The auteur's Super Bowl

What if the Super Bowl was directed by Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino? You'd get something like this. The Werner Herzog bit at the end is great.

Man carried across Manhattan by strangers

Comedian Mark Malkoff set out to disprove that New Yorkers are unfriendly and unhelpful by cajoling people into carrying him the length of Manhattan.

Hilarious. He made it all the way up to 141st St & Broadway! (thx, micah)

Richard Feynman explains magnets, sort of

I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you're more familiar with, because I don't understand it in terms of anything else you're more familiar with.

This is why science is so maddening for some and so great for others.

First two minutes of Lost season six

I couldn't find the entire first hour of the season six premiere of Lost that was supposed to have leaked online, but this contains the first two minutes (plus two minutes from last season):

Update: I've gotten some angry emails saying that I have spoiled the Lost season premiere for people by embedding this video showing the still frame of Jack on an airplane. To rebut:

1. Lost is unspoilable. What you think is happening either didn't happen, won't happen, will happen again, and has nothing to do with with happened previously or afterwards.

2. Seeing the first two minutes of a TV show doesn't spoil the TV show...that's just watching the show.

3. At the end of last season, if you picked the most obvious scenario for season six to open with, it would have been that the bomb reset the timeline and then seeing everyone on Flight 815 headed safely for Los Angeles, oblivious of all that we've witnessed in the past five years. You can't spoil the obvious.

Update: Ok, here's the first hour of the season premiere (starts at around 1:35:20). It's a poor recording with even worse sound, but it's watchable if you have to know RIGHT NOW. (thx, jeffrey)

Trippy morphing time-stitch video

I'm not sure what to the call the effect in this video -- timelapse stop-motion? panorama time-stitch? -- but I haven't seen its like before.

Multi-touch interactions on the iPad

For all you UI nerds out there, a four-minute video collection of some of the multi-touch gestures and actions on the iPad from Wednesday's event.

Here are the annotations. (via @h_fj)

Panoramic video camera

Remember those CNN videos of Haiti that I linked to last week? The ones where you could pan around in the scene as the video played? It's probable that CNN used the Yellowbird camera to do them.

The camera uses six cleverly divided lenses in order to capture every possible viewing direction. The data stream generated by the camera is impressive. Through a double glass-fiber connection, a stream of 1200 Mbit per second is captured and saved in an uncompressed format.

Check out the demo. (thx, rakesh)

Update: Or perhaps they used Immersive Media's rig. Their bridge-jumping demo is pretty crazy. They also did some videos for Red Bull of surfing the monster waves at Teahupoo. (thx, carl & kevin)

Tape measure tricks

Nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills, tape measure skills. Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.

The crash of Flight 815 in realtime

We're about a week away so this synchronized view of the crash of Flight 815 in realtime is a good amuse bouche for the season six premiere of Lost.

Stop motion thanks

The National Board of Review gave Wes Anderson a Special Filmmaking Achievement award for Fantastic Mr. Fox; Anderson accepted the award in the medium of stop motion animation.

Best extended movie takes

Mike Le has collected 20 great extended takes from a variety of movies, including no-brainers like The Shining and The Player but also some you may not have noticed before. (via @sippey)

Werner Herzog reads Curious George

The accent isn't perfect (Herzog's distinctive voice is difficult to impersonate well) but there are some great lines in this.

Video panoramas

This is a pretty amazing effect: CNN is doing panoramic videos that allow the user to pan around while the video plays. Watching and panning feel as though you're actually walking around in the scene holding the camera. (thx, jed)

Mother's History of Birds

A touching (but not sentimental) short documentary about the filmmaker's mother and her birds.

Fine crappy foods

This video deftly skewers the food industry's current fixations, including This-Is-Why-You're-Fat-grade hamburgers, fancy TV dinners, and junk food masquerading as wholesome:

We take the finest ingredients and put them in a bowl with salt and butter.

And "hide your salad" describes my salad dressing technique perfectly...it ends up more like ranch soup, really.

The bee orchid

A species of orchid from Israel that looks and smells like a female bee tricks male long-horned bees into pollinating them.

Update: Michael Pollan recently discussed orchids in a piece for National Geographic.

Update: There was a scene in Adaptation about the bee orchid. (thx, charley)

Nirvana covers Seasons in the Sun

Cobain with the vocals and the drumming. (thx, jon)

Andy Warhol's MTV show

Of course Andy Warhol made a TV show for MTV called Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes.

The whole thing is a perfect snapshot of everything to love and hate about the 1980s: the art bull market, Manhattan, fashion's hardworking LGBT backbone, and the nature of celebrity in the dawn of the fractured and streaming media world we live in now.

The link above has pointers to downloads of footage from three shows. (via fimoculous)

Guys with swords, sometimes cutting stuff

I don't know what this is, but it's funny and (via @sfj)

NYC timelapse

Watch the moon rise, planes land, smokestacks smoke, traffic pulse, and the sun rise.

Update: Coates posted an HD version of the same video.

Update: Here's another NYC timelapse, this one by Dale Short. He also made a timelapse of the construction of the Cooper Union Academic Building:

This is two and a half years of construction at about 4 frames per day up until May 24, 2009.

Unchopping a tree

From Maya Lin, a short video about deforestation.

The unchopped tree bit in the last minute is particularly beautiful.

The Avon Barksdale Story

Here's the trailer for The Avon Barksdale Story, a documentary about the real-life Baltimore gangster than inspired the Avon Barksdale character on The Wire.

Barksdale's real name, Nathan Avon Barksdale, and his nickname, "Bodie," were both used in the series as composite characters. Avon Barksdale was The Wire's first season's central character. The storyline focused on the Barksdale clan and their ruthless hold on Baltimore's underworld and the intense efforts of law enforcement to stop them. Barksdale was a real crime figure in Baltimore.

(thx, mark)

How a soccer ball is made

And not just any soccer ball...the official match ball for the 2010 World Cup.

Free to Choose with Milton Friedman

There's not a whole lot to do at work this week, right? So how about tucking into all ten hours of a PBS documentary featuring economist Milton Friedman called Free to Choose. Here's part one:

Here's part two and part three...all the rest are available on Google Video (aside from part six for some reason). From Wikipedia, a brief description of the series:

PBS telecast the series, beginning in January 1980; the general format was that of Dr. Friedman visiting and narrating a number of success and failure stories in history, which Dr. Friedman attributes to capitalism or the lack thereof (e.g. Hong Kong is commended for its free markets, while India is excoriated for relying on centralized planning especially for its protection of its traditional textile industry). Following the primary show, Dr. Friedman would engage in discussion with a number of selected persons, such as Donald Rumsfeld (then of G.D. Searle & Company).

Nation's Pride

Nation's Pride is a fictional Nazi propaganda film that appeared in Inglourious Basterds. The six-minute clip above was released as a promotion for IB and was shot by Eli Roth, who played the baseball bat-wielding Bear Jew (and is also a director of some repute). (thx, jeffrey)

Darth Vader opens Wall Street

Darth Vader and a number of Storm Troopers from the Star Wars Saga rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

(via @kngofwrld)

Why the Phantom Menace sucks

I confess that I only had time this morning to watch the first 10 minutes, but from that viewing I can safely conclude that this is the best 70-minute video critique of The Phantom Menace that exists in the world. If the first 20 seconds don't get you, stick around until "protagonist". Or don't take my word for it; here's Lost's Damon Lindelof's reaction:

Your life is about to change. This is astounding film making. Watch ALL of it.

Part the first:

After watching the last 3-4 minutes of this first segment, I wanted to give Lucas a hug because I feel so bad for the guy for failing in public in such a huge way. (thx, scott)

Enhance your hyperspace

A bunch of clips from movies and TV that show people enhancing things on computer screens:

And a more artful collection of hyperspace scenes from movies:

Both are via Andy, Mr. Supercuts himself.

The future of magazines, maybe, pt 2

Magazine publishers Bonnier and BERG, a London design consultancy, have collaborated on a digital magazine prototype called Mag+. The conceptual device is impressive in its restraint and its truth to form and function.

We find that the graphical page-turning metaphors that you see quite frequently in web-based e-magazine readers are not terribly believable, and they don't feel very honest to the form of the screen. [...] Scrolling systems are more appropriate to what we're dealing with.

Sing it, brother! Also of note is the way that the video takes the conventional "let me talk over some graphics" screencast and presents it in a much more compelling way.

The Known Universe

The Known Universe zooms out from Tibet to the limits of the observable universe. Dim the lights, full-screen it in HD, and you're in for a treat.

Like Powers of Ten, except astronomically accurate. It's not a dramatization, it's a map; the positioning data was pulled from Hayden Planetarium's Digital Universe Atlas, which is available for free download.

Since 1998, the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium have engaged in the three-dimensional mapping of the Universe. This cosmic cartography brings a new perspective to our place in the Universe and will redefine your sense of home. The Digital Universe Atlas is distributed to you via packages that contain our data products, like the Milky Way Atlas and the Extragalactic Atlas, and requires free software allowing you to explore the atlas by flying through it on your computer.

How Porsches are made: by hand

Here's the first part in a series of five videos from the 1960s that show how Porsches are made:

A Continuous Lean has the other four parts.

Guitar Hero with 21,268 Christmas lights

This is possibly the most American thing I've ever seen:

Such ingenuity combined with such conspicuous waste. (via waxy)

The making of an Eames fiberglass chair

From 1970, this video shows how Eames fiberglass shell chairs were made.

Greg Allen says:

The idea of design has been so thoroughly associated with computers in my mind, I'd forgotten the essential sculptural processes it used to involve: carving, modelmaking, molding, pouring... How design and art ever stayed separate in those days, I cannot imagine.

Lucas wanted David Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi

In this video, Lynch decribes a visit with George Lucas and why he turned down Lucas' offer to direct Return of the Jedi.

So, he took me upstairs and he showed me these things called Wookiees. And now this headache is getting stronger.

Orson Welles doesn't like Rosebud

I'm ashamed of Rosebud. I think it's a rather tawdry device. It's the thing I like least in Kane. It's kind of a dollar book Freudian gag. It doesn't stand up very well.

