--------------------

BoingBoing reader Jenny Smith says,

My dear friend Brad Will was killed in Oaxaca yesterday. Brad was a journalist, and he was an activist. He was always, always giving everything he had to work for justice and make the world a better place. We are all so much poorer now that he is gone. I can only hope that his death can serve to bring some attention to what is happening in Oaxaca. I am sure that Brad would have wanted that.

Snip from Houston Chronicle account of Will's death:

An American photojournalist and another man were killed and at least five other people were injured Friday as protesters and pro-government gunmen clashed in the southern state capital of Oaxaca.

The journalist, whom colleagues identified as documentary filmmaker and photographer Brad Will, was shot in a confrontation in a community on the edge of Oaxaca City, capital of the state of the same name. The city center has been besieged for nearly five months as activists press for the removal of the state's governor.

UPDATE: The Village Voice has a detailed item on Will's death, which includes photographs of the plainclothes gunmen who shot him (via the Mexican news daily El Universal): Link to Voice item. (WARNING: url includes graphic image of Will with exposed gunshot wound, before his death)

Eliot adds,

Brad Will was a videographer for Indymedia. He was a well-known and respected figure in the New York activist community and the US global justice movement. He had travelled and reported extensively throughout the Americas.

There is ongoing coverage as more information emerges from NYC Indymedia, global Indymedia. The most comprehensive source in Spanish is from the Centro de Medias Libres.

Brad's friends in New York are calling for emergency actions this weekend to demand that the US State Department press the Mexican government investigate Brad's murder and expressing solidarity for the social movement that Brad gave his life to document. In New York, a protest has been called for today, Saturday, October 28, at 3 p.m., outside the Mexican consulate general in New York at 27 East 39th Street.

Please come out if you can, and if you're in other cities please check your local Indymedia for information on local actions, or organize your own. The situation in Oaxaca is extremely urgent and while this awful tragedy hits very close to home for us, it is only one part of the ongoing repression against a vibrant and powerful grassroots movement for justice in Mexico.

Reader comment: TourPro says,

I've been following the story for a few months now on my blog: Link.

This is Brad Will's final footage from Oaxaca, Mexico: Link. It has been released under a Creative Commons liscense. Just over 16 minutes long it shows several interviews and ends with Brad's death. Also available as a torrent, here: Link.

Christopher Soghoian's stated intent with the "Boarding Pass Generator" website was to illustrate a well-documented airline security weakness that airlines and government failed to address -- not to commit fraud or help terrorists. IANAL, but people who are lawyers are no doubt examining the laws that may apply to his case, now that he has been visited by FBI agents bearing a search warrant, his computer and other belongings seized.

A number of legal areas may be at issue. Here's one. If I'm reading the current Homeland Security Code of Federal Regulations accurately, it would appear that even scrawling the words "boarding pass" on a cocktail napkin in lipstick and calling it a boarding pass could be cause for an unsolicited late-night visit, though intent is key. This section of federal law addresses the forging of airline tickets or boarding documents -- DHS Code Title 49, Volume 8; October 1, 2004 rev. [Page 302]:

TITLE 49--TRANSPORTATION

CHAPTER XII--TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

PART 1540_CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY: GENERAL RULES--Table of Contents

Subpart B_Responsibilities of Passengers and Other Individuals and Persons

Sec. 1540.103 Fraud and intentional falsification of records.

No person may make, or cause to be made, any of the following:
(a) Any fraudulent or intentionally false statement in any application for any security program, access medium, or identification medium, or any amendment thereto, under this subchapter.
(b) Any fraudulent or intentionally false entry in any record or report that is kept, made, or used to show compliance with this subchapter, or exercise any privileges under this subchapter.
(c) Any reproduction or alteration, for fraudulent purpose, of any report, record, security program, access medium, or identification medium issued under this subchapter.

BACKGROUND POSTS ON BOINGBOING:
* FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers (10-28-06)
* Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI (10-27-06)
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested (10-27-06)
* Website generates fake boarding passes (10-26-06)
* Slate's Andy Bowers on airline security loopholes (02-07-05)

(Thanks, 53(uri7y r3534r(|-|3r!)

Reader comments: Wil Wheaton says,

Doesn't it seem like the FBI is coming down on this guy with all the power of a fully-operational space station to make an example of him, and thereby silence anyone else who may get some crazy ideas like speaking freely about how ineffective the Department of Homeland Security is?

I wish the government spent 1/10 the effort tracking down really bad guys as they spend going after American citizens who use their constitutional rights.

This shit (and the martial law thing) are the scariest things I've read this Halloween season.

The boarding pass requirement at screening is primarily just to reduce the load on the security screeners: it keep others (such as friends/relatives waiting at the gate) from taking up the time of security screening.

The one problem is that the boarding passes are ALSO used to say "This person should have secondary screening". That the vulnerability, just reprint without the "SSSS", has been widely known since 2001, just suggests how little those in the TSA really believe secondary screening matters, especially since those who would get the secondary screening KNOW IN ADVANCE they will be screened.

The secondary screening is security theater, not real security anyway, so an easy way to bypass it isn't a real security risk!

Chris Warth says,

Hmm, maybe the FBI will start playing whack-a-mole with all these sites. You can print a Delta boarding pass at this site: Link.

Snip from his most recent blog entry:

I didn't sleep at home last night. It's fair to say I was rather shaken up.

I came back today, to find the glass on the front door smashed.

Inside, is a rather ransacked home, a search warrant taped to my kitchen table, a total absence of computers - and various other important things. I have no idea what time they actually performed the search, but the warrant was approved at 2AM.

BACKGROUND POSTS ON BOINGBOING:
* Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested
* Website generates fake boarding passes
* Slate's Andy Bowers on airline security loopholes

PREVIOUSLY AROUND THE WEB:
A number of people before Soghoian have pointed out the airline security vulnerability his "Fake Boarding Pass Generator" website illustrated. Among them:
* Bruce Schneier (2003): Link
* Sen. Charles Schumer (2005): Link
* Andy Bowers, Slate.com (2005): Link
* Jacob Appelbaum (2005): Link

Reader comment: Kevin says,

I'm pretty sure that you can bank on the fact that the FBI will be going through the IP logs to see everyone that visited that site.

Here's an article from Twin Cities newspaper with reaction from NWA (Ed. note: this one, not the one from Compton) to the Northwest Airlines Fake Boarding Pass Generator story: Link

Playboy magazine, June 1975...A gift-giving advertisement with ideas for dads & grads included this guy hidden in the back. The Calcron LED Wrist Calculator. Likely the first public offering of it's kind.

UPDATED BELOW.

Christopher Soghoian, who created the Fake Boarding Pass Generator website, claims to have been visited by FBI agents this afternoon at his home in Bloomington, Indiana, according to a security researcher with whom he was instant-messaging at the time.

This news comes just hours after Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) called for Soghoian's arrest, and for the takedown of his website, which generates phony Northwest Airlines boarding passes to illustrate an airline security weakness documented on the 'net since 2003.

Calls and emails I made to the 24-year-old computer science student after learning of the reported FBI visit were not returned. An iChat transcript provided to BoingBoing shows Soghoian claimed the FBI was at his door between 345 and 350pm PST. He stopped responding to incoming IM messages at that time, and has not responded to other incoming messages since.

FBI special agent Wendy Osborne declined to confirm whether Soghoian had been visited or if an investigation was taking place, citing FBI policy, but said "We will confirm that he has not been arrested."

Soghoian's Fake Boarding Pass Generator website was taken offline today, but other content on the same domain is still accessible.

Soghoian's personal web page states that he is a PhD student at Indiana University's School of Informatics in Bloomington. According to an online copy of his resume, he has interned for Google since June, 2006, and in 2004 served for a semester as a teaching aide to Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins who exposed security vulnerabilities in Diebold's electronic voting machines. Reached by phone this evening, Avi Rubin confirmed to BB that Soghoian served as his teaching assistant for one Spring, 2004 semester in a "Security and Privacy in Computing" class at Johns Hopkins University.

UPDATE: Ryan Singel at Wired News has been following this story, also, and has a report here: FBI Says No Arrest of Boarding Pass Hacker. Snip:

While the boarding pass generator, which was intended to point out flaws in airport security, is gone, other portions of Soghoian's website, dubfire.net, are still live. Soghoian's computer still registers as being online according to Google chat, indicating that the feds have not probably not confiscated his computer.

"I want Congress to see how stupid the (Transportation Security Administration)'s watch lists are," he said. "Now even the most technically incompetent user can click and generate a boarding pass. By doing this, I'm hoping (Congress) will see how silly the security rules are. I don't want bad guys to board airplanes but I don't think the system we have right now works and I think it is giving us a false sense of security."

UPDATE, 840pm PT: The "Slight Paranoia" blog credited to Chris Soghoian now contains two posts which reference an FBI visit:

3:54pm PT
FBI at the Door
The FBI are at the door. Off to chat.

7:12PM
Post FBI Visit
The FBI visited. They handed me with a written order to remove the boarding pass generator. By the time we were somewhere with internet access, the website had already been taken down. I am now safe (and no longer with the FBI). Still trying to find a lawyer.....

If you want to help, a good start would be to email Congressman Markey - who initially called for my arrest.

He is hardly the first or only person to have pointed out this flaw. Over a year ago, in February 2005, my NPR "Day to Day" colleague Andy Bowers wrote a piece for Slate.com titled "A Dangerous Loophole in Airport Security," which was also blogged here on BoingBoing. In the Slate essay, Bowers described the same security loophole which Soghoian's "Generator" demonstrates in code.

And two years before that, security expert Bruce Schneier outlined the problem in an issue of Crypto-Gram Newsletter item titled "Flying on Someone Else's Airplane Ticket," dated August 15, 2003.

Assuming that Schneier was the first to publish an outline of the security vulnerability -- that's more than three years during which the problem has been publicly known, but not resolved by either the airlines or government.

"The only way for these kind of problems to get fixed, are through through public full disclosure," Soghoian wrote when releasing the Fake Boarding Pass Generator. "TSA/DHS cannot be expected to fix anything unless they are publicly shamed into doing so."

MORE BB UPDATES:
* FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers (10-28-06)
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)

I received a couple of emails from YouTube this afternoon notifying me that a third party (probably attorneys for Comedy Central) had made a DMCA request to take down Colbert Report and Daily Show clips. If you visit YouTube, all Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park clips now show “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”

For a long time, Comedy Central has passively allowed the sharing of online clips of its shows—because let’s face it, it’s helped them generate the kind of water cooler talk that has made them a ton of money. In this Wired Interview , Jon Stewart and Daily Show Executive Producer even encouraged viewers to watch the show on the Internet:

Karlin: If people want to take the show in various forms, I’d say go. But when you’re a part of something successful and meaningful, the rule book says don’t try to analyze it too much or dissect it. You shouldn’t say: “I really want to know what fans think. I really want to understand how people are digesting our show.” Because that is one of those things that you truly have no control over. The one thing that you have control over is the content of the show. But how people are reacting to it, how it’s being shared, how it’s being discussed, all that other stuff, is absolutely beyond your ability to control.

