"It's a great connection with home for the students, and a way to de-institutionalize a college food service program," said J. Michael Floyd, food service director at the University of Georgia, which pioneered the approach 20 years ago with its annual Taste of Home competition...

From hundreds of entries that are taste-tested each year, Georgia has selected such winners as eclair squares, poppy seed chicken and bulldog punch bowl cake.

At Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, barbecued salmon and Thai eggplant dishes had their start in students' homes, as did the Ukrainian apple nut squares and whole-wheat cheddar buns.

Where: Ukrainian Cultural Center LA, 4315 Melrose Ave at Heliotrope
When: Sat, Dec 9, Noon-7PM

Link, Flickr Felt Club photos

There's more harm to this than the direct harm to individuals who post links that Fox doesn't like. Even worse is the chilling effect on people who write the Web, the fear that they're going to come under a legal hammer unless they validate the copyright status of every link they make (imagine if Google held itself to this standard! No Blogger, no search-results, no Google Groups).

Some Wikipedia editors have now taken the position that all links to YouTube clips and any other material whose copyright status can't be validated (that is, practically every single page on the Internet) should be ripped out of Wikipedia. That means that an entry about Stephen Colbert couldn't link to fair-use excerpts of his White House Press Corps speech; that an entry about the Katrina disaster couldn't link to eyewitness videos, and so on. Link (Thanks, Adam!)

However, Warner Music and the other big labels routinely sue the families of children who download music for their entire life's savings. That, in Bronfman's view, is the "consequences" of "stealing music" -- so did he turn over his entire life's savings to his employer?

We asked Edgar Bronfman, the head of the world’s fourth largest music company, at the Reuters Summit whether any of his seven kids stole music.

“I’m fairly certain that they have, and I’m fairly certain that they’ve suffered the consequences.”

We couldn’t begin to guess what that means. He explained to our Second Life reporter, Adam Pasick:

“I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.”

Great, but what did he do to them?

“I think I’ll keep that within the family.”

Update: Brad sez, "The Kids in the Hall perform a hilarious sketch that covers some of the same ground as the 'Sexual Consent' video, albeit before the proposed date even happens. Best line: 'That's panty-peeler and you know it!'"

In the comments section of Robyn's blog, a reader questioned the authenticity of these photos, suggesting the images may have been altered to make the horses appear longer than they really were. But Robyn replied: "Oh no, I assure you, they are absolutely real. Their demise is a sad one. A lesson indeed for future generations!" Link

Reader comment:

Some people have written to tell me that long horses aren't real. But if you read the comments section of Tinselman's blog post, you will read first-hand accounts of people who walked among these gentle giants. For example:

When I was in the Army in Italy in 1944 I saw a long horse that unfortunately had to be put down after a minor shrapnel wound to it's leg. So remarkly big and docile, she was. Her owner wept when we shot her at his request.

Nick Green, animal collection officer for the RSPCA, said: "Wild seals don't like being around humans at all, but this one seemed really quite tame, which suggests he could have been a pet..."

The fake products and their descriptions in the SkyMaul catalog are exactly like the ones you'd find in the SKyMall catalog, except they're wet-your-pants funny.

I don't usually like magazine parodies (Pre-1980 National Lampoon was the only publication that could do a funny, dead-on magazine parody), so when Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America sent this to me, I wasn't expecting much, but I was hooked from the very first product (Reality-Canceling Headphones from the Image Sharpener: "Using a simple principle called "science," the professor was able to invent headphones that block all the bullshit and responsibilities in your life. You can still hear things such as the microwave going off but not babies or the doorbell or dogs.") and couldn't stop reading it until I got to the last (A "Bettering your WordPower" audio CD set: "We will send you 2 of the first 200 CDs, packed with two hours of crippling content; including the "top gun" words, the vocabulary principals overview, and a VHS tape called Nature's Killers where an orca throws a sea lion around like a rag doll. You will shit at how powerful these whales are, and how cruel.")

Just looking it is making me laugh again. There's the "Hitler-Turning-into-Werewolf Nightlight" for your baby, a Divorced Dad "Pancake Time" Trumpet, Christian Over-the-Clothes Massage Lotion, a combination Retirement Crutch/Metal Detector, a Tiger Arm Extender, and lots more.

It was written by the comedy group, Kasper Hauser, which has a podcast produced by Jesse. Link

The thing about an e-book is that it's a social object. It wants to be copied from friend to friend, beamed from a Palm device, pasted into a mailing list. It begs to be converted to witty signatures at the bottom of e-mails. It is so fluid and intangible that it can spread itself over your whole life. Nothing sells books like a personal recommendation--when I worked in a bookstore, the sweetest words we could hear were "My friend suggested I pick up...." The friend had made the sale for us, we just had to consummate it. In an age of online friendship, e-books trump dead trees for word of mouth.

There are two things that writers ask me about this arrangement: First, does it sell more books, and second, how did you talk your publisher into going for this mad scheme?

There's no empirical way to prove that giving away books sells more books--but I've done this with three novels and a short story collection (and I'll be doing it with two more novels and another collection in the next year), and my books have consistently outperformed my publisher's expectations. Comparing their sales to the numbers provided by colleagues suggests that they perform somewhat better than other books from similar writers at similar stages in their careers. But short of going back in time and re-releasing the same books under the same circumstances without the free e-book program, there's no way to be sure.

What is certain is that every writer who's tried giving away e-books to sell books has come away satisfied and ready to do it some more.

Has the willingness of the greater scientific establishment to listen to or respond to your work substantially changed since the late-60s?

Yes, it has increased positively. Many childhood fans of cryptozoology are now professors in universities...

Which cryptid mysteries do you think are most likely to be settled in the public eye in the next couple decades?

The discovery of a new Asian great ape, whether it is the Orang Pendek in Sumatra, the Ebu Gobo in Indonesia, or an unknown orang in China, will occur, I think, in the next 25 years.

TokyoFlash's Christian sez, "please also mention that as a thank you to all our customers we are running a Christmas giveaway. The prizes are a Playstation 3 with 2 games and 10 watches."

Link

The below links are specific examples of quicksilverscreen.com web pages linking to video files that infringe upon Fox’s intellectual property rights. Fox hereby demands that quicksilverscreen.com promptly remove and disable the links to all unauthorized copies of Fox Properties on the quicksilverscreen.com website of which it is aware, including the infringing links identified below:

I'll tell you what is illegal, though: sending fraudulent takedown notices. Diebold was hammered by the courts for sending out DMCA takedown notices for something that isn't copyright; now career troll Michael Crook faces a similar fate.

I'd love to see Fox creamed over this, too. Link (Thanks, Steve!)

