Extraordinary Student Film About Augmented Reality: VIDEO

You've heard that "augmented reality" is the coming thing? (In April, Andy posted a slick demo video on the potential uses of Google's extremely cool augmented reality glasses prototype.) Well -- two film students at Jerusalem's Belazeal Academy of Arts, Eran May-Raz and Daniel Lazo, have taken it as the subject of their graduation project, and come up with the following, very impressive student film.

Their vision of humanity's technofuture is pretty grim, but their filmic abilities are delightful. That amateurs can put something this advanced, this slickly CGI'd on film convinces me: We're living in the future. Watch, AFTER THE JUMP ...  

Mitt Romney On Buying Chinese Factories And The Importance Of Sharing: VIDEO

AFTER THE JUMP, see what appears to be a bootleg of Mitt Romney addressing a group of rich people at a fundraising dinner. Mitt doesn't actually appear in the video -- he's speaking off-camera -- but it doesn't matter, because the oratory's fascinating. (Really!)

In the vid, Mitt's talks about a long-ago visit to China -- "back in my private equity days" -- during which he visited a factory he thought Bain Capital might like to acquire. He notes that the working conditions were horrible. The factory was staffed almost entirely by young women earning what Mitt calls  a "pittance." They lived on-premises, a dozen women to a room, one bathroom per ten rooms, barbed wire and guard towers ringing the complex (to keep overeager job applicants out, Mitt says).

The moral of the story, according to Mitt, who sounds like he might be tearing up:

The Bain Partner I was with turned to me and said, you know, 95% of life is settled if you are born in America. This is, uh, this is an amazing land and what we have is unique. And fortunately it is so special we are sharing it with the world.

"Sharing it with the world" -- assuming Mitt's talking about China, a feat Bain accomplishes primarily via the "Bain Asia Fund," which supplies the Chinese Communist Party with the equipment it uses to spy on democratic dissidents and Tibetan monks. Mitt gets misty over the weirdest things.

(HT: Buzzfeed.)

Soledad O'Brien Eats Tim Pawlenty On National Television: VIDEO

Twice last week, CNN's Soledad O'Brien improbably caught fire on air. Her veins filled with a righteous journalistic hatred of campaign trail/party-line BS, and she did mightily smite two lesser surrogates of Gov. Mitt Romney.

The first was New Hampshire's Gov. John Sununu, who on Tuesday was so perturbed by being asked actual questions on national television that he concluded his interview by telling Ms. O'Brien to paste an Obama bumper-sticker to her forehead. The next day, Tim Pawlenty stumbled onto Soledad's show, and you can see what happened AFTER THE JUMP ...

Maybe The Most Comprehensive Map In The Universe: VIDEO

The Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, which uses something called "drift scanning" to document the vastness of the sky, has been snapping pictures of the heavens for twelve years as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The Survey's findings have been compiled into a 3D map of space, picturing 200 million galaxies and "7 billion years worth of cosmic movement." The map will get bigger, soon.

The data from the survey, and the map itself, is largely impenetrable to non-specialists. Happily, somebody involved in the project has produced a video tour of the map as it exists today. AFTER THE JUMP, take a tour of what might be the most comprehensive map in the universe. It's certainly the most comprehensive map in our corner of it.

NEWS: Funny Money, Odd Hats, And Dubious Advice (VIDEO)

Have civil liberties you're not using? Turn 'em into cash, AFTER THE JUMP ...

Brian Moylan, late of Gawker, teaches Guardian readers how to be gay:

Everyone used to know to glance over your shoulder after three steps if you were interested in that sexy stranger on the sidewalk. There was a complex network of looks and signals that men used to use to attract each other, something that made gay men much more attuned to body language and perceptive than our straight counterparts. Learn how to do that. Not only will it improve your gay experience, but the way you interact with everyone. Street cruising is mostly dead – no, it can't be done on Grindr – but a trip to a bath house will teach you all you ever need to know.

The AP recaps the volleys of recrimination following the FRC shooting.

Moscow Pride deferred for a century.

In Britain, Tory support for marriage equality may cost them at the polls:

Almost six out of 10 people who attend [church] services regularly say they are less likely to vote Conservative at the next election because of the plans to redefine marriage.

More than a third of those polled said it had no effect on whether they would support the Conservatives but most of them would never vote for the party anyway.

Support among churchgoers for Labour and the Liberal Democrats was also damaged by their stance on the marriage question but the biggest impact by far was on the Conservatives.

... Gary Streeter, the Tory MP for Devon South West and a committed Christian, said: “Whatever the merits or demerits of the policy it is not smart politics.”

Russian clerics forgive Pussy Riot:

"We did forgive them from the very start. But such actions should be cut short by society and authorities." Archpriest Maxim Kozlov expressed similar sentiments on state television, but insisted that the church hopes the women and their supporters see the errors in their ways.

The words from the two top clerics came after the church reiterated its criticism of the women but called “on the state authorities to show mercy to the people convicted within the framework of the law, in the hope that they will refrain from repeating blasphemous actions." The remarks were widely seen as an indication that the powerful church would not object if the government moved to pardon the women or reduced their two-year sentences, points out Reuters.

Octomom is now a musician.

Craving something nasty? Read some of these epic takedowns, courtesy of Longform.org. My favorite's the Peter Bart story.

As many as 15,000 people marched at Prague Pride. Earlier fears that the event would cause God to level the city a la Sodom proved unfounded.

Bill Cunningham says farewell to Anna Piaggi.

Rep. Todd Akin: I Will Outlaw Things I Know Nothing About (VIDEO)

The biggest practical problem with letting elected officials meddle in people's personal lives is this: They often don't know anything about the things with which they're meddling.

AFTER THE JUMP, hear US Rep. Todd Akin, a Republican of Missouri, defend the outlawing of the morning-after pill, which he insists causes abortions, which it does not. (Rather, it prevents fertilization from occurring in the first place. It takes a while for even a very determined sperm to rendezvous with a willing and waiting egg.) 

Rep. Akin has just become the Republican nominee bound to take on Sen. Claire McCaskill in November. Sen. McCaskill was a vocal proponent of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and is currently engaged in an Obamaesque evolution on marriage equality. Rep. Akin is undergoing no such evolution -- he thinks marriage equality is likely to destroy civilization.