Even calmly answering interview questions and sipping on tea from fine china, Welles is an imposing presence. (via clusterflock)

Update: Here's the first part of the full 50-minute CBC interview from which the snippet above was pulled. Part two, part three, part four, part five, and part six. (thx, blake)

The People Speak

Loosely based on Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, The People Speak is a show that features well-known actors reading famous speeches and letters from American history.

Using dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries and speeches of everyday Americans, The People Speak gives voice to those who spoke up for social change throughout U.S. history, forging a nation from the bottom up with their insistence on equality and justice.

The show starts airing this Sunday but many of the performances are already available online.

Flexing of the Manhattan Bridge

Watch as one of Manhattan's main arteries pulses with the entering and exiting subway trains.

Imagining Earth with Saturn's rings

This video of what Earth would look like with Saturnine rings is pretty ho-hum, yeah, there's a shot from orbit of the Earth with Saturn's rings around it, and then BAM! here's what it would look like at night in NYC:

The view from Ecuador is pretty great too.

Update: Greg Allen wants an iPhone app that adds in Saturn's rings to any shot you take with the camera.

With the combination of GPS and orientation data that's baked in to so many digital photographs, it should be possible to create a filter -- I hear the kids call them apps now -- that automatically inserts properly positioned Saturn rings into any sky you want.

An augmented reality app would be nice too.

Two-Headed Boy

Video of Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel singing Two-Headed Boy at the Knitting Factory in NYC on March 7, 1998.

Intensity.

The future of magazines, maybe

Nice concept for a Sports Illustrated e-reader interface.

Lady Gaga + typeface = awesome

Jesus, this is nerdy (and hilarious): a Lady Gaga parody about a typeface.

(via @caterina)

OK Go, WTF

A delightfully low-tech but colorful music video from OK Go. Looks like it was shot it one take.

You may remember OK Go from their famous treadmill video. (thx, mike)

Update: Here's how they made the video. (thx, everyone)

Shaking cocktails

Kazuo Uyeda demonstrates his hard shake:

From an article in the NY Times about cocktail shaking:

Mr. Uyeda, who owns a bar named Tender in the Ginza district, is the inventor of a much-debated shaking technique he calls the hard shake, a choreographed set of motions involving a ferocious snapping of the wrists while holding the shaker slanted and twisting it. According to his Web site, this imparts, among other things, greater chill and velvety bubbles that keep the harshness of the alcohol from contacting the tongue, while showering fine particles of ice across the drink's surface.

The Matrix in Lego

This is amazing: a stop-motion recreation of the Neo-dodges-bullets-on-the-roof scene from The Matrix done entirely in Lego.

Food in movies

Another great video essay from Matt Zoller Seitz: Feast, a tribute to images of food on film.

Cooking, perhaps more than any activity, lets an actor exude absolute physical and intellectual mastery without seeming domineering or smug. Why is that? It's probably because, while cooking is a creative talent that has a certain egotistical component (what good cook isn't proud of his or her skills?), there's something inherently humbling about preparing food for other people. It doesn't matter whether you're a workaday gangster footsoldier giving lessons on how to cook for 20 guys, like Richard Castellano's Clemenza in The Godfather, or a hyper-articulate, super-fussy kitchen philosopher like Tony Shalhoub in Big Night, ("To eat good food is to be close to God..."), when you're cooking, it's ultimately not about you; it's about the people at the table. Their approval and pleasure is the end game.

The fall of empires

A visualization of the decline of the world's four maritime empires (British, Portuguese, French, Spanish) from 1800 to 2009.

France pretty much just explodes around 1960.

Drawing is thinking

A short video in which Milton Glaser extols the virtues of drawing while drawing.

It is only through drawing that I look at things carefully.

DIY chicken plucking machine

Not for the squeamish. Or you can build your own. (via eat me daily)

Electrically conductive steak as art

For his piece Steak Filter, Noah Feehan ran a video signal of a steak cooking through the actual steak. The deterioration of the video signal becomes a sign of how done the steak is.

Quite literally, I am plugging composite video into a big steak, which is then cooked. The video signal going through the steak is the image of the steak cooking. Gradually, the steak loses moisture and signal can no longer pass.

The videos don't really show too much, but I love the idea. (via eat me daily)

The 100 best quotes from The Wire

This is really well done. (thx, joris)

Update: The next 100 greatest quotes from The Wire. (thx, charlie)

Grand Theft Koyaanisqatsi

A timelapse video of 15-days of game play in Grand Theft Auto IV. Sadly not set to the music of Philip Glass. (thx, rob)

Update: An early teaser video for GTA IV featured Philip Glass' music as well as some timelapse footage. (thx, michael)

Slow motion water drops

When you shoot video of water drops falling into a puddle in super slow motion, it turns out that they bounce in really interesting ways.

(via 3qd)

From Wassap! to Obama, a decade in review

As part of Newsweek's extensive 2010 project (more on that next week), they've produced a 7-minute video showing the highlights from the past decade.

Wassup! Wassup! What a decade. (thx, jr)

How to play the piano like Philip Glass

(via merlin)

1920s footage of London, in color

If you liked the film of the 1905 streetcar ride down Market Street in San Francisco, you might enjoy this 1927 film of various sites around London, including several down-the-street shots. Oh, and it's in color. In the 1920s.

This clip is from a larger film called The Open Road by Claude Friese-Greene. He shot the film with a process his father William had developed called Biocolour.

William began the development of an additive colour film process called Biocolour. This process produced the illusion of true colour by exposing each alternate frame of ordinary black-and-white film stock through a two different coloured filters. Each alternate frame of the monochrome print was then stained red or green. Although the projection of Biocolour prints did provide a tolerable illusion of true colour, it suffered from noticeable flickering and red-and-green fringing when the subject was in rapid motion. In an attempt to overcome the colour fringing problem, a faster-than-usual frame rate was used.

(via @jamesjm)

Amazing Matt Meola surfing video

This video was offline so soon after I posted it and is so crazy that I thought it deserved more than an update to the old post. So here it is again. Watch it, watch it, watch it. (thx, tomek)

Market Street, 1905

Man, lots of good stuff today. This is a film of a trip down Market Street in San Francisco taken in 1905 from the front of a streetcar. The array of driving styles and vehicles on display here is dazzling. (via justin blanton)

Video mixtape

Somehow Ricardo Autobahn has constructed a coherent mix-video song from all sorts of movie and TV clips. It's just flat-out awesome; watch it:

See also Christian Marclay. (via fimoculous)

Making of: CG for Star Wars

There was a short CG special effects sequence in Star Wars (the Death Star explanation at the Rebel briefing); here's how it was made.

Denver to Singapore in 5 minutes

Timelapse video of a trip from Denver to Singapore and back again.

I made a time lapse video of a weekend trip I did to singapore by hanging a point and shoot around my neck, taking a snapshot every couple minutes/hours.

Amazing surfing video of Matt Meola

It is difficult to watch this video of Matt Meola surfing and not think of the evolution of skateboarding, particularly the transition between freestyle skating and the invention of vert in the empty swimming pools of southern California. Most of the stuff he does looks impossible. (via matt's a.whole)

Update: Gah, the video has been pulled offline for some reason. Here's another one, not quite as good. You can also try YouTube.

Dressing like a grownup

The first episode of a new web series "about dressing like a grownup" called Put This On is about denim. Denim like a jean. Put This On is hosted by Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America and Adam Lisagor, the web's loneliest sandwich.

Worst cut to commercial ever

I was watching The Perfect Storm on The Weather Channel the other night and witnessed the worst cut to commercial in the history of television.

If you're not familiar with the film, this is *the* scene in the movie, the climax...when this huge wave overwhelms the Andrea Gail and all souls are lost at sea. Bravo, Weather Channel. Next time, have somebody view the movie before you chop it up randomly for ads.

Update: This one might be worse. With about two minutes remaining in extra time of a 0-0 match between Everton and Liverpool, ITV cut away to commercial and back just in time...to see the players celebrating the winning goal. I think "wankers!" is the appropriate response here.

This cut to commercial during Battlestar Galactica (spoilers! or so I'm told) is pretty bad as well. (thx, michael & gerald)

Butchering a side of beef

Video of a butcher breaking down a substantial piece of beef.

Meat Appreciation: A NYC Restaurant Honors the Whole Animal from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

Meet Shanna Pacifico, the chef de cuisine & butcher at Back Forty restaurant in New York City. She helped devise a sustainable meat program that brings in whole animals to make up their menu, where everything gets used and nothing goes to waste.

NSFV (not safe for vegetarians). (via serious eats)

Banner ads on flies

A company at a German trade show tied tiny banner ads to flies as a promotional stunt. This video footage is weee-eird.

The banners, measuring just a few centimetres across, seem to be causing the beleaguered flies a bit of piloting trouble. The weight keeps the flies at a lower altitude and forces them to rest more often, which is a stroke of genius on the part of the marketing creatives: the flies end up at about eye level, and whenever a fly is forced to land and recover, the banner is clearly visible. What's more, the zig-zagging of the fly naturally attracts the attention because of its rapid movement.

One marketing creative's stroke of genius is another person's animal cruelty.

The long zoom of cells

Awesome zoomable demonstration of the scale of cells, book-ended from macro to nano by a coffee bean and a carbon atom. See also Powers of Ten.

Levi's (sponsored by America)

This is a 36-second wax cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reading a few lines from his poem, America. You may recognize the recording from its use in Levi's new ad campaign:

I thought for sure that Ryan McGinley had directed this and the O Pioneers! commercial but it turns out he just (just!) did the photos for the print campaign. (via slate)

Update: The audio clip used in that commercial might not be Whitman after all. From the inbox:

The Walt Whitman recording that is being used by the Levi's commercial that you posted on the 28th is actually not Whitman, and is now considered by most audio archivists to be a hoax.

More information about this most interesting recording can be found in Vol. X, No. 3 of Allen Koenigsberg's Antique Phonograph Monthly magazine from 1992, pages 9-11.

Among things pointed out, one is that the speech on the soundtrack ends with the quote, "Freedom Law and Love," whereas the original printed version of the poem ends with "Chair'd in the adamant of Time."

Koenigsberg also points out that Whitman's last years were chronicled on a daily basis by his personal secretary, and being wheelchair-bound, such a visit for Whitman would have been difficult, unprecedented, and undoubtedly noted.

