Photo: John Locher

In 2005, pastry chef Jean-Philippe Maury created this enormous 25-tiered chocolate fountain for the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas. It's 27 feet tall and circulates 120 quarts of chocolate per minute:

It wasn't, you see, quite as simple as constructing a waterfall.

"Water doesn't change," Maury said. "Chocolate is complicated."

It must be at the proper temperature to flow properly, for starters. Then there's the issue of the chocolate's viscosity, which affects the flow. And the viscosity of chocolate changes with every little bit of moisture in the air.

"The envy of chocolate is humidity," Maury said. With an increase in the humidity, cocoa butter and coconut oil must be added to the 2,100 pounds of chocolate in the tank. Maury takes viscosity readings every two or three days.

The 25 glass vessels from which the chocolate flows are each unique, and each handmade in Montreal. Maury and Oliver tested the system there for seven months.

Link via Gizmodo (where there are videos of the fountain)

Photo: Times of London

Bank Machine, an ATM operator in Britain, now has five cash machines in London that offer users the opportunity to conduct their business in the cockney dialect. It's a promotional gimmick designed to amuse customers:

“Readin’ your bladder of lard”, read the message on the screen. It asked for his “Huckleberry Finn”. Then more bewildering questions: did he wanted to see his balance on the Charlie Sheen? Did he wish to change his Huckleberry Finn or did he simply require sausage and mash, with or without a receipt?

Link via DVICE

826LA is a non-profit organization in southern California that teaches kids how to engage in creative writing. It's known for innovative workshops and clever marketing. We previously featured their time travel store on Neatorama. 826LA has applied that same theme to traditional propaganda posters, producing ten, including the above poster warning time travelers about the dangers of the Butterfly Effect.

Link via io9

Illustration: Reilulf Ramstad Architects

Norway plans to construct a wooden building 16-17 stories tall with carbon neutral construction techniques. The Norwegian Barents Secretariat will use it for a cultural center for the nation's northern coast. It will house a library, a theatre, and art studios in its approximately 10,000 square meter interior space and will highlight sustainable development:

The idea is to construct a building which will be CO2-neutral, where the concept of the cycles of nature will be preserved. The innovative solutions on modern wooden constructions will stand as a token of the level of competence in the region, says architect Reiulf Ramstad.

As far as I have been able to determine, the record for tallest wooden building in the world is currently held by the 43-meter tall St. George's Cathedral in Guyana.

Link via Gizmodo

Jeffrey Thomas is a California-based artist and character designer. He plays with pop culture in twisted and amusing ways, such as his latest series on eleven of the Disney Princesses. Pictured above is an Ariel more sinister than the one in The Little Mermaid.

Link via GearFuse

Artist's blog

Frankie Flood is an artist and professor of jewelry and metalsmithing at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He makes custom pizza cutters inspired by American motorcycles, such as the one above apparently modeled on the work of Mantis Choppers. Flood writes:

My work investigates one of a kind objects and their role in a world based on mechanical reproduction. Industry has removed the aura from objects and stripped them of their individuality. My pizza cutters seek to demolish the sterile conformity of mass produced objects and represent the stylistic and flamboyant embellishment of groups who live on the fringe of popular culture. The outlaw biker image is a break from the conformity that has taken over America since industrialization. My machined pizza cutters draw inspiration from chopper motorcycles and attempt to reclaim the mythology and economic usefulness of the American worker as patriarch; translating machine or functional object into flesh and blood. The outlaw as defiant nonconformist, as well as social outcast, parallels being an artist who makes functional objects and being an individual who takes pride in the power of invention and skill.

Link via Geekologie

Need a good excuse for why you're late to/absent from work? The Office Kid kit lets you pretend to have a child, which you can then use as an excuse for your questionable work ethic. Each kit comes with a framed picture of a child (ethnicity of your choice), a work of children's art, and a list of suggested excuses. For additional fees, you can have the child photoshopped into a sports team picture or a doctor's note on official-looking stationery.

Link via Bits & Pieces

Photo: David King Collection, London

The New York Times has a slideshow of famous faked photographs, including Abraham Lincoln's head on John Calhoun's body and Stalin's erasure of his enemies. Shown above is the before and after photo manipulation where Nikolai Yezhov, a one-time head of Soviet's secret police NKVD and a central player in Stalin's Great Purge was himself purged - from life and this photograph.

Link via Instapundit

(YouTube Link)

8-Bit Trip is a stop motion LEGO video tribute to classic video games. It was created by the Swedish band Rymdreglage after 1,500 hours of work.

Via Boing Boing

Architect Sou Fujimoto created a house inspired by the table game Jenga. It consists of cedar blocks 35 cm wide and was completed in Kumamoto, Japan in 2008.

Artist's Website

Link via Juxtapoz

Inventor James Dyson's fountain, inspired by the work of MC Escher, gives the illusion that its water flows uphill:

Covering the ramp is a glass surface. Water is pumped in at the bottom, and comes out of the opening at the top. At the opening, some of the water is diverted back down the ramp, covering the glass in a thin layer of water.

Compressed air is also pumped in where the water enters - bubbles then travel up the ramp to the opening. These bubbles, combined with the thin layer of water going downhill, are what create the illusion that the surface of the ramp is not just a glass lid.

Link via OhGizmo!

(Video Link)

Frank Levine began running competitively at the age of 65 -- nothing big, just a marathon. He's run seventeen marathons since that time. Levine just broke a world record for the 5000-meter in the 95-99 category with a finishing time of 50 minutes and 10 seconds.

Via Urlesque

The EniCycle, invented by Aleksander Polutnik, has a three-hour battery charge and keeps upright through the use of gyroscopes (like the Segway). It's not yet in production, but there are currently two working models. Video of them in action at the link.

Link

The QLOCKTWO, created by the German design firm Biegert & Funk, spells out time in five minute increments. Four dots in the corners let you know precisely which minute it is. The clock retails in Europe for about $1,600.

Link via OhGizmo!

(YouTube Link)

It's cool enough to have a realistic Bumblebee costume, but what makes this one Neato is that it actually transforms from robot to car mode. I don't have any more information about this clip. CrunchGear thinks that it's being used as a promotional gimmick in a car dealership, which seems like a reasonable guess.

Link via CrunchGear