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Monday, July 31, 2006

Emusic's DRM-free store is second largest in the world

Emusic, which sells DRM-free MP3s, is now the second-largest online seller of music on the Internet. I cancelled my sub when they capped the number of downloads per month -- I wanted to feel like I could take some months off from downloading, then download intensively when I felt experimental, and by capping the monthly downloads, Emusic made me feel like I had to download every month to get my money's worth.

That eMusic has found any traction is surprising, as it doesn't have any big hits. No music from major labels means nothing from chart-toppers such as Shakira, Beyoncé or U2 — but plenty from Scott H. Biram, the Pipettes, Dashboard Confessional and Peaches.

They are some of the popular eMusic artists, a roster that also includes household names: Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Credence Clearwater Revival, Miles Davis, Van Morrison, Moby, the White Stripes and Diana Krall are a few of the independent label notables, in a roster more heavily weighted to jazz, classical and indie rock than pop.

Link (Thanks, Tim!)

Update: Aaron sez, "Emusic doesn't charge a subscription anymore. It's just a straight $0.25/download now."

Update 2: Max sez, "eMusic is still a subscription service; if you sign up for the basic plan and download 40 songs a month, it works out to 25 cents per song."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:47:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Handmade wooden specs-frames

I don't know what these handsome, hand-made wooden specs-frames cost, but they're just fantastic. Link (Thanks, Nelson!)

Update: Kent sez, "Here's the Etsy shop for the wooded specs."

Update 2: Scott of Urban Spectacles sez, "I prefer that people interested in wooden frames contact me directly."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:44:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beirut time capsule: Last magazine cover before war

Image link: the last cover of the Beirut edition of Time Out magazine before the current war broke out. (thanks, Katy)

See also this related New York Times story -- "In Beirut, Cultural Life Is Another War Casualty," by Jad Mouawad: Link.
Update: Ah, wow -- there's a fascinating story behind this magazine cover, involving two editors: one from "Time Out Beirut," the other from "Time Out Tel Aviv." Lisa Goldman, a freelance Israeli journalist, blogs:

This is the story of two men, one from Beirut and one from Tel Aviv, who met less than four months ago and formed an instant friendship. They believed that the things they had in common were far more significant than politics - until the twisted reality of the Middle East interfered with that conviction.

This is the July 20 cover of Time Out Tel Aviv, published one week after the current conflict began. It is based on a famous 1970's New Yorker cover, A View of New York from Ninth Avenue. But whereas the world beyond New York's Hudson River is portrayed as a quiet, peaceful place, the world beyond Tel Aviv's Yarkon River is one of turmoil and violence. To the right are Baghdad and Tehran; on the left are Haifa, Tiberias, Carmiel, Acre and Kiryat Shmona - areas that have been under constant bombardment since July 12. The cluster of buildings at the top is Beirut.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:53:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New serial novel by Monster Island novelist

David Wellington, author of the excellent and super-creepy zombie novel Monster Island (which was a serialized novel before it was published as a print book), started a new serialized novel today, called Frostbite. Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:50:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gutfeld: Mel Gibson's guide to addressing female cops

Link to an illo-quiz by Greg Gutfeld, in which the immortal term "Toffee Twat" is coined. Here's more. (Thanks, Coop!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:41:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: BBQ zen

grilled meat
grills
pepsi stove
grilling and barbecue guide
ground meat cookbook
meathenge
meat hats
cole slaw
baked beans
periodic table of condiments
barbecue'n
burger time

Bonus: BoingBoing reader Travis says, "Joey Chestnut ate 8.4 pounds of pork rib meat at the Chinook Winds Casino in 12 minutes on July 16, 2006. Link to great video of the event. Here's Joey's web page: Link."

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Reader comment: Jeremy says, "I received this link in an email today, then saw the web Zen entry on BoingBoing and, well, the photo is mostly SFW."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:37:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Solar powered sidewalk bricks

Sun Bricks are self-contained solar-powered outdoor nightlights that use amber colored LEDs to illuminate walkways. They cost $60 each. Link (Via Popgadget)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:34:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Make Vol 7 at printer

MAKE Vol 7, the "Backyard Biology" issue just went to the printers today (I'm editor-in-chief of MAKE). We have some fun biology projects, including three DNA-based experiments. Other projects include putting a video camera in a model rocket, an easy-to-make Stirling engine, and a home mushroom growing lab. If you order a subscription from the Make site, you are eligible for a discount rate of US$29.95. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:30:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-EMF headwear

Handy-fashions.com sells hats, scarves, and waistcoats lined with shielding fabric to block the electromagnetic fields generated by mobile phone handsets. The amount of electromagnetic waves emitted by phones may or may not be very bad for you. Seen here, the Mobile Cap, approximately US$38. From Handy-fashions.com:

Handy-fashions.com is a Norwegian based corporation and offers fashionable and specially designed textile products for cellular phone users.

Our products are made of a special fabric, normally used by the military to shield missiles in extreeme mircrowave exposed environments.

Handy-fashions.com presents the cutting edge of microwave shielding technology for mobile phones, and it looks fancy and fashionable, too.

Link (via Red Ferret Journal)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:43:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monster House reviews reviewed

David Goldenberg says:

Not that it's particularly related to the discussion of the animation behind Monster House, but I thought you guys would be interested in how the Monster House PR folks twisted a review from the NY Times into blurb fodder:

A.O. Scott, The New York Times: " 'Monster House' is the best child-friendly movie of the summer so far...smartly written and a lot of fun."

Actual line: "If I say that 'Monster House' is the best child-friendly movie of the summer so far ('Ant Bully' and 'Barnyard' will expand the competition in the next few weeks), it may sound like extravagant praise—or maybe like faint praise.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:28:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FSM hate mail

FSM hate mail is a collection of email that Bobby Henderson, author of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, has received from friendly folks who hope to win him over with their charitable benevolence. Samples:

"If I was your creator and you mocked me in this manner I couldn't think of a hell hot enough for you."

"I hope you die in a lake of fire and get your eyes pecked out by crows, so that you may go to hell and exist for eternity in a lake of fire getting your eyes pecked out by crows."

"people like you are scum, I hope you die by the hands of some sick perverted guy who will skullfuck you and then use your skin to make lampshades."

"Charles Darwin went insane when he was 28 anyways (didn't know that did you?) Let me put it this way to you concerning your bologna flying spaghetti monster. If we are created in the image of what you believe God to be, we would look like spaghetti."

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:17:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Diebold voting machines can be beaten with a switch-flip

Diebold's voting machines are even less secure than previously suspected. Inspection of a Diebold machine by the open Voting Foundation revealed that all it takes to get a Diebold machine to boot a modified, crooked operating system is the flip of a switch, a task that can be accomplished in a brief moment using nothing but a screwdriver. Diebold has strenuously resisted calls for its voting machines to be fitted with paper audit-tapes that would record the votes cast for comparison against the electronic tally, and has used legal threats to keep critics from publishing memos detailing earlier flaws discovered in its machines. If you want to steal an election, use a Diebold machine.

Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.

"Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant," according to Dechert. "If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver." This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter's choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:07:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Videos of people humping hummers

ihumpedyourhummer.com has videos of people humping other people's Hummers. Link (Thanks, rosemary!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:59:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Never forget a lock combination

Robert Kohr says: "Combination locks are great because it means that you don't have to worry about losing the key, but if you don't remember the lock combo, you are in trouble."

The solution to this problem is to write an encrypted version of the combo directly on the lock itself using a sharpie, and then all you have to do is work back from the encrypted version if you forget the lock combination. This can be as simple as adding your birthday to the number, and when you need to recover the number, you just subtract your birthday from it.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:42:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rabbinical mystery game

The Shivah is an old-fashioned PC game about a Rabbi running a failing synagogue on the Lower East Side.

Just as he is on the verge of packing it all in, he receives some interesting news. A former member of his congregation has died and left the Rabbi a significant amount of money.

A blessing? Or the start of something far more sinister? Can Rabbi Stone just accept the money and move on? His conscience says no. Step into his shoes as he travels all over Manhattan in his attempt to uncover the truth.

Features rabbinical conversation methods, a unique method of fighting, an original score, and three different endings!

Link (Thanks, Andrew!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:37:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animation historians blast SF Chron movie critic

A Boing Boing reader says: "Mick LaSalle is a film critic for the SF Chronicle. His review of Monster House revealed his supreme lack of understanding when it comes to animation and CGI."

I agree. LaSalle doesn't know what he's talking about. His assessment of this crummy movie is profoundly wrong. The most egregious statement in the review had to be this one: "There was never any point to a close-up in an animated film -- there was never really anything to see." -- Woah! I mean, Winsor MacKay was blowing away audiences with the adorable and expressive Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914.

I know there's no accounting for taste, and if someone likes the animation in Monster House or A Scanner Darkly , I'm envious that they're so easily amused. But LaSalle's review reveals such a supreme lack of understanding about animation that true aficionados of the artform and talented industry pros are dumbfounded by LaSalle's astoundingly clueless review.

Pixar story artist Jeff Pidgeon sent a polite letter to the SF Chron in an attempt to educate LaSalle on the fact that animated cartoons weren't half bad before motion capture arrived to rescue the artform. (Excerpts from LaSalle's review in italics, followed by Pidgeon's response.):

Animated films always had the advantage of being able to go anywhere and show anything, to defy the laws of physics and follow the imagination as far as it could go. But they never had the ability to show the human face. There was never any point to a close-up in an animated film -- there was never really anything to see.

Nothing? No tenderness as Lady and the Tramp eat spaghetti together? No grief when Dopey stands at Snow White's coffin? No longing as Dumbo and his mother embrace at night, straining to reach one another through the wall of a circus wagon? No terror in Lampwick's face as he transforms into a donkey? You saw nothing in those faces?

Imagine what Disney might have done with this in the creation of the Seven Dwarfs. Imagine all the things that will be done with this in the future. "Monster House" looks like the ground floor of something important.

The emotional power and vibrant entertainment "Snow White" created almost seventy years ago will live on long after current techniques have come and gone. It hardly seems lacking.

The letter LaSalle wrote back to Pidgeon indicates that he doesn't want to learn anything from the talented animation industry pro:

Thank you for a thoughtful message. I appreciate it. (Don't agree with it, any of it, but I appreciate being accurately quoted and not being cursed at.)

As animation historian Amid Amidi says:

It's one thing to have a subjective view of a film —- it's another to be so glaringly ignorant of the art form you're discussing to completely dismiss one hundred years of accomplishments and proclaim something so obviously inferior as a technological advance.

Storyboard artist Jenny Lerew says:

[LaSalle] makes a mockery of 100 years of often beautiful, heartbreaking, breathtaking, real acting achievement in animated films. It's one thing to write about a "new" technique in film as the flavor of the month served up in a holy grail -- it's another to backtrack and demean the plain fact of past successes as somehow terribly lacking, which is what this reviewer thinks of, well, basically all Disney animation output from 1937 until "Monster House" with its supposedly improved presentation of animated facial performances.

The message boards for the society of digital artists are also full of head-shaking bewilderment over LaSalle's proudly ignorant review. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:11:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man lifts car to save teen

Tucson, Arizona resident Tom Boyle lifted a car with his bare hands to save a young fellow trapped underneath it. Kyle Holtrust, 18, was riding his bike in Tucson when the Camaro hit him and he was dragged for 20 or 30 feet. Boyle and his wife happened to be driving by when the accident occurred. No word on the gamma radiation levels at the scene. From an Arizona Daily Star article:

"I didn't believe what I saw," Boyle said Thursday. "I didn't believe it until my wife said something, and I was just like, 'Oh my God.' You think things like that only happen in movies...."

Holtrust was pinned underneath his bike, which was pinned underneath the car, said Boyle, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 300 pounds.

"As soon as I get to the car, the boy is just screaming his head off, and I could tell he was in a lot of pain," Boyle said. "As I was lifting the front end of the car off of him, he was just saying, 'Mister, mister, higher, higher.' Then when it was high enough, he said, 'OK. I can't move. Get me out.' "

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:39:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tibetan poet's blogs shut down in China censorship wave

Two blogs authored by the popular Tibetan poet Woeser (aka "Oser" or in Chinese, "Wei Se") have been censored, according to Reporters Without Borders:

They were shut down by the websites that hosted them - Tibetcult.net, a Tibetan cultural portal, and Daqi.com, a local blog platform - presumably on government orders amid a continuing wave of online censorship in China.

(...) Woeser used her two blogs - oser.tibetcul.net and blog.daqi.com/weise - to post her poems and essays about Tibetan culture, as well as articles written by her husband, Wang Lixiong, an independent Chinese writer. Most of the visitors to the blogs were Tibetan students who, like Woeser, had received their education in Chinese and who wanted to renew contact with their original Tibetan culture.

Woeser is one of the few Tibetan authors and poets to write in Chinese. She is committed to the defence of Tibetan culture and her book "Notes on Tibet" was banned in 2004 because of its favourable references to the Dalai Lama. She was fired from her job, evicted from her home and lost her social welfare entitlement. She was also forced to write articles recognising her "political errors." But she has continued to work and several of her books have been published in Taiwan in recent years. The disappearance of her two blogs comes a few days after the closure of the forum of her husband's website Dijin-democracy.net, and that of a site that was very influential among Chinese intellectuals, Century China.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:28:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Decorative marijuana plants

New Image Plants deals in silk marijuana plants and faux buds. Seen here is a beautiful 6' plant, on sale for just $190.57. From the product description:

Many people like the look of a towering, fully mature marijuana plant. Our 6 foot plant will not disappoint you. Whether you want to decorate your living room or large office or your hotel lobby or outdoor garden, our 6’ marijuana plant is a great choice! The large and leafy 6 footer is big enough to provide shade and classy enough to add a hip dimension to your living space.

These 6’ plants are so life-like that a dozen in an open field is sure to get noticed by all the right people. If you plan it right, you can have the last laugh!

Link to New Image Plants, Link to AP story about the fake weed biz (Thanks, Steve Lindholm!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:21:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bird flu hits badminton

The quality of premium badminton shuttlecocks have suffered from a feather shortage resulting from bird flu. Apparently, the best of these birdies are imported from China where a single goose might provide only two feathers. From the Los Angeles Times:

"I believe the problem is potentially considerable," said Torsten Berg, the official bird flu spokesman for the International Badminton Federation.

The shortage has been particularly felt in Southern California, home to some of the country's best players, coaches and clubs.

Prices on premium shuttlecocks, which cost up to $25 for a tube of a dozen, have risen 25% in the last few months.

Manufacturers are competing for the limited feathers, and players are scrambling to buy the best birdies in bulk, further restricting supply.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:15:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robotic roach-stud charms roaches into the light

European researchers have created a robotic roach that can convince other roaches that it's a sexy super-stud, crawling into their nests and then luring them out into the light with pheromones:

The machines are programmed to act like the insects and are even doused in pheromones that mimic eau de roach – the primary way cockroaches recognize each other. “It’s not vision, it’s not sound, it’s pure chemistry,” says scientific coordinator José Halloy from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. The droid enters a roach nest, charms the locals with movements and scent, and then slowly lures its minions into a better-lit area (these quintessential pests usually avoid light).

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:35:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How thieves steal RFID-enabled cars

Brad Stone's feature on RFID-enabled car-keys for Wired is astounding. In the article, entitled "Pinch My Ride," Stone documents the many ways in which these security systems fail. Most profound among the failures is that insurance companies believe RFID-keys to be infallible and refuse to pay out when your car gets stolen. How do RFID cars get stolen? Well, thieves can disable the RFID reader by removing a fuse, find the spare RFID key in the manual in the glove-box, steal RFID-enabled blanks from a dealer, or, most astoundingly, use a semi-secret sequence of pulls on the emergency brake.

This is a textbook example of how security systems can fail: if you strengthen only the door of your safe, thieves will go in through the sides. Like the biometric fingerprint-reading car locks in Malaysia that thieves defeat by amputating your fingers, an RFID car lock merely pushes the security problem to a different place:

[...]Montes fed the guy a barely credible story about a cousin who had dropped his keys down a sewer. The dealership employee was at home but evidently could access the Honda database online. I gave Honky’s VIN to Montes, who passed it along to his friend. We soon had the prescribed sequence of pulls, which I scribbled down in my notebook.

I walked outside and approached Honky. The door lock would have been easy – a thief would have used a jiggle key, and a stranded motorist would have had a locksmith cut a fresh one. I just wrapped the grip of my key in tinfoil to jam the transponder. The key still fit, but it no longer started the car.

Then I grabbed the emergency brake handle between the front seats and performed the specific series of pumps, interspersed with rotations of the ignition between the On and Start positions. After my second attempt, Honky’s hybrid engine awoke with its customary whisper.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:33:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Julian Dibbell on virtual economics transcript

Wagner James Au sez, "The event mentioned last week in Boing Boing with Julian Dibbell creating an avatar and selling a virtual edition of his latest is up now on my blog, a fascinating 5,000+ words on the future of online worlds, and of work online."

... If you had gone to Babylonia or whenever 10,000 years ago, and said 'Hey, 10,000 years from now, the economy you think of as the economy, the growing of grain and baking it and distributing it and all that stuff, and the system you think of as sort of spiritual and ephemeral, the priestly stuff of knowledge work, those roles are going to be completely flipped around, with esoteric, highly mediated financial transactions constituting BY FAR the majority of economic activity on the globe...' they would have laughed at you. Or made you their rain god.

And the evolution of a play economy would work very similarly, with the economy itself creating its own needs, which feed on themselves with especial voracity and velocity because there's less and less physical stuff involved to slow it down. Until voila, yeah, we still need agricultural workers and accountants and systems analysts and so forth, but of course all the REAL wealth of the world is being made here in these little worlds that used to be dismissed as mere games.

Link (Thanks, James!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:24:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Darth Vera, the Sith yenta

In reference to yesterday's post about Hello Kitty Darth Vader (sadly, a photoshopping job), Nic sends us word of his friend Jen, who went to ComicCon this year dressed as Darth Vera, a middle-aged, chubby, female Sith Lord.

Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5 (Thanks, Nic!)

(Image thumbnail from a larger picture in Mystphoto's Flickr stream)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, July 30, 2006

In memoriam: Bill Goggins, formerly of Wired Magazine

Paul Boutin writes,

Bill Goggins, who died unexpectedly while running the San Francisco Marathon Sunday, was Wired's man-behind-the-curtain for years until he recently moved on. Bill's meticulous yet hilarious verbal skills, coupled with a work ethic rarely seen outside New England milltowns, quietly improved most of Wired's feature stories and countless others in the late 90's and early 00's. Bill had an exceptional ability to take a good story and make it better—clearer, catchier, more consistent—usually by changing only a few words, sometimes by making both editor and writer go back and re-examine their basic premises. Whenever people comment on my ability to write clearly, I know Bill had a lot to do with it.

Case in point: I once spent weeks crafting a short piece on Ray Kurzweil that concluded with this paragraph.

Skeptics may say he's flown off the charts himself, but Kurzweil is sure they'll live to regret it. "The really surprising thing to me is how many Nobel Prize winners haven't internalized the implications of the exponential rate of increase in the rate of knowledge itself," he says. "It's easy to explain these things in the language of mathematics. But to really understand them, you almost need to resort to religious terms."

Bill read it and tacked on one more word:

Amen.

But I'll remember Bill most for his dry yet pointed wit around the office. When Chris Anderson's first Wired cover, "Is Japan Still the Future?" was punched up by Condé Nast's editorial director to "Japan Rocks!" Bill protested by posting a note above his desk in the same font: "If Japan's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'."

Link to Paul's post. Image: Bill Goggins, with Paul's wife Christina Noren, at a party in 2004. Here is an article with details on the circumstances surrounding Goggins' death at 43 years old, the first fatality in the SF Marathon's history. He was a kind man and a masterly editor.

Update: Snip from an item at Wired News by Mark Robinson:

Goggins was a legendary figure at Wired magazine, where he started as a freelance copy editor in 1995. He went on to become the managing editor and an articles editor, and eventually rose to become deputy editor. His colleagues admired him tremendously.

“Bill was that rarest of things: a true original,” says Chris Anderson, the magazine’s editor in chief. “He was brilliant, witty and culturally omnivorous, all of which combined in his signature headlines. They usually worked on at least three levels of meaning, from some remixed cultural reference to at least one pun. In many ways his winking style and clever turns of phrase became Wired house style for nearly a decade, and to look at our covers and headlines over those years is to hear Bill's voice again.”

Link (Thanks, Mark Robinson) Tim Cavanaugh at Reason magazine writes,

One of my countless career regrets was that I turned down a great offer from Wired back in the late nineties in order to keep chasing the white lady of a big dotcom ripoff. Bill was very cool before, during, and after that fiasco, and was a reliable good-time guy and great conversationalist. I always enjoyed hanging out with him. His writings for Wired are pretty sparsely represented on a quick Google search, but here's his complete Suck archive, my favorite of which is this Jack-Kemp-is-gay chestnut. I'll miss Bill.

With the apparent exception of the first title listed ("Free at Last"), this is an archive of Goggins' contributions to Suck.com (Thanks, Paul Boutin).

Nina Alter of Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) tells BoingBoing,

I used to work at WiReD, and fucking adored him. Deeply regret loosing contact with him- but I'm a hermit, and tend to do that with a lot of people.

He was just a brilliant mind, and an incredibly kind and wonderful human being. Many in SF and around the world will miss him a great deal. A very, very rare breed of wit, authenticity, passion, compassion, and intellect.

link to SF Chron article.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:31:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Game biz trade show E3 to wither and/or die?

Rumors abound that the annual gaming industry convention E3 may be severely cut back next year -- or canceled entirely -- due to decisions by some top sponsors to focus funds on smaller, brand-focused events. Link, and previous BB posts about E3.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:06:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hello Kitty Darth Vader costume

I don't know anything for sure about this image of a Hello Kitty-themed Darth Vader outfit (it's been suggested that it came from the San Diego Comic Con), though, honestly, what is there to say that the photo doesn't say for itself? JPEG Link (Thanks, Patrick!)

Update: Count Dookie sez, "That Sanrio Darth Vader is a quick Photoshop I did for a thread on The Dented Helmet, a Boba Fett prop-making site."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:08:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Linux Thinkpads can be controlled by knocking on them

There's a utility for Thinkpads running GNU/Linux that lets you execute commands by physically knocking on the machine. This registers as activity on the accelerometer built into the laptop (used to park the hard-drive heads in the even of a fall) and is translated into commands within the OS.

For the first time, you can hit your computer and get a meaningful response! Using Linux and the Hard Drive Active Protection System (HDAPS) kernel drivers, you can access the embedded accelerometers on Lenovo (formerly IBM) ThinkPads, then process the accelerometer data to read specific sequences of "knocking" events -- literally rapping on the laptop case with your knuckles -- and run commands based on those knocks. Double tap to lock the screen, and knock in your secret code to unlock. Tap the display lid once to move your mp3 player to the next track. The possibilities are endless.

Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:05:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Astronauts reveal BoingBoing 150% larger than reported by WSJ

The Wall Street Journal kindly mentioned BoingBoing in a roundup of new media "who's who" today, and ran this photo of Cory and me (alternate reg-free image link). Here's the accompanying article by John Jurgensen, "Moguls of New Media" (reg-free link)

But using cellular, modular, interactivogular surveillance cameras with supersonic laserphonic wingding plugins, astronauts on the International Space Station shot an aerial photo which looks shockingly identical... and reveals a whopping 60% 150% more humans in BoingBoing. Image Link.

From left to right, BoingBoing is Mark, Pesco, "band manager" Battelle, Cory, and me. And truth be told, Bart Nagel took the photo right here on earth.

Correction: BoingBoing reader Weeble says,

Your recent Boing Boing post, "Astronauts reveal BoingBoing 60% larger than reported by WSJ" uses "% larger" in a slightly confusing way. While 2 is 60% *smaller* than 5, 5 is not 60% larger than 2. It is in fact 150% larger than 2. This is a common mistake, and discussed in the Wikipedia article on Percentages [Link]. In general, when describing a percentage change in something, the percentage should be as a proportion of the initial figure, not the final one. Correct headlines might be "Astronauts reveal BoingBoing 150% larger than reported by WSJ" or "Astronauts reveal 60% of BoingBoing missing from WSJ report."

Reader comment: A number of you observed that 80% of us wear nerdy retro specs. Jaye Sunsurn says, "Xeni has to get a set of dark rimmed glasses because she looks out of place in the picture. Everyone else has 'em, why not her?"

Alright, but only if the other 80% agree to wear high heels.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:19:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tech politics roundup: blog license, laptop search, goatse ban?

* Image: Is Pastrami Goatse now a felony? See last item in this post. Image shot by BoingBoing reader Vidiot, who says: "This was taken in New York's Katz's Deli (of "When Harry Met Sally" fame) on the Lower East Side, home of the best pastrami on earth." Yeah, you never forget that taste, do you...

* Does the law allow border agents in the US and Canada to search your laptop? Yes. Link, Another Link, and court decision PDF Link. (Thanks, JahWarrior and John Sawers)

* She's a convicted fraudster, she's running from the law, and she's liveblogging on the lam: Link (thanks, Cyrus)

* RIAA attacks guitar tab sites: vengeance sought against dastardly amateur guitar-strumming scofflaws who learn to play music from internet tablature ("tab") websites (and eat babies). Link (thanks, AngryHerb)

* "Secret" terror watchlists have nabbed more congressmen than terrorists: Link.

* Members of the American Psychological Association are preparing a "revolt" at the group's next convention to protest what they believe to be psychologists' unconscionable assistance in torture at Guantanamo and other terror-war detainment facilities. Link

* Government officials in Malaysia are considering extending the country's "Printing and Presses Act" to cover blogs and other electronic media. The 1984 law requires all print media in Malaysia to obtain a license and abide by strict regulations, including restrictions on political speech. If the PPA is extended to internet media as well, would bloggers and webmasters need a license, too? Link to news article, here are more links: one, two.

* Websites that use kid-friendly words like "Mickey Mouse" or "Snoopy" to lure traffic but instead feature sexually-explicit content are now subject to felony charges, thanks to a bill approved in the U.S. Senate this week: Link. Free speech proponents say the bill is overly broad, impossible to enforce accurately, could villify law-abiding adult sites, and generally a bad thing for online democracy.

Some bloggers say a provision of the bill means that pulling a goatse (worksafe explanation) could land you in prison for twenty years: Link:

‘‘§ 2252C. Misleading words or digital images on the Internet

‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a person into viewing material constituting obscenity shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 10 years.

‘‘(b) MINORS.—Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material harmful to minors on the Internet shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 20 years.

‘‘(c) CONSTRUCTION.—For the purposes of this section, a word or digital image that clearly indicates the sexual content of the site, such as ‘sex’ or ‘porn’, is not misleading.

‘‘(d) DEFINITIONS.—As used in this section—HR 4472 EAS

‘‘(1) the terms ‘material that is harmful to minors’ and ‘sex’ have the meaning given such terms in section 2252B; and ‘‘(2) the term ‘source code’ means the combination of text and other characters comprising the content, both viewable and nonviewable, of a web page, including any website publishing language, programming language, protocol or functional content, as well as any successor languages or protocols.’’.

(b) TABLE OF SECTIONS.—The table of sections for chapter 110 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 2252B the following:

‘‘2252C. Misleading words or digital images on the Internet.’’.

(Thanks, Maxx and many others)

Reader comment: Regarding the legal code cited above, Craig Hughes says,

Now as I read it, that part about "successor languages" means that if you publish content today, and in the future some language or protocol renders that content in a way covered by the law, even if that wasn't your intention when you published -- then you're infringing. In other words, if someone were to write a codemonkey extension which displayed a link to goatse.cx whenever it encountered the word "Iraq" on the homepage of the New York Times, then the NYT would be breaking the law. Nifty.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:36:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beautiful Nooka watches

I'm literally salivating over these two handsome watches, the Nooka Zoo (left) and Zot (right), which sell for $250 each at Elsewares. Something about the face design just hits me square between the eyes, a mix of utterly impractical timekeeping UI (how cool is it that we can do builds and manufacturing of electronics in small enough quantities to make this kind of UI viable?) and handsome layout. Nooka Zoo Link, Nooka Zot Link (Thanks, Alice!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:45:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Miami Vice movie's anti-piracy line a plant?

