1. POTUS circumvents the law - an impeachable offense.

2. The story breaks (in this case after having been concealed by a news organization until well after Election 2004).

3. The Bush crew floats a number of pushback strategies, settling on one that becomes the mantra of virtually every Republican surrogate. These Republicans face down poorly prepped Dem surrogates and shred them on cable news shows.

4. Rightwing attack dogs on talk radio, blogs, cable nets, and conservative editorial pages maul Bush's critics as traitors for questioning the CIC.

5. The Republican leadership plays defense for Bush, no matter how flagrant the Bush over-reach, no matter how damaging the administration's actions to America's reputation and to the Constitution. A few 'mavericks' like Hagel or Specter risk the inevitable rightwing backlash and meekly suggest that the president should obey the law. John McCain, always the Bush apologist when it really comes down to it, minimizes the scandal.

Update: Maybe it won't go down as described above. The Washington Times, an ultraconservative paper that usually sides with the President, ran a sharply critical commentary by Bruce Fein, a former Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Reagan.

President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law. He cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses. Congress should swiftly enact a code that would require Mr. Bush to obtain legislative consent for every counterterrorism measure that would materially impair individual freedoms.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:29:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Festivus poles for sale

According to Frank Costanza, the Festivus celebration includes three major components:

The Festivus Pole
The tradition begins with a bare aluminum pole, which Frank praises for its "very high strength-to-weight ratio." During Festivus, an unadorned aluminum pole is displayed, apparently in opposition to the commercialization of highly decorated Christmas trees, and because the holiday's creator, Frank Costanza, "find[s] tinsel distracting." Local customs vary and you may be able to decorate your pole with non-threatening plain decorations, or ordinary green garland.

The Airing of Grievances
At the Festivus dinner, each participant tells friends and family all of the instances where they disappointed him or her that year.

The Feats of Strength
The head of the family tests his or her strength against one participant of the head's choosing. Festivus is not considered over until the head of the family has been pinned to the ground. A participant is allowed to decline to attempt to pin the head of the family only if they have something better to do instead.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:20:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Staples charges for "virus scanning" "Raster Image Processing"

Mike Langlie, who makes wonderful music with kids' instruments, says: "I had an interesting experience at Staples today. In case you feel like sharing with boingboing readers, here is an email I sent to Staples."

Today I visited a local Staples to print some color files. As an employee wrote up my order, he mentioned there would be a $2.49 fee per file for virus scanning. Incredulously, I asked if I am really expected to pay for my files to be scanned for viruses, to which he replied yes. I canceled my order and left. This experience brings up some very disturbing thoughts. Should I assume that until now Staples has never scanned customer files for viruses before processing? I've worked in many offices and service bureaus and consider virus scanning a necessary and common sense practice when handling any unknown files. I doubt that this is a new concept to Staples, and am even more dismayed by the next logical reason for this fee. Most likely, Staples is trying to bilk naive customers for a "service" that should be routine to any sensible and responsible computer user. Will customers be expected to pay for their cash register receipts next? Staples has lost me as a customer, and my respect.

Reader comment: Erin says: "I worked in a Staples copy center for over five years (up till this fall), and am familiar with the 'service fee' they charge. Technically, its not a 'virus scanning fee' -- it's just a 'rip fee' for taking a file off a disk. Because it is generally 1-3 minutes faster to copy an actual piece of paper, a few years ago Staples implemented the 'rip fee' to account for the time it takes to open a file off of a cd or floppy and send it to print. Not only is there the $2.49 initial charge, but employees were instructed to charge $.99 for 'each additional file' they wanted printed off the disk. This was certainly irritating to those who wanted their novels printed out, and had saved their work in 40 separate .doc files. I rarely charged for the 'ripping' as it is a clear example of corporate theft. It's not like the employee gets a commission for the File > Print effort either."

Reader comment: Chad says: "I would be interested to know if Staples is in violation of its antivirus software license agreement by providing the 'service.' Most enterprise licenses include language along the lines of 'Licensee may use the Software only for Licensee's internal business purposes, and Licensee shall not permit the Software to be used by or for the benefit of third parties, including via a timesharing, service bureau or other arrangement.' By selling access to their antivirus software for $2.49 a file, Staples has arguably created a antivirus scanner rental service, or at least a managed service (since they do the scanning).

"It's possible Staples has a special license where they pay royalties to the antivirus company on a per-file basis, but those are not common outside of the outsourcing industry."

Update: Mylissa Tsai, the program manager for public relations at Staples emailed the following to us today: "As a frequent reader of BoingBoing, I wanted to make sure to reach out to you and your readers regarding your post this week, "Staples Charges for 'virus scanning'".

We wanted to make sure that the blogosphere and our customers have the most accurate information about the company. Below I have included some information from our Vice President of Business Services, Rob Schlacter which should help your readers. I'd like to ask if you can post our enclosed comments."

$2.49 Raster Image Processing Service Charge Ensures First Generation Digital Output; Virus Scanning Claim Is Inaccurate

I understand how customers can be upset by inaccurate information. Let me clarify. At Staples, our commitment is to deliver quality work with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. The $2.49 charge is a "Raster Image Processing" fee; it is not a virus scanning fee. This is used industry wide and retailers often charge it as an additional fee or include it in the overall printout cost.

As we have added expanded media acceptance to our service capability, many customers bring multiple file types using different software applications. The Raster Image Processing process is a part of Staples Copy and Print Centers production standards, ensuring first generation, high quality output to our digital copiers. As technology improves and the industry implements new processes, we will continue to evaluate our service level fees just as we do our everyday retail pricing.

We also understand that customers are getting more tech-savvy. So, stay tuned on how Staples can provide easier solutions like a free file conversion software package coming soon to stores next spring.

Thank you for your continued patronage at Staples. Feel free to reach out to any store manager with questions or customerrelations@staples.com

Rob Schlacter

Vice President of Business Services, Staples Inc.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:22:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Set TiVo for NOVA scienceNOW, January 10

Make room, meat-lovers. Vegetarians, take note. Jason Matheny, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, has proposed methods of tissue engineering—cloning the muscle cells from farm animals and producing them outside of the animals’ bodies—that could lead to the affordable production of lab made meat that does not require the killing of animals. It’s a good idea in theory, and one that would be easier on the environment. Because of all of the water, grains, chemicals, fertilizers—and everything else it takes to turn the grass into cows and the cows into meat and get the meat to your house—getting food from animals takes a lot of energy, generates lots of waste, and can even make us sick. But how does lab made meat taste? Texture is one area that still needs some work. The biggest obstacle, however, is an economic one. Perhaps the technology will be there in five or ten years. Right now, however, a kilogram of beef would cost about a million dollars--no small sum to pay just for a hamburger.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:19:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Update: "DHS visits student over Little Red Book" report

There's been much debate online in recent days about the veracity of this story in a Massachussetts newspaper.

According to the article by Standard-Times reporter Aaron Nicodemus, a student at the University of Massachussetts was visited at his parent's home by Homeland Security agents after he requested a collection of Mao Tse-Tung quotes known as "The Little Red Book" via interlibrary loan.

Many questioned whether all of the facts in the story added up. Questions remain -- is the assertion that DHS visited the student confirmed as fact? If so, how did DHS obtain the book loan request data? -- but here are some reactions from librarians and university officials close to the story. If all of the facts reported are confirmed, as the reporter maintains, it is indeed a troubling story.

Here is a statement from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, lifted from a listserv for librarians:

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth officials are investigating reports that a student at the university was visited by officials from Homeland Security after the student requested a copy of Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book". UMass administrators have interviewed the student who has requested that his identity be shielded, and the University is complying with that request.

At this point, it is difficult to ascertain how Homeland Security obtained the information about the student's borrowing of the book. The UMass Dartmouth Library has not been visited by agents of any type seeking information about the borrowing patterns or habits of any of its patrons and did not handle the request for the book in question. The student has indicated that another university library processed the request.

The UMass Dartmouth library has established policies for handling requests under the Patriot Act and has taken every lawful measure possible to protect the confidentiality of patron records.

The Library subscribes to the American Library Association Library Bill of Rights and was a signatory to the MCCLPHEI (Massachusetts Conference of Chief Librarians of Public Higher Educational Institutions) resolution on the USA Patriots Act submitted to the Massachusetts Civil Liberty Union in 2003.

UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack said, "It is important that our students and our faculty be unfettered in their pursuit of knowledge about other cultures and political systems if their education and research is to be meaningful. We must do everything possible to protect the principles of academic inquiry.''

Ann Montgomery Smith
Dean of Library Services
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Library

We do not believe that the story is a hoax. One of the professors named in the story, Brian Williams, is the son of two of our Stetson University professors. We emailed him about the story being on the ILL listserv and he replied:

"I am delighted to hear that librarians are aware of this outrage. I was wondering if you could possibly give me a link to the site that displayed the story. All is well here in Boston, the story has caused a surge of interest in academic freedoms and I have been inundated with emails from people urging me to teach my class."

Of course, the big question still remains: WHAT was being monitored -- the local system or OCLC or what?

Susan Ryan, Associate Director
duPont-Ball Library
Stetson University. DeLand, FL

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:10:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool Tools reviews Secret Museum of Mankind

What a mysterious and fantastical book. This hefty softcover is a facsimile collection of thousands of exotic and sensational photographs dating from around the turn of the century when news of any sort from far away lands was rare. It's sort of a combination of early uncensored National Geographic and Ripley's Believe It or Not. Reproduced without a known author, or copyright, or even authentication of the captions, it was for many years a "secret" underground publication. And for pure gawking pleasures it still can't be beat. Cannibals, executioners, and fakirs, oh my! Toolwise, it serves as a mighty sourcebook of amazing costumes, body modifications and hairdos, architectural novelties, and extinct strange rituals. (I'm convinced science fiction film directors mine this for alien worlds.) I like to think of this book as the best one volume catalog of cultural diversity on Earth. For the most part these societies are long gone, and remain only in rare books like this one. It's a super bargain at $25.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:02:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Slot RC car photography

Reader comment: juddy says: "They're 'Zip-zaps'; crummy radio controlled Radio Shack toys, formerly endorsed by Shaquille O'Neal. Neat photos to be sure, however, they are definitely not slot cars. They're no where near as cool as a slot car, and I'm kind of hurt by your disregard for true slot car *magic* (sniffle)."

http://www.slotcargarage.com/vintage.htm
http://www.slotcargarage.com/gallery.htm
http://www.slotcarillustrated.com/InTheGroove.html
http://slotcarillustrated.com/Gallery.shtml

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:56:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unusual stuffed horse on eBay

This is a full-sized, authentic stuffed horse. Real animal hair, hooves, mane, tail. Stuffed in a very unusual position. Measures approximately 60" x 36" x 75" Free standing, doesn't need pedestal. Old style taxidermy, not done anymore. Highly unusual prop for stage or theatre, wonderful gift for horse-lover, conversation piece for living room, unique and rare. Chestnut color, black mane and tail. Front right leg is missing, approximately 3". Some tears in skin - approximately 5-10, no longer than 1". Two tears in back, approx. 8". More pictures on request.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:52:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Violet Blue's Top Ten Sexiest Geeks of 2005

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:31:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Inverse panorama photography of human head

We're trying to make high quality texture maps for game models. Using an FX-1 psuedo HD Sony camera, (its 1440 pixels, which is Sony's anamorphic short-hand for a 1920 16:9 image,) placed sideways, I filmed Yoshi as he rotated on a turntable in front of the camera. The bank-robber cap was his idea. This resulted in about 1200 frames of a 360 degree pass around the head.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:15:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Christian nudist's Garden of Eden

(Founder Bill Martin is) confident that Christians will flock to Natura to experience the spiritual benefits of a lifestyle “free from body shame”. He is spending more than $2m on a nudist recreational complex that will also feature a hotel, campsites and a children’s water park.

