In the YouTube mash-up spirit of Kutiman, a project called In Bb presents you with a grid of unrelated YouTube videos that all happen to be in the key of B-flat. There is no percussion or meter, so things will always blend together smoothly no matter when you start or stop each video. Try to resist the urge to play them all at once – turn on a couple at a time, then add new ones as time goes on. The effect is incredibly beautiful.

Farmers in Nuanquan, China, too poor to afford fireworks to celebrate the new year, instead melt down scrap metal and hurl it against a wall, creating a brilliant spray of sparks and molten iron. Their only protection is a sheepskin coat and a hat. [video]

There’s a new show on the Discovery Channel called “Time Warp” – it features extreme slow-motion footage of events that happen very fast, such as what happens when you put a lighter in a blender:

French composer Pierre Bastien builds small mechanical musical devices, which click and whirr and play somber melodies on keyboards as he follows along on his muted trumpet, occasionally reaching over to adjust a lever or attach a new part. It’s an intimate and introspective affair.

Dmitry Maksimov works in a variety of styles and media, but I’m most fascinated by his photo illustrations that show small characters going about their mysterious business in realistic settings with narrow depth-of-field. It’s a fleeting glimpse into a cute and spooky world. Visit the artist’s site (it’s in Russian, but just scroll down for the images).

“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.” Watch on YouTube

Researchers at automation technology company Festo have developed what just might be the Best Robot Ever. They’ve made a version that swims in the air using helium and lightweight tentacles, as well as one that swims underwater. Totally mesmerizing – check out the video!

Best. Lake. Ever. Lake Baikal, in southern Siberia in Russia, contains over 20% of the world’s fresh water and is home to over 1700 species of plants and animals, of which two thirds are found nowhere else. Although less than half the surface area of Lake Superior, it’s over a mile deep, comprised of an ancient rift valley where the Earth’s crust is pulling apart at two centimeters per year. As the rift has expanded over the millenia, it has filled in with a layer of sediment that is now four miles deep.

Due to its extreme age (25-30 million years) and isolation from other bodies of water, Lake Baikal has developed many unique species that are unlike any found elsewhere, and is therefore often called the “Galapagos of Russia”. The lake is home to a species of freshwater seal, as well as the translucent Baikal oil fish, known for liquefying into a slurry of oil and bones when dredged up from the extreme pressures at the depths of the lake.

In the late 1990s, artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, along with composer David Soldier, polled 500 music listeners to determine the least desirable musical qualities. They compiled their data and then composed a piece of music that incorporated as many of these qualities as possible, titling the final product “The Most Unwanted Song”. The folks polled apparently don’t like rap music, sopranos, or songs about cowboys, so their song prominently features a soprano rapping about cowboys. Other features include tubas, banjos, accordions, sudden changes in dynamics and tempo, children’s choirs singing about holidays (Labor Day, Ramadan) and corporations (Wal Mart, Coca Cola), and an uncomfortable length of 25 minutes.

The end result, in my opinion, is catchy and fascinating – much more than the sum of its unwanted parts. If you’ve ever enjoyed Mr. Bungle, I think you’ll love this song. You can stream it from the Wired article, or download the MP3.

The V-2 rocket, produced by Nazi Germany during World War II, was the first man-made object to achieve suborbital spaceflight and was the precursor to all modern rockets, including those used for human spaceflight. Germany launched over 3,000 of them at Allied countries up through 1945, claiming 7,000 military and civilian lives, mostly in London and Antwerp, as well the 25,000 slave laborers who died while being forced to produce them.

The 46-foot-long rocket’s liquid oxygen-fueled engine would burn for only about 65 seconds before cutting off, using two gyroscopes and a simple analog computer to determine the exact angle of the rocket at the moment the engine cut off. The rocket then followed a purely ballistic trajectory the rest of the way to its destination, sometimes landing within meters of its target. The V-2 had a range of up to 200 miles at an altitude of 55 miles.

Whenever the rockets fell in London, there would be no warning before the explosion, as the V-2 traveled at supersonic speeds. Just after the explosion, a characteristic fading whistling sound could often be heard. In fact, the British government denied that the city was under rocket attack until it had been going on for weeks, instead attributing the explosions to other causes.

When Germany fell to the Allied troops in 1945, the V-2’s creator, Wernher von Braun, and his whole team surrendered to the Americans in order to prevent their technology from going to the Russians. Von Braun went on to create the rockets first used by the fledgling US space program, including the giant Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the moon.