A reporter for The Inquirer suggests that the anti-piracy throwaway line in the execrable Miami Vice movie was actually paid for by the Business Software Alliance:

There was a scene in Miami Vice where they were discussing the big bad drug dealers, and how international they were. The good guys listed all the thing the bad guys were capable of bringing into the US, Cocaine, Heroin, etc etc. They listed it as coke from Coumbia, heroin from Afganistan, X from Y and A from B. Pretty normal stuff. At the end, they added 'pirated software from China'. Blink.

Now, had they listed anything other than drugs and software, it might not have been so blatant. If they had listed pirated software any other time in the movie, I might not have noticed, but this one was pretty obviously a plant. Don't go see the movie, it isn't worth it, but if you do, pay attention for this bit, you will see exactly how much it stands out. The movie makers could not afford people to do decent dialog, and it seems the DRM infectors could not either.

Link (Thanks, Charlie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:37:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why the CBC doesn't need DRM

A blog post from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation defended its practice of forcing Canadians to use American DRM software like Windows Media Player to watch the programming they pay for with their tax dollars, making the preposterous claim that if it didn't use DRM it would be sued. Canadian Internet law scholar Michael Geist takes apart the post and shows how the CBC could deliver more value to the people who pay for it by abandoning DRM.

First, there are many other public broadcasters who not only reject DRM, but have adopted open licenses (RadioBras in Brazil makes all of its content available under Creative Commons licenses). Second, there is no legal requirement to use DRM under Canadian law. If certain rights holders demand DRM use, the CBC has an alternative. It can reject those demands and choose instead to use only music that rights holders permit to be broadcast without DRM.

There is no shortage of such music. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of Creative Commons licensed songs and the thousands of classical music recordings in the public domain, the majority of Canadian independent labels reject the use of the DRM. Those labels are responsible for 90 percent of new Canadian music, so it seems to me that the CBC will have lots of Canadian content to choose from in its broadcasts and streams. Most of the music that may require DRM protection is likely that from foreign labels promoting foreign artists. While it would be great to include them in CBC broadcasts, Canada's public broadcaster should be rejecting DRM and moving toward as open a platform as possible. The inclusion of greater Canadian content and the ability to truly meet its mandate to be as accessible as possible to all Canadians make this the obvious path to take.

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:34:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aussie mall defends its photons from terrorists

A Melbourne shopping center and tourist attraction have banned photographs, in order to prevent terrorism. Because all terrorism begins with the devilish capture of precious photons. Once these photons have been taken away to the terrorists' spider caves, they are converted into terrorist photons and re-released at the speed of light to attack their targets with relatavistic savageness.

Naive Australians have aided the cause of terrorism by walking around with their own cameras, taking photos of the "no-photography" signs, not suspecting that their cameras are secret members of Al-Qamera, and that many of the photons they "innocently" capture are sent via steganographic means to Afghanistan Iraq Iran for processing at secret photon-camps.

"At no times do we permit photography in our back-of-house areas, in or surrounding our restrooms and within individual retail tenancies," a spokeswoman said. "There are safety, security, privacy and copyright issues which need to be considered with all photography and filming within the centre, and we reserve the right to ask people to stop filming or photographing if it is deemed inappropriate."

Link (Photo thumbnail taken from a larger picture credited to Dallas Goldberg)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:29:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hello Kitty anti-RFID skimming sleeves

A Japanese vendor called Shelly sells Hello Kitty (and other characters) RFID-card sleeves that shield them from "skimmers" who read the card and copy its contents, so that later they can spend your money, break into your car or home, ride the subway as you, etc.

Of course, this negates much of the value of RFID cards: no more can you merely wave your handbag at a turnstile. Now you have to get your card out, remove the radio-proof sleeve, and then rub the naked card over the reader.

And at that moment, if a skimmer happens to have a directional antenna pointing at the turnstile, well, then she can read (and clone) your card. Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:19:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Tomato with human face

This mutant tomato has become a celebrity in the Japanese city of Yawata, Kyoto. From MSN-Mainichi Daily News:

The tomato, which is about 10 centimeters in diameter and weighs about 150 grams, is of the regular "Momotaro" variety, but is about three times the normal size. It was harvested in Yawata from a field owned by 61-year-old farmer Kiyoshi Ueda.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:10:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zoo fights heat with meat ice-cream

A Swiss zoo is coping with record high temperatures by preparing "meat ice cream" for its animals:

The "alternative ice cream" offered to animals instead of their usual fare has been a big hit with large cats, apes and wolves, Zurich Zoo said in a statement. "The ice cream should at least offer the animals a temporary way to cool down," it said.

Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:44:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a bright wig out of yarn

The creator of this HOWTO for making wigs out of yarn describes it as a project to "all that cheap, bright acrylic yarn one finds in craft shops." It looks like it'd be a great autumn hat, too. Link (via JWZ)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:43:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Noise can make you smarter

Wired Magazine interviews Bart Kosko, author of Noise, a book that argues that adding noise to our signals can actually make them clearer.

Can background music make you smarter?
The more you can concentrate with background noise, the more it strengthens the brain. Isaac Asimov used to set his typewriter up in stores and other loud places to work. His claim was that you get really good at writing when you’re in a crowd. You want to be energized by that background noise, rather than distracted.

Amen to that. I love working in energetic places like subways, cafes, airport lounges and hotel lobbies. I don't like people actually interrupting me with questions or whatever, but I love working in busy places where everyone is doing her/his own thing. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:34:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Arrested for taking a pic of a cop arresting someone else

Thomas Hawk sez,

Apparently Philadelphia Police arrested Neftaly Cruz after he took a photo of them arresting a suspected drug dealer. One of Cruz's neighbors gave this recap.

""He opened up the gate and Neffy was coming down and he went up to Neffy, pulled him down, had Neffy on the car and was telling him, 'You should have just went in the house and minded your own business instead of trying to take pictures off your picture phone,'" said Gerrell Martin."

Our ability to photograph the police should be unquestioned. Without it things like the Rodney King incident might never see the light of day. If this occured as Cruz, his family, and neighbors allege, this is a clear abuse of police power and those resposible should be disciplined for this action.

Link (Thanks, Thomas!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:26:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, July 28, 2006

Unedited On The Road to be published

The original, unedited manuscript of On The Road that Jack Kerouac pounded out in three weeks on long rolls of paper will be published for the first time next year.

From the Boston Globe:

...In time to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the novel's publication, the version of ``On the Road" that Kerouac wrote on the scroll will be published next year in book form for the first time, said John Sampas of Lowell, the executor of the writer's literary estate and the brother of his third wife, Stella. It will include some sections that had been cut from the novel because of references to sex or drugs...

The scroll contains numerous passages that were edited out of the book and uses the original names of characters who were closely modeled on friends of Kerouac, including fellow writers William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg...

It remains to be seen exactly how (publisher Viking Penguin) will present the original Kerouac story, which was typed as one freewheeling, single-spaced paragraph. Eager to write freely and continuously, without pausing to pull finished pages from his typewriter and insert new ones, Kerouac typed instead on 12-foot rolls of paper that he later Scotch-taped together, Sampas said...

Some specialists say they prefer the unedited version, which features a different first sentence than the published novel, as well as a more abrupt ending.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:49:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weapons of Mass Confection: Norwegian pie-tosser in trouble

BoingBoing reader Ross Nelson says,

A student who threw a cake at Norway's Finance Minister is being charged with committing "a crime against the Norwegian Constitution" and could get up to 15 years in prison. No word on the penalty for flinging a pie without a license.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:05:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Convicted Aryan Brotherhood bosses used 400-year old crypto

Big news in California today -- after a five month trial and two weeks of deliberation, a jury in Santa Ana has convicted two leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang of racketeering and murder. Barry "The Baron" Mills and Tyler (at right) "The Hulk" Bingham (at left) were found guilty of ordering attacks on black inmates from maximum security cellblocks, and are now eligible for the death penalty. How did they order hits from within such high-security cells? With 400-year-old crypto, and invisible ink made from urine. Snip from Los Angeles Times story:

One of the government's star witnesses, Al Benton, a high-ranking Brotherhood defector, testified that he stabbed a victim through the throat after receiving a smuggled order from Bingham, who was incarcerated 1,700 miles away at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo. Benton testified that the order was written in invisible ink, which came into view when held over a flame. (...)

By the government's account, Brotherhood leaders ran the gang's far-reaching network by adapting ingeniously to the tight surveillance conditions in maximum-security lockups. To transmit messages, the gang employed an elaborate system of codes and cryptograms — including a 400-year-old binary alphabet system devised by Sir Francis Bacon — as well as more prosaic jailhouse ruses, such as slipping notes in mop handles and under recreation yard rocks.

Jurors learned about the gang's reading list, which included Nietzsche, Machiavelli and Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." They learned how to make knives from the shaved-off sliver of a light fixture. And with a cast of eccentric criminal witnesses, they witnessed strange, tangential exchanges, as when defense attorney Michael White cross-examined Chris Risk, who said he robbed banks to protest the treatment of American Indians.

Link. Here's more about "Bacon's Cipher": Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:18:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Questions for Sony regarding its ebook device

I was pleasantly surprised by this email message I got from Bennett Kleinberg at Goodman Media International:

Dear Mark -

I am part of the PR team working with Sony on the launch of the Reader (PRS-500) ebook reading device.

As I am sure you are aware, a great deal of information and misinformation has been floating around the internet about the product since its announcement at CES in January 2005.

To help clear up some of the confusion, we would like to offer you and your readers an opportunity to speak with Sony directly about the Reader to dispel some of the myth that has surrounded its rollout.

As a first step, we would like to suggest compiling questions from your readers about the device. I will then share them directly with a senior member of Sony’s product team for response. Hopefully, if all works well, we can work together to separate fact from fiction about the Reader.

Phil Torrone at MAKE got the same email and he has already compiled a big list of questions and has invited readers to do the same.

I am a huge fan of reading eBooks on my Palm (I've spent hundreds of dollars at ereader.com, and read lots of free books from manybooks.net) and I would love to have an eInk device that isn't DRMed up the wazoo. The fact that Sony wants to talk to potential customers is a positive step. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:31:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dude, your Dell just freakin' blew up.

Following up on a string of recent reports that Dell laptop batteries may sometimes self-immolate without warning, BoingBoing reader Humphrey Cheung says, "One of our forum posters has a story and pictures of a burnt Dell laptop. He also has pictures of the smoke covered office, fire trucks and the burnt battery." Link.

I'm no expert on this stuff, but as a former Dell bitter victim owner and user (now a happy Mac convert) I have a hunch this is because everything Dell is made in Hell.

Reader commentses: several follow after the jump....
More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:49:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More Americans "too fat for x-rays," say radiology researchers

The increasing number of obese Americans means two things for radiology: first, many are too heavy to be safely accommodated by scanning devices. Second, more people have so much body mass, the rays can't penetrate enough to yield quality imaging. Here's a BBC story summarizing a Radiology Journal report from the publication's August 2006 issue and here's a free abstract. The full text requires subscription. The synopsis:

Advances in imaging technology between 1989 and 2003 have focused on improving image quality; however, there has been a small but progressively increasing number of radiology reports described as "limited by body habitus."

I believe that's docspeak for human fat. As in, "Honey, does this body habitus make my butt look big?" (Thanks, Joe)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:33:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kite aerial photography rig

Learn how to take pictures from the sky with Bre Pettis' kite aerial photography rig in this weeks MAKE Weekend Project video. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:15:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Insane playground stunt with scooter and merry-go-round

Watch these kids spin around on a playground merry-go-round powered by the rear tire of a scooter. Death-defying fun for junior jackasses. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:00:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

All about condoms in India

Here's a bottomless page about condoms in India, including countless scans of condom packages, print ads, and this, the "world's first condom bike." (relatively safe for work) Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:56:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amateur video of new Bravia ad in Glasgow

Greg Wallace says: "You may remember the last Bravia Ad, the one with the colored balls falling down the street, this time Sony attacked an old multi story flat scheduled for demolition, with amazing effect!" Link

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

Israel using SMS, recorded voicemail in Lebanon psyops

Snip from BBC report:

According to US magazine Time, Israel has been targeting SMS text messages at local officials in southern Lebanon, urging them to move north of the Litani river before Israeli military operations intensified. On Friday, residents of southern Lebanon reported receiving recorded messages on their mobile phones from an unknown caller. The speaker identified himself as an Israeli and warned people in the area to leave their homes and head north.

Link, and here is the referenced Time article: Link. (Thanks, Jamie)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:48:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Watching Beirut Die

Snip from a Salon essay by Anthony Bourdain:

We went to Beirut to film a TV show about the city's newly vibrant culinary and cultural scene. Then the bombs started falling, and we could only stand on the barricades of our hotel balcony and watch it all disappear -- again.

From where I'm sitting, poolside, I can see the airport burning -- the last of the jet fuel cooking off like a dying can of sterno. There's a large, black plume of smoke coming from the South of the city -- just over the rise, where the most recent airstrikes have been targeting the Shiite neighborhoods and what are, presumably, Hezbollah-associated structures. My camera crew and I missed it the first time they hit the airport. Slept right through it. Woke up in our snug hotel sheets to the news that we wouldn't be making television in Beirut (not the show we came to do anyway), and that we wouldn't be getting out of here anytime soon.

Any hopes of runway repair followed by a flight out disappeared two nights ago, when we watched from the balcony of my hotel room as missiles, fired from off shore, twinkled brightly for a few long seconds in the air, then dropped in lazy parabolic arcs onto the fuel tanks.

Link. Photo: Stephanie Sinclair/Corbis -- "Prewar partygoers enjoy the music and atmosphere at 1975, a bar whose theme is the country's civil war." (Thanks, Cyrus)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:40:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Satellite photos reveal lilliputian China in China

Alan says: "This post at the Sydney Morning Herald describes an military facility in the desert of China which someone spotted in recently released hi-res photos in Google Earth. It's a 500:1, 700 x 900 meter scale model of the territory China took from India in the 1962 Sino-Indian War. There has been a lot of discussion, and many humorous suggestions, but nobody has figured out its function."

The Chinese site based in the very remote Huangyangtan region, appears to be a small-scale model of a piece of territory complete with snow-topped mountains, streams and valleys. The find, recorded by a German member of a Google Earth community site, has triggered speculation that the site might have a military purpose.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:35:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fretboard Journal Vol 3 on sale

The new issue of Fretboard Journal (Vol 3) is out and it is full of taut-stringed goodness.

Singer-songwriter Guy Clark is our cover story. Inside are interviews with Bill Collings of Collings Guitars, Bob Taylor (on his new R. Taylor guitars), banjo legend Wade Mainer and much, much more. It’ll show up in most stores around the first week of August.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:26:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free ebook about the Beatles' Revolver

Ray Newman says: "August marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' 1966 album Revolver. I've spent two years working on a short book about the making of the album which is available as a free PDF download. It's licensed under Creative Commons"

(The ebook is 130 pages long, and I skimmed it just now. It looks fantastic! -- Mark)

Revolver wasn't so much released as it leaked out over the course of some weeks.

Firstly, there was the advance guard – a hot-of-the presses Revolver sessions single, “Paperback Writer” backed with “Rain”, released in the USA in May and shortly afterwards, on June 10th, in the UK. Here was Revolver in microcosm – a kind of trailer for the LP – with compressed bass, backwards vocals, Indian influences, Beach Boys inspired vocals, LSDinspired imagery, and heavily treated vocals. Their last single, released almost six months earlier, had been a double A-side with the folky, earthy “We Can Work It Out” and straight-up plastic soul tune “Day Tripper”. Whilst it can be hard to see the dividing line between Rubber Soul and Revolver, it seems fairly clear cut when you listen to those singles in succession.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:18:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Meet Ren & Stimpy creator John K in SF this weekend

"John Kricfalusi is bringing armloads of cartoon fun to cover the tastes of every living being in San Francisco." He'll be at the Castro Theatre and the Cartoon Art Museum. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:35:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RU Sirius interviews ex-USWeb CEO who claimed extraterrestrials had visited Earth

There's an interview with Joe Firmage on this week's RU Sirius Show. Firmage became legendary when he retired as CEO of USWeb in 1999 after claiming that extraterrestrials had visited earth. And Jamais Cascio, cofounder of worldchanging.com, talks about "the participatory panopticon" on this week's NeoFiles.

Joe Firmage: I did have an unusual experience one morning at my home in Los Gatos. It was either a visitor, a vision, or a bad potato.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:28:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The top 50 movie endings of all time

Last week I was talking with my friend, who is a writer and director, about The Game, starring Michael Douglas. My friend said he enjoyed the "ride" of the movie as he was watching it, but in the back of his mind he kept thinking that the movie's ending was going to be hugely disappointing. And it was (for him at least).

A good ending is important in a movie, and Chris Null and his crew at Film Critic have put together a fun list of the Top 50 Movie Endings of All Time. (As you might expect, it has spoilers in it, so if you haven't seen one of the movies, read the entry for it at your own peril.)

13. Citizen Kane (1941) - Well, we kind of have to put this one on the list, don't we? One of the earliest examples of don't-spill-the-secret endings and also I've-been-robbed anti-climax, that little wooden sled explains everything and explains nothing about Charles Foster Kane, but it's the elusive piece of the jigsaw that drives one of the greatest movies ever made.

(BTW, Wikipedia says "rosebud" allegedly was a "nickname used by [William Randolph] Hearst to refer to the clitoris of his mistress", Marion Davies.) Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:24:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Parody Video: Day of the Longtail

Parody trailer for a zombie-alien-deathwar movie version of Chris Anderson's book, "The Long Tail." Includes spiffy rework of the preamble from "War of the Worlds."

"The old world of media faces an invasion from another planet. The horror. The horror." Created by Michael Markman, Peter Hirshberg, and Bob Kalsey. Link to video, and here's the maker's blog post about it. (thanks, mediamonger!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:46:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chanel, Dior, Gucci... Blackwater?

There are many brands you might expect to see in chic Paris boutiques, but Blackwater is probably not one of them.

BoingBoing reader and roaming couture trendspotter Hal Bringman was in Paris this week, and noticed a line of Blackwater-branded clothing and accessories promoted at one store.

For the sniper in your life who has everything -- ok, everything *but* a spiffy men's polo emblazoned with the logo of the world's most renowned mercenary machine.

Link to another photo, and another, and another, and another. The sign on the door promises "Security of the future."

"The store's name is Multiforma - Scanner, Security & Auto (self) Defense located in the Gallerie des Arcades/Boutiques, Paris," says Hal. "How can the company that is our government's hired rent-an-assassin -- er, I mean security force for emergencies/disasters be in a position to now be exploiting this as a brand worldwide?"

Reader comment: Rob Walker says,

Those who don't want to to paris can get a blackwater tactical polo for $30 right off their web site. In the Pro Shop... Also slings, holsters, shot glasses, etc. Even an xmas ornament.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:17:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

German "anti-piracy" site has major privacy hemorrhage

Carsten sez,

The German movie industry's campaign to scare people from illegally copying movies and other copyrighted material ("Hart aber gerecht", translates to something like "tough but just") has experienced a real blow to its public image, again.

The image put forward by the campaign strongly contrasts with the supposed level of technical knowledge within the organization as well as their webhosters: for a period of about 21 hours the server's DocumentRoot was open to the public. Everyone interested could peek at (drastic, if not hilarious) anti-piracy campaign videos, server logfiles and such. German blogs already have been eager to analyse and comment.

Most delicate is the matter of eCards, though: the website offers a service to send "scary postcards" with campaign motives to people you chose - without any kind of sender oder receiver verification (no opt-in, which is de facto illegal in Germany). And of course, all the addresses used and texts sent via the card service since April 2006 were logged in cleartext, and have already attracted some considerable attention. ;-)

Needless to say there is no privacy disclaimer at all on the website...

Link (Thanks, Carsten!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:08:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Odd, anatomically-precise joke book yields odder Amazon recos

The newly-released novelty book Penis Pokey offers readers the delight of sticking a certain male-specific anatomical feature through a die-cut hole to simulate an elephant's trunk, among other things. But a quick glance at the product page on Amazon shows that more than half 60% of the people who viewed this item went on to buy The Child's Story Bible. If there is a link between the two, I don't want to know about it. Link (Thanks, Joe Mefford)

Reader comment: Chris says,

Equally disturbing is the " 8 used & new available from $6.66" Used.....??? Though one must assume that is a selling point for some. And maybe the price drove others to study A Child's Bible Armageddon in repentance.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:43:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a tattoo gun machine

We've posted before about prisoners' inventions, including a tattoo gun machine made from an old walkman motor. (Link) Instructables now was step-by-step plans to make a similar DIY tattoo gun machine constructed from a remote control plane's motor, toothbrush, Bic Pen, and tape.
Link (via MAKE:)

UPDATE: Thanks to the readers who told me that it's not appropriate to call a tattoo machine a tattoo gun. Link And of course, if you want a tattoo, you really should go to a tattoo artist who uses professional equipment that's been appropriately sterilized.

UPDATE: BB pal Sean Bonner posted directions to make an even more, er, minimalist DIY tattoo machine out of hair clippers, a bic pen, and a guitar string. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:38:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Canadian government: Franklin Mint figures are not toys

The Canadian government has ruled that Franklin Mint collectibles are not toys (and thus eligible for lower import tariffs) even though adults find them amusing.

"It is common knowledge that a child will play for hours with an empty cardboard box, a paper bag or a stick. Thus, the tribunal is of the view that amusement alone does not make an object a toy for the purpose of tariff classification," the federal body wrote in a decision made public this month...

Mr. Morton argued that people display figures of the 1930s cartoon character Betty Boop to signal they're different. A customer who "otherwise may be very prim and proper may have a Betty Boop mini bell jar [figurine] sitting on their desk just to convey that there is a wild side there," he told the CITT.

Similarly, Franklin Mint argued that customers display various "Mood Dragons" on their desks to signal how they are feeling. "Like if 'Grouchy' is out, you know not to approach them that day or if a happy [dragon] is out, then you know that it is okay," Mr. Morton said.

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:24:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cingular threatens Consumerist over "how to discriminate" docs

Cingular has sent legal threats to Consumerist over Consumerist's publication of Cingular's customer service guidelines for determining how much of a discount to give to customers who threaten to leave. The information seems pretty harmless, but interesting, to me. There's nothing there that helps you scam a better deal out of Cingular, just confirmation that some people might be getting a better deal than you. The discussion that follows is pretty good, too. Cingular avers that this is copyrighted material and is demanding that Consumerist take it down. Link

Direct download link of Cingular docs: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:18:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Handmade lumpy clay dining room chairs

These stacking "ceramic" dining-room chairs are made of metal skeletons with hand-modeled, lacquered clay atop them. At $2250 each, I don't think I'll be buying them any time soon, though. Link (via Cribcandy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:11:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rolling Stones phonecast has a stupid hitch

Rolling Stones fans can listen to a soundboard mix from the group's Paris concert today by calling a telephone number and paying $1.99 for 7 minutes. The ridiculous thing is that after your seven minutes are up, you have to call back to hear more. Apparently, there's no way to hear the whole show uninterrupted. Rolling Stones manager Marty Erlichman says that's to prevent bootlegging. Carlo Longino has more over at MobHappy. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:50:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Skull as fashion icon

Yesterday's New York Times featured a Fashion & Style article about the mainstreaming of skulls, once an icon of the counterculture, pirates, a Catholic/Aztec holiday, and, er, paleontologists. I've always been delighted by skulls and I appreciate the fact that you can now find even more beautifully-designed items emblazoned with them. (Seen here, a Lucien Pella-Finet/Jacob Arabo watch with a pavé diamond face.) From the article:

If it was not clear a year or two ago, when the skull motif cropped up on battered Herman-Melville-meets-Edgar-Allan-Poe T-shirts made by Rogues Gallery, on costly cashmere sweaters by Lucien Pellat-Finet, on the perforated uppers of the wingtips made by the men’s wear line Barker Black, it is now. What only recently seemed clever and stylish — I’m wearing a skull! I’m baaaaad! — has shifted into overdrive, if not overkill.

Beyond the sea of skull wear — belts, T-shirts, ties — there are umbrellas, sneakers, swimsuits, packing tape, party lights, even a skull-branded line of hand tools. One company has made a skull toilet brush and caddy (with a molded-plastic femur bone for a handle). This summer Damien Hirst announced that he will make a life-size skull, cast in platinum and adorned with 8,000 diamonds.

If it seems harmless, well, there you have it. With the full force of the American consumer marketing establishment behind it, the skull has lost virtually all of its fearsome outsider meaning. It has become the Happy Face of the 2000’s. When the mid-1980’s proto-Goth group the Ministry sang “Every Day Is Halloween,” this was not quite what they had in mind.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:38:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anatomy of a Pygmie book

These beautiful illustrations are from a first edition copy of Edward Tyson's 1699 book Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man. This rare work is up for auction on eBay today. With only 8 hours left, the current bid is $2,275. The BibliOdyssey blog puts the book and Tyson in context.

From the text of Anatomy of a Pygmie:

"I take him to be wholly a Brute, tho' in the formation of the Body, and in the Sensitive or Brutal Soul, it may be, more resembling a Man, than any other Animal; so that in this Chain of the Creation, as an intermediate Link between an Ape and a Man, I would place our Pygmie."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:06:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Huffing mothballs

An 18-year-old in Boston France was hospitalized after her secret habit of huffing mothballs to get high resulted in a horrid rash, "unsteady gait," and "mental sluggishness. Turns out that her twin was also "bagging." Physicians report on these cases in the New England Journal of Medicine and suggest that the activity may be more common than people think. From the BBC News:

It was discovered that the girls had been using the mothballs as a recreational drug when doctors found a bag of mothballs stashed in her room while she was being treated at the Hospital of Timone in Marseille.

Both girls had been "bagging" - inhaling mothball fumes - after encouragement from classmates.

The twin who was sickest had also been chewing half a mothball a day for two months.

She continued her habit in hospital because she did not think her symptoms were linked to the mothballs.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:55:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PC shaped like an Elvis mic

Jeffrey Stephenson built this amazing mini PC inside a handmade replica Unidyne "Elvis" microphone. Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:25:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Happy Sysadmins' day, Ken!

In a few minutes, it will be July 28th on the West Coast, marking the start of national Sysadmin Appreciation Day. This is a fine idea. Sysadmins are the secret masters of the world, the tireless workers in the data-centers who quietly keep the Internet and its constituent PCs up and running. Sysadmins get more off-hour phone-calls than surgeons; for that matter, a good sysadmin is better to have around than a surgeon.

Boing Boing is blessed with a fine sysadmin indeed: Ken Snider, the extrodinary gentleman who keeps our machines online through slashdottings, DOS attacks, (my) idiotic posting of large media files, and the tribulations and vagaries of a data-center. He's one of Boing Boing's vital "fifth Beatles," a guy who makes all this possible, every single day.

Sincere and bottomless thanks Ken, and happy Sysadmins Day to you and every other admin who's toiled under the desks and in the crawlspaces of the world. Link

Cory's podcast story "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth": Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Update: The UK Unix Users' Group has a great homage to sysadmins in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan. Likewise, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie performed a classic sysadmin song at the ThinkHDI Conference in Vegas at 2005. (Thanks, Miss Cellania and Sam!)

