posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:08:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 29, 2007

Wikify the problem of ending corruption

When I talked to Larry about this move, he blue-skyed a neat little idea that's stuck with me: what if lawmakers were required to abstain from votes over issues in which they had a financial interest? For example, if you take money from the health industry, you can't vote on health-related issues. I serve on a bunch of boards, some for-profit and some non-profit, and it's standard that board members abstain from voting on governance issues in which they have a conflict of interest. It's just common sense -- so why not apply it to Congress? Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:33:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jesusphone: He is Risen

I'm in a cafe in Los Angeles right now with Sean Bonner, kicking the tires on the iPhone we just brought back from the Apple store at the Grove. In two words: totally sweet.

It lives up to the hype. All the rules just changed.

(All photos in this post: Sean Bonner. Link to Flickr set.)

Both of us were skeptical about the lack of a conventional keyboard, but so far, it's awesome. Sean's tapping out a bunch of Twitters and emails, single-fingeredly, and sailing through. iPhone does a remarkable job of sniffing out what you meant to type if you goof a little -- more so than any other mobile interface I've used. It'll take some getting used to, and it's not the same as a conventional keyboard. But it does not suck at all. I can imagine typing two-thumbed pretty soon.

(above: Greg Joswiak from Apple, with Jonathan, the first guy in line at the Apple store at LA's Grove mall.)

This cafe where we are right now has an open WiFi network, so data speed as we're testing this for the first time is fantastically fast. Automatically connects if the network is open.

When you connect to internet using AT&T's 300 kbps EDGE network, it does feel pretty poky. More like sub-dial-up, particularly in places where the signal is weak. Still -- faster than what you may be used to on any number of lamer US smartphones. Faster than I was used to on several models of Treos, and some Windows Mobile smartphones. Wherever there's WiFi you can connect to (and this is instant, and works wonderfully), there's a lot more speed. Presumably, the provided speed from AT&T will be faster as services evolve. (Why'd they go with EDGE? See this NYT article by John Markoff: Link).

Some of the first things that make us go "ajskdfgjhdfhakjomg":

(1) The web browser (Sean: "even the little javascript crawl at the top of Metroblogging.com works great.")
(2) The pinch (Xeni: it's super intuitive. I wish I could do this on every electronic device I own. I wish Apple would release a tablet with this on it.")
(3) Thumb typing (Sean: "Dude I can't believe it actually works." Xeni: "And functions fine even with wet or greasy fingertips.")
(4) It syncs beautifully with the Mac (Xeni: "All my personal data synced from the Macbook to the iPhone in a minute or two -- more than 6,000 contacts, several gigs of songs, podcasts, audiobooks, and video, and a dense calendar.")
(5) Activation went fine, even in the epic crunch time, proving naysayer reports wrong. (Xeni: "worked without a hitch, wait for server response at end of process was only a couple minutes, all very easy." / Update: all the iPhone-buying friends I spoke with had similarly breezy experiences this weekend, but apparently some folks who were existing AT&T customers had a bad time.)
(6) Orientation awareness (Sean: "It's so fucking sexy. It works THREE ways.")
(7) It just works, with no "stupid" getting in your way. It's simple and elegant. When have you ever used the word elegant to describe a phone UI, for chrissakes? (our pal Michael Baffico just arrived here at the cafe to check out the iPhone: "I've had it 7 minutes and I've already figured out how to play music, check stocks, browse the web, make calls, and a bunch of other stuff, with nobody showing me anything -- all in the time it would normally take me to load one shitty page on my Treo." Then he left to go buy one before all the stores closed).
(8) Holy crap, the Google Maps with real-time traffic data? OK, no GPS in this first-gen iPhone, but this feature is incredible. Not just local US data, either: I'm zooming off to satellite views of Africa, Europe, or Asia with the flick of an index finger.
(9) Navigating media is like slicing buttah. The iPod interface, with the flippy album cover Jedi hand gesture response -- oh man.
(10) Multiple web browser windows are a nice touch.
(11) The little camera in this thing is terrific, takes great, crisp, vivid shots.
(12) Oh, right, and the, uh, phone! Visual voicemail features were really nice, and voice quality was fine when we tested it in a few locations around LA, in a few different kinds of noise environments.

We're IMming with my pal Wayne in NYC, a former Apple employee from ages of yore. He says,

Apple now has a DUTY to export this interface to their entire product line. Today's iPhone naysayers probably don't appreciate the significance of the UI shift that happened today. The computer industry may once again -- at the hands of apple -- never be the same again. The interface reminds me of the scene in the film Minority Report where the pre-crimes unit staff were manipulating and viewing multimedia data using direct gestures. I feel like we're getting a taste of that kind of direct interface control today with the iPhone.

Also, I've never been in and out of an Apple Store so quickly before, the queue time aside (only 1 hour wait -- totally reasonable considering) the time spent in the store was organized despite the excitement and the transaction itself may have been faster than any other visit.

The fact that this device requires a two-year lockdown with one specific carrier, AT&T, is the biggest concern I have. As Cory has blogged here previously, they're under fire for "their stand on net neutrality, their warrantless wiretapping, and their handing over of customer records to the NSA" (EFF lawsuit details here, interview with whistleblower here). AT&T also recently announced plans to police traffic on their data network to see if customers are infringing copyrights, and the details of that plan have digital rights advocates worried.

Some lesser gotchas I will resent in varying degrees when the newlywed buzz wears off: The battery's not removable, no way to carry around a spare to pop in when you can't get to power. No IM, GPS, or video capture. No expandable storage (8 gigs sure fills up quick). No third-party apps, no Java or Flash inside the Safari browser. No copy/paste. Most non-iPhone-issued headphones won't fit without adapters or hacks. The terrific iChat-like SMS interface is coupled with wack pricing from AT&T for which there's no alternative (web-based apps to the rescue?). No "period" on the main qwerty keyboard (sounds like a small thing, but all those extra taps add up when you're txting), and that keyboard is the one thing which isn't directionally adjustable (except in Safari) -- would be nice to have it go sideways so it can be a little larger, particularly for users with bigger fingers than mine (which fit fine on the keyboard as is). Also, you can read but not edit Word or Excel files -- still, cmon, look me in the monitor and tell me you've ever actually edited a Word or Excel file on your phone?

This is a first-generation product with room to grow. But man, what a 1.0.

Many of the quibbles I listed above can (and no doubt will) be fixed by simple software updates, and Christ, all the pluses are overwhelming.

The interface makes all the other mobile devices I have around the office look dumpy and half-functional; the sleek form factor makes my other smartphones look morbidly obese. I want to pick them up and gaze upon them pityingly, then throw them all in a blender and hit "puree."

I may be high on launch fumes right now, but this feels like just about the coolest device I've ever owned. I just don't want to go back to any other phone now.

It isn't hype if the product lives up to it.

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Previously on BoingBoing:

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Reader comments: # Ville T from "hellsinki, finland, europe, earth" says:

hello from hellsinki finland, xeni! thanks for the illustrative post about the iphone. here's a question i've seen no-one covering in this massive iphone extravaganza:

one-handed use.

can the iphone be used with only one hand? and if not, can anything be done using one hand? for example, answering/making a call or taking a photo?

in all the photos in the coverage, everybody is always supporting the thing with another hand. an easy, but obvious thing for mobile stuff, but i've seen no-one cover yet. maybe bb could do it? ;)

Sitting here now, cradling iPhone in my right hand, I can navigate and bang out a simple text with that same thumb. I can skim through music and video libraries pretty easily, the same way. I can dial a call easily with one hand. Other more complex tasks are definitely two hands. Maybe that will change as I grow used to the device.

On the drive back from the Grove, Sean and I were talking about this -- texting while driving (not that this is safe or responsible in the first place) is pretty much out of the question with this. You probably couldn't sneak-text, blind, with one hand under the table, during a boring meeting, like you might with a Blackberry or Sidekick or Helio or Treo.

The fact that the interface doesn't hate me like all other phones do makes up for that. I can imagine much of this feeling more natural with less effort (and one less hand) in a few weeks.

[Update: 48 hours later, my type speed has increased a lot, and I'm one-handing a lot of basic tasks. There's no usability pain here.]

# zyzz says,

The iPhone can also be used as a video iPod without connecting to AT&T's network. You do have to activate it, but if you remove the sim card after activation, you have all the functionality that does not require voice or data. It's a bitchin video ipod.

# Paul Jones says:

Testing out the YouTube app on the new iPhone and I was super-impressed by the quality and speed of the download on the WIFI network.

But this morning I tried to search for some of the videos that amused me most. Less Okay-Go and more 60s concerts. Searching for "Byrds" did't give me any Byrds concerts when searching on the iPhone's YouTube utility. It gave me Paris Hilton getting out of jail and someone named Byrd shouting at her. Names of Bryds members gave me no videos found!

But back on the web at YouTube.com, I got lots and lots of Byrds. No problem.

YIKES! Is the iPhoneTube only licensed material? Is the great old stuff and the new crazy homebrew stuff cut out?

Others experiences?

try comparing "chumbawamba" on both platforms. plenty of our fav anarchist band in the web. one funky domino vid on iphone with 'tubtumping' in the background.

That's because the iPhone (and AppleTV) use h.264 instead of Flash for video, and youtube hasn't converted its entire libarary over. The linked story from AP estimates 10M vids by the iPhone's launch date.

# BB pal J points us to this hardware durability test at PC World: Link to "How Tough Is the iPhone?"

# Gitai R. Ben-Ammi says,

I understand that Apple loves to have a unified package for their design with minimal places where you could pull stuff apart, and that’s okay for the iPod. I can go a few days without my music while the battery gets replaced. I’m a small businessman though, and my cell phone is half of my business, with my laptop being the other half. I can’t go for one day without my phone, much less three to five. If they could do in store replacement in a couple hours, that would be fine, but otherwise, Apple needs to bite the bullet and have a battery which can be removed and replaced by the consumer. Until that happens, I ain’t buying.

[Update / Sunday July 1: Some of the battery-related criticisms floating around, including this one, are high on my list of gotchas, too. I'm still enthusiastically pleased with the device overall, but this is not an insignificant issue. On the plus side, I'm hearing rumors you'll be able to hang on to your SIM card and plug it into any other another compatible phone while your iPhone is in the shop -- I'll check into that.]

# Zach Brock writes,

I picked up an iPhone at the 3rd St Promenade store yesterday, and it was just like you described the Grove. A ton of people waiting, but more of a jubilant feeling in the air than anything. The apple employees wandering down the line assuring everyone that they had plenty in stock helped also. Anyway, I wrote up my first impressions of the phone. It might look like a lot of negatives, but really these are the only things I could find wrong with it. If I tried to type up everything RIGHT I wouldn't have had a chance to sleep last night. Here's the link.

Why are all the reviews making such a big deal out of the Google Maps feature? I've had the Google Maps applet (with real time traffic data) on my Blackberry for a year now. And my Blackberry works on Verizon's EVDO network, so it should be a lot faster than the iPhone's EDGE network.

# Wired News managing editor Evan Hansen points to an interesting juxtaposition they ran today:

Surreal world we live in, with iPhone shoppers lining up in U.S. as Londoners shake off bomb terror threats. We ran a photo gallery today juxtaposing images from both scenes. Makes for an interesting media critique, given search results from Google News for the past day show stories about the iPhone outnumbering stories about London's bomb scare by a margin of three to one. Link to slideshow.

My friend and I just calculated how much time was wasted (and hence money) waiting for the iPhone today (and yesterday and ...). (150 Apple Stores x 100 People/Apple Store + 10,000 AT&T Stores x 20 People/AT&T Store) x 8 hr/person x $20/hr = $34,400,000. Link.

Last night, as I looked at all the photos tagged “iphone” rolling in on Flickr, I wanted to capture all the iconic first photos people would inevitably take with their new iPhone once they got it. At the same time, I wondered, can an iPhone buy happiness*? So I started two competing groups at the same time: Photos of me with an iPhone, and Photos of me without an iPhone. Here are some of my favorite photos posted in the last 12 hours so far...

# Snip from the Time review -- here, Lev Grossman starts with his a laundry list of quibbles:

For example: AT&T's data network is slow (though it seems to be improving). It's a bummer that the camera doesn't shoot video. The glass touchscreen keyboard is kinda freaky (though if there was ever a moment for an ad campaign to license Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Put 'Em on the Glass," this is it). GPS would be nice. So would instant messaging. YouTube videos — in the little YouTube client Apple has ginned up — sound great but look lousy. And yeah, there's that content management quirk mentioned above.

Cold fusion would be great too, but you know what? Nobody cares. Steve Jobs has said, repeatedly, that this is the best iPod that Apple has ever made, and it is. It's also the best phone that anybody has ever made.

(...) For the iPhone, Apple has brought to market a revolutionarily smart, sensitive touchscreen and created an entirely new user interface to match it, all in one go, so seamlessly that my 3-year-old daughter — and I apologize for going to this place, but the fact is striking nonetheless — had no trouble unlocking the iPhone and dialing with it (even though she believed that she was playing a musical instrument).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:42:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report from Haunted Mansion castmember for a day winner

He produced a great write-up of the experience, with links to video, pics, and a long narrative describing his experience.

He also has this link to a site specializing in photos of top-s33kr1t piccies of the backstage mechanisms at Disneyland. Control-room porn at its finest!

Disneyland's Haunted Mansion Cast Members occasionally have a chance to perform what are called magical moments. These are moments in which the guest experience is enhanced by Cast Members performing in ways that are not regularly seen. The ghost dog walking is one such magical moment. Inside the Mansion, there are two others, both taking place in the changing portrait hallway.

The first was a pair of feather dusters that Mansion Cast Members use up and down the portrait hallway, dusting the walls, portraits, and most importantly, the chains and bat stanchions along the sides of the room.

This proved to be one of the most fun moments of the entire weekend. Guests regularly rest their hands on the stanchions or run their hands along the metal chains. Allison told me that her favorite bit is to walk up to the guests and give them a sinister look, making it clear that you want them to stop touching the chains and stanchions. I took her recommendation and once they got the message, I would quickly dust whatever areas they had touched. I got a lot of laughs with this routine.

See also: Video tryouts for a job at Disney's Haunted Mansion

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:29:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Print your business-card on a peanut

Taberu Me cards are created using Arigatou’s high-grade CO2 laser engraver nicknamed “Shiawase-kun,” which can etch up to 700 characters per second on hard organic materials like beans, nuts, rice and pasta and which has been optimized to print clean-looking logos, names and telephone numbers on the irregular surfaces of peanut shells.

See also:
Business-card punch-out cutlery
Business card that sprouts
Business-card converts to set of lockpicks
Cutlery made out of potato starch
Cutlery with wrenches on the end
Anti-terror cutlery for airline security theater
Moo Cards: Stunning kid-sized custom biz-cards with Flickr pix

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:20:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant graffiti typography

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:54:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

San Francisco Air Guitar championship

Beer was thrown, rock fists raised high in the air, and bad contestants ridiculed. Congratulations to Rick Stinkfingers who will represent the Bay Area at the US Air Guitar Championships in New York City. He will compete against the other regional champs as well as last year's SF winner, Hot "Lixx" Hoolihan.

