Some have even suggested some crash-course reading over the weekend. Lloyd Fonveille says that Air & Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement by Gaston Bachelard is a must: "Dense writing but amazing stuff about flying and flying dreams... he argues that images and dreams of flying are the highest state of the imagination, and emblems of the mental place where all real creativity happens."

As I prepare for Wednesday's adventure, I'll share some of this microgravity advice here on BoingBoing. I'll start with insights from experienced zero-g flier Raffi Krikorian of MIT (and O'Reilly).

I rode on NASA's KC-135a a few years ago (I was running a series of experiments to determine whether the brain's ability to localize sound was affected by being in a microgravity environment -- the anwer is that it is, but I digress), and it was an awesome experience.

NASA requires a lot of pre-training before they even allow you to get on the plane (a series of lectures about what to do if your sinus collapses, a hyperbaric chamber ride to have you experience what happens in the case of a rapid decompression of the cabin as the KC-135 is a single hulled plane), and going through that type of training is quite exhaustive. You spend a day in the classroom, then you spend a day learning how to work the emergency equipment and how to breathe through a reverse pressurized mask.

When the day of the ride comes, everybody tells you a few pieces of advice
1. bring jolly ranchers and gum
2. eat bananas and muffins for breakfast (extra credit for eating food coloring) [Ed note: I suppose this way, everything will look super-pretty and colorful IF YOU HURL IT ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLANE]
3. don't look out the window when flying.

As we were climbing for our first drop, I was chewing my gum like mad. The common advice is to get your mouth a little wet and to distract yourself of what was going to happen next. And then, all of a sudden, you lift right off the floor. I, personalily, was terrified on the first drop. I flailed around trying desperately to grab hold of something. I grab onto the floor, and it must have been amusing to see me hanging upside down, trying to pull myself down.

After that, it gets a lot easier. You just float around. Pushing yourself off the walls, and just bounce around. I was busy running an experiment, but it seems as though you will have time to play around.

What they don't tell you is that you will experience portions of negative gravity where you are pulled for the roof. Those freak you out. You're hanging out, chillin' in the air, and then all of a sudden you are rocketing towards the ceiling and pushing yourself off from it. Enterprising people invert themselves at that point, and go walking around up top. But, if you manage to close your eyes and somehow end up upside down, your brain will be convinced that you are right side up. You'll see people who are the other way from you. And then. Oh no. You puke.

The interesting thing about puking (or playing with any liquid) is its fascinating to watch it ooze around. Try it. Squirt some water into the air while you're floating -- it's gorgeous to watch these bubbles float around. and you can poke at it. Catch them. I'ts amazing. If you have a chance also, light a match. The flame makes a perfect sphere. Things you never think you'll see.

Link to previous post: Xeni Flies Zero-G, part 1

. web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

[E]nvironmentalists have recognized this area one of the most enduring symbols of the cold war and one of the most fortified and heavily mined stretches on earth as the Korean peninsula's, and possibly East Asia's, most important wildlife refuge. They have been pressing to preserve it but are feeling a special urgency now because of the growing reconciliation between the North and the South. The environmentalists fear that a South Korea that puts economic development first and a North Korea that has no environmental movement could together lead to the zone's rapid destruction as a refuge. (..)

"The DMZ is the last major vestige of Korea's natural heritage," said Kim Ke Chung, a professor at the Center for BioDiversity Research at Penn State and chairman of the DMZ Forum, an organization based in the United States that is dedicated to preserving the zone. "It's probably the only good thing to come out of the Korean War and cold war. So we have to preserve this as a nature reserve." [Bruce Sterling says: "How did the Cold War become the 'cold war' all of a sudden?]

The DMZ Forum recently held a conference in Seoul to gather support for designating the zone a Unesco World Heritage Site, a classification that would curb all development. William B. Shore, secretary of the forum and a former fellow at the Regional Plan Association of New York, said the zone should become a center for eco-tourism as an alternative to turning it into a weekend getaway for residents of Seoul.

"People are now willing to pay large sums to see wild animals in the proper setting," Mr. Shore said. "Eco-tourism would protect the DMZ from becoming the Hamptons of South Korea." [Bruce Sterling says: "Perhaps it's possible to transform the Hamptons into a DMZ."]

From the press release:

"Colorcalm pioneers a new and non-traditional way to use your TV to create a calm atmosphere. Colorcalm Skies, a continuous display of skies with 28 color and audio variations is designed to soothe your senses... Robert Norton, Founder and CEO of Atmos [says], 'Colorcalm is a response to the abundance of TV screens that surround us. Many homes now have more screens than family members. Colorcalm lets you bring color to your life in a soothing, calming way, which you can control. By adding color to your life, Colorcalm enhances your surroundings and improves your well-being.' Colorcalm also offers corporate clients the opportunity to use their own corporate, Pantone Colors to create tailored, color programming for brand-marketing purposes."

$19.99 at this Link

Current release version is in beta. Runs only on Win2000 and XP. Requires broadband.

With the client installed, you can create groups of up to 30 members and invite people to join them. The invitation includes the client.

Each peer can choose to share selected files. The client includes group chat and 1-to-1 IM.

You can download all but MP3s. Those you can only stream. I know that will be a point of contention, but it's not meant primarily to be a source of free music. I think it's more for groups of friends, family, classmates, associates who share photos and other large files. Link

"There are so many underground networks - the quarries, the metro, the collective heating, the electricity, the sewers - and each is the responsibility of a different bureaucracy... Urban explorers are the only people who, between us, know it all. We move between each network. We know where they link up - often, it's us who made the link. The authorities, the police, town hall, they don't know a hundredth, a thousandth, of what's down there."

The initial line up is supposedly a portable DVD player, two LCD televisions, and a home theater in a box system. Like most of these kinds of releases (assuming this is for real), they're really just slapping their logo on products built by somebody else (in this case, it's supposedly Diamond Electronics). This is either a really big deal or someone just went to a lot of trouble to try and dupe us -- regardless, everything looked like it checked out, and it was too good to not pass along. Make sure you click to see pics and product descriptions.

Update: Jason says he's received this email from a Yahoo spokesperson:

This is a licensing agreement through our marketing department. It's just another component of a licensing program that we've had in place for several years for a variety of items such as computer peripherals and we're now extending to additional items such as those you see in the photograph.

The manufacturer is Diamond Electronics and we will be providing our branding and logo. The manufacturer is working to sell these products into major retailers.

It's an exciting extension of the Yahoo! brand, but it won't be a significant announcement for the company as the blog suggests.

At a Glance: Get out your copybooks, because you can now cross "ballet" off of the "Big List of Things the Japanese Won't Make Porno Out Of". If you are an avid fan of ballet - but, you aren't such an avid fan that you actually have some modicum of respect for the art of ballet dancing - then you are probably the target market for this DVD. It features exciting behind the scenes interviews, some regular and wholesome non-erotic ballet dancing, and then multiple nude and even sex-filled dance sequences. You have not lived until you have seen a Japanese pirate rip a boner out of his leotard and plunge it into the waiting food-hole of a sassy ballerina.

Sexual Content: Heavily mosaic censored dancin' and a prancin'.

My sweet song-writing collaborators and shirt-tail family, The String Cheese Incident, are playing a free concert for peace tomorrow in Golden Gate Park along with Michael Franti (whom I'm convinced is some kind of avatar) and various others. Looks like this:

6th Annual 911 Power to the Peaceful Festival
Saturday September 11, 2004 (11am-5pm)
Speedway Meadow - Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA, USA
Featuring Michael Franti and Spearhead, String Cheese Incident Acoustic, Gift of Gab of Blackalicious, John Butler Trio, Xavier Rudd, and Amy Goodman.

And BoingBoing pal Jose Marquez sez, "This 'Election Protection' event might be less bumpin'," but it too is devoted to giving power to the peaceful.

September 11, 2-5 p.m., Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission St. between 3rd and 4th Sts.
Featuring Eva Jefferson Paterson of Equal Justice Society, Ralph Neas and Sharon Lettman Pacheco of the People For the American Way Foundation, and Michael Kieschnick of Working Assets.
Join Working Assets, Mother Jones magazine, People For the American Way Foundation, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Equal Justice Society, True Majority, AlterNet.org, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, and others to learn about opportunities to help protect voting rights in key states on November 2. Participants in this outdoor rally and training will receive an update on efforts to prevent minority disenfranchisement and intimidation at the polls, challenges posed by computer voting systems and an overview of the key states where voting rights are at greatest risk.

