Today's Pictures

photography is not entertaining

Jamie Lumley — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:10:58 GMT

I love this quotation and I would love to know who spoke these comforting words that I wish had been my own.

Pictures from 10-27-2009

moconnor — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:10:36 GMT

Pretty sure that picture 10 in http://todayspictures.slate.com/20091027/ is not the subway but rather the hallway within Madison Square Garden

"The Trenches"

Lupus62 — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:28:50 GMT

Great set of photos, some true classics. Note especially: Anyone who likes the first photo, by Elliott Erwitt, should try to get his book "Son of Bitch," now about 20 years old, all of doggy pictures. It is very hard to make funny photos; Erwitt is a genuine master.

where are all the pompadours?

jgarth — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:04:08 GMT

Out of 21 pics I count maybe 10. Take a way the beehives & we're still looking at a ratio of 10 out 18 pics. The rest were interesting, but something else.

The pompadour is a specific style. It involves hair which is cut short on the sides (above the ear) & back. The sides are pushed back with the hair on top being much longer & swept up & - importantly - off the forehead. It's different from a DA (duck's arse) or Teddy-boy cut, a few of which are depicted here.

Comparing some of these cuts to a pompadour is like saying a crew cut is a mohawk b/c both are shaved on the side.

p.s. Yes, I have a pompadour. Because rock and roll ended in 1958.

Audrey Hepburn

nerdnam — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:39:32 GMT

I just shudder to think what today's plastic surgeons might have done to Audrey Hepburn.

How completely stupid...

Apostrophe — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:50:28 GMT

.. why the FUCK would you put up a photo series of guitarists, purportedly in tribute to Les Paul, in which only TWO of the 21 photos actually contained a Les Paul guitar (Zappa & Townshend, btw)? And for that matter, Zappa is most known for playing a Gibson SG, which Les himself hated, and forced Gibson to remove his name from...

Here are some famous people who actually play[ed] Les Paul guitars - maybe you can find THEIR pictures someplace, hm? Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin, you may have heard of them), Billy Gibbons (ZZTop), Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Slash, Duane Allman... hell, there are dozens...

.. what do you do about people who claim to understand visual art but have no eye for detail?

Correction - Today's Pictures: Communes

Bruce09 — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:54:55 GMT

The caption to #17 is not accurate. The communitarian is not "doing some plumbing". He is using standard bar clamps (made out of steel pipe) to clamp several wooded boards being glued together. One clamp is in place and he is getting ready to apply another one.

In whose name?

Nasochkas — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:45:16 GMT

This project really made me think. On the one hand, it was disturbing to see images of orthodox and at times radical (osama bin laden t-shirts on children!) Islam in countries that we do not think of as being very Islamic - Thailand, Kenya, etc... At the same time, the photographic essay starts with images of deep religious worship and conviction here in the U.S.

In the end, the frightening thing is not the advance of evangelical Christianity or of Islam per se, but the retreat of secularism, tolerance and the desire to understand those that are not like us. Perhaps secularism is not in retreat, but was always a passing blip in history. The power of religion will always grip humanity. Lets just hope that whatever faith that the majority hope to embrase is interpreted in a peaceful manner.

Which Bill Barnett?

kcs2c — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:47:13 GMT

Picture 15 of http://todayspictures.slate.com/20090706/ allegedly shows Bill Barnett, former football player with model Adrijana Dejanovic

"NEW YORK CITY—Former football player Bill Barnett and supermodel Adrijana Dejanovic, 2004. "

Is the Bill Barnett in the picture "William Perry Barnett" who would have been 48 in 2004 and is 6'4". (Adrijana Dejanovic is 179 cm ~ 6 ft. )

Google and Wikipedia only turned up the one Bill Barnett former football player. I am only asking because the guy in the picture seems pretty short to have ever played football. Do I have the wrong guy? Is there something really weird about the picture angle?

Bruce Geldin

boredwell — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:07:00 GMT

The gilt-less photos in this montage capture us, shake us up and set us down with a visceral clunk! Not quite fire bombed Dresden of WWII notoriety, Geldin's landscape is no less riveting: it stabs the viewer in the gut forcing eyes to waver between closing shut and remaining wide open. Its power lies in the sprawling monotony. It's more about nightmare lives than emptied houses. One is forced to imagine, in its stead, blocks of souless urban housing looming on top of the all these plowed-under broken bones.

