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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

New species found: cave dwellers isolated for millions of years

Scientists in Israel have discovered eight new species of sightless critters living in a cave that has been closed from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, they look more like scorpions than Sanrio characters.

He said the cave's ecosystem probably dates back around five million years when the Mediterranean Sea covered parts of Israel.

The cave was completely sealed off from the world, including from water and nutrients seeping through rock crevices above. Scientists who discovered the cave believe it has been intact for millions of years.

Link

Reader comment: Robert Pugsley says: Those sightless critters found in a cave look really like some sightless critters living in a cave in Lanzarote called Munidopsis polymorpha.

There's a picture of them here. They've even built a sculpture of one.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:54:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Red Hat ships open source MySpace++ clone

Red Hat has developed a new MySpace like site called Mugshot -- but it's open source. I saw a short demo of Mugshot this morning at the Red Hat Summit in Nashville and it was pretty hot; they nicked the best stuff out of all the social networking sites and put them together in an open codebase.

The Mugshot client application is built with a special cross-platform code library developed in C with GLib and GObject. For network communication, Mugshot uses the open XMPP protocol also used by Jabber and Google Talk. The current version of Mugshot is built with Loudmouth, a GLib-based XMPP implementation developed by Imendio. The Linux version of the Mugshot client user interface is built with GTK and uses GConf for storing configuration data, which means it is closely aligned with the GNOME desktop environment. The Linux version uses D-Bus for interprocess communication, and will provide Firefox integration.

Link (Thanks, Segphault!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:44:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unusual flavors of ice cream in Japan

At my local ice creamery, I was somewhat shocked that they had avocado ice cream as a special flavor on the menu. (I was more shocked when my niece ordered a scoop and loved it!) That's nothing compared to the flavors available in Japan. Today's Mainichi Daily News features a delightful photo gallery called "The Wackiest World of Japanese Ice Cream." Seen here is soy sauce ice cream. The photos were taken at the Cup Ice Museum in Ice Cream City at Namjatown theme park.
Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:13:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-publishing-scam site shut down by "agent" - needs help!

A site that tracked scam artists running predatory self-publishing outfits has been shut down following a complaint to its ISP.

Absolute Write is one of the leading sites for information on publishing, including scam-debunking, and it did a very good job, too. Then Barbara Bauer, an "agent" whom the site had criticized, called up the site's ISP, Nashville's JC-Hosting, and invented a bogus Digital Millennium Copyright Claim. She told the ISP that Absolute Write had exposed her to spam by publishing her email address and that this was illegal and that the ISP had to shut down the site or be liable. This is not illegal, and it's not a DMCA claim. The ISP shut down Absolute Write anyway.

A week later, the ISP has not reinstated the site, and they are refusing to hand over Absolute Write's database so they can put the site back up somewhere else. Absolute Write has a legal fund (I just kicked in $100) to help them drag their foolish ISP into compliance, and to defend themselves against the predator who shut them down. Link

Update: The owner of the ISP says that he's in the middle of a longer dispute with Absolute Write about their bandwidth usage and other matters, and that terminating the site on the strength of the bogus excuse was just a "justification." (Thanks, PJ!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:58:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PopSci on possible microbes from outer space

Here's an interesting article in the June 2006 issue of PopSci about the 50 tons of red gunk that rained on India in 2001. It's possible that the stuff contains critters from outer space.

[Godfrey] Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples—water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis’s home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001—contain microbes from outer space.

Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600˚F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250˚F.) So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:36:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Legal implications of the word "fuck"

The Ohio State University's Christopher M Fairman has published a scholarly paper called "Fuck":

This Article is as simple and provocative as its title suggests: it explores the legal implications of the word fuck. The intersection of the word fuck and the law is examined in four major areas: First Amendment, broadcast regulation, sexual harassment, and education. The legal implications from the use of fuck vary greatly with the context. To fully understand the legal power of fuck, the nonlegal sources of its power are tapped. Drawing upon the research of etymologists, linguists, lexicographers, psychoanalysts, and other social scientists, the visceral reaction to fuck can be explained by cultural taboo. Fuck is a taboo word. The taboo is so strong that it compels many to engage in self-censorship. This process of silence then enables small segments of the population to manipulate our rights under the guise of reflecting a greater community. Taboo is then institutionalized through law, yet at the same time is in tension with other identifiable legal rights. Understanding this relationship between law and taboo ultimately yields fuck jurisprudence.

Link (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:31:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coelacanth caught on video

At Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman reports that an Indonesian coelacanth has been caught on film west Sulawesi Island, Indonesia. A darling of cryptozoologists everywhere, the coelacanth was thought to have been extinct for the last 65 million years but was "rediscovered" in 1938. This one was filmed at a depth of 170m using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), essentially an underwater robot, operated by a team from Aquamarine Fukushima. The video isn't public yet, but I look forward to it! Link

UPDATE: Loren updated his post with more context about why this news is so significant, something I missed when making my original post:

The African species (the beautiful blue ones) was re-discovered in 1938, and for decades people thought that’s all there was. In the 1990s, they were finally filmed live.

But then in 1998, to the surprise of zoologists and ichthyologists worldwide, 6000 miles away, a whole new and different species (they are the beautiful brownish variety) of coelacanth were discovered off Indonesia. They have never been filmed alive in the wild. Until now. That’s why this is such a remarkable piece of news.

UPDATE: At Cryptomundo, the story continues to unfold:

* Apparently, a German team previously videotaped a coelacanth in its Indonesian habitat in 1999. This new video is the first since then.

* Two more coelacanths were seen yesterday.

* And, last but not least, here's a still from the May 30, 2006 video of this dark blue beauty!

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:11:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO build a magic wand to control your Mac

Mike Kuniavsky hacked a cheap 3D mouse to turn it into a "magic wand" that controlled his Mac by means of gestures, and wrote a great article about it, describing the build and covering what it feels like to drive a computer with a magic wand:

Quicksilver's gesture recognition software isn't the best (it's not like the IBM SHARK stuff I described earlier), but it's better than other alternatives that I've seen. And, because it works with Quicksilver, that means that there's a large library of knowledge about actions that can be triggered with the gestures. To me, the most interesting possibility, and one that I'll be playing with, is that Quicksilver can issue arbitrary commands, including command-line input to software that can control things back in the "real" world. Command-line input to Processing or NADA, for example, will allow easy magic wand control of things like, oh, Roombas, lights, giant mechanical beasts or teleporters. Hide the computer, disguise the mouse, and action at a distance is yours. Kinda

Link (via Futurismic)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:06:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How do "info-addict" couples surf together?

Wired News columnist Momus is collecting stories about "information addicted" couples who spend their together time with a couple of computers, typing alongside of one another. That characterizes all my relationships since the late nineties -- the questions are cool and resonant:

What about surfing as a form of sociability: do you e-mail each other interesting website addresses? Do you tend to visit the same kinds of sites? I know that when Hisae and I are surfing, language divides us: I'm visiting English-language sites, she's on Japanese ones. But quite a lot of our interaction is me asking her for explanations of things, Japanese stuff I don't understand. When that's going on, we'll either bring up the same page on two machines, or huddle around one. It's actually more sociable than TV. (Of course, maybe the TV is on at the same time.)

What about more dubious areas: are you secretly looking at porn with your partner right there in the room? Are you flirting with someone else, messaging someone? Because the weird thing about this technology is that it makes what's distant seem closer than what's close. Absent people can have more presence than present people. Or do you look at porn together? What about YouTube videos? Is surfing turning back into TV-watching?

What's the sound of a couple surfing? Dead silence, broken only by the sound of two tapping keyboards (quite a pleasant sound, actually)? Is music playing, and if so, who chooses it? Is choosing which iTunes accesses the sound sticks via Airport Express the new fight for the TV remote?

Link (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:02:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Alderman, Borruso, and Adigard on TV's transformation

John Alderman and Sarah Borruso, veteran thinkers/reporters on technology and culture, teamed up with virtuoso designer Erik Adigard (M-A-D) in a visual/textual exercise pondering how TV is transforming as a media. The result is "Exploding TV: From One to Many to Many to Many," a smart and graphically stunning poster that they presented at the 2006 Information Architecture Summit. The poster was also reprinted in 10x10, a fun PDF magazine published by Eat Creative in Japan.

John says:

The poster came about because Erik, Sarah, and I were all doing work with IPTV and mobile TV, and we proposed a poster for the IA Summit in Vancouver, while simultaneously Eat asked for a submission to 10x10. Mainly we just wanted to do some thinking about the properties of TV as it changed from broadcast to Internet distribution, like how that changed the whole underlying dynamics. On top of that, there were all kinds of new devices popping up demanding new kinds of content. So we wanted to start connecting some dots.

Link to 10x10 (PDF)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:56:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Willard Wigan's microsculptures

Willard Wigan makes very tiny sculptures.

When working on this scale he slows his heartbeat and his breathing dramatically through meditation and attempts to harmonise his mind, body and soul with the Creator. He then sculpts or paints at the centrepoint between heartbeats for total stillness of hand.

Link (via The Cartoonist)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:26:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coop's Japan photos

Coop is in Japan to celebrate the release of two Hot Wheels cars he designed. He's been taking tons of great pictures, and posting them to his blog. Link

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

3-D photos of circular saw blunders in old PopSci

Steve Lodefink has published some 3D photos from a 1953 issue of Popular Science. (I know I have a pair of 3D glasses around somewhere, probably tucked between the pages of a 1980s Ray Zone comic book moldering away in a cardboard box.) Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:53:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Old tech never goes extinct

Last week at the Institute for the Future's Technology Horizons conference, I listened to a terrific talk Kevin Kelly gave about technology as a kingdom of life and the future of the scientific method. He had a lot of great slides to illustrate his points, including this set show here. (Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

Kevin was curious to learn whether or not any technology ever truly goes extinct. So he took a page from a 19th century Montgomery Ward catalog, and then tried to find the same products today. It turned out that every single thing, from hand plows to corn shellers to lard presses, is still being made and sold today. This, Kevin pointed out, is different from living things, which become extinct over time.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:46:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Timothy Leary: ten years gone

"The real war is between those who are turned on, and those who are uptight." -Timothy Leary (October 22, 1920 - May 31, 1996)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:39:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Left Behind Christian sf novels turned into bigoted video-game

The people behind the kooky Christian "Left-Behind" science fiction novels (about the futuristic battles on earth after the Rapture takes all the good Bible-bashers to heaven) have produced a violent, bigoted video-game version of their stories. Ironicially, the game is drawing fire from Jack Thompson, himself a nutcase Christian Conservative who hates video-games more than he hates sinning liberals.

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice.

Link (Thanks, Rod!)

Update: Here's part two of the article -- thanks, Jonathan!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:31:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Apple G4 converted to roadside mailbox

A Flickr user caught a pic of this Apple G4 tower that's been converted to a roadside mailbox in Auckland, NZ -- great use for an old, iconic tower! Link (Thanks, Dustin!)

Update: Dave Prager has made this planter out of his G3 tower.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:56:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

User creates virtual ecosystem in Second Life

Wagner James Au sez, "While taking a break from the UK game industry to raise her child, a programmer created a self-contained ecology on a Second Life island, with numerous species and natural phenomenon that must work together to keep the system function: clouds rain on the land, nourishing the plants (which also respond to sunlight), bees spread pollen to help the plants reproduce, birds eat seeds to keep the plants from growing out of control, and so on."

If I was to turn off the clouds the whole system would die in about six hours," Laukosargas Svarog tells me. "Turn off the bees and [the plants stop] growing, because nothing gets pollinated. And it's the transfer of pollen that signals the plants to drop seeds. The seeds blow in the wind, and if they land on good ground according to different rules for each species, they grow when they receive rain water from the clouds. It's all interdependent.

Link (Thanks, James!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:41:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Reader feedback on bizarre no-link spam

Last week I wrote about the bizarre link free spam comments I've been getting on Mad Professor.

Quite a few readers offered theories as to what these messages mean and who is behind them. My own (half-serious but fun to entertain) theory is that they are messages sent back and forth by spies, and that the five- and seven-digit numbers are instructions to carry out parts of a covert operation. Since I screen every comment before it gets posted to Mad Professor, I thought it would be fun to change the numbers before posting them, but what if the random number I inserted happened to be instructions to drop ricin in a subway system or something else bad? I've decided the best thing to do is just delete these comments as they come in.

Anyway, here are the thoughtful and entertaining theories you've emailed in so far. Thanks!
More...

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:55:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weird but effective dazzle camouflage schemes

I think I remember something in a Tom Robbins book about the time some French military officials asked Picasso to suggest a camouflage scheme for their soldiers. His answer: "Dress them as harlequins." I guess he was onto something. (After a search, I found this page with another version of the story).

Here's a wonderful article about the history of "dazzle camouflage" written by Roy R. Behrens. (I also really like the design of Behren's site. It's simple and beautiful.)

The most familiar kinds of camouflage make one thing appear to be two, two things one, and so on. Camouflage artists (called camoufleurs) make it an arduous challenge to see a figure on a ground (called blending), or to distinguish one category of object from another (mimicry). Less familiar but potentially far more effective is disruptive or dazzle camouflage in which a single thing appears to be a hodgepodge of unrelated components.

...

The purpose of dazzle painting a ship was not to make it invisible (indeed, at times the dazzle pattern made it more visible), but simply to divert the aim of the submarine gunner, who was required to "aim ahead" of a distant, moving target, under less than ideal viewing conditions, and who thus depended on critically accurate estimates of the ship's speed, direction and location.

Link (thanks, Kevin!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:37:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fanatgraphics oral history

This fall, the world's greatest comix publisher, Fantagraphics, will release "Comics As Art: We Told You So," an oral history of the pioneering company that issued the work of such BB faves as R. Crumb, Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge, Johnny Ryan, Jim Woodring, Roberta Gregory, Charles Schulz, and, of course, Los Bros Hernandez. As a teaser, Fantagraphics is uploading two-page PDF spreads from the first chapter every weekend weekday until August. From the post on the Fantagraphics Flog!:

Comics As Art: We Told You So tells of Fantagraphics Books' role in helping build and shape an art movement around a discredited, ignored and fading expression of Americana. (Comic historian Tom) Spurgeon and designer Jacob Covey have assembled an all-star cast of industry figures, critics, cartoonists, art objects, curios and groundbreaking publications to bring you a detailed account of Fantagraphics' first thirty years. The book is also quite funny, and in this first chapter you'll be privvy to some hilarious photos of Gary Groth and Kim Thompson as well as some great fanzine art from Fanta's earliest and most amateurish period.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:30:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

One thousand paintings of 1000 numbers for sale

Sala, an artist from Zürich, Switzerland, is selling 1000 paintings of the first 1000 numbers. The selling price of each painting is calculated like so:

Value = 1000 - number.
Initial discount: 90%.
Current discount: 80%.
The discount will decrease by an absolute 10% for every 100 paintings sold.
Min. price: $40.

So far, Zala has sold 128 paintings. What a fun idea! Link

Reader comment: fbz says:

I really enjoyed the post about the 1000 paintings of the first one thousand numbers. I noticed a strange thing: a disproportionate number of prime numbers have been purchased. Perhaps there are prime number collectors out there like me?

Here are the prime numbers less than 1000:

2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29
31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71
73 79 83 89 97 101 103 107 109 113
127 131 137 139 149 151 157 163 167 173
179 181 191 193 197 199 211 223 227 229
233 239 241 251 257 263 269 271 277 281
283 293 307 311 313 317 331 337 347 349
353 359 367 373 379 383 389 397 401 409
419 421 431 433 439 443 449 457 461 463
467 479 487 491 499 503 509 521 523 541
547 557 563 569 571 577 587 593 599 601
607 613 617 619 631 641 643 647 653 659
661 673 677 683 691 701 709 719 727 733
739 743 751 757 761 769 773 787 797 809
811 821 823 827 829 839 853 857 859 863
877 881 883 887 907 911 919 929 937 941
947 953 967 971 977 983 991 997

Reader comment: Georgie says:

It's a cool idea.

But not 100% original.

Ed Keinholz is an American artist.

Here's a quote from the Guardian:

"Kienholz made installations before there really was such a thing, and conceptual works before the term became a movement. In the 1960s, he swapped watercolour "Barter" works, whose washy grounds bore only the rubberstamped name of the thing he wanted, for the goods themselves: a set of screwdrivers, a fur coat, a portable saw, a car. He also made watercoloured currency, for cash amounts from $1 to $10,000, which he sold at face value to collectors. These watercolours have something of the lightness of Ed Ruscha."

I got the quote from this blog post.

It's a nice summary of some of his stuff.

(I don't think Sala's and Keinholz's ideas are very similar at all, but I like what Keinholz did, so that's why I posted Georgie's commment -- Mark)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:00:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anatomical curiosity illustrations

BibliOdyssey has a wonderful post about anatomical curiosities in antique texts, including a fine selection of links to various image and info sources. (This illustration from a Wilhlem ten Rhyne text.) From the post:

Wilhelm ten Rhyne was a physician for the Dutch East India company and spent a couple of years in Japan in the 17th century. During his stay he exchanged medical information with Japanese and Chinese health workers. In 1683 he published Dissertatio de Arthritide: Mantissa Schematica: de Acupunctura. This was the original first-hand published account of eastern medicine and introduced the western world to the concept of acupuncture.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:52:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fire display

The Infernoptix Digital Pyrotechnic Matrix is a 96-inch display "screen" with 6" bursts of fire as pixels. Designed by tech/art firm NAO, the computer-controlled system can act as a firey scrolling sign, sketch pad, audio level meter, and also a percussive instrument that plays out the bursts in rhythm. From the project description:

Each fire pixel has a corresponding valve nestled in the frame of the screen and turned on or off by commands from the software. The Infernoptix is typically fueled by propane, but can be run on natural gas as well. Fuel tanks are stored externally and connected by hose to the sign and valves. Fuel consumption varies widely but with propane averages 15 gallons per hour. The screen itself measures 4'2" high by 7' wide by 1' deep, and is constructed of steel and copper. Total weight is 450 pounds, not including the stand, which is removeable for transport or alternate installations.

Link (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:43:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SF story about AI-human love

My friend Lauren McLaughlin, an excellent new sf writer, has a story up on today's Salon -- "The perfect man" -- the story of a woman who found true love by designing an AI, and then turning him loose.

Martin was a mouth breather. Jim lacked ambition. Rennie's head was too big. Craig licked my face like a dog.

But Pritchard. Pritchard is everything I want. And I'm not going to apologize about the way I met him. Especially not to my friends still slugging it out on LovePlanet.com. I did LovePlanet. Seventy-four dates with sixty-two men. You know what I learned? People lie. Sylvester was fifty-five, not thirty-five. Jacob was an unemployed bartender with halitosis, not a financial planner with a beach house. I admit I lied about my weight. All women lie about their weight.

But I can laugh at all of this now because I am off the roster. I am no longer "out there," as they say. And I didn't have to lower my standards or search outside my geographic region either. What I had to do was stop searching and start designing. That's right. I designed my boyfriend. I'm a busy woman. I don't have time for the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys the world keeps throwing at me.

Link

Update: Here's a great interview that Lauren McLaughlin conducted with Kelly Link, the award-winning author of Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners -- thanks, Matthew!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:35:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lobsters avoid their sick neighbors

Scientists have discovered that Caribbean spiny lobsters, a social animal, do their best to stay the hell away from others that are sick. Biologist Mark Butler of Old Dominion University and his colleagues noticed that while healthy spiny lobsters spend their days in large groups, sick animals are left alone. It makes evolutionary sense, Butler told the New York Times, but "it's not common." The scientists ran experiments in the lab and published their findings in the journal Nature. From the NYT:

When healthy lobsters were given a choice in a lab setting between an empty den and one with a sick lobster, they chose the empty den. Further studies showed that healthy lobsters avoided sick ones weeks before there were visible symptoms and before the sick lobsters became infectious. That's a good thing, Dr. Butler said, because if lobsters catch the virus "they're pretty much goners." He said the healthy lobsters probably detected chemical cues released by the sick ones.

The finding has implications for conservation, as the lobster habitat is being diminished by humans. "If you're wiping out the housing market, so to speak, now you have animals constrained and forced together," Dr. Butler said. Healthy lobsters may have no choice but to mingle with sick ones, raising the risk that the disease will be transmitted.

Link (Thanks, Kate Wing!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:58:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

JPEG patent invalidated

The US Patent and Trademark Office has taken away parts of the patent that controls the use of the JPEG standard, moving it closer to being completely free:

In the reexamination proceeding initiated late last year by the Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT"), the United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected the broadest claims of the patent Forgent Networks (Nasdaq: FORG) is asserting against the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) international standard for the electronic sharing of photo-quality images. In its Office Action released yesterday, the Patent Office found that the prior art submitted by PUBPAT completely anticipated the broadest claims of the patent, U.S. Patent No. 4,698,672 (the '672 Patent).

Forgent Networks acquired the '672 Patent through the purchase of Compression Labs, Inc. in 1997 and began aggressively asserting it against the JPEG standard through lawsuits and the media in 2004. The company has the opportunity to respond to the Patent Office's rejection, but third party requests for reexamination, like the one filed by PUBPAT, result in having the subject patent either modified or completely revoked roughly 70% of the time.

Link (via Interesting People)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:39:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Baby with three arms

This incredible image is a real photo of an infant, named Jie-jie, in Shanghai who was born with a well-developed third arm. According to an Associated Press article, surgeons at Shanghai Children's Medical Center are assessing surgery options. Sadly, Jie-jie is also short a kidney and may have other medical problems. From the AP article:

Neither of the boy's two left arms is fully functional and tests have so far been unable to determine which was more developed, said Dr. Chen Bochang, head of the orthopedics department at Shanghai Children's Medical Center.

"His case is quite peculiar. We have no record of any child with such a complete third arm," Chen said in a telephone interview. "It's quite difficult to decide how to do the operation on him."

Link (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:35:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to Beat Video Games monotone LP from 1982

Kim sez, "In 1982 this very strange LP was issued by some bargain-basement label: it features overviews and tips of popular arcade games like Defender and Donkey Kong, haltingly read in a bizarre monotone. This post has MP3s of the entire album--great for samples!" Link (Thanks, Kim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:22:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-DRM graphic

Dutch artist Metin Seven has created this Creative Commons by-nc-sa graphic about DRM -- I think it's a great visual communication of the problems caused by DRMs like HDCP/HDMI. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:55:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google Maps converted to ASCII art

ASCIIMaps scrapes Google Maps and turns the graphics into ASCII art, delivering all the map data as green Courier on a black background, like the mpas I used to make of the Zork caverns. I love it. Link (Thanks, Bogphanny!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:03:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sign a letter supporting the BBC's online archive

FreeCulture UK has created an open letter to the head of the BBC's Creative Archive project, calling on him to accelerate and open up the archive project. This is a project that, when announced, promised to clear and redistribute the millions of hours of video and audio that the BBC had commissioned or created with public money, using a Creative Commons or similar license. The idea is that Britain paid to have this stuff made, and leaving it to gather dust in some offline archive does them no good (I wrote a paper about this for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport).

The Archive started with a bang. It was included in the "charter renewal" that gives the BBC its marching order for the next ten years. The highest levels of management at the Beeb made public announcements promising to deliver it.

But more than a year later, the visible progress of the Archive is pretty slow. Mostly, the BBC seems to be clearing short clips from "factual" programs, not giving us the stock we need to roll our own Doctor Who episodes. They're using a pretty restrictive license, too.

FreeCulture UK hopes to change that by gathering signatures from BBC license payers and other interested parties who want to see this given greater priority at the Beeb, and to see it returned to the simple, grandiose vision it started with: clear everything, put it online.

We wish to commend you and your colleagues on the steady progress of the archive over the last year. The Creative Archive is a wonderful idea and one whose value is already being demonstrated with projects such as the Radio 1/1Xtra "Rip, Mix and Win" competition. However such activities have only scratched the surface of the Archive's vast potential and much yet remains to be done if that potential is to be properly realised. In particular we would like to draw your attention to the set of suggestions laid out below which we believe would greatly increase the value of the Archive to the British public.

Link (Thanks, Rufus!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:59:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Home chemistry under assault

Chemistry kits shouldn't be a crime, but increasingly they are.

Home science experimentation -- model rockets, chemistry sets and playing with explosives -- are a gateway drug to serious nerddom, having inspired the likes of Internet co-inventor Vint Cerf and Intel founder Gordon Moore. But the hobby is under assault from government agencies that are terrified of terrorists, from anti-fireworks campaigns, and from the war on (some) drugs. The result is that hobbyists and those who supply them are getting investigated, raided and even jailed.

Steve Silberman's long investigative piece in this month's Wired tackles the subject with admirable thoroughness and fairness, and left me feeling genuinely alarmed. Science and innovation are things that you start doing early on (Nikola Tesla invented his turbine design when he was five -- a design still in use at Niagara Falls and other power-generation stations), and penalizing those who help kids do science is a surefire way to trash the nation's competitiveness.

The push to restrict access to chemicals by those who have no academic or scientific credentials gained momentum in the mid-’90s following the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. In the years since 9/11, the Defense Department, FBI, and other government agencies have strategized ways of tracking even small purchases of potentially dangerous chemicals. “The fact that there are amateurs and retired professors out there who need access to these chemicals is a valid problem,” acknowledges Rice University chemistry professor James Tour, who consulted with the Pentagon and the Justice Department, “but there aren’t many of those guys weighed against the possible dangers.”

A provision in the 2002 Homeland Security Act mandated background checks and licensing requirements for model-rocket enthusiasts on the grounds that ammonium perchlorate fuel is an explosive; the Justice Department argued that terrorists could deploy model rockets to shoot down commercial airliners. A bill pending in both houses of Congress would empower the Department of Homeland Security to regulate sales of ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer that Timothy McVeigh used to make the Oklahoma City bomb. “We finally have bipartisan support and encouragement from the chemical industry on this, which is important, because we’ve seen what can happen when these materials fall into the wrong hands,” says US representative Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania), who is sponsoring the House bill. “As we move forward, we’re going to be taking a very close look at other chemicals that should be regulated.”

In the meantime, more than 30 states have passed laws to restrict sales of chemicals and lab equipment associated with meth production, which has resulted in a decline in domestic meth labs, but makes things daunting for an amateur chemist shopping for supplies. It is illegal in Texas, for example, to buy such basic labware as Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers without first registering with the state’s Department of Public Safety to declare that they will not be used to make drugs. Among the chemicals the Portland, Oregon, police department lists online as “commonly associated with meth labs” are such scientifically useful compounds as liquid iodine, isopropyl alcohol, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen peroxide, along with chemistry glassware and pH strips. Similar lists appear on hundreds of Web sites.

Link (image thumbnail taken from David Clugston illustration)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:46:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flashlight/megaphone/radio/siren in one

This camouflage flashlight comes with a built-in megaphone, radio and siren -- now that's disaster preparedness! Link (via Red Ferret)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:37:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cliches to avoid when writing about women and video-games

Richard Cobbett, a UK journalist, has written an hilarious screed against articles about women who play video-games, summing up every cliche in this fast-growing genre:

This is your introduction; your jumping off point. How you tackle this thorny issue will affect the whole tone of your cutting article. Refer to "Lara's chest", and you sound debonaire and suave, aware of the connotations, yet subtly removed from them. A sly reference to "Lara's boobs" and you're with the everyman; casual, yet aware. "Lara's assets" show you as a dispassionate observer of life's rich tapestry. And "Lara's back! And her front too!" translates literally as "I am a man with no sense of humour."

Discussion of character should be avoided at all costs; fighting the objectification of female game figures by ignoring irrelevant details like personality, background, stance, objectives, voice work, dialogue, relationships, and all that other junk, in favour of obsessing over breasts. You know. The important things.

Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:35:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Puzzlefloor: Jigsaw puzzle parquet pieces

Puzzlefloor is a parquet flooring made of wood cut into jigsaw puzzle pieces, stained to differing finishes. Lay it down and turn your sitting room into a giant jigsaw! Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:31:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

American food in times of war, Civil War - present day

Megnut -- now reborn as an erudite and gripping food blog -- has a great Memorial Day post tracing the history of "war food" from the southland's okra-based coffee-substitute during the Civil Ware right up to the Gulf War's MREs:

During the Civil War Southern civilians suffered heavily from Northern blockades and as the war dragged on, food supplies became quite limited. Southern food substitutions became common when staples were no longer available. For meat people ate "[d]omestic animals, crows, frogs, locusts, snails, snakes and worms." When coffee ran out, it was "brewed" from "[o]kra seeds that were browned, dried sweet potatoes or carrots, roasted acorns, wheat berries."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:27:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 29, 2006

Funny photos I took with my cell phone

Here are six noteworthy photos I took in the last month or so with my cell phone. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:32:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Hand-decorated World of Warcraft Easter eggs

The winners and runners-up for this World of Warcraft Easter egg-decorating contest are fantastic -- I love this Orc Egg. Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:03:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Superhero/Renaissance art mashup photoshopping contest

Today in the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: modding Renaissance art to include underwear perverts and other comic book characters. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:59:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Join a timeshare island tribe in Fiji

Today's LA Times has a short article about Tribewanted, a project to recruit 5,000 people from around the world who want to live on an island with 100 other people for a couple of weeks and build a community.

The goal: to build a sustainable eco-community and keep at bay developers with dreams of massive hotel complexes.

Memberships — Nomad ($220), Hunter ($440) and Warrior ($660) — entitle members to seven, 14 or 21 days on the palm-fringed 200-acre oasis, 100 at a time. Fees cover food, lodging and local airport transfer.

This is not for the five-star hotel crowd. The tribe will be roughing it, especially the early arrivals, who will have only tents and basic shower and toilet facilities.

"The first job for the tribe," [co-founder Ben] Keene said, "is to build for those who come later," working alongside paid Fijian laborers to build beach huts. There's no electricity, but solar energy will provide Internet access.

So far, about 400 people have signed up, ranging in age from 18 to 67. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:53:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Typists' gas-mask from 1935

A scan from a 1935 edition of Modern Mechanix documents this "typists' gas-mask" whose clear face-plate allows typists to continue working while filtering out mustard gas and other airborne toxins. Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:25:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 26, 2006

Can anyone own "Web 2.0?"

O'Reilly Media have taken a ton of criticism for attempting to enforce a service mark against a nonprofit group in Ireland that wanted to have "Web 2.0" conference. O'Reilly exec Dale Dougherty coined the term Web 2.0, and O'Reilly used it for a line of very successful conferences chaired by Boing Boing's business manager, John Battelle (I've been a speaker at Web 2.0 as well, and found the con to be an amazing, eye-opening experience).

The dispute seems to have been resolved amicably. O'Reilly has apologized for sending in lawyers against the con before speaking to them, and has granted the con permission to use "Web 2.0" in its name.

However, O'Reilly maintains that Web 2.0 is a service mark of their company when applied to conferences, and that other conferences that want to call themselves "Web 2.0" will have to get O'Reilly's permission -- they defend this as part of the sound business practice of defending a trademark.

Trademarks are intended to protect consumers by ensuring that goods and services aren't misleadingly labeled. A trademark holder, say, "Coke," gets the right to sue companies that use the word "Coke" in their products and services in a way that would lead the public to believe that Coke was behind them.

But trademarks aren't "property" -- they aren't words owned by companies. They're the ability to use the courts to protect a company's customers. That's a pretty good idea: the public deserves to be protected from misleading marketing.

The question is whether using "Web 2.0" in a conference name is misleading: will the average person who hears about a Web 2.0 event assume that it must be put on by O'Reilly, or will she assume that it's just an event about the Web 2.0 technology and business-practices that O'Reilly defined?

O'Reilly has an amazing, wonderful gift for popularizing hard ideas and for explaining abstruse technology in catchy ways. "Web 2.0" is only one of O'Reilly's many accomplishments, which started with the publication of the first user documentation for Unix, and has continued through many iterations of excellent, world-changing ideas and memes.

The downside of creating amazing, industry-shaking ideas is that they become embedded in the popular consciousness. While the digerati know that O'Reilly originated Web 2.0, the idea is so infectious that it's just become part of the fabric of the industry. One of the things that makes O'Reilly's ideas so great is that they go on to be part of the infrastructure, invisible and huge and powerful.

But that means that O'Reilly's ideas are also not uniquely associated with O'Reilly. When I hear "emerging technology," I think of more than the excellent "O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference" (even though I've volunteered for every ETECH programming jury so far). When I hear "Open Source," I think of more than the wonderful "O'Reilly Open Source Conferences" (where I've spoken on several occasions). And when I hear "Web 2.0," I think of more than the brilliant "O'Reilly Web 2.0 Conference."

Which is by way of saying that I'm not convinced that there is a trademark here. In O'Reilly's latest post about this, they quote my pal and colleague John Battelle saying "Remember, Web 2.0 is also about having a business that works. And not protecting your trademarks is simply bad business practice." But while that's true -- Boing Boing has on one occasion asked someone publishing a really similar blog also called "Boing Boing," with similar graphics, to consider changing its name -- it's not the whole story.

The O'Reilly Conferences' unique selling proposition is that they rewrite the rules of the industry and coalesce meaning out of the stew of ideas floating around the field. If you're going to name the next direction the world will take, you have to be prepared for the world to take that direction. Industry shifts become public property -- or rather, things that are privately controlled can't shift a diverse industry.

That means that O'Reilly needs to choose whether it's going to retain control the word "Web 2.0" for conferences, or retain control over the shifts that created the Web 2.0 phenomenon.

I think being able to call the shots is more important than being able to own those calls. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:15:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iRiver gives customers the choice of switching off DRM

iRiver makes several digital music players that come loaded with an operating system that obeys Microsoft's crippling "Plays for Sure" specification -- which ensures that the device obeys big music companies instead of its owner. Hackers have fixed this for months by providing an unauthorized firmware for the device that turns it into a real MP3 player, and now the company has taken the hint and released an official version.

This is an object lesson in how DRM fails in the marketplace. iRiver's customers don't want DRM -- it makes their device less valuable. They want a device that obeys their wishes, and they're willing to void their warranties to get one.

iRiver can respond by locking down their devices further, but that's just declaring war on their customers. Instead, they did the smart thing and abandoned their Plays For Sure certification (which is meaningless, since Plays For Sure devices are notoriously incompatible in the field, prompting some former customers to call them "Plays For Shit"). They're giving their customers what they demand: legal devices that work as well as the company can make them. Link (Thanks, Brian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:02:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF scores win against Apple: bloggers' sources are protected

Apple has lost its bid to force websites to reveal the identity of their sources. Apple argued that because the websites weren't "real news agencies" they shouldn't be entitled to the protection that newspapers and other news-gatherers enjoy. This was pretty off-message from the "think different" company that has talked a big game about empowering average people to do extraordinary things.

Apple further argued that it had no means to discover the identities of its leaking employees save compelling the sites to reveal them. The courts rejected this too, saying first that Apple could get at those sources by investigating its employees, and wanted to get out of doing a dirty job by putting the sites on the spot. The court further elaborated on the public value of free speech, saying that free speech was more important than trade secrets.

This is new law, specifically that "the federal Stored Communications Act protects private e-mail from civil subpoenas" -- that means that ISPs and other entities who store email have the law on their side when people sue their customers.

EFF and its allies at cyber-law clinics argued this case, and it's an important win for bloggers and other citizen journalists who now know that the courts will give them the same respect afforded to big corporate news-gatherers.

The Sixth District Court of Appeals on Friday roundly rejected (.pdf) Apple's argument that the bloggers weren't acting as journalists when they posted internal document about future Apple products. "We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes 'legitimate journalis(m).' The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here," the court wrote.

"Beyond casting aspersions on the legitimacy of petitioners’ enterprise, Apple offers no cogent reason to conclude that they fall outside the shield law’s protection."

Link (Thanks, Lauren and Anthony!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:48:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mona Lisa made from computer parts

This Mona Lisa, on exhibition in Beijing, is made of computer parts, and titled "Technology Smiling." Link (via Gizmodo) (photo excerpt from AP Photo/EyePress)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:40:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Alan Graham's Nespresso movie

Alan Graham said my Aeropress coffee machine movie inspired him to make a movie of his favorite coffee machine in action, the Nespresso Esssenza C90. Link to movie | Link to review

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:32:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

JPL podcast about the history and future of Voyager probes

In 1977, NASA launched two Voyager spacecraft to explore the outer planets of the solar system. (Seen here, Jupiter with Io and Europa as photographed by Voyager 1 on February 13, 1979. Link) Nearly three decades later, both probes are still sending data back home as they're hurtling toward the edge of our solar system. (Previous BB post about Voyager here.) Ed Stone has been the project scientist since the beginning. This week, he was interviewed on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Podcast. From the transcript:

Narrator: Okay, let me just go back a bit, and again, you have 30 years of these two amazing spacecraft. This is a tough question for you, I'm sure, but do you have some highlights you can rattle off, some of the most important things you've learned in that time or some of the most exciting discoveries for you.

Stone: Well, generally the most important thing we learned is how diverse the bodies of the solar system are. Each one is unique and that's because they've had a different history, different evolution. Jupiter, with it's great red spot is just the largest of dozens of giant hurricane-like storm systems. And two of Jupiter's moons, Io, has a 100 times more volcanic activity than Earth. Europa has an ice crust probably on the liquid water ocean. On to Saturn, we've found Saturn's rings are riddled with wakes from moons, which are orbiting inside the rings and outside the rings. And there is a moon there called Enceladus, which is the whitest, brightest object in the solar system and has a very fresh surface. And there's the moon Titan, which has an atmosphere in which liquid natural gas rains on the surface. On to Uranus, where we found the magnetic pole down near its equator, and we found a moon, although it was only 300 miles across, it's one of the most complex surfaces we've yet seen. And on to Neptune, the furthest planet from the sun that we've visited, yet it has the fastest winds, with the least energy from the sun to dry them, and its moon Triton, 40 degrees above absolute zero, yet we found geysers erupting from its polar ice cap.
Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:15:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Table wreck

Design firm Tjep created this wonderful "controlled collision of 7 tables" for an ad agency's conference room. From the description:

"This table will be at the center of different view points, cultures and motivations colliding with each other to form something new and powerful, this idea is symbolized in the colors and design of the table."

Link (via Sensory Impact)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:57:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lori Earley prints for sale

Roq La Rue gallery is selling Giclee prints of this lovely Lori Earley oil painting, titled "The Wish." It's a limited edition of 100 signed and numbered. They're going for $600.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:44:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Duck swallowed alien?

This delightful image of an alien was found in an X-ray image of an ill duck at the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Coredlia, California. From the San Francisco Chronicle (photo by Carloa Avila Gonzalez):

The drake in question arrived at the center Sunday with a broken wing. Workers do not know how the mallard was injured, but it was clearly weak and emaciated. In an effort to pinpoint the trouble, Maria Travers, the assistant rehabilitation manager, took a radiograph image of the bird. She was stunned by what she saw.

"Look at this," she shouted. "It's an alien head!"

Holcomb admitted the strange image could have been an odd arrangement of grain in the stomach...

Link (Thanks to the many readers who submitted this one.)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:33:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Michael Stebbins on RU Sirius Show

Michael Stebbins, author of Sex, Drugs & DNA: Sciences Taboos Confronted, drops some political info about upcoming moves by Republican Senatorial titans Bill Frist and John McCain on this week’s RU Sirius Show.

Also, there’s an odd but interesting discussion of nano-biotechnology with Dr. Alan H. Goldstein, who writes about nanotech for Salon, on this week’s NeoFiles. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:53:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fan created song for Perplex City

Here's a fun music video created by a woman who is a huge fan of the game Perplex City (Here's an earlier post about it)
Link| 23 more YouTube fan-made videos about Perplex City

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:51:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Anton Bogaty cartoon

A few month ago, I wrote about Anton Bogaty's excellent art. Today, he told me that he created a short animated film, called "Coburn," which you can see here.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:03:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cartoons illustrate covers of classical music CDs

Deutsche Grammophon has been issuing classical music CDs with art work by well-known cartoonists. (Shown here, Handel by Jim Woodring). Link (thanks, Michael!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:54:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open travel-time maps of the UK

The MySociety project has produced an incredible set of travel-time maps of the UK, showing the voyage-time using color shading (red for close, blue for far) and contour lines to indicate each hour's travel -- they compare the overall travel time for going from A to B by rail and car and cab. They're laying an open geodata-bank for use in correlating house prices to travel times, cost-to-time, and generating realtime web-services. Link (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:21:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Help define "open business"

The OpenBusiness project (an academic venture that I'm an advisor to) has started an open forum to discuss what constitutes an "open" business practice, and they're seeking your input:

Yet, thinking practically, MySpace – one of the best known ‘open’ platforms for sharing content and information - recently changed its copyright policy following acquisition by Murdoch. Today everything which is uploaded to the site, your pictures, movies and recordings belongs, legally at least, to them. This position is clearly in opposition to some of the benefits sought by loosening intellectual property restrictions. The definition of ‘open’ also depends, in this regard, on encouraging communities which are sustainable.

There is also another aspect of how “Openess” changes the way business operates: Big industrial organisational models which were made for the era of mass-media and mass-production make no sense anymore. An online record label run by a staff of three can perform similar functions to a big record label run by hundreds of people. New organizational forms, new management styles and cultural norms are emerging, as well as new revenue models. But are these businesses more ethical, because they can re-distribute more, or radically reduce the costs of publishing making access to educational resources much cheaper?

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:09:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Can. Heritage ministry suppressed report damning DMCA

Michael sez, "The Ottawa Citizen runs a new column of mine that reports on an unreleased recent Canadian Heritage commissioned study on the economic impact of the copyright industries. The study, obtained under an access to information request, is damaging to Heritage's own positions as it contradicts many of their claims on copyright matters. For example, it finds that Canada leads the US in "copyright industry" growth despite the abscence of DMCA-style legislation. Moreover, contrary to claims that the music industry has been declining, it finds that the industry in Canada has experienced steady growth since 1999 (which it seeks to downplay by cautioning that "the findings should be treated with caution")." Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:02:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Accupressure outfits

The New York College of Health Professionals, a holistic health school, is launching a line of clothing that they claim enables the wearer to easily self-administer accupressure. Apparently, the wearer only need press on small seeds sewn into the clothing at specific points. The new clothing brand is called MyChi. From a press release:

"Imagine it’s the ninth inning, the score tied, you are one run up but bases are loaded with no outs. I wouldn’t want to be the pitcher," says Lisa Pamintuan, who years ago played at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open and is now President of New York College, the 25-year-old pioneering institution of Holistic Health (www.nycollege.edu). "However, hopefully, our baseball cap will make situations like this a little easier. All athletes look for ways to enhance their performance, whether on the field or the tennis court. I wish I had worn this line of clothing when I was playing at Wimbledon as a 16-year-old. I would have been able to press the acupressure points in the clothing, like my sweatbands, and I would have been able to be either energized when I was tired, or relaxed when it was a tight match..."

"We are moving forward to the market, but our primary business is in offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs, not selling clothing. We are hoping that companies like Nike, Reebok, Champion, Russell, Adidas and other major sportswear companies will see the value of the College’s technologies," says Lisa Pamintuan.

Link (via Medgadget, thanks Jason Tester!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:43:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cloaking devices described in scientific journal

Two papers (count 'em, two!) in this week's issue of Science describe the possibility and theoretical method to construct cloaking devices. (No demo devices as of yet.) Imperial College London physicist Sir John Pendry and his colleagues describe an approach based on metamaterials that could bend electromagnetic radiation, including light around an object. (Link to paper abstract.) Meanwhile, Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St. Andrews, writes about using metamaterials in "a general recipe for the design of media that create perfect invisibility within the accuracy of geometrical optics." (Link to paper abstract.) From National Geographic News:

Invented six years ago, the man-made (metamaterials) are embedded with networks of exceptionally tiny metal wires and loops.

The structures refract, or bend, different types of electromagnetic radiation—such as radar, microwaves, or visible light—in ways natural substances can't.

"[Metamaterials] have the power to control light in an unprecedented way," said Sir John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at England's Imperial College London.

"They can actually keep it out of a volume of space, but they can do so without you noticing that there's been a local disturbance in the light..."

So far researchers have only developed metamaterials that divert radar and microwaves—rather than light waves, which are the key to invisibility.

While that's good news for Air Force generals who want to conceal warplanes, it's bad news for wannabe wizards hoping for a magic cloak.

Link to National Geographic News article, Link to BBC News report (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:19:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burgaard and Norton on IFTF's Tech Horizons Exchange keynote

Peder Burgaard of Denmark's Innovation Lab has been working with us at the Institute for the Future for the last few months. Now, Peder has started blogging at We Make Money Not Art. His first post is about the presentation that Larry Smarr, Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), gave at IFTF's Technology Horizons Spring Exchange that took place this week. The subject of Smarr's talk was super high-definition telepresence and bandwidth to burn. Link

Blogger and BB pal Quinn Norton was also in attendance and posting her impressions of the Exchange at Ambiguous.org. Link

And IFTF researcher Alex Pang's thoughts on Smarr's talk are here on IFTF's Future Now blog. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:24:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Lifespan of best-sellers falls 6/7ths in 40 years

Print-on-demand publisher Lulu.com has done a study on the lifespan of best-sellers and concluded that the number of weeks a book stays on the bestseller list has fallen to one-seventh of the average 40 years ago. This means that more books are becoming best-sellers, but that best-sellerdom means less in terms of revenue expectations. It's a pretty long-tail-ish conclusion: success is a lot more niche and small-s than it was back in the heyday of blockbusters. On the plus side, the physical costs associated with book-publishing are also way down, making smaller print runs viable, and Internet-era retailers like Amazon can sell millions of different titles.

The findings of the 50-year study are announced as America's book trade gathers in Washington for Book Expo (May 18-21), its largest annual get-together, while the movie of "The Da Vinci Code," the mother of all recent bestsellers, goes on worldwide release (May 19). The study was conducted by Lulu.com (www.lulu.com), the world's fastest-growing source of print-on-demand books.

The average number of weeks that a new No. 1 bestseller stayed top of the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List has fallen from 5.5 in the 1990s, 14 in the 1970s and 22 in the 1960s to barely a fortnight last year -- according to the study of the half-century from 1956-2005.

In the 1960s, fewer than three novels reached No. 1 in an average year; last year, 23 did.

"The blockbuster novel is heading the way of the mayfly," says Bob Young, CEO of Lulu.com, referring to the famously short-lived insect.

Link (via Collision Detection)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:28:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Oil paintings inspired by video-game scenes

Jeremiah Palacek, a painter in the Czech Republic, paints beautiful oils of scenes out of video games and sells them online via his blog and eBay. Link (via Collision Detection)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:23:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What manga sound-effects mean

Here's a glossary of onomatopoeiac sound-effects used in Japanese comics and what they mean. Lots of interesting, nonintuitive definitions here:

Gunya = sudden mental realization

guon = the sound of a dryer. For the sound of a washing machine, see goun

guooo = a roar. Can be a fire sound, often used for Hiei's fire attacks (Cf. bo, goooo, po)

gura = stagger, move shakily (see also zuru)

guri = to give noogies

Link (Thanks, Betsy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:05:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lawyer demands U Fla cops' documents on fiction writer

Mitchell L Silverman, an attorney in Hollywood, Florida, was so outraged by the story of University of Florida cops leaning on a grad student who published fiction on his LiveJournal recounting a murder that he's filed an official request with the U Fla police for copies of all the police notes on the file. The cops have a legal obligation to disclose these records under state law.

Philip Sandifer is the U Fla grad student in Gainesville from whom the campus police demanded DNA and fingerprints. Sandifer had published a short story about a murderer who cites his crimes in a letter to the Special Forces as qualifications for a job with them. The cops' rationale was that even if it was fiction, you can't be too safe, and besides, they didn't think that English students should be writing about murder.

It looks like the original complaint came from people whom Sandifer had argued with over Wikipedia -- a message-board for disgruntled Wikipedians contains a discussion of Sandifer's story and the mischief that could be had by complaining the university about it, noting, "it wouldn't take much to put him in a position where he either decides to leave Wikipedia or decides that he doesn't need a Ph.D. after all." Sandifer told the police about this, but they continued to pressure him for DNA samples, threatening to obtain them from his garbage if he refused to comply.

The U Fla police refused to speak with me, and (via a university spokesman) denied asking for Sandifer's prints and DNA and condemning his writing -- but Sandifer's story is corroborated by his advisor, Sid Dobrin, who was present during one of their interviews with him.

Silverman is acting on his own in this request for documents -- he's not Sandifer's attorney. He's just an outraged Floridan who wants to know why the cops in his state are policing fiction. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:02:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kids turn "teen repellent" sound into teacher-proof ringtone

Kids in the UK have co-opted an annoying noise sold to retailers as teenager-repellent and turned it into a ringtone.

Mosquito is a high-pitched sound "audible only to teenagers" sold by Britain's Compound Security. It is sold to shopkeepers to use as a teenager repellent -- the idea is to play it loudly in and around shops and "chase away those annoying teenagers!!!"

The kids have reportedly converted the high-pitched noise and turned it into a ringtone, which, being inaudible to grownups, can then be used to receive texts and calls in class without alerting teachers.

This is either a magnificent hoax or just plain magnificent -- either way, I love this Little Brother Watches Back parable.

Schoolchildren have recorded the sound, which they named Teen Buzz, and spread it from phone to phone via text messages and Bluetooth technology.

Now they can receive calls and texts during lessons without teachers having the faintest idea what is going on.

A secondary school teacher in Cardiff said: 'All the kids were laughing about something, but I didn't know what. They know phones must be turned off during school. They could all hear somebody's phone ringing but I couldn't hear a thing.

Link (Thanks, Seth and WIll!)

Update: JS sez, "Considering that such high tones are virtually unattainable for the cell-phone loudspeakers I find the story highly suspect. Besides, the sound used as a ringtone would be compressed in some way (maybe not in the newer models, but would all kids have them?), further reducing the possibility that such high frequency content is preserved. I did little research and found this link where cell-phone audio capabilities are presented in detail. According to them the cell-phone's piezoelectric speaker caps its frequency response about at 10khz, while the Teen Buzz plays at 18khz to 20khz."

I had similar doubts -- which suggests that these kids have done something even more subversive than creating an adult-proof ringtone: they've convinced adults that there's an inaudible sound that they can all hear.

Update 2: James sez, "I found this article about the mosquito system. It includes a link to an MP3 of the sound. I'm 18 and I can hear it, but neither my mom nor my step dad (both in their 50's) could distinguish the sound. It's worth noting that my step dad is a country music singer who has a very well trained ear. Since the sound carries over to MP3, and most new phones can play MP3s as ringtones, it would seem likely that students could use the mosquito sound as an adult proof ringer."

Update 3: Gregory sez, "Here's a data sheet for a piezoelectric speaker for cell phones, and shows frequency response measured out to 20kHz. The link that JS found did not say that frequencies above 10kHz were unattainable, but said "The frequency response of piezoelectric speakers is similar to small geometry moving coil speakers up to ~10 KHz bandwidth." As you can see by the data sheet at the URL listed above, small piezoelectric speakers are quite capable of being driven at frequencies above 20kHz. In fact, piezoelectric speakers are commonly used as tweeters in some sound systems; high frequencies are easy, it's the lows that give small speakers problems. A far more important question is the frequency response of the amplifiers that are driving the cell phone speakers. Amplifiers are typically band-limited to reduce noise and increase stability. What is the band limit for the phones in question?"

Update 3: Tony sez, "I've just had a look at 'Mosquito'. It's recorded at a low level, a sort of 'European siren', switching between two high tones at 2Hz. There are some giggles & rumble present (cells would probably not pass these audibly), but the high tones measure around 15,000 to 17,000 Hz. Interested geezers should pitch-shift the sound down an octave. That's exactly the same range as old TV flybacks used to emit ... which I *used* to be able to hear walking by someone's house."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:48:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DeLay campaign cites Colbert bit as evidence of innocence

Tom DeLay is grasping at straws in his legal defense of his official corrution: his campaign cited a Stephen Colbert bit as evidence of his innocence. The segment is an interview with Robert "Outfoxed" Greenwald, whose latest film is called "The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress." DeLay's legal defense fund cited Colbert's interview in a fundraising letter, under the heading "Colbert Cracks Real Story on Motivations Behind the Movie." They're featuring the video on their website, too.

Of course, Stephen Colbert is a comedian whose brilliant schtick is to pretend to be the sort of neanderthal right-wing talk-show host who would apologize for Tom DeLay, something he became incredibly famous for after his blistering White House Press Corps dinner speech where he roasted the President (that speech is presently the top selling audiobook in the iTunes Music Store).

With the savvy displayed here, it seems a foregone conclusion that DeLay's defense isn't going to keep him out of jail. Link (Thanks, Mike and Doug!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:40:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tomorrow is Towel Day, for Douglas Adams

Tomorrow is Towel Day, a day of remembrance for Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Observe it by carrying a towel all day. Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:18:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO operate Disney's Pirates ride, circa 1976

Here's a link to the 1976 edition of the standard operating procedures for Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean.

My favorite Disney-geek reading is the old operating-procedure manuals for the rides. These docs are all one-of-a-kind Rube Goldberg machines, intended to be operated by large crews of semi-skilled, lightly trained individuals who spend 8-12 hours per day loading the richest children on Earth into modified threshing machines. Therefore, the manuals tend to be wonderfully lucid and down-to-earth, the Hemingway of documentation. Link (via The Disney Blog)

Update: Here's the Haunted Mansion manual from 1975 -- thanks, Tom! Cory

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:47:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hilarious column on rental-car tech

Lore Sjöberg continues to write laugh-aloud-funny columns in Wired News -- this one is about the great, useless technology that crowds the dashboards of rental cars. I've never owned a car, so pretty much every ride I've ever piloted has been a hertzmobile, and I love getting all those knobs and buttons to endanger myself with:

Satellite radio is very dangerous, because I'm really not qualified to make aesthetic decisions at 70 mph. It generally takes me three near misses to give up and go with the station that most resembles my own record collection. It's nice to know that at least one other person, or perhaps algorithm, out there likes "One Night in Bangkok."

Rental cars these days also have buttons all over the steering wheel, which makes me very happy. This is because like all rational, mature adults, I want to be Speed Racer. All I need is a child and his chimp in the trunk and I'm ready to rock. It's not precisely totally 100 percent the same, though, because Speed's buttons transformed the car into a boat and launched a robot homing pigeon, while my buttons engage cruise control. In all honesty, I'm about 400 times more likely to use cruise control as I am to need a robot pigeon, but it would be nice to have both.

I think the point of having the buttons on the steering wheel is that it's supposed to be safer, but it's actually more dangerous for the first 15 minutes, because that's when I'm experimenting. I'm pressing all the buttons to see what they do. I'd make a terrible James Bond. Two minutes after I pulled into traffic the streets would be covered in oil slicks and smoke screens, and I'd be trailing a grappling hook.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:33:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animal overpasses enable critters' "sex across the highway"

Y2Y is an ambitious project to create safe freeway crossings for animals from the Yukon to Yellowstone, in the form of overpasses and underpasses designed to lure animals into crossing away from traffic. That's good news for animals -- who are dying in increasing numbers from traffic fatalities -- and good news for drivers. As Clive Thompson reports, "slamming into an enormous black bear at 60 miles an hour is kinetically equivalent to driving into a brick wall."

