A weekend of internet video

Three videos of some note from the internets this weekend.

Being an avid reader of Bad Astronomy has turned me into a lay space enthusiast.  I even went ahead and recently backed my interest by buying a Galileoscope which was conceived in light of the the 2009 International year of Astronomy.  That established, I must confess that one of the few video clips that can always give me goosebumps and even occasionally well me up is the original 1969 grainy Apollo moon landing footage.  To any moon hoaxers out there I redirect you here, you’ve got some reading to do.  Other space related videos can have a similar effect and I guess I still pause considerably in awe at humankind’s space achievements.  With that in mind, this morning I stumbled across new footage of the first lunar module on the moon, which had apparently been lost for the past 40 years.  It didn’t bring me to tears but rather induced a good amount of head scratching.  The original story of how and why these tapes were lost is elaborate and unconvincing to say the least.  It would suffice to say the new footage is 100% hoax material (not uncommon).  Nonetheless, an interesting nugget to turn up and it shows good reason to keep the skeptical specticals on when these things come up on the web.  Phil even got duped monentarily.

David Attenborough has pretty much the best job ever.  You may or may not recognize the name but you’ll surely recognize his voice which appears in countless documentaries (one I posted here in fact) and is most recently reknown for the BBC’s Planet Earth series.  In this video (~28 mins), Attenborough gives us a glimpse into the brain of the dolphin, perhaps the smartest, most social and complex mammals aside from humans.  Pretty, impressive stuff if you can spare the half hour.  This one can’t be embeded so I’ll link you to Deep Thinkers.

The final video was called to my attention via reddit.  Paying tribute to Michael Jackson is a very rad nature lady with moonwalking birds.  This video seemed to go over pretty well when I posted on facebook so it’s worth posting here.

Perspective

It’s obviously an extremely important thing to have.  Who better to remind us of that than one of my favorite writers and skeptics, the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, who posted this the other day.  I love plugging fellow bloggers that I frequent so expect this sort of post semi-regularly.  I’ve seen videos like this on youtube before and though I actually couldn’t find my all time favorite, I think this one does the job fine.  Watch the video, pick up your jaw, wipe up the drool, and read up on some fascinating astronomy and skepticism.  Even better, find another area of interest on the Discover Magazine blog network and go nuts (might I also recommend Carl Zimmer of the Times).  Believe me, it’s better for you than Cosmo or Oprah.

If you have a moment to kill but can’t watch the video, here’s an interactive way of experiencing the same concept.  Big ups to Nikon.  This app kicks ass.