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"to play on a field like that:"
This is in the Olympic Park in Munich, Germany. I never did manage to play on the pitch, but they seem to mark it out like this every now and then!
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"perhaps never to be fully realized" Yes. We were very lucky that it never realized. We would be in a pretty bad shape by now. LOL
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I love cars, and I love Plan 59. This has been one of my favorite posts of yours, ever. I have a '59 fairlane galaxie 500...you just cant beat the styling of the 50's and 60's! Thanks!
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"their outrageous size and engine's unbridled power give off a statement of pure excess"
True, but many of today's automobiles rival their weight and easily exceed their power. Modern mid-luxury sport sedans are quicker, faster, handle immeasurably better, and are scads safer than their counterparts of yore. We're truly living in a new Golden Age of the Automobile!
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I really wish that the days of those kinds of cars could come back. Who knows, maybe one day when they find something better than oil to fuel cars.
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Darn! And I used to think you were so on the ball! Seriously, before mocking other politicians, have you checked out your George Bush recently? There's no question he considers himself King and his expressions are 1000 times stupider than Putin's!
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Dear Alicia,
Let me assure you, the thought has crossed my mind. Alas, Good Old Bush's faces can be found in every bookstore; there are wall calendars issued every year. Too obvious. But still... check out "Presidents and Babies" post from December 2006 :)
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I guess you're right (and all politicians suck, anyway).... You're still cool in my book! :-)
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The top serious of pictures needs to add "Murderous."
Thanks for the slaughter of thousands of Chechens, Putin, not to mention the Slaughter of free speech in your country.
RIP Anna Politkovskaya
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I think you mean to blame Yeltsin for the Chechens Jess
Damn him for killing those people, that were trying to kill his people
Free speech is relative and a loaded privilege that idiots abuse for their own personal fame and gain
Think of all the things you cannot say in any free society... the list is endless
Remember Jess, there are two sides to every coin
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As usual entertaining and amazing
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it is a pre-radar aircraft detection and localisation system .. using the sound of the aircraft engines and reflecting it into the listeners ears - the large distance between the artificial "ears" (parabolic sound mirrors) improves angular resolutin
on
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Number 7 is a hearing amplifier, it looks like.
i think its so that you can hear things far away, 1 for each ear
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I'm with anonymous #2 on this one. It looks like the guy from picture nubmer 7 is standing on a beach, listening to the sound of the waves.
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as an addition to my first commetn (aircraft detection)
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/ear/ear.htm
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I'm with Anonymous. In fact, here's a great article about the whole "anti-aircraft listening device" genre:
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=486
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#7 is a machine built to locate armies by sound. It was common before the radar
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Many examples of the kind of machines seen in #7 are found on
http://www.museumwaalsdorp.nl/en/airacous.html
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wow... thanks for the links... very interesting
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#7 is a Aucostic Location Device. It was used to detect airplanes before radar. I saw one in England a few years back. You can also learn about it here: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=486
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BTW, if you are wondering about the asymmetry of the acoustic receptors in 7, it might have been made to mimic Barn owls, which have no pinnas (external ear) but can still localize sounds in the vertical direction very well, thanks to asymmetric ears, one pointing up and the other down, http://www.wonderquest.com/owl-hearing.htm
shows an example about 1/3 of the way down.
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The little girl is wearing one of the first machines used for permanent wave hairstyling. They were used back in the 1920's or 1930's. They were cumbersome and uncomfortable, and sometimes painful! No, I don't know this personally, just remember seeing one on a film of an old newsreel!
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those are great! i expecially like the yellow truck one. well guess what.
im now a co-editor to: www.moillusions.com
isnt it great!!
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I love your site. It's got some of the most incredible and fun images all in one place that I like to see. I wanted to point out that the off-white six wheel bug with a soft top is an obvious Photoshop job. The back wheels are duplicated and are rotated in exactly the same position, and aren't casting a shadow. Also the front bumper's reflections don't reflect into each other because they're duplicated, and the fender lights as well.
I know, cool image. ...just being picky.
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That beige one with the 2 axles in back is one of the worst bits of Photoshop fakery I've seen! Look at where there should be a shadow under the wheels!
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Nitpick: Neither a Jetta nor a Type 2/Microbus is a Beetle.
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Hey guys, thanks for the tip about the Beetle, modified using Adobe (tm) Photoshop (tm) software :)
I've removed the pesky bug
cheers
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I remember when I was a kid you could order a Rolls Royce or a 1940's Ford nose for a Beetle from the Sears catalog.
There was a Continental style engine bay cover as well. The sales pitch was that the fake spare tire hump provided space for a 50% bigger carburetor.
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That fence like beetle is from Croatia.
