(YouTube Link)

We've previously posted the band OK Go's innovative music videos, including their Rube Goldberg machine and brass band versions of "This Too Shall Pass", as well as their treadmill dancing video. All of those videos were shot in one take, and this new one is no different. The director of "End Love" writes about how his team created the video's visual effects by altering the film speed:

The fastest we go is 172,800x, compressing 24 hours of real time into a blazing 1/2 second. The slowest is 1/32x speed, stretching a mere 1/2 second of real time into a whopping 16 seconds. This gives us a fastest to slowest ratio of 5.5 million. If you like averages, the average speed up factor of the band dancing is 270x. In total we shot 18 hours of the band dancing and 192 hours of LA skyline timelapse – over a million frames of video – and compressed it all down to 4 minutes and 30 seconds! Oh and don’t forget, it’s one continuous camera shot.

Link via Nerdcore

There's a growing market in luxury mattresses. The most expensive made in the United States is the Palais Royale by E.S. Kluft & Co., which costs $33,000. It contains 10 pounds of cashmere and its coils are tied together by hand with Italian twine. The price only goes up for higher-end, imported European models:

At $69,500—roughly the price of a Porsche Cayenne S hybrid SUV—there's the Vividus king-size mattress set from Hästens Sängar AB, of Sweden. Hästens says it takes 160 hours to assemble this mattress entirely by hand, which has a Swedish-pine frame with thick layers of horsehair, cotton, flax and wool inside. The company says since introducing the mattress in 2006, it has sold 250 of them world-wide.

There's an arms race under way in the world of luxury mattresses that jittery economists and sluggish home sales seem unable to stop. Even at the middle-to-upper-middle tiers, mattress prices are creeping up as companies cater to mainstream demand for luxurious sleep.

Voon. At the link, you can view a cross section of the Palais Royale.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user aralbalkan used under Creative Commons license

The Johnny Cash Project took the music video for Cash's last studio recording "Ain't No Grave" and invited artists to recreate it, frame by frame. There's no embeddable video, but at the link, you can watch several different versions. You can also get information about the each frame contributed, including the artist responsible and the brushstroke count.

Link via Urlesque | Image: Johnny Cash Project

Ellie, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy, is almost completely blind. Her owner is trying to find the money necessary for eye surgery. In the meantime, Leo, a German Shepherd, has taken up the role of seeing eye dog for Ellie.

"Ellie has cataracts on both eyes and is only aware of shadows," explains Jean Spencer, manager of Rochdale's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in an interview with the Manchester Evening News. "But Leo, who's an absolutely massive dog, has become her eyes. It's touching to watch them together. She follows him around and snuggles up to him."

The dogs' owner, Julie Lander, described how Leo helps Ellie:

Lander goes on to explain how Leo's almost 90 pounds of bulk helps keep his new charge safe. "I take them for walks in the park and Leo guides Ellie around. He is so protective and herds the more boisterous dogs away from her," Julie says.

Link via J-Walk Blog | Photo: Emma Williams, Manchester Evening News Syndication

Previously: White Cane for Blind Dog

(YouTube Link)

This video of unknown provenance shows a tortoise who has flipped over on his back. He's helpless until another tortoise rescues him by pushing him over.

via Bits & Pieces

Mitch Moxley worked in a unique industry in China: being a white man. Apparently, it's beneficial in the eyes of some Chinese businessmen to have white men standing around looking important. So that's what Moxley and others have been paid to do:

“I call these things ‘White Guy in a Tie’ events,” a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. “Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?”

I was.

And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: “Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face.”

Link via Fausta's Blog | Image: University of Texas

Previously: Meet a Black Person

There's a spot above a rocky cliff at Sydney Harbour called The Gap. Since the 19th Century, countless people have ended their lives there. But Don Ritchie, who has lived at that location for fifty years, has made his life's work to stand watch and invite people to choose life. According to the official count, he's saved one hundred and sixty lives:

In those bleak moments when the lost souls stood atop the cliff, wondering whether to jump, the sound of the wind and the waves was broken by a soft voice. "Why don't you come and have a cup of tea?" the stranger would ask. And when they turned to him, his smile was often their salvation.[...]

