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The 1947 version Aesop's fable, produced by Encyclopedia Brittanica Films. Link -via Nag on the Lake

The Twist Bridge in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands, was built for bicycles and pedestrians to cross the canal, but it's also a work of art! Made of 400 steel tubes, the matrix that covers the bridge is eye-catching and also absorbs vibrations. See more pictures at Amusing Planet. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Theo Lagendijk)

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From YouTube member bd594, the same geek who brought us "Bohemian Rhapsody" by The Gadget Orchestra a couple of years ago, we now have the classic "House of the Rising Sun" played by various vintage electronic gadgets. The instruments:

a. HP Scanjet 3P, Adaptec SCSI card and a computer powered by Ubuntu v9.10 OS as the Vocals. (hey, the scanner is old) b. Atari 800XL with an EiCO Oscilloscope as the Organ c. Texas instrument Ti-99/4A with a Tektronix Oscilloscope as the Guitar d. Hard-drive powered by a PiC16F84A microcontroller as the bass drum and cymbal

-via Metafilter

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The heartwarming tale of a shark with a peculiar talent! Caleb Hepler won first place in an editing competition for this remix of Jaws. -Thanks, Jessica Dunn!

You know the name, but you probably don't really know much about drug lord Pablo Escobar. Now you can read the short version of how he clawed his way up the ladder in the cocaine business.

The profits were astronomical at every step. In 1978 each kilo probably cost Escobar $2,000 but sold to Lehder and Jung for $22,000, clearing Escobar $20,000 per kilo. In the next stage they transported an average of 400 kilos to south Florida (incurring some additional expenses in hush money for local airport authorities) where mid-level dealers paid a wholesale price of $60,000 per kilo; thus in 1978 each 400-kilo load earned Escobar $8 million and Lehder, Ochoa, and Jung $5 million each in profits. Of course the mid-level dealers did just fine: after cutting the drug with baking soda each shipment retailed on the street for $210 million, almost ten times what they paid for it.

Soon Lehder was hiring American pilots to fly a steady stream of cocaine into the U.S., paying them $400,000 per trip. At one trip per week, in 1978 this translated into wholesale revenues of $1.3 billion and profits of $1 billion.

The profits and risks soared after that. The Jung in the quote is American George Jung, whose story was told in the 2001 film Blow. Read the rest of Escobar's astonishing biography at mental_floss. Link

With 10,000 people homeless in Budapest alone, Hungary has figured out how to solve the problem: make homelessness illegal.

According to an amendment to the local government act, passed by a strong majority in parliament last month, those found sleeping on the streets will first receive a warning.

They can subsequently be imprisoned or ordered to pay the fine.

The move has provoked widespread criticism, including from Hungary's human rights ombudsman, the BBC's Nick Thorpe reports.

Miklos Vecsei, deputy head of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service, said the law had not been passed on the basis of any rational or professional criteria but because the public were fed up with the homeless.

Since people who cannot afford a home would likely be unable to pay a fine, one would assume that the state will have to incarcerate homeless people caught breaking the law. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Nuclear Vacuum)

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Calorimetry, a word I never heard before today, is the science of measuring heat changes. GE Life Sciences explains calorimetry in this video, which is actually an ad for some hi-tech laboratory equipment. -Thanks, Stephen Clegg!

A new study from the Pew Research Center confirms what seem fairly obvious to most of us: people go on line for no reason at all.

That should explain all those kitten videos.

The report finds that the amount of time people spend tooling around on the Web doing nothing corresponds with age. Only 12 percent of people over 65 say they went online the previous day for no particular reason. Of those aged 50 to 64, the study found 27 percent answered yes to the same question.

In all, 58 percent of all adults said that they use the Internet to pass time or have fun at least occasionally. Of adults who use the Internet, nearly three-quarters surf the Web for no reason.

And those are the people we aim to serve. Link

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, on the planet Endor, under the forest canopy, lies a village made of chocolate, breakfast cereal, and gingerbread! And don't look now, but there's a Death Star lurking above. The Canadian baker who blogs under the name The Infinite Yums built this Ewok Village for a charity auction. The post about it has the building process and plenty of pictures of the details. Link -via Boing Boing

Popular fashion trends come and go in cycles, and once again we are seeing a trend of the "Native American look" in clothing, home furnishings, jewelry, and bedding. Some companies are running into legal trouble over their merchandise, as there are laws and trademark restrictions against products attributed to Native Americans. Even when the letter of the law is followed, the trend is causing bad feelings about the appropriation of a culture.

“The problem,” says Jessica R. Metcalfe, a Turtle Mountain Chippewa and doctor of Native American studies who teaches at Arizona State University and blogs about Native American fashion designers at Beyond Buckskin, “is that they’re putting it out there as ‘This is the native,’ or ‘This is native-inspired’. So now you have non-native people representing us in mainstream culture. That, of course, gets tiring, because this has been happening since the good old days of the Hollywood Western in the 1930s and ’40s, where they hired non-native actors and dressed them up essentially in redface.

“The issue now is not only who gets to represent Native Americans,” Metcalfe says, “but also who gets to profit.”

Collector's Weekly has an extensive article about the history of the trade in Native American style, and how the controversy is playing out today. Link -Thanks, Lisa!

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The Brothers McLeod have a series of videos called The Existential Pleading of the Inner Heart. This installment, Fear of Flying, continues the musings on everyday anxiety with a particular focus on flying. -Thanks, Myles!

Can you judge a workplace by the art they decorate their office with? That's hard to say. Buzzfeed has a mega-post of artworks and decorations found in website offices from all over. Find out what Playboy, College Humor, Gawker, Dailymotion, VH1, and many others have on their walls. Pictured here is the artwork that greets employees at Threadless. Go to the post to see Neatorama's positively minimalist office art. Link

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It's a short film. And you'll probably see the ending coming. We're sorry, Kurtis Hough. -via reddit

A pregnant cat named Puss Puss had been missing for three days in the village of Moelfre in North Wales. She had escaped while being transported to a foster home by an animal charity worker. Then someone heard a meowing sound coming from a donation bin for used clothing! But the lock on the bin had been damaged, and it wouldn't open. The fire brigade was called, and they, too, failed to open the bin. Finally, the entire bin was loaded up and taken 20 miles away to an engineering company.

There, steel saws were used to gain access and the mewing prisoner was revealed – as nothing more than a squeaky toy.

Kelvin Owen, who owns the engineering firm, said: ‘Once we got into the bin we heard the miaowing – it sounded just like a cat and we all started to carefully search the bags.

‘Then I found a bag of toys and picked out a toy. I said: “It couldn’t be this, could it?” As I held it it went “miaow, miaow”. Mystery solved!’

The sounds came from a talking plush toy resembling Marie from the Disney movie The Aristocats. Rescuers had a good laugh at the 12-hour effort to rescue the toy. Puss Puss is still missing, but may have been taken in by someone unaware of the search. Link -via Arbroath

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Stuntman Greg Gasson doesn't wear a parachute when he jumps out of a plane. He doesn't even wear shoes! Instead, he grabs a packed parachute with his hands. Don't try this at home -or anywhere! -via Buzzfeed