Tonight, let’s get abstract! Here are some of my favorite non-narrative videos on the web — stuff without plots, characters, narratives, none of that messy stuff. Just beautiful images and, in most cases, sounds.

Lights and Water

Described by its creator: “No cuts, no movement, no nothing, 1 minute. This was taken from my car in Downtown SF.” This is utterly beautiful.

Lights and Water from James Adamson on Vimeo.

Color + Modulation #7

By Portland artist Rob Tyler, this is one of his hand-painted photography projects. Basically he paints every frame of the film by hand, then edits it on a computer. Look him up if you want lots more of this (he sells a DVD of very mesmerizing stuff).

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It was this day in 1930 that the Motion Picture Production Code (AKA the Hays Code) went into effect, imposing a set of strict guidelines on Hollywood that are laughable today (“Revenge shall not be justified,” “The use of liquor when not required by the plot will not be shown,” “Obscenity in word, gesture, reference, song joke or by suggestion is forbidden”). We may not realize it, but most movies from 1930 to the mid-‘60s had to make concessions for this code – here are nine you may recognize, and one that managed to sneak by the censors.

1. It Happened One Night. This Oscar-winner was one of the first to really adhere to the code and was richly rewarded for it. The code prohibited basically even the smallest hint of lust or passion (“Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown,” and “[Scenes of Passion] should not be introduced when not essential to the plot”). So when the script called for Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert to be stuck in a motel room together, they did it in the most chaste way possible: a blanket was hung between the two beds in the room and Claudette wore a set of pajamas that covered everything but her face. When Clark Gable gave her a “lesson” on how a man undresses, she freaked out. The movie became the first to hit the Oscar Grand Slam – it won Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

2. The Outlaw. This movie was kept out of theaters simply because the advertising featuring Jane Russell’s cleavage was too racy. Director Howard Hughes threw an absolute fit and ended up cutting a total of 30 seconds from the movie that featured too much décolletage. The movie hit theaters for about seven days in 1943, two years after filming was complete. The Hays office decided it was still too risqué and the movie was yanked, not receiving a full release until 1946. It was such a controversial film by then that it was a massive success.

3. Anything featuring Betty Boop. Pre-Hays Code, Betty was a flapper who liked short skirts and low necklines. Post Hays-Code, Betty wore skirts to the knee, ditched the garter belt in favor of leg-covering stockings, and favored practically prudish necklines.
4. Casablanca. Joseph I. Breen, the head of the Production Code Administration, personally objected to any reference in Casablanca about Rick and Ilsa having possibly slept together in Paris. Although they still managed to get the point across, the original version was not so subtle. (more…)

It’s Reader-Submitted Quiz Week!! Today’s offering comes from Amy Torchinsky of Greensboro, NC. Enjoy!

Last August, the National Insurance Crime Bureau released its list of the most frequently stolen vehicles (cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans) for 2008. The NICB lists specific model years (“2002 Ford Explorer”), but we wouldn’t do that to you — just give us the model (“Explorer”). You’ve got three minutes. Good luck!

Take the Quiz: Name the 10 Most Frequently Stolen Cars

I recently caught the first few episodes of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on TV. (British guy doing a cooking thing? Sign me up!) Oliver’s show chronicles his attempt to change the food culture in Huntington, West Virginia — starting in the schools, and also going into the community directly, working with families, teaching people to cook, and so on. Why Huntington? Because the CDC says it has the highest rate of obesity in the US. What happens on the show? Judging from the first few episodes, Oliver is met with anger, resentment, but most of all ignorance about eating habits. Now, I’m not saying this is a problem specific to Huntington — I’ve been to Huntington (my family is from West Virginia) and it’s an American city like any other. But it’s honestly appalling to see Oliver quiz kids on what various foods are (like tomatoes and potatoes — he shows them to a classroom and asks “Does anyone know what this is?”) and discover that the kids have no idea what “real food” is.

In this TED Talk, Oliver talks about his work on educating people about food. He discusses his work in England (most notably on school lunch programs), and presents a series of alarming statistics and real-world examples of people dying from diet-related diseases. Because Oliver’s wheelhouse is school food programs, he spends a lot of time talking about that stuff — and it’s amazingly bad. “Pizza for breakfast, anyone?”

