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This bizarre video has been circulating the Internet for about a week or two. It appears to be a Russian man singing a wordless (even in Russian) nonsense song before a live audience. It is definitely an ear worm, so if you listen, be prepared to continue to listen to it for a couple of days.

Anyway, the meaning and origin of this video may finally be at hand. Blogger Justin Smith explains:

The man singing is Edward Hill, also known as Eduard Khil', or, better yet, [Cyrillic redacted -- ed.]. According to his Russian Wikipedia page, Hill was born in Smolensk in 1934, and finished his studies at the Leningrad Conservatory in 1960. By 1974 he had been named a People's Artist of the USSR, and in 1981 he was awarded the Order of the Friendship of Peoples. He is best known for his interpretations of the songs of the Soviet composer, Arkadii Ostrovskii. As for the peculiar name, I could find no information, but imagine that he is descended from the English elite that had established itself in western Russian cities by the 17th century. He is not a defector of the Lee Harvey Oswald generation. He is entirely Russian.

The song he is interpreting, "I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home," is an Ostrovskii composition, and it is meant to be sung in the vokaliz style, that is to say sung, but without words. I have seen a number of comments online, ever since a flurry of interest in Hill began just a few days ago, to the effect that this routine must have been meant as a critique of Soviet censorship, but in fact vokaliz was a well established genre, one that seems close in certain respects to pantomime.

http://www.jehsmith.com/1/2010/02/edward-anatolevich-hill.html via Urlesque

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A young couple named Darino and Niko created a wedding invitation in the form of an 8-bit video game. To get the invitation, one must complete the game. At the link, you can view the groom version of the game and the game-appropriate packaging for the invitations.

Link via Gizmodo | Previously on Neatorama: 8-Bit Wedding Invitation

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New Zealander Rudy Heeman made a hovercraft in his garage. When it hits seventy kph, it starts flying. Heeman homes to sell his invention at $13,000 USD per unit.

via Urlesque

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Jordan Verner of Ontario had a dream: he wanted to complete Orcarina of Time, a video game in the Legend of Zelda franchise. But he is blind, which makes playing a video game, let alone completing it, very difficult. Three men who read of his predicament on the Internet responded by writing a complete, keystroke-by-keystroke guide to completing the game.

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12074031 via Geekologie

Channeling a Star Wars metaphor, Stephen Van Worley imagined a McDonald's empire in black with pockets of rebellion within by its seven largest competitors:

By far, the largest pocket of resistance is Sonic Drive-In’s south-central stronghold: more than 900 restaurants packed into the state of Texas alone.  Sheer density is the key to victory!

The rebels already have the numbers – over 24,000 locations in total – but they’ve divided and conquered themselves by strict adherence to the peacetime principles of brand identity and corporate structure.  This is war, and for the sake of self-preservation, all must be sacrificed!  Kings and Queens: get used to hanging with the common folk.  Tone down the sarcasm, Jack.  And everyone, please, stop yanking Wendy’s pigtails!  Y’all need to work in harmony to succeed with the winning strategy: an Alliance!

Link via Fast Company

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This freaky video demonstrates what Weird Asia News describes as a trendy hobby in Japan: squirrel fishing. It involves attaching a nut to a fishing line and raising a squirrel off the ground when it bites in.

Ever since 1997, Japanese men, women, and children have been fishing for squirrels as a fun and harmless pastime.[...]

The goal of squirrel fishing is to lift a squirrel into the air using only a fishing pole with a nut tied to a string as bait. The fishing pole can either be a real fishing pole, or simply a long stick tied to a rope. Either way, the pole is cast in front of a hungry squirrel in the hope that he will jump for it and latch on, allowing the fisherman or fisherwoman to raise the furry little critter off the ground and into the air.

Link via Urlesque

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are working on a device that projects an interface onto a user's body, which can then be used to work mobile devices:

It's called Skinput, and here's how it works: The use wears an armband, which contains a very small projector that projects a menu or keypad onto a person's hand or forearm. The armband also contains an acoustic sensor. Why? Because when you tap different parts of your body, it makes unique sounds based on the area's bone density, soft tissue, joints and other factors.

The software in Skinput is able to analyze the sound frequencies picked up by the acoustic sensor and then determine which button the user has just tapped.

Link via Popular Science | Official Website | Photos: Chris Harrison

Miscast Classic Films
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Al Pacino as Han Solo? John Travolta as Forrest Gump? Animator Dan Meth presents clips from classic movies, if actors once considered for important roles had been selected.

A fugitive after being sentenced to death in Belgium 22 years ago (since commuted to life in prison, after the abolition of the death penalty), Jean-Claude Demey was finally caught:

But he is now back behind bars after he and two other men took a wrong turning while driving through Reims, in eastern France, on Monday.

