Mother cheetah wants kids to learn to hunt gazelle, but cubs want to nuzzle it.

After all my agitating for small, cheap, fuel efficient cars (and automotive metaphors), I figured I had to post this picture (and a few others) from the demolition derby at the Hopkinton Fair a couple weeks ago. My video of the four-cylinder event is at YouTube.

Extra: I don’t know where it fits in your stereotype of the demolition derby audience, but I was happy to find somebody wearing a css_descramble.c T-shirt.

derby, demolition derby, smashup derby, smashitup, fair, hopkinton fair, car, cars, demolition, video, photos

Not LMAO, certainly not ROFLcopter-ingly funny, but funny enough to want to snap a picture, and good enough for casual Friday here.

The boat in the parking lot, UPS vs. FedEx, and Hoe For Hire are all easy enough to understand (though they leave me open to easy criticism). The fourth photo is of some books on an anonymous shelf: look closely at “Library Trends, 1985” and others.

boat, hoe, books, library trends, UPS, FedEx, photos, funny

It’s likely Phil Carrizzi could make a broken tire iron look good, but his series of the iPhone with the Newton Message Pad and eMate is geek-sweet eye candy.

iphone, newton, emate, apple, photo, gallery, pr0n, porn, photos, eye candy

A long time ago somebody started the Newtons Around The World gallery, and it came to symbolize the love we Newton users had for the little device as well as our geeky pride.

The trend seemed to continue with iPods Around The World, and now iLounge wants to start a gallery for the iPhone. I was about to submit when I noticed the legal fine print:

By submitting, you agree that all photographs, and private information you submit are entirely yours at the time of submission, become the property of iLounge upon submission, and that you have not submitted and will not submit such images to any other contests.

The thing is, I give my photos away to anybody who wants them under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike License, and I’ve granted commercial use to pretty much everybody who’s asked (the exception was somebody who appeared to be setting up a splog and wanted some of my food photos to illustrate it). But the idea of entirely giving up my photos to iLounge stopped me in my tracks. I would happily offer them a non-exclusive license, but willfully removing my work from the creative commons and even my own use isn’t something I’m about to do.

Fortunately, photosharing services have exploded since the Newton and iPod galleries were created, and tagging allows us to opt into the gallery without having to give up our works. Here’s my iPhone on the summit of Mt. Monadnock (yes, I had connectivity), and here’s a collection of iPhones around the world on Flickr.

iphone, iphones around the world, travel, photos, gallery, copyfight, creative commons

When Dan Cat gets cagey, and people are talking about mysterious map buttons in Flickr a guy has to wonder…is this why the lines between Dan’s hobby and day job are so blurry?

update: Ryan Eby points out that the map is live!

Dan Cat, flickr, geobloggers, geotag, geotagged, photos

Mark Nelson’s Pripyat series on flickr is full of the pictures of desolation that people seem to be looking for as we solemnly honor the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

Google added high-resolution satellite photos of the area yesterday, and Pripyat.com offers both stories and photo galleries to help us remember.

It is there that I learned that Rimma Kiselica, the woman who has guided so many of those who’ve reported from the dead-zone, died on March 19.

Meanwhile, it turns out that people have started to graffiti the town. Mary Mycio, who wrote Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl, takes great offense at such things:

For someone like me, who considers Pripyat a monument — with universal lessons about folly, tragedy and our complex relationship with our planet — this approaches desecration.

While I respect Pripyat as a monument, Mark’s picture above does make me wonder. In a command economy, who orders somebody to make bumper cars or other carnival rides? How did the Soviet system work for such things?

1986, 20 years, 26 april, 26 april 1986, abandoned city, april, catastrophe, chernobyl, chernobyl nuclear explosion, chernobyl nuclear power plant, chernobyl tour, chernobyl-4, chnpp, chornobyl, disaster, ghost town, history, nuclear catastrophe, nuclear disaster, nuclear explosion, nuclear power, nuclear power plant, nuclear reactor, photos, pictures, pripjat, pripyat, radiation, reactor fire, russia, soviet, soviet union, tchernobyl, ukrain, ussr

Today, on the twentieth anniversary of the disaster, Google has added high-resolution satellite photos of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the abandoned town of Pripyat.