Stewart: I’m surprised people don’t have cables coming out of their asses, because that’s going to be a new thing. You’re just going to get it directly fed into you. I look at systems like the Internet as a convenience. I look at it as the same as cable or anything else. Everything is geared toward more individualized consumption. Getting it off the Internet is no different than getting it off TV.

But apparently, all good things come to an end when there is money and attorneys involved. I assume the only online clips that will remain will have to qualify under fair use – probably short clips, with social or political importance.

Reader comment: skott says,

This post (on a fairly well-known comedy message board occasionally frequented by comedians some of whom have even had shows on Comedy Central) indicates that the network's YouTube nastiness doesn't just stop with clips they "own," but clips involving their big stars.

# You have tiny pathetic little videos that can’t be resized. It’s like watching the TV in the next room through the keyhole of a closed door.

# You use javascript to launch a popup window. Therefore, I can’t send a link to my friends or put a link on my blog to direct someone to the video I want them to see.

# Your popup window can’t be opened in a tab or resized. Give me control of my browser back.

# Your popup window has an obnoxious background that I’m afraid is going to give me a seizure.

# Next to your video, there’s an ad that’s bigger than the video (Firefox blocks it, but I’m still annoyed by the gaping hole that remains).

Shown here: William's catapult, which he calls "Ludgar, the Warwolf," hurling two gasoline soaked softballs across a parking lot.

The show is about Alexander the Great and his pioneering use of catapults in warfare. Link

But I don't feel as guilty now that I've learned that one of my cultural heroes, Irwin Chusid, also likes her music, and approves of the Hannah Montana Soundtrack.

As a 55-year-old AARP card-carrying male with a Seussian distance from kids ("You have 'em, I'll entertain 'em") and 30+ years airtime here at the hotbed of broadcast anarchy, I'm not Radio Disney's target demo. (On my 49th birthday, I sighed, "Advertisers no longer care about me"—then realized: When did they?) Hannah's lyrics evoke the hopes, dreams, and rockstar fantasies of prepubescent girls, but the music is captivating to these admittedly jaded ears. It's everything catchy pop should be: frothy, harmonic, propulsive, memorable—that is, it's formulaic. And irresistible. She's The Monkees in a pleated mini.

"The Bush Administration must immediately act to investigate, apprehend those responsible, shut down the website, and warn airlines and aviation security officials to be on the look-out for fraudsters or terrorists trying to use fake boarding passes in an attempt to cheat their way through security and onto a plane," Markey said in a statement. "There are enough loopholes at the backdoor of our passenger airplanes from not scanning cargo for bombs; we should not tolerate any new loopholes making it easier for terrorists to get into the front door of a plane."

On his blog, Soghoain writes:

In addition to calling for my arrest, the congressman may want to call for the arrest of Senator Schumer (D-NY). In April of this year, he posted rather detailed instructions for the exact same attack. See: here. Sure, he didn't produce a php script that'd do it for you, but he provided detailed enough instructions that a terrorist or evil-doer with basic computer skills could do it.

Perhaps he'll be my cell-mate.

When New Horizons arrives at Pluto in nine years, Earth will be a different place than the world the spacecraft left behind.

To mark that passage of time, The Planetary Society, in conjunction with the New Horizons mission, sponsored a contest for children and adults to send a message to future Earth - a New Horizons Digital Time Capsule of photographs of the world today to the inhabitants of 2015, who will witness the spacecraft's arrival at Pluto. Time is almost up to submit a photo, however, since November 1, 2006 is the deadline.

Participants whose photos are selected for the time capsule will be eligible to win a grand prize trip to New Horizons mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland to witness the Jupiter flyby in February 2007.

What will Earth be like in 2015? How will life on our planet have changed in those intervening years? More than a billion people will be born, and a billion die; new technologies could revolutionize daily life; the rapid pace of change will have transformed not only our own lives but also that of cities and entire countries. The New Horizons Digital Time Capsule will consist of photographs of things in 2006 that people expect will be transformed by 2015.

Photographer and Louisiana native Clayton James Cubitt tells BoingBoing,

Winter is bearing down on the Gulf Coast, and volunteers for relief are increasingly scarce, while vast need remains. There's a tiny little village called Pearlington, Mississippi, that's now all but forgotten, especially relative to New Orleans.

Pearlington rests eight miles inland. It's nine feet above sea level, but that didn't protect it from the 20-30 foot storm surge that roared up the Pearl River and washed almost every home away.

I've been documenting the residents and volunteers in Pearlington as they struggle with survival. The volunteer housing efforts there could really use some much-needed attention right now, as it looks like the (in)famous FEMA trailer program will be ending for most citizens as soon as February. What then?

One House At A Time is one of the organizations working in Pearlington to answer that question.

As Craig "craigslist" Newmark put it, imagine if you tried to order a pizza and the phone company said, "AT&T's preferred pizza vendor is Domino's. Press one to connect to Domino's now. If you would still like to order from your neighborhood pizzeria, please hold for three minutes while Domino's guaranteed orders are placed."

The cable operators' PSA is a dishonest, steaming pile of FUD about neutrality, calling it corporate welfare for dot-com billionaires who want you to pay more for their services. There's no rebutting this, it's just a lie.

Net neutrality is about whether telcos get to charge you for your DSL, Internet services for their DSL, and then each carrier gets to shake down each of those already-paying services for even more money for "guaranteed delivery." Talk about corporate welfare! These greedheads already get the priceless government-granted rights-of-way into our homes (imagine if every time a wire crossed a property line, the telco had to negotiate with the owner). If they can't make enough profits with that enormous gift from the public coffers, let someone else take over their wires.

Link (Thanks, Daniel!)

Syndicate leader Barry Waterhouse, 41, who works at the design and printing section of the university, explained that the syndicate had been doing the National Lottery for eight years without conspicuous success after it started in 1994 with each member picking his or her own line.

"We just weren't winning with the numbers being picked that way, so we thought of a different method which would mean all 49 numbers would be used,' Mr Waterhouse said.

The syndicate then set up a computer program to check the numbers every week.

It took four years and a total outlay of $8700, but on Saturday, the formula succeeded.

Matching the winning numbers and the bonus ball, they hit the jackpot.

"We just thought that if all the numbers are in use, we must have a good chance of winning and it has proved so, though you never really think it will happen to you, "Mr Waterhouse said.

Update: These guys aren't math geeks, just some guys who came up with a "system" and got lucky. Thanks, Joel!

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Image above: Link, by Vera Brosgol, via DieselSweeties. (Thanks, R. Stevens!)

His name is Brian Atene and he does not appear on the Internet Movie Database, so I guess he decided the movie industry didn't deserve his talents. He hardly shows up on Google either. This 7th grade class photo does look like him, though. Link

The US has led the world is brainless copyright extensions that doom nearly all creativity to be forgotten by history in order to preserve a few marginally profitable works. Will the UK let the US drag it along in another folly, or will it stand up for the right to learn from America's mistakes and go a better way?

The evening features a presentation from copyright scholar Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University; a panel moderated by John Howkins of the RSA and Adelphi Charter, and a DJ set mixed from public domain, pre-1955 music.

Should the term of copyright protection on sound recordings stay at 50 years or be extended?

This question has been hanging in the air for the last couple of years, with the music industry lobbying government for an extension on the grounds that the royalties they earn from old recordings are essential to bringing new acts to the stage and supporting ageing musicians. They believe that copyright term on sound recordings should be the same length as the copyright in the composition, which currently stands at life plus 70 years.

On the other hand, copyright reformers argue that term should remain the same in order to protect the public domain and to free the huge number of old recordings which are no longer commercially viable and therefore not being released by the record labels. They also argue that there is a greater economic benefit to allowing works to pass into the public domain after 50 years so that new works can be made from them and new businesses that specialise in niche markets can flourish.

Date Nov 13, 2006

Time 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Location
Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
London, WC1
United Kingdom

The next day, however, we could no longer deny that the bleach pumpkin had a serious problem. It was listing to the side and fluid was oozing from underneath, and the bottom of the interior was slime covered. We tossed it and turned our attention to the last two survivors. The control pumpkin had several moldy areas inside that didn’t seem to be spreading very fast. The Pumpkin Fresh pumpkin, while it had little mold growing on the interior, had developed a soft slimy spot on the bottom, similar to the one that had just eaten its way through the bleach pumpkin. This was going to be interesting. Who would hold out the longest?

Here, we present 100 of our favorite horror theme stories, from shows like Witch's Tale, Lights Out, Innersanctum, Quiet Please, The Haunted Hour and others. These are the very stories that inspired favorite Horror Comics and shows like Twilight Zone and Thriller! In fact, old time radio horror show, "Witch's Tale" is reported to have served as direct inspiration for EC Comics.

ICANN’s President gave high remarks on the policy Bulgaria has for Internet access and usage. He informed Minister Kalfin about the multiple business-oriented applications, and the effect of using IT in different branches of the economy.

Joichi Ito, one of the Internet pioneers in the development of blogs, spoke about the new culture and new opportunities, noting that the blogs are one of the most democratic tools for access to information.

Another topic covered was the improvement of the services about registration of domains in the .bg top level domain.

Minister Kalfin started his own blog, to be found at www.kalfin.eu, where he will be discussion issues about Bulgarian foreign policy, EU membership, etc. The blog is based on open source software - Wordpress, and is the first such an initiative by a Bulgarian minister. Mr. Kalfin invited Joichi Ito to become an author at his blog - an invitation that was accepted by the famous Japanese IT-investor and blogger.”

Update: Cat sez, "If the readers want to get a few of those Japanese cell phone-cell phone charms from an English site, here ya go."

The position is jointly funded by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth and George Soros's Open Society Initiative.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking for a European staffer to head up our new Brussels office and round out our international team. This is a new position focused on European Community level intellectual property and civil liberties policy initiatives that impact the digital environment. The position will be part policy analyst, part activist and part educator.

We are looking for a motivated and dynamic European with:

* excellent written and spoken English language skills, and fluency in another relevant language (preferably French or German or another major European language);

* well-developed public speaking and social skills, who can talk with a wide range of audiences including European MEPs and Commission staff, consumer rights and public interest groups, computer programmers and media;

* familiarity with current European Community IP and civil liberties legislative and policy developments;

* a solid understanding of the European Community's structure, main fora, decision-making processes and key personnel and committees that work in the IP and civil liberties arenas;

* strong policy analysis skills;

* a good strategic sense;

* maturity of judgment;

* demonstrated ability to meet deadlines and work with others remotely; and

* the ability to travel throughout Europe, and to the United States.

Denied access to the inner sanctum, I take an 8-mile detour to the nearest village, Ataganathippa, and claim a spot along the road with a clear view of the launchpad, amid an audience of ordinary people – farmers, fishermen, day laborers, and my rocket-engineer acquaintance, who has brought along his family. Jeans-clad engineering students from the local community college chat excitedly about how the new satellite could reduce the price of cable television. Suddenly a bright flash erupts in the distance. Huge plumes of smoke boil up from the ground, and a loud rumble rolls across the water. In a matter of seconds the rocket rises above the horizon and a group of young boys shouts, "Jai Hind! Jai Hind!" (Victory to India!) Climbing steadily, the rocket disappears behind a bank of clouds. The crowd is motionless, anticipating the engine's fading rumble.

