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Thursday, August 31, 2006

Artificial cartoon-character skeletons

This Korean art exhibition explores the fictional anatomy of cartoon characters, with elaborate faked-up skeletons for Looney Toons characters, anatomical drawings of Mickey and friends, and many other artifacts from the study of toon anatomy. Link (Thanks, Noah!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:17:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kick-ass free software/open source con coming to Toronto, Oct 26-27

Toronto's Seneca College is throwing an amazing-sounding free/open source software conference called FSOSS on Oct 26-27, to be held on the York University campus. They've done tons of outreach to local open source groups, and kept the admission down to $20 to ensure wide participation. A substantial number of senior Firefox developers will be there (if the schedule holds, they'll launch Firefox 2.0 from the event), and Mozilla is the big sponsor of the event. The speaker list is quite impressive as well: Chris Blizzard, Nat Friedman, Mike Shaver,  Neil Deakin, Phil Schwan, Marcel Gangne, Marcus Bornfreund to name a few. Organizer Bob Boyczuk (also a talented sf writer) notes:

* We want to be inclusive; we've been working hard to reach out to the sundry OS groups in Toronto and get them involved - and to introduce them to one another. In fact, I've been working hard to attend all the pub nights the various groups hold!

* We want to provide a focus for people looking to plug into projects like OLPC, Firefox, and Linux, and into groups like Creative Commons.

* We want to bridge the gap between content people (artists, writers, etc.) and developers.

* We want to make people aware of the larger OS issues like licensing and DRM.

Link (Thanks, Bob!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:43:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

US to spend $20M to generate positive press spin on Iraq

Snip from Washington Post story:

U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.

The contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide "public relations products" that would improve coverage of the military command's performance, according to a statement of work attached to the proposal.

Link (Thanks, Hal Bringman)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:55:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Videoblogger Josh Wolf released on bail from Bay Area jail

Videoblogger and freelance journalist Josh Wolf was granted bail by a federal appeals court today. He's been in jail since August 1 for refusing to comply with government demands that he hand over video he shot at a political protest in San Francisco last year (earlier BB posts: 1, 2, 3).

In granting bail, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said the government had not shown that Wolf's appeal of a contempt-of-court ruling was frivolous or filed with the sole purpose of delaying proceedings. Snip from a report by Bob Egelko at the SF Chronicle:

The court said another panel would rule on Wolf's appeal of the contempt order while he is free on bail. If he loses the appeal, he could be sent back to federal prison until the grand jury's term expires next July. Wolf's attorney said he would be released on his own recognizance, possibly later today.

Wolf, 24, took videos of a July 2005 anarchist demonstration in San Francisco's Mission District against an economic summit that was taking place in Scotland. During the protest, a policeman was hit on the head and suffered a fractured skull. A federal grand jury is investigating the alleged attempted burning of a police car, which federal prosecutors say would be a federal crime because the police department receives federal funds.

Some of Wolf's footage was shown on local television, but he refused to surrender his outtakes, claiming a journalist's right to withhold unpublished material as well as confidential sources. Those rights are protected by California's shield law, but it does not apply in federal court. U.S. District Judge William Alsup rejected Wolf's constitutional defenses, denied bail and ordered him jailed until he agreed to turn over the videos.

His appeal was endorsed by numerous news organizations and by the Society of Professional Journalists, which contributed $31,000 to defray his legal expenses.

Link to story. Photo: National Lawyers Guild. (Thanks, Violet Blue)

Previously:
# Blogger jailed for refusing to hand over video
# Videoblogger's protest footage demanded by FBI
# Free Josh Wolf: update on jailed San Francisco blogger

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:09:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lockheed wins $4B NASA deal for "Apollo on steroids," Orion

NASA today announced that Lockheed Martin will design and build the agency's next-gen human space exploration craft, Orion. The initial contract value was reported to be approximately $4 billion.

Link to press release, here's a wire service report via NYT, and here's more at the NASA website.

Image: (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press) "NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Doug Cooke, left, and Orion project manager Skip Hatfield today with a scale model of the Orion spacecraft."

Earthlings will have much cause for cheer if whatever Lockheed comes up with is half as funky as an earlier starship Orion from 40 years ago.

This one was celebrated with joyous frugging in the pre-Star-Trek "space opera" Raumpatrouille ("Space Patrol," 1965-1966). Previous BB posts mit dem kitschy videos: one, two.

Here's what the Orion looked like in that TV series:

Reader comment: Jay M. in Minneapolis says,

It's interesting that NASA has resurrected the "Orion" moniker for their latest moonshot. Before Apollo (and even before NASA was NASA) the US floated the idea of spaceships powered by atomic explosions. The idea was not only plausible, but on the drawing boards! It turned out to be not-so-popular, esp. in light of their incredible destructive power. Physicist Freeman Dyson was one of the scientists who worked on this project. His son George Dyson detailed the early exploits of the original Orion project in his book "Project Orion." Another good clearinghouse for Orion info: orion.ttsw.com

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:59:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark Warner's Second Life appearance - transcript

Wagner James Au, fresh from Governor Mark Warner's appearance in the online world Second Life, sends us this: "A lightly edited transcript of Governor Warner's whistle stop appearance in Second Life is up now, a brief but wide-ranging interview on some of the important issues of the day, conveyed through the Governor's avatar to an audience of some 50 SL residents-- including Senator Ted Steven's version of the Internet, in avatar form."

MW: Next week, I hope to lay out some immediate steps we can take to better protect our homeland and ensure that the resources we spent get real results...

Taking Nap [from the audience]: Governor, do you favor fixed timetable in Iraq? Over here!

HA: Save audience questions for the next event with the Governor, please!

MW: ... But I also think the fifth anniversary of 9-11 serves as an opportunity to challenge Americans to remember that sense of civic engagement we all felt in the aftermath of that tragic day. As I've said elsewhere, the fact that the President didn't call upon that spirit to take on some of the major issues, from our energy crisis to restoring America's stature in the world, was a missed opportunity.

Link (Thanks, James!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:30:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-DRM day coming on Oct 3 - mark your calendars

Defective by Design, who campaign against DRM, have declared October 3 to be the the Day Against DRM and they're seeking your ideas for protest actions:

"If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed" - Disney Executive.

Defeating DRM is all about awareness. The direct actions that we have taken are all about this. Whether it means protesting outside Apple Stores in Hazmat suits or getting HUGE press coverage for announcing the Bono petition (sign it now). Action gets attention, and creates space for debate. And as our friends at Disney recognize, if there is a debate, we will have won.

Clear your schedule for a world wide day of action against DRM. On Tuesday October 3rd we will all be taking action to raise the stakes and attempt to increase awareness to the threats of DRM - in a very significant way.

Submit your ideas now and by October 3rd we will be ready to make it happen. Tell us how you think we can, together, raise awareness to defeat DRM. We will award prizes for the best ideas.

Link (via Digg)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:24:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

To do in SF: New tech bubble, ergo new reason to drink.

Scott Beale says,

Not only is there a new Bubble, but web geeks are happily celebrating the fact that they are in the middle of it.

Tonight, Thursday, August 31st, will be the first ever Bubble Thursday. The bubble bursting drinking will begin at 7pm at Dada in San Francisco.

Link. Photo, by Scott Beale: Kevin Burton of Tailrank at the Naked Conversations TechCrunch Party.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:22:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What would the TSA do about exploding ID?

Quinn Norton has a delicious hypothetical:

I think someone should try to blow up a plane with a piece of ID, just to watch the TSA's mind implode.

Could the TSA muster the will to fight a war on identification? Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:21:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

German sex-ed book for kids is oddly illustrated (UPDATED)

Update: After the jump, a full English translation in which we learn the meaning of the obscure biological term "Mother-Cake."

BoingBoing reader Hamilton says,

During a "writing for the web" course I was taking, the professor did a Google search for "Untitled Document" to illustrate a point.

One of the first results was entitled "Where Babies Come From In Germany."

With a title like that how could I resist clicking further? What I found was one of the strangest picture books I have ever seen.

Link. Look, li'l baby goatse!

Reader comment: Brian Johnson says,

That German sex ed book for kids? I don't know if it was originally German or what, but I first discovered that book in the kids section of a book store in England. I was about 7 or 8 years old at the time and THAT book, weird illustrations and all, clued me in to EXACTLY how babies were conceived. I was stunned at the time. That was a revelation that obliterated the concept of "girl cooties".

One bit of text that stuck with me through the years was something along the lines that "when the man gets a loving feeling, his penis becomes big" and cue the "wokka-chikka wokka-chikka wow wow" music... What a weird blast from the past!

Till Westermayer says,

What a pity planetdan.net doesn't tell us where this book is coming from. The text is German, ok, but the visual style of the pictures (e.g. the flower-power VW Beetle) as well as some elements of the text suggest for me that this book is from the 1970s. If that is true, I guess, that explains why it is like it is. I mean, that's the time of Willy McBride and -- I don't know if it was translated, and I can't find scans on the net -- Günter Amendts book "Sexfront" (that's more or less the same as the scanned childrens book, only without the baby, and with real photos of naked adults and also naked kids, and more slang in the text ...). Born 1975, I find it quite difficult to image a society were books like those were accepted by the societal mainstream. Even if Germany is not as puritanistic as the USA are, as far as I know, someone who would write such books in such a style today would be looked at rather strange.

So, to cut it short: it would be great if BoingBoing could research from when the book the pictures are from really is, and what the context is.

Tim says,

It appears that it is originally Danish by Per Holm Kudsen. Here is a cite from WorldCat: The true story of how babies are made, by Per Holm Knudsen
* Type: English : Book Book : Juvenile audience
* Publisher: Chicago, Childrens Press [1973, ©1971]
* ISBN: 0516036408
* OCLC: 549281

progosk says,

photographer Will (not Willy!) McBride's extraordinary sex-ed book "Zeig Mal!" (Show Me!) had to be hidden when friends from my 1970's German neighborhood came around; yet if there's anything shocking about it, it's its honesty in focussing on the emotional intensity that should surely be highlighted in any sex-ed. the link is to an article (in German) relating the plight of McBride's book; it includes some of the (sadly NSFW) photos. PDF Link.

Update: Whoah, we now have an English translation of the text for anyone who'd like to know how German goatse-babies are made. After the jump...

More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:54:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Who's your Flat Daddy? 2D proxies of deployed troops ease pain

The Army National Guard is providing life-sized photo replicas of deployed service members to families as a way to ease the pain of separation. So far, the Guard has paid for large-sized photo prints of 100 troop members. Families receive supplies to attach the photo to a foam board. Cutouts are also provided to parents and family members of childless service members. Snip:

Lt. Col. Randall Holbrook travels just about everywhere with his wife Mary and their two sons, Justin, 14, and Logan, 5.

He’s quietly in the background on family outings to the grocery store, to restaurants, camping, even on Mary’s most recent visit to her gynecologist.

Randall has little to say because he’s a ‘‘Flat Daddy,’’ a two-dimensional foam board likeness from the waist up of the Maine Army National Guard officer from Hermon who was sent to Afghanistan in January with the 240th Engineer Group of Augusta.

Link, alternate link. Image: Bridget Brown / Bangor Daily News via AP. "Logan, 3, and Justin Holbrook, 14, rode to dinner with the life-size cutout of their father, Lieutenant Colonel Randall Holbrook, a Maine National Guardsman from Hermon, Maine." (Thanks, Bonnie and DL)

Reader comment: George Murray says,

Can you think of anything more likely to royally fuck a kid up for life than a cardboard cutout of their father in a forced rictus grin? I mean, it would be like perpetually having that scary clown from Poltergeist following you everywhere. Look at the face of the kid on the left. That boy is headed into the arms of a soon-to-be-wealthy therapist. What happens when junior falls down and breaks his arm and flat daddy is still smiling? What happens when the kid spills grapejuice on flat daddy and flat daddy starts to warp and peel? What happens when flat daddy gets bent at the neck and his head starts to loll like overcooked asparagus? Soooo fuuuucked uuuup.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:45:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burning Man: Current TV broadcasts live from the playa

Scott Beale says,

Burning Man 2006 is now in full swing and Current TV is on the Playa and have setup an online television station, TV Free Burning Man.

They have been shooting video, doing interviews and uploading a daily show from Black Rock City. They will be doing a live broadcast the burn on Saturday night (September 2nd) starting at 9pm PST/12am EST.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:27:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Katrina, one year later: Two new disaster comms projects

Image: "People's Hurricane Relief Katrina Anniversary March from the Industrial Canal in the Lower 9th Ward to Congo Square in Armstrong Park," 08-29-2006, by NOGoddess (via FixTheGulf.com).

Brian Oberkirch of the Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog shares news of two new disaster communications projects for which geek-minded volunteers are sought:

# Fix the Gulf

As we saw with the Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog, blogs can be efficient tools for gathering current local news and matching resources with needs. There is still a mountain of work to do in all the communities along the coast, and this new project aims to 1) keep the spotlight on the continued disaster, 2) identify specific local needs and match those with people who want to provide help and 3) spotlight other bloggers, videobloggers, podcasters and locals using these tools to spread the word.

I'm looking for editors in each of the affected towns who want to help me aggregate information and outreach for their areas. In addition to the blog, we have a wiki we'll use to let people post up their own links, requests, material, etc.

# HurricaneMind

When a storm comes, we all spend the week asking each other what we're going to do about it. "Are you leaving? Getting your supplies gathered to hunker down? Boarding up? Where you headed?" And so on. HurricaneMind takes that process and writes it large. The idea is to take the wisdom of crowds and apply it to hurricane prep. In addition to telling you what your neighbors are thinking, I'd like the app to map hotel room availability, gather current open evacuation routes, show you where plywood and other supplies are still available and aggregate news sources in one central spot.

I've started a blog and wiki to get a team together to help me build and launch this community service focused application here:

Love to hear from you if any of this strikes a chord. Don't forget about us down here.

Image: Second line musicians, dancers, and memorial participants at the New Orleans Superdome one year after Katrina, 08-29-2006. Shot by NOGoddess.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:20:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Keith Olbermann: a special commentary, indeed.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann delivered a particularly impassioned "special commentary" last night in response to this week's speech by Secty. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Here's a partial transcript of Olbermann's response on "Countdown":

[A]bout Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism." As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that - though probably not in the way he thought he meant it. This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral." Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men; Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."

Link to QT/WMV video and transcript. Text and WMV-only video also here on Olbermann's MSNBC blog. Over at the Guardian UK's blog, Gary Younge has this analysis. (Thanks, Susan, and many others)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:12:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Test out Firefox 2 in beta

Attention crash-test dummies! The second public beta of Firefox 2.0 is now live, and ready for your download. This is a preview of the future of browsing, without question. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:01:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Software beats humans at crossword solving; Web is "shallow AI"

A bilingual Italian-English crossword competition has been swept by software based crossword-solvers that beat the pants off their human competitors in all but the pun-heavy Italian cryptic crossword category. Interestingly, the software used search-engine results and the Web as a "shallow source of human knowledge for artificial intelligence."

WebCrow uses four techniques in parallel to find possible answers to a clue. Two involve looking for the clue or a near match in a database of solved crosswords or using a dictionary. Another uses rules known to work on a kind of Italian clue with two letter answers and the fourth technique is to search the internet.

WebCrow performs a search using key words extracted from the clue. It can usually find the answer by looking at the small previews that appear with the search engine results, but it can scan whole pages if necessary. Words of the right length that crop up most often in the results are taken to be possible answers...

Tony Veale works on software that can deal with human language at University College Dublin, Ireland, and watched WebCrow in action. He told New Scientist he was impressed. "It's part of a trend to use the web as a shallow source of human knowledge for artificial intelligence," he says.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:52:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tobacco companies increased nicotine in kids' and minorities' cigs

A new study shows that tobacco companies have been quietly increasingly the nicotine in the brands most smoked by kids and minorities for the past decade, increasing the toxicity and addictiveness of their products.

The study, reported by the Boston Globe, found that 92 of 116 brands tested had higher nicotine yields in 2004 than in 1998, and 52 had increases of more than 10 percent.

Boxes of Doral lights, a low-tar brand made by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., had the biggest increase in yield, 36 percent. Some of this may have been the result of an increase in the total amount of tobacco put in that brand's cigarettes, one expert said.

The nicotine in Marlboro products, preferred by two-thirds of high school smokers, increased 12 percent. Kool lights increased 30 percent. Two-thirds of African American smokers use menthol brands.

Link (via A Blog Around the Clock)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:48:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

State Department: misinformed report on skateboarding

The United States Department of State has posted an overview of skateboarding titled "Skateboarding Grows from Casual Hobby to International Sport." SKATEDAILY.net points out some of the best moments:

It seems that skateboarding is now a topic of national importance.

If it is they certainly need to work on getting their facts straight. Here are a few highlights:

- “If (tricks are) executed well, fellow skaters will offer their most superlative compliment: “Dude, that stinks!”

- “…the impact cushioned by the kneepads and helmets virtually all skateboarders wear.”

- “Tight jeans are in “because they let you see your feet,”

The article also mentions, “Tee Cherry, an American Muslim, taking a few minutes to skateboard with his young son before heading off to afternoon prayers.” Is it a tad strange to call out a skate Dad as an American Muslim in an article created by the Bureau of International Information Programs or is it just us?

Link to the State Department report, Link to SKATEDAILY.net post (Thanks, Dave Gill!)

UPDATE: The article has been taken down and replaced with this note:

The editorial staff of USINFO were surprised by the feedback we received regarding the article "Skateboarding Grows from Casual Hobby to International Sport." We have removed the article from the web site and are determining how we can best present this increasingly popular American sport to interested readers worldwide.

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:57:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage Italian pulp comix covers

Over at FLOG!, Fantagraphics art director Jacob Covey has posted a wonderful gallery of Italian pulp horror/SF/fantasy comic covers from the '60s and '70s. Sites like The Groovy Age of Horror showcase a lot of this work and link to other galleries of pulp art masterpieces. Covey's FLOG! post is just a taste.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:18:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UK government censors YouTube vid it posted itself

The UK cabinet office has censored a video that another branch of government had previously posted off of YouTube -- ironically, the video was about how the government could be more coordinated:

A video called Transformational Government can no longer be viewed on the site, instead users get a box of red text stating: "This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner COI Television because its content was used without permission."

COI Television is actually part of the Cabinet Office and the further irony of the video being about transformational government was not lost on one critic.

A spokesman for independent body Public Sector Forums, told silicon.com: "The COI is part of the Cabinet Office. So it looks like the Cabinet Office's initiative has fallen at the first hurdle and ironically, it's thanks to a lack of joined-upness between parts of its own ministry."

Link (Thanks, Glyn!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:00:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Apple's lawyer sends bogus nastygram to blogger

A lawyer working for Apple has sent a DMCA takedown notice to the blogger at CrunchGear for linking to a YouTube video that demonstrates features of the next version of Mac OS. The letter is a remarkable example of bad lawyering -- sending a takedown to the blogger instead of YouTube is just the start. The letter also contains a "confidentiality notice" and the legend "NOT FOR POSTING." This lawyer, Ian Ramage of O'Melveny & Myers LLP, apparently believes that you can create a confidentiality agreement merely by stating that one exists, even if the other party doesn't actually agree to anything.

Ian, it a YouTube video. That’s at www.youtube.com. Get them to take it down if it’s a violation of your IP and it will stop showing at crunchgear and the other sites.

And Ian, when you are done, please take the time to send your client, Apple, a similar email for posting basically the same material on their own site.

Link (via Digg)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:57:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Missing Munch paintings recovered

Authorities in Norway have found the Edvard Munch paintings--The Scream and Madonna--that were ripped off at gunpoint two years ago from the Munch Museum. The thieves were convicted in May but the paintings hadn't been recovered. From BBC News:

The Scream and Madonna were found in a "police action". "We are 100% certain they are the originals. The damage was much less than feared," police said.

Link

UPDATE: Thanks to all the readers who point out that the paintings were found just days after Mars, Inc. offered 2 million dark chocolate M&M's for the return of The Scream. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:45:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a twin-engine solar rolling robot

Over at Street Tech, BB buddy (and old-school bOING bOING contributing editor) Gareth Branwyn explains how to build this beautiful twin-enginer solar-powered robot that rolls around on a pair of hard disk platters. The robot was designed by Zach DeBord who exhibits his elegant mechanical creations here on Flickr. DeBord's bots were all built using a design approach called BEAM (Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics). In most BEAM robotics, simple analog circuits are used in lieu of microcontrollers, eliminating the need for programming. Gareth says, "If you built my beginner solarroller from the cover story in MAKE: Vol. 6, this could be a perfect follow-up project."
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:34:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

McDonalds McFlurry cups redesigned for hedgehog safety

The British Hedgehog Preservation Society has won a years-long fight with McDonalds to shrink the size of the opening in a McFlurry (a frozen edible-oil dairy slurry) reduced. The present wide-mouth McFlurry cups serve as fatal hedgehog traps by sucking in 'hogs who lick up the left-over slurry, get stuck, and die.

Up to now the opening in the container has been large enough for hedgehogs to get their heads into for a lick of the left-over dessert -- a trap they have then been unable to withdraw from, so dying of starvation in untold numbers.

But from September 1, the wide-mouthed opening in the lid of the McFlurry containers will be reduced in size, making them too small for the sugar-loving animals to get their heads into.

Link (via Fark)

Update: The McFlurry is dairy, not oil. Here's the ingredients (thanks, Matt!):

Vanilla Reduced Fat Ice Cream: Whole milk, sucrose, cream, nonfat milk solids, corn syrup solids, mono and diglycerides, guar gum, imitation vanilla flavor, carrageenan, cellulose gum, vitamin A palmitate. Contains milk ingredients. Mini M&M'S® Candies: Milk chocolate (sugar, chocolate, milk, cocoa butter, lactose, soy lecithin, salt, artificial flavors), sugar, less than 0.5%: coloring (includes yellow 5 lake, red 40 lake, blue 1 lake), cornstarch, corn syrup, dextrin. Contains milk and soybean ingredients. May contain peanuts.

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

Inbred fundamentalist Mormon breakaway town plagued by birth-defects

A fundamentalist breakaway Mormon sect in Colorado City, AZ, is being overtaken by a rare birth-defect brought on by inbreeding. The cult's leader arranges all marriages between community members, who are descended from two founding families. The cult's members view the severe disabilities brought on by the inbreeding as a test from God, and those who question this are excommunicated and thrown out of the community.

By the late 1990s, Tarby and his team had discovered fumarase deficiency was occurring in the greatest concentration in the world among the fundamentalist Mormon polygamists of northern Arizona and southern Utah.

Of even greater concern was the fact that the recessive gene that triggers the disease was rapidly spreading to thousands of individuals living in the community because of decades of inbreeding...

Doctors and family members interviewed by New Times say up to 20 children from families in the polygamist community are currently afflicted with the condition that requires full-time attention from caregivers. Victims suffer a range of symptoms, including severe epileptic seizures, inability to walk or even sit upright, severe speech impediments, failure to grow at a normal rate, and tragic physical deformities.

"They are in terrible shape," says Dr. Kirk A. Aleck, director of the Pediatric Neurogenetics Center at St. Joseph's Hospital. Aleck is a geneticist who participated along with Tarby and others in the groundbreaking study of several polygamous families with fumarase deficiency in the late 1990s.

Link (via Gene Expression)

Update: Mike sez, "That inbred cult is (was?) led by Warren Jeffs, who just got picked up Tuesday by authorities during a routine traffic stop in Vegas-- with 'cell phones, laptop computers, wigs and more than $50,000 in cash when he was arrested.' Richard Abowitz, who's been covering the FLDS for some time, has been doing a great job tracking the story on his Las Vegas blog, the Moveable Buffet."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:05:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Have you seen Dinosaur Jr's stolen gear?

Dinosaur, Jr's entire collection of gear has been stolen out of their trailer, and they're trying to recover it before they have to start cancelling gigs:

After a blistering set last night in Brooklyn, NY the band awoke this morning to find that the their trailer had been broken into and all of the gear has been taken.

J's Amma guitar, the mountain man guitar, Lou's Rickenbacker... EVERYTHING IS GONE. They are still taking inventory to see what else is gone but they were pretty much wiped out.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!!! Spread the word to everyone you know, every music store, pawn shop, club... anywhere you can think they may show up.

If you have ANY information let us know - management@jmascis.com.

Link (via Digg)

Update: Andrew points out the entry for Dino Jr's kit on StolenGear.com, which helps bands recover their stolen stuff.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:38:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a glowing pickle-lamp

You can make a glowing pickle-lamp by jamming power-boards into either end of a pickle that's resting atop a non-conducting surface and then plugging it in. No idea whether this will burn your house down, but it may be worth it. Link (via Digg)

Update: Sputnik sez, "Where can I see this without getting my fool self electrocuted? As always, YouTube to the rescue!"

Update 2: Mike sez, "Years ago when I worked at Digital Equipment Corportation, this hilarious 'research paper' from DEC's Western Reseach Lab was widely circulated. Entitled Characterization of Organic Illumination Systems, it details arcing pickles and other assorted vegetables."

Update 3: Wayne sez, "I conducted this experiment years ago as my final high school chemistry project, trying to figure out why only one end of the pickle glows. I came to the same conclusions mentioned about the sodium, but was unable to figure out the polarization. Useless-knowledge.com makes reference to this scientific mystery of pickle polarization:"

Why does only one end of the pickle light up and glow? Look at the amazing electrical storm jumping through the pickle. (Results are best viewed in a dark room. This is better than Star Wars! Don’t worry the pickle will make all the light you need.) Unplug the pickle; reconnect the wires on the opposite side and it still only glows on one end. There is yet no definitive scientific answer to explain the polarization of a pickle connected to AC current.

Update 4: Dan sez, "Years ago, I figured out that if you buy one of those hot dog cookers that runs current through the meat to cook it, you could use it as a (somewhat) safe version of the glowing pickle lamp."

Update 5: Pat sez, "Penn and Teller cover the glowing pickle trick in the 1992 book How to Play with Your Food. It's a great resource for all kinds of food related mischief."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hairy people who made PT Barnum proud

At the Fortean Times site, Dr. Jan Bondeson, author of the classic book A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, profiles history's hairiest wonders. These individuals suffered from hypertrichosis aka "Werewolf syndrome." In Bondeson's article, you'll meet Barbara Urslerin, the "Hairy Maid" who played the harpsichord, the "Sacred Hairy Family of Burma" who worked for PT Barnum at the end of the 19th century, and, of course, Jo-Jo The Dog-Faced Boy, billed as "the most prodigious paragon of all prodigies secured by PT Barnum in over 50 years."
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:59:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony BMG settles Canadian DRM class action

Sony BMG has settled the Canadian class-action lawsuit brought against it for deliberately deploying music CDs infected with rootkits and spyware as part of a misbegotten anti-copying scheme.

The settlement, which must still be approved by a Canadian court, features similar terms to those found in the U.S., including the right to cash compensation or music downloads. The settlement site features a full list of the affected CDs including Canadian artists such as Sloan, Our Lady Peace, and a Canadian Idol compilation.

Link

See also: Sony anti-customer technology roundup and time-line

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

Facts about Death

The new issue of Discover magazine includes a list of "20 Things You Didn't Know About Death." For more on the subject, I heartily recommend Mary Roach's excellent book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. From Discover:

3 No American has died of old age since 1951.

4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.

5 The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the "agonal phase," from the Greek word agon, or contest.

6 Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.

10 The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses dosed with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever in livestock.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:37:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's When Sysadmins Ruled published in Baen's Universe magazine

My story When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, about the last days of the Internet as seen from a data-center after a series of terrorist attacks, has been published in Baen's Universe magazine. Baen's Universe is a tremendous experiment in short sf publishing: $30 gets you six issues over the course of a year, each issue bearing several novels' worth of verbiage from top writers. The stories are all vigorous adventure tales, and I share issue number two with the likes of Garth Nix, Brian Herbert and Catherine Asaro (issue one included an original story by Charlie Stross, along with Greg Benford, Elizabeth Bear, John Barnes and Alan Dean Foster).

He piloted the car into the data-center lot, badging in and peeling up a bleary eyelid to let the retinal scanner get a good look at his sleep-depped eyeball.

He stopped at the machine to get himself a guarana/modafinil power-bar and a cup of lethal robot-coffee in a spill-proof clean-room sippy-cup. He wolfed down the bar and sipped the coffee, then let the inner door read his hand-geometry and size him up for a moment. It sighed open and gusted the airlock’s load of positively pressurized air over him as he passed finally to the inner sanctum.