Update: EFF senior IP attorney Fred von Lohmann sez, "Whether linking to infringing materials can itself create copyright liability is still a somewhat murky question. Some cases suggest that linking to material you have reason to know is infringing (i.e., after the copyright owner notifies you that the material you're linking to is infringing) can give rise to liability (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry), while other cases point the other way (Perfect 10 v. Google). Of course, I think the latter cases have the better of the argument. But one thing is clear -- the DMCA's 'safe harbors' for online service providers (OSPs) give linkers a strong incentive to remove links upon receiving a DMCA takedown notice, because if they do so, they are protected from paying damages in any copyright infringement case. That's one of the problems with the DMCA safe harbors -- because OSPs have such a strong incentive to simply comply with takedown notices, courts get fewer chances to decide the underlying copyright questions, like whether linking to stuff on YouTube is infringing. So things stay murky. "

Once it got out that the MPAA had made its "pirated" copy of Dick's movie, one of the MPAA's lawyers called Dick up to admit that the cartel had indeed made an infringing copy, but not to worry, "The copy is safe in my vault."

At this point, I raised my hand and asked if Dick thought anyone caught downloading movies from the Internet could get off the hook by saying, "Don't worry, I keep my copies safe in my vault?" Link

Pretexting was used in Hewlett-Packard's crooked investigation into boardroom leaks, in which board-members, journalists and others had their privacy invaded by HP's investigators.

The MPAA opposes the bill because they want to have a broad arsenal of tools available to them as they attack movie-lovers who share films online.

Ira Rothken, a prominent technology lawyer defending download search engine TorrentSpy against a movie industry copyright suit, says he didn't know about the lobbying, but can guess why the MPAA got involved. Rothken is suing (.pdf) the MPAA for allegedly paying a hacker $15,000 to hack into TorrentSpy's e-mail accounts.

"It doesn't surprise me that the MPAA would be against bills that protect privacy, and the MPAA has shown that they are willing to pay lots of money to intrude on privacy," Rothken said. "I do think there needs to be better laws in place that would deter such conduct and think that it would probably be useful if our elected officials would not be intimidated by the MPAA when trying to pass laws to protect privacy."

Instead of writing a draft and “looking it over,” it’s much smarter to break down the work of writing and editing by thinking about one thing at a time. Developing a strong thesis statement: that’s one task. Working out a sequence of paragraphs to develop that thesis: another task. Figuring out how to make a transition from one paragraph to another: another task. If you tend to have patterns of errors in your writing, look for each kind of error, one at a time. Noun-pronoun agreement? Read a draft once through looking only for that. Comma splices? Read once through with your eyes on the commas. It might seem that approaching the work of writing and editing in terms of smaller, separate tasks is unnecessarily cumbersome, but breaking things down will likely make it far easier to work more effectively and come out with a stronger piece of writing. No writer can think about everything at once.

"(Dick) is someone, like Raymond Chandler, who took the conventions of a pulp genre and made very adventurous literary use of them," Max Rudin, publisher of the Library of America, told The Associated Press on Tuesday...

Beyond literary merit, Rudin cited a couple of factors in choosing Dick — the 25th anniversary next summer of Blade Runner, which will be marked by director Ridley Scott's remastered "final cut," and the positive response to the Library of America's volume of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, published in 2005.

"There were a lot of people who felt their reading tastes were validated by including Lovecraft in the library," Rudin said.

"The holidays...time to give thanks, spread joy and shop for the best sales. Now, here's the perfect "gift" to help you stretch your holiday dollar. Volkswagen Credit is offering you the opportunity to 'skip' your December 2006 payment on your current account listed above. [...] Upon receipt of your extension agreement, we will assess your account a $25.00 extension fee, payable on your next due invoice. There is no need to send money at this time. [...] Happy Holidays!"

Link

"In Louisville, Kentucky -- home to Louisville Slugger, America's most famous baseball bat manufacturer -- TSA has a special warning display near the security screening area at the airport.

"Sadly, this is the closest thing to 'local flavor' that I've seen at any of the otherwise uniformly-grim TSA outposts around the country."

SeaWorld's vice president of zoology, Mike Scarpuzzi, said the incident happened when female orca Kasatka was supposed to shoot out of the water upright so that the trainer could dive off her nose.

Instead, Kasatka grabbed the trainer's foot and dived to the bottom of the 36-foot-(11-metre-)deep tank, Scarpuzzi said. They surfaced less than a minute later, but she ignored other trainers' signals to draw her to the side.

The orca dived a second time with the trainer for about a minute. The trainer "stayed calm and calmed the whale down. He gently rubbed the whale, stroked her back," and she let go, Scarpuzzi said.

Powered by a oscillating linear weight that falls back and forth within the central shaft - transmitting the energy to the four ball bearing barrels. All part of the mechanical revolution in watchmaking where everyone is trying to reinvent the wheel - but this time with belts.

A distinguished team of U.S. researchers reported in 2005 that a gene called stathmin, which is expressed in the amygdala (the seat of emotion), is associated with both innate and learned fear. The researchers bred mice without the gene and put them in aversive situations, such as giving them a mild shock at a certain point in their cage. Normal mice exhibited traditional fear behavior by freezing in place, but the altered mice froze less often. And when both types of mice were put in an open field environment--an innately threatening situation--the mice without stathmin spent more time in the center of the field and explored more than the control mice.

Do individuals who have lesser stathmin expression exhibit less fear? It is unlikely that there is a one-to-one correspondence, because humans are far more psychologically complex than mice, capable of modifying their genetically programmed behavior. Yet it is not difficult to imagine that a military official who overestimates the significance of genetic information will someday propose screening Special Forces candidates, or even raw recruits, for the "fear gene." Indeed, a few years ago the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company had to pay $2.2 million to employees who had been secretly tested for a gene associated with carpal tunnel syndrome, even though the scientists who developed the testing technique said it could not work for that purpose. The company was trying to see if the workers' medical claims were attributable to their jobs or their genes.

If DNA testing for a fear gene is both scientifically and ethically dicey, what about setting out to create people who lack that characteristic? Would breeding humans without stathmin or other genes associated with fear reactions engender more courageous fighters? Would parents sign on for such meddling if they harbored ambitions for a child capable of a glorious military career or just didn't want to give birth to a "sissy"?

The main part of the pump is made from a flexible polymer sphere 5 millimetres in diameter. Teflon capillary tubes measuring 400 microns in diameter are inserted into opposite sides of this sphere.

A cell-friendly protein coating is then added to the sphere followed by a sheet of pulsing cultured heart cells. After just an hour the cells are firmly attached and begin driving the pump.

To test the pump, the researchers placed it in a nutrient medium at human body temperature (37°C). They watched through a microscope as small polystyrene balls contained with a fluid moved through the pump's tubes. The pump operated continuously for six days in testing.

They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions and the gears were a mechanical representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course across the sky, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C...

Historians of technology think the instrument is technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterward.

The mechanism, presumably used in preparing calendars for seasons of planting and harvesting and fixing religious festivals, had at least 30, possibly 37, hand-cut bronze gear-wheels, the researchers reported. An ingenious pin-and-slot device connecting two gear-wheels induced variations in the representation of lunar motions according to the Hipparchos model of the Moon’s elliptical orbit around Earth.

They placed the 98 residential units on 19 floors, using the pattern of outdoor spaces to determine the overall appearance of the project.