But it doesn't fade. There's a thunderlike crack. Then chunks of flaming debris begin a slow, tumbling descent, tracing red trails back to Earth.

"That's not supposed to happen," says the engineer, his voice tense with disbelief.

Dr. Mo Ibrahim, the African billionaire who founded Celtel -- the cellular company that has connected the continent -- has launched a 5 million dollar prize to be given to the most-effective African head of state. The hope is that cash incentives for good governance might serve as a counter-balance and change the ways of those presidents that are instead ilegally making millions from oil, diamonds, illegal contracts and corruption. This approach got us private space travel, so here is to hoping.

Reader comment: Alberto Gaitan says,

In Janna Levin's (fiction) book, "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines," (Link) about Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, I learned that both those big domes had an obsession with Snow White which provided for what Levin has called "bleakly complimentary" suicides. Gödel died of starvation because he thought his food was poisoned.

this site has a few years worth of pumpkins carved by physics students - from Newton to Einstein with a few Star trek ones for good measure.

The Sudanese Government requires that anyone seeking to enter the Darfur area, or to take photographs or perform other journalistic functions anywhere in Sudan, must obtain a special permit. This includes journalists, photographers, and other press/media employees (...)

Failure to possess the appropriate travel documents and permits can result in the traveler’s arrest and detention for multiple crimes, including illegal entry, publication of false information, and espionage. If convicted, sentences range from deportation to life in prison or the death penalty.

Dr Adrian Rogers, of family campaigning group Family Focus said yesterday that the kit would "destroy children's lives".

He said: "Tesco is Britain's number one chain, this is extremely dangerous. It is an open invitation to turn the youngest children on to sexual behaviour.

"This will be sold to four, five and six-year olds. This is a most dangerous toy that will contribute towards destroying children's innocence."

He added: "Children are being encouraged to dance round a pole which is interpreted in the adult world as a phallic symbol.

"It ought to be stopped, it really requires the intervention of members of Parliament. This should only be available to the most depraved people who want to corrupt their children."

Reader comments:

Adam says:

I particularly liked the comment from "Family Focus" spokesman Adrian Rogers about "Children are being encouraged to dance round a pole which is interpreted in the adult world as a phallic symbol. It ought to be stopped". I wonder if he is so adamant about insisting that Children shouldn't be allowed to dance around the equally phallic Maypole?

Being an elementary teacher, I was pretty prepared to get uppity about the poledancing kit y'all just boinged...but on a deeper reading I found that, in the "panic the populace first, ask questions later" style typical of Brit journalism, the article completely overlooked the fact that the kit was in no way marketed toward children. The other allegations they make (like the push-up bra for nine year-old girls) are creepy (and unsubstantiated; there may well be very petite women out there with every right and reason to buy a push-up bra), but Walmart's been selling faux-whore couture for very young girls for years (while removing products like the girl's t-shirt saying "someday I'll be president" as "not family-friendly") and somehow America's evangelical overlords seem to think it's cute.

The essential problem seems to be a category error...the outraged parents automatically categorize all toys & games as "for children," and so assumed a clearly adult toy was "going to be sold to four, five and six year-olds." And who, one might ask, is going to buy it for them? Is someone giving a toddler a credit card and teaching her to shop online?

For the retailer's part, obviously they need an "adult toys and games" category. But mainly I think it's the "journalists" who need to grow up.

A couple things come to mind. The first is that 4, 5, and 6-year-olds don't buy things. They have things bought for them by older people who can make informed choices about the appropriateness of products.

The second is that (as far as my understanding goes) strippers' poles were invented for the pragmatic purpose of giving the dancers something to hold on to to precent them from bein pulled off the stage by over-eager customers. Phallic associations are a secondary artifact.

A quick Google search for “peekaboo pole” led me to their official website.

I thought someone ought to clarify that this product is NOT aimed for children. Rather, their products seem to be aimed at adults; "With your own dance pole the possibilities are endless!! You can boogie on down in the living room, spice things up in the bedroom or even liven up a friend's party!!" A customer's comment reads, “The most fun I have ever had at a Bachelorette Party, thanks to the Peekaboo Pole!”

I think this was merely a case of an extreme mistake in stocking, which the press turned into a sensationalized "Society is sexualizing our youngsters!" story. Of course the kit would be harmful for children, but that’s not who the product is intended for.

"This will be sold to four, five and six-year olds. This is a most dangerous toy that will contribute towards destroying children's innocence."

I think this is a terrible overreaction on the doctor's part. If a book on drinking games was accidentally shelved in the children's section of a bookstore, would this doctor say the same thing? That this "children's book"--although it is NOT a book for children, merely a book placed among children's books--will be sold to "four, five, and six-year olds" and "destroy children's lives?" No. It was an error. The Peekaboo Pole is not a “toy”. It was placed among toys. It was created with the idea in mind that it would be used by children. Sensationalizing at its best.

Join us as we celebrate the release of CRAFT magazine, the first project-based magazine dedicated to the renaissance happening within the world of crafts. We’ll be offering magazine giveaways along with D.I.Y. demonstrations, door prizes from Felt Club and Chronicle Books, plus snacks and drinks.

FREE.

CRAFT Launch Party
11am - 3pm
Machine Project
1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA 90026
213 483 8761

Here's a special edition of the "Maker File" - Colin Berry reads Spinout, the story he wrote for Make Volume 07 about his brother's efforts to build and race a car in the soap box derby in Longmont, Colorado. Unfortunately, he was up against more than just his own bad luck. Introduction by MAKE & CRAFT publisher, Dale Dougherty.
Colin is an old friend of mine, and I was really excited that he wrote this piece for Make. Here's a sample of the text version:

All his life, my brother, Kevin, was plagued with terrible luck. It began when he was a teenager, in the early 70s, in Longmont, Colorado -- our hometown -- and soon became something of a family legend. IThis was in the early 1970’s, in Longmont, Colorado our hometown and if the Trojan theater was giving away free tickets to Planet of the Apes tickets, the kid in front of Kevinhim in line would geot the last one. If Kevin sold enough newspaper subscriptions to win a clock radio, it was broken when he opened the box. If one of hisa friends shoplifted a pack of Odd Rods bubblegum cards on the way home from school, Kevin got collared for it. It was a pattern. He weathered it well, half-joking about his luck with his shy, gap-toothed grin, but over time it took a terrible toll.

In shop class, however, Kevin seemed to step out from its shadow. He was adept with tools and proved himself a skilled carpenter at an early age. I was seven years younger, and remember marveling at the first projects he brought home from junior high school: a varnished gun rack; a Newton’s Cradle, with its five suspended steel balls; a sturdy set of bedroom shelves for his Revell models. Looking back, it follows that the noisy, meditative setting of the woodshop would appealed to Kevin. It was, a place where no one was shouteding at him, and where no electronic parts could mysteriously fail.

I found a bizarre data on an official USGS database. It points to a place on Minnesota and the text says:

'Tell Him I Blame Him for the Children We Have Lost...' Aish-Ke-Vo-Go-Zhe

It would be interesting to figure out this puzzle.

Reader comments:

Jay has solved the mystery. The coordinates indicate where Aish-Ke-Vo-Go-Zhe (AKA, Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay or "Flat Mouth" ca.1774–ca.1860) perished.

A powerful Ojibwa, or Chippewa, chief in the Leech Lake area of present-day Minnesota, Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay, or Flat Mouth, visited the nation's capital in 1855 as a member of the Indian delegation from the Midwest. The tribal leaders were brought to Washington to negotiate land treaties. Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay spoke on behalf of his people in negotiating the cession of more than ten million acres in north-central Minnesota—a land package that included the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The Native Americans received more than one million dollars in funds and services, but aspects of this cession and others in the region continued to figure in government discussions with Native Americans for the next hundred years.

Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay (other English spellings are also known) means "bird with the green bill" in the Ojibwa language. "Flat Mouth" did not derive from this native name but was instead an English translation of the nickname "Gueule Platte," applied by early French traders. In 1911 Smithsonian Institution ethnologist James Moody characterized the great leader as "probably the most prominent Ojibwa chief of the upper Mississippi region from at least 1806, when he held council with Lieutenant [Zebulon] Pike...probably to his death, which seems to have occurred about 1860."

Jane McG says: "This mystery was just solved in the comments of the original blog post- woo hoo! The strange database entry apparently refers to an annual commemorative event remembering a tragic native american relocation effort.

Here is the full text found on the Web"

Mikwendaagoziwag— They are remembered
Sandy Lake ceremonies set for July 28

To remember those who perished at Sandy Lake during a failed attempt to remove Ojibwe bands from Wisconsin and Michigan in 1850, GLIFWC sponsors annual ceremonies at the Sandy Lake site near McGregor, Minnesota.

Ceremonies are slated for noon at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) site on Sandy Lake. Ceremonies will be preceded by a paddle across Sandy Lake to the ACOE site. The paddle will begin at 9:00 a.m. Following the noon ceremonies, all will join in a feast.

Everyone is welcome to attend and to participate in the paddle across the lake. For more information, please contact GLIFWC at (715) 682-6619 or GLIFWC’s website at www.glifwc.org.

“Tell him I blame him for the children we have lost, for the sickness we have suffered, and for the hunger we have endured. The fault rests on his shoulders.” —Flat Mouth, Leech Lake Ojibwe speaking of Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey

In Bude (Cornwall, England) today there was the sound of a huge explosion that caused huge cracks in at least one person's house. The thing is no one knows what caused it -- there is no obvious explosion site, and the MOD and RAF deny any supersonic planes were flying over that area. Although the Ministry of Defence have been known to lie sometimes, surely a sonic boom that could crack houses would have smashed everyone's windows too. It's a fascinating mystery.

Reader comments:

Brad says:

This has happened in the US as well. In April, I experienced it in San Diego and it was reported in the newspaper. Every agency or entity that could conceivably be responsible says it had nothing to do with it and though it shook my four story office building, there is still no explanation for it.

