(YouTube link)

DJ Earworm has released his annual mashup of the top 25 songs of the year. The songs used in this video are listed at the YouTube page. -via The Daily What

The story of the Romanov family seems tailor-made for Hollywood (and Hollywood has embraced it, many times) with fabulous wealth and power, war and revolution, personal heartaches, conflicts, romance, deception, and action -including chase scenes. Parts of their history would be considered too unbelievable if it were presented as fiction. For example, the Russian royal family's advisor Rasputin was a strange character in life and even more so in death.

Ra ra Rasputin/Lover of the Russian queen/They put some poison into his wine/Ra ra Rasputin/Russia's greatest love machine/He drank it all and said "I feel fine"

Ra ra Rasputin/Lover of the Russian Queen/They didn't quit, they wanted his head/Ra ra Rasputin/Russia's greatest love machine/And so they shot him till he was dead

But there must be more to the song, because Rasputin wasn't quite dead even after he was shot! Read what really happened to Rasputin, and to the Romanovs at Atlas Obscura. Link

I had to laugh at this, as my kids are desperate for something to do that doesn't involve housework. From the mind of Jon Kudelka. Link -via reddit

The exoskeleton of the oriental hornet is a solar collector and generator that converts sunlight into electricity! A team led by Marian Plotkin of Tel-Aviv University discovered the wasp's power plant properties, but don't know why the insects produce electricity.

Their research revealed that pigments in the hornet's yellow tissues trap light, while its brown tissues generate electricity. Exactly how the hornets use this electricity is still not entirely understood, Plotkin noted.

"When I was running my experiment, people told me it was never going to work," she said. "I'm so happy at the results."

While solar cells using human-made substances are usually 10 to 11 percent efficient at generating electricity, the hornet's cells are only 0.335 percent efficient. For instance, the hornet still gets the vast majority of its energy from food.

Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image credit: Blickwinkel, Alamy)

(YouTube link)

Leandro Copperfield put together 500 scenes from eleven Pixar films to make this super mashup. If you've seen the movies, you'll love this! -via The Daily What

(YouTube link)

Halftime at the UConn-Florida State basketball game in Hartford last week. The performer goes by the name Christopher or Christopher from Las Vegas. -via The Daily What

Research by the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian natural history museum shows us that Neanderthals were not all that different from modern humans in their eating habits. They ate grains and vegetables as well as meat, and they cooked their dinners, too!

Researchers found grains from numerous plants, including a type of wild grass, as well as traces of roots and tubers, trapped in plaque buildup on fossilized Neanderthal teeth unearthed in northern Europe and Iraq.

Many of the particles "had undergone physical changes that matched experimentally-cooked starch grains, suggesting that Neanderthals controlled fire much like early modern humans," PNAS said in a statement.

Stone artifacts have not provided evidence that Neanderthals used tools to grind plants, suggesting they did not practice agriculture, but the new research indicates they cooked and prepared plants for eating, it said.

Link -via J-Walk Blog

Street artist Agata Olek covered the Charging Bull sculpture in Manhattan with a pink and purple crocheted skin! But why?

"I wanted to make it for all those people who couldn't make it to their families and for those people who don't have coats and don't have any money."

Olek is originally from Poland, but when she couldn't make it home to see her family, she thought of all the others who might be spending this holiday far from their loved ones.

The crocheted Charging Bull is her Christmas gift to NYC, she says, and a tribute to the sculptor of the bull, Arturo Di Modica, who placed the bull on Wall Street just before Christmas of 1989.

The sweater only lasted a couple of hours- long enough to get its picture taken before Bowling Green park employees removed it. Link -via Laughing Squid

This chart posted at io9 exposes the many liberties filmmakers take with science in movies about space. The only two films to receive a clean bill are true stories from history. Link -via The High Definite

The officials of Kimberly, Wisconsin buried a time capsule 25 years ago with plans to dig it up to commemorate the town's 100th anniversary in 2010. The time has come, but no one knows where that time capsule is!

The time capsule held coins, news clippings and a bottle of New Coke in a 2-foot-long piece of white PVC pipe. It was buried near the municipal building in 1985.

However, the time capsule had to be dug up in 1997 when the building complex was remodeled.

Kimberly street commissioner Dave Vander Velden says it's not clear where — or even if — it was reburied.

They're now using a metal detector to look for it. http://www.startribune.com/local/112453574.html -via the Presurfer

This movie mashup fan art just seems right: Buzz Lightyear ready to enter the Grid in the world of Tron, by DeviantART member iamclu. Link -via Breakfast Links

Israeli archaeologists have found teeth of modern humans in a cave in central Israel that date back 400,000 years. That makes them twice as old as modern humans found in Africa, which is where they've been thought to have originated.

"It's very exciting to come to this conclusion," said archaeologist Avi Gopher, whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found.

He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim. If it does, he says, "this changes the whole picture of evolution."

The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to modern human's ancestors, it could mean that modern man in fact originated in what is now Israel.

Sir Paul Mellars, a prehistory expert at Cambridge University, said the study is reputable, and the find is "important" because remains from that critical time period are scarce, but it is premature to say the remains are human.

The archaeologists from Tel Aviv University are confident that other human fossil evidence will be found at the site. Link -Thanks, özi!

(Image credit: AP/Oded Balilty)

(YouTube link)

A swinging sword looks very different from the sword's point of view! These guys duct taped a camera to the end of the sword before they put it through its paces. The effect may cause dizziness. -via The Daily What

(vimeo link)

Michael Black set up a camera to photograph his back yard in New Jersey every five minutes for twenty hours during yesterday's blizzard. He assembled those photos into this 38-second time lapse video. Note how the clock had to be lifted and lifted higher -until he finally gave up and just dug it out of the snow between pictures. -via Laughing Squid

This week mental_floss is counting down their top quizzes of 2010. If you enjoy the Lunchtime Quiz every day, you'll love this! Already you can relive the #24 quiz called Are They Canadian? and #23 The Goonies. Check back for more as we count down to 2011! Link