The slightly irregular pattern alternates these outdoor spaces to create what are in effect double-height spaces. Each unit then receives more sunlight than a typical stacked composition.

Update: Fabio FZero sez, "The cactus building reminded me of this other architecture experiment in Montreal, created for Expo '67. It looks like a bunch of matchboxes stacked on top of each other, but provides a garden with open and unblocked view for all apartments. Impressive!"

You can't change your mind about where you're going after the doors shut. "Once you get on, you've got claustrophobia," says Mr. Glassberg, who is a senior vice president at Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc.'s TV Guide. He calls the new elevators "Wonkavators," after the flying glass elevator in the movie "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory..."

Most people catch on pretty quickly. Just a month after the Hearst Tower opened, some Hearst executives said they were forgetting to push buttons in old-fashioned elevators. "My problem has become that I keep forgetting to press buttons in the elevator in my apartment building, so as I tap tap tap on my BlackBerry, I realize minutes later that the elevator hasn't moved," says Atoosa Rubenstein, the departing editor in chief of Hearst's Seventeen magazine.

THE sending of false fire alarms by mischievous persons may be eliminated through use of a newly developed call box. To use the device, the sender of an alarm must pass a hand through a special compartment to reach the signal dial. Once the dial has been turned, the sender’s hand is locked in the compartment until released by a fireman or policeman with a key.

A quick roundup of posts published to xeni.net/trek, while the electricity holds out. Howdy from what's probably the only internet connection in this part of the Petén jungle. I'm traveling in Guatemala for a month, working on a series of stories in various places here, and maintaining an online journal with quick notes (and video and photos) from the road.

* Chicken Bus of the Sky

* Volcán De Fuego

* Thousands of women protest wave of "femicides"

* Video: haciendo tortillas

* Guatemala and bandwidth policy reform

* 15 die in marketplace fire

* Murders of transgender/transvestite people on the rise

* Video: Marimba players

* Piñatas Encarceladas

* Mercado snapshot - 2 kids share an apple.

"I THINK I had one of these... I'm going to tell myself I did. (Giant Yoko shades sold separately.)" Link

Much of the work in the V&A is in the public domain but many museums practice a weird perversion of copyright: they make you agree not to take (or sometimes publish) photos you take while in their halls as a condition of entry. Then they assert the bizarre claim that photos of their public domain collections are themselves new copyrighted works (even though the purpose of such a photo is to apply as little interpretation, art and creativity to the shot as possible) and charge the public a monopoly rent to reproduce the photos they've produced.

It's basically a giant racket to sell penny postcards and license fees for books. But this undermines the museum's core mission: to preserve and promote access to our shared cultural heritage. It's a form of curatorial treason -- betraying the museum's purpose to enrich its coffers.

The V&A has been a very progressive institution on this subject, generally speaking. The last time I visited, I was able to take photos with impunity -- except, bizarrely, in the gift shop (though I was allowed to stand outside of the gift shop, taking pictures of the interior).

In a move which could transform art publishing, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (V&A) is to drop charges for the reproduction of images in scholarly books and magazines. Reproduction costs now often make it difficult to publish specialist art historical material. The new scheme will come into effect early next year.

The V&A is believed to be the first museum anywhere in the world which is to offer images free of copyright and administrative charges. It also intends to take a “liberal” view on what should be deemed scholarly or educational. The new arrangements will normally apply to all books published by university presses. Free images will also be available for exhibition catalogues and journals such as Apollo and The Burlington.

Update: Erik sez, "I'd get one with a truly random string of Characters on it. When asked what it says, I'd say "nothing, it's random ones and zeros." Which will mean, of course, I'll be thrown off the plane for having a shirt that says nothing meaningful whatsoever. What a lovely and useful precedent!"

A leaked report from the Gowers Review -- an expert body that is making recommendations on new UK copyright -- suggests that Gowers will reject the idea that records produced in the past should get a fresh 45 years tacked onto their monopolies, a massive picking of the public pocket. Britain offered record labels a bargain: press a record, get 50 years of copyright. Now the labels are coming back and asking for nearly double that, and not just for the records they make tomorrow, but for the records they made yesterday, too.

There's no way the labels will take this lying down. We must be sure that our MPs are aware that the public is watching this issue and will call its representatives to account if they cave into a few giant corporations' greed.

The Open Rights Group has led the charge on this and maintains a public petition to Tessa Jowell, the minister who controls copyright issues in Parliament. If you're a Briton who wants to keep the UK from repeating America's mistakes, sign on now -- and tell your friends to sign on, too.

The music industry says that they are simply looking after musicians, yet the copyright in many of these recordings is not held by the musician, but by the label. Record labels aren’t a charity; they aren’t giving anything to musicians that isn’t already in their contract. Instead, they are driven by a desire to retain control over a small number of profitable recordings in order to maximise profits.

Term extension is not just about the ulterior motives of a powerful industry group. When artists produced works 50 years ago, they did so knowing exactly how many years of exclusive rights they would gain. And they signed those rights away to record labels knowing that they would expire in 50 years.

Copyright has always been a bargain between the interests of the rights holder and the interests of the public. A retroactive extension of the term would do nothing more than provide a windfall to the rightsholders - not necessarily the musicians, remember - and would deny the public the benefit of their side of that bargain.

If you decide to extend copyright on existing recordings, you will destroy our musical and sound recording heritage. If you extend copyright on new recordings, you will deny our children access to that heritage, but without having any significant positive impact on artists who are recording today.

"This Film..." was the best documentary I saw this year. It delves into the shadowy world of the MPAA's rating system and the way that it forms a nearly invisible but all-encompassing censorship regime that punishes indie filmmakers far more than the major studios, who run it. The censor board is set up like a star chamber, the members, criteria, and appeals process shrouded in secrecy (Dick punctures the veil by hiring a charming private eye to uncover and reveal the hidden identities of the censors). The MPAA ratings process has been called "Jack Valenti's other mistake" -- apart from seeking wildly expanded copyright, that is.

It's an honor to be introducing Mr Dick and his movie -- he's a brilliant film-maker with something to say and real courage of his convictions. I hope to see you there tonight.

Where: University of Southern California, Los Angeles: University Park Campus, George Lucas Instructional Building, 108

When: Thursday, November 30, 2006, 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Link

The alligator had the man in his jaws when deputies arrived at Lake Parker in Lakeland about 4 a.m. today. They were called by nearby residents who reported hearing a man yelling for help.

[Adrian J.] Apgar, 45, of Polk City, suffered a broken arm, partially amputated left arm and trauma to his left leg.

Sci-artist Laura Splan created these nifty pillowy pills.

"Prozac, Thorazine, Zoloft is a group of large pillows crafted out of hand latch-hooked rugs, which have been sewn together and stuffed. These soft, oversized anti-psychotics and anti-depressants provide a different kind of comfort than their prescription counterparts. The time consuming nature of the latch-hook process provides a sufficiently mind-numbing effect. Latch hooking is a simple but tedious craft that has traditionally been used to depict idealized and romanticized images from domesticity and nature."

