(vimeo link)

Peruvian filmmaker Ricardo de Montreuil made the short film The Raven on a budget of only $5,000. It is based on a treatment for a potential film trilogy. I won't give any details, just enjoy the effects! -via Geeks Are Sexy

The question of whether video games can be considered an art form is raging across the internet. Game designer Kellee Santiago asserted in a TED talk that they can be. Film critic Roger Ebert responded that video games are not and can never be art. Gamers and art critics immediately joined in the fray. Neatorama author John Farrier comes down on the side of video games as art and explains in detail.

I define art -- and specifically good art -- as the effective outward expression of an inward conception of an ideal condition. If a person thinks of a story, and can express that story fully in text, that person is an artist and has produced art. If a person thinks of a sound and can fully express that sound in music, that person is an artist and has produced art. If a person thinks of a movement and can fully express that movement in dance, that person is an artist and has produced art. If a person thinks of an image and can fully express that image in paint, that person is an artist and has produced art.

If a person can envision a video and gather a team together that can accurately express that inner vision, that person is an artist and has produced art.

What do you think? Link

Eighteen-year-old Connor Olson of Tonganoxie, Kansas spent the past year fighting bone cancer. Earlier this month, he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on one side. But he also achieved the rank of Eagle Scout and was looking forward to graduating from high school. Last week, Tonganoxie High School held an early graduation ceremony for Connor in which he was the only graduate.

The high school let out early Thursday so that Connor’s friends could watch him get his diploma.

So by the time he made his way into the auditorium, more than 500 people — classmates, neighbors, school board members, people who have raised money for his medical bills — were waiting for him.

Connor’s teachers, wearing black graduation gowns, stood in a big semicircle in front of the stage, most of them blinking back and wiping tears from their eyes.

Even though the stage has a lift, Connor's friends carried his wheelchair to the stage where he received his diploma. Speakers included the senior class president and a representative of the University of Kansas football team. The school band played the national anthem and a slide show of Connor's school days was shown. After he received his diploma, he went home with his parents and hospice nurse. http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/15/1880739_tonganoxie-holds-special-graduation.html (with video) -via Fark

Connor died a week later. http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/21/1894385_tonganoxie-student-who-courageously.html

(image credit: John Sleezer)

Some dances that we learned as kids were not at all new, or not nearly as new as we thought they were! Here are the origins of five dances you might have tried at one time or another.

Fight for Your Right to Electric Slide

(image credit: Improv Everywhere)

Many people are too embarrassed to admit they know how to do the electric slide, but Richard Silver isn't one of them. Silver was a fixture of the New York disco scene, and he choreographed the electric slide in 1976. As the dance craze caught on, he was horrified to discover people doing just 18 of his 22-step routine. So he did what any self-righteous dance creator would do ad spent years threatening to sue anyone who bungled his moves. He even made YouTube take down videos of people dancing the slide at their weddings and bar mitzvahs. But Silver never actually sued anyone; he just made threats. In 2007, a civil rights organization called his bluff and sued him on behalf of a man whose dance party clips had been removed from the internet. The incident convinced Silver to stop hounding amateur dancers.

How Low Can You Go? The Soul-Crushing Origins of the Limbo

If you think the limbo was created for middle-aged couples in Hawaiian shirts, you couldn't be more wrong. According to most sources, the dance came to America by way of Trinidad, where West Indian slaves invented it to simulate the descent into a slave ship. The lower a slave went into the ship's hull, the harder it became to break free. Now try enjoying the dance on your next trip to Club Med. (image credit: Flickr user Endlisnis) 

Striking a Pose, When It Counts

Like breakdancing, voguing began as a competition between African Americans in New York. But in this case, rivals were underground fraternities of gay men in Harlem during the 1930s. Back then, voguing (which involves posing like a model) was simply called "performance" because of the judging it inspired. The dance was renamed "vogue" in the 1970s, after performers began striking poses found in glossy fashion magazines-namely Vogue. (image credit: Flickr user nayrb7)

Breakdancing: Settling it Old School

As innocent as it seems today, breakdancing emerged in the 1970s as a new way for gangs to fight each other. In black neighborhoods in the South Bronx, for instance, gang leaders would dance-off to songs like James Brown's funky "Get on the Good Foot." They'd even settles disputes through these proxy battles. The judging procedure was simple: whoever had the illest moves won.