Ghost Towns -- Thank you...

pdavidc — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:37:58 GMT

...for publishing what might be the 1st photo essay of 2009 about urban ruin that did not feature Detroit.

ewww

gzuckier — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:53:26 GMT

those cute piggy pictures sure went off into a dark direction. well done, although i don't think i'll send them to my 6 year old, after all.

Not even close!

michaelbasham — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:54:00 GMT

While I may agree with some of those selected in this compilation of “22 Women at Their Most Beautiful”, it is really way off! I’ll go for Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Monica Bellucci and I guess I’ll concede Marilyn Monroe. However the rest should not even be in the mix. Of course you did say "at their most beautiful”, not "the most beautiful". So many other noteworthy beauties. Too many to mention, actually.

Signe Wilkinson chastity belt cartoon

smitn — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:46:37 GMT

Maybe it's just my twisted mind, but I first saw this cartoon at reduced resolution and didn't realize the lady was holding a key ring. I suppose it is appropriate that I thought she was choking a chicken.
http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?image=0&topicid=20

Chuck Asay is about as funny . . .

another_liberal — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:43:41 GMT

Chuck Asay is about as funny as a burning orphanage. Why is he even included in the "Best Of" cartoon offerings? It must be Conservative "affirmative action" or something?

Bob Byrd was in the KKK!

gallant90 — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:54:42 GMT

Robert Byrd was in the KKK. No one ever asked him to resign.

Ted Kennedy killed someone. He's still there.

Do we even have to get into Bob Peckerwood & Larry Craig? (Not that ol' Lar wouldn't enjoy it.)

What the hell are we talking about here? There are people living in the streets and the drug trade is still flourishing despite all those magnificent laws and we're still unwelcome guests in Iraq & Afghanistan, and all anyone can focus on is another stupid diversion? Get your priorities straight, people. Let the man serve. If the voters don't want him in 2010, so be it. We have other, more pressing issues.

The talking point of the day has gone forth from Rush

tyrannosaura — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:41:21 GMT

and we now learn that by refusing to impose a gag-rule on health care professionals, Obama is "forcing" women to have abortions against their wills. I will give $100 to the favorite charity of anyone who can prove to me that any woman has ever been "forced" to have an abortion by the government (although I wouldn't doubt that there are a great many who have been forced to do so by their parents or husbands). Oh, and we also learn that educating people about birth control is a diabolical plot to reduce the number of Social Security recipients. Um, it might also reduce the number of women who need abortions, but never mind that; anything that gives a woman control of her own body is an evil thing according to the Republicans, apparently. Women voters, take note -- oh wait, you already did!

Mistaken Identity in Vietnam Buddhist photo essay

SpectatorAtTheScene — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:50:22 GMT

I very much appreciated the photo essay on Buddhism in Vietnam. They are so beautiful and peaceful. Just wanted to say that the figure identified as "Chinese deity" in photo 19 is actually the Buddhist bodhisattva Avolokiteshvara, otherwise known as Kwan Yin or Quanyin. She is holding a sprig of willow, with which she sprinkles the water of compassion from the vase she holds. Bodhisattvas are something like saints, representing different virtues. She is the bodhisattva of compassion and is the most beloved of all the bodhisattvas.

A lotus for you
Buddha to be.

:-)

And yet another scientific illiterate weighs in

tyrannosaura — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:59:16 GMT

Yet another cartoon today demonstrating why American students score so abysmally low in science and math. When will people figure out that one cold day proves absolutely nothing about global warming or climate change?

Catholic Schools

dgbx — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 04:44:13 GMT

So, what are we to take away from this slide show? That once - a long time ago - nuns in head to toe habits educated a bunch of ragamuffins. Today, the ragamuffins still go to Catholic schools, but judging from the photos, nobody is teaching them. They just stand there praying or looking prayerful, and somehow stuff just pops into their heads.

Please.