Go see the many other fantastic works displayed on her site, including neuroart. I also like Blood Scarf, a scarf knitted from vinyl tubing that fills with blood from an IV in the wearer, warming the body as it depletes it.

Comes with working pan/tilt mounted on roof (camera removed), deep cycle battery bank-(all hold full charge), a 250gig 4 channel DVR which also records 4 channel audio and acts as a quad.You could record audio and video remotely for a month. Huge power inverter to run everything you need on 120v AC. Like new Samsung 17" Flat Screen monitor. 2 smaller swivel LCD Monitors. Pan Tilt Controller, dash mount flip out LCD monitor and rear mount infrared camera for backing up easily. I also have the 20 watt low frequency tx/rx set which is like new,used with the van and already mounted antenna. You can recieve and record clear audio and video for many miles with this setup. Integrated sound system in the back along with a video effects board. All equipment works very well. Four swing out chairs and a practical work area in the back. Even has a huge xray flourescent light table viewer mounted to wall. Windows are mirror tinted. Has a very solid tow bar section for towing another vehicle(see pic). Van has been in everything from childrens books on ghosts to above mentioned tv shows...

Not a show vehicle but absolutly awesome potential with a huge number of uses: Surveillance/Spy, Parapsychology,Police, Military,Camping, Ghost Hunting, etc.

"This looks like its going to be quite the gathering with nearly 40 international musicians and visualists from all over the globe.

"For anyone that has been curious about people repurposing old NES consoles, Game Boys, Ataris and C64s to create completely original music -- this looks like the event to check out."

THE TANK and 8BITPEOPLES are pleased to present the Blip Festival, a four-day celebration of over 30 international artists exploring the untapped potential of low-bit videogame consoles and home computers used as creative tools. Familiar devices are pushed in new directions with startling results — Nintendo Entertainment Systems and Game Boys roaring with futuristic floor-stomping rhythms and fist-waving melody, art-damaged Sega hardware generating fluctuating and abstracted video patterns — and that's only the beginning. An exploration of the chiptune idiom and its close relatives, the Blip Festival is the biggest and most comprehensive event in the history of the form, and will include daily workshops, art installations, and nightly music performances boasting an international roster larger and more far-reaching than any previous event of its kind. Small sounds at large scales pushed to the limit at high volumes — the Blip Festival is an unprecedented event that is not to be missed.

I have always been an art shopping maniac, collecting toys, sneakers, skateboards, refrigerator magnets and closets full of artist products since Keith Haring made his first transistor radio. (I even have some Salvador Dali perfume bottles that are amazing.) The recent art and commerce feeding frenzy has led many artists to collaborate with numerous brands over the past ten years. On my office shelves I have Damien Hirst Becks beer bottles, Futura CK One fragrance bottles, Jeff Koons skateboards, Tom Otterness bookends, Stephen Sprouse fabric covered pillows. In my closets I have Phil Frost sneakers, Murakami Vuitton bags, Kenny Scharf magnets, Jeff Koons vase, Barry McGee and Margaret Killgallen dolls, Os gemeos sneakers, and LOTS more. I think of this stuff as my 401 K.

And so I thought it would be SO fun to survey what's out there, pull it all together and open an ART STORE for four days in Miami. My inspiration is the 99 cent store so we're going to sell stuff priced from 99 cents to 9,999,999 dollars!! The interior of the store is being customized by the wonderful artist Jim Drain (of Forcefield fame) and the sign for the front of the store is being made by the amazing artist Tauba Auerbach.

Artists represented in the store include Futura (clothes, skateboards), Kaws (toys), Ryan McGinnis (toys) , Thomas Campbell (wallets, T Shirts surfboards), Jeff Koons (skateboards), Tracey Emin (Longchamp Bags), Jean Michel Basquait (sneakers, Valentino purses), Tom Otterness (toys), Jo Jackson (DC sneakers), Shephard Fairey (watches, clothing), Lisa Yuskavage (shower curtains), Kiki Smith (rugs, toys), Keith Haring ( Jeremy Scott sneakers sweatsuits, bathroom tiles), Alex Katz and Marilyn Minter (the most amazing TARGET produced beach towels for The Art Production Fund!!! See photo of glittery eye.), Assume Astro Vivid focus ( Le Sportsac bags) , Kenny Scharf (mini mannequins, watches, Bic lighters, magnets), Artist Network Program (RVCA Tshirts), Neckface (jackets and skateboards), Ed Templeton (skateboards), John Baldessari and Sol Lewitt silk scarves, Karen Kilimnik, Jack Pierson (see photo of dish) and John Waters dishes, Skullphone (T shirts and bags), Sol Lewitt (china), Andy Warhol (watches, soap, mousepads), Tobias Wong (bongs, 18kt cokespoons, necklaces), Dalek (cameras, dolls), Barbara Kruger (pillows mousepads), Hugo Guiness (Kate Spade bags), Leanne Shapton (Jack Spade bags), Andrew Andrew (cookies, magnets, jewelry), Skullphone (bags, T shirts), Donald Sultan (playing cards), Claw Money (pillows, jackets), Threeasfour (bicycles, scarves)! PLUS we will have little pockets of representation from a couple of our most favorite likeminded shops like ALife, aNYthing, and Colette.

DNA DRM: The latest solution to the problem of media copying is a digital rights management (DRM) scheme that relies on identifying the DNA of the consumer. When you purchase a piece of media, your licensed copy is encoded with 13 unique sequences of nucleotides from your genome. Each time you hit the power button on your new DNA DRM Zune media player, a hair-thin needle painlessly pierces your flesh and feeds a drop of blood into an embedded genome sequencer. If you are the registered owner of the media, you are permitted to play it. If you aren't, the media is deleted from your device and a record of your transgression is reported to the central media certification authority. You will be forced to pay an extra "unlicensed play penalty tax" to license it next time. The only thing good about this system is that biohackers can take the DNA DRM Zune apart, remove the embedded sequencer, and use it to figure out if they have cancer.

This site takes music that is in the public domain, meaning a work that belongs to the community, and has it recorded by individuals and college/community orchestras throughout the United States and stored online so it can be accessed for free through this website. This would do the following:

1. Provide free unlimited access to music in the public domain to anyone with internet access.

2. Allow obscure works, for example some Baroque music, to be recorded for the first time that would otherwise not be recorded because of its small profit potential.

3. Community - being a community driven project, this can create an online music community, perhaps leading to future cooperative projects.

4. Add usefulness to all the untapped talent in our nation\u2019s orchestras. Think of about how many college orchestras perform to diminishing numbers of audiences. Now, every performance adds to the online repertoire, adding another reason to perform and perform well.

5. Create the first organization devoted to giving the public access to musical works which belong to them.

The change at Jones Soda comes at a time when high fructose corn syrup, which became a common sweetener for sodas in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has received negative publicity as being linked to obesity and diabetes.

Russo said a security guard at the restaurant had "at least 40" licenses in hand when he arrived to eat.

