I've only linked to the Boston Globe's The Big Picture once before, when they had amazing pictures of Jupiter. Kottke talks about this feature a lot, and for good reason: the pictures in these sets, without exception, are gorgeous and stirring, And as I'm a huge lover of good photography, I should probably link to this more often.

The set that finally gets a second link is The Next President of the United States, on the eve of his inauguration. These are great photos and exciting times.

G33k Lite has a short slideshow of 16 pictures called Perception. It's in the same vein as those photos your friends took in Italy where they're holding up (or pushing down) the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And after looking through the photos, it makes me wonder why I don't try to take more pictures like that.

Landscape + Urbanism Blog has a picture of an explosion that took place after someone that didn't check for underground pipelines ruptured a high-pressure gas pipe with an automated post hol digger. The scale of this is amazing!

A very cute picture of a spider on a frog on a turtle. You may also wish to read the children's story that sprang from this picture, or the shorter, and much better, account of the rescue.

APOD has a picture of the earth during a solar eclipse, as seen from the Mir space station.

Flickr user KCIvey has pictures of former Saturday Night Live writer and funnyman Al Franken at a fundraiser where he draws freehand a map of the US from memory while answering questions about healthcare and other topics. For the skeptics, there's also a video on YouTube of him doing the same thing. I've always liked Al Franken, and I'd buy one of these in a heartbeat.

At Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, there is an area called the Devil's Swimming Pool that allows people to swim safely right next to the vertical drop of the falls. It looks ridiculously frightening, but is apparently completely safe.

The blog Fogonazos collected some pictures and videos from around the internet of people swimming in the Devil's Pool. Snopes also says this is the real deal.

A 25-year-old man named Israel Sarrio had his arm severed in an accident. Doctors managed to reattach it, but were forced to amputate it again once infection set in. In an effort to keep the arm alive, the doctors attached it to his thigh for nine days to ensure the wound was clean, then reattached it to his shoulder.

Sounds like bullshit -- but no. The money shot is here, but the full story, and more pictures, can be found here.

Flickr user Dean Allen has kindly posted a mouth-watering set of pictures showing how he made bacon from, uh, scratch, I guess. It's amazing, thoroughly interesting, and makes me want to go eat bacon.

The Boston Globe has posted some breathtaking pictures of Jupiter and its moons from various NASA space missions dating back to 1979. A few of the pictures try to give a good sense of just how big Jupiter is, but I don't think the human mind can really comprehend it fully. One photo, for instance, shows the Great Red Spot, saying it's 20,000 km across. The diameter of the Earth is roughly 12,756 km, meaning you could almost fit two Earths side-by-side in it. The picture itself was taken from over two million km away. Crazy.

Mike Sacks takes pictures of his TV. I thought this was something that might get pretty old pretty quickly, but there are some good ones (Cheryl Tyler, Head of Hooters Girl Casting). I mostly like how it points out all of the garbage they put on TV that passes for news (Joe Winiecki - Forced to change shirt).

(Via Kottke)

Here's an inspired page in what I think is Russian, where individuals have photographed themselves acting out childrens' drawings. Delightful!

Flickr user Sean (Ajka_Hungary) posts a very powerful request from his step-father to please stop smoking.

Broken wall + Sense of humour = This

This is a really, really cool picture of Chicago at night.