BoingBoing readers on Persian confusion

By Xeni Jardin at 10:56 am Thursday, Jan 1 • Comments • Share

Sina Ahmadian points us to the FarsiWeb Project, and corrects my sloppy references to lanugage in Iran on recent posts (1, 2) about blogosphere reaction to the Bam earthquake (now said to have taken 50,000 lives):

I noticed that you have used the word "Farsi" (instead of "Persian") as English equivalent of our language in your web site. I would like to point out that FARSI (which is originally PARSI) is the native name of our language and PERSIAN is its English equivalent; as the native name of German language is 'Deutsch', but we never use 'Deutsch' in place of 'German' in English; or native term of Greek Language is "Ellinika" and always in English we say 'Greek' language, not 'Ellinika' language.

Update: Other Persian bloggers write in to disagree. Cyrus says, "I've heard both, and despite all the linguistic/political arguments, I don't care which is which."

Fuel Cell Generator

By Xeni Jardin at 10:49 am Thursday, Jan 1 • Comments • Share

Spotted on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools:

This generator provides 1,000 watts of 120 volts AC with no noise and no emissions, so that it can be used indoors. It uses Ballard's fuel cell technology for this silence and cleanliness. You need either tanks of industrial hydrogen or commercial metal hydride canisters to power it. Might be useful for mission critical power in clean rooms, medical operations, or in places where quiet is also essential.

Link

LOTR fan-art: Gollum rap

By Xeni Jardin at 10:32 am Thursday, Jan 1 • Comments • Share

Jason DeFillippo casts his gaze upon yonder .swf file and opines, "This shit Rocks!!!!!"