Video roundup: non-animals edition
The Rings of Earth, showing what the view from various places on Earth would be if our planet had Saturn-like rings. Nifty! (Thanks, Dave!)
Cut to Ribbons, an interactive art project creating a virtual ribbon dance, designed to be viewed with 3D glasses.
New Zealand Book Council's amazing animated book video Going West.
A Cirque du Soleil performer practicing a trampoline act. But not just any trampoline act. This one uses a wall in such a way that it occasionally looks like gravity has, gracefully and without any fuss, turned sideways. Amazing and lovely, and this is only practice and net video; I bet in a real performance it would be completely astonishing.
Visualizing empires decline: experimental computer animation showing how the size of four great maritime empires changed from 1800 to 2008. It's a little confusing and hard to follow in places, but neat. There are some slow parts; if you're in a hurry, skip ahead to around 2:20 in the video, where from the 1940s through the 1970s the empires explode like popcorn. Probably easier to view in fullscreen than ordinary size; either way, move your mouse pointer off to the side to hide the video controls so you can see the year counter at lower left.
The song "I Know It's Today" from the musical version of Shrek. I have very little interest in seeing the show, but I really like this song.