The Courage to Trot Like a Turkey

In the early 1900s, men and women danced side by side, polka-style. So when kids started doing the Turkey Trot-a dance in which partners face each other-parent just didn't understand. The Trot quickly became the forbidden dance of the ragtime era, and it was outlawed in some states. One unfortunate young lady in New Jersey actually served 50 days in jail just for dancing like a turkey. It should also be noted that the Turkey Trot is only one of many food- or animal-inspired dances that have been accused of corrupting America's youth. There's also the Bunny Hug, the Cakewalk, the Mashed Potato, the Duck Dance, and the Chickle Noodle Soup, just to name a few.

__________

The article above, written by Adam Rosen, appeared in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.

Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today!

Studies with apes and monkeys show that the concept of fairness goes beyond human experience. Researchers taught monkeys and chimpanzees to exchange tokens for grapes (which they preferred) or carrots. The exchanges went well when the subject knew what to expect, and when the reward they bought was the same for their cohorts. But when the researcher offered a grape and then delivered a carrot, or when the subject got a different reward from his cohorts, the tantrums began.

However, chimpanzees in this study went beyond the basic tenets of the social contract and demonstrated what could be considered the foundation of social solidarity. In 95 trials chimpanzees that received a grape were significantly more likely to refuse the high-value reward when their group mate only received a carrot (p = 0.008). Even those who benefitted from inequality recognized that the situation was unfair and they refused to enjoy their own reward if it meant someone else had to suffer.

This particular behavior was not seen in the monkeys. Did a sense of fairness evolve along with cooperation among higher primates? Link

(image credit: Flickr user Owen Booth)

Charlie Chaplin has a fan club in Adipur, Gujarat, India called the Charlie Circle. A couple hundred local people are members, and have a celebration every year on April 16th, Chaplin's birthday. For this year's party, more than 100 people attended dressed as Chaplin's character the Little Tramp. The man behind the town's fascination with the actor is film buff Ashok Aswani, who became a Chaplin fan in 1966 when he watch The Gold Rush four times in one day.

The young man, his life changed by Chaplin's cinema, dropped out of college and applied for an actor's course in India's most famous cinema school in the western city of Pune. He passed the admission test, joined the school but was thrown out after six months when he failed his tests.

Returning to Adipur, Mr Aswani opened the Charlie Circle club in 1973. He became a practitioner of indigenous medicine, giving away free Chaplin CDs with his potions.

The annual celebration includes a street party and procession and the showing of a Chaplin film. Link -via Fortean Times

(image credit: Sanjoy Ghosh)

Jim Rawlinson was riding the waves at Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii on Monday when a tiger shark attacked his surfboard.

As he slid backwards what happened next is as frightening as it is unimaginable.  Rawlinson ended up on the back of the  ocean's most feared predator.

"I was onto the shark's back...anywhere from about five to ten seconds.  It was so strange that everything was so slow and yet again so fast."

Rawlinson credits his escape from the large, toothy fish on his ability to stay calm.  As he straddled the fish, he released his surf leash from around his leg and slowly slid off.

From the bite marks left on the surfboard, Rawlinson and marine biologist Terry Lilley, who was shooting video underwater nearby, estimate the shark was around 14 feet long. Link -via Fark

Eddie Feibusch sells zippers at his New York store ZipperStop. He's been in business since 1941. There were once a lot of zipper shops in the garment district, but gradually they relocated overseas, leaving ZipperStop as one of the few remaining specialty shop where you can get a zipper in any size for any purpose.

So when a recalcitrant zipper threatened to be, or not to be, Queen Gertrude’s undoing in a Metropolitan Opera production of “Hamlet” last month, the Met dispatched a costumer, Michael Zacker, to Mr. Feibusch for a new zipper for Jennifer Larmore’s gown. “He really has great products,” Mr. Zacker said.

Retail, they go from 50 cents for a nylon dress zipper to $100 for a No. 10 brass zipper, 350 inches long, to wrap your hot-air balloon.

How great are zippers? Don’t even get Mr. Feibusch started. They are watertight for deep-sea divers, airtight for NASA. “Nothing replaces a zipper,” he said. Buttons? He made a face. “A button is unpleasant,” he said.

