Okay, is it sprinkling outside, or is it raining? A little boy tries to argue about the weather with a little girl. She’s got a sister for backup, and although the sister makes an attempt to moderate the disagreement, you know the poor little boy feels totally outnumbered. And she poked his heart! There will be a lot more of that in this young man’s life to come. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
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Paul Smith has suffered from cerebral palsy since birth. Simple things that most folks take for granted, such as holding a brush or a writing utensil, aren't within the realm of possibility for him. Yet Mr. Smith did not let a disability stifle his spirit and desire to create art. As a young man, Smith began to "paint" with a typewriter. Using only ten symbol keys, Smith creates the impressive works of art shown in this video. Paul Smith may be confined to a nursing home in Oregon, but he has the power to inspire people all over the world with his talents, gracious demeanor and perseverance in the face of hardship. Via Lost at E Minor.
Regular readers know that I am awed by the skills of good excavator drivers. In the past, we've seen one load a digger into a truck without a ramp, serve as the engine of a truck, row a boat, and light a cigarette.
In this video, the excavator is at the bottom of a deep ditch. That worries the driver not a bit. He moves his digger out so cleverly and smoothly that you'd swear that he had planned it that way from the beginning. And I suspect that he did.
A few days ago, I posted a video of a dog trying to save a fish's life. It was an amazing act of empathy between different animals, and it got me wondering how many other times this or something like it has happened between animals of different species. I showed a friend the video of the dog, and the next day I got this video in my email. As you will see, it is the same kind of thing. A bear sees a crow fly into his area in the zoo by mistake, and it lands in the water. The bear can clearly see the crow struggling, and what it does next is the last thing you expect to see from a bear.
What is most remarkable is not just the fact that the bear saves the crow from drowning, but that you can see it is trying to be delicate and not hurt the crow when he removes him from the water. For a minute, you think the crow may have gotten messed up, then it just hops up and does its thing and the bear goes back to just being a bear.
Again, you ever think we could learn some humanity from animals? Ironic, I know. But also pretty amazing.
Channel 4 and Nexus teamed up to produce this awesome animated short with a twist ending. This action sequence is about a working community that panics over a mysterious and deadly invasion. Telling you any more might spoil the payoff, but after you watch it, you can read more about it at Agency Spy. And if you hate watching something with such a mysterious description, hey, it's just two minutes. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
There’s something about watching a piano slowly being reduced to a pile of ashes via heat gun that is genuinely heartbreaking, worthy of a cheesy subtitle like "the day the music died" or "honky tonk blues".
Maybe it’s knowing how much musical joy the instrument has brought to the lives of listeners, or the fact that another piece of history is being reduced to ash.
Whatever the reason there’s something powerful about watching a piano being turned into a pile of smoldering rubble:
Deconstructed Piano is a meditative and melancholy video created by music lover Laurin Döpfner, who has this to say about his unique video project:
"Deconstructed Piano" considers the gradual destruction of instrumental music through digital sound generators. The Moonlight Sonata is corrupted in an assault by two robots. The Sonata represents the agony and grief suffered by the piano. For this performance two heat guns at a temperature of 650°C work the piano's wood on and on to the point of collapse. There are four cameras installed to capture the process in a time lapse with one frame every 6 seconds. The ongoing performance and the shooting took about 8 hours.
-Via Sploid
I think it is sometimes easy to look at animals and not realize that they are a bit of purity in an impure world. People want to write off their actions as all being based on the need to survive, so let me ask you, what is the dog doing in this video that will ensure it survives? Nothing. The dog simply sees that this fish is struggling, and somehow is aware enough to try to get water on the fish. It is as simple an act as one could do, yet it is impossible to watch the video and not get hit right in the feels. Don't worry if you cannot understand any of the background dialog, as this is all happening in Thailand.
Though apologies to anyone who finds this video sad, that is not how you should take it. You should walk away from this amazed at the empathy one animal felt for another, even of a different species. They say empathy does not exist within the animal kingdom (they being most psychologists), yet here we have a one minute video that proves that not to be true.
I know some humans who could learn a thing or two from this dog about how we should treat one another, even if we are a little different. Very powerful stuff.
Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai province, Northern Thailand is an elephant sanctuary and rescue center. Located in an idyllic, rural setting in a natural valley bordered by a river, the park is a welcome refuge for elephants in distress from all over Thailand.
Elephant Nature Park's founder Sangduen "Lek" Chailert has an interesting history. Her grandfather was a tribesman and traditional healer who took Lek on jungle adventures when she was young. Later, her family cared for an elephant that became her companion. Lek's lifelong affinity for elephants led to her important work with the species.
This sweet video shows Lek singing an elephant named Faa Mai to a sound sleep, complete with elephant snores. Via Viral Viral Videos.
Tim's Vermeer, directed by Teller of Penn and Teller fame and starring his partner Penn Jillette, focuses on a man's obsession with the photorealism of Dutch master Johannes Vermeer's seventeenth century paintings. Tim Jenison, an inventor and computer graphics professional from Texas, was fascinated by the paintings of Vermeer, which are so realistic that everything from skin tones to a multitude of natural and man-made surfaces seem more akin to photographic rather than painted representations.
Jenison was interested in whether Vermeer may have used a camera lucida or similar device using lenses and mirrors during his artistic process. Jenison's mission to recreate Vermeer’s painting The Music Lesson led to a five-year-long, complete reconstruction of the background of the painting. His research was filmed and the footage became the documentary Tim’s Vermeer, which was released today on Blu-ray and digital download. Via Colossal.
As we tried to avoid freezing to death last winter, you kept hearing people saying, “So much for global warming, huh?” In a preview of this week’s Cosmos episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the vast difference between weather, which is what we notice, and climate, which is global and changes gradually -usually. And he has an awfully cute dog out on the beach with him. -via Viral Viral Videos
A driver in Canada spotted what looked like a pile of trash squirming around on the side of the road, so they decided to get out and take a look. They discovered that the strange, indiscernible pile of stuff was actually a dog with fur that was so overgrown and matted it could hardly move, let alone feed itself.
They took the dog to the Quebec Society for the Protection of Animals, and a radical grooming session transformed him from a ratty looking hobo creature to this cute little dog ready for adoption.
-Via Daily Entertainment
What kind of companies top the list of political campaign contributions in your state's last election cycle? Mother Jones took the data from Follow The Money, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization that compiles a database of verifiable campaign finance contributions across the 50 states for the 2012 election, and came up with the map above.
The data is admittedly incomplete: Mother Jones limited their search to the top business in each state and excluded contributions from unions, law firms, nonprofits, and PACs.
It's not surprising that gambling dominated the political contributions in Nevada, but I was surprised to find that it also dominated in Rhode Island. I'm also surprised to find that finance companies dominated the political contributions in only 4 states - why did I think it would've been in more places?
Real Estate companies pay the highest corporate campaign contributions in 14 states, health-related companies in 13, and energy companies in 12. Tech and telecom dominated in 3 whereas manufacturing in only two.
See which type of company dominated your state's politics over at Mother Jones.
To mark World AIDS Day (December 1st), LIFE magazine looks at the story behind the iconic 1990 photograph of David Kirby and his family that put a human face on the AIDS epidemic, and showed the world how it affected families as well as its victims. Photographer Therese Frare shares how it came about.
“Early on,” Frare says of her time at Pater Noster House, “I asked David if he minded me taking pictures, and he said, ‘That’s fine, as long as it’s not for personal profit.’ To this day I don’t take any money for the picture. But David was an activist, and he wanted to get the word out there about how devastating AIDS was to families and communities. Honestly, I think he was a lot more in tune with how important these photos might become.”
Frare pauses, and laughs. “At the time, I was like, Besides, who’s going to see these pictures, anyway?“
Over the past 20 years, by some estimates, as many as one billion people have seen the now-iconic Frare photograph that appeared in LIFE, as it was reproduced in hundreds of newspaper, magazine and TV stories — all over the world — focusing on the photo itself and (increasingly) on the controversies that surrounded it.
Those controversies included the use of the photo in a Benetton ad, which drew the ire of activists and others. But you might not know what else happened after Kirby's death. His parents went through it all again, as they became caregivers to the hospice worker who cared for David, when he also succumbed to AIDS. Frare documented his story in pictures as well, which you can see in the article at LIFE. -via Digg
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