(thx, jack)

Star Guitar

Star Guitar music video. Music by The Chemical Brothers. Video directed by Michel Gondry.

The making of the Star Guitar music video.

Ever since this video blew my mind when I first watched it, I've wondered how it was made. Turns out Gondry tested the concept out on a sidewalk with oranges, shoes, videotapes, and drinking glasses. Alas, the making of doesn't cover the three months of post production required by the finished product, although the video isn't completely digital as you might expect:

The video is based on DV footage Gondry shot while on vacation in France. They shot the train ride 10 different times during the day to get different light gradients.

Still love that video.

Music videos of the decade

Antville has a list of the 100 best music videos of the decade, the first 50 or so are embedded right on the page. (via fimoculous)

How to shoot an anvil 200 feet into the air

If you've ever wanted to see someone shoot an anvil 200 feet into the air, you should watch this video. (And not just someone...a world champion anvil shooter.)

With gunpowder and a fuse. Just like Wile E. Coyote! (thx, rob)

First video from a plane, 1909

This short film was made in 1909 and depicts Wilbur Wright flying one of his airplanes around an open field. At 1:38, they attach the camera to the plane and shot what is thought to be the first video footage shot from a powered flying machine.

Then the plane started up again, followed a launching pad and took off: the camera was fixed for the first time on the ground that gave way...and the emotion was there, so great you could almost touch it! The image was as unstable as the cabin of the plane flying at low altitude, flying over the countryside and gradually approaching a town.

(via @ebertchicago)

Sand animation of Germany invading Ukraine

Kseniya Simonova won Ukraine's Got Talent 2009 competition with her dramatization of Germany's invasion of Ukraine during WWII, performed with sand on a giant lightbox. Sounds like the cheesiest thing, but this performance is amazing.

Watch until at least 1:06...that's when my mouth dropped open a bit. The entire audience was in tears by the end. (via @jessicadeva)

10/GUI

10/GUI is a new proposal for a way of interacting with personal computers using all ten fingers in a multitouch scheme. Very Minority Report.

(thx, david)

Drinking like Mad Men

Some folks from the web magazine Double X wondered what it would be like to drink as much in the workplace as the characters do on Mad Men. So they spent the day getting hammered and tried to do some work. The results are somewhat different than on the show.

The Botany of Desire documentary

PBS will be airing a two-hour-long documentary based on Michael Pollan's excellent The Botany of Desire (previously recommended here).

The tulip, by gratifying our desire for a certain kind of beauty, has gotten us to take it from its origins in Central Asia and disperse it around the world. Marijuana, by gratifying our desire to change consciousness, has gotten people to risk their lives, their freedom, in order to grow more of it and plant more of it. The potato, by gratifying our desire for control, control over nature so that we can feed ourselves has gotten itself out of South America and expanded its range far beyond where it was 500 years ago. And the apple, by gratifying our desire for sweetness begins in the forests of Kazakhstan and is now the universal fruit. These are great winners in the dance of domestication.

A five minute preview of the show is available on YouTube:

I've watched the whole program and it's a worthy companion to the book.

Update: PBS has put the whole thing online for free. (via unlikely words)

Rare hour-long Alfred Hitchcock interview

In 1973, Tom Snyder interviewed Alfred Hitchcock for the Tomorrow Show. Thought to be lost, the whole thing is now up on YouTube after being transferred from a VHS tape. Here's part one:

To follow: part two, part three, part four, part five, and part six.

Beyonce's Single Ladies covered by Pomplamoose

A good example of what Robin Sloan calls the production-as-performance video.

What I love about the approach is that it's showing us a complicated, virtuoso performance, but making it really clear and accessible at the same time. It's entertaining, but it's also an exercise in demystification -- which of course is exactly the opposite objective of every music video, ever. Their purpose has been to mystify, to masquerade, to mythologize in real-time.

The value of time off

Every seven years, Stefan Sagmeister closes his design studio for a year of focused R&D.

Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook. He explains the often overlooked value of time off and shows the innovative projects inspired by his time in Bali.

Bullets are slow

You're going to spend the next 10 minutes watching bullet impacts in super slow motion.

The really amazing part -- nope, not the instant bullet liquification (!!!) -- is how quickly other things happen after the bullet hits something. Glass seems to crack almost instantly, even at a million fps, making the bullets seem pokey in comparison.

Carl Sagan Auto-Tune (feat. Stephen Hawking)

Maybe you're tired of un-pop-music-like things being run through Auto-Tune, but I'm not quite there yet. This Auto-Tuned Carl Sagan mix is very nearly sublime.

From sketch to photo instantly (this is insanely awesome)

Wow. With PhotoSketch, you just draw a sketch, label each item, like so:

and then the system goes out, finds photos that match the sketched items and their labels, and automatically pastes it all together into one composite image:

The site is down right now but the paper is available for download and this video gives you a taste of how it works:

Again, wow. (via migurski)

Update: I've seen many references to Photosketch saying that it has to be fake (here's a sampling). But it's pretty obviously real. For one thing, here's the source code; try it out (Windows only). It was presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009; here's the listing of papers presented. The authors all have web pages on university sites and have published work using similar techniques and technology (Ping Tan and Ariel Shamir for example). And is what it does really that unbelievable? At the most basic level Photosketch is just find me a man that's sorta shaped like this, a dog that looks like this, and paste them together with a background that looks like this. That the results are so impressive (especially for a demo) is a testament to the team's execution and attention to the small details. Even if it turns out to be an elaborate hoax, I have no doubt that someone could actually build a working version of Photosketch...I mean, look at TinEye and Photosynth.

Philip Glass on Sesame Street

Loved this when I was a kid; all those shapes right there in those circles.

Amazing avalanche rescue video

A skier with a video camera on his helmet gets caught in an avalanche and then, four and a half minutes later, gets rescued. The good stuff starts around one minute in.

This was a decent sized avalanche. 1,500 feet the dude fell in a little over 20 seconds. The crown was about 1 - 1.5m. The chute that he got sucked through to the skier's right was flanked on either side by cliff bands that were about 30m tall. He luckily didn't break any bones and obviously didn't hit anything on the run out.

I had always assumed -- and this is likely based almost entirely on an episode of The Simpsons -- that you had options when buried by an avalanche...like digging yourself out or at least being able to move. Not so says the Utah Avalanche Center FAQ:

It doesn't matter which way is up. You can't dig yourself out of avalanche debris. It's like you are buried in concrete. Your friends must dig you out.

The FAQ contains a story by the director of the UAC about surviving an avalanche of his own; he confirms the concrete-like hardness of post-avalanche snow.

But after a long while, after I was about to pass out from lack of air, the avalanche began to slow down and the tumbling finally stopped. I was on the surface and I could breathe again. But as I bobbed along on the soft, moving blanket of snow, which had slowed from about 50 miles per hour to around 30, I discovered that my body was quite a bit denser than avalanche debris and it tended to sink if it wasn't swimming hard. [...] Eventually, the swimming worked, and when the avalanche finally came to a stop I found myself buried only to my waist, breathing hard, very wet and very cold.

I remembered from the avalanche books that debris instantly sets up like concrete as soon as it comes to a stop but its one of those facts that you don't entirely believe. But sure enough, everything below the snow surface was like a body cast. Barehanded, (the first thing an avalanche does is rip off your hat and mittens) I chipped away at the rock-hard snow with my shovel for a good 5 minutes before I could finally work my legs free.

Hammer vs. feather on the Moon

Nothing like a little science on the Moon, I always say.

Astronaut David Scott in 1971, from the Apollo 15 Lunar Surface Journal. Scott was part of the Apollo 15 crew, and applied Galileo's findings about gravity and mass by testing a falcon feather and a hammer. The film, shown in countless high school physics classes, is the nerdy, oft-neglected cousin of Neil Armstrong's space paces.

Bringing the oyster back to New York

Michael Osinski grows oysters out on Long Island, now an unusual pursuit in an area that used to support dozens of oyster companies...New York used to be the place for oysters (see also).

If you'd like to try them out, Widow's Hole sells their oysters to several NYC restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe, and Bouley. Osinski achieved a bit of notoriety earlier this year when he wrote an article about his experience writing software for Wall Street firms called My Manhattan Project: How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street. (via serious eats)

Robotic pancake sorter

This robot can sort pancakes at a rate of over 400 ppm (pancakes per minute).

The action gets going at about 1:15...don't miss the explanation of the pancake buffer shelf about 2/3s of the way through. (via eat me daily)

19th century movie in color

Each frame of this 19th century film by the Lumière brothers was hand-colored to create an early color moving picture. The color-shifting effect of the dress looks quite modern.

The dancing was inspired by Loie Fuller, a modern dance pioneer.

David Attenborough's favorite animals

I can't get this to work (because I'm in the US?) but the BBC has put up a collection of David Attenborough's favorite moments from his last 30 years of shooting nature documentary videos. More info here.

It has always been my hope that through filmmaking I can bring the wonder of the natural world into people's sitting rooms, inspire people to find out more and to care about the world we share.

(via @dunstan)

Weird neck exercise machine

My wife almost wet her pants at this part of a TV ad for the Neckline Slimmer. This odd little device reminds me a bit of the eye exercises that Speed Reader did on The Great Space Coaster. (Congrats if you get that reference.)

How to win at Scrabble

How to win at Scrabble if you're perhaps not that good at the words thing.

Scrabble isn't a game of who can get the best 6 letter words. It's a game of points and squeezing 2 letter terms into corners. Mehal Shah takes us through clean and sometimes dirty ways to win at Scrabble.

(via radar)

Federer between the legs shot at US Open

This is the most ridiculously implausible tennis shot you'll ever see.

Federer says "it was the greatest shot I ever hit in my life".

Michael Jordan's 23 most memorable moments

Michael Jordan is set for induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend and in honor of the best player ever, ESPN is counting down with video of his 23 most memorable moments.

Djokovic and McEnroe have a hit

Novak Djokovic, the clown prince of tennis, did his impression of John McEnroe after a victory at the US Open the other day and McEnroe came down from the booth to do his best Djokovic impression.

Al Franken draws map of USA

His US map is one of the best hand-drawn maps I've seen.

(via sippey)

Fire ant lifeboat

Watch as some fire ants built a lifeboat (out of themselves!) after the Amazon floods.