" Rowboat Vets for Truth is here to share the real story, to correct the misleading use of our images, against our will, in paintings, woodcuts and pamphlets across the colonies.

The Rowboat Vets for Truth will counter the outrageous claims made by Mr. Washington and the liberal printing presses in Boston and Philadelphia.

We speak from personal experience - our group includes men who served beside Washington in combat against unarmed Germans on Christmas night, 1776. Though we come from different backgrounds, shoe menders, haberdashers, stable boys, candle holders to the wealthy. etc., and hold varying political opinions, we agree on one thing: George Washington lacks the potential to lead."

"Faith" first published in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1989. Time:59:25, File Size 27.86 MB.

"The Best Christmas Ever" first published in SciFiction, May, 2004. Time:39:38, File Size 19.03 MB.

"Serpent" first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 2004. Time:22:53, File Size 10.74 MB.

In the context of games criticism, this tendency might lead to a narratologist placing enormous interpretative weight on the fact that most first-person shooters are structured by conflicts between the player’s avatar and small groups of three to six enemies, seeing this as a narrative choice that has authorial intent behind it, that can be related to various similar kinds of narratives in other media (e.g., the ur-narrative of Die Hard or Rambo or James Bond films, the narrative pacing of action films where the uber-masculine hero crushes small packs of slightly-less-manly bad guys). The problem is that the narratological kinship between Die Hard and first-person-shooters is a much more complicated matter in its actual historical evolution. If anything, when first-person-shooters first appeared with narratological structure that resembled the narrative of action films, to some extent that content was a superficial add-on rather than a deep structure of gameplay, a kind of narratological “skin”. The original Doom is a very good example of this pattern. The deep structure of the game (single player avatar versus distributed clusters of enemies) was, before anything else, a technical requirement dictated by the number of enemies it was then possible to have on the screen. This continues to be the case even though computers have much more processing power because the enemies have become much more graphically demanding.

Now the New Scientist reports that functional MRI scans of the brains of regular practitioners of hypnosis reveals physiological differences from those who are not susceptible to hypnosis.

But under hypnosis, Gruzelier found that the highly susceptible subjects showed significantly more brain activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus than the weakly susceptible subjects. This area of the brain has been shown to respond to errors and evaluate emotional outcomes.

The highly susceptible group also showed much greater brain activity on the left side of the prefrontal cortex than the weakly susceptible group. This is an area involved with higher level cognitive processing and behaviour.

I once watched a highly energetic chief ripped asunder by a senior member of his board. “Richard,” the determined board member almost shouted, “you are smart, energetic, creative to a fault, perhaps even a genius. But much of your 'genius' is dissipated because you apply it to ten different things at a time, albeit with great skill.

“Let me tell you what you need,” he concluded. “A 'to don't' list.”

I don't know about “Richard,” but for me that was a profound moment. Fact No. 1: We all have 50 genuine priorities. Fact No. 2: If we get even two Big Things Done in a six-year tenure on the current job, we will have had a...Great Ride. Axiom No. 1: Therefore, what we choose not to do (the sole subject of that “To Don't” list) is at least as important, or more important, as what we choose to do.

And, finally, effective “To Don't-ing” is far, far more difficult than effective “To Do-ing.”

Despite the fact that combatants may look like costumed humans, event organizers maintain they're real, and warn of the danger posed to mankind by the growing threat of city-crushing beasts.

"There is an abundance of empirical evidence that the threat posed by monsters is serious and far-reaching," Kaiju Big Battel referee Jinji told Wired News. "A number of great documentaries like Godzilla have reported these historic facts in great detail. Our world leaders would be wise to pay closer attention to this under-recognized menace." (...)

Featured villains and heroes included Dr. Cube, a sinister plastic surgeon who boasts of an "unstoppable malpractice technique"; an inebriated Hell Monkey wielding a large bottle of primordial booze; a pair of freedom-fighting plantains from Central America who toted color-coordinated AK-47s; and garbage-can-dwelling Gomi-man, who spewed a rain of fetid sludge on human observers.

See also: Link to Jason DeFillippo's superb photos of the event. This one's my favorite. And BoingBoing reader Teresa Ortega says, "I went to Kaiju Big Battel in Los Angeles based on Xeni's post and did a write-up at my site." Link

We are different from companies not in the entertainment field. We are a creative company, and as a result, we are so much more. We must consider, develop, discard and reconsider, literally masses of ideas each day, based on few inexact criteria, using experience, talent, judgment, instinct, and hope as our guides along with our education and experience and sense of fiscal responsibility. This is a complicated and risky process, unlike the manufacture and sale of a single or related line of product. We are judged by definitive standards. But it is the creative that pushes to new heights that which can be measured, that which has lasting value to our culture and company.

I believe we have learned who we are, and who we are not; what we do best, and what we don't. Of course, that does not mean we stagnate into a museum or play safe. It just means we play smart. There are so many opportunities available to utilize our core assets, our brands and capabilities around the world. We must be completely informed and involved in the future, in new technologies that can help us maintain our leadership in creating and distributing and protecting our content. We must be prudent entrepreneurs and pragmatic capitalists. We must not forget that we are always singing and dancing "for our supper."

Eisner recently told Walt Disney directors that company president Robert Iger would be a good successor, the Los Angeles Times reported. Iger, whose contract expires in September 2005, has recently met with investors and executives and told the Times he would like the top job.

We're 4 Toronto nerds, we're attending the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, we're blogging our reviews.

We don't get media passes, we don't go to press conferences or release parties or even the suit-and-tie gala screenings. We pick movies we think we'll like, count ourselves lucky if we get tickets, then line up on the sidewalk to try to get a good seat. Then we write honest nerd's-eye reviews.

*Sniffing Out Airborne Diseases: integrating human cells and microfluidics to detect pathogens in the air

*Wireless Ways to Go Green: the environmental impact of reading the news online

*Protecting Planes with Fabric: testing next-generation ballistic cloth

* The Invention of Virtual Cinematography: the key to The Matrix's "bulllet-time" sequence

Leslie was captivated with the sound of the Hammond organ when he heard it at a Barker Bros. furniture store in downtown Los Angeles, where he worked repairing radios. In the store's large showroom, the organ introduced in 1935 sounded much like a theater or church pipe organ. However, Leslie, was unimpressed with the organ's sound quality in the confined spaces of his home. He began tinkering with devices to make the instrument sound more like labyrinthine pipe organs, using mechanics and electronics experience he gathered from a series of jobs, including one at the Naval Research Laboratories in Washington, D.C., during World War II.

The company operating this flight is ZERO-G, whose founder Peter Diamandis is also the man behind the Ansari X-Prize competition. I invited Dr. Diamandis to speak at Wired Magazine's NextFest earlier this year, met him there, and learned he'd been working on this program for more than ten years.

The flight I'm taking next week (for NPR and Wired News) is part of ZERO-G's five-city media launch. Soon, they'll begin a commercial service on specially-equipped Boeing 727-200s. For about $3,000 US, passengers will be able to experience about 20 doses of parabolic weightlessness during a 90-minute trip.

Nothing like this has ever been offered to American consumers before. ZERO-G is the only company with FAA approval to conduct weightless flights for the public within the US.

NASA operates flights similar to this for training astronauts (Link), but not to the public. Space Adventures -- the company that made space tourists out of Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth (and, almost, N'Sync's Lance Bass) -- sells "vomit comet" flight experiences to paying passengers, but they cost closer to $10K and depart from a remote location in Russia. The combined costs of the flight, the prep, and getting to the departure site add up to a hefty five-figure sum. With the launch of this new service in the US, zero-G above the earth will now only cost a few G.

I've never done anything like this before. What will weightlessness feel like? A rollercoaster? Or floating in water, but without the water? When I was little, I used to have lots of recurring dreams about flying -- the dream-sensation of weightlessness felt so vivid, once I half-woke-up and sleep-jumped right off a flight of stairs. How is it that our bodies already know what zero-g feels like? Are we remembering what it felt like to float in utero? That waking dream of flight and floating -- it's something each of us physically understand. I'm looking forward to feeling the real thing.

My grandfather was an amateur astronomer. He taught me a lot of things about stars and space when I was a kid. He was there, downstairs in the living room, when I realized I couldn't fly that day -- about halfway down the stairs. He picked me up, held me in his arms, wiped my tears, and probably had to work really hard at not laughing.