Their goal is not just a wolf pack surviving here and there, or a few scattered grizzly bears or elk or bighorn sheep, but a landscape in which animals can thrive, roaming and reproducing widely and avoiding the genetic perils of small populations trapped in shrinking habitats.

When the researchers write up their findings for scientific journals, they call this goal "functional connectivity," said Michael Proctor, a zoologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alberta. He calls it "sex across the highway."

Link (via Collission Detection)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:48:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

GAM3R 7H30RY: a networked book on games

Ben of the Institute for the Future of the Book writes in about his latest project, "an open online book from Hacker Manifesto author McKenzie Wark entitled GAM3R 7H30RY (gamer theory). The subject: video games (as allegories of the world we live in).

"GAM3R 7H30RY 1.1 is an experiment in networked publishing. The Institute designed a web site that would enable McKenzie to engage with readers before the book is fully cooked, to see how a larger conversation might impact its development. Each individual paragraph has its own comment stream allowing for fine-grained response to the text. There's also a free-fire discussion forum where people can start their own conversations about the meaning of games and the propositions ventured in the book. It's all published under a CC license.

"All in all, an envelope-pushing endeavor, in both form and content. Eventually, GAM3R 7H30RY will be published by a conventional press, but between now and then we're trying to investigate new creative strategies in the peer-to-peer environment. We call this a 'networked book' — the book as social software. We're hoping to spark discussion about that as well."

Link (Thanks, Ben!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:34:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Canadian students ask govt to save them from copyright

Michael sez, "The Canadian Federation of Students, which represents more than 500,000 university and college students across Canada, has released a public letter to Ministers Oda and Bernier on copyright reform. The CFS identifies five issues of concern."

* Anti-circumvention legislation - the CFS recognizes the dangers associated with DRM and argues that if the government is to legislate in the area, that it adopt a minimalist approach

* ISP liabiliity - the CFS supports the "notice and notice" approach

* Fair use - the CFS calls for an expansion of fair dealing toward a U.S. style fair use system

* Digital Loans and Learning - the CFS advocates for provisions that support the use of the network without the additional burdens imposed by Bill C-60 that would have turned librarians into digital locksmiths

* Statutory Damages - the CFS wants the statutory damages reformed so that educators and students are not forced into settlements due to risk of enormous liability arising from the statutory damages provisions

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:32:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BMW distributes free audiobooks featuring their cars

BMW has commissioned four short stories that feature their cars and produced audiobooks of them, which are available as free, non-DRMed MP3s on their site (you do have to give them an unverified email address to get access, though). Presently, they're featuring stories by Don Winslow, James Flint, Simon Kernick and Karin Slaughter. Link (Thanks, Tim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:27:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New story on Cory's podcast: "Super-Man and the Bugout"

I've just posted the first of three installments of the podcast of my story The Super-Man and the Bugout, a superhero story that asks what would have happened if Kal-el had landed in suburban Toronto and been raised by an old Jewish couple. It's the conclusion of the triad of stories comprised by Shadow of the Mothaship and Home Again, Home Again, about the Canadian response to the invasion of benevolent Scientologist aliens.

Link, Podcast feed

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:01:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Grease Monkey: indie space-station comic collection

Tim Eldred's indie comic book Grease Monkey -- a great, funny space adventure comic -- has been collected by Tor and has just hit the shelves. Grease Monkey is the story of a post-alien-invasion space-station where crack pilots drill ceaselessly to train for the rematch with the aliens -- like Ender's Game, but wicked funny.

The Barbarian squadron are the all-woman leaders of the fleet, thanks in no small part to their mechanic Mac, who is an uplifted gibbon (part of a tribe of sentient apes that mixes with human society). The story is told from the PoV of Robin, Mac's young assistant, who is taken under Mac's hairy arm and treated to a crash-course in beating the system.

It's got space-battles, human-gorilla political clashes, and military humor: part Catch 22, part Planet of the Apes, and charming as hell. This is one of the rare fine comics that is a truly satisfying read for adults, but which contains nothing too racy for the average precocious twelve-year-old (said twelve-year-old will surely love this as much as her parents, by the way).

Kitchen Sink press published the first couple issues of this, but regrettably cancelled it. Eldred finished the series anyway, it being the sort of thing that you have to finish writing once you get started, and with the Tor edition, we get to read the whole story. Link

Update: Jim points out that the author's site has the first chapter up for free.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:38:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crybaby Kazaa sues P2PNet for libel

Kazaa is suing P2P news-site P2Pnet for libel over a comment left by a poster reprinted from a post on one of P2Pnet's message-boards. This is about as bogus as it comes -- real crybaby stuff, wah, someone said something nasty about me, I'll sue the site on which it appears -- and P2PNet deserves better. They're raising funds for their defense, and I'll pitch in a hundred bucks once it's live. Kazaa should know better -- this is an embarrassment to the company, far more damning than anything that could possibly have been said about them on the board itself. Link (via Recording Industry vs the People)

Update: An anonymous reader points out that the post was subsequently reprinted in the body of a P2Pnet article -- but I don't buy it. If allegation is false, correct it. This kind of libel suit is the last refuge of the coward, for people who don't believe that the answer to bad speech is more speech.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:36:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TMBG ringtone: "Call connected through the NSA"

Brian sez, "They Might Be Giants is offering up a few ringtones for purchase. The first two are amusing, but the third in particular is great, and is titled 'Call connected thru the NSA', with lyrics as follows:"

"Call connected through the NSA/Complete transmission through the NSA/Suspending your rights through the duration of the permanent war"

"It is sung rather pleasantly and has some nice piano accompaniment with the lyrics. It's available as a $1.50 purchase (through xingtone.com), but there is also a direct link to the freely-provided MP3 for those who prefer to make their own ringtones or who'd just like to use this as, say, a connecting sound for an IM client or an 'Email received' alert, etc." Link, Direct MP3 link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:31:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Is high-fructose corn syrup the devil? Yup.

Since reading Greg Critser's Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, I've regarded high-fructose corn syrup as a kind of toxic waste, present in an unbelievable amount of processed/packaged food. But as with all issues related to commerce and obesity, HFCS is a controversial subject, with woo-woo UFOlogist pseudoscientists on both sides inventing virtues or flaws with HFCS.

This Accidental Hedonist post does a pretty good job of digging into the reputable research on HFCS and concludes that avoiding this stuff (if you can) is a pretty good idea. I'm game: the last time I binged on sweet food laden with HFCS, I found myself miserable, tired, and hung-over for days afterwards.

The one part of the HFCS debate which bugs me is the one that surrounds personal responsibility in regard to sugar intake. According to "An Omnivore's Dilemma", HFCS has not replaced sugar consumption in the US, it has merely added to it. In other words, not only are we consuming the same amount of sugars we did 20 years ago, we've added HFCS consumption on top of it. Before we can say "HFCS causes obesity", we have to be honest with ourselves and say "Too much sweeteners cause obesity", because the consumption of both absolutely plays into our weight gains.

It'd be nice to restrict HFCS intake, if it wasn't for the fact that it's in more foods than many people realize. From ketchups to soups to even cough syrups, HFCS has been made a staple of the processed food revolution. Avoiding HFCS has been made a difficult proposition that many people, including myself, are too undisciplined to address on a daily basis.

In addressing the above e-mails, it should be said that banning HFCS is an unlikely possibility, at least not until we recognize our own culpability in its consumption. But its excessive usage needs to be addressed and reduced. I would love to see food processors explain their addiction to the stuff, and in the process of this confrontation, we find out just how bad (or not) the stuff is for people.

Link (via the all-new, all-food Megnut)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:28:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nike sneakers communicate wirelessly with iPod Nanos

The Nike+ running shoes contain a pedometer accelerometer sensor and a wireless transmitter that talks to a receiver you plug into your iPod Nano. You program your workout routine (and music) into your Nano, and it collaborates with the sensor to deliver messages like "two miles to go" to your headphones as you go, and tracks your workout for upload to your PC's fitness-tracking app. I'm no runner, but I'm fascinated to see what the hardware hackers make of a wireless sensor that connects to the most popular portable player on the market. Link (via Warren Ellis)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:21:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gaiman on "the myth of Superman"

Neil Gaiman and Wired's Adam Rogers have a brief editorial on the "Myth of Superman" in this month's Wired Magazine -- always fascinating to see Gaiman (whose Sandman comics are very far from traditional underwear pervert super-funnybooks) tackling the subject of underwear-pervdom's number-one icon:

What’s important, though, is how Superman uses these powers. Compared to most A-list comic characters, he has almost no memorable villains. Think of Batman, locked in eternal combat with nocturnal freaks like the Joker – or Spider-Man, battling megalomaniacal weirdos like Dr. Octopus. For Superman, there’s pretty much only bitter, bald Lex Luthor, forever being reinvented by writers and artists in an effort to make him a worthy foe. Superman’s true enemies are disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, jet planes tumbling from the sky, enormous meteors that would crush cities. Superman stands between humanity and a capricious universe.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:16:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Demographics of NYC's subway in the morning, hour-by-hour

A blogger spent a morning on the NYC subway, making simple demographic notes on who rides, when -- fascinating stuff:

3:00-4:00 AM: Drunks of all sorts, club kids, and winos. Late night workers, busboys, getting off their shifts. Only a handful of people per car. 6:1 male/female ratio.

4:00-5:00 AM: Transit workers changing shifts. Maybe 6 people per car. All male.

5:00 AM - 6:00 AM: Blue-collar laborers, minorities, immigrants. Half the car is asleep. Maybe 20 or 25 people per car. 9:1 male/female ratio.

6:00 AM - 7:00 AM: Construction workers, blue-collar laborers, hospital workers. 75% of seats in car are taken. 7:3 male/female ratio.

Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:13:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-DRM demonstrators in hazmat suits storm Bill Gates keynote

Protestors from the Free Software Foundation's excellent Defective By Design anti-DRM campaign staged a surprise demonstration yesterday at Seattle's WinHEC conference, disrupting Bill Gates's keynote. The demonstrators swarmed the entrance to the conference center in bright yellow hazmat (hazardous material) suits as attendees filed in to see Gates describe the new DRM features in Vista, the next Windows operating system. The message was that adding technologies designed to restrict the freedom of computer owners turned our beloved PCs into hazardous materials -- technology that harms us instead of making our lives better.

Defective By Design promises lots more grassroots activism, street theater, and direct action against DRM.

Brown's case is simple: the computers, high-definition screens, phones, music players and video players that are currently being sold are "defective by design". These products don't respect the user's right to make private copies of their digital media. These devices make no provision that would allow art, literature, music or film to ever fall into the public domain. Effectively, the media purchased for these devices does not belong to the user -- rather, the networking of these DRM'd devices means that as the user watches a film, reads an e-book or switches channels on their HDTV, their habits can be recorded and actions monitored. The result is that over time, DRM technology will negate, if not completely eliminate, the rights of the individual.

"In any other industry, such limitations or invasions would be considered major flaws. A media player that restricts what you can play is like a car that you won't let you steer," said Brown. "Products containing DRM are defective -- only, unlike other products, these defects are deliberately created by an industry that has long stopped caring about us."

Link, Flickr Photos (Thanks, John and Henri!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:11:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Orphan works bill introduced: could give old creativity a new life

Texas Rep Lamar Smith has introduced a bill to clear the way for the re-use of "orphan works" whose authors are unknown or unlocatable. This wasn't a big problem until 1976, when the US changed its rules and did away with copyright registration, so that everyone who created anything got an automatic lifetime-plus-decades copyright on it, from the lowliest napkin doodle to the most trivial Usenet post. This created the present situation where, according to the Supreme Court in Eldred v Ashcroft, 98 percent of the works in copyright are orphan works, and liable to disappear long before their copyrights expire.

The bill looks like a pretty good compromise, but the devil is in the details -- it requires petitioners to undertake "best practice" searches for missing copyright holders, but leaves those best practices up to the Copyright Office. Depending on the procedure established, this could either be the savior of American cultural history, or its downfall.

"The orphan works issue arises when someone who wants to use a copyrighted work cannot find the owner, no matter how diligently they search," said Chairman Smith. "The owner may have moved several times, died, or in the case of businesses, changed their name or gone bankrupt."

"For example, a local civic association may want to include old photographs from the local library archive in their monthly newsletter, but there are no identifying marks on the photo," explained Smith. "Under current law, the civic association must locate the owner to ask permission and in many cases may not be able to find the owner. Under the Orphan Works Act, they could follow guidelines posted by the Copyright Office as a show of due diligence to reduce the threat of litigation for simply doing the right thing."

The Orphan Works Act is the product of over 20 hours of negotiations among various interested parties and the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, chaired by Smith. It incorporates language from a year-long study conducted by the United States Copyright Office.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:00:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dinosaur species named after Hogwarts

A dragon-like dinosaur unearthed in South Dakota has been named "Dracorex hogwartsia" (Dragon King of Hogwarts) with the help of a group of kids at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. The name has received the blessing of JK Rowling, who says it will give her more cred with her "science-loving family."

The newly described horny-headed dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia lived about 66 million years ago in South Dakota, just a million years short of the extinction of all dinosaurs. But its flat, almost storybook-style dragon head has overturned everything paleontologists thought they knew about the dome-head dinos called pachycephalosaurs.

Link (Thanks, Daisy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:53:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sacrelicious porny "brothel badges" mock historic "pilgrims' badges"

"Brothel badges" were pornographic (by Victorian standards, anyway) badges that parodied the "pilgrim badges" sold at shrines to religious pilgrims in earlier times. Historic Games sells replicas of the badges for $6/each, noting that historians differ on whether they were naughty Mardi Gras souvenirs or brothel tokens. Of this badge, "Lady," the site notes that it's a "lady... off on pilgrimage, carrying a pilgrim's staff with a phallus-shaped head, and carrying a rosary. Similar badges were popular in the Low Countries from the 13th through the 16th centuries." Link (Thanks, Chateau Bizarre!)

Update: A reader sez, "These are suspiciously similar to the badges made by a friend of mine at Fettered Cock."

Update 2: Charles from Historic Games confirms that they're the same thing -- Fettered Cock is his supplier.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:49:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WTF is going on with "Courtney Gidts" comment spam?

I allow comments on my other blog, Mad Professor, but I have set it up so that I get to review each comment before I release it to be posted. In the last few months, I've been getting some weird comments like this:

IP Address: 66.81.23.78

Name: Courtney Gidts
Email Address: eastcoast@microsoft.com
URL:
Comments:
I've managed to save up roughly $16804 in my bank account, but I'm not sure if I should buy a house or not. Do you think the market is stable or do you think that home prices will decrease by a lot?

Note that there's no URL, so how can this be profitable for the spammer? Is it part of a larger scheme? The number (in this case, $16804) is different each time. Is it a code number used by spies?

I googled "Do you think the market is stable or do you think that home prices will decrease by a lot?" and it returned 13,300 results. Most of them were from sites that allowed these weird comments to go through (example). I also found that Peter Kaminski has been getting the same type of comments and is just as mystified as I am. What's going on? Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:39:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zoom forever into this photomosaic

The photo on this page is made up of tiny photos. Click on the photo to zoom in. More tiny photos. Forever. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:17:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Grow a square watermelon

Grow a square watermelon by putting it into a box. If my wife and I have another baby, we'll see if we can grow a square kid. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:57:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Old Panama photos from Swapatorium

Yesterday I wrote about Swapatorium's excellent estate sale score of old photos. Today, she wrote a little more about the sale. Included in the photo albums are a bunch of pictures of Darien and Kuna Indians taken in the 1940s.

It was the cleanest and most organized sale I have ever seen. Not a speck of dust and odor free. Even the old photos have no hint of smell so they were stored well over the years. Turns out the dad was a dentist and the mom a nurse. Maybe that’s why the place seemed sterile. I learned that they traveled all over the world and during the war, were stationed in Panama. I have amazing photos from there, as well as fantastic dental images. I have only gone through a fraction of the images, so no telling what I will find. Apart from the photos, we also purchased some cool old things like toys, a painting, old watches, decorative glass, vintage fabrics, and numerous other objects. We completely stuffed our vehicle. We had to go to the ATM so we left the ladies to price our goods while we were gone. When we came back, I heard the calculator going for at least a couple of minutes while she added our massive pile. Nothing was priced, so there was no telling what the amount would be. When she told us, I was shocked! She practically gave us the stuff, literally! She told us to make an offer for all the photos and we gave her a very fair price which was a bit padded to make up for the other items. I think she was very happy with our offer. To give you an example, we purchased a fabulous 1930’s lamp which was $1.50 and all the old toys for $1. Not $1 each, but a buck for all. They just wanted to clean everything out. It really was one of those once in a lifetime sales. The fun doesn’t end there because this sale did not include the items in the house. This was just for the things in the garage. They are having another sale in a few months for the rest of the household. They have our phone number and they said they will call us. You can bet we will be there early!

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:15:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Seeing Machine for the blind

MIT researchers have developed a portable Seeing Machine, a system that could aid some blind people by projecting images directly onto the retina of the eye. Project leader Elizabeth Goldring first conceived of the device ten years ago when she was blind in both eyes due to hemorrhages in her retinas. (Surgery has since enabled her to see with one eye.) A physician examined Goldring with a scanning laser opthalmoscope (SLO), a $100,000 diagnostic medical device that uses a laser to project an image on the retina and detect damage. The Seeing Machine is based on similar technology but the prototype cost just $4,000. (The image here depicts Goldring looking at "an image she created to approximate what she sees when she looks through her seeing machine at an image of a staircase.") From MIT News Office:

Recently the machine received positive feedback from 10 visually challenged people with a range of causes for their vision loss who tested it in a pilot clinical trial...

Participants used the machine to view 10 examples of Goldring's visual language. A majority -- six -- interpreted all 10 "word-images" correctly. "They responded really well to the visual language," Goldring said. "One woman told me she would love to see recipes written that way."

They also used the machine to navigate through a virtual environment, raising the potential for "previewing" unfamiliar buildings a person wants to visit...

All of the participants reported that the machine "may have the potential to assist their mobility in unfamiliar environments," according to the Optometry article. Concluded Goldring: "A couple of them said they'd tried every seeing aid available (magnifying devices, etc.), and this was by far the best, even in this rough, rough shape."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:28:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chronicles of Narnia is a good movie for folks with faceblindness

Prosopagnosia is the scientific term for faceblindness. As Beware of the Blog's Iowa Firecracker describes it, "for some reason, my fusiform gyrus isn’t hooked up properly and I can’t recognize human faces." He She goes on to mention that she has been interviewed for an upcoming documentary about this rare condition, and that she met another faceblind for the first time, a guy named Glenn, who administers an email list for faceblind people.

I was really nervous about it, but it turned out to be okay. Whether it’s because he’s the list admin, or because he lives in Boston where prosopagnosiacs go to get studied by Scientists and Experts at Harvard, Glenn has met plenty of other faceblind folks, so it wasn’t a big deal for him. That helped me calm down a little. Mostly I just wanted to thank Glenn in person for running the faceblind list, because I like knowing there are some other people out there who see the world a little bit the way I do. I like knowing they have the same problems I do at parties, and they don’t see any point in having photos of their loved ones around, and they call people who aren’t faceblind NTs (for Neuro Typicals). I like getting recommendations for movies based on the fact that they have characters I’ll be able to identify all the way through the story. (“Chronicles of Narnia” got good marks for that.)

So Glenn and I met in a coffee shop, and drank some coffee, and he was very nice and a very interesting guy. When I try to remember what he looked like, I think of a sea captain on an old whaling vessel, I guess because of his facial hair or because of what he was wearing that day, and I wonder what he remembers of me.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:25:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SmartFilter censors Worth1000 photoshopping site

SmartFilter has added Worth1000, the photoshopping competition site, to its hit-list of sites that can be censored by its customers (who include several repressive governments that use SmartFilter's carelessly constructed blacklists to filter their entire countries). They've listed Worth1000 as "tasteless/gross." How delightfully arbitrary. Link (Thanks, Toby!)

Update: And now they've reversed it. Capricious and arbitrary and unpredictable! Just the traits we love in our self-appointed universal media censors. I wonder what they do when the person who needs to complain about a miscategorization is a political dissident in one of the repressive countries SmartFilter takes money from?

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:08:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Domino run video in a gothic 3D role-playing game

This youtube is an astounding three-minute domino run constructed out of books, swords, corpses, silver balls and many other props in the 3D game The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. This has been done in other 3D worlds (such as Second Life), but this one is particularly nice. Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:06:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Circuit board business cards

Gareth says: How freakin' deep geek are these!? I found them on Lady Ada's wonderful site (which you have to check out if you haven't already -- she has lots of cool DIY projects there). When she asked Todd about the grid of solder pads in the lower right, he said: "That's the prototyping area." On the back it says "electronic design & embedded systems." I MUST have a card like this! Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:03:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scottish Rite real time solar power performance

Gary says: "The Oakland Scottish Rite building has a full battery of solar panels on the roof. Now they have a link to a page where you can watch they system’s performance in real time."

When I checked at 10:30am PT, the panels were producing 31 kW, and the building was consuming only 23.2 kW, which means the Scottish Rite building's meter was running backwards. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:35:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Help make a RTFM on global warming

Alex Steffen of WorldChanging says: "Given that An Inconvenient Truth opens this week, and that it appears that the president just acknowledged that climate change is real, and that there's been an uptick of "climate skeptics" leaving disruptive, if not downright trolling comments on environmental and science blogs recently, we thought it would be useful to come up with a way of signaling that the debate is really over on these subjects, and its time to move on."

So WorldChanging has started a discussion about developing "a page which can become shorthand in blog comment threads and online discussions for 'we've already gone over this,' a sort of RTFM message for climate change science." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:30:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Water Tasting extravaganza

In the new issue of Oxford American magazine, writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus immerses himself in the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting. At this upscale gathering, connoisseurs rate the subtleties of various bottled waters. It's a delightful premise for a feature story, and Lewis-Kraus handles it masterfully. From the article:

Europeans drink water for what’s in it, for its minerality, while Americans tend to drink water for what’s not in it. As water commutes through the earth’s crust, it “acquires a personality” or “develops a style.” Magnesium might give water one particular flavor, while potassium—which Arthur pronounces “botazhium”—might give it a different flavor. Silica can make a water feel silky. The Japanese like young water, water that has not spent years streaming through geological filters like aquifers. One can be trained to be more perceptive about water. One really can be trained to be more perceptive about water. The results vary little from year to year, which lends some credence to these proceedings.

On the tables in front of us are pink “trial” judging sheets. Across the top run a series of boxes for water numbers, and down the side is the set of criteria we’ll be using....

Overall Impressions is scored out of fourteen points, which makes the total available points for each entrant an eyebrow-raising forty-nine. The fourteen-point scale is provided to us on an attached sheet. It was developed by a food scientist at UC Berkeley named William Bruvold. In the ’60s, he pioneered experiments in the acceptability levels of total dissolved solids in water, and he used his students as subjects; he incrementally increased the turbidity of the sample until the water came to resemble Turkish coffee and his students refused to drink it.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:19:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kids make a sport out of outsmarting school Web-filters

Kids across America have made a sport out of evading the censorware that restricts which websites they're allowed to visit, handily outsmarting their IT departments and the indiscriminate filters that block whole swathes of the Web, including sites vital to the common curriculum, in the name of keeping them from seeing boobies.

Ryan had apparently set up a so-called Web proxy from his home computer so that when he was at school, he could direct requests for banned sites like MySpace through a Web address at home, thereby tricking the school's filter. (Web, or CGI, proxies can be Web sites or applications that allow users to access other sites through them.)

"I eventually tracked down the (Internet Protocol) address, so that it doesn't work for him anymore," said Don Wolff, tech coordinator in the Phoenix-Talent School District, adding that Ryan didn't face disciplinary action. "It's against our acceptable-use policy, but he's not going to quit trying, (and this way) we can keep learning."

"This is a hot new trend among kids for getting around Web filters," Wolff said.

Link (Thanks, Mike!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:24:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

First photos of MIT's $100 laptop for developing world

Pete sez, "These are the first available pictures of the working prototype of the $100 laptop from MIT. Now working under the One Laptop Per Child heading, today was the first public showing of the machine. Link (Thanks, Pete!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:20:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO build a homebrew Bing Bang Boing game

Bing Bang Boing was a genius 1970s board-game where players laid out trampolines, funnels, spirals, elevators and other apparatus and then released marbles through the run you'd built. The effect is basically Mousetrap with bouncing, and it features heavily in the kids' toys cartoons I blogged this morning.

Rob, a blogger, recreated Bing Bang Boing for his kids with balloon-and-peanut-can trampolines and other props, and has details on how he did it, along with a video of the toy in action. Link (Thanks, hexmonkey!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monsters-in-fine-art photoshopping contest

Today's Worth1000 photoshopping contest revisits my absolutely favorite theme: putting horror-movie/monster themes into classic fine art. I was utterly torn on whether to include the Girl With a Pearl Earring Meets Nosferatu pictured here or the equally awesome Mona Lisa Ringu mashup. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:10:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video-game from 1952 - OXO, a tic-tac-toe

This blog post traces the history of "the first computer game," a tic-tac-toe implementation programmed in 1952 on Cambridge University's EDSAC mainframe -- the post includes URLs for an EDSAC emulator.

OXO, a revolution in entertainment, that featured amazing 35*16 pixel graphics, and was actually a version of tic-tac-toe, played by dialing (on an typically 50s phone-dial) your input and facing a simple but decent AI. The first video game's creator was (as is usual in these cases) a PhD student: A.S. Douglas. It seems his thesis was on human-computer interaction.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:01:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TV networks stop suing PVRs, get clever instead

CBS is launching a web/TV game this autumn that requires players to monitor programs and commercials to win up to $2 million in prizes. The network has taken this on as part of the challenge of getting viewers to watch ads in an era of PVRs with commercial-skipping capability. ABC has done something similar during the commercials for Lost.

It's great to see the networks applying some creativity to the problem of surviving technological change -- it's a welcome switch from their tactic to date, which is whining in court about the big bad PVR makers who naughtily allow viewers to control what's on their own TVs.

NBC's popular sitcom "The Office," for example, put together fake public-service announcements that mimic NBC's own "The More You Know," a series of PSAs featuring actors, writers and directors delivering the messages. Because "The Office" PSAs so closely resembled actual PSAs, viewers did not realize they were fake until the announcement series took a bizarre, humorous turn. The fake PSAs also can be viewed for free on "The Office" Web site. An ad streams silently next to the video while you watch it.

In this case, an advertiser who places a spot next to the online version of the PSA can claim at least one advantage over the advertisers flanking the same PSA on television. Thanks to online tracking software, it's relatively easy to obtain demographic information on the viewers who click on the online PSA video, while the television advertisers flanking the same PSA during a commercial break have much less precise information about who was reached. The ANA/Forrester report found that 97 percent of advertisers wanted better measurement of audience viewership for actual commercials, not just a TV program ratings system.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:53:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HDMI, the Manchurian DRM - a Broadcast Flag dormant until 2010

Hollywood studios and some CE manufacturers have reportedly entered into an informal agreement to hold off on using the "image constraint token" in HDMI DRM until 2010 or 2012. The image constraint token is a flag in a video signal that instructs receivers, DVD players and other high-definition sources to "down-rez" their output to a low-definition signal when connecting to an "untrusted" screen or other sink.