If I'm ever in a vegetative state after an accident or anything, just cue up a bunch of BBC nature videos and I'll be good.

The sling shot man

Rufus Hussey is a crack shot with a slingshot.

Rufus hit the big-time when he was invited to appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. After a bit of small-talk, Johnny asked, " I understand you're going to demonstrate your skill... is that right?" Rufus replied, "Sure! I'd rather shoot the beanshooter than shoot the bull." Soon Rufus was shooting a corncob from Johnny's hand.

(via reference library)

100 years of special effects

A wonderfully concise video tour of how special effects in film have evolved since 1900.

Anthony Bourdain's Disappearing Manhattan

A Continuous Lean recommends Anthony Bourdain's Disappearing Manhattan episode of No Reservations...with the pertinent YouTube embeds.

Fuck, it's worth a watch even if you have seen it ten times. Eisenberg's, Manganaro Foods, Keens, Le Veau d'Or, this show is like my NYC gastro-playbook. Watch it, love it, live it.

Grub Street has some textual CliffsNotes if you're not into the video. If I had one of them life lists, sharing a meal with Bourdain would probably be on it.

Acceleration

Somewhat related to the apple video from the other day is Jake Lodwick's Acceleration.

Federer's (nearly) flawless footwork

A New York TImes video explains Roger Federer's footwork and how it helps him be so effective and efficient on the court. Bonus: the creepy CG version of Federer makes him seem like even more of a robot. (via clusterflock)

Ecological apple

This is about as creepy as you can make an apple. (via clusterflock)

How a car's differential gear works

The video starts off with synchronized motorcycle riding but give it a minute.

Museum of Animal Perspectives

A bunch of videos that show the world from the perspective of several animals, including an armadillo, a wolf, a scorpion and a house fly. Here's a bison's view of moving with a herd:

(via @dunstan)

NYC parkour

Rocketboom recently profiled some parkour practitioners in NYC. Is 35 too late to take up a new sport?

Man in a van interview

Jimmy Tarangelo lives in Manhattan in a van down by the river.

He doesn't like paying rent, but he does like living in Manhattan. So what does he do? He lives in a van down by the river, literally. I spent a few hours with Jimmy and let him speak his mind.

Wrist-mounted flamethrowers

A man demonstrates a pair of wrist-mounted flame throwers in his garage.

This somehow does not end in tragedy, but I see a very painful sneeze in this fellow's future. (via minizud)

Celebrity GPS voices

I had no idea you could get celebrity voices for your GPS navigation device. There's Mr. T ("what does he say if you need to go to the airport?"), Yoda, KITT from Knight Rider, Michael Caine, Kim Cattrall, the Star Trek computer voice, Homer Simpson, Gary Busey, and Dennis Hopper.

And then of course you've got the mashups like Mr. T navigates Mr. Bean, Mr. T navigates Frogger, and Mr. T navigating in Mario Kart Wii.

You may even be able to get a Bob Dylan voice soon.

Widescreen vs pan and scan

This video features a number of directors talking about the difference between viewing films in widescreen vs. pan and scan. Martin Scorsese:

[Converting to pan & scan] is, technically, re-directing the movie.

Update: Thoughts from David Lynch about pan and scan taken from a 1997 interview:

I would like to see everything done letterboxed and with great sound. I'm not too interested in doing the commentary, you know, like a lot of people do. But in some strange way I kind of like pan-and-scan. Because you see things. It is a compromise, and in a couple of things you really say, "Why am I doing it?" But it's just an interesting thing that happens- another composition. It's not so bad, but I wish really that people could see the thing in a theater and that laserdiscs and videos didn't exist. Because on the big screen with the sound, you become inside the film, and that's the beauty of cinema. And it never happens on video, and it doesn't happen on laserdisc, either.

(thx, bill)

Life advice from old people

Seth Menachem takes his video camera out on the streets and collects Life Advice From Old People. Menachem is in the movie biz so he even got advice from Jon Voight and Errol Morris.

Helen Keller video

This 1930 newsreel footage shows Helen Keller and her companion Anne Sullivan demonstrating how Keller learned to speak.

Much is made of Keller's method of sign language, but I had no idea she could talk. (via gulfstream)

Update: Here's an audio clip of Keller giving a speech.

Damn nature, you scary!

I almost wet my pants laughing the other night watching this little bit on Family Guy:

The Midtown Games

It was so hot in New York City last week -- HOW HOT WAS IT? -- it was so hot that the first event of the Midtown Games was held in a fountain on 50th St.: a 50m freestyle swim.

Friday, August 14th at 1pm marked the opening event of the Midtown Games: Olympics, and was attended primarily by the city's punch-drunk, heat-stroked interns. With the blare of a foghorn the crowd closed in like a shield, trumpets sang out "Eye of the Tiger" and five swimmers in Speedos and caps leapt into the burbly water of a decorative fountain to swim its 50 metres or so in elegant racing style.

Burning car

The best part of this video of a car on fire is the sound. (via today and tomorrow)

The 2000s, summed up

Momus is first out of the gate with a summary of the 00s, what he calls a "mister narrative of the decade"...a one-man master narrative.

Other things that looked dead or dying this decade: I personally stopped going to the cinema. Why sit behind someone's head in a fleapit when you can download all you need to see and project it at home? Copyright effectively died, overtaken, de facto, by events on the internet. Magazines and newspapers ended the decade looking very unhealthy indeed, although books seemed strong. Young people got a lot less interested in cars, leading some to label Japan a post-car society. Detroit pretty much collapsed. The polar ice caps melted rapidly; climate change is a fact. Banks -- having invented what they thought were clever ways to spread risk around, and play with planet-sized sums of entirely fictional money -- looked pretty shaky.

Embedded in Momus's post is a video called Rise of the Rest, the title of which was borrowed from Fareed Zakaria.

From the video:

In ten years, the number one English speaking country in the world will be USA India China.

Don't text while driving

This is why you shouldn't text while driving. While you're at it, knock it off with the phone conversations, lipstick application, and crossword puzzles. NSFW or for the faint-of-heart.

While I was away

JD's girlfriend was not a good listener. He was leaving on a trip to Europe for two weeks. She wasn't aware he had left. Then the emails started.

(via that's how it happened)

Quentin Tarantino's top 20 movies

Quentin Tarantino talks about his 20 favorite movies that have been made since he became a director.

Here's the full list in handy text form:

Battle Royale
Anything Else
Audition
Blade
Boogie Nights
Dazed & Confused
Dogville
Fight Club
Fridays
The Host
The Insider
Joint Security Area
Lost In Translation
The Matrix
Memories of Murder
Police Story 3
Shaun of the Dead
Speed
Team America
Unbreakable

Interview Project

Interview Project features David Lynch traveling around the country and interviewing normal folks. (thx, youngna)

Update: David Lynch isn't travelling around...his son Austin and Jason S. are co-directing. (thx, eric)

Harrison Ford, family guy

Harrison Ford is concerned about his family. Like in every movie he's ever been in. (via cyn-c)

Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3-D

Using redshift data, a 3-D animated view of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field was created.

A long walk across China

Man shaves head, walks across China for a year, grows beard & crazy hair, and takes daily photos and short videos of himself along the way, which he stitches into this.

Paris is Burning

Smashing Telly found the entirety of a documentary called Paris is Burning on YouTube.

This is a documentary about vogueing, and the extremely refined and detailed aesthetic sensibilities it reflects, shot in New York City around Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, and Harlem in the mid- to late-80s. The city has changed in dramatic ways since then, to say the least. The characters of the film are complete outsiders with, at the same time, a deep understanding of the world they are outside of.

Check out a recent example of vogue dancing.

High speed robotic hands

Wow. I had no idea that robots could move that quickly. (via justin blanton)

Insect flight patterns

Video composed of long-exposure photos of bugs buzzing around a streetlight.

(via snarkmarket)

Vol Libre, an amazing CG film from 1980

In 1980, Boeing employee Loren Carpenter presented a film called Vol Libre at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference. It was the world's first film using fractals to generate the graphics. Even now it's impressive to watch:

That must have been absolutely mindblowing in 1980. The audience went nuts and Carpenter, the Boeing engineer from out of nowhere, was offered a job at Lucasfilm on the spot. He accepted immediately. This account comes from Droidmaker, a fascinating-looking book about George Lucas, Lucasfilm, and Pixar:

Fournier gave his talk on fractal math, and Loren gave his talk on all the different algorithms there were for generating fractals, and how some were better than others for making lightning bolts or boundaries. "All pretty technical stuff," recalled Carpenter. "Then I showed the film."

He stood before the thousand engineers crammed into the conference hall, all of whom had seen the image on the cover of the conference proceedings, many of whom had a hunch something cool was going to happen. He introduced his little film that would demonstrate that these algorithms were real. The hall darkened. And the Beatles began.

Vol Libre soared over rocky mountains with snowy peaks, banking and diving like a glider. It was utterly realistic, certainly more so than anything ever before created by a computer. After a minute there was a small interlude demonstrating some surrealistic floating objects, spheres with lightning bolts electrifying their insides. And then it ended with a climatic zooming flight through the landscape, finally coming to rest on a tiny teapot, Martin Newell's infamous creation, sitting on the mountainside.

The audience erupted. The entire hall was on their feet and hollering. They wanted to see it again. "There had never been anything like it," recalled Ed Catmull. Loren was beaming.

"There was strategy in this," said Loren, "because I knew that Ed and Alvy were going to be in the front row of the room when I was giving this talk." Everyone at Siggraph knew about Ed and Alvy and the aggregation at Lucasfilm. They were already rock stars. Ed and Alvy walked up to Loren Carpenter after the film and asked if he could start in October.

Carpenter's fractal technique was used by the computer graphics department at ILM (a subsidiary of Lucasfilm) for their first feature film sequence and the first film sequence to be completely computer generated: the Genesis effect in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The sequence was intended to act as a commerical of sorts for the computer graphics group, aimed at an audience outside the company and for George Lucas himself. Lucas, it seems, wasn't up to speed on what the ILM CG people were capable of. Again, from Droidmaker:

It was important to Alvy that the effects support the story, and not eclipse it. "No gratuitous 3-D graphics," he told the team in their first production meeting. "This is our chance to tell George Lucas what it is we do."

