Animator Jeremie Duval remixed Super Mario Bros. with the tone and sound of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Content warning: not for mushroom lovers.

Via Geekologie

Photo: geishaboy500 [Flickr]

Neatorama’s own Johnny Cat has got the best idea concerning the Olympics that I’ve heard in a long time. Here it is, in his own words:

After some dull moments in beach volleyball, I realized the Games could use a little perk in athleticism, namely the greatest new sport/subversive activity: Parkour

Sure beats skateboarding. IOC, are you listening? And if you don’t know what Parkour is, here’s the founder performing a Super Mario Parkour [Google Video]

Hit Play or YouTube Link

Brad Smith used a program called Lunar Magic to set up his own Super Mario Brothers level, in which he spelled out a message to his girlfriend, Lisa.  Then, he got her to play it.  Beagle bonus at the end!

via Asylum

Love video games and jazz? Well, Scott Bradlee and Ben Golder-Novick teamed up to bring you this: classic video game music in piano and saxophone!

Love 8-bit Nintendo games but not necessarily 8-bit musical
instruments? Wish you could hear the soundtracks of those games
rendered by live musicians as you play?

Eight Bits of Jam will come into your living room and provide real-time acoustic soundtracks to old school games such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda,
Mike Tyson’s Punch-out, and many more. All you have to do is put the television on ‘mute’ and Eight Bits of Jam will take care of the rest.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by vaughnadam81.

So. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, I’m sure you’ve heard that President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize (surprise!)

The blogosphere was immediately abuzz with … confusion. What has Obama done to deserve to win? Isn’t it a bit premature? Are Norwegians just Obamafans? And does this mean that the Olympics is ditching Rio to come to Chicago? You’d expect this kind of reaction from his political opponents, but it seems that *everyone* was scratching their heads.

I know, I know – no politics on Neatorama. But I’m genuinely puzzled. What do you guys think is going on?

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And yes, I made that Super Obamario Bros. photoshop

Photo: Montyfull

Craftster user Montyfull was a fashion major and a gamer, and so naturally combined the two interests with evening wear inspired by the video game Super Mario Bros. The above sequin dress took eighty hours of work and features a NES controller as a garter. There more pictures at the link, including a mushroom dress and a bob-omb dress.

Link via Geekologie

These fantastic Super Mario fingernails almost look photoshopped, but they aren’t. I have to admit though, the parts going back on the finger do look a bit uncomfortable -that’s the true price of beauty awesomeness though.

Link Via BoingBoing

I love math (though it's debatable whether math loves me back, I suspect not) so it's a pleasure to read Cliff Pickover's newest creation, The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics.

Don't let the title fool you - The Math Book is a thoroughly enjoyable "walk" through the history of mathematics with each milestone narrated by Pickover in a short and sweet fashion (and surprisingly, with very little equations) that even non-mathemagicians like myself can enjoy. If you've ever heard the terms Bessel functions, Transcendental numbers, and Riemann hypothesis, and want to know more, then this is the book for you.

Below is an excerpt from the book (selecting which ones to show was a hard thing to do - there were just so many interesting articles!):

Cicada-Generated Prime Numbers

Cicadas are winged insects that evolved around 1.8 million years ago during the Pleistocene epoch, when glaciers advanced and retreated across North America. Cicadas of the genus Magicicada spend most of their lives below the ground, feeding on the juices of plant roots, and then emerge, mate, and die quickly. These creatures display a startling behavior: Their emergence is synchronized with periods of years that are usually the prime numbers 13 and 17. (A prime number is an integer such as 11, 13, and 17 that has only two integer divisors: 1 and itself.) During the spring of their 13th or 17th year, these periodical cicadas construct an exit tunnel. Sometimes more than 1.5 million individuals emerge in a single acre; this abundance of bodies may have survival value as they overwhelm predators such as birds that cannot possibly eat them all at once. (Photo: Joelmills [Wikipedia])

Some researchers have speculated that the evolution of prime-number life cycles occurred so that the creatures increased their chances of evading shorter-lived predators and parasites. For example, if these cicadas had 12-year life cycles, all predators with life cycles of 2, 3, 4, or 6 years might more easily find the insects. Mario Markus of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany, and his coworkers discovered that these kinds of prime-number cycles arise naturally from evolutionary mathematical models of interactions between predator and prey. In order to experiment, they first assigned random life-cycle durations to their computer-simulated populations. After some time, a sequence of mutations always locked the synthetic cicadas into a stable prime-number cycle.

