Hurricane Irene Rain Dance

Four dudes with nothing left to do but dance for their lives…

Cool dancing, bro. Hurricane at The Roxbury. I like totally get it.

Mission Accomplished [Photos of the Day]

From the official White House Flickr feed: “President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011.”

“Servicemen hang off a lamp post cheering in celebration as thousands of people celebrate in the streets at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center, waving American flags and honking horns to celebrate the death of Al Qaeda founder and leader Osama bin Laden in New York City.”

“A vendor walks past a sand sculpture of Osama bin Laden created by Indian sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik on a beach in Puri, India.”

Did somebody order an accomplished mission?

National Geographic’s Photography Contest 2010

Via: The Big Picture
“National Geographic is once again holding their annual Photo Contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30th. For the past eight weeks, they have been gathering and presenting galleries of submissions, encouraging readers to rate them as well. National Geographic was again kind enough to let me choose some of their entries from 2010 for display here on The Big Picture. Collected below are images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature.”
Click to enlarge…

Farewell to the 2010 World Cup

“After a month of matches, the 2010 FIFA World Cup Tournament is over, with Spain claiming its first ever trophy, the Netherlands placing second, and Germany taking third place. 32 teams came to South Africa last month, and the eyes of the world were upon them as television and online viewership broke records, and in many places productivity dropped sharply when matches were being played. Collected here are photos from the second half of the tournament, the action on the fields, and the reactions of those following the games in both South Africa and their home countries, as we bid farewell to the 2010 World Cup.”

Poverty within white South Africa

“When stories are told about African poverty, race often seems to play a large part. Based in Senegal, Reuters photographer Finbarr O’Reilly (previously acclaimed for his work in DR Congo) traveled to South Africa earlier this year and visited one of a growing number of squatter camps populated mostly by Afrikaners – white South Africans – to document their stories and help show that, despite the fact that impoverished blacks in the region far outnumber whites, poverty is a human issue, not necessarily racial. O’Reilly: “While most white South Africans still enjoy lives of privilege and relative wealth, the number of poor whites has risen steadily over the past 15 years. Researchers now estimate some 450,000 whites, of a total white population of 4.5 million, live below the poverty line and 100,000 are struggling just to survive in places such Coronation Park, a former caravan camp currently home to more than 400 white squatters. Formerly comfortable Afrikaners recently forced to live on the fringes of society see themselves as victims of ‘reverse-apartheid’ that they say puts them at an even greater disadvantage than the millions of poor black South Africans.”

Via: The Big Picture @ Boston.com

Halfway in – 2010 World Cup in Pictures

Oil in the Gulf, two months later

62 days have passed since the initial explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and the crude oil and natural gas continue to gush from the seafloor. Re-revised estimates now place the flow rate at up to 60,000 barrels a day – a figure just shy of a worst-case estimate of 100,000 barrels a day made by BP in an internal document recently released by a congressional panel. Louisiana’s state treasurer has estimated environmental and economic damages from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could range from $40 billion to $100 billion. Collected here are recent photographs from the Gulf of Mexico, and of those affected by the continued flow of oil and gas into the ocean. Via: The Big Picture @ Boston.com

Preparing for the World Cup

Collected here are recent scenes from South Africa as it readies itself to welcome the world. South Africa will step onto the world stage as host nation of the 2010 FIFA World Cup as the international football tournament begins – welcoming 32 teams from around the world. Over the past weeks, the teams and their legions of fans have begun arriving while final preparations are made and and dress rehearsals held for the Opening Ceremony.
Click the pictures to enlarge.

Thanks to The Big Picture @ boston.com