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Condensed knowledge for 2007-05-10

Like chicken soup, but full of plump bits of juicy data:

  • The Cellar is running a few shots of a nasty deer accident in IotD. Kinda graphic, but thankfully the driver was okay. Watch for those deer, folks! Drive slower when you’re in wooded areas. You never know when one of them will jump out in front of you.
  • There’s a city called Raoul in Georgia (State of Georgia, that is). Funny to me.
  • I’ve posted a Star Wars “Mahna Mahna” mashup yesterday. I’ve also been driving Ligia crazy singing the song at home. I’ve even IM’d her with links to that video. 😀 Now it’s time to post the original video. Ah, good old Mahna Mahna! Jump down to see the video directly, or use the link to view it over at YouTube.
  • DailyMotion’s got a neat video called L’image parfaite (the perfect image). It’s packed full of visual illusions that peel away to reveal sad truths.
  • Fulgerica.ca has a nice compilation of videos and images about and from Romania. I blogged (separately) about those images and videos here and here, some time ago, but it’s nice to revisit them.
  • New Scientist has a great post about spying on other people’s computer displays by tuning into the radiation emitted by the monitors themselves (CRT) or the wires (LCD). Interesting research.
  • Dark Roasted Blend has some really neat photos of newborn hedgehogs. Cute!
  • Urologists have approached the study of erectile dysfunction with engineering tools. The results are… interesting. [via Kottke.org]
  • BlogCritics is running a post on the proposed gas boycott of 5/15. I got news of this via email from my mom a few days ago. It sounded silly from the get-go. Remember that far-fetched idea of last year, when some people suggested we not buy gas on a certain day? What did that do? Absolutely nothing. Now they propose we stop buying from the two largest corporations: Exxon and Mobil. They say it’ll drive prices down. Not only is this silly, but it’s very short sighted. Even if it works, and I’m not saying it will, it’ll only be a short-term patch. Gas prices will still rise. I for one am happy about that. Let them rise. It’ll force people to purchase more fuel-efficient cars, and will provide a much-needed market drive toward the production of even more fuel-efficient cars. Incidentally, it’ll also encourage people to drive less and plan their trips better. I might also mention that it’ll provide added incentive for the oil and energy companies to explore new fuel alternatives, many of which are not financially viable unless the price of gas rises to match the production costs for the other fuels. So forget the boycott, and focus on the long-term solutions instead. It’s smarter and more effective.
  • I had no idea that Bill Gates was a bully at the office. But that’s his management style apparently. And, he curses, too. Who’d have thought? An ex-product manager at MS serves up the goods on his blog. [via Kottke.org]
  • This is absolutely awesome. If you haven’t heard of the movie Baraka, you should watch it. It uses time lapse sequences to explore life. This 10 minute segment published to Google Video is fantastic. You can also watch it below. I could write a whole essay about that segment alone. No wonder they say an image speaks a thousand words. The director looks at modern life and its dehumanizing aspects with a fantastic eye. Just watch the video and you’ll understand. [via Kottke.org]
  • Mental_floss has a post about a new re-telling of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” in modern terms. It features striking paintings by Sandow Birk, and it’s animated in a very captivating way using cutouts. There’s even a trailer you can watch, and I’m making it available below as well.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7877306475042790908

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Funny videos

A college professor reviews funny comments from his students on a class survey. Great fun!

This is a stop-motion “seduction” dance, performed by two camcorders.

Want to learn how to speak “body”? Look no further than this hilarious instructional video.

When Bill Gates announced his retirement as CEO, David Letterman wanted to put together a tribute. Here’s the result.

I love the Mah-Nah song, and naturally I enjoyed this Star Wars mash-up.

Michel Gondry, the French director, solves a Rubik’s cube with his nose.

Have you ever wondered what the Chartered Accountant Dance looks like? Wonder no more, here it is!

