The accordion has always fascinated me. How the players manage to hit the keys is a mystery to me. Anyhow, the kid is talented. Listen.

His tempo is really very fast. Compare it to this version played with the full string orchestra. The fast bit starts around 7:10 mark.

And while you listen, enjoy the exquisite sand animation.

Ah the sand animation is exquisite.

And finally, here’s a Danish (I guess) orchestra playing Summer. Just listen to the Presto part beginning at the 8:00 mark. But listen to the entire piece — I especially love the slow bits that lead up to the climactic crescendo. C’est magnifique.

Isn’t it just marvelous that we can watch and listen to such talent. Ah the Wonders of the Brave New Internet World.

The shortlist for YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video has been announced! Selected from more than 23,000 submissions from 91 countries, the 125 shortlisted videos can now be seen on the YouTube Play channel.

The jury will now select their top choices to be revealed and presented at a special YouTube Play celebration event at the Guggenheim Museum on October 21 and on youtube.com/play. The final videos selected by the jury will be on view to the public at the Guggenheim Museum from October 22 through 24, and available to a worldwide audience on the You Tube Play channel.

Here’s one that I especially like — Lucky by All India Radio:

Details:

All India Radio/ Dee Pee Studios

From: DarcyPrendergast | August 02, 2009 | 375,527 views

Lucky by All India Radio, is the viewable blood, sweat and tears of Australian based animation company ‘Dee Pee Studios’.

It involves a painstaking animation technique, whereby the team paints in the air with glow sticks, frame after frame to create entire sequences of animation, usually taking a whole night to shoot.

For more info, please check out:www.deepeestudios.com and www.allindiaradio.com.au

When I was small, and Christmas trees were tall,
we used to love while others used to play.
Don’t ask me why, but time has passed us by,
someone else moved in from far away.

Now we are tall, and Christmas trees are small,
and you don’t ask the time of day.
But you and I, our love will never die,
but guess who’ll cry come first of May.

The apple tree that grew for you and me,
I watched the apples falling one by one.
And as I recall the moment of them all,
the day I kissed your cheek and you were gone.

Now we are tall, and Christmas trees are small,
and you don’t ask the time of day.
But you and I, our love will never die,
but guess who’ll cry come first of May.

Sarah Brightman’s cover is definitely worth collecting.

Easter on the small Greek island of Chios means one thing – a massive firework battle, with over 50,000 rockets raining down on two small towns.

[Source.]

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury
Henry Paulson

Penn and Teller are pretty amazing. I especially like their debunking videos. They are iconoclasts and have a lot of fun letting the air out of some of the high and mighty. They have done the usual ones. YouTube has a lot of their stuff. Here’s a video of one great illusion by Teller: Shadows

They have a series where they expose bullshit. Here’s one on the Bible.

Penn and Teller use comedy in their debunking, but they are basically serious about getting people to be more rational. For real humor, Ricky Gervais is awesome. Here’s Ricky on Biblical creation. My favorite bit is around the 3:40 timestamp in the following video. (“and god saw the light and saw that it was good … even though he says so himself … there’s pride in your work and there’s arrogance…we do like to write our own reviews … And lo! Gervais was not only a handsome man but a funny f***** … maybe I’ll do me own …”)

Well that’s about it for now. Have fun.

The Airbus 380 cockpit. Click on the image above to see the amazing 360 degree view (which will open in a new window or tab.) Note the controls at the bottom of the screen which allow you to zoom and tilt the view. (Thanks Yuvaraj for the link.)

The last time I sat in the jump seat of an Airbus was a flight from New Delhi to Paris on Aug 31st 2001. I had been traveling a lot on business and gotten to know the flight crew. I spent a couple of hours chatting with the captain that night as we winged our way across the world under a starry sky. A few days later, on Sept 11th, the opportunity for most people to ever hang out in the cockpit of a commercial jetliner vanished for good.

2.5 million MBAs? Really?

It is a brilliantly composed song and the video is packed full of very clever references. Here are a few lines that matter here:

blog blog blog it all
blog it if it’s big or small
blog at the cineplex
blog while you’re having sex
blog in the locker room
babies blogging in the womb
blog even if you’re wrong
won’t you blog about this song . . .

