This is the Lavender Pit, part of the Copper Queen Mine in Bisbee, Arizona. The Phelps Dodge Corporation began work on this huge hole in 1951, but they had to move 46 million tons of material before they reached the copper.

However, by 1975 over one billion tons of copper had been successfully extracted, at which point the price of copper plummeted, and the whole mine was closed.

Given that the demand for copper is currently rising again (and therefore the price), I wonder which bright spark will try to reopen one of these ecological disasters first?

Read more about the Lavender Pit at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Jeff and John B.

The last time we posted an apparently leaky ship, there was a little debate about whether or not there was oil in the water, but I doubt you can deny that there is certainly a oily haze around this container ship in Galveston Bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico.

And, it might just be me, but can anyone else see Munch’s The Scream in this thumbnail shot?

Thanks: Frank Taylor

CNBC: “I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?”

President George W. Bush: “Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see – I’ve forgot the name of the program – but you get the satellite, and you can – like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.”

(Watch the video)

Via Andy Baio’s Waxy.org, and thanks to punk floyd, Joey, Kyle Maxwell, Jason, Markus, Benjamin, Larry, rob schimmel, Tony, Gut, Rick Second and Greg Askins.

Mazinger Z is a giant manga robot who had his own anime show in the early 70s, and according to Wikipedia had a great influence on the Super Robot genre.

In this satellite photograph we can see a giant statue of Mazinger, standing proudly in a Spanish field. Nope that wasn’t a typo (’Japanese’ being quite a few keystrokes away) – this really is in Spain! But who built him there and why?

I’d never heard of Mazinger Z, but the show was a surprise hit in Spain, despite being edited down from the original violent Japanese version. A babelfish translation of this Spanish article might shed more light on the statue’s origins…

The statue of the Mazinger was constructed 20-25 ago years, when they emitted the series by tele, so Mazinger is the guardian of our urbanization.

Umm, nope, that didn’t help much. Loved the Power Rangers poses though.

Thanks: Gumbor

It’s not often we would get to post about a council estate in Scotland, but this particular estate in Toryglen, Glasgow was the location for the latest Sony Bravia advert, which features huge quantities of paint exploding from the high-rise in our thumbnail.

The video was directed by Jonathan Glazer (who also directed the awesome Virtual Insanity video for Jamiroquai), and it took 250 people 10 days to film. It also took 60 people 5 days to clean up the mess afterwards.

I hope the residents of this estate were paid well – as I wouldn’t have thought many people who live here would be able to afford one of Sony’s TVs otherwise*.

* A little clarification seems to be required here – this comment was meant to reflect upon the overpricing of Sony products rather than the financial status of any of Toryglen’s residents. Apologies if any offence was caused.

Thanks to Nick Miners.