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

Fake bad video-game title photoshopping contest

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: fake box-art for bad video-games. There are some real howlers in this one -- I love World Cup Hooligans (pictured here), but I'm also very partial to Gum, the game. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:44:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO made a handbag out of ties

CraftBits has a HOWTO for turning a bunch of old neckties into a handsome handbag. I love stuff made from old ties -- you need only visit your nearest charity shop to understand that the world has more neckties than it can possibly consume. We may even have more unloved and unwanted ties than we do unusuable car-tires. Link (Thanks, Vikram!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:39:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

France's new copyright law slaughters fair use and open source

France's crazy DRM/anti-DRM law has finally passed, and is incredibly toxic in its final form. Last-minute changes from the Constitutional Court makes programming open/free software in France into a suicide mission, with fines extended up to 500,000 Euros and prison sentences of up to five years, and all copying prohibited, in a total annihilation of France's fair use/fair dealing laws. Link (Thanks, Jean-Baptiste and Jeremie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:22:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Debunking record industry's report on Canada

Michael sez, "While the Kazaa settlement captured the headlines, the recording industry's international lobby today also released its Piracy Report 2006. Canada has been listed as a priority country since the industry thinks Canadian copyright law doesn't measure up. This posting reviews the claims and finds numerous half-truths and inaccuracies."

"National surveys reveal that of those Canadians spending less on music products, by far the largest single reason cited was downloading/file sharing/CD burning."

Leaving aside the fact that all of the above may be lawful, a more recent CRIA commissioned study by Pollara actually arrived at different conclusions. As I documented last March, when asked why they were spending less on music, survey respondents cited price (16%), nothing of interest (14%), lack of time (13%), downloading (10%), collection is big enough (9%), don't buy (7%), listen to radio (7%), change in tastes (6%), no CD player (3%), have an MP3 player (2%), lack of opportunity to buy (2%), watch more tv (2%), age (1%), only buy what I like (1%).

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:12:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brady Bunch clip where Greg is too stoned to act

Apropos of yesterday's fan-created rendering of the Brady Bunch house, David sends in the youtube of the notorious scene that Barry "Greg Brady" Williams shot when he was ripped on whacky weed. Link (Thanks, David!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:07:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Feds retrieve Google records after Gmail used for NAACP death threat

Steve Bryant of eWeek.com's Google Watch site says,

I was searching about in public court docs and found a warrant from last month that shows the feds searched Google. The doc relates a fascinating story about a dude in West Virginia who sent hate mail to the NAACP via Gmail, and how the FBI caught him. Very CSI: Mountain View. A cautionary tale for all the playah hatahs out there.

Here's a snip from the text of Steve's blog post:

The recovered records included the offending e-mail, registration information, session timestamps, and originating IP addresses for amgonow@gmail.com.

That e-mail address was used by a Randall C. Ashby II to send threatening speech from Weston, West Virginia to the Washington Bureau of the NAACP on May 22,2006. That act was a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 875c (Interstate Communication of a Threat). The email read:

You are no match for our numbers and our power. We will come out of the night and rise from the dirt to murder you in your sleep. Meet us on 6/6/06 to seal your fate. The end is at hand, accept your place at the foot of the true masters throne. The kingdom of god is for naught, Hell will rule the earth soon enough. We will meet you at the center of sin, Washington on June 6th or you can hide and die like the insignificant mortals you are. Christ is Dead.

According to court records, there is currently no legal action against Google pending in this matter. Google did not immediately return a request for comment. However, documents obtained by Google Watch shed light on a fascinating tail of digital sleuthing.

Read the rest of it here.

Reader comment: Steve Bryant's post is interesting for a number of reasons, one of which being the sleuthing trail it traces. But it's worth pointing out that these kinds of requests from federal investigators are not uncommon, and this is not the first time Google has received one. BoingBoing reader SleepNoMore says,

I'm an attorney in New York, and this sort of thing happens quite frequently, in both civil and criminal actions. Civil parties can subpoena Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo for gmail, hotmail, or yahoo email account information, including any and all emails sent from a specific email address. As this practice is legally acceptable for civil actions, it would certainly seem reasonable to allow such requests (via valid search warrants) in the context of criminal cases involving real threats of violence or otherwise. Of course, defense attorneys can and do frequently challenge such requests and confidentiality and/or protective orders are often required before information is released. But this is certainly nothing new or surprising in the legal realm - Google and Microsoft must receive thousands of similar search warrants and subpoenas each day and likely have a separate legal department for dealing with such requests.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:08:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Babies good for two things: poo production and marketing

Blogger and Wired Magazine editor Mark McClusky, whose wife Kristen is also a blogger, writes,

Kristen and I were talking about the blogging thing the other day, and realized that the single best promotional opportunity is the cute little baby we have. After a little design work, here's what we came up with. What father could resist? Grab your own at Cafe Press.

Link

Reader comment: Marty says,

I thought the other 'thing' needed a t-shirt too. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:19:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

US to continue role in ICANN governance

Snip from Ars Technica item by Eric Bangeman, which directly contradicts another story circulating widely on blogs today:

Over the past couple of years, the issue of Internet governance has become a hot topic. Currently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is responsible for parceling out IP addresses and domain names. In turn, ICANN operates under the auspices of the US Commerce Department, an arrangement that doesn't sit too well with parts of Europe, the UN, and many developing nations.

Contrary to some reports, things are not about to change. After a meeting at the Commerce Department, Acting Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information, John M.R. Kneuer, said that the existing arrangement was likely to continue, at least for another year. "There certainly are still strong arguments that there's more work to be done," said Kneuer.

Link

Reader comment: Ntwiga says,

A key component behind to maintaining control of the net's root zone file was a letter that Condoleezza Rice sent in her capacity as Secretary of State to the EU through Jack Straw, the UK's Foreign Secretary. The content of the letter basically boiled down to telling the EU that almost everything else was negotiable but control the root zone file was not.

Another interesting development is the Burr Proposal: a private plan to "to outline a practical, concrete pathway for eliminating one of the most important sources of contention in the ICANN debate - the United States’ retained, exclusive, and unilateral authority over the Internet’s authoritative root."

A pdf outlining this plan can be found at this link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:37:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Series of [fallopian] Tubes t-shirt: HOWTO get one

If you want to buy one of these hacker parody tshirts inspired by Ted Stevens' immortal sena-tardial utterance, now you can. Info at seriesoffallopiantubes.com.

Boingboing pal Jacob Appelbaum spotted the shirts at HOPE earlier this week, and shared them here on BoingBoing.

Cheebs says,

I just wanted to point out to everybody that these t-shirts were hand-made by the Prometheus Radio Project. They were creating the shirts and giving them out for small donations as a fundraiser towards future "barnraisings", more info here. I bought one myself and looking forward to having most of my female (and possibly male) friends wanting one too. Oh and some of them also say on the back (as far as I can remember since mine does not have it): "Senator Stevens: Don't tie my tubes."

(thanks, Kristen Pitner). BB reader Justin Time adds,

I heard it was their first try at making tees this way and they did an excellent job. They sold out of men's shirts and most women's shirts. As a side note, this year's HOPE had the highest percentage of women I've yet seen at a super-fun con.

The Prometheus Radio folks say,

"I think just for the sake of sanity we're going to limit to silver, shiny charcoal, or shiny pink on black or pink shirts, and men's and women's cuts, of course.

(...) We are going to sell them to fundraise for some incredible media activism and digital divide groups here in Philadelphia, so your bucks go to unclogging the IntarTubes for all. We are also going to release the silk screen design for diy'ing so you can have your own geekerly silk screening party in your town, on your porch, or in your basement."

And Jake shot tons more photos at HOPE: they're here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:14:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Corn plastic may not be as green as you might think

Corn plastic is hyped as a green alternative to petroleum-based plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the stuff of almost all consumer packaging. Wal-Mart, for example, introduced it in some packaging as part of their "big corporate goals for the environment." Advocates tout that the corn plastic, formed from polylactic acid (PLA) resin, is biodegradable and can be composted into fertilizer. And it can. Under the right conditions. In the new issue of Smithsonian, writer Elizabeth Royte digs into whether the corn plastic is as good as it sounds. Apparently, it's not. From the article:

...PLA is said to decompose into carbon dioxide and water in a “controlled composting environment” in fewer than 90 days. What’s a controlled composting environment? Not your backyard bin, pit or tumbling barrel. It’s a large facility where compost—essentially, plant scraps being digested by microbes into fertilizer—reaches 140 degrees for ten consecutive days. So, yes, as PLA advocates say, corn plastic is “biodegradable.” But in reality very few consumers have access to the sort of composting facilities that can make that happen. (PLA manufacturer) NatureWorks has identified 113 such facilities nationwide—some handle industrial food-processing waste or yard trimmings, others are college or prison operations—but only about a quarter of them accept residential foodscraps collected by municipalities...

Wild Oats accepts used PLA containers in half of its 80 stores. “We mix the PLA with produce and scraps from our juice bars and deliver it to an industrial composting facility,” says the company’s Tuitele. But at the Wild Oats stores that don’t take back PLA, customers are on their own, and they can’t be blamed if they feel deceived by PLA containers stamped “compostable.” (The president of compost research lab Woods End, Will) Brinton, who has done extensive testing of PLA, says such containers are “unchanged” after six months in a home composting operation. For that reason, he considers the Wild Oats stamp, and their in-store signage touting PLA’s compostability, to be false advertising.

Wal-Mart’s (VP of private brands and product development Matt) Kistler says the company isn’t about to take back used PLA for composting. “We’re not in the business of collecting garbage,” he says. “How do we get states and municipalities to set up composting systems? That is the million-dollar question. It’s not our role to tell government what to do. There is money to be made in the recycling business. As we develop packaging that can be recycled and composted, the industry will be developed.”

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:55:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Soy sauce made from human hair

Tracy says: "This article is about cheap soya sauce that is being manufactured in the East as an alternative to the original. The 'secret ingrediant' is amino acid syryp, a concoction consisting of 'human hair ... gathered from salon, barbershop and hospitals around the country' which is then filtered to remove unhygenic matarials such as '... condom, used hospital cottons, used menstrual cycle pad, used syringe ...' The Chinese government has banned the production of this kind of soy sauce, although not the production of amino acid syryp." Link

Update: I forgot that I posted something about this in 2004.

Martijn says:

I've been thinking about your soy sauce from human hair entry on boingboing.net, and I just don't think it makes sense. I don't believe it.

I'm not a chemist, but throwing in some chemical addititives to make something that tastes like soy sauce doesn't seem to likely to me.

And I'm not an economist, but the cost of collecting human hair in sufficient quantity to process it industrially compared to just growing soy doesn't seem plausible to me. Who would produce a fake foodstuff when it's more *expensive*?

This also reminds me of the earlier boingboing entry on the "faked eggs" which is implausible for the same two reasons.

In addition, both articles on such fake products are hosted on the same site and are written by the same author: Alexander Tse-Yan Lee.

Link 1

Link 2

Perhaps this is a form of nefarious propaganda from one food producint company against another. I'm not sure: to me though this has the right symptoms of a crackpot at work...

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:45:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Classic video clip: "Psychic" Uri Geller busted on the Tonight Show!

Denis says: "Self-proclaimed psychic Geller embarrasses himself big time when he realizes his pre-bent spoons and other props have been switched before the taping of the show. Watch Uri sweat and panic as he realizes that his career is about to end on live TV."

I believe that James Randi is narrating. Link

Reader comment: Old Scot says:

You are correct; the narration is by James Randi. Here is a YouTube link to an extended discussion of Uri by Randi that I found quite interesting, which includes the Johnny Carson episode at the end of the 8 minute piece, and includes explanations of how the tricks could be performed. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:39:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos of scrambling an emu egg

Cartoonist Natalie Dee scrambled an emu egg, and photographed the process. She didn't like the results very much. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:29:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Huge fish washed up in Oregon

This huge King-of-the-Salmon fish, nearly six feet long, washed up on the shore near Seaside, Oregon last weekend. These rarely-spotted fish, Trachipterus altivelis, usually are found at depths of 1600 feet. From Salem-News.com:

“He belongs to the family of Ribbonfish,” (Seaside Aquarium's Tiffany) Boothe said. “There are four other species of Ribbonfish along our coast, but the King-of-the-Salmon is the largest; growing up to and possibly exceeding six feet. This one measured almost exactly 6 feet. They can be found down as far as 1600 feet from Alaska to Baja and along the Coast of Chile.”

(Seaside Aquarium manager Keith) Chandler said this was the first time he’d ever seen this in his 27 years of marine science career. He said he did not know what conditions could’ve brought the creature up this far above its normal environment.

Link

UPDATE: At Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman takes a brief cryptozoological look at this odd occurrence and posts two other impressive photos of the same species of fish. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:20:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Trove of Bob Ross videos on YouTube

The late Bob Ross was a joyful oil painting instructor who appeared on PBS. I wish I could have met him and hung out with him!

Coop says:

This show always seemed to be playing on the local PBS affiliate when I was a kid. It's oddly hypnotic. The quiet tone and gentle cadence of Bob's voice, the rhythmic whakkity-wak of the brush on the easel, that giant palette, and most of all, the 'fro.

Sweet Fancy Moses, what a 'fro. It's something to which all great artists should aspire, I think.

Link

Reader comment:

Jim Rosenberg says: Bob Ross Lives - in a Virginia office park. As a freelance reporter for Marketplace in 2003, I profiled Bob Ross Inc., which is housed in an office park near Dulles Airport, outside Washington. "Most people don't know Bob is dead," says one of the owners. Page link for the broadcast. Listen to the full piece (it's damn funny).

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:06:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Custom laptop sleeve with Morse code pattern

I received one of these gorgeous custom-made laptop sleeves for my birthday last week, and I'm purely delighted with it. The creator sells through the crafts site Etsy, and makes the shell out of Morse code-dotted upholstery fabric, and it's lined with soft fleece. At $25, this is a steal. Link (Thanks, Alice!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:34:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Billy Bragg gets MySpace's terms of service changed

Billy Bragg's highly publicized campaign against MySpace's crummy, grabby terms of service has been successful. MySpace has revised its terms so that musicians who upload to the site retain control of their works, and MySpace/NewsCorp/Fox can't sell those songs without contracting with the musicians.

Now that the popularity of downloading has made physical manufacturing and distribution no longer necessary, the next generation of artists will not need to surrender all of their rights in order to get their music into the marketplace. It is therefore crucial that they understand, from the moment that they first post music on the internet, the importance of retaining their long term right to exploit the material that they create. This is doubly important on a networking site where many of the songs posted will be by unsigned artists. Ownership of the rights to such material is somewhat ambiguous. Thats why I hope that the groundbreaking decision of MySpace to come down on the side of the artists rights will be followed throughout the industry.

I also welcome the new wording of the terms and conditions in which MySpace clarify exactly why they require specific rights and how they intend to use them. Again, I hope more sites follow the lead of MySpace in ensuring the use of clear and transparent language in contracts. The last thing any of us wants to see is a situation in which everyone posting a song on the site has to have a lawyer sitting next to them.

Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:23:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ice-cubes shaped like giant diamonds

This £5 ice-cube mold produces ice cubes shaped like giant diamonds, called Cool Jewels. Link (via Popgadget)

Update: Freddie Freelance sez, "These are also available from shop.com from $6."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:05:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-DRM kids' book now for sale

A couple weeks back, I blogged about "The Pig and the Box," an anti-DRM kids book. Now, MCM, the book's author, writes:

I got enough feedback and general interest to start a print run of The Pig and the Box, and I'm finally taking proper orders for the thing. $12.99 (+shipping) gets you a really slick dead tree version, so you can damage your children away from the computer.

Also, if you're so inclined, I've got a Fundable.org action set up to free the rights to the Pig (switching from CC-NC-SA to CC-SA) if 100 people buy a signed copy of the book for $20.

Half of all profits go to Oxfam.

And finally (this is the coolest part): there are now 7 translations of the book, donated by selfless volunteers around the world, free to download. Oh, and a movie is underway in Germany as well. Ah, the wonders of liberally-licensed media...

The follow-up book, The Crow Who Could Fly (about patent abuse) is due in the next week or so, once my server's bandwidth limit resets in August :)

Link (Thanks, MCM!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blogs of this year's Clarion sf writers' workshop students

Alex Wilson, a student at the legendary Clarion science fiction writers' workshop, has posted a roundup of the blogs of this year's Clarion and Clarion West workshops, who are currently at week five of their six-week programs. Clarion is an intensive, boot-camp style workshop, taught by leading professionals, with an excellent track-record of graduating talented, successful writers like Dale Bailey, Octavia Butler, Ben Rosenbaum, Bruce Sterling, Lucius Sheppard and many others. Since the early 90s, many attendees have published running journals or blogs of their Clarion experiences (I did this on the GEnie online service when I attended in 1992).

I was privileged to teach Clarion last year, and to be invited to join the Board of the nonprofit, charitable Clarion Foundation, which oversees the administration of Clarion. This year's instructor lineup includes Samuel Delany, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Joe and Gay Haldeman (pictured left), Holly Black, Kelly Link, Tobias Buckell and Jim Hines.

Reading Clarion journals is a great way to get a flavor of the workshop and a peek inside the extraordinary learning process that takes place there. Link to Clarion East journals, Link to Clarion West journals (Thanks, Alex!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:31:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free shipping on signed, inscribed copies of Cory's books

I'll be attending the World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles from 23-27 August, and I've made arrangements with one of the book-dealers, San Francisco's Borderlands Books, to take orders for signed and inscribed copies of my novels and short story collection and cover the cost of shipping them within the US (you still have to pay for the books, though!).

If you're interested in a signed, inscribed copy of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Eastern Standard Tribe, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town or my collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More, you can call (888.893.4008), fax (415.824.8543), or email your order to the store, and they'll get me to sign copies with your inscription. There is no charge for media-mail shipping within the continental US.

Priority mail in the US is $6.00 (that’s delivery within three days or so). International will be Global Priority for $10 to Canada or $12 elsewhere.

Books will ship after the Worldcon, in late August. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lebanese comic-blogger, Israeli bunker blogger on BBC

Mazen Kerbaj, the Beirut blogger who is posting illustrations and live improv as bombs drop, was interviewed by Chris Vallance on BBC radio.

Chris says, "The segment also features Israeli blogger Eugene from 'Live from an Israeli Bunker,' and Samar Mazloum who blogs from the Bakaar valley." Link.

Illustration from Kerbaj: "of paris i said that it doesn't have a sky but rather a neutral grey stain / and of the new yorkers that they cannot see the sky because of the heighth of their ambition / and of london's sky that it is manufactured from flying cotton / where are you blue sky of beirut? "

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:43:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Israel/Lebanon conflict: death counter webpage

"Each coffin represents a single person killed in the on-going conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

Current Figures:

Israel: 51

UN: 4

Lebanon: 405"

Link to Moiz Syed's map illustrating the proportionality of death in the conflict (thumbnail at left is cropped, and does not reflect the current ratio).

Moiz tells BoingBoing, "A guy named Jonathan made a visualization of American versus the Iraqi casualties in response to my Israel/Lebanese page, here."

(thanks, Inoue Taiji and Moiz)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:24:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MPAA, RIAA squeeze $115 million out of Sharman

The music and movie industries have settled a lawsuit against Sharman Networks, the Australia-based company behind the filesharing service Kazaa.

The settlement (...) concludes years of litigation against a company that studios and labels claim was responsible for massive copyright infringement. Kazaa, like Napster before it, had been emblematic of music and film piracy to computer users worldwide.

Under the terms of the settlement, Kazaa will introduce filtering technologies to ensure that users can no longer share copyrighted music, film or software files. Sharman will also pay $115 million to the recording industry, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. Future payments to the film and software industries may be forthcoming.

Link to Los Angeles Times story.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:15:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Global warming melted MySpace.

Bruce Sterling blogs: "MySpace goes down with all hands. Just a harbinger. A big one. New York City, Saint Louis, California: heat blackouts. The transmission was never designed for loads so severe. It's the same thing all over the world, folks. It's getting worse fast, and there's no place to hide from it."

Reader comment: Derek Dohler of Washington University in St. Louis says, "This is a minor point, but the St. Louis blackouts were caused by an intense thunderstorm, rather than excessive heat. It's arguable (and probable) that the thunderstorm itself was caused by several days of high temperatures, but it wasn't a direct "heat blackout" as implied."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:05:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jasmina Tesanovic: Louisiana

photos: Bruce Sterling

Cameron, Louisiana, July 2006

Used to be a town
by Jasmina Tesanovic

We just missed a twister. We saw its black cloud in the sky, lit by lightning. In Louisiana, some miles after Cameron, a small tornado has toppled trees into the road. Police blocked the highway, workers cleaned the branches away and cool people sat on the porches, watching it all happen. Mostly old people. Why do people stay in disaster sites, living under the volcano? Why do they watch?

We enter the tourist center at the border of Louisiana. We want to go to Holly Beach, we say. Holly Beach isn't there any more, says the clerk, politely smiling.

But yes, the road to Holly Beach still exists. We see this: tall trees snapped in half, house-trailers blown by the hurricane, landing in the most improbable places, upside down. Dead cars strewn like corpses, rusting anywhere, mangled as if crushed by specialized machines. Wind-shredded American flags. Where beach-houses once stood there are only bare poles. Instead of churches, there are the statues of saints... The trees which survived the storm have weird wind-tattered shapes. New leaves are growing out of their trunks.

Marshlands stretch all around us. My American friend is devastated. He laments loudly: the future belongs to this indestructible marsh-grass.
More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:56:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Write on water with water, using wave generator device

A circular tank developed by Mitsui Engineering in Japan called AMOEBA (Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin), allows users to "write" letters on "stationary waves" of water.

This remarkable display device consists of fifty water-wave generators surrounding a cylindrical tank 5 feet wide and a foot deep. The wave generators move vertically to produce cylindrical waves. These "pixels" are about 4 inches in diameter and 1.5 inches in height; these form lines and shapes. The AMOEBA device can form all of the roman alphabet, as well as some kanji characters.

It takes about 15 seconds to produce each character, according to livescience.com, and the wave generator's maker will sell units to amusement parks in a science-entertainmnet package that combines sound, lighting, and water fountains. Link (thanks, Aaron the Bold)

Update: this story was blogged a few days earlier by the SciFi Tech blog: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:44:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

France: Greenpeace can't show GE crop sites on Google Map

A French court has ordered Greenpeace France to take down a web page with a Google Map that shows locations of commercial, genetically engineered corn fields in France. Greenpeace argues the online maps should not be censored because an EU law requires the French government to make the crop site information public anyway.

Greenpeace responded by carving a giant 'X' crop circle into one of the genetically engineered corn fields the courts say can no longer be Google-mapped.

"Greenpeace France complied with, but will likely appeal, the censorship order," Brian Fitzgerald of Greenpeace tells BoingBoing, "And Greenpeace International is now hosting the map from its servers in Amsterdam."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:37:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Plushy monkey paintings

Peter Jones does oil paintings of plush monkeys. Seen here, "Dirty Orange Monkey" (2005), Oil on Linen, 12 x 10 inches. From Jones's biography at Fred [London] Ltd gallery:

We all love monkeys, especially the younger, cheekier ones who are so much fun and always full of life. Deeply sensitive and very bright, they are always alert and interested in their surroundings even when they are thoroughly engaged in conversation and chatter. Monkeys know how to be funny and provocative, how to amuse and entertain with their sparkling wit and that famous monkey magic. They are honest, imaginative, motivated individuals, and can easily sympathise with other animals so even the most shy creatures open up to them.

Link (via Drawn!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:17:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dabbler - rate/recco/discuss videos, no matter where they're hosted

Dabble, a site that makes it possible to search, recommend, rate, discuss and be sociable about video hosted anywhere on the the net, has come out of private beta and launched for public use. Dabbler Lisa Rein sez,

Dabble collects metadata detailing the location, authoring, licensing information, and user-generated tags associated with hundreds of thousands of short video clips. Users visiting Dabble will see a search box allowing them to do a simple keyword search for online video clips. Their results, including both amateur and professional video, will be pulled from hosting sites all over the web. Users can then begin to collect their favorite web videos, adding new videos to their collection at will as they surf other websites.

Already, hundreds of hosting sites exist where users can upload their own videos to the web and thousands of independent sites. Dabble solves the problem of navigating through all these videos, no matter where they are hosted.

Link (Thanks, Lisa!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:34:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brady Bunch house rendered in CAD

The King of Jingaling sez, "A Flickr user has uploaded pics of the Brady Bunch house including views that never actually appeared on the show." Link (Thanks, The King of Jingaling!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:30:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bandwidth of the eye

Scientists have estimated that the human retina can transmit data at approximately 10 million bits per second, equivalent to a standard ethernet connection. The researchers at the University of Pennsylvania came to that number by measuring spikes of electrical impulses from a (disembodied) guinea pig retina "looking" at movies of biological motion, like a salamander swimming. The ganglion cells in the retina were then classified as either "brisk" or "sluggish," depending on how fast they fired. From the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine:

The researchers found that the electrical spike patterns differed between cell types. For example, the larger, brisk cells fired many spikes per second and their response was highly reproducible. In contrast, the smaller, sluggish cells fired fewer spikes per second and their responses were less reproducible.

But, what's the relationship between these spikes and information being sent? "It's the combinations and patterns of spikes that are sending the information. The patterns have various meanings," says co-author Vijay Balasubramanian, PhD, Professor of Physics at Penn. "We quantify the patterns and work out how much information they convey, measured in bits per second."

Calculating the proportions of each cell type in the retina, the team estimated that about 100,000 guinea pig ganglion cells transmit about 875,000 bits of information per second. Because sluggish cells are more numerous, they account for most of the information. With about 1,000,000 ganglion cells, the human retina would transmit data at roughly the rate of an Ethernet connection, or 10 million bits per second.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:12:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flickr set of bad parking at Yahoo lot

Alan Graham says:

On flickr there is a photoset called ycantpark which is all about how bad people park in the Yahoo! lot...there is a whole set of bad parking jobs taken by employees...

Here are a couple of my favs.

Link

Reader comment:

Anonymous says:

The article link pointed to the ycantpark user's page, which looks to have not been updated in a while. If you search by the 'ycantpark' tag, there's many more.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:53:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Better illegal foods

Joshua Stein says:

Chef Robert Gadsby in LA is doing an "Outlaw Dinner" which is kind of crappy since none of the food are actually illegal. Here's a list of actually illegal foods including fugu, raw cheese, ortolan and, awesomely, a mellified man, a manmade dish popular in ancient Arabia. According to Mary Roach, author of Stiff, men 70-80 years old, on death’s doorstep anyway, would cease to eat food, instead partaking solely of honey. Pretty soon, they would be mellified, that is, “he excretes honey (the urine and feces are entirely honey).” Soon he dies and is placed in a honey-filled coffin which is then sealed for 100 years. At the end of the 100 years, the goop is eaten up.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:30:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of defunct underground Soviet submarine base

These cool photos of a defunct underground Soviet submarine base look like backgrounds from a video game. Link (Thanks, Kevin Evans!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:07:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Introducing Puzzle Fantastica

PUZZLE FANTASTICA #1

Dave Ng says:

We consider this an online mystery, and a blogging experiment of sorts. Essentially, we have presented five seemingly unrelated clues (three images, one video, and the start of a novel) that should effectively converge to a solution we have in mind, and we've been inviting readers to postulate and hypothesize on what that answer could be.

What's interesting is that, so far, the conjecture produced has been pretty intriguing, with rational linkages that suggest the answer to be as varied as Jamaica's Independence Day, the year 1962, Minister Koizumi, the number 42, evolutionary theory, and James Joyce. This happened with our limited readership, so we were basically curious to see what would happen if 100s or even 1000s of folks participated. It could really boggle the mind to see such a collective response, or we suppose it could also fall flat -- but we are curious nevertheless.

In some respects, we've treated it as a blogging carnival, except that there is no theme, or rather the point is, to figure out the theme. This, we think, is a first, much like an experiment - being science types, we like experiments.