Later, after lots of band-aids and kleenex, he explained what gravity was. I remember feeling really sad and crying all over again when he told me, "Honey, people just can't float like that." I wish he could still be here now, and float with me next Wednesday.

Link to Jason's photo gallery.

One of the teams who participate regularly in the Channel 101 showdowns is The Lonely Island, and they've just posted a bunch of their work online. It's terrific stuff. One of their pieces, which screened at last week's event, is a dry, deadpan music video performed by two guys, called, uh, "Just 2 Guyz." (MPEG-4 Link, MPEG-1 Link, 2 min.). I loved their "Nintendo" animated short, too (MPEG / Quicktime, 3 min.)

Episodes of the Lonely Island short series The 'Bu are here (Link), with Sarah Chalke of Scrubs and Roseanne fame. Other celeb links -- Brooke Shields has a 5-minute bit in the begining of Episode 2: Regarding Ardy. (Link). Kal Penn (of Harold and Kumar and Gilmore Girls) plays Fred in Episode 2. A source close to the project says, "Kiefer Sutherland interrupted the filming of episode 1, then told all sorts of fanciful embellishments about it on Leno and Letterman. (Link)."

Link to The Lonely Island, and Link to the Channel 101 site where you'll find more online shorts.

Robert in Australia says, "Transperth has acquired 3 Daimler/Chrysler fuel-cell buses for trial. This trial is being done in conjuction with a number of European trials." Link

Paul says, "UPS has been using alternative fuel vehicles since the 1930's (electric vehicles in NYC). 95% of the company's Mexico City vehicles burn propane. The company's earned 26 environmental awards." Link

Max says, "[San Francisco Bay Area public transportation system] AC Transit has been running a fuel cell bus since June. It is very eerie when it glides silently by. Brakes still screech, of course." Link

Matt says, The Hysun 3000 is a hydrogen fuel-cell-powered recumbant bike that began a 3000km tour yesterday, from Berlin to Barcelona. The vehicle is projected to use 3kg of hydrogen -- roughly equivalent to 1022 miles per gallon. Link to bike info, Link to tour diary, and Link to a good image.

Peter says, "Honda's hydrogen scooter might be the seed that grows a third world hydrogen fuel infrastructure for future cars and trucks." Link.

And Tim emails, "This site says that 'RunAbout Cycles go twenty miles an hour, as regulated by a new federally mandated classification for electric bicycles and tricycles. They have a forty mile range on motor alone, and the more you pedal, the further and faster you can go.' Available early 2005." Link

Brad says, "I have a friend in London who has spotted many fuel cell buses and has some pictures of them in use here: Link."

There are lots of amazing elements at this year's fest -- among them,

1) Bushwhacked! - a special program for this election year of great viral political films from media jammers (The Yes Men, Bryan Boyce, Michael Moore) around the world, includes some world premieres like Pinocchio (image shown here) which was too hot for MoveOn.org, and a "Schoolhouse Rock"-style animation from Eric Henry, Pirates & Emperors (Or Size Does Matter)
2) Thomas Campbell's SPROUT -- presentation of amazing globetrotting surf film from acclaimed artist Thomas Campbell will be preceded by a in theater acoustic performance by the UK-based band Mojave 3 (who also contributed to the soundtrack).
3) RESFEST Live - Emergency Broadcast Network and Hexstatic -- our closing night event will feature an audio visual event from VJ pioneers NYC's EBN and UK's Hexstatic. EBN will showcase their Video Baby Grand Piano, while Hexstatic will preview work of their forthcoming Master View DVD album.

Michael Morgan says, "One of the better approaches I have seen relies on using the CD changer inputs that many car stereos have. The simpler products, such as the one I have, provide RCA audio jacks. Better ones allow iPod control through the CD changer controls. The sound quality is better than FM or cassette tape adapters although the integration of iPod display and control is either poor or absent." Link

Nik Clayton says, "You should try out Dension's IceLink 1.1. This provides a cradle/dock that you can mount on the dash (damage free). Just drop the iPod in the dock, and the audio's taken from iPod's dock connector (far better quality than the headphone socket) and routed to the stereo, in place of the CD-multichanger. So the steering wheel controls work for changing tracks, and so on. And, of course, your iPod's there on the dash, so you can see all the information it displays. It also works in cars other than BMWs." Link BoingBoing reader Chris says, "There are two other common solutions; some car radios now have a front panel auxiliary input. Just get a 'stereo plug to stereo plug' cable, and away you go. The other option is one of the FM modulators that plugs into the antenna lead. See the Farenheit EFM-01 or the JVC KS-IF200 - likely found many places but they re listed at Crutchfield. They are a little trickier to install, but as long as your car FM radio has an antenna (!) they should work. Link."

Neil replies to a comment submitted to BoingBoing by reader Becky (Link). He says, "To follow-up on Becky's problem with iPod installations in cars without cassette adapters there is actually another solution. Blitzsafe makes adapters that plug into the CD changer port that lives in most cars, and converts it to an AUX input for your car stereo. Then you can run a regular stereo cable to the front of the car to plug in any device you like (such as an iPod). I used one to install XM Satellite radio in my BMW. Sadly, it doesn't look like they have any for Saturn cars yet :( -- Link to Blitzsafe."

Tom Karches says, "A company called Soundgate (Link) makes a number of devices that allow iPods to be attached to factory or aftermarket stereos. Their auxillary input adapters attach to the cd changer plug on cd changer ready stereos and pass the audio through the changer input. If you have a changer already, they have a model that plugs in between the stereo and the changer and provides a switch to select the changer or the ipod. This does not provide ipod control, unfortunately. Perhaps something like this would help: Link. I'll probably put the Soundgate adapter in my minivan. If I decide to equip the honda similarly, I'll probably go with an inline RF modulator like this or this."

Anthony Hall says, "Although BMW claims they are the first car manufacturer with integrated iPod support I actually saw ads for Smart cars shipping with iPod cradles several months ago... I dunno, perhaps it's considered third party but Smart was plugging it in the own ads in the UK. Looks liker a much simpler proposition to me. I agree with you that having the iPod just rolling around loose in the glove compartment is nuts." Link

(Thanks to other readers who sent in great tips, including Wes, Adrian, Josiah, and Brian King!)

Salavon digitally reconfigures raw source data into abstract, and often painterly, photographs and videos. Utilizing self-designed software programs, Salavon's hybridized artworks fuse information technology with pop cultural aesthetics. Salavon's recent photographic series, 100 Special Moments, culls images of newlyweds, graduates, little league players and traditional Santa portraits to manifest composite images of each scenario. The artist deconstructs nostalgia to its average mean, subverting and blurring the lines between singular and collective social experiences within the framework of commemorative photographs. For the Emblem series, Salavon interrogates the social implications of 1970s iconic films, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now, by algorithmically abstracting their filmic frames in time and subsequently reorganizing them in a circular structure reminiscent of traditional Mandalas. Late Night Triad, a three-channel video projection, overlays introductory monologues from late night talk show hosts David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Conan O'Brien. Salavon digitally aligns and averages the comedic routines to expose the inherit repetition in their underlying structure and rhythmic timing.

The most savvy travellers I know log onto Thorn Tree as they vagabond. Thorn Tree Travel Forum is where you get the latest, greatest, most dependable travel advice for exotic destinations. Originally set up by Lonely Planet as an online way for readers to update their guidebooks, this bulletin board now bypasses and surpasses the guidebooks altogether. Reliable travel info has been completely revolutionized by the ubiquity of internet cafes around the globe.

Let's say you want to know whether the border between China and Kazakhstan is open this October, or whether its safe to visit Katmandu, Nepal, or where the newest climbing spots in the Peru Andes are. You log on to the appropriate Thorn Tree "branch" where a traveler who is in Katmandu, or who has just arrived in Almaty yesterday after a harrowing 11 hour border crossing from China can tell you all the specific details of what is true and what is not. Someone else might post that the popular beach shack on Lombok island, Indonesia you were headed for is now closed. And, to complete the circuit, you may be on the road yourself, at a dusty internet cafe in Morocco, when you read this. It's true real-time advice, from real folks who've done it. Thorn Tree is a remarkably efficient way to score hard-to-get facts from and to the field. And for armchair planners at home, the sheer details available at a distance is heavenly.

I've found that the third world locations, rather than Europe and the US, are best served by the forums; but these after all are the very places instant ground-truthing is so badly needed. Thorn Tree is also a great place to connect up with others bent on long-term Around the World tours, and up-to-the-latest tips on long haul travel.