They tried to avoid roadworks caused by the construction of a new tram system, and found themselves blocked in the car park of the city's main police station.

Police said they spotted the van reversing towards the exit, and arrested three men 'all in a state of inebriation'.

Link | Photo: AFP

Popular Science has an article describing medical treatments for four diseases that could be available to the general public in a few years. One is an effort to reverse autism:

While studying mice, he learned that the disease allows a neuron’s mGluR5 receptor to send out a flurry of signals telling the cell to produce protein. The protein overload causes a neuron to form many more connections to other neurons than normal, creating chaos by spreading nerve instructions to too many cells. Bear’s drug, called STX107, inhibits the receptors to pare back the overproduction of proteins associated with Fragile X to a normal range. His company, Seaside Therapeutics, plans to test STX107 in patients this fall. If it works as well as it did in mice, Bear says, it could be a first step to treating other causes of autism.[...]

Fragile X neurons lack the ability to mute messages from the mGluR5 receptor, leading to an overproduction of protein. STX107 binds to the receptor, dampens its productivity, and slows protein production to a normal rate.

The other innovative treatments are for patients of Leber’s congenital amaurosis, persistent vegetative state, and brain tumors.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/radical-cures | Image: John MacNeill

To be fair, the unnamed man in Nuremberg, Germany didn't know that it was a police vehicle:

The 26-year-old was lining up the powdered drugs on the roof of the car in a disco car park, when the two police officers surprised him, a Nuremberg police spokesman said on Tuesday.

The man had no idea the vehicle belonged to the police, and it was coincidence that the officers - who were walking by their parked car - discovered him just as he was about to take the drugs.

Link | Photo (unrelated): Fresh Scent

Would you like to get away from the stresses of the daily life for the next five to ten years? Then Norway's new Halden prison/spa is for you!

[...]every cell comes with a private bathroom and a flat-screen TV, as well as a view--the windows don't even have bars in them. But what about facilities, you might ask? My college dorm had a foosball table, and a vending machine! This prison can't match that, right? Wrong. Halden has a gym, training room, chapel, library, family visiting unit, football (possibly soccer) field, a school, and, most unbelievably, a sound studio. But it's the design that's most strikingly different from American prisons. Halden doesn't shy away from bright, cheerful colors, and actually spent about $1 million to hire a graffiti artist named Dolk (sort of their version of Banksy) to paint beautiful murals all around the grounds.

Link | Photo Gallery | Photo: NRK

UPDATE: In the comments, Courageous Grace brings up a very good point. The prison opens on April 1. Is this a hoax?

Both the Titanic and the Lusitania sank, and both lacked enough life boats to shelter everyone on board. But even though the Lusitania sank in 18 minutes and the Titanic sank in 2 hours and 40 minutes, Lusitiana passengers and crew had a higher survival rate. In Smithsonian, Sarah Zielenski explains why:

What happened? The researchers say it all comes down to time.

The passengers of the Lusitania had less than 20 minutes before their ship sank, and in such a life-and-death situation, social scientists say, “self-interested reactions predominate.” It didn’t matter what the captain ordered. The ship was going down and people reacted selfishly, and in such a situation, it would be expected that people in their prime (16 to 35) would be the most likely to win a seat on a lifeboat. In addition, because there were difficulties in launching those boats, people in that age group would have had an additional advantage because they were more likely to have had the strength and agility to stay on board a rocking boat or to climb back in after falling into the water.

The Titanic, though, sank slowly enough for social norms to hold sway. The passengers generally held to the rule of “women and children first” even though they could have easily overpowered the crew. And first- and second-class passengers may have benefited from the extra time in which they may have had earlier or better information from the crew or had other advantages.

Link | Image: NOAA

If you were to make a list of everything that you could be afraid of, how much room would it take? Artist Brian Rea created 7 by 3.5 meter mural filled with his fears:

Rea keeps many lists. During his last year in New York (2008) he began taking inventory of the things he and other people around him were worried about. "After being there for 11 years, I discovered like most people I had a lot of fears--after a few months, I began to catalog them: physical fears, natural fears, political fears, random, emotional."

Rea categorized the fears into themes like physical, political, and of course, supernatural.

More pictures at the link.

Link | Artist's Website

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Last month, Minnesotastan posted a parody of the classic children's book Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, as though it was read by the German film director Werner Herzog. It's one of a series of such videos by YouTube user Ryan Iverson, including a dark take on Curious George.

Iverson's latest in the series presents Madeline, a French children's book first published in 1939:

Their discipline was impeccable. They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad. But being children, their concept of good and evil was not fully formed. And it would shock a grown person how much gray area existed along the moral compass.

via The Presurfer