Well now, I have been shirking this feature, No. 68 having appeared on December 9 of last year. Mainly, I was preoccupied with our year-end Listmania series and the nearly endless roll-out of our 2012 “Most Infectious Song” installments. I’m finally finished with those projects and now trying to resume more usual NCS activities, including this series in which I collect images, videos, and news items that I think are metal despite the fact that they’re (usually) not musical.

In this installment: a stunning Rubik’s Cube solution, swans in Poland, People vs Winter, a dude cleaning a cobra pit, another dude playing keep-away with a polar bear, the world’s biggest fireworks display, and Bad Lip Reading takes on the NFL.

ITEM ONE

The human brain is capable of amazing things. Okay, well maybe not my brain, but some brains in some people. Take Mike Hughey’s brain, for example. Mike Hughey can take an 8x8x8 Rubik’s Cube, scramble the shit out of it, and then solve the puzzle blindfolded.

He was filmed while doing this. After scrambling the cube, he studied it for 40 minutes, visualizing and memorizing the steps necessary to solve the puzzle. Then he lowered the blindfold and spent 37 minutes executing the solution. The video is accelerated in the following YouTube clip, so you can see this in 7:39. It is utterly phenomenal. Hughey’s reaction after finishing is priceless. Continue reading »