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:14:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man thinks he is living inside Grand Theft Auto: sent to psychiatric facility

A young man was admitted from prison to a psychiatric facility after reports that he had been acting in a bizarre manner. He had been arrested for stealing motor vehicles and assaults with weapons. At interview he was found to be experiencing the delusion that he was a player inside a computer game (adult-certificate game, widely available) in which points are scored for stealing cars, killing assailants and avoiding police vehicles. Psychotic symptoms had emerged slowly over two years. His family had noticed him becoming increasingly withdrawn and isolated from social activities. He developed delusions that strangers were planning to kill him and also experienced auditory hallucinations, constantly hearing an abusive and derogatory voice. Previously a computer enthusiast, he began to play computer games incessantly. He felt that the games were communicating with him via the headphones. In a complex delusional system he came to believe he was inside one of these games and had to steal a car to start scoring points. He broke into a car and drove off at speed, believing he had `invulnerable' fuel and so could not run out of petrol. To gain points he chose to steal increasingly powerful vehicles, threatening and assaulting the owners with weapons. Later he said he would have had no regrets if he had killed someone, since this would have increased his score.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:44:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Another outdoor warning note

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

I laughed and laughed at the Dick Car note post on Boing Boing. Sometimes writing the right kind of note to get your point across works perfectly.

We live in Amarillo, Texas, home of Hummers, pickups, and Bush love. During the last presidential campaign, we had had three Kerry signs stolen from our yard (one within minutes of us getting home from a soccer game -- it was there when we drove up and seconds later, when I passed the window, it was gone.

So I thought about sticking broken glass on the sign's edges, but then I came up with an even better idea. Attached is a pict of what I did.

No one stole our sign after that.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Passive aggressive notes taped in offices and shared houses
• Bizarre self-referential warning sign
• Japanese warning signs
• Scary Russian warning sign
• Stick figure danger sign Flickr pool
• Atrocious apostrophe's and "quotation" "mark" "abuse" photo galleries

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:19:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

List of sf/f writers' blogs

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:42:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

All memes, one comic

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:41:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sorry I'm all out of clever iPhone headlines: short links roundup

Previously on BoingBoing:

Reader comment: Nathan says,

This is a photo of me and Steve Wozniak. He arrived at the Valley Fair mall apple store on a Segway at around 5am, he has been sitting in front of the store ever since. I am in line blogging about my experiences.

UPDATE 3PM PT: A secret NYC operative tells BoingBoing at 3:05PM PT, "Spike Lee is suddenly the first person in line at the midtown Apple store. I don't know if he bought the place in line or what, but he wasn't there before, and he is now. He's being mobbed by papparazzi, bigtime. The line is like 2 blocks long. It's like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, everyone is waiting to open their box and find a golden ticket..."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:47:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos from old sewing and knitting patterns

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:31:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Play Food group on Flickr

Robert Mahar of Mahar Dry Goods and Junior Society has started a new Play Food group on Flickr where you can upload all your delicious delights related to food. Pictured here is the "Crying Cracked Eggman" by sewingstars.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:22:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zucchini the size of a child

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:14:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Re-jiggering Mickey Mouse: Now with Disney's approval

Disney get-out-of-jail-free card to several artists to put their own spin on Walt's baby. The exhibit opened last night at Meltdown and is really cool. Slick, Mear One, Greg Simkins and others got the chance to do some cool stuff with the mouse.

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

The Humans Are Dead

I know I'm a little late to the party on this one, but -- I'm really enjoying the new "Flight of the Conchords" show on HBO, starring a digi-folk-parody comic duo from New Zealand (Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement).

Disclaimer: HBO bought ads to promote the show launch here on BoingBoing, but that's not why I'm blogging this, honest. A friend turned me on to this one robot-themed clip, which soon led to downloading the whole first episode on iTunes and watching it over and over and over within the course of a few days, which soon led to going totally nuts waiting for the second and third episodes to pop. Funny stuff.

YouTube Video Link to "The Humans Are Dead," from episode one of "Flight of the Conchords," which includes the hottest "binary solo" you'll ever parse on cable television. So awesome.

There are better quality versions for streaming or embedding here on the HBO website, but the stupid UI won't let me link directly to the clip I want to share with you here, and the player sucks 20 different flavors of azz. Please, HBO guys, do everything possible to prevent people on different platforms from easily watching and sharing this stuff. Because sharing is stealing.

Also from that first episode -- "Most Beautiful Girl (in the room)" is pretty excellent, too, but no robots here: YouTube Video Link.

Subscribe to the free video podcast via iTunes here: Link

Reader comment: Jesse Thorn from The Sound of Young America says,

FYI: Flight of the Conchords' original half-hour HBO performance special (which is great and hilarious) is airing tonight on Comedy Central at 11:30pm, for those without pay cable.

Any story about Flight of The Conchords isn’t complete without mentioning that Bret McKenzie played a minor elf role in the Lord of The Rings trilogy. The character had no name, but devoted fans later dubbed his character “Figwit,” which stands for “Frodo is great… Who is that?” The nerd underpinnings are strong with this one.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:46:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Note on car warns others not to call parking enforcement

Greg says:

I saw something funny today in my SF neighborhood and wanted to send it your way.

I was walking by this car this morning and noticed a) the car was blocking the driveway/garage of an apartment building and b) there was a note in the window.

I can't help but read notes and was much bemused by what I saw.

It had a twist I hadn't seen before, a pro-active: I-know-I'm-being-a-dick-but-don't-dick-with-me-cause-I'll-dick-you-right-back-in-spades-note

ONCE AGAIN,

YOU MAY NOT KNOW THAT THE DEPT. OF PARKING AND TRAFFIC DOESN'T CARE WHO CALLS IN A COMPLAINT.

IF YOU HAVE MY CAR TICKETED FOR PARKING HERE, I'LL DO THE SAME FOR ANY OTHER CAR PARKED HERE.

Reader comment:Here's the obligatory LOLcar photo (from Greg)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:35:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

GPL 3.0 ships

"Since we founded the free software movement, over 23 years ago, the free software community has developed thousands of useful programs that respect the user's freedom. The programs are in the GNU/Linux operating system, as well as personal computers, telephones, Internet servers, and more. Most of these programs use the GNU GPL to guarantee every user the freedom to run, study, adapt, improve, and redistribute the program," said Richard Stallman, founder and president of the FSF.

Version 3 of the GNU GPL strengthens this guarantee, by ensuring that users can modify the free software on their personal and household devices, and granting patent licenses to every user. It also extends compatibility with other free software licenses and increases international uniformity.

Jeremy Allison, speaking on behalf of the Samba team, states that they see the new license as "a great improvement on the older GPL," and that it is "a necessary update to deal with the new threats to free software that have emerged since version 2 of the GPL."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:27:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYC to require $1MM in insurance and a permit to shoot video on public sidewalks

“Your everyday person out there with a camcorder is never going to know about the rules,” Mr. Dunn said. “It completely opens the door to discriminatory enforcement of the permit requirements, and that is of enormous concern to us because the people who are going to get pointed out are the people who have dark skin or who are shooting in certain locations.” The rules were promulgated as a result of just such a case, Mr. Dunn said. In May 2005, Rakesh Sharma, an Indian documentary filmmaker, was using a hand-held video camera in Midtown Manhattan when he was detained for several hours and questioned by police. During his detention, Mr. Sharma was told he was required to have a permit to film on city property. According to a lawsuit, Mr. Sharma sought information about how permits were granted and who was required to have one but found there were no written guidelines. Nonetheless, the film office told him he was required to have a permit, but when he applied, the office refused to grant him one and would not give him a written explanation of its refusal.

Update: Michael sez, "In case your readers want to express their opinions right to the source; there is an e-mail form on the nyc.gov web site specifically for the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:26:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Symphony for old IBM mainframe

Fast-forward four decades, and recently discovered tape recordings of Gunnarson's works form the basis of a touring song-and-dance performance, IBM 1401: A User's Manual. The show was composed by Gunnarson's son Jóhann Jóhannsson, with interpretive dance choreographed by Erna Omarsdotti, whose father is another IBM alum.

The work, named in part for a companion recording of a voice reciting the manual for an IBM 1403 printer, was performed in Wales, Tokyo, Copenhagen and Belgium this summer.

(Image thumbnail ganked from a larger pic by Laurent Zigler)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:15:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Levittown in space: 1953 pulp mag cover

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:11:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Karl Schroeder: Show me your Virga RPG maps!

I reviewed the first Virga book, Sun of Suns, last December. It was one of the best books of 2006, and my favorite Karl Schroeder book to date, a rollicking, swashbuckling space-opera that managed to mash up the singularity, steampunk, and high-seas adventure in one glorious ride. Better still, the paperback is out soon, in time for lazy August reading, and book two will follow shortly afterward.

I know you're out there. People have been telling me for a while that they were planning or executing RPG scenarios or campaigns set in my world of Virga. Well, I'm consumed with curiosity and want to know what your versions of Virga look like. So if you've been running a Virga campaign tell me all about it! If you've got maps, post 'em! Let's see how big we can grow this world.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:09:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiki art at Chicagos' DvA Gallery

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:23:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dave Cooper's painting process on Flickr

this can be a nerve-wracking stage, but it's usually pretty straightforward. i use an antique projector (that you can see in my "some of my favourite artnerd things" set) and a cheap brush pen. the image that's in the projector isn't the original pencil drawing but rather a smaller print-out.

the final painting will be about 7' wide! as you can see, i work on unstretched canvas stapled to the wall. it's only once the painting is finished and photographed that i stretch it onto a custom made stretcher.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:11:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mountain lion in Maine?

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:59:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vertical farming proposals for cities

The idea is simple enough. Imagine a 30-storey building with glass walls, topped off with a huge solar panel. On each floor there would be giant planting beds, indoor fields in effect. There would be a sophisticated irrigation system. And so crops of all kinds and small livestock could all be grown in a controlled environment in the most urban of settings. That means there would be no shipping costs, and no pollution caused by moving produce around the country.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:52:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Venter: Changing one species into another

Over at Edge.org, John Brockman says:

In a news cycle dominated by Paris Hilton and the Apple iPhone, Craig Venter has announced the results of his lab's work on genome transplantation methods that allows for the transformation of one type of bacteria into another, dictated by the transplanted chromosome. In other words, one species becomes another. This is news, bound to affect everyone on the planet. Below is the press release from Venter's Institute, along with links to the scientific paper published in Science, and the international press.

The day after the announcement, Edge talked to Venter, who had the following to say about the research underway:

"Now we know we can boot up a chromosome system. It doesn't matter if the DNA is chemically made in a cell or made in a test tube. Until this development, if you made a synthetic chomosome you had the question of what do you do with it. Replacing the chomosome with existing cells, if it works, seems the most effective to way to replace one already in an existing cell systems. We didn't know if it would work or not. Now we do.

" This is a major advance in the field of synthetic genomics. We now know we can create a synthetic organism. It's not a question of 'if', or 'how', but 'when', and in this regard, think weeks and months, not years."

Here is one of many dozens of news articles -- snip:

Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, in New Jersey, said the transplantation technique, which leads to the transferred genome taking over the host cell, was "a landmark accomplishment."

"It represents the complete reprogramming of an organism using only a chemical entity," Ebright said.

Image: Colonies of the transformed Mycoplasma mycoides bacterium, courtesy J. Craig Venter Institute.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:47:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Science pop songs

Among the best and strangest science songs are surely the Beastie Boys' Sounds Of Science, Kool Keith's version of Ego Trippin', MC Hawking's What We Need More Of Is Science, Sweet's Alexander Graham Bell, Einstein A Go-Go by Landscape and E=MC2 from Big Audio Dynamite. Oh and of course, Monkey vs Robot.

But there's also Kraftwerk's Computer Love, Big Science by Laurie Anderson, pharmaceutical trial procedure described in Siouxsie and the Banshees' Placebo Effect, Blur's Chemical World, Electricity courtesy of Suede (also OMD), Atomic by bombshell Blondie, Genetic Engineering by OMD (and X-Ray Spex), and what list would be complete without Diana Ross's Chain Reaction (less ably repeated by Steps)?

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:39:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UFO postage stamps

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:14:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wikipedia vandal accidentally predicted Chris Benoit murders

Now the vandal has confessed, saying that he'd put the murder accusation in as an unfortunately timed joke.

Nonetheless, I feel incredibly bad for all the attention this got because of the fact that what I said turned out to be the truth. Like I said it was just a major coincidence, and I will never vandalize anything on wikipedia or post wrongful information. I've learned from this experience. I just can't believe what I wrote was actually the case, I've remained stunned and saddened over it.

I wish not to reveal my identity so I can keep me and my family out of this since they have nothing to do with anything. I am not connected to WWE or Benoit at all in anyway. I am from Stamford as the IP address shows, and I am just an everyday individual who posted a wrongful remark at the time that received so much attention because it turned out to actually happen. I will say again I didn't know anything about the Benoit tragedy, it was a terrible coincidence that I never saw coming.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:05:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Working Assets calls for iPhone boycott

Working Assets is a really top-notch organization, and they've nailed one of the reasons I've been skeptical of the iPhone since the start. Handset locking sucks, and AT&T sucks more: These people are criminal traitors who helped wiretap the nation, neutricidal maniacs bent on wrecking the Internet, and convicted monopolists besides.

It's terrible that Apple is selling out its customers to this thug of a company -- it's like being traded to the cellblock bully for two packs of cigarettes. None of the mobile carriers are good companies, but AT&T is the worst of the bunch. And honestly, is there anyone who believes that having a captive audience of two-year-locked iPhone customers will incentivize AT&T to behave better? Link (Thanks, Destiny!)

See also: The Passion of the Jesusphone: iPhone short links roundup

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:01:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Profile of steampunk maker Jake von Slatt

"The Victorian era was really the last era in which a high school graduate was given the complete set of scientific concepts to fully understand the technology of the age," von Slatt says. "Because of this, part of what I wanted to do was to co-opt the term 'steampunk' and imbue it with this DIY component. DIY wasn't part of the definition of steampunk … but I wanted it to be."

Steampunk stuff on Boing Boing

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:50:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jeffrey Vallance's modern relic art show

I first learned about Vallance from Re/Search's Pranks book, where he recounted his now-famous 1978 art stunt of taking a thawed frozen supermarket chicken to a pet cemetery in Los Angeles and straight-facedly requesting it be given a proper burial. (The tombstone read, "Blinky, The Friendly Hen).

His current exhibit contains bits and pieces of his past, each of which carries some kind of personal significance. The items are house in beautiful displays.

The fragmentary Orange Crush bottle, for example, bears witness to a childhood trauma. “One night during the summer of 1966,” reads the accompanying text, “our family went to the Canoga Park Drive-in Theater to watch Fantastic Voyage. My stepfather brought along bottles of Orange Crush soda. He did not explain why, but instead of a bottle opener he had brought along a pair of pliers to open the bottles. At a certain point during the movie, he said that he would open everyone’s bottles with the pliers. But for some reason, I didn’t want my drink just yet.

