The more immaculate of these malls evoke the nation of ghost malls Cory Doctorow imagines in his recent book Makers, or seem ripe for zombies. But the decaying images offer possible glimpses of America's eventual ruins.

Ghosts of Shopping Past [Morning News via Boing Boing]

JC Penney, Dixie Square Mall, 2009
Belz Factory Outlet Mall, 2009
Rolling Acres Mall 1, 2008
Columbus City Center, 2009
Dixie Square Mall, 2008
Kentucky Fried Chicken, 2009

Balog was just written up in the Wall Street Journal for his Extreme Ice Survey, which involves a mix of mountaineering and nature photography to capture the effects of global warming. Balog explains:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for "Extreme Ice Survey"?

A: The New Yorker asked me to shoot a story on climate change in 2005, and I wound up going to Iceland to shoot a glacier. The real story wasn't the beautiful white top. It ended up being at the terminus of the glacier where it's dying. That idea gestated in my mind for a year and eventually turned into the "Extreme Ice Survey" in 2006.

Q: How do images of glaciers collapsing bring the idea of climate change home?

A: There were a lot of repeat photos that showed glaciers retreating over a hundred years. That's pretty abstract. I wanted to show a shorter term time lapse that would make people think, "My god, little Emily was in first grade in April and she's in second grade in October. I remember this. It's happening in my life."

The EIS photos are arresting and heartbreaking — they show the icebergs breaking off from the glaciers and going out to sea, and in one case you can actually see an iceberg on a beach where surf and sand meet the deaths of the icecaps. There are some utterly lovely pictures of "meltwater" floating on top of the ice, as well as some disgusting images showing the silt-befouled water encroaching on the ice, over the past few years.

But meanwhile, Balog's site also has a section called "Techno Sapiens" which celebrates the cyborgs in our midst, including gorgeous looking artificial limbs and wearable computers. Back in 1996, Balog talked to Fortune Magazine about it:

On the following pages, photographer James Balog documents what he calls Techno sapiens: fusions of humans and machines that can be found today in American research labs and hospitals, and even on the streets. Add up the images, says Balog, and it's not hard to envision a race of flesh-and-technology beings with electric hands, legs of steel that run a two-minute mile, and perceptual powers unknown in nature. "Imagine you are a traveler from another galaxy," Balog says. "You land in North America today and look around carefully, with fresh eyes. This is what you might see."

It's an interesting contrast, but maybe not a contradiction: He worries what we're doing to the planet, but he's also celebrated the way we're transforming ourselves.

There are tons more photos at the links. [Extreme Ice Survey and James Balog Photography]

Icebergs 200 feet tall, formerly part of the Greenland Ice Sheet, float into the North Atlantic Ocean, raising sea levels as they melt.

Jökulsárlón, Iceland. Decaying ice and icebergs on the surface of the Jökulsárlón in southeast Iceland. The ice drains off the great icecap called the Vatnajökull.

Columbia Glacier, Alaska. Columbia Glacier calves icebergs into Columbia Bay west of Valdez, Alaska. The ice shown in the bergs was deposited in snowstorms 300 to 500 years ago.

Columbia Glacier, Alaska. Contrasts between clean glacial melt water and water laden with eroded silt color these lakes on the surface of the East Fork of Columbia Glacier. Black stripes are erosional debris called "moraines."

Svínafellsjökull Glacier, Iceland. An EIS team member provides scale in a massive landscape of crevasses on the Svínafellsjökull Glacier in Iceland.

Greenland Ice Sheet, Greenland. On the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet east of Kangerlussuaq, a meltwater stream known by the French word "moulin" (in English it means "mill," as in windmill).

Icebergs calved from Whiteout Glacier, Alaska.

River water and seawater polish the surface of a berg in Iceland.

Meltwater on surface of Columbia Glacier, Columbia Bay, Alaska.

Decaying ice and icebergs on the surface of the Jökulsárlón in southeast Iceland. The ice drains off the great icecap called the Vatnajokull.

