1.2.11 … the end of break approaches … :

movies: 🙂

YouTube – Filmography 2010.

270 films from 2010 were spliced into one single, fabulous, illuminating 6 minute video, by genrocks (“I’m a girl by the way”)

via 2010: the year through film « The Improvised Life.

culture: very interesting.  I am going to have to research Hans Rosling, since this is the my second YouTube post of his in less than a month.  Anyone know anything about him?

YouTube – Hans Rosling – 2020 Shaping Ideas.

movies, kudos:

YouTube – Man in a Blizzard.

This film deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject.

(1) Because of its wonderful quality. (2) Because of its role as homage. It is directly inspired by Dziga Vertov’s 1929 silent classic “Man With a Movie Camera.” (3) Because it represents an almost unbelievable technical proficiency.

via “Man in a Blizzard,” by Jamie Stuart – Roger Ebert’s Journal.

skiing/snowboarding, Edward/Jack:  very interesting … one boy skis; one boy boards … wonder what it says about their personalities?

Snowboarding, by contrast, was born not of a utilitarian desire to get around, but of unadulterated hedonism. It was conceived from the first to be fun. And all things considered, it seems the more natural way to get down a slope. In an outtake from “Lines”, a documentary about big-mountain snowboarding in Alaska, Mike Renquet, a legend of the sport, offers the following thought experiment. Imagine a caveman asked to choose how to get down a snowy mountain. Would he strap on two separate wooden slats and lean forward? Or rather stand sideways on a broader plank and lean back a little? Mr Renquet does not think the theoretical troglodyte would plump for the skis. Nor does Babbage. But then again, both he and Mr Renquet may be biased.

via Babbage hits the slopes: The science of skiing v snowboarding | The Economist.

history, Civil War:

Museum Collections Manager Catherine Wright let curiosity get the best of her and decided to crack open the bottle to see what message it was hiding from the world. After pulling the plug and enlisting a CIA code breaker to crack the encrypted message, the world was able to receive the message that Gen. Pemberton never did.

Wright explained that the Civil War messenger bearing the bad news likely turned back after seeing the U.S. flag flying over Vicksburg, indicating the Confederacy had surrendered, and making the message irrelevant. “It was just another punctuation mark to just how desperate and dire everything was,” she said.

via Civil War Message in a Bottle Decoded After 147 Years – TIME NewsFeed.

Gretchen Rubin, happiness, New Year’s Resolutions: The Happiness Project: Recommended happiness reading.

-and-

YouTube – Try a Week of Extreme Nice..

snow, winter, science:  Probably learned this in middle school, but it is still interesting.

Rather than liquid freezing, snow comes from water vapor — the gaseous form of water — changing directly into the solid, ice phase, a process known as deposition. The water molecules link together in a beautiful hexagonal crystal, like so.

via Happy Snowy New Year! : Starts With A Bang.