Video: The Science of Chocolate (aka the real meaning of Valentine's Day)

From SciShow (warning - autoplay video at link):

While you unwrap that luscious truffle, let Hank explain the science of chocolate -- where it comes from, what its active ingredient is, and how it works. Also learn the difference between chocolate, cocoa, cacao and coca, so you really know what you're talking about the next time you pass the candy dish.

Must read of the day (week) is Jonah Goldberg: In Olympic coverage, Soviet horrors are being swept under the rug

Read the whole thing at NRO.  Excerpts:

Watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, you’d have no idea that from the Moscow metro system to, literally, the roads to Sochi, the Soviet Union — the supposed epitome of modernity and “scientific socialism” — was built on a mountain of broken lives and unremembered corpses.

Consider the stunted and ritualistic conversation (“controversy” is too vibrant a word for the mundane Internet chatter) about the Soviet Union sparked by the Winter Olympics. The humdrum shrugging at the overwhelming evil of Soviet Communism leaves me nostalgic for the Eichmann controversy. At least Arendt and her critics agreed that evil itself was in the dock; they merely haggled over the best words to put in the indictment.

What to say of the gormless press-agent twaddle conjured up to describe the Soviet Union? In its opening video for the Olympic Games, NBC’s producers drained the thesaurus of flattering terms devoid of moral content: “The empire that ascended to affirm a colossal footprint; the revolution that birthed one of modern history’s pivotal experiments. But if politics has long shaped our sense of who they are, it’s passion that endures.”

To parse this infomercial treacle is to miss the point, for the whole idea is to luge by the truth on the frictionless skids of euphemism.

“To eat your own children is a barbarian act.” So read posters distributed by Soviet authorities in the Ukraine, where 6 to 8 million people were forcibly starved to death so that the socialist Stalin could sell every speck of grain to the West, including seed stock for the next year’s harvest and food for the farmers themselves. The posters were the Soviet response to the cannibalism they orchestrated.

If it is conventional wisdom that the Nazi Holocaust was worse than the Soviet Terror, you would at least think earning the silver in the Devil’s Olympics would earn something more than feckless wordsmithery and smug eye-rolling from journalists and intellectuals. Imagine if instead of Sochi these games were in Germany, and suppose the organizers floated out the swastika while NBC talked of the “pivotal experiment” of Nazism. Imagine the controversy.

But when the hammer and sickle float by, there’s no outrage. There is only the evil of banality.

Friday links

Crocodiles, Alligators Able to Climb Trees.

This compilation of the Oscar winners for Best Visual Effects, 1977-2012 is a real trip down memory lane.  Related, Behind the scenes of the 1956 Japanese Godzilla Movie and the 1966 Batman TV show.  Also, 17 Facts You Might Not Know About Gilligan's Island.

The first car that Porsche ever built was found in a shed, untouched for over a century.

New Zealand Prime Minister adamant he's not a shapeshifting reptilian alien.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, including animals using each other as pillows and a trailer for Zombeaver. Speaking of Zombeaver, Sharknado 2: The Second One is coming!

‘Sharknado 2: The Second One′ Cast Unveiled; Production Starts Next Week

Sharknado was set in LA, but apparently Sharknado 2: The Second One will be set in Manhattan.

Vivica A. Fox, Mark McGrath, Kelly Osbourne, Andy Dick, Judah Friedlander, and Judd Hirsch have been cast in Anthony Ferrante is again directing the screenplay by Thunder Levin – this time about a freak weather system that turns its deadly fury on New York City, unleashing a “sharknado” on the city’s population and its most iconic sites, with sharknado experts Fin (Ziering) and April (Reid) the only ones able to save the city.

Judd Hirsch plays a taxi driver.  ;-)

More here.

Compilation of the Oscar winners for Best Visual Effects, 1977-2012 is a real trip down memory lane

Watch full screen! This compilation makes me want to re-watch many (albeit not all) of these.

Academy Awards: Best Visual Effects Oscar Winners from Nelson Carvajal on Vimeo.

This includes the nominees for 2013.  From the first Star Wars in 1977 to the Life of Pi in 2012 through Alien, The Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, Matrix, Terminator 2, and lots more.  A full list is at the end of the video, and at Wikipedia.