Of course, this research is still in its infancy and many questions remain. What is special about 13 and 17? What predators or parasites have actually existed to drive the cicadas to these periods? Also, a mystery remain as to why, of the 1,500 cicada species worldwide, only a small number of the genus Magicicada are known to be periodical.

Borromean Rings

(L) Borromean Rings; (M) Valknut, or three interlocked triangles, on the Stora Hammar Stone; (R) Molecular Borromean Rings by J. Fraser SToddart

Peter Guthrie Tait (1831 - 1901) - A simple yet intriguing set of interlocking objects of interest to mathematicians and chemists is formed by Borromean rings - three mutually interlocked rings named after the Italian Renaissance family who used them on its coat of arms in the fifteenth century. (Image: Theon [Wikipedia])

Notice that Borromean rings have no two rings that are linked, so if we cut any one of the rings, all three rings come apart. Some historians speculate that the ancient ring configurations once represented the three families of Visconti, Sforza, and Borromeo, who formed a tenuous union through intermarriages. The rings also appear in 1467 in the Church of San Pancrazio in Florence. Even older, triangular versions were used by the Vikings, one famous example of which was found on a bedpost of a prominent woman who died in 834.

The rings appear in mathematical context in the 1876 paper on knots by Scottish mathematical physicist Peter Tait. Because two choices (over or under) are possible for each ring crossing, 2⁶ = 64 possible interlaced patterns exist. If we take symmetry into account, only 10 of these patterns are geometrically distinct.

Mathematicians now know that we cannot actually construct a true set of Borromean rings with flat circles, and in fact, you can see this for yourself if you try to create the interlocked rings out of wire, which requires some deformation or kinks in the wires. In 1987, Michael Freedman and Richard Skora proved the theorem stating that Borromean rings are impossible to construct with flat circles.

In 2004, UCLA chemists created a molecular Borromean ring compound that was 2.5 nanometers across and that included six metal ions. Researchers are currently contemplating ways in which they may use molecular Borromean rings in such diverse fields as spintronics (a technology that exploits electron spin and charge) and medical imaging.

Golden Ratio

Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (1445 - 1517) - In 1509, Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli, a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci, published Divina Proportione, a treatise on a number that is now widely known as the "Golden Ratio." This ratio, symbolized by , appears with amazing frequency in mathematics and nature. We can understand the proportion most easily by dividing a line into two segments so that the ratio of the whole segment to the longest part is the same as the ratio of the longer part to the shorter part, or (a+b)/b = b/a = 1.61803 ...

If the lengths of the sides of a rectangle are in the golden ratio, then the rectangle is a "golden rectangle." It's possible to divide a golden rectangle into a square and a golden rectangle. Next, we can cut the smaller golden rectangle into a smaller square and golden rectangle. We may continue this process indefinitely, producing smaller and smaller golden rectangles.

If we draw a diagonal from the top right of the original rectangle to the bottom left, then from the bottom right of the baby (that is, the next smaller) golden rectangle to the top left, the intersection point shows the point to which all the baby golden rectangles converge. Moreover, the lengths of the diagonals are in golden ratio to each other. The point to which all the golden rectangles converge is sometimes called the "Eye of God."

The golden rectangle is the only rectangle from which a square can be cut so that the remaining rectangle will always be similar to the original rectangle. If we connect the vertices in the diagram, we approximate a logarithmic spiral that "envelops" the Eye of God. Logarithmic spirals are everywhere - seashells, animal horns, the cochlea of the ear - anywhere that nature needs to fill space economically and regularly. A spiral is strong and uses a minimum of materials. While expanding, it alters its size but never its shape.