"Identity theft is rampant. I wouldn't want to give my license, with my address or Social Security number to anyone that I'm not familiar with," Russo said. "I'm going just for breakfast."

While we make a lot of noise here at Street Tech about consumer responsibility, environmental awareness, living lower on the hog (or forgoing the hog altogether), truth be told, we love buying shit just as much as the next conspicuous consumer. And we won't even try to deny our unwavering interest in new gadgets and cool tools. That said, we're also obsessed with high quality, intelligent design (of the non-theocratic kind), and products that perform as they're advertised. On top of all this, we love the act of gift-giving, showing our love and appreciation for people, in ritual gestures of exchanged beads and baubles. Combine all this: Great goods that are well- and responsibly made, that you get to buy and then give away to make fellow, beloved meatbots happy? Well that just sounds like a whole lot o' good times to us.

(Joel Bava) explains: "That night above Ath there was an icy fog full of flat plate crystals. The tiny crystals mirrored the lights of the city beneath into sets of light pillars. The higher the crystals, the closer the reflection glints approached the zenith making the pillars appear to converge overhead: illustration. Why the breaks in the lines of light? There were several layers of ice crystals with gaps between them."

The sculpture depicts a subcellular protein factory called a ribosome caught in the act of producing the BLyS protein, which stimulates the production of infection-fighting antibodies in the body...

The sculpture is comprised of seven structures, each of which is derived from that of the actual biological forms, observed using scanning electron microscopy, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and X-ray crystallography.

One person who noticed the same distinctive scream reoccurring in so many movies was sound effects fan Ben Burtt. Ben and his friends in the cinema department at USC, Rick Mitchell and Richard Anderson, noticed that a scream was popping up in a lot of movies. One of the films they made together, a swashbuckler parody "The Scarlet Blade" (1974) included the scream - which they borrowed off another film's audio track.

A few years later, when Ben Burtt was hired to create sound effects for Star Wars (1977), he had an opportunity to do research at the sound departments of several movie studios. While at Warner Bros. looking for sound elements to use in the space adventure, he found the original "Distant Drums" scream - which he called "Wilhelm" after the character that let out the scream in "Charge at Feather River."

A group of zombies have risen up to claim the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County violated their free rights and discriminated against them.

The six adults and one juvenile who were arrested while impersonating the undead in July filed their lawsuit Thursday.

The ragged group were arrested for "simulating weapons of mass destruction" during a dance party near the Minneapolis entertainment district.

See also:
Toothpaste for Dinner -- high-larious new book from Drew
Funny toons
Mad Drew: new Toothpaste for Dinner book

Please join us Saturday Dec 2nd at 5:30pm for a very special meeting of Dorkbot SoCal to launch the new issue of MAKE magazine.

Simon Penny (Director of UCI's Arts Computation Engineering program) will speak on integrating interaction design, space design, structure design, mechanical design, electronic design and software engineering using his 3D machine-vision driven interactive digital-video project Fugitive 2 as a case study. Attention will then turn to the pragmatic design and fabrication issues involved in building a custom motion control rig for the video projector in the project. Simon is bringing in a prototype of the motion control rig as tangible example.

Mr Jalopy (Contributing Editor to MAKE and automotive mad scientist) will be giving an epic (yet fast paced) talk on "Deep Sea Suburbs: Custom Vans, Internal Combustion Engines, Backyard Anthropology and the California Dream".

Make magazine issue #8 will be available for perusal and purchase

There is a high probability of free beer and pretzels

Machine Project
1200 D North Alvarado Street
Los Angeles, CA 90026
213-483-8761

An elderly survivor of Hurricane Rita, Ms. Rhonda Crain, has been sued by the RIAA in Beaumont, Texas, in SONY v. Crain.

She is fighting back and has asserted a counterclaim against the plaintiffs, saying that the RIAA's actions "amount to extortion, reciting a litany of other similar cases brought by the RIAA.

You might ask why collecting societies are in there at all. That's because AllOfMP3.com claimed that they were paying licenses to a collecting society that made their business legal. Putting this last clause in the agreement sounds like the US Trade Rep is admitting that AllOfMP3.com is a legitimate, licensed business that pays for what it sells.

Russia has to take on board the WIPO Copyright Treaty, which is the treaty that created the US DMCA, a law that has resulted in the jailing of a Russian researcher who visited the USA for talking about math.

* The United States and Russia agreed on the objective of shutting down websites that permit illegal distribution of music and other copyright works. The agreement names the Russia-based website allofmp3.com as an example of such a website.

* Russia will:
- take enforcement actions against the operation of Russia-based websites; and
- investigate and prosecute companies that illegally distribute copyright works on the Internet.

* Russia will work to enact legislation by June 1, 2007, to stop collecting societies from acting without right holder consent,

* Russia will also work to enact legislation implementing the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Internet treaties.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

Reader comment:

GarrettThank sent a link to this video of US soldiers using their tank to crush a car owned by some impoverished Iraqi citizens who allegedly stole some wood in a greedy attempt to feed their families. I'm sure the vast majority of US soldiers are excellent people, but these assholes ruin all the good will. He says:

Compared to the GIs in WWII who carried extra chocolate rations to make friends with the locals these soldiers look like punks. Link

Reader comment:

David Cassel says:

Speaking of Iraq footage, here's a really cool link. Footage from Iraq shows how YouTube is giving a much better view of the reality in Iraq than the traditional news media.

Combat attacks are seen - from both sides - and towards the bottom there's some surprising hot Iraqi "action" of another sort.

Often the artists that are using CC have chosen to do so almost on instinct. They believe strongly that traditional copyright has not succeeded in providing the promised financial incentives and protection for artists themselves and see CC as a way of limiting negative effects without completely losing control over their work.

And for good measure, authorities closed portions of the Twin Cities Lindbergh terminal parking ramp for two hours.

Why in the world would the police destroy the equipment so quickly? Here's a picture I found of the "suspicious looking equipment."

Remember, this thing was in the trunk of an Avis rental car, about a half mile from the nearest runway, not on the tarmac or in the terminal.

Yes airline security is important, but all this paranoia, and rote following of draconian procedures means no flexibility, no common sense, and second chances. Looks like another win for the real terrorists.

I dug up this video I shot back in December ‘04 when I was aboard an Air Deccan flight from Bangalore to Mumbai. Looked out my window and what did I see, A group of guys repairing the wing with some sort of muthafcukin’ duct tape. There’s some more repairs to the left of the one they are working on with what seems to be the same technique. Crossed my fingers, tossed back a shot of Black Label, and stayed on the flight.

The agreement settles a suit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in August on behalf of Dr. Stuart Frankel against Lyons Partnership, owners of the Barney character. Frankel received repeated, meritless cease-and-desist letters from Lyons, claiming his online parody violated copyright and trademark law. EFF's suit asked the court to declare that Frankel's parody was a noninfringing fair use protected by the First Amendment.

"We wish we hadn't had to file a lawsuit to finally get Barney's lawyers to stop harassing a man who was just expressing his opinion about a cultural phenomenon," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "Hopefully Lyons Partnership has learned its lesson and will have more respect for fair use in the future."

