There are many photos of defaced bills out there, but very few I've come across have caught my attention. Here are my favorite defaced US bills:
To see some of the others, there's a good collection at Holy Taco, Offbeat Earth and on Flickr (here for US legal tender & here for all others). I'm sure I've missed some good ones out there, so please share the link in the comments. ▣
A large white cloud in the shape of a circle — or as it's being called a "halo cloud" — was spotted over the Russian capital last week. Someone decided to take a video of the halo cloud, uploaded it to YouTube and — voilà — instant phenomenon.
Just because of a circular cloud? Of course. All the elements are there: Grainy and shaky video footage. An "unexplained" hovering circular formation cast against a dreary, gray sky. The female voice of a concerned-sounding Russian newscaster emanating from the car radio; although it appears to be unrelated to the cloud.
And on top of all these requisites, there's the obligatory weatherman saying that it's not a UFO, rather it's just a cloud. Anyway, it all follows a well-trod path. Video uploaded to YouTube. It gets watched hundreds of thousands of times (it already hit 1.5 million). And screaming headlines further the sensation.
When the cloud initially formed, some UFO enthusiasts declared it to be a "true mystery." Some even compared it to the giant spaceship hovering over Earth in the movie "Independence Day." Reality quickly dashed any predictions of an alien invasion. An article from the Daily Mail explains that the "luminous ring-shaped cloud" was simply an optical effect.
I'll be the first to admit that a photograph of the heavenly cloud appears to be Photoshopped. It's just so...perfect. But meterologists have spoken up and said the cloud wasn't digitally altered. However, it wasn't exactly what it appeared to be, either.
An official spokesperson for Moscow's weather department said, "Several fronts have been passing through Moscow recently, there was an intrusion of the Arctic air too, the sun was shining from the west — this is how the effect was produced."
Still, my favorite headline so far comes from the popular tech website, Gizmodo. "Ominous cloud formation has Russians fearing an alien attack," they write. Of course, when you read the story, they don't mention anything about fearful Russians at all. Instead they acknowledge — right away — that it's a cloud. But, you can't resist the headline.
And I love the different YouTube descriptions of the same video as well. There's "Stargate Portal Opens Above Moscow!” and “Doomsday sign or UFO? Strange circle in Moscow."
And then there's the report from the Russian media outlet, Russia Today. Are they actually taking this thing seriously? We can’t tell. (See video below).
One of the graphics on the screen says "Trick or Treat" but the anchor, in all seriousness, says things like "scientists have rejected claims of UFO activity" and "people have been left baffled by unexplained circular light ..."
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHOPxVM6oIw
Well, if anything, reports like this will keep the buzz going. And with only two weeks to go until Halloween, it's only appropriate. While the cloud made its appearance a week or so ago, the search-engine searches are still soaring. Look-ups on "halo cloud" and "moscow cloud" are both booming; and as previously mentioned, the video clip has garnered 1.5 million views on YouTube and counting.
Got something weird or bizarre to share with the rest of the World? Send me what you got. ▣
I have a vast collection of bookmarks that I've collected over the years. I often revisit one only to be dumbfounded by why I bookmarked the site in the first place, the page no longer exists, the image or the video behind the reason I bookmarked the page is no longer active/available, etc.
As I slowly comb through and clean up/out my bookmarks, I've come to realize that in this day & age of social media I really don't need to bookmark an entire page. Some times I want just the text. And some times, I want just images or the video. And other times, I want the whole site preserved and saved to my computer's hard drive.
I use different solutions for each of the three. For the 1st one, I use a Google product (more on that on a different day). And for the last one, I use a piece of software, which I've enjoyed having for a number of years. But for bookmarking (not saving) images and/or video, I've come to find one service to be the easiest: weheartit.com
I come across many many great images, photos (yes there's a difference between the two) and videos that I want to bookmark/remember. Sometimes I want to look at them all on one page either by category/tag or just have them all there. That's where weheartit (we♥it) comes.
Are there other services out there? Yes, there are plenty. To name a few, there's the by-invite-only ffffound.com, which is really aimed more for the artsy type. Then there's dropular.net, which's another invite-only service; except this one is "mostly designed for fashion designers, photographers, architects, graphic designers and artists." Then there's vi.sualize.us. If I wasn't using weheartit, I'd likely be using vi.sualize.us; but I like weheartit's ease of use and simplicity. Of course, there are many others; but these are the ones that come to mind at the moment.
So how do I use it? Well, when I come across something I like ... something that I want to remember for later ... but mostly something I find inspirational and/or just beautiful, I ♥ it.
More specifically, weheartit provides a bookmarklet that I assigned (in Firefox only) a keyword to ("loveit"). From there, while I'm on a page with the photo/image/video I like, I simply type "loveit" (without the quotes, of course) in the browser's URL and hit enter. I immediately get the pink border around the objects of that page allowing me to click on the heart of the one I'm interested in saving. Voilà.
If I wanted to, I could then use a URL shortener like bit.ly (I use their sister shortener called j.mp) and tweet or post on Facebook an image or video I liked. In a way, making my own twitpic.com replacement.
Are you using a visual bookmarking service? Which one? How are YOU using it? Let us know in the comments. ▣