Benford's Law

Simon Newcomb (1835 - 1909), Frank Benford (1883 - 1948) - Benford's Law, also called the first-digit law or leading-digit phenomenon, asserts that in various number lists, the digit 1 tends to occur in the leftmost position with probability of roughly 30 percent, much greater than the expected 11.1 percent that would result if each digit occurred with a 1 to 9 probability. Benford's law can be observed, for instance, in tables that list populations, death rates, stock prices, baseball statistics, and the area of rivers and lakes. Explanations for this phenomenon are very recent. (Photo from Mark J. Nigrini)

Benford's law is named after Dr. Frank Benford, a physicist at the General Electric Company who publicized his work in 1938, although it had been previously discovered by mathematician and astronomer Simon Newcomb in 1881. Pages of logarithms, with numbers starting with the numerals 1 are said to be dirtier and more worn by other pages, because the number 1 occurs as the first digit about 30 percent more often than any other. In numerous kinds of data, Benford determined that the probability of any number n from 1 through 0 being the first digit is log₁₀ (1 + 1/n). Even the Fibonacci sequence - 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 - follows Benford's law. Fibonacci numbers are far more likely to start with "1" than any other digit. It appears that Benford's law applies to any data that follows a "power law." For example, large lakes are rare, medium-size lakes are more common, and small lakes are even more common. Similarly, 11 Fibonacci numbers exist in the range 1 - 100, but only one in the next three ranges of 100 (101 - 200, 201- 300, 301- 400)

Benford's law has often been used to detect fraud. For example, accounting consultants can sometimes use the law to detect fraudulent tax returns in which the occurrence of digits does not follow what would be expected according to Benford's law.

Menger Sponge

Menger Sponge by Jeannine Mosely, at the Institute for Figuring. Photo: Ravi Apte

Karl Menger (1902 - 1985) - The Menger sponge is a fractal object with an infinite number of cavities - a nightmarish object for any dentist to contemplate. The object was first described by Austrian mathematician Karl Menger in 1926. To construct the sponge, we begin with a "mother cube" and subdivide it into 27 identical smaller cubes. Next, we remove the cube in the center and the six cubes that share faces with it. This leaves behind 20 cubes. We continue to repeat the process forever. The number of cubes increases by 20ⁿ, where n is the number of iterations performed on the mother cube. The second iteration gives us 400 cubes, and by the time we get to the sixth iteration, we have 64,000,000 cubes.

Each face of the Menger sponge is called a Sierpinski carpet. Fractal antennae based on the Sierpinski carpet are sometimes used as efficient receivers of electromagnetic signals. Both the carpets and the entire cube have fascinating geometrical properties. For example, the sponge has an infinite surface area while enclosing zero volume.

According to the Institute for Figuring, with each iteration, the Sierpinski carpet face "dissolves into a foam whose final structure has no area whatever yet possesses a perimeter that is infinitely long. Like the skeleton of a beast whose flesh has vanished, the concluding form is without substance - it occupies a planar surface, but no longer fills it." This porous remnant hovers between a line and a plane. Whereas a line is one-dimensional and a plane two-dimensional, the Sierpinski carpet has a "fractional" dimension of 1.89. The Menger sponge has a fractional dimension (technically referred to as the Hausdorff Dimension) between a plane and a solid, approximately 2.73, and it has been used to visualize certain models of a foam-like space-time. Dr. Jeannine Mosely has constructed a Menger sponge model from more than 65,000 business cards that weights about 150 pounds (70 kilograms).

The Quest for Lie Group E₈

E8 graph as a 2-dimensional projection, by Peter McMullen
(image by Claudio Rocchini [wikipedia])

Marius Sophus Lie (1842 - 1899), Wilhelm Karl Joseph Killing (1847 - 1923) - For more than a century, mathematicians have sought to understand a vast, 248-dimensional entity, known to them only as E₈. Finally, in 2007, an international team of mathematicians and computer scientists made use of a supercomputer to tame the intricate beast.