It was bedlam. The cages were designed to let two or three sysadmins maneuver around them at a time. Every other inch of cubic space was given over to humming racks of servers and routers and drives. Jammed among them were no fewer than twenty other sysadmins. It was a regular convention of black tee-shirts with inexplicable slogans, bellies overlapping belts with phones and multitools.

Normally it was practically freezing in the cage, but all those bodies were overheating the small, enclosed space. Five or six looked up and grimaced when he came through. Two greeted him by name. He threaded his belly through the press and the cages, toward the Ardent racks in the back of the room.

Link

Podcast: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:46:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bag Lady Syndrome: women's anxiety about being poor

Bag-lady syndrome is a non-medical term for a common anxiety among women: the fear that they will end up destitute and on the streets. It affects women from all social strata and can be crippling. One psychiatry prof calls it a specialized form of psychotic depression -- but it's surely telling that this particular anxiety is common at this moment, when consumer debt is on the rise, crazy "exotic" mortgages are the norm, and scaremongers are telling us that Social Security is doomed.

Bag-lady syndrome plagues, puzzles and, in more extreme cases, paralyzes women who want to get a better grip on their financial lives, according to Olivia Mellan, the author of “The Advisor's Guide to Money Psychology” and a Washington, D.C., therapist who specializes in money psychology. Lily Tomlin, Gloria Steinem, Shirley MacLaine and Katie Couric all admit to having a bag lady in their anxiety closet.

"It cuts across women of all social groups; it's not like wealthy women don't have it," says Mellan. "Heiresses, women who have inherited wealth, have big bag-lady nightmares because they really feel like the money came to them magically and can leave them just as magically."

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:38:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hactivists hang anti-DRM banner at Berlin tech conference

Wetter sez, "Hacktivists from the Chaos Computer Club publicly protested against copy protection and DRM at todays starting IFA - consumers electronics trade fair in Berlin. The goal is to be seen by mainstream media reporting about IFA, HDready, DRM and others by giving the pictures and critical statements to journalists and consumers. The slogan on the big self-painted banner is 'copy protection is incapacitating' (Kopierschutz entmündigt)." Link (Thanks, Wetter!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:33:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kid's paper robots spawn Japanese toy franchise

Kami-robo (paper robot) is a hot new toy line in Japan -- whimsical, childish papercraft robots that also come as plastic replicas of papercraft robots. Their designer, Tomohiro Yasui, came up with the idea when he was an obsessive toy-collecting 11-year-old who made paper "play-copies" of his metal robots so that he could leave the originals in mint condition. Now it's a commercial success, with cartoon and card-game being spin-offs.

Tomohiro Yasui started crafting them in 1982, at age 11, because he couldn't bear the thought of playing with his precious store-bought bots – what if the paint chipped or an arm fell off?! So he used cardboard, scissors, wire, tape, and markers to construct his own durable automatons.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:29:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Avant-garde jazz derived from math concepts and sequences

Avant-garde jazz saxaphonist Rudresh Mahanthappa's latest CD, Codebook, blends improvisational jazz with rhythms and melodies derived from beautiful mathematical concepts and equations -- while the drummer beats out hidden Morse Code messages. The Wired News review has links to sample MP3s and lots of crunchy details on what sounds like a fantastic CD. My dad -- jazz aficionado, PhD in math education -- will go bonkers for this.

The very first track, "The Decider," is a groovy primer on how to turn math into music. Its bristling melody (.mp3) is derived from the Fibonacci sequence, an infinite series of integers that governs the structure of everything from pineapples to the Parthenon...

Returning to the realm of number theory, the tune "Further and In Between" is based on the cyclical number 142857. Like all cyclical numbers, this one has some very strange properties; for example, if you multiply it by 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, you get the same digits in a different configuration (for example, 2 x 142857 = 285714).

Link (Photo thumbnail clipped from an image on Rudreshm.com)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:24:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fight off Teletubbies with a chainsaw

Teletubbies Kill: a Flash shooting gallery game where you fight off bouncing Teletubbies with a chainsaw, finishing them is a fountain of gore and tubbiegobbets. Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:58:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Exotic debt-trap mortgages about to turn on their owners

It's amazing that banks can get away with offering these "option ARM" mortgages that let people buy way more house than they can afford, and then give them the option of actually making no mortgage payments so that the interest owed is added to the principal, in a cascade of compound-debt that will rapidly mount.

The only question I have is whether the banks will be able to cash in on all those repossessed houses after the real-estate tumble, or will prices be so low that they also lose their shirts?

In order to get the $800,000 house he bought early last year in California's Silicon Valley, Joe got an "option ARM," an adjustable-rate loan that lets him choose from a variety of payments every month. The smallest payment included no principal and less than 100 percent of the interest due. The unpaid interest was tacked onto the principal, creating "negative amortization..."

The [lender's warning] letters contain hypothetical examples of what lay ahead. One is a California homeowner making only minimum payments on a $402,000 loan. The current full interest rate on the loan is 7.6 percent, but the borrower has been paying just $1,348.47, far less than what's needed to fully amortize the mortgage over its 30-year term. If the loan reset at today's rates, the full payment required would be $2,887.50 — more than double what the homeowner is currently paying.

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:28:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blocky dog lamp with curvy skeleton shadows

This milky acrylic lamp is shaped like the silhouette of a dog, if that dog were made out of blocky pixels. Thus, the screened-on shadows of curvilinear bones that show when the dog is lit up are all the more lively and funny, a deeper impossibility in the conflict of square exterior and curved internals. Link (scroll down)

(via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:22:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dress made from sock-monkeys

This dress made out of sock-monkeys is on exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair. Magnificent. Obsessive. Tony Millionaire-esque.

I'm just bummed that there isn't a matching suit. Link (Thanks, Theresa!)

Update: Heidi points out this other sock-monkey dress from the fair, with strategic monkeys.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:14:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Presidential candidate to speak in Second Life tomorrow

A former governor of Virginia and an undeclared presidential condidate named Mark Warner will make a live appearance in the multiplayer online world Second Life tomorrow. You can attend.

Mark Warner’s avatar seems presidential, too—tall, stern, and statesman-like. And tomorrow at 12:30pm Second Life Time (i.e., PDT), in a public event sponsored by Forward Together and produced by Millions of Us, I’ll be interviewing him, in a brief conversation that’ll touch on national security, foreign policy, the Democratic Party-- and, of course, future plans for the Governor and his team in Second Life.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Royal Mail may fire anti-spam postman

The UK Royal Mail has suspended a postman for printing and delivering a pamphlet that explained how the people on his route could get the post to stop sending them spam. The Royal Mail, which makes tons of money on the delivery of unaddressed spam, suspended the letter-carrier and may fire him.

Mr Annies decided to act after receiving dozens of complaints from householders who were fed up with the piles of junk mail dropping through their letter boxes everyday.

So, hoping he may have the answer to their prayers, he delivered his own leaflet to residents in Barry, South Wales, explaining how they could opt out of getting mailshots known as 'door-to-door' items by filling out a form.

Link (via Neatorama)

Update: Want to opt out of Royal Mail spam? Here's the form: PDF, DOC -- thanks, Paul!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:36:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ghost town dial-up BBSes still online

There are a few ghost-town dial-up BBSes still alive and kicking, and you can connect to them using VoIP and your machine's modem. They're abandoned towns with half-finished multiplayer games, mouldering message boards, and the occassional old coot holding court:

All this makes me wonder why the Sysops who own these BBSes keep them running with such little traffic. Did they just forget to turn off their machines in 1998 as the Internet finally swept away the traditional US BBS scene? Did the old Sysops die and nobody noticed that the automated machines were still running, undetected, in a dusty back room somewhere? The possibilities are incredibly compelling; they really stir the imagination. That’s why finding such forgotten realms elicits a sense of discovery in me, like being an explorer discovering a long-lost temple in the overgrown jungles of Peru — all the more reason to give the old places a visit.

I got my start with BBSes on my Apple ][+ in 1980 or so, when we got the modem card (we'd have to take out the 80-column card to free a slot for it, so all my BBSing was in upper-case letters). I fell in love on BBSes, fought on them, got jobs through them, organized demonstrations -- and played endless games. I was so hooked on Pyroto Mountain -- I used to show up at the library I worked at with stacks of 3x5 cards with the mountain's trivia questions printed on them and skive off by looking up the answers on the shelves.

Link (Thanks, Jacques!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:31:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Soviet-era bootleg rock albums on used X-ray film

In the former Soviet Union, rock-and-roll rebels would bootleg subversive recordings by engraving them on salvaged, used X-ray film. The result is a kind of radiographer's picture-disc, part Samizdata and part pathology.

Owing to the lack of recordings of Western music available in the USSR, people had to rely on records coming through Eastern Europe, where controls on records were less strict, or on the tiny influx of records from beyond the iron curtain. Such restrictions meant the number of recordings would remain small and precious. But enterprising young people with technical skills learned to duplicate records with a converted phonograph that would "press" a record using a very unusual material for the purpose; discarded x-ray plates. This material was both plentiful and cheap, and millions of duplications of Western and Soviet groups were made and distributed by an underground roentgenizdat, or x-ray press, which is akin to the samizdat that was the notorious tradition of self-publication among banned writers in the USSR. According to rock historian Troitsky, the one-sided x-ray disks costed about one to one and a half rubles each on the black market, and lasted only a few months, as opposed to around five rubles for a two-sided vinyl disk. By the late 50's, the officials knew about the roentgenizdat, and made it illegal in 1958. Officials took action to break up the largest ring in 1959, sending the leaders to prison, beginning an orginization by the Komsomol of "music patrols" that later undertook to curtail illegal music activity all over the country.

Link (Thanks, Spluch!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kelly Link's magic story "The Girl Detective" - free audiobook

Telltale Weekly has just released a free MP3 reading of Kelly Link's amazing story "The Girl Detective." Kelly's work leaves me jaw-dropped and gob-smacked, and I rate "The Girl Detective" up there with her Nebula-winning, Hugo-nominated novella Magic For Beginners (read this now, run don't walk).

This story also appears in Kelly's Creative Commons-licensed collection Stranger Things Happen.

The girl detective's mother is missing.

The girl detective's mother has been missing for a long time.

The underworld.

Think of the underworld as the back of your closet, behind all those racks of clothes that you don't wear anymore. Things are always getting pushed back there and forgotten about. The underworld is full of things that you've forgotten about. Some of them, if only you could remember, you might want to take them back. Trips to the underworld are always very nostalgic. It's darker in there. The seasons don't match. Mostly people end up there by accident, or else because in the end there was nowhere else to go. Only heroes and girl detectives go to the underworld on purpose.

There are three kinds of food.

One is the food that your mother makes for you. One is the kind of food that you eat in restaurants. One is the kind of food that you eat in dreams. There's one other kind of food, but you can only get that in the underworld, and it's not really food. It's more like dancing.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:20:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Payphones of the world

The Payphone Project documents that most armored, most endangered, and most attacked of technological artifacts: the global payphone. Payphones evolve anti-fraud, anti-tampering measures in the ruthless Darwinian public thoroughfares, and they crop up anywhere an entrepreneur sees an opportunity to turn conversation into cash.

The payphones in the gallery are wild, like this floating payphone in the middle of Lake Victoria in Uganda, solar-powered and GSM-networked. Link (via Street Use)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:09:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

People-watching on Moscow's subway

This gallery of photos of outre riders on Moscow's subway is captivating. The Moscow subways are legendary, the people's palaces, with chandeliers and broad halls and cheap tickets. It's Russia, it's a big city, so you'd expect some boneless drunkards and russo-goths, but commandos with heavy arms? Zoot-suited hipsters? Unconscious, drunken transit cops?

You won't see pics like this from Petersburg's subway: that's because the full-employment-scheme useless transit cops there fine you a hundred rubles if you use your camera in the Petersburg metro. They are indeed valiant guards of the transit authority's precious photons. Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:03:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chinese bloggers declare war on British sex-pat blogger

Chinese bloggers have declared war on a British womanizer in Shanghai who gleefully blogs his sex-pat adventures seducing the delta's women.

Traffic on the Sex and Shanghai blog has surged from 500 hits to more than 17,000, thanks to a swarm of castration threats, anti-British rants and attacks on women who sleep with foreigners. The author, who calls himself Chinabounder, introduces himself as a wastrel, "lacking in moral fibre, but coping with the situation". According to the posts, he is an English language teacher at a university...

The campaign against the blog was launched on Friday by Zhang Jiehai, professor of psychology in the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences under a post titled The Internet Hunt for an Immoral Foreigner. "I have something to tell Chinese men: please think about how these foreign trash have dallied with your sisters and made fun of your impotence," he wrote. "This piece of garbage must be found and kicked out of China!!!"

Link (via Smart Mobs)

Update: Jane sez, "This a great example of chinavenging - a term I coined to describe the culture-specific practice of moralizing 'smart mobs' in China. Now that the Internet is increasingly constrained by local governments, it really makes sense to start talking about Web trends in site-specific terms."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:55:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Katrina: public service announcement (shot by BB pal photog)

My friend Clayton James Cubitt, who has family roots in New Orleans, IMs:

Ad agency Grey Worldwide worked with the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Ad Council to create a series of PSAs highlighting the need for Katrina surivors to reach out for help.

Depression and post-traumatic stress disorder are rampant throughout the survivor population.

They sent me down to photograph survivors. I spent a week in New Orleans and Mississippi. This is the first ad to come out.

Link. The copy reads: "A year after Katrina, all the water still hasn't receded. If you're having trouble coping, trained and caring help is waiting." Here's more about the campaign.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:48:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report: UK gov staff hack into Home Office database

Snip from news report:

Office staff are hacking into the department's computers, putting at risk the privacy of 40million people in Britain. The revelation undermines Government claims that sensitive information being collected for its controversial ID Cards scheme could not fall into criminal hands.

Nicked from Bruce Sterling, who observes:

Okay, let's imagine you're, like, Mr Humble Government Clerk punter bedsit Weetabix-eater guy, and in front of you, every day, is the Brand New British Gigantic SuperAntiTerror ID Consolidated Database. If you're, like, Miss Moneypenny or something, maybe you're so rigidly disciplined that you never peek. But wouldn't you -- just as job one -- check out YOUR OWN entry in the giant Satanic Mill database? And after that, wouldn't you do Enid, in the cubicle down the hall? I mean, how could you not?

Link.

Reader comment: Blake says,

You may already be aware, but a very similar thing happened in Australia last week. (Link to story). About 20 Goverment Employment Office staff were sacked and around a 100 others resigned after they were found to be searching through the database illegally.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:50:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PA paper fights gov order requiring computer hand-over

Previously on BoingBoing:

As part of a state grand-jury investigation over press leaks, the office of Pennsylvania's Attorney General has seized four hard drives from the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal. At issue is whether reporters at that paper were given access to a password-protected law enforcement website with nonpublic information on local crime incidents. The paper is accused of having used some of that information in news reports. Reporters may be charged with felony "computer hacking" if they accessed the website without permission from authorities.

Link to archived post (March 14, 2006).

Lancaster Newspapers did hand over the initial four hard drives. But today, there's news they've filed an emergency petition to block an order to turn over two more computers. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will soon decide whether the news organization must sumbit the additional hard drives, as part of the ongoing probe of alleged illicit access to that restricted law enforcement website. Snip:

Lancaster Newspapers surrendered four of its computer hard drives in March after an earlier court battle, but balked at a more recent court order demanding two more computers. It was given a deadline of Aug. 25 to turn over the computers or face a fine of $1,000 a day, according to court documents.

Link (via Romenesko)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:26:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

California to become first state to limit greenhouse emissions

Limits on all greenhouse gas emissions -- including utility plants, fuel refineries, and other industrial sites -- will become mandatory in California if the bill is signed into law:

The agreement marks a clear break with the Bush administration and puts California on a path to reducing its emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by an estimated 25 percent by 2020.

The bill still needs lawmakers' approval, but that appears likely, given that Democrats control the Legislature.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:14:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hybrid BMW Mini Cooper: engines in its wheels, 0-60 in 4.5

Snip from Treehugger:

A British engineering firm has put together a high-performance hybrid version of BMW's Mini Cooper. The PML Mini QED has a top speed of 150 mph, a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds. The car uses a small gasoline engine with four 160 horsepower electric motors — one on each wheel. The car has been designed to run for four hours of combined urban/extra urban driving, powered only by a battery and bank of ultra capacitors. The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles (1,500 km). For longer journeys at higher speeds, a small conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) is used to re-charge the battery. In this hybrid mode, fuel economies of up to 80mpg can be achieved.

Link (Thanks, Wayne Correia)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:00:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UK gov bans violent porn

If the plan becomes law, possessing "extreme and violent pornography" in the UK will be a crime punishable by up to three years in jail:

Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said the government planned to make it an offence to own images featuring scenes of extreme sexual violence, following a year-long consultation on the issue. The action is a victory for the family of Jane Longhurst, a 31-year-old Brighton teacher murdered in 2003 by a man obsessed with viewing necrophilia Web sites, who have campaigned to block access to such material in the UK.

"My daughter Sue and myself are very pleased that after 30 months of intensive campaigning we have persuaded the government to take action against these horrific Internet sites, which can have such a corrupting influence and glorify extreme sexual violence," Longhurst's mother Liz told the BBC.

Link. The adult industry trade news site Xbiz.com reported:

[A] spokesman for a BDSM group called criminalization of possession troubling. “The theory that people should be punished for viewing an image that simply involves the idea of sexuality with violence shows the proposal being made is to introduce a form of thought crime,” the spokesman said.

Director of the Libertarian Alliance Shaun Gabb said that extending the ban on possession of such content gives the police “inquisitorial powers to come in your house and see what you’ve got.”

The change in the law applies to England and Wales. Plans are underway to extend the law to Northern Ireland. The Scottish Executive is expected to announce its plans separately.

Link to full text of article.

Image above -- shibari (worksafe definition) photos by Phillippe Boxis: NSFW link.

Reader comment: Tom says,

In a typical example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, the British government has announced plans to ban violent pornography because one man who enjoyed it killed his girlfriend [a woman]. Last time I checked, killing people was still illegal, so why do we need a new rule outlawing fantasies?

Erith says,

What's actually been announced is the end result of a consultation process. Parliament is not in session, and there is as yet no Bill, never mind an Act passed into Law with Royal Assent. It will require seperate legislation in Scotland.

The report itself states that a bill will be brought before Parliament "when the legislative calendar allows", giving those who oppose it plenty of time to continue the campaign against this legislation.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:49:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paddlestar Galactica: sf-fan video folkart starring kids

"Starbuck, Lee, and the President come across some pylons and toasters in their search for home." Link to video starring three young fans of my favorite sf tv show, Battlestar Galactica. Shot in Quebec. (thanks, EmilyTheKid)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:18:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New tech to track traffic by "cellular stream" speeds

A two-week trial currently taking place in Florida evaluates a new way to map traffic patterns in real time by processing "non-voice data streams generated by cellphones." Organizations involved in the test include the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, DOT, FedEx, UPS, and various cellular carriers. Snip:

Every cellphone is tuned into multiple relay towers. The towers determine the phone's position twice a second when someone is talking and once every 30 seconds if the phone is idle. The towers send phone position information to the carrier's local computers where, for the most part, [engineer Ron Herman] says, "it falls on the floor and nobody pays any attention to it."

Atlanta-based IntelliOne probes that data stream and converts it into real-time traffic congestion reports. The reports detail the exact locations and extent of the congestion, and the average speed of traffic. "If there are 50 or 100 phones out on I-275 moving at 10 miles an hour in a 65 mph zone, there's a problem," Herman said.

There are no privacy issues. The IntelliOne probe taps a data stream, not the voice stream, so it can't listen in on calls. There also is an anonymity filter, so the system doesn't know whose phone it is tracking.

"There are no privacy issues." Heh. Link (Thanks, Rusty Hodge / via FriendsOfWayne)

Reader comment: Michael Keukert in Aachen, Germany writes:

the previous issue of the German edition of MIT's "Technology Review" reports that such tests are being conducted in several areas of Germany for quite a while already. Germanys crowded network auf "Autobahn" is heavily affected by traffic jams, so a network of permanently mounted detectors have been installed. Data is also acquired by "floating car units", many of them put on the road by BMW. The research project tries to use the cellphone data to further detail the current traffic situation and to have an early warning for jams.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:03:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guy uses looped audio response to drive telemarketers nuts

creativebastard writes:

A little while ago I put together a little application on our phone system so that when a telemarketer calls in, I can transfer them to this extension and annoy the hell out of them. I thought about it a bit more and decided to make it a little more interesting, so I can get them to hold on the line as long as possible. Today I recorded a bunch of different voices sounding really interested in what a telemarketer would be offering. Have a listen (...) Once I gather enough calls, i'm gong to setup a little podcast of all the best calls from a fortnightly period. Enjoy!

Link to page with MP3 audio of a simulated interaction between a faux telemarketer and an audiolooped pretend-dude. I can't wait to try this out at home! (thanks, Denis Drye)

Reader comment: Michael Natale says,

Funny idea that would work, but I don't think the call is real. That Indian accent sounds put on to me. [Ed. note: Right-o, it's totally fake.] These are a few years old but absolutely genuine: Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:40:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nightmare dental instrument from 1939

Amazing to think that the gnathograph, which looks about as comfortable as Clockwork Orange's crazy eye-opener device but for your teeth, was ever considered a good idea. But there it is, in the June, 1939 ish of Popular Science.

WITH the aid of the "gnathograph," an instrument as mouth-filling as its name, a dentist's patients may now be assured of a perfect fit for artificial teeth. Fitted to the jaws as shown above, the new device registers the arrangement of the teeth and the direction of the "bite," to guide the dentist in straightening teeth or fitting inlays, crowns, bridges, and plates. Its inventor, Dr. Beverly B. McCollum of Los Angeles, Calif., demonstrates in the picture at the right how the instrument is then mounted for use in tooling a plate to just the right shape to give the most comfortable fit in the mouth.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:05:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Trek vs. Simpsons theme

This video of a Star Trek/Simpsons TV theme mash-up is a real hoot. I dig the Theremin and the funnel.
Link (via Neatorama)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:41:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What ever happened to Half.com, Oregon?

A followup on the tale of Halfway, that small Oregon town "bought" and renamed in the Web 1.0 boom years by Half.com:

[B]ack in 1999, in its Netflix-like heyday, Half.com was hot. And then it did something quite remarkable. As a publicity stunt, it bought a town — somewhere in Oregon — and renamed it. This news made the wire services, The New York Times and Wired Magazine.

So what ever happened to Half.com, Oregon, the first dot com city in the world?

Link (thanks, William Drenttel)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:11:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Katrina lessons: Linux kiosks for post-disaster comms

Snip from an interesting story at Linux.com about tech entrepreneur Steve Hargadon of TechnologyRescue.com. His humanitarian tech project involving public web kiosks helped Katrina victims reconnect last year:

Hargadon specializes in Linux thin clients for small businesses and schools. He likes to transform aging Windows networks into high-speed, low-cost, virus-free workstations by using existing PCs, sans hard drives, that act as dumb terminals. Hargadon has discovered that that kind of technology translates easily into community outreach. He started thinking about that as he watched the world's response to the Asian tsunami in 2004. "I wondered, what are people doing on those response teams and in the emergency shelters, and wouldn't it be nice if they could get Internet? I started playing around with some ideas and looking at different live CD versions of kiosk software."

When Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in 2005, Hargadon decided to take his thin client knowledge and the live CD concept and do what he could. "I thought, let's see if we can make a difference." He went to the shelters and to local Red Cross agencies with his proposal: to provide the means for workers and victims to easily and securely access the 'Net. The agencies took him up on that offer.

Hargadon created the bootable CDs with Morphix Linux and a locked-down version of the Firefox browser. The system is configured to clear the cache when Firefox is closed or after five minutes of inactivity. Hargadon also creates custom portal sites for agencies that request the kiosk software.

One problem Hargadon encountered with the kiosks was that FEMA Web sites were not fully accessible with Firefox, so shelters had to have a Windows system available to access that agency's services online. Even so, he says, the kiosks were deployed "fairly widely" in hurricane-affected areas. This year, Hargadon created a custom CD for victims of Tropical Cyclone Larry, which hit Innisfail in Queensland, Australia..

Link (thanks, Mike Outmesguine!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:05:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Peace art grafitti in Beirut

Combat zone grafitti artist Arofish writes, from "one of the most bombed out areas in Beirut":

I was asked by local people to paint something happy, to reflect the spirit of the community. Before starting I banged up a piece of explanatory text on the wall (...) It reads: "When Ramallah, in Palestine, is put under curfew by the Israeli Army, nobody goes outside for days. The streets look completely deserted. But from a tall building, if you look out over the city, you can sometimes see hundreds of many-coloured kites, flown from the roof-terraces by the children of Ramallah. The children you can see here are flying kites to celebrate the spirit of the people of Dahyeh. Some kites you can see are flying away. These are for the children who are no longer here; they are no longer held down to the Earth".

Link to post on Wooster Collective blog, and here are more photos. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:43:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NASA: Data indicates Earth's ozone layer is on the mend

Newly released data from NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) studies shows our ozone layer is healing. Snip from NASA announcement:

A team led by Eun-Su Yang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, analyzed 25 years of independent ozone observations at different altitudes in Earth's stratosphere, which lies between six and 31 miles above the surface. The observations were gathered from balloons, ground-based instruments, NASA and NOAA satellites.

The stratosphere is Earth's second lowest atmospheric layer. It contains approximately 90 percent of all atmospheric ozone. The researchers concluded the Earth's protective ozone layer outside of the polar regions stopped thinning around 1997. Ozone in these areas declined steadily from 1979 to 1997.

Link (with more chart-o-licious infoporn), and here's a 7MB quicktime animation: Link (screengrab shown above).

Reader comment: Steve Mallett says,

With threats of funding cuts and various other pressures put upon NASA it seems suspicious, though I hope it is indeed true, that NASA comes out supporting something that Republicans would like to see... that Al Gore is wrong.

James Orr says,

The user comment you posted under the story "NASA: Data indicates Earth's ozone layer is on the mend" - is incorrect. It's been known for some time that the ozone layer is improving, a fact that Gore actually mentions in his documentary about global warming, a separate phenomenon.

Aaron Suring says,

In his movie "Inconvenient Truth" Gore points to the recovery of the ozone layer as a sign of hope that through policies, change is possible. And that now that we have made progess on the ozone layer we need to start working on carbon dioxide emmisions.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:29:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

First nationwide Jewish cable TV network launches

Shalom TV debuts today on cable providers in Pennsylvania and Delaware. "All during the month, Shalom TV features 50 hours of entertaining and educational telecasts on a VOD format with programming updated on a regular basis," reports Cynopsis.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:36:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hornmassive giant speaker

Honrmassive is a 2000 watt horn sound system that can "project 'content'" up to a kilometer. It's been seen heard at Burning Man, the Coachella Valley Music Festival, and a few other big blow-outs. From Hornmassive.com:

HORNMASSIVE (2004) (Matt Hope) is a 2 Ton (4500 Lbs US), 3.5 M by 3.1 M by 4 M mobile 2000 watt steel and aluminuim horn sound system, all powered from a commercial 12” speaker driver. It functions as a mobile audio input station... (and is) designed to be the ultimate monophonic sound projector intended to catalyze social activities in multiple settings.

Link (via The Cool Hunter)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:43:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

At home with the cannibals

In this month's Smithsonian magazine, Paul Raffaele visits with the Korowai tribe in Indonesian New Guinea. The Korowai are believed to be one of the last tribes left that still eats people. From Smithsonian:

Cannibalism was practiced among prehistoric human beings, and it lingered into the 19th century in some isolated South Pacific cultures, notably in Fiji. But today the Korowai are among the very few tribes believed to eat human flesh. They live about 100 miles inland from the Arafura Sea, which is where Michael Rockefeller, a son of then-New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared in 1961 while collecting artifacts from another Papuan tribe; his body was never found. Most Korowai still live with little knowledge of the world beyond their homelands and frequently feud with one another. Some are said to kill and eat male witches they call khakhua...

After we eat a dinner of river fish and rice, Boas joins me in a hut and sits cross-legged on the thatched floor, his dark eyes reflecting the gleam from my flashlight, our only source of light. Using Kembaren as translator, he explains why the Korowai kill and eat their fellow tribesmen. It's because of the khakhua, which comes disguised as a relative or friend of a person he wants to kill. "The khakhua eats the victim's insides while he sleeps," Boas explains, "replacing them with fireplace ash so the victim does not know he's being eaten. The khakhua finally kills the person by shooting a magical arrow into his heart." When a clan member dies, his or her male relatives and friends seize and kill the khakhua. "Usually, the [dying] victim whispers to his relatives the name of the man he knows is the khakhua," Boas says. "He may be from the same or another treehouse."