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Some are cute, some are hilarious! People are getting bored with the beetles.. I guess vw has to do something with it. We have a vw beetle and is still in good running condition. My dad even bought a
vw beetle rainguards last week.
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VW is a great car. The 5 cylinder has plenty of power and the handling is better than similar cars. The design of the new
VW Bettle parts is a classic, very unique; cuts into the rear headroom a little, but whatever. My only slight problem with the car is that I wish it handled better. Maybe upgrading the suspension on this concept would be great... I know VW has had some reliability problems in the past, but I honestly think that these redesigns will be Volkswagen's savior.
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I believe that some of the hotrods were actually 1930s Fiats. This one is definately not a VW Bug:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/148/423856000_12447e5217.jpg
I've seen a couple of hot rods at major car shows that were made out of the old Fiats.
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its me again!
the second one from the bottom seems fake.
love the site keep up the great work!
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The second one from the bottom is Bryce Canyon, not the Grand Canyon.
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i just found this blog , and i must say that i really enjoyed it! i will be coming back for more wonderful & wierd things :)!
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Impressive pics, Nature is amazing, ain't it? :D
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Most (if not all) of those unattributed pics are from Webshots. I recognized them right away since I see them on my screensaver all the time!
Love the site, btw!
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I am amazed that I actually have lightning photographs of my own. The circumstances were strange— basically, an Independence Day fireworks celebration that was pushed a little ahead and condensed because of a storm rolling in... and then the lightning started, much to my glee.
My favorite two are
here and
here. And due to the fact that I was on a riverbank at the time with a three-inch tripod (yes, lying on the ground), I'm very pleased with the results.
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Strange, architecture reminds me somewhat of the anthroposophical buildings like the Goetheanum...
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As always interesting finds
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Among your pictures is a tower in Vienna I live quite near by. I've always liked it for its gloomy, threatening look, and in summer it always gave nice shade to the people hanging out in the park it's in. Unfortunately, time has worn it down, and last year it threatened to collapse. While there had been plans by a company to turn it into a data-center, I don't think it'll last that long. Right now they are just trying to stop it from collapsing.
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Check out this one. One huge ugly block. http://www.technik-kultur.de/wiki/index.php?title=Bunker_-_zweckentfremdet
It held 18.000 people and is still maintained as an emergency shelter.
It is across the street from where I live. It is now called the Mediabunker and is used by Photostudios, a music shop and bands for practice rooms. It also has a club at the top.
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Someone should have put these towers up hitler's ass.
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Very interesting. I am surprised someone hasn't turned one into a house of some kind.
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Dude great blog that architect Leo Winkel should of designed the World trade Center. I hope you can visit my website
ONLINE SHOPPING MALLbest regards John
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As a child i was always interested by the german bunkers in the channel islands such as these
http://www.festungguernsey.supanet.com/Fortification.htm
cheers for the post
NTS
http://notstraight.wordpress.com/
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We have couple of those towers in Sarajevo too, I know about them since I was a child but newer know the purpose of those old buildings. Looks exactly the same as those on pictures.
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Hello,
I recall seeing these in the railyards near Kaiserslautern too. I also remember seeing one in Vienna - I'm not sure if it is the one you posted, but it had building built around it. It was almost like they were mushrooms that had grown up around a tree or something
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Hehe, the one they turned into a bus stop (with the Loto-Sign in front of it) is actually located in my hometown of Stuttgart in Germany (Stuttgart-Feuerbach). My father always told me how he had to hide there and in other shelters when the bomb alarm went off during the last months of war...
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A tower that is used for antiaircrfat guns and searchlights would not seem to be a safe refuge in an air raid...
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They look like rocket ships skyward pointed, poised to lift off. But they are the opposite; heavy, not light, built to stay, not go.
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I like the analogy...
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I often went passed the one in Feuerbach, but I never could figure what it was. I'll have to go and look again... Thanks!
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Wow those things are interesting. That is definitely a fun bit of useless knowledge.
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Useless knowledge? I find them to be a facinating and somewhat hidden aspect of the war. We all know about Londoners hiding in the tubes during the Blitz, but no one seems to remember how badly Germany was bombed. This goes to show Germany's way of protecting it's people.
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i wonder if there was any specifical order in the position asignated to people. i mean, upper floors seems much more dangerous than base. and taking in account that if u come first, the latest people entering the tower would push you up, its a potetial crisis. what u think? anybody knows about behavior in shelters in WWII?
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A tower of this type (locally known as "Spitzbunker") survives to this day in Bremen. It is located next to what used to be a car and truck factory up to the 1960s, so I suspect it was intended for the workers. Nowadays, it sports advertising for an oil company.