As background, consider the Mysterium Cosmographicum (The Sacred Mystery of the Cosmos) of Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630), who was so enthralled with symmetry that he suggested the entire solar system and planetary orbits could be modeled by Platonic Solids, such as the cube and dodecahedron, nestled in each other forming layers as if in a gigantic crystalline onion. These kinds of Keplerian symmetries were limited in scope and number; however, symmetries that Kepler could have hardly imagined may indeed rule the universe.

In the late nineteenth century, the Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie (pronounced "Lee") studied objects with smooth rotational symmetries, like the sphere or doughnut in our ordinary three-dimensional space. In three and higher dimensions, these kinds of symmetries are expressed by Lie groups. The German mathematician Wilhelm Killing suggested the existence of the E₈ group in 1887. Simpler Lie groups control the shape of electron orbital and symmetries of subatomic quarks. Larger groups, like E₈, may someday hold the key to a unified theory of physics and help scientist understand string theory and gravity.

Fokko du Cloux, a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist who was one of the E₈ team members, wrote the software for the supercomputer and pondered the ramifications of E₈ while he was dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and breathing with a respirator. He died in November 2006, never living to see the end of the quest for E₈.

On January 8, 2007, a supercomputer computed the last entry in the table for E₈, which describes the symmetries of a 57-dimensional object that can be imagined as rotating in 248 ways without changing its appearance. The work is significant as an advance in mathematical knowledge and in the use of large-scale computing to solve profound mathematical problems.

Mathematical Universe Hypothesis

Max Tegmark (b. 1967) - In this book, we have encountered various geometries that have been thought to hold the keys to the universe. Johannes Kepler modeled the solar system with Platonic Solids such as the dodecahedron. Large Lie groups, like E₈, may someday help us create a unified theory of physics. Even Galileo in the seventeenth century suggested that "nature's great book is written in mathematical symbols." In the 1960s, physicist Eugene Wigner was impressed with the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences." (Photo: MIT Physics Faculty website)

In 2007, Swedish-American cosmologist Max Tegmark published scientific and popular articles on the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that states that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and that our universe is not just described by mathematics - it is mathematics. Tegmark is a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute. He notes that when we consider equations like 1 + 1 = 2, the notations for the numbers are relatively unimportant when compared to the relationship that are being described. He believes that "we don't invent mathematical structures - we discover them, and invent only the notation for describing them."

Tegmark's hypothesis implies that "we all live in a gigantic mathematical object - one that is more elaborate than a dodecahedron, and probably also more complex than objects with intimidating names like Calabi-Yau manifolds, tensor bundles, and Hilbert spaces, which appear in today's most advanced theories. Everything in our world is purely mathematical - including you." If this idea seems counterintuitive, this shouldn't be surprising, because many modern theories, like quantum theory and relativity, can defy intuition. As mathematician Ronald Graham once said, "Our brain have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions."

__________

Cliff Pickover is a prolific author, having published more than 40 books, translated into over a dozen languages, on topics ranging from science and mathematics to religion, art, history, computers and creativity, human intelligence, higher dimensions, time travel, and science fiction. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University's Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, holds over 50 U.S. patents, and is an associate editor for several scientific journals. His computer graphics have appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, and his research has received considerable attention from media outlets ranging from CNN and WIRED to The New York Times. His website, pickover.com, receives millions of visits.

Links: The Math Book website | The Math Book on Amazon | Cliff Pickover's Reality Carnival

__________

Previously on Neatorama: 5 Scientific Laws and the Scientists Behind Them

Math T-shirts from the Neatorama Store:

I Love Math T-Shirt	Math Puns Are The First Sine of Madness	Integral of 1/cabin = log cabin

Image: IBM

Take a look at the image above and tell us what do you see. A field of mushrooms? A series of tubes a la Super Mario Bros.? Actually they’re a crop of silicon nanowires, grown by IBM researcher Frances Ross. The gray columns are the wires and the black blob are liquid droplets that catalyze the growth of the nanowires.