I ask Boas whether the Korowai eat people for any other reason or eat the bodies of enemies they've killed in battle. "Of course not," he replies, giving me a funny look. "We don't eat humans, we only eat khakhua."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:23:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pot patch at police station

A dozen pot plants were discovered growing in a planter near the front door of a police station in Duluth, Minnesota. According to city gardner Tom Kasper, who was asked to identify the plants and then remove them, the plants were 4 to 6 inches high and had been planted roughly three weeks ago. From the Duluth News Tribune:

(Police Lieutenant John) Beyer pointed out that he, his police officers and the public use the backdoor entrance to the police station. The front door just off busy Grand Avenue is usually locked and not used.

"The only thing I can say is somebody has a sense of humor," Beyer said. "Now they'll read about it in the paper and say, 'Yeah, that was me...' "

But this isn't the first time marijuana has been discovered growing in a public place in Duluth. In 1990, a citizen pointed out to police that a 3-foot marijuana plant was growing in the northern corner of the Civic Center courtyard near City Hall.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:34:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scanning nun brains for god spots

Neuroscientists report that there is no "god spot" in the brain where mystical experiences are centered. Université de Montréal researchers conducted fMRI brain scans on fifteen nuns as they recalled previous mystical experiences. As they recalled their moments with God, brain regions involved in self-consciousness, emotion, and body representation lit up. The results of the study were published in Neuroscience Letters. From a press release:

“The main goal of the study was to identify the neural correlates of a mystical experience,” explained Beauregard. “This does not diminish the meaning and value of such an experience, and neither does it confirm or disconfirm the existence of God.

This study demonstrated that a dozen different regions of the brain are activated during a mystical experience. This type of research became very popular in the United States in the late 1990s. Some researchers went as far as suggesting the possibility of a specific brain region designed (italics mine--ed.) for communication with God. This latest research discredits such theories.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:16:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UK airports declare war on ink, crosswords, to-do lists

Joey DeVilla describes an extraordinary security measure he encountered on a flight from Belfast to Toronto:

Another thing they don't tell you -- in fact, they don't tell you until the search at the gate: they won't let you bring a pen onto the plane. I only lost a ball-point pen which I'm pretty sure came from Tucows' office supply closet. Others were less fortunate; in the bin where confiscated pens were being collected, I saw a at least a dozen "executive" pens, including Crosses and Mont Blancs. If you're accustomed to carrying an expensive pen, do not take it with you!

Without pens, we had nothing with which to fill out the immigrations and customs forms required for international flights arriving at their first port of entry to the United States. We ended up -- all 172 of us -- sharing the chief flight attendant's pen, passing it from row to row.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:03:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jean-Jacques Perrey performance photos

Moog maestro Jean Jacques Perrey and Dana Countryman performed in San Francisco last night and it was reportedly a spectacular concert. Laughing Squid's Scott Beale was on hand and took a slew of magnificent photos. The final show of this tour is Thursday evening at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:54:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Social networking with structured data

HiveLive is a new service in public beta that works a little like LiveJournal or Orkut (make networks of your friends) but throws in easy templates for structured data, like lists, forms, and other data. The idea is that you create a template (recipes, shopping lists, brainstorming, email account passwords...) and then share it with the world, your friends, or a smaller hand-picked group. Could be a useful piece of roommate-ware for keeping track of the bills, shared accounts, router passwords, etc. Link, Signup Link (Thanks, Carlos!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:10:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1960s commercial jingles from legendary arranger

Jason sez,

The UK's Trunk Records are always unearthing and releasing strange, lost recording from the 20th Century, but their latest release, "Music For Biscuits" has the most incredible story behind it.

The tracks are all by Mike Sammes, backing singer and vocal arranger for almost everyone back in the 60's (Crosby, Sinatra, Bacharach, Streisand, The Beatles, Judy Garland...) and were mostly made for commercials. Apparently the one for tractors is especially good.

Mike's story does not end well however. He died almost completely alone after a long illness exacerbated by a fall. The master tapes were rescued from his house, which had already been ransacked, just days before the rest of his belongings were disposed of.

Link (Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pirate Party manifesto

Mick sez, "On August 28, the Pirate Party of Sweden made their election program official. An introduction stating the ideas and ideology behind their program."

The development of technology has made sure Sweden and Europe stand before a fork in the road. The new technology offers fantastic possibilities to spread culture and knowledge all over the world with almost no costs. But it also makes way for the building of a society monitored at a level unheard of up until now.

In no time, the monitoring state has advanced its positions strongly in Sweden. This development threatens equality and safety before the law, and nothing indicates that it even adds to security. The Pirate Party believes this is the wrong way to go.

The right to privacy is a corner stone in an open and democratic society. Each and everyone has the right to respect for one’s own private and family life, one’s home and one’s correspondence. If the constitutional freedom of information is to be more than empty words on a paper, we much defend the right for protected private communication.

Link (Thanks, Mick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:16:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Beach Boys' dad on a drunk, abusive tear - audio

This piece of WFMU audio from 2005 is magnificent: the Beach Boys' dad, drunk, ranting and abusive in the studio:

January 8, 1965: The Beach Boys enter the studio to record what will become their second number one hit, "Help Me Rhonda". Well into the session, a drunken Murry Wilson (Brian, Carl and Dennis' Dad) arrives and proceeds to commandeer the session with psychodrama, scat singing and weepy, abusive melodrama. The session tape captured it all, and versions of these tapes have been floating around bootlegs for years. The fact that the tapes survived is itself surprising - you can hear Brian and Murry fighting over the tape recorder controls at the 35:30 mark of the full version, Murry wanting to stop the recording, with Brian ultimately keeping the tape rolling.

Link (Thanks, Organ Leroy!)

Update: Star sez, "My friend Emily Geanacopoulos made a lovely video featuring the Beach Boys audio. it features handmade stick puppets of the Beach Boys hanging out in elaborate sets."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:38:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google Books offers PDFs of public domain books

Adam sez, "Google Books has just started offering downloads of their public domain books as PDF files. You can search for 'free view' books to find other ones. (disclaimer: I'm the engineer who did this, but I'm nothing to do with PR)" Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:13:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Meet the SF Chron's new sex columnist: blogger Violet Blue

Violet Blue says:

It's official. I'm now the sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Not just 'plucked' from the blogosphere to freelance for a 141-year-old mainstream media institution; Phil Bronstein hand-selected me to be their frontline sex writer, with a column and everything that comes with it. I just got home from the Chronicle building -- today was the final meeting with the PR department, and to set the launch date (I wore my Laughing Squid shirt to the meeting). At one point David Wiegand said, "We're just making sure it's okay before we plaster your face on buses."

Link. Congrats, Violet! A chorus of lethal machines joins me in wishing you success in subversion.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:35:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Katrina: one year later - a photographer's family story.

Clayton Cubitt writes:

[A] simple photograph of my mom's Eden, one year on. She's sitting on the front porch of what will be her new home soon. It's risen on the foundation of the home Katrina destroyed, only steps away from her FEMA trailer, and every day she looks out the trailer window a thousand times at it, and her gold smile lights up, and she whispers "Thank you, Jesus."

It's been built by the sweat and love of volunteers from all over the country. From all walks of life they've come into the Gulf to help their brothers and sisters. Normal, average Americans, disgusted by their government's inaction, they've picked up hammers and done it themselves.

One day there's a moldering heap of rubble, the next day hippie volunteers from Burning Man bulldoze it and take it away. One day it's a flat slab of concrete, the next day a pre-fab home kit is delivered by One House At A Time and New Hope Construction. One day there's a jumble of materials, the next day a church group from Oregon shows up and builds the frame and shell. A little later a group from Pennsylvania shows up and paints it my mom's favorite shade of green, and puts a tin roof on so she can hear the rain fall at night. And not to be outdone, a group from Alabama comes over and sheet rocks the interior, then comes back and builds her a deck for good measure.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:38:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Painter of Light targeted by Investigation of Feebs

Thomas "Painter of Light" Kinkade and company executives are the subject of an FBI investigation. They're charged with having duped investors into launching Kinkade-only galleries that effectively bilked them of cash:

The ex-owners allege in arbitration claims that, among other things, the artist known for his dreamily luminous landscapes and street scenes used his Christian faith to persuade them to invest in the independently owned stores, which sell only Kinkade's work.

"They really knew how to bait the hook," said one former dealer who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case. "They certainly used the Christian hook."

Kinkade has denied the allegations in the civil litigation.

Here's the LA Times' coverage. Here's more from the SF Chron. Image: Mr. Kinkade's website. See also these previous BB posts about Kinkade's work, which always kinda makes me want to scrub out my eyes with bleach. (Thanks, Jesse)

Reader comment: Ethan says,

I was interested to read about the latest Kinkaid scandal... but was a bit taken back by this paragraph in the SF Chronicle (actually AP) story about it. Rachel Konrad wrote:

Critics -- including highbrow art aficionados, satirical bloggers and starving artists annoyed by Kinkade's marketing success -- snicker at his work. His paintings typically include tranquil scenes of country gardens, churches, streams and lighthouses in dewy morning light. Many contain images from Bible passages.

That kind of commentary seem appropriate a write doing, well, commentary... but it doesn't seem ok for what is purportedly a straight-ahead, hard news article. Frankly, the characterization of "starving artists" bugs me, but even more so the assertion that what they dislike about Kinkaid is his success. That seems especially odd implication coming at the end of an article outlining Kinkaid?s apparent fraudulent activities (could it be the fraud, not sappy art, that especially bothers people?).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:58:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYT ad tech blocks UK web visitors from terror plot article

The NYT website is using geo-targeting ad technology to block UK visitors from accessing a news article about the investigation surrounding the alleged UK airline terror plot. The technological self-censorship is an attempt to comply with UK law. The Times' Tom Zeller explains how the block works and why it's in place here.

Snip from MSNBC article:

"We had clear legal advice that publication in the U.K. might run afoul of their law," Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said Tuesday. "It's a country that doesn't have the First Amendment, but it does have the free press. We felt we should respect their country's law."

Visitors who click on a link to the article, published Monday, instead got a notice explaining that British law "prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial." The blocked article reveals evidence authorities have in the alleged plot to use liquid explosives to down U.S. airliners over the Atlantic.

Link to MSNBC coverage, here's an item on Foreign Policy blog, Link to Guardian UK coverage. Here's what web visitors identified as UK-based will see:

"On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial."

Of course, proxy servers and tools like Tor can help users route around efforts like this. And any number of blogs or other online sources could republish geo-forbidden content. The point here seems to be for the Times to demonstrate a good faith effort to comply with UK law. But determined users can easily route around the restriction.

(Thanks, Larry Campbell, Chris, and Cyrus -- who has a new gig writing for Engadget, btw!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:41:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Up to 14 hurt, one killed by SF hit-and-run driver

Snip:

As many as 14 people were injured this afternoon by a motorist who drove around San Francisco running them down before he was arrested, authorities said. Seven of those injured were in critical condition, police and firefighters said.

"It was like 'Death Race 2000,' " firefighter Danny Bright said at California and Fillmore streets, as an ambulance stood nearby. "Guys were walking down the sidewalk and the guy just came up and ran them over. The guy went crazy."

Link (thanks, Violet)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:34:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Big stars don't sell movies

The New York Times reports on a ton of academic research that says that paying big stars doesn't appreciably improve the box-office returns. Paying a big star is a marketing expense (lots of people can do Tom Cruise as well as Tom Cruise does, but you haven't heard of them), but it looks like Hollywood execs sign those big checks on the basis of a superstition about how much filmgoers care about the faces on the screen:

In one study, Mr. De Vany and W. David Walls, an economist at the University of Calgary, took those factors into account. Looking across a sample of more than 2,000 movies exhibited between 1985 and 1996, they found that only seven actors and actresses -- Tom Hanks, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jodie Foster, Jim Carrey, Barbra Streisand and Robin Williams -- had a positive impact on the box office, mostly in the first few weeks of a film's release.

In the same study, two directors, Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone also pushed up a movie's revenue. But Winona Ryder, Sharon Stone and Val Kilmer were associated with a smaller box-office revenue. No other star had any statistically significant impact at all. So what are stars for? By helping a movie open -- attracting lots of people in to see a movie in the first few days before the buzz about whether it's good or bad is widely known -- stars can set a floor for revenues, said Mr. De Vany.

"Stars help to launch a film. They are meant as signals to create a big opening," he said. "But they can't make a film have legs."

Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:41:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Power-strip shaped like a container ship

This power strip, shaped like the container ship that brought it from China, is terribly handsome, the kind of thing you'd want on your desk, rather than under it. I like that it seems designed to look best when covered in giant, strip-hogging transformer bricks that resemble containers. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:36:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Campaign to save the 76 Ball

I know there are a lot of more important issues in the world to address besides saving the 76 Ball, but here's a website dedicated to that very cause.

The original 76 Ball is about as pleasing an object representing a gas company can be, and it strikes me as bizarre that the corporate powers that be think its a good idea to replace it with the new, flattened-ball-in-a-rectangle sign. It's uglier and more difficult to identify from a distance. I tell you, it's the same unfathomably dull minds at work here as the ones that have destroyed cereal box design. Link (Thanks, Todd!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:24:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazing collection of 4 x 6 artworks

In 1999, Jeremy Adolphson, then 17, began sending artists that he likes 4" x 6" notecards in the mail with a stamped return envelope and a request to draw him a picture. Now, he has hundreds of amazing artworks from the likes of Dan Clowes, Hunt Emerson, Chester Brown, Seth, Chris Ware, Roberta Gregory, Will Eisner, our Fantagraphics informant Eric Reynolds, and many many more. Seen here, from left to right, drawings by Seth, Daniel Clowes, and Will Eisner.

From 4x6-art.com:

I was brought up at an early age reading comic books, as I grew older, I eventually found myself standing among thousands of people at the Rosemont Convention Center for Wizard World 1999. The cramped passageways, loud noises, and individuals from all over the world was my first encounter with a comic book convention. I saw fans handing out sketchbooks to artists and purchasing commissions for them to scribble something , an original work, for their collection. This intrigued me, that someone would take time out their schedule and actually draw something specifically for you. Something like this was much more personal than say an autograph or even purchasing artwork that has been published before. After the show ended, my desire to collect artwork continued to soar. While comic book conventions usually only occur once a year in a given city, it would become too costly to travel across the nation acquiring art. I needed to find a way to continue this throughout the year and to make it efficient to do this through the mail. There would be too great a risk to send out a sketchbook through the mail for fear of it becoming lost. I remembered seeing postcards with First Day stamps whereby syndicated cartoonists would autograph it along with putting a doodle of their most known character on it, then mailing it back to the person. So, I drew from this, along with my grandfather’s movie star autograph collection on index cards, and decided to mail a card along with the return postage to some illustrators to see if I received anything back...

Link (via Flog!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:22:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SpiralFrog, Uni launch "free iTunes alternative." DRM, many restrictions apply.

Update: rumor has it the big "gotcha" is this -- music expires after 6 months. Music biz trade zine Hits Daily Double is reporting this, but no other sources yet.

The SpiralFrog service will be supported by online advertising, according to reports. Universal's participation is confirmed, and talks are under way with EMI and other music labels. I wonder exactly what kind of ads (how intrusive and time-engaging?), and what bitrate we're talking about -- really low-quality, or high enough that you'd actually *want* to listen?

Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired News has confirmed that the file format will be PlaysforSure-protected WMA (barf): Link.

Regular readers of this blog may recall Cory's post a few days ago with news that the Microsoft copy-protection scheme was unclimactically cracked: Link

Snip from Reuters report with more on today's launch news:

SpiralFrog, a new music download service, on Tuesday said it would make Vivendi's Universal Music Group's catalog available for free legal downloading in the United States and Canada.

The new advertising-supported service, due to launch later this year, joins the ranks of rivals battling for a piece of the digital music market in the shadow of Apple Computer Inc's dominant iTunes music store.

New York-based SpiralFrog said it would offer users of its free, Web-based service the ability to legally download music of Universal's roster, which includes U2, Gwen Stefani and The Roots.

The service as described would seem to preclude burning to CD and transferring the files to iPods (without sneaky and potentially illegal workarounds). If so: that blows. Snip from a related item on TechCrunch summarizing comments by a SpiralFrog spokesperson:

Spiral Frog will offer a desktop downloader for Windows Media Files (no iPods!) that can be listened to on one PC and two portable devices. Here’s the kicker - you must log in to the Spiral Frog service at least once per month, and see their ads, or your files will stop playing!

((Ed. note: you're kidding, right?))

The details aren’t fully set in stone, but it will be something like that. There will be links to third party sites of the record labels’ choosing if you’d like to buy your freedom to at least skip the ads.

Spiral Frog will also offer far more than just music, but also video and other digital content. The selling point here is that users will be able to access media legally, without the malware, bad network connections and pirate’s shame that comes from other online media sources.

"Pirate's Shame?" I doubt many people who download from illicit services are losing sleep -- or downloads -- over that one. It's hard for me to imagine this service doing anything to solve the broader dilemma, given the considerable disconnect between SpiralFrog's planned restrictions and the usability/portability needs of its stated target population: 18-34yo music fans. (via pho list and many BB readers, thanks all)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:45:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stupid stoner SMSes cop about getting baked, by mistake

An 18-year-old ganja enthusiast in Oklahoma inadvertently texted a police officer instead of her fellow stoner pal. Txt hijinks ensued, and arrestage followed instead of the desired doobage. Snip:

Officer Phillip Short received a text message on his personal cell phone Thursday night regarding marijuana. He didn't recognize the phone number and didn't know who sent the message, so he decided not to respond.

The messages kept coming Friday and finally he decided to play along. Officer Short messaged the person back, setting up a meeting to do the drugs. "I said, yeah I remember who you are now and I have another sack if you want to buy it for half price, she said no I have plenty but you can help me smoke this one. I said okay can you come to Broken Arrow.”

Link (Thanks, Michael Jenkins)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:14:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xbox and data glove for stroke rehabilitation

Rutgers University researchers hacked an Xbox and Essential Reality P5 glove controller into a hand exercise system for stroke patients. The system doesn't have quite the accuracy or resolution of commercial rehabilitation glove systems but it is one tenth of the price. From a press release:

"Virtual reality is showing significant promise for promoting faster and more complete rehabilitation, but the cost of many systems is still prohibitive for widespread deployment in outpatient clinics or patients' homes," said Grigore Burdea, professor of electrical and computer engineering and a noted inventor of virtual rehabilitation technology. "While it's essential to keep pursuing breakthrough technologies that will initially be costly, it's just as important that we find ways to make innovative treatments accessible to the many patients who need them..."

In one exercise, a patient attempts to wipe clean four vertical bars of "dirty" pixels that obscure a pleasant image on a computer display. The bars are erased in proportion to each finger's flexing motion, giving the patient immediate feedback on his or her performance. And in an exercise to promote finger flexing speed, a patient tries to make a fist quickly enough to "scare away" a butterfly flitting around on the screen.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:35:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO speak 19th century

Eric Furguson combed the 1830 book Private Yankee Doodle to develop a glossary of early 19th century vocabulary. He picked out the words that are no longer in common usage, "words that have disappeared, words that have changed meanings, and a few that haven't changed but could be mistakenly thought too modern to use." I'm glad he included the word "gripe" because I have a new baby boy and we've had to administer the miracle of gripe water a few times. From How To Speak 19th Century:

The pinch of the game; the determining moment, the crucial point. "But the pinch of the game had not arrived yet..." P.6

Covert; used as a noun, means a hiding place "I then came out of my covert and went on..." P.37

Elbow relation; distant relation, like a cousin-in-law. P.60

Seasoning; drunkenness. "...some of our gentlemen officers, happening to stop at a tavern, or rather a sort of grogshop, took such a seasoning that two or three of them became "quite frisky"..." P.146

Gull; fool, trick. "...and the men seeing they could no longer gull the officers, gave up the business likewise." P.152

Gripe; noun, meaning a grasp, perhaps literally a pain in the bowels. Describing a bout of nightmares---"I recovered partly from the first attack, but before I could fully overcome it, it took a second gripe upon me more serious than the first." P.160

Link (Thanks, Mark Dery!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:00:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make an Altoids tin survival kit

Field & Stream magazine shows how to pack a survival kit into an Altoids tin. They present several versions, including the Pocket Kit, Day Kit, and Wilderness Kit.
Link (via Life Hacker)

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:20:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What OS would Jesus use? Ubuntu Christian edition

The Ubuntu Christian edition is a special version of Ubuntu Linux that comes with a porn blocker and Christian software.

Along with the standard Ubuntu applications, Ubuntu Christian Edition includes the best available Christian software. The latest release contains GnomeSword, a top of the line Bible study program for Linux based on the Sword Project. There are several modules installed with GnomeSword including Bibles, Commentaries, and Dictionaries.

Ubuntu Christian Edition also includes fully integrated web content parental controls powered by Dansguardian. A graphical tool to adjust the parental control settings has also been developed specifically for Ubuntu Christian Edition. These features are truly what sets Ubuntu Christian Edition apart.

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:01:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funny ads for the game Risk

Adverbox has images of three print ads for the game Risk, depicting funny takeover scenarios. (Large version of image on Flickr) Link (Thanks, db!) (Via AdFreak)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:44:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Whistleblower uses YouTube to get the word out

An engineer who worked at Lockheed Martin on a multi-billion dollar contract job with the US Coast Guard, is using YouTube to describe security flaws, after his complaints to his managers, congressmen, and government investigators were ignored.

From the Washington Post:

Posted three weeks ago, the video describes what De Kort says are blind spots in the ship's security cameras, equipment that malfunctions in cold weather and other problems. "It may be very hard for you to believe that our government and the largest defense contractor in the world [are] capable of such alarming incompetence and can make ethical compromises as glaring as what I am going to describe." In response to De Kort's charges, a Coast Guard spokeswoman said the service has "taken the appropriate level of action." A spokeswoman for the contractors said the allegations were without merit.

Now that the video has made the news, the people who can so something about it are finally getting their butts in gear.

The video also has caught the eye of people in high places. De Kort's video has been covered by defense trade magazines, and yesterday, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter to the Coast Guard asking for an answer to De Kort's "extremely distressing" allegations.

"I want to make sure that the product we paid for is a product that does not jeopardize our men and women in service," Thompson said.

Link to WaPo story | Link to video

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:37:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Should online-game Ponzi scammer go to prison?

Julian Murdoch has an interesting essay about a guy who ran a Ponzi scam (for virtual money) on other players in a massively multiplayer online world, which comes to the conclusion that the guy is a real-life criminal and should be treated as one.

Last, week, Dentara Rask -- a character in CCP's Eve Online massively multiplayer online world -- pulled off an impressive stunt. He ran a classic Ponzi scheme and walked off with 700 billion ISK (in game money, and quite a lot of it). Normally, this kind of in-game bravado would generate nothing but a confuse stare from someone not deep inside the Eve universe, and little more than scandal-of-the-week titillation and subsequent yawns there. But I believe this case is more interesting than that.

I believe Dentara Rask committed fraud.
I believe he owes the IRS a lot of money.

Admittedly these are bold statements likely stuffed with straw, but they have deep implications, and bear argument.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:22:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

IKEA insists photo of dog does not show human-like penis

The cover of IKEA's 2007 catalog has a photo of a family and pet dog playing on a bed. The dog is unusual looking, as this CTV article describes it, because it appears to have "a larger-than-normal, human-like appendage."

An IKEA spokesperson says that the appendage is actually the dog's leg. "It's that straightforward," she told CTV. "The picture is unfortunate, but we hope our customers will see past the image and see how fantastic the other 364 pages in the catalogue really are." Link (Thanks, Matthew!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:10:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired News article about Wikipedia is on a editable wiki

Wired News has published an article on wikis and Wikipedia, and put the unedited text of the article on a wiki-page for readers to edit and improve:

Wikipedia has hit the big time.

The massive user-generated and edited site is not only the biggest encyclopedia in the world, it's also gotten the attention of the media elite, been lampooned by the Onion and Comedy Central, and will come packaged with MIT's $100 laptop project.

But what are the lessons of Wikipedia and what bodes for the future of wikis beyond Wikipedia? Will open collaboration be the exception or the rule?

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:41:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Singapore will have nationwide WiFi by 2007

Singapore is promising to have nationwide WiFi by the end of 2006. It'll be interesting to see how an inherently anonymous system like WiFi will play out in a country where a national firewall and monitoring are employed to interdict, catch and punish socially or politically unorthodox Internet users.

I'll be in Singapore, keynoting at the State of Play conference, just after New Year's, so I'll be able to check this out myself.

The official report released with the unfurling of the Intelligent Nation program pointed out that Singapore already had one public hot spot for every square kilometer at the end of last year. Communication between hot spots will be augmented by mesh networking, according to the Intelligent Nation report. Commercial WiMax--a wireless standard that allows signals to travel over longer distances than those using Wi-Fi--will begin in Singapore by the end of the year, said Chang.

Link (via Digg)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:39:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Camera paints WiFi signal pictures on the wall

The WiFi Camera Obscura uses a directional WiFi antenna as an aperture for taking "pictures" the radio energy from WiFi use in a room, and paints those pictures as a movie on a nearby wall. The pictures are lovely oil-slicks of revealed radiation. Link (via Joshua)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:35:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, August 28, 2006

Cory's "I, Row-Boat" live on Flurb

My story "I, Row-Boat" was just published on Rudy Rucker's awesome new online sf magazine, Flurb. "I, Row-Boat" is a riff on my Hugo-nominated story I, Robot, and it concerns the theological wars between an Asimov-cultist AI boat and an uplifted coral-reef.

The reef made a tremendous grinding noise. "Yaah!" it said. "Get lost. Sovereign territory!"

"All those fish," the woman said. Robbie had to stop himself from thinking of her as Janet. She was whomever was riding her now.

"Parrotfish," Robbie said. "They eat coral. I don't think they taste very good."

The woman hugged herself. "Are you sentient?" she asked.

"Yes," Robbie said. "And at your service, Asimov be blessed." His cameras spotted her eyes rolling, and that stung. He tried to keep his thoughts pious, though. The point of Asimovism wasn't to inspire gratitude in humans, it was to give purpose to the long, long life.

Link

Podcast: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:14:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hugo nominee James Patrick Kelly video podcast

Video blog The Eye interviewed James Patrick Kelly, an outstanding science fiction writer whose podcasted novella "Burn" was a Hugo nominee this year. Jim Kelly is one of the best writers working the field today, and is a tireless mentor to many writers (me included). He has lately become an advocate of Creative Commons as well, and in this video, he talks frankly and succinctly about why a popular and accomplished writer would adopt Creative Commons licensing, and what it takes to make it as a writer. Part 1 Link, Part 2 Link (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:12:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yes Men prank the Man in New Orleans

Kembrew says,

The Yes Men convinced the organizers of a major conference attended by contractors and government officials in charge of rebuilding N.O. that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson would attend the conference. Once at the conference, Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum -- posing as Rene Oswin, a fake HUD official -- delivered a speech that asserted that HUD was wrong and that it would not actually demolish perfectly sound low income housing, as it was planning to do. The Yes Men were working with local N.O. activists who have built a tent city around the site that will be destroyed to make way for a gentrified neighborhood.

Link (thanks also, Clayton James Cubitt)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:08:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

7,800 metaphors for the mind from the 18th century

Brad Pasanek (disclosure, one of my colleagues at the Annenberg Center for Communication) is working on a thesis project about metaphors for the human mind in 18th century literature; a kind of view of the steampunk vision of the brain in an era when mechanism was all.

He's put up a database with over 7,800 literary metaphors for the mind in 18th century English lit, with more to come:

"Those raging storms of wrath That so bedym the eyes of thine intent"

"Only a few succeed in arriving at these reasons with the eye of the mind, and when one does arrive, insofar as is possible, the very one who arrives does not abide in them, but as it were the eye (of the mind) itself is beaten back and repelled."

"The World a Scene of murder'd Souls appears, / Interr'd in living Sepulchres, / And moved from Place to Place in walking Tombs."

Link (Thanks, Brad!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:09:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New book by David Byrne: Arboretum, from McSweeney's.