Leah says:

Writing in from Toronto to say that the same phenomena was reported to have happened here about a week ago, some time around 4am. I didn't personally hear it, but woke to the radio personality I listen to discussing it with his co-host. It was described as sounding like a sonic boom, and none of the city's emergency personnel could provide any information as to what caused the sound. Later reports during the day claim that people as far as Mississauga heard the same noise.

the exact same weird thing happend 2 years ago on the island of sylt, where i live, as well (july or august). i was sitting at the beach, where i work, in my hut and waited for customers/tourists.

suddenly the whole hut was shaking like crazy. coffeepots and mugs were falling down and all that stuff you see on the telly when there is an earthquake. it lasted 3 to 5 seconds. tourists.

i immediatly thought there is some freak/buddy below my hut (it sits on poles because of hightide) who is doing some hoax fun crap with the poles to wake me up or scare me, but there was noone. but a lot of people who looked very distrurbed. tourists.

everybody on the island felt this "earthquake" that day. but there was no officially recorded seismic activity, no highspeed mach planes faster than sound, no military testing or whatsoever. there was no mini-tsunami kinda wave as well from a possible sea-quake either. i grew up on the beach (33 now), i know how that looks. tourists.

everybody on the island of sylt who i know remembers that earthquake, but noone knows what it was.

regarding your post about the mysterious booms that have been happening around the world.

my mother used to tell a story of when she was a teenager -it must have been the early 70's- growing up on Bell Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. she was down in her parents creepy cellar getting something, when she heard and felt what she told us sounded like a sonic boom, followed by someone dropping a bag of marbles on the floor above.

thinking it a joke, she angrily ran back upstairs only to find everyone freaking out about themselves.

Apparently a lot of chickens just keeled over that day, as well as all the the glass covers on the electricity meters on the sides of houses were smashed.

Consider the body of the body in question. After a quick shake of the head right and left, she leans backward to begin her rotation around the pole. Her pivot points include her right hand, held fast to the pole, and her left foot (disastrously clad, we will soon learn, in three-inch heels). She now has a sizeable amount of angular momentum moving counterclockwise around the pole, and this can be halted only by an external force.

Unfortunately for our young dancer, the outcropping of wall her rear end soon encounters does not provide that force. Instead it simply serves as a new fulcrum, shifting the center of rotation from her hand to her hip. This does two things: Like a figure skater pulling her arms in, shifting the center of rotation closer to her center of mass acts to speed the rotation up. More important, it also means that her right hand must begin to rotate around the wall as well.

"Generator lead time for a nice 2 megawatt diesel engine is now up to a year for one generator," Josh Snowhorn of Terremark said in a panel at the NANOG conference earlier this year. "So we can build all the raised floor we want, and then sit around and wait six months for a generator."

Going Under is the story of a bright, home-schooled brother-sister pair who struggle with their love and resentment for one another, under the hapless gaze of their clueless parents. Hilly, the sister, got involved in the local high-school's paper and made her first outside-world friends, one of whom has recently committed suicide, shattering Hilly's life. Now her family struggles to bring her back from the dark pit she's fallen into.

I first started reading Koja with her ground-breaking, lush and literary horror novels like The Cipher. These baroque, grisly novels shocked and engrossed me, impressing me with their verbal pyrotechnics. I thought of Koja as a prose stylist first and foremost.

Then Koja started to publish slim, moving young adult novels, books that were written in a simple, bare-bones style that was more Hemingway than Marquez. It was then that I realized that beneath the prose-tricks, Koja wrote amazing characters, badly flawed people whom you loved and hated, who destroyed each other with their best intentions.

Going Under has that in spades. In spare brushstrokes, Koja sketches out several people, monsters, angels, devils and bystanders, each of them climbing out of the pages and telling you their stories. After a scant 120 pages (read all in one gulp of an afternoon), I felt like I'd spent a month living with her people, getting to know and love (or hate) them.

If you are or you know a smart young reader who's ready for something different, Koja's YA books like Going Under are like nothing you've ever read before. And if you're an adult, Koja's YA novels are a visit to the horrors and wonders of adolescence, a ticket to a world where young people aren't mere literary devices, but their own species, separate and whole; vulnerable and strong. Link

"It was the obvious entry point," says Penguin's Ettinghausen (avatar name Jeremy Neumann) as he shows me around the virtual sampler of Snow Crash. "We are always looking for new ways to connect with online communities and Second Life is undergoing a huge amount of growth. However, it is still a small community when compared with MySpace or iTunes and we wouldn't want to bring authors in who didn't have a connection with that world yet."

Penguin worked with the London-based virtual world design agency Rivers Run Red to create an in-world version of the book - this offers readers excerpts of the text, an audio clip and a link which clicks through to a dedicated Second Life page on the Penguin website, complete with the opportunity to buy the book at a discount. They are now developing a virtual bookshelf of other Penguin titles for the Second Life resident.

Update: Wagner James Au sez, "I wrote about that *Snowcrash* excerpt a couple months ago, with a pic of it in action. Also includes a recollection by a former Linden Lab staffer who met Stephenson, and told him about Second Life as his metaverse made manifest-- but got a rather bland response."

At start-up, the Trojan requests and loads a DLL from the author's command-and-control server.

This then downloads a pirated copy of Kaspersky AntiVirus for WinGate into a concealed directory on the infected system.

It patches the license signature check in-memory in the Kaspersky DLL to avoid having Kaspersky refuse to run due to an invalid or expired license, Stewart said.

Ten minutes after the download of the DLL, it begins to scan the system for malware, skipping files which it detects are part of its own installation.

"Any other malware found on the system is then set up to be deleted by Windows at the next reboot," he added.

BoingBoing reader Richard Alan Peters is Assistant Director of the Center for Intelligent Systems at Vanderbilt University School of Engineering. He teaches two courses there about image processing. Not long ago, he asked us for permission to use a group photo of the BoingBoing crew shot by Bart Nagel in a lecture slide about the mathematics of image manipulation. Nagel kindly obliged, and professor Peters in turn said,

I've decided that I'd like to make the .ppt lectures for "EECE-253, Image Processing" and "EECE-254 Computer Vision" freely available with a Creative Commons license that requires only that I get cited for their use. Do you know where a good place would be to make them available?

Here is a link to the slides from the intro lecture from my course, EECE/CS Image Processing (Vanderbilt University, Fall 2006).

I'm happy to make all of them available, but they are pretty large (e.g., this one is 16MB). I might be able to get enough webspace at Vanderbilt to put them up for public access, but I don't have it right now. Right now the whole set totals out at 340MB.

I used Bart Nagel's photo on pages 32 and 33 of this lecture. They are also in the lecture on the Fourier Transform. The slides look best and display best if viewed in full-screen mode with Adobe Acrobat (hit control-l that's little ell).

This photo [also] relates to a specific application of the [Spanish] word "nervio". Shortly after meeting my wife, she introduced me to the nuanced meaning that the Spanish word nervio had acquired in the lexicon of her family. As used in their Chilean home, the word could be defined as a feeling of such intense affection that one trembles or grits his teeth with restraint so as not to harm the object of his affection. I have heard others allude to the sensation in seemingly bizarre phrases such as, “It’s so cute [that] I want to squeeze it to death.”

Over at blogging.la, Sean Bonner says,

On Monday LA Voice linked to this LA Times story stating that LAPD officials had photographed and videotaped ambulances from Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center allegedly dumping five people on skid row over the weekend and were calling it a major break. Since then both NPR and CNN have jumped on the story. What's worse is that of the 5 cases from this weekend, at least one of them was not even homeless and other reported they did not want to be taken to Skid Row. From CNN:

In one case, a man dropped off at Skid Row was in fact not homeless, said Smith, the LAPD captain. A police officer took him home and the man's family was "outraged," he said.

"Not only did they not know that he was discharged, but the fact that he had been brought to Skid Row instead of being brought home was what further outraged that family," Smith said at a news conference Tuesday.

Reader comment: Bob says,

From Christine Pelisek's article in the LAWEEKLY, The Scourge of Skid Row: "Skid Row staph, or, more technically, a strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus that is sickening dozens of police officers, firefighters, health-care workers and homeless people."

In 2000 and 2004, problems plagued the polls in different parts of the country: long lines, eligible voters turned away, voter intimidation, misallocation and malfunctioning of voting equipment. They were underreported on Election Day. Days and weeks later, a more complete picture of voter disenfranchisement emerged -- but it was too late. The elections were over and the media had moved on. Starting this election, citizen journalists -- people like you and I -- will document problems as they occur. We'll play them online, spread word through blogs and partner websites, doing our part to make sure the full story of our elections is told.

Previously:
Legal guide for bloggers covering US Election Day

I don't think I've seen this mentioned on BoingBoing at all, but there's a very funny way to avoid the Diebold and related machines and have a paper trail. Vote absentee. In most states, there's no requirement to state that you will be physically incapable of reaching a polling place. More than 50 percent of King County (Seattle's county) voters now vote absentee. The county proposes eliminating all but a few polling places in about two to three years, which would also produce a relatively large savings.

There's two outcomes from this.

First, a paper trail is established for ballots. Ballots are still machine processed, but there's a paper, hand-marked backup. This defeats voting machines or tabulators that are programmed to cheat as long as a recount is required. In Washington State, a losing party may ask for a recount, and they are not required to pay if the recount changes the outcome or results in a change of more than certain percentage. This happened in our last gubernatorial election.

Secondly, it does establish one point of entry -- albeit heavily secured -- in which state-controlled malefactors could tamper with ballots. However, tampering with massive enough numbers of paper ballots over long periods of time involving sometimes hundreds of vote counters is a substantially more difficult problem than reprogramming weakly protected voting systems.

When I visited my polling place -- I haven't switched to absentee yet -- for the primaries several weeks ago, a poll worker said I could use a computer voting system, or a fill-in-the-bubble sheet. I opted for the latter. He said, "I don't blame you."

I don't know what every county does with absentee voting, but it's a very interesting analog response to a digital problem. Let's hack the vote by moving backwards to a more reliable paper trail, that has a long, long history of operation and thus is more transparent to abuse because of the many, many working parts involved. Absentee voting would also have solved the problems of disenfranchisement and intimidation in Ohio. I didn't hear any reports about absentee ballots being destroyed, stolen, or miscounted. (Perhaps that's the next strategy.)

Another benefit: the jurisdictions I’m familiar with typically don’t even open absentee ballots until after Election Day. If enough people vote absentee, it will let all the (insufferably hot) air out of the election night TV specials, which have become a bloated parody of kill-the-viewers-with-graphics sports coverage. There is something bizarrely attractive about the prospect of reverting to an electoral system not based on instant info-gratification.

Many people are turning to absentee voting as a way to skirt the issues with electronic voting but absentee voting eliminates many of the securities of the secret ballot and introduces a lot of room for fraud and coercion.

In nursing homes many people get "assistance" with absentee voting. An employer or controlling spouse could also easily interfere with the secrecy of an absentee vote.

I think since we already have a system with such limited secrecy we should eliminate the problems with electronic voting and give each voter a reciept or verification number so they can immediately go online and check to see that their vote was registered correctly?

Keep the curtains in place and make sure the law prohibits people from demanding your verification number and it will be the same level of secrecy as absentee voting with a much more reliable overall return. Link.

Just some more info on this matter: If you live in some counties in Utah you can register to have your ballot mailed to your house a week before the election whenever you are eligible to vote (this includes general and primary elections). It's not really absentee, but more of an early voting automation thing. More info at Link, and Link.

I am reluctantly, belatedly, but now utterly psyched about "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan". When I first saw the schtick, all I could think was: he's lifting this from Mahir "WELCOME TO MY HOME PAGE! I KISS YOU!" Çağrı, (shaking his hand at the 2000 Webbies remains one of the most awesome moments of my life) .