Dave's collaborator, Benjamin Cohen, says:

"Puzzle Fantastica #1: Fish-Cow-Elvis" began surreptitiously, lurking at the sidebar of The World's Fair blog. It then, from the watchful gaze of visitors, came into light as something to be addressed. There was a puzzle being revealed, but we dared not step closer. We left that to you. The puzzle was soon bigger than us, and so we stood back and offered the rest of it for the world. There was more, and a few more clues have made their way into visibility. What is the puzzle? What is it a puzzle of? What did a fish, a food-factory cow, and an Elvis cover mean? And of the video and the novel's beginning?

Fire away. The solution, which indeed exists, has yet to be revealed.

First posting was here (where we teasingly warned: "do not click unless you are of reasonable intelligence").

Follow-up clue (a video clip) came here.

So-called Final Clue was dropped here.

With follow-up commentary and an explicit update here.

There *is* a solution -- many early contributors thought we were simply toying with them, which is not true. And although I say this from the comfort of one who knows the answer, it's actually not as complicated, in answer form at least, as many have suspected. We've had a lot of very fascinating approaches to solving it, and many good and laudable attempts, but nothing that's nailed it yet.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:49:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos of cool things below Tokyo

Gareth says:

This pic may look like the set of Tron or Logan's Run, or some futuristic mall, but it's actually a close-up of the giant machinery inside Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization. It's just one of the amazing images in a piece on PingMag called "Joe Nishizawa: Japan’s Underground Photography." All the images are from a book of Nishizawa's photographs, called Deep Inside, which explores the inner (and under) workings of Japan through photos and deep captions. Think of it as UNDER street tech.

Reader comment: Matthew says: "The photo in this item is from KEK ("Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization", as you say), which is not in Tokyo. It's it Tskuba, about 40 miles north east of Tokyo, more or less the middle of nowhere. I spent a week there in college, installing code for controlling high voltage power supplies for the Belle detector project."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:31:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Science bloggers weigh in on their favorite children's books

Dr. David Ng, Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory (AMBL), Michael Smith Laboratories, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, says:

Some of the folks over at scienceblogs.com have come together with some children's book suggestions that once appealed or currently appeal to their science sensibilities. As well, a few children's book authors add their recommendations to the mix. In total, you get a pretty decent library of books to collect for that kid who aims to be a scientist one day.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:23:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nintendo DS Lite teaches you to make Sushi

The Nintendo DS Cooking Navigator is a voice-controlled recipe book for Japanese meals. It tells you (in Japanese) how to prepare dishes, step-by-step, pausing after each step, until you tell it to continue on to the next step. This would be fun for other projects besides cooking! Link

Reader comment: Dsmamsil says:

Neogaf has a discussion about the software and where someone actually used it to make a meal.

It appears the software sold over 100,000 units its first two days of release.

This is a link to a youtubed Japanese commerical for the software.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:04:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Safety hazard photos

The Navy's Safety Center website has a fantastic gallery of photos showing people doing foolishly dangerous things.

On the plus side, he is wearing a hard hat. Also, if you look carefully at the boulder’s 4 o’clock, you’ll see a plastic drink bottle propped on another rock, so he is also staying hydrated. And maybe that boulder is actually 20 feet long, so that’s just the tip sticking out. Yeah, that’s it.

Link (Thanks, Shawn!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:58:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PopUp Politicians for Web pages

"Popup Politicians is an AJAX-based widget that adds mini-profiles with links of Members of Congress to your page that appear when you mouseover the link." Link (Thanks, Greg!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:48:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lightning blows antenna off blogger's car

Darren says: "Car gets hit by lightning in parking lot, and blows the antenna clear off (with photos)."

"I got in my car, turned it on and couldn't figure out why it would not b-u-d-g-e from park. I then realized that everything that could light up on the dash, was, and that there was something wrong."

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:44:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hindu goddess now distributes her blessings online

Scott Carney, an American expat tech journalist living in Chennai, India, tells BoingBoing,

"One of the most important temples in South India has decided on a new plan to market its religious services.

"Starting some time in the next few weeks the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai will begin offering E-poojas for people who can't make it to the temple for pilgrimage. How's that for mixing religion and technology?"

Link to Scott's blog post, in which he adds: "For an additional fee prasadam, eatable sugar coated blessings, can be mailed anywhere in the globe."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:58:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DRM dystopia -- can Microsoft save us?

Ed Felten's Freedom to Tinker blog is being guest-edited by David Robinson, one of his students, writing about how the DRM wars may be won:

Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that this early report is right -- that Microsoft is, in fact, going to make an offer to all iTunes users to replicate their libraries of iTunes, FairPlay-protected music on the new Zune service at no added cost to the users. There are several questions of fact that leap to mind. Did Microsoft obtain the licensing rights to all of the music that is for sale on iTunes? If not, there will be some iTunes music that is not portable to the new service. Will copyright holders be getting the same amount from Microsoft, when their songs are re-purchased on behalf of migrating iTunes users, as they will get when a user makes a normal purchase of the same track in the Zune system? The copyright holders have a substantial incentive to offer Microsoft a discount on this kind of "buy out" mass purchasing. As Ed pointed out to me, it is unlikely that users would otherwise choose to re-purchase all of their music, at full price, out of their own pockets simply in order to be able to move from iTunes to Zune. By discounting their tracks to enable migration to a new service, the copyright holders would be helping create a second viable mass platform for online music sales -- a move that would, in the long run, probably increase their sales.

At a guess, I'd say that it would be very, very hard for MSFT to keep Zune users from faking the contents of their iTunes libraries -- I suspect we'll see the Internet full of hacks to let you pretend to have thousands of songs you haven't bought, which Microsoft will then thoughtfully buy for you. And even if Zune works, well, that's just another company's lock-in; if you buy Zune tunes, you won't be able to switch back to an iPod and take the music with you. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:14:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Doom 1 ported to Doom 3

Doom 1 has been ported to Doom 3 -- you can play the original game on a terminal in its sequel:

The Terminal DOOM demo is a DOOM3 port - of sorts - of the Classic DOOM source as originally released in 1997. The playable demo is available for Windows and Linux, and supports all shareware and retail versions of DOOM. You will have to have the retail version of DOOM3 installed, and you will have to apply the version 1.3 patch to be able to run the Terminal DOOM demo. Once you applied the new patch, download the demo here from the mirror kindly provided by Ryan Gordon.

Link (via Waxy)

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

Rubber sidewalks

More than sixty cities around the US, including New York and Washington DC, have installed some rubber sidewalks made from recycled tires. The material is manufactured by Rubbersidewalks Inc. From the Associated Press:

Since 2001, Rubbersidewalks has been grinding thousands of old tires into crumbs, adding chemical binders and baking the material into sidewalk sections that weigh less than 11 pounds a square foot, or a quarter of the weight of concrete. The panels are available in two shades of gray and a terra cotta orange.

Many of the squares have been installed in areas where damage from tree roots, weather and snow removal have required sidewalk replacement or major repairs every three years, said Lindsay Smith, founder and president of Rubbersidewalks. Rubber sidewalks are expected to last at least seven years, Smith said...

The panels are firmer than a running track or a rubberized playground, but far more resilient than concrete.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:10:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ex Libris collections

BibliOdyssey posted a wonderful sampling of bookplates from various online collections. This opthamologist's bookplate comes from Microscopic Ex Libris, dedicated to microscopy-related bookplates.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:02:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Courts dismiss one AT&T spying suit, and US gov sues Missouri

Citing national security concerns, the federal government has sued Missouri officials for demanding that AT&T disclose whether it provided customer data for the government's domestic surveillance program. Snip from Reuters report:

Missouri Public Service Commissioners Robert Clayton and Steve Gaw, state utility regulators, had served subpoenas to AT&T Missouri and its affiliates in June amid speculation over their involvement with the National Security Agency. The government's civil suit, submitted by the U.S. Department of Justice to a district court in Missouri, said the state officials' attempts to obtain the information from AT&T and its affiliates were invalid.

Link (thanks, Ben)

And in related news: again citing national security concerns, a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit aimed at blocking AT&T from surrendering customer telephone records to the government.

"The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities," U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said.

Link. Via slashdot, where a poster explains, "Not to be confused with the EFF case, this case was filed by the ACLU on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other activists who argued that their constitutional rights had been violated by the actions of AT&T and the NSA."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:47:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

License plate tracking for fun and profit

BoingBoing reader Dan says,

Wired News has an story about the increasing accessibility of LPR (License Plate Recognition) technology. This is the same technology US Customs uses to track vehicles entering the country. (For a brief overview of the technology, see this DHS article) The potential privacy implications are scary. Even if LPR systems remain out of your next-door neighbour's price range, do you really want ChoicePoint and its ilk corellating your credit history and shopping patterns with precise information on where you drive?

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:39:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Earth left defenseless from greenhouse gases, aliens, robot invaders

NASA officials removed the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" from their mission statement over political pressure from global warming naysayers, says one NASA scientist:

That statement was repeatedly cited last winter by NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who said he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions. But NASA officials told The New York Times the elimination of the phrase that was used by Hansen was "pure coincidence."

Link to UPI story via physorg.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:23:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tampon gun

TamponCrafts has published a HOWTO for building a paintball-style gun for firing tampons:

Inspired by marshmallow shooters, this air-powered tampon gun turns your feminine hygiene products into high-flying projectiles. Have a shootout between rival tampon brands, or use it as a fun alternative to paintball. The tampon shooter has a range of 10 to 20 feet depending on your ammo and lung capacity. The matching bandolier lets you carry a full “clip” (i.e., box) of 20 tampons, so you’ll never be caught short in the heat of battle.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:21:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boston installs solar compacting public trash-cans

Boston is solving the problem of overstuffed public trash cans with solar-powered, self-compacting replacements:

They are Menino's latest idea for keeping the city litter-free: solar-powered, self-compacting trash receptacles. Delivering a rant about overstuffed trash cans, while trying to scrape gum off the bottom of his shoe at a Downtown Crossing unveiling, Menino described the virtues of the new devices. They need emptying only once or twice a day, not the 15 or more sanitation worker visits required by some downtown trash cans. They don't spill. They smell less. And, they hold some 150 gallons of trash, about five times more than a standard city receptacle.

Link (Thanks, Axlrosen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:19:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tattoos inspired by Threadless t-shirt designs

Fans of the social t-shirt-design site Threadless are using the shirt designs as tattoos. Link (Thanks, Mike!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monopoly replaces play-money with fake credit-cards

The new UK edition of Monopoly dispenses with paper play-money in favor of play-credit-cards with their own card-reader.

Players will instead use a Visa mock debit card to keep track of how much they win or lose.

It is inserted into an electronic machine where the banker taps in cardholders' earnings and payments.

Parker said replacing of cash with plastic showed the game was moving with the times.

Link (Thanks, Brian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:15:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

In first-ever inspection, FBI checks porn co for §2257 records

On Monday, FBI agents visited the offices of porn producers Diabolic Video to inspect the company's recordkeeping for 18 U.S.C. §2257, according to company owner Greg Allan. One agent told Allan that a total of ten companies were on the to-inspect list, but would not say which companies. Monday's visit was the first time any adult business had ever been inspected in the 11 years that the regulations have been in effect. Critics argue the laws expose adult porn performers to serious personal security risks, and create unfair burdens for porn companies that amount to a form of de facto government bullying. The regulations -- and the newly initiated inspection roundes -- also affect "secondary producers," as they're known in porn biz jargon: websites that display sexually explicit photos or videos that were produced by other companies. Snip from AVN report:

[T]he FBI did not disclose the other names on the list, but knowledgeable sources say that the agents are interested in examining the records of 23 video titles from various producers. That list was not made available to AVN.com.

At least one attorney had speculated that the inspections might be connected with the rumor, some months ago, that a fairly new performer by the name of "Seduction" had made features and posed for explicit photos while underage, but knowledgeable sources say that the current investigations have nothing to do with that performer.

Link. Here's a related report: Link. Previous coverage of 2257 laws on BoingBoing: Link. (Thanks, Violet)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:10:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Virtual money economics author to sell book for virtual money

Wagner James Au sez,

In a tradition set by Cory Doctorow and Lawrence Lessig, this Thursday technology journalist Julian Dibbell will appear in Second Life as an avatar named "Julian Dibbell" to autograph copies of *Play Money*, his latest book about making a real living by harvesting gold in Ultima Online.

Going one more meta step, Julian is also *selling* virtual copies of *Play Money* for Linden Dollars, the official currency of the online world. In other words: on behalf of Julian Dibbell, "Julian Dibbell" is selling *Play Money* for play money.

Link (Thanks, James!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:08:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bench made from a crowd-barrier

Philippe Million's "Barrier Bench" is only a gallery prototype, but it's marvelously subversive -- turning something warding into something welcoming. Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:06:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO build a fax out of salmon tins

From the June 1932 issue of Modern Mechanics, this recipe for building a fax machine ("electric picture transmitter") out of two salmon tins:

A COUPLE of sardine and salmon cans, a few bits of brass and several pieces of wood are all the materials that are needed to assemble an experimental but very practical picture transmitter and receiver.

Two of each of the cans will be needed. The salmon cans should be of the small or half can size and the end that has been opened should be replaced by soldering in water tight, a new disc of tin.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:02:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Congress may vote today on Deleting Online Predators Act

BoingBoing reader Andy Carvin says

The American Library Association's Washington office is reporting that the House of Representatives will likely vote on the so-called DOPA Act [today, Wednesday July 26]. DOPA, the Deleting Online Predators Act, would force schools and libraries receiving federal Internet subsidies to block all interactive websites, including blogs, bulletin boards, email lists and online social network. It's an absurd reaction to the anti-MySpace hype that's been dominating the media in recent months, and threatens to make the Internet completely useless as an educational tool. Schools already have the ability to block inappropriate websites, and they should be the ones determining which sites are educationally relevant.

Link. I'm a little late posting this news, so the suggestion to contact your congressperson may be moot -- but yesterday, pro-online-liberty groups were urging voters to do so. The House switchboard is 202-224-3121.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:02:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DIY board-game inventor's build-log

Dustin sez, "Here's the story of how independent board game designer Peter Morrison conceived, developed and self-published his own strategic board game VICTORY (and now its sequel VICTORY II)."

Here is a closeup of the troops. Note the crude methods I was forced to resort to in these early days. The fluorescent post-it strips are to indicate different terrain types.

After some initial testing, I decided it would be easier to construct my own hexes, and with a pair of scissors and some construction paper, produced the map below on a Sunday afternoon. Note that the game is still set in the modern era, with oil still being used as a resource and A&A pieces representing the units. However, the hexes were extremely light and floated all over the table and were a real pain to keep together.

Link (Thanks, Dustin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:00:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disneyland home-movie from 1967

W Elias Disney sez, "This blogger's parents visited Disneyland in 1967 and took 8mm home movies of the park. This 6 minute Quicktime video is a fascinating look at the park just after Walt passed away. Lots of stuff that looks unchanged today like the Jungle Cruise's Elephant bathing pool and charging hippo, to the rarely seen outside of old Walt Disney Presents shows - like the obviously fake rhinos turning and 'walking' away during the Jungle Cruise." Link, Coral Cache mirror

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:58:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animated series puts all files under CC license

John sez, "We just posted a story over on Drawn! about the Canadian animated series Odd Job Jack, which is releasing the master Flash files and bitmaps of every piece of art used in this season of the show: every character, prop, and background from every episode plus tutorials and other support material, all free to hack, use, remix under a share-friendly license."

Why: We love animation and we just know you do too. We're proud of Odd Job Jack and we've put lots of work into our show. Our art deserves to live beyond broadcast and who better to give a free gift to than the entire planet?

When: Every Monday during our 13 episode broadcast we will release a new set of files. First episode air July 22nd. The torrent will be available the following Monday.

Link (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:55:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Power outlets in airports wiki

The AirPower Wiki chronicles the location of power-outlets in the world's airports. Those of us who've had three hours to catch up on email and recharge before making another eight-hour flight know what it is to be a voltotropic voyager.

Phoenix, Arizona (Sky Harbor Airport - PHX):

* Gate A-17: on the pole near the bank of payphones (2 outlets)
* Gate A-18: on the pole near the women's restroom (2 outlets) -- chair close by!
* Gate A-18: on the wall about half way up (2 outlets) -- above bank of chairs!
* Gate A-19: under the arrival/departure televisions (2 outlets)
* Gate A-20: on the pole near the Gate A20 sign (2 outlets)

Link (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How iTunes is bad for the music industry and the public

In my latest Information Week column, I discuss the way that loose, single-vendor anti-copying systems like iTunes Music Store DRM are just as bad for the public (and even worse for the music industry) as tight, super-restrictive systems are:

The iPod is the number one music player in the world. iTunes is the number one digital music store in the world. Customers don't seem to care if there are restrictions on the media Steve Jobs sells them -- though you'd be hard pressed to find someone who values those restrictions. No Apple customer woke up this morning wishing for a way to do less with her music.

But there's one restriction that's so obvious it never gets mentioned. This restriction does a lot of harm to Apple's suppliers in the music industry.

That obvious restriction: No one but Apple is allowed to make players for iTunes Music Store songs, and no one but Apple can sell you proprietary file-format music that will play on the iPod.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:44:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Raising money for CIA blogger fired for saying "torture is bad"

EFF co-founder John Gilmore sez:

Top-secret blogger Christine Axsmith was fired on July 13 from her BAE Systems job testing CIA software. Why? She posted her opinion that "torture is wrong" to her classified blog, after reading a newspaper report saying the CIA plans to following the Geneva Conventions again (after the Supreme Court forced them to). This was beyond the pale for the CIA "seventh floor" (top management), who apparently ordered her fired. Her unclassified blog, Econo-Girl, is starting a longer discussion of torture. Bloggers who think she's been wronged can donate to her at PayPal account caxsmith@aol.com; I've started the pot with a $1000 "attagirl".

I'm in for a hundred, myself.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:41:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot Child Invasion: kinderbot clone from 1978

Reassimilated former robochild Kristin says, "I finally found a photo of my days in the Robot Children’s Crusade! I started my search when Boingboing first posted a series of photos of our ongoing robot child invasion of Earth. I was quite popular in my 133t halloween costume that year, its hidden bonus being that it was roomy enough inside to contain my wintery Wisconsin clothes." Link. Further proof that Kristin is now 100% human? With co-workers, she rescued a crow found under a shrub near their office: supercute link.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:00:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Graphic design for newbies workshop at Machine Project in LA 8/5/06

Machine Project says:

After a long and intense campaign, we've convinced one of our favorite designer friends Ben Benjamin to come teach a one day design workshop. Ben is a man of many talents, but may be best known for his endearingly confusing and confusingly endearing website, superbad.com. "Wait" you say "Wasn't that in the 2000 Whitney Biennial"? Yes. Yes it was.

If you’re not a designer but are sometimes called upon to design things, this class is for you. We’ll walk through a typical design process and along the way we’ll learn some basic tips and tricks, design strategies, and some broad design principles. The goal is not so much that you will become a good designer in one day, but more that you will learn how to avoid some of bad design’s biggest traps.

Verily, this class will surely be the phlogiston that fuels your ascension to dizzinging heights of fame and success.

August 5th, Saturday. 10am to 5pm (lunch break from 12-1). $65

As always space is limited, sign up early to avoid disappointment.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:45:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PBS fire kiddie show host for spoof videos she made in 1999

Paul and Audrey say:

PBS is the new Clear Channel. The hypocrites at PBS Sprout Kids have fired their host Melanie Martinez over two short films she made SEVEN YEARS AGO that spoof PSAs [called "Technical Virgin"] about teen abstinence. Someone posted the films on a website (though we couldn't find them, they sound funny) and PBS was worried about her moral authority as their host of programming for 2- to 5-year-olds. What did they think would happen - our 4-year-old might find the films while trolling the Internet?!?

Here are the videos (1) and (2). They are really funny, but NSFW. | Statement from PBS

Grammar rant: George says:

You quoted some text using the word "trolling" in a piece on BB today. "our 4-year-old might find the films while trolling the Internet?!?"

I know it was not your text, but really I am very tired of seeing this nonsensical usage and would welcome its regular correction before it gets out of hand.

A troll is ... well a troll. So 'trolling' makes no real sense. I am 100% convinced that this usage began when someone correctly used the word 'trawling' in a proper context and some under-educated (not even enough to think to check) thought it sounded like trolling and ... well that's how s**t happens. I have yet to see a usage of the word 'trolling' where 'trawling' would not have fitted perfectly (and more to the point, correctly, I believe).

Grammar rant rant: Andy Keck says:

I want to rant about George's grammar rant. Specifically, George says:

A troll is ... well a troll. So 'trolling' makes no real sense. I am 100% convinced that this usage began when someone correctly used the word 'trawling' in a proper context and some under-educated (not even enough to think to check) thought it sounded like trolling and ... well that's how s**t happens. I have yet to see a usage of the word 'trolling' where 'trawling' would not have fitted perfectly (and more to the point, correctly, I believe).

I do not believe that George has a firm grasp on his fishing terminology. Here's the entry for troll from the Merriam-Webster site:

troll
One entry found for troll.
Main Entry: 1troll
Pronunciation: 'trOl
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, probably from Anglo-French *troiller, *troller; akin to Anglo-French troil, trolle winch
transitive verb
1 : to cause to move round and round : ROLL
2 a : to sing the parts of (as a round or catch) in succession b : to sing loudly c : to celebrate in song
3 a : to fish for by trolling b : to fish by trolling in c : to pull through the water in trolling d : to search in or at ; also : PROWL
intransitive verb
1 : to move around : RAMBLE
2 a : to fish by trailing a lure or baited hook from a moving boat b : SEARCH, LOOK ; also : PROWL
3 : to sing or play in a jovial manner
4 : to speak rapidly
- troll·er noun

Note that both transitive entry #3 and intransitive entry #2 express the idea that he claims to be incorrect. Trolling is correct.

Brad says:

To correct George who is "tired" of your incorrect and under-educated usage of the word "troll," actually it comes from the fishing term. Fishermen using this method drag either numerous lines or a specially made bucket filled with bait behind a slow moving boat, enticing the fish in large numbers. So it's similar in usage as to "surfing" the web. Maybe now that he was "tired" for no reason, he'll have the energy to find something more productive to do with his time, like looking it up.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:42:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amy Crehore's "Banana Eater" painting

One of my favorite artists, Amy Crehore, just posted her beautiful "Banana Eater" painting, which will appear in Blab! 17. Gary Baseman bought it already, or I would have hocked my ukulele collection to buy it. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:56:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Galley of Ron Mueck sculptures

A while back, David wrote about visiting a Ron Mueck exhibition. Here are more photos of Mueck's incredible work from a show in Russia. NSFW? Link (Via shift8)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:23:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hello Kitty molar implant

Is this a real implant or Photoshop? Link (Thanks, akira!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:19:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interspecies love: duck and chicken raise a family

Johan Anglemark says:

A duck and a hen on a farm outside Söderköping have found each other. The duck is now a foster-father to five chickens.

Annika Stenbäck and Peter Andersson, who live at the farm, tell the daily Norrköpings Tidningar about the love birds.

The birds started dating already last summer, after the duck accidentally drowned his mate during lovemaking. However, the duck didn't spend much time in mourning before starting to date the hen instead.

Soon, the hen started laying and brooding, but as the eggs were not fertilized, they never hatched.

"So we fetched some fertilized eggs from our old hens at my parents-in-law. She got six chickens, but one has died," says Annika Stenbäck.

During the entire brooding period the duck kept a nervous watch by the hen's side.

"And since the chickens were hatched he hasn't left her side," says Annika Stenbäck to Norrköpings Tidningar.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:06:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photo of Chinese street pharmacy: falcons, seahorses, and flattened lizards

It's nice to know that, in China, you will never find yourself short of dead falcons, seahorses, and flattened lizards, if this detail from a Flickr photo is any indication of what's available from Xinjiang street vendors. Link (Thanks, Healthbolt!)

Reader comment: Raul Gutierrez (the photographer) says:

If you liked my photo of the Xinjiang medicine man’s stand you linked on boing boing today, you might also also dig this one and this one. I have a terrible image somewhere (not online) of a chinese medine man in Xining with a stand full of bear and tiger feet.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:03:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The MPAA finally sues the wrong person

Robotech_Master says: "The MPAA's search-and-sue algorithms pinpoint a multimillionaire software company CEO who pledges to fight them in court rather than settle for $2500."

Though [30-year-old software developer Shawn Hogan] expects to incur more than $100,000 in legal fees, he thinks it’s a small price to pay to challenge the MPAA’s tactics. “They’re completely abusing the system,” Hogan says. “I would spend well into the millions on this.”

Link (Via Slashdot )

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:58:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Site dedicated to the potato bug

Potatobugs.com is "dedicated to the fabrication and perpetuation of fear, hate and disgust for the Potato Bug."

Q: I have potato bugs in my vegetable garden. How can I rid myself of these pesky critters?
A: Drench your entire yard with gasoline and set it ablaze. Once the fire has burned itself out and the ground has cooled, cultivate the soil to a depth of seven feet, saturate the area with battery acid and top the surface with gasoline. After a few minutes, most of the surviving potato bugs, now irritated, will burrow up for air. Set the yard on fire again, and let it burn itself out. The remaining bugs should be crisped. Add water. Only then, and only maybe, will you rid yourself of potato bugs.

POTATO BUGS AS PETS?

As most species of potato bug are good climbers and can gnaw through 12-gauge steel mesh, a tight fitting lid is required made of a good quality 16-grade galvanized sheet steel with nail holes (no bigger) to allow for air flow. The walls of the cage should be galvanized steel backed with 5/8" plywood, carefully mitered at corners and reinforced with L brackets to prevent escape. Wood screws are preferred over nails for assembly, as potato bugs have been known to ram against the walls until the nails eventually loosen from the wood and work free, compromising the integrity of the structure, and allowing the creatures to infest your house and lay eggs in your ear canal or anus.

Link (Thanks, Marc!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:46:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Woman arrested for medical curiosity collection

Exotic dancer Linda Kay of South Plainfield, New Jersey, was arrested Friday and charged with "improper disposition of human remains" after police found six skulls and a severed hand in a jar of formaldehyde at her apartment. The police were responding to a report that there was a suicidal person (evidently not Kay) in the apartment. Kay is free on $100,000 bail. From the Associated Press:

Two people who knew Kay told The Star-Ledger of Newark that the hand, which Kay nicknamed "Freddy," was a gift from a medical student who frequented an all-nude juice bar where she dances.

Kay's mother, Patricia Ann Kay, told the newspaper that her daughter bought the skulls from a mail order catalog. She said her daughter has always been fascinated with the macabre, and when she was a girl she collected animal skulls and snake skeletons.

"She has a flair for the dramatic," Patricia Ann Kay said. "I have never tried to stop my children from doing whatever they want. As long as they are happy, aren't hurting anyone, and it's keeping them out of the poor house."

Link

UPDATE: The New Jersey Star-Ledger has more details in their report. Link (Thanks, Chris Coleman!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:49:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with an arborsculptor

Cabinet magazine posted a terrific interview with Richard Reames, an Oregon artist who uses ancient grafting techniques and simple tools to create delightful tree sculptures. (Image from Reames's Web site Arborsmith.) From the Cabinet interview:

How does arborsculpture differ from bonsai or topiary?
Arborsculpture is the art of shaping tree trunks to create art and functional items through bending, grafting, pruning, and multiple planting. Bonsai is the art of miniaturizing trees. Some of bonsai's basic techniques, such as bending branches and pruning, are similar to arborsculpture. Topiary was originally defined as ornamental gardening, so you could say, to be technical, that arborsculpture is a branch of topiary, but the word topiary is more commonly used to describe the shaping of foliage. In that sense, topiary is almost the opposite of arborsculpture in that you're only trimming the foliage, whereas in arborsculpture, you're only working with the trunk. Of the various tree arts, arborsculpture is most closely related to espalier, a technique that began in France as a way to grow quality fruit in small areas, like inside castle courtyards. They'd grow fruit trees up against the wall and shape the branches so that they were evenly spaced and parallel, maximizing the amount of fresh air to each piece of fruit. I like to say that arborsculpture is like espalier on acid.