One day, these mushroom-shaped wires just may replace today’s transistors:

In Dr. Ross’s laboratory at I.B.M., researchers are concentrating on more near-term technology. They are exploring the idea of constructing FinFET switches in a radical new process that breaks away from photo etching. It is a kind of nanofarming. Dr. Ross sprinkles gold particles as small as 10 nanometers in diameter on a substrate and then suffuses them in a silicon gas at a temperature of about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. This causes the particles to become “supersaturated” with silicon from the gas, which will then precipitate into a solid, forming a wire that grows vertically.

I.B.M. is pressing aggressively to develop this technology, which could be available commercially by 2012, she said. At the same time she acknowledged that significant challenges remain in perfecting nanowire technology. The mushroom-shaped wires in her laboratory now look a little bit like bonsai trees. To offer the kind of switching performances chipmakers require, the researchers must learn to make them so that their surfaces are perfectly regular. Moreover, techniques must be developed to make them behave like semiconductors.

John Markoff of The New York Times has the fascinating story: Link – via Make

This faux trailer presents Super Mario Bros. as the classic war movie The Inglorious Bastards (or possibly the new Quentin Tarantino remake). It’s called The Inglorious Plumbers and was produced by Nick Murphy.

Via Popped Culture

GadgetHER has pictures of 25 unusual Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls, including crocheted robots, Super Mario Bros., and Left 4 Dead video game characters. The picture above is of a set that illustrates the evolution of the cell phone over time.

Link via Crunch Gear

Previously on Neatorama:
Russian Matryoshka Dolls
Geeky Matryoshka Dolls
Star Wars Matryoshka Dolls

Craftster member enemyairship created this 7 by 7 foot rug of Mario in raccoon form:

He’s made of 386 granny squares, each one representing 1 pixel (3.5″ each) that makes up Raccoon Mario. I learned to crochet in February by watching youtube videos and recently watched another video for granny squares and got started on this project right away. I had originally thought that it would take me over 1 month to complete if I made about 10 granny squares per day.

Link via Gear Fuse

If you love Mario, you may be interested in learning how to make your own Super Mario Mushroom from a radish.  Perfect for bento boxes or party treats, although, if you’re like me, it’s nothing you’d ever want to eat.

Link

Did you guys hear that Indiana Jones 5 is apparently in the works? Are you all as horrified as I am? If you’re like me and hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with a passion, then you prefer to dwell on the classics – Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Last Crusade, and yes, even Temple of Doom. Here’s some trivia to remind you of the good times.

The movie was filmed during the summer of 1980.

You’ve probably heard the rumors, and yes, they’re true – Indiana Jones was named after George Lucas’ dog, Indiana. He was the prototype for Chewbacca as well, so his old malamute had a pretty big impact on Lucas’ two biggest series.

“Indiana Smith?” Yep, almost, until Steven Spielberg told Lucas it just didn’t sound right. The equally-generic “Jones” was suggested and flowed much better.

According to George Lucas, almost every studio in town turned down the movie, feeling that it would cost too much money to make.

Tim Matheson and Tom Selleck both tested for Indiana Jones; Karen Allen actually screentested with Tim Matheson. Tom Selleck did very well and was the frontrunner, but had to bow out due to Magnum P.I. Harrison Ford was brought up early in the casting discussion, but George Lucas wanted to avoid casting him since he had already become so closely associated with Star Wars.

The role of Sallah was offered to Danny DeVito – he was Spielberg’s first choice – but was unable to do it because of Taxi. The job went to John Rhys-Davies instead. Picture from BlogCDN.

Indy’s leather jacket looks old and beat up, but in reality, it was brand new – and there were 10 of them. The costume director “aged” each jacket with a metal brush and Harrison Ford’s own pocket knife.

The famous hat is from Savile Row in London, a place called Herbert Johnson. The hat had a very wide brim and the crown was quite high, apparently the fashion Down Under since it was their Australian model. After a couple of fittings, it was declared the Indiana Jones fedora. When the customized hat arrived at the studio, the costume designer rolled it up and crushed it, then various members of the cast (including Harrison) took turns sitting on it to make it look like a very worn-in, well-loved hat.