But all that's changed now. And between Borat's MySpace hijinks, the tons and tons of looks-like-homemade promo videos... this is the first big-studio movie that seems like it's nailing online viral promotion perfectly. How smart was Fox? MySpace, which Fox bought for $580 million, doing online street promotion for Borat, a Fox property... this is no "Snakes on a Plane" accident.

The first four minutes of the Borat movie are now online. I scour YouTube daily for new Borat junk, but I'm sure there's tons of other stuff I haven't seen yet: Link. Kazakhstan, I surrender.

Hollywood, four words: Borat/Mahir buddy flick.

(Thanks, Wayne Correia and Sean Bonner and Kathy Bakken)

Update: Defamer has an item today about Fox scaling back the number of US theaters screening Borat from 2000 to 800: Link. Contains the brilliant term, "neon-benutslinged." Points to this LA Times article, which reads in part:

Despite the slimmed-down release, "Borat" is almost certain to make money for Fox given that its production budget was a modest $17 million. Edward Douglas, who writes a box-office column for ComingSoon.net, said he expected "Borat" to open at $8 million to $9 million and ultimately gross $50 million.

WIRED: In the moc-doc, Borat is a globe trotting journalist, Are you also a man of letters?

Cagri: I do journalism as a freelancer sometimes. I go travel sometimes and take pictures video-write, meet people for documentary.

WIRED: Borat's signature is his mustache, didn't you rock it first?

Cagri: I start first grow mustache, 10 or 15 years ago. Sometimes I been no mustache. I am male and mustache shows a male mature.

We were invited [Ed. note: Dave, I believe you mean "invitated"] to the pre-screening of the movie.

I went to have a good time with my fellow bloggers, but I did not like the Borat role. I mistook it for making fun of Kazakhs, like so many other people do.

But the movie made me change my opinion 180 degrees. Borat confronts, and when you think he goes to far, he goes futher, trespassing social borders. And then futher. This is social horror. There were moments I was watching through my fingers, like I watched "The Blob" as a kid. And in the and it's very clear that the rednecks do think like Borat does. But they are real, Borat is a character.

This movie is a much more shocking portrait of the American society then Michael Moore's movie about Flint, MI. The Kazakhs need not worry. The joke is not on them.

To make matters "worse" all the Kazakh / gibberish spoken by Borat on the four minute preview is actually Hebrew. I wonder how that will go down...

Reader Kyle Goetz says,

I just thought it was interesting that on the map in the first 4 minutes of the movie that shows where Kazakhstan is has all proper Russian (you can easily see "MOCKBA" which is "MOSCOW" written in Russian Cyrillic), but the "Cyrillic" label for Kazakhstan is gibberish (says something like KFYFLYEFI). And then I noticed that Φ occurs many times in the "word." Someone used a Cyrillic font in Word or something and typed "kazakstan." In this font (some faux Cyrillic font), K=K, a=Φ, z=Я, k=л, s=ы, t=Е, and n=й.

Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Borat, is an observent jew whose mother was born and raised in Israel. While in character, he often keeps notes and interview questions in Hebrew for his reference, with the idea that it's extremely unlikely that his marks will recognize the language as anything other than Kazakh. Or whatever they speak in Kazakhstan.

Simon Baron-Cohen is Sacha's brother cousin and one of the leading authorities on Autism and also how the male brain differs from the female. I wonder does Sacha read his books :) Link.

Reader comment:

Max says:

Enjoyed your post about the kid stuck in the vending machine. It appears to be something of a trend, in fact. Check out the hilarious photos.

It costs $10 for the CD.

Here are some samples:

Hamburger Hamlet Two LA socialites tell all regarding a restaurant chain called Hamburger Hamlet.

Trailer Couple An old man forces conversation while learning to use a tape deck. He has no idea the way his conversation interacts with the music he is recording over.

BETA Video An awkward conversation, with pleasant pop culture references.

Link (Thanks, Julian!)

Lots of bloggers are planning to cover the 2006 general elections on November 7. But what are the legal issues that you need to understand?

Such as: Can you be in the voting area except to vote? (Not in Delaware) Can you ask people how they voted? (Not within 50 ft of polling place in Rhode Island). Can you take photos? (In CA it is illegal to photograph, videotape or otherwise record a voter entering or leaving a polling place). And so on.

Student Fellows at Stanford University Law School's Center for Internet and Society will be answering those kinds of questions and more in coming days. Do you have one? Ask it here. We'll compile and publish a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and post it before the election.

Please note that some election laws vary from state to state. We ask you to tell us your state so we can answer the questions based on the laws of your state. We will also try to answer the question for other states as time permits.

# If creative ideas are owned like physical objects, just like furniture, can I buy them at Ikea? And is it expensive for me to think of new ideas, because I have to pay for thought-materials and thought-warehouses and thought-customer-service?

# If people should be compensated for their creative works, and creative works are the same as ideas, why isn't anyone paying me for all the ideas that I have every day?

# If selling a painting on eBay makes an artist feel violated, does Sotheby's make them feel REALLY violated?

# If "good stories" are what brought up box office numbers this year, why is that movie list's mean RottenTomatoes score only 59.4%? (54%, 77%, 57%, 24%, 76%, 57%, 75%, 72%, 31%, and 71%, respectively.)

See also: MPAA's "MyMovieMuse" survey reveals interesting plot twist

In 2002, a 62-year-old French man with a history of mental illness went to hospital complaining of stomach pains. An x-ray showed he had swallowed five kilograms of coins, necklaces and needles; his stomach was so heavy it had been forced down between his hips. He died after an operation to remove the objects. In 2000, Edward Cope, a 33-year-old man with autism from Manchester, died from complications after swallowing 10 buttons, a drawing pin, pieces of chain and bone and a large amount of black foam rubber...

In one American study, 25% of patients in psychiatric care were found to have pica and it appeared in 60% of people with autism (pica tends to be a symptom of something else rather than a disorder in itself).

There are two main types of the condition, says O'Brien. "Food pica, where what a person eats is edible but is not prepared for eating - for instance, I have had patients who would eat a catering-sized tin of coffee powder or gorge on marmalade or potato peelings - and non-food pica, where people eat anything else. Once it starts, it can be difficult to control."

* All games must have been wide releases for legitimate, popular platforms.
* We tried to avoid games heavy on the Engrish. Translation errors are just too easy.
* So are educational games and porn.

Those limitations didn't stop them from hitting pure kitsch paydirt. Three of the best: "Booby Kids," "Nuts & Milk," and "Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt!" Link.
Heh, notice who made the game shown at left? (thanks, Liz Upton)

Reader comment: Alberto Gaitan says,

I can't believe they left out the 1982 Arcadia classic for the Atari 2600, "Communist Mutants from Space"! Okay, maybe cuz it's pretty awesome.

Halloween is meant to be scary, right? Year after year we dust off the old, silly, novelty records. While they are fun, they not at all frightening. Oddio Overplay put the challenge to musical artists the world over to create Halloween music that is "frightening, damaging and disturbing." No "Monster Mash," instead creepy soundtracks to a fiendish Halloween. They succeeded with CALLING ALL FIENDS, two hours of original music. Some of these pieces will creep you right out of your skin!

In the podcast, I asked Rudy why it's not as popular as it once was to do recreational programming. His answer was along the lines of "The Web sort of killed it." I think he's right.

But I got an encouraging note from a Boing Boing reader named Wendell, who says:

The mention of QuickBasic and the like toward the end caught my attention since I've enjoyed playing around with BASIC flavors since the 80s. There still exists a hobbyist scene for several modern flavors, including some with easy-to-use 3D graphics. Blitz3D and BlitzMax are my own choices, though DarkBasic also has a following. While the main emphasis is on making "mainstream" games with them, it's certainly easy to do weird (i.e. more-interesting) 2D & 3D things with them.

Here's some of Rudy's software: Link

Update: Ivan sez, ""but did they include the recipe?!""

Update 2: Fred sez, "The IE-team cake looked suspicious, what with the irregular white and black marks. The conspiracy theorist in me made me think about Morse code. I saw in the comments on the original blog that some people had looked at it and that there is no obvious morse code there. I couldn't be bothered to write a perl script to parse it depending on the starting place and direction of the message (cw or ccw), but it sure looks like some kind of message. I see, starting top left going cw, 'S E S / A T / (D:N:B) (U:V:A) / T N' I assume that someone else could properly decode this, so I suggest sending this as a challenge to all the would-be cryptographers and lovers of codes. What message has the IE-team hidden in the icing on the Firefox cake?"

Digital technology enables literally anyone and everyone to be a creator, an innovator or an artist -- to produce music, to create cutting-edge videos and photos, and to share their creative work. Digital technology empowers individuals to enjoy these new works when, where, and how they want, and to participate in the artistic process. These are basic freedoms that must be protected and nurtured.

The Digital Freedom campaign is dedicated to defending the rights of students, artists, innovators, and consumers to create and make lawful use of new technologies free of unreasonable government restrictions and without fear of costly and abusive lawsuits.

Final touches: The "eye" and two "ears" are pieces of carrot. Instead of the toilet plunger and paint rollers that the originals had, I used a hand-mixer beater paddle and a candy thermometer. I think that they both work pretty well. Overall, however, the shape is almost too round to be recognized as a Dalek. But, we are somewhat constrained by the shape of the pumpkin. With a bit of work, you could make a pretty good R2D2 by the same method. I hope someone else does that because I'm not planning to. =)

Now: Pimp your Dalek! Add one of those blinky lights that indicates when its talking. Download some Dalek voices, and put them inside the pumpkin with a speaker. The possibilities are endless!

The mythic, haunting history of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion will finally be told by voice talent Kat Cressida, the artist whose performance as the gothic "Black Widow Bride" was added in early 2006 to the Disneyland version of the Haunted Mansion attraction as part of park-wide enhancements made to the attractions during Disneyland's 50th anniversary festivities.

Disney aficionados will be pleased to hear that this is the first time that a telling of the "backstory" from the Haunted Mansion is presented being based on the story as it was told by the WED Enterprises "Imagineers" themselves back in the earliest days of the attraction's existence. For decades, Haunted Mansion fans have told tales and myths of the Mansion's storied history, with little more than anecdotal evidence to back their claims. Cressida's telling of the story will be pulled directly from her childhood conversations with her father, who worked with Disneyland's PR Department, and also worked directly with the original Imagineers who created this famed attraction.

See also Burning Man photos from 1998 on

# Before Universal Music Group announced a deal to give YouTube users the right to incorporate works from its catalog in the material they upload, its CEO Doug Morris accused YouTube, MySpace and others of owing tens of millions of dollars in copyright damages. (Though the Google acquisition has gotten YouTube off the hook, the same can't be said for defendants Grouper and Bolt.)

# Some who have sued YouTube for infringement have indicated they intend to challenge its eligibility for the DMCA's safe harbor on the ground YouTube is not a service provider within the meaning of the Act.