“Later, when I got thirsty, my stepfather refused to open the Orange Crush for me. Instead he handed me the bottle and the pliers. I tried in vain to open the bottle — after about 15 minutes I managed only to shake it up, real good. At last, in one violent cataclysm, the bottleneck exploded, sending sharp shards of glass and sticky orange soda pop all over the seats, the ceiling, the windows and the rest of the family. Boy, was I in trouble now! And still thirsty.”

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:53:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of martial art ads in comic books

The below images are ads for martial arts courses that appeared in comic books of the late 50s through the early 80s. The ads were usually over the top in their promises to teach you how to smash bricks with your head, turn invisible, fight 12 attackers at one time, and kill a man with your pinky finger. Even including bodybuilding courses, hypno coins, and fake vomit in the equation, there was something especially strange about selling martial arts training through comic book ads. Unlike all those other products, it was unlikely anyone could get hurt or killed by mucking about with a sea monkey. Yet, in truth, all you really got for your 99 cents was a small pamphlet providing ass-backwards instruction in a few techniques, or, more often, a "taster" for the larger course. It's safe to say no one became a martial arts master through a comic book ad.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:52:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Anti-drug war video

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:38:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Passion of the Jesusphone: iPhone short links roundup

UPDATE: OK, I just received some corrected details on the Apple internal iPhone giveaway:

All full time U.S. employees receive a free iPhone. All part time U.S. employees who've been at the company for more than a year get a free phone. Everyone gets the 8GB model, and presumably this includes Apple retail store employees, too. The number of $12M quoted by Engadget is wrong, because that references worldwide employee stats. This is for US employees only at this time.

iPhone will be available in (...) Europe in late 2007, and Asia in 2008.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Reader comment: Tom Stevens says,

Link to a news article in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

Apple's new iPhone is NOT available for sale in Vermont due to the fact that AT&T is the sole wireless provider for the phone and AT&T is not offered in the state.

Small Dog Electronics in Waitsfield is a Vermont Apple product dealer, and CEO Don Mayer said this week he is disappointed the iPhone will not be available here.

"I think it's very unfortunate that Apple has chosen to limit distribution of the iPhone," he said. "They've frozen out Vermont as the only state in the union without service. I understand why — that they will have their hands full with what they already have, but it leaves us and people in many other rural areas out in the cold."

Other areas affected in this area include parts of New Hampshire and Maine...

Vermont isn't the only one in the cold. Alaska is also part of the USA and it is out of the running. I believe there is a huge penalty. Link to news article.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:24:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CA court rules T-Mobile contract terms unconscionable

Good news for T-Mobile customers. In a class action brought against T-Mobile, this past week, the plaintiffs have successfully argued that T-Mobile cannot prevent its customers from filing a class action against it. The plaintiffs are suing over non-prorated early termination fees and the selling of SIM-locked handsets.

T-Mobile, as many other cell phone companies do these days, had written into its contract with customers that any disputes between T-Mobile and the customers had to be resolved by arbitration. Requiring customers to go to arbitration means that customers cannot sue, and more importantly it means that customers cannot file class actions. The result, if the contractual terms requiring arbitration were valid, would be that the most abusive cell phone company practices could not be limited by customers bringing lawsuits.

However, in the suit Gatton et al. v. T-Mobile USA, Inc., the plaintiffs convinced the trial court that the contractual provision requiring arbitration was unconscionable and therefore not enforceable. On June 22, 2007, the California appeals court affirmed the trial court's ruling. The class action is going forward.

Presumably, this means that customers of other cell phone companies will be able to sue their own cell phone companies as well. The particular grievances against T-Mobile in this class action are the imposition of non-prorated early termination fees and the selling of SIM-locked handsets. Both of these are common to other cellular carriers, although it's not clear from the appellate opinion whether T-Mobile is doing something extra-shady with the SIM-locking. (The appellate opinion states, "T-Mobile requires equipment vendors to alter the handsets they sell to T-Mobile by locking them with SIM locks and setting the SIM unlock code based on a secret algorithm provided by T-Mobile.") So if this suit is ultimately successful in California, it may not take long before non-prorated early termination fees and SIM-locked handsets die a long-awaited death.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:27:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rule the Web cracks the Top 100 Amazon best seller list

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:03:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cereal Straws -- powdered sugar-cereal drinking straws

Upon perforating one of the two packages, the perfume of fake fruit and powdered milk permeated the air and tempted the taste buds (try to say that without sounding like Daffy Duck, I dare you). There’s something about unabashedly artificial flavoring that’s both charming and nostalgic…sexual, even. Alright, maybe not sexual, but something pleasant nonetheless. The straws were thinner than what the box indicated, looking more like real straws than giant-sized novelty pens. They are lined in the middle with that sickly sweet powdered milk that seems to be popping up in granola and cereal bars everywhere. Someone needs to tell these guys that it does NOT replace milk and that we can all tell it’s just sweetened coffee creamer. Fortunately, the flavor of that is masked by the Froot Loop shell.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:54:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF: Privatunes doesn't anonymize your iTunes files as promised

Earlier this week, a bunch of posts popped up on sites including Slashdot and Wired Compiler about Privatunes, a free application that purports to anonymize DRM-free files you buy on iTunes.

Why would anyone need such an app? Well, because there's been much controversy in recent weeks over allegations that Apple may be tracking personal information in the headers of these DRM-free files, in order to limit sharing (previous BB post here).

Today there's word that Privatunes may not be what it's cracked up to be. Here's a snip from the EFF blog:

Unfortunately, the Privatunes coders didn't read our last post about iTunes tracking data. Aside from the name and email address, there are other fields that Apple, or a litigant that subpoenas Apple, could use to identify the purchasers of iTunes Plus files, even if they've been run through Privatunes 0.9.

In addition to the sign and chtb fields, there are several other places where iTunes Plus copies of the same song vary by three or four bytes (they can be readily observed with a program like vbindiff on *nix). It should be assumed that a file is identifying unless all of these fields have been overwritten.

Lastly, Privatunes 0.9 just overwrites the name and email address using spaces (0x20). This means that the length of these two fields can still be seen after the file has been modified. For full anonymization, these lengths should be made unreadable.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:11:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eric Mueller video blogs from the NYC iPhone line

Eric Mueller is a graphic designer who quickly got in line as soon as he heard there was one forming for the debut of the iPhone at the Apple store in Manhattan. He started out at #5, then #6. Now after coming and going a few times, he's got his wife Ramona Ponce at #19, and he's now (maybe) still #20.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:08:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Random clip from "Boy in the Plastic Bubble) (1976 TV movie)

This is actually a tiny, random clip taken from The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). Whether it's the botched editing job between "oooo-owwww", the palpable sense of self-satisfaction Reed exhibits after he's contained the chaos of bubbly eruption or the final announcement that the disaster has been averted - and "Champagne OK!"

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:02:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with Douglas Rushkoff (MP3)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:47:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rebuttal: Transformers movie "actually kind of rad"

First, we heard from the Bay-haters.

Now, we hear from BoingBoing readers and pals like Joel Johnson, who declares himself "totally gay for Transformers":

"You come out and your parents get all freaked out and tell you that it’s just a confusing time for you but you know, deep down, or not even that deep down it could be right at the surface, that you have to have some man inside of you. Doesn’t matter if you’re ashamed or feeling guilty; you just can’t deny that ache."

Susie told me later I was so excited that she thought perhaps I was coming out right there in the restaurant, something I am pretty sure she lives in legitimate fear of every time we go out to eat. Our neighbors set down their spoons.

"That’s how I feel about robots fighting. I know it’s juvenile. I know it’s going to be an awful movie. I just can’t help it.

I’m gay for robots fighting. And I want those robots to fight inside of me."

And Bonnie says,

I saw a preview screening of "Transformers" at work last night, with the ILM folks who actually worked on the effects, and I have to say it actually was kinda rad. The visual effects and sound design were mindblowing.

Even the usual Michael Bay-isms of supermodel women as mechanics and enginerds, people outrunning EVERYTHING, slo-mo action of helicopters in the sunsets and and doofus secret government officials seemed to work just fine with the movie's subject matter. It added to the movie's popcorn fun mentality.

Shia's acting was endearing and believable, and almost John Cusack like. And as expected Jon Voight and John Turturro brought their own acting chops to the table. All in all, I loved the over-the-top action, the humor, the inside jokes, the special effects, the chilling sound elements and even the camp.

Hardcore fans need to loosen up. After all, Bay did get voice actor Peter Cullen to return to his role as Optimus Prime. In this film, there really is more than meets the eye.

Previously on BB:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:46:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free "Texas Steampunk" graphic novel

This is a fun, breezy, Tex-Japan mashup that's quite charming! Link (Thanks, Lea!)

Other Steampunk stuff on Boing Boing

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:30:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thomas Crampton: How Facebook ended my marriage - UPDATED

Facebook has implemented fixes that should prevent this from happening again, but -- tech journalist Thomas Crampton experienced an unfortunate side effect of that Facebook personal profile bug I blogged about here yesterday. Thomas says:

A misguided attempt to increase our privacy backfired horribly a few days ago, just weeks ahead of our wedding.

My fiancee and I unchecked the personal relationship box in Facebook to make our personal lives a little more private.

Unwittingly, however, that action sent out a message to our entire social network and newsfeed saying we were no longer engaged. (Complete with a forlorn broken heart.)

Within minutes, condolence notes started coming in from around the world, sending us into even high state of crisis than just a wedding.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Update: Christopher Soghoian, whose recent security research on Facebook I blogged here, writes:

You just blogged: "Facebook has implemented fixes that should prevent this from happening again, but -- tech journalist Thomas Crampton experienced an unfortunate side effect of that Facebook personal profile bug I blogged about here yesterday. Thomas says:"

This is not correct. The Facebook attack I exposed dealt specifically with random strangers being able to play go-fish with private elements in your profile. Facebook fixed this with some haste, such that private profiles of strangers will no longer show up in a search on any sensitive fields.

Crampton's problem stems from the Facebook mini-feeds feature. You covered that train-wreck of a privacy problem last year (Link).

The common theme here is that Facebook has very very fine grained privacy controls - which most users clearly do not know how to use. Crampton could have quite easily modified his privacy settings to stop his friends from seeing changes in his relationship status - but he didn't know to do this.

The cynic in me wonders how we can expect regular users to know the finer details of privacy control customization when a tech journalist can't figure it out.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:27:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Insane complexity in programmable light-switches

Update: Sun's Simon Phipps sez, "In fact, this is an off-the-shelf electrical part that is installed in many other USA places."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:22:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Real-money game-traders interviewed

Sparter does not buy or sell game items and we don't have an in-game presence. As a result, we cannot know for sure how our sellers behave in the game. But if you believe as we do that the truly damaging behavior is exhibited by the spammers, bot farmers, hackers and dupers, then the more we migrate the market to a true gamer-to-gamer exchange, the harder it is for those folks to profit from their actions.

We designed Sparter to give the gamer every opportunity to compete with the professional seller. They play for love of the game, don't have any overhead, marketing costs or customer service operations. The gamer will always be able to undercut the B2C. There will always be sellers of different sizes, but gamers are selling on Sparter and taking business away from the B2Cs like IGE and peons4hire (some of whom not only spam in-game but, we suspect, are the primary currency outlet for the dupers, hackers and bot farmers). In fact, our typical seller undercuts IGE by 30-40% and is making enough to pay for his WoW subscription.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:18:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

All-metal diving suit from 1938

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

Explosive camp trains demolition kids

"Some people like baseball, others like math – I just like to set off bombs," he said. "I figure here, learning how to do it properly is better than messing around with it at home, right?" Meadows is one of 20 teenage campers enrolled in a weeklong explosion camp in the Missouri Ozarks. At the camp, high school students from as far away as Egypt and Hawaii shoot dynamite, TNT and plastic explosives. The camp's leader, Paul Worsey, a professor at the University of Missouri, Rolla, uses the camp as a way to attract new recruits into the unglamorous field of mine engineering. He recruits students to help carry on the industry, which is facing a serious personnel shortage...

During his week at camp, Niels Zussblatt, a teen from St. Louis, helped blast a rock from deep in a mine, obliterated a watermelon, cut steel beams and set off a "wall of fire."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:04:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Breaking: Transformers movie "kind of sucks"

BoingBoing reader Jay was one of many old-school Transformers fans who wrote in to share the breaking news that Michael Bay's bloated epic is lovely, but kind of sucks:

I went to a media screening of Transformers last night, and I'll give it a full set of 10 shiny, golden stars for the most brilliant design and amazing effects I think I've ever seen. Now I'll quickly take them all back because the script, direction and editing were perhaps the worst I've ever endured. Seriously, how many poignant love stories, wrong-side-of-the-tracks childhoods, comic relief black men and all-American-world-savers can you jam into one giant alien robot movie? I'll proudly be wearing this awesome t-shirt when I hunt down Michael Bay and stab him in the face-eye.

See also on BB:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:58:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jerk swipes bike wheels, owner makes music video of security tape

A video of security cam footage of a guy stealing my bike wheels set to a song I wrote about what an asshole this guy is.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:56:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos of cozy woodland home construction

Main tools used: chainsaw, hammer and 1 inch chisel, little else really. Oh and by the way I am not abuilder or carpenter, my experience is only having a go at one similar house 2yrs before and a bit of mucking around inbetween. This kind of building is accessible to anyone. My main relevant skills were being able bodied, having self belief and perseverence and a mate or two to give a lift now and again.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:29:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazon turns books into ransom notes to protect copyright

Charles Shopsin says,

The Make blog had a cool post today about a computer made of K'Nex parts and I remembered that I had read about a really cool computer made of Tinker Toys built by Danny Hillis. I knew I had read about it in his excellent computer primer "The Pattern On the Stone" so I went to Amazon to try finding the page with their "Search Inside the Book" feature.

Well, I found the page but it wasn't what I expected. Instead of seeing a straight scan of the page it looked like someone had cut out all of the words and pasted them back on the page in the same order. It looked just like a ransom note. The picture that was supposed to be on the page was nowhere to be found.

At the top of the page was a note that said "Some images in this book are not displayed". Then I realized that this was Amazon's way around showing pictures they didn't have copyright for. They literally cut out all the text and then paste it back on a blank page. How ridiculous! Link to Make post, and Link to Amazon Reader for this book (you have to search for "tinker," then click on page 17. There doesn't seem to be a way to link to a specific page).

Reader comment: Richard George says,

This could be a feature of OCR software at Amazon - in order to make the text searchable and keep the original fonts some systems identify each word, storing the original glyphs to display on screen with the machine recognised text put an index - perhaps the background colour was wrong on that document?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:27:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Real ID foes manage to block mandatory carding -- for now.

The U.S. Senate took a preliminary step on Wednesday toward reining in the controversial Real ID Act, which is scheduled to become America's first federal identification card in a few years.

During Wednesday's floor debate over a massive immigration bill, Real ID foes managed to preserve an amendment to prohibit the forthcoming identification card from being used for mandatory employment verification, signaling that the political winds have shifted from when the law was overwhelmingly enacted two years ago.

The anti-Real ID amendment is backed by two Montana Democrats, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, who say the digital ID cards represent an unreasonable government intrusion into Americans' private lives. In April, Montana became one of the states that has voted to reject Real ID.