“As evidenced by Adam and Eve, we believe that when God’s children are in the right relationship to Him, they will be naked and unashamed,” explains one of Natura’s brochures...

Martin and his supporters argue that nudism is unhealthy, especially for children, unless it occurs in a proper Christian context. He has criticised non- religious nudist camps for encouraging alcohol and sensuality. “We are going after a totally different group, a group that doesn’t want a sexual atmosphere,” he said. “There is absolutely no relationship between nudity and sex.”

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:13:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wall hanging inspired by Revell car model kits

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:07:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Methadone clinic comix: HOOKED!

Scans of HOOKED!, an anti-drug comic book distributed at New York City methadone clinics in 1966. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:32:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report: FISA court judge resigns over NSA domestic spying

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:12:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Schneier op-ed on unchecked presidential power, NSA spying

[T]he president's wartime powers, with its armies, battles, victories, and congressional declarations, now extend to the rhetorical "War on Terror": a war with no fronts, no boundaries, no opposing army, and -- most ominously -- no knowable "victory." Investigations, arrests and trials are not tools of war. But according to the Yoo memo, the president can define war however he chooses, and remain "at war" for as long as he chooses.

This is indefinite dictatorial power. And I don't use that term lightly; the very definition of a dictatorship is a system that puts a ruler above the law. In the weeks after 9/11, while America and the world were grieving, Bush built a legal rationale for a dictatorship. Then he immediately started using it to avoid the law.

This is, fundamentally, why this issue crossed political lines in Congress. If the president can ignore laws regulating surveillance and wiretapping, why is Congress bothering to debate reauthorizing certain provisions of the Patriot Act? Any debate over laws is predicated on the belief that the executive branch will follow the law.

Reader comment: JonS says,

This is the link to Schneiers op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on his own blog, and includes a bunch more links plus reader feedback. He's written a couple more blogs about the NSA thing over the last couple of days[/url], and the rest of his postings on security are interesting too.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:04:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kodak assvertises on Ukrainian models' butts

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:02:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MP3 of "It's a Wonderful Life"

Reader comment: Greg Tulonen says,

Thanks for the It's a Wonderful Life link. Lux Radio Theatre was a curious and wonderful show wherein the stars of major motion pictures recreated their roles for a live radio version (with no retakes!) It ran for over twenty years, from 1934-1955. I can't imagine the movie stars of today agreeing to a similar arrangement with television.

The great otrcat.com offers mp3 CDs of every Lux Radio Theatre episode ever broadcast, as well as hundreds of other radio shows: Link

You know that the film used to be in the public domain? It was copyright free from 1974. Then in the early 90s, all prints and underlying elements got bought up by Republic Pictures; stopping the free-to-broadcast showings on US TV? Shame, isn't it? Link to Wikipedia entry with history.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:52:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Soviet-era space-themed New Year's cards

All of the cards in the linked to collection are, in fact, New Year’s cards, not Christmas cards – they bear the New Year greeting С Новым годом! (Pronounced: s’novy godom). New Year’s was the main holiday celebrated in the former Soviet Union (officially atheist), replete with a New Year’s tree and the appearance of “Dyet Moros” (Grandfather Frost) – not Santa. Christmas was banned after the 1917 revolution and not celebrated again until 1992. Also, in Russia, Christmas is celebrated by the Orthodox church according to the Julian calendar, on January 7, and was/is a much different type of celebration than New Years. (Link).

The pronunciation for the Russian "Happy New Year" phrase isn't quite right. It should be "s'novym godom" (missed the M on the end of the first word). And if you wanted to focus more on pronunciation than transliteration, then the second O in 'godom' might be changed to an A. It's written "godom" in Russian, but pronounced more like "GO-dam."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:49:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photo tour of Volkswagen's "Transparent Factory"

"[I have visited] several times, and thoroughly enjoyed each visit," he says, "The building and grounds are beautiful, and the whole process of both making and selling Phaetons is totally different than that for any other car in the world."
Link to messageboard post with helpful tips on how to arrange a visit of your own. (Thanks, Barney Stephens)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:36:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pac Man re-enacted by humans at U. of Michigan

Two students at our school, the University of Michigan, dressed up as Pac-Man and the Ghost respectively, ran through the UGLi (the Undergraduate Library) and the Fishbowl (a huge computer lab on Central campus) during finals week. Pac-Man screams in horror as the Ghost chases him yelling "Waka Waka Waka." This video has spread like wildfire on our campus, and killed the original hosting site's bandwidth.

Reader comment: Will says,

Their idea is not an original one, and was probably derived from one a few months ago at Case Western Reserve. The event happened during a freshman chemistry (CHEM 111) lecture. Our version has instructions on how to create your own Pac-Man costumes, so spread the joy at your own university! Link

My friends and I dressed up as Pac-Man and all four ghosts this halloween, complete with reversible sides to turn our regular ghosts into scared ghosts. We don't have any movies of it, but you can read an account of it in this issue of the Telegraph (and there's some pictures, too). PDF Link

If the Pac Man routine was meant to be a re-enactment, it isn't very accurate. Plus the videography is crappy.

Of course, in the real game, the "waka-waka" sounds only occur when Pac-Man eats the pills. The ghosts are silent.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:29:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Old-school gadget fantasy: iPod Classic II SE++

Reader comment: Chris Robison says,

When I saw this post, I immediately thought of a video I'd found on Google Video a few days ago -- in fact, I thought the link you provided would be pointing to it. It's a *brilliant* spoof of the iPod Nano advertisement, featuring a mac classic II. It's immediately funny, but keep watching, it gets better. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:25:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More space art at universities: Carnegie Mellon

Art Center in Pasadena isn't the only school involved in space art. Carnegie Mellon University is offering Space Art as an undergraduate class next semester, taught by Professor Lowry Burgess, a pioneer in the genre.

Previously: Art school offers interplanetary flight course

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:55:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Apple Newton Museum shutting down, selling everything

The "Newton Museum," which has a complete collection of every Newton model ever made is closing down and selling the entire collection as one giant piece. There are some good pictures covering everyone's favorite PDA whippingboy.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:55:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Girls Gone Wild creator grilled on police record in court

[Francis] testified that an armed intruder stole cash and possessions and then forced him to make a humiliating, half-naked video. Francis identified his assailant as Darnell Riley, 28, who is accused of six felony counts of burglary, robbery, carjacking, kidnapping and attempted extortion.

In Los Angeles County Superior Court today, Riley's lawyer fired back at Francis, grilling him on his own police record. Defense attorney Ronald Richards asked Francis about a theft arrest in North Carolina, and a case pending in Florida alleging that he filmed minors for one of his videotapes and was charged with racketeering, prostitution, obscenity, child pornography and possession of an illegal drug.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:17:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cell phone number portability coming to Canada

Finally, the CRTC in Canada has decided that Canadians will get cell phone number portability, too. "all Canadian wireless telephone companies to implement wireless number portability (WNP) by March 14, 2007, in most of Canada"

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:12:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Coyote fur hat

Relive the era of the mountain man with this authentic full-body coyote Mountain Man Hat. The hat drapes down in the back for added warmth and protection on your neck and shoulders. From reenactments of famed mountain man triumphs along the frontier, to displays and decor befitting America's pioneers and settlers, the classic styling and authentic coyote hide make this hat a conversation starter at any gathering. Soft, white-tanned interior holds up to years of wear. The professionally cleaned fur is exceptionally soft and holds its sheen extremely well. The perfect gift for rendezvous black-powder re-enactment enthusiasts.

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:38:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How an illustrator draws a spot

Finally, it's time to ink. I use a #2 brush for most of it, except the lines on the tie, and some of the components of the chair, for which I use a Pitt Artists pen. I find that my brush lines tend to be a bit wonky at times, going from thick to thin, and while that's great for figures, it looks kind of bad on non-organic objects like cars and, well, wheelchairs.

Speaking of wheelchairs, I'm pretty happy with how this one has turned out. It looks good, the perspective is correct, or at least, I've faked it in a believeable way. I struggle drawing vehicles of any kind, anything with wheels, so this a pretty satisfying result.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:50:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Firewall workaround: use Google as a proxy and access forbidden sites

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:41:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fanzines on display from world's largest collection

Letter writing and clubs were a solace to people passing through the Depression, especially when the topic of discussion was another world or a better future. Fanzine production, however, proliferated after World War II, following the curve of developing technology of reproductive printing devices accessible to the amateur. Some see a "golden age” of fanzine fandom occurring in the late 1950s through the 1960s. At this time, a split occurs in terms of editors’ and readers’ approach to the activity of fanzine writing and to the content of the fanzine. On one hand, there are fanzines that follow the “faanish” way, that is, focus on the activity of fandom rather than its “content” (SF literature). The motto here is the acronym FIJAGH, or “Fandom Is Just A Goddam Hobby.” These hobbyist fanzines are filled with gossip columns about events and members of what becomes, over the years, an increasingly incestuous group of fans. On the other hand, there are the “sercon” fanzines, meaning fanzines “of serious content,” focused on the sacred task of commenting on, and judging, the increasing output of SF/fantasy literature.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:39:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiki bar guide updated with Google Maps

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:15:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Art Dorks show in Atlanta, January 7

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:21:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Top ten simple circuits for DIYers

6. There is much need for a simple audio amplifier. There are many ways to do this, one is to use a darlington transistor like my 1-watt amplifier, and another way is to use an opamp like my post on the CMOY pocket amplifier, but the best way is to use an LM386 chip. The different gains can be changed by changing the resistor values. C5 filters out the DC, and C4 and R1 act as a low pass filter. Go to warplink.com for the values to use for the comonents.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:14:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Penguin swiped from zoo

Zoo manager Kath Bright said the bird, who was taken from a compound where he lived with his parents and four other penguins, would probably die of malnutrition if not urgently returned.

"Toga is very, very vulnerable. The penguin is still being fed by his parents and we don't believe it could survive more than five days," she told The Associated Press.