# EFF's Fred von Lohmann discusses the DMCA and YouTube.

# Lawyer "Ron from DC's" YouTube video looks at the Tur v. YouTube case.

# TechCrunch turned out to be right that Warner Music Group's deal with YouTube was a sign of things to come.

# Creative Commons: symptom or solution?

The Walking Dead is a zombie adventure serial about the survivors of a plague of walking, flesh-eating dead. All the usual zombie movie stuff applies -- lots of gore, you get bit and you die and then come back, hordes of creepy shamblers are everywhere.

What distinguishes this series is its characters, who are likable and deeply flawed people who are being unmade along with the world. Each character is stretched to the breaking point, turned into a monster, and then just enough of them are brought back from moral ruin to give you hope for the rest.

The pacing is incredible. I read five volumes in a day -- I couldn't stop. This was one of those books that kept me up until three in the morning, and then left me all spooked out when I finally switched off the lights.

Scary, fun, and gripping -- who can ask for anything more. I'll be reading this one through all the way to the end. Link

(I picked up The Walking Dead on recommendation from badass comics store Secret Headquarters, which is definitely worth a visit if you live in LA)

But yesterday, Adams reported that he hacked his brain and can speak again!

The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme. Rhyme was a context I hadn’t considered. A poem isn’t singing and it isn’t regular talking. But for some reason the context is just different enough from normal speech that my brain handled it fine.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack jumped over the candlestick.

I repeated it dozens of times, partly because I could. It was effortless, even though it was similar to regular speech. I enjoyed repeating it, hearing the sound of my own voice working almost flawlessly. I longed for that sound, and the memory of normal speech. Perhaps the rhyme took me back to my own childhood too. Or maybe it’s just plain catchy. I enjoyed repeating it more than I should have. Then something happened.

My brain remapped.

My speech returned.

Reader comment:

The Indian's headphone cord is quite long, because Waifer X points out that the giant iPod is in Australia. Link

"Michael J. Fox admits now that he stopped taking his medication prior to testifying before Congress," Hannity said. "You have a right to speak up, but he also has a right to be criticized."

Fox cut a highly emotional spot for several Democratic candidates, including Missouri's Senate candidate Claire McCaskill.

Limbaugh questioned whether Fox's very real physical tremors had been faked.

"In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it's purely an act," Limbaugh said.

Reader comment:

Barb says:

TNR covered the Limbaugh attack on Fox. Interestingly enough, they interviewed a doctor who says that the agitation is a side affect of the meds, not a symptom of the disease.

If so, admitting he stopped taking the meds means that his involuntary movements were LESS on the show than they would have been. Not more.

Why would Congress pass a law allowing such a thing? The answer is that it did not. But a U.S. appeals court ruled in 1998 that business methods could be patented, and since then the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued 50 tax- strategy patents, with many more pending.

I was listening to NPR's All Things Considered yesterday and this segment had me so enraptured I nearly had to pull over my car for safety.

The story of a family's dog and her addiction to getting high on toads.

The link goes to the written article, but the audio version (linked on page) is produced with well-chosen background music and narrative that it is the best way to experience Lady the Toad-Sucking Dog.

Update: Here's a torrent -- thanks, Christopher!

Update 2: Steve has extracted the URL for the stream, which you can paste into the free player VLC.

Totally autonomous, it collects, parses, edits and organizes news stories and then passes the formatted content to an artificial anchor for presentation. Using the resources present on the web, the system goes beyond the straight text of the news stories to also retrieve relevant images and blogs with commentary on the topics to be presented.

Once it has assembled and edited its material, News At Seven presents it to the audience using a graphical game engine and text-to-speech (TTS) technology in a manner similar to the nightly news watched regularly by millions of Americans. The result is a cohesive, compelling performance that successfully combines techniques of modern news programming with features made by possible only by the fact that the system is, at its core, completely virtual.

Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth. - Vernor Vinge

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer? - Eileen Gunn

It cost too much, staying human. - Bruce Sterling

We kissed. She melted. Mop please! - James Patrick Kelly

His penis snapped off; he’s pregnant! - Rudy Rucker

Internet “wakes up?” Ridicu - no carrier. - Charles Stross

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time - Alan Moore

Longed for him. Got him. Shit. - Margaret Atwood

Batman Sues Batsignal: Demands Trademark Royalties. - Cory Doctorow

Help! Trapped in a text adventure! - Marc Laidlaw

Bush told the truth. Hell froze. - William Gibson

Update: Mike sez, "There's a very active Flickr group that uses this philosophy in attaching six story-telling words to an accompanying photograph."

U.S. customs officials have the authority to scrutinize the contents of travelers' laptops and even confiscate them for a period of time, without giving a reason. Appeals are under way in some confiscation cases, but the law is clear.

"They don't need probable cause to perform these searches under the current law," said Tim Kane, a Washington lawyer who is researching the matter for corporate clients. "They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations."

Reader comment: anonymous border-crosser says,

What about encrypted drives and home folders (ie. TrueCrypt or FileVault on Mac). What happens to a citizen if they refuse to give up the password? Can they be arrested or legally barred from entering the U.S.?

It's been on my must-visit list for years, but owing to my recent obsession with building Dr. Strangelove- style control panels, my need became more pressing. So at last, I made the pilgrimage to visit Ed Grothus at The Black Hole, a remarkable place in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Ed is a former Los Alamos National Laboratory employee, and The Black Hole is his masterpiece -- an improbable but effective combination military surplus outlet, pacifist shrine, and "museum of nuclear waste."

Ed was on hand when I stopped by, so I had the opportunity to talk with him, watch his presentation on the perils of atomic warfare, learn about his plans to erect a pair of "Rosetta Stones for the Nuclear Age" in Los Alamos, and, of course, wander the aisles.

Reader comment:

Paul Alvarado-Dykstra says:

Per your Boing Boing post about Todd Lappin's awesome Flickr tour of The Black Hole in Los Alamos, I must also highly recommend the 2002 documentary "Atomic Ed & The Black Hole" (directed by Ellen Spiro and produced by Karen Bernstein), which is as fascinating as it is amusing. It aired on HBO and PBS, and is now available on DVD. A QuickTime clip can be viewed here.

Sid says that Wilkerson, Powell’s old chief of staff, believes that the correct number of victims in secret Bush prisons is 35,000, only 5% of which “may” have to do with terrorism. More than twice what I thought, and hardly any to do with the “war on terror.”

One year, I decided to build the coffin-where the guy is trying to get saying, "lemmeouttahere!".So, I went to Home Depot, bought some MDF particle board, some molding, etc. and built it. It turned out great-but it was heavier than Hell!!!!

Every year it was a big ordeal-I constantly had to get a neighbor or a good friend to help me move it into place.

I sculpted the hands. The lid was made from styrofoam. I built a mechanism inside that would open and close the lid. I put it on a folding card table and put a skirt around it and whah-lah! A coffin.

Link (Thanks, Scott!)

It includes footage of the Zimbabwean police and security intelligence services breaking up a peaceful demonstration by members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions (ZCTU) on September 13th. The police repeatedly beat the demonstrators, who are calling for the provision of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for the treatment of HIV, a minimum wage, and stabilisation in the prices of certain basic commodities. The bulk of the video involves interviews with the ZCTU members describing the events of the day, and the actions of the police. Ethan and Rachel Rawlins have kindly provided a transcript.

When news of the beatings originally leaked out, trades unions in other countries strongly condemned Robert Mugabe’s hardline approach with legitimate and peaceful demonstrations. Last week a court dismissed the police report on the incident, and postponed the trial of the ZCTU protestors until October 17th, to give the Criminal Investigation Department time to conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations of police torture. When footage of the protests was smuggled out of Zimbabwe on DVD to South Africa this week, it prompted the head of one of South Africa’s labour unions to say that she would give President Thabo Mbeki a copy of the DVD of the beatings in a meeting with him on Friday.

The server contacted is for a company that no longer even services the product. The product activation people do not answer the phone, even after a 6 minute hold period that consists of really bad techno music and product pitches, probably for more things that do not work...

Anything you ever buy that has "product activation" may stop being something you can use at any time, for any reason. Consumers are being raped wholesale by these companies when they invade our privacy with this method of copy protection - and thats assuming it even works in the first place.

The software does install great on a microwave oven, however...

Winner of numerous awards in the design and comic industries, Jordan Crane first emerged in the comic world in 1996 with the anthology NON. Crane edited, contributed to, and published Non, which has become known as that era's showcase for the most explosive young experimental cartoonists. The short lived series has been compared to Spiegelman and Mouly's Raw.

Crane's first self published comic novella, The Last Lonely Saturday (now published by Fantagraphics), is noted for well observed narratives that focus on the vulnerability and mystery of the human experience. Crane's work simultaneously has the feel of humble handcrafted objects made in the garage of a lonely teenager, and the sophisticated work of an artist at the height of his form.

A couple of times a week, David calls a friend and they'll talk about three items in the news, focusing on pop culture, technology, and politics. The discussions quickly spin off into delightful absurdity. I listened to all ten episodes (each one runs about 15-minutes) and frequently laughed out loud. Link| Subscribe via iTunes | RSS feed

While in Portland, I'm also giving a talk on copyright at Portland State University on November 16 at 5PM -- it's free and open to the public. Link to OryCon, Link to PSU talk

The book features a foreword by Al Gore and an introduction by Bruce Sterling, and begs to be taken out of its handsome slipcase and browsed. Link

Last December at an erotic-art exposition in Moscow, a woman was covered in whipped cream and men in the audience were invited to lick it off; the scene was later shown on late-night TV. The capital even boasts its first touch of Times Square raunch, at the Tramway Workers' House of Culture, which last month began playing host three nights a week to a nude revue featuring a striptease and a simulated sex act.

Nearly every night here for the past month, Iraqis weary of the tumult around them have been turning on the television to watch a wacky-looking man with a giant Afro wig and star-shaped glasses deliver the grim news of the day.

In a recent episode, the host, Saad Khalifa, reported that Iraq’s Ministry of Water and Sewage had decided to change its name to simply the Ministry of Sewage — because it had given up on the water part.

In another episode, he jubilantly declared that “Rums bin Feld” had announced American troops were leaving the country on 1/1, in other words, on Jan. 1. His face crumpled when he realized he had made a mistake. The troops were not actually departing on any specific date, he clarified, but instead leaving one by one. At that rate, it would take more than 600 years for them to be gone.

(...) The show’s title appears initially as “The Government,” but the Arabic words split in half to reveal the actual name, another crack at the country’s plight.

Reader comment: Bob Lee says,

He looks like Bootsy Collins! This clip from the Mighty Boosh brought it to my attention.

“Michael, could you hand Don the arugula?” April calls over her shoulder, looking up from the laptop that’s always near to hand as she cooks, loaded with an interactive diet-planning program that helps not only count calories but track the twenty other nutrients without which CR would just be a glorified form of anorexia. “Don, I need you to put 24 grams on each plate, please.” And so Don Dowden, attorney at law, commences weighing arugula on an electronic postage scale, carefully adding a leaf here, removing one there, like a drug dealer parsing out dime bags. Tall, dark-haired, craggy, Don gets by on a ration of about 2,000 calories a day and swears by its rejuvenating effects. “I used to wear glasses, but I don’t wear glasses anymore,” he says. “I don’t have 20/20 vision, but I can drive, and I can read the paper, and I’m 74.”