Meltwater on surface of Columbia Glacier, Columbia Bay, Alaska.

Kenny's Arm

Breathing Observation Bubble

Wearable computer

Every year, the Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Contest invites imaging experts and amateurs to submit their best examples of microscopy - in still and video form. The results, as you can see, are incredible.

The top prize is $5,000 worth of Olympus imaging equipment. In addition, twenty-two of the 2009 winning and Honorable Mention images will also be displayed in a winners' tour that will travel to San Diego, California, New York City; suburban Washington DC; Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities. Additional exhibits of BioScapes images will simultaneously be touring cities across the U.S. and Canada throughout 2009-10.

You can see more winners and honorable mentions on the BioScapes page.

Sexual Attraction in Spyrogyra. This classic microscopic subject illustrates sex in lower organisms and shows the power of sexual attraction even in simple algae. One cell becomes quite amoeboid as it squeezes through the narrow fertilization tube that the partner cells have just built between them. The movie was shot in time-lapse over 2 hours. By Jeremy Pickett-Heaps, University of Melbourne, Australia. Third Prize.
Water flea Daphnia atkinsoni. This specimen has a "crown of thorns," a defensive trait induced in offspring only when the parents sense chemical cues released by one of their main predators, the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis. The water flea's exoskeleton (exterior structure, green) and subcellular details within the organism (nuclei - tiny blue dots) are both visible. By Dr. Jan Michels, Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Institute of Zoology, Christian Albrecht
University of Kiel, Germany. First Prize.
Nucleus of a plant cell showing synaptonemal complex, a ladder-like protein structure that forms between pairing chromosomes during meiosis (the cell division required for reproduction). This may be the first-ever high-resolution 3D image of this complex ever captured with light microscopy. The two parallel axes of this complex, which run the length of each chromosome, are seen as two threads spaced 100-200 nm apart and twisting around each other in a helix. By Chung-Ju Rachel Wang, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, USA. 2nd Prize.
Fresh water algae Haematococcus pluvialis, 100x. Phase contrast microscopy. By Charles Krebs, Issaquah, WA, USA. Fourth Prize.
Unicellular alga Penium, treated with the microtubule poison oryzalin. By David Domozych, Department of Biology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA. Fifth Prize.
Single-cell smackdown! Amoeba trying to engulf a yeast cell by Margaret Clarke, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, OK, USA. Honorable Mention.
CAR fish fibroblast. By Maria Nemethova, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria. Honorable Mention.
Adipose tissue in living animals. Cellular dynamics and structures including erythorycytes, platelets, leukocytes, and endothelial cells are visualized through in vivo imaging. Satoshi Nishimura, Tokyo, Japan. Honorable Mention.
Desmid (green alga) dividing. Desmids are symmetrical cells composed of two identical halves or "semi-cells" that have a complex, highly ornamented and species-specific shape. Every time the cell divides, it is bisected between the two semi-cells. The two daughter cells now have to generate a new, complementary semi-cell to restore the cell's normal symmetry. This morphogenesis takes about 2 hrs. By Jeremy Pickett-Heaps, University of Melbourne, Australia. Honorable Mention.
Mouse cortical neurons (nerve cells in the brain). Each second in the movie replays one hour in real time; total time is 5 days. Scientists are looking at the trajectories of the elongating axons. Despite the disorganized culture environment, note the straight trajectory of axon growth cones. This type of experiment is extremely difficult; researchers spent two years optimizing the biology and imaging conditions to make this long-term imaging possible. By Neville Sanjana, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA. Honorable Mention.
Epidermal layer cells of Lotus japonicus dry seed. By Mayumi Wakazaki and Kiminori Toyooka, RIKEN Plant Science Center, Yokohama, Japan. Honorable Mention.
Drosophila (fruitfly) ovarioles. Fluorescence imaging. By Maria Paula Zappia, IIB-INTECH UNSAM-CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Honorable Mention.
Apicoplast. Confocal imaging. By Bernd Zobiak, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany. Honorable Mention.
Genetically-identified retinal ganglion cells. This study shows that it is possible to target genetically-identified neurons, a non- random approach to studying cell types. By Tim Viney, Friedrich Miescher Institute, Basel, Switzerland. Honorable Mention.
Fungia feeding. Fungia are large individual corals that don't form colonies or reefs. Their large and very expandable mouths allow them to eat large pieces of food compared to most corals. The movie was captured with epifluorescence, using the Fungia's own natural auto-fluorescence stimulated by UV, blue and green excitation light. James Nicholson, Coral Culture & Collaborative Research Facility, NOAA NOS NCCOS Center for Coastal Environmental Health & Biomolecular Research, Fort Johnson Marine Lab, Charleston, SC, USA. Honorable Mention.

