1 Ah, thanks for posting this; it happens it's been on my mind for the last week or two, but I couldn't find it --in fact, my last search term was "five song mashup", which might help explain why I couldn't find it.

I have read that this collision works because the source songs are all essentially riffs on Pachelbel's Canon in D-Major.

For whatever reason, it does work, beautifully, and I'm bookmarking it so I can't lose it again.

2 And yes, I know about the cellist's rant against the Canon. Don't care, I still love it. Would that all cliches were this beautiful.

I first heard the Canon while visiting a friend in her co-ed dorm. We were talking (no, talking, really, honest), and I slowly became aware of this gorgeous music seeping in from the hall. I had to stop the conversation and find the guy who was playing it and ask him what it was....

3 That's... that's brilliant. 

4

What's the story on this, then? Did all those different performers really collaborate on doing the music, or is this an astounding and amazing mix retroactively done by someone who noticed that all those songs had the same beat and key signature and similar enough melodies that they could be combined in that way?

My intuition is that it really was performed this way, not mixed retroactively. It just seems too good.

5 Your intuition has done you wrong for once.    The guy who did this has done about thirty other such mixes.  This is the best one I've heard so far, though.

He changed the tempo of some of the songs to fit (probably all but one, since they fit so exactly).  The Jason Mraz piece that it starts with is normally much slower; the other changes are less noticeable.

Although he uses the name Norwegian Recycling for his mixes, the artist's name is Peter Bull and he lives in Australia.  You can download all his work here, at least until the record companies decided otherwise - or give him a contract.

6 I'll just correct myself a little there.  The guy's name is Peter Bull, and he lives in Byron Bay in northern New South Wales...  And he is, indeed, Norwegian.

1

What the hell is that thing? Is it a one-off, or part of a series of some kind?

The animators have spent too much time watching Yellow Submarine!

2 It's a one-off as far as I know.  The guy who recorded the song wasn't even born when Yellow Submarine came out, so I'm not sure how it ended up with that video.  It fits the song, but still...

3 Sob, I'm getting old... (I knew I was over the hill the first time I heard a Beatles song on the Musak at a grocery store.)

4 The curry, the cicadas and the heat must be affecting my mind...because that video tasted purple.

1 That was a lot better than I thought it would be. But the rock through the window at the end is a little ominous.

1

I've played five games (on relaxed) and twice my disease started in Madagascar.  Heh.  Heh-ha.  Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa!

Except there was one problem.  The first time, I didn't know what I was doing, so I tried to build the evilness of the Madagascar Duck Wasting Flu as fast as possible... and Madagascar closed its seaport.

Before it spread.

Oy. 

The second time was the last game I played.  12 survivors, thanks to a vaccine.

Twelve.  On the entire planet.  I win (yes, I know we're supposed to wipe out everybody, but I did better: the last people get to suffer being alive.  Did I mention that there are three in China, and the rest have their own region?).

2

That's what I was wondering about. Why not start the infection there?

I may have to try this game, just for the hell of it.

3 Your starting location is selected randomly.

The island nations are always the hardest ones to infect, and Madagascar is the worst because (in the game) it doesn't have an airport.  You have to wait until a ship calls in and hope that the infection takes hold, and sometimes no ships will go to Madagascar through an entire game.

I'm wondering if choosing rodents as a disease vector helps spread the germs by ship.  There's lots of possibilities like that - sneezing coupled with an airborne virus seems to work really well - but there's no in-depth strategy guide to confirm this.