The Chimerist

Parahawking in Nepal. If you like birds well enough to train them, then obviously you’d want to fly with them if given half the chance. Who wouldn’t? Hence, “parahawking,” which means hawking while paragliding, a term that apparently applies even when the birds are vultures. Note: You may want to hit the mute as soon as this one starts if, like me, you’re not keen on the scrapey warblings of painfully earnest singer-songwriters.

— Laura Miller

Here’s Ibiza without drunken tourists and seaside kitsch, just immense Mediterranean skies wheeling over the rugged Spanish island, in an HD time-lapse video that will look ravishing on all the new retina screens out there.

—Laura Miller

The now-iconic “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster was never really used during World War II. As this charming video explains, a prototype was found in an old box in a bookshop in Northumberland. The store, Barter Books, is located in a former railway stations and as an added bonus, it happens to be one of the prettiest bookstores in the world.

—Laura Miller

Auroracam. Footage of the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) from above, taken from the International Space Station.

— Laura Miller

The first time I visited Rome, I couldn’t get over how big the ruins were. Usually fabled sites give the opposite impression. Now, thanks to a 3D digital model called Rome Reborn, you can take a fly-through tour of the ancient metropolis circa 320 CE. There are even animated citizens to give you a sense of the scale of the buildings and statues. It’s impressive even to a resident of a thoroughly modern city, and must have seemed superhuman to visitors at the time. No wonder the emperors got away with calling themselves gods. 

—Laura Miller

Fascinating, beautiful, and vaguely menacing, and all the more so when viewed from above in full-screen handheld isolation, this 3D hologram of a building and the trees and streets around it was featured at Zebra Imaging’s Studio-X presentation last week and doesn’t require special glasses. Says Voltage, “The architectural applications are obvious. The artistic possibilities are intriguing. [But] the military is also extremely interested…. DARPA has already poured $25 million into Zebra’s research.”

—Maud Newton

I watched this first thing in the morning today, even before I got out of bed. I thought I’d use my iPad primarily for movies, and I do use it for that. But this is the sort of video I enjoy ten times more for not having to watch it at my desk.

—Laura Miller