McSweeney's has released a new book called Arboretum by David Byrne, described as a "collection of drawings/trees/maps." From the McSweeney's preview:

It's printed in a black-and-silver duotone for an uncanny graphite finish that preserves all the erasures and scribbles of the originals, its hard cover is wrapped in unassuming lunch-bag brown paper, and there's a 4-foot-long foldout explanatory guide.

Byrne explains the drawings:

Well, I guess they're a lot of things. Faux science, automatic writing, self-analysis, satire, and maybe even a serious attempt at finding connections where none were thought to exist.

They began a few years ago as instructions to myself in a little notebook—"draw an evolutionary tree on pleasure," or "draw a Venn diagram about relationships," for example. Mental maps of imaginary territory; typologies of wine descriptions, East Village clubs and bars, and medieval war machines. Maybe it was a sort of self-therapy that worked by allowing the hand to "say" what the voice could not.

Irrational logic—I've heard it called that. The application of logical scientific rigor and form to basically irrational premises. To proceed, carefully and deliberately, from nonsense, with a straight face, often arriving at a new kind of sense.

But how can nonsense ever emerge as sense? No matter how convoluted or folded, it will still always be nonsense, won't it?

Here's an Amazon order link, and here you'll find more info and preview images at davidbyrne.com. Danielle Spencer collaborated with Byrne on the book's design.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:00:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rigged carny game -- secret revealed! (with videos)

Yesterday I posted some photos of an old carnival game that belongs to a woman named Marsee who works at O'Reilly. She inherited it from her grandfather, who was a carny and owned the recieved the game as a gift, but never used it. (He was an honest carny, like most are.)

About 200 people emailed me with their ideas on how this game was rigged. Today, one of Make's interns, Ty Nowotny, took the game apart and revealed its secret: a cylinder with damping material.

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) When the carny wants to demonstrate how easy it is to throw a ball into the basket and have it drop through the hole, he reaches into the catching apron and pushes the green fabric tacked to the backboard, which makes the cylinder flush against the backboard. Then he tosses the ball into the basket. The cylinder absorbs the ball's energy, so the ball does not bounce out of the basket, but instead drops through the hole.

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) The very act of throwing the ball against the backboard causes the damping cylinder drop away. Now, when it's the rube's turn, the ball bounces right out of the basket. Here's a photo of the game (the real name is a "Scissors Box") with the back panel removed, revealing the mechanism.

Here are two videos of the thing in action. The first one shows balls bouncing out of it like crazy; the second one shows how the mechanism operates. Video 1 | Video 2

Reader comment:

Mark, Richard says:

Re: "Now, when it's the rube's turn, the ball bounces right out of the basket."

A technology later perfected by Diebold.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:56:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wu Orleans: mashup of Wu-Tang Clan plus dixie jazz tunes

BB reader Greg says,

Another mash-up album from djbc (who produced the excellent Philip Glass/Hip-Hop "Glassbreaks" album), this time featuring vocals from the Wu-Tang Clan over dixieland jazz tunes. It's a thing to hear. Online for free, and probably only until the cease-and-desist letter comes. Link, and a torrent for the file can be found here as well.

OMG the whole thing is amazing. I believe my favorite so far is "When The Meth Comes Marching In," with the unlikely pairing of Louis Armstrong and Method Man.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:53:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Evhead: pageviews are obsolete

Evan Williams (Odeo CEO and Pyra/Blogger co-founder) has an interesting post up about the fading significance of pageview and hit counts in determining the reach and influence of websites. Ajax, RSS and widgets have something to do with it, argues Ev -- but so does crappy design that effectively forces the user to clickclickclick many times to accomplish a task that leaner design would permit in just a single click. Crappy design like you'll find on MySpace. Snip:

Pageview counts are as suseptible as hit counts to site design decisions that have nothing to do with actual usage. As Mike Davidson brilliantly analyzed in April, part of the reason MySpace drives such an amazing number of pageviews is because their site design is so terrible. As Mike writes: "Here's a sobering thought: If the operators of MySpace cleaned up the site and followed modern interface and web application principles tomorrow, here's what the graph would look like:

Read Ev's entire post here.

Sean Bonner did, and responds with a post observing that "MySpace Can Eat a Bag of Dick." And indeed they can, but it'll take them 20 times more clicks to accomplish the task.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:39:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

San Francisco: Jean-Jacques Perrey in concert tomorrow

Legendary Moog maestro Jean Jacques Perrey will perform live in San Francisco tomorrow evening, August 29, at 8pm. The intimate concert is presented by RE/Search Publications who have done wonders to turn on multiple generations of Incredibly Strange Music fans to the tripped-out tunes of Perrey, a true electronica pioneer. From RE/Search:

Jean Jacques PERREY, resident of France, will play a live concert in San Francisco of "Happy Retro Moog Pop"! In the 60s, the 77-year-old composer produced some of the most amazingly inventive/humorous music ever collaged together with a razor blade and tape, on albums like The In Sound from Way Out! J-J Perrey's recent CD, Circus of Life, is one of the best recordings ever to grace our stereo system (every track is great).

Jean Jacques will play the Ondoline, accompanied by Dana Countryman. (Their new CD collaboration, The Happy ElectroPop Music Machine [Oglio Records], is scheduled for release on Sept 25, 2006.) This personal concert will be legendary and you will be glad you were there in an intimate setting--rabid fans of the music of Perrey and Kingsley should not miss this event!

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:12:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burning Man enthusiasts: "The SF Chron defiled our muffins!"

(Link to full-size pic). Burners have their glow-in-the-dark hemp thongs in a bunch over an error in this San Francisco Chronicle article. The subject is a "pollution exchange" at Burning Man modeled after real-world projects like the Chicago Climate Exchange -- but here's the goof in "Burning Man Goes Green":

Encouraged by the resurgence of the green movement, the scientists are taking a hard look at all those sacred flaming temples, gas-powered scooters shaped like cupcakes, and hundreds of rumbling RVs that converge for a week on the dry Black Rock Desert lakebed. With an idea that would make Al Gore smile, the scientists have created Cooling Man, an online calculator that determines how many tons of greenhouse gases each of the 37,000 "burners" will produce with their art projects and community camps.

Thing is, those infamously cute cupcake art-cars (shown above) aren't powered by gas -- they're electric. And their makers are not amused with the Chronicle's mistake. Using glittery, festooned pens, and wiping playa dust from their eyes, members of the "Cupcake Corners" camp at Burning Man reply:

My dear editor,

I feel my muffin has been defiled. In Meridith May's August 26 article entitled "Burning Man Goes Green," she made a particularly distressing error (well, distressing to, at the very least, me and my fellow cupcake builders). Gas powered food? Ick. The motorized cupcakes and muffins are all electric, every delicious one of them, charged by solar panels back at camp. No gas. No varoom. None among us has a gas powered Burning Man art vehicle. (And as a matter of fact, my sweetie and co-inventor of the mobile muffins, converted his Honda Civic Del Sol into a fully electric vehicle years ago. He now works at Tesla Motors, the new company in San Carlos manufacturing a long range electric sports car.) Please remember to do your research even when writing about wacky art projects. Though I hope no one digs deep enough to discover that the furry toppings for the cupcakes were harvested from baby seals and stray kittens.

Greenly yours,
Lisa Pongrace
(Otherwise, I very much appreciated the article)

More muffin outrage after the jump...
More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:15:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-psychiatry Scientology astroturf exhibit at WorldCon

Yesterday, after the LA World Science Fiction Convention had wound down, I happened upon the Scientology after-party, held at the far end of the second-floor meeting room. This room had been converted to an anti-psychiatry museum by a Scientology-founded organization called The Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

A Scientology rep asked me if I wanted anything and I told her I was there to see what the Church was up to. She insisted that The Citizens Commission on Human Rights wasn't a Scientology organization, but on further questioning she admitted that the organization had been founded by the Church and that the majority of its funding came from donations from Church members.

The exhibit was a nightmarish round of blaring video-screens playing the kind of ominous music that you hear on America's Most Wanted during the atrocity re-enactment, each screen competing with the others to fill the room with a cacophonous, stomach-churning gumbo of scary sound-effects. The visuals showed photos of Hitler (a favorite graphic emblem of the Church -- they used it to smear Time magazine after a critical piece appeared there) and atrocity photos. The Church's connection to the "Council" wasn't mentioned anywhere.

At the literature stand, there were a number of brochures on offer, including the one linked below, which encouraged readers to found astroturf blogs that copy-and-pasted information from the Council's own site in order to "get the word out." Astroturf is as astroturf does, I guess. Link to astroturf blog brochure, Link to video of exhibit, Link to my photos of the exhibit, Link to Wikipedia on CCHR

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:01:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Internet guy wants to free USGS maps to "true public domain"

BoingBoing reader Seth says,

Jared Benedict is trying to get all the USGS public domain maps into the actual public domain so they are freely available for everyone to freely use. He's bought all the maps in digital form. Once he's recouped his costs they'll all be available via the Internet Archive.

Link to project info.

Update: wrexen sez, "The map data has been freed and is making its slow journey to the safe harbors of the Internet Archive!"

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:57:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Menger sponge tattoo

Derek van Westrum says

I've had this tattoo since 1990, so you can imagine my surprise/delight on seeing the giant business card Menger Sponge (which I've learned I've always referred to incorrectly as a "Sierpinski Gasket") on boingboing.

The only thing I'd add to the description is the fact that when taken to the limit, the resulting sponge has infinite surface area (it would take an infinite amount of paint to cover it), but zero volume (it can't hold any paint). (Click on thumbnail for enlargement)

Reader comment:

Mark Allen of Machine Project says: "I put a couple images of it installed up on flickr if you're curious."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:44:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Idlewild: bloggers slam NYT over review detail

Idlewild -- aka "the Outkast movie" -- opened this weekend, and I saw it here in LA at the super-awesome Cinerama Dome. If you come expecting a long-form music video with cameos by great actors and amazing dance numbers, you'll dig it. It was gorgeous, visually rich, with a score to die for. Full of heart. But if you expect a script that holds together, with lead characters you grow into really caring about, you may be disappointed. It suffers from too much of too much, or as my movie companion said: it tries to cram 10 pounds worth of stuff in a 5-pound bag. Still, I'd go see it again just to catch everything I missed while my head was reeling from the first round.

Jossip's Corynne Steindler says there's a bit of brouhaha over the NYT review:

The New York Times reviewed new movie Idlewild, and described [female lead] actress Paula Patton as "a beautiful singer" and "a lovely woman with a serviceable voice." Funny, since everyone who actually interviewed Ms. Patton on the red carpet was told that the voiceover was dubbed. Patton repeatedly told reporters ""I just wasn’t gifted with that talent for singing." Nice job, NYT!

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:36:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO wash dishes when camping

Common methods for washing dishes and utensils in the wilderness without running water may not be as effective at removing E. coli as campers think. Microbiologist Joanna Hargreaves of the North Bristol NHS Trust evaluated a variety of wash/rinse/disinfect techniques and reported her results in the scientific journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. She outlines an alternative system that uses an equivalent amount of water and number of rinses. From Science News:

To clean eating implements adequately, Hargreaves proposes a rigorous approach to washing in which backpackers would first fill each of three large bowls or buckets with about 5 liters (1 1/3 gallons) of clean water. Next, add 5 milliliters (1 teaspoon) of detergent to the first container and 10 ml (2 tsp) of 4-percent chlorine bleach (a common commercial preparation) to the second. To wash dishes and utensils, remove most food residues in the first bowl and, in the second, scrub the items until they are visibly clean. A quick rinse in the third bowl removes the odor of the cleaning chemicals...

By comparison, the methods that are currently most popular among expedition companies removed more than 99 percent of bacteria during the first step. But the quick rinses after that step failed to consistently remove remaining bacteria.

That's why Hargreaves and other wilderness-medicine experts recommend that campers adopt the new system.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:24:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More on the mid-flight, ipod-in-a-toilet terrorist freakout

The Ottawa Citizen has a report with more details on the security overreaction that followed a hapless iPod's dunking into an airplane loo. Link, and here's the previous BoingBoing post.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:10:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cold cuts peppered with viruses

The Food and Drug Administration approved certain viruses as food additives, to be sprayed on cold cuts before packaging. The bacteriophages are added to defend the meats from Listeria monocytogenes, a bug that when ingested can cause a nasty bacterial infection in humans. The phages infect the bacteria, binding to the host and ultimately killing it. From the Los Angeles Times:

The FDA spent four years evaluating the safety and effectiveness of the "cocktail" of several phage at the request of Intralytix Inc., a Baltimore, Md., biotechnology company. In presenting its petition, Intralytix referred the government to more than 20 studies documenting the power of phage to fight infection, many of them performed in Russian and Eastern Bloc countries where phage therapies have long been popular in treating certain infections.

Intralytix also conducted studies of its own, trying out its phage mixture (consisting of six different phage that attack the food-poisoning bacterium Listeria monocytogenes) on more than 10 different kinds of deli meats, including sliced turkey, roast beef, bologna, chicken and even raw hot dogs, and found that they effectively killed all strains of listeria.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:05:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dept of Homeland Security using trademark to silence critics

Michael sez, "On August 1st, Boing Boing featured an article about the efforts of my summer intern, Emily Hesaltine, to improve on the Department of Homeland Security's website Ready.gov. Her website, launched by the Federation of American Scientists, is called reallyready.org. Now the Department of Homelnad Security is coming after us because they believe we have infringed on their 'intellectual property.' Specifically, they take issue with our use of a green check mark over the word Ready. I have posted their letter to us and our response. For the record, it cost them more money in lawyer time to write the letter then it did for us to create the entire website."

Federal agencies aren't allowed to assert a copyright in their works, but they are allowed to use trademark law. But silencing political criticism isn't what trademark law is for -- nor is it for censoring genuinely useful information about disaster-preparedness.

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:00:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

World's oldest person, RIP

María Esther de Capovilla, the world's oldest person, died yesterday at age 116. The world's oldest man, Emillano Mercado Del Toro, who celebrated his 115th birthday last week, does not take Capovilla's title though. That honor goes to Elizabeth Bolden of Memphis, Tennessee, who was born a few months before Del Toro.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:52:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot pencil-sharpener takes a victory lap

This clever little £3.50 wind-up robot/pencil-sharpener winds when you sharpen your pencil. Once your pencil's nice and pointy, your robot can take a celebratory lap around your desk. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:29:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

British recording ass. wants police to spend less time on real crime

Phil sez, "The BPI are a music industry body in the UK. They are now calling for 'Intellectual Property' issues to be 'higher on the police's agenda.' Since police resources are finite, I think we should hold them to account on this one, by insisting that they expand on that by telling us *exactly* what offences should be positioned *lower* on the police's agenda to make resources available." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:27:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Filipino student protests run on SMS

This account of Filipino student protesters using SMSes to organize giant flash-mob political demonstrations reads like adventure fiction for young radicals -- these kids use their pocket-communicators to rally, retreat, change course, and swarm the cops when they try to bust one of their number.

Caught up in the melee, ducking from the swinging batons, Palatino heard his phone ping loudly.

"GET OUT OF THERE. You are in a dangerous place," warned the text, from a friend who could see that Palatino was about to be pinned between the crowd and a wall.

An officer grabbed Palatino.

"ID! ID! Now!" the red-faced officer demanded.

A small group of officers closed in around Palatino, whose eyes were suddenly wide with terror.

Students who saw it quickly typed a text alert to others, using Palatino's nickname: "Mong is being arrested."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:26:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pump-and-dump spam-scam works

Jonathan Zittrain and Laura Frieder have studied over 75,000 pump-and-dump stock-scam emails and determined that they actually produce a pretty good return -- for the spammer.

People who respond to the "pump and dump" scam can lose 8% of their investment in two days.

Conversely, the spammers who buy low-priced stock before sending the e-mails, typically see a return of between 4.9% and 6% when they sell.

I figured that this was true when the number of stock-scam emails in my in-box doubled and redoubled and re-re-doubled. There are so many spammers running this scam right now that I'm filtering thousands of these every day, and a couple dozen make it through the filter on top of that. Link (via Kottke)

Update: David sez, "A fellow on the CISSP mailing list set up a simulation of a portfolio whose strategy was simply, sell short every stock he got a spam about. He 'made' $8K in two weeks."

Update 2: Joshua sez, "I run the spam stock tracker site you listed on boing boing last October. Just got the following email today. Basically it is offering to affect stock price for a fee or a cut of the action. It is the first time I have seen such an offer, and I got it 3 times in just a couple hours. There is a lot of speculation regarding who spams and why, but one thing certainly affecting the volume of spam is the ease at which anyone can trigger the flood of spam, and seemingly do it risk free based on the offer in the email."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Retractable power-cord that changed my life

I bought a some of these ZipLinq power-cables a couple weeks ago -- they've got a two-prong US plug on one end, and a figure-eight plug that fits the transformers for my PowerBooks, ThinkPad, and many other devices on the other. A quick tug makes them reel back into a compact, tangle-free package.

I love retractable cables, they're the next-best thing to wireless. Power-brick-and-wire assemblies are always problematic, as they require coiling up two wires, making packing up a laptop into a protracted pain. This thing is such a delight to use that I find myself taking it out of my bag just to show it to other laptop junkies.

At this point, I'm ready to replace every power-cable in my house with one of these. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:14:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Nerdcore rap: Attack of the Clonefucker

Nerdcore rapper Schaffer the Darklord has a filthy masterpiece in "Attack of the Clonefucker," a bawdy, disgusting rap about a narcissistic cloner who makes, screws, and murders copies of himself. This is funny, disturbing, gross and danceable. Link (Thanks, Scott!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:35:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plastic Man pilot

The pilot for the new Plastic Man cartoon series on Cartoon Network looks great. Link (Thanks, Matter Eater Lad!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:39:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mr Jalopy's gum machines

At Foo Camp this year, Mr Jalopy brought a gum machine rack, but instead of selling gum and toys, the plastic bubbles sold spare parts, like gears, tiny motors, and switches. One gum machine sold a little booklet that he wrote with tips on buying a used car. Brilliant! Here's a Flikr photo set -- one of the photos shows David Pescovitz posing next to the machines. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:36:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool car show

Coop went to a lowrider car show in LA today and took tons of great photos. This car looks like it could climb a tree!

Artist and hotrodder Robert Williams points to the example of the Indian longrifle as one of many instances of humans’ interaction with, and need to transform, the impersonal products of the Industrial Revolution into something more relatable, more human, something with a soul. Hot rodding and car customization are a part of this long history, too. Perhaps the most perfect example, in fact.

The history of the lowrider in Hispanic culture is long and storied, and parallels neatly with the history of hot rodding, sometimes intertwining, and sometimes traveling far afield.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:26:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animated version of the "Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn"

A while back I posted a link to artist Jim Woodring's discovery of the "Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn," which depicts Sluggo floating blissfully in the air, uttering the word "No."

A little while later, a fellow sent us a photo of the new tattoo he got of the "Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn."

Today, Coop sent me a link to this terrific animation inspired by the "Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn," with a Gabby Pahinui soundtrack (I think) accompanied by quotes about the tao from Alan Watts (again, I think). Link

Reader comment:

Gary says: "Fyi, the Gabby song that’s on the Sluggo video is Pu’uanhulu."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:21:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rigged carny game

This weekend I looked at a ball toss carnival game from the 1930s. It belongs to a woman who works at O'Reilly (publishers of Make). She got it from her grandfather who used it in carnivals in the 1930s and 1940s.

It's a rigged game, because there is some kind of mechanism in it that the operator can secretly activate, which all but ensures the ball will bounce out of the bucket when the mark tosses it in. We were going to take the thing apart to see if we could discover the mechanism, but this was during O'Reilly's annual Foo Camp and so there were so many other exciting things happening that we forgot to disassemble it.

Carnys call these "alibi games," because the operator uses a long litany of excuses to keep the mark from giving up in disgust, and encouraging him to dig more money out of his wallet and try "just one more time" to win a stuffed animal that his girlfriend doesn't even really want.

Does anyone know how this game works? I'm wondering if there might not even be a mechanism -- maybe the carny just secretly switched between different balls: a soft one that thudded against the backboard and dropped through the win hole, and a hard one that bounced off the backboard. Email me if you know the answer and I'll post it here. Link

Reader comments:

More...

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:09:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Yisrayl Hawkins' end of the world videos, remixed

Last week I pointed to a video of Yisrayl Hawkins' warning that the Bible prophesies that nuclear war will erupt on September 12, killing one-third of the Earth's human inhabitants.

Boing Boing reader Joe says "Once I learned from a Youtube link in your article that the world was going to end, I started surfing around Youtube and found that the followers of Overseer Yisrayl Hawkins have posted quite a cornucopia of scary little videos about the upcoming nuclear war. I got so inspired that I had to remix some of them. Hope you enjoy it." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:34:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Armor of God kids pajamas

Your children will be eager for bedtime with their Armor of God pajamas to protect them from the beasts under the bed. Just $39.95. From the Armor of God web site:

The Armor of God PJ's were inspired by a mother reading Ephesians 6:10-18 every night to her daughter to give her a safe and secure feeling in the dark. As they read the scriptures, they put on each spiritual and powerful piece of the Armor of God to keep them safe and peaceful while they slept. At that moment, God gave me the idea how wonderful it would be if all children could have the opportunity to put on a pair of pajamas that symbolized the Armor of God for the same purpose... that with their belief in Jesus and His protection they will feel safe and secure during the night as they sleep. As they dress in the mornings, they should replace them with the spiritual Armor of God to protect them in their daily activities.

Link (Thanks, Shawn Connally!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:11:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Maine Mystery Beast carcass is canine

The amazing Maine Mystery Beast that many hoped had shuffled off this mortal coil several weeks ago is apparently not dead (undead?). DNA evidence reveals that the strange rotting animal found two weeks ago in Turner, Maine was, in fact, a dog. As Loren Coleman points out at Cryptomundo, this means that the real Mystery Beast with its glowing eyes and creepy cries is... still out there.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:06:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

85-blade "pocket" knife

Wenger's "Most Incredible Knife," a $1,200, 85-blade Swiss-Army-style knife is apparently not a joke. I guess if you had really big pockets? Link (via Charlie Stross)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:46:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TSA busts "explosive water" that turns out to be cosmetics

It turns out that a bunch of "explosive water" that the TSA's Moisture War squad busted was, in fact, make-up. I'm sure that was a great relief to the passenger who was incarcerated for carrying it around.

"The bomb squad is on site and the woman is being interviewed by the FBI," the TSA's Amy von Walter said. "It looks like there were four items containing liquids ... two of those containers tested positive."

But law enforcement sources say the substances that tested positive were cosmetic-based products and not a threat CBS News reports.

Link (Thanks, Adrian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:15:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, August 25, 2006

More on "free energy" company

The Guardian reports that Steorn, the Dublin-based company that claims to have a gizmo that generates more useful energy than it consumes, took out a full-page ad in the Economist inviting scientists to examine the technology.

There is a test rig with wheels and cogs and four magnets meticulously aligned so as to create the maximum tension between their fields and one other magnet fixed to a point opposite. A motor rotates the wheel bearing the magnets and a computer takes 28,000 measurements a second. The magnets, naturally, act upon one another. And when it is all over, the computer tells us that almost three times the amount of energy has come out of the system as went in. In fact, this piece of equipment is 285% efficient.

In Steorn's theory, fixed magnets could act upon a moving magnet in such a way as to make it a virtual perpetual motion generator. In an electrical appliance - a computer, kettle, mobile phone or toy - that would provide all the power for its lifetime. Of course, free-energy cars, power plants and water-pumping systems could follow. A better world indeed.

Link (Thanks, Adrian Champion!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:16:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photo of the hummingbird hawkmoth

This beautiful photo of a Hummingbird Hawkmoth was taken by Jane Cockman and posted to her Flickr stream. I'd never heard of a Hummingbird Hawkmoth before, but I like the name. It's as if the first person to see one didn't quite know what they were looking at, so they just named it after three flying animals. (Personally, I would have called it the Hummingbird Batmoth, just to throw a mammal into the mix.)

Hummingbirds are native to the Americas only, but the Hummingbird Hawkmoth does a decent job of mimicking a true hummingbird, much to the delight of easily fooled Europeans. Link (Via Neatorama)

Reader comments: Jan says:

I saw these buggers in France a few years ago, where I went to attend a friend's wedding in the country side. My wife and I were awestruck and more than a little confused at to what we were looking at, so you're absolutely right that the name is most likely given to cover all the bases (though hawk seems a bit off, but what the heck).

I saw a bunch of these fluttering around a bush, drinking the nectar, and we stood there for quite some time debating whether it was a hummingbird or not.

Joe says:

Fabulous find, the photos of the hummingbird hawkmoth. Sometime these creatures are stranger than we imagine.

I tooks some similar shots of what I thought was a hummingbird last fall. Investigation showed it, too, was a moth -- a hummingbird clearwing moth. Photos here.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:04:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Business Card Sponge event at Machine Project in LA

Behold the Business Card Menger Sponge. You can see it live and in person at Machine in Echo Park on Saturday night.

Menger’s Sponge - named for its inventor Karl Menger and sometimes wrongly called Sierpinski’s Sponge – was the first three dimensional fractal that mathematicians became aware of. In 1995 Dr Jeannine Mosely, a software engineer, set out to build a level 3 Menger Sponge from business cards. After 9 years of effort, involving hundreds of folders all over America, the Business Card Menger Sponge was completed. The resulting object is comprised of 66,048 cards folded into 8000 interlinked sub-cubes, with the entire surface paneled to reveal the Level 2 and Level 3 fractal iterations.

Recipe for a Menger Sponge: Take a cube, divide it into 27 (3 x 3 x 3) smaller cubes of the same size; now remove the cube in the center of each face plus the cube at the center of the whole. You are left with a structure consisting of the eight small corner cubes plus twelve small edge cubes holding them together. Now, imagine repeating this process on each of these remaining 20 cubes. Repeat again. And again, ad infinitum … To make a Level 3 sponge, stop after 3 iterations.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:45:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ABC two-part series on Xeni's "Hacking the Himalayas" reports

This week, ABC World News with Charles Gibson webcast a two-part online video series about the reports I filed (NPR, Wired News 1 2 3 4) on technology and the Tibetan diaspora.

PART 1: Here is the link to the piece, Here is the link to the whole webcast.

PART 2: Here is the link to the piece, Here is the link is the whole webcast.

ABC has now been webcasting news for about 9 months, and it's interesting to watch this take form. Some stories are not part of the normal World News Tonight broadcasts -- they appear exclusively in the webcast (what I love about their web delivery interface: it's *not* WMV, unlike some of their competitors; what I don't like: unless I'm missing something, it seems you're not able to navigate forward or back within a video once it's begun playing).

But the network is also making these available as video podcast quicktime files (for free), so you can noodle around to your heart's content. And some longer-form ABC News specials are available via iTunes now, for $1.99 or so a pop: Link.

Incidentally, CNN International ran a "Techwatch" segment this week about the Tibet series, too (video isn't available for blogging at this time).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:16:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Custom-made changing spooky portraits

Last September, Mark blogged the changing spooky portraits of Haunted Memories, lenticular goth-y pictures that changed between innouous old-timey portraits to spooky axe-murder-y ones.

Now Haunted Memories is offering custom verisons of these portraits, where they'll turn you into a haunted, changing portrait. I'm ordering one now. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:40:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lost: stack of stripper polaroids in San Francisco

From The Seven Deadly Sinners: "This guy is offering only $50 dollars for the return of a stack of polaroid photos of strippers all held together with a rubberband." Link

Update: Is this Flicker set from the stack of missing stripper polaroids? (Thanks to everyone who pointed me to this!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:11:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Manifesto Games: an indie label for the best games you never played

I've been watching master game-designer Greg Costikyan plan his new gaming startup, Manifesto Games, for some time now. Greg (Paranoia, Toon, Star Wars: the RPG) promises to reinvent video-game publishing with a model that's sustainable, creator-friendly, and fun as hell. It's like an indie label for video games, publishing deserving games that mainstream publishers are too blinkered, risk-averse or stupid to put out.

Manifesto went live today, filled with amazing-looking games, the likes of which I've never seen. Congrats, Greg!

The NOKs

It's Delightful, It's De-Lovely, It's... Pretty Damn Strange

The Noks is about the weirdest game I've seen this year. I'm tempted to call it "indescribable," except we need to describe it, eh?

