in this year’s competition, but I think her entry is the most stunning. Behold, the cancer alphabet:

Spelling out the diagnosis: Glandular structures from fibroadenoma and nodular prostatic hyperplasia cases – by Ma. Ivy Clemente, Pulilan, Philippines

Fetal cat coronal section – by Mike Peres, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.

Squid embryo – by Rachel Fink, Mount Holyoke College, Massachussetts

Link: Winners Gallery of the 2009 Olympus BioScapes

Photo: François Knorreck

The Snaefell is the creation of François Knorreck, a French hospital technician who spent €15,000, 10 years, and 10,000 hours of work on the project. It’s a 1976 Laverda motorcycle with a custom-built sidecar made from Renault, Citroen, BMW, VW and Audi parts. More pictures at the links.

Link via The Presurfer | Official Website

Image: TMZ

TMZ has side-by-side photos of celebrities and the Sesame Street Muppets that they resemble. Queen Elizabeth II, Nick Nolte, Dustin Diamond, and Zach Braff are among the mocked.

Link via Urlesque

Photo: Noise for Airports

Noise for Airports has a gallery of early sound amplifier/locator technologies. He quotes a 1939 issue of Science News Letter about these efforts:

The picturesque triple or quadruple sets of horns, looking like gigantic versions of old-fashioned ear trumpets, that are used by listeners for airplanes, are only artificial external ears that can be cocked in the direction of suspected approach, just as a rabbit or a donkey can tun his ears. Only they are more nearly perfect, mechanically, than any animal ear, because they were made to order along mathematically calculated lines, not slowly evolved out of folds of flesh.

During the World War, many blind men, with ears trained to special acuteness in compensation for loss of sight, volunteered for this service in Britain, and it is likely that such sightless soldiers are again helping their companions to locate enemies in the dark.

Link via Gizmodo

Anyone who takes digital pictures gets a real kick out of how crime investigators on the CSI TV shows use their computers to zoom in and enhance photographs, as if you could really zoom in to just a few pixels and see a legible image. Now you can! The CSI Image Enhancer lets you zoom in on a photograph just by typing furiously and saying “enhance!” Well, really, all you have to do is type furiously. Try this one as an example. Upload your own photos to make a personal enhancement of your own. Link -via b3ta

(image found at Arbroath)

Link | Image: Amazon.com

Illustration by Shaun Tan

The Book Review has an annual roundup of the best in children’s books from an illustrative point.  Books for kids are crucial for learning the language, and if you can lure them in with outstanding visuals, all the better.  NYT has the ten best, including this one from Shaun Tan’s “Tales From Outer Suburbia.”  Tan also won a slot in 2007 for the phenomenal, wordless “The Arrival.”

Link

Some people eat at their computers. Some smoke while computing. And some don’t change the filter on their heating and air system as often as they should. Many of us never open up our computers to see what’s inside, but that’s the first thing your computer repair expert will do. If your PC is anything like these computers, the next thing he/she will do is take a picture. The Register has six pages of these dirty, filthy pictures. Link -via Digg

Often overlooked and certainly overshadowed by its more famous neighbor, the Manhattan Bridge will, this December, become a centenarian.  Quite a feat, all told, as the bridge’s history has been full of issues to say the least.

Gustov Lindenthal’s first design was thrown out purely for reasons of aesthetics. He came back with another idea – incorporating two thin-profile steel towers. This idea was retained but his main plan – four cables made of immense chains of eye bars (lengths of steel at least ten foot long joined at each end by steel pins) was again rejected. Perhaps the thought of what was essentially a gargantuan bicycle chain put the chills up the spine of the city fathers.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

My parents are awesome has to be one of the best tumblr accounts to date – the simply concept is it posts retro pictures of parents, who are looking awesome. Your parents were awesome, too, so why don’t you send in an awesome picture?

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

Link – via cakeheadlovesevil

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by cakehead loves evil.

“Bliss” by Charles O’Rear (L), “After Microsoft” by Goldin & Senneby (R)

The default desktop image for Windows XP was called “Bliss,” and became instantly recognizable.  The image was taken by a photographer named Charles O’Rear, but now it’s being phased out.  The image on the right is what that hill in Sonoma Valley looks like today.

Charles O’Rear used to pass that hill almost daily between his home in Napa and his wife, Daphne, who lived in Marin County. He always carried his medium format camera.

It was hard even to slow down on highway 12/121. But one day, it must have been in January, he pulled over. After about a month of rain the sun comes up, and there is beautiful green grass. The weather during the winter can change dramatically. A break in the storm. Intense blue sky with cumulus clouds. Maybe later that day it rained.

Looking to brand XP as green, Microsoft bought the photo right around the time the soil recovered enough to replant grapes for vineyards.  Link -via grow-a-brain.

