Photos of Interest

My non-expert identification of this: href="http://www.mister-toad.com/photos/lizard/lizardphotos.html">desert spiny lizard, href="http://www.mister-toad.com/photos/lizard/Sceloporus_magister_15June05.jpg" rel="tag">Sceloporus magister.
From Cellar Image of the Day...
These things are hard to photograph.  They are faster than I am, that is for sure.  Out of about 30 shots, at least a few were decent.   These are said to be the smallest birds in the USA.  They are href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliope_Hummingbird">named after the Greek muse of  epic poetry, if you can believe Wikipedia.  
Spent part of the afternoon trying to get better pictures of the woodpeckers, but I am not happy with any of the pictures I got.  So here is someone else's picture: I think it is easier to get pictures of birds when they are in a confined space. href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=471537&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments">Source.
Next to the headline "Corporate America Braces for Market Fallout," is a photo, selected at random, of a guy diving in front of some skyscrapers. It is not intended as an illustration for the article, but at first glance it appears to be. The actual photo is less alarming, when you can see the full context: Su Qingliang, 58, dives into the Huanghai Sea as he performs in Qingdao, east China's Shandong province August 15, 2007. Su and four other people are planning to celebrate the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games by diving 208 times each into the Huanghai Sea on August 8, 2008, the day of…
Some people did not believe that the picutre of the href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/08/photo_of_surfing_dog.php">surfing dog was real.  I can't prove it either way, with respect to that particujlar dog, but I did find a video of a different dog surfing.  This might give pause to the skeptics.  The dog in the video is a href="http://www.akc.org/breeds/golden_retriever/index.cfm">golden retriever.  If any dog could do it, a Golden certainly could. The photo, below, is a screen capture.  The video is at the SLO Tribune, href="http://www.sanluisobispo.com/videos/…
Here it is again, with unsharp mask applied, and increased contrast.
I am now sure this is a ladderback.  The photos are not very sharp, having been taken through a window screen, but it still was fun. The cat was going nuts.  That's how I knew there was something outside.
That, by the way, is a cobra's head in the man's mouth. Courtesy of href="http://news.sky.com/skynews/picture_gallery/0,,70141-1279060,00.html" rel="tag">Sky News "We've scoured the globe for some of the best, strangest and most dramatic photographic images..." They quipped that snake charming is "a dying profession."  
Since the last one of these I did was kind of scary, I decided to do one that is not so scary.  It is just plain weird.  But there is an interesting story to it. The female is on the left; the male is on the right.  These are the genitalia of mallards: href="http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Anas_platyrhynchos.html" rel="tag">Anas platyrhynchos.  The photo is from href="http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070430_duckgenital_evolu_02.jpg&cap=The+genitals+of+the+mallard+%28Anas+platyrhynchos%29%2C+female+vagina+…
This is featured at the title="Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences">PNAS site.  It appears to not have a permanent link, but it currently is the PNAS Featured Image on their href="http://www.pnas.org/misc/news.shtml">PNAS in the News page.  The caption: The intromittent organ of male seed beetles is armed with sharp spines that puncture the genital tract of females during copulation. This form of sexual conflict has led to coevolution between these harmful male structures and female defense morphologies in this group of insects. Photo courtesy of Johanna Rönn…
Put this near the top of things you don't want to do to yourself.   This woman developed fever and abdominal pain, but did not disclose to her physician what she had done.  That was her second mistake. face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"> The oval darkish thing near the top of the CAT scan (marked by arrow) is not supposed to be there.  That white round thing in the photo on the right is not supposed to be there.  It looks like a caseating granuloma, but is rather large for that...   Surgery was performed, obviously.  It was discovered that she had inserted a plastic bag of cocaine…
href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-pod-pix,1,4514127.photogallery?coll=chi_business_promo&index=3">LA Times photo by Stephen Osman Buddy, a 4-year-old Jack Russell terrier, catches a wave while surfing Rincon Point in Santa Barbara County, north of Ventura, Calif.
This little gal was in the garage. It's a green toad, Bufo debilis.
cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="500"> valign="middle" width="500"> OK, here's another front-yard bird.
This bird was in my front yard a couple of days ago.  It flew away before I could get a better picture.
href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-07/24/content_6424764.htm">These are sooo precious... The one on the left is the cub.  They are href="http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Chrotogale_owstoni.html" rel="tag">Owston's Palm Civets, Chrotogale owstoni ... They are found in southern Yunan and southwest Guangxi provinces in China; northern Vietnam; and northern Laos.  The typical weight is 2-3 kg (4.4 to 6.6 pounds), length 50-60cm.   10cm, by the way, is the width of my palm across the knuckles  (which is pretty convenient sometimes).  …
I was reading about the href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/24941.php">epidemic of vitamin D deficiency, got curious about albinism, and ended up finding this picture of a white lion.  It is distributed under a creative commons license, attribution required.  The photographer is face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Stano Novak.  The original, in much higher resolution (and not compressed for the web) is in href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:White_Lion.jpg" rel="tag">Wikimedia. This is not to be confused with the band named href="http://www.…
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/3/e3"> face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">This image shows what can happen to your retina from a sudden increase in venous pressure.  What could cause such a sudden increase?  Jumping straight down, followed by sudden upward acceleration.  The patient initially had 20/400 vision in the affected eye.  After surgery it stabilized at 20/25.  The image, by the way, can be viewed full-size at the open-access NEJM article: href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/3/e3">Macular Hemorrhage from Bungee Jumping. See for…
As reported in the journal, The Lancet, a man has been found who had a small brain, but a normal life.  The article is subscription only so I am not even going to link to it.  But it is still noteworthy.     There is a fair summary in the online version of href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,495607,00.html">Der Spiegel, and it is even in English.  It describes the case of a 44-year-old man employed in a tax office.  He was married, father of two, holding down a job, seemingly fine.  In 2003 he noticed some weakness in his left leg.  He ultimately was seen by Dr…