Partly, it's a game of collectibles. There are several hundred "Noks" in the world at present, and the developers plan to add more over time. You can think of Noks as something like, say, Magic: The Gathering cards, except that they aren't cards. They're animated 3D avatars with backstories. Some of them sing songs or perform music. And most have something to tell you about the game itself, or the backstory of the Noks universe. To understand that universe, you'll need to collect--well maybe not "them all," but lots of them.

Link (Thanks, Ellie!)

Update: Ellie adds, "This is still in beta, within a couple of weeks the site will be an order of magnitude better."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:38:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Windows Media DRM cracked, no one cares

Derek sez, "Last night, I got a tip that the WM DRM was cracked; Endadget has now confirmed that the tool exists and works. While interesting news, it's rather irrelevant to online media services using WM DRM. Most users won't care about these decryption tools, not because the DRM is 'consumer-friendly,' but rather because there are already easily-accessible alternatives for acquiring unencrypted copies of practically any song or movie. Thus, users already could readily get around the DRM's unfriendly limits, without any actual decryption tool." Link (Thanks, Derek!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:30:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burning Man 2006: a reliable map, and GPS data files.

PDF link for map.

Here are data files you can load into your GPS device or Google Earth.

This year's Burning Man camp is located at a site about a mile and a half north of the 2005 edition.

* artweb250.gpx

* fence.gpx

* roads250.gpx

(Thanks, Wayne Correia!)

Previously:
Burning Man Bingo is Back
Burning Man 2006 - come all ye roving art-cars

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:04:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RE/Search Pranks 2 book coming soon

This fall, iconic counterculture chronicler RE/Search will release the long-awaited sequel to their seminal Pranks! book published in 1988. The new book features inspirational interviews with The Yes Men, Ron English, John Waters, monochrom, Billboard Liberation Front, and many more tricksters. Hit the RE/Search site for excerpts and pre-order information. From the introduction:

What are pranks? For us, pranks are any humorous deeds, propaganda, sound bites, visual bites, performances and creative projects which pierce the veil of illusion and tell the truth. Pranks unseriously challenge accepted reality and rigid behavioral codes and speech. Pranks deftly undermine phoniness and hypocrisy. Pranks lampoon sanctimoniousness, self-glorification, selfmythologizing and self-aggrandizement. Pranks force the laziest muscle in the body, the imagination, to be exercised, stretched, and thus transcend its former self.The imagination is what creates the future; that which will be.

Link (Thanks, V. Vale and Scott Beale!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:10:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mad Hatter's Tea Party cafe

In honor of tea company Lipton's centennial, Japanese design firm Nendo was commissioned to create a cafe inspired by the Mad Hatter's Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland. The installation was built last month at the Ozone Living Design Center in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

From Nendo's site:

We radically distorted the size of the long table and rows of chairs to heighten the room’s sense of receding depth, and did the same thing with the silhouettes of characters from the novel used as the pattern for the wallpaper. These details let us create a space that felt long and narrow, as though it was pulling in visitors. The scale of the installation changed just like Alice after eating the cake. We shrank some of the chairs so that visitors could barely squeeze into them, and enlarged others until visitors’ feet couldn’t touch the ground.

Link (via Sensory Impact)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:56:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Walking cane with telescope

This amazing c.1920s walking cane with a built-in working telescope is up for auction on eBay. With a week left in the auction, the current bid is US$22.72 but the seller expects it to sell for US$1,000-$1,500. From the listing:

This excellent system walking cane boasts an extendable spyglass as the handle that is made of brass. The handle is hand carved out of appealing dark red Mahogany in the shape of two folded hands that are actually holding the removable telescope. At the narrow end the lens cap of the spyglass can be unscrewed and it can be removed from the circular opening in the hands.

The telescope comes in working condition and the view is very good. The hand carving applied is of high quality and the bronze collar as well as two gilt copper collars at the upper end of the shaft, match the overall appealing look perfectly.

Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

UPDATE: Chris Meadows writes, "You can get a more modern version of this sort of thing for substantially less." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:38:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fiberglass mascots gallery

Flickr has a fiberglass mascots group.

A home for storefront fiberglass mascots from around the world. The Big Boy. The Doggie Diner. The ubiquitous Col. Sanders statues outside of KFC outlets in Japan. From Tulsa to Tokyo and everywhere in between, feel free to post your photos of fiberglass mascots here.

Link (Thanks, Todd!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:19:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burning Man Bingo is Back

Joel Johnson, who came up with the dang thing in 2003, says,

"Sorry, I moved some stuff around. It now lives here: Link. Please note that I predicted the Chuck Norris meme by a full three years. I am the Oracle of Ephemera."

Alternate Link (Thanks, Sherman!)

Previously: Burning Man 2006 - come all ye roving art-cars

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:54:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jews for Jesus' wacky pamphlets: Jackie Mason strikes back

David Goldenberg from Gelf Magazine says,

Remember those silly JFJ pamphlets you guys featured on BoingBoing not too long ago?

Well, comedian Jackie Mason didn't find them nearly as funny as you guys (and presumably Steve Jobs) did. He's suing the JFJs for $2 million, saying "While I have the utmost respect for people who practice the Christian faith, the fact is, as everyone knows, I am as Jewish as a matzo ball or kosher salami."

Link to AP story. Lawsuit or not, the pamphlet examining Mr. Mason's Jewishness and Jesusness is still live on the Jews For Jesus website: Link, here's the PDF for online viewing, and here's another version formatted for printing.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:44:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

T-shirt: "I am not a terrorist," in Arabic

Tim Murtaugh tells BoingBoing,

After reading about blogger Raed Jarrar's experience at JFK (he was forced to take off a shirt with Arabic writing on it or miss his flight), I finally stopped being depressed about the war on terror and began being proactively pissed off. I made this shirt, which says "I am not a terrorist" in Arabic. I plan to wear it every time I go to the airport from now on.

On the t-shirt site, Tim says: "All the shirts are set to $1.00 more than the Spreadshirt base price — all profits will be sent to the ACLU."

Reader comment: George Murray says,

Xeni, Thanks for linking to the Arabic shirt. I just bought one. I'm a 6' 2", 220lbs white guy with red hair and an Scottish last name. I wonder what will happen when I try to wear it while flying from St. John's to Toronto in September. I'll let you know.

One thing: are we sure it doesn't say "I've got the mother of all bombs up my ass, please check"? Cause that would be bad.

Cindy Mosqueda says,

black lava, has had a shirt reading the same thing for a while. a muslim friend named mohammad wears the shirt all the time, but leaves doesn't wear it when he's going to fly somewhere. i guess he has enough trouble with the name mohammad. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:33:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

War on World of Warcraft? Toilet-plunked iPod leads to security freakout.

A World of Warcraft forum member posts this bizarre story: a guy accidentally drops his iPod into an airplane toilet, and a terror alert freakout follows: Link. It's a very wordy tale, and I don't quite grok all the details or have resources to factcheck right now -- but if it's all true, it really is "overreaction at its worst," as Bruce Schneier said. (Thanks to Sean Bonner and everyone else who suggested)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:17:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

XXX-XBOX: teledildonics mod with live video chat

Violet Blue says,

It seems I finally have a reason to start gaming again: new Xbox teledildonics. Kotaku tells us that the Xbox 360 now has cameras with video chat, and while chatting there is a command to make your chat-partner's controller vibrate. Even though it takes holding down both triggers at once, making one-handed enjoyment complicated, it seems like this is just a few tiny hardware hacks away from being consumer-level teledildonics. It's my theory that not being truly marketed as porn/sextoy/teledildonics will make it adapted by consumers quickly and easily.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:10:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funky Friday video smorgasblogging

Every Friday, BoingBoing pal Coop sends around an email to a small list of buddies with pointers to great, funky songs worthy of rocking out to on the last work-day of the week. Today, iowahawk picked up the schtick and compiled this extensive list of links to super-funky video clips: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:18:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cartoonist-designed miniature golf course

Ccartoonist Jef Czekaj in Somerville, Massachusetts, got a bunch of cartoonists together to design a miniature golf course. Looks like fun! Link (Thanks, Coop!)

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

Canadian music label puts fans and artists first

Wired has a great article on Nettwerk, a Canadian label that puts out stars like Avril Lavigne, which has taken a fans-and-artists-first approach to the business that has them making tracks available from remix, fighting to defend fans who are being sued by other labels, and delivering unheard-of sweet deals to the artists they publish:

Terry McBride has an idea. Another idea. A good – no, a great idea. McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, is sitting in his Vancouver, British Columbia, office with his local marketing staff discussing strategy for the release of a new album by Barenaked Ladies. The marketing departments in three other cities are conferenced in. The conversation ping-pongs from Nascar promotions to placement in a Sims videogame. McBride is on a roll.

"This one's a real wingdinger," he says, leaning into the speakerphone so New York, Denver, and Los Angeles won't miss a word. "Let's give away the ProTools files on MySpace. Vocals, guitars, drums, and bass. We'll let the fans make their own mixes." The room falls quiet. Musicians usually record their instruments and vocals on separate tracks; the producer and mixer combine those tracks into a finished product. McBride wants to make the individual files available so that amateur DJs can use them like Lego bricks to create something all their own. The record industry likes control. McBride is proposing unfettered chaos.

A voice from LA breaks the silence: "For the single, you mean, right?" McBride's features screw up in concentration, then quickly expand into a grin. "What I'm proposing," he says, "is that we make all 29 songs available as ProTools files. In two weeks." The Internet marketers in Vancouver look worried. "But," he adds, "we'll get the files from the single up on MySpace by Monday." Libby White, a member of the department, shoots McBride a skeptical look. Can they make it? McBride asks. White sighs. "We'll make it," she says.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hand-carved Kenyan iPod stands from tropical woods

The SafariPod is a Kenyan one-of-a-kind hand-carved renewable wood iPod stand:

SafariPod craftsmen make each object sold here to his own design. We determine the need for a specific type of product... say, an iPod stand. Then, we tell the artist what we need the object to do, and he then develops a design to his own taste and standard. Each of our artists have been sculpting native wildlife pieces for many years. Now, they are applying those years of thoughtful experience to creating technology accessories just for you. And, each of our objects is made of renewable tropical woods, so as not to contribute to Kenya's horrific wood depletion problem. This makes your SafariPod object not only a wonderfully beautiful possession, but one that is also made to respect the environment.

Link (via Red Ferret)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:42:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Post-Pluto mnemonics for the planets

Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan held a competition to come up with a better mnemonic for the planets' names in the wake of yesterday's decision to demote Pluto from planet-status. The winner, Josh Mishell's My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums is great, as are the runners-up:

Many Very Earnest Men Just Snubbed Unfortunate Ninth Planet (Dave Child)

"My vision, erased. Mercy! Just some underachiever now." (Delia, as spoken by Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh)

Most vexing experience, mother just served us nothing! (Bart Baxter)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:39:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Universities put Hollywood ahead of students

On the heels of yesterday's post about USC's lunatic copyright policy, many readers have written in with more examples of copyright lunacy on USC and other campuses, instances in which scholarship is being trumped by a desire to appease the entertainment industry, enforcing rules that don't take any account of the limits put on copyright by lawmakers in order to preserve public rights and especially the right of scholars and researchers to pursue their work.

USC has a pretty crummy track-record here: A USC student who was downloading copies of Larry Lessig's FreeCulture, a book distributed via BitTorrent and Grokster at the behest of its author, was censured by USC for installing the app. He got kicked off the campus network and told that he would not be allowed back on until he promised to uninstall all general-purpose file-sharing software. He wrote letters of protest to the university about this, but never heard back.
More...

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:30:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Colbert Report rips off Ze Frank? For shame, if so.

BB reader Dave says,

I'm sure I'm not the first to have noticed this, but if you watched The Colbert Report on tuesday night you saw a bit about the Fields Medal and the Poincaré conjecture, in which he smooshed a doughnut into a ball, providing a (somewhat shaky) demonstration that the Poincaré conjecture is b.s.

However, if you watched The Show with Ze Frank that morning, you would have notice that Ze did a suspiciously similar bit, where he too smooshes a toroidal doughnut into a ball and eats it (as well as making a gag about everyone's favorite spherical doughnut, the Munchkin, which Colbert also does!).

Was Ze ripped off? Links to the two video clips are here.

I asked Ze how he felt about it, and he tells BoingBoing,

I was a bit sad at first... but someone in my forum pointed out that whether or not it was a rip off, it was not a great joke to begin with :)

Reader comment: Patrick Allen says,

Regarding the Stephen Colbert seemingly ripping off Ze Frank post, I was a bit sad myself after watching that segment on the Report just a few hours after watching the same bit on Ze's show. But you know, this isn't the first time I've seen Colbert "ripping off stuff" from the Internets. In fact, his shows of late seem to be almost mirror projections of what is 'hot' on the Internets that day, or at least that week.

As someone who spends a good deal of time swimming in the tubes, The Colbert Report is feeling more and more like a rerun of what I read and saw throughout the day. When I say rerun, I mean just that. It's like he takes the stuff that, say, received 1,300 diggs that day and does the same thing on show and passes it off as his own. Unlike Keith Olbermann who takes something that was popular on the Internets that day and files his own, original report on it.

Now I wish I had a bunch of examples to give you to back up my point, but I don't. I know, bad me. But it's something I've only started noticing in the last few weeks, and I really didn't start taking notes or anything like that. The first thought that came to mind after reading your post today was: 'hmmm, maybe I'm not the only one who feels Colbert is beginning to pass certain content off as his own, knowing that only a small percentage of people are going to know where it originally came from. And who's going to have the balls to say anything about it. Colbert's a geek/nerd/dork hero right now.'

Now, I could be wrong of course. I've been a big fan of Colbert since his days on The Daily Show. I would hope he's not starting to stake claim as his own the content created by folks like you or me. Now, I'm also a big fan of fair use, but Colbert getting paid the big bucks telling the same jokes Ze Frank and others created aint cool or fair in my book. Or maybe it's all in my head, and there's only been a few isolated instances that I'm making a mountain out of. I think I'll start paying closer attention...

Ed. Note: Whether the Colbert Report/Ze Frank Show donutgate incident is coincidence or "rip-off," I can't say. But when internet-idea-poaching does happen, remember: TV shows are created by teams of writers, producers, editors, and others. If Ze Frank's donut was poached, it's not reasonable to assume that Colbert, the host, is personally responsible. But screw all that, why doesn't the Colbert Report just poach Ze himself? I hear he comes with free donuts, too. The Show is funnier than just about anything else out there on TV right now, basic cable or otherwise.

BB reader Todd Jackson says,

As someone who worked as a humor writer and editor, I can say in full confidence that Colbert didn't take anything from ZeFrank. They're both using a simple construction for a joke implied by the article itself - that you can't turn a doughnut into a sphere. It's a common structure: one character saying "it can't be that simple" and then another character doing it just that simple. Both came to it because it's a time-tested formula for a gag that works.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:27:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burning Man: come all ye roving art-cars

Update: See map coordinates data correction note below.

To all you dirty hippies our esteemed friends traveling to Burning Man this year: be safe, stay hydrated and sunscreened, please don't floss your butt with el-wire, and watch out for these characters.

The event has a new theme this year: Hope and Fear. But, bla bla bla, theme schmeme, we all know it's about the pink-haired girls and real-life Magritte tableaux, awesome footwear, naked people on hobby-horses, beautiful fire, and all the other indescribable stuff that flashes in your head when someone asks "What's Burning Man?" and you can't explain.

BoingBoing reader Turgan has created a neat interactive map website that lists events, camps, and artwork at Burning Man 2006 here. More information about that site here, here, and here:

Update: Wayne Correia says there's a problem with some of the data in Turgan's map:

The camps map google maps overlay stuff is using the wrong location data, overlaying camps on a satellite photo from a previous year that doesn't reflect this year's location -- which is north about 1.33 miles from the 2005 site. These files can be loaded into your GPS or Google Earth to see exactly where the event is located this year. This BRC layout is accurate for this year and should be disseminated.

* artweb250.gpx

* fence.gpx

* roads250.gpx

And Thomas Terashima tells BoingBoing,

I am helping host the Canadian Street Hockey Tournament -- better known as the Xeni Cup -- this year at Burning Man at The_Many theme camp, located at 9:00 near Guess.

The time is set for Thursday at 3:00 PM. Equipment will be provided. Bring your own favorite hockey stick and (Canadian) beer.

Link to more info, and here are photos from last year's edition of The Xeni Cup.

Update: Alas, the Burningman bingo image link is dead. Anyone have an archived copy somewhere? Going to Black Rock City without it is like going to see Snakes on a Plane without your audience participation script!

Update 2, yay: Here is is.

Reader comment: Phil Stripling says,

The Civilized Explorer is having its annual geek fashion show on Friday September 1 at 2:00 pm, Chance at 8:30. Photos from last year here. We give away free clothes to geeks with no fashion sense so they don't look like tourists at the Burn on Saturday night. As you can see from the photos, many arrive as geeks, but no geeks leave.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:07:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The real Mexican "lucha" wrestlers

Yes, there were luchadores in Mexico before Hollywood pounced on the colorful phenom for lame-o Jack Black movie fodder.

British photographer Malcolm Venville's photographs of real Mexican wrestlers are captured in a new book, and there's more on the project here at pleasantmorningbuzz blog: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:31:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant praying mantis invades Prague

QTVR panorama of a giant mantis invading Prague yesterday at 8:30pm in the city's old town square. Link (Thanks, jeffrey martin)

Reader comment: Rich B says,

We posted some additional info yeserday on the praying mantis in Prague: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:23:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: traveling zen

one minute vacations
turn here
drive project
yutaka love london
kenya
big things
lost america
roadside america

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Image: From Lost America, "Whorehouse art collection. Bobbie's Buckeye Bar, Tonopah, NV. Abandoned bar and whorehouse. Shot summer 2004, 35mm film. Abandoned for about a year before I found it (judging by the expired liquor license), the place was unlocked and wide open that day, but on my last trip to Tonopah it was locked up tight. No idea if it has been vandalized or ransacked."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:16:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

War on Moisture "permanent," say UK air transport authorities

UK newspaper The Independent today reports that anti-liquid security measures at U.K. airports are likely to remain in place permanently -- at least until scanning devices are capable of automatically detecting potentially explosive substances. Link (Thanks, Adrian Champion)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:06:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video: "Tokyo hectic"

BoingBoing reader Fosta placed a still camera in various spots around Tokyo last week, then shot lots of timelapse photography, and later stitched it into a short video.

"Tokyo is a particularly unique city," says Fosta, "Pedestrians are treated like traffic, with pedestrian 'roads' on floating skyways, and one way systems. It's truly odd."

Link. The video's great, but what I want to know -- who's that soundtrack? Update: wasabi_pz says,

The song is "Beef or Chicken", done by the Teriyaki Boyz, a Japanese rap/hip-hop group (obviously). The band is composed of members of Rip Slyme and m-flo. Here's the wikipedia article on them. They have a song on the soundtrack for "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift."

Chad Arsenault says,

Ron Fricke has a similar segment in his art-house documentary, "Baraka." Definitely worth checking out. Also, the first part of that clip was of the six-way intersection in Shibuya. My girlfriend and I made a video of the same interesection from street level. (We're standing beneath the ginormous video screen). It's here. Oh, and some flickr photos: 1, 2, 3, 4.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:59:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Xeni on CNN American Morning: Apple recalls Sony batteries

Friday, I'll be a guest on CNN's American Morning with Miles O'Brien and Soledad O'Brien for a segment about the recall of Sony batteries in Apple notebook computers. News was posted earlier today here on BoingBoing and elsewhere around the web. Segment airs live around 915am-ish ET/615am-ish PT, Friday.

Reader comment: Andy Sternberg says,

Yahoo vid is hosting the segment here: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:07:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mikey "I RFID-chipped myself!" Sklar on The Daily Show

Eliot Phillips of hackaday.com says,

BoingBoing has covered Mikey Sklar's projects before. He RFID chipped his hand and also built a trampoline controlled flame thrower. He was on The Daily Show yesterday for a segment on nano machines along with Ray Kurzweil.

Link. (Way to go, Mikey!)

Reader comment: Mark says,

Wow... Mikey's a wild one. I blogged last month about a cool video (both in style and soundtrack) he did awhile back on making a pizza. Here's the original link to his Youtube post, and here's my permalink.

Eliot Phillips adds,

Mikey's friend Dan Lane (also chipped) has uploaded the short clip to YouTube: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:57:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report: "My 6-year-old was traumatized by Barney's penis"

BoingBoing reader Mike Guerena says,

I live in Fallbrook, CA which is a conservative rural town in San Diego county. What I didn't know was that Ned Flanders lived in our town. Some guy wrote a letter to the editor in the local paper about his fear for his 6 year old daughter's future because some teenagers put a reference to Barney's penis on a sign outside the local store.

Snip from the published letter:

She said, “Look, Daddy, a Barney movie!” I couldn’t see it, so she guided my eyes to the vulgar obscenity arranged there on the sign. “Look! Up there! Barney’s p***s!” I was shocked when I saw the words arranged on the sign. I quickly averted her eyes and escorted her into the store.

Since then, she has not stopped mentioning Barney’s p***s. This has shaken the bedrock of our family. I made an emergency call to our church’s pastor about this bombshell in my daughter’s life and he is unsure how it will affect her future.

Link. When will the purple-hued sociopath be brought to justice? Why, less than 12 hours ago, my colleague Cory posted this related item on more of Barney's heinous hijinks: "EFF sues Barney the humorless, copyright maximalist dinosaur."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:44:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jasmina Tesanovic: Mermaid's Trail (dispatch from Dubrovnik)

(Ed. Note: Photos by Bruce Sterling.)

Mermaid's Trail
by Jasmina Tesanovic
DUBROVNIK -- August, 2006

The bus from Belgrade to Dubrovnik costs 4700 dinars for a return ticket, and takes 13 hours one way. It goes through Bosnia, Republika Srpska, and stops in several former-Yu war sites, such as Mostar, where the famous bridge was destroyed and recently rebuilt. Mostar's old face was blown away and it has a new face. Except for shrapnel and craters, it has a happy look.

The border crossings are easy, a busywork of transfers and passport-stampings, inflicted on all passengers just alike and done without a word of explanation. The foreigners look scared, but everyone else just does it. The bus stops too often, and people get on and off without schedule. Strange black packages are unloaded from the bus and delivered into private cars in the middle of nowhere. Some Americans in the bus seem troubled by this, but all the locals sleep peacefully.

On our arrival in Dubrovnik, local grannies are waiting with signs about private rooms to rent. I pick the one with mustache, no teeth and a fake smile. She speaks English and tells me she does not like renting rooms to Italians. I reveal that I am a Serb and my friend is American. Now that's nice, says Granny with her fake smile: Serbs and Americans!

We come across a Croatian monument talking about Serbs as aggressors here. I speak with my heavy Belgrade accent, but no hostility is in the air. My American pal is suspicious about Granny: is she really going to shelter us without any American-style paperwork? I say, that how we do it around here: if she is not a serial killer, it should be all right.

[Story continues after the jump]

More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:19:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TSA changes laws of physics, declares ice to be liquid

The War on Moisture continues! BoingBoing reader Dan says,

While listening to this piece on All Things Considered, Tony Jabbour mentions that ice is now prohibited from being carried onto aircraft - because it is a liquid. Though both Tony and Robert Siegel call ice a liquid, I am confident that both men are aware that ice is, in fact, a solid. Only the TSA could decide to either change the laws of physics or to put something (ice) into a category in which it clearly does not belong (liquid).

Link

Reader comment: Lone Locust of the Apocalypse says,

I'm not sure I agree with reader Dan's synopsis, or your headline. Nowhere in the linked interview did either person say the TSA has banned water ice. The TSA's "full list of prohibited items" FAQ does not list water ice.

The whole time during the interview it sounds pretty clear they are talking about gel ice packs being banned. The one time the interviewer says "ice" I infer from context that he is using as shorthand for "gel ice pack."

Note: I am a fairly leftish liberal who thinks we're going about airport security in a stupid way, subscribe fully to Bruce Schneier's ideas about "Security Theater" being ineffective etc. Just so you don't think this is just a knee-jerk political reaction.

George Kind says,

1) After talking about gel packs, Robert Siegel specifically says in the audio: "or you couldn't use ice, because that would be ... liquid." (52 seconds in)

2) The discussion is about the shipping of lobsters. Including live lobsters.... sounds like a set-up for a sequal in the making: "Lobsters on a Plane" !?!?!

Lone Locust of the Apocalypse says,

Siegel may have referred to ice as a liquid, but that doesn't mean the TSA classifies it as such. While I share Dan's confidence that Siegel and Jabbour know ice is a solid, anyone can momentarily slip and say the wrong thing when speaking extemporaneously.

If someone produces a statement from the TSA that ice is banned *** specifically because it's classified a liquid ***, then I'll agree the headline is justified. Until then, let's go back to mocking them for stupid things they've actually done.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:52:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Original S.S. Minnow for sale?

Paul Boutin says, "This boat ad for a 37-foot 1964 Wheeler Express Cruiser claims it was used as the S.S. Minnow in Gilligan's Island."

Link. Price: $99,000.

Reader comment: The Liberal Avenger says,

1964 didn't sound right to me for Gilligan's Island. Even though I was born in 1970, I remember black and white episodes of Gilligan's Island. IMDB shows Gilligan's Island starting in 1962: Link.

(Ed. note: I haven't had time to research this one, and I have no idea if the sale listing is legit or not. But thinking out loud here -- it's conceivable that more than one boat was used as the S.S. Minnow during the show's many years of production. If so, it would be possible for this one to have been used from 1964 on. )

Reader Tom L. says,

The Gilligan's Island Fan Club web site page on the Minnow makes it look like this probably is one of the four actual Minnows: Link. They have a story about Minnow #3 being found and restored by a guy in British Columbia. They list the model as 1964 Wheeler, and say it was used in the second season.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:46:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FreeEnigma: easy privacy for webmail

FreeEnigma brings cryptography to webmail, with an ingenious set of free and open browser plug-ins that work with Yahoo, Gmail, and others. The plugins implement a version of GPG (the free/open version of Pretty Good Privacy) and scramble and de-scramble the text in your webmail before you send it and after you receive it, reducing the amount of information that webmail providers have on your communications. This is long overdue, as webmail and other hosted mail solutions are a ticking bomb, just waiting for a hacker, spook or copper to come a-knockin', there to get a look at your private communications.

Though this is miles and miles better than the privacy that plain webmail delivers, there are a couple of ways in which this is less than perfect -- the system doesn't protect the To: and From: and Subject: information in your email; an adversary might be able to harm you just by knowing the fact that you've gotten encrypted mail from a specific person. Link (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:22:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report: UK, US cos sold mobile phone tapping tech to Vietnam

A British company -- Silver Bullet -- and a US company -- Verint Systems (subsidiary of Comverse Technology) -- sold equipment for surveilling mobile phone calls to Vietnam's intelligence services, according to the UK-based publication Jane's Defence Weekly. The report went on to say that a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries served as an intermediary in the transactions. Silver Bullet's website has gone offline. Journalists' advocacy group Reporters Without Borders issued a related statement today. Snip:

"We are appalled to learn that our phone calls with Vietnamese cyber-dissidents have been monitored with equipment provided by European and US companies. Coming a year after it emerged that Yahoo! cooperates with the Chinese police, this new case reinforces our conviction that telecommunications companies must be forced to respect certain rules of ethical conduct. In particular, they should be banned from selling surveillance equipment to repressive governments."

The sales were revealed by Robert Karniol in an article headlined "Vietnamese army enhances mobile phone monitoring" in the 31 October 2005 issue of Jane's Defence Weekly (JDW). He said the London-based Silver Bullet had recently sold two P-GSM stations (portable mobile phone listening devices) to Vietnam for $250,000 each. Elta (a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries) and Aikap Group, another Israeli company, acted as intermediaries in this transaction.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:42:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Audio from 6th Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) now online

Jason D says, "The organizers of the Sixth Hackers on Planet Earth convention that took place last month in New York City have posted all of the audio from every presentation." Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:23:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pluto dissed and pissed, UPDATE: the icy dirtclod responds

The recently demoted member of our solar system responds: "Planets have feelings, too." Link. (Thanks, Troy)

And this billboard is a likely Photoshop job, but who can argue with a phrase like "Friends of Pluto"? Link (Thanks, Adam Selvidge) UPDATE: Free-vo says, "The billboard you showed about Pluto is from the worth 1000 pluto contest."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:15:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

YABR (Yet another battery recall): Apple recalls 1.8M Sony units

Apple will recall nearly two million power devices believed to cause a risk of overheating risk. Sony's stock -- they manufacture the batteries in question -- sank today; recent recalls of its product may cost up to $258 million. Link to news story (Thanks, darkman424).