Link -via Jason Kottke

(image credit: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times)

It was a scene reminiscent of Winnie the Pooh and the honey pot. A young bear was spotted in Reading, Vermont wandering about with his head stuck in an old-fashioned milk can.

State biologist Forrest Hammond, along with some help from firefighters and police, spent about 45 minutes Sunday afternoon getting the old fashioned milk jug off the 120-pound bear's head, according to Vermont Fish and Wildlife spokesman John Hall.

The bear was found meandering through the woods along Route 106 in Reading, bumping into boulders and trees with the milk jug stuck on its head.

Hammond had to tranquilize the bear and first tried to soap up his head and pull the milk jug off, but that didn’t work and he eventually had to use metal shears to get it loose. "He just did an excellent job of getting out there," Hall said. "It's important, too, that nobody got hurt," he said, adding that the bear was released into the wild.

Officials think the can had been used as a bird feeder because there was birdseed in the bottom, which may have attracted the young bear. Link -via Arbroath

(YouTube link)

Canine musical freestyle returns to the TV show Britain's Got Talent! Tina and her dog Chandi put on quite a show. -via Buzzfeed

Previously at Neatorama: Carolyn Scott and the amazing Rookie.

Sean Murtagh of London, England was scheduled to marry Natalie Mead of Brisbane, Australia surrounded by family and friends in England. They had a civil ceremony in Australia already, and were on the way to the big British ceremony when they were stranded at an airport in Dubai due to the volcanic ash cloud that cancelled many European flights. Instead of canceling the wedding, they were married via Skype! Assembled wedding attendees in Ealing, west London, watched the couple take their vows aided by a laptop and a webcam at the airport.

Natalie Mead told Gulf News: "Passengers stranded in the hotel were getting excited for the first time in days when they heard about our wedding; some even helped me with my hair and make-up. It was also great to see everyone in the UK on our wedding day, even if it was via webcam.

"It has been an amazing day and we are just so grateful for everything that everyone has done for us. It is definitely a story to tell the grandchildren. There was no way we were going to let this volcano stop us [from] getting married."

Caroline Black, a celebrant who conducted the online ceremony from London, said: "It was just like any other wedding except the bride and groom weren't there."

The airport donated flowers and a wedding cake for the celebration. Link -via Bits and Pieces

Jeff Varasano, a New York pizza chef in Atlanta, shares his love of pizza and pizza making. In this extensive page, he breaks down every ingredient and procedure to explain why each step is important. Then he displays different pies and critiques them.

The quality of the ingredients is very important. I have scoured the lands, trying every brand of flour, tomato and cheese I could find. I've had cheese flown in, paying $75 for enough cheese for just one round of pies, I've even made my own cheese from scratch, starting with just milk. I've tasted every brand of tomato I could find and peeled and blanched my own from local tomato growers. And theses things do make a difference. But there's just no getting around the simple truth of 'the big three' - High heat, good natural yeast, and mixing technique. Getting these right will cover a lot of sins and getting these wrong will screw up the best ingredients.

Varasano even praises and ranks other pizzerias and gives directions to them! Link -via reddit

This site doesn't pretend to know everything; it's a collection of men giving their varied advice on love. Some are practical, some are cynical, and some are philosophical. I particularly like what the old guys have to say. The guy pictured here has the right idea.

“Don’t wait to find the ultimate act of love. Create the ultimate act of love.”

Link -Thanks, Abe Greenwald!

Less murder-y than a real chainsaw and more fun than any Texas Massacre.

Etsy artist SteffBomb has a limited-edition run of plush chainsaws available! Link -via Geekologie

From Raytheon's radar business to your breakfast of leftover pizza, the story of microwave cooking is an interesting read. Like computers, they took off when the size (and price) came down.

The 1947 Radarange was a whopping six feet tall, weighed nearly 750 pounds, and required its own 220 volt electrical line and a dedicated water line for the cooling tube. It sold for $2000, or nearly $22,000 today. Not yet an appliance for the home cook, Raytheon marketed the behemoth appliance to high-volume, quick service restaurants. Busy diners, ocean liners and hospitals all purchased their own Radaranges, cooking hamburgers and sheet cakes in less than 30 seconds.

Link -via Boing Boing