Juha Arvid Helminen [DeviantArt via Coilhouse]

TOYIB's Gallery [DeviantArt via Nerdcore]

Greenham Airfield,June 5, 1944
Neuschwanstein 1945
Yalta Conference 1945
Cherbourg 1944
Unknown Location, 1945

The above image, by Spike Walker, was one of the winners of the 2009 Wellcome Image Awards, announced yesterday in England. Last year's winners blew us away, but if anything, this years' are even more spectacular. Many of them play to our weakness for beautiful microscopy images. Here are our absolute favorites — more images at the link. [Wellcome Image Awards]

Microparticle drug delivery by Annie Cavaugh and Dave McCarthy: A synthetic drug coated with co-polymers. Scanning electron micrograph.

Villi in the small intestine. Multiphoton fluorescent micrograph by Paul Appleton.

Capillary network. Light micrograph by Spike Walker.

Mouse liver. Scanning electron micrograph by Jackie Lewin.

Lung cancer cell. Scanning electron micrograph by Anne Weston, London Research Institute, Cancer Research, UK.

Summer plankton. Light micrograph by Spike Walker.

The winners for the 2009 competition will be announced this Thursday, October 8th. In the meantime, you can play a few rounds of Identify the Image with more finalist photos on the competition website.

Small Wonders: Finalists From the Nikon Small World Competition [PDN Photo of the Day via Metafilter]

Shamuel Silberman, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Embryo of guppy fish (40X)
Viktor Sykora, Institute of Pathophysiology, First Medical Faculty, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Hoya carnosa (wax plant) flower (10x)
Massimo Brizzi, Microcosmo Italia, Empoli, Firenze, Italy
Snail eggs (200x)
Daniel Vega, Madrid, Spain
Gall (plant tissue growth) formed by Trigonaspis mendesi (4X)
Karie Holtermann, Rancho Cucamonga, California, United States
Raindrop on butterfly wing (20X)
Norm Barker, Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Dinosaur bone, Jurassic period (15X)
Gerd A. Guenther, Düsseldorf, Germany
Sonchus asper (spiny sowthistle) flower stem section (150X)
Fabrice Parais, DIREN Basse-Normandie, Hérouville-Saint-Clair, France
Atherix ibis (fly) aquatic larva (25x)
Yanping Wang, Beijing Planetarium, Beijing, China
Snowflake (40X)
Frederique Ruf-Zamojski, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, United States
Zebrafish embryo, 22 hours post-fertilization, living specimen (40X)

More information about the organisms, the project, and her travels is available at Sussman's blog.

The Oldest Living Things in the World [Rachel Sussman via The Long Now]

La Llareta, up to 3,300 years old
Sagole Baobab, 2,000 years old
Clonal Creosote Bush, 12,000 years old
Siberian Actinobacteria, about 400,000 years old
Jomon Sugi Japanese Cedar, 7,000 years old
Lichen R. Geographicum, about 3,000 years old
Clonal Quaking Aspens, 80,000 years old
Underground Forest, 13,000 years old
Welwitschia Mirabilis, 2,000 years old
Clonal Mojave Yucca, over 12,000 years old

Hackenwerth started working with party balloons as a street performer, and now creates these enormous sculptures, the largest of which stands at 40 feet. Each sculpture uses hundreds of balloons and takes several hours to make. As many people comment that the airy monsters resemble sea creatures, Hackenwerth frequently photographs them at the beach, although they occasionally invade the cities and forests as well.