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:54:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

6000 people Clifford Pickover would like to meet

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:32:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dan McCarthy's drawings and paintings

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:21:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comic psyops: CIA's Grenada booklet from 1983 invasion

The comic book gem GRENADA: Rescued from Rape and Slavery was produced by the CIA and air-dropped over the island nation after the 1983 US-led invasion.

Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:46:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stalin's army of man-apes

According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat..."

Mr Ivanov's experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.

A final attempt to persuade a Cuban heiress to lend some of her monkeys for further experiments reached American ears, with the New York Times reporting on the story, and she dropped the idea amid the uproar.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:48:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PARK(ing) urban art project

...More than 70% of San Francisco's downtown outdoor space is dedicated to the private vehicle, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to the public realm.

Feeding the meter of a parking space enables one to rent precious downtown real estate, typically on a 1/2 hour to 2 hour basis. What is the range of possible occupancy activities for this short-term lease?

PARK(ing) is an investigation into reprogramming a typical unit of private vehicular space by leasing a metered parking spot for public recreational activity...

By our calculations, we provided an additional 24,000 square-foot-minutes of public open space that Wednesday afternoon.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:36:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Astronaut reality TV show hoax revealed

"When I thought we were coming back to Earth I was planning my speech. I was going to say it had been my childhood dream. Now I'm a little bit heartbroken," (contestant Keri Hasset) said.

Ms Hasset, plasterer Paul French, 26 from Bristol, and footballer/recruitment consultant Billy Jackson, 25, from Kent, had suspicions they were being tricked when they had to hold a ceremony for a celebrity Russian dog called Mr Bimby on the spaceship.

"This is a spacecraft but it feels like a caravan," Paul told his fellow astronauts.

"And if we were going to space and they were weighing us for our health, they wouldn't use scales like you get at home, would they..."

"Aw man," said Paul. "We're not astronauts. We're just asses."

Reader comment: TheGilmanator says: "Because of the murmurs about the show I read on Boingboing I decided to search around for torrents of Space Cadets (I live in the US). Found the whole series two days ago (and the show ended 4 days ago). It's a bit lame, but it's a good watch, especially if you're interested in the psychology behind the whole thing."

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:27:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blogger's favorite books of 2005

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:24:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYC Transit strike hits, traffic slower than a 1993 modem

NYC bloggers are reporting events in detail. On the NYC Metblog, the group promises to cover everything "Blow by freakin' blow!"

Boing Boing reader Adam Fields says, "I took some pictures at the 96th Street blockades this morning, where the NYPD was preventing cars with fewer than 4 people from passing. Link."

Link to more photos tagged with "transit strike." Image by Flickr user "jenchung."

Boing Boing reader Jim Parsons wonders if this morning's strike announcement sounded anything like this.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:55:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Federal judge rules on Dumbass Design: science wins

A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that the Dover Area school board violated the Constitution when it required that Intelligent Design be taught as part of the biology curriculum.

But more than that, the judge apparently found that the school board members who supported the policy lied about their true motives: "We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he wrote in his 139-page opinion.

Pending a thorough review of those 139 pages, it is unclear whether there was an mention of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Joshua Shapiro adds,

The Dover "Intelligent Design" trial is over, and the good guys won! The Pennsylvania ACLU has excerpts and the full decision on their site: PDF Link. The judge fully recognized the absurdity of the ID proponents. Oh, that and acused them of lying. Not that he had much choice in the matter; they were pretty blatant. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:46:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UFO museum founder, "Flying Saucer" news release author dies

Reader comment: DrakeGTA says,

You might be interested in the local paper's writeup on the subject.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:26:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Movie theater owners want to jam cellphone signals

That would require changing an existing regulation, he added. But some theaters are already testing a no-cellphones policy, asking patrons to check their phones at the theater door.

A spokesman for a cellphone lobby said the group would object to any regulatory change. "We're opposed to the use of any blocking technology, because it interferes with people's ability to use a wireless device in an emergency situation," said Joseph Farren, a spokesman for CTIA-the Wireless Association, based in Washington.

Link to NYT story, Link to UPI item, (Thanks, Bonnie!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:20:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Droidel, Droidel, Droidel

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:10:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nintendo threatens lawsuit over cancer gene "Pokemon"

The name of a cancer-causing gene has been changed from "Pokemon" to Zbtb7 after Pokemon USA threatened legal action to keep scientists from referring to the gene by the game's name, according to an article in science journal Nature.

In January's issue, geneticist Pier Paolo Pandolfi of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York describes the cancer-causing POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic gene, calling it Pokemon.

The gene in question is part of the POK gene family that encodes proteins that turn off other genes. POK proteins are critical in embryonic development, cellular differentiation and oncogenesis, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Reader comment: Aki Zeta-Five says,

You know there's a gene named after Sonic the Hedgehog? Link. I guess Sega is just more science-friendly than Nintendo.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:06:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Art school offers interplanetary flight course

Reader comment: Ethan says,

Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan (who created the Makrolab, kind of an art/space environment on land) teaches a cool class at UC Santa Barbara called The Art and Science of Aerospace Culture. He has some software to do simulated satellite launches, uses XPlane for aerodynamic simulations and has fieldtrips to SpaceX among others in the LA area. As well they watch Barbaraella. Come on, that's cool. I TAed the class last year. The final project for the class is the design of an art/science object for low earth orbit.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:01:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to tell if the PSP you're buying is hackable

The letter just above the bar code on the product packaging lets you know which firmware version your PSP will come with before you shell out $250 for what may be something you did not want.

I have verified this to be true, my PSP was 1.51 and has a B on the box. As long as the version is 2.0 or lower, it can be upgraded to 2.0 (if necessary) and then downgraded to 1.5, allowing for homebrew programs such as the awesome pspradio (which allows me to listen to shoutcast stations anywhere with WiFi) or other OK programs like the notepad or filemanager, even ports of Quake and Doom. Using the quick guide (which could use some comments to confirm D and E), one can decide which PSP to give to your loved one for them to enjoy in more than just the Sony Approved ways.

Links: Firmware 2.0 (US), to upgrade to if you have anything higher than 1.5 but lower than 2.0; MPH Downgrader (to go from 2.0 to 1.5); Firmware 1.5 (To upgrade to from the fake 1.0 after the MPH Downgrade); PSP Homebrew; PSP Quake; Doom; PSP Radio (awesome).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:57:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bloggers, media ethicists respond to NYT's camwhore story

Why is this news now? Salon tread here first (“Candy from strangers”), long ago, back in 2001. What’s new now is that a former teen webcam site operator and owner, the subject of the lengthy and multiply sidebar-ed feature, after being approached by the Times journalist — who was, at the time, posing as a customer and fan — was urged by the journalist to end his involvement with his and related sites, and to pursue criminal charges against those he still knew in the online circles in which he profited, with legal assistance supported by the journalist.

All of which begs the question — how can one even report thoroughly on this issue without becoming a part of it, and how does that fundamentally compromise that reporting — which Slate’s Jack Shafer ("The New York Times Legal Aid Society: The newspaper helps a very young pornographer find a lawyer") candidly asks. Because we know the Times is having hard enough time lately with such issues. Adding teenagers and porn to the pot hardly clarifies things.

Update: Boing Boing founder Mark Frauenfelder covered the teen webcam porn subculture for Yahoo! Internet Life magazine way, way back in 2002: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:45:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Technorati's venti, triple-shot cup of new features (with foam)

We just launched a major update of our search results pages over at Technorati.com. You can read my blog post about it here. The idea was to make things much easier to use and understand, especially for newbies, while giving some kickass features for experienced users -- like dynamic charts of all search results and the ability to easily scope a search down to understand what a particular community was saying about the topic you're interested in.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:00:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unfortunately suggestive food packaging

Might go nicely with some Cup O' Pussy.
Reader comment: John Black says,

This product is a favourite of Vice Magazine's tidbits...there is a Tidbits issue out now with many many more amazing products. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:25:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, December 19, 2005

Unfortunate illo: "...and your little dog, too!"

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:45:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MP3s of Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:11:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Big controversy over Little Red Book / "DHS visits student" story

Librarians, reporters, and bloggers are today debating whether this story about a student visited by DHS agents over a famous book of Mao Tse-Tung quotes is real or hoax.

Standard-Times reporter Aaron Nicodemus, who filed the article, maintains it is "is real and factual to the extent [he] reported."

But Jessamyn West, an elected Councilor of the American Library Association, says "The jury is still out... parts of the newspaper story don't add up."
Link to updated Boing Boing post with details.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:55:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Loren Coleman's list of the Top Cryptozoology Books of 2005

It is a wonderful old-fashioned tome on the discovery of the giant pandas - one of last century’s most remarkable stories - and the relatively untold details of the woman who should get more credit for "finding" them. The search for the first live giant pandas is a fascinating but true tale of cryptozoology discovery, captured with adventure in The Lady and the Panda .

Vicki Croke’s book is an exciting, warm, and intriguing volume about Ruth Harkness’ personal journey to be the initial Westerner to catch and return with the first live giant pandas. This is a book I’ve wanted to write myself for years, and I’m glad to finally see someone, appropriately a seasoned woman writer, do a great job with this subject. The Lady and the Panda also gives due credit to Harkness’ Chinese guide and eventual lover Quentin Young, who showed her how to find the giant pandas.

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:54:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

KRON-TV: everyone in the newsroom is a one-man-band.

San Francisco's KRON recently became the first major-market TV station in the US to supply much of its newsoom staff with laptops and digital video cameras, then train them to shoot, write, and produce stories on their own. KRON calls them VJs. Others in the biz sometimes refer to the combo role as "sojo" (solo journalist) or "one-man-band," while a producer + editor mashup is a "preditor."

Here is the blog of one of KRON's VJs, Charley Bill: Link. Image above: Charley's VJ gear, in his office.

Snip from a critical analysis on Grade The News blog:

KRON hopes that low-cost techniques perfected on reality shows will bring the once high-flying station back to both journalistic excellence and competitiveness in Nielsen ratings. But critics say forcing journalists to become "one-man bands" who report, shoot and edit at the same time will lead to shoddier journalism, and eventually leaner news staffs.

The collapse of three distinct jobs into one delights the station's tech-savvy consultants for the same reasons it alarms some union officials and veteran journalists. KRON reporters, who rarely used to touch a camera, now are shooting their own video every day. Many photographers are reporting for the first time, which is sometimes apparent in video that ignores obvious story angles.

Cameraman Charles Clifford described himself in a blog entry about his retraining as "a guy who hasn't done any real writing since college." The reorganization has eliminated most editors. While a producer is supposed to review every story, outside observers worry about the loss of quality control.