Link (via Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:48:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scotty set for space

James "Scotty" Doohan's ashes will be shot into space in October. Doohan died two one years ago today. From the BBC News:

In a letter to fans last year, Doohan's widow, Wende, said the actor would have "given almost anything to be able to actually go into space".

"He finally gets his wish, I can't think of a more fitting send-off than having some of his fans attend this, his final journey," she said.

The flights have been arranged by Texas company Space Services, which previously sent the ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960s drug guru Timothy Leary into space.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:41:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Donut duel in Seattle

The Ethicurean is an excellent new group blog where seven smart literary types write thoughtful and funny commentary on, you guessed it, food. Today, the "Man of La Muncha" reports on a Seattle donut duel. When I visited Seattle a few weeks ago, BB pal Kirsten Anderson took me to Top Pot and I concur with Man of La Muncha that it's an excellent place to "get doned." From the post:

Calling Krispy Kreme a donut shop is like calling a Boeing plant a workshop. The Krispy Kreme in Northgate is like the other Krispy Kreme locations I have visited, a small factory with an assembly line that rolls fresh donuts from the cooking area to the counter, where they are go on trays for display. The interior is bright green and white and there is a lot of space pabetween the counter and the booths, even taking into account the display stands of Krispy Kreme paraphernalia. The service is friendly and efficient, and we place our donuts in the back seat and head to the next shop.

I should mention that we have no way of tasting the donuts simultaneously under ideal conditions, so we will put all of them at a disadvantage. Each donut will sit in the back of our car, drying out and warming or cooling to about 80 degrees until it reaches the cool shade of our kitchen.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:36:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Police arrest pretend zombies for possessing pretend weapons

In Minneapolis, it is apparently against the law to pretend to look like an undead ghoul carrying a bag "with wires sticking out."

Six friends spruced up in fake blood and tattered clothing were arrested in downtown Minneapolis on suspicion of toting "simulated weapons of mass destruction." Police said the group were allegedly carrying bags with wires sticking out, making it look like a bomb, while meandering and dancing to music as part of a "zombie dance party" Saturday night. "They were arrested for behavior that was suspicious and disturbing," said Lt. Gregory Reinhardt, a police spokesman. Police also said the group was uncooperative and intimidated people with their "ghoulish" makeup.

Link (Thanks, Xopl!)

Update: Xopl says:

Local MPLS paper the Star Tribune has an article on the zombie arrests. Apparently the arrest reasoning is a bit weak considering they had the zombies walk to the precinct without searching them. If they really thought there was any chance that the backpacks contained bombs, I don't think they would have done that.

The two original officers didn't appear to think the backpacks were bombs, said Kibby, who said she had a messenger bag. They weren't searched until after they arrived at the First Precinct, where she said several officers appeared to be making fun of them, she said.The two original officers didn't appear to think the backpacks were bombs, said Kibby, who said she had a messenger bag. They weren't searched until after they arrived at the First Precinct, where she said several officers appeared to be making fun of them, she said.

There is also a dicussion on MN Speak.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:24:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Auditory hallucinations

This week's edition of the excellent All In The Mind radio show is about auditory hallucinations, specifically "hearing voices." From the transcript of the program:

(Monash University psychiatry professor) David Copolov: We think of voices maybe as a distortion of auditory memories, we have memories of things that we've heard and things that have been said to us and it's our current conceptualisation that these voices are replayed, but in a very real sense of auditory memories and a distortion of these auditory memories feeding in to the regions of the brain that process hearing.

(show host) Lynne Malcolm: So could you tell me a little bit more about what we know about what happens in the brain with auditory hallucinations?

David Copolov: Well a series of studies by our group and others has shown that during hallucinations there are regions of the brain that become active. And those regions commonly involve the regions of the brain, the temporal lobe under the temple that are associated with the processing of normal sounds. So it's as if the brain is being tricked, or the person is being tricked into believing that these voices are actually occurring because there's spontaneous activation of these hearing regions of the brain. There is also activation of regions of the brain, especially the hippocampu,s that are associated with the processing of memory, which is why we believe it's a combination of reactivation of memories with the false perception of external or internal voices.

Have you heard of phantom limb syndrome, where a person who might have had an amputation can feel their arm or leg even though the leg has been amputated? It's the part of the brain that is deprived of input from that region of the body, the brain responds to a lack of input by activity. So in hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, even though we've shown that there are subtle abnormalities of the hearing brain but not deafness as such, the evidence is that those base line abnormalities actually give rise to spontaneous eruptions within the dysfunctional hearing brain that then gives rise to this experience of hearing voices.

Link (via Mind Hacks)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:24:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chimpanzee carrying a club, or Sasquatch?

A chimpanzee carrying a club was allegedly spotted yesterday morning in the backyard of a Thousand Oaks, California home. So far, authorities haven't tracked down the animal. As the search continues, Loren Coleman wonders over at Cryptomundo if this was a case of mistaken identity and that the chimp is actually Bigfoot. Link to Ventura County Star article, Link to Cryptomundo post

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:09:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Leela: women's athleisure clothing

Leela is a new line of women's athleisure clothing that launched in February. The word "leela" is Sanskrit for "play," and company founder Anna Levine says that's the idea of the clothing: to help tip the work/play scale toward joy and fun. I dig the clean, modern feel, unique fabrics (bamboo!), and freshness of the styles. I may be a little partial though because my wife, Kelly Sparks, designed the entire line. The first Leela boutique opened last December in Burlingame, south of San Francisco. The products are now available online as well. Congrats Kelly and Anna!
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:59:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Innocent people put on federal air marshal watch list to meet quota

Dave says: "This is an article describing how federal air marshals are placing innocent people on watch lists to meet quotas that require them to file at least one surveillance detection report (or SDR) per month."

"Do these reports have real life impacts on the people who are identified as potential terrorists?" 7NEWS Investigator Tony Kovaleski asked.

"Absolutely," a federal air marshal replied.

7NEWS obtained an internal Homeland Security document defining an SDR as a report designed to identify terrorist surveillance activity.

"When you see a decision like this, for these reports, who loses here?" Kovaleski asked.

"The people we're supposed to protect -- the American public," an air marshal said.

What kind of impact would it have for a flying individual to be named in an SDR?

"That could have serious impact ... They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious," said Don Strange, a former agent in charge of air marshals in Atlanta. He lost his job attempting to change policies inside the agency.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:11:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, July 24, 2006

Update on HOPE speaker Rambam arrested by Feds at event

Following up on this earlier BoingBoing post, Brian Krebs at the WaPo's security blog reports that the FBI is charging Rambam (aka Rombom) with witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Snip:

The complaint, available here as a PDF, charges Rombom with obstruction of justice and with witness tampering, alleging that in April 2006 Rombom impersonated a federal investigator at the request of a client who had hired him to locate a government informant who was central to the client's money-laundering indictment in 2003.

Rombom is a licensed private investigator and founder of Pallorium Inc., which bills itself as the largest privately held online private investigation service in the United States. The government charges that Rombom unlawfully interfered with an ongoing case prosecutors filed against Albert Santoro, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney who was indicted in Jan. 2003 with one count of money-laundering (prosecutors have accused Santoro of agreeing to launder $100,000 in cash for drug dealers and claiming he knew how to stymie money-laundering investigations); The complaint says Santoro hired Rombom to locate one of the government's confidential informants, whom Santoro has publicly accused of entrapment.

(...) Rombom appeared in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York yesterday and was released on his own recognizance. He is scheduled to appear again on Aug. 7. The Washington Post print edition today carries a brief story that draws from this update and reporting from the last two blog posts.

Link to full text of post. And BoingBoing reader Jayzel reminds us that Rambam was "previously involved in a lawsuit against a prominent anti-spam blacklist hosting service."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:51:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Marlin exacts revenge on fisherman

A marlin fisherman in Bermuda was nearly killed by his would-be prey on Saturday. After Ian Card hooked a 14 foot marlin, it jumped from the water, speared Card near his collarbone, and pulled him into the ocean. Card is recovering from surgery. No word on the marlin. From the Associated Press:

"The fish all of a sudden changed direction and jumped. The fish made a leap and Ian just happened to be in the way," (Ian's father) Alan Card said.

The younger fisherman managed to struggle free while his father cut the line and helped his son get back into their boat, the Challenger.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:02:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Online bug identification service

Kelli says: "People send in pictures of creepy, beautiful -- and sometimes dead -- bugs, and these two identify them. It's also a great database of bug pictures. I'd been looking for a site like this for a long time, because I'm forever finding weird bugs." (Shown here: a potato bug. "Potato Bugs are not aggressive, but they will bite if handled.") Link

Reader comments:

Jennifer Forman Orth, Ph.D., Invasive Plant Ecologist, UMass Boston Department of Biology says:

"What's that Bug?" is good, but I'm a die-hard BugGuide.net fan myself. In fact, I used it to confirm that your photo is of a Jerusalem cricket, NOT a potato beetle!

BugGuide also has a very active community and does IDs.

Jim says:

The Jerusalem Cricket is indeed also known as a "Potato Bug" (there are also other bugs known as Potato Bugs, but it isn't incorrect as she implied). Jerusalem Crickets are also known by another name that's even cooler - "Children Of The Earth."

Jennifer responds:

Sorry about the common name mixup (note "beetle" vs. "bug"). But most importantly, I did not mean to disparage "What's That Bug?"!!!! I just wrongly assumed you had made a typo..uh, not that I am disparaging you either. Anyway, I like "What's That Bug?" but BugGuide is an amazing repository in a class by itself.

-

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:42:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Indian man eats entire supply of food at all-you-can-eat joints

Amit Varma says: "In a newspiece about how doctors in a South Indian town had to curb the appetite of a gentleman named Rappai, the Hindustan Times writes":

On several occasions, the cops had to intervene to rein in the monstrous eater. Once college students took sweet revenge on a restaurateur with Rappai’s help. He took an “unlimited meals” coupon and emptied the day’s food -- three buckets full of rice, one bucket of fish curry and 10 kg cooked meat -- in no time. Finally, law-enforcers had to be called in to end his sumptuous feast.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:33:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nintendo's response to hinge cracks

Joshua says: "My brand new DS Lite has developed cracks all over it, not through mis-use but due to poor quality plastics. Any publicity of this would be great as Nintendo has been charging people $50 to fix this problem." Link

A Nintendo spokeperson says: "In the U.S., the reported number of small cosmetic cracks in the plastic hinge of DS Lite systems represents less than 0.02 percent of the total units sold. This cosmetic issue in no way impacts the gameplay or integrity of the DS Lite. Nintendo stands behind the quality of our products and encourages DS Lite owners to contact our Customer Service Department if they are not happy with the functionality of their systems."

Update: Nintendo will fix cracked DSs for no charge: Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:29:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disgusted by dice, gamer buries them

Martin Ralya was convinced that his set of gamer's dice was cursed, so he buried them.

Rolling 10d10, I consistently got one or two successes, night after night, game after game, for two months straight. It wasn’t just hacking rolls, of course — those were just the most dramatically shitty rolls, since they were made with such a huge pool.

These dice, in other words, aren’t just bad. They’re projectile-vomiting, masturbating-with-a-crucifix, possessed-by-the-Devil bad.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:22:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fantastic gallery of strange statues around the world

I love this gallery of strange statues from around the world. Link (Thanks, Wade!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:17:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Electroplankton inventor creates new musical instrument

I'm gaga about Electroplankton, the music making application for the Ninendo DS (I use it to make background music for videos, like this one.)

Now the creator of Electroplankton, Toshio Iwai, has a new handheld electronic instrument for Yamaha called the Tenori-On. It's beautiful looking.

Currently in the prototype phase, it consists of a 16 by 16 grid of LED buttons within a square aluminium frame about the same size as a lightpen tablet, and also contains two in-built speakers.

Holding this frame in one hand, Iwai demonstrated how the Tenori-On worked during the opening evening of last weekend's Futuresonic electronic musical festival in Manchester.

Each of Tenori-On's LED buttons can either be lightly strummed, sort of like a harp, or alternatively pressed down, whereby each button lights up. Musical notes are triggered by a regular line of light that moves from left to right, much like the sweeping line in PSP game Lumines.

Iwai has a blog about his new instrument. And here is Yamaha's site about the Tenori-On. You can hear samples of the instrument, which sounds a lot like Electroplankton. Link (Thanks, Chris!)

Reader comment: Olly Farshi says:

Quick update for you on the Electroplankton/Toshio Iwai talk at Futuresonic. A friend of mine, Maria Stukoff (a Media artist) also attended the talk with me, she made a recording of Toshio's Tenori-On performance (which was fantastic!) on her mobile. You can check out the video over here.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:03:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Homeland Security bans Canadian Band from US for 5 years

Canadian band The Grey can't enter the US for five years because they told US border guards they weren't playing a gig in the US. The guards checked the band's online touring schedule and went ballistic.

We were treated as terrorists at first. When we first went, one by one, into the room with the interrogating officer they used that line about "America is at war, and Canada may not take that seriously..." and "since 9-11, we take these things seriously." Then they realized that we were not making any money doing what we do, and that we were more naïve than anything else. Some of the other guards even told us that the whole thing was bullshit, and that it was overzealous and a waste of paperwork.

The decision to deport and ban us from the US was made entirely by officer Kurt Tennat, the supervising officer. He said he had consulted his supervisor by phone, but we don't know for sure. No court proceedings, no legalities, no chance.

Link

Reader comment: Michael Sider says:

Bands travelling from the U.S. to Canada often have had similar experiences, even long before 9-11. I brought many U.S. bands to Vancouver in the early 90's and they were mercilessly hassled, often turned back to the U.S. We kept trying to determine what exactly the rules were, but every response was different. We managed to contact someone high up in Canadian Immigration through a friend of a friend, and their response was that the laws are intentionally ambiguous so that it is up to the discretion of individual border guards whether ANYONE crosses the border, and no recourse if you don't like their conclusion. One trick that often worked was if the band told the border guards that they were coming to Canada to record (helps to have someone in Canada willing to confirm the story), as this means they are going to be spending money in Canada rather than earning it... may work for bands going to the U.S. as well, don't know.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:54:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Drunk groundhog attacks woman

Boing Boing reader Eric was kind enough to share this excerpt from a family email message:

Last night around 7:00 pm Terri came home and was walking around her yard looking at her flower garden. She noticed an animal acting very strangely, since it was running around in circles, plus falling down. She tried to chase it away, which caused the "Ground Hog" to attack her and it gave her a bite on the leg.

She then called me, and I drove over bringing my shotgun with. When I arrived the "Hog" advanced towards me like it was going to attack, so I sent him to a better place.

We then packed up the "Hog" and took off for the emergency room. We first went to *** clinic, where they cleaned the wound and then sent us to M____ Hospital.

I believe that Terri was the first ground hog attack that they had there, and really didn't believe that it was a ground hog until I showed they the animal, then they were believers!

So Terri had to start the rabies shots, until they find out if the hog was infected with them. The hog had to be dropped off at the Health Dept for testing, and the results won't be available until maybe Monday or later.

It also could be that the animal was drunk, from eating fermented berries? The health dept seemed to like that idea, since Hogs are low risk animals for rabies. I'm hoping that it will turn out to be the answer! It turned out to be a long evening, since we got home around 12:00 last night.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:48:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vehicle turntable

The Hovair Systems Vehicle Turntable is a pretty slick solution "for automobile owners who just do not have yard space for turning, or have to reverse onto a busy main road to make their exit."
Link (via Jalopnik)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:08:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weed Wrench pulls up unwanted shrubs

The latest edition of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools has a review of the Weed Wrench, a tool that makes short work of thick, woody weeds. It looks like a lot of fun. Don't you just love leverage?

THE tool for the job if you're uprooting alien and invasive plants such as French broom and Scotch broom. Those plants, like other invasives, tend to form aggressive monoculture areas that drive out local biodiversity, and they often make dense undergrowth fire hazards. Ripping them out is a kind of joy -- a fine workout, more productive in every way than a couple hours at the gym.

Built like a cast-iron frying pan, the Weed Wrench is a seriously macho tool. Its fierce jaws grip the miscreant plant or small tree by the throat (base of stem), and big leverage yanks it bodily out of the ground. If you get the smallest (mini) and the largest Weed Wrenches, you've got everything covered up to 2 inch diameter (beyond that, use a saw).

Link

Reader comments:

Pamela says:

With regard to the Weed Wrench, our favorite new gardening tool is the Flame Weeder.

It's got its roots in organic gardening (no herbicides!) and it provides a great deal of satisfaction, too!

Kevin Kelly of Cool Tools says: "Yes, we do weed torches as well." Link

Bill Fletcher says: "That weed flamer you linked to is no longer available. Try this one." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:34:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Meth Gun for drug detection

The "meth gun" looks similar to a radar gun but it's made to help police find trace amounts of dope. According to CDEX Inc., the $10,000 device is the first portable, handheld system that uses ultraviolet light to scan surfaces (most likely at close range). From the Arizona Daily Star:

The device works by transmitting UV radiation at a surface, causing any chemicals to release their "spectral fingerprints." It's a form of spectroscopy. When a chemical is exposed to UV radiation and releases its signature, the meth gun picks that up, CDEX scientists said.

This allows the meth gun to instantly scan for meth on a surface.

"We see this as an investigative aid," Foster said. "If I had been ingesting cocaine and then wiped it off, this unit would be able to identify the cocaine on that table or on my clothes..." The devices being field-tested will test only for meth, but the mass-produced devices will test for meth, cocaine, marijuana, heroin and peroxide-based explosives — which are similar chemically to meth, company officials said.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:46:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cursor kite

Tim Elverston's Cursor kite is a very clever idea. From WindFire Designs: Quad-line control, asymmetrical framing, invisible stainless fittings, and opposed-bow tensioning for the sail make this incredible kite look digitally pasted right into the sky.
Link (via MAKE: Blog)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:37:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Better CG blond hair

Simulating the "glow" of blond hair in computer graphics is apparently much harder than creating lifelike brown or black hair. Cornell researchers report that they have a new method to render blonde locks much quicker with a better end result. Researcher Steve Marschner's previous CG hair styling tricks appeared in King Kong while his skin rendering techniques used in Lord of the Rings won him a technical achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. From the Cornell Chronicle Online:

The problem is that light traveling through a mass of blond hair is not only reflected off the surfaces of the hairs, but passes through the hairs and emerges in a diffused form, from there to be reflected and transmitted some more.

The only method that can render this perfectly is "path-tracing," in which the computer works backward from each pixel of the image, calculating the path of each ray of light back to the original light source. Since this require hours of calculations, computer artists resort to approximations. "People do something reasonable for one bounce and then assume it reflects diffusely," Marschner explained. In other words, he said, they assume that hair is opaque. "In light-colored hair it's important to keep track of the hair-to-hair scattering," he said.

Marschner and (grad student Jonathan) Moon's algorithm begins by tracing rays from the light source into the hair, using some approximations of the scattering and producing a map of where photons of light can be found throughout the volume of hair. Then it traces a ray from each pixel of the image to a point in the hair and looks at the map to decide how much light should be available there.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:45:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Battelle: YouTube worth $1B? Who will buy?

Snip from John Battelle's Searchblog:

This NY Post item caught my eye - YouTube was the toast of Herb Allen's Sun Valley conference, and therefore is now worth $1 billion. I don't buy it. I don't think the founders are smoking this shit, I think the media is - at least I hope that's how it is. Why? Simple really. While YouTube is an amazing service, with extraordinary uptake, its core content is mostly copyrighted material. (I make this statement after being told as much by two very senior folks at major media companies who have studied content patterns on YouTube.)

Now, folks who own copyrights are waking up to the power of letting their copyrighted content flourish on YouTube, but that particular worm has not turned - content companies are very, very wary of letting this genie out of the bottle.

So who might buy YouTube? A major entertainment company, like the ones mentioned in the Post piece? No way. That's buying a lawsuit or ten - if Time Warner bought YouTube, how long do you think it'd be before competitors sued to get their copyrighted stuff off TW's new service? And once that stuff is cleared off (YouTube does make a point of taking down copyrighted material when asked, but policing that massive service is not exactly a hand-rolled affair), what is YouTube worth then?

Link

Previously on BoingBoing:
- YouTube's new policy...
- More on YouTube's controversial new terms and conditions

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:44:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New details on Jeff Bezos' West Texas spaceport plans

Snip from an AP story with details from a recently-obtained Federal Aviation Administration review document for Blue Origin:

A spacecraft taking off from a private West Texas spaceport being bankrolled and developed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos would take off vertically, but unlike NASA's space shuttle would also land vertically, according to an environmental study that offers a glimpse into the secretive plans.

The craft would hit an altitude of about 325,000 feet — or almost 62 miles — before descending and restarting its engine for a "precision vertical powered landing on the landing pad" in sparsely populated Culberson County, about 125 miles east of El Paso.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:56:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Heat wave wreaks havoc on California electrical grid

Watch California's electrical infrastructure melt in realtime on the internet! It's triple-digitastically hot here in Los Angeles, and has been so without relief for weeks. Jim Graham says,

California is facing rolling blackouts today [Ed note: AGAIN] as everyone returns to work from the blistering weekend. The California Independent Service Operator, which manages the state power grid, says people turning on “computers, coffee machines and fax machines” (what, no swamp coolers?) could potentially max out the available supply.

Monitor statewide power usage here. Of course, you'll need electricity to do that. Also, what's a a swamp cooler? Is that where you hire an out-of-work crocodile to fan you over a bed of cool green algae?

Reader comment: Oh, all right. Dave Stolte says,

A swamp cooler is one of those window-mounted air-conditioning boxes that pulls hot air through a water-filled cooling system.

Chris says,

Actually this isn’t really true. Most swamp coolers are placed on the flat roofs throughout the southwest. They can be installed on the side of the building but they certainly are not installed in windows. Here’s an article at Wikipedia.

Update: Breaking! Swamp cooler analysts from around the internets have been weighing in at BB headquarters throughout the day. Consensus seems to be that these systems can be installed in windows *or* on roofs, but the crocodile-driven units are harder to come by.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:28:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Technorati look and functionality

Technorati turned three today and launched a major revision to the software, with substantially better results, personalization and other new features, and a clean new look. Link (Thanks, David!) (Disclosure: I'm a proud member of Technorati's advisory board)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:14:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sex in space. No, seriously.

The subject of human sexual behavior in microgravity is sparking renewed attention for several reasons, explains MSNBC science writer Alan Boyle:

...including next month's publication of a book by Laura Woodmansee titled "Sex in Space," as well as billionaire Robert Bigelow's plan to host research into animal propagation on his commercial space modules. After all, sometime in the next decade Bigelow Aerospace envisions putting a hotel complex in orbit, "where people will probably be recreating and having sex," [space-erotica-fiction writer Vanna] Bonta said.

But the fantasy of spacefucking may be better than the real thing -- without careful choreography and helpful gear, physics get in the way. First, there's that microgravity-barfing connection. But then, Boyle writes...

Sex in space would likely be "hotter and wetter" than on Earth, Bonta said, because in zero-G there is no natural convection to carry away body heat. Also, scientists have found that people tend to perspire more in microgravity. The moisture associated with sexual congress could pool as floating droplets.

Hotter and wetter sex in this case being, apparently, a bad thing.

I went on a zero-gravity flight once with a bunch of astronauts and journalists. Also on board were two guys who won tickets on a radio contest. If memory serves, one of them worked in an auto shop. I was talking with them between floating parabolas, and one of them made a joke about sex in space, and I asked something like -- are you guys thinking about that, really? Because all I could think about at the time was not vomiting or bonking my head on the roof when I flew through the air. Sex was the last thing on my mind. The two guys looked at each other and were silent for a moment. Then they burst into extended dude-laughter, and one said, "Well OF COURSE! Guys always think about that!"

Image above, Vanna Bonta sketch for her "2suit" garment: "includes Velcro strips, zippers and diaphanous inner material that would be designed for intimacy in the near-weightless environment of space." Link to story (Thanks, Violet).

Over at Terrestrial Musings blog, live notes on the "Sex in Space" panel yesterday at the Space Frontier Foundation's NewSpace 2006 conference.

Laura Woodmansee talking about her book on the subject. Not a scientist, but has a deep interest in science and space. Subject makes everyone giggle. But humans take their sexuality everywhere they go. It's going to happen, there will be weddings and honeymoons in orbit, and we have to start taking it seriously. Book is about both the fund part and the serious part. Looking at the future as a mother, and the concerns about gestating and raising children in that environment.

First chapter is about the question everyone wants to know. Many rumors exist. There was controversy about Mark Lee and Jan Davis, a married couple went into space, and declined interviews. Another issue is pr0n in space. There was an attempt to do a film on Mir, but it didn't work out. She wishes that it had happened, because it might have generated interest in space. Quote from Gene Roddenberry--"I guarantee you it happened, for no reasons other than common sense."

Link (thanks, Coop)

Update: Violet Blue posts a HOWTO here. Snip:

(Please) tie me to the console and fuck my brains out. This is the natural next step for space sex: bondage. No, you won't need to know which pocket to flag your synthetic space hanky in, or need to know BDSM scenester lingo to get laid in the spacepod, but a little forethought about restraint is going to be the name of the game (...) because while floating in zero G you need to use stationary objects to move, period.

Update 2: If there's sex in space, there's abstinence in space. Snip from a dead-serious satirical blog post by a fellow who read this BoingBoing item, and found it troubling. He implores would-be starfuckers to preserve the sacredness of carnal congregation, and even then -- never on anything but terra firma:

The sexual act should be performed only by married couples in an attempt to breed. (...) I urge you to never, ever have sex in space, unless you are married, and having sex in order to produce a child. But for God’s sake — and I mean that literally: for God’s sake — don’t you dare enjoy it. Because then it’s a sin.

Link

Reader comment: BoingBoing reader John D. Verne says,

Reading this reminded me of Rudy Rucker's "Rapture in Space" which I first read in Semiotext(e) 14 SF collection. He makes zero-G sex sounds like a lot of work, which may not be too far off the mark. Other than Star Trek TOS stories, with Kirk having a green or purple chick in many ports of call, I guess I'd never read SF that acknowledged that human space travel would be, well, human.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:13:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Domain Name Kiting: spammers exploiting domain reg

Domain Name Kiting is a new online scam that's pretty fascinating. Under new domain reg rules, you can register a domain for five days without paying for it. Kiters register thousands and thousands of domains and stick ads on them, check to see which ones generate income, and pay to keep those registrations. They can also linkfarm on those domains, using thousands of shifting come-and-go domains to try to trick Google into conferring pagerank on a spam-site. Here's a pretty good explanation of Domain Name Kiting and how it got here:

The AGP is a five-day window period during which a newly registered domain name can be deleted/ dropped with full refund of registration fee. AGP was introduced to provide a mechanism for Registrars and registrants to correct mistakes, reverse fraudulent registrations. Registrars involved in kiting scam, register thousands of domains against the large amount of money they deposit with Registry. Domains registered are usually the expired ones, which have been indexed by search engine giants like Google, Yahoo etc. Appreciable volume of type-in-traffic is received for these domains, which have now been parked, to generate revenue. Domain Parking presents viable option for domainers to generate revenue from their unused domains, by hosting a single page web site with paid advertisement links. Clicks from visitors to such sites, generates money for the domainer.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Continuous Partial Attention wiki

Linda Stone -- a superconnector of great insight -- coined the term "Continuous Partial Attention" to describe a new phenomenon, distinct from multitasking. It's the attempt to stay involved in as many connections and networks at once as possible, and it can be nerve-wracking, though the temptation to indulge in powerful. Now Linda's started a wiki devoted to the subject.

Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We're often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task -- we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch -- we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive.

To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention -- CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.