Attack of the 50ft party balloon [Daily Mail via Make]

Much of Van Aelst's work is focused on unconventional representations of information, and he is especially interested in using ordinary household objects to illustrate the key concepts that hold life and the universe together. In addition to his more edible works, he also uses nuts and bolts to illustrate the phases of the moon, represents a single heartbeat in parted hair, and heaps together Christmas lights in the shape of the human brain.

[Kevin Van Aelst via Make]

Chromosomes
Logarithmic Spiral
Beta Carotene
Golden Mean
Dragon Curve
Cellular Mitosis (Krispy Kreme)
Cantor Set
Periodic Table
Sierpinski's Arrowhead
Common Clouds

[Lex Machina via Warren Ellis]

Andreev combines (illegally taken) photos of the Moscow Underground with other images to create portraits of gloomy horror. Some of the photos suggest the subway system (one of the oldest and deepest in the world) is a hotbed for arcane mystical activity, others seem built on urban legends of gigantic insects making their homes in the tunnels, and still others are straightforward science fiction, with the daily commute supervised by watchful robotic overlords.

The Horror of Subway [English Russia via Environmental Graffiti]

Judges for the Royal Observatory Greenwich combed through over 500 images of moons, planets, nebula, and Earth's own night sky, and chose twenty top photos in each of four categories: Deep Space, Earth and Space, Our Solar System, and Young Photographers — for astronomy buffs 16 and under. Judges were especially wowed by Pugh's image of the oft-photographed Horsehead Nebula. Said Chris Lintott, competition judge and co-presenter of the BBC's The Sky at Night:

I think this is the perfect deep-sky image; perfectly composed, it grabs your attention straight away. When you look closer, the detail is absolutely stunning, whether it's the fine structure in the curtain behind the horse or the subtle details on the edge of the dark nebula itself.

The winning photos will be on display at the Royal Observatory until January 10th, 2010.

[Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2009]

Horsehead Nebula by Martin Pugh — Astronomy Photograph of the Year, Winner Deep Space
Star Trails, Blue Mountains by Ted Dobosz — Winner Earth and Space
Blue Sky Moon by Michael O'Connell — Winner Our Solar System
Occultation of Venus by Paul Smith, aged 14 — Winner Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year
Galaxies M81 and M82 by Edward Henry — Runner Up Deep Space
Venus, Jupiter and Moon trails over the Nepean River by Vincent Miu — Runner Up Earth and Space
3.1 Day-old Moon by Nick Smith — Runner Up Our Solar System
No Dogs on Beach by Sarah Gilligan, aged 11 — Runner Up Young Photographer of the Year
Galactic Dust in Corona Australis by Martin Pugh — Highly Commended Deep Space
Centaurus-A: Ultra-Deep Field by Michael Sidonio — Highly Commended Deep Space
Eta Carina Nebula by Thomas Davis — Highly Commended Deep Space
Milky Way by Nik Szymanek — Highly Commended Earth and Space
Bow of Orion by Karl Johnston — Highly Commended Earth and Space
Death Valley Star Trails by Nikhil Shahi — Highly Commended Earth and Space
Clavius-Moretus Mosaic by Nick Smith — Highly Commended Our Solar System
Comet Holmes by Nick Howes — Highly Commended Our Solar System
Venus by Paul Smith, aged 14 — Highly Commended Young Photographer of the Year
Full Moon by Jathin Premjith, aged 13 — Highly Commended Young Photographer of the Year
Mercury and the crescent moon by Ben Fernando, aged 15 — Highly Commended Young Photographer of the Year

Much of McCarty's work is commercial, commissioned by toy companies, Rockstar Games, and Adult Swim, and his job is to bring art toys to life. In the process, he's amassed an impressive portfolio of playful scenes starring everything from the Hulk to Sasquatch to visitors from another world.