Media Orchard blog interviewed KRON's online news manager Brian Shields about the initiative, and he says:

Television is the ultimate 1.0, 'We talk, you shut up and watch' industry. That means the business model of local television news is fundamentally out of date. It's based on the concept that you're going to wait until 6:00, then we'll show you some things you may or may not care about, show you some commercials, show some more stuff you may or may not care about, show you some more commercials by which time it's quarter after the hour and lucky you, Scott, now we'll tell you the weather. Of course, now you get the weather when you want it online or on the Weather Channel or by RSS or...

So now we have a choice as an industry. We can sit around like many of the people quoted in this article, break open the scrapbooks, and pine for the good ole days of local TV news' mythical golden era. Or we can try to create something new that makes sense within today's economics and that at the same time fixes many of the existing problems with the genre.

Ask anyone outside our industry and they'll tell you, local television news SUCKS. It's the same stories, told in the same way and the only things different from one station to another are the blonde and the graphics package. Despite all of the money they used to have, television news executives never really changed the format from "the guy at the desk with the box over his shoulder." Despite the extravagances of the old system, it was still just six crews covering the market on any given day... never taking risks... just getting the easy stuff... the crime and the regurgitated newspaper story from that morning.

The VJ concept is, to me, a good try at fixing that.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:20:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photoshop retouching of model

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:55:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Netflixsettlementsucks.com Objection Posted

"Anyone included in the settlement who haven't already opted out can sign onto the 27 page objection at netflixsettlementsucks.com."

Perhaps most ironically, if a significant number of class members do in fact submit claim forms, the result will be that NetFlix has to distribute hundreds of thousands of extra DVDs over a short period of time. Since there is no indication that NetFlix plans to expand its DVD inventory for this upsurge, the natural result will be that all of its subscribers will face significant delays in receiving the movies of their choice, all without being informed in advance of these delays; in other words, the “cure” will actually exacerbate the disease.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:44:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moment of terror threat level zen: Yellow

A visit to the Department of Homeland Security website reveals that the nation's present threat level is under yellow status, elevated for "Significant Risk of Terror Attacks." Perhaps the imminent, closely-guarded travel trajectory of a certain North-Pole-dwelling magnate with mysterious funding ties is to blame?

Regardless, here are a few other things under yellow status today: an orchid, Big Bird, a spider on a flower, a phone book, rubber duckies, a Rockford Files ad, and grains of heirloom corn.

Bonus: While you're visiting the DHS homepage, check out this crazy photo of border patrol agents reaming frontera dirt on their dune buggies!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:44:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1960 film of first human in space the stratosphere

Reader comment: Warren Grant says: " I think its a bit disingenuous to claim he was 'The First Man in Space' when even NASA agrees that the first man in space was Yuri Gagarin (see http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=1832). It just struck me as kind of like rewriting history to make that claim, and although its a small point, its in effect a form of disinformation that seems out of keeping with the spirit of Boingboing. I am sure you don't want to misinform your readers and leave them with the impression that the US had the first man in space when even NASA doesn't make that claim. I know the US as the time was in tremendous shock to learn they hadn't been first, but posting stories that suggest otherwise is only contributing to the wishful thinking of those who would rewrite history."

Reader comment: Jason Finley says: "Warren Grant did well to point out that Yuri Gagarin was in fact the first human in space. To his comment I'd like to add the awesome fact that there is now an annual worldwide Space Party called Yuri's Night, held every April 12th to commemorate Gagarin's ground(space?)-breaking flight and celebrate unity in looking to the stars. 'Circling the Earth in the orbital spaceship I marvelled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world! Let us safeguard and enhance this beauty - not destroy it!' -- Yuri Gagarin.

"Also: I don't read Russian to confirm this form the website, but this would appear to be a video of Gagarin's flight."

Reader comment: Mitch says: "I just wanted to put in my 2 cents on this. The headline should definitely be changed from space to stratosphere. Whatever the source stated it is poor journalism to take such claims as fact. Especially when this is patently incorrect. "While the boundary of space as it relates to earth isn't 100% defined, 30 km is much too low. The United States defines space as 50 miles above sea level (approximately 80 km). Which is 2.6 times the height attained by this gentleman. I am not trying to play down his achievements, but the thought that a balloon which operates on the principle of being inside an atmosphere is in space is rather ludicrous. "He would have to move above 100 km above the earth to begin to be in air so rarified that normal aerodynamic surfaces no longer function. A balloon is of little help in this endeavor. "A useful introduction is on Wikipedia here."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:39:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free 411 service

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:26:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RU Sirius interviews punk prototype Richard Hell

RU Sirius: The video definitely increased my respect for the police. A pretty well done cheesy video. The Charlies Angels parody was more like a parody of the soft core porn films that, in turn, parodied Charlies Angels in the 1970s. Very hip, self-referential, post-modern attempt by these members of the San Francisco Police Department.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:03:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYC: Where are all the US Census race definitions at?

Previously: Dorothy Gambrell pie charts Google's "necessary" things

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:40:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moment of Morning Musume zen

You guys posted a clip a while ago of Japanese pop group Morning Musume wearing meat on their heads and being chased by a lizard.

This is the same group, same game show, chasing American fighter Bob Sapp around the TV studio and trying to grab foam balls off his body.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:23:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SNL short: Chronic of Narnia rap

Previously on Boing Boing, we've chronic-WHAT-cled the rise to fame of three comics who released shorts online under a Creative Commons license, then got big gigs on Saturday Night Live.

This week's Jack Black-hosted SNL episode included a digital short produced by the Lonely Island guys at their new NBC post. Thankfully, network television does not kill all good things: The Chronic-WHAT-cles of Narnia kicks just as much tuckus as the online shorts that made Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer web celebs in the first place. Watch the video: YouTube link, WMV link. (Thank you, Macki, thanks Jeff Holmes!)

A quick blog search Sunday returned tons of results for the video, ripped and hosted by fans. Wonder why NBC/SNL isn't offering clips on the official site? Seems like an obvious opportunity lost, given that they branded it as "AN SNL DIGITAL SHORT," anyway. Took 'em two days, but this short and others are now on the SNL site!

Bonus: I wrote a piece about the Lonely Island guys for this month's edition of Wired Magazine. Live, from New York!. Related Boing Boing posts:

Video: Bing Bong Bros (Ying Yang parody by "Lonely Island" SNLers)

"Creative Commons Comics" debut on SNL this weekend

"Creative commons comics" join Saturday Night Live cast

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:15:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

German gov blocks domestic access to body mod websites

The German government has been moving forward with their plans to make linking to BME illegal, and have just had me de-listed from Google as an illegal content site.

(...)[When you Google 'BME' in Germany, you see a note which says] they have responded to a legal demand to remove three websites (ie. BME) from the search results. When you click through to the info site, here's what you get: A URL that otherwise would have appeared in response to your search, was not displayed because that URL was reported as illegal by a German regulatory body.

This is a process that the German government started back in 1999. To make a long story short, it is the contention of the German government, I believe incorrectly so, that BME must entirely block underage viewers from seeing anything on the site.

(...)I'm not sure what recourse I have, if any. I'm at additional risk because I'm a German citizen.

Reader Comment: Anonymous in Germany says,

i thought i'd chime in that the BME zine/google issue is real and at the end of the page i got this (same as the screenshot on the zentastic blog):

"Als Reaktion auf eine gesetzliche Forderung, die Google nach lokalem Recht gestellt wurde, haben wir 3 Seite(n) aus dieser Suchergebnisseite entfernt. Sie können die Beschwerde, die dieser Entfernung zugrunde liegt, unter ChillingEffects.org lesen."

Where "die Beschwerde" links to.

A simple work around is to click on the "google.com in english button" and search for BME there. The site is reachable from Kiel. So what's actually being accomplished here? Why is the German government harrassing these guys? What recourse do they have? And why are they doing such a half assed job?

Surely there must be a way to forge such notices and cause google to unlist parts of the german government!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:54:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NSA domestic spying: reaction from a crypto mail-list moderator

There is no room for doubt or question about whether the President has the prerogative to order surveillance without asking the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] -- even if the FISC is a toothless organization that never turns down requests, it is a federal crime, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, to conduct electronic surveillance against US citizens without court authorization.

The FISC may be worthless at defending civil liberties, but in its arrogant disregard for even the fig leaf of the FISC, the administration has actually crossed the line into a crystal clear felony. The government could have legally conducted such wiretaps at any time, but the President chose not to do it legally.

Ours is a government of laws, not of men. That means if the President disagrees with a law or feels that it is insufficient, he still must obey it. Ignoring the law is illegal, even for the President. The President may ask Congress to change the law, but meanwhile he must follow it.

Our President has chosen to declare himself above the law, a dangerous precedent that could do great harm to our country. However, without substantial effort on the part of you, and I mean you, every person reading this, nothing much is going to happen. The rule of law will continue to decay in our country. Future Presidents will claim even greater extralegal authority, and our nation will fall into despotism. I mean that sincerely. For the sake of yourself, your children and your children's children, you cannot allow this to stand.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:45:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Human Rights Watch: U.S. operated secret ‘Dark Prison’ in Kabul

Eight detainees now held at Guantánamo described to their attorneys how they were held at a facility near Kabul at various times between 2002 and 2004. The detainees, who called the facility the “dark prison” or “prison of darkness,” said they were chained to walls, deprived of food and drinking water, and kept in total darkness with loud rap, heavy metal music, or other sounds blared for weeks at a time.

The detainees offer consistent accounts about the facility, saying that U.S. and Afghan guards were not in uniform and that U.S. interrogators did not wear military attire, which suggests that the prison may have been operated by personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency.

The detainees said U.S. interrogators slapped or punched them during interrogations. They described being held in complete darkness for weeks on end, shackled to rings bolted into the walls of their cells, with loud music or other sounds played continuously. Some detainees said they were shackled in a manner that made it impossible to lie down or sleep, with restraints that caused their hands and wrists to swell up or bruise. The detainees said they were deprived of food for days at a time, and given only filthy water to drink.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:32:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Police seize computers of BDSM webcam site operator

Deputy Chief Carl Sferrazza said the Montano Road house was searched in November and that no charges have been filed against the woman, Michelle Silva. He would not say what kind of criminal activity is being investigated. Sferrazza said investigators seized computers along with a number of other items, which he would not specify.

He said police started investigating Silva early this year after neighbors complained of suspicious activity that included lots of traffic and people often coming to the house at night. Sferrazza said neighbors also saw a number of cars with out-of-state license plates. The computers are being examined at state police forensic computer lab. Sferrazza said the outcome of that examination will determine what police do next.

Silva said she obeyed all local and state laws in running the website and said the search violated her rights.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:21:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage Al-Anon Comics + happy liver-in-a-bag

Bonus round: Why yes, my replacement liver will have another eggnog. An ad agency in San Francisco is sending out a grosser-than-gross holiday-party invite: a replacement liver in a bag.
(Thanks, Kim Cooper, also seen on screenhead; thanks Tim Nudd)

Reader Comment: John Mark Ockerbloom says,

Al-Anon did in fact spin off Alcoholics Anonymous. (It was founded by Lois Wilson, the wife of Bill. W who started Alcoholics Anonymous, and was designed for family and friends of alcoholics rather than alcoholics themselves. Link).

