...I love it when xkcd pertains.
Mike
(Thanks to James Hengst)
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Featured Comments from:
D Evans6: "Coincidentally, someone with a Blackberry has just failed to settle the Loch Ness question. Frustratingly, I was at the same spot a month ago with a 300mm lens."
Mike replies: This is what it looks like when you take that photo and enhance it.
Peter: "There's also a generational shift in there somewhere, in that he didn't bring up Elvis."
In the particular case of the Loch Ness monster, things were settled ages ago, without needing cameras: for a large animal to survive (and unless you believe in very strange things) in fact for a breeding population of such animals to survive there needs to be enough large-animal-food in the loch. Well, you can look at the ecosystem and people have done this and it there isn't. So it doesn't exist.
However this xkcd is brilliant, I think.
Posted by: Tim Bradshaw | Wednesday, 10 July 2013 at 06:16 AM
This link, Mike? http://ggwallftw.com/gamewidescreenwallpapers/monster-hunter-3g-wallpaper.html
Also, on 'enhancing photos' as seen in movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk
Will
Posted by: Will Frostmill | Wednesday, 10 July 2013 at 08:17 AM
My family spent a few nights up near Lake George a couple weeks ago and went to an evening "ghost tour" at the Fort William Henry museum. (I don't subscribe to the supernatural, but was hoping to hear some entertaining stories). There was one woman there who kept taking flash pictures in the dark, annoying the heck out of everyone else. The hosts kept talking about people who have photographed "glowing orbs" down this hallway or under those stairs. Finally, she asked everyone to gather round because someone had captured orbs and she wanted us all to see what they looked like. Surprise, surprise, it was Wonder Flash Woman and her "orbs" looked for all the world like dust floating in front of the lens overexposed by the flash.
Posted by: Dennis | Wednesday, 10 July 2013 at 09:04 AM
Ah, but you forget National Geographics Ancient Aliens and Discoveries never ending search for Bigfoot (who by the way calls himself or herself Sasquatch or so I've heard). Better news in Holland the wolves are back (one was according to Dutch fashion killed in traffic). And of course there was the real life black pather running through the wood in Apeldoorn (to clever to be driven to kingdom come and photgraphed by stunned tourists to fill the 2005 summer gap).
Greets, Ed.
Posted by: Ed | Wednesday, 10 July 2013 at 11:38 AM
Funny. I was strolling down Beverly Boulevard, in Los Angeles, just two weeks ago, and spied what sure looked like Nessie to me. I just grabbed the shot, I make no claims. Let the experts decide.
http://stephengillette.tumblr.com/post/53876977283/nessie
Posted by: Stephen Gillette | Wednesday, 10 July 2013 at 12:22 PM
I'm just sayin' this so I can sidestep any responsibility for my thoughts which I'm writing here and absolve myself in advance so don't be giving me any grief in your response and this is my forum anyway so bugger off with your opinions: http://psychcentral.com/lib/2012/defending-against-im-just-saying-and-other-verbal-annoyances/ :) (which is kind of the same thing)
Posted by: Steven House | Wednesday, 10 July 2013 at 01:06 PM
I've spent enough time around Loch Ness with long lenses (in the old days with Kodachrome and/or Tri-X) to have an emotional attachment to the idea that there just might be something there. As Tim points out there can't be a breeding population of large animals, though seals do enter from the Moray Firth from time to time . The theory that makes sense to me is that occasionally one of the eels that live in the Loch can live much longer and grow much larger than usual.
Posted by: D Evans6 | Wednesday, 10 July 2013 at 07:27 PM