We pay continuous partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention. This artificial sense of constant crisis is more typical of continuous partial attention than it is of multi-tasking.

Link (via Joi Ito)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:55:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chimeric animal photoshopping contest

Today on the Worth 1000 photoshopping contest: animal chimeras. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

US rushes peace negotiators - er, laser-guided bombs to Israel

"The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday." Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:17:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Best "Series of Tubes" yet: t-shirt from HOPE con

Further embiggening the pile of parodies inspired by Senator Stevens' infamously inept analogy: a t-shirt spotted at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) in NYC this week. Link (thanks, Jacob Appelbaum!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:24:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vernor Vinge and Cory on the Singularity on NPR

Rick Kleffel produced a great NPR segement on the Singularity, interviewing both me and Vernor Vinge (author of the amazing Rainbows End) on the subject.Regrettably, the file is only available as a Real and WMA stream, but if you happen to make and MP3 of it, dropload it to doctorow@craphound.com and I'll get it hosted and linked. Got it, thanks! Link (Thanks, Rick!)

Update: Here's the MP3 Link, courtesy of Eric, Alex, Darien, Ian, Jim, Michael, Mike, David, John and Dona! Thanks, folks!

Update 2: Lee's posted a torrent of the file, too.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:36:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cufflinks shaped like Philips screws

I love these cufflinks that resemble giant Philips head screws! Link (via Popgadget)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:32:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video-game themed cakes

Rakka of the Glitterpissing blog has posted a lovely gallery of her recent game-themed cake baking: a cake NES and Game-Boy, cake Tetris tiles, and the gorgeous miniature cake console games shown here. Link (via Wonderland)

Update: Rakka sez, "I've been making these types of cakes and other video game related things for a while. Here's my Flickr set.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:00:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Albert Einstein, sex-fiend

A collection of Einstein's letters, bequeathed by his daughter to Hebrew University in 1986, have been unsealed following her specified 20-year lock-up period. It turns out that Einstein talked a lot of trash about fellow scientists and slept around on his wives and mistresses:

The letters reveal how Einstein lost most of his Nobel Prize money in bad bond investments on Wall Street, and provide details of how he was showered with affection and gifts by his many mistresses...

He became involved with Elsa, a cousin, in 1912 when he was still married to his first wife Mileva, a fellow scientist with whom he had two boys, Hans Albert and Eduard. Before he and Mileva married, they had a daughter, Lieserl, who was given up for adoption.

In 1919, Einstein divorced Mileva and married Elsa, but within four years he was in love with Bette Neumann, his secretary who was also the young niece of one of his friends. Many more liaisons followed.

The letters reveal that a beautiful Berlin socialite named Ethel Michanowski followed him to Oxford, only to discover that he was involved with a third woman.

Link (via 3 Quarks Daily)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:56:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fagin: Will Eisner's retelling of Oliver Twist

Will Eisner's 2003 graphic novel "Fagin the Jew" is a masterpiece of literary criticism in comic form. It is a retelling of the story of Oliver Twist's Fagin that explores the anti-Semitism that ran rampant through Dickens's England. Eisner's great gift was in the expressiveness of his cartoons, which are one part MAD Magazine, one part Pieta, capturing emotional nuance running from the hilarious to the tragic. Eisner's introduction and postscript are the perfect frames for this remix story: in the intro, he talks about his naive use of black stereotypes in his 1950s comic The Spirit, while the postscript is an accessible but learned discussion of the stereotyping that Dickens fell prey to. This is the perfect companion to Oliver Twist -- or any other historical work where race plays a vital role, from the Merchant of Venice to Huckleberry Finn. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:01:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, July 22, 2006

95 Theses of Geek Activism: how to defend freedom with tech

The "95 Theses of Geek Activism" is a great list of 95 ways to use knowledge for good, and to defend freedom with technology.

1 Reclaim the term ‘hacker’. If you tinker with electronics, you are a hacker. If you use things in more ways than intended by the manufacturer, you are a hacker. If you build things out of strange, unexpected parts, you are a hacker. Reclaim the term.

2 Violating a license agreement is not theft.

3 All corporations are not on your side.

4 Keep in touch with everyone you can vote for and make sure you know where they stand on the issues you care about.

5 More importantly, make sure they know where you stand on the issues you care about.

Link (Thanks, Devan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:54:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Canada futurism: how the net can foster and harm independence

Karl Schroeder, the author of many fantastic sf novels (most recently the swashbuckling space-pirates post-Singularity book Sun of Suns) has written an excellent vingnette for the WorldChanging series on sustainability in Canada, CanadaChanging. In it, Karl writes about the way that Inuit communities in Nunavut might find the Internet to be a force for independence and a threat to their identity all at once. This is a heartbreaking, bittersweet and visionary piece -- pure Schroeder.

Under the rose-and-peach of a northern sunrise, the town's mountie found Amaruq looting his own library of its books.

Ross watched as Amaruq defiantly heaved another heavy cardboard box into the back of his truck. Then he sauntered over to peer through the door. "Enlarging your collection?"

Amaruq scowled at him. "They're throwing out the books today. After the legislature voted to close the place I did a book sale. Nobody wanted to buy them. I couldn't just sit there and let it happen. Couldn't sleep."

Ross stared at the canary-yellow band of light on the horizon. Then he grinned at Amaruq. "I could say, 'everything's on-line now' so what's the loss?"

Amaruq just shook his head. "We were the only library for two hundred kilometers. Where will the community meet? --And don't say, 'on-line.'"

Ross shook his head and walked up the wooden steps. "I said I could say that. But I won't. What I was going to say was, need some help?"

Amaruq grinned at him. By the light of a canary-yellow band of sky they emptied the contents of the little library of Bell's Lake.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:52:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Economists study how naïve people subsidize cut rate hotels

New York Times has an interesting article about the work of two university professors from Harvard and MIT/Princeton who say savvy people take advantage of good deals by avoiding the hidden costs that suckers pay.

The smartest strategy, they say, is for the sophisticated consumer to choose the service with the most hidden charges and highest add-on prices, but then avoid paying those added costs. “The sophisticated consumer takes advantage of that,” Mr. Gabaix said. “The naïve pay all the fees.”

For example, you see an offer for a room at Nontransparent Hotel for $75 (which costs the hotel $100 to provide). The guy checking in behind you also rents a room, but will rack up $70 in fees from the minibar, the phone and garage parking (all of which cost the hotel $20 to provide). You, on the other hand, were not tempted by the minibar, used your cellphone for calls and took public transportation to the hotel. The other guy subsidized your room.

Link

Reader comment: Robert says:

Since I just read the study, let me add my $0.02. It seems somebody along the chain to boingboing missed the main point of it - most economic theories predict that the hotel without hidden costs would benefit from making its opponents maneuverings public. Instead, it turns out they're better off adding hidden costs themselves.

That shatters the whole myth of the 'rational consumer', a core assumption of econ theories. Then again, if you look at spam and realize that there must be some people buying the offered goods, you knew that already ;)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:37:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

At HOPE hacker con, speaker arrested by Feds (UPDATED)

Washington Post "Security Fix" blogger Brian Krebs reports that Steven Rambam, whose company Pallorium Inc. touts itself as the "largest privately held online investigative service" in America, was arrested today by FBI agents just as he was about to lead a panel discussion at HOPE in NYC. Snip:

Rambam's fellow panelists said four men clad in dark blue FBI jackets quietly entered the auditorium, asked Rambam if he had any weapons on him, and then escorted him out the door along with his laptop and other equipment that contained the PowerPoint slides that were to make up the bulk of his scheduled two-hour presentation.

"If you know Steve then you know he's very flamoyant, and at first I thought it was just PR, you know?" said Kelly Riddle, a private investigator from San Antonio who was to speak alongside Rambam. "So, they asked him to step out in the hallway, placed the handcuffs on him and started to lead him off."

Rambam was going to discuss how he dug up -- in just 4.5 hours of searching private and public databases -- more than 500 pages worth of data on HOPE attendee Rick Dakan, who agreed to be the guinea pig for the project.

Link. No one, including HOPE organizers, has published further details on the arrest at this time.

Reader comment: BoingBoing reader ylbissop, emailing us from the conference where Mr. Rambam was arrested, says:

As I sit here waiting for the engineers of the Grafitti panel at HOPE I decided to look around and saw the post about Steven Rambam. Seems whisper down the lane has changed the story since Emmanuel told it before the mentioned panel today. According to Emmanuel, Steve was arrested as soon as the Palltech seminar was over, not immediately before. Emmanuel spoke to us before the panel entitled "Privacy is dead: Get over it." The Palltech seminar was in the same hotel but on a different floor and as far as I know the FBI has left us hackers alone, only going after the aforementioned private investigator. "Privacy is dead: Get over it" went on as scheduled without Rambam and was great. cheers from hope!

Update, 11PM ET: Krebs at the WP got in touch with an FBI spokesperson in the agency's New York field office, who confirmed they had:

...executed one arrest warrant without incident at around 4 p.m. ET today at the Hotel Pennsylvania where HOPE Six is behind held. The FBI agent said the agency would not release any more information about the arrest, and that the information was sealed until Monday when Rambam is expected to make an initial appearance in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. I've got a call in to his attorney and will update this post if I hear anything new. The scuttlebutt here at the conference is that Rambam may have located someone who was in the FBI's witness protection program, but I have not been able to verify that rumor at all.

Nathan Rudy says,

A little side note on Rambam: He is the friend of Richard "Kinky" Friedman, the funny country singer who wrote "They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore," and is running as an independent for Governor of Texas this year. Rambam is also a repeat character in Friedman's mystery novel series, where all of Kinky's friends are fictionalized.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:49:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ScatterChat: anonymous, secure chat

ScatterChat is a new hactivist program from the Cult of the Dead Cow. It's an anonymous chat program that combines gaim, an open source encrypted chat protocol, with TOR, an open source "onion router" that disguises the origin and destination of packets, so that no one can know what you're chatting, nor whom you're chatting with.

ScatterChat is a HACKTIVIST WEAPON designed to allow non-technical human rights activists and political dissidents to communicate securely and anonymously while operating in hostile territory. It is also useful in corporate settings, or in other situations where privacy is desired.

It is a secure instant messaging client (based upon the Gaim software) that provides end-to-end encryption, integrated onion-routing with Tor, secure file transfers, and easy-to-read documentation.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:14:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CIA software contractor fired over Geneva Conventions stand

Covered previously on BoingBoing here. Snip from Washington Post story about Christie "Econo-Girl" Axsmith: a software contractor for the CIA who says she was fired over an anti-torture post on her internal, intel-community blog:

Only people with top-secret security clearances could read her musings, which were posted on Intelink, the intelligence community's classified intranet. Writing as Covert Communications, CC for short, she opined in her online journal on such national security conundrums as stagflation, the war of ideas in the Middle East and -- in her most popular post -- bad food in the CIA cafeteria.

But the hundreds of blog readers who responded to her irreverent entries with titles such as "Morale Equals Food" won't be joining her ever again.

On July 13, after she posted her views on torture and the Geneva Conventions, her blog was taken down and her security badge was revoked. On Monday, Axsmith was terminated by her employer, BAE Systems, which was helping the CIA test software.

As a traveler in the classified blogosphere, Axsmith was not alone. Hundreds of blog posts appear on Intelink. The CIA says blogs and other electronic tools are used by people working on the same issue to exchange information and ideas.

Link Image: Kevin Clark for the Washington Post.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:45:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SF podcast: reality TV as criminal tracking-bracelets

My friend Bill Shunn's story "Observations From the City of Angels" (originally published on Salon as Love in the Time of Spyware) has been adapted for spoken word by the excellent science fiction podcast Escape Pod. The story is about a guineapig in a program to track criminals with reality-TV-style spyware that transmits their sensoria to a home audience. He's kept company by robots and an omnipresent voice of the panopticon computer, each guiding him through a life where his every word and deed and sensation are transmitted to the world.

It's not just that, Brian. Think about this technology. The experiment's been successful beyond anyone's expectations. Spyware fittings for registered offenders will no doubt go into effect next year. But why stop there? Can you imagine having a therapist, a financial counselor, a social secretary, a nutritionist and personal trainer at your beck and call twenty- four hours a day? You'd like to get rid of that spare tire, right? We could help you. Really."

Hayes shivers, though the climate inside the car is perfectly controlled. "Sure," he says. "And I could have the whole world watching everything I do, for the rest of my life."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:08:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Technical presentation on ethanol fuel

I found this one-hour presentation on using clean ethanol instead of bloody petroleum to power the world's automotive fleet through Bruce Sterling, who sez,

I saw Vinod Khosla give a very similar speech this month. It's technical, but technical solutions are supposed to be technical. Now that I've heard the speech twice, this is actually starting to sound like a rational plan to me. It might, conceivably, actually work. It can't stop us from getting slammed with a series of city-wrecking Katrinas, but it might avert a scenario that's all Katrina, all the time.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:44:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plane made of printed parts flies

A plane made almost entirely out of "printed" parts flew last weekend at an airshow in Britain. It was made by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works in Palmdale, CA, and is a 28m unmanned vehicle made of radar-absorbing composites.

About 90 per cent of Polecat is made of composite materials with much of that material made by rapid prototyping.

"The entire Polecat airframe was constructed using low-cost rapid prototyping materials and methods," says Frank Mauro, director of UAV systems at the Skunk Works.

Link (via Futurismic)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:40:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scott McCloud on the future of comics

Here's a cool, brief interview with Scott "Understanding Comics" McCloud that touches on the present and future of comics (which is looking pretty rosy, thanks to novel titles, formats and business-models):

WN: How does the lack of editors affect webcomics?

McCloud: I always think of Spiderman's "With great power comes great responsibility."

When you're free of editorial control, you owe it to yourself to obtain feedback from friends and readers. Some take those criticisms to heart and incorporate it into their work, and some ignore them.

WN: Is it difficult to separate the quality webcomics from those of lesser worth when there are literally thousands of them?

McCloud: The good work floats to the top really quickly. If a comic comes out on the scene and it's really knock-out brilliant, the community is pretty good about getting the word about good newcomers. (The challenge is) finding the one that evolves and becomes better: You'll check it out and it wasn't very good. Then you'll check it out three years later and realize it's become pretty good.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:36:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

VIntage comic-book covers

In honor of the San Diego Comics Con, Wired News has published a handsome little gallery of classic funnybook covers from the heyday of sexy comic illustration. Link

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

New Democracy Player: free and open Internet TV

There's a new version of Democracy Player, the free and open source Internet TV program that can play any video format and that's as easy to use as a TV.

Democracy is produced by the Participatory Culture Foundation, the same activists behind Downhill Battle (remember the Christmas when they sent a lump of coal to the RIAA for every $100 donated to EFF?). They're now registered as a charity, taking donations to pay programmers to improve the user-interface behind Democracy.

Democracy is made by combining the popular open source program VLC with a free RSS reader and a free BitTorrent client -- so you can subscribe to any channel of video and it will be pulled down cooperatively with all the other subscribers, and played right there regardless of the video format.

The new version plays on Windows, MacOS and Linux, and, while still in beta, is far more stable and robust. If you want to live on the edge, you can also sign up to test the next version. Link (Disclosure: I am a proud member of the Participatory Culture Foundation's Board of Directors)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:08:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, July 21, 2006

DIY rodent-powered nightlight

In this week's Weekend Project video from MAKE:, Bre Pettis shows how to build your own Rodent Powered Nightlight! William Gurstelle's printed plans for this project, based on Otherpower.com's hamster-powered generator, can also be found in MAKE: Volume 6.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:20:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jim Woodring original art for sale

Comic book artist Jim Woodring is selling beautiful water colors and pen-and-ink drawings at his "Ivory Tower Art Outlet."

Frank is just beginning to understand what is meant by the phrase "Catch you later". He hopes not. In any event, he has learned an important lesson.

India ink on paper, image size 9" x 5", 2005. Price $250

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:53:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open call for Eyebeam research fellows

The terrific Eyebeam art/science/tech atelier in New York City is holding its second open call for research fellows. All work created as part of the program will be free under open licenses, without patents, released under GPL, Creative Commons, and documented in the form of DIY guides. This is an amazing opportunity for makers/hackers.

From the R&D Fellows Program page:

Join the OpenLab and Make Your Mark on the Public Domain
Eyebeam is now accepting applications for the next round of R&D Fellows in the R&D OpenLab. We are looking for hardware and software hackers, techno arts-and-craftsters, and new types of open source makers to come to New York City and develop experimental creative technologies and media. The OpenLab represents an opportunity for selected individuals to work in a state-of-the-art digital fabrication laboratory, to collaborate with a range of talented technologists and artists from diverse and hybrid backgrounds, to gain international exposure for innovative work and to directly enrich the global DIY community, free culture and the public domain. Join past OpenLab Fellows and projects like MintyBoost, OGLE (OpenGLExtractor), SlashLinks, LED Throwies, Contagious Media and FundRace and make your mark on the Public Domain.

Link (Thanks, Mike Frumin!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:41:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Persistence-of-vision bike spoke Goatse

Limor says: "I figured since y'all were posting a bunch of these things, the magic of persistence-of-vision electronics brings you an red LED bikegoatse. I dunno, I think it'd awesome to bike around with this." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:59:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

700 Hoboes project takes off

A number of months ago, I wrote about John Hodgman's funny song, "700 Hobo names." I said that it would be fun to start a Flickr group where artists get together to draw each on of the whimsically named hoboes in the song. And it started happening right away.

The project has heated up considerably. Behold the 700 Hoboes Project, a beautifully designed site that archives the current drawings and offers new features, such as semantic classification of the hoboes.

Daniel and Sarah Drucker worked to semantically classify 125 of the 700 Hoboes, and are now hoping that others will pitch in after their example to help with the rest. With this semantic information available, viewers at e-hobo.com would be able to view just hoboes with hats, or with missing body parts, or who are named anacronistically.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:33:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Goatses in the media

After one brief look at Goatse, your brain is scarred forever. You can't help but see Goatse again and again -- in ads, photos, logos, and so on. Here are a few that have been submitted to Boing Boing this week:

Superman advertisement.
Tour de Goatse (three handed!)
Flickr downtime Goatse contest entry
AOL member retention goatse graphic (I think the hands were added on after the fact)
Intentional Goatse T shirt

Reader comments:

Keith says:

I couldn't help but notice the flickr downtime goatse. Note that I did one as well, but I was more creative with mine. It's a double-goatse. The one you have posted didn't exactly follow the rules. The image had 2 circles.

Kyle says:

God bless Boing Boing for doing more than anybody for populating the Goatse meme into the mainstream conciousness -- though the mainstream conciousness will never be able to acknowlege the goatsiliciousness of this fact.

I wanted to pass on a link to some goatse bumper stickers Bumperactive developed a while back. We did something pretty innovative, I think, which is create special "cut-out" stickers with a hollow oval in the center, which is being "gripped" by the receiver. The idea is, you can use the stickers to guerilla goatse anything.

Also, there's Condi/Goatse '08. Which is on my car at the moment, in fact.

Magnus says:

This one is a little far-fetched, but as you wrote, "you can't help but see Goatse again and again"...

Lawrence says:

Here's a pic of "Mr. Sprinkles," the Goatse'd clown of sugar showers. Every time I see him in the kitchen I think of you and ... I finally had to open my vault of Goatse goodness.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:51:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New New York Dolls video

Here's the animated video for the New York Dolls' new song, "Dance Like A Monkey." I was pleasantly surprised by how excellent the song is, especially without Johnny Thunders (who died in 1991) on guitar. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:33:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Tourist Remover" removes people from photographs

FutureLab has a nifty service that erases people, cars, etc. from photographs. It works by comparing several photos of a scene, and getting rid of the stuff that's different from the other photos. Check out the gallery of "ghost town" photos! Link (thanks, Marc!)

Reader comment: moon_custafer says:

You can use this to evoke the photography of the 1840s, when the exposure time was too long for passers-by to register! (as seen in the following photo of Nelson's Column under construction.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:22:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lockheed Martin designing tiny "maple seed" spy plane

The Department of Defense has contracted Lockheed Martin to design a remote-controlled nano air vehicle that looks like a maple seed.

Designed for release from a hover craft, and similar to the propeller-like maple seed, the one-bladed NAV should rotate in flight while a camera on board provides a "stable forward view and transmit images back to a small, hand-held display. "The NAV should be equipped with a chemical rocket to power it 1,100 yards, yet it should weigh only 0.07 ounces.

Link (thanks, Guy!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:17:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A visit to Sanrio Puroland

Dan Howard says: "My pal Charlotte and her partner went to Tokyo's Sanrio Puroland, and made a video of exactly the stuff I would want to document -- the weird stage shows, Hello Kitty's house, and, most importantly, the most freakishly over-themed restroom you'll ever see."

Like all themeparks, it is both crappy and great. We pick a day when we know that it’ll be dead and quiet and we work our way through a series of over-designed shows that feature Hello Kitty and her pals vanquishing various forces of evil, sitting amongst impassive audiences who are urged “Let’s Dancing!!” by overexcited performers. We hug various people (Men? Women? Children? Who knows) dressed in furry Sanrio mascot suits. We eat a Hello Kitty bun. We visit Kitty’s house, where everything is shaped like her head. We nod and smile and bow at female Sanrio staffers who talk to everybody in creepy baby voices.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:02:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mazen Kerbaj's daily comicblogging from Beirut.

Previous posts about his work here and here. From today's batch of drawings, this one about a 5-year-old relative stuck in the warzone with a gaming console to comfort him:

21 july 2006
i am at home in sin el fil
thinking of evan
prisoner in a house
playing playstation all day long
alone
and asking everyday: why can't i go see farid / yasmina / simon / etc.
what can i answer?

Link to image, here's another from today: "the bombs pass and we bark." And here's his blog.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:12:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blogging the yet-unnamed war, from northern Israel.

BoingBoing reader Melly in Israel writes, "I'm Canadian but flew to Israel on Tuesday the 18th to be with my family who lives in the northern part of Israel." She's blogging her experience here. Snip:

Alright, I'll admit it. I'm scared. About half an hour ago there was a series of nearby explosions without the warning of a siren. So far, this is the most scared I've been. So far, I've counted on the sirens to at least warn us.

[My] parents live in a north-facing apartment. Meaning, an apartment facing Lebanon, where the rockets are coming from. Without a siren, we're very exposed as there is pretty much only the corridor that can serve as an inner room, as futile as it may sound. My heart doesn't stop racing and I have that bitter fear taste in my mouth.

Slowly, my other family members are leaving the north, heading south of Haifa. There is no relief and no quiet. I'm trying to calm my racing heart, and maybe writing about this helps. Not sure.

Earlier this morning there was a siren and one distant boom after the siren. This time - no siren and a series of nearby booms. At the same time we just heard of massive casualties in Lebanon and I want to cry for them and for us, but I must stay strong or I'll crumple.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:46:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Inmate paints with M&Ms and brush made from his own hair

A Pelican Bay inmate serving life in solitary confinement for second-degree murder creates amazing images with paint brewed from M&Ms. Snip from NYT article by Adam Liptak:

[Donny Johnson] orders his supplies from the prison commissary once a month. The M&M’s are 60 cents a pack, and he gets 10 packs at a time. He puts from one to five of the candies in each of the jelly containers, drizzles a little water in and later fishes out the chocolate cores, leaving liquid of various colors, which get stronger if they sit for a couple of days.

He has tried other candy, but there are perils. “It’s the same process with Skittles,” he said, “but I end up eating them all.”

Sometimes he experiments with other materials. “Grape Kool-Aid in red M&M color makes a kind of purple,” he wrote in a letter to a reporter not long ago. “Coffee mixed with yellow makes a light brown. Tropical punch Kool-Aid granules can be made into a syrup and used as a paint wash of sorts. But it’s a bear to work with and it’s super-sticky and it never dries.”

And there are frustrations. “If lint gets in a piece, I feel like screaming,” he wrote.

Link (thanks, yehuda)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:34:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google's search-engine for accessible sites

Google's just launched a site that gives higher results-ranking to pages that are designed to be accessible to people with visual disabilities. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:34:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Help identify infringing Mickey images for book on the mouse

Siva "Anarchist in the Library" Vaidhyanathan sez, "I am working on a book about Mickey Mouse in American culture. It's a broad survey of the ways the Mickey image means different things in different contexts. This corporate spokesmouse is much more than a cartoon character. Can someone tell me more about the origins of these two images?"

The black light hippie Mickey shirt
And the "Hey Iran" Mickey, giving the finger to the Ayatollah, circa 1980:
Link (Thanks, Siva!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:30:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Worst week in the history of broadcast TV

Last week was the least-viewed week in the history of broadcast network television in the USA.

CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox averaged 20.8 million viewers during the average prime-time minute last week, according to Nielsen Media Research. That sunk below the previous record, set during the last week of July in 2005.

TV keeps losing to gaming, the Internet, youtubing, etc, and yet our elected representatives are willing to kill innovation and open source with a Broadcaast Flag that is intended only to assuage the fears of the broadcasters and studios, but which will have no impact at all on file-sharing. Link (via TWIT)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:27:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pen with built-in WiFinder

Here's a $20 pen with a built-in WiFi finder and an LED flashlight. I have my doubts about the wifinder component, though -- usually these things depend on having a pretty good antenna that's at least as good as the one in your laptop, otherwise it will miss networks that your laptop could see. Link (via Red Ferret)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:24:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kent "Dr. Dino" Hovind refuses to enter plea in tax fraud case

The "creation science evangelism" founder faced off with a judge in a Florida courtroom this week, and...

Neither he nor his wife and co-defendant, Jo, wanted to enter a traditional plea of guilty or not guilty. The Hovinds question the court's right to try them. They consider themselves missionaries exempt from taxes to a government that, incidentally, is providing them with attorneys.

But Magistrate Miles Davis wanted them to enter pleas just as any other citizen would. "If they don't wish to enter a plea, I'll enter one for them," Davis said.When asked by the prosecutor to list his residence, Kent Hovind said he lives in "the church of Jesus Christ ... located all over the world."

(...) Then, Hovind offered another wrinkle. "I would like to plead subornation of false muster," he said, announcing a defense I haven't heard in 30 years of hanging around courtrooms. The precedent is not good. A man in the state of Washington tried a similar defense a few years ago, claiming he was a "citizen of heaven" and not subject to state laws. But a court there ruled that when in Washington, do as Washington law requires, and found him guilty.

Link. False muster! Good to know. If I'm ever busted for these many years of live baby-eating (don't tell anyone, please), I'll tell the judge I'm a "citizen of blogosphere" and see how far this gets me. (Thanks, rusty)

Previously: Dr. Dino arrested for unpaid taxes

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:24:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Biofeedback game where you compete to relax

I love the idea of a biofeedback game that challenges you to relax faster and more deeply than your opponent. Best of all -- there are build notes so you can make your own biofeedback driven game. it would be perversely great to do one that's wired to so you win the more stressed-out you become, and attach it to an espresso machine, and a monitor that shows nothing but comments from Slashdot that have been ranked -1 or lower.

Simmer Down Sprinter is a two player, sit-down, arcade style video game I designed and programmed in which players compete to move runners around a track. The game is controlled by player’s bio-feedback. The more relaxed the player becomes, the faster the runner moves around the track. Essentially it is a game of competitive relaxation.

Link (via Evhead)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: geeknerd zen

star trek camelot
sims torture
all your snakes
compupromo
mac system 7
rsg-tac compression
nada
unicode chart
ipod war
dance voldo dance

And image above: "found" 1960s computer photos, discovered by BoingBoing reader Aria who works in the same site where beehived she-nerds once swept unplunged data center floors decades before. Here's her post about finding the images, and this post show that specific part of the datacenter. Says Aria, "It seems the she-nerd has been replaced by a storagetek silo!"

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Reader comment: Super-observant BoingBoing reader Ranjit Bhatnagar says,

Look more closely at the photo of the beehived she-nerd. She's not sweeping the floor - she's going at it with a rubber plunger. Clearly her primitive internet has clogged tubes!

