Today's Time Magazine Pictures of the Week are from Jan 13 - 20th. Enjoy; pics link through to their appearance on Time's site.
Incidentally, if you happen to enjoy seeing when my (now infrequent) updates popup on your dashboard: I'm considering moving over to Wordpress, where I'd probably expand the range of stuff that I post about, making it less of a themed blog. Although captions would probably still be the primary focus. And maybe pictures of food I make, because it seems like everyone has to have one of those.
If you have an opinion about that, do me a quick favor and leave a comment on this post (I have Disqus, which is supposed to let you do that--if not, I dunno, send me a message through the Ask A Question function). If you don't have an opinion, I hope you get diarrhea.
All pictures not owned by me. Hover your mouse over the images to get the alt-text.
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi makes like she's going to high-five supporters, but then leaves them hanging.
North Korean light filters in through filthy windowpanes. Pak Eunju stands by the window. The day is long, but it wanes. The year is long, and it has just begun. Kim Jong-Il is dead, and little has changed. She can think of nothing but her symbolic matryoshka: the goldfish in their plastic box; she in this room; this room in North Korea. Like the fish, she is captive in a bubble, an enclosure stranded in a universe of unbreathable atmosphere. There is physically nowhere she can go, she is too much a creature of this environment, and leaving, if the ones who watch her didn't do it first, would eventually kill her. Some days, she wishes the yellow goldfish's scales would fluff and grow into feathers, gills seal and eyes bead, fins elongate into airy wings, scrawny clawy legs sprout, thick gaping lips petrify and point into small chirping beak, and they would become canaries, flighty animals. Then they would drown under that water, but at least they would die in motion.
Indian soldiers from the Border Security Forces line up atop their sacred camels on the outskirts of town. They prepare themselves for the most deadly of tasks: Camel Polo.
During a farewell ceremony in Chengdu, Sichuan Province in China, the nefarious villain Pandamonium appeared with his Panderizer ray and turned the assembled populace into small stuffed animals. The Bamboozler, Pandamonium's arch-nemesis and erstwhile defender of Chengdu, was not available for comment.
After a spate of austerity measures which involved selling off military assets to cover budgets, the Greek army found itself without vehicles of war. Deprived of tanks and AA cannon, it had resorted to medieval machinery of war, but found that the cost of wood and trebuchet design to also be outside of its budget. Forced down to the bare bones, they resorted to recruiting the Bowling Ball Catapult Troops, here photographed during training exercises.
Giaccamo Belli, entranced by the pretty shinies in the Christmas tree in Vatican City, climbed up and now can't get back down.
New Delhi, India. Paramilitary troops investigate flickering lights they saw off the path to town. They follow them deeper, picking their way between trunks, mist curling at the gentle footpads that stalk beneath camel bodies. At one point, Sandeep says, "Hey; where are we?" and nobody knows. All senses of direction have evaporated, absorbed into the fog. The lights they followed twinkle out one by one, and the troops are left alone beneath a single canopy. Hanif swings a leg over, slides off his camel, and pats it; instinctively the camel kneels, lowers heavy lids, relaxes. Hanif follows suit beneath the tree. "My friends," he says, unbuttoning the regulation brass at his collar, slipping off his beret, loosening his belt, and resting at the foot of the trunk, "I think we're home."
Dusak Simocko of Slovakia in action during the men's 10km sprint individual event. At about km 3, a piston sprung loose; a sprocket overheated and tore through the weakened rubber coating like it was pantyhose; crank-shafts and springs peeled and pealed out with comical sproings and per-twangs, superheated vapor whistled out from miniscule broken seals at his joints. As the coating was shredded by unaccounted friction, a man made of brass and gears and watchworks, steam-powered, punked, was revealed. What am I? Dusak worried, still pumping back and forth rapidly deteriorating limbs. He had, after all, a mission to fulfill.
An Ethiopian Orthodox Christian female pilgrim is pictured at a mass before the annual festival of Timkat in Lalibela, Ethiopia which celebrates the returning of Bumba, the voracious god of spiders. This pilgrim and her child have already been cocooned in silk; at the peak of the festival, they will be fed to the giant spiders of the steppes.
Here's a bit of American folklore for you: back in 1831, Christopher Smith, the uncreatively-named blacksmith of a small town in Texas (it was called Town O' The Six-Times Blessed then, although now it's known more as an unassuming patch of dirt in the Texas plains), was a happily-married man with six young daughters, purtiest things you ever saw. Pressure began to build in those days, as the stage was set for the violent Texas Colonists' Revolt, and in those high times roving bandits were wild with passion. A posse of outlaws rode into Town O' The Six-Times Blessed and caused mighty havok in the square. Smith was taking his daughters for an outing that day, and the outlaws couldn't resist. By the time they rode off into the blood-red sunset, Smith was one blistered eye and six daughters poorer. Before a half-burned town still hot with flames he swore that day that he would kill every man who had rode into town and taken his daughters from him--and every man, woman and child who had stood by and watched it happen.
Over the next three years he fulfilled his vow, and forty-seven people lay dead. The ringleader of the band he saved for last, torturing the poor soul with molten metal and all the secrets of pain a blacksmith knows for fifteen months without respite.
At last, the law caught up with poor, deranged Christopher Smith, and he was hanged without much ceremony.
Christopher's fiery corpse can still be seen sometimes riding the dirt paths between Liberty and El Paso. It is said that when the endtimes finally come, he will take his place beside the Four as the Horseshoeman of the Apocalypse.
This is what you don't know about the process of Gummi Bear manufacturing.
January 18: the 2012 Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne. Spain's Rafael Nadal versus Germany's Tommy Hass.
Nadal has always been able to do this; it's what makes him such an unstoppable player. At a certain point in the ball's arc, the picture freezes. The moment thins like taffy into an infinitely long gummy thread, sweet and salty and just bitter enough. And the world goes black, everything that is not the sport and his direction is eliminated from the world. Nadal sees only the tiny asteroid of neon fuzz, and the path where he will command it to go. And for some reason he's never been able to filter out the ball guys just off the side of the court.
Private Xinjuan Ai! You think it's funny to fall asleep in line? This oughta wake you up!
The Royal Yacht Britannia, in dry dock at Forth Points in Edinburgh, Scotland, models its dainty legs for a magazine ad.
White bishop to G5, king in check.
At the Sharif Islamic Committee, a community center operated by the Muslim Brotherhood in a neighborhood of Cairo, Imperial Snowtroopers offer free health and education services.
The severe depletion of military camels due to the violence of Camel Polo and a whole mounted unit just straight up disappearing into the woods, the New Delhi Indian Border Security Force has had to cut back on transportation costs. It now requires all troops to carpool to work.