Stop-Motion Guacamole Making; Robots Will Replace Our Caricaturists

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We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today: The stop-motion video of an avocado that looks like a grenade that captured the Internet's fancy today, another look at that solar flare that won't bring about the end of the world, the robot that will replace our Boardwalk caricature artists.

PES -- aka animator Adam Pesapane, who made the very, very well-circulated "Western Spaghetti" -- has created another hugely fantastic stop-motion short for Showtime hinging on an avocado that looks like a grenade. It's short and clever and the various shades of green are easy on the eyes. With more than 400,000 views on YouTube in the span 24 hours, it's a reminder that everyone loves stop motion, except when it lasts for more than five minutes and is not a 40-year-old Christmas special. [Showtime] 

We'd love to be able to draw, or barring that, possess a robot that could draw things for us. Something like the giant metallic arm that sketched unnervingly flawless caricatures in less than three minutes at the Cebit technology fair in Hanover. Though ideally, we'd like our robot artist to be a bit smaller, and come in colors other than orange. [Reuters]

Now that NASA scientists have concluded humanity has nothing -- nothing at all! -- to fear from the giant solar storm currently buffeting the earth, it is once again possible to watch the agency's informative and wondrous videos without the prospect of global annihilation to detract from the experience. The timing is pretty perfect, because Flight Engineer Don Pettit from the ISS and the angry birds from Angry Birds have teamed up for a thorough explanation of how gravity works. Yes, it's chum for the viral video water. But after watching, we kind of understand how microgravity work. So you know, beat that.  [NASA]

Speaking of that solar flare that hit but not destroy the earth today: here it is. [AP]

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.