"This was a real victory for Montana and the American people," Tester said, after the Senate vote to kill their amendment failed to muster a majority. The unsuccessful vote to table it was 45-52.

Previously:

Reader comment: Jennifer Emick says,

Didn't know if you guys had caught that the NH governor banned real ID yesterday? That brings it to five states actively protesting. Link.

Even better than Jen says – the total number of states opting out is not five, but seven! From Realnightmare.org:

June 13, 2007 -- Today Gov. Mark Sanford signed a bill that states simply, "The State shall not participate in the implementation of the federal REAL ID Act." South Carolina becomes the sixth state to pass a statutory ban on Real ID implementation, following Montana, Washington, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Maine.

(and now New Hampshire!)

The newspapers aren't doing their research. Many more states have banned Real ID by legislation, resolution, or at least unofficial stance. Utah, for example, has opposed the Real ID act through a resolution passed earlier this year. The language of the resolution is actually a really entertaining read (as far as resolutions go) and pretty much covers all the bases on Real ID-suckage. It really makes you proud to be an American.

The Wikipedia page sheds further light on the status of many states. When I made the count a few weeks ago, the number of states was in the twenties. They're not necessarily opposed because of moral reasons or anything like that - it's usually just a case of the Government asking states to implement a really (really) expensive program without giving them funding for it.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:07:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hillary Clinton's new "pick my song" contest

It was created by the Ask a Ninja guys, with Candace Brown. Secret appreciation tip: does that dramatic reveal in the beginning remind you of someone? (Thanks, Kent Nichols!)

Seriously, what is the deal with the whole "pick my song" thing lately? Everyone's on this. It's like walking into one of those restaurants where you cook your own food at the table. I want restaurants that cook my food for me, and I want presidents and news anchors who pick their own damn songs.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:10:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Serpent Mother: giant fire-sculpture

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beastie Boys' Flickr feed

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:55:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MusicBrainz powers BBC music

He says, "Setting aside BBC's iPlayer DRM shenanigans for a second, I'm pleased to announce something that the BBC is doing right! The BBC has just licensed the MusicBrainz live data feed and has fortified its music pages with MusicBrainz provided information. What is even more significant is that the /music teams at the BBC will be participating in editing/adding to the MusicBrainz data. This gives MusicBrainz access to the BBC's deep music knowledge that many others around the world simply can't match. For more information, check out the press release and this more detailed MusicBrainz blog post."

I'm proud to serve on the board of directors for the charitable non-profit that oversees MusicBrainz, the MetaBrainz Foundation.

Link (Thanks, Rob!)

Update: The BBC's Tom Scott sez, "Bit more information on the work we've done with Rob on integrating MusicBrainz into the the BBC music site. I'm proud of this (so sorry for the self promotion) but in addition to the musicbrainz integration we've also released the related album reviews under CC and microformatted. Plus some related projects."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:49:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rolling Stone: the record industry committed suicide

So who killed the record industry as we knew it? "The record companies have created this situation themselves," says Simon Wright, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group, which operates Virgin Megastores. While there are factors outside of the labels' control -- from the rise of the Internet to the popularity of video games and DVDs -- many in the industry see the last seven years as a series of botched opportunities. And among the biggest, they say, was the labels' failure to address online piracy at the beginning by making peace with the first file-sharing service, Napster. "They left billions and billions of dollars on the table by suing Napster -- that was the moment that the labels killed themselves," says Jeff Kwatinetz, CEO of management company the Firm. "The record business had an unbelievable opportunity there. They were all using the same service. It was as if everybody was listening to the same radio station. Then Napster shut down, and all those 30 or 40 million people went to other [file-sharing services]."

It all could have been different: Seven years ago, the music industry's top executives gathered for secret talks with Napster CEO Hank Barry. At a July 15th, 2000, meeting, the execs -- including the CEO of Universal's parent company, Edgar Bronfman Jr.; Sony Corp. head Nobuyuki Idei; and Bertelsmann chief Thomas Middelhof -- sat in a hotel in Sun Valley, Idaho, with Barry and told him that they wanted to strike licensing deals with Napster. "Mr. Idei started the meeting," recalls Barry, now a director in the law firm Howard Rice. "He was talking about how Napster was something the customers wanted."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:46:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Tokyo's tiny perfect burger-cookies

Update: Wagner James Au sez, "San Franciscans can get those at a new Mission restaurant called Spork (yes, really), they're served as free after-dinner treats. And yep, you actually eat with sporks-- they're beautiful chrome versions that the owner (he told us after an insanely good dinner) found in an Asian grocery store."

Update 2: Chris sez, "My brother got these chocolate mushrooms from a friend the other day. (I swear he's just holding onto them.) They came from an Asian market in the Atlanta area. There're three pictures of them in my photostream. One features the packaging. The inner bag looks like a seventies version of Super Mario Bros. Super awesome!"

Update 3: Richard sez, "Thought I'd chime in over the tiny candy burgers with a photo of a chocolate turd: 'Chamalyn, a San Francisco Japanese candy/bubble tea store, sells these candy turds. Basically tastes like Cocoa Puffs with an extremely light milk chocolate coating. Thankfully, it doesn't taste like a turd.'"

Update 4: Eric sez, "justJENN has had a recipe for mini-burger cookies on her design/craft website for several months now. My wife recently brought home some of these cookies, made by justJENN herself, and I must say - they are quite delicious!"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:49:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

One day left to fight the US national ID card - ACT NOW!

The US Senate is trying to force states to adopt a National ID card: it's time to stop them. As part the debate on immigration legislation, the states will be forced to become REAL ID compliant.

States have strongly resisted this unfunded federal mandate – one that the Department of Homeland Security expects to cost more that $23 billion or almost $100 per license holder. Seventeen states have said 'no' to REAL ID – labeling it invasive, un-American, costly and an invitation to identity theft. They know it will force citizens to stand in long lines for licenses and endure numerous hassles looking for documents like birth certificates.

Now instead of listening to the states, the US Senate is trying to force them to comply through the back door. As part of immigration legislation being considered next week in the Senate, an employment verification system will be created that requires everyone to have a REAL ID in order to get a job.

Update: John Gilmore sez, "Sweet -- check the faxes that people are sending about Real ID. Thousands and thousands of 'em -- all individually written..."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:47:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF designer has an art show

Now Hugh and his friend Mati McDonough are throwing their first gallery show at a.Muse Gallery, 614 Alabama Street, San Francisco. The previews on the website are awesome -- I wish I could be there.

"Where We Overlap" new work by Hugh D'Andrade & Mati McDonough
a.Muse Gallery, 614 Alabama Street, San Francisco

Opening Reception Friday, June 29, 2007 -- 6pm till late Show runs through July 21, by appointment only

Live Music by Pale Hoarse

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:23:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thoof: social bookmarking meets wiki-style editing

Thoof is the latest project from Freenet creator Ian Clarke, a wildly creative geek who's always up to something cool. I was honored to be asked to join the Thoof advisory board, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the service does. Link (Thanks, Ian!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:17:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO solve mazes with the magic wand tool

1. Increase contrast.
2. Select the right wall of the maze using the magic wand.
3. Select > Modify > Expand 4 pixels
4. Create new layer.
5. Fill with Red.
6. Select > Modify > Contract 2 pixels.
7. Delete. Now you’ve got a line tracing the solution.
8. Manually clean up the outer edge, and connect the dots.
9. Cake!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:14:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Two weeks in an underwater cabin

The marine biologist used a system of onshore solar panels and a pedal-powered generator to create electricity and recharge his water-proof laptop computer.

He kept an algae garden to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen for breathing.

A team of divers delivered food and drinking water to the sub through a manhole, including a homemade lasagna and freshly barbecued salmon.

For entertainment, Godson watched videos on his laptop and used a wireless Internet connection to communicate with schoolchildren around the world.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:49:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Booze and pills 4 Jesus" banner

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Bong Hits 4 Jesus

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:47:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Senate Committee subpoenas White House over wiretap docs

The Senate Judiciary Committee issued a series of subpoenas to the White House, Vice President Cheney’s office, and the Justice Department today related to the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, setting the stage for a major legal showdown between Congress and the Bush Administration.

Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the committee, said the subpoenas seek documents that could shed light on the legal basis used by the administration to justify the wiretapping program. In addition, the panel is seeking materials on the way the program operated, including the relationship between the agency and several unidentified telecommunications companies that aided the eavesdropping program

Update: A wise information rights lawyer who is well-known but prefers to remain anonymous here says,

There are 4 subpoenas, all linked to the bottom of this page.

Interesting stuff being asked for, including:

D. All documents from September 11, 2001 to the present that reflect, discuss, or describe agreements or understandings between the White House, the Department of Justice, the National Security Agency, or any other entity of the Executive Branch and telecommunications companies, internet service providers, equipment manufacturers, or data processors regarding criminal or civil liability for assisting with or participating in the warrantless electronic surveillance program;

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:39:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reviews of Rule the Web

Frauenfelder's "Rule the Web" includes tips on: starting a blog, getting word-of-mouth publicity for it, and following other blogs with an RSS reader; setting up a private wiki, joining an online social network that's right for you, and sharing digital photos; browsing the Web free from viruses, ads, and spyware; shopping and selling online; downloading music and videos; using the Internet to become more productive at work and at play; protecting and tuning up your computer and software; and much more.

The book was published earlier this month, and instead of browsing through it, I've been carefully reading it from the first page forward. Thanks to Frauenfelder, I've finally figured out how to add a message board to any website (via QuickTopic), find photos online that I can use for free (via Open Photo, Flickr, and Creative Commons), edit and retouch photos online (via Snipshot), find unlisted phone numbers (via Zabasearch), and more -- and that was just the first two chapters. Phew!

So will "Rule the Web" help empower the individual, restore community, overcome prejudice, revitalize democracy, and make us smarter and richer? Let's put it this way: It's much more likely that these things will happen if everybody reads Frauenfelder's book than if they don't.

Rule the Web is a surprisingly useful set of web tips, even for an old web fogey like me. I learned a dozen things I didn't know in the first six pages, and am already making use of them.

And here's a woman who was inspired to start a blog after getting a copy of my book.

In addition, Daniel Holloway of Metro New York interviewed me about Boing Boing and Rule The Web.

It's very gratifying to know that two people that I respect so much like the book! Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:53:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google enters Kenya, hires first sub-Saharan African exec

Some of the answers are in this interview with Joseph Mucheru, former CEO of Kenyan ISP Wananchi, who will head up the new outpost. Asked what Google will do here, Mr. Mucheru explains:

Initially there will be three big things. Firstly, we want to optimise the use of Google applications in the region. We already have a lot of customers in the region but further development of the market is hindered by the absence of an international cable offering cheap bandwidth. Google understands that this is an impediment and is willing to go to the extent of buying international bandwidth that locals don't have to pay the current considerable premium they are.

The second thing they want to develop is their Maps product to make sure it has local information that is searchable and useful.

The third thing is using Google advertising in ways that can help monetize local content. Lots of people have done local content but most times it's flopped. We hope to show that there's a way of doing advertising that can support content. If we can do this, it will generate jobs and work.

Here is a related post on the news from Global Voices: Link. Photo from White African, who blogged about it here. Related post on WebProNews,

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:17:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Canadian disco nerd family's 1980 cover of Star Wars theme

You haven't truly heard the theme from Star Wars until you've heard it performed by Dryden, Ontario's The Bordens, with father George Borden (accordion), mom Jeanette (Electrovox organ), sons Roger (saxophone and guitar) and Gary (drums), and nephew Bill Dombradi (guitar). According to the liner notes, The Bordens played in "various parts of the country", including Thunder Bay and Edmonton, and recorded this album at Century 21 in Winnipeg. The snippets of other songs they throw into the mix, including the "snake charmer song", are just gravy. Good Times, indeed.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:13:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Andreas Bechtolsheim's new supercomputer

(...)Mr. Bechtolsheim, who is 51 years old, has designed a parade of computers that have continued to squeeze the most processing power or storage capacity into the smallest possible space. And, despite becoming one of the richest people in the world, he remains obsessed with designing ever more powerful computers. His new machine, which is currently being installed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin, is the latest example of his trademark elegant and simple engineering. It is set apart from other supercomputers made from tens of thousands of networked microprocessor chips by Mr. Bechtolsheim’s ability to orchestrate the range of computing disciplines that are needed to create the fastest computers.

As such, he is the leading candidate to inherit the mantle of Seymour Cray, a famous computer designer who consistently designed the world’s fastest computers from the 1960s until his death in a car accident in 1996. “He is this amazing blend of artist and engineer and that reminds me of Seymour,” said Larry Smarr, an astrophysicist and supercomputer user, who was an early customer of Sun Microsystems’ computers as director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications during the 1980s.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:57:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boarding pass hacker finds privacy flaws in Facebook - UPDATED

Christopher Soghoian, whose name you may remember from that huge boarding pass terror freakout last year, has discovered that Facebook's advanced search features can provide you with access to users' names, pictures, religion, or sexual orientation, even if you don't have permission to view their profile.

Ryan Singel at Wired News' "Threat Level" blog explains what Soghoian found, and how:

Like many social networks, Facebook allows its users to mark their profile page as private, semi-private or very open However, even if you mark your profile to only be visible by friends, that doesn't change how you turn up in Facebook searches or whether your profile is open to indexing by search engines.

So for instance, if you are a Facebook member of your college or local area, you could run a search to see all the people who are Christian women who are lesbians, all the women interested in women or all the Muslim men into other men.  Your search results will likely include people who thought they marked their information as private, but didn't also change their search settings.

It's not as if Facebook doesn't give you the right to limit who can see your page, but common sense dictates that the vast majority of people who mark their pages as private don't want their information showing up in a public search. Some might, but here Facebook could automatically remove "friends-only" users from search results, and let those who don't mind be found via searches yet want a private profile choose that option.

Update: Facebook spokesperson Matt Hicks tells BoingBoing the issue was promptly resolved:

Facebook offers sophisticated search and privacy controls and is constantly making improvements based on feedback from our users. We have since updated the advanced search function so that profile information that has been made private by a user, such as gender, religion, and sexual orientation, will not return a result.

Within a few hours of your post appearing on Boing Boing, Facebook's engineers had rushed out a fix to the problem. One of Facebook's PR people left a comment on my blog to let me know.

This is a big win for privacy, and it's great to see that Facebook continues to take user privacy seriously.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to be too concerned about the security of their users home computers - as a fairly serious software vulnerability I reported to them over 2 months ago remains unfixed - the same issue that Google and Yahoo fixed within days. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:06:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nintendo Sixty Fouuuuuur versus iPhooooone (video)

Much-circulated internet chestnut video of screeching, ecstatic child opening Nintendo 64 for Xmas is redone, this time with full-grown adults freaking out over just-unwrapped iPhone. OHHHHH MYYYYY GOOODDDDDDDD! OHHHHH MYYYYY GOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!! Link to the new riff, here's the original.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:38:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Digging deeper into CIA "family jewels" docs

Over at Wired's "Danger Room," Noah Shachtman has been digging deeper into the ultraweird '70s CIA docket known as the "Family Jewels," released online earlier this week.