“You’re 74 years old?” I blurt, not so much astonished as simply confused. It’s not that I can’t see Don’s age in his face and skin, now that I know to look for it. But there’s something in the way his body moves, the way he holds it—an ease and an assuredness—that doesn’t quite square with the fact that he was born before FDR took office.

“He gets that a lot,” says Michael, a trace of glee in his otherwise quiet, clipped, north-of-the-border tone. April has him chopping asparagus now, while she continues crunching numbers. Tonight’s calculations are based on Michael’s caloric requirements, and those requirements are as strict as they come. Unlike April’s daily average of about 1,300 calories, which really is an average (she likes to go out drinking and dining with friends on weekends, and doesn’t mind enduring a few 1,000-calorie weekdays to save up for the splurge), Michael’s regimen of 1,913 calories a day is exactly that: 1,913 calories every single day, 30 percent of them derived from fat, 30 percent from protein, and 40 percent from carbohydrates. Cooking for him is the same elaborate exercise in dietary Sudoku it is for all CR die-hards, only more so.

1. The natives know best. Part of our inspiration at outside.in was the amazing rise of hyperlocal bloggers -- sometimes called placebloggers -- writing about their own communities. (Brooklyn, where we all happen to live, may well be the placeblogger capital of the world.) And so we've seeded outside.in with a list of about 500 placebloggers from the top 25 metro areas in the US.

2. The post's location is more important than the blogger's location. People have been creating maps of blogger locations for years now. (The NYC subway blogger map is one of our favorites.) But from our perspective, we're less interested in the location of the blogger than we are the location of what the blogger is writing about. So in our system, each item (a blogger post, or a link submitted by a user) can be associated with its own specific point in space.

3. Neighborhoods are more important that maps. We love the neo-geo movement as much as anyone, and continue to marvel at the amazing work being done with Google map mash-ups. But maps can often overwhelm with too much specificity. Most of the time when you're thinking about local issues, you don't actually need specific geo-coordinates or street addresses. You just want to know roughly what's happening around you. That's why we've made the navigational unit for outside.in the neighborhood. And if the neighborhood is too specific, you can always zoom out on the navigational map and see a broader view.

4. Geo-tags are only the beginning. Neighborhood content needs to be location-aware for it to be useful, but that can't be the whole story. It's just as important to know when something is happening, as it is to know where it's happening. So we've creating a simple tagging architecture for all our posts: what/where/when. This lets you create powerful filters for viewing all of outside.in's data: you can see recent crime reports within two miles of your neighborhood, real estate openings in your zip code coming up this weekend, poetry readings city-wide.

5. Local news often has a long-shelf life. One thing both blogs and traditional newspapers share is that they are organized around time, with the latest news given priority. But a lot of neighborhood information is news that stays news: a parent's comment about the science program at a local school is just as relevant six months after it was posted; a guide to gay-friendly bars could be useful for years. That's why outside.in is designed not just as a "latest headlines" service; it's also an evolving neighborhood encyclopedia, capturing all the things that have been said about specific places.

1 For large groups of trick-or-treaters, always set at least one child ablaze, ensuring enough light that other children won’t trip over uneven pavement.

2 Only separate shards of X-Acto blades from rodent poison once you get home; doing so in the dark will lead to inevitable mixups and tummyaches for youngsters with allergies...

To celebrate Mr Skilling's sentencing, the "Enron Explorer" offers access access to the whole corpus of 200,000 enron emails released during the fraud investigation.

The system generates a visualisation of each executive's social network and analyses the thematic signature of their communications. you can access each person's mailbox, read individual messages, or take a thematic slice through the archive. clicking on someone in the visualiser zooms them to the centre and loads their information.

My personal favourite from Mr Skilling is:

"Fuck you, you piece of shit. I can't wait to see you go down with the ship like all the other vermin. Smug, paranoid, unhappy mother fucker. Eat shit."

Update: Ben sez,

Further to that Enron Explorer story, a close look through the archives suggests that the "Fuck you, you piece of shit" email was sent by a troublemaker pretending to be Skilling, not Skilling himself.

Skilling had resigned as CEO when that email was sent from the Yahoo! address jeffreyskilling@yahoo.com, so it's something that he plausibly might have said, given that he isn't a very nice person.

However, Skilling was having his Enron mail forwarded to markskilling@hotmail.com and it doesn't look like the Yahoo address is his.

This message shows that whoever sent the "Fuck you" had entered the name "jeff lawson" when setting up the Yahoo! account.

Andy Zipper, the recipient, asks HR to deal with the problem:

And this message *may* represent the offender being found and punished (by his employer, an energy trading company):

"We pulled the log ... found the guy ... and told him to knock it off. Please let me know if there is a repeat performance."

This is part of Sony's ongoing, suicidal war against its own customers -- from installing rootkits on CD-buyers' PCs to threatening hackers with lawsuits over teaching new dances to their Aibos to re-crippling the PSP to lock out homebrew software. Great companies like Lik-Sang that exist to serve an early-adopter, passionate user niche are collateral damage in the war.

Thanks, Sony. I hope you lose a shitload of money on Blu-Ray.

Lik-Sang.com, the popular gaming retailer from Hong Kong, has today announced that it is forced to close down due to multiple legal actions brought against it by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Sony claimed that Lik-Sang infringed its trade marks, copyright and registered design rights by selling Sony PSP consoles from Asia to European customers, and have recently obtained a judgment in the High Court of London (England) rendering Lik-Sang's sales of PSP consoles unlawful...

A Sony spokesperson declined to comment directly on the lawsuit against Lik-Sang, but recently went on to tell Gamesindustry.biz that "ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera; is not - in PS3's case - backwards compatible with either PS1 or PS2 software; will not play European Blu-Ray movies or DVDs; and will not be covered by warranty".

Lik Sang strongly disagrees with Sony's opinion that their customers need this kind of protection and pointed out that PSP consoles shipped from Lik-Sang contained genuine Sony 100V-240V AC Adapters that carry CE and other safety marks and are compatible world wide. All PSP consoles were in conformity with all EU and UK consumer safety regulations.

Link (Thanks, Stewart!)

Harvard law-blogger David Giacalone wrote to the Gazette's editor about this, and got a scorching response:

My own attempt, by email, to suggest to the offending editor the error of her ways (by quoting the statute and referring her to two resources), resulted in an angry rebuff, in which I was accused of practicing law without a license, told that my email would therefore be forwarded to the Attorney General and the paper’s lawyer (who it was implied had okayed their statement denying Fair Use rights), and threatened with hearing from said lawyer, should I take any of their materials.

Free Culture USC is hosting a remix competition where you get your hands dirty remixing George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead into a 5 minute short in any style of your liking. The winner (or winning team) will receive a Neuros OSD open-source media player. Oh man, too cool!

We will be holding a screening/pizza party for all the shorts on Sunday, October 29th. This is where your short will first be screened - after the screening we will post them on our website for the world to see and vote upon! The winner will be announced the following Sunday (Nov. 5th) at the ‘Remixing the Archive’ Visions and Voices event at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, where hundreds of people will have the opportunity to see your work.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly. It defines the fundamental rights of individuals, and exhorts all governments to protect these rights. The UN has translated the document into over three hundred languages and dialects. This audiobook includes readings in 21 languages, by LibriVox volunteers.

The torn ends of the canvas can probably be lined up, and conservators can identify matching fibers on either side of the rip by inspecting them under a microscope. In general, you can expect the wefts in the fabric—that is, the crosswise yarns of the weave—to split at the site of the impact. The lengthwise warps tend to get stretched out, but they may not break.

Reader comment: Rich says,

The City Hochhaus/MDR tower in Leipzig is also designed to look like an open book. Of course it was designed and built in DDR/pre-unification East Germany, a country not known for its free and open exchange of ideas. Link.

Love the new book shaped building in Turkmenistan. But I thought I'd point you towards to wikipedia page for the truly freaky president of the country 'Turkmenbashi', who's not just your regular dictator, but an oddball of almost Bushian proportions. In addition to suggesting people chew bones to strengthen their teeth, he has a gold statue of himself which revolves to face the sun and has decreed that anyone reading his book/s of poetry will automatically go to heaven. The country/government's own website can be found here.

As an Update to the Turkmenbashi book building story you might want to show readers how much this glorious building resembles the Derek Zoolander School For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Want To Be Able To Read.

The UN's head of mission in Sudan, Jan Pronk [Ed.: that's him in the photo at left], has been expelled after writing in his personal blog that Sudan's army was experiencing low morale after suffering setbacks in the Darfur region.

So who wins here? Probably nobody. Pronk reportedly was warned many times to not post his personal views in a public forum (that's not good diplomacy, right?) and now the UN has to reassess its team and its stance in Sudan. The government in that country, meanwhile, looks foolish and has drawn severe criticism from around the world.

This may be the most extreme case yet of someone losing their position because of a blog.

Danh has invented a technique for printing found photographs (digitally rendered into negatives) onto the surface of leaves by exploiting the natural process of photosynthesis. The leaves, still living, are pressed between glass plates with the negative and exposed to sunlight from a week to several months. Coined "chlorophyll prints" by the artist, the fragile works are encapsulated and made permanent through casting them in solid blocks of resin. By conjoining his process into his conceptual ideas so completely, Danh is also able to reference the history and technical developments of photography.

He says of his work, "Throughout my education, I have always been very attracted to Art, History, and Science. The histories I search for are the hidden stories embedded in the landscape around me. The processes used in my work represent my interest in the sciences and photographic techniques."

America, founded in secularism as a beacon of eighteenth century enlightenment, is becoming the victim of religious politics, a circumstance that would have horrified the Founding Fathers. The political ascendancy today values embryonic cells over adult people. It obsesses about gay marriage, ahead of genuinely important issues that actually make a difference to the world. It gains crucial electoral support from a religious constituency whose grip on reality is so tenuous that they expect to be 'raptured' up to heaven, leaving their clothes as empty as their minds. More extreme specimens actually long for a world war, which they identify as the 'Armageddon' that is to presage the Second Coming. Sam Harris, in his new short book, Letter to a Christian Nation, hits the bull's-eye as usual:

"It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver-lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ... Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."

Does Bush check the Rapture Index daily, as Reagan did his stars? We don't know, but would anyone be surprised? My scientific colleagues have additional reasons to declare emergency. Ignorant and absolutist attacks on stem cell research are just the tip of an iceberg. What we have here is nothing less than a global assault on rationality, and the Enlightenment values that inspired the founding of this first and greatest of secular republics. Science education - and hence the whole future of science in this country - is under threat. Temporarily beaten back in a Pennsylvania court, the 'breathtaking inanity' (Judge John Jones's immortal phrase) of 'intelligent design' continually flares up in local bush-fires. Dowsing them is a time-consuming but important responsibility, and scientists are finally being jolted out of their complacency. For years they quietly got on with their science, lamentably underestimating the creationists who, being neither competent nor interested in science, attended to the serious political business of subverting local school boards. Scientists, and intellectuals generally, are now waking up to the threat from the American Taliban.

