Bird’s Eye: A gif is a short simple movie format, usually depicting some hilarious accident, or repetitive process, or Woah, dude piece of op art. We have some examples of each here. Gifs had seemed to a dying race, but they have recently risen to be forwarded again, and again, and….
11. Eyecandy: A Mixed Bag of All-Sorts
Bird’s Eye: In Focus ran an all-request photo collection this week, and the Guardian had Sony’s World Photography awards. So we’ll toss in a mixed animal collection and claim that no theme is as valid a theme as any other. Good photo, in any case. Enjoy!
* All-Request Photos: Aurora Borealis, Blue Frogs, Spacewalks … In Focus
* Sony World Photography Awards The Guardian
A selection of some of the strongest images from the professional and open shortlist for the 2012 Sony World Photography awards
* Animals in the News Alan Taylor – In Focus – The Atlantic
A panda cub looks at a toy dragon, a New Year gift, in a nursery room
10. Winter
Bird’s Eye: A brutally warm winter for the skiers, but maybe that feels good to the cold-blooded among us. Huddle up to the warmth of your computer, and look at some snowcandy.
* Auroras Spark Awe Across The North PhotoBlog (Thanks Don!)
* Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival 2012 The Big Picture
Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang province, in northeastern China. It is nicknamed “Ice City” and aptly so for winter January temperatures that average minus 18 degrees Celsius, under the influence of the cold winter wind from Siberia. …. Harbin is one of the world’s four largest ice and snow festivals, along with Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada’s Quebec City Winter Carnival and Norway’s Ski Festival
* Winter Arrives Alan Taylor In Focus The Atlantic
11. Eyecandy: Festivals
Bird’s Eye: Fine photos of celebratory festivals. Not much else needed to be said really.
* Chinese Lunar New Year 2012 In Focus
* Kalachakra: A Tibetan Buddhist festival of teachings and meditations The Big Picture
* Pow Wow
11. Dogcandy
Bird’s Eye: We start with one vision of what dogs look like: bred and coiffed and perfectly conforming to breed standards. (Full disclosure: my dog is different.) Then we look at sled dogs in Greenland, and end up with a seriously balanced dog strutting his stuff. Enjoy!
* Westminster Dog Show National Geographic
38 show photos.
* The Cold Patrol: Sled Dogs National Geographic
* Dog Balances On Chain Bits and Pieces
10. Trees
Bird’s Eye: A full season appreciation takes us back to our roots.
*‘Snow Monsters’ Of Japan Pink Tentacle
Ghostly trees covered in snow and rime ice – known as “snow monsters” or juhyou(frost-covered trees) in Japanese — are a celebrated feature of the winter landscape in mountainous areas of northern Japan. Here are a few photos.
* Magnificent & Weird Trees Dark Roasted Blend
* Climbing The World’s Tallest Tree, In California Boing Boing
After Chris and Michael announced their discovery, a team of scientists, led by Humboldt State University ecologist Steve Sillett, climbed to the top of the tree and dropped a tape down to the ground. Some things are still that simple. Steve’s colleague, Jim Spickler (check out his biceps! scary), repeated the climb and brought a camera, so we can go with him. This video, which comes with dramatic music in all the right places, is, to use a much overused word, but I’ll use it anyway…”awesome”.
11. Eyecandy: Animals, Sight and Sound
Bird’s Eye: A double dish of Eyecandy this week! We start with three links that show how animals look (flying Devil Rays look a lot like nothing you’ve ever seen before), then end with three links on how animals sound. We’ll have links for smell, taste, and touch as soon as we get the bugs out of the transmission process.
* 13 Adorable Baby Kangaroos Peeking Out of Their Mothers’ Pouches Environmental Graffiti
It’s common knowledge that kangaroos are found in Australia (although smaller related species such as tree kangaroos also live in New Guinea). Most people are also aware that, as marsupials, kangaroos have a pouch in which their babies live and grow. Yet, the true wonder of the way mama kangaroos give birth and begin to rear their young begs belief – and makes most other mammals look downright boring! Prepare for cuteness overload as we take a look at the facts behind this amazing process while marveling at some aww-inspiring images of baby kangaroos (known as ‘joeys’) in their mothers’ pouches
* Pelicans And Flying Rays (via The Presurfer)
Pelicans and the incredible flying Devil Rays in the Sea of Cortez.