The effect is that if your screen or recorder isn't blessed by Hollywood, they can limit the video they send to it to a low-resolution image. Manufacturers who want the full signal have to enter into the HDMI license agreement and agree to cripple their hardware in lots of ways -- and have to promise not to make their equipment compatible with anyone else's, unless they, too, agree to cripple their hardware.

HDMI doesn't come cheap. The PS3 is shipping in two versions: an HDMI version for $600 and a non-HDMI one for $500. If you try to play a "image constraint token" video on your non-HDMI PS3, you'll get a purposely downgraded picture.

Of course, no customer wants this. It's crazy to think that there are manufacturers out there who are devoting engineering resources to purposely degrading the quality of their products. Especially since there's very little HDMI equipment in the field today -- chances are the high-def screen you have in your house today is plugged into a PC, and isn't HDMI-ready at all. No reason not to use these cheap, plentiful screens with high-def players, except for the cartel's insistence that you shouldn't.

The agreement to stay away from the image constraint token for four or six years is a way to get around this. If the DRM is kept switched off for the first 4-6 years, there's an opportunity to lure people into accepting it -- to buy into devices, media, players, screens, storage and other components with HDMI crippleware within, but inactive.

This is a classic Manchurian Candidate strategy. These devices behave like normal gear until the studios pull the trigger, then they turn on you. The studios talk a big game about wanting to operate in a free market, but then you get stuff like this: back-room deals, restraint of trade, and attempts to subvert the market by fooling customers into buying crippled kit.

The conundrum isn't apparently lost on the consumer electronics industry or Hollywood. According to German-language Spiegel Online, there is reportedly a behind-the-scenes, unofficial agreement between Hollywood and some consumer electronics manufacturers, including Microsoft and Sony, not to use ICT until 2010, or possibly even 2012. Without providing more details, the report suggests that Hollywood isn't exactly happy with the situation, and could very well renege on the agreement, such that it is. But the agreement is there nonetheless, presumably to help the industry transition to HDMI. This could explain why the very same studios that pushed for HDMI and ICT have recently announced that they would not use it for the time being.

The report's claims could also shed some light on two of the more baffling consumer electronics moves as of late. Sony stunned onlookers when it announced that the low-end PlayStation 3, which will retail for US$499, will not have HDMI. This put Sony in the awkward position of downplaying HDMI as a "must have" feature for a next-generation optical disc player. Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, sidestepped the lack of HDMI by painting it as a high-end standard that wouldn't be aesthetically appreciated by many consumers.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:16:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Orthodontal molds of the inside of ant-holes

Walter R. Tschinkel, from the Department of Biological Science at Florida State University pours orthodontal plaster down ant holes, and creates perfect molds of the topology of the inside of an ant-colony. These are lovely sculptural pieces -- someone should mass produce them. Link (Thanks, Numlok)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:58:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 22, 2006

Japanese TV doc on American nerds, English subtitles

Earlier this month, I blogged a video caught off a Japanese news-show that documented the pilgrimage of a group of Japan-obssessed geeks to Tokyo to revel in American-style "otaku" obsession. We get so much pleasure out of odd cultural moves from Japanese nerd-dom, so it's great to see Western nerd culture go under a Japanese microscope.

Here's a followup video on the same subject, this time with English subtitles. As Gavin from TVinJapan sez, "it does a really nice job of explaining some of how the Japanese feel about these Americans that are obsessed with Japanese culture." Link (Thanks, Gavin!)

Update: Jenn sez, "American otaku aren`t the only ones that Japanese tv follows with interest. This video (mainly Chinese footage dubbed over with Japanese), a segment from a panel show, follows the equally fascinating story of Chinese otaku. (part two)

"The video starts with footage of anti-Japan rallies in China, followed by polls on how the Chinese feel about the Japanese (more than 60% say they `hate` Japan). Then they ask the same respondents what country`s animation they like best, and surprisingly more than 60% say they prefer Japanese anime to Western (28%) or Chinese (11%). The segment covers the phenomenonal popularity of Japanese manga in China, as well as otaku attending a cosplay convention in China, focusing on a high school student whose parents berate her for not only having such a hobby but it being Japanese.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:54:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of links to automata-related sites

This Wists thumbnail site is dedicated to collecting links to sites displaying automata, from clockworks to electronics. Right now, they're showing replicas of the Mechanical Turk, a small hand-cranked storm-scene in a porcelain cup, an automata orchestra, hand-cranked monkey automata (in fezzes, natch), and historical accounts of Victorian steam-driven human automata. Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:46:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Custom treehouses that look like toon houses

Daniels Woodland sells amazing, custom-built treehouses that resemble toontown dwellings, with curved and sagging rooflines and crazy, angular windows. The houses stand 14' high and are perched atop a giant, chainsaw-hollowed log. The net effect is straight out of a Max Fleischer cartoon.

Each tree house is built in two main pieces: the playhouse and the log. The playhouse is made from cedar or ship lapped pine siding. The log is a real, old fallen tree that we hollow out using a chainsaw! To get into the playhouse, simply enter the door in the hollow log, climb up the ladder in the center of the log and pull yourself through the trap door in the floor of the playhouse. Kids or no kids, this tree house is an incredible addition to any landscape!

Link (Thanks, Justine!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:41:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Killer reel of 1970s toy commercials

Someone has uploaded a 7 minute reel of amazing 1970s toy commercials -- for Bing Bang Boing, SSP Pee Wees, SSP racers, Smash Up Derby, Screen-a-Show, Slip n' Slide/Water Wiggle, Bug Out!, Screech, and Masterpiece. These are commercials from an era of cheap plastic and no advertising-to-kids regulation, and as a result, the toys look incredibly fun, even today. Plus who knew buying fine art at auction could be fun for seven-year-olds? Link (Thanks, Piranhaboy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:34:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chair made of recycled wine corks

Designer Gabriel Wiese has produced this armchair made from recycled wine-corks -- it must smell amazing. Link (via Cribcandy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:26:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars Kid recreated with a MacBook and MacSaber

Metafilter Matt has recreated the Star Wars Kid video using a MacBook and a piece of software called MacSaber, which makes lightsaber noises as you swing your motion-sensor-equipped laptop around. The result is nothing short of genius.

I went for accuracy, combing my hair down, putting on tight khakis and a striped tight shirt, and following his first set of movements.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:22:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gun ads in Boy's Life encouraged youngsters to shoot hawks

Here's an interesting collection of gun and ammo advertisements from 1950s issues of Boy's Life. My father had a gun as a kid, and so did all the kids in the neighborhood where he grew up. Times have changed. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:17:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dog bowl designed to keep dogs from eating too fast

The three prongs in this bowl prevent your dog from eating too fast by forcing him to poke his snout gingerly into the chow. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:47:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Papercraft pinhole camera

Here's a sharp looking papercraft pinhole camera you can download, cut, and build. It's a design that was published in a 1979 issue of "ABC mladých techniků a přírodovědců" ("An ABC of Young Technicians and Natural Scientists") and translated for digital download by the Linatree photo printer and virtual gallery.
Link (Thanks, Peder Burgaard!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:00:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John K and Katie Rice art exhibit in LA, Sunday May 28

John Kricfalusi and Katie Rice are going to exhibit and sell their work at Every Picture Tells A Story in Santa Monica this Sunday. After the show, watch a bunched of BANNED John K cartoons at the theater across the street. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:39:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade circa 1932

I have two comments about these photos of balloons from a 1932 (or thereabouts) Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. One, Swapatorium seems to find once-in-a-lifetime troves of fascinating ephemera on a daily basis. Two, no one can deny that the parade balloons in 1932 were much cooler than the ones they have now. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:33:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Laughing yogi video

WFMU's Beware of the Blog found a video of a yogi teaching a laughing exercise. Try it. "Don't feel shy!" Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:23:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Travis Louie and Robert Craig at Roq La Rue

Roq La Rue gallery in Seattle has a terrific two-man show going on right now, featuring the work of Travis Louie and Robert Craig.

Travis Louie’s hypnotic “portraiture” is compelling for its blend of the hyper realistic with the blatantly surreal. Fantastical creatures gaze out from paintings so technically refined (using transparent layers of acrylic paint over a tight graphite drawing on a smooth flat surface) that they look uncannily like old photographs. Adding to the discomfiting presence these animal like characters have are the human expressions- even if the creature in the paintings looks a bit bizarre, it also looks spookily familiar as well.

Robert Craig creates Technicolor dreamscapes where toys, deities, skeletons, and advertising archetypes intermingle and cavort under bright blue skies. Inspired by everything from Michelangelo, Dali, Norman Rockwell, and Rick Griffin to the images on a box of pancake mix, Craig defiantly refuses to raise one influence as loftier than the other, in fact states that while he cites as influence old sci-fi movies, cartoons, his own childhood, Hindu art, LSD, the catholic church, and the death of his daughter, “My paintings have no inherent, intentional meaning because I don't believe that life has any inherent meaning...it just is. I have no great wisdom, moral messages or cosmic profundity to impart in my work. I feel that would only detract from it. Like watching a great movie and a commercial butts in. 'Shut up and paint!' Sez I.”

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:40:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Al Gore's new movie is "bringing the wingnuts out of the woodwork"

David Roberts, staff writer for Grist Magazine read my review of An Inconvenient Truth and comments:

As you're already aware, Al Gore's new movie on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, is being released this week. It should come as no surprise that it's bringing the wingnuts out of the woodwork.

A few weeks ago I did an interview with Gore about the movie. He shared some insights on how it was made and the strategies he uses to get past people's ignorance and apathy. Last week, the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels appeared on FOX's Hannity & That Other Guy. He lifted a quote from the interview out of context, twisted its meaning, and used it to smear Gore. I wrote to FOX and Michaels to correct the record. (See also Media Matters and News Hounds.) Suffice to say, Michaels has not retracted or apologized.

That was merely dishonest. For a layer of parody-defying hilarity on top of the dishonesty, check out the new ads from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded "think" tank. They honestly look like something straight out of Saturday Night Live. Tag line: "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."

Seriously.

(Check Sphere for more reaction to the ads.)

And finally, for readers who would like to see the slideshow on which Gore's movie is based (way more interesting than it sounds!), I tell them where to find video of it here.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:37:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cryptomundo on the Hobbits

Over at Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman writes about the latest controversy surrounding Homo floresiensis, the "hobbits" whose bones were discovered in Indonesia in 2004. (Link to previous BB posts about the hobbits.) Is Homo floresiensis really an extinct species or just the skull of Homo sapiens with a genetic disorder called microcephaly? Background on the controversy in this New York Times article. At Cryptomundo, Coleman quotes conversations he had with Peter Brown, one of the researchers behind the hobbit discovery. From the post:

Reacting strongly to the latest round of attacks on Homo floresiensis being conducted more in the media than in reasoned reality, Peter Brown, one of the primary researchers of the new species has told Cryptomundo: “Some people see exactly what they want to see, for a variety of reasons.”

Distracters, the media, and the debunkers in this current onslaught against the discovery are completely ignoring the evidence of the possibly nine Homo floresiensis individuals discovered at the site, says Brown. “There are no modern humans with the postcranial dimensions of Homo floresiensis and the second mandible is well outside the range of human variation,” Brown told Cryptomundo.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:15:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah-A-Thon

From WFMU, A Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah-A-Thon of covers of the classic tune as performed by Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Dionne Warwick, the Jackson 5, Steve Miller, and a couple dozen more. Listen via RealAudio or download the MP3. My, oh, my, what a wonderful day.
Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

UPDATE: BB reader John Cook points out the interesting backstory of the flamewar filled with accusations of racism that led to Stephin Merritt's Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah-A-Thon. Link to NYT article, Link to Slate article

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:58:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Buy a collection of odd objects

Lost Found Art is a design firm that puts together collections of unusual and interesting items--antique industrial pulleys, ray guns, valve knobs, fishing spears, etc.--and sells them as custom installations. Seen here, Art Deco inspired microphones, $2,800, and children's antique baseball gloves, $1,800.
Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:07:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Inflatable buildings - from an office to a pavilion

Britain's Inflate sells and rents gigantic inflatable structures, ranging from a small "office in a box" to gigantic pavilions. Link (via Cribcandy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:45:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

U. Florida cops ask fiction writer for fingerprints, DNA

The university police at Gainesville's University of Florida have targeted a graduate student in the English program over his publication of a piece of horror fiction on his LiveJournal. The police have repeatedly visited the student and demanded that he submit his fingerprints and DNA to them so that they can compare the fictional murder he described in his story to evidence from any similar unsolved murders.

Philip Sandifer is a graduate student in U. Fla's English program, and keeps a personal creative writing journal called "Pulp Decameron," where he posts very short stories in the styles of various pulp genres. The stories are released under a Creative Commons license. One story, I am Ready to Serve My Country, is a first-person account of a murderer who executes two victims before applying to the military.

On May 12, detective Sanders of the University of Florida police left him a voicemail asking him to contact her. This began a series of meetings and calls with the University Police in which detectives repeatedly pressured him to allow them to fingerprint him, so that they could compare his prints to evidence from unsolved murders. They cited his publication of the horror fiction as the reason.

I spotted the story on Sandifer's LiveJournal last week and rang the university police. I spoke to Detective Sanders, but she declined to give any comment on the case, referring me to Lt. Sharkey, the Department's press-relations officer. I left several messages for Lt. Sharkey, without receiving a call back.

However, on May 18, Sandifer posted an update to his LiveJournal, stating that the police had met with him and his faculty advisors, Kenneth Kidd and Sid Dobrin, and the police had told him that "a journalist from the UK" was asking about his story. They advised him that he'd better turn over his DNA and fingerprints before the story broke. They also questioned Sandifer's advisors as to whether their students should be writing material like Sandifer's.
More...

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:48:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PC case modded to look like a movie bad-guy bomb

The WMD is a custom-built PC whose case resembles a shiny, hollywoodized terrorist bomb, straight out of a Bond flick. Bit-Tech has the incredibly detailed, lavish write-up of the build. The attention to detail is really remarkable. Link (via Digg)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:06:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Movie-plot security threats bonanza

Security guru Bruce Schneier's April fools challenge to come up with "movie plot security threats" continues to bear fruit. Schneier's readers keep on posting new, implausible threats to national security that the Department of Homeland Security can include in its nothing-is-too-implausible countermeasures:

Several teams could base themselves in western US states like Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, etc during summer, and wait for dryest and hottest part where forests are at their period of least amount of moisture in the fuels (wood, shrubs, grasses).

All that would be required for that is just easily made incendiary devices, tossed out a window of a moving car. If a series of teams did that simultaneously, and each one did multiple fires in one day, many large fires could be created in each state, quickly overwhelming wildland firefighting crews.

And in order to ground aerial firefighting planes and helos, either unguided rockets, or even a real SA-7/14 type missile to actually hit one of them. USFS will immediately order all firefighting aircraft to not fly.

Firefighting crews could be attacked, by means such as shooting, bombing their vehicles or firecamps.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:00:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coffins woven from wicker

Britain's Somerset Willow Company sells biodegradable, handsome wicker coffins. Beats interring your loved ones in tropical hardwoods, toxic anodized aluminum, or depleted uranium (I made up the last one). Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:17:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Derelict amusement park in Sichuan, China

M Otis Beard sent us this site he built documenting his trip to The World Landscape Park near the capital of Sichuan in China. The World Landscape Park -- or as he calls it, Disgraceland, PRC -- is a failed amusement park that sits rotting on an unremarkable street-corner, filled with architectural marvels, concrete trees, a giant crucifix, and many other amusements.

Once upon a time in a land called Xi Pu, just west of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in the People's Republic of China, there was a tourist theme park... The World Landscape Park. As a business venture it failed, and today the park lies abandoned and decaying. Personally, I think it's a lot more interesting this way than it could ever possibly have been when it was open.

Link (Thanks, Otis!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:48:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Photos of Katamari Damacy runners in Bay to Breakers race

Fans of the awesome video game Katamari Damacy ran last weekend's Bay to Breakers footrace in San Francisco dressed as characters from the game, pushing a giant katamari ball dotted with funny San Francisco symbols, from Frank Chu's notorious "Zagnatronic Galaxies" sign to oversized martini glasses. The photos from the race make it clear that these cats were the best thing on legs this year. Link (Thanks, Heather!)

Update: Katie B, one of the Katamari crew, sends in this Flickr set, and this LiveJournal for the effort.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:50:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How P2P lending is changing the credit industry

Salon's Farhad Manjoo has a long feature today about new, net-based peer-to-peer loan services. These services, like prosper.com, encourage borrowers to post personal accounts of their financial situations -- the kind of material that doesn't show up on a credit report, like the fact that you accumulated your debt going through school and are about to graduate into a good job -- and then allows individuals to act as lenders by putting small sums together in a syndicate to make the loan. So if you want $5,000, you might get it from 50 people who share your interest over three years. Interest rates are also determined between lenders and borrowers, and are much lower than the predatory high-risk rates charged by credit cards and payday loan centers (which can charge a whopping 521 percent API).

Lenders are encouraged to diversify their loans, spreading out their investment in $50-or-up chunks that are spread among borrowers with different risk profiles. The sites report that their default rate is no worse than a credit-card company's, even though they make loans at lower rates to high-risk individuals.

Early in May, Bulck put up a request for a loan of $2,800, offering an interest rate to lenders of 13.9 percent. "This loan is probably the hardest thing I have had to ask for in a very long time, and I appreciate your help," his listing began. Bulck went on to describe his situation. He receives financial aid, he said, but his next disbursement doesn't come until August, and he'd have a hard time until then. But he assured possible lenders that his future looked bright. He's in his last year of school, and he expects to find a job soon. "I don't anticipate any problems paying this loan back," he wrote.

Despite his assurances, a risk-averse investor would have found much to be wary of in Bulck's listing. His chosen field of study is creative writing, not a major known for the swiftness with which it places graduates in steady employment. There's a more basic problem, which is whether you can trust him. Bulck posted a photograph -- he's seated at a desk, writing, a cat perched nearby -- and though he looks decent enough, it would have been impossible for any lenders to know for sure that Bulck was really a student due to get a financial aid check in August, and was not, instead, just practicing his creative writing to get some quick cash.

As it happened, people believed Bulck's story, and he got his loan. But that's not the case with everyone. Lending money on Prosper is no different from lending money in real life -- it's possible, and some might say likely, that some people aren't who they say they are, and that they won't pay you back. Prosper is explicit with lenders about this risk, and it advises people to get around it by diversifying. If you have $5,000 to invest in Prosper, the site encourages you to spread your money among many people. Every loan on Prosper lasts for three years (borrowers face no penalty for paying the loan early). If you give $50 to 100 people who have a credit grade of C, chances are that over the course of three years, some people -- about three, according to Experian -- will default on their loans. But if you get a 14 percent return on your money from those who do pay you back, you'll make more than $1,000 on your $5,000 investment, enough to cover your losses.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:44:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Javascript adds reflections to images

This little Javascript library -- reflect.js -- lets you add reflections to the images on your site. Comes as a standalone or a Wordpress plugin. Link (via Digg)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:32:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bundt pan shaped like a sand-castle

Williams-Sonoma sells a Bundt cake pan in the shape of a sand-castle so that you can prepare baked goods that double as miniature spongy fortresses. Link (via Cribcandy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:50:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a programmable binary LED watch

Instructables's 01 watch is a DIY binary watch where you solder on the LEDs and program the chip with a flexible firmware that includes "a voltage meter, binary counter, club mode and time display. The watch is fully programmable. Future firmware upgrades will include: stopwatch/timer, alarm, bicycle speedometer/odometer, data logging, and an advanced configuration menu." They briefly mention the possibility of a watch that displays the seconds since Unix epoch, which is what I really want, especially if it can do so in hex. Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:33:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tokyo's Butler Cafes: subservient men wait on women

The Swallowtail is a new Tokyo cafe in which subservient men dressed like butlers wait on the clientele of women in their 20s and 30s. This is an inversion of the Tokyo "maid cafes" where young geeky men go to be waited on by lavishly attentive women in maid costumes. Men in butler costumes is a theme in women's "Boys' Love" manga, which features attractive young men's homoerotic relationships:

The Swallowtail coffee house in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district is decked out like an English manor house, with customers subserviently greeted with a “Welcome home, Madam.” A concept that may seem a little odd, but it’s one that appears to have a ready-made audience, Emiko Sakamaki, the woman behind the eatery, explaining, “When I visited a ‘maid cafe’ last year, I thought there should be a cafe with a similar concept for women. And I saw people post some messages on the Internet that they wanted such a butler cafe. I thought the cafe could be accepted.” And accepted it has been, with tables being fully booked until May 12, the management asking customers to make reservations online to guarantee themselves a table.

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:31:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO recreate the Famous Monsters of Filmland

Max sez, "We've created a site dedicated to doing every single one of the dozen some-odd monster make-up designs created by horror make-up legend Dick Smith in his 1965 'Famous Monsters of Filmland'-published 'Dick Smith's Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up. The book was meant for children, and so many of the designs suggest using everyday household items, such as bread crumbs and Karo syrup, but the results are eye-popping, thanks to Dick Smith's genius for horror make-up. Max and Courtney document every step of the process with photographs, and then offer a short movie to demonstrate what the make-up looks like in action. So far we have created a Boris Karloff-style mummy, weird skin textures made with liquid latex and bread crumbs (!), Collodion scars, and a Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth-style bug eyed dragstrip monster called a 'Weird-Oh.'"

STEP ONE: Paint liquid latex on your face and stick bread crumbs to it
It's a good idea to have a plate or a pie tin below you to catch spare crumbs that will fall of your face.

STEP TWO: Add more latex and breadcrumbs
At this point, you can really build up the facial features with the latex and bread crumbs. Be careful around the eyebrows and hairline, as liquid latex can tug quite a bit when it comes off. Let each layer dry before you add a new one. If you don't want a texture that is quite so thick, Dick Smith suggests using cracker meal.

Link (Thanks, Max!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:11:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Too much kimchi might be bad for you

Recently, I started making my own sauerkraut, which is much better tasting than store bought. There have been stories suggesting that fermented foods like kimchi and sauerkraut are good for your immune system. (Here's a BBC story about claims that kimchi may cure bird flu.) So this article about Kimchi in the LA Times caught my eye. The Chinese World Journal of Gastroenterology recently ran a report titled "Kimchi and Soybean Pastes Are Risk Factors of Gastric Cancer."

The researchers, all South Korean, report that kimchi and other spicy and fermented foods could be linked to the most common cancer among Koreans. Rates of gastric cancer among Koreans and Japanese are 10 times higher than in the United States.

"We found that if you were a very, very heavy eater of kimchi, you had a 50% higher risk of getting stomach cancer," said Kim Heon of the department of preventive medicine at Chungbuk National University and one of the authors. "It is not that kimchi is not a healthy food — it is a healthy food, but in excessive quantities there are risk factors."

It could be that the danger of kimchi might be from the large amount of salt in it, "which could combine with red pepper to form a carcinogen."

In any case, I'm not going to stop making sauerkraut. I don't use much salt when I make it anyway. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:00:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fantazyland: Egypt's run-down kiddee park

Dubaidave visited Alexandria in Egypt and discovered a run-down kiddee park called Fantazyland: the United Ride of Fantasy. He lavishly documented it in photos and prose at the link below. It seems like a remarkably awful place -- derelict themeparks are possibly the greatest things in the world; you just can't beat 'em for scoobydooid spooky atmosphere, kitsch and phantasmagoric wickedness.

I had heard that there was a kiddie credit at a place called Fantazy Land but could not find anyone who had been there. Anyway We finally found the park and it was the worst run park I have ever been to.

On the net I had found that the entry fee was 7 Egyptian Pounds, around $1.50. However when I got there they said it was 13 Pounds. I went back to the car as or whole group was going to go in, but when we got back to the pay window it was now 30 Pounds each, Anyway, I decided to go in on my own to get some photos.

One thing to note was that when I paid my 30 Pounds I was actually given 3 tickets with 10 Pounds written on them, something tells me I was ripped off.

Link (Thanks, Shalaby!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:54:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fundraising book for Arthur C Clarke award

Iain sez, "The fundraising body for science fiction's Arthur C Clarke Award has just released a collection of essays on past winners (up to and including Quicksilver) and The Aust Gate bookstore has set up a site for it. All money (les what we need to keep the site running) will be given to the Foundation." Link (Thanks, Iain!)

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

Saturday, May 20, 2006

HOWTO make a game-show buzzer

This build-log explains how to create your own game-show hand-buzzers for use with your favorite video-game system. These were created for games of You Don't Know Jack played on a gorgeous MAME cabinet. Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:57:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AMC fires 80-year-old Marine for military tattoos

An 80-year-old Marine Corps veteran was fired from an AMC theater in Bridgewater, NJ, over the forearm tattoos he bears, which are a Marines emblem and his Corps serial number. When he started working at the theater, he kept the tattoos covered, but when the theater mandated that ushers wear short-sleeve shirts, he fell afoul of the "no visible tattoos" rule.

After a public outcry, AMC re-hired him, with back-pay.

AMC spokesman Zach Baze, based in Kansas City, Mo., said the company does not comment on personnel matters.

In a letter to Trombadore, an AMC Theatres attorney, Kelly W. Schemenauer, wrote: "AMC does value the contribution made by military veterans, including Mr. Smith. As an employer, AMC also has employee wardrobe standards, and we strive to treat each employee equally with respect to such standards."...

Every year, his family postpones Thanksgiving to the following weekend so he can work that day — one of the busiest for movie theaters — and fellow employees can have the day off with their families.

"I'm from a generation that grew out of the Depression. When you have a job, you make damn sure to hold on to it. People come around every day looking for work," said Smith, who has been working since he was 14 years old and delivered beer on his bicycle, using 15 cents from his paycheck for movie tickets. "When I had a job, I did what I was supposed to do and a little extra."

Link (Thanks, Dan!) (photo excerpted from Gannett Photo/Ed Pagliarini)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:55:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

GarbageScout: Gmaps for craphounds

GarbageScout is a Gmaps mashup for craphounds: when you're out and about in New York, San Francisco or Philadelphia, you send phonecam pics of any nice garbage you see on the curb, along with the location. GarbageScout puts your pictures on an interactive map of choice crap, and scroungers can grab a wheelbarrow and head on out.

I once stood watch for an hour over a mid-20th-century dentist chair, curvilinear and powder blue, while I waited for Roger Wood, the mad clock-maker, to show up and take it away for conversion into clocks. It's the craphound's code: you've gotta get the junque for your buds. Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:46:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Smoking fast Firefox 2 alpha is out

A new public alpha of Firefox 2 has gone live. The browser, code-named "Bon Echo" (all Firefox versions are named after public parks) is nowhere near ready for prime-time, but it is smokin' hot fast on my Powerbook, easily twice as fast at managing tabs and tab-switches as the current Firefox. Regrettably, almost none of my Firefox "extensions" (plugins) worked with Bon Echo, but I'm willing to live without them temporarily while I play at crash-test dummy. Link

Update: Leonard sez, "Use the Nightly Tester Tools extension to get around those silly version issues. Obviously if the extensions are actually broken you'll have issues, but almost everything I have works even on the FF3 trunk builds (I run 40-50 extensions)."

Adam also suggests "You might want to try the MR Tech Local Install extension for forcing extensions to work with Bon Echo Alpha - I've haven't tried it w/the latest Bon Echo Alpha, but it worked really well for Bon Echo Alpha a month or two back."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:15:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 19, 2006

Man build 90-ton scale model of cruise ship in back yard

François Zenella, an ex-coal miner, spent 25,000 hours building a 90-ton one-eigth scale model of Royal Caribbean International's cruise liner, the Majesty of the Seas. In his back yard. He launched it in 2005 and has sailed it ever since. Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:25:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pearl Jam uses CC license for new video - kind of?