Later, Narcotics Anonymous and Nar-Anon were formed, in the spirit of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. I don't know if the same people were involved or not, but they both clearly walk in the AA 12-step tradition.

L. Ron Hubbard's drug rehab quackery and Scientology front is "Narconon". It has nothing to do with the other groups above, except for trying to sound like them.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:12:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Last Gasp holiday party snapshots

Both Laughing Squid and Bookmans have posted flickr sets from the holiday party at Last Gasp [Ed. note: one of the world's largest, oldest, greatest publishers and sellers of underground comix].

Link to Bookman's photo set, Link to Laughing Squid's.

From the Laughing Squid blog -- "Ron and Colin let us into the hall of oblivion early and we got some great shots of the collection....even the back room. Later, V. Vale and Charles Gatewood stopped by and party started and a great time was had by all for a good cause."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:04:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Imaginary Foundation's San Francisco t-shirt

Timothy Leary had a theory that the edge of culture is moving westward, from China to Western Europe, to the new world and now, the westcoast. Sometimes on a Sunday evening We’ll stand on a hillside in San Francisco and look westward to the pacific and beyond. It’s then, in the numinous glow of magic hour, We can see the soul of San Francisco twinkle.

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:10:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, December 18, 2005

"I FU*KED ALEC BALDWIN IN HIS A*S" (sic) author at it again

Dessarae Bradford -- the wacky former phone-sex operator who sued Colin Farrell for harassment this year and self-published a book about an alleged erotic encounter with Alec Baldwin -- has recorded a dance single. Bradford kindly sent us a copy of the song, "I [bleeped] Alec Baldwin (Colin Farrell Is My Bitch)," in which she utters the tasteless title over a vintage house-music beat and purrs, "Sit! Beg! Fetch!" Bradford failed a lie-detector test concerning her allegations about Farrell, who claims he's never met her, on PAX-TV's "Lie Detector" show. Bradford cussed out host Rolonda Watts and claimed the test was rigged.

And IFABIHA -- her tell-all tome about that night with Alec Baldwin, a dog, and a chocolate bar -- is still for sale online. Snip:

In Sept. 2002, I fu**ed Alec Baldwin in his a** in a hot, sweaty, nasty sex romp. Read the story that will change lives. Be the first one on your block to have the nitty gritty about that night, that will be only told in my book. Grab the scoop before my story gets into the hands of the media, and they attemp to censor it. I had Alec Baldwin on all four's for me, and S/M was involved.

Previous Boing Boing posts about the lovely and talented Miss Bradford:

I F***ED ALEC BALDWIN IN HIS A**, Update 1, Update 2.

Reader-submitted reality mashup request: Using his "serious" voice, reader Michael Slater asks,

What happens if I request I Fu*ked Alec Baldwin In His A*s via interlibrary loan? Does DHS visit?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:51:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DHS agents visit student over Little Red Book - HOAX DEBATE

Widespread debate today over whether the South Coast Today story "DHS visits student over Little Red Book" is a hoax, or contains unsubstantiated non-facts. But the reporter who filed it maintains otherwise; update and details at bottom of this post.

A Massachussetts paper is reporting that a college student was visited by Department of Homeland Security agents in October after requesting a copy of Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung -- better known as "The Little Red Book" -- from a university library:

Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

Attention, comrades! Subversive cesspool Amazon.com sells copies of this watchlisted terrorist manual. Here's the link where you can buy a copy before you invite the DHS over for eggnog. (Thanks, Nat, and the approximately ten gajillion other fellow travelers who suggested this item.)

Reader comment: Glenn Fleishman says,

Not that this excuses the government's action, but, in fact may chill us further: the student requested "the official Peking version." So it's not JUST he asked for Mao's book, but rather he asked for original source material (an authorized, unabridged translation into English).

Reader comment: Michael Benveniste says,

1. UMass Dartmouth does not use SSN's for student ID's. An interlibrary loan request by SSN would seem to violate the University's own privacy policies (Link).

2. The reporter has not talked to the student. He has talked to the professors, who told him what the student claimed happened. The professors have no first hand knowledge of the incident.

3. It seems a little unlikely that UMass Dartmouth wouldn't have the Little Red Book on Campus. [Ed.: see below]

4. The professors only "went public" with the story in response to a query about domestic wiretapping.

I think it's at least equally likely that the student made up an excuse for not doing some work, and that the professors bought into it enough to advance their own agenda.

UMass Darmouth does not in fact have an unabridged version of the little red book on campus as far as their library system can tell: Link

There is now another version of this story about a Dartmouth student who received a visit from Homeland Security after requesting an original version of Mao's Little Red Book. The latest version takes place at University of California/Santa Cruz and mentions History Professor Bruce Levine. I emailed Levine to see if he could verify the story, but my email was the first he'd heard about it. He was a bit amused, as his specialty is Civil War history, and curious about his name got tacked on to the story. ALA's Public Information Office is digging into the story as well. More details as they become available!

UPDATE: Standard-Times reporter Aaron Nicodemus, who wrote the news report in question, responds to allegations that the U.Mass incident is a hoax, and to "copycat" reports of DHS visits to student(s) at another college in California:

The UCSC story is a fake, someone merely replaced the names of the professors I quoted and took the story as his own.

But my story, published in The Standard-Times on Saturday, Dec. 17, is real and is factual to the extent I reported.

I am trying to convince the student to come forward, and for the university library loan system to come clean about its involvement, and of course, for the Department of Homeland Security to admit it visited the student.

I hope to have an update published soon.

UPDATE: Jessamyn West says,

I maintain the website librarian.net. I'm also an elected memeber of the Council of the American Library Association. We've been going back and forth on this issue for most of the day. Here is what we know.

1. I emailed with the reporter. He claims the story about the UCSC library is copied form his, that his is the original and cites the two professors as sources. He says that he has been trying to get the student to come forward to tell his story. Link

2. the book does not come from UMass Dartmouth, that is why it needed to be ILL'ed. The library belongs to a consortium and the copy of the book [that the agents brought to the student's house... I know, sounds fishy to me too] was from a library in nearby Providence, not part of Dartmouth's virtual catalog. Link

In any case, I think the jury is still out, Lots of parts of the newspaper story don't add up BUT the reporter is contactable and so is at least one of the two professors who has been cited in the article [my emails to the second professor have not yet been returned] which is not the case withe the bizarre reprinting of the story with a West Coast school implanted in it. Council has been sort of paying attention to this issue, so more may turn up on the listserv as the day goes on. Link

This is from the blog maintained by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), who are the folks who know the most about anything going on with college or university libraries. UMass Dartmouth issued a statement providing reassurance that the library did not participate in violating the student's rights. The student requested the book through another library, not UMass Dartmouth's. The author of the blog entry checked UMass Dartmouth's ILL form and discovered it doesn't ask for social security number. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:20:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web zen: holiday zen

twin peaks 12 days of christmas
letters to walken
snow globes
helicopter
santa snaps
hack santa
plush nativity
christmas cards
sugarplums
fruitcake
soda
eggnog
ny snow globe
mutant snowflakes
spiky star
mac ornaments
mistletoe and meat

and the annual...
chaoskitties in snowsuits

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

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:46:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WWW inventor Tim Berners-Lee starts a blog

In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.

Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline. Bizarely, they were prepared to edit the funny angle brackets of HTML source, and didn't demand a what you see is what you get editor. WWW was soon full of lots of interesting stuff, but not a space for communal design, for discource through communal authorship.

Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:12:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gaim 2.0 beta released

Here's the changelog, with lots of nifty new features. Read warning label carefully before installing the beta: "Side-effects include awesomeness, dumbfoundedness, dry mouth and lava."Link (via /.)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:03:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ginormous lime of Thailand

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:40:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, December 17, 2005

bOING bOING zine PDF: now smaller, more compatible

Reader comment: Simon says: "The compatibility problems are mainly with mac users not using acrobat. all macs running OS X come standard with apple's own 'acrobat' called 'preview'.

"preview reads .pdf files just like acrobat and i've never had a problem with it until i downloaded your boing boing zine! yeah for some reason (i don't know?) the boing boing zine in apple's preview just came up dead blank ...nuthin' ! it did show that the document was 32 pages - but every one of them 32 pages had zero content.

"so i then opened the .pdf in photoshop - and that actually worked! but photoshop had to rasterize the whole document first before i could view it.

"so yeah ...then i downloaded acrobat reader for mac OS X and it worked fine - i could see the zine! ...yay!

"so yeah ...i'd say 90% of boing boing readers would have acrobat reader already.

"but then you got those pesky mac users who have never downloaded acrobat cuz they've always just used apple's preview.

"anyhow, the zine was a great read - a blast from the past!"

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:46:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Horrorshow magazine, Illustration, and the future of Comic Art

Once upon a time, only boring, cookie-cutter horror magazines roamed the land. They terrorized fans with their press release-style stories and monotonous actor interviews. Occasionally they would throw in a photo of a mask or an action figure here or there, but they really only cared about making lots of money by covering the "latest and greatest" Hollywood film in the most generic, clichéd way possible.

But then, there came HORRORSHOW... And the collectors rejoiced.

From the publishers of ILLUSTRATION and ILLUSTRATION '05 comes HORRORSHOW, a stunning, full-color magazine for the monster fan and horror collecting community. Each quarterly issue of HORRORSHOW spotlights the best of the best from around the horror scene — including latex masks, vinyl and resin kits, PVC figures, props, and more — as well as in-depth, behind-the-scenes interviews with the artists and designers who bring these frightening creations to life.

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:46:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lyrics Dustup Ends in Apology

Facing an upswell of protest, Warner Chappell Music on Friday formally apologized to Walter Ritter over a letter it sent to the software programmer earlier this month targeting a helper application for Apple's iTunes called pearLyrics.

"The goal of Warner/Chappell's prior letter to pearworks was to gain assurance that pearLyrics operated according to (copyright) principles. However, in both tone and substance, that letter was an inappropriate manner in which to convey that inquiry. Warner/Chappell apologizes to Walter Ritter and pearworks."

(...)Ritter says Warner Chappell is now talking with him about ways to create lyrics search tools with the blessing of music publishers, but the experience will cause him to think twice before committing his next big idea to code.

One of Ritter's recent brainstorms -- an application that queries lyrics data online to help music fans choose tracks based on themes, like "love" or "breakup" -- may now remain only an idea, he says.

"I'm concerned with how I should go on with software development, because this will be a potential issue -- every time I come up with something that people like, someone might say 'you can't do that, it's illegal and it infringes copyright," Ritter told Wired News. "It's getting really difficult to be innovative as a small developer."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:49:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, December 16, 2005

DNA mutation accounts for white skin

The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person's offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to give rise to the lightest of the world's races.