From “The Daily Coyote“:

Charlie came into my life when he was just ten days old, orphaned after both his parents were killed. He lives with me and a tomcat in a one-room log cabin in Wyoming.

Definitely not work-safe as it will distract you no end. But it is food for the soul. All creatures great and small. Go marvel at the cute little critter.

Source.

Mr Mehta, the plumage don’t enter into it–it’s stone dead. This parrot wouldn’t voom if you put four million volts through it. This parrot is definitely deceased. It is no more. It’s bleedin’ demised. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It’s shuffled off this mortal coil. It’s rung down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. All statements to the effect that this parrot is still a going concern, are from now on inoperative. Visavis the metabolic processes, this parrot has had its lot. This is an ex-parrot.

[Rarely, if ever, does one get a chance to quote Monty Python and do so with such devastating accuracy. ]

I used to listen to them religiously. They are funny and irreverent and clever and poked as much fun at the callers as they did at themselves. In the closing credits, they acknowledged the research done by Paul Murky of Murky Research and thanked their law firm Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe. They would also thank random people such as their adopted son from Sweden, Bjorn A. Payne Diaz, or their airline reservation manager, Will Price Randomly. (See this for a complete list of credits.)

I was pleasantly surprised when I recently learnt that Tom and Ray Magliozzi (Click and Clack) were the speakers at MIT’s Commencement Exercises in June 1999. Here is part of a MIT news item on the event.

They received tongue-in-cheek letters from MIT President Charles M. Vest explaining that both the United Nations and the President of the United States had “really spiffy flags” that came in handy to “cheer up a drab corner of the campus.”

So, not to be outdone, the Magliozzi brothers created a flag. Their flag — purple, red and black on a white background — is 4-by-6, emblazoned with the slogan Non Impediti Ratione Cogitatonis (Unencumbered by the Thought Process) surrounding a seal showing the fins, taillights and bumper of a 1959 Cadillac, complete with a raccon tail on the trunk. They say it memorializes the rear end of Tom’s recently deceased 1963 Dodge Dart. The flag flew on the podium alongside the US and state flags.

In their rambling, hour-long address, the brothers occasionally jockeyed for position at the podium, yelled “Stop it!” and “Behave!” at each other and laughed harder than almost anyone in the audience at their own jokes. Their speech was accompanied by hand-made graphs on posterboard that showed the relationship between happiness levels for “left brain vs. right brain” individuals.

Although each brother seemed loath to give the other the last word, Ray finally managed with: “Have fun, enjoy the ride and don’t drive like my brother.”

The address is a must read. I read it because it was delivered at what C&C said “is the world’s foremost institute of technology on Massachusetts Avenue” but I guarantee that you will not have wasted your time for having read it as well.

Since I am listed on the “About Us” page of the IRDF website, I do occassionally get emails from various agencies working in rural areas. I got one today which I think is too good to keep to myself. Here it is — for the record — the email with the subject heading “Raural Development.”

sir,
first of all my heads off to u and ur team.
i shall take this opportunity to introduce myself,
i m a citizen of village thaura, block rewsa.
sir, v villagers wana do some innovative task for the development of our village for this v need ur guidence. v have some good projects which v wana excute through our gram panchayat.
sir v also wana meet u personally to explore areas of our interest.
it wil b our pleasure if r given a chance and i shall promise on behalf of ourt villagers that if v given a chance v shall leave no stone broken.
thanking u,
anticipating ur kind cooperation as always.

[name]
village thaura
block rewsa
distt sitapur.

The image of headless people and unbroken stones is priceless.

Now aren’t you glad that we did not go with those compact Japanese models of elephants? Sure they gave more miles to the bale of hay, and were easier to park in the crowded streets, but they were useless when it came to crossing overflowing creeks.

I make no representations about the authenticity of the picture above. Any idiot can doctor up a photo these days. Even then, it is funny. Kind of goes with the image that one has of the prime chimp President of the United States of America.

Those guys at Google do have a sense of humor. See the moon at max maginification. Don’t forget to visit the Google Moon Help page and the Google Copernicus Center if you are looking for a job.

When I come across these sorts of things, I cannot stop marvelling at the amazing power of the world wide web.

Talking of internet games, I came across something that is really spooky. I cannot figure this one out. I am pretty clever but that one has me totally puzzled.