Flour Power

Among all the information coming from Japan concerning the huge earthquake and tsunami, the gallery created by The New York Times presents the tragedy in a very simple way. With superimposed satellite pictures of the before and after that can be interchanged using a slider, one can have a quick look at how badly changed the affected areas were.

For example, this is how Ishinomaki looked on April 4 2010:

And on March 12 2010:

Make sure you check out the whole gallery. Some impressive/shocking images there.

UPDATE: And here’s some more photos, from the ABC News site.

(Source: Geekologie)

Back in the day, Portugal, Spain, France and the United Kingdom had huge empires spanning the entire world. This video is a very interesting way of visualizing their decline. Totally worth watching.

(Vimeo)

If you only have 10 minutes today to procrastinate on the Internet, use them to watch this video.

While I’ve seen other projections on the side of buildings, this is clearly the best I’ve come across. It’s full of astounding visual effects while telling the story of what Prague’s Astronomical Clock saw during its 600 years of existence. Awesome!

The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.

(via CrunchGear)

If you’re anything like me, you despise the likes of Justin Bieber with their teenager pop “music”. Well, since I listened to his latest single, my opinion has changed: I now think his music is awesome… if slowed down 8 times. The computer-algorithm-generated crap that’s “U Smile” becomes a 35 minute ambient epic. Check it out for yourself:

J. BIEBZ – U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

Impressive, uh? Sounds like something out of an epic movie soundtrack. Or Sigur Rós. If you want to create your own ambient sounds, just follow this tutorial at Lifehacker.

But the original is still crap:

U Smile by imd

(via Gawker)