Snip from his latest post:

During the 1960s and 1970s, CIA documents reveal, the Agency mingled with mafiosi to off Fidel Castro, routinely spied on reporters, and detained a Soviet agent for more than five years.  But even at the heights of all that questionable and illegal activity, the CIA's "family jewels" documents show, there was one operation that made Agency officials particularly uncomfortable: widespread electronic surveillance of American citizens -- the kind of activities that federal agencies have routinely been engaged in since September 11.

Another document, dated May 8, 1973, mentions the existence of a 1963 account of agency scientists administering mind- or personality-altering drugs on "unwitting subjects" -- that is, testing hallucinogens such as LSD on people without their knowledge. The document doesn't provide details.

One of the most notorious such cases involved Frank R. Olson, a CIA germ-warfare expert who died in a fall from a hotel window in 1953, nine days after a CIA doctor spiked Olson's after-dinner drink with LSD. In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford invited Olson's family to the White House to apologize; the government also paid the family $750,000.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Reader comment: Scott Calonico says,

Our short film "LSD A Go Go" went into the details of the Olson case. You guys were kind enough to link to us a while back before we had the video up. The whole short film is online now: Link. Also here's the youtube link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:33:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Southampton pub declares itself an embassy to skirt smoking ban

Redonda is a "one mile square remnant of the cone of an extinct volcano." According to Wikipedia, "The current title of 'king' of Redonda is disputed by at least nine people." Here's "king" Leo's site.

Yesterday a spokesman from the Department of Health confirmed that if the pub was granted embassy status then it would be exempt from next month's national smoking ban.

She said: "The new smoke free law will not be enforceable against premises with diplomatic status - as recognised by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

"For the health of staff and visitors to overseas embassies and consulates, the Department of Health would encourage these premises to follow the principles of the new smoke-free law by eliminating second-hand smoke from their enclosed workplaces and public places."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:31:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

YouTube wins Cicarelli (Brazilian model beach sex video) case

Last year YouTube was banned in Brazil because of a video where Daniella Cicarelli, a famous brazilian model, was shown having sex on a beach in Spain.

Two days ago, the court ruling came out: YouTube won and Cicarelli will have to pay R$ 10,000 (aproximately US $5,000) to YouTube, iG and Globo, the three companies she was suing for monetary compensation.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:21:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

IBM's Blue Gene: thousand trillion mathematical ops per second

The first supercomputer capable of crunching through a thousand trillion mathematical operations every second has been announced by IBM.

This is roughly equivalent to the combined processing power of a 2.4-kilometre-high pile of laptop computers.

Blue Gene/P will be capable of a peak performance of 3000 trillion calculations, or floating point operations, per second (3 petaflops). But its sustained performance is expected to level out at around 1 petaflop.

Reader comment: Erc says,

a thousand trillion -- You know, some people call that a "quadrillion." If I've told you once, I've told you ten hundred times...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:14:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man spends 18 years making miniature garden castle

His wife, Ikuko, 66, gave him a book containing photographs of the castle on his 47th birthday. He saw a drawing of the castle in the book and made up his mind to build a replica.

Imura bought a plot of land in the town of Enza in Ise, which has a beautiful view of mountains unhindered by the sight of power lines — a setting he thought would be perfect for the replica.

He moved to the town and began building the model in 1989, using experience he gained as a joiner during his youth.

After retiring at age 60, Imura devoted his life to building the replica.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:57:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MPAA sues "guerilla video" nets, aka "indexing websites"

The Motion Picture Association of America filed lawsuits in LA federal court Tuesday against "guerilla video" indexer sites YouTVpc.com and Peekvid.com.

Both "internet video on demand" sites are advertising and/or PayPal supported, and consist of links to video streams, files, and torrents.

The MPAA press release reads, in part:

YouTVpc and Peekvid rely on advertisers to maintain their illegal websites and they profit handsomely from a seemingly endless stream of third-party advertising pitches. Peekvid - whose servers are located in San Antonio, Texas - averages over 53,000 unique users per day who view over 184,000 pages of content. YouTVpc – whose servers are located in Scottsdale, Arizona - averages more than 6,000 unique daily visitors who view over 21,000 pages of content per day.

In addition to advertising revenues, operators of YouTVpc solicit monetary donations through a “Donations” tab on the website that allows users to make financial contributions through PayPal.com.

Civil lawsuits were filed against YouTVpc and Peekvid in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles for damages and injunctive relief for violations under the United States Copyright Act of 1976.

Peekvid does not contain any content on its site, but is merely an index of available links on the Internet. Peekvid is committed to an industry solution that will provide a mechanism to compensate artists that create the work you enjoy watching. Peekvid would like to be part of the long term solution.

A few months ago over at the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Delaney did an extensive piece about these sites: Link, but the stupid WSJ paywall won't let you read it unless you're a subscriber. Here's a snip, after the jump...
More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:52:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lethal Nuclear Mutant Unicorn Chaser

Mighty Samson #29, September 1975. Link, and Link. (thanks, Mark Frauenfelder!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:31:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pile High Club: passengers on "poop plane" are pretty pissed

Earlier this month, 168 people boarded Continental flight 71 from Amsterdam to Newark. An 8-hour flight, usually. But this time, the passengers arrived 32 hours later, after horrific toilet malfunctions on the flight led to "poop running down the aisles," according to witnesses.

I mentioned the incident in a short link roundup yesterday, and a number of BoingBoing readers wrote in with more.

Eyewitness and blogger Dana Bushman says,

I had the good fortune to be a passenger on the dreaded “Poop Flight” that you wrote about today.

I posted the entire ordeal (and I do mean entire, it’s a 5 page diatribe) about what happened on Metblogs NYC: Link.

I’ve also started this gem of a site as a centralized place for information about the Poop Flight and its passengers: Link.

We are trying to organize a multi-plaintiff suit against Continental for the way we were treated. We are working on engaging the services of Weitz & Luxenberg, P.C. (the firm handling the Valentine’s Day JetBlue debacle) but we need to get the word out to everyone on the plane to keep the lawyers interested. Currently we have 25 people on board, but we need as close to the full 168 passengers on board to make this fly (pun completely and totally intended).

Reader comment: Jason says,

My friend Brandon and I threw this together (JPEG Link) after seeing the "Poop Plane" post (and based on this earlier pic).

As you may recall, you posted about a previous (possibly fake?) issue that Continental Airlines had before with their in-flight bathrooms: Continental customer's letter lamenting Toilet Class seating.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:14:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dinner with Joss Whedon fundraiser

I'm gonna be a guest at Comic Con too this year, my first time there -- looking forward to meeting some of you in person! Link (Thanks, Joe!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:57:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creepy, interesting, and real -- a short link roundup.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:04:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creepy, interesting, and real -- a short link roundup.

Reader comment: Oliver says,

Rehnquist was actually addicted to Placidyl, a non-barbiturate sedative; see Link and Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:58:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burning Man organizers: we want to go 100% biodiesel in 2007

Ah, the smells of Burning Man: weed, incense, unwashed naked people -- and now, french fries. That new aroma wafting over the Black Rock desert this year comes from reclaimed biodiesel:

Burning Man is working on shifting our entire power generation load from regular old diesel fuel to clean, green biodiesel, thanks to a very dedicated effort by Mr. Blue of Recycle Camp and many others. It will be used to power things like the medical and fire outposts, rangers stations, BMIR, and other event operations. What does that mean in real terms? It means that 20,000 gallons of diesel that would have been coming from places like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Iraq and other human rights holiday spots will instead be coming from old French fry vats and the like in nearby Reno, Nevada.

Reader comment: Jay W. says,

There is project "Single Cell Solution" by "Dr. Friendly" that combines biodiesel with a "Algae Bar", a "Green Genesis Dome". Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:45:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mushrooms as insulation material

Here's how it works: A mixture of water, mineral particles, starch and hydrogen peroxide are poured into 7-by-7-inch molds and then injected with living mushroom cells. The hydrogen peroxide is used to prevent the growth of other specimens within the material.

Placed in a dark environment, the cells start to grow, digesting the starch as food and sprouting thousands of root-like cellular strands. A week to two weeks later, a 1-inch-thick panel of insulation is fully grown. It's then dried to prevent fungal growth, making it unlikely to trigger mold and fungus allergies, according to Bayer. The finished product resembles a giant cracker in texture.

"It really allows for a myriad of uses," said McIntyre. He said they've envisioned modifying the product to make structural panels that could be grown and assembled onsite to produce sustainable homes.

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:43:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Optimus Prime "Transformers" cake (with video and frosting)

BoingBoing reader and cakemod aficionado Andrew Green says,

My wife and I baked a replica of Optimus Prime in cake form. Here are photos and videos: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:37:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dude in line for iPhone to raise money for AIDS drugs in Africa

Sean Ganann from the promotional agency Anomaly (they were the guys behind the Virgin name-a-plane thing) tells BoingBoing:

One of the partners here at Anomaly is first in line for an iPhone at the NY Soho Apple store -- he's been waiting there all day.

The twist is that Johnny Vulkan's iPhone will go straight up on to eBay with the proceeds going to Keep A Child Alive, an organization that provides anti-retroviral treatment to children infected with AIDS in Africa. Some of our other clients have joined in with Jawbone adding two bluetooth headsets and Virgin America throwing two round trip tickets in the mix.

Update: Well now, here's another "first in line" guy, in another city, with a different mission: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:20:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars documentary on TV tonight

The plight of the refugee in today’s war-torn world is captured in the African proverb, “When two elephants are fighting, the grass will suffer.” So it was in Sierra Leone from 1991-2002, where the government and various rebel factions carried out a brutal civil war in which the terrorizing of civilians — by killing, mutilation, rape, and forced conscription — was common practice on all sides. The war sent hundreds of thousands of ordinary Sierra Leoneans fleeing to refugee camps in the neighboring West African nation of the Republic of Guinea. That’s where the remarkable documentary Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars begins.

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars are a band of six Sierra Leonean musicians who came together to form a band while living in a refugee camp in Guinea. Many of their family and friends were murdered in the war, leaving each of them with physical and emotional scars that may never heal. Despite the unimaginable horrors of civil war, they were saved and brought hope and happiness to their fellow refugees through their music.

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars chronicles the band over three years, from Guinean refugee camps back to war-ravaged Sierra Leone, where they realize the dream of recording their first studio album. And so begins a musical phenomenon that is making the world hear the voices of West Africa’s refugees – through the film Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars have been able to launch an international musical career, while drawing the accolades of Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Ice Cube (one of the executive producers of the film), and Joe Perry.

Through their unflinching spirit, their powerful stories of survival and their joyful music Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars celebrate the best that is in all of us. As violent conflicts multiply around the globe and the worldwide refugee crisis deepens, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars is a humanizing ode to all the innocent survivors of war whose brutal realities are often dismissed by surface mass media sound bytes.

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:18:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ultimate rube goldberg machine

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:14:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web radio stations go silent today in protest

Organizers say the "Day of Silence" serves to focus attention on the recent, dramatic increase in royalty fees -- many webcasters say the cash hike will drive them offline.

Link to "Day of Silence" at Kurt Hanson's internet radio website. Link to savenetradio (here's their PDF about today's action: Link). Link to Washington Post article, Here's Soma FM's statement, here's di.fm, Pandora, pitchfork media, and a statement from Ruth Seymour at KCRW.(thanks Myles, Rob)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:59:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paul Krassner on Supremes' "Bong hits 4 Jesus ruling"

Bong Hits 4 Repression

The Supreme Court sucks so badly it turned itself inside out. An utterly outrageous 5-4 ruling has made it acceptable to suspend a high school student for an off-campus act like holding a 14-foot banner saying “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” That simple joke became a federal case ending with a dangerous precedent for suppressing free speech.

Chief Justice Roberts agreed with the school principal that “the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one”--what a ton of bullshit!--and Justices Alito and Kennedy stated that their decision doesn’t address “political or social issues such as the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalized marijuana for medical use.”

So this is really about the war on pleasure. I once asked the late Peter McWilliams--leading activist in the medical marijuana movement who suffered from cancer and AIDS--“Would you agree with Dennis Peron, the co-author of Proposition 215 [California’s medical marijuana referendum], who says--not as a joke--that all use of marijuana is medical?”

“In the general sense that everything we do for our health--both curative and preventative--is medical, I’d agree,” he replied. “Even a perfectly healthy person who smokes pot once a month purely for its euphoric effects could be said to be doing so to prevent becoming ill, in the sense that people take vitamin C every day to prevent becoming ill, for I believe that euphoria is both healing and health-maintaining....

“While I was using marijuana to treat my nausea, I can’t tell you how much I missed getting high. Although I’d smoke it several times a day, the average high school student was getting high more times a month than I was. That’s because after the first month, I never got high, and I really enjoy marijuana’s high. Simply put, recreational marijuana you use to get high; medical marijuana you use to get by.”

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Paul Krassner on Secret Bullshit
• The Sopranos Meet The Hippies by Paul Krassner
• Boing Boing interviews Paul Krassner
• Paul Krassner on the parts they left out of the Abbie Hoffman movie
• Paul Krassner on RU Sirius Show
• Realist archive project

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:24:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crustaceans chewing up Japanese island

"It's rare, even on a global scale, to hear of biological erosion that has proceeded on such a large scale and at such a rapid pace as to alter the landscape of an island," said Yuji Okimura, an emeritus professor at Hiroshima University.

According to land records of Hoboro Island compiled in 1928, the island was 120 meters long, and its highest point stood 21.9 meters above sea level. In a photo taken between about 1955 and 1965, the island had two rocky peaks, and vegetation was growing on the highest of the peaks.

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:24:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Deep Sea Detectives: Loch Ness

Perhaps the world's most famous underwater mystery, reports of "Nessie" sightings have circulated for centuries.

Photos, film footage, sonar traces, and amazing new scientific discoveries all suggest that there just might be something lurking in the frigid waters of Scotland's Loch Ness.

These cold waters are hauntingly deep, drowning victims usually disappear without a trace and most divers refuse to enter. But not our intrepid team!

Join us as we delve into the darkness of Loch Ness and look for an aquatic lassie named Nessie, history's most celebrated cryptozoological creature.

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:01:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Laser-etched Spock matzoh

I saw Phil and his cutter last weekend and got Tenniel's illustration of the Mad Hatter etched into my leather shoulder-bag and into the stickers on the lid of my laptop. Man, that was fun. I want one of these things. He'll etch pretty much anything you send to him, for a reasonable fee. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:37:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Red vs Blue to end

Having labored on the series for four years, Red vs. Blue creator Michael "Burnie" Burns, who remains the series' writer, editor, director and lead voice talent, wants to make sure fans aren't let down.

The 15-minute final episode will be "the biggest one we've ever done," says Burns, "but The Sopranos stole our ending, so we had to change it completely..."

