Did you know that the adorable Jorge and Alexa Magnetic Zeros video isn’t the only awesome video we came across yesterday? I know right? There’s also this Star Wars PSA — how to introduce your kids to Star Wars. Well, some of it is pretty common sense, “There’s no question that you should star with A New Hope,” but we can see how it might be nice to get other parents’ opinions on how to explain the Force and midichlorians and such.
If you want a boost in making Santa more believable, download this Elf Cam app for iphone/itouch. If you point your phone towards the North Pole, you can hear what’s going on in Santa’s workshop! And you can capture Santa in night-vision. No wonder this app is so cool, it was made by elves. (via BoingBoing)
If you’ve been humming Tchaikovsky in the recent weeks and days, you might be interested in this brief history of nutcrackers on Slate. Here’s an excerpt:
The dolls symbolize good luck in German tradition—one popular origin myth, related by Rittenhouse, holds that a wealthy but lonely farmer who found the process of cracking nuts to be detrimental to his productivity (efficiency even pervades German folklore!) offered a reward to whoever could come up with the best solution. Each villager drew on his own professional expertise—a carpenter advocating sawing them open, a soldier shooting the suckers. But it was the puppetmaker—a profession that seems to loom large in European tall tales—who won the day, building a strong-jawed, lever-mouthed doll. Read more...