Pearl Jam -- who previously released free MP3s of their concerts -- have shipped their latest video as a Creative Commons download. Weirdly, they plan to stop officially distributing the video in four days and move it behind a paywall -- though the CC license would allow others to go on distributing the video for free. Link (Thanks, Patrick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:17:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Quake papercraft

Captain Nod, a PhD student, has produced a pair of papercraft models inspired by the original Quake: first, the cthuloid Shambler -- the coolest of all the monsters in Quake -- and then the Quake "player" character ("Ranger" -- thanks, James), a grimacing, muscle-bound marine. Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:15:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gibson Flying V drawn on by Clowes/Bagge/Armstrong

 Michael Simmons, editor of The Fretboard Journal showed me these photos of a Gibson Flying V guitar that he asked Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge, and Robert Armstrong to decorate. He gave me permission to run them here. He says:

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement) The guitar was originally made in 1974 or 1975 and I've had it since maybe 1983. The finish was in terrible shape, so I stripped it in a fit of youthful exuberance, intending to refinish it in red, and promptly lost interest in the project. In 1993 Dan Clowes and Peter Bagge were at a local comic store and I had the idea of letting them doodle on the guitar. When I got to the store, there was a huge line of fanboys with comics to sign so Peter and Dan were limiting each person to just a signature and maybe a dedication, but absolutely no sketches. When I plunked down the guitar and asked them if they would draw on it, they seemed to be really excited about the idea because they spent about 30 minutes doodling on it. The drawing of Mickey Rat on the back was done by Robert Armstrong in 1998. The great thing about Armstrong's drawing style is that his musical instruments are always anatomically correct. The guitar Mickey is waving around is clearly a 1959 version of the Flying V, for example. I had a clear pickguard made for it so the drawings would show through. The pickups are custom Seymour Duncans. One of these days I'll finish putting it together.



posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:03:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing Squidoo winners

Squidoo announced the three winners for the Boing Boing lens contest. Basically, Squidoo lets readers select and annotate content from other sites, and categorize it. I like the "Boing Boing Trips" entry.

I also didn’t think about Boing Boing as a travel guide until Sarah King served up this Boing Boing-inspired lens. Sarah indicates that Boing Boing can be a useful tool for backpackers, expatriates and other geeks on the go.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:38:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Koranic fish

Markings on this tuna fish caught on the Kenyan coast south of Mombasa may or may not spell out the Arabic words for "You are the best provider." According to the BBC News, the phrase is close to a text in the Koran. After the tuna was reeled in, it was brought to a local fish shop "for preservation." Shortly after, the tuna was moved to the fisheries department for protection. It was promptly reported stolen from the fisheries office but has since been located back at the fish shop where it first came to the public's attention. From the BBC News:

After being asked by Muslim leaders in Kenya, Kenya's National Museum had offered to take custody of the fish and preserve it for the country's heritage.

The reported theft followed numerous attempts by locals and Muslim scholars to buy the mysterious fish.

An official at the fisheries department in Mombasa said someone had even offered to pay as much as $150.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:01:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BBC Radio program on "time"

This week, the BBC Radio 4's Frontiers ran a very interesting special program on the human perception of time. From the program description:

When a person's life is in danger, a phenomenon known as 'time-dilation' can occur. This is when, during a car crash for example, time seems to slow down or become frozen.

In these cases the body's internal clock speeds up when facing a potential catastrophe, so that it can take in more information more quickly and function more effectively in an emergency.

This is also a phenomenon actively sought by elite sportspeople, when they get 'in the zone'.

Link (via Mind Hacks)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:23:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Victoria Falls replica at 1939 World's Fair

Robyn Miller has images and information about Rhodesia's fantastic entry to the 1939 World's Fair.

They put Victoria Falls in a huge room (or a scale creation of it) pumping 60,000 gallons of water over the edge per minute! But it came to a sad end, due to nearby "depraved" activities (at the fair).

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:08:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

An Inconvenient Truth

Last week I saw an advance screening called An Inconvenient Truth, an incredible documentary about Al Gore's work to raise awareness about global warming. It opens May 24.

It's part revealing profile (Gore is as smart as you'd guess, a Macintosh / Treo freak who creates his Keynote presentations himself, and a passionate, caring, positive, and funny person) and part hair-raising report on the astonishing changes our planet is undergoing as a result of massive increases in carbon dixode in recent decades. The two parts are woven together in a way that makes for a riveting, unforgettable movie.

I especially like the fact that the film offers a way out of the frightening path we're taking. There's plenty to be scared about, but with smart (and expensive) work, Gore believes we can reverse global warming.

Naturally, Big Oil is not happy about this film and has started attacking the facts presented in the film. Link |Trailer

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:49:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lawsuits of Web 2.0

FuckedSuit is a site that collaboratively tracks and comments on the lawsuits of Web 2.0:

Fucked 'suit (Beta .2)

Legal Wars of the New Economy

A Web 2.0 opinion site revealing the new economy of sue or be sued. Created in the spirit of FuckedCompany, FuckedSuit covers the web this second time around, and the NEW way of doing business - via attorneys.

This site is 100% lawsuit opinion and humor. Your opinion, my opinion, everyones opinion!

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:30:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blog about Dennis the Menace ghost artist, Al Wiseman

Bill Alger has a terrific blog about Al Wiseman, a supremely talented illustrator who worked as a ghost cartoonist on Dennis the Menace in the 1960s.

Jaime Hernandez (co-creator of Love and Rockets) told me that Wiseman was a big influence on him and his brother Gilbert. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:25:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BOMBA drink in grenade package

Apparently, BOMBA energy drinks have been available in the US for a few years now, but I'd never seen one before my Institute for the Future colleague Jason Tester showed me a bottle this afternoon. (Photo by Chris Noessel.) Pull the pin for, er, an explosion of flavor. From the BOMBA FAQ:

Can BOMBAenergy explode?
Yes, but only inside the body and with a positive effect on your energy levels. The bottle, itself, cannot explode.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:12:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sing along with Kim Jong Il

The Korean Friendship Association has kindly created this follow-the-bouncing ball sing-along for North Korea's Defense Anthem. The lyrics to this snazzy, uplifting number is spelled out in phonetic Korean to make it easy for you. Link (via WFMU's Beware of the Blog)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:49:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Obit for "Ramrod," Grateful Dead roadie

The SFGate has an obituary about the interesting life of a Grateful Dead roadie named Lawrence "Ramrod" Shurtliff. Sounds like he was a good guy to have in your corner.

(link to photo by Jay Blakesburg) [Mickey] Hart also remembered one New Year's Eve when he thought he might be too high to play. Ramrod solved the problem by strapping Hart to his drum stool with gaffer's tape. Hart recalled another show in San Jose with Big Brother and the Holding Company, where the starter's cannon the band used to punctuate the drum solo of "St. Stephen's" went off early.

"I looked back," Hart said. "His face was on fire. He'd lost his eyebrows. You could smell his flesh. And he was hurrying to reload the cannon in time. That was the end of the cannons."

Link (via Information Junk)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:34:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Garbage house full of 70,000 empty Coors Light cans

A rented house in Ogden, UT was discovered to have accumulated some 70,000 empty Coors Light cans in eight years of tenancy -- the cans covered the furniture and blocked the entrance. The garbage house tenant consumed 24 cans of Coors Light per day for eight years.

Ryan Froerer, Century 21: "As we approached the door, there were beer boxes, all the way up to the ceiling."

Inside, he took just a few snapshots to document the scene. Beer cans by the tens of thousands. Mountains of cans burying the furniture. The water and heat were shut off, apparently on purpose by the tenant, who evidently drank Coors Light beer exclusively for the eight years he lived there.

Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:44:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Last chance to save LA's South Central Farm

Cindy sez,

The South Central Farm, which is believed to be the largest urban community garden in the United States, will disappear shortly unless members of the public lend a helping hand. Created by the City of Los Angeles after the 1992 Rodney King uprising, the 14-acre farm in South Central Los Angeles, offers plots of land that 350 low-income families use to grow their own food. The City of Los Angeles sold the land it to a developer in a backroom deal.

The farmers held off bulldozers by legal action, but the developer recently received approval from the court to evict them. The Trust for Public Land, a national, nonprofit, land conservation organization that is working to save the farm, has until Monday, May 22, 2006, to raise approximately $10 million to purchase the land. They are part of the way there, but need several million more.

Link (Thanks, Cindy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:39:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Is one month's piracy worth more than France's GDP?

A blogger multiplied the number of music downloads from ThePirateBay in a month by the $150,000 the RIAA asks for in statutory damages for each download and discovered that the music industry believes that one month's worth of downloads costs it more than the GDP of France.

In January 2006, there were approximately 2370 music torrents posted. By estimating that each music file is 5 megs, we can estimate the number of infringements as the number of downloads multiplied by the estimated number of songs. I ran my program, and when I saw the results I was shocked! Using those figures, there were approximately 76,272,931 infringements caused by the torrents posted in January! Using the RIAA's value of $150,000 per infringement, the total cost to the music industry was $11,440,939,650,000!

Link (via Digg)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:29:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

If "The Ten Commandments" was a wild teen comedy

"Ten Things I Hate About Commandments" is a mash-up trailer for a John Hughes style teen comedy, using footage from the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments. It's masterfully done, and milk-out-the-nose funny. Link (Thanks, Mangesh!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:22:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Attempt to create an "Earth sandwich"

ze franks says:

The viewers at zefrank.com/theshow are attempting to create the first Earth sandwich in history: when two pieces of bread are simultaneously placed on opposite sides of the globe.

The original call to action can be found here.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:54:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rudy Rucker on Digital Village radio program

Author Rudy Rucker was interviewed on KPFK's Digital Village radio program on May 6. Here are the MP3s. This page has interviews with a lot of other interesting people, too, including our own Xeni. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:31:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

William S Burroughs's cut-up films

The online version of a 2003 article on WIlliam S Burroughs's cut-up films from Bright Lights Film Journal includes downloadable videos of the cut-up films Burroughs, Gysin and Balch made. Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:08:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stone Golem suit made of foam mattresses - incredible!

Players of Mordavia, a live-action role-playing game, constructed a jaw-droppingly awesome "stone golem" suit out of foam mattresses and hot glue. The photo doesn't do it justice -- it has to be seen in motion (as with this youtube clip) to be believed.

This Stone Golem was constructed using about 5 foam mattresses, over 50 sticks of hot melt glue, and 8 cans of grey and black spray paint. The foam is glued in large thick sheets (approx 20cm thick) to a fabric bodysuit, and the deep cracks are carved into the foam surface. The bodysuit has a zip up the back to allow the wearer to enter it, and the zip is concealed by abutting foam. The soles of the feet are made of corflute that has been sliced in half to expose corrugations that act as grip. The arms are about twice the length of the wearer's arms, and act as swinging weapons made entirely of soft foam. The golem took about 100 hours of work to construct, between 3 people. On its first appearance, the Stone Golem sent twenty bold adventurers into a hasty retreat without so much as touching them.

Link (Thanks, Greg!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:40:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Audio from Bruce Sterling's "Arphid nor RFID" rant

The audio from Bruce Sterling's London SPPACE speech Arphid Not RFID is up:

Bruce predicts there will be 3 main phases of ARPHID art practice, and a window of opportunity lasting about 7 years before ARPHID fades into obscurity.

-The first phase he says will be the magic stage/the Mellies stage involving 'Jarking' - putting the chips into objects without people knowing to come up with sometimes freaky/magic-like interactions.

-The Second phase will be a detournement (like Nancy Nisbit work) marked by an increased awareness of ARPHID by trying to make some Bohemian kick-back, trying to build scandals out of it exploiting the sinister aspects of the technology.

-During the third phase, ARPHID will have reached a degree of maturity.

Bruce also predicts that there will be a sex scandal involving Oyster Cards in the next 18 months. Predict the present old sci-fi writers tricks, possibly some similar dirty tricks activity along these lines. Jealous (politician) husband/wife plants on partner, hacks card establish airing spouse is somewhere not meant to be etc

Link, Coral Cache direct download (via We Make Money Not Art)

Update: Dave sez, "The New Statesman's got a podcast of his (more broadly themed) London talk and Q&A from earlier in the week."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:26:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cops raid "sex slave cult" based on science fiction novels

British police have raided a domination "sex cult" in Darlington based on the long-running Gor science fiction novels from John Norman. The Kaotians (a splinter sect from the mainline domination Gor fandom, known as Goreans) are accused of holding a woman as an involuntary sex-slave -- women's sexual subservience features in the Gor novels.

Gor books still have a huge following, despite being out of print for some years. When I worked at a science fiction bookstore, we had lots of customers with standing orders for used copies of the missing numbers from the 26-book series. The books were a little stilted and wooden, but they were chock-full of BDSM sex stuff. One customer told me that he bought the books for the sex, and didn't really care much that the writing was clunky -- he said it was still miles better than the average porn novel.

The 29-year-old woman is said to have voluntarily attended the sect after finding out about it over the internet.

She later contacted a friend in United States, who then contacted the police, saying she wanted to leave but couldn't as she had burnt her passport and return ticket.

But a police spokesman said upon arriving at the premises they did not find any evidence of "criminal offences".

Link (Thanks, Mike!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:07:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Space-sneakers like a Japanese toe-sock

These "space-sneakers," manufactured by Japan's Asics, were designed in response to a Russian cosmonaut's complaint that the space-shoes he'd worn had hurt his feet. These shoes are more like Japanese tabi, a sock with a split toe, and they weigh a mere 130g. The slightly inclined toe is meant to keep the calf-muscle taut in low gravity. The company hopes that Japan's astronaut Takao Doi will beta-test them on his Space Shuttle/ISS mission in 2007. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:38:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Supreme Court makes it harder to be patent predator

Glenn Fleishman tells BoingBoing,

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that injunctions shouldn't be rubberstamped for patent cases. They specifically singled out business-method patents that are litigated by those who have no stake in producing the product or offering the service; i.e., patent trolls. (There are some legitimate non-business-method patents pursued in ths manner. They don't get much press beyond the variable windshield-wiper case that has been underway for 50 years in various venues and appeals.)

What this means is that patent trolls will be less likely to hold their victims for ransom through injunction unless the patentholder can demonstrate that they meet a four-part test, already in use for other injunctions involving equity, which is hard for a non-producer to meet. Even if a patentholder wins at trial, the defendent could file an appeal and still have injunctions in abeyence.

The Supreme Court's majority opinion written by Clarence Thomas describes the four-part test. (It's in PDF form from the link.) In essence, a plaintiff has to show irreparable harm, that mere money or other remedies when at trial aren't enough, that there is an imbalance in hardships against the plaintiff, and that a permanent injunction wouldn't harm the public interest. (IANAL.)

I wrote one of Amazon.com's patents (but did not invent it), and I've followed the business-model debate for years. I believe it is possible this decision will decimate the market for patent-trolling because it will be much less likely to obtain a settlement beforehand to avoid an injunction that would disrupt the defendant's business.

Link to ruling.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:07:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A Scanner Darkly trailer remix contest

RES Magazine is running a contest for the best remix of the trailer for the upcoming film A Scanner Darkly. Deadline for entries is June 7 and the prizes are pretty sweet: a trip to the film's US premiere, video production hardware and software, and assorted other bits. Winners will be picked by the creative team behind A Scanner Darkly and there's also an audience award selected by visitors to the site.
Link (beware, it's a Flash site)

UPDATE: BB reader Georg Bosch sadly points out that the contest is only "open to legal residents in the contiguous 48 U.S. and the District of Columbia."

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:51:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Slow motion video festival

The SLOMO Video festival, curated by Webzine conference co-conspirator Ryan Junell, is a collection of 100 one-minute videos that have only one thing in common: they're all in slow motion. What a fun idea! The videos play Saturday night (followed by a slowdance) at Lobot Gallery in Oakland and in mid-June at SONAR Cinema in Barcelona, or you can order a DVD compilation for just $8. From the SLOMO Video description:

This unique compilation of cinematic slowness will pull the audience through a molasses-tinged warp of catastrophic visual and audio beauty.

Stop and smell the roses! Leap into that k-hole! Feel spellbound by your own navel! Celebrate a savory moment... its the human way! Remember when you were a kid and you could stare at ants crawling around for hours, or just space out and look at the ceiling or the patterns on the floor? SLOMO VIDEO is a recreation of that meditative place in the present. It is a video experience that isn't afraid to put a 78 record on at 33 1/3rd and kick back in a beanbag to ponder the mysteries of space and time.

Link to SloMo Video Festival site, Link to a few sample videos (via Laughing Squid)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:16:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Class to study dog speak

Starting next week, the UK's Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs will offer a course in dog language. A vet, nurse, and dog behaviorist will teach humans how to understand the variety of noises that dogs make to communicate their desires. The first free-of-charge course will take place in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Apparently the Peterborough City Council is hoping it will help cut down on noise pollution. From The Times:

The different noises made by dogs have been identified as grunts, whines, yelps, screams, howls, growls, coughs, barks, tooth snapping and panting.

While this cacophony might sound overwhelming to the untrained ear, dog owners will learn whether the sounds mean that their pet wants a walk, a wee or a fresh can of food.

Apparent meanings can include a friendly greeting, an invitation to play, a signal of distress or defence. Other noises indicate that the animal is under threat, submissive, wanting contact, attention seeking or contact seeking

. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:57:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Smithosnian magazine on Dada

This month's issue of the always-excellent Smithsonian magazine has a long feature about the history and influence of the Dada art movement, described by artist Tristan Tzara as a "virgin microbe" that spread around the pre-World War I world leaving mind-blowing artifacts of absurdity in its wake. The article is timed with the massive Dada exhibit touring the US that will be on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art beginning next month. From Smithsonian:

“In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn,” (Marcel Duchamp) wrote, describing the construction he called Bicycle Wheel, a precursor of both kinetic and conceptual art. In 1916, German writer Hugo Ball, who had taken refuge from the war in neutral Switzerland, reflected on the state of contemporary art: “The image of the human form is gradually disappearing from the painting of these times and all objects appear only in fragments....The next step is for poetry to decide to do away with language.”

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:50:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monkeys string calls together to communicate

Scientists have reported that putty-nosed monkeys string two warning sounds ("pyows" and "hacks") together to create a third call with an entirely different meaning. No animals other than humans have previously been known to do this. From News@Nature:

..Two calls seem to be the only sounds in the putty-nosed monkey's repertoire. Researchers had observed that the monkeys sometimes use these calls in an apparently non-meaningful way: to yell at a fellow monkey, for example, without communicating a specific message.

But now zoologists have realized that at least one combination of these sounds has its own distinct meaning: up to three pyows followed by up to four hacks seems to mean 'let's move on'. This call sequence is given both in response to the presence of predators or simply as a sign to head for new terrain.

"Whenever a male gave these sequences the group would move on and leave," says Klaus Zuberbühler of the University of St Andrews, UK, who carried out the research in Nigeria's Gashaka Gumti National Park with his colleague Kate Arnold.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:37:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Court says EFF *can* use AT&T docs for surveillance lawsuit

Following up on Cory's earlier post, here's a snip from an EFF announcement released late Wednesday: "A federal judge in San Francisco ruled today that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) can use critical evidence in its class-action lawsuit against AT&T. However, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said the evidence -- three documents that AT&T alleges are proprietary and contain the company's trade secrets -- will be kept under seal for now." Link. Previous BoingBoing posts about the EFF's class-action suit against the NSA: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:18:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nina Paley's wonderful "Sita Sings the Blues" cartoon

Nina Paley says:

You wrote about my "Sita Sings the Blues" animation last year on BoingBoing. Just lettin' you know I recently posted another clip publicly - using the Internet Archive as a host, and a Creative Commons license.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:06:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Psychedelic cartoon for Dio children's song

Merlin says:

Trippy YouTube cartoon of “Love is All,” featuring a psychedelic children’s song performed by Elf/Rainbow/Black Sabbath singer, Ronnie James Dio.

Apparently, Deep Purple’s Roger Glover wrote a record’s worth of songs based on “The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast,” a 19th C. poem about a party for small animals and their insect friends (the poem had recently been made into a children’s book in 1973). Other contributors to the Glover record included members of Roxy Music and future Whitesnake, David Coverdale. (You can still buy the CD on Amazon.)

Although a full-length animated feature Glover had planned never saw the light of day, this animated short gives a taste of the Fleischer-esque trippiness it might have begat a generation of stoners and midnight movie fans. The song is totally catchy, too.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:47:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clever death notice in Swiss newspaper

The text reads: "I have moved. New address: cemetery. I'm looking forward to visitors." Link (Thanks, Sala!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:42:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The world saw evil that day. Oh, and Zoolander.

Boing Boing reader x amount says,

The one thing that stands out the most (besides plenty of mustachioed men) in the just-released trailer for Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" is the prominent billboard for another Paramount property: 2001's "Zoolander."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:37:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

When Isamu met Bucky

The Noguchi Museum in Queens NY just opened a new exhibit about the friendship between sculptor Isamu Noguchi and Buckminster Fuller. David at ironicsans blog has a great post about the show here. Snip:

Fuller’s Utopian vision extended beyond [geodesic domes as] homes. In 1933, he built a prototype Dymaxian Car, a highly efficient vehicle that seated 11, reached 120 miles per hour, got 30 miles per gallon (unheard of at the time) and did it all on only 3 wheels. It was 20 feet long, but barely needed more space than that to do a full 180 degree turn. Sadly, an accident at the 1933 World’s Fair prompted investors to abandon the project, and the car never passed the prototype stage. It’s a shame it never went any further in development. It’s hard not to imagine how automobiles would be different today. For the current exhibit, the Noguchi museum has brought together models, pictures, and video footage of the car in action.

Reader comment: J. Tony says, Regarding your Boing Boing notice today mentioning Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car...

The last known prototype of the 3 that were built can be seen at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada. Their page on the Dymaxion can be seen here. I'm not much of a car nut, but this is one of the best, coolest museums anywhere, with more one-of-a-kind cars than you'd ever imagine (including my favorite, the Phantom Corsair and several Big Daddy Roth cars). Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:25:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

GETV: bring on the cockfighting Roombas!

In this episode of Geek Entertainment TV (GETV), correspondent Violet Blue explores geek polination games and fighting robots with Annalee Newitz and Jennifer Granick. Violet then interviews Phil Torrone, master Roomba warrior from the land of MAKE, who explains the impossible mission that got the Roombas fighting in the first place. Link to video.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:19:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DIY inspirational posters

The Motivator produces homemade motivational posters by grabbing any photo on the public Internet and adding your own message to it. Here's one of me trying out the merch at the Pirates of the Caribbean store in Disneyland Paris. Link (via Wonderland)

Update: Dan created these motivational postcards modelled on my favorite catchphrase from the geek sit-com The IT Crowd.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:16:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Questions for the NSA

DearNSA.com: questions we can ask our all-seeing, all-knowing, total information awareness overlords:

Q: Where did I leave my keys?
A: Inside pocket of your gray jacket (it's hanging in the front closet).

Q: What should I get my wife for her birthday?
A: Blue sundress from Calypso, size 12. Also note that she likes to have her toes licked.

Q: Is now a good time to buy Google?
A: Unfortunately, due to strict federal laws NSA cannot provide stock tips.

Q: Can I substitute margarine for butter in my Toll House cookie recipe?
A: We know that you've been smoking pot.

Q: What should I have for dinner?
A: You've been eating a lot of Chinese and pizza -- how about some Turkish?

Link (via Lawgeek)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:13:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

June Robogames event in SF: last week to register!

David Calkins says,

Got a robot? Wanna mingle with the likes of Phil Toronne? Wanna show the world your stuff? Wired magazine picked RoboGames as one of the Top Ten Best Geek Fests in America. This is the last week to register for RoboGames. Teams are coming from 20 different countries to compete in 50 different events - combat, sumo, robo-one, robot soccer, robot hockey, and many more. If you've just a got a cool robot that doesn't fit into any particular event, register it in the "Best of Show", which lets anyone compete (even Phil.) The actual event in June 16-18 in San Francisco.

Space remains available for the following events:

- FIRE FIGHTING: Robots that can find and put out fires.
- 3KG SUMO: This is your best chance to meet foreign builders - Singapore, Mexico, Japan.
- BALANCER RACE: Got a two-wheeled balancing robot? Bring it out!
- ROBO-ONE (ROBONOVAS!): If you've got a RoboNova, you compete for free!
- BIPED RACE: Bring out those walkers - compete in the race and robo-one.
- HEXAPOD CHALLENGE: The only event in America just for 6-legged bots.
- BEAM SPEEDER/PHOTOVORE: Anyone can build a BEAM bot for $5 in an hour.
- MIROSOT: There must be more 5:5 soccer teams out there - let's see you compete in SF.
- BEST OF SHOW: This is everyone's chance to shine. Any bot you can imagine can compete - it doesn't have to fit into any particular rule-set!

Link

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

Cannes-cam: webcam at France film fest

BoingBoing reader Allison says,

IFC has a webcam (Windows Media Player) with a 24-hour-a-day live feed of the Cannes red carpet (with surreally clear audio) for the duration of the festival -- it's manned during some of the bigger premieres and zooms in for a clearer look of the back of, say, Tom Hank's "Da Vinci" hairdo.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:01:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Parrots on a motherfscking plane

Snip: "A bird flitted around the cabin of a JetBlue airplane Tuesday before being caught, said Todd Burke, a JetBlue spokesman. Two African parrots were sneaked aboard a flight from Puerto Rico by a passenger who hid them in a small cardboard box, which he shoved in a carry-on bag and sneaked through security, Burke said." Link to news story, and here's Parrots on a Plane. (thanks, Cowicide)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:00:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Haunted Mansion trivia site to die for

The Ghost Relations Department is a very good trivia-blog devoted to the Haunted Mansion rides in the Disney parks around the world. Lots of nice stuff I never knew here -- real Mansion-otaku material:

Throughout the history of the Disneyland Haunted Mansion, there have been many refurbishments. Some of these have been to update effects, some have been to fix items that were getting constant wear from guest interaction. In 1995, the Haunted Mansion was given a nice new hearse, updated attic popups, a broken down piano and the Ghost Host again told us that the ghosts on the corridor are having trouble getting through.

In the foyer however, the woodwork wainscoting on the walls was raised. Originally it was perhaps two feet off of the ground. By this being within a guests footrange, people could easily raise one foot and rest on it. This however was not a good idea. It caused much wear and tear on the woodwork. What could Disney do? They couldn't remove the wainscoting, it just wouldn't be thematically pleasing. So, Disney took the existing woodwork and added more! The current Disneyland Foyer woodwork extends probably four to five feet above the floor.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:57:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Old time swing dancer video set to hip-hop

This video shows a pair of extraordinary gifted swing dancers from some black-and-white era set to modern hip-hop with a lot of eerily serendipitous synch-ups between the music and the video. The dancing is nothing short of amazing and set to the contemporary music, it's even nicer. Link (Thanks, Alice)

Update: AV sez, "If I am not mistaken (and I might be) that type of dance is called "Lindy Hop" and those two dancers are Al Minns and Leon James."

Update 2: A reader writes, "This one is Big Apple rather than Charleston/Lindy Hop."

Update 3: Laurence (and many others) sez, "The dance they are doing is, in fact, the Charleston."