"We didn't even know what machinima was," says Burns. "We played a ton of Halo at LAN parties because Xbox Live didn't exist yet. The humor of us yelling across the room led to Red vs. Blue.."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:38:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Satellite dishes as decorative objects

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:32:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hacker con badges

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:27:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tenth anniversary of First Amendment protection for the net

EFF’s work over the past ten years demonstrates that while the technology might evolve, threats to online expression persist and core First Amendment principles must be vigilantly defended. The CDA was a crystal clear case of unconstitutional government censorship, and the challenges today are sometimes more complex. EFF's efforts today include:

* Intermediaries: EFF fights to protect Internet middlemen -- like hosting services, search engines, and ISPs -- from overreaching liability, so that creators of amazing free speech tools don't have to worry about being held responsible for everything that Internet users say.

* "Fair Use": EFF defends “fair use” of copyrighted material, including its ongoing campaign to counter bogus copyright takedowns on YouTube and elsewhere;

* Bloggers' Rights: EFF promotes bloggers’ rights through litigation and distribution of a comprehensive legal guide.

* Anonymous speech: EFF supports online anonymity, primarily through representation of defendants in "John Doe" lawsuits filed by large corporations and thin-skinned public officials who want to intimidate their anonymous critics.

* "Right to Know": EFF uses the Freedom of Information Act to promote the public’s "right to know" and facilitate informed and open debate on technology and civil liberties issues.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:24:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, June 25, 2007

Build your own game console kit

Written by best-selling game development author Andre' LaMothe, the included book is your complete guide to developing games, graphics, and media applications for the Propeller Powered Hydra Game console. The book assumes you have only basic programming experience. It covers all aspects of the Propeller chip from its architecture to using the Propeller Tool IDE for programming in both Spin and assembly language, with numerous demo programs to use as starting points for your own games.

Included on the CD is all the source code and executables for all the included games, demos, tools and examples. Additionally, "Hydra Tiny BASIC" based on the "Tiny BASIC" specification originally published in "Dr. Dobb's Journal" in 1975 is included. With this classic version of BASIC you can write programs directly on the Hydra without the need for a PC! Simply load BASIC into the Hydra or on the included game cartridge and you are up and running with nothing more than your TV and keyboard.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:55:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boingo rolls out flat-rate global WiFi

I pay for a T-Mobile WiFi plan and it sucks. They charge gigantic roaming fees to use other T-Mobile WiFi hotspots around the world -- $0.14/minute in London's Starbucks! T-Mobile Italy charges US T-Mobile roamers more than they charge Telitalia roamers -- the company charges its own customers more than customers of the state-owned telco!

I've had a comp Boingo account for a couple months now and I've found it to be way more useful than my T-Mobile account. It works at more airports, hotels, coffee-shops, etc than T-Mobile does, by far. The only bummer was the roaming fees, and now that those are gone, this is a no-brainer for anyone who puts in a lot of road time. You can spend more than $40 on one night's WiFi in a hotel -- $40/month is totally worth it. Link (via Engadget)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:52:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYT biz journo: I was held hostage at "Thomas" toy factory in China

As an American journalist based in China, I knew there was a good chance that at some point I’d be detained for pursuing a story. I just never thought I’d be held hostage by a toy factory.

That’s what happened last Monday, when for nine hours I was held, along with a translator and a photographer, by the suppliers of the popular Thomas & Friends toy rail sets.

“You’ve intruded on our property,” one factory boss shouted at me. “Tell me, what exactly is the purpose of this visit?” When I answered that I had come to meet the maker of a toy that had recently been recalled in the United States because it contained lead paint, he suggested I was really a commercial spy intent on stealing the secrets to the factory’s toy manufacturing process.

“How do I know you’re really from The New York Times?” he said. “Anyone can fake a name card.”

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:53:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

M.I.A. and the Macbook

I kind of love the way the new stuff from M.I.A. looks -- sorta like mid-90s websites, word salad spam, Pac-Man, and Nigerian gangsta rap all rolled up and smoked as one. Her recently redone website induces excellent epilepsy.

In the photo above, she's chilling between takes at a video shoot for the new single, "Boyz," with a bestickered MacBook Pro. Snip from Obtusity blog:

Though it's hard to believe, M.I.A. has taken the visual themes of 2005's Arular (seen everywhere from the cover art to the video for "Galang") and created something even more gloriously epilepsy-inducing for sophomore LP Kala. The vibrant collage of neon colors and cheap special effects found in the promo for new single "Boyz" (as well as her fantastic website) is a homage to everything from 80's video games to the advertising and film culture of Nigeria, Southeast Asia and Jamaica. But it's also a completely singular vision, and one that is impossible to pin to any particular movement or region of the world.

Reader comment: Chris Hutsul in Toronto says,

I too like MIA's new webiste. But I like art collective Paper Rodeo's better: Link.

As you can see, her's is a blatant copy.

Your commenter meant (hopefully) to say "Paper Rad," not "Paper Rodeo" in the MIA story. Link, and they're eminently YouTubeable.

To be fair, MIA's designer could be getting the Paper Rad influence secondhand; a quick look around MySpace reveals an embarrassment of pages with a similar GIF-Bomb'd Nu-Rave Retarditaire aesthetic...

I'm pretty sure that Ben from Paper Rad actually did that site, so it's not a rip-off of their style.

Paper Rad has been doing this stuff very well for a long time now.

Chris is onto something, but I wouldn't say MIA's site is a "blatant copy" of Paper Rad's. It's called psychedelia. Check this website of local Detroit art/music collective, Scrummage University: Link.

I believe, M.I.A.'s website was actually designed by the awesome zephyrerising.com but a lot of the inspiration comes from Cartoon coutour fashion designer cassetteplaya.com who actually helped with the original designs for her 1st album. Rad stuff, that I hope will become uniforms in private schools all across the world.

I'm not sure who started the epileptic websites, but sadly a portland band, menomena has recently changed their fun, wackyness website to a more formal readable site. however, you can still access their radness page - it's truly the radness. check it out!

Thanks to Ben for correcting me. Indeed, the collective is called Paper Rad. They put out a newsprint comic titled Paper Rodeo, hence the error. As to who came out with this look first, hard to tell. But I recall seeing the Paper Rad site in this current state at least three years ago. Talk about being ahead of your time. Thanks for posting my comment.

I noticed the recent flurry of epileptic website love surrounding M.I.A. and others. I just wanted to throw in my two cents with the website of underground music reviewer umeancompetitor. When I say music reviewer I mean that in a purely nominal sense of that if you stare hard at the words and don't go insane from the images you will get some idea of whats good in the hip-hop world. I would also warn that following inline links in his writing is both a good and a bad idea. Good because its insane, bad because its really really insane.

Many people think Paper Rad got their style from the amazing Virgina Beach art collective Dearraindrop. They are all part of an art scene centered around New York city and Providence, RI. Here's a you tube video of their trippy work: Video link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:31:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jasmina Tešanović: What About the Russians?

Text: Jasmina Tešanović, June 19, 2006
Photos: Peace performance in Belgrade. Images courtesy Women in Black.

- - - - - - - - - -

Another one off to the Hague. One more of the last five indicted was arrested two days ago and delivered.

His name is Vlastimir Djordjevic and he is particularly famous for his efficiency in burying thousands of Albanian bodies in a secret mass grave just a dozen kilometers from the center of Belgrade.

The sinister designed efficiency has always puzzled me in the history of local warfare. We Serbs are a sloppy, easy going people, not to say boozy and work-shy. Besides, we lived for years on end under a communist regime with guaranteed salaries and social security, which much promoted our dolce far niente attitude. The Yugoslav army was big, like a second nation in a multiethnic nation.

Then all of a sudden the same placid army turns into a death squad which is second only to Nazis. The bodies were transported in big refrigerator trucks and buried all over Serbia.
More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:12:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creepy, interesting, and real -- a short link roundup.

"It's like trying to stop the wind," said David Shibles, a horticulturist with the Polk County extension office. "If you find them, you need to kill them."

(Thanks, Eric, Avi Solomon, Mark Mauer, Chris, Ape Lad, José Leitão, Alex, Kier Smith, John, Marco, Matthew Sokoloff)

Reader comment: David Fischer says,

Regarding the origins of the Rodent clip - Mini-Moni isn't a show, it's a singing group. They were a side-project of Morning Musume, and they showed up on Momusu's TV show a lot.

Mini-Moni were the pinnacle of suger-overdosed jpop for children: Video link 1, Video link 2, Video link 3.

I sincerely hope that when the alien archeologists start digging through the scorched remains of Earth, a Mini-Moni CD is their first evidence of what humans were like.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:00:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Girl sues for right to wear a "purity ring" to school

(Photo from Wikipedia)

A sixteen-year-old girl took her fight for her right to wear a ‘purity ring’ to the High Court. Her school has determined that her chastity ring was jewelry and therefore under the normal school rules, not allowed. Her ring represented her vow to abstain from sex. One would imagine she would abstain until marriage. It doesn’t actually state in the newspaper report when the deadline of her abstinence would expire.

To some extent this young girl has some justification in making her request. There are other forms of apparel that are allowed, which show off religious allegiance. Of these a more obvious one is the head gear worn by Muslim girls and women. These scarves are permitted in schools in the UK. What would one then say is the difference between a narrow ring, and a full-on head covering. If she were to wear a head scarf as an image of her vow, would that be allowed then?

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:56:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Drug addled driver makes mess of farmer's field

Reader comment:

Gareth says:

The image of the cornfield destroyed by a driver on cocaine trying to evade police reminds me of experiments conducted by Ulrike Heberlein at UCSF wherein fruit flies were exposed to cocaine vapors and their paths in a glass box were traced. The resulting images show clearly how stoned out of their little minds these flies got.

Specifically this image:

And this caption: Computer-generated traces of the locomotor behavior of a group of five flies exposed to volatilized free-base cocaine. Each panel corresponds to a 1-min period starting 2 min after the end of the cocaine exposure. (a) Mock exposure; (b) exposure to 100 µg of cocaine; (c) exposure to 200 µg of cocaine.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:49:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yo Yo Girl Cop, Dasepo Naughty girls, NY Asian Film Fest

The action-chick-flick Yo Yo Girl Cop is...

Directed by Kenta Fukasaku, son of Japan's master director Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) (...) an off-the-rails revival of Japan's much loved, cult fave 1980's TV series, Sukeban Deka, or as we say in English, "Delinquent Girl Detective."

Also at NYAFF next week, Dasepo Naughty Girls (Korea / 2007) looks like a winner -- based on a popular webcomic, and described in the tease as a "hurricane of horniness." Link. Still from the film below.

(thanks, Jason Wishnow)

Reader comment: Steve Leggat says,

I knew I recognised the lead in Yo-Yo Girl Cop as Matsuura Aya. While I can't wait to see that movie, I find there's no better way to start each day than watching her music video for Ne~e: Video Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:40:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Larry Page's helicopter commandeered by MAKE:?

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:40:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SmartFlix and lawyer posts removed

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:48:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scary prison escapee captured

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:38:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Further ponderance of the iPhone's size

Snip from iphonesize.com:

With all of the recent confusion surrounding the size of the iPhone, we just wanted to set the record straight on how big (or small) the iPhone really is. To best show it's true size, we've taken the liberty of taking the following shots of things that are of comparable size to the iPhone with a normal sized hand.

Previously on BoingBoing:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:31:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blade Runner turns 25: an appreciation by Mythbuster Adam Savage

Snip:

Twenty-five years ago, the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner became an instant science fiction classic. Set in a sodden, squalid Los Angeles of 2019, the neo-noir masterpiece influenced a generation of filmmakers and video-game designers. Long before I teamed up with Jamie Hyneman to form the MythBusters, I was a special-effects modelmaker, and Scott's cyberpunk gem almost instantly became the most important film in the canon of movies I love.

I'm still such a big Blade Runner fan that I watch it at least once every 18 months. I also own pretty convincing replicas of the "blade runner blaster" wielded by Harrison Ford's world-weary former cop Rick Deckard. The source material was a Steyr Mannlicher .222 target rifle magazine cover, with a Bulldog .44 carriage underneath. I can't get enough of this prop. Now, I want a working one.

Link to the Blade Runner Director's Cut DVD on Amazon, here's a big fat fansite, here's the Wikipedia entry, here's IMDB. (thanks, Matt Sullivan)

Reader comment: Mike says,

To go along with your Blade Runner 25th anniversary story, a replica of Deckard's firearm is currently for sale on ebay with about 1 day left: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:23:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bong Hits 4 Jesus: high court ruling's implications for online speech

andy carvin says,

I've just posted an analysis of today's Supreme Court ruling against the Bong Hits 4 Jesus kid. The court basically says that the school was within its rights to bust the kid because he was displaying anti[pro]-drug messaging and it was a school-sanctioned event, even though it occurred off campus. This might affect students who have been busted by schools for posting drug-related content on the websites, blogs and social networking profiles. Ironically, a school might be able to argue that this is justified if they also allow social networking access at school, thus making it school sanctioned. In contrast, schools that filter out social networking sites might have a harder time punishing kids for their drug-related online activities, because the act of filtering pretty much says that social networks aren't exactly school sanctioned. Pretty ironic if you ask me.

Here's a Wikipedia article on the case.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:13:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant Gigantor statue in Kobe

The statue will serve as a double memorial, marking both the birthplace of creator Mitsuteru Yokoyama, who passed away in 2004 in an apartment fire, as well as celebrate the revitilization of the area, which was devastated in the 1995 Kobe earthquake.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:56:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video of fearless power workers in Dominican Republic

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:51:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1982 virtual reality exercise bike

How many of these are collecting dust in the billiard and pinball rooms of retired septuagenarian entertainment industry executives who used them once or twice, then had nothing to do with them other than occasionally using the video disk as a makeshift cocaine mirror? Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:32:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beijing production of Martin Luther Kings stars Chinese man in lead

The play's production in China is the brainchild of 27-year-old Caitrin McKiernan. She says she's surprised that she's been allowed to hold discussions on Chinese campuses about the Montgomery bus boycott and the freedom rides.

"I think that it shows that there's something happening right now in China," McKiernan says. "There's a moment, there's an opening that's happening that allows people to have these kinds of discussions, that allows the actors during one scene to hold signs that say 'freedom now' and to sing 'We Shall Overcome' on stage, and to show what civil disobedience is."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:22:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CIA secret documents just declassified

One one occasion XXXX asked if the U.S. forecast has even bothered with U.F.O. sightings. He explained that one time the XXXXXXXXX and the XXX in particular, has been plagued with calls and questions about the U.F.O. sightings. He said that some of their scientific balloon flights had prompted some of them. Now, he said, he never gets these calls anymore and half joking surmised that someone must have made a political decision that they were not to be sighted anymore.

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

China's manufacturing cities - photo gallery

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:01:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toddler in MENSA

(Middlesex University) psychologist Joan Freeman, who tested Georgia, said she thought the toddler could have scored even higher but needed a nap after 45 minutes of work...

She told the BBC: "She is two years, nine months - not very much older than a toddler really - and she is able to answer questions five and six-year-olds can't.

"The test uses questions like 'If brother is to boy, then sister is to ...?'. If you take a normal two-year-old, they cannot hold a pencil, they don't know the colours and they would not be able to answer those simple questions.

"The thing I found most striking was the copying of a circle. Most two-year-olds cannot do that but she drew a perfect one.