Don Bruey says,

The person in the picture is lifting panels which comprise a "fake floor" (sort of like a false bottom of a suitcase) under which power and network cables can be run without being tripped over by visitors to the room. It's a common data center feature.

Christian "CJ" Jacobsen says,

In one of the Web Zen: geeknerd zen photos you posted, the woman in the computer server room (as someone has already said) is using a special tool to pull up the floor tiles. This allows access to the computer network and power wiring, which ran under the floor in old server rooms.

What I have to add is that this photo is one of many that were hanging in the big server rooms at NASA - Ames Research Center in Palo Alto, California. (Most of the photos on the walls at NASA were from NASA, not from outside sources, so I expect the woman in the photo is working in the same room I used to work in. But I have no evidence of that.) I used to be a system admin there in the late 80's, and there were a bunch of groovy photos like this one, poster-sized and mounted, on the walls of the tech building. There was also an old Cray (with built-in bench seating) in a plexiglass display, and a really old 3' x 3' transistor array from a very early computer also on display.

Charles Lai says,

Nasa Ames has its own “city” of Moffett Field. Check it out at: Link. And Nasa Ames and Moffett Field are usually identified with Mountain View, not Palo Alto – just ask everyone working at the Mountain View companies like Mercury Interactive, Symantec and Verisign across 101 from Moffett Field.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:35:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Boing Boing reader has black light hippie Mickey shirt

Jim says: I read boingboing daily and really enjoy your guys work. The image you linked for the black light posters (The Hippie Mickey Mouse) caught my attention. In my second grade group picture I have a shirt with that EXACT Hippie Mickey Mouse. Why my mom bought me a Hippie Mickey Mouse while I was in SECOND grade makes the picture just that more humorous. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:46:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MySpace clamps down on users through new tech limits

Siva Vaidhyanathan says, "MySpace is slowly installing technological restrictions that will undermine its value as a social networking site. Well bowled, Rupert! My brilliant doctoral student Alice Marwick, who studies social networking and identity online, wrote this..."

So: stuff like Slide.com, RockYou.com, and YouTube’s Flash video wrappers will no longer be able to link back to the sites if the user is using Flash 9. Generally adoption for Flash isn’t that quick — but since all users with Flash 8 currently have broken MySpace video/audio players, you can expect that to have somewhat of an effect on the adoption rate (i.e.: skyrocket).

MySpace can say all they want about wanting to protect users, but really this is about them protecting their advertising dollars. The barnacle-like secondary market sites will have to find increasingly creative techniques to launch Flash-based content within the site if they want it to spread virally.

This is actually quite wily on the part of MySpace. And it’s going to be interesting to see how much influence they have on the adoption rates of Flash 9… I wonder if they have a formal partnership with Macromedia/Adobe.

Expect a LOT MORE moves like this from MySpace. I’m aware of a few I can’t talk about that I know will have huge impacts on secondary market sites. If you work for a startup whose entire business plan depends on mooching off MySpace’s user base, you guys might want to consider diversifying your revenue streams.

Link

Reader comment: Kevin Khandjian says,

The article you linked to fails to mention that a myspace XSS worm that spread like crazy using flash. The allowNetworking attribute talked about in the article will not block flash from pages like youtube, but it will be able to stop external flash from. without this attribute, flash is always allowed to change the containing window's location, and able to force users onto any page.

The allowNetworking attribute being set to internal will block this from happening, but as it appears, html links inside of flash will still be legal. This means that while some people will have to make some changes in order to keep the exact functionality, no functionality should be lost.

There is a description of what the tag itself does here, and a description of the recent XSS hack and how it worked here.

Christopher says,

You might want to mention the plight of Linux users who are now left in an even worse position; having only had a Flash 7 player available for Linux they now have to wait until at least 2007 until a Flash 9 player is released for them, which leaves myself and probably many others unable to watch many Flash 8 based videos, and currently a lack of sound on YouTube videos. At best, there's always synch issues between audio/video.

Link to Flash Player's product manager's blog on their promised Flash 9 for Linux plans (though they also promised a Flash 8 player which never turned up) and this link for some blogged comments by a guy who knows more about it than I do. .

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:56:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More on YouTube's controversial new terms and conditions: UPDATED

Update: YouTube's response is here (scroll down to the end of the post).

Earlier today on BoingBoing, I pointed to discussions around the blogosphere about YouTube's newly updated Terms & Conditions. As Eliot Van Buskirk wrote on the Wired News music blog "Listening Post," the new policy appears to give YouTube more rights over user-uploaded content than before. Link to post, with some insightful comments, both pro and con, from readers. I asked Jason Schultz of the EFF what he thought of the news, and he tells BB:

Your commenters are pretty much correct. YouTube wants to CYA itself in case it flows into new formats with old videos, e.g., cell phone downloads. They don't want to have to go back and relicense all the content in new mediums. And its also true that simply yanking the video will cut off all their rights, which is a powerful weapon to keep them in check.

When the Billy Bragg folks complained about MySpace, it was basically over the same issue, so now that MySpace has responded with some clarity, it might behoove YouTube to do the same.

One thing they could say is that any reproductions, distributions, derivatives, etc. that they make of your work would not be sold separately as a distinct product. This would keep them from burning CDs or DVDs and the like.

Reader comments...
More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:40:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

India blog ban NOT over, says author of still-banned blog

Dr. Rusty Shackleford says,

The blog ban is NOT over. What happened was that the Indian government clarified the ban to Indian ISPs which had blanket banned the top-level domains (eg, blogspot.com). My blog is #2 on the list, and still banned. Here is the Indian Department of Telecom's official press release of today which clarifies: Link. Excerpt:

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has instructed all the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country to block only the specified website/webpages on the parent website . The DoT, in its letter issued to all the ISPs has mentioned that it had come to notice that in some cases the parent website had been blocked in contravention to what was stated in its earlier order dated 13th July 2006 whereby it ordered the ISPs to block certain websites/webpages .

As such the DoT has now directed all the ISPs to strictly comply with the order dated 13th July 2006 and provide unhindered access to Internet except for the websites/webpages which have been specifically mentioned in its orders issued from time to time.

The DoT has further sought explanation from the erring ISPs as to why action be not taken against them for blocking unintended websites/webpages.

Since my website is at the center of the controversy, and specifically targetted by the Indian government, I hope you can stand with me in solidarity.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:26:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Past and future of DRM

ArsTechnica has a great article on the past and present of DRM cracks -- where they came from and where they're headed:

Like a creeping fog, DRM smothers more and more media in its clammy embrace, but the sun still shines down on isolated patches of the landscape. This isn't always due to the decisions of corporate executives; often it's the work of hackers who devote considerable skill to cracking the digital locks that guard everything from DVDs to e-books. Their reasons are complicated and range from the philosophical to the criminal, but their goals are the same: no more DRM.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:44:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Feral child profiled in The Telegraph

The Telegraph profiles Oxana Malaya, a 23-year-old woman in Ukraine who, between the ages of 3 and 8, was raised by a pack of dogs. She currently lives in a home for the mentally disabled and has been featured in documentaries on the Discovery Channel and Channel Four. Apparently, she can still show eerily canine-like behaviors, including running on all fours, panting, and barking. From The Telegraph:

"I expected someone much less human," says (psychologist Lyn Fry, an expert on feral children and) the first non-Ukrainian expert to meet Oxana. "I'd heard stories that she could fly off the handle, that she was very unco-operative, that she was socially inept, but she did everything I asked of her.

"Her language is odd. She speaks flatly as though it's an order. There is no cadence or rhythm or music to her speech, no inflection or tone. But she has a sense of humour. She likes to be the centre of attention, to make people laugh. Showing off is quite a surprising skill when you consider her background. In the film, Miss Malaya looks unco-ordinated and tomboyish. When she walks, you notice her strange stomping gait and swinging shoulders, the intermittent squint and misshapen teeth. Like a dog with a bone, her first instinct is to hide anything she is given. She is only 1.52 metres tall but when she fools about with her friends, pushing and shoving, there is a palpable air of menace and brute strength. The oddest thing is how little attention she pays to her pet mongrel. "Sometimes, she pushed it away," says Ms Fry. "She was much more orientated to people."

Link (Thanks, Dave Lyons!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:20:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man asks pal to break leg to avoid military service

This young man enlisted the help of his friend to break his leg with a dumbell to avoid military duty in Afghanistan. Judging by the swollen lump on his shin, earlier attempts to shatter his tibia were unsuccessful. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:31:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gator with God's name

Michael Wilk, of Salem, Wisonsin, has a 4-foot-long alligator displaying scale patterns that seems to spell out "G-O-D." An alligator biologist says that the markings appear to be legit. From the Chicago Tribune (click image for full photo by David Trotman-Wilkins):

Rev. Philip Wilde, a pastor at Zion Lutheran Church in nearby Bristol, said he views the markings as a coincidence of nature.

"Obviously it's there because God wanted it to be that way," said Wilde, who has not seen the gator. "But I don't see any special message in that."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:26:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beirut shopping list, from Lebanese comic artist Mazen Kerbaj

"TO BUY (quickly): water / coffee / batteries / chocolate / ink / candles (a big stock) / canned food / bread / picon cheese / toilet paper / radio powered by batteries / matches / black felt pens / rolling paper / milk (still consumable." From comic artist/musician/blogger Mazen Kerbaj, who has decided not to evacuate, and is holed up in Beirut with family and loved ones. Link to this one, and there are many more incredible drawings in his flickr stream -- like Evacuation Blues, and this one. Previous BB post on his work here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:25:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazon may be sued for selling cockfighting mags

The Human Society of the United States is threatening Amazon.com with a lawsuit for selling The Gamecock and The Feathered Warrior, two magazines about cockfighting. The Gamecock is currently ranked #172 in Amazon's magazine sales ranking while Feathered Warrior is at #2,207. From the Associated Press:

The Washington D.C.-based (Humane Society) argues that Internet sales of the magazines violate the federal Animal Welfare Act, which bars use of mail or other means of interstate commerce to promote animal fighting, unless it's performed outside the United States.

"That's their claim, and we don't agree with their claim, so we're going to continue to make these titles available," Amazon.com spokeswoman Patty Smith said Tuesday afternoon. "It's up to the customer to determine what they feel is appropriate for them to purchase."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:16:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snake in a mailbox prank

James Mell, 31, of Farmington Hills, Michigan put his six-foot boa constrictor in his mailbox to freak out his mail carrier. According to the Associated Press, Mell now faces six months in federal custody. Link (via Fark)

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:59:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF defeats govt motion in AT&T wiretapping case

Greg sez, "In January, EFF filed a lawsuit against AT&T for collaborating with the NSA in its massive and illegal spying program. Today, a federal court denied the government's and AT&T's motions to dismiss the case, allowing EFF's suit to proceed. This is a huge step toward stopping illegal surveillance and holding AT&T accountable for these privacy violations. With your help, we can finish the job and secure your rights. Please donate to EFF today and forward the news along to your friends and family!" Link (Thanks, Greg!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:50:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Indian gov finally lifts ban -- UPDATE: not so.

According to reports out of India today, the Indian government has finally lifted its ban on blogs after overwhelming pressure from Indian blogger groups and press worldwide. Link (Thanks, J L Borghead)Not quite, update here.

Previously:
Update on India bans blogs: bloggers want answers
Update on India censoring blogs
Indian gov blocks Blogspot, Typepad, Geocities blogs

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:47:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yahoo music blog decries DRM

Chris sez, "Ian C Rogers has an editorial on the Yahoo Music Blog endorsing DRM-free downloads:

The only people [DRM] adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform.

Link (Thanks, Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:34:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Calculator determines death by caffeine

Energy Fiend has a handy calculator to determine how much coffee you'd need to drink to kill yourself. According to it, I will die if I 112.61 cups of espresso in a single sitting. Luckily, I stopped at 111 this morning. Link (Thanks, Tracy!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:37:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sugar water is wholesome for tots

Someone on eBay is auctioning off an old print plate of a Seven-Up ad showing a baby being fed a bottle of Seven-Up. The copy reads: "So pure...So good... So wholesome for everyone... including the tiniest tots!"

I reversed the plate image so you can read the text. Link (Thanks, Seth!)

Reader comments:

Sass says:

More 7-up creepiness. I saw your link to the 7-UP ad endorsing feeding it to babies, and it reminded me of something I came across the other day. The Gallery Of Regrettable Food has a link to an old promo "cookbook" of recipes using 7-UP. This cookbook is rife with that same theme of 7-UP being "pure" and "wholesome" and meant for the whole family -- the description makes it sound like you're drinking holy water, not carbonated sugar!

Paulio says:

Not sure if this is the appropriate place to comment, but in the original soda-fountain-as-drug-delivery days, 7-up originally had lithium in it and had a tag line of

"takes the Ouch out of Grouch" which kinda always left me thinking 'and what? leaves you with Grrrrrrrrrrrr'
(Image from vintage 7-Up Flickr Pool. (Thanks, Paula!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:28:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Religious nuts ecstatic over Middle East turmoil

Harper's has posted messages from the Rapture Ready/End Times chat bulletin board. These folks are as happy as can be that Israel and Hezbollah are fighting because that means they're one step closer to the Rapture.

Got that dancing feeling on the inside of me.

* * *

This is the busiest I've ever seen this website in a few years! I have been having rapture dreams and I can't believe that this is really it! We are on the edge of eternity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* * *

Whoa! I can sure feel the glory bumps after reading this thread!

* * *

I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what's going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, oh happy day, like in your screen name , it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!

Link (Thanks, Kirsten!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:17:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-terror cutlery for airline security theater

A UK company is selling "anti-terror" cutlery that will help you cherish the illusion that air travel is made safer by confiscating arbitrary lumps of metal (while allowing business travelers to lug around several pounds of highly volatile lithium in their laptops), because, you know, terrorists hate silverware.

The company, Arthur Price, said it was the first to design such a set, intended for use by business-class customers, replacing plastic cutlery. The knives, forks and spoons have been created to specifications based on new British Department for Transport guidelines that have their origin in security concerns.

The knives have a rounded rather than a sharp end and measure no longer than 2.36 inches, or 6 centimeters, while the forks have prongs no longer than half that.

Link (via Megnut)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:12:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John K signing at ComicCon in San Diego

Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi will be signing at the San Diego ComicCon this week. Here's his schedule. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:27:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amount of caffeine in popular drinks (from NatGeo)

Yesterday I posted a link to a chart that showed caffeine in common beverages. The numbers looked off to me. But here's a chart from National Geographic, January 2005 and the numbers are pretty close to the numbers I posted yesterday:

Hershey's milk chocolate almond bar, 6 oz 25 mg
Espresso, 1-oz shot 40 mg
Brewed tea, 8-oz cup 50 mg
Coca-Cola, 20-oz bottle 57 mg
Red Bull energy drink, 8.3-oz can 80 mg
Excedrin pain reliever, 2 tablets 130 mg
Brewed coffee, 12-oz cup 200 mg
Mountain Dew, 64-oz Double Big Gulp 294 mg

Link to PDF of NatGeo article about caffeine

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:01:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CIA contractor: I was fired for criticizing torture on my blog.

Psuedonymous blogger and CIA software contractor "Econo-Girl" wrote a post criticizing interrogation techniques she said amounted to torture -- and she says she was soon fired for it. The blog was not publicly accessible, but posted in an intranet of sorts which is only available to intelligence community members with a high level of security clearance, according to Econo-Girl. Here's the problem post:

Waterboarding is Torture, and Torture is Wrong

Not to mention ineffective. Econo-Girl has serious doubts as to whether European lives were saved. Econo-Girl's purpose in writing this blog is to start a dialog on the Geneva Convention, since it now applies to the Department of Defense again. Guess it's not quaint anymore, eh?

Over the next few weeks, Econo-Girl would like to post articles about the Geneva Convention, like its origin and major provisions. Legal analysis is not the magic some would have you believe. If the grunts and paper pushers are knowledgeable, the anti-torture infrastructure will be strengthened.

Here's what waterboarding is: Wikipedia Link. And here's what the pseudonymous blogger writes after losing her job:

The above post is a recreation of a post that got me fired from the CIA. It is not exact, but covers the main points as best I remember them. I had a blog called Covert Communications on a kind of classified Internet. I wrote a version of the above post and classified it so that only Americans with clearances could read it. You couldn't even get to the blog if you had less than a Top Secret and above clearance anyway.

Another purpose of the blog post was to start a dialog on interogation techniques with the people who are asked to do the interogating. It was to be a public education campaign, of sorts. I was going to do the research on my own time and type in the results when I got to work. I never spent more than 15 minutes writing any of my posts.

More here. Image (via Wikipedia): "The Water Torture"—Facsimile of a woodcut in J. Damhoudère's Praxis Rerum Criminalium in 4to, Antwerp, 1556. (thanks, anonymous)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:57:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

YouTube's new policy says: we own your content. UPDATED

UPDATE: See response from YouTube at end of post, and more analysis here.

The newly revised Terms and Conditions page at YouTube raises important questions for anyone who uploads videos there. Eliot Van Buskirk at the Wired News music blog "Listening Post" writes:

Musicians such as Billy Bragg have been complaining about networking/music site MySpace's terms of use – and rightfully so. MySpace is said to be changing its tune, and should be posting updated terms soon (currently, its About page is offline).

The video site YouTube constitutes an equal or larger threat to small content producers. Before you upload that video of your 19-person indie rocker reggae band, for instance, you may want to read the fine print. YouTube's "new" Terms & Conditions allow them to sell whatever you uploaded however they want:

"…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business… in any media formats and through any media channels."

Among other things, this means they could strip the audio portion of any track and sell it on a CD. Or, they could sell your video to an ad firm looking to get "edgy"; suddenly your indie reggae tune could be the soundtrack to a new ad for SUVs. The sky's still the limit, when it comes to the rights you surrender to YouTube when you upload your video. Perhaps even scarier is the idea that anyone who might eventually buy YouTube would automatically obtain these same rights. Since YouTube is so popular, with 100 million videos shown each day, it's an attractive acquisition target for any number of companies.

Read the rest of the post here: Link.

Author/podcaster/robot-handler Violet Blue has a related post here, and Andrew at PuppetVision blog has a related post here.

Reader comment: ttrentham says,

As a musician whose band has music on MySpace, I did a little snooping after reading Xeni's post today about YouTube's terms. It does look like MySpace has altered theirs to more favorable terms as of June 15th.

"MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the MySpace Services."

Reader comment: David Gulbransen says,

I hate to be put in the position of trying to defend an onerous license... but the excerpt you posted on BoingBoing is a little misleading. It continues, "...The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website."

That last little bit is pretty important. It means that if you remove the work from the YouTube site, they have to stop using your work. So there is some protection for users who have uploaded original content. If YouTube were to sublicense your content to an advertising agency, for example, and you were to remove the content--thus revoking the grant under the terms of the agreement--then the agency's license would be revoked as well. That's not really a tenable situation for advertisers or businesses, who are unlikely to sublicense content with such strings attached.

Upon reading the entire section, in context, it's pretty clear that YouTube is trying to ensure they are covered from attacks by users if they use videos featured on the site for promotional purposes, and also to allow the sharing of video content on other's blogs, sites, etc. My first inclination when seeing something like that is to recoil in horror, too. However, sometimes actually reading the license and parsing what the real impact is can be useful.

Hm. I'm not so sure that the scenario described above would protect a user -- what if they only find out that a video has been sold or used in an ad after the fact? Taking the video down from YouTube won't change that, if the sale or republication has already taken place.

Either way, I won't be uploading any of my content to YouTube under these terms -- archive.org, revver, and other services offer more uploader-friendly terms, and Creative Commons licenses with those services and others allow you to specify more precisely what forms of reuse you're okay with.

I'd welcome further analysis from folks versed in this area of law, and will gladly post any reply from YouTube, too.

justin wood says,

you-tube's terms and conditions are eerily similar to att/sbc's new conditions re: their dsl/internet service. how a company can "own" your content by you using their service, especially if you pay for it, is beyond me.

Jason Kottke blogs,

The longer term question is, can YouTube find a business model that won't completely screw up their wonderful offering or will they ultimately go the way of Napster?

Update: Jennifer Nielsen, Marketing Manager for YouTube, writes:

To clarify, YouTube never intended to sell, and never obtained any rights to sell, any User Submissions on CD or other physical media. The sentence you quoted was intended to enable YouTube to syndicate all or part of our website through third party websites (including to enable our embed functionality), in mobile contexts, and similar types of syndication. (...) The sentences that were omitted in the paragraph quoted are [italicized] below in context:

For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service. The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:07:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Americans' DIY evacuations from Lebanon

When government resources did not come to their aid soon enough, some stranded US citizens in Lebanon managed to get out on their own at considerable risk:

Shayna Silverstein and her friends jumped into expensive taxis and sped from Beirut to Damascus, preferring to dodge bombs and bribe border officials rather than wait for the U.S. government to evacuate them. (...)

Mandy Terc, 28, couldn't wait. Last week, the Chicago native kept checking the Web site of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut for information about evacuations. But there were no updates, she said. So, she decided Saturday to join Silverstein and six other Americans fleeing Lebanon.

The trip from Beirut to Damascus normally cost $10. They each paid $200 and piled into a gray Mercedes taxi that sped to the border. "We had to put our faith in our taxi driver," Terc said. "We were very nervous."

They passed an area that had been bombed only an hour earlier. "You could smell it in the air," Silverstein said. They took back roads, avoiding any possible military targets, until finally reaching the Syrian border, where hundreds of other people were trying to flee Lebanon.

Link (Thanks, Cyrus!)

Reader comment: anonymous says,

A grandfather describes how his 16-year-old granddaughter finessed her way (and her little sister's) onto a Greek war ship and out of war-torn Lebanon. Link (Scroll down to the post titled 'Hope Springs Internal...' then scroll back up to the second half of 'Little Doug Wins a Town... And an Update on the Girls' for the happy conclusion.)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:21:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Remixed advertisements photoshopping contest

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: "Bad Ads." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:47:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Audio: Beirut musician/blogger records improv to bombs falling

30-year-old musician, comic book author, and painter Mazen Kerbaj in Beirut has been blogging throughout the recent violence. You can view some of his recent drawings here on his blog.

Listen to a six-minute ambient, improvisational music piece he performed -- accompanied by the sound of falling bombs. "Starry Night" -- Audio link, alternate MP3 link, more links.

Cropped above: "Family Tree," here's the full-size: Link. "This is not a political blog," writes Mazen, and he continues:

for the israeli musicians, painters, writers, thinkers, intellectuals and for all the israeli in israel and around the world who sent us supportive emails and comments,

we know you are here.
we know you are hearing us.
we know you are hearing the bombs getting down on civilians and kids.
kids from lebanon.
kids from israel.
kids from al over the world.

we know that like us, you feel ashamed.

we know you are not a lot.

but we shall meet one day.
when our people will wake up.
in 10.000 years.

Link. (Thanks, Mr Angry)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:00:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video: mapology of the Northeast vs. the Mideast

BoingBoing reader Andy Carvin writes,

Watching all the coverage of the fighting in Lebanon this week, i was curious to know exactly the scale of the distances involved between northern Israel and Beirut. I'd been to the region before but not where the fighting was going on. So I decided to take a screenshot of the war zone from Google Maps and overlay it with a map of part of the northeast US, using the same scale for both images. The result is this short video. Once you've downloaded the video, slide the scrubber back and forth so you can see the two maps overlap each other. For Americans who are used to countries being thousands of miles wide, it's quite astonishing to realize what a compact area of land is affected by the fighting. For example, the distance between Haifa and Beirut isn't much difference than the distance between Providence, Rhode Island and Lowell, Massachusetts.

Link, includes short video.

Reader comment: Edward West says,

I enjoyed Andy Carvin's video of the Middle East being overlayed with the Northeast US, but, being a native Californian, it didn't give me a visceral sense for the scale, not really grokking how far Boston is from Providence. So I overlayed a screenshot of his map on a map of the Bay Area at the same scale. It's a little bit jumbled with the three areas all on top of eachother, but (I think) interesting nonetheless. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:59:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush's grope: "Blitz-Massage" or Vulcan nerve pinch?

Following up on Bush's unsolicited shoulder smoosh of German chancellor Merkel yesterday, Michael Shaughnessy says,

I can only imagine what Chancellor Merkel was thinking and it can't be positive. While 'personal space' is less than what you have in the US, Germans still have social tabus on touching, especially in such a public forum as the G8 summit. Germans may be obsessed with shaking hands, but it is a very brief shake. Even family members will shake hands with each other. Touching of this sort is for -very- close friends in private. At least this produced yet another cool German word: "Blitz-Massage."

Here is an excerpt from an etiquette guide for Germany, interesting and funny stuff: Link.

But Michael was among many BB readers who wrote,

Bush's "Liebes-Attacke" looks more like the Vulcan nerve pinch to me: Link.

Thanks for the image, Michael! Link to full-size, mit super-important analysis.

Previously:
Bush "gropes" Germany's (female) chancellor Merkel

Reader comment: #!chris says,

Hello from old Europe. As a German I must say that Bush meeting Merkel naked in the sauna would be inappropriate because of the lack of seriousness, but _way_ less offensive for her. It's not so much offensive in a sexual way but more in a sexist and arrogant way - at least this is how it is perceived by most (!= all) people I talked to. He decides to cross her physical borders without asking for her consent or without being in a context that implies consent. However, this might be just one of the many cultural misunderstandings you get used to working internationally. Though - I never got a spontaneous massage by any business contact from US yet :-)

Liz says,

With regard to your posting at Boing Boing, isn't the legal term for what Bush did to the German Chancellor "assault & battery"? Although I do understand that those in power are above the law, I think it's always helpful to remember what they might be arrested for in a real democracy, don't you? [smirk]

Adam Garcia says,

I was listening to the excellent podcast of the world by pri (Link) and at ten minutes into the show he went into a story about Angela Merkel doing a weekly podcast to explain her policies to the citizens of Germany. The local bloggers went nuts! According to the show "Germany has practically no tradition of political humor using video images of politicians". Check out this funny video of the blogger remixed version.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:56:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Update on India bans blogs: bloggers want answers

Following up on news earlier this week that the government of India blocked access to a wide array of websites (Link to BB post), Mridula says,

Nandan, an Indian blogger filed an application under Right to Information Act 2005 seeking the government to explain:

"My RTI Application was filed to find out why a blanket block has taken place for Blogspot.com, Typepad.com and Geocities.com. You can find a step by step guide to filing an RTI application (specifically for this ban) here."

The irony is the Government takes one month to reply and then can deny an answer quoting 'National Security' as a reason.

Link.

BoingBoing reader Ace Bhattacharjya writes, "I'm a member of the South Asian Journalists' Association. Please see this clarification from A.R. Ghanashyam, Deputy Consul General, New York (many of you met him at this week at the SAJA Convention and know him through his earlier work as the consul in charge of dealing with the press here)."

From: A.R.Ghanashyam [dcg@indiacgny.org]
Subject: Blog Issue in India

July 19, 2006

Dear Sree:

Reference our discussions and correspondence on the issue of blocking of blogs in India, we had taken up the matter with the authorities concerned in the Department of Telecommunications in the Government of India and the facts are as under:

A two-page write up containing extremely derogatory references to Islam and the holy prophet which had the potential to inflame religious sensitivities in India and create serious law and order problems in the country appeared in a blog facilitated by well known search engines. The matter was immediately taken note of by our CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) was informed of it. The DOT took up the matter forthwith with the search engines and instructions were also issued to all Internet providers to block the two impertinent pages. Because of a technological error, the Internet providers went beyond what was expected of them which in turn resulted in the unfortunate blocking of all blogs. Department of Telecommunications have now clarified the issue and the error is being rectified and it is expected that normalcy in respect of blogs will soon be restored.

This is for your information.