* Animals in 3D Flickr – Photo Sharing!
(Don’t have a pair of red–green glasses? Print this page on transparency film….)
* Puppy Hears his First Wolf Howl - YouTube
* What A Rhino Sounds Like (via The Presurfer)
* Kookaburra Calls (via The Presurfer)
11. Eyecandy: Blacks and Whites
Bird’s Eye: At last! An Eyecandy that Tikkunista readers with monochromatic monitors can fully apreciate! Not too shoddy for the rest of us either.
* 50 Unexplainable Black & White Photos (Thanks, Cline!)
A collection of the most confusing/unexplainable photos…
*33 Haunting Black And White Photos Of Japan’s Ghost Island
Urban decay has never looked so beautifully eerie. Hashima Island, or Gunkanshima (meaning “Battleship Island,” so nicknamed for its nautical shape), was a former coal mining community established in 1887. The mine was shut down in 1974 and the city abandoned. Now it has a new nickname: Ghost Island.
* New York 1 Vivian Maier Photographer (Thanks, Dave!)
9. Untrustworthy Senses
Bird’s Eye: “Trust your senses not your neighbours.”– London Transport security notice. Don’t do it. We explore how you can’t trust your sense of taste, or sight, or hearing. (Touch and smell are trickier to do over a computer, I suppose.) Entertaining and insightful revelations: the last one is a real mind-blower!
* A Bad Taster in Your MouthWired Science
Let’s be blunt: The tongue is really dumb. Unlike the rest of our sensory organs, which are exquisitely sensitive, that lump of exposed muscle sitting in the mouth is a crude perceptual device, able to only detect five different taste sensations. (Your cochlea, in contrast, contains thousands of different hair cells, each of which is tuned to particular wavelengths of sound.)
… All sorts of clever experiments have demonstrated the limitations of the tongue. It turns out that expert wine critics can be tricked into confusing cheap and expensive clarets, that we prefer beer laced with balsamic vinegar (as long we don’t know it’s been added), that most people can’t tell Coke from Pepsi (but still have strong preferences) or pate from dog food. My favorite, though, comes from the mischievous Frederic Brochet at the University of Bordeaux. In a 2001 experiment, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn’t stop the experts from describing the “red” wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its “jamminess,” while another enjoyed its “crushed red fruit.” Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine. Because the tongue is vague in its instructions, we are forced to constantly parse its input based upon whatever other knowledge we can summon to the surface. As Brochet himself notes, our expectations of what the wine will taste like “can be much more powerful in determining how you taste a wine than the actual physical qualities of the wine itself.”
* Sidewalk Art Masterpieces Seem As Real As Photographs
* McGurk Effect Audio-Video Illusion BBC
User Hint: Ignore the verbose write-up, and watch the video
10. Eyecandy1: Unnatural Beauty
Bird’s Eye: When bad things happen to a good planet, the results can be beautiful even while they’re awful. Some nice pix of places you don’t want to be.
* A Silk Purse From A Sow’s EarMail Online (Thanks Elizabeth)
J Henry Fair’s spectacular aerial images show the devastation man has wreaked on America. Pollution is exposed on a massive scale, creating striking vivid colours that highlight the scars of spillages, open cast mining, chemical and oil leaks, industrial decay and deforestation
* Dallol – The World’s Weirdest Volcanic Crater Kuriositas
* The First Millisecond of a Nuclear Explosion Gizmodo
The rapatronic camera, as it is called, was created by Harold Edgerton in the 1940s using two polarizing filters and Kerr cell instead of a shutter, which is too slow for this job. This acts as a very high speed shutter, which allows the perfect exposition to capture this moment.
* Oil Spill Disaster on New Zealand Shoreline In Focus
11. Eyecandy2: Natural Beauty
Bird’s Eye: And the other side of the same coin: a cornucopia of beauty on which to end the year. Enjoy, and see you all in 2012!
* 50 Best Photos From The Natural World The Big Picture
* Winners of the National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 Alan Taylor In Focus The Atlantic
* Charles Cockburn Photography
A selection of scenic landscape and fine art images from throughout the Pacific Northwest including Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and California. Enjoy…
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