Update 4: Terry sez, "Contemporary swing dancers sometimes dance 20's Charleston and Balboa to hip hop. Those styles also go great with bhangra. If you're interested in swing dance footage, there's over 30GB of vintage and contemporary swing dancing clips at dans.poy.no."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:51:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eyeballing the new 24/7 Apple store in NY

It's just an empty glass box now, but this site will become the world's most powerful nerd magnet tomorrow. Expect to see geeks flying through the air towards it, whoosh! over Manhattan, like steel dust drawn to a neodymium disc. Many thanks to literary uber-agent John Brockman for the photo. Link to full-size (jpeg). Steve Jurvetson has some thoughts about it here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:38:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Video: Lou Reed and John Cale do Heroin

The song, that is. In this 1972 video, John Cale and Lou Reed perform the Velvet Underground tune at a Paris club called Le Bataclan: Link. See also this video of Nico singing "Femme Fatale" from that same show. (Thanks, David Lloyd.)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:16:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Macworld's first look at the new MacBook

Macworld's Cyrus Farivar and Jason Snell each have first look reviews of the new MacBook, which was announced yesterday.

Snell: "The biggest change with this keyboard is its look. Previous Apple laptops have featured keyboards with keys that are wide at the base, but narrower at the top. As a result, even though there are fairly large spaces between the square areas where your fingers contact the keys, there are only tiny gaps down at the base of the keys."

Farivar: "[The 13-inch] MacBook fits quite nicely into the Booq PowerSleeve12—only sticking out a little bit, but not enough to prevent the bag from closing. The extra resolution is quite nice too, as it allows me to have a good-sized browser window while keeping an instant message client open on the side."

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:32:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John K's drawing school

John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy and one of the world's best animators, has been using Preston Blair's animation book as a textbook to teach people the art of cartooning online. (You can download the pages for each lesson from the Animation Art Archive.)

If you are interested in learning cartooning, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Here's a method to easily check your copies. Remember this word: PROPORTION

Part of what makes a character look like who it is, is its proportions. MANY characters can have the same construction, but they have different proportions-like Elmer Fudd and Coal Black and Peter Pan and Pinnochio-all those folks are the exact same construction! -THEY ARE MADE UP OF THE SAME TYPES OF FORMS-A BIG ROUND CRANIUM AND A SMALL BABY JAW.

1) Bring your drawings into Photoshop.
2) Bring Preston's drawings that you copied into the same Photoshop file.
3) Re-size the Preston drawings to match the size of yours.
4) Put the drawings next to each other.
5) Make notes of how your drawing differs from Preston's
6) Make a copy of the Preston drawing and lay it on top of yours on a layer
7) Make the layer transparent so you can see through it to yours.
8) Make more notes on where yours differs from Preston's.
9) Redraw your copy, this time trying to fix the mistakes you found.

This fella's copy is pretty good, so there isn't a lot to correct. Some other artists are less accurate.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:09:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cha Cha and Mambo tracks on Swapatorium

There are a couple of great Cha Cha and Mambo songs available at Swapatorium today.

It's four tracks by two cuban singers - Celia Cruz and Celio Gonzalez. I think I found it at the flea market at Brick Lane in London's East End back in the 80's. I was immediately drawn to the wonderful kitsch photo on the sleeve. The vinyl itself is rather badly warped and only the two inner tracks on each side will play properly. Thankfully they are both really excellent examples of Cha Cha and Mambo and well worth the 50p or whatever it was I paid for it.

Link

Reader comment: Doran says:

Regarding the warped Cha Cha and Mambo record. Here are a couple of techniques I've used when dealing with warped vinyl. I've used all these with varying degrees of success. In all cases I've done it so I could get one good copy, which I would use in the future (ie. I didn't use these techniques to play the vinyl every time). Also note, I probably wouldn't recommend these techniques with a really expensive turntable and stylus, though they never messed up mine.

1. Try weighting down the stylus with one or two pennies. Or perhaps a nickel (which weighs about 5 grams).

2. Place the vinyl onto a hard surface (eg. table top), between two sheets of clean paper (not the sleeve, since it sometimes has stickyness), and then place a heavy, flat weight on top for 15 minutes or so (I'd use an unabridged dictionary). While the vinyl usually has enough physical memory that it'll ultimately re-warp, it's possible to flatten things out long enough to record one copy.

3. Drizzle a bunch of distilled water all over the surface of the vinyl (avoiding the label). While I usually used this to reduce pops and clicks from scratches, the added dampening from the water would sometimes be enough to hold the needle in the groove on warped records.

4. Lastly, play it at a lower speed, so the needle doesn't jump, then process the recording to shorten the time and raise the pitch. While I did this a couple of times, it was back in the early 80's before I had a digital processor, so restoring the sound in the end wasn't so easy, though I could get close.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:54:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Marina Bychkova incredible dolls

Siberian born Vancouver resident Marina Bychkova makes haunting, beautiful and incredibly detailed porcelain dolls with elaborate costumes. They take up to 500 hours to make. She describes her process and thoughts in this interview at Pixelsurgeon.

Your dolls are very darkly erotic; definitely not children's toys! Is the doll's sexuality an important part of their attraction for you?

The eroticism is definitely a significant element that has to be present in every doll. I suppose that says something about my personally, I’m just not sure what. It was present in all my dolls. I remember when I was, maybe six or so, I saw a picture of a painting of a beautiful naked woman in a magazine. It was explicit. I cut it out and made a doll out of it. One day my grandma discovered it. She was confiscated and destroyed with disdain. I was made feel very ashamed. I grieved for her.

The dolls are more anatomically correct than your average Barbie doll; why was it important to include detailed genitalia?

It’s compulsory. Most of the dolls, both, Fine Art and children’s dolls, though try to imitate human form, are sterilized through a complete removal of sex organs. It’s as if they need to be cleansed of all their sinful humanity. I find this deliberate denial of the essence of life to be ignorant and appalling. I don’t know why there is so much fear and shame associated with human sexuality. Every Barbie needs to have a vagina. Every Ken needs a penis. I think it’s time the dolls leave the realm of tea parties and innocence and address some important issues.

Link (via Drawn!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:30:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beverly Cleary interview on NPR

I'm over a month behind in listening to podcasts, so I just got around to listening to this NPR interview with Beverly Cleary. She just turned 90, and her mental acuity is better than most people half her age.

She said that she was a children's librarian in 1940 and got the idea to write kids' books when some boys at the library complained that they couldn't find any books "about kids like us." So she sat down and started writing stories about the kids she had had gotten to know at the library.

My daughter is now reading Beverly Cleary books. I flipped through them and was disgusted to see that the books do not use Louis Darling's darling illustrations. Instead, the publisher is using looser, more cartoony illustrations that have none of the charm or humor of Darling's work. I wish NPR would have asked Mrs. Cleary what she thought of this depressing switcharoo. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:07:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hand-embroidered Katamari Damacy patch

Kate sez, "A while ago you blogged about my friend Helen and the Super Mario scarf she made for her boyfriend. Well Helen has a knack for mixing up video game nerdiness with craftiness, and voila: the Prince from Katamari Damacy in embroidery!" Link (Thanks, Kate!)

Update: See also this great Katamari Damacy pillow -- thanks, lex10!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:02:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Do Not Resuscitate tattoo

This is a photo of a tattoo that Mary Wohlford, 80, has emblazoned on her chest. Wohlford, of Decorah Dyersville, Iowa, got the ink in February to hopefully eliminate the possibility of any Terri Schiavo-esque controversy about her medical wishes should she become unable to communicate them directly. From the Des Moines Register (photo by Mary Chind):

If all else fails, if family members can't find her living will or can't face the responsibility of ending life-sustaining measures, she said, then doctors will know her wishes by simply reading the tiny words that are tattooed over her sternum.

"I probably should have had it dated, too," she said.

As it was, the first time she entered Gary's Professional Tattooing Studio, the employee balked, saying he wasn't sure it would be ethical.

"I said, 'OK, but you get these druggies and drunks in here and you do it. Do I look lucid or not?' " she remembered.

The employee still demurred. Shop owner Gary Lietz said he, too, was reluctant, but eventually gave in. Wohlford even talked him into a senior citizen discount.

Link

UPDATE: Thanks to all the readers who sent in info on other similar tattoos and comments about whether it would be enough to convince a care provider not to resuscitate. Steve McCullough points us to an excellent 1992 article on the subject from the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:56:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired News publishes damning docs from EFF vs AT&T

Wired News has published a bunch of documents from EFF's lawsuit against AT&T for the company's role in helping the NSA perform indiscriminate, illegal warrantless wiretaps against millions of American citizens. AT&T has asked a court to take these documents out of the public record and suppress their publication -- so grab your copy now while you can:

Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against the company, which alleges that AT&T illegally cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic-surveillance program.

In this recently surfaced statement, Klein details his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T office in San Francisco, and offers his interpretation of company documents that he believes support his case.

For its part, AT&T is asking a federal judge to keep those documents out of court, and to order the EFF to return them to the company. Here Wired News presents Klein's statement in its entirety, along with select pages from the AT&T documents.

Link

Update: Jet sez, "The judge rejected AT&T's motion to remove the documents from the public record!"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:39:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Canadian privacy commissioners against DRM

Michael sez, "Three of Canada's best known Privacy Commissioners have joined dozens of civil liberties, education, and library groups (as well as prominent privacy experts) to call on the Canadian government to factor privacy into the copyright reform process. The letters demand privacy impact assessments before the law is introduced and seek pro-active privacy protections that allow for anonymous and private access to copyrighted works. The site has full links to all the public letters."

1. any proposed copyright reforms will prioritize privacy protection by including a full privacy consultation and a full privacy impact assessment with the introduction of any copyright reform bill;

2. any proposed anti-circumvention provisions will create no negative privacy impact; and

3. any proposed copyright reforms will include pro-active privacy protections that, for example, enshrine the rights of Canadians to access and enjoy copyright works anonymously and in private.

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:03:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New report on public policy and internet filters in the US

Neema Trivedi of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU says,

Today, the Brennan Center for Justice released “Internet Filters: A Public Policy Report,” a detailed survey of tests and studies documenting how the widespread use of filters limits the free exchange of ideas necessary in a healthy democracy. The report shows that filters are an unreliable and inefficient means of preventing children from viewing material that their parents find offensive. Some filters censor political and other information, casting a net far wider than is necessary for any legitimate goal.

As a result of the “Children’s Internet Protection Act,” or “CIPA,” passed in 2000, filters are now required in most schools and libraries – for adults and minors alike. Yet because filters must, by necessity, search the web for potentially objectionable sites using “keyword” identification, they both “overblock” (censoring sites that are not objectionable) and “underblock” (failing to identify pornography or other material targeted by their various blocking categories).

“Internet Filters” updates and expands upon an earlier survey published by the Brennan Center’s Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP) in 2001. The new report describes the effects of CIPA and the deceptiveness of manufacturers’ claims to have improved the accuracy of filters with sophisticated “artificial intelligence” techniques. It then describes nearly 100 tests and studies up through 2006, with hundreds of examples of both deliberate and accidental overblocking.

For instance, one filtering program, SurfWatch, blocked the University of Kansas’s Archie R. Dykes Medical Library website upon detecting the word “dykes.” Cyber Patrol blocked a Knights of Columbus site and a site for aspiring dentists when set to block only “sexually explicit” materials. SmartFilter blocked the Declaration of Independence, Shakespeare’s complete plays, Moby Dick, and Marijuana: Facts for Teens, a brochure published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The report is available here (PDF Link). More info at the Free Expression Policy Project website, from NYU's Brennan Center for Justice. (Thanks also, Seth Finkelstein and James Tyre!). Previous posts on BoingBoing on censorware: Link. For helpful tips on how to route around censorware, visit our HOWTO guide.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:58:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How the RIAA's suit against XM came from Napster, MP3.com and Grokster

The RIAA sued XM satellite radio today over the company's decision to sell XM receivers that can record radio-programs. This is the latest salvo in the labels' attacks on tech companies, but it's easy to forget that in the focus on what XM's player does or doesn't do. EFF's long post on the suit does an excellent job of explaining how this lawsuit fits into the RIAA's larger strategy of asserting a veto over all new digital technology, a war that started with Napster and has led inexorably to this:

Inducement isn't just for pirates anymore: In the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in MGM v. Grokster, EFF warned that the newly minted "inducement" weapon would not be reserved for "bad actors," but would also be leveled against legitimate innovators building the next generation of fair use technologies. Sure enough, the complaint accuses XM of inducement based on the following statements in promotional materials: "Hear It, Click It, Save It!," "[XM] delivers new music to you everyday and lets you choose tracks to create your own custom playlists," "record with the touch of a button," and "store up to 50 hours of XM." Not exactly a pirate's "ahoy," is it?

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:43:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nutriplates informational dinnerware

Design firm Materious created Nutriplates, a series of eight dinner plates printed with various kinds of nutritional and health information. From the project description:

One of the most pernicious problems facing Americans now and into the future is adult and childhood obesity. While the war on obesity must be fought on many fronts, education of both parents and children is one important approach. These standard ceramic dinner plates are "decorated" with nutritional information including caloric content of hundreds of food items; average metabolic rates varying by age, gender, weight, and activity level; and typical caloric expenditure for numerous physical activities.

Link (via Sensory Impact)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:31:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Oil drum luxury sink

Bristol and Bath's "Kyle" bathroom sink is styled like a 55 gallon oil drum. At more than $2650 for the base and the basin though, this product is begging for a build-it-yourself approach. In fact, I'd bet it was inspired by some maker's DIY washroom.
Link (via Neatorama)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:19:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Huge shark caught with fly tackle

In March, Dr. Martin Arostegui reeled in the heaviest fish ever caught on fly tackle. He nabbed the 385-pound lemon shark near Key West, Florida, using a filleted barracuda to lure the shark toward his boat. From the Associated Press:

"We brought it in alive and we released it alive," Arostegui told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "That to me is what made the catch very special..."

He fought the fish for one hour, and at one point the shark opened its jaws and attacked (Capt. Ralph) Delph's 29-foot boat.

"He could have eaten half of me or even all of me in one bite," said Arostegui, who stands at 5 feet tall.

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:07:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comet viewable from Earth

Paul Saffo, my colleague at the Institute for the Future, encourages us to look to the skies this week for a glimpse of Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. (Image by Sheldon Faworski and Sean Walker of MASIL Astro-Imaging Team, created using a 14.5-inch Newtonian telescope.) Paul writes:

(It's) an early morning binocular object this week -- and may offer a terrific meteor shower next week. What's interesting about it is that it has been breaking up over the last few years, and this year it is a appearing as a string of fragments. Not naked eye, but good bino viewing.

Link to Sky and Telescope update, Link to This Week's Sky At A Glance, Link to Spaceweather (one of Paul's favorite sites for astro alerts)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:39:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Feds' citizenship flashcards omit Freedom of the Press

Steve sez, "The Government Printing Office sells a set of flash cards that are designed to help soon-to-be citizens learn about our government. Question 80 asks, 'Name one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment.' The answer lists freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the right to petition the government — but omits freedom of the press." Link (Thanks, Steve!)

Update: XY sez,

In the Citizenship and Immigration Services' "Guide to Naturalization" (the official guide on becoming a citizen), the same omission is made in the sample civics questions (on page 64 in document):

80. Name one right or freedom guaranteed by the first amendment.

The rights of freedom:
- Of speech,
- Of religion,
- Of assembly and,
- To petition the Government

So either the flashcards come from the same source, or there's some kind of mini-conspiracy...

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:29:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creepy McDonald's ad from India

This creepy Ronald- McDonald- baby ad comes from India and reads "Just opened, near Kimaya Kothrud. I'm lovin' it." As Consumerist points out, this looks a little like something out of Stephen King's IT. Link (via Consumerist)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:55:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Custom-art toilet-paper

Liquid Shirts will print rolls of custom-art toilet-paper in quantities of four rolls or more, starting at $12 each. They suggest putting foreign leaders and stock certificates on the paper, but the possibilities are endless -- skull-and-bones, goatse, the ORLY owl... Link (Thanks, Al!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:53:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

FeedRinse: filters for your RSS and a happier Internet

FeedRinse is a service that filters the RSS feeds you subscribe to, hiding items that match keywords or authors you don't want to see. This is a service that's both so vital and so obvious that it's practically an indictment of RSS feedreaders that they don't all include this already.

As Clay Shirky has noted, the pre-Internet world was one of "select, then publish." That is to say, some editor out there looked through a lot of material, picked the stuff she thought you'd want to see and then put it in front of you.

The Internet world is one of "publish, then select." Anyone can put up a blog, publish a feed, post to Usenet, or stick something on a message-board. Your job is to figure out which of those things are interesting to you and ignore the rest.

"Publish, then select" is a lot messier than "select, then publish." But it's also a lot more satisfying, if you can keep up. After all, the editor of a magazine, newspaper, or TV show has to please a lot more people than you, so her selections are never going to be exactly what you want -- for example, your local newscast might give 10 minutes over to sports every night, and only cover MMORPGs when someone starves to death playing World of Warcraft. You might prefer the inverse: lots of WoW coverage, and only fatal NASCAR crashes and hot Olympians on the sports-side.

There are lots of places to go for posts about MMORPGs -- this is one of them. But we publish about a lot of subjects. It's only one in fifty posts that is relevant to MMOs here, so if that's all you care about, there's no point in signing up for our feed.

Or maybe there's a Boing Boing author you don't care for -- it's not a big deal to hit the spacebar when his posts come up, but wouldn't it be nice if you could just filter that on your screen in the first place?

The beauty of this kind of filtering -- eliminating posts that do or don't contain certain words, or that have certain authors -- makes it possible to cast your selection net a lot wider than you would otherwise. I've got hundreds of feeds I read in my RSS reader, but at that volume, there's a lot more than I can actually read in depth. Adding machine-filters would harness a computer's perfect ability to detect the keywords I hate or love, rather than offloading the job of word-searching onto my human brain.

Computers are great at fetishistically counting things, finding things, and comparing things. Humans are good at understanding things. I can understand that certain keywords should never show up in my RSS reader, while others should always show up. It's about time that my computer can be instructed to do the grunt work of checking to make sure that the stuff I know I hate and the stuff I know I love go into the right hoppers.

Every now and again, someone sends us a peevish note saying, "I'm bored of your posts on $SUBJECT, you should stop posting about it." There's no chance we'll ever honor one of these requests, because Boing Boing isn't a select-then-publish site -- no one here is trying to figure out what you like and publish that and only that. Instead, Boing Boing is part of your universe of raw material for your own personal publish-then-select decisions. We publish the stuff we care about and you're welcome to read as much or as little of it as you want. Bored of goatse? Hate anagram subway maps? Not interested in ukes or yetis? That's cool -- just skip it.

The problem is that skipping it is hard -- and it should be automatic. More than three quarters of Boing Boing readers read the site via RSS, and it's a crime that their readers don't include the killfiles and filters that have been standard in email and Usenet readers for decades. I've used several readers and only a very few of them include any sort of even rudimentary filtering.

So it's great to see FeedRinse live and running -- and I can't wait for feedreader authors to get the hint and make this standard. Link (via PlasticBag)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:32:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

When US currency was a showcase for art: 1876

Five Dollars: The Paper Currency of 1876 is a fascinating look at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's decision in 1876 to use paper money as a "showcase for art." The bills are really lush and lovely, like the ceilings of a brothel in a old western movie. Link (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:10:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Papercraft sculptures

Richard Sweeney creates beautiful three-dimensional structures out of folded paper -- and uploads the results to Flickr. Link (Thanks, Jenna!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:06:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Bedazzled Video Show

Spike Priggen has launched a video popsdcast. The first episodes features The Everly Brothers, Raquel Welch, Lee Hazlewood, The Turtles & some classic commercials. Fun! Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:29:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Updates on feds seeking phone records for journos, citizens

Two excerpts from ABC News blog "The Blotter":

The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly seeking reporters' phone records in leak investigations.

"It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration," said a senior federal official.

Link. And,

The Department of Justice says it secretly sought phone records and other documents of 3,501 people last year under a provision of the Patriot Act that does not require judicial oversight. The records were obtained with the use of what are known as National Security Letters, which can be signed by an FBI agent and are only for use in terrorism cases. The letters require telephone companies to keep secret even the existence of the request for records.

Link. (Thanks, Alex Rosen)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:07:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dave Alvin interview

My friend Colin Berry interviewed one of our favorite musicians, guitarist Dave Alvin (formerly of The Blasters) for KQED radio.

Grammy-winning songwriter Dave Alvin talks about the man behind his song "Everett Ruess." Born in Los Angeles in 1914, Ruess was an artist, poet and wanderer who spent most of his short life exploring the wilderness of the West.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:03:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Best New Orleans mayoral candidates interview snip EVAR

Snip:

Last question: There's another flood. You are in a rescue boat. You arrive at a rooftop to find Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. There's only room for one in the boat. Who do you take?

Landrieu: They both get left.

Nagin: I give them the boat and get on the roof and wait for the helicopter.

Link (Thanks, Jonno!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:58:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO play the spoons

When my wife was a small child, she'd sometimes pick up the spoons to sit in with her great uncle's bluegrass band in Kentucky. Every so often, I can still get her to give me a roll or two. Now I'm going to try to learn by following the directions on this site.
Link (via MetaFilter)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:07:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Siva Vaidhyanathan on Net Neutrality

Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Anarchist in the Library, did a great NPR spot last week on Net Neutrality -- audio and transcript now available:

There are a couple of different ways to look at this. There's the romantic way, right? The romantic way is that we want to have the Internet as the wild frontier for entrepreneurship, and that's a strong case. There's also the liberal free speech argument, which says we want the Internet to be a level playing field so a variety of voices can enter the public sphere. That's a fairly strong argument. But then you've got the economic argument, which is those of us who write checks every month to these companies, we want to be able to know that we are getting decent service for what we're paying. If my broadband company next week starts dialing down my Skype speed so Skype doesn't work as well for me, I might not even know it or notice it for a long time, until Skype starts frustrating me, and out of frustration, I'm just going to pick up my old phone and dial India the old-fashioned way and just pay for it because I know the call's going to go through. That's the sort of frustration and opacity we might start seeing on the Internet. So it is a service question, a competition question, an economic development question, a consumer question. And it really is dollars and cents.

Link (Thanks, Siva!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:46:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flickr goes Gamma

Flickr has finally left Beta and gone into "Gamma" with lots of nice new features:

Search
When you search from the main navigation bar, you'll be looking through the titles, tags & descriptions of all the photos on Flickr. You'll see that you can zero in on your photos or photos from one of your contacts too, and sort the results in a few different ways on the search results page.

Link (Thanks to everyone who suggested this!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:42:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Buckminster BlingBling: scientists discover golden buckyballs

A team of researchers have stumbled on a scientific first: golden buckyballs. These nanoparticles of gold atoms are roughly 6 angstroms across -- about 6 millionths the diameter of a human hair. Snip:

Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland and at the University of Nebraska report in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have discovered hollow molecular structures made of pure gold -- golden buckyballs.

Carbon buckyballs, hollow spheres made of 60 carbon atoms and named for the geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller, were discovered in the early 1980s. Originally known as buckminsterfullerenes (today, technically, just as fullerenes), buckyballs became the third known natural form of pure carbon after diamond and graphite.

In today's report, Lai-Sheng Wang, a national lab scientist and professor of physics at Washington State University, said his team appears to have created the first metallic version of the buckyball.

Link to Seattle Post-Intelligencer story. (Thanks, Vance!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:42:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animal sounds from around the world

This is a fascinating grid showing the sounds that animals are said to make in different languages:

Cat mewing

Danish: miav
Dutch: miauw
English: meow
Finnish: miau
French: miaou
German: miau
Greek: miaou
Hebrew: miyau
Hungarian: miau
Italian: miau
Japanese: nyan nyan/nyaa nyaa
Russian: miyau
Spanish: miao
Swedish: mjan mjan
Turkish: miyav
Urdu: meow

Link (via Kottke)

Update: Elias sez, "This is from the DRAE (Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy), where you can see that the sound of the cat in Spanish is not 'miao' but 'miau'."

Update 2: Anders sez, "The Swedish entry for how a cat sounds is also wrong, and should be 'Mjau, mjau.'"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:41:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Super-pretty astronomer's watch displays lots of sky data

Boing Boing reader Fred Kiesche says,

This is a high-end "astronomer's watch", but I bet most astronomers could not afford it. It also has some puzzling features (why do you need the information about Sirius and Arcturus?). It's nice, it's fancy, but for the cost of a PalmOS PDA plus under $100.00, I could outfit you with enough astronomical freeware/shareware to do everything this does and more (except look as beautiful).

Link, and here's a manufacturer's website. I can't figure out the price, but I can tell it ain't no hundred bucks. They cost about US$ 365. (Thanks, also, Winchell Chung)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:33:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SF Chron journalists' "First Amendment battle blog"

Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters were subpoenaed by the Justice Department to appear before a grand jury and identify the sources who supplied them with grand jury testimony related to the BALCO steroids investigation. Chron editor Phil Bronstein has launched a blog documenting the journalists' resistance efforts here: Link (Thanks, Violet!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:23:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Please don't carve an emoticon in my skull until I'm dead.

Blogger and "lethal machine operator" Violet Blue says,

I [just] finished reading Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains by Annie Cheney (great companion book to Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Corpse: Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint Time of Death). It was fascinating. In it, Cheney mentions bone retooling machines called FADAL, and describes them as sort-of CNC/VNC machines without stating as much. My self-educated guess was that they are CNC milling machines, but for human bone.

So I go on a Google tangent looking for milling machines used in bone harvesting and shaping, because I'm really curious about what they look like and stuff, and I come across this research project for a haptic/vr temporal bone surgery simulator. The reward is in the scrolldown. "The simulator can also be used for free form design." Yikes! Next, I hit paydirt -- a page with an actual photo of leg-on-a-lathe (milling machine). It proves to me that CAD can indeed be used against humans.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:19:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage hot rod strollers and prams

Daddy Types rounds up a few sources for vintage strollers and prams that put modern buggies to shame, aesthetically anyway. At left, the Helvetia, from 1959, available for 450 Euros from Ouderwetse-Kinderwagens.nl, a Dutch outfit that deals in these sweet rides. At right, the 1950s Giordani Bambino Carriage, US$2800 from Cincinnati Modern.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:16:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Slate.com starts "textcasting": podcasts of print content.

My friend and colleague Andy Bowers at Slate.com shares word that Slate has launched a service they call "textcasting," starting with their "Today's Papers" feature. A "textcast," Andy explains, is a podcast in which the main thing being delivered to your iPod is text rather than audio. You read the text on your iPod's screen. Snip:

[T]he iPod is not currently configured as a text reader, so we've done our best to work around the device's limitations. (Here's hoping Apple will make its cash cow more text-friendly in future releases.) That said, I've been testing the TP textcast for several weeks now, and I find it very easy to use. Plus, I love that Today's Papers just shows up in my iPod automatically each day.

Here's a little more detail on how the textcast works: The text is actually contained in a 15-minute audio file. (It's 15 minutes of silence, which is how we make the file so small.) Play the file as you would any other podcast, and then hit the iPod's center button two or three times until you reach the description field, which contains the full TP text. You can scroll through the text using the iPod's scroll wheel.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:10:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Feds want hacker Adrian Lamo's genetic code

Adrian Lamo, now 18 months into a two-year probation for hacking the NYT, is again in hot water -- this time because he failed to give a DNA sample to the federal government. Snip from Kevin Poulsen's report in Wired News:

On Tuesday, federal probation officer Michael Sipe filed a notice of violation in a Northern California court accusing Lamo of refusing to submit a blood sample, in violation of Sipe's instructions and a 2-year-old federal law.

"He reported to the probation office as instructed; however, he refused to provide a blood sample for DNA testing, in violation of the general condition of supervision requiring compliance with federal law," the filing reads.