A.R. Ghanashyam
Deputy Consul General
New York

Link.

Hob Gadling says,

Rediff is reporting that India's blog blockade will end in 48 hours. According to a spokesperson of the Internet Service Providers Association of India, the block happened as some ISPs misunderstood the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) notice and blocked entire blog domains instead of individual blogs. Ironically, the report lists the individual sites blocked thus attracting more attention towards them.

Patrix M. of Desipundit and other blogs says,

Just read your Update post on Blogspot ban in India. This newspaper article examines each of those blogs and exposes the inept and ham-handed way in which the censorship was carried out. Almost all of the blogs or rather the content in those blogs have nothing to do with national security of India. I guess India too has their share of Ted Stevens who have scant knowledge of the Internet and to make it worse, they lack reading skills as well. Dang! I am pissed as hell.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:49:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sarcastic comic about computational linguistics (and emo kids)

From XKCD ("A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language"), this most excellent, most sarcastic comic about emo kids and computational linguistics. Link (via JWZ)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:33:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paul Krassner on RU Sirius Show

Boing Boing pal and hero Paul Krassner is interviewed on The RU Sirius Show this week.

RU SIRIUS: You went through the fifties, and you went through the Nixon years, and you’ve been through George W. Which was the worst?

PAUL KRASSNER: These are the worst times I’ve ever lived in. But I’m sure the crusades weren’t that much fun.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:44:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Black light posters from the 1970s

You don't need strychnine-laced acid for this gallery of old black light posters to trigger a bad trip. Link Alt link (Thanks, Coop!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:00:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man catches fish with human-like teeth

Wildlife in Lubbock Texas are "baffled" by this fish that has teeth resembling those of a human that does not practice good dental hygiene. Link (Thanks, Kim!)

Reader comments:

Mike Bishop says:

The fish with human teeth is most likely a sheepshead. We have these all over the place in West Palm Beach where I live. They'll freak you out the first time you catch one and see those human-looking teeth. Check out this article and photo, taken by someone in Texas interestingly enough.

Brett Burton says:

Contrary to what Mike Bishop said, I don't think the fish is a sheepshead. it looks a lot more like a pacu, which is what the article said. Here's a good image of a pacu.

You'll notice that the pacu's face is wider and only the bottom teeth are visible, just like fish found in Texas.

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman says:

Yes, this is a pacu (Piaractus brachypomus). As a strange but infrequent member of the exotic pet fish trade, the pacu, like the piranha, are sometimes dumped in ponds and similar locations. Articles about "piranhas" in the neighborhood stream or swimming hole are an annual exercise for those of us that watch such matters closely, to separate the truly unusual (a sighting of a Lake Monster) from the mundane (another pacu or piranha caught).

It is easy to google (pacu teeth) several photos that look like the one posted, and see a comparable pix here

The media is calling them "human teeth" but they only appear that way. They are, however, merely pacu teeth, which have a Homo sapiens molar-like appearance to human reporters.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:25:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Biomedical Image Awards

The selections in the Wellcome Trust's Biomedical Image Awards 2006 are truly incredible. From bugs to brain cells, colon cancers to collagen fibrils, this look at the natural world just boggles my mind. The images were chosen from recent acquisitions of the Welccome Library's Medical Photographic Library, a wonderful online gallery in its own right containing images from 1,000 years of medical history. Seen here is Ludovic Collin's confocal micrograph of nerve cells. From the image description:

A cluster of special nerve cells called cerebellar granule cells, growing in culture. These cells naturally gather together, and when placed in a culture dish covered in a particular protein, they start sending out long projections (yellow/green) as they would in the developing brain.

Link (via easternblot.net)

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:16:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Caffeine count of popular beverages

I find this chart hard to believe: I know a shot of espresso has less caffeine in it than a cup of drip coffee but does a grande Starbucks drip really have 550mg of caffeine while a single shot of espresso has just 35mg? Link (via Paul Boutin)

Reader comments:

Aaron says:

I saw your caffine post and it reminded me that according to the Erowid drug information site, the L.D. 50 for caffeine (the amount that is lethal for 50% of a test population) is between one and four grams. So, according to the link you posted, a single grande coffee at Starbucks is just over half of the bottom of that range. It's also worth noting that they list anything over 400mg as a "heavy" dose.

John says:

Rule of thumb for coffee and caffeine: the darker the roast, hotter the water and faster the water goes through the coffee, the lower the caffeine. Hence, espresso is generally the lowest caffeinated (real, non-decaf) coffee drink you can get.

Also, some recent studies have shown that the caffeine in a cup of coffee can vary wildly from cup to cup, even from the same pot. Well, this last bit of info I learned recently from the interweb, so it may be bogus.

Rigel says:

LD50s are typically computed from animal models, which may or may [not] vary in their extensibility to human data.

Also, not just is that 550mg figure very likely completely wrong, but the variability in caffeine content in a cup of brewed coffee is HUGE, as shown in this paper.

Sean says:

I too question the original site but I also question the Erowid source. Using the rat LD50 data from Erowid I get:

e.g. a 150lb person 150lbs = 68.04kg

68.0388555kg * 192mg/kg of body weight = 13,063.4603mg

or about 13 grams, not 1-4.

I know this is using rats and the method of administration is not mentioned so from wikipedia:

The minimum lethal dose of caffeine ever reported is 3,200 mg, administered intravenously. The LD50 of caffeine is estimated between 13 and 19 grams for oral administration for an average adult.

So a person would have to drink over 100 cups of coffee within a small time span to reach the LD50. That reminds me of the Futurama episode "300 big boys".

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:46:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stella Im Hultberg's beautiful drawings

Stella Im Hultberg is an incredible painter and illustrator based in New York City. Interestingly, her background is in toy design and industrial design and she only started showing in galleries last year. Her beautiful work makes me think of Egon Schiele and Ralph Steadman meeting in one of Aubrey Beardsley's absinthe dreams. Seen here, "after my dreams are dreamed out," 2006, ink, watercolor, tea on paper, 10" x 8".
Link (via Drawn!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:14:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Self-Destruction Button and USB hub

This is a USB 2.0 hub disguised as a "Self Destruction Button." Pushing the button plays sound files too. Available in Japan or online through GeekStuff4U.com for $61.39.
Link (via Akihabara News)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:42:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Digital Hero wristcam

The Digital Hero is an $80 camera that straps to your wrist and pivots up for shooting. Apparently it's designed for extreme athletes to document their activities like skiing, skateboarding, surfing, and, er, race car driving. The company claims that the Hero is shock-proof and waterproof down to 30 feet. Still, the resolution is just 640 x 480 and the memory is maxed out at 32MB. I kinda dig the bulk of it though.
Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:18:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Human space invaders

Guillaume Reymond and his collaborators at NOTsoNOISY created this amazing stop-motion video of space invaders. Sixty-seven people act as the "pixels." The three minute video took 4 hours to film. It was a project for the festival Belluard Bollwerk International earlier this month in Fribourg, Switzerland. Last year, the group produced a similar piece based on Pong.
Link to video on YouTube, Link to project page

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:51:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Douglas Rushkoff fiction in Nerve

Douglas Rushkoff wrote a funny short story about sex in the future, called Inbox. It's about a 70-year-old in the year 2033 who, thanks to life extension and rejuvenation technology, looks 30. The story is presented through the main character's email inbox.

Date: March 3, 2033
From: Tally Stern
To: Mark Johnson
Subject: last try

Okay, so I Googled you last night even though I promised I wouldn't. But you haven't emailed in a week so I figured all bets were off.

Why didn't you just tell me you were 75? I mean, it's not like I'm looking for a serious relationship now, anyway. When you didn't know your way around campus I guessed you were an over-40, anyway. And I'm open-minded. I mean, my parents probably wouldn't want me going out with someone older than them. Or than their parents, probably. But they just don't get it. With nano, it's just a number, right?

I should've figured it out when I saw those White Stripes songs in your playlist. But lots of people my age listen to oldies, too. I mean, people really rocked back then, too. They had war and everything to think about.

Or is it me? Just write back, okay? Don't discriminate because of my age. You wouldn't have wanted me to fake it, would you? Besides, I've got to learn, somehow, don't I?

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:31:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush's threat to veto stem cell funding is morally bankrupt

Scott Rosenberg of Salon has an excellent blog entry explaining why Bush's threat to veto federal funding of stem cell research is shamefully ridiculous.

Here is why Bush's position is a joke: Thousands and thousands of embryos are destroyed every year in fertility clinics. They are created in petri dishes as part of fertility treatments like IVF; then they are discarded. If Bush and his administration truly believe that destroying an embryo is a kind of murder, they shouldn't be wasting their time arguing about research funding: They should immediately shut down every fertility clinic in the country, arrest the doctors and staff who operate them, and charge all the wannabe parents who have been wantonly slaughtering legions of the unborn. But of course they'll never do such a thing. (Nor, to be absolutely clear, do I think they should.) Bush could not care less about this issue except as far as it helps burnish his pro-life credentials among his "base."

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:24:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jan Svankmajer's animation

In 1992 Czech animator Jan Svankmajer made a surreal movie trilogy called Food. They combined live action with claymation and are exceedingly weird and funny. WFMU's great Beware of the Blog has them available for viewing as QuickTime videos.

Part Two, Lunch: The best of the three parts, in which an inattentive waiter forces two diners to partake in lunch without food. They eat everything on their table - the flowers, the tablecloth, their plates, their clothes, and in a nod to Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, their shoes. But it doesn't stop there.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:16:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Book about boy who sailed around the world alone

Chris Meadows says: "On the subject of sailing around the world, here's a plug for The Boy Who Sailed Around the World Alone by Robin Lee Graham. It's an autobiographical tale, illustrated with copious photos, of a teenager who became the youngest person (at least at the time) to sail solo around the world. I read it as a kid, and found it really fascinating. It's out of print now, but you can still find used copies if you look. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:18:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pew study on bloggers

The amazing Pew Internet Life project has just released a study on blogging in the USA -- it's full of really chunky stats compiled from phone interviews with bloggers: "most bloggers are primarily interested in creative, personal expression -- documenting individual experiences, sharing practical knowledge, or just keeping in touch with friends and family."

* The most distinguishing characteristic of bloggers is their youth. More than half (54%) of bloggers are under the age of 30. Like the internet population in general, however, bloggers are evenly divided between men and women, and more than half live in the suburbs. Another third live in urban areas and a scant 13% live in rural regions.

* Another distinguishing characteristic is that bloggers are less likely to be white than the general internet population. Sixty percent of bloggers are white, 11% are African American, 19% are English-speaking Hispanic and 10% identify as some other race. By contrast, 74% of internet users are white, 9% are African American, 11% are English-speaking Hispanic and 6% identify as some other race...

* 55% of bloggers blog under a pseudonym, and 46% blog under their own name.

* 84% of bloggers describe their blog as either a “hobby” or just “something I do, but not something I spend a lot of time on.”

* 59% of bloggers spend just one or two hours per week tending their blog. One in ten bloggers spend ten or more hours per week on their blog.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:38:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Windows XP sounds created with warez

Windows XP ships with system sounds that were created with a cracked version of Sony's SoundForge program -- and the sounds contain a thank-you screen acknowledging the warez dood who cracked the Sony program.

At first, that sounds anything but spectacular. It seems as if the Microsoft musician or the freelance musician commissioned by Microsoft used the Sony-made software " Sound Forge " (formerly Sonic) in its 4.5 version. Sound Forge is a tool for professionals and enables users to create WAV, AIFF, MP3 and other music files priced at $400.

On its face, all that's not unusual: Microsoft uses professional software. Who would've thought? But wait a minute, who or what is "DeepzOne"?

Bingo!

DeepzOne is (or at least was) member of the Warez group Radium that had specialized on cracking music software. Along with a person using the alias "Sandor," he was also co-founder of this group, which was established in 1997( see in this interview ). In addition, it was DeepzOne who started circulating the cracked 4.5 version of Sound Forge a few years ago.

Link (Thanks, Raul!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:34:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kiwi organization promotes hitting children

A Christian organization in New Zealand devoted to promoting beating children has produced a booklet with instructions on how to hurt your child, and is touring a Swedish lawyer around NZ who argues that Sweden's anti-hitting-your-kid law ruined Sweden.

Mr Smith said last night the brochure was written for a Christian audience and outlined the biblical philosophy of child punishment. Many Christians did not want to see smacking banned as that would take away parental authority, but he conceded the brochure would appear as "total nonsense" to non-Christians.

Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:30:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Around the world in an amphibious Jeep

Commenting on Cheyenne Morrison's letter about the book An Island to Oneself, Scott Miller says: "Another great story is Ben Carlin and his trip around the world in an amphibious Jeep in the 1950's. There are two books about the trip. Read the books, you'll love them."

Here is the story. The book.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:32:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiki Night at Egyptian Theater in Hollywood July 23

If you live in LA, you will undoubtedly want to come to the Enchanted Tiki Luau Night at the Egyptian Theatre (6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028) on Sunday, July 23. One of my favorite performers, King Kukulele will be there. (Do you remember this commercial he appeared in?)

Join us in the Egyptian Courtyard for a Royal Southern Californian-style Luau between a double feature of island adventures exotic musical entertainment from King Kukelele and his Friki Tikis There will also be Tiki vendors and other special surprises in the courtyard from 1:00 PM till we shut it down.

Tiki Vendors to include: Tiki Tony, Adrift Clothing, Crazy Al's Bone Productions, "Dumb Angel" Magazine authors Dominic Priore and Brian Chidister, Tiki Diablo, Falling Cocos, Coconut Kids Clothing,Tiki Farm and the American Cinematheque selling posters from our fabulous collection!

Separate ticket prices for the films. Or enjoy just the luau and the music, or buy a ticket which includes all the films and the luau. For movies, General: $12.00, Sr/Students: $10.00, AC Member: $9.00 Luau Dinner Only: $15.00 or Movies & Luau: General: $25.00, Sr/Student: $23.00 and Member: $22.00.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:20:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes

John Kricfalusi announced the release of his new double DVD: Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes. I got my sticky pseudopods on an advance copy and I'm quaking in awe at the fantastic cornucopia of top-notch entertainment emanating from these shiny plastic discs.

INSIDE:
3 Spike episodes
3 never been seen episodes
9 half hours total cartoon product.

Naked girls (by the # 1 cute girl artist-Katie Rice)
The 3 Things
Ralph Bakshi animated
First on screen live animated birth

Lots of supplemental material:
I introduce each cartoon and tell you the back story of how we came up with it. I even thrust my groin a couple times.

Meet the cartoonists-Eddie, Katie, Luke, Vincent, Annmarie, Steve (of Asifa Archives fame!) and Eric Goddamn Bauza himself!

A rare personal appearance by Dave Feiss (creator of Cow and Chicken)

Weird Al live justifies the existence of the set!

Animatics
background paintings
model sheets
storyboards

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:00:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

OpenOffice's anti-MSFT bus ads in Redmond

Wade sez, "Sun Microsystems has posted extremely pointed OpenOffice.org ads on the sides of transit buses that serve Redmond. Slogans include, 'Stop giving a bully your lunch money,' 'Compatible with expensive, closed, memory-loving software,' and 'Prehistoric reptilians welcome.' Booya!" Link (Thanks, Wade!)

Update: Creede sez, "Just a quick note from a guy who takes the bus to Microsoft on a regular basis. I haven't done an in-depth survey to confirm that this is the case, but it certainly seems like those OpenOffice ads *only appear on bus routes specifically going to the Microsoft campus.*"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:13:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Record player made of paper

This design for a paper phonograph is elegant and sweet:

To play the record the handle needs to be turned in a clockwise direction at a steady 331/3 rpm. The paper cone then acts as a pick up and amplifies the sound enough to make it audible.

Link (via Red Ferret)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:09:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a bookshelf out of books

Here's a great project for those giant, awful hardcover books you find at library sales: convert them into wall-mounted bookshelves. Link (via Make Blog)

Update: Here's the inspiration for this

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:06:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pac Man with crickets controlling the ghosts

Wim van Eck's grad project for the Masters program in Media Technology at the Netherlands' Leiden University was a version of Pac Man that used crickets to control the ghosts:

Up till now we had one-way interaction: the game play depends on the movement of the animals. But if we want somewhat more intelligent game play, the animals should also react to the actions within the game. It is possible to attract or repel an animal with stimuli such as sound, vibration, temperature, pheromones, light, electricity and smell. In nature, vibration of the ground warns crickets for an approaching predator. We chose to use this behaviour to stimulate the crickets in the game. We divided the floor of the maze into six parts, each with a motor attached underneath that vibrates when switched on. When the crickets should chase Pac-Man, we switch on the motors furthest away from his location in the maze, so the crickets will flee in his direction. When Pac-Man eats a power-up, the crickets are supposed to run away from him, so we then vibrate the part of the floor that contains Pac-Man’s position.

Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:04:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AOL's "customer retention" dirty tricks manual

Consumerist has gotten hold of a copy of AOL's "retention" manual for customer service reps. This is the manual that the notorious AOL rep was working from when he abused a customer who recorded and published his phone conversation. Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:01:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush "gropes" Germany's (female) chancellor Merkel

Yesterday's news from the G8 summit was all shit. Today, blogger Taylor Marsh posts photos of another "candid moment" in which President Bush gives an unsolicited, surprise neck-massage to German prime minister Angela Merkel. The Los Angeles Times reported:

"Entering the meeting room, as relayed by a Russian television camera, Bush headed directly behind the chancellor, reached out and, placing both hands on the collar of her gold jacket, gave her a short massage just below the neck. She smiled."

IANAFRE (I am not a facial recognition expert), but that doesn't look like much of a smile to me, or a happy hand-gesture following. What odd manners the leader of the Western world has. Link (Thanks, Stefan Jones)

Reader comment: Alex Steffen says,

There's video on this page that makes it clear how inappropriate it was... the Germans are calling it a "Liebes-Attacke"

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:36:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Image of the day: children send messages on missiles

I don't know the whole story behind these images, but they say a lot on their own. Here, some Israeli girls have apparently been told to "sign" bombs directed at Lebanon, writing messages like "from Israel with love." Link (via lawrenceofcyberia and thismodernworld) Update: That link keeps crashing my browser. Here are better links, to the source of these photos: one, two, and another. Caption, via AP, "Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006." AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner.

Reader comment: Chris Maytag says,

In your boingboing post "Image of the day: children send messages on missiles", the objects in the picture are alternately referred to as "missiles", "bombs" and "shells". These are three very different terms, and it's worth keeping things straight.

A "missile" is a projectile, powered during flight by either solid of liquid-fueled engines, with a weaponized payload of some kind (example: SCUDs, 'Katyushas'). A "bomb" is a weapon dropped from an aircraft or other airborne platform and guided by ballistics alone or a combination of ballistics and fin-based guidance (example: JDAMs, unguided 500lb mk82 bomb).

A "shell" is essentially a bullet. It is fired from a tube (cannon, howitzer or mortar) il it either hits a target or explodes due to to one of a variety of triggers (flight time, position, etc). Contents of shells range from pure metal (as in an early, simple cannonball) to explosives (as in the high explosive and shaped-charge shells generaly used by tanks) to advanced anti-personnel munitions, which explode and release smaller objects (much like a shotgun shell releases 'shot').

Why is this worth paying attention to? Because there's enough misinformation in the MSM already. By the way, the objects being signed by the Israeli girls appear to be 155mm howitzer or tank shells.

Amy M. says,

The Getty caption I have seen for an image similar to this (ie of the same girls) reads: "Israeli girls write messages in Hebrew on shells ready to be fire by mobile artillery unit toward Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon 17 July 2006"

I assume this means they are tank shells. I disagree with Chris Maytag: I don't think it matters what sort of weapon these are. The fact is, they are deadly weapons intended to kill and maim, and they are being signed by children. I fail to see how anyone can justify this, even if they support the right of the Israeli state to carry out these attacks.

This is no different to the images of Palestinian toddlers dressed as pretend suicide bombers.

Aryeh Abramovitz says,

This unfortunate 'photo op' has taken on a life of its own, with the meme that bloodthirsty Israeli children are sending a message of destruction to their Lebanese neighbors. Neither the hebrew or english says anything like "From Israel with Love". I can make out "Nazrala with.. from Israel", which I assume might be "[To] Nazrala with [love] from Israel". From the little I can make out, all the messages in hebrew are similarly addressed to Nasrala.

[Ed. note: Hassan Nasrallah is the leader of Hezbollah.] Adrian Midgley says,

Perhaps a bit pedantic, but a missile is of course anything which pursues a trajectory - as in being thrown, fired etc, so journalists or subs who pick that one word to describe gun projectiles, freefall bombs and ballistic rockets with warheads are not being unreasonable in their use of English...

And of course the one thing that a shell is not is pure metal. The distinction was between a cannonball, and a projectile made to be fired from a gun which was merely a shell containing something - gunpowder to start with.

One effect of removal of foreign nationals from the Lebanon is that there will be less hindrance on random bombardment of it with whatever anyone chooses to project, not that I'm not pleased to see HMS Gloucester hauling our citizens out of Beirut or that I wouldn't have discovered an appointment elsewhere if I'd been in the target zone myself.

Update: Lisa Goldman of Global Voices has more on the background behind these photographs: Link.

Update 2: Here's a related post at The Guardian, with more background on the circumstances under which the images were taken. (thanks, Dave)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:14:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blogging photos from bombed Lebanon

The Flickr stream for blog/online newsletter "Arabist" (maintained by Issandr El Amrani, a journalist in Cairo) is filling up with photos taken on the ground in bombed-out areas of Lebanon. Link to stream, includes extremely disturbing, explicit images of burnt corpses. Image: a destroyed home; residents were evidently reading the Quran when the bombs hit. (Thanks, Sassan)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:13:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chris Cunningham's new grossout music video

The latest music video directed by "Rubber Johnny" creator Chris Cunningham: "Sheena Is A Parasite," from the UK band The Horrors. As one Brit YouTube commentser wondered aloud, how many (s)quid were in the budget for this one?

Link to video (anyone have a better version? YouTube craps up the strobe effect that makes this video so visually interesting), here's a related post on elastico, and here's a previous BB post about Cunningham. (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Update: here's a way better quality video link, and lo, ye shall find alternate video links here in better quality than the YouTube url. Apparently, Cunningham first hooked up with the band via MySpace. (Thanks, Katzenjammer and James Battersby!)

Reader comment: David Stein says,

The movie clip via the alternate link is in Quicktime, and the standard Quicktime plugin that plays the clip will allow you to - gulp! - step through any part of the video frame-by-frame. I am a big believer in the "less is more" theory of horror, but many of the frames in this clip are even *more* macabre and horrifying!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:16:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great food-review prose from folks who aren't food critics

I've been chowing down lots of food-related prose recently. Reviewing gadgets is all well and good, but I generally have to return the goodies to their makers when the review is over, which means I never get to eat them. Food reviewers must live happier lives, perhaps even more so when they're noshing on Treos and PSPs.

So my friend Sean pointed me to this one graf on a guy's blog which may just be the awesomest flavor description snippet of all time -- despite the fact that it's not a food review but a personal account of an appendectomy. Bad News Hughes, a blogger fond of generous pottymouthery, has just had his appendix out. He wakes up:

As dawn broke it was once again time to have more fluids dripped into me, while other were sucked out. I woke up with a hard-on, which was a good sign. Not that I was expecting them to chop off my dick, but, you know... Accidents happen... They gave me some sugar-free raspberry Jell-O, and let me tell you — your ass goes a solid 24 without food and that goddamn sugar-free raspberry Jell-O is like having Osama Bin Flavor crash a plane full of celebration into your mouth.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:50:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Over 100 Iraqi civilians killed per day in June

A UN report released today says over 3,000 civilians were killed in Iraq last month alone, and nearly 6,000 in May and June combined. Link to report text at Reliefweb, and here's an excerpt:

Insurgent, militia and terrorist attacks continued unabated in many parts of Iraq, especially in Baghdad and in the central and western regions, with an increasing sectarian connotation. A total of 5,818 civilians were reportedly killed and at least 5,762 wounded during May and June 2006.(1) Killings, kidnappings and torture remain widespread. Fear resulting from these and other crimes continued to increase internal displacement and outflows of Iraqis to neighbouring countries. The negative effect of violence on professional categories, targeted by sectarian and criminal violence or displaced as a result, coupled with inadequate provision of basic services, also affected the level of education and health care received by the population. Women, children and vulnerable groups, such as minorities, internally displaced and disabled persons continue to be directly affected by the violence and the ongoing impunity for human rights violations. Organized crime and corruption have persistently added to the overall insecurity.

Here's an article about the findings by Kirk Semple at the NYT.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:52:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to "gain flesh"

"A SKINNY man hasn't a chance."

A chance to what? To make it with the delectably curvy woman shown here? On the contrary! She's says "I'll tell you how to gain pounds quick!" See, this woman digs skinny guys. She likes to help them become big and strong.

The moral of the story: no matter your phenotype, there's someone out there ready to love you for who you are (or for what they might be able to mold you into becoming). From the archives of Modern Mechanix blog.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:43:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Deja-Katrina? US rescue bogs down in Lebanon

Perhaps we need a template for "US government does lame job rescuing citizens from wars or acts of God" stories -- just like we do for each newly-leaked domestic surveillance program. Snip from Los Angeles Times article:

Thousands of Americans whose vacations and business trips to Lebanon have degenerated with sickening speed into stints in a battle zone remained stranded here under Israeli bombardment Monday, their frustration and anger mounting because the U.S. government hasn't gotten them out faster.

Waiting around Beirut with bags packed and fingers crossed, U.S. citizens derided the embassy for busy phone lines, a lack of information and gnawing uncertainty over when and whether they will get out. Hundreds were expected to be shipped to Cyprus today, but how long the full evacuation will take remains uncertain.

Link (thanks, Cyrus)

Previously: U.S. gov't billing citizens for evacuation from Beirut

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:00:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

With Google Earth, defense analysts spot North Korea missile sites

Brendan from Radio Open Source says, "Colin, an intern here, was poking around North Korea on Google Earth and discovered that defense analysts -- active duty and retired -- are identifying missile installations and sub bases flagged by civilians. From a retired Army satellite analyst..."

There are areas in several countries that have been left at low resolution at the request of the countries affected for security purposes. Since the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea [N Korea] is a secretive state that does not have regular contact with the rest of the world, they have not requested any areas to be excluded.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:13:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Update on India censoring blogs

Over at the Chennai (India) metblog, Nancy Gandhi writes:

According to a report on NDTV 24X7, an Indian news channel, the Indian government's clampdown on blogsites (and some websites) is NOT connected to the recent blasts in Mumbai, but is an effort to curb the propagation of religious extremism on the Net. If that's true, the ban may not be lifted any time soon. The Indian government, however, has yet to issue an official statement on the subject.

If it's not clear from what has been said so far, the Indian ban applies to ALL blogs from these sites, not just those originating in India: ALL blogspot, typepad, geocities blogs worldwide. If you have a blog from one of these providers anywhere in the world, I cannot read you.

It's odd that we can still post to our own blogs, and read the blogs that we have had the foresight to subscribe to through RSS. These loopholes may be closed soon, if this is to be a long-term policy. The list of blocked sites includes:

• hinduunity.org
• hinduhumanrights.org
• princesskimberley.com
• bloodspot.com
• dalitstan.org
• clickatell.com
• blogspot.com
• geocities.com
• typepad.com

Link (thanks, Sean Bonner)
Previously: Indian gov blocks Blogspot, Typepad, Geocities blogs

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:06:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yeti skin rug

UK artist Debra Swann transforms everyday materials "into fantastical objects" such as Sellotape animal exoskeletons, faux taxidermy made from dried plants, and this beautiful Yeti Skin Rug.

From Swann's artist statement:

I attempt to investigate my own imagination and explore the boundaries between the everyday and the subconscious or metaphysical worlds of fantasy. I am interested in how science tries to explain or make sense of the world and the way