Here's a snip from the battery recall info page at apple.com, with instructions on how to apply for the exchange program:

Apple has determined that certain lithium-ion batteries containing cells manufactured by Sony Corporation of Japan pose a safety risk that may result in overheating under rare circumstances. The affected batteries were sold worldwide from October 2003 through August 2006 for use with the following notebook computers: 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4 and 15-inch PowerBook G4.

Reader comment: John D. Verne says,

It isn't clear if you just scan the recall details, but if you (like me) purchased a replacement battery for a G3 iBook, you may still have a problem battery. I noted that the replacement was slightly more powerful than the original battery.

"If you participated in a previous battery recall for any of these computer models or recently purchased or received from Apple an extra battery for an iBook G3, please check your battery serial number in case you received a replacement battery that is affected by this program."

Unfortunately, the iBook I need to check is in Ghana right now! Anyway, unless you read all the way down you may not realize that G3s are also affected.

Also worth underscoring: none of Apple's current-generation notebooks are affected. If you walk into an Apple retail store and toss your credit card in any direction -- your plastic won't plunk down on any product involved in this recall, according to the Apple rep I spoke with earlier today. Unless, like, you aim at someone with an older laptop who happens to be standing in line at the Genius Bar.... but work with me here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:05:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Future of the factory

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, my colleague at the Institute for the Future, just wrote an engaging article for Samsung's DigitAll Magazine about how industrial factories are becoming more like modern offices and design studios. From the essay, titled Raising The Floor:

Almost since the Industrial Revolution began in the 1750s, engineers and managers have sought to make factories more efficient and productive. Industrial engineering and operations research developed in the mid-twentieth century to put factory design on a more scientific foundation. Total Quality Management and Six Sigma brought a new focus to these efforts: they made quality improvements the centerpiece of factory reform, and made quality a key consumer benefit. They also generated vast quantities of information about factory operations, and required large amounts of information to succeed. Likewise, robotics and supply chain management made manufacturing more information-intensive.

Industrial engineers are now looking beyond the production line: Georgia Tech dean William Rouse argues that industrial engineers will design supply chains and entire enterprises, not just factories. Meanwhile, new technologies are moving into the factory floor. Put most simply, they’ll make products more intelligent; make manufacturing more information-intensive; and turn the factory floor into a center for a new kind of knowledge work...

So what will the factory of the future be like? It will be aware of how users are reacting to both its latest products and still-under-NDA prototypes, feeding off streams of information coming in from prototypes, recycled units, market-watching software agents, and blogs and discussion boards. It will be able to shift production lines in a matter of days or hours, and will constantly incorporate the latest insights from the lab and the natural world. The combined effects of cascades of information and pressure for constant innovation will turn the factory floor from a space populated only by machine-tenders, into a space in which production and innovation happen simultaneously. The factory will follow a transformation similar to the recording studio. Until the 1950s, music studios were places where groups just made recordings: they were production lines. Then, rock and roll musicians like Buddy Holly and the Beatles turned the studio into a place to write songs, improvise, and experiment with new sonic effects. As Brian Eno put it, the studio became an instrument, a space for creation and experimentation as well as production.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:29:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Katrina: following one NOLA family for a year as they rebuild

Snip from an article by John Schwartz in the NYT:

When the floodwaters receded, the yard was a moonscape of cracked mud and debris; the shrubs in front were bleached gray by salt water. Three-foot-high drifts of muck fouled the interior, and the scummy waterline was just four inches from the first-floor ceiling.

In a city that still seems largely stuck in the mud, this nearly restored home represents 11 months of sweat-drenched labor by its owners, Artie Folse and Tonja Osborne, two of a multitude of New Orleans residents who never stopped pushing ahead.

From the earliest weeks after the storm, Mr. Folse and Ms. Osborne defied the conventional wisdom that little could be accomplished in the city, and overcame the doubts and worries even of their own families. Their efforts, observed since last winter by a reporter for The New York Times, were born of an urge to rebuild that is as primal as the force that pushes grass up through cracks in a sidewalk. Rather than wait for advice, direction or help from the city, the state or the federal governments, Mr. Folse and Ms. Osborne simply got to work.

Link. Photo: Lee Celano/NYT.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:27:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bumper stickers: HONK IF PLUTO IS STILL A PLANET

Link (thanks, Chris Spurgeon) And here's a similarly-themed t-shirt. (thanks, Brady Koch)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:26:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ROJO's new books featuring urban artists

In January, I posted about Spain-based art collective ROJO's new series of beautiful mini monographs collecting work from various street artists. I just received the latest four books that feature Lolo, Elton & Nuria, Sakristan, and Juju's Delivery. Argentine artist Lolo's illustrations on the canvas of Barcelona are my favorite.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:06:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steampunk rayguns

Weta makes three models of these stupendous steampunk pistols, which they'll be offering for sale within the next year. They look like they'd cost a fortune -- and be worth every penny. Link (Thanks, Stephen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:21:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

No high-def in 32-bit Vista, thanks to DRM

The 32-bit-compatible version of Vista, the next version of Windows, won't play back high-def video because they can't get the DRM right. However, it will play back high-def video if, instead of buying HD DVDs, you just download copies of them off the Internet -- talk about a perverse incentive.

"Any next-generation high definition content will not play in x32 at all," said Riley.

"This is a decision that the Media Player folks made because there are just too many ways right now for unsigned kernel mode code [to compromise content protection]. The media companies asked us to do this and said they don't want any of their high definition content to play in x32 at all, because of all of the unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around content protection, so we had to do this," he said.

Link (via /.)

Update: An anonymous Microsoft employee sez

Media Player won't play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but you'll still be able to play them (on XP, even) with third-party programs like WinDVD and PowerDVD, in full HD.

Why? Because the media companies are willing to certify WinDVD and PowerDVD, but they won't certify Windows, basically for the reasons described. The other problem is indemnity - Microsoft has much deeper pockets and the risks of someone hacking Windows and getting the Microsoft keys is too high; Microsoft's payouts to the studios would be enormous. The DRM contracts essentially say that you forfeit all money lost to the studios if your key is hacked. The money "lost" to the studios is of course calculated using the estimate most favorable to the studios - i.e. every copy downloaded off LimeWire is a full-price loss. Intervideo (WinDVD) and Cyberlink (PowerDVD) are small companies and figure they're not the largest targets, or they'll just go bankrupt and start again as a new company. Cyberlink is based in Asia, and suing them would be pricey.

The screwball thing about all this is that essentially the same risks of hacked drivers and whatnot exist with PowerDVD and WinDVD; there's no good reason for the studios to certify them if they really are worried about people using the PC to copy movies. This leads folks at Microsoft to conclude either:

A) The studios don't understand the technology enough to see these risks clearly, or

B) They just want to screw Microsoft

The studios all have tech consultants, and many of them are not fools, so A seems unlikely. B also doesn't seem completely likely. It's probably the usual: human stupidity rolled up in a big ball.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:11:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

USC's bizarre, non-legal copyright policy

I'm spending the year at the University of Southern California on a Fulbright chair. Yesterday, some of my students forwarded me a memo sent to them by USC Deputy Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Student Affairs on "Copyright Compliance."

It purports to inform students about the contours and boundaries of copyright, but actually presents a collection of scare-tactic half-truths and astonishing statements about the purpose of the university.

In the letter, USC's officers promise to spend students' tuition on policing them on behalf of the entertainment industry, but make no comparable promise to protect them from the thousands of automated, baseless accusations generated by the RIAA, MPAA and BSA.

Worse, the letter completely mis-states the relationship between copyright and scholarship, omitting any mention of fair use and the other user rights in copyright (especially important in an institution like USC with excellent arts programs, where students are apt to making daily unauthorized uses of copyrighted works for the purpose of criticism and study), and making the extraordinary statement that "USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation and lawful use of intellectual property." (If this is true, the USC will be "successful" when it generates copyrights and patents, not when it generates scholars and diplomas)

It would be interesting to compare USC's policies on this to those at competing schools like UCLA and produce a ranking chart showing which schools side with scholarship and academic integrity, and which ones take USC's approach of putting non-legal notions of copyright ahead of its students' education.

Link

Update: Aram sez, "I got busted for using BitTorrent on the USC network last year. Here's a link to the (unanswered) letter I wrote back to the university's CIO:

3. File sharing is my area of study and expertise.

Although I admit to downloading content I wish to view for entertainment purposes (i.e. [TV show]), my primary purpose in using file sharing networks is research, not entertainment. I am an "expert" in the field of online file sharing, with a paper trail to prove it. I have published both corporate and academic research on the subject, and served as a public voice in the media and at conferences regarding file sharing since the phenomenon first emerged six years ago. In fact, I was an expert witness for the defense in the recent lawsuit MGM vs. Grokster, which was eventually decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Before I am referred to Student Conduct, I would ask that you consider my research and pedagogical purposes for file sharing, and even consider granting me permission to continue file sharing for these purposes.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:08:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to really fight terrorists: Anti-terror

Bruce Schneier has an excellent piece up today on how to really, effectively fight terrorism: anti-terror:

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF sues Barney the humorless, copyright maximalist dinosaur

Derek sez, "Barney the purple dinosaur may teach kids a lot about playing fair, but his lawyers need a lesson in fair use. Yesterday, EFF asked a federal court in New York to uphold a web publisher's online parody of Barney as non-infringing protected speech. Stuart Frankel posted the parody on his website in 1998, and Barney's lawyers have repeatedly sent him baseless cease-and-desist letters over the last four years. Read the press release and complaint [PDF]." Link, Link to the parody site (Thanks, Derek!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:18:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pluto not a planet

Last week, I posted that an official definition of "planet" was being debated that would have expanded the number in our solar system to at least twelve. In the end though, the International Astronomical Union went with a much more conservative definition. Pluto has been demoted to a "dwarf planet, resulting in a decrease in the number of "classical" planets in our solar system to eight. From the Associated Press:

Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun -- "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:15:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Delicious wine-like grape juices - fantastic flavor

I had an amazing meal tonight at a restaurant that prides itself on its wine-list. I'm not much of a drinker, but I was happy to try the Gewürztraminer grape juice from Navarro Vineyards, a rich, tasty grape-juice that has complexity and flavor comparable to a good wine. Navarro also makes a Pinot Noir grape juice that sounds delicious. I took a pic of the label and checked online later, hoping that Navarro sold the juice over the web, and they do! At $11/bottle, it's not for everyday use, but it sure makes for a great special treat. Pinot Noir Link, Gewürztraminer Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:51:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a fly-powered match-plane?

This HOWTO purports to explain the creation of a fly-powered matchstick airplane. Despite the lavish and handsome illustrations (and the precedent in the form of young Nikola Tesla's june-bug-powered motor) I don't really imagine that this would work, and if it did, it would be pretty squick. Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

Update: Jon sez, "the graphic with the flies & matchsticks is from an Esquire of a few years back."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:10:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Commodore 64 emulator in Flash

The folks at OSFlash have figured out how to emulate a Commodore 64 computer in Flash, so that old C64 apps can be run within a Flash app. The source for the emulator is licensed under the GPL.

FC64 is the first low level Commodore 64 emulator for the Flash Player. Yes, Flash! It emulates most of the C64 hardware and executes the original Kernel and Basic ROMs. Under the hood, it even features an 6502 assembler, disassembler and debugger. Best of all, it's all open source and extensible so you could quite easily go ahead and write an emulator for *your* favourite eightbitter (NES, Apple ][, Atari 2600, BBC, you name it).

We put some original game ROMs online with it, so go ahead and enjoy some old Llamasoft titles like Matrix (released as public domain), or just hack in some Commodore Basic.

10 PRINT "C64 R0XRZ ";
20 GOTO 10

Link (Thanks, Claus!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:03:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

A is for Aquaman: underwear pervert alphabet

Ape Lad says,

Here's another one hour alphabet, this time with a theme. I listed all the characters before I started the hour though and it is pretty heavy on the Jack Kirby creations. Not that that's a bad thing.

Link to this one-hour-alphabet, and here's a previous one of those, and a monster alphabet.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:04:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Evolution of speech balloons

This fascinating "History of Picture Stories" has a page showing the evolution of speech balloons, the ubiquitous graphic convention used to convey that comic characters are saying something. The image seen here is detail of Bernhard Strigel's "Saint Anne and Angel" (1506/1607). From the Evolution of Speechballoons page:

During the 18th century, British caricaturists changed the shape of speechballoons from gothic speech-bands or flags into fluffy balloons, our modern speechballoons.

I'm using the word speechballoon as the general, inclusive term. (The gothic form of speechballoons are speechbands, flags, scrolls or sheets of paper, the modern form of speechballoons are balloons, but also little rectangles, often rounded at the edges, or simply little blocks of text above the heads of the speaker etc, etc).

The 18th century term for speechballoons was 'labels'.

Link (via Drawn!)

And there's more on the subject in the brand new issue of the always-magnificent Comic Art magazine, now in book format. I can't wait to get my copy! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:54:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Osama bin Laden I Screwed

Excerpt from a Harpers excerpt of the previously-BoingBoinged tell-all by Kola Boof, who claims to have once been the lover of Osama bin Laden:

He would humiliate me by making me dance naked. It was such a strange thing, because for the most part he believed music was evil. If a guest at the estate played music, he would cover his ears until the “poison” was silenced. But other times he would become this devout party boy who wanted to hear Van Halen or some B-52's. To this day I hear the song “Rock Lobster” in my sleep. I would be jerking around like a white girl—“Dance like a Caucasoid girl!” he would say—and his eyes would track me from one side of the terrace to the other. “Your ass is too big, show me the front,” he said. Osama, you understand, did not know the difference between being vicious and being tender. (...)

“Why do you wear your hair braided?” he asked.

“Because my braids are beautiful,” I replied.

Osama said only monkeys braid their hair. He told me that the singer Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and that she never wore her hair braided. “I want you to fix your hair like hers from now on,” he said. “I can't put my fingers through it when it's braided.”

Link to "His Prerogative." (Thanks, W. Vann Hall)

From the 2002 BB vaults:
Kola Boof: 'Net persona, writer, Bin Laden's ex-girlfriend--or hoax?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:45:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Censorware follies #umptybillion: at NASA, Wikipedia = porn

Here's a screengrab of NASA's in-house censorware blocking Wikipedia as a pornography site. Link (Thanks, Jennifer)

Update: jwf says,

NASA's censorware was blocking wikipedia.com, not wikipedia.org. The .com site is indeed pornographic.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:12:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fan photos of celebrities

Here's a large gallery of celebrity photos taken by fans. This one is my favorite:

Our house was selected as one of the locations for the Steve Martin/Laura Dern/Helena Bonham Carter bomb, Novocaine. Because it was a low-budget film, we were allowed to stay downstairs while the filming went on upstairs (note all of our bedroom furniture piled up in the background). My husband knew that Steve Martin had a banjo just like one of his so he left it at the bottom of the stairs as bait. Sure enough, Martin saw it, asked who played, and then the two of them played at every filming break for the rest of the day. I handed my camera to the still photographer, who shot this photo.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:41:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Forbes kills sexistardian "Don't Marry Career Women" article?

Do these fumes of Ajax and smoke from yonder burnt banana muffins deceive mah eyes? Or has the already-parodied article which cautions menfolk against matrimonializin' with cash-earnin', brain-cell-totin', emasculatin' harpies been rah-moved? Link to screengrab, here was the original url. (thanks, Ariel)

Update: It's true. A moment of internet silence please, while we all shed a single, collective, airbrushed tear like the miserable wage whore in the stock photo that once accompanied the article in question. Jess Hemerly says,

They pulled the article down from Forbes.com about an hour ago, but thanks to readers in the forums I got the text. Unfortunately, I don't have the "In Pictures" part with 9 reasons not to marry a career woman. If you're interested, I posted it here. You also might want to check out [the article's author] Michael Noer's recently updated Wikipedia entry.

Update: Here are screenshots of the original article: one, two (Thanks, PJ). Here's the slideshow text, annotated by a LiveJournaler named Sara.

BoingBoing reader Tim Altom wrote:

I am an avid reader of BoingBoing posts, a supporter of ‘net freedom, a user of open source software, someone who does the family laundry and scrubs the toilet, and a proud husband of a late-life college student, yet it causes me some pain to read your gleeful post on Forbes’ removal of its “don’t marry a career woman” article. Am I the only person who notices the irony of such gloating on the same page with a prominent link saying “defeat censorware”?

I never suggested that Forbes should remove the article. On the contrary: its removal from Forbes.com is worthy of ridicule (hence, all the pointers in this BoingBoing post to cached copies of the article's full, original text). Why can't the publication stand behind the work of one of their own? Did Forbes editors not read the item prior to publication? If so, shame on them for poor quality control. But if they just can't take the heat, shame on them for pulling the article as if to pretend it never happened -- regardless of the article's merits or shortcomings. Poor Michael Noer needs a blog!

Update 2, at 630PM PT: Jess Hemerly says,

Yet another development. The article is back up, but next to a counterpoint article. Interesting attempt at redemption, eh?

Link to Forbes' too-lame-too-late attempt at redemption from blog-flogging.

BB reader L. Perg says,

Forbes has also taken down the Michael Noel article, "The Economics of Prostitution." It is still available for the moment via Google cache. Comparing the Google cache vs. the current version of the special report shows that the article was deliberately removed, and is not part of the "site redesign." (Searching the Forbes site for the article also brings no joy.)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:23:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cray computer for sale in San Francisco

My pal and former BB guestblogger Steve Steinberg (AKA Legion of Doomer "Frank Drake") is selling a magnificent Cray Y-MP EL98 shell with some of the internal components. He'll take the best offer over $400 from someone who has the wherewithal to pick this monstrous beast up on Friday. Email your bid here. From Steve's Craigslist ad:

This is your chance to own a (very heavy) piece of supercomputing history. The EL98 was Cray's "low-cost" -- mid six figures -- line extension to the very successful Y-MP. The exact provence of this unit is unknown. (I purchased it four years ago from an Arizona warehouse; the manager of which *thought* that the Cray came from Lawrence Livermore. But given the repeated memory lapses he suffered from in casual conversation, I don't put a lot of stock in this recollection.)

This supercomputer does not currently work. While it has plenty of internal wiring, power supplies, interconnects, and the like, it is missing some key subsystems. However, the exterior is in good shape, with the great big red power-on button on top, finger flip switches for the different "capacitor banks", and just some fairly minor cosmetic blemishes. Included with the Cray is a new, custom, museum-quality display stand...

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:56:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FLURB: Rudy Rucker's new literary zine

Great news! One of my all time favorite writers, Rudy Rucker, has launched a new web zine, called FLURB.

My present strategy is simply to post a few stories by myself and my friends. I have some good stories for Issue #1, with possibly a few more coming in. You might think of this as the Cyberpunk issue.

We'll see where it leads. I still have a backlog of writer friends to hit on, so, at least for now, rather than sending me stories that you'd like me to post for you --- do it yourself!

The line up for the first issue looks wonderful:

Rudy Rucker and Paul Di Filippo,
“Elves of the Subdimensions”

Richard Kadrey,
“Liner Notes for Luchenko's Third Symphony (The Arcades of Allah)”

Marc Laidlaw,
“Evaluation of the Hannemouth Bequest (A.k.a. Hannemouth Self-Configurable Combinatorial Array)”

John Shirley,
“Provocatourist”

Terry Bisson,
“Billy and the Circus Girl ”

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:40:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Don't Marry Career Women: let the remixes begin!

Following up on a previous BoingBoing post about an utterly stupid article in Forbes, Gawker has posted this "Cliff's Notes" version:

We realize that many of you lead busy lives; some of you are so busy, in fact, that you probably lack the time to read Forbes' "Stay Away From the Smart Bitches" piece. In that spirit, we've put together a brief summary of the article, based entirely on its slideshow. It actually comes off as a miraculous fairy tale for adults, complete with suitable moral. After the jump, the condensed version of why you shouldn't marry those ball-busting, cash-making whores.

Link (thanks, Violet).

Blogger Jennifer Saylor writes,

There are some things not worth writing a rebuttal to, and this [Forbes] article is one of them. However, I was inspired by Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing to do something with it. I pasted the whole thing to a Word document and then reversed all the gendered nouns and pronouns. Everything below is word-for-word from the article; I did absolutely nothing but switch gender. Ladies and gentlemen, behold: Don’t Marry Career Men.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:31:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RU Sirius interview's Paul Boutin

RU Sirius has a juicy and often hilarious chat with tech journalist Paul Boutin about the seven types of AOL searchers, and tech culture at large, in the latest NeoFiles.

Also, The RU Sirius Show serves up part two of the GettingIt.com reunion, featuring funny stuff about dot com junkies, speed seducers, San Francisco politics, and insane editorial meetings. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:19:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage Mechanix Illustrated: "Could You Be a Hero?"

BoingBoing reader Charlie says,

Very odd article from a 1957 Mechanix Illustrated which tackles the big question of "What makes a man a hero?".

The best part is that there is a test you can take to judge your "Courage Quotient" which is full of some truly absurd questions.

A few statements from the quiz that a man with courage would agree with:

* Desk work is more for a woman than a man
* Any man should love camping and hunting
* I’d rather read a detective story than a humorous story

Here are few statements that reflect poorly on your courageousness:

* A totalitarian system of government is more efficient
* After most wars, the U.S. came out the loser in the peace treaties
* A cowboy movie is more interesting than a good love story

Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:52:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Victorian house on wheels fundraiser tonight in Berkeley

Meredith says: I'm working on the Neverwas project that you just posted, and I wanted to let you know that this Wednesday is our fundraiser/send off party. It will be christened by the illustrious Dr. Hal, and we all will be in our finest Victorian party frocks.

The Imperial Hibernian Ministry of Insanity wishes to invite you to the dedication by the Hibernian Ambassador, his Honorable Dr. Hal, of Neverwas Haul, that is about to disbark on its exploratory adventure of the Black Rock Rendezvous. Festivities will begin at 7:30pm on Wednesday, August 23rd at the Shipyard (1010 Murray St, Berkeley; near San Pablo and Ashby). H'ors doevres and libations will be served to all who come. This is technically a fund-raiser, so bring wealthy friends and checkbooks. This is a Jules Verne inspired event - please dress accordingly! T-shirts will be available for purchase at this event.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:43:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video montage: Mink Stole, kitsch cinema goddess

At left, actress Mink Stole as Connie Marble in John Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS (1972):

"I guess there's just two kinds of people, Miss Sandstone - MY kind of people, and ASSHOLES. It's rather obvious which category you fit into. Have a nice day."

Link to video montage of her work -- here's her website, and good heavens, she's on Myspace. (Thanks, Coop)

Reader comment: Bonnie Burton says,

I figured since you gave Mink Stole some props, you'd like to know about my fan site for her co-star in all the Waters films -- Mary Vivian Pearce: Link. Here's a YouTube clip of her in action in "Mondo Trasho" (she's the bombshell): Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:39:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ISS astronaut snaps photo of volcano erupting on Earth

"This oblique image (looking at an angle) from the International Space Station (ISS) captures an ash cloud first observed on satellite imagery at 11:00 GMT on August 14, 2006. An ISS astronaut took this picture one hour and 45 minutes later. The ash cloud caused the Buenos Aires Volcanic Ash Advisory Center to issue an aviation hazard warning." Link. (Thanks, Spluch)

Reader comment: Evan Thoms of the U.S. Geological Survey, PNW mapping project says,

Earlier this summer my wife, Michelle Coombs, was acting as Duty Scientist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) when she got a phone call from the ISS to report an eruption in the Aleutian Islands. She spoke with astronaut Jeff Williams for a few minutes while she and and others at AVO determined it was a volcano called Mt. Cleveland. Jeff later sent them this picture. This and many other amazing photos of Alaskan volcanoes are available from the excellent AVO website.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:30:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

That icy cold water they swim in has nothing to do with it

MSNBC reports "Polar bear genitals shrinking due to pollution." Snip:

The icecap may not be the only thing shrinking in the Arctic. The genitals of polar bears in east Greenland are apparently dwindling in size due to industrial pollutants. Scientists report this shrinkage could, in the worst case scenario, endanger polar bears there and elsewhere by spoiling their love lives and causing their numbers to diminish.

In fact, all marine mammals could get affected by these pollutants, "especially the Arctic fox, killer whale and pilot whales," wildlife veterinarian and toxicologist Christian Sonne at the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark in Roskilde told LiveScience. These animals bodies also carry extremely high levels of these contaminants.

Link (thanks, Stefan Jones)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:26:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sexy bark, part 3.

Marne Lucas may be best remembered by BoingBoing readers as Gina Velour, star of erotic infrared cinema cult classic The Operation (I never did manage to get my hands on a copy for the archives), or as a fetish model for Steve Diet Goedde and others.

In more recent years, she's relocated to the Pacific Northwest, and migrated to the other side of the lens. Here's a gallery of her photos featuring minimally-clothed beauties lounging around Oregon trees -- babes 'n' bark: NSFW Link (thanks, Violet).

Incidentally, Ms. Lucas has found another crafty use for wood -- puppets. She's half of a performance art duo known as Blinglab. Next month at a Portland artfest, they're doing a "historically accurate" puppet show for the bicentennial anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition, promising "explicit scenes of nature." Link.

BoingBoing reader René Blais adds,

As you've just posted another "sexy bark" related thing, I thought I'd take a chance and submit one of my own works more-or-less in the same genre: Link.

Previous BoingBoing posts: Sexy Bark 1, Sexy Bark 2.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:10:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zen Sluggo tattoo

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement)

William Dennes says: "I saw a posting on your site several weeks ago to a sublime, one-panel comic of Sluggo from Nancy floating along saying only 'NO' to the world. I fell in love with it instantly and got a tattoo of it on my arm. I wanted to send it to you guys to let you know how deeply happy this makes me and I’d never ever ever had seen it had it not been posted on your site."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:06:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Used FAQs blog of random questions/answers

From the UsedWigs folks, the new Used FAQs blog collects eclectic FAQS snipped word for word from all kinds of Web sites. Out of context, many of the questions and answers are delightfully strange and funny. Here are two posted this week:

Can I bring my favorite sword or knife?

Every convention is different when it comes to a weapons policy - some allow them when worn as part of a costume (though they usually have to be “peace bonded” meaning they are secured to the scabbord and cannot be quickly drawn or dropped in accident. Some conventions have a strict weapons policy - check with the convention staff or web site before taking it with you.

Source: www.scificonventions.com

How can I use a Barney Fife Impersonator at my next event?

The Deputy can operate in many ways. From a quick surprise “Hit and Run” appearance - to a wandering act all day at a fair or festival. At a company party, for example, Barney may show up during dinner and “arrest” a few retirees. Or he may interrupt the Big Cheese as he addresses the employees. He may help hand out name tags, awards or check ID’s at the door. He’s interrupted bands that were playing “cheesy music” and even improvised a song about the group while the band played back-up! At a fair or festival Fife can emcee the main stage, welcome guests at the gate, remind them to travel safely as they exit, or follow folks around and pose for photos.

Source: http://www.fifeismylife.com/

Link (via MetaFilter)

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:22:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

World will end on 9 September 2006

No, this isn't the new host of Rocketboom, even though the set looks similar. This is Overseer Yisrayl Hawkins coming to you from the house of Yaweh in Abilene, Texas. According to Mr. Hawkins and his interpretation of Biblical prophesy, nuclear war will erupt on September 12, 2006, and one third of the humans on the planet will perish.