Link (Thanks, Jake!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:04:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Murderous writing assignment

Michael Maxwell, a teacher at Central High School in St. Joseph, Missouri, informally assigned his students to write about who they might like to murder and how they'd do the deed. The odd thing is that Maxwell wasn't teach a writing or English class, but rather "introductory drafting." After one of the students' parents complained to the principal, Maxwell publicly apologized. According to an Associated Press article, disciplinary actions against Maxwell haven't been disclosed, but he isn't likely to lose his job. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:03:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Neo-psychedelic spokesman Daniel Pinchbeck on RU Sirius show

RU Sirius interviews tripster visionary Daniel Pinchbeck about his new book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl on his show this week. And on NeoFiles, they’ve got Alex Steffan from WorldChanging.com Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:22:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Marc Weigarten on Tom Wolfe

When Tom Wolfe was awarded the Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities honorarium, he asked my friend Marc Weingarten to write the essay about him. It's a great read (as is Marc's history of new journalism, The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight.) Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:21:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool Tesla coil photos

Tesla1000 has a Flickr collection of amazing high voltage experiments. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:09:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WEP password on painting

If you insist on keeping a closed home wireless network, then this is a good idea. Put the WEP password on a painting in your house so visitors can log on. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:05:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Old Disney Booklet scanned: "ABC's of Hand Tools"

Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew has a entry about a 1946 Disney / General Motors film called "ABC's of Hand Tools." (The illustrations are by Walt Kelly of Pogo the Possum fame. Thanks, Steve!) They made a booklet of the same name and a kind soul scanned it and made it available as a PDF. Link

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

The stuff cartoonists keep on their desks

The new issue of Vice magazine, edited by Johnny Ryan, is all about comics. The website has some samples. I like the photos of stuff cartoonists keep on their desks.

COMIC WRITING TOOL This was made for me by this guy Tim Biskup. If I’m stuck for an idea I just give it a roll and it tells me what I should do. [Johnny Ryan]

Part 1 | Part 2

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:48:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coop explains his tool fetish

Artist Coop has been on a serious tool collecting bender. On his blog, he explains why.

Why have I gone overboard with these old tools? Well, for a perversely curious person with advanced packrat syndrome, such as myself, there is no greater joy than discovering some new thing to collect. Serial numbers and model names to remember, history to uncover, objects to covet, these are truly the things that make life worth living.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:38:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dan Clowes video interview

Here's a BBC video interview with Dan Clowes, one of the best comic book artists and writers on earth. Link (via Drawn!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:23:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Timezone warrior's watch with faces on inside & outside of wrist

The Face-to-Face watch sports watch-faces for both the inside and outside of your wrist; you can tune them to different timezones (I'm addicted to multi-face watches to help me keep track of what time it is wherever I'm trying to be or wherever I've just left or wherever I'm about to go to). Link (via Shiny Shiny)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:56:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Han shot first bookends

These Star Wars Bookends -- depicting Greedo and Han at opposite ends of a booth in the Mos Eisley cantina -- are sheer genius. They ship in October. Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:53:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open source anti-bird-flu project

Christine sez, "IBM has teamed up with public organization and academia to launch an open-source, collaborative approach to fighting possible virus outbreaks."

Central to the effort will be the use of advanced software technologies, elements of which IBM intends to contribute to the open-source community, that are designed to help share information on disease outbreaks electronically and use it to predict how diseases will spread.

Among the technologies that will be used is a software framework IBM developed to allow electronic health information to be more easily shared and mined for trends, such as the outbreak of disease. Called the Interoperable Healthcare Information Infrastructure (IHII), the technology is designed to improve communication and collaboration among medical professionals and researchers by helping them collect and share health data. IBM will expand the role of IHII to include public health issues, responding to global calls for pandemic preparedness by facilitating the sharing of clinical data among medical facilities, laboratories and public health agencies.

Link (Thanks, Christine)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:20:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lamps built from found junk

Andrew Schulman hand-builds these lovely one-of-a-kind lamps under the brand Afterglow, assembling them from all kinds of lovely found junk. Link (Thanks, JeremyT!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:10:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FreeCulture activist event in SecondLife

James sez, "He's protested DRM on the streets and he's helped spearhead the student movement for copyright reform. This Thursday, Fred Benenson comes to Second Life (where he's known as "Fred Beckersted") to promote and expand the meaning of free culture in the virtual world. Appropriately enough, he'll be appearing at the new Free Culture Art Gallery featuring cool CC-licensed works, hosted by the official Creative Commons office on Joi Ito's SL island of Kula." Link (Thanks, James!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:02:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 15, 2006

Life-sized human statue made of bread, popular with pigeons

Constanza Puente, a Chilean artist, has installed a life-sized statue of herself made of bread in a park in Santiago de Chile. The statue is popular with pigeons -- Puente says "I chose bread to celebrate the fragility of the human beings." Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:46:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Astroturf site from telcos' PR company against Net Neutrality

Neil found a site called "HandsOff.org" that seems to be a grass-roots campaign from "a nationwide coalition of Internet users" against Internet regulation. On closer inspection, though: "it's nothing more than a front for business interests that was set up by a PR company called the Mercury Group. If you've ever wondered why government seems so far removed from the will of the people, the existence of 'astroturf' campaigns like this go some way to explaining why."

Science fictional rubber fetish-wear

This rubber/latex-fetish sites carries the most science-fictionally squicky gear I've ever seen, like this "urinal mask" -- it's kind of HR Giger meets alt.binaries.fetish. Link (via JWZ)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:38:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snogging cures hay-fever

Kissing can alleviate hay-fever, according to a Japanese hospital's study. The theory is that kissing relaxes you and therefore slows histamine production:

The researchers asked a total of 24 couples, where both partners suffered from hay fever, to spend 30 minutes kissing.

Blood samples were taken before and after to compare levels of histamine, and results showed that after the kissing session levels of the chemical were significantly reduced.

This was not found to be the case, however, when the experiment was repeated with cuddling but no kissing, with no change in histamine levels found.

Link (via JWZ)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:34:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spotting spam is hard for humans

A blog entry from the creator of SpamOrHam? (a site that asks users to teach a computer what is and isn't spam by voting on messages) reveals humans' extreme difficulty in distinguishing spam from not-spam. Some of the messages that his users have mistaken for legitimate are the crudest phishing scams, while some of the messages that people often rated as spam are legit, including jokes and discussion-threads from a sales-team. Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:32:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Console prices in real dollars, 1976-2006

CurmudgeonGamer has produced a fascinating chart of inflation-adjusted game console prices starting with 1976's Fairchild Channel F to the PS3. Lots of interesting stuff here including Wes Felter's observation that in real dollars, every Nintendo console has been cheaper than the last one. Link (via Hack the Planet)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:28:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

History of human migration

The History of International Migration Site from the Netherlands' Leiden University has a simple index of migration batters from prehistory to present-daytracking who went where, when. It'd be great to be able to cross-reference this by country of origin and destination, too -- but it's still utterly fascinating reading.

Migration to Latin America, 1750-1914

Spain
* 1600-1900: Southern Spain - Andalusia (especially Seville and its hinterland) - consistently provided the largest number of emigrants of any single region.)

* 1600-1900: Spanish society in the Indies reflect a wide socio-economic representation in the settlement of the New World: only the extremes of Spanish society - the highest nobles who commanded great wealth and resources, and the true paupers scarcely participated in the movement.

* 1850-1920: Spaniards moving to Argentina were poor, rural and looking for a permanent place for resettlement. (Survey, 216)

* 19th- 20th century: Especially emigrants from Spain went to South America. Portugal

* 1850-1900: The first group Portuguese (8-11%) composed of adolescents and young adults who went to join relatives or 'friends' to work in trade activities. This group departed almost exclusively from the northern regions of Portugal. The second group (ca. 10%) is relatively older, and is formed by those that had some sort of property or skill, and could easily find a niche in the expanding Brazilian urban economy. The third group (ca. 80%) is made up of those with no skills, who entered the Brazilian unskilled labour market. * 19th- 20th century: Especially emigrants from Portugal went to South America.

Link (via Making Light)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:22:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Venom extractor review

The latest edition of Cool Tools has a nice review of vaccuum pump to extract venom from bites and stings.

A friend was bitten by a flying bug. Her arm immediately began to swell up. She was in intense, burning pain. We attached The Extractor over the bite, with its largest cup...Several drops of foul brown liquid were drawn from her arm. Almost immediately her pain dissipated. I have used this tool many times since then on simple bee stings on my children -- their pain leaves almost immediately.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:04:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mister Jalopy on the Von Dutch auction

There's a mom at my daughter's school that I don't like. She's arrogant, ill-mannered, ostentatious, and obnoxious. One morning when I was on the school campus, I saw the mom wearing a Von Dutch hat and a Von Dutch T-shirt. I asked her who Von Dutch was. "He's a fashion designer," she sneered. I told her that wasn't correct. I told her that he was a car customizer and an artist, and was no longer living. "That's someone else, idiot," she said. (The "idiot" was silent, but her mind spoke it.)

I remembered that conversation when I read today's entry at Jalopy Junktown, where he wrote about an auction where Von Dutch's pinstriping box was sold for $270,000.

Luckily, the ghost of Von Dutch already suffered the gross indignity of his name being licensed to sell overpriced trucker hats. An injustice that great assures Von Dutch will be not coming back from the dead to rattle around Beverly Hills mansions looking to reclaim his hammers or pick-up truck tailgate.

"Everything you love, everything meaningful with depth and history, all passionate authentic experiences will be appropriated, mishandled, watered down, cheapened, repackaged, marketed and sold to the people you hate."

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:32:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fractal nanomolecule

Scientists have used self-assembly to create a nanoscale molecule that, like snowflakes and coastlines, has a self-similar fractal form. The hexagonal gasket is composed of of six rings, which are made up of six rings, and so on. The University of Akron and Clemson University researchers presented their creation in the journal Science. From Ohio University Research News:

“This man-made structure is one of the first nanoscale, non-branched fractal molecules ever produced,” said (George) Newkome, who is lead author on the Science paper and also serves as dean of the Graduate School and the James and Vanita Oelschlager Professor of Science and Technology at the University of Akron. “Blending mathematics, art and science, these nanoscopic hexagonal-shaped materials can be self-assembled and resemble a fine bead necklace. These precise polymers — the first example of a molecule possessing a ‘Star of David’ motif — may provide an entrée into novel new types of photoelectric cells, molecular batteries and energy storage.”

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:53:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos from Epcot Center's construction

Kirby sez, "Von W. Johnson's Slide Show of images of Epcot while it was under construction in 1981-82. (The page title needs to be updated as it is now 25 years since the earliest of these images was taken!) Von was manufacturing scheduler for the China, Germany and Japan pavilions and took some fantastic shots of the park while it was being built. The second image is interesting as it is the standard view every visitor has from the parking lot, but of a partly built Spaceship Earth. The first 42 images are of Epcot under construction. The rest are from the MAPO offices (now known as Imagineering) (in Glendale CA, I presume) on Epcot Opening day."

I was there the month Epcot Center opened and man, was it in trouble. It seemed like nothing works. I got stuck at the top of Spaceship Earth (the giant golf-ball) for the better part of an hour (after waiting several hours to board) and eventually we were all led off via a backstage staircase. Link (Thanks, Kirby!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:37:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Design Creative Commons bag, win trip to iSummit Rio!

Next month, iCommons, the international Creative Commons movement, will host its first-ever summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (I'm going!). They're holding a competition to design the conference bag, and the winner gets free airfare and expenses to attend the summit:

Entries will be judged based on the following criteria:

* Relevance to iCommons Summit theme (45% of overall grade);
* Creativity (45% of overall grade); and
* Suitability for bag design (10% of overall grade).

Link (Thanks, Heather!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:30:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free Bruce Sterling talk in London Tuesday night - ADDRESS UPDATE

Bruce Sterling is giving a free talk in London tomorrow night (note updated address below):

On Tuesday, May 16^th , come and hear Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor and critic, rant about RFID, the future of design and technology and whatever else is on his mind...

SPACE Place, 43 Dace Road, Fish Island, London E3 2NR

129 -131 Mare Street, Hackney, London E8 3RH. (Tube: Bethnal Green, bus 103 and 254 or Old Street, bus 55)?

For more information, please contact Heather Corcoran at heather@spacestudios.org.uk or by telephone at 0208 525 4339...

Link (Thanks, Tristan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:26:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gmail downgraded, no longer cracks PDFs

Google has downgraded Gmail so that it no longer cracks PDFs with the no-copy-bit set.

Gmail has crippled its "View as HTML" functionality so as to comply with Adobe's PDF copy-control scheme. In case an email attachment is a DRMed PDF file (= a PDF with copying and/or printing restrictions), clicking on the "View as HTML" link returns the message displayed in the screenshot.

Link (Thanks, Andreas!)

Update: Perrin sez, "Adobe's own Macromedia Flashpaper 2, will convert a DRM-ed PDF into a PDF with all the DRM stripped. I just tried it on an ebook I purchased from Amazon and it worked flawlessly."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:23:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Australia puts out for Hollywood with new copyright law

Australia is finally reforming its backwards copyright law, which made it illegal to record shows off the TV and radio, and to rip CDs for personal playback. However, in the process, they proposed a new law that is even more backwards -- one that prohibits watching your recorded shows more than once, one that doesn't allow you to make backups of your CDs, and that doesn't let you loan them to friends.

Australia's digital TV standards come from the DVB, a standards-setting body that is in the midst of creating one of the worst, most restrictive crippleware DRMs ever conceived of. With this new law in place, the "super-broadcast-flag" envisioned by DVB will be a slam dunk in Australia.

It's funny: the Hollywood cartel couldn't get the US to adopt the Broadcast Flag, so they went and sold this bill of dubious goods to Australians. You'd think Australia would be smarter than that: it's pretty sad to be the easy-lay nation that Hollywood turns to when it can't convince America to put out.

Does this mean I can record my favourite television or radio program to enjoy later?

Yes. For the first time you will be able to record most television or radio program at home to enjoy at a later time. This will allow you to watch or listen to a program as it was made available to the public at the time of the original broadcast.

How long can I keep the recording?

The recording must be deleted after one use. It will not be possible to use the recording over and over again.

Can I make a collection of copied television and radio programs?

No. You will not be able to burn a collection (or library) of your favourite programs on DVD or CD to keep. (It will be permitted to record a program on DVD or CD but only temporarily until you watch or listen to it for the first time.)

What can I do with recorded program?

You can watch or listen to the recording with your family or friends. It will not be permitted to sell or hire a recording or to play it at school or work or in any kind of public audience.

Can I give a recording I have made to a friend?

No. A recording is for the personal use of the person who made it. You can invite a friend over to watch or listen to your recording but you can’t lend or give it to a friend to take home with them.

Link (Thanks to everyone who wrote to me about this link)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:17:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wall-safe disguised as electrical outlet

This "safe" -- really a cache -- disguised as a wall-socket is pretty clever and goes for a mere $10. Link (via OhGizmo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:07:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing has a widget

Brian Stucki, creator of the excellent FreeMacWare.com site, has announced the creation of a Boing Boing Widget for Mac Dashboard users. It's very nicely made. Thanks, Brian! Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:09:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Soldiers to sport life recorders

DARPA is checking out wearable systems to "augment a soldier's recall and reporting capability." As part of the Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology (ASSIST) project, the National Institute of Standards and Technology are testing wearable cameras, GPS systems, and context-aware software to generate automated "reports" of what the soldier experienced on the battlefield. From the NIST Tech Beat:

The sensors are expected to capture, classify and store such data as the sound of acceleration and deceleration of vehicles, images of people (including suspicious movements that might not be seen by the soldiers), speech and specific types of weapon fire.

A capacity to give GPS locations, an ability to translate Arabic signs and text into English, as well as on-command video recording also are being demonstrated in Aberdeen. Sensor system software is expected to extract keywords and create an indexed multimedia representation of information collected by different soldiers. For comparison purposes, the soldiers wearing the sensors will make an after-action report based on memory and then supplement that after-action report with information learned from the sensor data.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:18:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Update on funny BBC mistake: "cabbie" is an IT expert from the Congo

The real Guy Kewney has an update about the funny BBC mix-up I posted yesterday.

OK, reset everything you've heard about my appearance on the BBC: they've found the "taxi driver" and (as I have constantly tried to explain to everybody) he isn't a taxi driver.

His name is Guy Goma - which goes some way to explaining why he (and the BBC receptionist) assumed that someone asking for Guy Kewney was asking for him.

And he wasn't there to pick up a fare, because he's not a cabbie. He's a Business Studies graduate, from the Congo, and he was there in reception because he was applying for a high level IT job with the BBC.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:15:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Something weird going on with the clock on 24

Andrew Hearst of the Panopticist noticed that the digital clock that appears before and after commercials on 24 behaves strangely. For one thing, the numeral 1 has a serif. For another, the numeral 1 is kerned to prevent the big gap between characters usually seen on LED clocks.

And that's how I stumbled onto this weird pattern: The clock never shows a 0 turning into a 1, and it never shows a 1 turning into a 2. (There are some very rare exceptions, which I explain below.) Check it out the next time you watch the show, if you watch it. The clock will display a sequence like "04:42:24, 04:42:25, 04:42:26, 04:42:27, 04:42:28," then stop, or "04:21:16, 04:21:17, 04:21:18, 04:21:19," then stop. I've only been watching for this pattern for six or eight episodes, so I don't know if it's been like this since the first episode of the first season—but I'm betting that's the case. The onscreen time sequences are dictated partly by the typographic limitations of the clock font.

Andrew also reminds 24 viewers to check their TiVo's recording times for tomorrow's episode:

Don't forget to configure your TiVo or VCR to compensate for the speech by Mr. 29 Percent tomorrow night. According to Fox, 24 will start about 20 minutes late in the Eastern and Central time zones.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:03:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Worldmapper's cartograms

Worldmapper is a wonderfully eye-opening collection of "cartograms," maps that resize geographical regions based on different variables, from birth rates and population to disease to aircraft flights and imports/exports. Seen here, a map that depicts "Toys Exports." From the description:

More toys are exported (US$ net) from Eastern Asia than from any other region. The value of net exports depends on a combination of how much is exported, how much is imported, and the prices paid.

In terms of earnings from toy exports, there is considerable variation between Eastern Asian territories. Net exports earnings per preson from Hong Kong are more than 10 times greater than those from Taiwan, and almost 100 times greater than those from China.

Toys, including sports equipment, make up 1% of worldwide exports when measured in US dollars.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:55:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Science video, 1971: Hippies re-enact protein synthesis

BoingBoing reader Fritz Roth says,

Kenyon College professor Joan Slonczewski has made available a classic short film from 1971 in which flower children at Stanford re-enact protein synthesis. If you don't have time to watch the whole film, tune in at 3:46 to watch the cavorting 30S ribosome orgy. A different colored balloon for every ribonucleotide and a puff of smoke for every pyrophosphate cleavage... science entertainment at its best.

Link to Kenyon College blog post, and here's a direct link to the film (MP4).

Reader comment: Richard Carnan says,

I'm currently attending UCSB and they show that video to every intro biology course. And I have a bunch of friends scattered around California at other UCs and universities who have seen the video in their intro biology courses too. The professors get a kick out of it and tell the students it's a must-see video. I also find it quite ironic that you guys blog about that video on the day of my genetics midterm.

Reader comment: Adrienne says,

Dr S, the Kenyon prof who created the RNA hippy dance video, is also an accomplished science fiction writer: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:03:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Kelly on future libraries: Scan This Book!

Snip from an article by Kevin Kelly from this weekend's New York Times Magazine:

When Google announced in December 2004 that it would digitally scan the books of five major research libraries to make their contents searchable, the promise of a universal library was resurrected. Indeed, the explosive rise of the Web, going from nothing to everything in one decade, has encouraged us to believe in the impossible again. Might the long-heralded great library of all knowledge really be within our grasp?

Brewster Kahle, an archivist overseeing another scanning project, says that the universal library is now within reach. "This is our chance to one-up the Greeks!" he shouts. "It is really possible with the technology of today, not tomorrow. We can provide all the works of humankind to all the people of the world. It will be an achievement remembered for all time, like putting a man on the moon." And unlike the libraries of old, which were restricted to the elite, this library would be truly democratic, offering every book to every person.

But the technology that will bring us a planetary source of all written material will also, in the same gesture, transform the nature of what we now call the book and the libraries that hold them. The universal library and its "books" will be unlike any library or books we have known. Pushing us rapidly toward that Eden of everything, and away from the paradigm of the physical paper tome, is the hot technology of the search engine.

Reg-free Link. Image: Abelardo Morell / Bonni Benrubi Gallery for the NY Times.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:47:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Feds to news orgs: we know who you're calling.

Snip from an ABC News report:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources. "It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation. One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.

Link (Thanks, keanon liggatt)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:34:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tubatron: HOWTO make and play a flaming tuba (video)

My friend David Silverman is a director on the TV show The Simpsons, and he's helming the forthcoming Simpsons Movie. But more importantly, he designed and built a flaming tuba, and plays it beautifully in exotic locations throughout the weirdosphere. He toots out a cover of "Oops I Did It Again" in this video. I asked David to explain how the flaming tuba came to be, and he offers this explamanamation to BoingBoing readers:

I probably was thinking about this idea for a year or so before realizing it. A friend of mine, Anna Maltese, is an expert fire dancer. I'd watch her perform with her other fire and circus pals -- and that's when it hit me: fire+tuba=fun. Very simple equation. The "+" was the the tricky part.

We talked about attaching fire wicking to the top of the sousaphone bell, or something with propane shooting out of the top. But I'm not a carpenter or welder.

Fortunately, she knew a terrific carpenter/tinkerer. And one with a strong knowledge of propane, so things don't go boom in the night. I was hoping for something propane based, and a system where I could manipulate the flame height. Also, because the bell of the sousaphone detaches, I needed the fuel line to be able to detach in the middle as well.

More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:17:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steve McQueen motorcycle epic that never was but soon will be

Snip from NYT story by Paul Cullum:

When Steve McQueen died 25 years ago in Juarez, Mexico, he left behind two children, some 30 movies and a legacy as "The King of Cool" (the title of a documentary about him). He also left behind two custom-made trunks containing 16 leather-bound notebooks full of drawings, photographs from period magazines, and a detailed script continuity — a screenplay without dialogue — written in a kind of hyper-stylized poetry. These materials were his plans for "Yucatan," the vanity project he yearned, but failed, to make.

A heist film and adventure epic, it would have married the sprawling canvas of films like "The Great Escape" and "Papillon" with the chase-scene histrionics of "Bullitt" (transferred to motorcycles, McQueen's lifelong passion) along with some ancient history and visionary science thrown in for good measure.

reg-free Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:52:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LAPD now has a blog and a Flickr stream

Sean Bonner of metroblogging.com helped the Los Angeles Police Department set up a blog and a Flickr stream. Link to LAPD blog, and here's the backstory.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:42:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: mind games

falling sand | prisoner's dilemma | click the color | scissors paper stone | eskiv | splash back | atome | mumu | poom | troyis | block jump | tontie | circles | flow

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:39:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jasmina Tesanovic: Letter to Laura Bush on Mother's Day

Belgrade, May 9th 2006

Dear Laura Bush:

     Let me tell you what happened to me recently. 

    I sat on a bench between two women, of my age and your own,  while a film was screened inside a courtroom. It was a documentary film, showing the execution, minute by minute, of the sixteen year old sons of these women.  These contemporaries of ours  lost all trace of their sons  ten years ago. They were asked to watch the footage and to identify their missing sons.  They were told that the images were cruel, and  were begged to be brave for the sake of truth and justice.

     The  dignified women  accepted the task, and, dressed in their Muslim peasant clothing, they came from Srebrenica, Bosnia to the Belgrade special court for war crimes. 

They sat on that bench behind the living killers of their dead sons, and, with tears and sighs, they said: yes, that is my boy.  The second one from the left.  The one that is kicked on the ground, beaten on the head with the machine gun, whose jeans are torn.  The one who is denied a last glass of water.  The one who is shot in cold blood by a squad of six muscular fully dressed soldiers: because of their religion.

More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:26:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, May 14, 2006

BBC mistakes cab driver job applicant for Net pundit on TV interview

The BBC wanted to interview Newswireless.net editor Guy Kewney about the Apple music / Apple computer decision but accidentally pulled his cab driver another man named Guy who was applying for an IT job at the BBC onto the set for a live TV interview. It makes for excellent viewing.

"I'm very surprised to see... this verdict to come on me, because I was not expecting that. When I came, they told me something else, and I'm coming, 'you got an interview,' so a big surprise, anyway.

Link (Thanks, Christopher [for the video] and Josh [for a more accurate quote from the cabbie]!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:35:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, May 13, 2006

DOJ moves in dark of night to quash EFF wiretapping lawsuit

Kurt sez, "Early Saturday morning, in the darkest hours of the night, the Department of Justice made good its threat to file a motion to dismiss our class-action lawsuit against AT&T, contending that AT&T's collaboration with the NSA's massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications (which violates the law and the privacy of its customers)--despite being front page news throughout the United States and the subject of government press conferences and Congressional hearings--is a state secret. The motion was accompanied by declarations by Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander, Director, National Security Agency and John D. Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence. We will vigorously oppose this motion. Donate to EFF and help stop the illegal spying!" Link (Thanks, Kurt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:33:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Holy card collectors!

Holy Cards are small pictures of Jesus, various saints, or religious scenes with a prayer on the back. Distributed at Roman Catholic churches, Holy Cards have been in circulation since at least the early 1400s. Today's Los Angeles Times has an intriguing article about people who collect these religious curiosités. (Seen here, a German holy card, circa 1910, via Wikipedia.) From the LA Times:

To Julie Ann Brown, they are "visual scriptures, visual faith..."

Ten years ago, the Oxnard resident and marketing professor at Santa Barbara City College found a set of 300 holy cards in a Palmdale antique shop. That discovery brought back memories of attending Mass as a child, when she would use dimes meant for the collection basket to buy cards depicting Jesus.

Always an antique aficionado, she fell into an old passion. Now with 40,000 religious cards stored throughout her house and garage, Brown is determined to preserve as many examples as possible of what she calls "people's art" for posterity.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:12:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WolfenGitmo: Guantanamo Bay mod for Castle Wolfenstein

WolfenGitmo is a Guantanamo Bay mod of the classic 3D first-person game Castle Wolfenstein. In WolfenGitmo, your hands are bound and you have no weapons, so you merely run around and get mauled by dogs and beaten up by soldiers. The game is presently on display at a show in NYC. Link (Thanks, Evan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:15:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dance Dance Revolution, the CBS TV series

DDR will soon become a Saturday morning television series on CBS:

In "Dance Revolution", 'tweens' and teens bring their freshest moves to this sensational new dance competition where teams of dancers display their innovative routines. Hosted by the charismatic "Dance Revolution" house band, kid-friendly judges determine the winners as the dancers perform their routines to the cool sounds of the band. "Dance Revolution" will also offer onscreen visuals that constantly encourage viewer participation by demonstrating specific dance moves and steps.

Link (Thanks, Chester!)

Previous BoingBoing posts about Dance Dance Revolution: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:13:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Congresscritter wants to ban MySpace and social net sites in schools, libraries

Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) introduced a bill in Congress this week that would ban anyone under 18 from logging on to MySpace or other social networking services from school or library computers. Snip from LA Times article:

"The social networking sites have become, in a sense, a happy hunting ground for child predators," said Fitzpatrick, a father of six children, including three teen girls. His legislation, called the Deleting Online Predators Act, "is essentially a bill to protect children from the Internet."

It also would ban access to chat rooms and could block a variety of online forums. In addition, the bill would require the Federal Trade Commission to create a special website for parents and teachers warning of the potential dangers of social networking sites.

