Bara Bear of the Day

Hot!

Correlation vs. Causation

Bara Yaoi of the Day

Simple Happiness

Hot Man of the Day

And speaking of wondrous beauty (lol!):

Amazing Spiral Galaxy M51

Slate's Phil Plaitt posted new pictures of the spiral galaxy M51 which combine pictures from the Hubbel and Spitzer space telescopes. It is amazingly beautiful and awe-inspiring. I love galaxies: they are big and so far away and so numerous that they just overwhelm me with the power and majesty of the Cosmos. The picture here combines, to my mind, aspects of religious, philosophy, science, and art. Truly, the universe, in its vast beauty and wonder, puts our small and petty concerns and problems in perspective, and it also provides a counter-balance to the absurdity of organized religion and its dogmas and stupid prejudices. I love science!

And be sure to click here to embiggen the above image: it's well worth it...(and be sure to look closely to find distant galaxies in the picture).

We Are Star Stuff

Bara Bear of the Day

Reason

Man of Steel

Looks great.

Bara Furry of the Day - RWolf

Zero Dark Thirty and Torture (?)

So "Zero Dark Thirty" finally made it to my area after a period of playing exclusively in the city in a couple of theaters (what is it with that, anyway?). I had heard a lot of noise about the torture scenes ("enhanced interrogation"?), especially from Andrew Sullivan's blog. Yes, the scenes were brutal, and depicted the questionable results of such methods (did they really lead directly to the courier, or was it indirect? I still don't know for sure). However, I found myself less moved than I had been led to expect. Does this mean I'm a brute myself? The answer, I think, lies in the context of the film. Yes, if I seen the scene in real life, I'm sure I would be sickened. However, in the film, the scenes are surrounded by a lot of other material, especially the opening sequences which sets the stage for what follows: we are presented with a title card reading only "September 11, 2001" against a black screen, then real life recordings of phone calls from the towers of emergency calls (among others) from people trapped - people who would soon be dead. In particular, one young woman, clearly terrified, describing the rising heat, and asking if she was going to die.
I have to say that, after this visceral experience, what followed (the interrogation scenes) didn't move me much at all. In fact, all that followed, fit the deranged and terrified tenor of the times. These were the people responsible for that atrocity, and they got pretty much what they deserved, is how I felt.
Anyway, I felt the film was brilliantly executed (although it seemed to drag a bit here and there), and the final act, which depicted the actually assault, was amazing. After seeing the film, I am astounded that the Academy left Kathryn Bigelow out of the directorial nominations. Shame on them. I hope she wins the Directors Guild Award. The film was brilliant, the acting superb, the writing sharp and spot on, and the technical work excellent. I commend this film to everyone.

Bara Bear of the Day

Bara Yaoi of the Day

"Interior Leather Bar" - James Franco's New Film

Now this is a film that looks interesting!

President Obama

I watched with great joy and satisfaction President Obama's inauguration and address this morning, and almost came to tears hearing him proclaim, without reservation, the necessity for gay equality. I put a lot of stuff on this blog - pictures - which seem superficial. But the deeper issue, the thing which enables me to celebrate male beauty and sexuality, is the equality my society has achieved for gay people, the freedom we have to celebrate ourselves as we are and not as some religious or social dogma wants us to be. Today, we have a president for all the people, and for that I rejoice...

Bara Man of the Day

Bara Furry Tigers

My favorite furry species!

The Scientific Power of Thought

A fascinating little video laying out the relationship between the imagination and the physical brain and how your thoughts can influence it...

The Core of the Milky Way Galaxy

 The image, taken by Stéphane Guisard at the ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, spans an area of the sky roughly 30° x 20°, or about twice the area of the sky you can cover up with your outstretched hand. That’s a lot of territory. Taken as part of the GigaGalaxy Zoom project, it's a mosaic of 52 fields shot over 29 nights for a total of 200 hours of exposure over 1200 separate photos.

Look at all of them! And then compare the size of this small piece of the picture to the whole thing…and realize this is only a tiny fraction of the stars in the galaxy. There are tens of millions of stars in the whole zoomable picture at least, but hundreds of billions in the Milky Way. In other words, this huge picture crammed full of stars shows less then a thousandth of all the stars in our galaxy!

Go here for the full, zoomable picture.

Angry Bird Watching

A female Bearded Tit perches on a reed amongst the reedbeds in Hyde Park on January 15, 2013 in London, England. The birds, a pair spotted for the first time last week, offer a rare opportunity to see them as this species has never before been seen in inner London. Since their arrival twitchers have flocked to the area for a rare glimpse of the birds. By Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Libraries

My love affair with books perfectly captured:

Bara - Mirror Men

Hot guys making self-portraits in the mirror: a great sub-genre!

Aurora from Space

A great story from Phil Plaitt:

This breath-taking photograph was taken by an astronaut on board the International Space Station on September 17, 2011, when the station was over the southern Indian Ocean, about halfway between Africa and Australia

Hugs

Bara Yaoi of the Day

Very nice point of view!

Volcano: A View from Space

Phil Plaitt, on his Slate blog, "Bad Astronomy," has a view of a new volcano eruption taken from space which is awesome:

As Plaitt describes it, "The image above was taken by the Earth Observing-1 satellite on Dec. 22, 2012. You can see the main peak to the north (upper right); the crater at the top is obvious due to the shadow of the crater rim falling across it. The plume from the new eruption—a mixture of ash and steam—is blowing west toward the Pacific Ocean, and you can see the shadow of the plume on the flank of the main peak. In this picture fresh lava is black and older lava is gray, the latter having had enough time to cool and get a coating of snow. This type of eruption is called strombolian (after the Italian volcano); characterized by medium activity and small explosions, unlike other volcanoes that can explode catastrophically and cause widespread destruction like Mt. Vesuvius did."

The site also features up close video of the eruption and a link to a site embiggoning the pic. Cool!

Science

The Problem

Bara Man of the Day

Jason Sokody...

Hot Man of the Day

My Cleo ...

Bara Man of the Day