What do you think Mr. Hawkin's excuse will be in the event that nuclear war does not break out on September 12? Please email your suggestions and I will post the best ones here on Boing Boing. Link

A list of excuses Mr. Hawkins can use when the world doesn't end on 9/12/06:

• "Did I Say 9-12-2006? I meant to say 9-12-2007." (Dave Kriesel)
• "The war has broken out as I predicted and it's only a matter of time before the missiles will launch. Some day. Soon." (James King)
• “I write dates in the European fashion, so the date of the end of the world is actually December 9, 2006.” (Brother Mike Bube)
• "Satan himself intervened and saved the world in a diabolical plot to discredit me." (Dave Gottlieb)
• "The Lord listened to our prayers and saved us from doom." (David Pescovitz)
• “The world did end, but God recreated it, so as to give people another chance. Like in Groundhog Day.” (David Bedno)
• "Thankfully for all you sinners I appealed to God directly via prayer, he heard my plea and has spared you non believers from certain damnation." (Steve)
• "I said nuculer war, and whether that's happened or not already is none of your business, thank you." (Ben Smart)
• "There was some shmutz on my Bible. Turns out it really prophecies a breakout of tubular Wii which one third of all humans will cherish." (Dorian Baldwin)
• “God works in mysterious ways. Still.” (Craig Howard)
• "It's the terrorists' fault." (Adam Morgan)
• "President Bush saved the world from terrorism by increasing troop strength in Iraq." (Scott)
• "I was under a hypnotic spell of that white buffalo on the shelf behind me!" (Harold Hays)
• "Mr. Hawkins is not available for comment at this time." (Chris Null)
• "What was I thinking? I forgot the verse that says: 'Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh' (Mat 25:13)" (Christopher M Palmer)
• “Damn you Pat Robertson!” (Tim Slipp)
• "The missiles did launch on the day in question, but they'll remain in the atmosphere, invisible, just as the second kingdom of Jesus Christ did back when the Jehovah's Witnesses's original prediction didn't pan out." (Wyrd)
• He's going to follow the same sequence as previous kooks: First, he will wait until September 12 has fully expired around the world--maybe up to 48 hours just to make sure. Then, he will say that his efforts to publicize the date resulted in increased prayers--and the increased prayers will have averted the disaster. He will consider his prediction a success. I'm looking forward to this farce being played out once more. (Frank Williams)
• "It's a miracle! Disaster has been averted through my direct communication with the Lord! However, I fear that disaster will strike soon (perhaps tomorrow!) without your financial support for my work. Send in your faith pledge today!" P.S. - Leon Festinger (one of the giants of social psychology) did some interesting work on a doomsday cult in the 50's in which he infiltrated the cult and investigated what happened when the doomsday prophecy failed. Of course, the failure of the prophecy only further convinced most believers in the vailidity of the prophets (who fed the followers some line about a miracle). It turns out that it takes about three failures before most people abandon the group/prophet. The work is summarized in the book When Prophecy Fails. (Fred)
• "If it wasn't for all those peace loving liberals getting in the way the world would have ended as we want it too....I mean as it is prophesied to end." (Andersson)
• "God won't end the world until He finds out who Flava Flav picks to be his honey on The Flava of Love 2." (CG Browning)
• "I did not say, and no one in my administration has ever said, that the world was going to end" (Robert Spina)
• "There is an ongoing investigation into why the world did not end on September 12. And I have a policy that I do not comment on an ongoing investigation." (Robert Spina)
• "There is no consensus in the scientific community that the world has not ended. The jury is still out on that one." (Robert Spina)
• "All this talk about the world not ending is just more liberal, pre-9/12 thinking." (Robert Spina)
• "Last night God and I had a powwow. I rescheduled with God because I read this:

  "Deuteronomy 23:1 He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD"
  

  "My urologist wasn't going to be able to check that my stones weren't wounded until the 15th. Thanks be to Satan's HMO's, seeing a specialist can take forever." (Meadowlark Bradsher)
• "Now that we've averted yet another terrorist plot, we need you to give up even more of your rapidly dwindling freedoms so this can never happen again." (Courtney Silverthorn)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:25:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tortoise hassock

This tortoise foot stool that Horchow is selling for $729 would fit wonderfully in my library with the rolling ladder, oak-paneled walls, and overstuffed chairs. If only I had such a room in my home.
Link to Horchow catalog, Link to crappier-looking $299 turtle ottoman from Rooms To Go (via Neatorama)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:08:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why do horse-fat fries taste so good?

A foodie made some frites using horse-fat she bought from a horse-butcher in Nice, France and discovered that they were plum delish, so she's asked her readers for their speculation about why horse-fat makes the perfect fry:

Horse fat is unusual among quadruped fats in having a lot of highly unsaturated fatty acids, which are reactive and finicky and readily go rancid, but on the way there can give an aromatic complexity to whatever is cooked in it. The general flavor of horse may also be different enough from beef and pork to add something unusual and enriching to the fried flavor. As for the texture of the fries: horse fat isn't so different from other animal fats as to do something different to the structure of the fried potato, either crust or interior. So I think horse-fat fries come out well because the people doing the cooking in horse fat are clearly obsessives and making sure they do the best they can with this rare ingredient!

I don't have any squeam about eating horse, but man, the carbs in the potatoes scare the hell out of me. Link (via Link)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:48:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of typos

Monochrom has published a gallery of beautiful typos, and they're looking for your typos:

beauftiful // lamin at gmx.at
gril // jg at monochrom.at
psychiartist // jg at monochrom.at
New Zork // Aileen Derieg (a.derieg at eliot.at)
frenburay // dorkbotsthlm at dorkbot.org
melnoma // francesca.birks at gmail.com
huse // francesca.birks at gmail.com

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:46:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Happy birthday to oldest man in the world

Emillano Mercado Del Toro celebrated his 115th birthday this week in Puerto Rico. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, he's the oldest man in the world. From the Associated Press:

Emiliano Mercado del Toro, who was a boy when the United States seized Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898, attributed his long life to a healthy diet and avoiding alcohol.

"I never damaged my body with liquor," said Mercado, who quit a 76-year smoking habit when he was 90.

Link (Thanks indirectly, Jason Tester!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:43:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hackable Juice Box Media Players for $4

Mattell's wonderfully hackable Juice Box Personal Media Player can now be had for less than $4 each! Originally selling for $70 or so, the device can be booted to run Linux and has other maker friendly features that enable it to be transformed into useful devices like an LCD digital picture frame, seen here on the MAKE: Flickr pool. BB brother Gareth Brawyn has more details and pointers to hacking info over at Street Tech.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:27:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Penis pump mistaken for bomb at TSA airport screening

I warned you people. But you just won't listen.

Mardin Azad Amin found himself in a tight squeeze last week when security at O'Hare Airport discovered a suspicious-looking object in his luggage. So Amin, 29, handled the delicate situation this way: He told security the object was a bomb, Cook County prosecutors said. The security guard then asked Amin to repeat what he'd said to a supervisor. This time, Amin was chuckling as he spoke, prosecutors said. In fact, Amin was trying to disguise the fact that the black object -- resembling a grenade -- was a component for a penis pump. ...

Link to story. (Thanks, Baptiste)

Reader comment: Pedro Pinheiro (Peter Pinetree) in Portugal says,

I don't know the origin of the gentleman in question, but in some languages (such as in Portuguese, my first language), the word for "bomb" and "pump" is the same, thus perhaps the reason for the story.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:23:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Your brain on rock

Rock producer-turned-psychology professor Daniel Levitin researches how the human brain responds to music. At McGill University in Canada, he runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition, and Expertise. Levitin's new book, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, sounds fascinating. From an interview in Wired News:

Wired News: Are there any myths about music that neuroscientists have exposed?

Daniel Levitin: I think we've debunked the myth of talent. It doesn't appear that there's anything like a music gene or center in the brain that Stevie Wonder has that nobody else has.

There's no evidence that (talented people) have a different brain structure or different wiring than the rest of us initially, although we do know that becoming an expert in anything -- like chess or race-car driving or journalism -- does change the brain and creates circuitry that's more efficient at doing what you're an expert at.

What there might be is a genetic or neural predisposition toward things like patience and eye-hand coordination. (On the other hand), you can be born with a physiology that gives you a pleasant-sounding voice, but that doesn't guarantee you'll have a career as a singer.

Link (via Mind Hacks)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:42:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's USC talk next Wednesday

I'll be giving a free public talk to kick off my Fulbright Chair at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center on Public Diplomacy -- hope you can make it!

When: Wednesday, August 30, 2006, 12:00 PM

Where: University of Southern California, Annenberg Center, Room 207, 3502 Watt Way, LA CA

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:22:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steal This Movie: documentary on Swedish piracy movement

Steal This Film is a spectacular documentary on Sweden's piracy movement -- The Pirate Bay BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bureau think-tank and The Pirate Party, a political party. Steal This Film ingeniously combines Hollywood footage, scare-interviews with Hollywood execs, Hollywood anti-piracy PSAs and footage of interviews with Swedish pirates, politicians and people on the street.

I was really interested to hear how deep a chord the MPAA-ordered police raid on The Pirate Bay's Swedish servers struck in the heart of Swedes, who quite rightly view threats of trade sanctions and US corporate intervention in their national laws as a serious incursion on their national self-determination.

It's a kind of macrocosm for the way that industry customers feel when they find themselves frustrated by DRM: I bought this DVD, I own it, I want to use it in my house in the way that I want. Who is Hollywood to take away my autonomy and impose their policies on me from a distance? Link (Thanks, Jamie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:13:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's After the Siege in Russian, CC licensed

My story After the Siege was first published as a podcast in my feed. It was a science fictional retelling of the stories my grandmother told me about being a little girl during the Siege of Leningrad, stories she related on a family trip to St Petersburg in summer 2005.

I gave the first publication rights to the story to Esli, a Russian science fiction magazine, and they've given me the Russian translation to release under a Creative Commons license online (the English version will follow later this year, in The Infinite Matrix). Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:53:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Victory in War on Moisture: Gel-bras once again safe!

The TSA is winning the War on Moisture! As of today, the laws of physics have been changed, rendering the following items non-explosive:

* Small amounts of Baby formula and breast milk if a baby or small child is traveling
* Liquid prescription medicine with a name that matches the passenger’s ticket
* Up to 5 oz. (148ml) of liquid or gel low blood sugar treatment
* Up to 4 oz. of essential non-prescription liquid medications including saline solution, eye care products and KY jelly
* Gel-filled bras and similar prostethics
* Gel-filled wheelchair cushions
* Life support and life sustaining liquids such as bone marrow, blood products, and transplant organs carried for medical reasons

Note to Al Qaeda: start recruiting diabetic/wheelchair-using bombers now, just in case you can change physics back without the TSA noticing.

Let's hope that the non-bomber diabetics don't need six ounces of sugar-water in-flight, though.

Link (via Consumerist)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:07:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO convert six USB cards to an electric barbeque

This Japanese HOWTO documents the conversion of the electrical output of six five-port USB cards into a meat-grilling indoor barbeque. Translated Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:00:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Costco's pirate treehouse

These 20' tall pirate treehouses from Costco run $18,500 and require a forklift for assembly, but your children will love you forever and not put you in a crooked home when you can't take care of yourself any longer if you buy them one of these. Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:58:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Papercraft pistols

This gallery of Japanese papercraft pistols is a tribute to the model-maker's obsessive precision in reproducing lethal weapons in folded paper. Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:55:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Croatian government goes open source

Jason sez, "Last month the Croatian government adopted an open source software policy and issued guidelines for developing and using open source software in the government institutions. The Croatian government is concerned that proprietary software leads to too much dependence on the software suppliers. Open source software will make the government's work more transparent, according to the government's document, entitled 'Open Source Software Policy.'" Link (Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Free Josh Wolf: update on jailed San Francisco video-blogger

Earlier this month, San Francisco-based blogger Josh Wolf was jailed for refusing to hand over video to the federal government. He shot the footage at a 2005 G8 protest in San Francisco.

Details about the video, why authorities wanted it, and why Wolf declined, are here. The incident is the first I know of in which a blogger has been jailed for not relinquishing content on demand.

Violet Blue writes,

There are two benefits coming up; one is this Saturday the 19th at Cafe La Boheme and another is Thursday the 24th at House of Shields -- and if you can't make it to either, donate to his legal fund. Our local politicians are fumbling around with little more than two hands and a flashlight trying to figure out what to do, and SFMike is all over it in his deatiled Civic Center post about the supes trying to pass *something* more than gas in Josh Wolf Rules (Kimo Crossman points us to video of this session here). Interesting to note that the SFPD didn't bother to show up for the hearing, isn't it? In case it wasn't obvious, Josh is still in jail for refusing to hand over the video he shot -- but he's not silent, as pal Jackson West is exchanging letters (analog email) with Josh and transcribing Josh's mail into blog posts over at The Revolution Will Be Televised. There's a wiki, too. Josh would love to get mail, so if you still remember what a pen is, drop him a line at:

Federal Correctional Institution - Dublin
Joshua Wolf 98005-111
5701 8th St. Camp-Parks, Unit J2
Dublin, CA 94568

Link. Photo of Josh Wolf by punkmonksf.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Videoblogger's protest footage demanded by FBI

Blogger jailed for refusing to hand over video

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:12:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More sexy bark

BoingBoing reader Aaron Young says,

The Photoshopped bark body in this BoingBoing post is similar to this piece of mine, though I use live models and light projectors. It's a lot of fun.

Gopi says,

Heather Firth has been doing 'earth erotica' for a while now. Have a look at how sexy geology can be. Link.

Previously: I'm bringing bark sexy!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:33:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Don't Marry Career Men: Forbes hankers for the '50s

Hey, this would be a funny way to start an article in Forbes, wouldn't it?

Girls: A word of advice. Marry handsome men or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Bald or hairy. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a man with a career.

Why? Because if many social scientists are to be believed, you run a higher risk of having a rocky marriage. While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional men are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that men -- even those with a "feminist" outlook -- are happier when their wife is the primary breadwinner.

Right. Now, reverse each gender reference above, and you're reading a real Forbes article: Don't Marry Career Women. 2006, meet 1956. Pathetic.

Reader comment: Nichole takes a break from baking a casserole and detailing her bathroom grout with a toothbrush to say:

The author of the "Don't marry career women" article, Michael Noer, also wrote "Economics of Prostitution" that starts off with the memorable line, "Wife or whore?" ...so he's kind of just an ass. His other stories as executive editor, news for Forbes.com, are frequently about cars, video games, and sports.

For the record: Normally, I rather like stories that combine cars, video games, sports, and whores.

Angel City Blues has this response for Mr. Noer:

I turned 32 in July and have been single for nearly seven years, for a few reasons. It’s partly by choice; I mean, from the college-dropout losers living two to a room and working customer-service, to the attorneys living high up in fancy condos over Hollywood, I dated them all, and somehow, no matter who they were, I was never good enough for them, and I gave up. After that many years of trying to please other people, I decided it was better to please myself, and you can read that any way you’d like, thanks everso. (...) But mostly? I’ve been single for that long out of fear – yes, fear - because I am deathly afraid of ending up with a jackass like you.

Update: And the "best alternate title award" goes to: "Why Michael Noer Never Got Laid Again, Except By That One Girl Who Works at The Piggly-Wiggly and Cain't Read so Good"

Reader comment: Donna says, A rather skewering item-by-item response, for any of the "slower" boingboing readers who thought Mr. Noer had the right idea: "Why You Should Marry a Doormat."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:26:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bacon wallet

The Bacon Wallet looks like it's made of bacon. It's the treyfest place to keep your gelt. Link (via Shiny Shiny)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:14:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Collateral damage in the airports' War on Moisture

19 airport workers and TSA agents who were fighting the War on Moisture were hospitalized today after the hell-brew of confiscated liquids they had been mixing began to offgas something toxic -- likely a by-product of mace or pepper-spray.

"They could find absolutely no sign of air contamination," he said. "It's important that people recognize that we don't have any indication that this was a deliberate act to disrupt airport operations."

Given the workers' symptoms and that the air tests did not find anything, Hogan said, the likely culprit is discarded Mace or pepper spray. Travelers often carry the chemicals and forget about them until they enter a checkpoint, he said. The chemicals are prohibited past the checkpoint.

Link (Thanks, Bill!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:11:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

World still here -- WSJ got it wrong

A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published Mideast Scholar Bernard Lewis's op-ed piece suggesting that Iranian President Ahmadinejad might commit some kind of catastrophic mischief, such as launching nuclear weapons, on August 22.

Lewis said this might be so because that's the anniversary of Mohammed's journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. (Makes sense, doesn't it?)

As it turns out, instead of attacking anyone, Iran announced it was going to "resume negotiations with the group of 5+1," much to the disappointment of folks like John Bolton and Lewis, who are looking for any excuse to invade Iran and get the US stuck in another horrifically wasteful, deadly, and unjustified foreign occupation.

I'm curious to learn what Bernard Lewis's reaction to today's non-event was. Did he make a statement?

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:15:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weird Al's file-sharing anthem

Weird Al Yankovic has produced an anthem for the download generation: Don't Download This Song:

You don't want to mess with the RI-double-A
They'll sue you if you burn that CDR
It doesn't matter if you're a grandma
Or a seven year old girl
They'll treat you like
the evil hard-bitten criminal you are...

Link, MP3 Link (Thanks to everyone who suggested this!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:35:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese game show: silent torture

Silent Library is a Japanese game show where the players have to remain silent as they are forced to eat a huge wad of wasabi, get slapped in the face by a machine, get their ear gummed by a dour old man, get hit in the butt with a baseball bat, or -- shown here -- inhale "bad smell air." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:02:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Three story, mobile Victorian mansion for Burning Man

Scott Beale says: "The Neverwas Haul is a fantastic steam-powered, mobile 3 story Victorian mansion that is being constructed for Burning Man 2006 by a team of industrious lunatics."

The NeverWas Haul explores the theme of the intrepid explorer, boldly adventuring into the unknown, seeking golden cities, mysterious artifacts, fame and glory. This pre-turn of the century, steam powered, mobile Victorian house is 3 stories in height, and is decorated with the relics and artifacts collected in its journey around the globe, as well as a few more specimens collected in Black Rock City. Participants are interviewed, measured and documented in arcane and amusing scientific experiments. Traditional Irish tea is served every afternoon, and visitors may tour the Haul and be impressed by our advanced steam technology and finely polished brass scientific instruments.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:52:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Country singer allegedly shoots tame bear in pen for enjoyment

Jim says: Country music singer Troy Lee Gentry, of the country singing duo Montgomery Gentry, has been accused of killing a tame black bear that federal officials say he tagged as killed in the wild.

Authorities allege that Gentry purchased the bear from Greenly, a wildlife photographer and hunting guide, then killed it with a bow and arrow in an enclosed pen on Greenly's property in October 2004.

Gentry allegedly paid about $4,650 for the bear, named Cubby. The bear's death was videotaped, and the tape later edited so Gentry appeared to shoot the animal in a "fair chase" hunting situation, the government alleges.

Link

Reader comment: Jon says:

You should really check out some of this guy's "music." There's one video for a song called "You Do Your Thing" where's he's driving around the city with dead dear strapped to the hood of his SUV. The song has such priceless lyrics as "I ain't tradin' in my family's safety just to save on a little gas" and "And I ain't gonna spare the rod because that ain't what my daddy did." It's like a parody, except he's actually serious.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:48:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comparing odds of exploding laptop batteries to other unlikely events

Chris Null says: With all the panic over the Dell batteries, I thought I'd look at what the real odds of these exploding might be, and how those odds compare to other common (and not so common) disasters. Not to mention: Your laptop is 1000 times more likely to be stolen than it is to explode. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:45:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eric Goldberg's animation for Hong Kong's new Buddhist cultural center

Animator Eric Goldberg was interviewed about a cartoon he helped make for a new Buddhist cultural center opening near the Hong Kong Disneyland.

Now, I say "film" but it's environmental, so we have in-house gags like when something gets destroyed there's dust that spews out over the audience, when rain occurs there's actual physical rain in the theater. We've got 360-degree sound. There are gags that go all the way around the theater. And obviously this one is quite whimsical compared to the other film that they are doing, Walking With Buddha, which is directed by my producers on this film, Allen Yamashita and Oric Scott De Las Casas. It's much more serious, about the life of Buddha. I think they cast me right to do the funny one.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:40:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of carved nickels

In the old days, people carved nickels to pass the time. Some people still carve nickels today.

Folk artists have used just about every material on earth. That includes earth and dirt, as last week linkers were interested to see perfectly round, highly polished balls of dirt as folk art from Japan.

When the US first minted the buffalo nickel in 1913, the practice of carving a new face onto the nickel was started, because the coin was thick and its metal was malleable.

Link (Thanks, axlrosen!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:56:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I'm bringing bark sexy!

That's what Justin Timberlake might say if he were responsible for these suggestive images from nature. But he's not. I'm not sure who shot them, but they're blogged with Japanese text by someone named Hiro. Here's what Hiro says, in babelfish botglish:

"Sexy which can be made natural it is photograph collection of the thing. It makes good."

Link (Thanks, Seth Abramovitch)

Update: Looks like the blogger I pointed to earlier ripped 'em off from another site, which in turn collected them from various places around the 'net. Bloggers get awful sensitive about this stuff. Quang Pham says,

I'm chief editor of haha.nu. I've just received mail from our reader, that boingboing.net has posted the 'Nature is sexy.' It is originally started on haha.nu and you can check both the original post date and the comments + more pictures.

Conor says,

At least one of those pics is probably Poser'd and Photoshop'd -- there is apparent texture mapping stretch marks on the figure's hips...and the branches sort of grow from nowhere (as the figure was simply pasted into and over a tree image) -- etc. Too bad it's a phony!

Jason Coyne says,

At least two of the images are from Worth1000: Link, and I know the other tree/nymph image is also a Worth1000 entry, but I have been unable to find it in my search. However, here is another large collection of items in a similar vein, (with some repeats from your original post) that have some images I think are real. The crossed legs picture appears to come from this guy: Link.

Oh who cares I just want to look at dirty pictures of trees!

Reader comment: Quinn Norton says:

No mention of such things so go without Edward Weston's famous Pepper No. 30, which I studied in college photography as a demonstration of light, perception and composition. It's genuine, and for my thinking, sexier than the rest: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:19:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Six horrifying parasites

Neatorama has a nice article about six sickening parasites. A female sacculina begins life as a tiny free-floating slug in the sea, drifting around until she encounters a crab. When that fateful day arrives, she finds a chink in the crab’s armor (usually an elbow or leg joint) and thrusts a kind of hollow dagger into its body. After that, she (how to put this?) "injects" herself into the crab, sluicing through the dagger and leaving behind a husk. Once inside, the jellylike sacculina starts to take over. She grows "roots" that extend to every part of the crab’s body -- wrapping around its eyestalks and deep into its legs and arms. The female feeds and grows until eventually she pops out of the top of the crab, and from this knobby protrusion, she will steer the Good Ship Unlucky Crab for the rest of their co-mingled life. Link (Thanks, Frank!)

Reader comment: Michael says:

It was nice to see the screw worm mentioned in the article "Six horrifying parisites". My father works for APHIS helps fight the battle against these pests down in Panama. Most of us in the U.S. haven't heard of them although they were once a quite a problem in the Southwestern United States. The U.S. government has since eradicated them here and down through most of Central America. To get rid of them they irradiate the male flies with very low level radiation which makes them sterile then release them into the wild to mate. The females can only mate once so when they hook up with a sterile male... no more flesh eating maggots. All this without pesticides too.

I took a tour of the plant in Tuxtula Gutierrez, Mexico and it was quite a gruesome experience. It is a quarantine facility, so we had to shower and change clothes to enter. It is five-football fields under roof, divided in to large rooms where the flies were raised in different stages of their lives. 

There isn't much to see in the egg room, just flies laying eggs. In the pupae room the action is starting to happen. There was tray after tray (tray= 18"x36"x6") of black stuff. On closer inspection it is all moving, thousands of little screw worms only a few millimeters long. My father's coworker turns to me and says "This is when they are most dangerous, say you get one on your finger then scratch your eye." He left it up to me to imagine what would happen. (I do know that one screw worm isn't going to kill you, but a bunch of them left untreated will.) In the larvae room the smell almost knocks you down. I almost didn't think I could handle it. The smell comes from their feed. It is a mixture of animal blood and other nutrients. The larvae are about an inch long now and are kept in trays stacked eight high on rolling carts. There were many, many carts.  When it is feeding time there is a guy standing in a vat of blood on wheels and using a bucket, he sloughs the blood into the trays. When the maggots are full, they crawl out of the trays and into gutters on the floor. Then they are swept up, literally, and go on to the next room to grow into adult flies. Males get to be irradiated, females get to make more flies to be irradiated, and so on.

"Six horrifing parasites" gives you an idea of what kind of damage these things can do but to give you a real world example... My father once saw a brahma bull that was badly infected. From across the field he could see a large red patch across the bull's shoulders. When they got closer he could see the wound was covered in screw worms. To get rid of them, they had to sedate the bull and douse the screw worms with alcohol. Nasty huh?

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:03:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snap character judgements

Fitting into the Blink! realm, new research from Princeton University suggests that our brains determine whether we think someone is attractive and trustworthy within one tenth of a second. That's so fast that our rational minds don't have much, if any, sway in the snap judgement. From News@Princeton:

"The link between facial features and character may be tenuous at best, but that doesn't stop our minds from sizing other people up at a glance," said Todorov, an assistant professor of psychology. "We decide very quickly whether a person possesses many of the traits we feel are important, such as likeability and competence, even though we have not exchanged a single word with them. It appears that we are hard-wired to draw these inferences in a fast, unreflective way..."

Why the brain makes such snap judgments is not yet entirely clear, (professor Alex) Todorov said. However, he often works with a sophisticated technological tool for probing brain activity called a functional magnetic resonance imager (fMRI), and Todorov said some of his general research suggests that the part of the brain that responds directly to fear may be involved in judgments of trustworthiness.

"The fear response involves the amygdala, a part of the brain that existed in animals for millions of years before the development of the prefrontal cortex, where rational thoughts come from," he said. "We imagine trust to be a rather sophisticated response, but our observations indicate that trust might be a case of a high-level judgment being made by a low-level brain structure. Perhaps the signal bypasses the cortex altogether."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:24:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Proof of dark matter

As widely reported today, scientists claim that they have found direct proof of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up the vast majority of our universe. Dark matter was first proposed in the 1930s when astronomers noticed that the motion of galaxies and clusters of galaxies they observed did not jibe with the visible mass. Since then, dark matter and dark energy have theoretically been implicated in the expansion of the universe. Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, scientists observed galaxies colliding at 10 million miles per hour, pulling apart normal matter and dark matter. Link to NASA press release, Link to News@Nature, Link to New Scientist, Link to Good Math, Bad Math

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:42:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIAA propaganda movie for students in desperate need of remix

The RIAA has just released a back-to-school propaganda video called "Campus Downloads" that is full of lies, half-truths, omissions, and intimidation aimed at convincing students to stay away from file-sharing.

This is such a steaming pile that it desperately needs to be remixed. Someone out there needs to make a version where every lie is interrupted with an explanation of the real story, to be shown alongside of it.

You think it can't happen to you. You need to meet Derek.

Derek: I was in my morning Spanish class when the teacher went to the door and said Derek, you need to leave the class. I went outside and there was a campus police officer and an FBI agent in my room... They showed me some paper and asked, 'Is this you?'

[[Welcome to 1984 -- every Internet connection is wiretapped to preserve the business model of the music pirates who got rich ripping off composers to make records, back when that was illegal]]

You may not know Derek, but he's one of tens of thousands of people whose lives are now entangled in legal actions all over the country...

[[With 70 million more to come]]

Sharing copyrighted music files is stealing, no different from shoplifting music from a store.

[[Except that you pay a thousandth of the penalties for actual stealing, because this isn't about stealing, it's about controlling the future of music distribution, and the RIAA wants to stay right in the middle of it]]

Derek: I work 40 hours a week to pay legal bills... The weight on my mind, knowing for the rest of my life, having to explain why I'm a felon.

[[Like this fell out of the sky, like the RIAA didn't decide to ruin this kid's life]]

Look, it's simple: Unless you get permission if the music you find on the web is owned by someone else, you can't share it, download it or copy it, period.

[[Except for fair use, which is especially available to scholars]]

And in most cases if it's free, it's not legal.

[[Except for the 160 million Creative Commons works that have been created in the last three years]]

Making copies for your friends, giving it to them to copy...is just as illegal as downlaoding it.

[[In other words, making a mix-tape is illegal]]

Link (Thanks, Jason!)