Two or more sensors are attached around the edges of the surface. These pinpoint the position of a finger, or another touching object, by tracking minute vibrations. This allows them to create a virtual touchpad, or keyboard, on any table or wall.

The system, called Tai-Chi (Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction), was developed by researchers from Switzerland, Italy, Germany, France and the UK. "We have made a system that can give any object, even a 3D one, a sense of touch," says Ming Yang, an engineer at Cardiff University, UK, who is coordinating the project.

...they are also planning a roller coaster that emits Bruce Lee’s signature squawks and grunts! The park will be patrolled by robot-mannequin Bruce Lees! And the whole shebang is controlled by a special secret control room housed in a giant statue! Yes!

The park is slated to be finished in three years and we can pretty much guarantee, without doing any research or talking to anyone, that there’s going to be a hall of mirrors of some kind in this thing.

This weekend I was handed an opened wheel of processed cheeses by a friend. He said that his brother-in-law had caught wind of a frequent flyer promotion whereby you get 500 miles for each purchase of this cheese wheel and had purchased 75,000 miles for ~$300, which also means he's got more opened cheese wheels than he knows what to do with.

According to Space News, cosmonauts now earn $767 (20,448 Russian rubles) per month plus bonuses for spaceflights. That's far less than what they could attract in the private sector.

So the rocket company Energia has allowed university students to apply to be cosmonauts before they graduate. That didn't pan out so well. Only five of 20 students who volunteered for the programme in 2006 underwent medical tests. None of them passed.

“I am very excited to have been asked to give a talk, via an avatar, in Second Life," Judge Posner tells me, via e-mail. "Virtual communities are an important social phenomenon with transformative potential, and I know that Second Life is in the forefront of this latest stage of the digital revolution." And I'm very excited to welcome such an august figure in-world, joining Lawrence Lessig, Thomas Barnett, and other great public intellectuals who're among the first to transmit their crucial ideas into the metaverse.

Where: Equator Books, 1103 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291

When: Sat, Dec 2, 7:30PM

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

On a recent episode of the terrific podcast, The Sound of Young America, Mal Sharpe was invited as a guest to talk about the movie Borat. The podcast's host, Jesse Thorn, said Coyle and Sharpe were spiritual grandfathers to Sacha Baron Cohen. Thorn also played a segment of an early Coyle and Sharpe bit, called the human sugar bowl, in which the pranksters entered a San Francisco restaurant and asked the owner if he would "be opposed to the idea of using an area of your head, which is currently not used for such purposes, to use this as a storage place for sugar?" I loved the fact that the restaurant owner actually had a conversation with the two pranksters, telling them they were crazy for thinking the idea would be a viable business, and explaining to them why he thought it was a bad business idea. Today, most restaurant owners who were approached by a pair of deadly earnest men spouting such insanity would reach for a gun, a can of pepper spray, or a phone to call the cops.

Here's a sample of the bit. You can buy a four-disc set of Coyle and Sharpe's work at CDBaby.com.

Reader comment:

Sound of Young America host Jesse Thorn says:

I must reflect credit elsewhere... that was actually an episode of Public Radio International's Open Source on which Mal Sharpe and I were guests. The host is Christopher Lydon. They're CC licensed, so I put it down my podcast chute since I was out of town this past weekend.

That said, here's an hour show I did a few weeks ago with Mal.

The idea is that if you don't give them their design-veto, they won't put movies on high-def, and then the money won't come in. But when the head of Canada's national broadcaster announces that there's just no way any broadcaster is going to make its money back on high-def, it makes you wonder if the Brits don't have the right idea.

In the UK, a digital TV system called "Freeview" gives the public 30 free standard-definition TV channels, for life, over the air, for one setup payment. Instead of trying to lure people into throwing away their old sets and buying all new, Hollywood-crippled ones, the Brits just created free cable for life. Amazingly, lots of people voluntarily switched -- and soon they'll be able to shut off the old analog towers and use that spectrum for better, more internetty things.

“There's no evidence either in Canada or the United States that we have found for advertisers willing to pay a premium for a program that's in HD,” Mr. Rabinovich said. “So basically they're saying if you want to shoot in HD, that's your business, we're not going to pay you more.”

Version 0.92, released today, fixes a ton of performance issues, mostly in the Windows version (Democracy is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux). If you've tried Democracy before and had problems with it, this is the version to get. Link

(Disclosure: I am a proud member of the Board of Directors of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the charity that oversees Democracy)

In 2005, Robbie wrote about this group of entertaining tots. And here is Fritz Bantam's homepage (on Geocities!). From his site:

The youngest of 3 brothers, that were a music phenomenon in the late 60's and early 70's, Fritz Bantam has continued his music career to the present day. Graduating from playing maracas, to playing bass guitar, Fritz continues to wow audiences with his musical talent.Fritz currently resides in the Inland Empire of California with his wife and two children. A recent surge in the interest of 60's and 70's music culture,and a notable demand for Bantam memorabilia,prompted the development of this site.

After Thanksgiving my family visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville, Virginia. Before entering, the tour guide told us that we couldn't take any photos inside because they "don't own the copyright for some of the works of art." This peeved me in light of the copyright-restricted space post I had read recently about misusing the language of copyright to intimidate people.

In protest I tried to take a no-flash picture of Jefferson's engraved copy of the Declaration of Independence, but was politely told to stop - and reminded that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation doesn't own the copyright to some of his works of art. If they don't own the copyright to his nearly 200 year-old art then who does!?

I was a tour guide at Monticello from 2002 to 2004, and I can answer Mike Love´s question of, "If they [Monticello] don't own the copyright to his nearly 200 year-old art then who does!?" It´s a great question, and I was always happy to answer it for my own tour groups.

The reason that photographs are not allowed inside Monticello itself is because the home itself is owned by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, a non-profit organization that upkeeps the home, but more than half of the furniture inside the building does not belong to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. When the non-profit organization bought the house in the 1930´s, there was no furniture in it at all. Thomas Jefferson died over $100,000 in debt and the vast majority of his private property was sold at dispersal auction in the 1830´s to recover his debt, which was a huge burden on his surviving family. The TJF curators spend an enormous amount of time just trying to find the furniture, which is literally scattered to the four winds.

When they do manage to find a furniture or piece, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation would obviously prefer to buy it when possible for their own collection. But the TJF can´t afford to buy it all outright, and understandably, some pieces aren´t even for sale, either because the private owners don´t wish to part with it or because it´s part of another museum´s collection. Consequently, the majority of furnishings in Monticello are on permanent contractual loan to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, with the private (or other museum) owners retaining all rights--including reproduction copyright--to the items themselves. So prohibiting photography in the house is actually done to protect private property that belongs to a slew of other people. That´s a very different situation than what´s going on at Victoria and Albert, where the artwork truly is in the public domain.

