The most diverting websites and videos collected and collated each day for you by Times Online.
A blue Earth sets over the Moon’s horizon in pictures released yesterday by the Japanese space agency JAXA.
The images were taken by the Kaguya probe as it orbited the Moon at a distance of about 100 kilometres (62 miles). Kaguya, which is named after a girl carried into space by angels in a Japanese fairy tale, is part of the most detailed lunar mapping project since the American Apollo missions that began in the Sixties.
The first image of the Earth from space was taken in 1959 by the US Explorer VI while it passed over the Pacific.
In Damian Whitworth's interview with Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, (in today's times2) the former astronaut talks about the loonies who are convinced the Moon landings were an elaborate hoax. "I try not to add to their notoriety," says Aldrin. "They don't want to listen to reason." See how he dealt with one particular irksome conspiracy theorist...
With an exponential increase in channels and a commensurate collapse of audience share programme makers like to fill their schedules with ‘ordinary people’ because, frankly, they’re so cheap. Regrettably they’re also not especially entertaining: Why couldn’t someone sign up this ordinary person? Jordan Greenhalgh took 987 Polaroids and made the most interesting film you’ll see all day
You may recall us introducing you to the ‘will it blend’ series back in March of this year. Evidently French director, writer and all-round hipster Michael Gondry was paying attention because he’s now produced his own idiosyncratically surreal take on the genre – de-blending a shattered DVD in defiance of both entropy and good sense.
We’re assured that the Harry Potter phenomenon is boosting teenage literacy almost as often as we’re told that Rap Music is degrading it. What would happen, then, if you put the two together? Silly fresh wizardry, that’s what. Check it out, muggles.
French Internet viewers seem convinced that M.Sarkozy had treated himself to a refreshing cold drink or two during talks with President Putin at the G8 summit. See what you think:
The best protected man in the world, and he still gets his watch pinched.
Disappointing postscript: Perhaps it wasn't Albanian sleight-of-hand after all, but good old fashioned Texan caution.
Having addressed the mysterious lacuna between Prequels two and three of the Star Wars saga with a hyperactive sugar-rush cartoon from Genny Tarkovsky, George Lucas plans to do it all again with a CGI-rendered epic.
Some critics will undoubtedly observe that this may be the ideal arena for Lucas, whose characters can frequently resemble video game avatars more than they do real people. Some, like us, will just thrill to the the Manichean struggle between Jedi and Sith while hoping that no other grownups catch us watching it.
UPDATE: YourTube version now suppressed. You can see it at the official LucasFilm site here
Two wonderful things: Apple's peerless Front Row media browser and nature's unrivalled cute kitten meet to decide who is the more entertaining. Sadly, for Apple fans, it's a foregone conclusion.
kitten vs. frontrow from mattcoats on Vimeo
The Civil War was a powerfully traumatic event in the life of the fledgeling USA. In a world where America effectively dictates much of our culture and almost all of our foreign policy it would be beneficial for all of us to gain an understanding of this formative experience in the growth of the world's most influential nation. The trouble is, it's such a big subject. If only there were some way to understand the ebb and flow of the war, and to keep a track of its appalling body count, in just four minutes. If only, indeed, there were something like this:
We've already discussed the ironic cover. We think this one's supposed to be ironic too. You decide. Nouvelle Vague and the advertiser's favourite Moby give us their unique on the early Depeche Mode favourite Just can't get enough:
The closest video makers have yet come to approximating the feeling of an under-five's sugar rush. We don't know what this song is about, the video suggests it's something to do with breakdancing policemen, bodypopping schoolgirls, and unusually exuberant majorettes. We don't need to know any more than that. It is proof, if proof were needed, that those recorder lessons are worthwhile after all..
In this finely observed and deeply silly piece of 'French' cinema, we learn that not everybody wants to be a cat.
Le Cheval 2.1 Add to My Profile | More Videos
Even if you could resist the otters, this silent clip of a mother and child panda combo should soften the hardest of hearts. Try showing it to your boss just before you ask for a pay rise. Or don't. They'll know you were looking at YouTube when you should have been working:
From a film which is irrefutably the funniest heavy metal band mock-documentary of the mid-1980s directed by the son of a famous American humourist comes the haunting ballad 'Lick My Love Pump'. Now,at last, done in Lego:
Using no instruments except standard office equipment (As long as your office contains extensive medical facilities) The Kungliga Philharmonic Orchestra bring you a unique rendition of the timeless Dolly Parton wage-slave anthem 'Nine to Five' :
In 1984, when he was 20 years old, Troy Hurtubise was attacked by a grizzly bear. He survived, but the encounter left him obsessed with bears. Three years later, he was watching Robocop, and decided to start building a bear-proof suit, which he's been developing ever since. His new thing is 'Trojan', a protective suit for soldiers in Iraq, which he's demonstrating in this video.It features emergency morphine and salt compartments, magnetic weapon holders and a forehead-mounted laser pointer. If your journey to work would have been improved by pepper spray dispenser in your gloves and a groin-mounted clock, you might want to pay the $2,000 he believes the production suits would sell for. Unfortunately, the cost of building this prototype has bankrupted Troy and his family. In February, he tried to sell the prototype suit on eBay. Despite bids of over $35,000, it didn't reach the reserve price.
We’re going to tell you about as many big silly noisy movies as we can in these twilight years of the blockbuster.
By night, Tom Whitwell makes extra geeky clips for YouTube. By day, he's the communities editor of Times Online
Michael Moran spends much of his time watching Batman fan films but is nevertheless web correspondent of Times Online
Simon Crerar digs watching Chinese karaoke singalongs and dogs chasing their tails, and is Arts & Entertainment editor of Times Online
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