Someone was actually sent out to find a mountain that specifically looked like the Paramount Studios logo mountain so they could create the opening shot of the movie. I suppose these days Lucas would have just made a CGI mountain…

There was a complication during the scene where Alfred Molina is covered in spiders – they didn’t want to move. They just sat stagnant on him, making the excitement of the scene rather… well, not exciting. They discovered that all of the spiders were male, so a female spider was put on Molina’s chest. It did the trick – the male spiders were immediately more active and started to crawl in the direction of the female.

The golden idol was based on an Incan fertility statue. Photo from FanPop.

The movie was filmed in Tunisia because it was a lot cheaper to shoot there than Egypt, and since the script never called for shots of the Sphinx or the pyramids, so they were able to get away with it. In fact, one of the scenes was shot in the exact same canyon where R2-D2 was stolen by Jawas in Star Wars.

The part where Indy watches a swordsman go through a very elaborate routine with his scimitar only to shoot him at the end of it happened because Harrison Ford really had to go to the bathroom. Indy was supposed to have a huge fight scene using his whip, but a bout of dysentery had left him weak and desperately needing the john. Because of this, someone – reports vary on whose idea it was – suggested that Indy just dispatch the dude like anyone who had a gun in his arsenal would.

Harrison wasn’t the only one who got sick – a majority of the cast and crew found themselves incapacitated at some point during filming in Tunisia. Steven Spielberg didn’t get sick because he ate only canned food from the U.K. Everyone else who ate food in the restaurants or at the hotel got horribly sick at least once during filming.

During the scene where Indy fights while the plane is rolling around, Harrison Ford actually sustained an injury when the wheels of the plane got too close and rolled right up onto his leg. It tore his ACL, but rather than submit to Tunisian hospitals, Ford wrapped it in ice and continued to shoot. He also bruised his ribs during the scene where he is dragged behind the truck.

Unlike his character counterpart, Harrison Ford isn’t afraid of snakes and had no problem working with them during the Well of Souls scene. Precautions were taken anyway – if you look closely, a reflection gives away the fact that a sheet of glass was placed between Ford and the cobra. It was a good thing, too – at one point the cobra actually sprayed venom onto the glass.

Some of the sound effects weren’t fancy at all: the sound of snakes slithering was really just the sound designer squishing his fingers through a cheese casserole, the sound of people getting punched was really a pile of leather coats being hit with a baseball bat, and the lid sliding off of the Ark was a toilet lid being slid off the back of a toilet. The sound designer was having trouble coming up with just the right sound for the rolling boulder at the beginning of the movie and ended up using the sound of a Honda Civic coasting down a gravel hill.

Marion was the writer’s grandmother-in-law’s name, and he had been mulling over a surname for a while when he came across a streetname called “Ravenwood” and loved the way the two names fit together. Photo from TheShadyCat.

The boat was actually the submarine model from Das Boot.

Although most shots were done in four takes or less because Lucas and Spielberg wanted a “quick and dirty” feel to the movie – nothing too perfect – there was one shot that took more than 50 takes. It was the scene where the monkey salutes with a “Heil Hitler” gesture. A grape was attached to fishing line and held just out of reach of the camera shot to achieve the salute, but it took a while to get it just right. It ended up being one of Steven Spielberg’s favorite moments in the movie.

Those of us who like little movie secrets know that George Lucas likes to include a reference to “1138” in all of his movies in homage to his first movie, THX 1138. You’ll find it in Raiders during the Nazi harbor scene if you listen to the numbers being read over the loudspeaker. It’s subtle, though, because the numbers are read in German – “Ein, ein, drei, acht.”

Known for their supersized productions, the French mechanical marionette street theatre company Royale de Luxe have been up to their tricks again this weekend, this time on their home territory of the city of Nantes in western France.  A giant deep-sea diver desperately searches for his niece, a search which has encompassed a hundred years, the sinking of the Titanic and a mysterious mailbox.  This is quite an extraordinary sight by anyone’s standards.

