This marvelous video shows atmospheric gravity waves undulating over the surface of Stratus clouds near Colorado Springs, CO. Photo credit goes to Lars Leber who has a bunch of impressive Colorado cloud photography on his website.
Via the Cloud Appreciation Society
MinutePhysics (which, if haven’t checked out already would be worth spending a little of your time on) and a fun whiteboard explainer on the different types of time-travel in various films and books. Specifically, the video synopses how time travel causally affects the perspective of characters’ timelines (Who has free will? Can you change things by going back to the past?).
I appreciate time travel stories that have a nice logic to them. I have to agree with Henry Reich when he says that, “Logical consistency is a thing that you may have noticed I think lays the foundation for good time travel stories.” Which explains why I didn’t like Star Trek: First Contact or the Original Superman.
Youtube user QuintemSSB/Number2Vaderfan created this entertaining video of 48 simultaneously playing infomercials of the late Billy Mays. Listen for long enough and it sounds like a swarm of bees.
Also see Billy Mays Is A Sad Robot and Billy Mays Is A Sad Robot – Part II
Inside the Gardens at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, U.K. you find the famous Poison Garden. A garden plot containing around 100 different plants that can kill a man in just as many ways. From deadly Golden Bells to Hemlock, the only way a plant is allowed to grow in this garden is if it is lethal to humans.
In this video from Great Big Story we are introduced to Trevor Jones, the head gardener. Clad in a protective suit, Jones explains the cautious steps taken in order to safely maintain the garden. Surprisingly most of the plants are very common and known as cottage garden plants – they’re grown in many people’s gardens, but people don’t know how harmful they actually are.
After 12 years, skateboarding legend Rodney Mullen is back on deck with a new video called “Liminal“. Since his last showing in 2004’s “Almost: Round Three”, Rodney had suffered an injury-related fusion of his femur and hip bone. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone Mullen explains:
After much deliberation, with doctors doubtful of my recovery, I engaged in medieval ways to break apart the bone fusion – hammering the end of screwdrivers into my flesh, climbing into the wheel well of my car to apply leverage while pulling on the car’s frame. After thousands of hours, over years of doing this, I began breaking those dried-gum-like strands of fascia. I would often become overwhelmed, screaming violently in pain, panic-stricken that I was doing more damage than good and I would never be able to skate again. Until one night, hanging from my car, I heard a thump. And when I got up, I realized that I had broken the calcification and my hip-joint was mobile again.
What makes this all more amazing is that since his hip-popping breakthrough in 2010, Rodney Mullen has had to relearn to skateboard with his opposite foot forward. This was not simply to learn how to skate switch, which is common. To skate without re-injuring his hip, it was crucial that he once again train his body the tricks he came up with more than three decades ago, as well as any new ones, with his right foot forward. Mullen has reversed his native stance and is now more adept at skating with his right foot forward as he was with his left. He has found bona fide goofy-footedness – an idea he calls stancelessness.
Rodney says of the Front-Rail To 360º-Shove-It To Back-Rail (Performed above and at the 2:27 mark in the new film).
“This trick has never been seen or done, as far as I know. It is rooted in an obscure freestyle trick dating back 30 years. However, it was only done landing on all four wheels. This rail-to-rail version requires another level of power and control. On top of that, to do it on a modern (bigger) board, and landing on axles, is so daunting that I had never done it until now. It was particularly inspired by the camera action, because of how beautiful it would look: a rotary motion in a rotary system.â€
More detailed descriptions of Rodney’s tricks, and the technology used to create the film, can be found on the film maker Steven Sebring’s website.
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains — Thomas Carlyle.
My wife introduced me to The Avalanches when we first started dating – that was over 12 years ago. At that time, the groups first and only ablum, “Since I Left You“, was already 4 years old. And what a brilliant album it was. It was made entirely through a unique blending of an estimated 3,500 samples (Rumor has it that he song “Frontier Psychiatry” has something like 600 samples on it).
Well, 16 years since their original release, the Avalanches have announced they were finally going to be releasing (scheduled for July 8th) a full-length sophomore effort called “Wildflower”. The first single “Frankie Sinatra” features Danny Brown and MF Doom on it.
If the above single isn’t enough to tide you over here is a link huge list of downloadable Avalanches related mixtapes, live sets, and DJ sets
Right on the heals of this large hip hop mixtape dump comes an enlightening Vox video that explores the advancing complexity of rap lyrics and rhyme construction. Employing the research of Martin Connor and some helpful visual aids, the video explores how the best artists manipulate words, rhymes, beats, and motifs in continually sophisticated ways.
Here is a playlist highlighting songs used in the video and others that are choice examples of how outstanding rhyming in rap can be.
Pinball was illegal in New York City from 1940 till 1976. The above short explores the surprisingly troubled history of pinball in New York and why it was banned there for over 35 years. The ban was lifted when WWII ended and the state finally (and rightfully) determined that pinball is a game of skill and not a game of chance. The great Big Story explains:
In 1940, pinball machines were banned in New York City. Like most contraband, this simply pushed pinball underground. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the “Salvage for Victory†campaign called on Americans to turn in scrap metal to bolster the war effort. As a result, then New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia went on a hunt for pinball machines. By February 1942, more than 3,000 machines has been confiscated, turning roughly 2,500 of them into one ton of metal for the war. Unfortunately for pinball enthusiasts, the ban in New York lasted for decades, outliving LaGuardia, who died in 1947.
This is a video of a washing machine on top of a trampoline – with a brick in it.
Bootsowen’s Youtube channel has a bunch of other crazy washing machine videos on it as well. But something about this one in particular is just delightful.
Referred to simply as The Lick this melodic element can be found in nearly all genres of music and played by all kinds of instruments. It has somehow managed to seed itself everywhere. It can be found as early as Stravinsky’s “Firebird†(1910). Player’s “Baby Come Back” and Santana’s “Oye Como Va” are based on variations of The Lick. Although the origins of The Lick are unknown, it has propagated throughout the entire musical kingdom as you can see from the two videos below.
I have come down hard on artists who use clichés too much. But I think The Lick proves itself as something greater than a musical cliché, something more like a musical meme. The best art copies, reconstructs, personalizes, mutates and owns up to other great artworks that came before it. Viva La Lick!