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:50:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a prop blood-geyser from a Swiffer

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:28:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

London's mayor calls deadbeat US Ambassador "venal little crook"

In London, the top offender for traffic fines is the US Embassy, which refuses to pay the "congestion charge" for driving in central London. The US Embassy owes the city of London £1,484,765 in unpaid fines. This state of affairs has prompted London's mayor, "Red" Ken Livingston, to call US ambassador Robert Tuttle a "venal little crook."

"The majority of missions pay the congestion charge on time and do not incur fines. We also wrote to all missions owing over £1,000 in fines urging them to settle their debts with Transport for London."

The US embassy - along with many others - has refused to pay the congestion fee on the grounds that it is tax; and therefore diplomats are exempt from paying it.

It has led to stinging criticism from London mayor Ken Livingstone, who branded US ambassador Robert Tuttle a "venal little crook" for his refusal to pay.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Punctuation bookends

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:31:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Bamboo jeep

The bamboo jeep (or kawayan jeep, as we call it in our native language) then was born from this culture. The jeep was created by my father supposedly for personal use only - my parents using it when going to work and dropping us, their children, when going to school. But since my father was a government employee (from the Department of Agriculture) and he had the obligation also to feature the products of our province, he used the bamboo jeep (as substitute to carabaos perhaps hehe) in the exhibits to attract people. I don't know if you're fascinated with a bamboo jeep but a lot of people here are really fascinated with it.

The jeep (again instead of carabaos) became the ride also of high officials of the country in parades when they visited my province. If I remember it right, our current president right now rode on it when she was still a senator.

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

MySpace, Facebook mirror class divisions in US society

As with all danah's work, this is provocative, insightful stuff that exposes the deeper lessons lurking beneath the tens of millions of profile pages on social networking sites.

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:00:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Camera in parcel tracks journey through postal system

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:39:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kids create massive Lego map of US

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:46:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pressure Printing sale

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:35:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steampunk jar of fireflies

Steampunk on Boing Boing

Update: Aaron sez, "the 'fireflies' aren't LEDs, they're 'small fluorescent BBs.' Ultraviolet LEDs fixed at the top of the jar illuminate them."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:44:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Man kills attacking bobcat

Dale Rippy endured the (25 pound) bobcat’s slashes and bites until it clawed into a position where he could grab it by the throat. Then he strangled it.

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:25:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Theremin cover of Gnarls Barkley

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:12:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory podcasts Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown"

So now I'm reading other people's stuff -- at least until I get more in the can. I'm starting with Bruce Sterling's brilliant, seminal book The Hacker Crackdown, a 1992 book that recounts the events that led to the founding of The Electronic Frontier Foundation, my former employer. Bruce released the book as a free electronic download nearly 10 years before I did the same with my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

This book changed my life -- and the lives of countless others. It inspired me politically, artistically and socially. Last week, I saw Bruce at his home in Serbia and asked him if he minded my reading this aloud for the next 20 weeks or so. He gave me his blessing -- so here it is. Link, Podcast feed link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:21:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open Source Consortium to regulators: Stop the BBC's DRM!

The BBC chose the DRM instead of making good on its promise to deliver an open "Creative Archive" of freely licensed content that Brits could share and remix. Brits are required by law to pay for the programming that the BBC commissions, and most of that work ends up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, never to be seen again. The BBC's "Worldwide" division markets a tiny sliver of it abroad (the proceeds from this account for less than five percent of the BBC's budget, with the other 95 percent being involuntarily extracted from the British public), and there was fear that producing a true Creative Archive would limit the BBC's ability to serve as a glorified Blockbuster Video for Americans. Link (Thanks, Joel!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:01:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Broadcast Treaty wounded and dying!

The broadcast treaty creates a copyright-like "broadcast right," for the entities that make works available. So while copyright goes to the people who create things, broadcast rights go to people who have no creative contribution at all. Here's how it would work: say you recorded some TV to use in your classroom. Copyright lets you do this -- copyright is limited by fair use. But the broadcast right would stop you -- you'd need to navigate a different and disjointed set of exceptions to broadcast rights, or the broadcaster could sue you.

That's just for openers. The broadcast right also covers works in the public domain that no one has a copyright in -- and even Creative Commons works where the creator has already given her permission for sharing! You can't use anything that's broadcast unless you get permission from the caster. What's more, they're trying to extend this to the net, making podcasting and other communications where the hoster isn't the copyright holder (that is, where you create the podcast but someone else hosts it) into a legal minefield.

Now, though, the treaty is in disarray. This week saw a new meeting on the treaty with the Chairman of the committee ignoring his orders from the WIPO General Assembly (which instructed him to prepare a treaty that stopped people from stealing cable, but didn't create this para-copyright regime), pushing for a rapid movement to a "diplomatic conference," the final step on the way to a global treaty. It looked bad for our heroes.

But the representatives of the world's governments wouldn't be railroaded. After a week of hard debate, all motion to a diplomatic conference has been abandoned. Instead, this has been turned into just another regular agenda item for future meetings, as in "OK, onto that broadcast treaty: is everyone in favor of this yet? No? OK, next item."

This is a gigantic victory for our side. When we started going to the World Intellectual Property Organization, we had no idea how we would manage it. There is no constitution to appeal to there. They control the venue and call the shots. But we went in and blogged the negotiations (the first ever look inside the sausage factory of a UN treaty negotiation), bringing unparalleled transparency to the negotiations. We rallied dozens of other organizations to come to Geneva. We argued. We posted guards over our position papers when someone started to throw them in the bathrooms and hide them behind the plants (first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you -- then you win!). We slashdotted them. We wrote them letters. We went all over the world and talked to librarians, activists, and hackers. We proposed a better treaty that would limit copyright around the world and give rights to archivists, educators and disabled people to use and preserve creative works.

We kicked ass.

And we won. (For now.)

A mighty congratulations to my colleagues at EFF, especially Gwen Hinze, EFF's international directory, who's been slugging away there like mad. And an even bigger thanks to all of you, the activists on the net, for your letters to WIPO, your blog posts, your donations to EFF. We did it!

The Diplomatic Conference had been scheduled to take place in November 2007. It has now been postponed indefinitely until Member States reach agreement on the objectives, specific scope and object of protection of the proposed treaty. Given the vast differences between Member States' positions that emerged this week on core parts of the treaty, agreement does not look likely in the near future. Although the treaty is still on WIPO's agenda and by no means dead, the practical effect of today's decision is that it is no longer on the fast track. That's good news indeed for the Internet Community, including the over 1500 podcasters who signed an Open Letter to WIPO expressing concern about the treaty, which EFF delivered to WIPO this week. Member States refused to set a date for a diplomatic conference. They rejected proposals from the WIPO Copyright Committee Chair, Mr. Jukka Liedes, to postpone the diplomatic conference to November/ December 2008, to convene a further "Special Session" of the WIPO Copyright Committee focused on finalizing the treaty, and to create a "modern framework" for "webcasting organizations". Instead, it was agreed that the subject of protection of broadcasting and cablecasting organizations would stay on the agenda and be discussed in regular sessions of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:54:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 22, 2007

DIY gadgets in Africa: the knife-sharpening bicycle

The excellent Afrigadget blog has a post up today about a man named Peter Kahugu, in Banana Hill, Kenya (near Nairobi), who makes a living using his bicycle to sharpen knives for his neighbors:

AfriGadget reporter Afromusing and I had an opportunity to interview Peter who has modified his bicycle with a belt, a set of tensioning pulleys and a grinding stone to make it a knife-sharpening machine. By kicking the bike up onto its stand and engaging a gearing system, he is able to use “leg-horsepower” to drive a grinding wheel and sharpen knives while “on the move”.

Peter has been at this for 2 years now and he makes about Kshs 500 ( app. 10 US$) a day by riding his mobile workshop from client to client sharpening all their knives as he goes. The grinding stone he uses has lasted an astounding 2 years and he has had to replace his drive belt a couple of times but that is as simple as cutting up a long strip of rubber from an old car or bicycle tire inner tube.

Reader comment: Mauro says,

Xeni, when I was growing up in Brazil, that's exactly how you would get your knives and scissors sharpened... the guy on a bicycle like that would ride around through your neighborhood every now and then, blowing on a kind of whistle so people would know he was coming, the housewives would get their cutlery out and go to the front of the house to flag him down as he passed by.

This profession has pretty much disappeared nowadays, though, as far as I know. It's kinda sad, I think, in a nostalgic way.

I live and work in Buenos Aires. Every week or so, the man with the knife sharpening bicycle makes his pass on my street. Similar to Mauro's description, my sharpener blows on a blue plastic pan flute as he goes down the street. He consistently blows the same tune as he approaches, I imagine it's his signature tune. If I work from home one day and get lucky, perhaps I'll hear him, run out with my knives, and get the full experience.

There are a lot of reasons I love living here, but the fact that things like this still exist is one of them.

Thanks for the blog.

The same technology is used in Mexico, these guys are called "afiladores" which means sharpeners.

They would ride around neighbourhoods on their bikes, making a peculiar and easily recognizable whistle with some sort of flute. Any housekeeper who would have cutting tools in need of sharpening would come out and ask to have them sharpened for a low price.

On a silly note, there are other ways of sharpening your tools, like these guys on the SUV demonstrate: video link.

There's a fellow named Chuck that lives at the end of Zion Road in Gambier, OH. He's crazy about bikes... loves building recumbent chop-jobs, including a tandem recumbent for him and his wife. Anyway, I went over to his place one day to see about getting a spoke replaced, and I saw this most peculiar contraption... the bike powered belt sander... a stationary recumbent bike with that powers a sander at arms-reach. He uses the sander to take broken pieces of mirror and fashion them into rear-view mirrors to clip on bike helmets, among other things. A lot of people around here say that he invented the clip-on mirror. I choose to take that statement at face value.

I'm 40 and have lived all my life in Dublin, Ireland. When I was a very young girl I remember an old man coming round to offer the exact same knife sharpening service with the same bicycle contraption. I distinctly remember bringing him out a glass of water because my Mam asked me too. It was a hot afternoon. Unfortunately, I also remember that he didn't do a very good job - something I only found out much later in life.

Similar bicycle-bound knife sharpeners are quite common in Indian cities and villages. Such devices serve a dual purpose as it is both the equipment as well as a mode of transportation. There are variations of it in different regions of the country. In the hilly regions where cycling is not possible, the contraption is modified so that it can be easily carried on the head or shoulders.

In Australia we have our own knife sharpener... (well, some time ago, the actual 'trailer' is now in our national museum). It's the Saw doctor's wagon. Some pics and info here: Link. From memory it's about 30ft long and was pulled by a ute (Australian pickup truck).

In the flesh it's quite amazing, with different options for saws, knifes, kitchen blades, machetes, sissors, really anything with a blade. If anyone is in Canberra it's worth the visit.

I have seen the same things in Mumbai (Bombay), India, the city where I grew up. These things existed as recently as three years ago, but I have been in the US ever since and I dont know if those guys are still around. These guys often sell their owns knives that have been sharpened on the bicycle. I have used those knives and while the blade is somewhat flexible and can be bent by hand, the edge is pretty sharp, and it is very effective in cutting vegetables.

Bollywood has the best paean to these knifey heroes in Jaya Bhaduri's knife-sharpener cameo in the 1973 hit 'Zanjeer.' Video Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:56:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: bag zen

Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:46:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pentagon "gay bomb" inspires new adult film

Military technology has inspired some of history's greatest films: Firefox, Stealth, Crimson Tide... the list is practically endless.  But never, to the best of my knowledge, has a gay porn house dared to plat in this arena, strived to go head to head with these timeless classics.  Friends, I can now report that this imbalance has been rectified:

Following the controversial political parody of Gaytanamo, released to huge critical acclaim earlier this year, New York'€™s most filthy-fun gay film studio Dark Alley Media today announced plans to kick the US Government while it'€™s down.

Gay Bomb will take us into the future and the year 2012. George the Second has refused to step down as leader of the €œfree world,€ and the nations of Europe have banded together to fight the new American military dictatorship.

Desperate to fend off its attackers, the US launches the experimental gay bomb, designed to make the enemy forces drop their guns and turn fag.

But the winds of fate blow in a different direction, and soon America is brought to its knees.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:36:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Feral House and Process books

They've just released a bunch of wonderful new titles. Here's a rundown of some of my favorites:

Jim Goad’s Gigantic Book of Sex, by Jim Goad

The author of the notorious ‘zine ANSWER Me!, Shit Magnet (Feral House), and the best-selling Redneck Manifesto (Simon & Schuster) lampoons every imaginable aspect of human sexuality in 224 hilarious, illustrated, full-color, R-rated pages.

Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product, by Dave Praeger

Is “The Origin of Feces” a Darwinian concern? Perhaps not, but it is the title to the preface of this tongue-in-cheek and unexpectedly revealing exploration of human behavior by the webmaster behind the popular PoopReport.com.

Mexican Pulp Art, from the Collections of Bobbette Axelrod and Ted Frankel

The lurid cover art of Mexican pulp novels is a pop culture revelation. Never before seen in an English or even Spanish-language collection are the often surreal and psychedelic images of extraterrestrials, robots, dinosaurs, dastardly killers, Zorro, Santo, and many other icons from stories involving suspense, mystery, romance and the supernatural.

Top Secret Tourism: Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases, and Other Places in the United States You’re Not Supposed to Know About, by Harry Helms

Here is the unseen America of government facilities and installations protected by a wall of secrecy, deception, and misinformation. It includes huge, isolated areas (some larger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island), along with innocuous office buildings located in the middle of major cities. This “other America” has an enormous impact on your life, but you probably have little idea of its extent, scope, and power.

American Hair Metal, by Steven Blush

There was a time -- not so long ago -- when pomp and spandex dominated MTV and pop radio playlists. American Hair Metal celebrates this orgy of flamboyance, androgyny and animal magnetism, of big-haired alpha males and the beautiful women who surrounded them. Rare photographs of the biggest bands and unsung heroes surround revealing quotes about the sex, drugs and Rock & Roll style of ‘80s American hair metal.

Guitar Army: Rock and Revolution with The MC5 and the White Panther Party, by John Sinclair

Guitar Army is the incendiary book that proclaimed “Rock and Roll is a Weapon of Cultural Revolution.” This 35th anniversary edition of Guitar Army includes two dozen previously unpublished period photographs, recent writings from John Sinclair, and an introduction from Michael Simmons. A bonus CD contains rare recordings of MC5 and other Detroit-area revolutionary bands, Allen Ginsberg, Black Panther Bobby Seale on the White Panthers, and original White Panther Party meetings.

And here a couple of upcoming books from Process and Feral House that look interesting:

The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, YaHoWha 13, and The Source Family, by Isis Aquarian and Electricity Aquarian

It was 1972, time of the cult-occult-commune explosion. By day, the Source Family served organic cuisine to John Lennon, Julie Christy, Frank Zappa and others at the famed Source restaurant. By night, in a mansion in Hollywood Hills, they explored the cosmos through the channeled wisdom of their charismatic leader, Father Yod. Father was an outlandish figure who had 14 “spiritual wives,” drove a Rolls-Royce, and fronted the rock band Ya Ho Wa 13, now considered by collectors to be one of the most singular psychedelic bands of all time.