I have always liked this bunker, because it looks like a rocketship. Whereas the enormous concrete cubes scattered throughout the city are just ugly, even if they commission artists to paint the walls.
Most municipal authorities are not exactly happy about huge slabs of concrete occupying real estate that could be used for better purposes. But those bunkers were built to withstand bomb hits and often did, so they are very difficult to demolish.
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Excellent! Could we also see the existing Fascist architecture that was built in Italy by the Fascists?
Did Franco build any in Spain?
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So strange. I traveled all over Germany for five years while I was stationed there in the US Air Force during the 90's and I never saw a WinkelTurm. I never even knew they existed.
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Great shots as usual
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Absolut great shots.
Have a look here for some more pics of a crane incident:
http://home.planet.nl/~willysplekje/Berging%20BKF%20kraan%20Strandheem%20Opende/home.html
(Mobile crane was hired to lift a sunken dredging-boat, but then flipped over so something really big was needed to get the other crane out)
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Gravity is the only reason anything falls!! Cranes fall over primarily due to two major factors. The most important being improper set up the second being operator error which is due largely to a lack of quality training and a push in the industry to have these machines do more than they were designed to do.
Ultimately these machines when properly maintained, inspected and operated in a safe manner by people who have been sufficiently trained will perform exactly as designed over and over again without mishap. It is not the equipement that is so fallible but the people who run them.
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Irony (n).: The excavator arm sticking out of the hole in the ground like some kind of post-apocalyptic monument. Also, the bulldozer picture is funny in a Hitchhiker's kind of way.
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i think most modern cranes are equipped with GPS reporting systems, that communicate back to the manufacturer where and when they were overloaded. so they can avoid the operator saying 'it was a light load....honest'!
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of course they fall because of lousy opperators. cranes are great machines and makes things much easier. anyway, about gravity - curtains in the last picture hangs like in normal windows, not like it should, if it was'nt fake :)
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First off great blog, it's one of the sites I visit daily!
But the pictures in this post of the hanger being filled with foam, are actuallly of the fire suppression system. It is designed to fill the hanger with fire retarding foam in the event of a fire.
gtrz Nils
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Was going to comment the same thing Nils said, the system released the foam by accident.
Nice pictures nevertheless!
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Your blog is awesome.
However, the pic with the turret, isnt that a plane beeing de-iced?
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I believe the first twelve pictures are fire-suppression foam tests / accidents. Then there's a shot of a pressure-rinsing system, a de-icing rig, and a flight crew scraping snow / ice off their aircraft.
Aircraft doused in fire-suppression foam aren't squeaky-clean. The stuff dries to a nasty film and can damage finishes, wiring, exposed bare metal, etc.
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I've seen the photos of the fire-retardant foam incident before, but they're great photos and loved seeing them again. From memory the base is a USAF base in California and most of their aircraft were parked outside ready for training exercises. The day happened to be a fairly windy one as well. Also, the foam used is extremely corrosive. Naturally, most of the planes were touched by the foam, so all aircraft need at least a wash, and the ones closer to the hangar needed deeper maintenance.
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Brilliant photographs!! How fun.
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I believe that the foam pictures are the result of fire-supressing foam. As seen in the pictures it suffocates the source before it can do any significant damage. I'm not sure how well it works as an aircraft cleaner, though I'm sure it takes quite a while to clean up.
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Fun photographs, but from personal account (I am former USAF member), this is fire foam. "Bird baths" are more like a hose-rigged gantry that the jets drive through for their post-flight washes.
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The very first photo happened like this: The hangar was equipped with a device for mixing soap concentrate and water for mopping the floor. The manager shouted to the man doing the work, "Don, turn off the machine." Don hears, "Don't turn off the machine." Thus, you get what we have here. It was a case study in the human factors course I got in the Air Force. There is also a picture of the hangar before it happened.
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As for the string of photos from the hangar full of foam: That was a test, the intent was to operate the system momentarily to check its operation. Obviously, no-one planned that the system would refuse to shut off, hence the people on the maintenance stands climbing to save their hides. There is a video somewhere of it all happening.
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Thank you Jim, great info!
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The foam pictures are actually from an Air Force base just east of Rapid City, SD. You guys are right in that they were running a test 'fire' on the newly automated system when the system wouldn't shutdown. There are also pictures of one of the cameraman's truck parked outside that had his windows down, and after they opened the hangar doors to let the foam pour out it filled and covered the truck. I have the full set of pics on an external harddrive somewhere.
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Haha! When did the incident happen at Ellsworth? I'd lived there 14yrs and hadn't heard of it. Love the B-1 very much. :D
I collect nose art of the b-1b lancer, trying to find images of all the various work. So when I saw the b-1b in the first image, I tried to determine which one it was. :P
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"QUANTUM SHOT" #184
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