The story of Catholic education deserves better treatment than this slapped-together slide show. Yes, there used to be plenty of nuns in habits. Okay, can you show me who replaced them? Umm, like a whole mess of lay teachers, perhaps? Who are nowhere to be seen in this slide show. (The salaries and benefits needed to pay these teachers is but one of the pressures which lead to parochial school closures, after all.)

These schools work for a lot of reasons - values, an emphasis on traditional educational methods, and discipline (self-discipline, by the way, and not the tired cliche of discipline enforced by ruler-wielding nuns). And they close because of a complicated mix of factors - changing demographics and loss of traditional immigrant working class Catholics to Evangelical and Pentecostal groups, for starters. And yes, financial crises triggered by huge payouts in some dioceses for sexual abuse lawsuits.

But hey, how can that compare to some old pix of nuns in habits. Tired, tired, tired! Trying to understand - and depict - how these schools change, close or survive, is a worthwhile undertaking of interest to more than a few people out there, I suspect. But when it comes to going beyond the cliches, I guess old habits are hard to break.

I am a product of these schools, educated through high school in what you would consider a ghetto. The nuns, priests and lay teachers did a good enough job with me (and my classmates) that I got an Ivy League education through grad school. The amazing thing is these schools still are doing the same thing with the current crop of kids.

David Gonzalez
NY NY

Washington and Lee University

lapietra — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 01:20:36 GMT

It's in Lexington, VA not Mass.

In Memoriam Oversight

calbearo — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:25:10 GMT

A sobering look back on some of the bright stars we lost this past year. Unbelievable that Heath Ledger was not included in this retrospective. Sure he was a Hollywood icon like Newman or Charles Heston, but in his fairly short career, he had established himself as an accomplished actor and star in his own right. One of the saddest entertainment stories of 2008 for sure.

McCoy's cartoon is as predictable as it is ignorant.

tyrannosaura — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:31:06 GMT

Every single year, the first snowstorm produces a chorus of triumphant "I told you so's" from global warming deniers. And every single year, people with basic scientific literacy bang their heads against walls in frustration. One more time with intense feeling: Global warming does not mean that every day in ever place is going to be warmer than it was the previous year. It means that average temperatures worldwide are rising, at a rate too fast to be explained by normal geological processes, and doing serious damage to the environment in the process. One blizzard in the American midwest is anecdotal evidence. Charts of average temperatures worldwide over a long period reveal a significant trend.

What's even more revealing about McCoy's cartoon is the need to ridicule Al Gore. Why are conservatives still so obsessively running against him, eight years after the 2000 election debacle? The lies and quotes out of context that they used to trump up reasons for mockery no longer have any political use -- unless, of course, it's because they still know that election was stolen, and with disastrous consequences. If I had that on my conscience, I'd be suffering a lot. Conservatives seem to have chosen near-delusional denial instead.

I can't believe Chuck Asay had the gall

tyrannosaura — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:41:17 GMT

to whine about the national debt, after six years of cheerleading for the war in Iraq, which is what put us so deeply in the red. But then I also couldn't believe that he snarked about how Democrats were going to spend the next four years blaming everything on Bush, after he and his crowd have done nothing for the last 8 except to blame everything on Clinton. Believe me, Chuck, the damage that Bush has done will take many decades and many presidencies to correct, if indeed it can be undone. He, and his supporters, will deserve all the blame they get.

BUFFALOED AGAIN ?

unionave — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:39:24 GMT

This administration is trying to get the Columbia Free Trade agreement passed if not before then after it leaves on permanent vacation . The idea is to try all options and HRC is their "girl" . Remember , WJC signed the papers to overturn the FDR banking regulation laws with HRC at his elbow . WJC and HRC campaigned for the passage of NAFTA and GAT which dumped millions of jobs out of the USA . WJC is a LOBBYIST (that is how he makes most of his money) pushing the passage of the Columbian free trade agreement . And he "pals around with" GHWB .

Remember , during her campaign she spent a lot of time loving up the FOX gang so if we look at her closely we might see a spy planted by this administration . This administration has the MSM working hard to get her in there . If that happened they would ridicule the new administration loud and long for what is in the 16 question job application because they know she would flunk that test big time .

REMEMBER , OUR GOVERNMENT LOSES BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF INCOME WITH FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS .