If you’d like to see some spectacular photos of water, visit this site. The focus is on “tubes.”
And speaking of water, have you ever before seen this 1911 photo of Niagara Falls while it was completely frozen (Photo is from the Niagara Falls Public Library)?
I somehow got onto a emailing list that sends me lots of information on God and heaven. The latest email included a provocative photograph of Jesus. He looks like a wealthy young man from Los Angeles, hanging out at the beach. These sorts of “photos” of Jesus were extremely popular when I was growing up. These sorts of images still appear in the Christian literature handed to me on the streets and at my front door.
It makes me wonder, though, whether Jesus would be nearly as popular if he was represented as he might have looked in reality (if he existed at all): He would have had much darker skin and hair; he’d likely be much shorter than most modern men; he would not have been so well groomed, his complexion wouldn’t be that of a pampered movie star, his clothing would not have been well-washed and he would not have spoken nor understand English. If he visited our modern world, he would hang around prostitutes, criminals, other types of sinners, and the poor and down-and-out. He would likely assume the role of “terrorist,” attempting to detonate the corporate temples of the big Wall Street money-changers/Mammon idolaters. He would, if he visited us, encourage his followers to give up their suburban lifestyles, and to empty out their 401K’s and give all of that money to the poor, which would mean that they would be asked to hand their hard-earned retirement money to needy strangers. If he visited us, he would also ask his followers to conjure up the images of the people (gays, atheists, Democrats, Iranians) that they most despise, and to affirmatively take real life steps to demonstrate that they love them. If he visited in person, those who love the beach-boy Jesus, would become dismayed that Jesus is actually a prickly, even accusatory fellow (as he often was in the new testament stories), challenging people to dramatically change the way they lived their lives. He would not be the kind of fellow most Christians would repeatedly invite to their cocktail parties: “This is my best friend, Jesus, who will follow you around tonight insisting that you give away all your property to poor strangers and criminals.”
I know that many folks would say that they would follow Jesus no matter what he was like, but is that so? How many American Christians have any friends who fluently speak only a language used in the Middle East, and whose skin is darker then their own? Who spend lots of time giving comfort to street people and criminals? If the answer is “none,” then it is unlikely they would have paid any attention to Jesus.
The Christians who bond over images like the “Jesus” shown above need to at least have the courage to get the picture more accurate before deciding how much they love him.For more on what Jesus “looked like,” see this earlier post.
In that same email, I was sent a cartoon summing up that God loves me so incredibly much that he will send me to hell for eternal torture if I don’t love him back. Hell is usually described in such terms that it would clearly be unconstitutional. Of course, it’s always presented as “my choice.” I’ve heard that such warped and sadistic people like this exist on Earth–love me on my terms or I will get violent. I avoid those people like the plague–as all rational people should do. This little cartoon vividly illustrates the principle that the “God” is “good” even though he allegedly loves us like an abusive parent would “love” us, at least for some Christians. And BTW, it was the kind and gentle beach hippie Jesus of the New Testament who invented hell.
If you think you know what happens when a drop of water falls into a pool of water, take a look at these beautiful slow motion videos:
During my recent visit to the St. Louis Zoo, I wondered how it would have been had humans been the only species of great ape still alive on the planet.
I suspect that there would have been quite a few preachers out there suggesting that the animals represented by the fossils of other species of great apes were not at all similar to humans. I can imagine them preaching with great confidence that there wasn’t any credible evidence that any other living animal was ever remotely similar to humans in physical appearance or facial expressions, regardless of the fossils.
They would call it laughable to suggest that any other species of great ape was a tool user, or that any other species of great ape exhibited emotions akin to those displayed by humans. And they would have argued without any doubt that it was silly to suggest that communities of the other great apes would have ever exhibited such things as reconciliation, empathy and proto-morality.
I’m marveling at Thomas Shahan’s close-up photos of bugs.
[via Daily Dish]
Improv Everywhere has struck again, this time with Subway Yearbook Photo.
And I dare you to watch this one without getting tears in your eyes (and I’m often cynical about weddings).
Check out this cool photo of a rocket launch. It was well worth the loss of a lens, according to the photographer (who was miles away when the photo was taken).
I mean, truly, what’s up? How about this incredible NASA photo of the Milky Way taken by the Spitzer infrared telescope. We live in quite an amazing neighborhood.
But there are other things that are up closer to home. I caught both of these images yesterday. First of all, a sky-full of clouds, as a storm was gathering . . .
. . . which ended up with this rainbow, right over my house. A sign of good luck, assume . . .
While flying from Columbus Ohio to St. Louis today, I stopped over in cloudy/misty Chicago. Here’s how downtown looked from above the airport.
How do you photograph an entire redwood tree? It’s not easy, but the result can be spectacular, especially when it’s done by National Geographic’s pros.
This is a photo I took a few weeks ago during a trip to Chicago with my daughters. More specifically, this was a trip to Navy Pier’s amusement park. My nine-year-old is one of the kiddos in the image:
This is really a treat. Go to this link and see ten photos taken by the recently refurbished Hubble telescope, along with detailed commentary. The image below is one of the ten. It depicts the “Butterfly Nebula.” The inset photo is of barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217.
Here’s the description of the above photo, from NASA:
A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star’s outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. The “butterfly” stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. The central star itself cannot be seen, because it is hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the center.
Watching bicycists racing is awesome. The Tour de Lafayette bicycle race was held tonight, about two miles away from my house. My wife and two daughters (9 and 11) rode our lighted bikes through the dark to watch parts two 
races. We brought our little consumer grade camera with us (the Canon SD1100SI) to see if we could squeeze a good photo out of fast bicycles racing through the still night. There was lighting at each of the corners of the 1 mile square course, so we parked ourselves under one of those lights. Most of our photos were total blurs, even when we tried panning with the bikes as they blew by us from left to right. I did manage the photo on the right, though.
The winning photo of the night, however, belonged to my 11-year old daughter JuJu, who at first thought she had let the pack get too far in front when she snapped her photo (below). It’s a neat effect: speed, darkness and well-tuned athletes. You’ll have to imagine the cool night air and the gracious encouragement of the spectators.
Click on these photos for larger versions.