Nantes, the home town of Jules Verne, is situated in western France. Here, near the river Loire a giant deep-sea diver sleeps gently, waiting for his task to begin. Sadness marks his face even as he sleeps. He has been searching the world over for his missing niece and although he may not know it, the end of his search is coming. The diver or scaphandrier as he is known in French will be paraded through the streets of this historic city at the beginning of the Estuary 2009 arts festival. The biannual festival gives the French mechanical marionette street theater company Royale de Luxe the opportunity to unveil their latest creation.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

Images : Kyohei Sakaguchi

The Japanese are just better than the rest of us. There. I’ve said it. From consumer electronics to cars, it seems that the Japanese just do things better.

I’m sure we’ve all heard that the Japanese may be academically better (their school children consistently score at the top of the charts) but they’re not creative. But that is dead wrong as anyone who has seen a Japanese game show, watched an anime, or play Super Mario can attest.

Even the Japanese homeless are better. In 2000, architect Kyohei Sakaguchi ran across this homeless camp along a riverside in Tokyo. The homeless man who was living in it worked for a camera company and knew his electronics – so he outfitted his "Zero Yen House" with a solar panel that let him watch TV and listen to the radio.

The Interior is made from wood. The roof is made from the cardboard. He covered it with a big blue vinyl sheet. He stocks under the floor. This house isn’t connected with the road. He just put it on the road. He said to me that this could float on the water once. This house is also a ship!!!

Link – via anArchitecture

Previously at Neatorama: Gaillard’s Super Mario Kart.

Cross-Stitch Ninja made this map of the first world of Super Mario Bros. 3 by zooming way in on a screenshot of the game, and making one pixel=one stitch. 

You can make your own video game cross-stitch patterns by following the instructions at Spritestitch.

Link

Remember Retro Sabotage (previously at Neatorama) where you can play hilariously sabotaged classic arcade games? Now they have something new! See if you can figure out what is different about this version of Super Mario Bros. from 1985. You can construct one of your own, too! Link -Thanks, Rico & Tof!

This post started when I saw The 40 Greatest Uses of the Mario Brothers theme article at Rock the List. I figured I’d play one of the videos and link you guys to the rest. But when I searched for the original Tesla Coil video to share, all of these other video game themes appeared. Who knew?!

Here’s the theme that started it all – Mario:

And here we have Tetris, of course.

Zelda:

Amazing. I still recommend you check out the 40 Greatest Uses of the Mario Theme, though. It’s got everything from the banjo, which I think sounds pretty good, to a dude with a remote control car that drives by a line of glass bottles and hits them to make the appropriate noise for each note.

Yummy burgers made out of mushrooms that look like Mario mushrooms! 1 Up to nom town. For instructions to make your own, don’t miss this Instructables post. If you like that, don’t miss their Mario holiday guide here.

Antoinette J. Citizen created this art installation straight out of Super Mario Bros, complete with working question mark boxes with sound effects: Link – via Chunnel

It turns out that Mother Nature invented the Super Mario Star. Behold the Marginaster sea star, newly discovered off the coast of Tasmania:

Photo: CSIRO

A recently discovered species of Marginaster sea star was found living around seamounts in the southern waters off the coast of Tasmania, scientists reported in October 2008.

The seamounts, or underwater mountains, can sprawl 15.6 miles (25 kilometers) wide and rise thousands of feet from the seabed.

In the deep sea, where the ocean bottom is nothing more than muddy sediment, rocky seamounts offer a stable habitat that provides shelter and food for sea life.

National Geographic News has the fascinating photo gallery: Link

For his daughter’s fourth birthday, Will Turnbow decided that he’s going to make the bestest Super Mario cake EVAR! Behold the Super Mario Galaxy cake, complete with spinning Luigi, flying Mario, and a rockin’ Bowser! It. Is. Simply. Awesome. Link

Here’s a YouTube clip of the cake "in action"

[YouTube clip]

Okay, okay – I know a lot of you are tired of the overplayed Mario Bros. theme, but bear with me this one instance.