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Condensed knowledge for 2007-05-06

Here’s the good stuff:

  • Want to watch cheese mature? A company in England wanted to show the process and time involved in making good cheese, so they installed a web cam next to aging cheddar. That hunk of cheese has now become an Internet star.
  • Escape the Meatrix! Watch this movie to find out what it is and how to join the resistance. 🙂
  • Neatorama has a great post on three animals we ate into extinction. Oh, the poor dodo bird, it never stood a chance, even if its meat was gross.
  • This toothless old man from Russia has a really elastic face (and a really long tongue as well). The video is slightly disturbing, and it begs the question, why would you want to lick your own eyes? I can see him now, scaring little kids in his village. The parents, shuddering, will tell their kids, “See, this is what happens if you don’t brush your teeth!”
  • Have you been wondering why no one reads your blog? This post may have the answer.
  • This bird, called the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, has got to be one of the funniest looking animals I’ve ever seen! 🙂
  • Oh, how I wish I were a boy once more (sans school and homework) and got “The Dangerous Book for Boys” as a birthday present!
  • A fire burned through the historic Eastern Market in DC recently. This Washington Post article has photos.
  • Ever wondered just how our sense of smell works? Well, wonder no more, because Wondermark has the answer.
  • Apparently surgeons have started to perform abdominal surgeries through the mouth (and in women, a certain other orifice)… The advantage is that there’s no external scarring, and the recovery time is much, much better. The patient can go home the same day. Still, I’m pretty grossed out by the whole thing. I would not want bits and pieces of my appendix or gall bladder or other such thing pulled through my mouth. It’s just plain weird.
  • A couple of days ago, I started my browser in the morning and saw that the logo on my Google Home page had changed to iGoogle. For a moment, I thought Google and Apple had merged, but later found out the real explanation.
  • A physician from France wrote Linux drivers for 235 web cams, particularly bargain ones made in China, with no proper drivers and no support whatsoever. And he did this all for free, unrecognized, working from his own home. That’s just plain cool!
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Videos about photography

I thought I’d share a few of my favorite videos about photography with you. The first video is called “Miniature Earth”, and the photos used in it are really powerful.

This next video took two years to make. It’s called “Koya Moments”, and chronicles the changing weather, light and seasons over Edinburgh, Scotland.

Dove put out a video showing the transition that takes place in makeup and Photoshop to make a model look good. It’s pretty sad really, to see that beauty is not only skin-deep but also quite elusive.

I believe this time lapse video was done by a French director, who drove across America with a friend of his in a convertible.

This is a beautiful time lapse video of the 2006 Reno Balloon Race:

Here’s how a typical fashion photo shoot takes place. The subject of this shoot is Martin Scorsese.

Holger Eilhard, a fellow photographer, put together this great time lapse video of one of the Berlin gates. It’s a whole day, from dawn to dusk.

These are a couple of the “take a photo every day” projects:

This is a humorous look at the rise of a photographer. He’s a Nikon guy and I shoot Canon, but I won’t hold that against him… 🙂

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Funny animal videos

This video of two otters holding hands has been viewed over 5,000,000 times on YouTube. I think that makes it a hit. 🙂

A dalmatian watching Disney’s “101 Dalmatians” howls along with the movie dogs. The poor thing thinks something bad has really happened.

A man in Japan has invented a deep fryer that houses a goldfish bowl underneath. Somehow, the temperature of the water is kept low enough for the fish to survive, and of course the oil stays on top of the water since its density is lower, creating a nice separation barrier. Fried bits of food fall toward the bottom from the top, and the fish get their food as well. What I’d like to know is how he cleans the water, and how the fish get their oxygen. What’s more, how in the world does he take out the dead or sick fish, or put new ones in there? In concept, this is interesting, but in practice, it seems like a pretty rough way to treat some poor dumb organisms.

This looks like a frat boy prank, and since I saved this video, I’ve seen lookalike videos popping up. If you look carefully, you’ll see the trainer enticing the dolphin to climb up on the man by holding a bit of food over his shoulder. What happens thereafter is anyone’s best guess. Are the dolphins trained to move like that, or does some reflex kick in that makes them hump like dogs? I don’t know. Apparently the man knew what he was getting into. It’s pretty sad, and after the cheap laugh wears off, you gotta wonder why the heck anyone would pay for something like that…

A donkey cart gets overloaded somewhere in a Far East country, and the poor animal is left stranded in the air. The people then rush to unload the cart and bring the donkey back to earth. Gee, we’ve only been using animals to pull carts for how long… maybe thousands of years… and we still haven’t learned how to properly stack the loads.

This is a compilation of thieving animal videos. Remember, it’s only funny until it happens to you.

Check out Bebo, the beatboxing bird:

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