The commercial worked on Lucas but a few years later, the computer graphics group at ILM was sold by Lucas to Steve Jobs for $5 million and became Pixar. Loren Carpenter is still at Pixar today; he's the company's Chief Scientist. (via binary bonsai)

Cory Arcangel's atonal YouTube cat video mashup

Drei Klavierstücke op. 11 is a set of pieces written for the piano by Arnold Schoenberg in 1909, some of the first western music to written in an atonal style. Cory Arcangel took a bunch of YouTube videos of cats playing the piano and fused them together into a performance of op. 11.

This project fuses a few different things I have been interested in lately, mainly "cats", copy & paste net junk, and youtube's tendency in the past few years to host videos that are as good and many times similar to my favorite video artworks. I think all this is somehow related.

Cory's no-bullshit statements about his art are just as entertaining as the work itself:

So, I probably made this video the most backwards and bone headed way possible, but I am a hacker in the traditional definition of someone who glues together ugly code and not a programmer. For this project I used some programs to help me save time in finding the right cats. Anyway, first I downloaded every video of a cat playing piano I could find on Youtube. I ended up with about 170 videos...

You can catch Cory's project in-person at Team Gallery in NYC and at Kunsthaus Graz in Austria.

Tron Legacy trailer

They're making a new Tron movie. And it looks like it might not suck! (via @dburka)

Update: The Tron Legacy trailer and Michael Jackson's Beat It match up pretty well, don't they?

You Are There

First broadcast on the radio in 1947, You Are There presented historic events as they would have been reported by modern news broadcasters. In 1953, the program jumped to television with Walter Cronkite as the host, who also hosted a brief revival of the show in the 70s.

The series also featured various key events in American and world history, portrayed in dramatic recreations, with one addition -- CBS News reporters, in modern-day suits, would report on the action and interview the characters. Each episode would begin with the characters setting the scene. Cronkite, from his anchor desk in New York, would give a few words on what was about to happen. An announcer would then give the date and the event, followed by a bold, "You Are There!"

Cronkite would then return to describe the event and its characters more in detail, before throwing it to the event, saying, "All things are as they were then, except... You Are There."

At the end of the program, after Cronkite summarizes what happened in the preceding event, he reminded viewers, "What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times... and you were there."

Here's a clip from an episode from the 70s version of the show about the siege of the Alamo. Cronkite reports and Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster) plays Davy Crockett.

What a fantastic idea for a show...I'd love to see a contemporary version of this. Well, not too contemporary; watching a CNBC-style presentation of the 1929 stock market crash wouldn't really be that fun.

The best film titles ever made

Perhaps someday I'll get tired of posting links to lists of good movie title sequences, but today is not that day. (via quipsologies)

Virtually delicious

Simple video of a burger, fries, and a drink, right? Well, just watch until about 28 seconds in.

Food stylists, your days are numbered...some intern at Pixar is gunning for your job. (via red)

Watching them swim

Get your Wednesday started off on the right foot: load this video up in HD, full-screen, let it buffer, and then just watch for awhile. You'll feel right as the mail.

The main tank [at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan] called the "Kuroshio Sea" holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and features the world's second largest acrylic glass panel, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters with a thickness of 60 centimeters. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish species in the main tank.

This tank is the second largest aquarium tank in the world.

Update: From the same aquarium: Jellyfish.

Biomimicry

This was one of my favorite talks at PopTech in 2004: Janine Benyus on biomimicry. From her web site:

In Biomimicry, she names an emerging discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature's designs and processes (e.g., solar cells that mimic leaves, agriculture that models a prairie, businesses that run like redwood forests).

CBS News Coverage of Apollo 11

For those of you who missed the show last night or if you just want a replay, the CBS News footage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and Moon walk, presented by Walter Cronkite, is available on YouTube. The Moon landing video is here and the first of 7 videos of the Moon walk is here.

The giant Apollo 11 post

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 and Monday is the same for both the first Moon landing and the first walk on the surface. In this entry, I've collected some of the best resources on the web related to the anniversary...articles, historical documents, audio, video, transcripts, photos, and the like. Enjoy.

We Choose the Moon is tracking the activities of the Apollo 11 mission as it happened 40 years ago. Very nicely done.

Housed on NASA's history site is a ton of resources about the Apollo 11 landing, including an annotated transript of the landing, which makes for really interesting reading. MP3 files are also available as are many, many video clips of the landing at the astronauts' time on the surface. Highlights: this video was shot out of the window of the lunar module from a height of 50,000 feet until one minute after touchdown and I've never seen Armstrong's first step on the Moon from this angle before.

For its July 21, 1969 issue, The NY Times used 96 pt. type to declare that MEN WALK ON MOON.

The landing was made four miles west of the aiming point, but well within the designated area. An apparent error in some data fed into the craft's guidance computer from the earth was said to have accounted for the discrepancy.

Suddenly the astronauts were startled to see that the computer was guiding them toward a possibly disastrous touchdown in a boulder-filled crater about the size of a football field.

Mr. Armstrong grabbed manual control of the vehicle and guided it safely over the crater to a smoother spot, the rocket engine stirring a cloud of moon dust during the final seconds of descent.

The Onion used larger type and took a more unadulterated and profane approach (love the video version).

John Noble Wilford, the Times journalist who wrote the front page story underneath the 96 pt. type -- "the biggest single story of my career" -- recounts his Apollo 11 experience and ponders the Apollo program's legacy in a great piece for the Times.

It then occurs to me that if Columbus and Capt. James Cook were alive, they might be less astonished by two men landing on the Moon than by the millions of people, worldwide, watching every step of the walk as it happens. Exploring is old, but instantaneous telecommunications is new and marvelous.

In just 1.3 seconds, the time it takes for radio waves to travel the 238,000 miles from Moon to Earth, each step by Armstrong and Aldrin is seen, and their voices heard, throughout the world they have for the time being left behind. In contrast to exploration's previous landfalls, the whole world shares in this moment.

The Apollo 11 mission in photographs: NASA Images is the comprehensive source for NASA photos of the Apollo 11 mission; the always excellent Big Picture has photos of the mission from a variety of sources; David Burnett shot photos of people watching the launch; Time looks at Apollo astronauts Now and Then; the NY Times collected photos from readers of their Apollo 11 moments; Life has several photo galleries: Buzz Aldrin Looks Back, Scenes From the Moon, Up Close With Apollo 11 (rare and never-published photos), and The World Watches; and Google's archive of Life magazine's Apollo 11 images.

A map of where Armstrong and Aldrin walked during their 2+ hours on the surface. That same map superimposed on a soccer pitch and on a baseball field. They didn't walk that far at all.

Explore the Apollo 11 landing site on Google Moon.

In piece published on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch, Buzz Aldrin advocates not a return to the Moon but a mission to Mars with the objective of establishing a colony on the red planet.

Let the lunar surface be the ultimate global commons while we focus on more distant and sustainable goals to revitalize our space program. Our next generation must think boldly in terms of a goal for the space program: Mars for America's future. I am not suggesting a few visits to plant flags and do photo ops but a journey to make the first homestead in space: an American colony on a new world.

Robotic exploration of Mars has yielded tantalizing clues about what was once a water-soaked planet. Deep beneath the soils of Mars may lie trapped frozen water, possibly with traces of still-extant primitive life forms. Climate change on a vast scale has reshaped Mars. With Earth in the throes of its own climate evolution, human outposts on Mars could be a virtual laboratory to study these vast planetary changes. And the best way to study Mars is with the two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first at a moon orbiting Mars and then on the Red Planet's surface.

Video of John F. Kennedy's "we choose to go to the Moon" speech given at Rice University on September 12, 1962. Fewer than 7 years later, Apollo 11 achieved the goal that Kennedy laid out in that speech.

In a piece for New Scientist, Linda Geddes writes about possible future lunar parks and how they might be preserved.

Around these [landing sites] are scattered smaller artefacts and personal items, such as Neil Armstrong's boots and portable life-support system, scientific instruments and their power generators -- and, of course, the iconic US flag which remains planted in the moon's surface. Then there are the footprints and rover tread paths. Despite the passing of the years, these remain carved into the dust because the moon has no wind or rain to wash them away.

Anthropologist P. J. Capelotti of Penn State University in Abington has mapped out five "lunar parks". These cover the areas where the majority of the artefacts are concentrated and could be used as a basis for future preservation efforts. "Nobody's saying that the whole moon has to be off limits, but as people are starting to make plans for tourism and mineral extraction, or for putting a base there, they just need to be aware of them and work around them."

Since returning from the Moon, Neil Armstrong has been less and less willing to speak in public about his Apollo 11 experience. For the 40th anniversary, Armstrong will not take part in the NASA event to commemorate the landing. His only appearance related to the anniversary will be a 15-minute lecture at a Smithsonian Institution event on Sunday night. I found this event on the National Air and Space Museum site...maybe that's it? If so, then Armstrong's lecture will be webcast live on the NASA TV site that evening.

Popular Science shares a list of ten things you didn't know about the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

7. When Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface, he had to make sure not to lock the Eagle's door because there was no outer handle.

Moonwalk One is a documentary film about Apollo released in 1970 to little fanfare, even though it won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was commissioned by NASA but with so much Apollo activity and information happening in the late 60s and early 70s, no one was interested in distributing or seeing the film and it was soon forgotten. Recently, the only remaining 35mm print of the film was located under the director's desk, restored, and offered for sale on DVD in time for the 40th anniversary.

To get a feel of what it was like in the Soviet Union during the Apollo 11 mission, Scientific American interviewed Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev. The reaction was somewhat more subdued than in other parts of the world.

Of course, you cannot have people land on the moon and just say nothing. It was published in all the newspapers. But if you remember [back then] when Americans spoke of the first man in space, they were always talking of "the first American in space" [not Yuri Gagarin]. The same feeling was prevalent in Russia. There were small articles when Apollo 11 was launched. Actually, there was a small article on the first page of Pravda and then three columns on page five. I looked it up again.

Eat Me Daily explores the food consumed on the mission.

The Apollo crew even dined on thermo-stabilized cheddar cheese spread and hot dogs during the moon mission, bringing at least a bit of America in July to the sterile flight craft. And yes, there was bacon - foreshadowing the current bacon craze, the first meal eaten by man on the moon was none other than bacon cubes, coated with gelatin to combat crumbs.