"The wonder space which cannot be moved satisfactorily ... How can the sound of the outside which can be heard through cloth really be heard?"

Ponder that, grasshopper, while you click this Link.

But a prison spokesman, Brian Kelly, was sceptical about the veracity of the claim the venom was used as a narcotic, saying it had come from a single unreliable inmate. Mr Kelly said the spiders were more likely to have been kept as pets.

Chemical fingerprints of four different varieties of ginseng—American, Chinese, Korean and Sanqi--show that each has different proportions of two key ingredients. Additional studies showed that a preponderance of one ingredient has positive effects on the growth of blood vessels; more of the other component tips the scale the other way.

I opened Microsoft Word, set the font to Microsoft’s Times New Roman, tabbed over to the default tab stop to enter the date “18 August 1973,” then typed the rest of the document purportedly from the personal records of the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian.

And my Microsoft Word version, typed in 2004, is an exact match for the documents trumpeted by CBS News as “authentic.” The spacing is not just similar—it is identical in every respect.

(Background: CNN reported that "the White House, without comment, released to the news media two of the memos, one ordering Bush to report for his physical exam and the other suspending him from flight status." Here are PDF copiesof the memos the White House released.)

I think the documents are indeed forgeries, but who made them? Could it be a White House dirty trick to make the Democrats look bad? Are there real documents that these forgeries are based on that are even more damning about the President's behavior? I'm sure there's more news to come. Link (Thanks, Bob!)

UPDATE: Eric sez: If you weren't reflexively looking for the interpretation of events that reflected most poorly on Bush, you might have noted that the White House did not release those records, they merely passed along without comment copies that had been sent to them by CBS.

UPDATE:David sez: "Saw your post on this on BoingBoing. Fark.com had a couple big discussions today about the potential forgeries (here and here).

Someone posted the two images (White House released and Word generated), so I fired up an image editor and had a look. While the font character spacing are very similar, most typography experts in the threads agreed that the original had type-write like characteristics (number 8 slightly high on the line, etc.) that would be hard to reproduce in Word. More importantly, the superscript "th" which caused most of the interest is not in the same position in the two images (see attached superimposed comparison).

It's possible that the original was generated on a typewriter with a proportional width Times New Roman font wheel or ball (available at the time), with the same common margin settings as Word uses by default. The superscript used in Word is artificially generated (smaller font size, elevated baseline), whereas the typewritter superscript "th" would need to be carved in the same space as other characters, which is why it appears lower. David Schwab

What is Anarchist U?
The Anarchist U is a volunteer-run collective which organizes a variety of courses on arts and sciences. Most courses run for ten weeks, and meet once a week; there are no admission fees. The Anarchist U follows the tradition of free schools in that it is open, non-hierarchic and questions the roles of teachers and students.

Where is Anarchist U located?
Anarchist U is in Toronto ON, Canada. There is no single street address; rather different classes and meetings take place in different community centres and homes throughout the city.

Do you offer online courses?
No. All courses are run non-virtually, classroom style.

What's an anarchist school? Good question, we're also trying to figure that out!

Simon sez: "I put together this visual explanation of Dubya's Air National Guard service (or lack thereof) based entirely on the released documents to date. My goal was to put the confusing mixture of events and records into some kind of order." Link (Mirror)

Lessig explains how the court got there and what it means:

Sampling, we're told, is piracy. But be certain to see the 19 footnotes in this relatively brief opinion, or the 28 separate quotes the opinion includes from other peoples work. I assume the court got a license for those.

Now that's not quite fair. The court's decision turns upon its "literal" reading of the sound recording statute. The sound recording statute has no de minimus exceptions, the court held. So while you are free to copy three notes from a musical composition, you can't copy the same three notes from a recording. So copying (so long as de minimus) is fine; cut & paste is not. It is a "bright-line" rule the Court has crafted: Ask permission first. (And don't worry, they might have added. It's simple.)

So once again: life in the analog world is freer than life in the digital world. You can do it, just don't use technology to do it — unless, of course, your lawyer has spoken to their lawyer.

The basic idea behind ecto's WYSIAWYG is to offer users the ability to compose entries without having to bother with HTML tags. Since most blog entries are not complete web sites, composition of entries only allows font and paragraph changes, indentation (read "blockquote"), and obviously images (video and audio should follow shortly). Regarding image authoring I had two ways of implementing support for it. I tried the extreme version involving containers and layouts but that produced quite a bit of headache and would slow down typesetting too much. Considering that Tiger's WebKit will allow editing, I chose the easier route. Images can still be positioned and resized in place, but text flow is not what you will see. That's one reason for the 'A' in WYSIAWYG... 'almost' (If your entry fails to post, read "Got" instead of "Get"...).

Stuff is bouncing around in our heads and causing untold stress and anxiety. Evaluation meetings, bar mitzvahs, empty rolls of toilet paper, broken lawn mowers, college applications, your big gut, tooth decay, dirty underwear and imminent jury duty all compete for prime attention in our poor, addled brains. Stuff has no “home” and, consequently, no place to go, so it just keeps rattling around.

Worst off, we’re too neurotic to stop thinking about it, and we certainly don’t have time to actually do everything in one day. Jeez Louise, what the hell am I, Superman?

So you sprint from fire to fire, praying you haven’t forgotten anything, sapped of anything like creativity or even the basic human flexibility to adapt your own schedule to the needs of your friends, your family or yourself. Your “stuff” has taken over your brain like a virus now, dragging down every process it touches and rendering you spent and virtually useless. Sound familiar?

This spot, called "Who watches movies?" and features a graphic designer talking about how grossly offensive it is to pay a stack of money, sit through interminable advertisements, then be lectured at in a film made by some distant coked-up Hollyweird fatcat. 4.4MB MP4 Link (Thanks, Paul!)

Update: Kim Sullivan sez, "I bought one when they were new ca. 1990-91, and it stopped working almost immediately. Some loose connection in the handset failed to transmit a voice signal. The kicker? Yeah, it's Lego, but it's epoxied. You cannot take this phone apart to fix it without destroying it. I have no reason to believe that's not still the case -- and it's too lightweight to make even a good doorstop."

Update 2: Michael sez, "It's made from Tyco Bricks, not LEGO"

Here's what happened: Last year, I gave my six-year-old daughter my old 10 Gig old-style iPod, because I got a 20 Gig model. Last month, she started complaining that the battery wasn't holding a charge. This is a known problem with iPods. Last week, her iPod was dying after running for just a few minutes. It was time to crack it open.

Using Froogle, I searched on "iPod battery" and found this replacement unit for $30. The shipping was around $6 and it arrived via 2-day UPS.

(Click images for enlargement)

When it arrived (on time), I opened it and found the battery, some instructions (the same ones found here), and a cute-as-a-button miniature screwdriver with a little clip on it so you can insert it in a shirt pocket. Following the instructions, I carefully inserted the screwdriver into the crack between the metal case and clear plastic lid. But the screwdriver's blade was way too thick to get into the seam. I ended up gouging the plastic.

I set the screwdriver aside and grabbed a kitchen knife. It took about three or four minutes of tentative probing before I could get the knife blade worked in far enough to give me enough leverage to start to separate the top from the bottom. Once I got it started, though, I was able to use the adorable little screwdriver to pry the iPod the rest of the way open.

The old battery was attached to the hard drive with a couple of strips of padded, double-sided tape. I tore the tape a little while removed the old battery, and one of the strips got stuck to itself, but it wasn't a big deal. The battery has a couple of wires coming out of it, ending in a tiny white plug that goes into a socket. It was easy to unplug. I took the new battery and stuck it onto the sticky tape. Then I plugged it in the little socket. The cover snapped right on.

After charging it overnight, I gave it to my daughter and it has been running for hours. Mission accomplished!

Roger Wood creates with time in mind. Yet even though the clock can be a consistent element of his work, it's often secondary to its creation. Whether it's a curious timepiece or a unique assemblage, Wood thrives on working with an immeasurable array of findings from the tarnished and forgotten to the odd or intriquing. He is a devoted collector of usual and unusual objects with one thing in common, a history.

The source of his inspiration lies in the hundreds of curiously labelled drawers and boxes brimming with artifacts of all description that line the shelves of his Toronto studio. Wood orchestrates an arrangement from his myriad of treasures until the precise moment that it feels right. Then he quickly glues them all down so they can't escape.

