If you have a half serious interest in photography, chances are you own a couple of old-school film, or, if you like, analogue cameras. It may pay to look more closely at the age and brand of these devices though, as it’s possible some of the lenses may be radioactive:

Radioactivity in old camera lenses is due mostly to the widespread use of thorium glass elements in the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Thorium oxide is highly refractive and low dispersion; this translated into cheaper high-quality glass by allowing manufacturers to make lenses of lesser curvature.

The McDonald’s Theory states that good ideas come from first putting forward subpar notions. Such as eating at a fast food restaurant in the hope someone will suggest somewhere less casual.

While the hypothesis certainly has its merits, it does, I think, cast Maccas in a less than fair light, given plenty of people are happy to partake of their fare.

And as a startup, as it once was, McDonald’s itself has proved to be a good idea, a very good idea, for someone.

It may be a false colour, near-infrared image, but nonetheless this hurricane – the eye of which is some two thousand kilometres across – that is currently raging in Saturn’s atmosphere, would be truly fearsome no matter which way you were looking at it.

Staging an art exhibition is no small task, there are no end of arrangements to be made, and then of course there is the minor matter of moving the artworks going on show from point A to point B, something that can become especially complicated if said works are large or of an unusual shape, something that is often be the case.

Perhaps it’s time we tried another approach in trying to lure extraterrestrials into visiting Earth?

If you’re going to attempt to make a mobile phone base station look like an actual, real tree, you really have to do the job properly or not bother at all.

(Photo by Dillon Marsh)

Via Kottke.

Dietmar Eckell, a German photographer based in Thailand, has assembled an impressive collection of images of aircraft wrecks from across the world. The photos are to be featured in a book, “Happy Endings”, that Eckell plans to publish.

As the title suggests, the passengers and crew survived the crashes that brought each of the aeroplanes they were aboard to grief, and its these stories that Eckell now hopes to tell.

Via PetaPixel.

Budapest based photographer and digital artist Flóra Borsi met all sorts of interesting people during a recent jaunt back through time.

Almost 23 years after reunification, differences between the east and west of Berlin remain apparent, especially when seen from Earth orbit after dark, as this photo by current ISS commander Chris Hadfield makes clear.

It looks as if the east side of the German city continues to use street lights dating from the Cold War era, which are seemingly still going strong.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Made in 1902, Fun in a bakery shop, that was, by the way, produced by Thomas Edison, is one of the earliest examples of a stop motion animation. See more of the oldest known stop motion animation clips here.