Picture Posts
tqa | April 4, 2009
Since I'm currently out of town, original content is going to be in short supply for a few days. Fortunately, there are a few things I've written over the years that I think people might still enjoy (or at least tolerate). Since they didn't get read much when I first posted them, I thought I'd give them another chance. This one was originally posted at the old blog in August of 2005.
I took these pictures, showing the screen of a Sega video game, at a nearby* Chuck E. Cheese today**. I think they definitely help answer Bush's question about education.
*at the time the post was…
tqa | April 3, 2009
This is just a picture I took someplace. Where should be easy to guess. True geeks will also be able to identify each of the prominent man-made structures on the horizon, and determine which direction I was facing when I took the picture.
As always, you can click the picture for a larger version.
tqa | April 2, 2009
A new life:
Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) with very recently hatched chick.
Ka'ena Point, Oahu
29 January 2006
tqa | March 31, 2009
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Letter to Charles Kingsley
23 September 1860
Children (Homo sapiens) and Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla).
London Zoo, 6 Sep 2008
As always, you can click on the image for a larger version.
tqa | March 22, 2009
Reeve 078948-36, originally uploaded by otisarchives1.
Another picture from the Walter Reed collection. This one comes from a series of really cheesy military issue anti-VD posters.
tqa | March 16, 2009
Below the fold, you'll find a picture taken from an earlier post on this blog. In the image, you'll see three very different locations. These three locations have at least one biogeographical feature that they share and that relates to today. What is it?
tqa | March 16, 2009
I've been going back through some pictures I took last month, trying to identify the birds in the pictures. I've found one gull that I'm having problems with. I've got a couple of shots I'm going to share with you, and then I'll give my current thoughts and reasoning.
The picture was taken on 23 Feb 09, on the grounds of Naval Air Station Pensacola. The gull on the right is the one I'm having difficulty with. The next picture is a closer view of that gull.
I'm reasonably certain that the gull on the left is a Ring-Billed Gull, and the gull on the left definitely seemed to be just a…
tqa | January 20, 2009
I don't know what says "change" better to a geek than this:
11:10 am
12:02 pm:
tqa | September 3, 2008
Ozymandias was a piker.
He left us his legs, most of his face, and a clear statement of what he wanted to achieve. When you get right down to it, he's not much of an enigma.
The people who built this left an enigma. Stonehenge was constructed to stand proudly forever, a monument to the greater glory of something, but we don't know what. Their engineering withstood the test of time. They - and their cultures - did not.
Stonehenge stands today, on a plane covered with the barrows of the unknown lords of long forgotten peoples. It reminds us, far more than Shelley's statue ever could,…
tqa | August 26, 2008
Congrats to John Lynch for quickly coming up with the correct answer to the previous picture quiz. The man in the statue is Richard Owen; the statue sits inside the Natural History Museum in London. Since that quiz was taken care of so quickly (and I'm going through pictures anyway), let's try another one.
This is a picture I took this morning. What's wrong (or at least atypical) about this shot?
tqa | July 6, 2008
I took this one last winter, while I was on vacation out in the French countryside.
City Hall, Chaussenac, France. (Population 246)
tqa | July 1, 2008
It's a little bit loud at the new Authority Family residence right now. The guys in the picture are practicing right overhead at the moment. The dog's in the bathtub, and the cat just did a backflip.
As always, feel free to click the thumbnail above for the full size version. That picture was taken at one of last week's practices. 1/500th of a second at f/8 using a 180mm lens.
tqa | March 20, 2008
There's an island visible in the picture below. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify the island, it's location, it's relationship to science, and (for extra credit) its relationship to American pop culture. The answer (or a hint) will be posted on Monday.
(as always, you can click on the image for a higher-resolution version of the shot).
tqa | March 18, 2008
In Saturday's photo quiz, I posted a very cropped version of a picture, and asked people to identify the item that's in there. This was simultaneously one of the most and least successful photo quizzes I've posted so far. It was successful in the sense that it's attracted more comments than most of the previous photo quizzes have; it was unsuccessful in the sense that it seems to have been too easy.
Here's the full image (as always, you can click on it for a larger view):
Nathan was the first to post a comment, and the first to get the answer. This is the first stage of a Saturn V…