Update: Brandon sez, "Apparently that Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt in the video was on the far extreme of 'file sharing' and prosecuted by the feds, and not just the RIAA. He was a member 'Apocalypse Crew' which was convicted of prereleasing music."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:37:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Trained goldfish

Here's a delightful video of trained goldfish responding to hand gestures. It's odd that the person who posted this to YouTube seems more amused by the fact that the trainer is Japanese.
Link (Thanks, Stephen Lindholm via Mike Love!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:14:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gizmodo's hiring a new (additional) senior editor

Gizmodo lead editor Brian Lam says,

I'm looking for someone with hustle, and solid contacts in the gadget world. Someone who is technical, but can still write around the jargon. Someone who has a good sense of humor, a strong work ethic, and a competitive streak. Someone who has a few years magazine experience, but isn't scared of the blogging pace. Someone who can spot news fast, and has an innate ability to write strong headlines and leads. Someone in NY, who can spearhead the day, hit up the NY junkets, and help manage our NY writer, and intern. One caveat: The job does come with a boss who runs the site like its a sailboat driving hard against tide and weather. It's just more fun that way.

email blam at gizmodo dot com. He won't tell you this up front all public-like, but they pay you in flash drives and lines of blow.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:03:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fastest predatory strike in the world

UC Berkeley scientists have discovered that trap-jaw ants have the fastest predatory strike in the entire animal kingdom. According to biologist Sheila Patek, whose work I've previously profiled in ScienceMatters, the ant's mandible strikes at 78 to 145 miles per hour, with each jaw generating more than 300 times the insect's weight in force. From the Berkeley NewsCenter:

...Animals such as trap-jaw ants and mantis shrimp (which formerly held the record for swiftest strike in the animal world) utilize energy stored within their own bodies. The mandibles of the trap-jaw ant, for instance, are held cocked by a pair of huge, contracting muscles in the head. The muscles are sprung when their corresponding latches, each on a shield-like plate called the clypeus, are triggered.

...O. bauri ants can launch themselves into the air with a mere snap of their jaws, achieving heights up to 8.3 centimeters and horizontal distances up to 39.6 centimeters. That roughly translates, for a 5-foot-6-inch tall human, into a height of 44 feet and a horizontal distance of 132 feet, an aerial trajectory likely to be the envy of circus acrobats and Olympic athletes.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:02:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Websense censors Cory's podcasts - UPDATED

See update below

Websense, an Internet censorship company that I've criticized here, has apparently decided to punish me by censoring every podcast I've ever made. The files are hosted on the Internet Archive, and consist of me reading non-pornographic, award-winning science fiction stories. It's hard to believe that someone accidentally mistook these files for "free software download" (the category that Websense has used, one that is selected for blocking by many corporate and school customers); as between that explanation and the notion that Websense has sought petty revenge against its critics, the latter is more credible to me.

I spoke with Cas Purdy, the Websense PR manager, but he was unable to provide any information or comment at this time. Link

Update: Websense added all of archive.org/download to its "free software download" category after this post was published.

Update 2: Websense has reclassified the Internet Archive and my podcast. This morning, archive.org/download was not classed as "Software Download," but archive.org/download/ (with trailing slash) was, hence the appearance that my podcasts had been singled out. Websense has since reclassified all of the Internet Archive, including my podcasts, as "Search Engines and Portals." (Thanks, Salim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:05:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FCC open meeting on media concentration coming to LA

Joanna sez,

Did you know the FCC is gearing up to relax restrictions on big media again, like in 2003?

They will be in Los Angeles at USC for a Town Hall Meeting on Aug 31st to talk about localism in media... ask us what we want, etc... They are required to do this and all comments will be a part of the public record.

Some orgs (like Media Alliance from Oakland) are getting together to promote attendance as well as to offer some prep workshops! The goal is to inform about what to expect at the Town Hall Meeting, what to think about when you prepare your "3 minutes", etc... These are this Thursday at the CWA local 9000, 5855 Venice Blvd at noon and again at 6pm.

Link (Thanks, Joanna!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

No unions in iPod City

Wired News's Leander Kahney points out something I missed in Apple's report on labor conditions in the Chinese "iPod City" factories -- there are no unions:

But the big gaping hole is the absence of unions. The report makes no mention of them, but even Apple's own code of conduct recognizes the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. (Replying to a query, Apple sent an e-mail with PR boilerplate citing its commitment to workers' dignity.)

Of course, the ban on unions isn't Apple's dictate, nor its contractors. It's the Chinese government's.

Unions are out of fashion in the Western world, but the benefits we enjoy at work were hard fought by our predecessors. There may be a limited role for unions in my white-collar workplace, but that's not true in China and elsewhere manufacturing has been outsourced.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:10:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DHS runs anti-cyber-hippie wargame

The Department of Homeland Security recently ran a cyber-wargame in which the US defended itself against an adversary consisting of anti-war groups, labor activists, vegans -- but not Al Quaeda.

At the top of the pyramid is the Worldwide Anti-Globalization Alliance, which sets things off by calling for cyber sit-ins and denial-of-service attacks against U.S. interests. WAGA's radical arm, the villainous Black Hood Society, ratchets up the tension on day one by probing SCADA computerized control systems and military networks, eventually (spoiler warning) claiming responsibility for a commuter rail outage and the heat going out in government buildings.

The Black Hoods are a faction of Freedom Not Bombs, whose name is suspiciously similar to the real Food Not Bombs,[1] which provides vegan meals to the homeless.

Another allied lefty-group called the Peoples Pact joins in, crashing portions of the power grid. Things get confusing when the "Tricky Trio," three evil hax0rs who are 50 percent more devious than the Deceptive Duo,[2] hacks the FAA, issues false Amber Alerts, and manipulates the communications system of the U.S. Northern Command.

Then someone posts the No-Fly List to a public website (third act shocker: it's all nuns and Massachusetts Democrats), and opportunistic cyber thieves raid a medical database looking for identity theft targets. Logic bombs explode, wireless communications devices are corrupted, DNS caches are poisoned.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:08:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spamigation: automated litigation

Brad Templeton has coined "Spamigation" for spam litigation, lawsuits that are automated by computers, noting that while suing people can be readily automated so that it's possible to sue millions, legal defenses are much harder to automate.

This means that while it's possible to sue millions, it's impossible for millions to defend against those lawsuits. The RIAA has practically invented this; a friend in the know confided about 18 months back that the RIAA's litigation was actually turning a profit: that is, the RIAA's network of sleazy bounty-hunters, boiler-room intimidators, and software-generated legal threats were costing less to run than they were bringing in through the persecution of American music fans.

That means that there's no technical reason the music industry can't individually sue all 70 million American file-sharers. Indeed, that might be their last profitable business-model in an era when they refuse to give sell what people will buy: DRM-free music at a reasonable price.

The RIAA strategy is an example of a new legal phenomenon that I have dubbed "spamigation" -- bulk litigation that's only become practical due to the economies of scale of the computer era. We see spamigation when a firm uses automation to send out thousands of cease and disist letters threatening legal action. We saw it when DirecTV took the customer database for a vendor of smartcard programmers and bulk-litigated almost everybody in it...

The RIAA uses systems to gather lists of alleged infringers, and bulk-sues them. It has set a price that seems to be profitable for it, while being low enough that it is not profitable for the accused to mount a defence, as they do not get the economies of scale involved.

Link (via Michael Geist)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:00:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Greasemonkey script feeds all your searches through anonymizer

Apropos of yesterday's post about TrackMeNot, a Firefox plugin that randomizes your search history, Nemanja made this Greasemonkey script that automatically feeds all your search-queries through Black Box Search, "a proxy that runs Google, Yahoo, and MSN searches through a proxy and then displays them with almost no delay." Link

Update: Ken sez,

I was able to make a Firefox 1.5.0.x search plugin that uses the site in that Greasemonkey script. You just put the files from the zip into a folder named "searchplugins" in your Firefox profile folder. For help with locating your Firefox Profile folder go here.

I also created a Firefox 2.0 and IE7 Google Anon OpenSearch plugin. Here's a link to the SearchPlugins.net search that shows "Google Anon Search" that I made.

You click on the "I" to install it. Here's a link to the direct source of the search plugin if you'd rather have that.

(Thanks, Nemanja!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:46:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RyanAir: Airport security is like a strip-search

RyanAir, the discount airline that's threatened to sue the UK government over new security procedures has posted this provocative image to its website: a crowd of naked people running away from their piled-up clothes, with the caption "New Airport Security Procedures Put the Fun Back Into Flying."

They're onto something here. If the existence of a plot to use implausible liquid explosives against aircraft creates a global war on moisture at the airports, imagine what a similar plot to smuggle a bomb up a terrorist's ass would engender. The war on moisture is bad, but it's nothing compared to the inevitable war on body cavities.

The terrorists hate our freedom, so by eliminating the freedom, we can stop the terrorists from hating us. Link (Thanks, Michael!)

Update: Eileen sez, " Looks like the outtake from a Spencer Tunick photo shoot."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:44:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video-games recreated in stop-motion with household objects

Pes, a gifted short-film maker, has produced a video-game tribute called "Game Over" that blew me away. He's recreated scenes from classic arcade games (Space Invaders, Asteroids, Frogger, etc) in stop-motion, using household objects like salt-cellars, leaves, dead bugs, shark's teeth, candy corn and other quotidian detritus -- synching it all to the original game sound. Link (via Kottke)

Update: Site's slammed, here's a Coral Cache mirror

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:37:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tokyo cosplayer show video

Tokyo Tonite has already got video of the August 22 Wonderfest cosplay/anime/figure show in Tokyo. The video focuses on the female cosplayers and is a little prurient, but there's some wild stuff here, like the Elegant Goth Lolita maid with a giant machine-gun assault rifle -- also catch the four-year-old baby cosplayers doing the cosplayer vogue. Link (Thanks, Justinzaru!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:54:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, August 21, 2006

Deadwood Pancakes

Link to video made by Deadwood fan Justin Schlegel. It wafts just right. (thanks, Geoff)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:18:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weapons for ladies

Antonio Riello says, "Using leopard skins, brightly lacquered colors, inset jewels and fake furs, I create a range of specialized items for wives of mafia bosses, arms dealers, sophisticated ladies and exigent soldiers....hybrids born from Italian obsession for high fashion as well as for violence." Link (Thanks, Violet Blue)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:07:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: writing zen

titlescorer
misused quotation marks
cliché finder
non errors
choose your own adventure

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:02:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ghost ride da whip

Duhhh-sclaimer: The actions described in this post could kill you or others. But most people dumb enough to do this kind of crap don't read BoingBoing anyway.

Apparently I am the last person in the world to know about this. The short version:

(1) get in your car and drive
(2) *while* your car is moving forward
(3) step out of the driver's seat and dance around in the road
(4) optional: jump on top of your car, which remains in motion, and vamp on the roof.
(5) refrain from dying
(6) post video on the internet, boyyyeeeeee.

There's another term for this: "natural selection." (Thanks, Oxblood and Pat!)

Reader comment: Jami Dwyer says,

After way too much time on YouTube, my favorites are the cop ghostriding and a guy ghostriding his little sister's bike.

Of course, when dumb teenage boys do this at full speed on busy streets, this is a huge safety worry. What we need are about twenty more videos from yuppies ghostriding in PT Cruisers, and ghostriding will be over before an innocent bystander gets killed.

Scott says,

If you don't wanna be the last on the block to know about THIS, then you should start workin' your tray surfin' skillz. Search "Tray Surfing" on YouTube.

Conrad Kilroy says,

'Ghostride da Whip' reminds me of the Monty Python's Flying Circus' UpperClass-Twit of the Year sketch. "...and Oliver has ran himself over!" Screen Shot, and Video link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:52:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flame throwing trampoline

Mikey Sklar is one of my favorite makers. He left a cushy IT job on Wall Street and moved to Truth or Consequences, NM to build things that spit fire. His first project is called the High Lighter, and it's a trampoline that is connected to a torch that flares up every time you bounce. An early prototype was on display at Maker Faire.

To keep people from using the High Lighter when Mikey isn't around, he has equipped it with an RFID reader. Mikey has an RFID chip implanted in his hand, so only he can activate it. Mikey says:

Just wanted to drop you a line about the fire trampoline finally reaching version 1.0. This is one overbuilt piece of back yard trash. Infrared Camera, text LCD, video LCD, RFID Reader, Ultrasonic Sensor, and of course up to 5' flames depending on the jumpers bouncing abilities. The control panel is hand made from 3/4" plexiglass so that is pretty sexy.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:40:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Oliver the Humanzee

I missed the documentary on TV last night about Oliver the Humanzee. It had been rumored for years that Oliver was half human, but DNA tests ruled it out. What a pity! Here's a nice Wikipedia article about him.

Oliver's next owner was New York appellate lawyer Michael Miller, who promoted Oliver as a "missing link". Oliver appeared on Japanese TV with fraudulent promotions picturing him as a miniature and hairy human being. Though he was sent to Japan in a normal chimpanzee cage as cargo, Oliver was depicted as flying in the passenger cabin. Oliver's trip coincided with a concert promotion of the rock 'n roll group The Monkees and he was presented on Japanese television shows with Micky Dolenz spouting inaccurate scientific observations.

Miller claimed he was promised genuine scientific examination of Oliver including genetic testing by the Japanese promoters. Some Japanese results, later proved false, held that Oliver had 47 chromosomes. Some anthropologists observing Oliver's head, nose, ears, and preference for bipedal walking asserted the possibility that the chimp was a hybrid.

Link

Reader comment: Max says:

I am an avid Boing Boing reader and when I came across the posting about Oliver the Humanzee I figured I’d recommend a documentary that you will almost certainly find pertinent and interesting. The film is called Kanzi, Ape of Genius. I think it was made by the University of Georgia, but I can’t seem to get my hands on it, so I’m afraid I can’t verify that bit.

Kanzi is a Bonobo chimp that lives in captivity. He has been taught to communicate through sign language, images and gestures and he can cook – with a bit of help. The emotions that Kanzi exhibits are incredible – he’s so human like it’s embarrassing…for us I think. The film shows Kanzi’s interactions with his human trainer, his fellow chimps and a dog – for whom he has nothing but jealousy, and contempt, which are but two of many complex traits he displays.

Good luck finding the film. If you do, I’d love to know where.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:21:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Indian statues drinking milk?

Devotees in India have claimed that statues of Hindu gods are drinking milk at temples in New Delhi, Lucknow, and Kolkata. Apparently, milk held up to statues of Lord Shiva, Lord Krishna, and Lord Ganesha are gulping up milk offered up in believers' hands. Thousands of people are now visiting the temples to experience the magic for themselves. From Reuters:

A similar mania gripped the country in 1995 when thousands of Hindus fed milk in spoons to marble idols of Lord Ganesha.

That rumor spread across the globe and there were reports of Hindu deities drinking milk in London, New York and Italy.

"It is very natural for any stone idol to absorb any liquid and the older the stone the more it absorbs," M.P. Singh, a geology professor at Lucknow University, told Reuters.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:14:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Massive yellow jacket nests in Alabama

Massive yellow jacket nests are being found in barns, abandoned cars, and empty houses in southern Alabama. Entomologists say that the reason for the large nests is something of a mystery.

The largest nest (entomologist Dr. Charles) Ray has inspected this year filled the interior of a weathered 1955 Chevrolet parked in a rural Elmore County barn. That nest was about the size of a tire in the rear floor seven weeks ago, but quickly spread to fill the entire vehicle, the property owner, Harry Coker, said. Four satellite nests around it have gotten into the eaves of the barn, about 300 yards from his home.

"I'm kind of afraid for the grandkids. I had to sneak down there at dark and get my tractor out of the barn," Coker said. "It's been a disruption..."

In previous years, a yellow jacket nest was no larger than a basketball, Ray said. It would contain about 3,000 workers and one queen. These gigantic nests may have as many as 100,000 workers and multiple queens.

Link (Thanks, Chris Noessel!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:53:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snakes on a Plane: the aftermath.

This betatted fellow isn't worried about disappointing box office returns or concomitant studio whinery -- or, it would seem, the fact that ink in flesh lasts longer than internet fads.

BoingBoing reader Adam explains,

A gentleman named Jim Dozier ("Doz," or "iBgerd") decided he was so excited about the movie that he would have its logo tattooed on his arm. (Link) Doz has been a cherished member of our site for years now, so we all cheered him on when we realized the tattoo was real. One of our members photoshopped the picture of the tattoo replacing the logo with one from "Howard The Duck" and reminded Doz that he was really going to regret this in a few years.

A few days after getting the tattoo, New Line Cinema announced the "Snakes on a Plane #1 Fan Sweepstakes." (Link) Doz immediately entered the contest, and as of today, he's firmly in second place. Max (of YTMND.com fame) has a commanding lead thanks to his army of followers, but even he has admitted that Doz is clearly the #1 fan.

At this point, it's easy for people to roll their eyes and write Doz off as some creepy old guy living in his mom's basement. Indeed, he's gotten a bit of media exposure because of all this, and has been treated poorly by some. A few mouthbreathing DJ's on some morning show decided to interview Doz, and tried their best to run a bunch of cliche jokes into the ground while embarrassing and demeaning him. Doz handled it beautifully, turning their jokes around on them, and making the group look pretty dumb in the process. (Link) I couldn't be more proud of an "Internet guy" for shattering the stereotype in beautiful fashion.

We've collected many of the relevant links to Doz's story (along with plenty of childish banter) on the post we've been using to promote his contest entry the last few weeks. (Link).

David Goldenberg from GELF magazine sends their coverage of "Snakes on a Plane on a Dude." Link. Snip:

GM: Do you think you're too old to be so infatuated with movies?

Doz: I don't think I'm too old. We all have our fads as we go through life—remember Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Dolls (I NEVER got into either of those!)? It's just human nature. This was just something that struck a nerve in me and sounded like something fun. And I'm always looking for fun things to occupy my time with.

Woody from Dateline Hollywood attended the premiere and interviewed Sam Jackson and the rest of the cast on the red carpet. The resulting video is pretty darned funny: Link. (thanks, Ben Fritz!)

Adam says,

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, TX is hosting a "Blanks on a Blank" filmmaking competition inspired by "Snakes on a Plane." All of the parody films are available on their site, and some of them are outstanding. Link

Dan Kaminsky offers a linguistics lesson here. Snip:

Perhaps one of the most interesting and colorful phrases in the English language today is the phrase "Snakes on a Plane". It is the one magical phrase, which, just by its sound, can describe pain, pleasure, love, and Samuel L. Jackson.

In language, "Snakes on a Plane" falls into many grammatical categories. It can be used as a verb, both transitive (John snaked Mary on a plane) and intransitive (Mary was snaked on a plane by John). It can be an action verb (John really snakes on a plane), a passive verb (Mary really doesn't snake on a plane), an adverb (Mary is snaking-on-a-plane interested in John), or as a noun (Mary is a terrific snake on a plane). It can also be used as an adjective (Mary is snaking-on-a-plane beautiful) or an interjection (Snakes on a Plane! I'm late for my date with Mary). It can even be used as a conjunction (John is ugly, SNAKES ON A PLANE, he's also stupid). As you can see, there are very few words with the overall versatility of the phrase "Snakes on a Plane."

Aside from its R-rated-because-that's-what-the-fans-demanded connotations, this incredible word can be used to describe many situations:

More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:05:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's USC class on DRM starts tomorrow

Tomorrow I teach my first class at the University of Southern California as the US-Canada Fulbright Chair at Annenberg Center on Public Diplomacy: "Set-Top Cop -- Hollywood's Secret War on Your Living Room." It's a grad seminar open to grad students at USC, and undergrads by arrangement with me. Unfortunately, it's not possible to invite the general public to the small seminar class, but I will be hosting a variety of guest speakers this year who will be giving public talks at USC on Tuesday evenings. USC students have until Sept 9 to late-add this class. We'll also have a public research blog. The class meets Tuesday from noon-2:30. A lot of USC students have written to me about this class and I promised them I'd blog it once the details were finalized -- here they are! Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:47:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wearetheweb.org video

This pro net-neutrality video, starring a trio of outre web characters, is excellent! Link (Thanks, Coop!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:22:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blog about end times

Signs of Witness is a blog that covers news about religious people claiming that certain events and phenomena are evidence that the world is about to end. It's excellent entertainment, and a little scary.

God sends sign as a chocolate dripping.
Sweet Mary! Workers at a chocolate company in Fountain Valley, CA have discovered a 2-inch-tall column of chocolate drippings that they believe bears a striking resemblance to traditional depictions of the Virgin Mary. “For me, it was a sign,” Cruz Jacinto says of finding the chocolate icon that matches her prayer card.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:15:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TrackMeNot: Firefox extension randomizes your search history

Stephen sez, "TrackMeNot runs in Firefox as a low-priority background process that periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. It hides users' actual search trails in a cloud of indistinguishable 'ghost' queries, making it difficult, if not impossible, to aggregate such data into accurate or identifying user profiles. TrackMeNot integrates into the Firefox 'Tools' menu and includes a variety of user-configurable options." I don't know if this will foil determined adversaries, but it seems like a sharp idea. Link (Thanks, Stephen!)

Update: Odiumjunkie sent in the following thoughtful analysis of TrackMeNot's robustness:
More...

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

New Spike Priggen CD: "There's No Sound In Flutes!"

Spike Priggen, who publishes one of my favorite blogs, Bedazzled!, has a new CD out called There's No Sound in Flutes. (The title comes from a studio recording of one of Buddy Rich's infamous temper tantrums. The cover, by favorite cartoonist Peter Bagge, depicts Rich laying into his musicians.)

Priggen's music is a delight. Bun E. Carlos plays on a couple of songs, which makes sense, because much of Priggen's work has the same sensibility as Cheap Trick. You can listen to a sample song on his blog. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:12:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Goth day at Disneyland photos

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of attending the eighth Bats Day in the Fun Park goth day at Disneyland, California. Thousands of goths of various stripes attended, and posed for group photos and did a gang ride of the Haunted Mansion (there were other off-site events that I missed). It was a hoot. There's something simultaneously loving and subversive about the Bats Day attendees, and the cognitive dissonance of these black thunderclouds of goth riders amidst the bright-colored Southern California crowd was especially delicious. My Flickr batsday photos, All Flickr batsday photos Official batsday.net photos

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:13:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bloodspell censored by Leipzig Games Conference

Johnnie sez, "Edinburgh-based machinima production team 'Strange Company' have refused to attend the Leipzig Games Conference in protest over the conference's insistence that their machinima feature film, BloodSpell, be censored before it gets shown. Artistic Director Hugh Hancock and First Assistant Director Johnnie Ingram have post posted quite angry responses on the company blog."

On Friday, the Leipzig Games Conference people asked us not to show BloodSpell at the conference.

They feel it is too violent.

They feel that German journalists are looking for violent scenes in video games*, and wish to show Machinima as "a positive example of what players do with games." The implication, of course, is that BloodSpell is not one of those positive things.

I'm quite angry about this. I'm angry that we're being singled out - EA and Take Two are both showing games at least as violent as BloodSpell. I'm angry that I'm being asked to censor my work, and by doing so to implicitly agree that BloodSpell is unwholesome, or at least suspect. And I'm angry that the reason we make Machinima - the chance to tell stories - is being treated as a mere by-product, something that can be chopped, changed or censored at will.

Link (Thanks, Johnnie!)

Previously: Part one of machinima epic "Bloodspell" online under CC license

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:08:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

London ambulance memoir under CC license

Tom sez, "I've just released my new book under a CC license, this is the first book by a UK author and a major European publisher to be released in this fashion (as far as we know). It is simultaneous with the book being sold in major bookstores." The book is Blood, Sweat and Tea: real-life stories from the London Ambulance Service, based on Tom's blog about his experiences as a London ambulance tech. Link (Thanks, Tom!)

Update: Charlie Stross points out:

Actually, the first that I know of in the UK was Net.wars by Wendy Grossman -- admittedly published by NYU Press, but she's based in London and it went out online in, um, 98 or 99 or thereabouts.

And ACCELERANDO was released under CC with the kind permission of Orbit back in 2005.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:24:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toronto's Alternate Reality game, Waking City

Waking City is a new Alternate Reality Game set in Toronto -- a kind of city-wide ongoing scavenger-hunt and puzzle where clues and collaboration come over the net:

What: Waking City
When: September 16
Cost: $27.80/team member. Team sizes must be between 4 to 7 people.
Contact: info@torgame.com
For more details, attend an info session: 7:10pm on Thurs, Aug 24, and Thurs, Sept 7, at Lillian H Smith Library (239 College Street, at Huron)

Link (Thanks, Kate!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Farecast predicts cheapest plane-fares for 55 cities

Farecast, a service that predicts when plane tickets will be cheapest, has just expanded its database to 55 cities. Feed it any route between these cities and a travel-date and it will tell you when the fares will be cheapest -- or deliver you a realtime ticker of fare predictions over RSS. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:14:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Custom ketchup labels

Heinz is offering a make-your-own custom ketchup label service. At $6 per, it's not a terrible deal if you've got a stone ketchup junkie in the family. Personally, I hate the taste of ketchup so much that writing this post has caused me to lose my appetitite, but those are some swell custom labels. Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:09:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO run a successful sf convention room party

Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who has run innumerable successful publisher-parties at science fiction conventions, has just posted an incredibly detailed HOWTO for running a successful large room party at a con:

Get in as early as possible. Turn the thermostats to "Lunar nightside" and the AC to "Siberian blizzard". You're going to have a lot of radiant bodies in the room. Start laying down a basal layer of cold now.

Give yourself prep time: order dinner from room service.

You have a moral obligation to feed your party prep minions, if you have them.

If you're in a very nice suite, remove any fragile ornaments to the top shelf of a closet. Remove all the phones (except for one, if you're sure you'll need it) to a dresser drawer or closet shelf. If you're staying in the room, secure your possessions.

Optional: rearrange the furniture. If you're using the big conference table for refreshments, move the chairs away. They'll do more good over by the sofa and easy chairs, and removing them will keep social maladroits from sitting there and chowing down on your munchies.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:04:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yahoo: Go ahead and remix our brand

Yahoo -- trailing Google in the search wars -- is hoping to gain some ground by beating Google at being open and friendly to Internet users. Google is sending out lawyer letters to people who use "to google" as a verb, but Yahoo is encouraging its customers and fans to remix its brand and create their own commercials:

Most companies, including ours, spend a great deal of time trying to turn our brands into household names. In fact, we just kicked off a marketing campaign called "Your Yahoo! has changed" that is meant to encourage people to have fun with our brand by creating their own commercials.

Link (via SearchBlog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:57:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Cat gets teeth bling

This kitty, named Sebastian, was given a gold grill by his human companion, dentist David Steele. Apparently, Sebastian has such a severe underbite that Steele was concerned the teeth could be easily damaged. So he capped them in gold. Each tooth cost around $900. From the Associated Press (via a Herald Bulletin article):

Two weeks ago, veterinarian Larry Owen tranquilized the cat at the Alexandria Animal Hospital about 30 miles northeast of Indianapolis so Steele could do the dentistry work, which took about 15 minutes to complete.

Owen said putting gold crowns on teeth can be done for any pet with a dental problem.

"Mostly, though, it was a fun thing to do," Owen said.

Ummm... Did Sebastian think it was fun? Link (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:11:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pics of Disney Animators in the 50s

Amid sends us this link to "a Flickr set from the collection of artist Ray Aragon showing layout and background artists during the production of Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians. Also includes photos of them during lunch hour exploring the Zorro set on the Disney backlot."

These photos, from the collection of Ray Aragon, were taken in June and July 1958 at Disney Studios. Most of the artists in these pics worked in the layout and background departments at Disney. At the time they were completing work on Sleeping Beauty and beginning production on 101 Dalmatians.

Link (Thanks, Amid!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:18:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google launches free, kick-ass word-processor

Google has re-lauched Writely, the online word-processor they recently bought, in public beta. Writely does everything most things Word does, for free -- and saves its output as PDFs and even RSS feeds (subscribe to a word-processor doc!). It features collaborative editing -- multiple editors on the same doc at once -- and can be used as the editor for writing your blog, saving out to a post instead of a file on your machine. This is a great-looking program for people who have always-on Internet, and for so long as you don't worry about the NSA demanding that Google turn over its Writely files as part of some "security" procedure. Also: if I were a Google China user, I'd have some doubts about this, given that Google has shown that when it comes to China, keeping the government happy is more important than delivering the best product it can. Link (via Vertical Hold)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:15:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eavesdropping on a botnet

A security researcher deliberately infected a PC with a botnet worm, then monitored it via a network proxy that caught all of its communications with the botmaster that had enslaved it. The machine was hijacked into sending mountains of spam from "dozens of IP addresses and using forged sender addresses," "advertising everything from pornography to fake Rolex watches and pharmaceuticals."

"I have two machines here running in an isolated network. I infect one with the malware, and I have the other machine pretending to be the entire Internet," he explained. The second machine, known as a sandnet, is a custom-made tool for analyzing malware in an environment that is isolated, yet provides a virtual Internet for the malware to interact with. "I can sit back and see all the interaction up to point where it [the infected machine] joins botnet's control channel. Then I can take that information, go outside and replicate it. I can see what the real server is doing to get an entire picture of the operation," Stewart said.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:09:29 AM permalink |