[McCarty PhotoWorks via The Photo Argus via The Presurfer]
[Brian McCarty on Flickr]

Broken Hearted Robot
Alter Ego
Bertie the Pipebomb
Turtle Camper
The God of Animation
Meltdown
Cheez-It
Sasquatch Splash
Mom and Dad
Juke-Bot
Sasquatch Attack!

Bunny Van
Business as Usual
Laughing Squid
YHWH
Gorbo
El Chupacabra
Little A'Le'Inn
Shake-zula, the Mic Rula
Transformers Go to Hollywood

I love how carefully these parks have been laid out, as if each feature might really be a capacitor or processor.

Hosang Park via 20X200

Ross's book Waiting for the End of the World contains photographs and accounts of bomb shelters from across America, Europe, and Asia. Below are photos from just a few of those shelters: shelters in Sanpete and Salt Lake City, Utah, the Phillip Hoag and Charlie Hull Shelters in Emigrant, Montana, oil tycoon's Ling Chieh Kung's shelter in Conroe, Texas, and a public shelter near Zurich.

Picture Show: Waiting for the End of the World [GOOD Magazine via Presurfer]

Kitchen in shelter in Sanpete, Utah
Entrance to shelter in Sanpete, Utah
Storage Shelves in Sanpete, Utah
Entrance to shelter in Salt Lake City, Utah
Traverse tunnel in shelter in Salt Lake City, Utah
Entrance to Phillip Hoag Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Communications tower for Phillip Hoag Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Entrance to Kung's shelter in Conroe, Texas
Jail cells in Kung's shelter in Conroe, Texas
Operating room in Kung's shelter in Conroe, Texas
Bedroom in Charlie Hull Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Bedroom in Charlie Hull Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Living room in Charlie Hull Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Air filters in public shelter near Zurich, Switzerland
Doors to public shelter near Zurich, Switzerland
Personal unit in public shelter near Zurich, Switzerland

Cassidy says the project was inspired by a visit to a Hugo Award-winning author's house, where he began to wonder about the connection between a writer's work and their environment:

I spend a lot of time thinking about people's environments — the places they build around themselves, the things they choose to live with. Is there a connection, I started to wonder if there was a connection between the places that writers work and their work itself.

Cassidy plans to collect these and additional photos — including the Neil Gaiman and Lois McMaster Bujold's workspaces — with interviews from the authors into a full-length book.

[Where I Write via Metafilter]

Photographer Kirk McMenamin, who submitted this image to National Geographic's "Your Shot" writes:

This is a shot of an FA-18 performing a high-speed pass that resulted in a vapor cone forming around the back half of the plane. When viewed head-on, it made the plane appear to be coming out of a porthole. The photo was taken during the 2009 Gold Cup Races on the Detroit River.

I think McMenamin meant "portal," not "porthole." Like in Stargate or Lost.

via Your Shot

Star trails reflect the rotation of the Earth, showing how the stars seem to spin in concentric circles around a fixed point in the sky. Photographers who want to capture these trails take several short-exposure pictures over a period of days, weeks, or even months. The resulting pictures are unique, because the camera is able to capture subtle differences in chemical make-up and color that the human eye is unable to discern. Thus, the individual rings are far brighter and more varied than you might expect from simply looking up at the stars yourself.

Star Trails: Secret Paintings of the Night Sky [Environmental Graffiti]

A toy hobbyist known on the Toyster.ru forums as Aquila painstakingly created a step-by-step photo series of Russian men in World War II uniforms, assembling a T-800. As the sign in the final few pictures indicates, the T-800 has orders to travel to Berlin, and, unless John Connor had an ancestor hanging around the Nazi stronghold at the time, this T-800 was probably built (and perhaps traveled back in time) to kill Adolf Hitler. Of course, we know that never actually works.

[Toyster.ru via Metafilter]