Background:

Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the author of nine books, including The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and The Ancestor's Tale. His new book, The God Delusion, published last week by Houghton Mifflin, is already a NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, and his Foundation for Reason and Science launched at the same time (see RichardDawkins.net).

Reader comment: Andrew Tonkin says,

Richard Dawkins was on Stephen Colbert last night, and namedropped the FSM: Link. Long Salon interview: Link.

MP3 link (64 kbps) | Subscribe via iTunes | Internet Archive page | Get Illuminated 001 | Get Illuminated 002

powered by ODEO

On May 24, lawyers for Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures convinced a federal judge in San Francisco to issue a subpoena requiring YouTube to turn over details about a user who uploaded dialog from the movie studio's "Twin Towers," according to a copy of the document.

YouTube promptly handed over the data to Paramount, which on June 16 sued the creator of the 12-minute clip, New York City-based filmmaker Chris Moukarbel, for copyright infringement, in federal court in Washington.

That YouTube chose to turn over the data, rather than simply remove the offending video from its site -- as it did Friday when it agreed to take down 30,000 videos at the request of a group of Japanese media companies -- came as a surprise to copyright experts.

"YouTube seems to have given up too easily," said Laurence P. Colton, an intellectual-property lawyer at the firm of Powell & Goldstein LLP in Atlanta. Its prompt legal capitulation suggests that YouTube users who post copyrighted material should not expect the company to protect them from media-business lawsuits[.]

Update: Fred Von Lohmann from the EFF says,

The problem here is with the DMCA, not with YouTube's privacy practices. In that law, Congress gave copyright owners the power to get subpoenas that force online hosting service providers (like YouTube) to identify users who are accused of infringement. (In the RIAA v. Verizon case, Verizon successfully argued that these subpoenas can't be used against traditional "conduit" ISPs that simply carry bits for users, but the law clearly authorizes these subpoenas against hosting providers like YouTube.)

Furthermore, the underlying dispute referenced in the MarketWatch story, involving a 12-minute video short based on the script for Oliver Stone's film, World Trade Center, was apparently settled some time ago.

So, all in all, a pretty poor piece of reporting by Market Watch, I'm afraid. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of issues here -- just not the ones MarketWatch is going on about.

Reading the story about Chris Moukarbel, who YouTube narked out to Paramount, I was curious what "uploaded dialogue" from another film meant.

Here is a WaPo story from June. What Moukarbel did was take a leaked early script of "Twin Towers" and make a version of a segment of it:

"But as a 28-year-old filmmaker, Moukarbel wanted to do more than simply watch Stone's "World Trade Center." He decided to create his own version -- using a bootleg copy of the screenplay and Yale University student actors -- and offer it free on the Internet.

Although his film is only 12 minutes long and doesn't have a cast to rival Nicolas Cage and Maria Bello, it has brought the power of Hollywood down on him."

So someone makes a fan film before the movie is released, and Paramount has a fit? They actually claim in the WaPo story that people would have confused Moukarbel's no-budget film with Oliver Stone's $40 million version. *Gag*

This post is timely: Chris Moukarbel has some other work in a show, opening this Thursday (the 26th) at Marianne Boesky Gallery. 509 west 24th, NYC.

Link (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Link to more images, here's more info, and sixspace is selling $10 print catalogs for the show (thanks, Sean and Caryn).

Young Nkululo Mnisi - whose arms and legs were cut off by machete-wielding rebels - used to be taunted by cruel classmates as "baboon" because of the way he ran on his stumps and crutches. Mnisi told a South African newspaper that the dream that kept him going was the promise of getting artificial limbs so he'd be able to play soccer like a normal child.

But months after filming ended, Mnisi and his fellow amputees were still waiting. When they asked Warner Bros. about the promised prosthetics, they were allegedly told, "You will have to wait for December, when the movie comes out, so we can get some publicity out of it."

June 26, 1997, was a big day for me, and a big day for Nerve, for two reasons: (1) it was the day the Supreme Court made its decision on Reno vs. ACLU, which effectively overturned the Communications Decency Act, and (2) it was the day that we launched Nerve (then nervemag.com).

This was not a complete coincidence — we delayed our launch for a week to coincide with the ruling, and consider ourselves in some ways a creature of that decision. Don't get me wrong — we would have published Nerve irrespective of that ruling. We were young and fearless, and we also understood that the government would be relatively foolish to go after some idealistic bespectacled kids publishing "literate smut," were the act to be passed. However, we also understood that this was an important decision supporting critical First Amendment rights, and that laws criminalizing what we do every day are not a good thing. Every day since, we have taken great pleasure bringing you lewd and salacious content, baked fresh daily and inappropriate for minors.

Now, nine years later, I am sitting in a hotel room about to go on the stand as the first plaintiff in ACLU vs. Gonzales, Civil Action No. 98-CV-5591, better known as the Child Online Protection Act case. Despite repeated drubbings by the ACLU over the years, the Department of Justice is continuing its efforts to criminalize the publication of content "inappropriate for minors" online — they are, in my view, attempting to put the entire nation back in nursery school.

An AP item about the trial is here. And here's a related item from CIO.com (IDG News Service). (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Now that habeas corpus and other basic rights, including the right not to be tortured while interrogated, have now been deemed unnecessary, more Americans than ever have been thinking of getting out the door while they still can. Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America (Process Books, January 2007) provides an informed consideration for all potential expats: where to go, how to get there, and how to live best outside the U.S.

An emigrant to Berlin himself, author Mark Ehrman breaks down the top 50 expat countries and offers true-life tales from American expatriates worldwide, documenting their experiences and compiling all the best tricks to help the process go as smoothly as possible.

Getting Out is the second volume in Process’ Self-Reliance Series, a new series aimed at helping urbanites make smart choices to live sustainably and self-sufficiently in the 21st century.

They call it the “Johnny Carson attack,” for his comic pose as a psychic divining the contents of an envelope. Tom Heydt-Benjamin tapped an envelope against a black plastic box connected to his computer. Within moments, the screen showed a garbled string of characters that included this: fu/kevine, along with some numbers.

Mr. Heydt-Benjamin then ripped open the envelope. Inside was a credit card, fresh from the issuing bank. The card bore the name of Kevin E. Fu, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was standing nearby. The card number and expiration date matched those numbers on the screen.

The demonstration revealed potential security and privacy holes in a new generation of credit cards — cards whose data is relayed by radio waves without need of a signature or physical swiping through a machine. Tens of millions of the cards have been issued, and equipment for their use is showing up at a growing number of locations, including CVS pharmacies, McDonald’s restaurants and many movie theaters.

The card companies have implied through their marketing that the data is encrypted to make sure that a digital eavesdropper cannot get any intelligible information. American Express has said its cards incorporate “128-bit encryption,” and J. P. Morgan Chase has said that its cards, which it calls Blink, use “the highest level of encryption allowed by the U.S. government.”

But in tests on 20 cards from Visa, MasterCard and American Express, the researchers here found that the cardholder’s name and other data was being transmitted without encryption and in plain text. They could skim and store the information from a card with a device the size of a couple of paperback books, which they cobbled together from readily available computer and radio components for $150.

And here is a related post from the guys who did the hack on RFID-cusp blog. (Thanks, Tom Heydt-Benjamin).

Consumerist has a post worth reading here.

Anti-RFID activist group CASPIAN has a response here (see also these previous BB posts about the group's founder, Katherine Albrecht).

Image: "Tom Heydt-Benjamin, left, and Kevin Fu, a University of Massachusetts professor, cull information from a credit card with a card reader." Shot by Nancy Palmieri for The New York Times.

Reader comment: Aaron says,

Since I have a Chase RFID enabled card, I've read about things like this before. One bit of useful info to pass along to other readers who have these cards is that the radio signal can be easily blocked with as little as a sheat of tinfoil or the anti-static material (like what an EZ-Pass ships in.) Putting a bit of foil or anti-static material between your card and the outside of your wallet will block potential ID thieves.

Although I don't have one of these new RFID credit cards, I have been using an Altoids tin as a wallet for almost three years now. Guess I was just planning ahead.

Here is a toy of Simon the chipmunk from the 1960s cartoon series [Top]. It is a well made toy. It has a solid recognizable form and the details are fairly cute and tasteful. It is a nice happy thing to give a kid (or a grown up nerd like me). Whoever made the toy liked kids and was kind to them by making something cute and fun. The sculptor did what was once obvious to people -- make things well and make them with a purpose in mind -- in this case -- make a cute toy because kids like cute toys. Logic and common sense -- foreign concepts today.

Here's a version of supposedly the same character from the 1980s [Bottom]. What's the difference? No form. No taste. Ugly, sloppy and wrinkly. Whoever makes modern toys for kids doesn't understand the concept of toys and cartoon characters. They are supposed to be made to make kids happy. That means cute and appealing and with a distinct shape and form. In order to be appealing, you have to have form and design. It doesn't seem to exist anymore.

The bastards that make shit like this must hate kids. Either that or they are just plain retarded.

I found this rain gutter capped on both ends. I wasn't surprised to find decayed material inside.

Dale Hrabi of Radar Online just posted this lineup of purses only a (fashion zombie) mother could love and the classic horror movie monsters that inspired them. I have a brown fur handbag that looks like Chewbacca. At least it doesn't look like a "charmless alien man-hunter."

Ekman, 72, lives in Oakland, Calif., in a bright and airy house near the bay. As I talked with him there, he studied me, his eyes peering out from under bushy brows as if they were registering each brief facial tic I unknowingly exhibited. Does his talent make him a mind reader? "No," he says candidly. "The most I can do is tell how you are feeling at the moment but not what you are thinking." He is not being modest or coy; he is simply addressing the psychological bottom line behind facial expressions: "Anxiety always looks like anxiety," he explains, "regardless of whether a person fears that I'm seeing through their lie or that I don't believe them when they're telling the truth."

The professor calls the ever present risk we all take of misreading a person's visage "Othello's error." In Shakespeare's drama, Othello misinterprets the fear in his wife Desdemona's face as a sign of her supposed infidelity. In truth, the poor woman is genuinely alarmed at her husband's unjust, jealous rage. Othello's subsequent decision to kill Desdemona is a fatal error, and Ekman wants to make sure that police, security personnel and secret service agents do not make the same mistake. "Arresting the guilty is a good thing," he acknowledges, "but decreasing the number of innocent people who are falsely accused is just as important." His system for understanding the emotions that faces portray, and his expertise in applying it, could help all kinds of law-enforcement and legal personnel in their work. It could also help the rest of us better negotiate how our family members, friends and colleagues really feel.

Geller, 59, declined to elaborate on what supernatural skills the contestants claim to have, and whether clairvoyants -- who might be assumed to have an edge in predicting judges' votes -- are taking part. He described the prize, simply, as "huge"...

"This is not a show where people have to prove to me that they are for real," Geller said, adding that he has no plans to retire. "I just want to be amazed."