The issue of the New Yorker published just after the Moon landing is worth a look: much of the Talk of the Town section is devoted to the landing and there's also a Letter from the Space Center. (Subscribers only.)

The main NASA site has an interactive feature to explore the landing site and Eagle (Eagle was the name of the lunar module).

Finally, there's still some good stuff to be had on the old telly on Monday. The History Channel has As It Happened: Man on the Moon at 8pm ET:

This special takes viewers back to July 1969 to experience the actual CBS News/Walter Cronkite coverage of man's first lunar landing. Using minimal editing and leaving the original footage untouched viewers will feel as if they are watching the CBS coverage in July of 1969. While today we know the outcome of Apollo 11's mission it was not a given then. This will become evident watching Walter Cronkite and his colleagues as they watch the historic lunar mission unfold before them.

and Moonshot, a two-hour documentary about Apollo 11, at 9pm ET. Turner Classic Movies is airing a bunch of Moon-related movies all day, including A Trip to the Moon (a 12-minute film from 1902) at 8pm ET and the excellent For All Mankind (newly out on Criterion Blu-ray) at 8:15pm ET. The Discovery Channel has When We Left the Earth, a one-hour documentary on the mission, at 10pm ET. If none of that tickles your fancy, try episode 6 of the excellent From the Earth to the Moon (available for the insanely low price of $12 on Amazon) or In the Shadow of the Moon on DVD.

[If you enjoyed this post, you should post it to Twitter.]

Update: Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, writes that landing on the Moon killed NASA.

Everybody, including Congress, was caught up in the adrenal rush of it all. But then, on the morning after, congressmen began to wonder about something that hadn't dawned on them since Kennedy's oration. What was this single combat stuff -- they didn't use the actual term -- really all about? It had been a battle for morale at home and image abroad. Fine, O.K., we won, but it had no tactical military meaning whatsoever. And it had cost a fortune, $150 billion or so. And this business of sending a man to Mars and whatnot? Just more of the same, when you got right down to it. How laudable ... how far-seeing ... but why don't we just do a Scarlett O'Hara and think about it tomorrow?

July Moon is a forthcoming documentary about some lost NASA tapes. Surely not these NASA tapes?

The computer source code that ran Apollo 11's Command Module and Lunar Module has been released.

A recently discovered photo clearly shows Neil Armstrong's face on the Moon through his visor.

He was the first man to walk on the moon, taking that one giant leap for mankind -- yet most of the famous shots are of his fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin, as it was Armstrong who manned the stills camera.

New Scientist overlaid the Apollo lunar excursion maps on top of cities in Google Earth. Neil and Buzz didn't even leave Trafalgar Square on their trip to the Moon.

Tectonic plate timelapse

Timelapse video of the shift of the Earth's tectonic plates from 400 million years ago to 150 million years into the future. (via kk)

NASA releases restored Apollo 11 moon walk video

NASA is restoring and improving the video footage of the Apollo 11 mission and this morning they released some of those videos, including Neil Armstrong's first step on the Moon, Aldrin's first step, and the raising of the American flag.

Update: The tapes containing the original footage were erased to record satellite data. The restorations are being sourced from broadcast TV footage.

Seven hours of Feynman lectures online

With a little help from Bill Gates (who secured the rights using personal funds), Microsoft is presenting a series of lectures on physics by Richard Feynman. The lectures, shown in seven hour-long segments, were recorded by the BBC at Cornell University in 1964. Lecture titles are as follows:

Law of Gravitation - An Example of Physical Law
The Relation of Mathematics and Physics
The Great Conservation Principles
Symmetry in Physical Law
The Distinction of Past and Future
Probability and Uncertainty - The Quantum Mechanical View of Nature
Seeking New Laws

(thx, dan)

What fast looks like

People like to go fast and film themselves doing so. Modern technology offers a variety of ways to both go faster than ever before and record that speed for posterity. But for something to look fast on video, there needs to be a frame of reference for the viewer -- something to hurtle past or whoosh by -- and maybe even a hint of danger. Here are a selection of videos of people doing just that: traveling at high speeds in cars, on train tracks, through the air, and down mountains in close proximity to traffic, large rocks, and thin atmospheres. Most of these videos are filmed from a first-person perspective so that when you watch them, you can imagine that you're the one zooming along.

In 1976, Claude Lelouch mounted a camera on the front of his Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 and drove through the streets of Paris -- running red lights, jumping curbs and possibly reaching speeds upwards of 120 mph -- before reaching his date near the Sacré Coeur. The result is the film C'était un rendez-vous, 8 uncut minutes of insane urban driving.

Base jumpers equipped with wingsuits can glide very fast very close to the ground. Perhaps the most insane videos on the page...they're not doing 1200 mph or anything, but they are awfully close to the ground with few safety options if they slip up.

The lads at Top Gear took the Bugatti Veyron to its top speed of 253 mph on a test track. The test driver seems to have had what I would term a religious experience at the top speed.

Two gents in powder-blue suits speed down a California hill on skateboards. Holy crap!

240 mph on a Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle. Oh, and he does a wheelie from 70 to 140 mph. (Note: Wikipedia says the bike has an "electronically restricted" top speed of 188 mph. Either the owner a) removed the restriction, or b) tweaked the speedometer to display higher than normal speeds.)

In 1960, Joseph Kittinger reached a speed of 714 mph after jumping from a helium balloon at an altitude of 102,800 feet.

A French TGV train reaches a top speed of 357 mph in a 2007 test.

A camera mounted on the external tank records the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis in May 2009. There's not a lot to whoosh past here, but at an eventual 18,000 mph, the pace at which the Shuttle leaves the Earth behind is astounding.

While skydiving, both of Michael Holmes' chutes failed as his helmet camera recorded his crash landing into some thick bushes. (He lived.)

Footage of Alex Roy and David Maher on the road as they sped across the entire United States in just over 32 hours, an unofficial world record. There is a book and a blog of the experience.

Passenger seat and road-side views of a Lamborghini Murcielago doing 219 mph on the 202 freeway in Mesa, Arizona.

World's fastest

Video that showcases the world's fastest people in several disciplines: clapping, sprinting, undressing, Rubik's Cubing, gun shooting, and stamping.

The stamping champ is kind of incredible and if you haven't seen the cup stacker, check her out and here's one that's even faster. Stacking gear is available if you'd like to join in.

Eternal Moonwalk

This is pretty awesome: a bunch of videos strung together to make it seem like one long moonwalk. In tribute to Michael Jackson, of course. What's amazing is that for the 4-5 minutes I watched, there was not a single decent moonwalk...just people shuffling backwards. (via vsl)

Update: Matt Zoller Seitz analyzes Eternal Moonwalk and finds much to love about it.

Eternal Moonwalk is also an incidental tutorial in the basic properties of cinema. It returns motion pictures to their origin point, when the medium's core appeal was the chance to watch strangers performing, their bodies moving from Point A to Point B, their familiar or amusing actions serving as an emotional connection point, a reminder that we're members of the same species inhabiting the same small world.

Sixty Symbols videos

From the folks who brought you The Periodic Table of Videos, Sixty Symbols is a series of videos on the symbols used in physics and astronomy. (via snarkmarket)

No one dies in GI Joe

Did you notice that no one ever died in the GI Joe animated series? Slate's Adrian Chen presents the video evidence.

The first war between G.I. Joe and Cobra (1985-86), as documented in the G.I. Joe animated series, was the most violent conflict in history never to result in a single casualty. Through a combination of terrible aim, superhuman jumping ability, and impossibly reliable parachutes, every combatant escaped even the most dire of situations without so much as the angle of his beret askew.

Usain Bolt still fast

Yesterday he ran 200m in 19.59s on a wet track with a headwind, winning by an absurd margin. (via biancolo)

Smelting iron ore in a microwave

Holy crap, did you know that you can smelt iron ore with a microwave?

This video shows part of an attempt to build a toaster from scratch.

Finding ways to process the raw materials on a domestic scale is also an issue. For example, my first attempt to extract metal involved a chimney pot, some hair-dryers, a leaf blower, and a methodology from the 15th century -- this is about the level of technology we can manage when we're acting alone. I failed to get pure enough iron in this way, though if I'd tried a few more times and refined my technique and knowledge of the process I probably would've managed in the end. Instead I found a 2001 patent about industrial smelting of Iron ores using microwave energy.

Microwaves, as we all know, are just so much more convenient -- and so I tried to replicate the industrial process outlined in the patent using a domestic microwave. After some not-so-careful experimentation which necessitated another microwave, followed by some careful experimentation, I got the timing and ingredients right and made a blob of iron about as big as a 10p coin.

(via mr)

Feynman on trains

Richard Feynman explains how trains stay on their tracks.

Hint: it's not the flanges. (via jb)

Top 50 movie trailers

IFC lists the 50 greatest trailers of all time. Trailers are like episodes for Law & Order for me -- ten minutes after viewing and I can't remember a thing about them -- so I don't really have any favorites, but this list seems like a solid collection.

Update: They also polled a number of experts to weigh in on their favorites. The article led me to the Golden Trailer Awards, an annual awards show for the best movie trailers and posters. This year's winner was the trailer for Star Trek (I'm guessing it's trailer 1).

Uncanny babies

The only thing creepier and more irritating than those E*TRADE babies are these Evian rollerskating babies. (thx, bb)

Previously on Lost

A Bolivian TV station was duped into airing screencaps showing a plane crash from Lost thinking that it was the crash of Air France Flight 447 somehow photographed in widescreen from inside the plane.

In their rush to air exclusive photos of Flight 447's destruction, no one in this newsroom stopped to ask the logical questions, such as: 1) How did the camera survive? and 2) Why are the photos in wide-screen format?

The answers, of course, are: 1) Because the footage is from Lost. And, 2) because the footage is from Lost.

First trailer for HBO's The Pacific

As a follow-up to the excellent Band of Brothers, HBO, Steven Speilberg, and Tom Hanks have teamed up to make The Pacific, a 10-part miniseries about the fighting in the Pacific during WWII from the perspective of a group of US Marines. The first trailer for the series has been released:

(via sarahnomics)

Update: So of course HBO made YouTube remove the video of the trailer. But they put up a smaller crappier version on their own site so it's all ok, right? (Why do media companies not like people spreading their advertising around? That's the fucking goal, yes?) Anyway, in the meantime I changed the link to the video above with a new one that hasn't been removed yet. And if that one gets removed, you can probably find the newest ones here. (thx, greg)

How to tie a tie, shine your shoes, etc.