Leaders of the study, at Penn State University, warned against interpreting the finding as a discovery of "the race gene." Race is a vaguely defined biological, social and political concept, they noted, and skin color is only part of what race is -- and is not.

In fact, several scientists said, the new work shows just how small a biological difference is reflected by skin color. The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome -- the complete instructions for making a human being.

"It's a major finding in a very sensitive area," said Stephen Oppenheimer, an expert in anthropological genetics at Oxford University, who was not involved in the work. "Almost all the differences used to differentiate populations from around the world really are skin deep."

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:56:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coop reports back from Masters of American Comics in LA

Fortunately, George Herriman's Krazy Kat original art was better represented in the show. The members of our party spent a lot of time poring over Herriman's originals, marvelling at the loose, gestural inking. Herriman achieved a lot of his inking effects by scraping ink away from the surface, either with a pen point or razor blade. This was particularly scary to the more anal members of our group. (myself included!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:05:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Congress: "Merry Chrismas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs"

"The government is proposing that devices (consumer electronics, computers, software) manufactured after a certain date respond to a copy-protection signal or watermark in a digital video stream, and pass along that signal when converting the video to analog. The same goes for analog video streams, to pass on the protection to the digital video outputs.

"The technology Congress is proposing (VEIL) is derived from one that originated with assorted interactive Batman toys that allowed the toys to respond to Batman television shows or videos. How cool—at least for toys.

"The government wants your future TV, TiVo, computer, cell phone, Final Cut Pro, (input your favorite analog signal viewing / converting device here) to respond to the Bat Signal." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:15:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Groovetube makes TV worth watching

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:10:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PDF of first issue of bOING bOING from 1989

This 36-page issue has an interview with my hero, Robert Anton Wilson, an article about the wonders of public-key crytography, a piece about lucid dreaming, an interview with the 1988 Libertarian candidate for the US Senate, reviews of zines, comics, books, and software, and lots of comics by me and my friends. The writing is clunky and the design is even more clunky, but I think it resonates nicely with the Boing Boing of 2005. Enjoy!
Link to 16MB PDF file

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:38:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Senate rejects extension of Patriot Act

"The Senate on Friday rejected attempts to reauthorize several provisions of the USA Patriot Act as infringing too much on Americans' privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.

In a crucial vote early Friday, the bill's Senate supporters were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a threatened filibuster by Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and their allies. The final vote was 52-47."

Reader comment: Danny says: "You can mail to say thanks to the senators standing up to PATRIOT from the EFF's Action Center. Rumor has it that Frist is going to keep trying to take the vote until Dec 31." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:21:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mona Lisa's emotions decoded

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:34:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory going away until Jan 1

Happy holidays! See you in 2006!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:58:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony DRM Debacle Roundup Part V

Dec 5: Sony rootkit ripped off anti-DRM code to break into iTunes

Code from the Free/Open Source program DRMS was illegally included in the XCP rootkit -- and Princeton researchers Felten and Halderman reveal why: in order to sneak Sony music onto the iPod without giving Apple a cut of the sale through the iTunes Music Store.

Dec 6: Sony *finally* releases rookit uninstaller -- sort of

65 days after being put on notice about the XCP rootkit on 50+ of its CD Sony releases an "uninstaller," but the fine-print makes it clear that this doesn't really uninstall anything.

Dec 6: Musician: DRM screws my fans, so it screws me

Damien Kulash, the lead singer for the band OK Go, has a great editorial in the NYTimes today, describing why DRM systems are bad for artists.

Dec 6: EFF forces Sony/Suncomm to fix its spyware -- UPDATED

After intense pressure from EFF, Sony releases an uninstaller for the Mediamax spyware that comes on music CDs from Sony and other music companies.

Dec 7: Sony's DRM security fix leaves your computer more vulnerable

Princeton DRM researchers Halderman and Felten publish their investigation into the uninstaller that Sony has provided for the Mediamax spyware -- turns out that the uninstaller creates even more vulnerabilities.

Dec 9: EFF to Sunncomm: release a list of all infected CDs!

EFF petititons Sunncomm, makers of the MediaMax spyware, to release a list of all infected CDs and to institute policies for future policies.

Dec 14: Sony Artists offering home-burned CDs to replace spyware-infected discs

Sony refuses to recall CDs infected with Sunncomm's MediaMax spyware, so some artists are running their own recall programs, offering home-burned CDs to fans who complain that the software prevents them from ripping their CDs.

Dec 15: HOWTO make a DRM CD

Alex Halderman, one of the Princeton researchers who's been doggedly revealing the tricks, nastiness, cheating and lies in the Sony DRM Debacle, has published a detailed HOWTO explaining how to make your own malicious "industrial strength" DRM CD, just like Sony's. The perfect project for your holiday break!

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:56:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Commercial Commons: standard commercial licenses

"It is designed to assist creators who release work under a Creative Commons license and want to engage with a publisher or gallery (for example) in a commercial relationship. They can use the Model Agency Agreement to structure the commercial relationship. The document provides a way to by-pass the legal costs of entering a commercial relationship. In this way it very much acts like a Creative Commons license, as it provides a free tool for creators to specify their rights and demands. In that sense one can call it a Commercial Commons License." Link (Thanks, Christian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:49:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush and Hume discuss the iPod

Unidentified male: . . . which ones do you play?

Bush: All of these. I put it on shuffle. Dwight Yoakam. I've got the Shuffle, the, what is it called? The little.

Hume: Shuffle.

Bush: It looks like.

Hume: The Shuffle. That is the name of one of the models.

Bush: Yes, the Shuffle.

Hume: Called the Shuffle.

Bush: Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the Shuffle.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:35:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What would a Unicorn do? folder

I've been walking around UC Davis today with my new "What Would A Unicorn Do?" deluxe spin folder. Inside, the Unicorn Code reminds me that Unicorns Don't Cheat on Tests, and Unicorns Don't Do Drugs, among other important things. I *heart* my "What Would A Unicorn Do?" folder! There's nothing like it to give your day a little boost, over and over again.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:23:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

God Is A Moog t-shirt

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:57:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Deepak Chopra's Kama Sutra

The deal has been described as bringing together two of India's well-known and established brands. The book might be called Deepak Chopra's Kama Sutra: Timeless Erotica for the Virgin Mind...

Originally the (Kama Sutra) served purely as erotic literature for kings and queens, said Chopra. But he believes that there is a great connection between sexuality and spirituality. He wants to explore that and take the carnal experience to new heights of spiritual ecstasy. Link

As much as we find Chopra a pabulum factory for Hollywood's seeker set, he's sidled right on up to the next hottness in spirituality: freedom from sexual guilt and Victorian-era moral repression.

While we're sure Chopra will palpify it in no time, it's still a signficant development in the alternative spiritual scene. But just because Chopra is Indian doesn't mean he's a master of doing it. It's too bad Virgin didn't have the vision to hire someone with more affinity for the subject matter. We imagine rock star Tommy Lee and a bevy of beautiful Sanskrit scholars locked in a hotel room for a week could take the centuries-old text to a whole new level of the erotic. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:40:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NSA spies on US: calls, emails intercepted without warrants

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

Reader comment: Mark says,

Here is an interview (RealAudio Link) with David Skillicorn, a professor of computing at Queen's University. Starting at about 4:40 into the interview (near the end), David notes that there is a confederation of five countries which look at Internet traffic (including email) whose destination is outside of those five countries. Originally linked from (Link); second RealAudio link on the right.

Reader comment hllc says,

This American Life did a great story almost 3 years ago on the Orwellian world of FISA courts (i.e. where the NSA would go if it were actually getting a warrant.) Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:11:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage 8mm porn photos

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:16:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Google launches Gmail edition for mobile devices

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:16:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warner/Chappell Music apologizes to PearLyrics

Today, W/C chairman Richard Blackstone and Jane Dyball, who handles the label's legal affairs in Europe, apologized to the Austrian programmer who created PearLyrics. Snip from Billboard analysis:

W/C’s apology was the right move, but may have come as a result of a publicly posted argument from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Not only was [Walter] Ritter’s application probably legal in the United States, reasoned the EFF, but such threats against U.S. developers could open Warner Music Group to federal liability.

The music industry might want to think these actions through more thoroughly, and not just to avoid legal strife. Dyball’s letter to PearLyrics was copied to Kevin Saul, an Apple Computer lawyer, and links to similar applications quickly disappeared from the Apple Web site.

This was two opportunities lost. For one, by taking the text from illegal lyrics sites, applications such as Ritter’s—which seek no revenue and are, at least arguably, legal—were taking eyeballs away from, and thus diminishing the ad revenue of the very illegal, very revenue-seeking sites that archive and distribute unlicensed lyrics.

Major rights holders confronted with these grass-roots software developments might also consider embracing them as possible new business models as aggressively as they have been in recent years about shutting them down. How many casual music fans currently pay for lyrics?

Previously:

Warner Music attacks specialized web-browser

PearLyrics shutown: EFF's open letter to Warner Music

Update: Walter Ritter has posted the joint announcement on his website, along with his thoughts on the debacle, and his thanks to the EFF. Link. And incidentally, Friday is Mr. Ritter's birthday.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:38:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Army officer charged with using Iraq $$ to pimp out her NJ crib

A female Army officer has been charged with using money intended for reconstruction in the holy cities of Iraq to pimp out her New Jersey crib with a bangin' new deck and a hot tub. Oh yeah -- and then there was the ill-gotten Escalade...

Lt. Col. Debra Harrison is the fourth person to be arrested and charged in the scandal, and the second army officer. Snip from a report by James Glanz in Friday's New York Times:

An Army lieutenant colonel who received the bronze star for her wartime service in Iraq was arrested yesterday and charged with taking bribes in a growing corruption scandal involving the Iraq reconstruction program. An investigation has jolted the program, embarrassed the United States military and exposed a dark underside of the American occupation authority that ran the country after the invasion in April 2003. (...)

She is charged with receiving cash bribes of $80,000 to $100,000, a Cadillac Escalade, a trove of illegal weaponry and other items for steering construction jobs to an American contractor in Iraq.

Some of the cash, intended for projects like a library in the holy city of Karbala and an Iraqi police academy south of Baghdad, paid for a new hot tub and a deck for Colonel Harrison's home in Trenton, according to the federal affidavit. Conviction on the charges, including conspiracy to commit bribery and money laundering as well as a long list of weapons charges, could put her in prison for up to 30 years, the Justice Department said in a statement.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:13:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How soon after marriage do Japanese brides cut the cheese?

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:36:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Book for adoptive parents: A Love Like No Other

She says: "Penguin's Riverhead imprint just published my book, A Love Like No Other: Stories from Adoptive Parents, an anthology that I put together with fellow journalist Jill Smolowe. Unlike most books about adoption, ours is not about wanting a child or the process of adopting. Instead, it focuses on the special issues, challenges, and pleasures that can arise in actually raising the child.