Playful, wondrous timepieces emerge that take flight on cherubic wings, float and sway on fine wires, or appear frozen mid-explosion with flying springs and cogs that bounce at the touch.

Yet, Tucows plans to protect the previous registrant's existing rights because even if a URL enters the auction, the old registrant still has a window of opportunity to retain the name under the system. Noss said Tucows plans to "hold the name in escrow for another 30 days" on top of a period of "anywhere from one to 45 days" that a former registrant has to reclaim their domain name after expiry, depending on which registrar they're dealing with.

Weirdly enough, Canada seems to think that this sounds pretty good.

Given the controversy associated with the broadcast flag in the U.S., one would think that Canada would be wary about embarking on the same route. Accordingly, it came as a shock to many when an Industry Canada official recently indicated that Canada was likely to follow the U.S. lead by quickly implementing a similar system by July 2005. The official suggested that there was broadcaster support for the measure and that since the U.S. had adopted it, Canadians had little alternative but to follow suit.

While Canadian broadcasters may or may not support the broadcast flag (they have in fact been rather publicly silent on the matter), it is essential Canada craft its own policy by considering the privacy and copyright policies associated with the proposal.

Pre-judging the issue, as some in Minister Emerson's department appear to have done, is a dangerous course of action, that should be replaced immediately by a working group of all stakeholders, including the broader public interest, intent on studying the Canadian options. The suggestion Canada faces a Y2K-like deadline with respect to the broadcast flag appears as overblown as was the Y2K threat itself.

I loved the car, and I loved grooving out to my own digital tunes by way of the iPod. The abilty to select songs, playlists, and control volume from the steering wheel was great. But some aspects of the system seemed lacking. For instance -- the iPod sits inside the glove compartment, but just sort of bangs around loose inside there. No special case to protect it, and passengers in the car with me were always cramming keys or sunglasses in there. Damage seemed inevitable. Also, when I'm in iPod mode -- why can't I see what's playing? The stereo display shows you names of radio stations, even program and song details -- but you get nothing but playlist number and song number when you've selected the iPod mode. Other aftermarket products do display the names of songs when you're in iPod mode, and I was frustrated by the fact that this system didn't.

So, bottom line: super-fly car, and a fun first edition of a system that needs a few finishing touches to live up to feature demands of discriminating geeks.

Link to online archive for today's NPR "Day to Day" segment, "Future Mobile Sounds: A Beemer with an iPod."

Update: BoingBoing reader Becky says, "You note that there are lots of third-party items that let you use your iPod in the car, but in fact if it's a new car, in most cases you're SOL: cassette players (required for cassette-adapter iPod devices) are falling out of favor, and FM transmitter versions, in addition to not working well in big cities with lots of radio stations, fail if your windshield has UV coating that blocks the signal getting from iTrip or similar device to radio antenna outside.

I learned all this the hard way: my lime green Ion quad-coupe matches my iPod Mini, but alas, no device so far lets me use them together. Alpine's got one now, if you have their stereo system; just hoping others are on the way soon!"

(Ed. note: Look for a bunch of news related to this topic in the holiday '04 issue of Wired Magazine. Ahem.)

Interview begins around 7pm.
Fans in the bar from around 5:30pm.
Good pub food available
Dinner at the Spaghetti House afterwards for anyone interested.

The 420-pound space capsule was to have been plucked out of the air by a helicopter and returned safely to earth. It was carrying solar wind samples weighing less than 20 micrograms, which is less than a few grains of salt.

It is unclear whether the samples have been destroyed. NASA officials say that the sapphire, silicon and diamond wafers that were used to collect the samples may have been shattered in the crash, although it may be possible to piece them back together.

"It's a pit in my stomach," said Roger Wiens, flight payload lead at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the creator three of the instruments aboard Genesis. But Wiens was optimistic about the opportunity of recovering samples. "It looks like its in one piece, and we're going to get a lot of samples of solar wind out of there."

Ray Caesar creates fantastical, grimly hopeful and gravely whimsical images of wizened children who radiate an enigmatic serenity. Sprouting bio-mechanical limbs and appendages, the figures are otherworldly, a melding of sci fi fantasy, lush landscapes, and Victorian sensibilities. Ray's work is astonishing in the fact it is all digitally created, most people assume they are looking at paintings due to the seamless blending and "painterly quality" of the work as well as its unique emotional impact. Creating models in a 3D modeling software he then wraps them in painted and manipulated texture maps. Each model is set up with an invisible skeleton that allows him to pose each figure in its 3D enviroment.  

Amy Hill paints with a notoriously difficult Dutch Renaissance technique, using formality in the execution and opting for non-conventionality in her subject matter. In her newest series, Amy has painted a series of classic movie monsters as businessmen in suits. Earthy, luminous portraits are painted in tones perfect for the discriminating boardroom, as repulsive monsters are lovingly painted and renamed with "normal" societially accepted names. Funny, yet thought provoking, the initial assumption of "businessmen as monsters" begins to expand as the viewer considers what the artist might actually be implying. Amy will be showing her entire series of oil on panel Monster paintings.

Save Betamax, is a new Downhill Battle project to bring together all the opposition to the INDUCE Act into one big Congress call-in day on September 14. The RIAA and MPAA are making a big push to get this thing through, especially since they lost the Grokster case, and it could come to the Senate floor at any time. Sending emails and faxes is great, but we need to show that opposition to the INDUCE Act or whatever variant is being devised, is very broad. We think working to defend the Betamax decision is a good rallying point for people to come together on.

I knew the guy was bad, but if all the allegations in this article are true, he's singlehandedly hamstrung all the offices of the military and intelligence in the US:

Over at Defense, competent intelligence professionals were purged in order to ease the way to war. Douglas Feith, brought in under Rumsfeld to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy, applied an ideological test to his staff: He didn't want competence; he wanted fervor. Col. Pat Lang, a Middle East expert who served under five presidents, Republican and Democratic, in key posts in military intelligence, recalls being considered for a job at the Pentagon. During the job interview, Feith scanned Lang's impressive resume. "I see you speak Arabic," Feith said. When Lang nodded, Feith said, "Too bad," and dismissed him.

During the rebel pullout from Grozny in January 2000 Basayev lost a foot after stepping on a landmine, according to the Wikipedia Web site, but he and other rebel fighters eluded Russian capture by hiding in forests and mountains.

"In the morning paper, I can read the weather report as well as the stock quotes. But when I look out of my window I only get a weather update and no stock exchange info. Could someone please fix this bug in my environmental system? Thanks."

MTV has ordered an animated pilot for "Hef's Superbunnies," a collaboration between cartooon veteran Lee's newly launched Pow! Entertainment and Playboy's Alta Loma Entertainment division. Hefner's name and likeness will be featured in the pilot, and he also might provide the voice of his cartoon alter ego.

Hefner said he sparked to the notion of being involved with an edgy, sexy animated series as soon as Lee, the mastermind behind such Marvel comic book legends as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, approached him with the "Superbunnies" concept.

We've developed a print head that will print 5mm 'pixels' of the consumable. It basically acts as a pump. Its a medium sized lego gear (driven by a worm gear attached to the motor) with four axels that repeatedly squeaze and release a pipe attached to a funnel that holds the consumables. a half-rotation of this wheel yeilds a blob...

Green and Black's 72% cocoa organic chocolate seems to be the stuff. Stick it in the microwave, melt it, and pour it into the funnel. Rather than trying to be scientific about this we've taken the brute force plan and simply melted as many different types of chocolate as we could. We got lucky however, and hit on Green and Black's pretty quickly. The really nice thing about this particular consumable seems to be that it retains heat for a long time, and still prints a similar sized blob as it cools.

Now, BearShare has teamed up with YourVoteMatters.org to encourage voter registration. According to BearShare's press release, 800,000 individuals have already registered. The goal is to reach 1 million before the November 2nd elections.

"BearShare users can register by clicking on a link located on a web page only accessible to BearShare users. The link takes them out to the online voter registration site hosted by YourVoteMatters.org. In the short time this program has been live, we have seen great success which we hope will continue through the voter registration deadline."

Most sites requiring registration ask you to choose a "secret question" to which only you supposedly know the answer. Of course, in the age of Google, the city where you were born and your mother's maiden name may no longer be the best kept secrets in the world.

So, next time you register for a site and it asks for your response to a challenge question, choose something that's completely insane, but really memorable to you.

Can customers upload their own ringtones?

No. There’s an effort by the industry to make people pay for the content on these devices...