Garra has a fun and informative series of lifestyle how-to videos for men, including how to tie a tie (6 ways), perform a bit of table magic, wear a scarf, iron a shirt in 3 minutes, and shine a pair of shoes. See also how to bull your shoes and Bowmore's other videos. (thx, youngna)

Hodgman and Obama nerd it up

Video of John Hodgman's speech at the Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner.

With Obama in attendance, Hodgman wonders if our Commander in Chief is indeed as nerdy as we've hoped.

Trailer for Cold Souls

Cold Souls = Being John Malkovich - John Malkovich + Paul Giamatti. Sort of.

Update: Perhaps this could be a sequel?

2012 trailer

This movie just looks amazing. And horrible. A must-see trailer in HD if you like, as I do, watching the Earth being destroyed.

Update: And here's a totally sweet trailer for 2012: It's a Disaster. (thx, javier)

Can't get enough of Auto-Tune the News

Is installment #5 the best Auto-Tune the News yet? Shawty!

Immersion: Porn by Robbie Cooper

You may remember Robbie Cooper's projects Alter Ego (photos of gamers and their in-game avatars) and Immersion (kids filmed with an Interrotron while playing video games). Cooper's new project is like Immersion, except with people watching porn. The video stills can be found in the July issue of Wallpaper but an 18-minute video is available on their web site.

In a film of startling power and unsettling intimacy -- produced exclusively for wallpaper.com -- video artist and photographer Robbie Cooper shoots back at active porn aficionados lost in ecstatic release and hears how their passion developed. Be aware that this is not easy titillation and some of you may find the footage shocking. But the film does throw up any number of questions about voyeurism and exhibitionism and makes clear the incredible nakedness of the solo sex act.

NSFW because it turns out that watching people watching porn at the office is no easier to explain to your boss/co-workers than actually watching porn at the office.

19th century bike tricks

In 1899, Thomas Edison filmed some very contemporary looking bike tricks.

This seemed fake when I first watched it but here it is at The Library of Congress.

Gay Talese spends $2800 on shoes

And he's got several pairs of them. In this video, the noted writer shows off his suits and talks about "dressing up for the story" as a young reporter.

Ames' Window

This is one of the freakiest optical illusions I've ever seen.

(thx, veronica)

The Moon in HD

HD video of the Moon from 13 miles above the surface taken by Japan's KAGUYA probe. The probe's orbit has been decaying since it began circling the Moon and will crash on the surface at 18:30 GMT on June 10.

Chris Burden's Big Wheel

In a piece from 1979 called Big Wheel, artist Chris Burden took a massive 19th century iron flywheel and set it spinning with the rear wheel of a small motorcycle. The flywheel spins for *three hours* on a single charge.

A description of the work from the NY Times:

Several of his larger works present a characteristic blend of purity, violence and monumentality now aimed at demonstrating simple principles of motion or mass in breathtakingly sculptural ways. In "The Big Wheel," Burden uses a motorcycle's rear wheel to set a three-ton iron flywheel, the survivor of a 19th-century factory, into a fast and furious spin that lasts about three hours. The contrast is wonderful: this old, simple Goliath of a wheel, man's first "machine," powered by a modern David -- small, complex and delicate.

Following shots

From Matt Zoller Seitz, Following: a collection of movie clips where the camera follows a character through their environment.

See also Seitz's The Substance of Style series on Wes Anderson's influences.

Update: See also The Explanation by Seitz, Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions, and Jad Abumrad's selection of movie clips with great music. And a shot that should have been included in Following: the lovely opening to Birth. (thx, dan & matt)

Live Donkey Kong record attempt

Steve Weibe is trying to break Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong record live. As in right now! The pair's exploits were chronicled in the documentary King of Kong. (via waxy)

Update: The score to beat is 1,050,200 points. (Oops, Wiebe just died as I was typing this. He's got two guys left.) Wiebe owns the second highest score with 1,049,100 points.

Update: He just died again. He's at ~370,000 with one guy left. Not looking good.

Update: Last guy. 457,000. Not looking good.

Update: He finally got it going but ended up short of the record with 923,400. Word is he's got two more chances to break it today.

Update: No dice...didn't break the score with any of his games.

Khaaan! Agaiiin!

While discussing this morning's post about Khaaan! at the breakfast table with us, Ollie showed his growing dramatic range as an actor by reenacting the scene.

It's no chicken dance, but it's not bad.

100 movie lines in 200 seconds

Video of 100 of the best movie lines in 200 seconds...or what it would look like if SportsCenter put together a highlights package for popular movies.

Khaaan!

Artist Daniel Martinico took William Shatner's finest moment as an actor and stretched it out into a 15-minute video.

You'll notice the crowd gets quiet after the first few seconds. It draws you in, forces you to pay attention, even if it's just staring at the back and forth eye tics on Shatner's face for a minute at a time. "In that moment everyone responds to it," Martinico says. There's laughing at first, but then people get into the rhythm of it and study the various little muscles as they pull and twitch on Kirk's face. "It's a phenomenal range in just a few seconds."

Here's the first two minutes of the video.

It's pretty mesmerizing, even small and at poor quality. (via greg)

Bach Bach Revolution

Two women play Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on a giant piano at FAO Schwarz.

If that's too much for you, just start with chopsticks or caper around like an idiot and knock over toddlers. (via cyn-c)

The other drama

During the TV coverage of the NBA playoffs, the NBA is running commercials showing great moments in playoff history that have been edited to isolate the players from the crowd. There's Bird stealing the inbound pass, Dr. J's improbable behind-the-backboard reverse layup, and Kobe lobbing the ball to Shaq for a thunderous dunk.

The Kobe/Shaq clip is worth a closer look because although the NBA picked this clip because it represents a dramatic moment in the NBA playoffs involving two of the best players in history on a storied team, what it actually shows is how dysfunctional Shaq and Kobe's relationship was even then, in their first championship season.

Bryant creates 95% of the offense here by crossing Pippen over and throwing a perfect lob to O'Neal. O'Neal throws it down and the camera follows him as he heads down the court yelling in celebration, totally blowing right past Kobe, who has his hand out to high-five Shaq. Kobe half-heartedly grabs at O'Neal's forearm as he passes; Shaq doesn't even notice. From his celebration, you'd think Shaq had made an amazing play, but Kobe made that whole thing happen. And if you look at the box score for the game, it was clearly Bryant's game: he had 25 points, 11 rebounds, 7 assists, and 4 blocks to O'Neal's 18/9/5/1.

The unedited clip of the play¹ shows an awkward ending to this awkward moment. After celebrating with the Laker bench, Shaq looks for Kobe and the two finally acknowledge the play together. But it's a brief moment; they slap hands and go their separate ways, foreshadowing Shaq's departure four years later.

[1] What's also striking about the clip is that it shows just how much Kobe has improved the mechanics of his game since then. Even though he makes a great play here, he's still got those jittery feet that characterized his early career, at times looking like a dog skittering around on freshly polished linoleum. Any stuttering footwork is now long gone, replaced by the silkiest and smoothest of movement. ↩

Update: fxguide has a good look at how these commercials were made from a technical standpoint.

Usain Bolt speeds to record in 150 meters

Yesterday, Usain Bolt broke the unofficial record at the rarely contested distance of 150 meters, running it in 14.35 seconds on a temporary surface set up in Manchester's city center. This sounds made up, but here's the video.

(via biancolo)

The sleeping man never fails

From a new collection of pieces by Mark Twain, a reading by John Lithgow and drawing by Flash Rosenberg of chapter 2.

Kobe and LeBron puppets

I love this Nike commercial featuring puppets of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James where Bryant is heckling James about his three championship rings.

The chalk one is pretty good as well.

Floating frogs (with video!)

If you've got a 16 tesla magnetic field, you can levitate a frog.

The levitation trick works because giant magnetic fields slightly distort the orbits of electrons in the frog's atoms. The resulting electric current generates a magnetic field in the opposite direction to that of the magnet. A field of 16 teslas created an attractive force strong enough to make the frog float until it made its escape.

Best part: it doesn't kill the frog. (via afrooz)

Update: Video of the levitating frog:

See also levitating strawberry, levitating grasshopper, and levitating water droplets. (thx, jesse)

Pakistani fetish wear

In this video, the NY Times profiles a pair of Pakistani brothers who run a business in Karachi designing and manufacturing bondage and fetish wear. As you'll see in the video, many of the firm's employees are unaware of what they're making. (thx, andrew)

Supertrain!

Supertrain was a massively promoted and extremely expensive 1979 NBC adventure drama that lasted only a few episodes before being cancelled. Along with the US boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics, the superflop nearly bankrupted the network.

The show featured an "atom powered steam turbine" train that could travel from NYC to LA in 36 hours. Infrastructurist has posted links to the awful and campy pilot episode of the show. Here's part one to get you started. I love that the train's crew is right out of a 1970s disco and the board of directors are bona fide 1890s railroad magnates. This thing is a train wreck. (Layered narrative again! Bam! (Again!))

Baseball cards: not for kids anymore

The Baseball Card Movie is a nice nine-minute film that introduces the viewer to a world where adults pay up to $500 for a pack of cards (aka cardboard crack) and act very superstitiously about opening them.

Thw whole sports memorabilia thing is an odd world. There's a story about major league pitcher Barry Zito buying his own autographed cards on eBay:

He once made it a practice to buy his own autographed baseball cards on eBay; when asked why he bought them at auction for high prices rather than acquiring unsigned cards and signing them himself, Zito replied, "Because they're authenticated."

Possibly apocryphal but Zito would likely have a difficult time selling self-signed cards because they're not authenticated.

Faux Wes Anderson commercial

For a student project (a fake Wes Anderson film festival), Alex Cornell and Phil Mills shot a promotional short in the style of The Royal Tenenbaums.

More information on how it was made is here. (thx, alex)

Update: Here are the rest of the materials for the film festival. This is an awesome project.

Catfish noodling

Noodling is the practice of catching catfish by letting them latch onto your arm.

