Bashir Sultani uses a salt shaker to make art, documenting his creative process in a series of intriguing YouTube videos. Subjects of the artist’s portraits range from pop-culture icons such as Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen, and President Obama to legendary figures like Kurt Cobain, Bruce Lee, and Albert Einstein. Check out Sultani’s fascinating time-lapse videos after the jump.

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“Wonder,” wrote Richard Harvell in a recent NPR article, “is that feeling you get when some new idea springs open your imagination to reveal that the world is so much vaster and richer than you ever thought.” Although Harvell goes on to recommended Perfume: The Story of a Murder, The Age of Wonder, and Candide, Or Optimism as “Three Books to Rekindle Your Sense of Wonder,” we couldn’t help but consider a more bite-sized approach to the conundrum. These ten richly detailed micro-histories will humble you into reveling in the vastness of the world — or, at the very least, open your imagination to some good trivia points.

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The trailer for Angelina Jolie’s crime thriller Salt hit the interwebs yesterday afternoon. (A bit of trivia: The movie was originally supposed to star Tom Cruise.) In it Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer accused by a defector of being a Russian spy with a plot to kill the president. She flees the scene, changes her hair color, and must prove her innocence before all traces of her existence are eliminated “powerful forces.” The lovely Liev Schreiber plays her friend/supervisor. Watch the trailer after the jump, and check out photos of some of our favorite Salt looks. She might have had twins just six months prior, but good god this woman is hot — especially in action flicks.

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[Via Ric e Ette's Flickr]

If this article in the Telegraph is right, and “salt puts people in a better mood and creates cravings comparable to drug addiction,” then that would explain why we feel compelled to jump in San Francisco-area salt ponds picture above. (So pretty, right? The aerial image was taken using a balloon!) Or why every time we go out for chips ‘n margaritas the table ends up covered in salt. Or why “Salty Dog” was our favorite track on Cat Power’s The Covers Record. We’re just happy addicts.

And don’t you even think of telling us to cut back, because that could be dangerous: “The study by scientists at the University of Iowa found that going without salt could even make people depressed.” None of us wants that, right? You’ll have to pry the cool, lovely shaker from our dead hands.