"There really hasn't been a book like this before, despite the fact American families are raising some 2 million adopted kids."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:30:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: home decorating

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

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:57:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ren and Stimpy artist has a serious side

"It's not easy to start over from scratch, even when your skilled it's though getting a gallery so I'm looking for promotion anyway I can get it. Hope you will consider covering my site and blog. The site just has the paintings, the blog has little brief stories about the process of doing them. I hope you find it worthy."
I think his work is gorgeous. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:20:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Teenager in Nepal said to have been meditating for 6 months with no water

Bamjan has spoken only a few times since he began the meditation, according to Prem Lama.

He said the first time Bamjan spoke was when a snake bit him around a month ago.

Bamjan took the incident as his second test, which he must overcome, Prem Lama said.

In the first test he was also bitten by a snake - three months after he began the meditation.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:16:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cousteau's Shark Sub

Cousteau calls the sub Troy, in reference to the mythical Trojan horse statue, in which Greek soldiers were spirited into the fortress kingdom of Troy.

The idea for the sub, though, came from a slightly more prosaic source.

Troy was inspired by Tintin, a Belgian comic book character. On the cover of the book Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge (published in English as Red Rackham's Treasure), Tintin and his dog are pictured in a metal, shark-shaped submarine.

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:00:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stretchable silicon

Functional, stretchable and bendable electronics could be used in applications such as sensors and drive electronics for integration into artificial muscles or biological tissues, structural monitors wrapped around aircraft wings, and conformable skins for integrated robotic sensors, said Rogers...

To create their stretchable silicon, the researchers begin by fabricating devices in the geometry of ultrathin ribbons on a silicon wafer using procedures similar to those used in conventional electronics. Then they use specialized etching techniques to undercut the devices. The resulting ribbons of silicon are about 100 nanometers thick – 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

In the next step, a flat rubber substrate is stretched and placed on top of the ribbons. Peeling the rubber away lifts the ribbons off the wafer and leaves them adhered to the rubber surface. Releasing the stress in the rubber causes the silicon ribbons and the rubber to buckle into a series of well-defined waves that resemble an accordion.

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:02:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cute Overload

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:16:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Does cosmic background radiation contain a message from God?

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:38:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

King Kong's Monkey Love

Josh says: "It is probably the only coverage of King Kong that is based on weird science, meandering from Enkidu, the hairy man-beast in the Gilgamesh epic, to the latest paleontological evidence about Gigantopithecus blacki, the 12-foot prehistoric ape that died out 100,000 years ago, to the re-classification of chimpanzees into the hominidae family, and of course the biological potential for a consummated love between man and ape."

Cooper and Schoedsack weren’t entirely off their rockers when they cast Kong and Fay Wray in a “great romance.” Humans share enough DNA and chromosomal similarity with both gorillas and chimpanzees — we’re 99 percent genotypically congruent with chimps — that offspring might be possible, were biologists unscrupulous enough to try it. There’s always suspicion they may have already; for some reason, Japan often gets fingered as the place that has secretly developed primate crossbreeds. And then there was the case of Oliver, a circus chimpanzee who seemed so human — he lived with a family in South Africa, where he liked to feed the dogs and sip whiskey while watching TV — that he was tested for human parentage. He came up negative, but in the end Oliver had to be sold because he developed an overpowering sexual interest in his female owner and woman visitors.

Reader comment: email_name: Jordan Running says: "Your post from today titled 'King Kong's Monkey Love' reminded me of an article I saw yesterday from Seed Magazine titled 'Girls Gone Wild...for Monkeys.' The article is about a study which shows that "while straight men are only aroused by females of the human variety, straight women are equally aroused by all human sexual activity, including lesbian, heterosexual and homosexual male sex, and at least somewhat aroused by nonhuman sex." Wild. Link

Reader comment: John says: "Apparently at least one person tried to crossbreed chimps and humans, in 1926. Clive Wynne has the story in a NYT op-ed. The scientist was Ilya Ivanov of the USSR, and the story involves Africa, Cuba, the New York Times and the Ku Klux Klan."

The young Soviet Union, in its effort to stamp out religion, was determined to prove that men were descended from apes. In 1926, a Soviet scientist named Ilya Ivanov decided the most compelling way to do this would be to breed a humanzee: a human-chimpanzee hybrid.

Ivanov set off for a French research station in West Africa. There he inseminated three female chimpanzees with human sperm. Not his own, for he shared the colonial-era belief that the local people were more closely related to apes than he was. He stayed long enough to learn that his experiment had failed.

Next Ivanov wrote a Cuban heiress, Rosalia Abreu. Abreu was the first person to breed chimps in captivity and had a large menagerie outside Havana. Ivanov asked if any of her male chimpanzees might be available to inseminate a Russian volunteer known to posterity only as 'G."

Reader comment: "Lovecraft wrote a story, now public domain, about a man who married an ape called 'Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family.'" Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:18:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SNL video: Woomba, the feminine hygeine robot

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:52:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Liz Cohen: simultaneous body-mod and car-mod

In her BODYWORK project, Liz Cohen is converting Färgfabriken's main hall into a car body shop and a gym. Every day, she will be working to transform an old East German Trabant into an American Chevrolet El Camino. East German functionalism goes American low-rider. In addition, the artist will be training her body so that she will also be able to present the finished car as a showroom bikini model.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:44:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PSP 2.01 firmware unlocked

On Dec 1, some cheats were published that allowed players of "Grand Theft Auto:LCS Trainer" to add new weather conditions and other play options.

This gave firmware hackers the crib they needed to unravel the game-format, and thence the whole firmware. Now a new hack allowed PSP owners to once again play homebrew games and add new functionality to their PSPs.

Now, how freaking bizarre is it that Sony continues to spend good money removing features that make the PSP more attractive to its customers? Someone needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders with the business-model stick.

First 2.01 Homebrew Game Ported By PSP 3D

That's right. From Hello World yesterday, to Tetris today. We at PSP 3D have successfully ported the first 2.01 game EVER. Thanks to Fanjita for the tips and for the wonderful GTA hack (props to all the people who helped him too). In the next few days, expect this and more games to be ported to 2.5 also (if and when we get SYSCALs working)...

If you are a homebrew developer and would like your game converted to 2.01 format (2.5 in the near future), please feel free to contact us with the SOURCE to your homebrew (aka, the C++ files, not an EBOOT or .bin).

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:38:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video of site where oldest Maya mural was unearthed

Dave Pentecost tells Boing Boing,

I'm adding to the media frenzy surrounding the San Bartolo mural announcement today ("Sistine Chapel of the Maya") with a "you are there" video of the dig that discovered it.

I was in the tunnels, inside a pyramid, for five weeks as they discovered and cleaned the murals. In the press coverage they are using the phrase "blood sacrifice" to refer to the graphic penis perforation, with six-foot spears, that four figures are performing in the mural.

The video was shot and edited, and the music composed in Garageband, in the jungle east of Uaxactun, Guatemala. It's in iPod format - one of the oldest art objects in the hemisphere playable on one of the newest. My thanks to Bill Saturno and the whole San Bartolo team for allowing me to be part of the astonishing discovery.

Previously:

Earliest known Maya painting revealed

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:38:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What if copyright law were strongly enforced against blogs?

Suppose the mainstream media, fed up with the buzz bloggers keep getting and with bloggers criticizing their stories, decided to exact revenge. They initiate a vigorous copyright enforcement strategy, launching a barrage of lawsuits against bloggers as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has done to music file sharers. What would happen?

The blogosphere would be in for some tough times I bet. Bloggers frequently copy large chunks of mainstream media articles and some of us copy pictures we find on the Web. Bloggers don't have a team of photographers and artists, so they snag images from the Internet. As for mainstream media articles, bloggers often quote very liberally because the mainstream media is notorious for creating dead URLs -- articles often just disappear after a week or two. In other instances, articles get archived and can only be retrieved for a fee. The result is that a post discussing a mainstream media article with just a link or a small quote can become hard to understand when the article being referred to becomes unavailable. That's why bloggers often copy significant portions of articles -- so their posts can still be understood when the URLs to the articles go dead.

(...)[The] blogosphere has developed a set of copyright norms in an area where there is very little enforcement. These norms about the use of copyrighted material are probably at odds with existing copyright law. The mainstream media and other websites have not been going after bloggers for copyright violations all that much. Although the music and movie industries have been on the copyright offensive, beyond them, the enforcement of copyright on the Internet has been rather laid back. But this article from the WSJ strikes a bit of fear in my bones (...)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:28:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reaction to passing of EU data retention law

I'm really sad to say that Europe has failed itself. Today the EU accepted a terrible directive. If you read the PDF link here you can see what a disaster they've created.

For those that want a quick summary: Proposal for a DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the retention of data processed in connection with the provision of public electronic communication services and amending Directive 2002/58/EC.

The directive argues that changes in business models and service offerings create new logging practices. Namely, pre-paid cell phone companies don't need to log as much information as a company that sends you a bill later. VoIP providers don't even have a location, they might have an IP address if the user isn't very savvy. All of this as well as other communication advances allow for criminals to speak freely.

They specifically discuss the value of "traffic data" and "location data" and how it's very useful for "prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime, such as terrorism and organized crime." So now they've created a way to solve that problem. They wish to log all of this data. Not the contents mind you, they're not recording every phone call. They're going to be logging who you dialed and when. They'll be logging names and addresses. They won't log the data in the body of your email, they'll log all of the communication headers.

This is a great deal of data.

Reader comment: Robert says,

It's worth noting that this link is the text of the *amended* proposal that the European Parliament passed and contains quite a number of changes by them in relation to maintaining privacy and trying to limit unnecessary intrusions. There are several added references to the European Convention of Human Rights and the EU data protection directive. Also, this amended text has to be approved by the Council of Ministers before going any further. If they make any changes, it has to come back to the Parliament. So it's not over yet!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:19:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More on China blocking news of Shanwei protest deaths

I am a reader of Boingboing and I am in China right now. The protest in the city of Shanwei is being blocked by the authorities as known, yet at 10:20 p.m I saw it reported on TV with video clips by the so-called Dragontv,(or 东方卫视 as in Chinese) which I think is a station based in Shanghai and personally I think it a pioneer on some level.

I went to their website to check on it, but could not find a transcript. I could only navigate as far as the National News category, in which that particular piece of news didn't appear among a list of news on 2005-12-15. Here is the link.

Online news of protest deaths blocked by China authorities

Bloggers in China break silence on violent suppression of protest

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:16:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

No blood for oil. No, wait -- blood for oil.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:10:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

7 Deadly Sinners artists blog

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:46:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a DRM CD

You added the extra track (shown in yellow) when you edited the disc image in step 4. This simple change makes the audio tracks invisible to most music player applications. It’s not clear why this works, but the most likely explanation is that the behavior is a quirk in the way the Windows CD audio driver handles discs with multiple sessions.

