It’s opening day of Birmingham, England’s Crufts dog show, which claims to be the world’s largest. Good luck cards pinned above a dog’s stall hint at the stakes. Indeed, even the walk into the exhibition hall seems like a performance.
In table tennis, a player has fractions of a second to react to her opponent’s play. The photographer, meanwhile, tries to react to them both. For all parties, anticipating is the only way to stay ahead. Anyone who’s ever tried to photograph any type of ball sport — or even just a toddler tossing a toy — should appreciate these shots of the 2016 World Team Table Tennis Championships by Manan Vatsyayana of Agence France-Presse.
No matter what the groundhog says, or what the thermometer says back home, the sight of their teams on the practice fields in Florida and Arizona tells baseball fans spring can’t be far, even if only the last couple weeks of spring training are actually in spring. Here’s a glimpse of some of the early action in Major League Baseball camps.
Jackie Treehorn’s pad is becoming part of an art museum? “Far out,” we hear The Dude gasping. The living room that the film “The Big Lebowski” set in Malibu is, in real life, in the hills, not by the beach. Now, the convention- and gravity-defying home its part of, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright disciple John Lautner, is being donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which plans to use it for fundraisers, exhibitions, conferences, and collaborations with other museums, the L.A. Times reports. In a Times column, the museum’s director called it “one of the most important houses in all of L.A.” and “one of the most L.A. houses.”
Across the Christian world, it’s a day for indulgence. Fats and dairy traditionally forbidden during Lent, which begins tomorrow, are packed into pastries, doughnuts and other celebrated treats, including pancakes, the inspiration of a hundreds-year-old race in Olney, England. Legend says a housewife at the stove when called to church dashed to the service with her frying pan, a pancake still inside it. More recently, the women of Liberal, Kansas, got in on the fun, challenging Olney to a friendly international competition after seeing media coverage about the event.
Iowans defending their place at the front of presidential nominating cycle like to say that the state’s relatively low population and intimate voting process let voters talk to candidates and each other face-to-face, resulting in a thorough vetting of the hopefuls and issues that the rest of the country benefits from. Whether you agree with that or not, the caucuses, which involve speechifying on behalf of candidates, and, on the Democratic side, cajoling to woo or hold onto supporters, are a spectacle unlike most of us are accustomed to seeing on Election Day.
Since financially struggling Flint, Michigan, changed its water source without adding a chemical to control corrosion, residents have been unhappy with the water’s smell, taste and appearance, and have reported rashes, hair loss and other ailments. One activist, Melissa Mays, told the Detroit News she loved the city despite its economic troubles, tied to the loss of auto industry jobs, but with her three sons suffering a bevy of medical problems they believe are linked to the water, she now wants to leave, if she can sell her home. “Trapped is a pretty decent word,” she said.
In the second year of the College Football Playoff championship game, the Alabama Crimson Tide defeated the Clemson Tigers 45-40 Monday night at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, capturing its fourth national title in seven years.
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This week the New York Public Library began offering high-resolution downloads of the more than 187,000 items from its Digital Collections that are in the public domain. They include thousands of stereographs donated by collector Robert N. Dennis, including a few hundred taken in Maryland, a sampling of which can be seen in the slideshow below.
The Consumer Technology Association’s International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, is the world’s largest annual technology trade show. Ahead of the Jan. 6-9 event in Las Vegas, media got a preview of some of the products and services to be exhibited, including cameras, wearables, drones, robots, and health and safety systems.
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