What about allowing developers to create user-installable applications for the Sidekick?

Not user-installable. We’re a gatekeeper in that sense. they use our developer kit, they reach an agreement with us, and then through us they can have access to our user base.

Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

"In normal use, experts fire chicken carcasses at a test target at varying speeds to simulate a direct bird-strike during flight."

"The Olympics were a huge success for NBC.200 million viewers. A "halo effect" that boosted other channels and programmes. An estimated $60-70 million profit (Source: Hollywood Reporter) Before the Games started, NBC boasted of the depth and breadth of its coverage.1210 hours of events.103 commentators. 28 Olympians on the commentary team. A week from now, I'll be heading back to Athens for Greece's second remarkable major sporting event of the year. The Paralympics will boast:4000 athletes. 140 countries represented.525 gold medals at stake. 19 sports. There will be no American TV coverage of the Paralympics. Let me repeat that. There will be NO AMERICAN TV COVERAGE OF THE PARALYMPICS. Not one hour of live coverage. Not one commentator. Not one Olympian on the commentary team. Nothing. This at the same time that a record number of journalists are preparing to cover the Paralympics."

Update: Author, Memory Hole editor, and former BoingBoing guestblogger Russ Kick says, "I wrote about the disgraceful treatment of the last Paralympics: Link. Some of the specifics are obviously dated, but the overall gist - that America ignores the event and treats the athletes like shit -- is still very much valid. Just rereading it pisses me off all over again."

Image: Cameron Clapp competes in the 2004 Endeavor Games, a sports competition for amputees. Clapp won four gold medals. Credit: Courtesy Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics, Inc.

BoingBoing reader Scott says, "Russ Kick's article on the TV coverage of the 2000 Paralympics mentions that there was no broadcast in Australia. While it's true there was no coverage on commercial channels, the 2000 Paralympics were broadcast in Australia by the ABC (Aust Broadcasting Corp - Link) - and they rated through the roof! The 2004 Paralympics will be broadcast by SBS (Link) - who outbid the ABC for the rights. See this story for more info: Link."

"I'm a network data analyst for T-Mobile. I've actually tested the network to see why those messages were blocked, and from the response our email-to-sms gateway is giving, apparently our immensely retarded spam filter thinks that txtmob's SMTP server is spamming us. Basically, if the network sees more than about a hundred messages coming from the same SMTP server within an hour, it just blacklists it. Stupid but true."

"Following up on the "Cellphone towers for Jesus" BoingBoing post (Link), I actually went to that church with the Sprint tower built in, did some asking of questions, some more photos, found a skatepark for jesus.

(...)Also, according to ZDnet, it also delivers Wi-Fi. 'Peninsula Covenant Church parishioners in Redwood City, Calif., bring their Bibles, and their Palms, to Sunday Mass. A Wi-Fi access point--on the church's rooftop cross--beams them the text of a Sunday sermon and an accompanying multimedia presentation.'"
Link

Lawyers for John Gilmore filed their opposition to a Department of Justice attempt to file a secret brief in a case that involves secret law. The case, Gilmore vs. Ashcroft, is now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. DOJ filed a motion last Friday asking the Court's permission to file their arguments in secret, allowing only the judges to read their full brief.

DOJ is trying to distract the Court and the public from the real issue in the case, which is whether or not American citizens can travel in their own country without official government paperwork. Their method of distraction: secret law.

In a sharply-worded objection to the government's motion, Gilmore's lawyers stated that the government's "extreme cry for secrecy, preventing even plaintiff's counsel from being privy to their legal arguments because plaintiff's counsel does not meet defendants self defined 'covered persons who have a need to know' criteria, is disturbing and illustrates the dangers of secret law."

Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.

Don't miss this group show featuring over 60 artists from around the world paying homage to Tiki!  This stunning display of neo-primitive images is captured in a 90-page full color catalog available opening night (or later from Shooting Gallery).

Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.

Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush campaign’s personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you described previously as “one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend.")

After I first read the story, I was amused, and put it aside to blog here. In transcribing the story for this entry, though, I'm struck by the odd inconcinnity of this account with my own experience. The Deputy Chief's story sounds very little like what happened to me.

* The mysterious "tapper" was leaning against the rear of the Atheneum; I was sitting on a public benchbeside the Atheneum.

* The newspaper story says that this incident gave rise to a "rumor" that "the police considered outdoor users. . . to be engaged in a theft of services," but in fact that's exactly what the officer who rousted me told me.

* The story says that this took place "a month ago," but if the article was published last week (when the weekly paper would have had to go to press in order for it to get to my mom, who then clipped it and mailed it to me), the incident couldn't have taken place longer ago than two weeks, give or take a day.

Virtual memory: Wikipedia has a pretty good entry; Britannica has no entry for virtual memory, and doesn't appear to discuss the concept elsewhere, either. Verdict: advantage Wikipedia.

Public-key cryptography: Good, accurate entries in both. Verdict: toss-up.

Microsoft antitrust case: Britannica has only two sentences, saying that Judge Jackson ruled against Microsoft and ordered a breakup, and that the Court of Appeals overturned the breakup but agreed that Microsoft had broken the law. That's correct, but it leaves out the settlement. Wikipedia's entry is much longer but error-prone. Verdict: big advantage to Britannica.

Overall verdict: Wikipedia's advantage is in having more, longer, and more current entries. If it weren't for the Microsoft-case entry, Wikipedia would have been the winner hands down. Britannica's advantage is in having lower variance in the quality of its entries.

Update: Thanks to Doug for converting this to a Comic Book Reader doc: 1.7MB CBR Link

They say that they have a deal with the Chinese copyright office where if they give a royalty to the office, they get permission to translate and publish the story -- this sounds to me like a weird, and somewhat wishful reading of the appendix to the Berne agreement on the compulsory translation right.

In any event, I'm not all that out-of-sorts about this (I wasn't to begin with, and less so now that I've made some peace with them). I'll let you know if they come through with the electronic text and post it once they do -- thanks so much for all the support on this, it was really cool to see everyone spring into action (and I had no idea that Boing Boing/I had so many Chinese-speaking/residing readers!). Link

Number42  sez: This one is my favorite mailbox of all time...

Nicholas sez: I don’t have any photos, but I have a suggestion. My mother kept on getting her mailbox hit in by someone driving by with a baseball bat or similar object. To punish future bashers, I dug a good sized hole, and planted a thick metal pole in it. After that set, I made a hole in the bottom of the mailbox large enough so that the pole would fit in. I put the mailbox on top of it, and then using more cement, filled up the back of the mailbox with the cement, attaching the pole to the inside of the mailbox. Make sure the pole goes into the back half of the mailbox, as to still be able to get mail. This secures the mailbox the mailbox to the pole, and from the outside, looks like every other mailbox, but if someone hits it with anything, their hands will sting for a while, and the box should stay intact.

John Wilson sez: I remember seeing an article in a magazine (popular mechanics?) about 4 or 5 years ago about a guy who went through three mailboxes in quick succession.  He was a welder, so he bought one of those great big mailboxes, and modded it by replacing the sides and bottom with 1/2 inch thick steel, and the top with a section of 1/4 inch steel pipe cut in half.  Mounted it on a big-ass pole, deep hole, lots of concrete, etc.

Couple days later he found a half broken baseball bat at the foot of the mailbox.  Not a dent in the box itself..

I googled and found a lot of messages in welder mailing lists of guys doing similar projects.  Another guy suggested putting down tire spikes, or have some sharp, rusty metal scrap "accidently" fall out of the back of the truck, near the approach path to the mailbox.

Googling for "welded mailbox" only brought up this though

Pancho Cole sez: I don't have a good picture, but I suspended my mailbox from an overhead post using chains so that it was hard to do damage to it - the mailbox just moves when a bat or a snowplow hit it.

Then there is this approach: http://www.steelmailbox.com/ and http://www.fortknoxmailbox.com/home.htm the trick is to make your tough mailbx look "vanilla" - when they hit it with a bat you get the satisfaction of hearing them scream as the shock goes all the way up their arms. Of course you need a tough post to put it on, some local kids borrowed their parents Hummer and went around driving over mailboxes, they would have got away with it except they got stuck in a ditch behind one mailbox. I suggest a steel post filled with concrete, buried at least 3 feet and hopefully with a concrete footer poured around it.