To begin, a noodler goes underwater to depths ranging from only a few feet to up to twenty feet, placing his hand inside a discovered catfish hole. If all goes as planned, the catfish will swim forward and latch onto the fisherman's hand, usually as a defensive maneuver in order to try to escape the hole. If the fish is particularly large, the noodler can hook the head around its gills.

This video captures some noodling fishermen in action.

(via that's how it happened)

Update: There's a documentary on noodling called Okie Noodling. (thx to many)

Live Space Shuttle Launch

Live on NASA TV right now: the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, tasked to repair the Hubble telescope. Looks like if the weather holds, lift-off is around 2:01pm. (via @noahkalina)

Punch-Out for Wii

Punch-Out is coming to the Wii (@ Amazon)...the teaser commercial features Isiah Whitlock, Jr., who played Clay Davis on The Wire, as Little Mac's trainer. It's worth watching to hear Whitlock's comparison of comebacks and yo-yos. (thx, rob)

Waves in slow motion

Absolutely gorgeous slow motion HD video of a large wave from under the water...you can clearly see the intricate and powerful architecture of the wave.

Nice surfing shot too...but the wave is mesmerizing.

Free running

Free running is like parkour except that the former is more expressive than the latter. Whereas parkour is the efficient movement through space, free running adds acrobatic flair for aesthetic purposes. One of the more talented practictioners of free running is Levi Meeuwenberg; here's a demo reel he made of his stunts.

Popular Science recently examined the physics of the jumps involved in both sports.

However, by bending and rolling, the time of impact can be increased to as much as 0.3 or 0.4 seconds. By decreasing his velocity over this extended period of time, the force is substantially reduced. Applying the above calculation with an acceleration time of 0.4 seconds we now get Fground = 2000 N (460 pounds). It's still a significant force but as you can see in the video quite manageable for someone with the proper skill, strength and technique.

I'm behind on my Ninja Warrior, but Meeuwenberg did quite well on a recent appearance, advancing further on the show than any other contestant. (via justin blanton)

Quimby The Mouse, gone fishin'

A short video animation of Quimby the Mouse by Chris Ware. (via waxy)

Update: Vimeo has pulled the video offline. (thx, paul)

Update: The video is back online again.

Jane Jacobs video

The CBC has a clip of Jane Jacobs talking about Toronto and Montreal from 1969. In it, she makes the distinction between the two urban organizational forces at work in Toronto, a sort of "civil schizophrenia": the vernacular spirit ("full of fun") and the official spirit ("stamp out fun"). I also found a video on YouTube about Robert Moses and his difficulties with Ms. Jacobs which concludes with a cheeky update of Arnold Newman's iconic photo of Moses.

Madison Avenue Cookware

Madison Avenue Cookware. The only thing that cooks better is a woman.

The site, which seems to be down right now, is actually a promotional site for Mad Men.

Gene Kelly tap dancing on roller skates

Video clip from It's Always Fair Weather of Gene Kelly dancing with roller skates on.

The good stuff starts around 2:00. As David says, "putting Kelly on roller skates is like adding polish to wax".

The Factory in a box

So, this happened: video of Andy Warhol painting Debbie Harry on an Amiga computer.

Update: AmigaWorld did an interview with Warhol about his Amigas (he owned two at the time).

The thing I like most about doing this kind of art on the Amiga is that it looks like my work.

(thx, paul)

The Happy Gilmore tee shot tested

Sport Science recently tested to see whether professional golfer Padraig Harrington could drive the ball further than normal by employing a Happy Gilmore swing.

The good stuff doesn't get going until around 3:00. The running swing technique increased Harrington's distance by an average of 30 yards but his accuracy suffered. The split-screen view of his stationary and running swings is amazing...it's the same swing.

Moving photography

For the cover of Esquire's June issue, photographer Greg Williams shot ten minutes of video footage of Megan Fox, from which the best stills were selected for the cover and inside the magazine.

As resolution rises & prices fall on video cameras and hard drive space, memory, and video editing capabilities increase on PCs, I suspect that in 5-10 years, photography will largely involve pointing video cameras at things and finding the best images in the editing phase. Professional photographers already take hundreds or thousands of shots during the course of a shoot like this, so it's not such a huge shift for them. The photographer's exact set of duties has always been malleable; the recent shift from film processing in the darkroom to the digital darkroom is only the most recent example.

Esquire's moving cover reminds me of two other things.

1. Flickr encourages their members to think of short videos as long photos. When he guest edited kottke.org last year, Deron Bauman wrote about short video as a contemporary version of the photograph. Matt Jones argued that looping short video is the real long photography. So maybe the photograph of 10 years from now might not even be a still image.

2. In order to get the jaw-dropping slow-motion footage of great white sharks jumping out of the ocean, the filmmakers for Planet Earth used a high-speed camera with continuous buffering...that is, the camera only kept a few seconds of video at a time and dumped the rest. When the shark jumped, the cameraman would push a button to save the buffer.

Clear all tabs

There's just too much good stuff on the internet today. So rather than flood the site with a bunch of posts, I'm going to clear out my tabs and round them up here.

Dear Prudence: "I cheated on my wife while sleepwalking. What do I do now?" I've heard quite a few weird/bad things about Ambien in the past few months. Also, paging Emily Gould from The Awl, please A this Q.

Rocketboom covers Single Serving Sites in their spin-off series, Know Your Meme.

The Big Picture peers into North Korea with a collection of photos of the dictatorship taken from neighboring China.

Maira Kalman visits Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court, illustrating the story beautifully as usual.

I return to the court to hear Justice Ginsburg speak to law students. And in answer to the question "How does it feel to be the only woman on the court?" she answers simply, "Lonely."

The Society of Publication Designers has been busy posting nominees for their upcoming annual awards on their blog. Last year's winners are here. (thx, david)

Jamie Zawinski has used his keyboard so much over the past eight years that he's carved grooves into the M and N keys (with his fingernails?) and completely worn through part of his Alt key.

Auto-Tune

The voice modulation technology isn't just for pop songs anymore. Check out Blake tries to talk to Jack about the homepage:

Babies crying in Auto-Tune is pretty hilarious: Baby T-Pain 1, Baby T-Pain 2.

But Auto-Tuning the News takes the prize.

Pay particular attention to Katie Couric at 1:20. Awesome. (thx, matt)

Update: Whoa, Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech run through Auto-Tune. (thx, matthew)

Update: Winston Churchill + Auto-Tune = [you don't need me to tell you the answer to this].

Parkour on a bicycle

Street rider Danny MacAskill starts off by riding his bike across a narrow fence about four feet in the air...and the video only gets better from there.

Stunning. I want to see MacAskill in the next Bond film. (via waxy)

Update: See also Ryan Leech. (thx, courtney)

Pumping up with flammables

Did you know that you can fill a flat tire using starter fluid and a match?

I've watched this about ten times and it's still amazing. (via dunstan)

David Simon interview

Short video interview of David Simon.

You know, newspapers are gonna say, "We already let the horse out of the barn door. How can you charge for content? Information wants to be free." All that bullshit. As I remember, there wasn't an American in America 30 thirty years ago who paid for their television. Television was free 30 years ago. Now everybody's paying 16 bucks a month, 17 bucks a month, 70 dollars a month.

Related: the NY Times recently ran the poignant story of a interracial Baltimore couple who turned to The Wire for comfort when the husband underwent treatment for cancer.

Also related: read David Simon's HBO pitch for The Wire from Sept 2000.

Disturbin' Strokes

The intro to Diff'rent Strokes set to some disturbing music is "far more creepy than I thought it would [be]". (via cyn-c)

What's up?

Sprint would like to show you a video of what's happening right now. (via swiss miss)

Wes Anderson, annotated

Matt Zoller Seitz has completed his five-part look at Wes Anderson's influences.

Part 1: Bill Melendez, Orson Welles, and Francois Truffaut
Part 2: Martin Scorsese, Richard Lester, and Mike Nichols
Part 3: Hal Ashby
Part 4: J.D. Salinger
Part 5: The Royal Tenenbaums, annotated

Seek out the video links in the right sidebar; they're better than just reading the text. From the Salinger segment:

Detractors say Anderson's dense production design (courtesy of regular collaborator David Wasco) overwhelms his stories and characters. This complaint presumes that in real life our grooming and style choices aren't a kind of uniform -- visual shorthand for who we are or who we want others to think we are. This is a key strength of both Anderson and Salinger's work. Both artists have a knack for what might be called "material synecdoche" -- showcasing objects, locations, or articles of clothing that define whole personalities, relationships, or conflicts.

The fifth part, where Seitz annotates the beginning segment of The Royal Tenenbaums with text, images, and video, is particularly fun to watch.

Birdhouse

The introduction video for Birdhouse is just really fantastic; the best iPhone app intro video in the universe probably.

Open-mindedness

This video explains how to counteract the "you're not being open-minded" argument that atheists and scientists sometimes get when confronted by those who believe in the supernatural.

Trying to suggest that a lack of explanation is evidence that supernatural powers are at work is actually a contradiction. In effect what it's saying is, "I can't explain something, therefore I can explain it."

(via buzzfeed)

The Evolution of Religions

Jared Diamond lecture on the evolution of religions.

Oh, Mercury

How surreal is it to see a cannonball floating in liquid?

Magnetic snakes

Taking a bit of code from here and a snippet from there, Robert Hodgin made an animation of 3-D snakes in Processing. Check out Hodgin's use of constraints to spur the invention of a way to keep the snakes from overlapping.

I had no interest in adding a complete 3D physics library because my needs at this time are fairly simple. I am not worried about environment... I just want the snakes to crawl over each other. I decided to try magnetic repulsion despite thinking it probably wouldn't work well enough. The thinking is this: Take each segment of a snake (200 segments each), and check its distance to every single other segment of every other snake on screen. Stupid, right? Yeah, pretty much. But with some optimization and only checking the segment distances if the snakes in question are close enough for overlap to be possible, I got it to run at 60 fps with 10 snakes.

Actually, when you get right down to it -- the atoms in snakes' bodies, that is -- magnetic repulsion isn't that far off from how matter achieves its electromagnetic opacity. Hodgin also made a video in which the snakes react to music. I wonder if this one's gonna end up in iTunes. (via waxy)