Representative quote: “Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the US right now, here, today.” And it’s preventable. This talk is smart, simple, and very alarming.

Soaps are mixtures of sodium or potassium salts derived from fatty acids and alkali solutions in a process called saponification. Each soap molecule is made of a long, non-polar, hydrophobic (repelled by water) hydrocarbon chain (the “tail”) capped by a polar, hydrophilic (water-soluble) “salt” head. Because soap molecules have both polar and non-polar properties, they’re great emulsifiers, which means they can disperse one liquid into another.

When you wash your dirty hands with soap and water, the tails of the soap molecules are repelled by water and attracted to oils, which attract dirt. The tails cluster together and form structures called micelles, trapping the dirt and oils. The micelles are negatively charged and soluble in water, so they repel each other and remain dispersed in water—and can easily be washed away.

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It’s an all-new 5-day trivia hunt!

Co-puzzle Master Josh Halbur and I are happy to bring you the next How Did You Know? sponsored by the extraordinary video sharing site motionbox.com.

>> Prizes! Each month, motionbox.com will be giving out 3 prizes: a free premium subscription on their site; a Vado 8GB HD cam. Plus, the winner of the cam will get the opportunity to purchase a discounted premium membership on motionbox, as well.
>> How do you win? Rules: anyone who submits any kind of answers at all, right or wrong, is now eligible for a prize. So long as you submit, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win the free, premium subscription to motionbox.com, worth $49.99. Next: the $199.99 Vado 8GB HD cam. Anyone who submits all the correct answers within 24 hours of the final puzzle post on day 5, will be eligible for a drawing for the this amazing little gadget that holds up to 2 hours in brilliant HD.

>> So what’s in it for the person/team who finishes first with all the correct answers? Bragging rights, as always, with your photo/bio posted on our site. But also two chances to win the motionbox.com prizes, and, as is our tradition here at the _floss, your pick of any t-shirt from our store.

As always, if you’re not a Fan of our Facebook page, be sure to add us so we can keep you updated, and you can get in on some additional nifty clues throughout the week. If you’re new to our five-day hunt, you can read up on our new Rules page here. If you missed Day 1, that can be found right here. Ready to get your Hunt on? Click on through.

I was a Navy man myself, but had friends who were members of the U.S. Army. We also had to learn the ranks of other services, since it was important to know if, say, an Airman in the Air Force outranked a Third-Class Petty Officer in the Navy.

From a list of U.S. Army ranks, I pulled the names of the 20 main ranks. (I removed five ranks that are special or parallel, mentioned by name in the quiz instructions.) Can you name all 20 in five minutes? At ease… and good luck!

Take the Quiz: Be All You Can Be.

Regular _floss readers may remember the article I posted last month about The Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy. The group gives away $100 grants to people, as long as those people promise to give away the money in a creative way. We got so many excellent reader ideas in the comments section, we decided to take a closer look at the Society’s past giveaways.

Before we get started on the actual philanthropic practices of the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy, let’s take a quick look at the history of the program. In my original article, I mistakenly said the Society was based in the Bay Area. As it turns out, the San Francisco and Athens, Georgia, branches are only chapters of the original group, which was started by Courtney Martin in New York City back in 2006.

Miss Martin was an aspiring writer who had just finished her first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, and suddenly found herself in possession of a six-figure royalty advance. Unlike most people, who would be thrilled to have this amount of cash in their pockets, Martin felt guilty that she suddenly had so much money, so she decided to give some of it away to charity. The only problem was that she didn’t know how. In the end, she decided to give nine of her friends and family members $100 and then ask them to give it away as they saw fit. She only asked that they reported back to her a month later.

And thus, the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy was born. (more…)

Last month, New York Magazine posted a photo gallery titled “A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things.” Dean Trippe has tweaked those photos, adding objects like Marty McFly’s hoverboard, The TARDIS, Johnny Five and The Sword of Omens. Makes me want to run for office.

See all the photos on Dean’s blog or his Flickr page.

[Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan.]

Wednesday’s Brain Game: Which U.S. city could be represented by the following combination of measurements?

86,400 seconds + 32,000 ounces