Dave Hurley sez: Here is a link to a mailbox that the venerable Norm Abram of the "New yankee Workshop" built on his PBS show some time back.  I'm not sure if fits in the category of "brick shithouse," but it certainly looked stout enough on the show and it has the added benefit of being good-looking to boot.  I don't know about you, but I think building one from NYW would be fun and it would certainly have a certain caché.

Nick Papadakis sez: Don't make the mailbox *look* fortified.  Just fill it with cement, and put it on a spindly ole pole so it looks naked and vulnerable. With any luck, they'll break an arm ...

Eric Thorsen sez: As a test: if the mailbox survived a hit the pebbles would get knocked off. Or maybe someone is buried in it...

Michael Green sez: How typical that people would overlook the fun they could have with this and instead go for the brut-force approach. I have a buddy who lived in a similar area and, after losing two mailboxes in one week, went for the “Q-Ship” approach.  He found the most noticeable, but flimsy looking, mailbox available, painted it day-glo orange, filled it with cement, and mounted it at radiator level.  Fortunately no one was killed, but he did manage to demolish the engine compartment of a Ford F150 pickup that tried to take it out later that evening.  He never had another problem after that.

Alan Macdougall sez: could the pebbles be the markers of door to door itinerants?  In the area of rural New Zealand where I grew up, a small stone on the mailbox was sometimes used by the Jehovah's witnesses to mark out which houses they'd visited. So a kid's small prank was to remove these and cause the house to be visited more than once, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants.

jeremy hunsinger sez: just steel on a 4x4 post, like these.

you want a wood post because it is safer in case you run into it yourself, you want it to break if you hit it with a car.  to make the post, get a 5 gallon pail, fill it with a plastic bag, pour it 2/3 full of concrete then sit the post in the concrete and let it set up, then sink the concrete about 2 inches underground, so only the post is sticking out, and put the rolled steel mailbox on top of it.  then... tell your neighbors, once a few neighbors have these, it ruins the whole mailbox baseball sport.

David Friedman sez: While those homebrew solutions are nice, check out the Fort Knox Mailbox.

Their website comes complete with confusing rollovers, a promise to be "The Last Mailbox You Will Ever Need to Buy!" and even a gallery of ugly mailboxes.

According to the FAQ, the 1/4" thick steel mailboxes ("Most skyscrapers and bridges are made of the same material") can withstand:

Baseball bat = Definitely!
Pumpkin = Pumpkin Pie!
Sledge Hammer = Sure thing!
Rock / Boulder = Boing!
M-80 (explosive) = A 1/4 stick of dynamite has been tested with no phase to the mailbox. It is equivalent of the force of four average M-80 bombs together at once. Your mail will be ashes, but they won't steal it!
Dump Truck = Pulled the mailbox out of the ground in 180 pounds of concrete & dragged it down the street for about 100 ft. A little exterior paint patching and it was back to work the next day receiving mail.
28 Ton Boom Truck = Let's just say there was more damage to the boom truck!

James Goggin sez: Why don't you just dig a hole, put a large metal casing in the ground with lockable hinged lid, yellow marking around a slot so your postman knows what to do, and you'll have a mailbox with no further concern for structual damage or, indeed, disapperance?

Michael sez:  

i saw your entry on boingboing.  

i am looking for information on a mailbox that i think i saw on the hdtv network.  

when vandals hit it with a baseball bat a spiked probe locks into the bat, also two vials of liquid release and spray the vandal. the first vial has a phosphor paint, the second vial has a very strong skunk odor.   if someone happens to email you about this mailbox, could you please forward the info to me.

clifford hedin  sez: This is a mailbox my dad put in about twelve years ago after a few teenaged bashings and careless drivers.  He made it out of four railroad ties, the 8 x 12 pieces of wood they lay down to support railroad tracks. Those are tied together with several metal straps hidden by some decorative rope. The whole thing got buried in the ground about four feet. The original box is embedded inside. A few years after he put it in, the road was repaved. That added a few inches to the road height, so we attached a new mailbox to the outside to appease the complaining mailman. The only time I can remember anything happening to it, a car hit it and ran off. The impact tilted it about four inches, not such a big deal to fix.  I'm sure the car had a bigger problem than we did.

Joe Schneider sez: There's an interesting mailbox on my commute work.

It appears that the homeowner had some problems in the past, as they used what appears to be a 4-5 inch "I" Beam, which I can only assume is sunk more than a few feet down.  Painted on the side is "HIT ME."

As I thought about it, it's a hell of an idea, and would do major damage to anyone who hits it.  I just wonder if it's legal, as anyone hitting it is going to have some serious problems.

Anyway, i'll get ya the pics as soon as I get a chance.

dfghdfgh sdfg  sez: The brick shithouse can survivae a car based attack, but not pedestrians. It is usually quite fragile.  A 6' 180 lb person can easily separate the brick 'house' from it's concrete foundation.  Once separated, the center of gravity is high enough it can easily be rocked back and forth until it topples.

take it from one who knows...

This year there were 35,000 people at this arts festival in the desrt, a giant refugee camp but where the strangely upscale refugees had carried their liquor out with them--sometimes in place of their clothes. Always an observer more than a belonger,I inevitably had mixed feelings, especially when it's gotten big enough to include a significant percentage of knuckleheads, dopeheads, philistines, and "tour-or-rists" as the Burning Man's temporary radio station called them. Most Burning Man self expression, though pretty at night with its fluorescent trimmings, is sheer kitsch. It's about on the level of high school students planning decorations for their prom. Much of Black Rock City, nowadays, has a spring-break, frat-party feel to it. Much else is just rave culture spillover, replete, I'm sorry to say, with MDMA aka X, that Stealth Brain-Damage Drug. There is a constant white nose from 'drum circles', and thudding obnoxious party music from "party vehicles" like parade floats who've lost their parades, drifting about the gigantic horseshoe-shape of the festival playing dance music, and even Van Halen, waving margarita glasses and going 'woo! Woo!' and shaking bodyparts. That's some pretty inspiring art there, boy. On the other hand there are the Mutaytors, doing athletic punk rock fire art; there is the burning of the Temple, a beautiful many-stories-high Asianesque temple, of components that vary with the year--this year strange shapes from the frames that held bones of dinosaur-bones-kits, so you have negative-dinosaur and mammoth bones-shapes wrought into an intricate temple, an Eiffelish design but more art-decoish...Some beautifully designed party vehicles (one that was of four Egyptian gods carrying an artfully detailed ancient-Egyptian palanquin filled with people dressed as courtiers, seemed to have been made by a professional prop outfit--I suspect hip millionaires rub elbows with street people here), there's the grand convocation of 800 art cars converging like animals coming to a nighted waterhole for the Burning of the Man, the giant statue consumed first in fireworks and then fire, flames that go forest-fire sized.

At this point we haven't been given a chance to use a bathroom facility, it's been about 3 hours. I see several ladies huddled up in a corner blocking others while they pee on the floor. Soon after, lines form on either ends of the cage for people wanting to use the port-o-john's that are now open for business. They are located behind a locked gate at either end where a police officer mans these gates while allowing one person at a time to enter. My turn is next, my plastic cuffs are cut off and I finally pee. I stretch my arms a bit, gulp down a cup off water from a nearby water cooler and prepare to be recuffed. I put my hands behind my back and am recuffed very loosely. I return to the general population in the main cage and pull my hands out of my cuffs as I see many others have done.

A few days after moving in, I noticed that the brick enclosure had tumbled. Either a car hit it, or someone kicked it over. The next day the pile of bricks was gone. The bricks were now several yards away from the mailbox, being used to prop up a plywood ramp so kids could do dirt-bike tricks.

A couple of days later, the bricks were gone. Someone had stolen them in the dead of night. Maybe they're being used to protect somebody else's mailbox, or are part of a backyard barbeque. In any case, I hope they used cement.

Now unprotected, our mailbox's life turned nasty, brutish, and short. I looked out the window one morning and saw the pole with nothing on top. Going outside to investigate, I found the mailbox lying in the dirt, with a giant dent in it. Someone must have played mailbox baseball the night before. Fortunately, I was able to remount the mailbox, but how long will it last before someone else wreaks havoc on it?