Adrian Holovaty, one of the lead developers of the Django web framework, stumbled upon VGMix.com, an online community of amateur musicians who make recordings of video game music. Inspired, Adrian then recorded his version of the Super Mario Bros. 2 Level One theme music, in the style of gypsy jazz music of Django Reinhardt.

It’s wonderful, check it out: Link (embedded YouTube clip)

(Links open in a new browser window/tab)

	Wedding Ring Exchange FAIL Or perhaps, better titled "The World's Worst Best Man" - I don't know if he'd ever live this one down. Wait for it ... wait for it ... Link
	CSI:NY Creates VB GUI to Track IP's Shows like CSI try hard to bring "real" science into the show, but more often than not, they fail (DNA sequencing in 3 minutes, anyone?) Perhaps the writers really don't understand how science is done, or perhaps they just want to throw in some jargon that sounds good on the dialog. Here's a perfect example: tracking down IPs using by creating a GUI (Graphical User Interface) using Visual Basic. As the VideoSift caption says, it made as much sense as "Get me some lettuce, and I'll count to potato, then we'll find grandma." Link
	Japanese Games Shows Are So Much Better Than Ours Here's what contestants have to do in one Japanese game show: swing on a rope to a treadmill, then grab a stepping block and swing to a floating platform ... What are the Japanese thinking? Actually this explains Super Mario Bros. perfectly! Link
	Saturn V Rocket Launch - Ultra Slow Motion What's better than watching a rocket launch? Watching it in ultra slo-mo! Here's a fascinating clip of the launch of the Saturn V rocket like you've never seen it before: Link
	Here Come the Fat One! What would happen if a manatee swam into the glass at the aquarium? Oh, the huge manatee! Check out this "nature's crumple zone" clip here: Link (short and sweet, just 11 sec!)

For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.

Ooh … This. Is. Awesome. No, it’s SUPER AWESOME: Dan Kressin made a Donkey Kong diorama, complete with Kong throwing barrels and Mario jumping over them out of LEGO MINDSTORMS:

During a random discussion at the April NELUG meeting, Robyn (my wife and muse) off-handedly said, "You should make Donkey Kong!" As is her way, she followed this remark with a brief musical rendition, firmly planting the idea in my skull.

The Goal
Donkey Kong is a classic, so I wanted my MOC to do it justice. At a minimum it would need to have:

* rolling barrels (using LEGO barrels if possible)
* Donkey Kong throwing the barrels
* a barrel-jumping minifig
* ladders and ramps that closely resembled the originals

The rest is an epic win: Link – via Brothers Brick | Gizmodo has a YouTube clip of the Donkey Kong LEGO in action: Link

The Best Mario Cake Ever from last month faces some serious competition from this amazingly detailed creation by Beth from Let Them Eat Cake in Costa Mesa, California.

We were looking for ideas to make our wedding different and our own, a unique wedding cake was one of the things we came up with. My wife suggested the idea of having a video game cake after we saw one online. We wanted a game that we both enjoyed and decided on the game series we have spent the most time playing together.

Coincidentally, the latest Mario Kart game was released on the same weekend of our wedding. This cake was designed with elements from multiple Mario Kart games, as well as a few aspects from other Super Mario Bros. games.

Link (Flickr) – via Sprite Stitch

Eminence Orchestra wants to open up classical music to new listeners, especially younger people who think that a symphony is either a milk chocolate bar or music for old people. So they don’t play Bach or Beethoven – rather, they composed and play music straight out of video games!

If young people won’t come to the orchestra, then Eminence Orchestra will bring music to them … through YouTube. I’ll skip the oft-played Super Mario Bros. theme song (though it’s good) – rather, let’s listen to something from …

Metal Gear Solid [YouTube Link]

… or from a year ago:

Final Fantasy VII (One Winged Angel) [YouTube Link]

Link: Eminence Orchestra website | YouTube Profile - Thanks Noel!

Previously on Neatorama: 10 Operas You Didn’t Know You Already Like