Furthermore, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation is understandably concerned that if they did allow non-flash photography in the home, visitors would inevitably forget to turn off their flashes and misunderstand the rules and take flash photography anyway. Most of the items in the home are extremely light-sensitive due to their age, to the point that all of the home´s windows are covered with a protective UV film. Imagine if just one out of every 1,000 visitors forgot the rules and took a flash picture in the house; with about half a million visitors to the home each year, that would expose the house to approximately 500 photography flashes a year, which is plenty enough to do damage.

If the Jefferson Foundation were so anti-film, they wouldn´t allow photographs everywhere else on the grounds except inside the house. Because they own the entire outdoor property and have only allowed replica furniture to ornament the outside of the house, there is no copyright conflict with people taking pictures outside the home itself. I always reminded my tour groups as soon as we got back outside that they should turn their cameras on and start snapping away.

Finally, if it makes Mike feel any better, I am almost certain that the engraved, framed copy of the Declaration of Independence that he was attempting to photograph didn´t actually belong to Thomas Jefferson. There are two engravings of the Declaration in the home, and while both are contemporary to Jefferson´s time period, Jefferson´s own engravings of the Declaration no longer exist. So Mike was actually looking at a very similar engraving by the same engraver, but not the one that Jefferson actually owned.

The Lucky Dog Pet Shop is where the writer of Ubik goes to buy ground horsemeat, ostensibly for his dog, actually for himself and his wife to eat. It’s not so bad, horsemeat. In the Pyrenees they smoke it into jerky and serve it with hard cheese and casks of good red wine. What’s bad is the shame. The writer of Ubik has come to suspect that the woman who runs the cash register at the Lucky Dog Pet Shop knows he’s buying the horsemeat for himself, that there is no dog. In a world where the FBI has already visited the writer’s house—they were dapper and polite, fine figures of men, a little older than he’d expected; they reminded him of Hollis, they took him for a drive, he sort of liked them—the woman is one of his foremost looming authority figures. She might turn him in. She might tell his mother.

Yet when the writer of Ubik gets to the cash register he finds not the dreaded woman but instead a substitute clerk, a young man with a small beard like a Beat. When the writer approaches, the substitute clerk greets him in a voice conditioned by cigarettes and bearing traces of an accent. The writer understands without knowing how he understands that the substitute clerk is from France. More than just from France. The substitute clerk is a Marxist literary critic. The writer feels relief. Here is someone who certainly must grasp the eating of horsemeat. The writer’s going to get away with it, at least today.

“You are Philip?”

“Yes.”

“You will write Ubik?”

“I don’t know, I guess so.”

...(The) first known public lecture appearance of the word ("blobsquarch" was) on September 14, 2003. On that date, Alton Higgins, at the Willow Creek Symposium, flashed the term up on a screen and spent several minutes analyzing various blobsquatch images.

Higgins expanded what he presented at Willow Creek, and published his March 21, 2004 revised paper, which can be found online here: "Evaluating Purported Sasquatch Photographic Evidence".

Higgins wrote within that paper: "Any photo requiring equal parts interpretation and imagination (photos sometimes characterized as ‘blobsquatches’) should be discounted."

W.A.T.C.H. OUT! ! These "Fear Factor" pouches containing "spine-chilling spiders", "mystery meat", and a "buzzard buffet", pose a "candy challenge" to children, asking: "[I]s fear a factor for you?" The grotesque buffet, available in the toy aisle, is based upon the television series which sometimes features contestants competing to eat as much as possible in the shortest time. Toy aisles should not be used to encourage food-eating competitions, which invite potential choking and ingestion injuries, particularly for young children.

Seth is a polymath geek, who created the job of Staff Technologist at EFF. He makes it possible for EFF's lawyers to understand the technological implications of the law and the legal implications of technology. He's an engineer who fights for freedom, and has taken part in such exciting adventures as ferreting out the secret codes hidden in color laser printouts. He maintains a Linux distribution, wrote the DeCSS Haiku, and testifies in court. Most importantly (from my perspective), he is the world's leading expert on the threats and promises of trusted computing -- and the creator of Owner Override, a proposal that will leave trusted computing's privacy benefits intact, but defang its threats to liberty.

As always, we'll podcast the audio within a day or two of the event, but I hope to see you there! This is the last speaker of the year, so it's your last chance in 2006!

Where: University of Southern California main campus (LA), Annenberg School for Communications, room 207

When: Tuesday, November 28, 7PM-9PM

Link

In 1854, London was a city with millions of residents and no sewage system. It was the first time a city had grown so big, and while it had a rudimentary idea of a public health system, this system was based on the "miasma" theory of disease: that illness was the result of smelling bad smells. So it was that London was drowning in its own shit, and so it was that thousands of Londoners were in the business of harvesting, cleaning, moving, exploring and scavenging in shit. Johnson quotes journals and accounts of the day describing unimaginable filth, residents dipping buckets into open, running sewers, then letting the "water" separate out of the excrement, skimming it off and drinking it.

Cholera epidemics are the inevitable outcome of such a situation. One such outbreak took Soho -- a poor, overcrowded neighborhood -- by storm, killing one in ten in the space of a week. In that week, two very different men (a cleric and a scientist) who were both local to Soho pounded the streets, working to extinguish the disease's flames. They struggled against the miasma-obsessed public health administration (whose idea of sanitation was to order all the basement cesspools emptied into the Thames, London's main source of drinking water).

The cleric, Reverend Henry Whitehead, had intimate knowledge of Soho's streets and families, and the scientist, Dr John Snow, had a history of challenging establishment superstitions with empirical research. Together they worked on a map that showed the disease's course through London, and ran the cholera back to the well where it originated. The combination of data-visualization and local knowledge revealed the microbial nature of cholera, years before anyone managed to connect the actual bug with the disease.

Johnson's got a gift for telling human stories in science -- and a healthy respect for cities, humanity's most complicated and magnificent inventions. He's characterized this as the story of the world's largest organism -- the city -- locked in struggle with one of the world's smallest -- a bacterium. That's as good a strapline as any -- it's a dramatic story of a key evolutionary moment in our history, a moment when we could have destroyed ourselves or brought ourselves to the future. Link

See also:
Steven Johnson's new book The Ghost Map
Steven Johnson's fave books about plagues
Steven Johnson launches outside.in
BoingBoingBoing podcast 006: Steven Johnson

Update: Jeff sez, "John Snow published a book on his investigation into the cholera epidemic. His account is a pretty interesting read."

Kirby Dick has graciously agreed to present the screening of his movie, which I reviewed in September. This Film is Not Yet Rated is the best documentary I've seen all year, the kind of thing that inspired outrage and sympathy. It tells the hidden story of the MPAA's rating board, and its systematic discrimination against sympathetic portrayals of gay sexuality and sex in general, and its tacit support for ultra-violence.

The ratings board is shrouded in secrecy, and exists, supposedly, to forestall Congressional censorship of the film industry (an eventuality as unlikely as it is unconstitutional). The board's membership is secret, as are the names of the appeals committee that is meant to watchdog the organizing. The whole, secretive mess was established by Jack Valenti in his capacity as head of the MPAA, and so it bends over backwards to help filmmakers from the major studios (while shafting indies).