Above is the plant; the damaged reactor is on the left. In Pripyat, the ghostly ferris wheel was easy to find, but where’s the vehicle graveyard? Update: here it is. Hat tip to “di” and “pero69″ for their comments.

We didn’t get to go to Barstow as planned, but I couldn’t leave Las Vegas without a peak at the desert. Fortunately, Red Rock Canyon isn’t far from town, and the Blue Diamond Highway does a nice loop there and back.

Along the way I found that the town of Blue Diamond has a new welcome sign, but the old text remains: “elevation: high, population: low, burros: ?” I stumbled across an upended car standing like a tombstone exclaiming “dirt man rocks.” The Oliver Ranch sign above is just across the road from the BLM’s Welcome To Red Rock Canyon sign. That’s where Vincent from New York found me. He pulled up in a cherry red Dodge Viper and asked for my help getting pictures of him with his car. We got shots with him standing at every corner and both doors, which is probably what I’d want to do if I was driving that car.

las vegas, las vegas nv, nevada, vegas, red rocks, red rock canyon, blue diamond, blue diamond highway, desert, road trip, photos

Memepool introduced me to camera tossing at Flickr, where there’s even a group for those who are willing to risk their camera for a chance at a shot of streaky lights. But not everybody tosses in the dark, it’s turned out to be a a new fad in self-portraiture.

Click through for credits and more info on the photos above.

tags: blur, blurry picture, blurry pictures, camera, camera killer, camera toss, camera tossing, cameratoss, cameratossing, dangerous (to your camera), fad, flickr, memepool, photo, photos

I’m entirely captivated by Mark Michaelson’s collection of mug shots on Flickr. It’s titled “Least Wanted” and he notes with little fanfare that they’re “Nobody famous.”

Some of the photos contain little histories, like this set from the 40s and 50s that includes conviction details — “30 days W. H.” for “selling obscene literature.” Another image shows rapid aging over a three year period starting in 1943. It’s part of a small collection of recidivist women of the 1940s.

For most of Michaelson’s images, however, there’s little to describe who these people are or why their photos became a part of public record. Each is its own little mystery, and it’s hard not to want to look at all 422.

tags: 1940s, accused criminal, arrest, crime, criminology, history, law enforcement, mug shot, mug shots, photos, police, police photo, police photos, recidivism, recidivist

I can’t help but like beatnickside’s Las Vegas Flickr photo set. It’s one of the most photographed of cities, but these photos are fresher than that. Sometimes enteraining, sometimes informing, the shots of Vegas’s glitz and glamour show special attention to detail.

This week is Vegas week at MaisonBisson, since I’m out here before heading to San Francisco to present at IUG 2005.

I have an inexplicable fondness for Vegas. My Vegas Guide from 2001 speaks of the curiosities of the city and the surrounding desert. In 2004 I finally got to go to the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley and run through Crystal Nevada, home to the Brothel Art Museum and a bunch of “ranchs” (all in one location, amusingly).

Expect a bunch of posts to my photoblog, but don’t expect much depth. This is Vegas, and it defies depth and nobility.

vegas, las vegas, nevada, las vegas nv, beatnikside, photo, photos, welcome to las vagas

Warren is blessed with a rocket. It was once a intermediate range ballistic missile, but it’s basically the same rocket that launched America’s first astronauts Allen B. Shepherd and Gus Grissom into sub-orbital space. It’s enough to be proud of, anyway.

RoadsideAmerica.com has a story on our rocket, but it’s based on reader reports and it seems people just don’t know what town they’re in when they see the thing.

New:

These pics have moved to my Redstone Rocket gallery on Flickr

warren, rocket, warren rocket, civic pride, redstone rocket, photos, pictures