In his younger years, he would occasionally climb the fence to hold people back while Moya called the police. He would help rescue crews haul up the bodies of those who couldn't be saved. And he would invite the rescuers back to his house afterward for a comforting drink.

It all nearly cost him his life once. A chilling picture captured decades ago by a local news photographer shows Ritchie struggling with a woman, inches from the edge. The woman is seen trying to launch herself over the side — with Ritchie the only thing between her and the abyss. Had she been successful, he would have gone over, too.

These days, he keeps a safer distance. The council installed security cameras this year and the invention of mobile phones means someone often calls for help before he crosses the street.

But he remains available to lend an ear, though he never tries to counsel, advise or pry. He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they'd like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him.

Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: AP/Jeremy Piper

(YouTube Link)

The Kitty Coin Box has a toy cat inside that reaches up for coins placed on top of it. It also, as this video demonstrates, entertains real cats.

via Make

People in Hong Kong drive on the left side of the road, but people in mainland China drive on the right side of the road. How do you switch them when they cross the Pearl River? Dutch design firm NL Architects proposes this figure-eight design that splits the lanes and reroutes both to the correct side of the road for each direction.

The bridge does exactly what the name suggests: It flips traffic around. The key here is separating the two sides of traffic, using a figure-eight shape. One side of the road dips under the other, funneling cars that were traveling on the left to the right (and vice versa), without forcing them to encounter head-on traffic at an intersection.[...]

Say, for instance, you're coming from Zhuhai. As you cross the bridge on the right into Hong Kong, the highway slopes downward to let you pass under the oncoming traffic. As it slopes back up, you reemerge on the left. No cars barreling straight at you. No concrete labyrinth to maneuver through. No sweat (and, ostensibly, no blood).

Link | Image: NL Architects

(YouTube Link)

The Chiba Institute of Technology, a private university in Japan, makes awesome robots. No, not giant missile-firing mecha robots yet. Those are still in early development. But Serkan Toto of CrunchGear rounded up a few videos of the university's more completed projects, including the above Hyperion 4. This robot is designed to move individuals over uneven terrain.

Link | Official Website

(YouTube Link)

You know what would be fun? To pilot your jet ski from the lake directly into the back of an open van that has been backed into the water. Just like in the movies. What could possibly go wrong?

via Gizmodo

(Video Link)

"Cardboard Mechanics" is an art installation created by four students at the Utrecht School of Art and Technology in the Netherlands. It is a clockwork machine built out of cardboard and controlled by an arduino. You can view more videos of the machine at the link.

Link via The Presurfer

Adorable, isn't it? Ah, but you haven't what seen the interior of this Ferrari 360 Modena spotted in Jakarta looks like. It's really cute/grotesque! More pictures at the link.

Link via Geekologie | Photo: Detikoto & GTSpirit

A Dutch navy sergeant was scuba diving off the coast of Aruba when he lost his waterproof digital camera. It washed up six months later on the shore of Key West, Florida, where it was discovered by Paul Schultz. He turned it on, downloaded the pictures, and then posted them on an Internet message board in the hope of locating the camera's owner:

Under the name "Aquahound", he uploaded the images to Scubaboard.com, an online diving community, asking for help. Within days, users identified the location as Aruba, a Dutch island off the Venezuelan coast.

A plane's tail number was visible in one shot, and a computer search showed the aircraft was on the island on the day the photograph was taken. There was also a school poster written in Dutch.

Mr Shultz duly posted the pictures on the travel websites Cruisecritic and Aruba.com, and two days later a local woman contacted him to say she recognised the children in the photos as classmates of her son. Camera and owner were duly reunited.

Link | Photo (unrelated): CDC

(YouTube Link)

I've heard more than one New Yorker wish that tourists on sidewalks would either speed up or get out of the way. Improv Everywhere ran with this idea and spray painted actual traffic lanes marked "New Yorkers" and "Tourists" on a section of sidewalk. Then the pranksters tried to enforce them.

It took four days for municipal maintenance workers to remove the lanes.

New Yorkers, would you like to see carried out officially?

via Urlesque | Official Website

Previous Improv Everywhere Pranks:
Food Court Musical
Ghostbusters in New York Public Library
Frozen in Grand Central Station
Mobile Desktop Prank