Dick's documentary revolves around his efforts to unmask the identity of the secret censor board. He hires a private eye and sets her to work (the CSI elements of the film are really juicy -- it's fun to see how private eyes really work). Threaded around this are interviews with filmmakers who've had run-ins with the board, and, as a climax, Dick's own Orwellian adventures in submitting his documentary to the censor board whose identities he has uncovered.

I can't wait to meet him -- one viewing of This Film is Not Yet Rated turned me into an instant, lifelong fan. I hope to see you there!

Where: University of Southern California, Los Angeles: University Park Campus, George Lucas Instructional Building, 108

When: Thursday, November 30, 2006 : 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Link

The BBC are reporting that there will be no copyright extension for songs in the UK. The official review commissioned by the Treasury on all IP law in the UK has not yet been published but it is highly likely the BBC have managed to get a sneak peak.

Sir Cliff Richard and Jethro Tull had been among artists lobbying for copyright to last 95 years, rather than the present 50.

The Open Rights Group had been amongst the groups lobbying against this possibility with their release the music campaign and their submitions to the review. When the report actualy comes out we will see if they have had similar success with their request to create a new exception to UK copyright law that would give individuals the right to create a private copy of copyrighted materials for their own personal use, including back-ups, archiving and shifting format. Sign the petition if you're in the UK.

Reader comment:

Russell says:

I've been an avid reader of the Boing Boing blog for some time, it's good stuff.

I saw the 'turn urine blue' post and remembered seeing something about methylene blue on an MSDS that would probably be worth mentioning with this - it may have had a hand in some birth defects when injected amniotically. Fairly harmless stuff unless you're pregnant though, and probably not to dangerous when ingested even then, but for more info there's a report here.

Xeni, Pesco and I talk with our guest about a slew of recent Boing Boing topics, and about things going on in Merlin's busy life, including his fabulously funny "Phone Guy" videos.

LISTEN: Podcast Feed, Subscribe via iTunes, Direct MP3 Link (64K), other MP3 file download options from archive.org: Link, enhanced podcast with images, or listen at Odeo (with archives of previous shows): Link.

COLT 45 TYPE GUN SHAPED GLASS BOTTLE HAND MADE
THIS IS A RARE CONDITION WITH A NICE WELL DETAILED EMBOSSING GLASS SURFACE..

A LOVELY BOTTLE TO HAVE IN YOUR COLLECTION BOTTLE APPROX 10'' LONG.. .

The burger company says owning the 'intellectual property rights' would help its hot deli sandwiches look and taste the same at all of its restaurants.

It also wants to cut down on the time needed to put together a sandwich, thought to have been dreamt up by the Earl of Sandwich in 1762.

The 55-page patent, which has been filed in the US and Europe, covers the 'simultaneous toasting of a bread component'.

Garnishes of lettuce, onions and tomatoes, as well as salt, pepper and ketchup, are inserted into a cavity in a 'sandwich delivery tool'.

The 'bread component' is placed over the cavity and the assembly tool is inverted to tip out the contents. Finally, the filling is placed in the 'bread component'.

It explains: 'Often the sandwich filling is the source of the name of the sandwich; for example, ham sandwich.'

Update: Gareth sez, "Here's a link to the actual patent application. McDonald's isn't attempting to patent sandwich-making per se, just a tool for putting together a sandwich."

There are hundreds of gift guides this holiday season filled with junk you can buy - but a lot of time you actually don't own it, you can't improve upon it, you can't share it or make it better, you certainly can't post the plans, schematics and source code either. We want to change that, we've put together our picks of interesting open source hardware projects, open source software, services and things that have the Maker-spirit of open source. Some are kits, some are open software projects that you'll need to build hardware for before gifting, and some are just support for the projects/groups that do open source. Included in this guide are things you can get from the MAKE store too (we try and have as many open source goods as possible).

* Meaningful and specific parts lists shall be included.
* Cases shall be easy to open.
* Batteries should be replaceable.
* Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons.
* Profiting by selling expensive special tools is wrong and not making special tools available is even worse.
* Torx is OK; tamperproof is rarely OK.
* Components, not entire sub-assemblies, shall be replaceable.
* Consumables, like fuses and filters, shall be easy to access.
* Circuit boards shall be commented.
* Power from USB is good; power from proprietary power adapters is bad.
* Standard connecters shall have pinouts defined.
* If it snaps shut, it shall snap open.
* Screws better than glues.
* Docs and drivers shall have permalinks and shall reside for all perpetuity at archive.org.
* Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought.
* Metric or standard, not both.
* Schematics shall be included.

Update: Fred sez, "there's a couple of things that struck me about the device after I read the manifesto and looked at the Flickr set:"

Warranty Voider violations of The Maker's Bill Of Rights

1. No parts list.
2. Case is sealed by rivets -- cannot be opened for repair.
3. Need a drill to remove rivets and a riveter to replace them (i.e. 'special tools required').
4. Can't get at components to replace them, thus entire assembly must be replaced, and proprietary parts are not available individually to the end user.
5. Ease of repair not a consideration.
6. No schematics included.

Update 2: Phil sez, "the Make Warranty Voider has a 25 year warranty from Leatherman - they'll pretty much repair them no matter what."

Link

The new law will create punishing potential liability for search engines who do not secure permission for indexing, cacheing and and searching every website in their database. In order to protect themselves from liability, search engine operators would have to contact every single web-author who ever lived.

Critics say Australian copyright laws do not take into account how information is gathered and presented on the Internet.

Dr Rimmer says Internet search engines could be crippled by the proposed copyright changes, which protect libraries, archives and research institutions but leave commercial entities like Google out in the cold.

He says this will affect the ability of search engines to engage in digitisation projects like book search, provide images, index news stories and archive web content.

"Given the amount of litigation that Google has been involved in the last year, I think they've got very genuine fears that they could be subject to copyright actions in Australia," he said.

He says rather than adopting the narrow "fair use" definitions contained in the legislation, Australia should adopt a US-style open-ended fair-use defence to ensure a flow of and access to information.

Update: Mark Pesce has a great op-ed about this in today's Melbourne Age.

Mahmood al-Yousif, a businessman whose political chat and blog site Mahmood’s Den is among Bahrain’s most popular, says that in the tense run-up to the polls, few Bahrainis have not surfed over the contours of their kingdom, comparing vast royal palaces, marinas and golf courses with crowded Shia villages nearby, where unemployment is rife and services meagre.

For those with insufficient bandwidth to access Google Earth, a PDF file with dozens of downloaded images of royal estates has been circulated anonymously by e-mail. Mr Yousif, among others, initially encouraged web users to post images on photo-sharing websites.

“Some of the palaces take up more space than three or four villages nearby and block access to the sea for fishermen. People knew this already. But they never saw it. All they saw were the surrounding walls,” said Mr Yousif, who is seen in Bahrain as the grandfather of its blogging community.