]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2009/11/13/after-microsoft/feed/ 7 http://www.neatorama.com/2009/11/13/tsingy-de-bemaraha-madagascars-stone-forest/ http://www.neatorama.com/2009/11/13/tsingy-de-bemaraha-madagascars-stone-forest/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:45:49 +0000 Alex http://www.neatorama.com/2009/11/13/tsingy-de-bemaraha-madagascars-stone-forest/
A city of limestone towers rises in western Madagascar.
Photo: Stephen Alvarez / National Geographic

Benson weaves through skin-ripping pinnacles. In Malagasy, the formations are called tsingy, meaning "where one cannot walk barefoot." The terrain resists intrusions from hunters, hungry cattle, and wildfires.
Photo: Stephen Alvarez / National Geographic

A couple of weeks ago, we featured a story of how NatGeo photographer Stephen Alvarez’s went deep underground to explore the caves in the corner of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia.

This time, Stephen, along with Neil Shea and biologist Hery Rakotondravony and colleagues went the opposite way – they climbed Madagascar’s astonishing Tsingy de Bemaraha stone forest:

One afternoon, returning from a hot, wet slog, vines along the trail tripped me up, and my right knee landed on a small rock. Back home in New England, where rocks come in rounder forms, I would have walked away with a bruise. But this was tsingy in miniature. A barb of limestone drove in nearly to the bone. It took two days to reach a hospital, where a nurse removed dirt from the wound. "Why were you doing this?" she asked, twisting a swab deep into the hole. She looked up. I was sweating. "I think you are a little dumb," she said. The tsingy is the perfect foil to human ambition.

Links: Article | Photo Gallery

This beautiful picture of Earth was taken by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft. Rosetta is on a mission to intercept the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which will happen in 2014. The brightest part of this picture is our South Pole. Link

(image credit: ESA)

Photographer Richard Calmes takes glorious pictures of professional dancers in flight. This photograph (which took many attempts to achieve the result) is from the gallery entitled Beautiful Dancers on the Town. Link to gallery. Link to artist’s site. -via Everlasting Blort

Photo: Corrie White

No, that’s not the AOL Guy casting a cherry spell, it’s actually a drop of milk.  Corrie White discovered a talent for macro-photography  and prefers the dairy product due to its slower rate of descent.  Using dyes and little else, she creates some stunning, gorgeous images… she even shows her modest, kitchen-based studio!

Link Previously on Neatorama- Macrophotography of Dews

Photo: Ronald Playforth

Early in May, 1945, officers from the German army and Gestapo met with Allied commanders, including Field Marshall Montgomery to offer their country’s surrender at his headquarters near Hamburg.  Interestingly, the only color photographs of this event were taken by a clerk, Ronald Playforth, who hid in the trees during the meeting.

Thequintessential wrote a brief synopsis of this event:

His pictures show Admiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg, the most senior member of the delegation, General Eberhard Kinzel, chief of staff of the north west Germany army, and Major Friedl, a 6ft 6ins Gestapo chief. They were received by Field Marshall Montgomery, with his customary black beret and army uniform, who, when the Germans tried to negotiate, reportedly gave them a ‘tongue lashing’ about the bombing of Coventry and the horrors of Belsen. The delegation reported back to their HQ and Admiral Karl Doenitz – Hitler’s successor – and were given permission to sign the surrender papers, which they did the next day, May 4. When it was all over Montgomery is said to have leaned back and said simply: ‘That concludes the surrender.’

Link

Image: Jeff Brunner

Jeff Brunner offers this scathing critique of the values that the Disney Princesses teach girls. At the link, you can view a response about what Disney teaches boys.

Link via Popped Culture

Photo: flickr user Prince Roy

Deck Chair has compiled pictures and videos of seven unique golf courses, including one that floats, one that sits astride a motor speedway, and another that is 1,365 km long. Pictured above is a scene from the golf course at Coober Pedy, a small mining town in Australia. The land is so desolate that golfers must carry around a piece of turf from which to tee off.

Link via The Presurfer | More about the Coober Pedy golf course

The British Royal Mail service commissioned Studio Dempsey to create first class stamps with classic albums covers. The covers include albums from Blur, New Order, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Primal Scream, David Bowie, The Clash, Mike Oldfield, Pink Floyd, and Coldplay -but no Beatles.

The final selection of ten sleeves (which perhaps oddly doesn’t feature one of The Beatles’ album covers) will appear on a set of 10 stamps that will launch on January 7, 2010 – and the stamps will be uniquely shaped, as shown in these images, to accommodate a glimpse of a vinyl disc poking out of each record sleeve.

Link – via babycreativeblog

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Babycreative.

Illustrator Paul Rogers puts together six drawings of iconic images for each classic movie. Your challenge is to name the movies from the drawings. You don’t get a clue as to the plot, the dialog, or the actors. I could name most of them; I suspect that the others are movies I haven’t seen. Link -via reddit

Astronomical clocks – amazing works of engineering that are sometimes six hundred years old – can be found throughout the world.  Europe, however, has the lion’s share.  Here are some of the more remarkable examples of the form.