For an added layer of protection, the extraneous track you added to the disc is only 31 frames long. (A frame is 1/75 of a second.) The CD standard requires that tracks be at least 150 frames long. This non-compliant track length will cause errors if you attempt to duplicate the disc with many CD drives and copying applications.

Previous installments of the Sony DRM Debacle Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:54:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Swiss money has AIDS virus, foetus and skull decorations

Update: Martin points out that the decision isn't final yet: "After acknowledging the jury's decision as to the result of the competition, the Governing Board of the National Bank will decide on the next steps."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:59:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dickens's Christmas Carol podcast

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:56:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

MSFT responds to Liebhold's privacy concerns

When you visit the Windows Live Local and hit "Locate Me", Location Finder sends signal strengths and MAC addresses of nearby wireless access points and standard HTTP request information such as your IP address to the Microsoft online location service. The online service calculates the user's location from a database of known access point locations and returns an approximate longitude and latitude. If this method fails, other methods may be used such as IP address lookup.

Location Finder service was designed with concern for your personal information; secure methods such as SSL are used when transferring location information between your machine and the Microsoft location service. Since the Location Finder will only determine your location information when you visit the Windows Live website, we will not share your location information with other web sites. Also note that the Location Finder does not include an option for forwarding or sharing user location information with third parties. It is designed to work with the Windows Live web site only. Location finder can not track users. Your location is only determined when you explicitly click the “Locate Me” link at Windows Live Local and no user has the ability to determine another user’s location.

We believe that you deserve to have your personal data used only in ways you have agreed to that provides value to you. Our privacy policy prohibits the selling, renting, or leasing of your information to other companies.

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:13:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spooky antiquarian etailer

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:24:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Britannica averages 3 bugs per entry; Wikipedia averages 4

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three...

Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.

Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:19:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Official Katamari Damacy shirts

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:16:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chris Ware on NPR's Here & Now

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:48:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Other Music's Year End Recap

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:28:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CodeCon submission deadline is tomorrow (12/15)

The CodeCon 2006 submission deadline is tomorrow! If you're a developer with a cool project, come present it at the same venue that's showcased Off-the-Record Messaging, Audacity, Tor and a wide variety of other kick-ass open-source apps.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:16:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RadioDavidByrne: Rednecks, Racists and Reactionaries

Well, I probably could have filled up this playlist with just the recordings of any one of these artists, but the RIAA has recently issued me a warning, so I’m not going to tempt a shutdown, lawsuit or a hefty fine. (Link to rant on this subject)

I’m defining classic country as pre-hippie-country, pre-alt-country, pre-outlaw-country — before Graham Parsons, Bob Dylan, Emmylou, Willie, the Flatlanders and scores of others made the genre accessible to folks who usually associated country music solely with rednecks, racists and reactionaries (hey, that would have made a good album title!) Those changes began in the late 60s and early 70s, so most of this stuff was done before that. I haven’t gone back to the real early rootsy stuff either, and there’s lots of incredible stuff left out, but it’s a pretty good sampling. (FYI, The best basic introductory sampler I’ve ever heard of this stuff is the Smithsonian’s box set. Our government cut through the red tape and inter-record-label squabbling and did something right for a change. Their jazz survey is pretty good, too.)

Previously:

David Byrne gets RIAA warning

More BB posts on David Byrne

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:07:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sponsor massage with happy ending: Quikbook rules

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:13:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Andy Rosen's punk photos on Flickr

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:28:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiny R/C helicopters

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:13:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir, new from Graham Roumieu

Like many reclusive celebrities, Big Foot is misunderstood. In his touching memoir Me Write Book he wants to set the record straight, proving that although he's larger, hairier, and more foul-smelling than most of us, he's really not so different underneath.

Only the most cold-hearted among us could look on without compassion as this hirsute Everyman struggles bravely with parental abandonement, Pringles potato crisps, embarrassing moments with peach schnapps, the desperate loneliness of personal ads, and 'roid rage.

Previous Boing Boing posts about Roumieu's Bigfoot-related work: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:05:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boosting brain cannabis to treat depression

This is the first time it has been shown that a drug that increases endocannabinoids in the brain can improve your mood," says the lead investigator Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, an MUHC and Université de Montréal researcher.

Endocannabinoids are chemicals released by the brain under certain conditions, like exercise; they stimulate specific brain receptors that can trigger feelings of well-being. The researchers, which included scientists from the University of California at Irvine, were able to measure serotonin and noradrenaline activity as a result of the increased endocannabinoids, and also conducted standard experiments to gauge the 'mood' of their subjects and confirm their findings.

"The results were similar to the effect we might expect from the use of commonly prescribed antidepressants, which are effective on only around 30% of the population," explains Dr. Gobbi. "Our discovery strengthens the case for URB597 as a safer, non-addictive, non-psychotropic alternative to cannabis for the treatment of pain and depression and provides hope for the development of an alternate line of antidepressants, with a wider range of effectiveness."

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:01:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eliminating bank clocks in attempt to reduce complaints

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:50:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pud vs Bazooka Joe

I love the color palette with the light green and light yellows. This was quite counter to Bazooka Joe comics which always hit you with primary red, blue and yellow. Pud comics were much more subtle. They were also more visual and played with the tiny space they were allowed.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:38:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Treasure of Baghdad" diary of Iraqi journo's first visit to USA

A young Iraqi journalist and blogger is taking a break from Iraq and hanging out at my brother-in-laws office (Committee to Protect Journalists, based in NYC) for a few days. He is staying in Brooklyn. His blog is very moving -- he drinks wine and gets his hair cut by a woman for the first time in NYC, goes to Ground Zero, etc. This entry is about walking to school with my two nieces, Ruby and Lola.

Joel and his two cute daughters arrived at the corner where I was waiting. Then we walked with his daughters to take them to their school as their mother who is a journalist is assigned for reporting in another state.

The school was so beautiful. It’s a church school that looks like the school where my mother used to teach. She used to teach in a Nun’s school, one of the best primary schools in Baghdad, called Dijlah [Tigris]. Because this school is located in the most dangerous street in Baghdad, Sadoun Street, my mother had to leave it and move to another school in my neighborhood. She decided to move after a massive car bomb took place at the main gate of the school where 22 Iraqi civilians were killed, most of them were pupils, school buses drivers and parents of pupils.

I remember how my mother was scared when I called her that day. She was crying and crying and saying things like the kids are killed, it’s like hell and something like that. My heart sank at that moment. What does it mean when someone is trying to kill westerners in front of a primary school? Two westerners and 22 Iraqis were killed.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:58:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Earliest known Maya painting revealed

Snip from National Geographic:

Archaeologists today revealed the final section of the earliest known Maya mural ever found, saying that the find upends everything they thought they knew about the origins of Maya art, writing, and rule.

The painting was the last wall of a room-size mural to be excavated. The site was discovered in 2001 at the ancient Maya city of San Bartolo in the lowlands of northeastern Guatemala.

(...) The painting dates to 100 B.C., proving that stories of creation and kings—and the use of elaborate art and writing to tell them—were well established more than 2,000 years ago, 700 years earlier than previously believed.

Reader comment: Mark says,

The National Geographic picture you published with your story of the newly discovered Mayan Mural seems to show the King making an offering of his own blood. As customary among the Mayan Kings he does it by stabbing his own penis with a white spear. To show the kings potency the blood is seen 'squirting out', as also noted in the NGS article (page 2), but they don't say it is also shown in the picture! Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:47:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Virgin Galactic to build $225M spaceport; new logo = Branson's eye

Virgin Galactic also revealed that up to 38,000 people from 126 countries have paid a deposit for a seat on one of its manned commercial flights, including a core group of 100 "founders" who have paid the initial $200,000 cost of a flight upfront. Virgin Galactic is planning to begin flights in late 2008 or early 2009.

At a Virgin Galactic press conference today, the commercial spaceline firm unveiled a new logo design that will feature the iris of Branson. The logo concept comes from Philippe Starck, in conjunction with a design agency, GBH Design Ltd.

Starck is a founder astronaut for one of the first hundred commercial seats onboard Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spaceliner.

In displaying the logo concept, Branson said: “I believe it represents all those who will watch and be a part of the growth of this amazing new commercial aviation sector. Whether they are six or sixty, all will see and believe that a new chapter in the story of space flight has begun.”

I just saw the Virgin Galactic logo, and imho, it looks really similar the the cover of George Orwell's 1984: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:59:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jailhouse tech creations -- update

This month, they're back in Chicago, at the I-Space. Then, in the Spring, the Prisoners' Inventions head to San Francisco's Yerba Buena Arts Center. The show has 13 new drawings from Angelo.

Previously on Boing Boing:

Prisoners' Inventions: MacGuyver meets the prison system

Prisoners' Inventions

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:24:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Art made from Thames flotsam

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO decorate for the holidays with tampons

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:50:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EVDO: I'm a believer

I've had the use of an EVDO card that worked flawlessly and speedily (rates comparable to the Ethernet connection in my hotel room) in my Mac, and which also seamless interfaced with a WiFi access point that was literally plug-and-play: just connect it to the wall-power, stick in the card, and the EVDO wireless service was retransmitted to my whole hotel-floor.

The number of situations in which I find myself captive to overpriced Internet service provided by hotels is climbing (in Amsterdam, I stayed at a hotel where the Swisscom WiFi ran 30 Euros/day, with a cap of 250MB -- I spend 90 Euros in one particularly busy day) and gear like this points the way to freedom. I'd love to bring one to an airport ($10 bucks for a couple hours' broadband? Geez) with me and set the Internet free for my neighbors -- hell, with the right software, you could even set up a competing ISP that charged a buck instead of a sawbuck for access! Link (Thanks, Geo!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:47:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Costumes for your Roomba

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:36:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony Artists offering home-burned CDs to replace spyware-infected discs

Artist managers have been vocal in their opposition to the use of copy-protection software. "I just don't think that this is the answer to the problem that they think exists," says the manager of one veteran artist affected by the XCP software. Mike Martinovich, manager for My Morning Jacket, says that even before the revelation of MediaMax's security problems, his company had been mailing burned, unprotected copies of MMJ's new album Z to fans who complained that MediaMax prevented them from transferring songs to their iPods. "It should have been enough that fans are annoyed," he says. "But this should be the final reason."

Previous installments of the Sony DRM Debacle Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:31:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Voodoo Toothpick Holder invites you to puncture effigy with toothpicks

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:25:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pentagon bravely vigilant against sinister, threatening Quakers

The DOD database obtained by NBC News includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. One "incident" included in the database is a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest banners. Another incident mentions a planned protest against military recruiters last December in Boston and a planned protest last April at McDonald's National Salute to America's Heroes -- a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat and a column in the database concludes: "US group exercising constitutional rights." Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense -- yet they all remained in the database.