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This is a simple but remarkably soothing video. Dan Cohen took the sheet music for Miles Davis's "So What" and animated it, one note at a time.

-via Joe Carter | Dan Cohen's Website

Kristie Carlisle Duncan, a MFA student at the Savannah College of Art and Design, came up with this whimsical sculpture. It's a mechanical deer piloted by tiny chickens. Not real ones, of course. But if this contraption rolls up to your front door, don't let it inside. Link -via @Christopher Jobson

Esther Havens snapped this marvelous shot in Ethiopia. NASA says that it's a pileus iridescent cloud, which is "a group of water droplets that have a uniformly similar size and so together diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts." Translation: the sky gods are happy and demand fewer virgin sacrifices this year.

Link -via Geekologie | Artist's Website

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YouTube user docjazz4 plays the ocarina well enough to keep up with the rapid tempo of Nyan Cat -- but only for a minute and a half. Keep at it! We need to hear at least three hours of this music without interruption. -via Geekosystem

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Ako Tsubaki, a Japanese artist, works with sand. In this amazing video, he arranges sand in layers so that the cross section reveals a landscape. -via reddit | Artist's Website

Believe it or not, this peacock sculpture is actually made out of paper! The Great Omar, named after the cover image on a book of Persian poems, was created by Joyanne Horscroft and Julie Wilkinson.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/The-Great-Omar-Peacock/819389 -via Dude Craft | Artists' Website

I've been saying this for years: we're all just characters in a really boring role-playing game played by transcendent, unseen beings. Or that our lives, somehow, are interesting to them. Kris Straub sums up this reality nicely in this strip. Link -via Ace of Spades HQ

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Zardoz, that bizzare 1974 John Boorman film starring Sean Connery, might make a good video game. Animator Nick Criscuolo created this introduction for this tragically non-existent game. -via Boing Boing | Criscuolo's Website

You can buy a grappling hook launcher, but they're expensive. Instructables member and MIT mechanical engineering student crreed figured that he could build his own. The force is provided by a paintball gun CO2 canister and the barrel is a copper pipe held in place by the frame of a Nerf gun.

Link -via Technabob | Maker's Blog

This isn't a sleeping woman, but a huge candle sculpted into the shape of one. It was made by the A.F. Vandevorst fashion design house and displayed at the Arnhem Mode Biennale, an art and fashion show held this past July. There's nothing quite like candlelight to create a romantic/creepy atmosphere, right?

Link -via Colossal | Photo: Lenn Cox

I can't find any information about this marvelous creation which shows a Galaxy-class starship and Terek Nor. But as you can see from the other photos in the gallery, it's not the only such cat tree. Somebody get this man an Etsy account.

http://hobbitron.imgur.com/cat_trees#3HVY6 -via blastr

If you've been using heavily patched, older versions of the English language, you'll be pleased to know that a completely updated and revised edition just entered beta testing. One reviewer at The Register thinks that it's great:

Just downloaded the beta version of English V3.31, and I have to say I am very excited about it. This is definitely going to be a feather in the cap of Anglophones everywhere, and way better than the notorious V2.99 release of French (or the 'deux point neufty-neuf' as it has become known). There's a ton of new features to talk about, so let me dive in right away with some toothsome details.[...]

By the way, an alternative spelling proposal, which aimed to differentiate better between so-called 'British' English and its assorted inferior knock-offs, has been resoundingly rejected to the disappointment of many. The idea, backed by the Tourist Board among others, was to boost the general kookynicity of British spellings in general and word endings in particular. In short, to take the ball introduced by such pairings as analogue/analog, colour/color and programme/program and run it out of the gridiron and over the try line.

For example, the noun 'dog' was to be respelled 'dogue', giving it a 66% boost in angliosity, and the days of the weeke were to be reworked with an 'arts and crafts' feel with carefully-designed, synthetically yet sympathetically retro-blended syllables: Thursnobdaye.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/01/verity_stob_english_upgrade/page2.html -via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo by Flickr user crdotx used under Creative Commons license

The girlfriend of redditor TroyPDX got stung by a yellowjacket, so "it was on like Donkey Kong." He prepared for his attack on their nest by getting drunk and improvising a beekeeping suit out of duct tape, rubber boots, a flashlight, and computer parts. Troy then armed himself with a vacuum cleaner and marched off into battle. It did not go well, and his story is worth reading in full. Link | Photo Gallery

Isaac Osei started out driving a taxi in New York City when he immigrated to the US about thirty years ago. He has built up that business into a fleet of fifty cars operating day and night. But that's not his only occupation. When his older brother in Ghana died, Osei took his place as king over a region of that country. Now Osei divides his time between US and his royal realm:

As chief, his days are 20 hours long, and his duties are anything but ceremonial. Osei, during his "vacation," becomes the one-man judicial system, arbitrating familial disputes and other legal questions, resolving as many as possible before returning to New York. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has duties as the chief's wife, including throwing a feast for 1,000 guests commemorating the annual yam festival -- a party at which guests sit, waiting to eat until Isaac does his priest-like duty of blessing the yam harvest.

But unlike Akeem in Coming to America, the Osei's trips to Ghana are not permanent relocations. They return to the U.S. after fulfilling their official Ghanian duties, where it is back to the taxi business.

Link| Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user ceiling used under Creative Commons license

Previously: American Woman Becomes African King

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Don't worry, it's not the real R2-D2! It's just a model. The staff at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado stuffed a cardboard R2 unit with treats and let Emmett, a grizzly bear, have his way with it. Because....

Well, they don't actually say why. -via Nerd Bastards