Ever since these events, I've been paying careful attention to mailboxes. It's interesting to see how they're fortified. I want to make a mailbox that can withstand the brute force and misplaced ingenuity of the delinquents that prowl around after nightfall. Here are a few mailboxes in my neighborhood (click thumbnails for enlargement):

This one is pretty good, because the bricks are cemented together, preventing scavenging. But it's still vulnerable to mailbox baseball. Survivability score (out of 10): 5

The owner of this "brick shithouse" mailbox has obviously been victimized by vandals more than once. He's got his entire mailbox surrounded by bricks. The only way a vandal could cause damage to this is by ripping the door of the hinges. Survivability score: 9

The strategy here is to make the mailbox so low to the ground that troublemakers won't notice it. Also, the low-profile makes it hard for a beer-drunk, bat-wielding high-schooler in the passenger seat of a car to knock it off. I don't know why there are pebbles on the mailbox, but I noticed that on another mailbox on the same street. Is there a secret meaning? Survivability score: 6

Short of a bulldozer, no vehicle is going to topple this mail box. But the box itself is fully-exposed, almost begging for someone to come along and knock it off. Survivability score: 6

Like the "brick shithouse" mailbox, this fully enclosed unit will withstand most assaults by amateur vandals. The owner's one mistake, in my opinion, is in making it attractive, and therefore a bigger target for those who find pleasure in damaging other people's property. Survivability score: 8

The thinking behind this design seems to say: "If you can't cage the vandals, then you need to cage the property." Behind the thick cast-iron grillwork you'll find an ordinary metal mailbox. The sturdy wooden beams look like they'd hold up against a determined attack. Survivability score: 7

I'd be interested in seeing photographs of other fortified mailboxes. Email them to me.

[Ruiz claims she was] emotionally and physically abused and forced to work 18 hours a day at virtually no pay for a year ... she said that Elizabeth Jackson had frequently slapped her and pulled her hair.

During her year at the Jacksons' home, Ruiz said she slept in a sleeping bag on a "dog's bed" on the living room floor and ate days-old food, while she prepared fresh food for her employers' pets.

You can also reach people who don't use Skype, through a new service called SkypeOut. This allows you to dial nearly any cellular or land-line telephone number in any country and talk. Though it isn't free, it's really cheap. Skype's prices are in euros - its founders are Scandinavian, the main programmers are Estonian and its headquarters are in Luxembourg - and they average two or three American cents a minute, at any time of day. With a credit card, you buy calling time in units of 10 euros ($12.18), which are deducted automatically as you talk.

I started with 10 euros. After my wife talked to her sister in Italy for a half-hour and I made one quick call to the Philippines and five more within the United States, we still had 9.10 euros left.

China has intensified its battle against Internet and mobile phone pornography by threatening distributors with life in prison... A pornographic Web site that had been clicked on more than 250,000 times would be considered a "very severe" case that could warrant a life sentence for its producers.

From World War II through the 1960s, paperback crime novels were one of the fastest-selling categories in book publishing. Millions of readers snapped up hundreds of millions of books by well-known authors like Erle Stanley Gardner and Mickey Spillane, as well as by promising young writers like Lawrence Block, Elmore Leonard, and Ed McBain. Today, Block, Leonard, and McBain still make the bestseller lists with each new hardcover -- but the pulp novels that first captured the public's imagination weren't hardcovers. They were paperbacks you could fit in your back pocket, with jaw-dropping cover paintings and bare-knuckled prose that grabbed you by the collar with the first sentence and held you until the last page. No one's published books like that in years.

But these replicas -- in addition to being better-manufactured than any of the original pulps! -- are cheap(ish) and replaceable, and a perfect tank-top reader. I kept hauling out my copy yesterday and showing it around, and the universal reaction among the WorldCon-goers was a bittersweet sigh of regret for the passing of the golden age of dreadful fic and exploitative covers and quack advertisements. Link

"Green Glass Sea" is about Trinity, where the first bomb was dropped, and trinitite, the faintly radioactive fused green glass from the Trinity site that can be had in small or large pieces on eBay, even to this day.

The story is a memoir of the life of the small daughter of an atomic scientist, who recounts the events leading up to and following Trinity in heartbreaking Klages style:, simple, subtle, emotionally powerful writing that will knock you on your ass again and again as you read it.

Now "Green Glass Sea" is on Strange Horizons, the excellent online sf magazine, and free for all to read. If you haven't read Klages before, you're in for a treat.

In the summer of 1945, Dr. Gordon was gone for the first two weeks in July. Dewey Kerrigan noticed that a lot of the usual faces were missing from the dining hall at the Los Alamos lodge, and everyone seemed tense, even more tense than usual.

Dewey and her father had come to the Hill two years before, when she was eight. When he was sent to Washington, she came to live with the Gordons. They were both scientists, like Papa, and their daughter Suze was about the same age as Dewey. Dewey's mom hadn't been around since she was a baby.

One Sunday night Mrs. Gordon had shooed the girls to bed early, then woke them before dawn for a hike with some of the other wives, many of whom also had jobs and titles other than Mrs. They carried blankets and sandwiches and thermoses of coffee out to a place on the edge of the mesa where they had a clear view of the southern horizon and sat in the still early darkness, smoking and waiting.

Link to Larson Utility Camouflage (Thanks, Mike)

Update: PC Magazine said the mouse is pretty but the usability sucks ass. Link (thanks, Jake)

I was watching Spike TV at my girlfriends place when I noticed something flash by right before the station went back to its presentation of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Since my girlfriend is lucky enough to have TiVo, I rewound it and discovered that there was an ad there for Sony, with a little Centrino symbol in the lower left hand corner. It lasted less than a second and I noticed it happen several times throughout the evening. Searches of the net brought up nothing on it so far, but I thought bOING bOING readers might dig up some answers.

Reader Tim says, " It is probably just local cable commercials overlapping the SpikeTV network commercials. Of course, I for one welcome our Sony overlords." And reader Steve Portigal says, "I see this happening all the time on TNT, but my assumption has always been it's a slight lack of synchronization in the syndication. I assume that commercials are sold locally as well as nationally, and so some markets get different ads. What I see always appears to be the tail end of another ad, not a whole piece of advertising in itself, and so I assume it's just cruft from what another audience was able to see."

BoingBoing reader Lucas Emery says, "Reader Tim is correct about the SpikeTV ads. I used to work for a TV station and, traditionally, television advertsing is sold in 30 second increments, but advertisers are allowed to take advantage of that 0 second, sometimes stretching a commercial out to what actually amounts to almost 31 seconds. Spots like this are easy to cover up when a human is operating the program switcher to shuffle between local and national advertising, but when the switching's controlled by computers (as most stations these days are) it is often the case they switch back after exactly 30 seconds, and not 30.29 (for instance), so that is why you see the commercial cruft. I, too, notice this a lot on Spike and a few other channels."

I first saw him, many years ago now, staring out with an uncanny gaze of blank intensity from the pages of a newspaper. Seated alone on a bench, immune to the endless motion of the airport around him, there was a curious inscrutability to his slight, balding yet dignified countenance. He looked like some unlikely cross between a Zen master and Chaplin's Tramp. He had these amazing long brows, as dark as his hooded eyes, and a small, perfectly groomed moustache perched on top of his upper lip. It was like a caricature of a face, five charcoal marks on a canvas. But strangely noble, too.

His name was Merhan Karimi Nasseri though he called himself "Sir Alfred". He lived in a lost dimension of absurd bureaucratic entanglement. That is to say, on a bench in Terminal One of the Charles de Gaulle International Airport, and he had lived there since 1988. For a series of insanely complicated reasons, the Iranian-born refugee was now a man without a country - or any other documented, internationally accepted identity status. Alfred couldn't leave France because he did not have papers; he couldn't enter France because he did not have papers. The authorities told him to wait in the airport lounge while they sorted the paradox out. That he did - for years and years.

Then one day, I heard that Alfred had finally been given his papers. He was free to go anywhere in the world he wished. Except now it seemed he didn't want to leave the airport after all. It was the only home - the only past - he had left.

Three days after the start-up company Star38 began offering a service that fools caller ID systems, the founder, Jason Jepson, has decided to sell the business. Mr. Jepson said he had received harassing e-mail and phone messages and even a death threat taped to his front door - all he said from people opposed to his publicizing a commercial version of technology that until now has been mainly used by software programmers and the computer hackers' underground.

For a fee, customers using the Star38.com Web site would be able to alter the number that would appear on the caller ID screen of the recipient's phone. The technique could mask the identity of a bill collector, for example, or enable a private investigator to fool someone into answering the phone on the false belief that a friend or relative was ringing

As the developer of myTunes, I can't just let that go unanswered, can I? :-) A new version of myTunes has been released which allows live searching of every song on the network and an interface which is easy to use and modern looking. No JVM required."
Link