Hey, where's the bill to protect children from the follies of pandering congressmen? Link.

danah boyd adds,

The important thing is that it's not just social networking sites and MySpace. It would eliminate Neopets, Flickr, AIM, YouTube, Yahoo! Groups, Blogger, Odeo, Slashdot -- and a whole lot more. It would kill Wikipedia except that it's commercial only.

Here's more on danah's blog. (Thanks, Kathryn!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:09:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyfighting Canadian musicians talk about Parliament meetings - MP3

David sez, "As part of their blitz of Canadian policymakers, Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page and his colleagues Andrew Cash and Brendan Canning (of Broken Social Scene) stopped in for a meeting with the editorial board of the Ottawa Citizen, the major newspaper in Canada's capital (where I'm an editorial writer). We put MP3s of these kinds of meetings with politicians and diplomats and so on online as a matter of course, and you can hear Page and Cash and Canning on copyright, WIPO, their reception from the responsible ministers." Link (Thanks, David!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:06:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Where does booing come from?

Slate's Sonia Smith delivers this neat history of "booing" through the ages:

The first written record comes from ancient Greece. At the annual Festival of Dionysia in Athens, playwrights competed to determine whose tragedy was the best. When the democratic reformer Cleisthenes came to power in the sixth century B.C., audience participation came to be regarded as a civic duty. The audience applauded to show its approval and shouted and whistled to show displeasure...

While people have expressed displeasure publicly since ancient times, the English word boo was first used in the early 19th century to describe the lowing sound that cattle make. Later in the 1800s, the word came to be used to describe the disapproving cry of crowds.

Link (via Monochrom)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:48:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report from Fortean Times's UnConvention

The Scotsman.com attended this year's UnConvention, a gathering of high weirdness organized by Fortean Times magazine. UnCon06 took place in London at the end of April with the likes of Rat Scabies (of The Damned) and Christopher Dawes presenting their Holy Grail quest, and Andy Roberts discussing "UFOs and the Hippy Movement." What fun! Maybe next year. From The Scotsman.com:

Colin Munro and his girlfriend Gayle Probert make up part of the Edinburgh contingent who travelled down for the meeting. Munro lists Fortean interests with relish:

"Forteans are interest in UFO's ghosts, history, forbidden science. Stuff scientists are scared to touch in case they look like loonies." And Colin himself? "I'm interested in all these subjects and keen to keep an open mind."

His girlfriend Gayle is here because of Colin. She doesn't go to the monthly Edinburgh meetings, but she has enjoyed the weekend as it gives her a chance to meet up with other people who have had paranormal experiences.

"I've seen a ghost, my gran, and it helps coming here," says Probert. "People are interested and it's nice to talk to someone who doesn't think you're mental."

Link (Thanks, Greg Benjamin!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:22:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Negativland on copyfight -- video

Here's a video of Mark Hosler of the illegal art band Negativland giving his views on the copyfight.

"You don't get total control.” Mark Hosler is a founding member of sound collage pioneers Negativland. He talks about their role in creating the Creative Commons sampling license, and about copyright + culture in general. He says Creative Commons is the Sierra Club of intellectual property, and Negativland is more like Earth First!.

Mark is in Minneapolis for the opening of "Negativlandland" which is touring the country. Here's another video of Mark from the same visit where he talks about the ubiquity of online video and their famous connection to a Minnesota axe murderer.

Link (Thanks, Chuck!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:13:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rare diseases causes "wires" to grow out of sores

Morgellons disease is a rare illness (characterized by some as a delusion) that has struck South Texas -- it causes incredibly painful lesions that sprout little "wires" of fiber, and never heal. It's painful and has no cure, and some victims commit suicide to escape the pain:

Patients get lesions that never heal.

"Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers," said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.

Patients say that's the worst symptom — strange fibers that pop out of your skin in different colors.

"He'd have attacks and fibers would come out of his hands and fingers, white, black and sometimes red. Very, very painful," said Lisa Wilson, whose son Travis had Morgellon's disease.

While all of this is going on, it feels like bugs are crawling under your skin. So far more than 100 cases of Morgellons disease have been reported in South Texas.

Link (Thanks, Cosmo!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:20:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Science fiction take on the future of Mid-East media

Gonzo sf author Chris Nakashima-Brown has a lovely, snort-milk-out-your-nose-funny story in RevolutionSF called "Welcome Back, Qatar," about the shenanigans that media consultants and culture jammers find themselves getting up to in the battle for the media of the Middle-East:

"Right. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. It's like this. There's more to life than CNN and Al Jazeera. That narrative is way too heavy. People need an escape from the drudgery. They need a few laughs."

The Prince crossed his arms.

"The idea is to present the contemporary Arab experience through the vehicle of our best media product configurations. You'll be amazed how well people can be anesthetized from the pain of a bad day by twenty-two minutes of situational comedy."

One of the grand viziers produced a Siemens Weltmeister 9000 cell phone from beneath his robe and scrolled for a speed-dial.

"And if we can put together some sure-fire hits, there's serious revenue for the Kingdom on top of the cultural pacification. Example. The biggest thing these days is reality shows. You can do regular lives of famous people, a la The Osbournes — move a camera crew in with a colorful member of the royal family. Or regular people in extraordinary situations. Think Survivor: Guantanamo Bay."

Link (Thanks, Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Racist soccer chanting neutralized with echoes

Dutch scientists have developed a system for stopping "racist chanting" at football matches: they feed back the audio of the chant at a slight delay, and the resulting confusion makes it impossible for mobs of football hooligans to synch up their shouting with one another, leading to chaos.

The volunteers were surrounded by loudspeakers that simulated the sound of a chanting crowd and were asked join in. However one speaker replayed the crowds chant with a short delay.

When the delay was greater than 200 milliseconds the volunteers found it too difficult to chant coherently. Increasing the delay, up to about 1 second, was even more effective. "It was very confusing," van Wijngaarden says.

Link (via We Make Money, Not Art)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:49:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Douglas Coupland models his life & books on net-rumors about him

Douglas Coupland makes a habit of following the Internet gossip about his proclivities and habits -- when he finds a juicy rumor about his hobbies (such as the idea that he's an avid meteor collector), he tries out whatever the rumor has him doing.

He's written a new novel, JPod, in which "Douglas Coupland" appears as a character, based on the nasty things that people write about him on the net.

There's a rumor going around the Internet that Douglas Coupland collects meteorites. Nobody knows how it began, least of all Coupland. But the story started to circulate shortly after his first novel, Generation X, became an On the Road for the '90s. Every effort he's made to set the record straight has been ignored by his many fan sites. So he recently decided to purchase a few choice specimens...

...[F]or JPod, he created a character called Douglas Coupland, based on his online doppelgänger: a one-dimensional egotist with cold eyes resembling "wells filled with drowned toddlers." This Coupland first intrudes on the action when the narrator - Ethan Jarlewski, a game designer working for a lightly fictionalized Electronic Arts - meets him on a plane to China. Coupland is ostensibly writing an article for Wired on "designer prisoner-of-conscience labor," but he's secretly developing a gadget and, not incidentally, looking to poach programmers from Electronic Arts.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:45:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 12, 2006

Machinima about a game-character's existential crisis

Deviation is a lovely short film about a video-game character's existential crisis. It was made using the CounterStrike game-engine, and was selected for incusion in the Tropfest@Tribeca Film Festival.

Macintyre, an online-game character and member of a four-man counter-terrorist squad, attempts to break out of the cycle of futile violence that has been his sole existence.

Link (Thanks, Jon!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:56:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Happy naked soldiers in old magazine towel ads

Did the military have a don't-ask-don't-tell policy in WWII? These wonderful towel ads don't answer that question, but they sure are fun to look at.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:10:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Water powered cars just around the corner (sure they are)

Enjoy this news segment about a fellow named Denny Klein who has a water-powered torch and a water-powered car.

From the news segment: Klein just patented his process of converting H2O to HHO, producing a gas that combines the atomic power of hydrogen with the chemical stability of water. "it turns right back to water. In fact, you can see the h20 running off the sheet metal." Klein originally designed his water-burning engine for cutting metal. He thought his invention could replace acetylene in welding factories. Then one day as he drove to his laboratory in Clearwater, he thought of another way to burn his HHO gas. "On a 100 mile trip, we use about four ounces of water." Klein says his prototype 1994 Ford Escort can travel exclusively on water [italics mine], though he currently has it rigged to run as a water and gasoline hybrid.

It seems like every 15 years or so some guy comes along and claims to have come up with a way to turn water into clean burning fuel. (Remember the "Bodine Gasoline" pill from the Beverly Hillbillies?) The thing is, any elementary school student can turn water into hydrogen and oxygen, which burns very nicely, turning back into water when it burns. But I have yet to hear of anyone who has come up with a way to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen without using more energy than you produce. If you had an electrolysis machine that produced more energy than it consumed, you could plug it into itself and have yourself a perpetual motion machine.

I couldn't find any claims one way or another on Klien's website about the efficiency of the process, but if it isn't greater than 100%, then what's the big deal? The welding device seems kind of neat, but I've read comments that dismiss these kinds of welding torches.

Link to short-on-facts and big-on-hype Fox News story video (Here's a video presentation on Klein's company site, Hytechapps.)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:06:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Space colony art

According to NASA, "A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made." Here are more than a dozen of them. Ah, the good ol' daze of Gerard O'Neill's High Frontiers and Timothy Leary's rallying call of SMI²LE (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension).
Link (via MAKE: Blog)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:54:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Quantifying hot topics in physics

A PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Solid-State Physics has developed a method to infer the "hottest" topics in physics research by scouring the abstracts of scientific publications in a massive database. According to graduate student Michael Banks's ranking system, carbon nanotubes are the top research topic of the day, followed by nanowires, quantum dots, fullerenes, giant magnetoresistance, M-theory, and quantum computation. Banks's index builds on the Hirsch index, a technique developed last year for "quantifying the performance of individual scientists." From PhysicsWeb:

The new index might help potential PhD students to choose their future area of research, suggests Banks. It could also provide a useful yardstick to compare different fields when awarding funds and grants. However, he warns that his index should not become the only way to assess the importance of a particular subject.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:26:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ritual remnants discarded in canal?

Volunteers cleaning up an unused canal in Kent, UK, found an unusual package of items wrapped in a black cloth: a dozen coconuts, a dozen nails, and a package of lentils. The Thames and Medway Canal Association suggest that the items might be remnants from "ritual set by gurus or witch doctors," according to the Bucks Free Press. From the newspaper:

Up until now members have only found junk such as tyres, engine parts and an abandoned car. However, on April 25, they found an odd package containing 28 pounds of black lentils...

Association chairman Brian Macknish said the area does occasionally attract vandals but not ritual-holders.

He said: "It's bizarre. There has to be a good reason for it. I asked someone who said it could be something to do with gurus.

"They tell people to do things to bring them good luck.

"Somebody said to me they scoop out the coconuts, put ashes of the dead in and throw them in the river.

Link (via Fortean Times)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:08:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

William Gibson on NSA wiretapping

Open Source Radio did a special yesterday on the NSA's indiscriminate, illegal databasing of American citizens' calls, revealed in an expose in yesterday's USA Today. They got William Gibson on for a rare interview and he was fascinating, trying to place this in context as a spasm generated by humanity's inability to master its technologies. Audio starts about 34 minutes in.

I can't explain it to you, but it has a powerful deja vu. When I got up this morning and read the USA Today headline, I thought the future had been a little more evenly distributed. Now we've all got some...

The interesting thing about meta-projects in the sense in which I used them [in the NYT editorial] is that I don't think species know what they're about. I don't think humanity knows why we do any of this stuff. A couple hundred years down the road, when people look back at what the NSA has done, the significance of it won't be about terrorism or Iraq or the Bush administration or the American Constitution, it will be about how we're driven by emerging technologies and how we struggle to keep up with them...

I'm particularly enamored of the idea of a national security "bubble..." Technologies don't emerge unless there's someone who thinks he can make a bundle by helping them emerge...

I've been watching with keen interest since the first NSA scandal: I've noticed on the Internet that there aren't many people really shocked by this. Our popular culture, our dirt-ball street culture teaches us from childhood that the CIA is listening to *all* of our telephone calls and reading *all* of our email anyway.

I keep seeing that in the lower discourse of the Internet, people saying, "Oh, they're doing it anyway." In some way our culture believes that, and it's a real problem, because evidently they haven't been doing it anyway, and now that they've started, we really need to pay attention and muster some kind of viable political response.

It's very hard to get some people on-board because they think it's a fait accompli...

I think it's [the X-Files, Nixon wiretapping, science fiction]. I think it's predicated in our delirious sense of what's been happening to us as a species for the past 100 years. During the Cold War it was almost comforting to believe that the CIA was reading everything...

In the very long view, this will turn out to be about how we deal with the technological situation we find ourselves in now. We've gotten somewhere we've never been before. It's very interesting. In the short term, I've taken the position that it's very, very illegal and I hope something is done about it.

Link (Thanks, Brendan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:18:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BBC music festival simultaneously in-game and in real-life

This weekend, the BBC's Radio 1 is holding its One Big Weekend music festival simultaneously in Dundee and in the virtual world Second Life:

Every virtual festival-goer will get a wee digital radio to take away with them, which will broadcast Radio 1 in-game, wherever you are. There's also, I hear, these Radio 1 teeshirts for your avatars. And dancing. And a chance that you could appear on-screen at the actual festival - the jumbotrons may or may not take screengrabs of the in-game festivalgoers.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:51:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a teddy-bear remote-control

This step-by-step from Instructables tells you how to install an old radio-remote for an iPod/TV/whatever in the guts of a custom teddy-bear, creating an adorable plush remote. Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:22:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Poems inspired by Google's priciest adwords

Jacob sez, "Inspired by the list of most expensive Google words you linked to, I've started a series of poems based on those words. I'm hoping to prove that poetry can be profitable."

Asbestos tragedies,
mesotheliomas
happen most frequently
inside folks' pleuras.

Then they get bloodthirsty
mesothelioma
lawyers to harass their
stingy insurers.

A Clerihew on "Chicago Personal Injury Attorney", A Higgledy-Piggledy on "Mesothelioma Lawyers", A Song Parody On "Lasik New York City", A Limerick on "Asbestos Attorney" (Thanks, Jacob!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:01:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO paint realistic miniatures and settings

This site has an incredible variety of tips and tricks for painting miniatures and setting them in complex, realistic dioramae. I used to love painting D&D miniatures -- a lot more than I loved playing D&D, really -- and this was my favorite part of it: setting up elaborate, miniature settings for them to frolic in:

The monument bases can be used as column bases for walls. The crosses and roof peaks can be used to decorate the tops of steeples and buttresses. The fence sections can also be used to span archways and put bars into windows.

The coffin was spray painted white, then brown paint was wiped on like a stain. The trim of the coffin was painted a dark brown. Looking back, I should have made the coffin a little more of a gray color.

The skeleton models are Warhammer(TM) miniatures from Games workshop.

Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:57:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Inventions and creations inspired by dreams

BrilliantDreams -- a site for lucid dreaming -- hosts a page of famous discoveries and inventions inspired by dreams, like the dream in which Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz discovered the Benzene molecule:

"...I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis."

Link (Thanks, Rick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:27:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage Computing Festival this Saturday, Jersey Shore

March sez, "It's been 2 years since the last one, but the wait is finally over. This Saturday, May 13, will be the next Vintage Computer Festival East; this time at a new venue on the Jersey shore, precisely where Marconi did his early trans-Atlantic wireless experiments. You'll see computers from the Fifties to the Eighties, up and running in all their former glory. There will also be speakers, including _Creative Computing_ magazine founder, David Ahl." Link (Thanks, March!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:24:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Soviet gadget thumbnails link-site

This is a thumbnail gallery of links to Soviet-era technology and gadgets, from the BK0100 Soviet come computer to chunky old mics, radiation meters, typewriters, stereo cameras and the transistor radio kit shown here.

I love this stuff -- Soviet engineers had a terrific eye for physical design. My great-uncle Bora is a curator at St Peterburg's A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications a tremendous exhibition of Soviet and pre-Soviet gadgetry . It's absolutely packed with things like these. I nearly passed out with joy when I toured it (check out my photos from my visit to Russia last summer). Link (via Digg)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:20:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Whimsical oil-paintings of Mac OS UI elements

Guatam Rao has produced some whimsical oil paintings showing magnified, impressionistic elements of MacOS X's GUI (like this detail from the Safari interface). Quite lovely! Link, Link, Link (Thanks, Gautam!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:14:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Diebold voting machines can be 0wned in minutes

Diebold's notoriously insecure voting machines -- in use across the USA -- have been found to have an even deeper vulnerability than previously known. A new report by Harri Hursti, released on BlackBoxVoting, documents how an attacker with a few moments' of private physical access to a machine could compromise it and load it with his own software, compromising every function of the machine, including the ability to count votes.

Ed Felten and Avi Rubin have written an excellent summary and analysis of the Hursti paper and published it on Freedom to Tinker -- if you care about whether you vote gets counted in 2006, read this now.

Hursti’s findings suggest the possibililty of other attacks, not described in his report, that are even more worrisome.

In addition, compromised machines would be very difficult to detect or to repair. The normal procedure for installing software updates on the machines could not be trusted, because malicious code could cause that procedure to report success, without actually installing any updates. A technician who tried to update the machine’s software would be misled into thinking the update had been installed, when it actually had not.

On election day, malicious software could refuse to function, or it could silently miscount votes.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:11:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MIT students' tricked-out dorm-room automation system

Some MIT students have transformed their room with a homebrew automation system called MIDAS: Multifunction In-Dorm Automation System. The system is incredibly comprehensive, automating party effects, alarms, music, surveillance cams and much more -- and they've documented it in loving detail on this page. Link (via Digg)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:06:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hail to the Chief played with hands

This guy plays music by squeezing air out of his hands. As Tom of Backup Brain says: "I believe in honoring the office of the Presidency, even though I despise the current occupant of the Oval Office. But here's the kind of honors our current President has earned, and deserves." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:16:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Customs dogs trained to sniff out DVDs in luggage

FedEx, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have successfully trained a pair of dogs to detect DVDs in boxes. Why? Because, as you know, DVD piracy supports terrorists.

The dogs were trained over an eight month period to identify DVDs that may be located in boxes, envelopes or other packaging, as well as discs concealed amongst other goods which could be sold illegally in the UK. These DVDs are often smuggled by criminal networks involved in large scale piracy operations from around the world.

For their first major live test, Lucky and Flo were put to work at FedEx’s UK hub at Stansted Airport and were immediately successful in identifying packages and parcels containing DVDs for destinations in the UK.

“This is the first time dogs have been used anywhere in the world to search for counterfeit DVDs and the results were amazing, said Raymond Leinster Director General of FACT. “With the cooperation and assistance of FedEx and Customs we were able to properly test the dogs in a real life situation and prove that they can work in a busy airport environment.”

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:00:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

British farmer supplies gallows to totalitarian governments

A farmer in Middlesex Suffolk builds and exports gallows to African dictatorships, where they are used to execute dissidents and others who've been railroaded through corrupt judicial systems. He's been condemned by Amnesty International, but insists that "business is business," and some people deserve the death penalty. His business will be outlawed by a new EC regulation in July.

The execution equipment he says he sells ranges from single gallows, at about £12,000 each, to "Multi-hanging Execution Systems" mounted on lorry trailers, costing about £100,000.

Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said: "It's appalling that a British man is apparently attempting to sell gallows to President Mugabe's government [in Zimbabwe].

Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:30:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ingenious makeshift contraptions

This gallery of "redneck" photos is a testament to human ingenuity. Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:25:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monkeys drink like humans

A new scientific study reports that monkeys housed alone drink more alcohol than those living in groups. Also, monkeys overall tend to drink after "stressful periods," according to research from the National Institutes of Health Animal Center. From Discovery News:

The study, recently published in the journal Methods, also found that booze affects monkeys much the same way it affects people.

"It was not unusual to see some of the monkeys stumble and fall, sway, and vomit," (researcher Scott) Chen added. "In a few of our heavy drinkers, they would drink until they fell asleep..."

Lower-ranked monkeys and males tended to drink more overall, but certain individuals consistently drank more than others, regardless of status or housing conditions.

"Similar to humans, rhesus macaques have individual differences in taste preference, stress levels, drug tolerance and genetic background that lead to differences in alcohol intake," explained Chen.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:18:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Having fun with roadside alert signs

This guy explains how he changed the text on some light-up roadside signs which were still in operation long after the construction crew had finished its work.

This was the first time I had attempted a prank like this, so I expected the control box to be locked, and the programming functions password-protected. I was wrong. First of all, the control cabinet had no lock. Swinging open its door, I found a deliciously inviting handheld keypad, then took a wild guess and pushed a button labeled STOP. The display on the control box flashed ENTER PASSWORD. I was about to give up in disgust when I noticed that someone had written the password in large Sharpie lettering above the box.

Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:17:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man billed for damages caused by failed suicide attempt

A 47-year-old Munich man tried to commit suicide by jumping in front of a train. He missed and smashed through a window of the engine car where the captain sits. On Tuesday, courts ruled that the suicidal man must pay a couple thousand Euros for repairs to the train and the wages that the driver lost because he was too freaked out to work for several weeks. Link (via Fortean Times)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:10:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robinson Crusoe retold in words of one syllable

Adult literacy pioneer Mary Godolphin (1723-1764) (w -- but see update below) rewrote many books, including Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, and The Swiss Family Robinson, in words of one syllable.

I was born at York on the first of March in the sixth year of the reign of King Charles the First. From the time when I was quite a young child, I had felt a great wish to spend my life at sea, and as I grew, so did this taste grow more and more strong; till at last I broke loose from my school and home, and found my way on foot to Hull, where I soon got a place on board a ship.

When we had set sail but a few days, a squall of wind came on, and on the fifth night we sprang a leak. All hands were sent to the pumps, but we felt the ship groan in all her planks, and her beams quake from stem to stern; so that it was soon quite clear there was no hope for her, and that all we could do was to save our lives.

Link

Reader comment: Martha Imparato, librarian at Mabee Library, Washburn University, in Topeka, KS says:

I am writing to inform you of a small correction that needs to be made in the article about an author, Mary Godolphin, who rewrote several classic works for children with simple language. The name is actually a pseudonym for Lucy Aikin and she has different birth and death dates than the ones you posted. Something about the 3 titles listed didn't click with me and after investigating, sure enough, one of the titles was published after Mary was supposedly dead. There was a real Mary Godolphin who was a British noble whose dates were those on your post, but she was not an author.

[Here] is a link to Project Gutenburg which will clear things up.

Lucy's dates are 1781-1864.

Swiss Family Robinson was published 1818 so the Mary on your post could not have reworked it since she died in 1764.

A librarian in Kansas sent this link to our state listserv knowing some of us would be interested, so that's how I happened across the story and thus began my investigation.

I don't usually look for things like this, but I hope you will look into this in the spirit of accuracy.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:08:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nice collection of vintage cartoons online

Here are a bunch of old cartoons you can watch on Google Video. "There are 27 Betty Boop cartoons, 11 Felix the Cat cartoons, and 3 Krazy Kat cartoons." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:46:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Platial helps people makes maps of places group by subjects

Last week I went to the Web 2.0 Expo at the Disney Studios and met, Di-Ann, the co-creator of Platial, a neat web site that lets you create maps grouped by subject. My favorite map is the Lost map, which has locations pertaining to the TV show. When you click on a place, you can see screen grabs for the show, notes, video clips, etc. Very cool! Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:30:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paul Krassner and Roy Zimmerman performing in LA, June 3rd

On Saturday, June 3 at 8:30 pm, investigative satirist Paul Krassner and singing satirist Roy Zimmerman will perform at Steinway Hall.

About Krassner... Over the years, Paul Krassner has built up a cult following that has steadily been edging into mainstream awareness. The New York Times calls him "... an expert at ferreting out hypocrisy and absurdism from the more solemn crannies of American culture." The Los Angeles Times says Krassner "...has the uncanny ability to alter your perceptions permanently." And the San Francisco Examiner declared that "Krassner is absolutely compelling. He has lived on the edge so long he gets his mail delivered there."

About Zimmerman... What's funny about war, poverty, ignorance, bigotry, neo-conservatism, homophobia, greed, lust and fear? Ask Roy Zimmerman. He's been writing satirical songs for 20 years. Zimmerman founded and wrote all the material for the comedy folk quartet The Foremen (Warner/Reprise artists) who toured extensively, opening for Bill Maher, Dennis Miller, and even for President Bill Clinton. The Los Angeles Times noted Roy's " lacerating wit and keen awareness of society's foibles...a latter-day Tom Lehrer." Roy's fans include Joni Mitchell and Tom Lehrer!

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:09:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Imaginary Foundation art prints

Our friends at the Imaginary Foundation are selling hand-screened art prints in a limited edition of 100 per design. Each poster is 22"(w) x 28"(h), printed on heavy stock, numbered, and embossed by the Imaginary Foundation Director himself. They're $30 each or $75 for all three. Previous posts about Imaginary Foundation here and here. Coming soon: Limited edition double label Boing Boing / Imaginary Foundation t-shirts!
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:14:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Proposed law requires schools to censor MySpace, LJ, blogs, Flickr

A new bill called DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act) will require schools and libraries that receive federal funding to block access to social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook, and is written so broadly that it plausibly could encompass blogs, mailing lists, and sites like Flickr.

According to the proposed legislation, the bill

"prohibits access by minors without parental authorization to a commercial social networking website or chat room through which minors may easily access or be presented with obscene or in- decent material; may easily be subject to unlawful sexual advances, unlawful requests for sexual favors, or repeated offensive comments of a sexual nature from adults may easily access other material that is harmful to minors."

If you're wondering what would qualify as an "online social network," the bill defines it as "a commercially operated Internet website that allows users to create web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to other users and offers a mechanism for communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, email, or instant messenger." That definition is rather broad, of course, though apparently it would not apply to noncommercial websites. My guess is that commercial blogging tools and email list services could be subject to this legislation as well - though I do not know if it would block access to these services writ large or on a blog-by-blog/list-by-list basis.

Link (Thanks, Andy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:09:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NJ lawmaker wants to criminalize taking pix of power-plants

Chris sez, "A lawmaker in New Jersey is pushing a bill that would make it a crime to photograph or videotape power plants, sewage facilities, etc."

The state Senate Law and Public Safety Committee is expected to discuss a bill today which would make it a crime -- punishable by up to 18 months in jail -- to photograph, videotape or otherwise record for an extended period of time a power generation, waste treatment, public sewage, water treatment, public water, nuclear or flammable liquid storage facility, as well as any airport in the state.

At the very least, it will allow law enforcement officials across the state to detain the individual or confiscate any recorded materials to further their investigation, according to state Sen. Fred Madden, D-4 of Turnersville, who is the bill's sponsor.

Link (Thanks, Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:32:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

20-storey robotic cylinders of Volkswagens

Volkswagen has a fully automated garage made of 20-storey-tall towers in Wolfsburg, Germany. These photos make it appear to be some kind of egg-chamber for the Queen VW to stash her larvae in before they hatch into marauding auo-duellists. Which is to say that it's really quite lovely. When cars are ordered, they are robotically fetched down for delivery: "In a fully automated procedure, your new car is brought down to you from one of the 20-story Car Towers. Large signboards in the Customer Center show you when your turn has come. Then, you're handed the keys, your picture is taken, the glass doors open and your brand-new car appears. You're all set to go." Link (via Gizmodo)

Update: Rusty sez, "This reminds me a lot of a restaurant called Aureole in the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas that has a four-story wall of wine. Once you order, an acrobat ('wine angel') scales the giant wall to get your bottle. It's inspired by a scene in Mission Impossible."

posted by