To say that this clock is astronomical is, perhaps, stating the obvious. Another word that might describe the Prague Orloj is exquisite. The first and perhaps most astonishing fact about this astronomical clock is that it was finished and in place in 1410, over eighty years before Columbus made his voyage of discovery to the Americas. The first thing that draws the eye is the dial at the center of the clock which shows the positions of the moon and the sun. What makes the Orloj a magnet for visitors to the Czech city is the clockwork show of the figures of the apostles, which on the hour parade themselves. There are other moving sculptures too – plus a dial which pitted with medallions which represent the months of the years.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

Alan Taylor’s excellent photoblog The Big Picture over at Boston.com has a really nifty collection of images of the Martian landscape:

Since 2006, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been orbiting Mars, currently circling approximately 300 km (187 mi) above the Martian surface. On board the MRO is HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which has been photographing the planet for several years now at resolutions as fine as mere inches per pixel. Collected here is a group of images from HiRISE over the past few years, in either false color or grayscale, showing intricate details of landscapes both familiar and alien, from the surface of our neighboring planet, Mars. I invite you to take your time looking through these, imagining the settings – very cold, dry and distant, yet real.

Link

It looks like a lioins has jumped up on the hood of an open vehicle! Look closely, though -it’s an illusion, as the front of the car and the passenger area are separated by a sheet of glass. Invisible lion cages are the mane attraction Werribee Open Range Zoo, in Melbourne, Australia. VERY strong glass is used in place of other enclosure types more familiar in zoos – the result is stunning shots of the lions and a unique visitor experience.

This incredible Lions on the Edge exhibit, which puts you just inches from a lion’s jaws, is one of the biggest attractions at the zoo.

Kings of the jungle Tombo and Tonyi are joined by two lionesses in the exhibit. Though it has been open since 2006, the male lions were added just last month – leading to some startling photo opportunities.

Link – via cakeheadlovesevil

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by cakehead loves evil.

Photo: T. Enami

Pink Tentacle has an awesome collection of gifs culled from Okinawa Soba’s Flickr set- called the mother lode of online photos by enigmatic photographer T. Enami (1859-1929).  These particular photos were taken for a stereoscope (kinda like a View-Master) that made them look like 3-D.  Coincidentally, the geishas in the photo above are enjoying some stereoviews.

A stereoview consists of a pair of nearly identical images that appear three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope, because each eye sees a slightly different image. This illusion of depth can also be recreated with animated GIFs like the ones here… Follow the links under each animation for the original stereoviews and background information.

These animated images are worth the click.  Check them out! Link.

Photo: Jurgen Otto

This is a kind of jumping spider, and it’s only about 5mm in size.  The males have a colorful pattern on flaps that extend from their abdomen during breeding/mating.  In addition to this, they raise their back pair of legs and dance from side to side to win over their plain brown females.

Only found in Australia, they were classified as species Maratus volans because people originally thought the flap was for gliding after jumping. Wiki

Link

Is that an alien being disguised as furniture or is it artwork by Julian Göthe?

This wonderful piece is part of Julian Göthe’s exhibition "Events during Flood" at the Galerie Buchholz in 2008 but just in case I’m mistaken let me just say I, for one, welcome our new furniture overlords: Link

French photographer Fred Lebain took a trip to New York City and took a series of photos around town.  He then revisited those sites after printing out huge poster versions of his shots.  Then he carefully re-aligned the shots to incorporate his previous image into a new, dynamically interesting one.

these postcard images show lebain’s preference for particular areas of the city,
telescoping his views – a time parallax representing the days which separate the two shots -
and superimposing his vision of new york. hands, feet or a pair of jeans can be seen…
like surrealistic winks, indicating that the photographer is not alone in his mission.

Link

Alan Friedman, a greeting cards-maker by day and astronomer by night, took this amazing photo of the Sun. APOD explains why it’s blue:

Our Sun may look like all soft and fluffy, but it’s not. Our Sun is an extremely large ball of bubbling hot gas, mostly hydrogen gas. The above picture of our Sun was taken last month in a specific red color of light emitted by hydrogen gas called Hydrogen-alpha and then color inverted to appear blue. In this light, details of the Sun’s chromosphere are particularly visible, highlighting numerous thin tubes of magnetically-confined hot gas known as spicules rising from the Sun like bristles from a shag carpet. Our Sun glows because it is hot, but it is not on fire. Fire is the rapid acquisition of oxygen, and there is very little oxygen on the Sun. The energy source of our Sun is the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium deep within its core. No sunspots or large active regions were visible on the Sun this day, although some solar prominences are visible around the edges.

For a larger pic, be sure to check out APOD: Link