Here are some photos of Father Yod and his commune.

The Secret King: The Myth and Reality of Nazi Occultism, by Stephen E. Flowers and Michael Moyniha

The Secret King is the first book to explode many myths surrounding the popular idea of Nazi occultism, while presenting the actual esoteric rituals used by Heinrich Himmler’s SS under the influence of rune magician Karl-Maria Wiligut, the “Secret King of Germany.”

David Pescovitz and I are going to visit with Adam and Jodi soon for an on-location podcast.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:28:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photography banned in Silver Spring, Maryland

Security guards in a Silver Springs business district are enforcing a "no photography" policy, under the false claim that the street in question is private property. The Peterson Company, which manages the buildings on this DC-area street, claims the right to protect their brand. Not to be dissuaded, photographers have contacted NowPublic contributor Bill Adler (he of sippy-cup fame) and formed a Flickr group to post photos of the area in defiance of the ban, and a protest is being scheduled by area photographers. this is the latest in the ongoing trend of private guards enforcing frivolous or nonexistent laws in the name of "security".

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Aussie mall defends its photons from terrorists
• No taking pix of San Fran building from the sidewalk?
• Photography student's odd run-in with Homeland Security
• Spy museum bans photography

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:05:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Binary marble adding machine

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:01:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool video technique demonstration

Reader comment:

Joseph says:

That technique is called slit scan. It was popular in the 60's and 70's. I was inspired to google slit scanning and came up with this: someone de-slit scanned the 2001 images. This is the artwork (he infers) that was used in the movie. Kinda neat

The technique used in this case is called Time Displacement which is a cool After Effects effect that uses colors and grayscale gradients to play different parts of a video timeline in a single frame.

Slit scan is a cool technique, but this is NOT slit scan.

Neither was it invented by Adobe; in fact it predates the original (COSA) After Effects by a good five years.

Normally it's hard to track down the exact provenance of a technique, but in this case there is absolutely no ambiguity.

It was invented by the brilliant filmmaker Zbignew Rybczynski in an experimental film called The Fourth Dimension in 1988.

I highly recommend his three DVD collections; The Fourth Dimension is contained on DVD No 2 (Steps). DVD No 1 (Media), which contains work from 1972 to 1982, is absolutely mind-blowing. Jam-packed with ideas that were so far ahead of their time that, well, some of them still are. Required viewing for anyone involved in digital/nonlinear/database/etc cinema. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:50:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chicago alderman wants drivers to run more red lights

I just posted an item in Salon about a crazy Chicago Alderman who wants to ban a new radar detector that alerts drivers to red-light cameras. He's afraid that if people can learn about upcoming cameras, they will -- you know -- stop at the red lights. And if people stop at the lights, Chicago will lose all the fine money. That's really his reason. He wants people to run through red lights so that the city doesn't lose money.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:46:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Science fiction writer Greg Bear on The Daily Show

A BB reader says, "The book is about domestic bioterrorism. The plot arose when the Department of Homeland Security about Bear and others to speak about the future of crime. Good interview." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:21:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant monkey crotch playground toy

This inflatable bouncy playground set that supposed to be a cowboy monkey perched on a tunnel looks more like a creepy monkey showing off it's engorged giant monkey crotch. Phallus or labia? You decide. the amount of children this playground toy has warped and traumatized must be staggering. It can only be seen to be believed. when I say it's a giant monkey crotch playground play toy, I really mean it.

Reader comment:

Isaac B2 says:

Seeing Mark's post about the monkey crotch reminded me of a party I went to a few weeks back with a giant inflatable train for kids to bounce in that I had to take a picture of... it looked more like a penis than anything else. All aboard!

This unfortunately shaped inflatable jungle gym contraption was spewing out children at an apple-picking farm in the Catskills a few years ago. (Animated gif of children spewing forth out of the hole)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:46:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Thrill ride severs rider's feet

A girl's feet were cut off Thursday when a free-fall thrill ride malfunctioned at the Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom Amusement Park in Louisville, Kentucky, police said.

A cord wrapped around the 16-year-old's feet and severed them at her ankles while she was on the "Superman Tower of Power," a police dispatcher said. The girl was taken to a local hospital.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:17:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sandra Kasturi's sf poetry

The Unbinding of Spirits

What frail spectres can we begin to conceive
out of darkened bedrooms and glass-blown pride?
Conjuring tongues and gin-chilled fingers relieve
us of our private hauntings, turn them inside
out upon the carpet. Can we not inspire
peace—not this hag-ridden, ghost-hackled perturb
of an existence? Give one thought to what dire
sorrows may come forth, what we may disturb?
Yet here is grief. I have been waylaid.
I am gone to frantic clutching, a raving
of words, braiSitting, steadying the tilting world; smoking, obscuring the truthsding together things unsaid,
things imagined. Mourning’s bright weaving.
From my drowning bed, dragged by tides’ rebound,
my spectral words, pulled to depths where they unsound.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:13:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Schneier TSA movie plot contest results

On June 5, I posted three semi-finalists out of the 334 comments:

* Butterflies and beverages; water must be banned.
* Dimethylmercury; security checkpoints must be banned, but of course they can't be. Oh, what to do!
* Oxy-hydrogen bomb; wires -- earphones, power cables, etc. -- must be banned.

Well, we have a winner. I can't divulge the exact formula -- because you'll all hack the system next year -- but it was a combination of my opinion, popular acclaim in blog comments, and the opinion of Tom Grant (the previous year's winner).

I present to you: Butterflies and Beverages, posted by Ron.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:03:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Adalberto Abbate's disaster-themed micro-sculptures

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:51:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cage completely immobilizes occupant

It's called the sitting cage, a cage made in the mold of the human body. Once inside the thing you can't move. Totally insane and not one for claustrophobics.

The site is semi-safe for work. No nudity or anything.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:47:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steampunk problem light

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:10:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

North American Broadcasters Association knifes NPR and PBS at the United Nations anti-podcasting treaty negotiation

This week, the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization is holding a critical debate on the "Broadcast Treaty." This treaty would establish a new copyright-like right, but whereas copyright goes to people who make creative works, Broadcast Rights go to companies that broadcast other people's copyrighted works. The Broadcast Right isn't subject to the same fair use limits as copyright, which means that even if copyright lets you record a broadcast for criticism or parody, you will need to separately get an exemption under the Broadcast Right. More gravely, if means that if you license your work under Creative Commons, the people who distribute the files or air the program can overrule your generosity and insist that your fans not copy your work.

This treaty threatens the Internet as we know it. Novel services like YouTube and novel practice like podcasting would not exist today if this treaty was already implemented.

The General Assembly of WIPO has ordered Jukka Liedes, the chairman of the relevant committee to cut this out, instructing him to oversee a much narrower treaty that will block "theft of signals" (hacking free cable or satellite), while leaving all this other business off. The chairman has gone rogue, ignoring the direction of the Assembly and producing a draft that's even worse than the previous draft.

The Chairman isn't the only one who's gone rogue, though: the National Association of Broadcasters of America has been lobbying hard all week for the treaty. One problem: PBS and NPR -- members of NABA -- oppose the treaty and have not authorized the association to lobby for this measure.

"National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service do not support a Diplomatic Conference to adopt a treaty based on the April 20, 2007 non-paper because they do not believe the treaty provides adequate protection for the fair use of broadcast and cablecast matter for newsgathering and other purposes. Bell ExpressVu does not support a Diplomatic Conference because it believes the proposed exclusive retransmission right exceeds what is necessary to prevent signal piracy or protect investment and does not contain a reservation that would permit a signatory to limit or not apply the application of the retransmission right."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:06:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dramatic Chipmunk: separated at birth?

Link to gigglesugar, where someone astutely pointed out the resemblance. (thanks, Barbara!).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:38:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lawyer to RIAA: Sue the First Twins for copyright violations!

As you will see from the attached article from today’s The Miami Herald, President George W. Bush’s daughters made him a presumably illegal compilation CD, a so-called “mix CD,” as a Father’s Day present. As the article, at http://www.miamiherald.com/692/story/142726.html states, “[President] Bush's twin daughters, gave him [as a Father’s Day present] a CD they had made for him to listen to while exercising.”

This is a serious violation of copyright. As you know, whichever of your member organizations that are right-holders for the copied musical works may be entitled to statutory damages of $150,000.00 per musical work copied.

I hope and expect that you at the RIAA will display the same vigor in prosecuting this matter and protecting the rights of your rights-holders that it has displayed in enforcing those rights against other alleged violators.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:37:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Apple uses big-handed model to "shrink" iPhone

When I viewed the new iPhone site something struck me: did Apple change the dimensions of the unit?

A quick comparison of the official Apple photos revealed they've just changed handsize.

(Wikipedia has an interesting page on forced perspective by the way)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:18:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

20 magic trick videos

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:53:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The worst of the CNN/YouTube Presidential debate videos

BoingBoing reader Destiny Land says,

YouTube joined CNN for a bold experiment -- letting YouTube users upload questions for the 2008 candidates for President. But one week in, how's it working out?

The Washington Post rounds up the best videos they could find: Link.

...but 10 Zen Monkeys found the WORST! Link.

I loved the hard-hitting questions from the audience during the Kerry/Bush debates -- but what happens if YouTube can't deliver enough good questions? In the end, couldn't this trivialize the primary process -- and the role of "citizen video-bloggers" -- rather than expand it?

What if my President was selected by MySpace? It’s the nagging concern raised when young video bloggers lob questions at the Presidential candidates. In July when the Democrats gather in Charleston, they’ll find CNN has swapped in questions that were uploaded as videos to YouTube.

At least that was the hope when the CNN/YouTube “debate” was announced. Unfortunately, no one cared about the announcement (except the commenter who added “omg the youtube guy is fucking HAWTT!!!”). Nearly a week later, YouTube has barely managed to assemble more than 50 questions to choose from. And five of them are the dogs below.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:59:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Solar beach tote charges your phone

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:38:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clay Shirky defends the Internet

This has become a motif among net-critics, whose vanguard is Andrew Keen, who wrote a sloppy, intellectually dishonest book called The Cult of the Amateur that damns the Internet for much the same reasons (Clay Shirky wrote a great response to Keen). Shirky has made a little cottage industry out of taking these people apart, writing articulate, snappy essays debunking their claims and explaining the real way that the net and expertise interact. This is highly recommended reading.

These two theories cannot both be true, so it’s odd to find them side by side, but Gorman does not seem to be comfortable with either of them as a general case. This leads to a certain schizophrenic quality to the writing. We’re told that print does not necessarily bestow authenticity and that some digital material does, but we’re also told that he consulted “authoritative printed sources” on Goya. If authenticity is an option for both printed and digital material, why does printedness matter? Would the same words on the screen be less scholarly somehow?

Gorman is adopting a historically contingent view: Revolution then was good, revolution now is bad. As a result, according to Gorman, the shift to digital and networked reproduction of information will fail unless it recapitulates the institutions and habits that have grown up around print.

Gorman’s theory about print — its capabilities ushered in an age very different from manuscript culture — is correct, and the same kind of shift is at work today. As with the transition from manuscripts to print, the new technologies offer virtues that did not previously exist, but are now an assumed and permanent part of our intellectual environment. When reproduction, distribution, and findability were all hard, as they were for the last five hundred years, we needed specialists to undertake those jobs, and we properly venerated them for the service they performed. Now those tasks are simpler, and the earlier roles have instead become obstacles to direct access.

Digital and networked production vastly increase three kinds of freedom: freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly. This perforce increases the freedom of anyone to say anything at any time. This freedom has led to an explosion in novel content, much of it mediocre, but freedom is like that. Critically, this expansion of freedom has not undermined any of the absolute advantages of expertise; the virtues of mastery remain as they were. What has happened is that the relative advantages of expertise are in precipitous decline. Experts the world over have been shocked to discover that they were consulted not as a direct result of their expertise, but often as a secondary effect — the apparatus of credentialing made finding experts easier than finding amateurs, even when the amateurs knew the same things as the experts.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:38:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fundraiser: bid to appear in an sf writer's fiction

Clarion West board member Eileen Gunn sez, "The Clarion West Writers Workshop is running an unusual fundraising auction on eBay this week, offering bidders the right to appear in stories by various science-fiction and fantasy writers: Paul Park, Eileen Gunn, Vylar Kaftan, and K. Tempest Bradford. Eight auctions are underway already and will end at some point after 9:30 p.m. PST on June 26." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:26:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

HOWTO make a toy soldier table

Update: Matthew sez, "The "toy soldier table" is very remenescent of the super-cool 'Floor' installation by Do-Ho Suh at the Indianapolis Museum of Art."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:52:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blackboard paint makes kitchen scribbly

Update: Gavin sez, "I could only be reminded of the wall I painted with magnetic paint leading into my kitchen. It's very entertaining, and it is a living scrapbook for everyone to enjoy!" Pic 1, Pic 2

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:48:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AACS key on a check

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:26:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UK rejects tourists visas for stupid reasons

The government goofballs who reject tourist visas for no good reason also delight in using confusing language to explain why tourist visas were rejected:

The provenance of the funds depicted is not evidenced allied to other financial commitments.

You have failed to complete pivotal areas of Section 6. P>I can only assess your mutual knowledge in a subjective context.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:03:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of Robin "shock" covers

There was a thread in a comic book chat room about two years ago that discussed the "Robin Corner Shock Pose" Its superbly funny. In a nutshell the late 50's and 60's Batman comics have Robin in the bottom left or right corner looking shocked at whatever is going on. This occurs on about 30 covers. Nearly exact same pose every time. Here's a link with the page showing a poster picture of the covers.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:14:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bradbury short story foreshadows airport bicyclist story

"But you haven't explained for what purpose."

"I explained; for air, and to see, and just to walk."

"Have you done this often?"

"Every night for years."

The police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly humming.

"Well, Mr. Mead," it said.

"Is that all?" he asked politely.

"Yes," said the voice. "Here." There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car sprang wide. "Get in."

"Wait a minute, I haven't done anything!"

"Get in."

Reader comment:

Nathaniel says:

On the general subject of "21st century turning out rather badly so far," I noticed that corpo-police-state super-macho riot-cop motifs, presented as dystopian in the '80s in for example "Robocop," reappeared years later in the filmed version of "I, Robot" -- as a comforting, familiar connection to the present! When Will Smith interrogates his robot suspect, the array of locked-and-loaded human SWATistas behind him don't seem to connote dystopianism but rather to remind and reassure us of the human power of self-determination and to offer a connection to our actual 21st century present reality. I thought it was interesting how culture has rotated itself around the Riot Cop as an icon, and normalized the security state.

In another, more recent and disturbing example, I just finished reading Hartwell's "Year's Best S.F. #4," from 1998, and while most of the stories in it are already dated, some surprisingly so, I was shocked at how relevant, how much MORE relevant, Swanwick's horror story "Radiant Doors" has recently become. Swanwick has seen something very important about the mass psychology of our new era, and saw it very early.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:01:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Presidential Idol video

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:51:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark interviewed on New Hampshire Public Radio

No matter how much you may know about the internet, there's always something new out there that can make your online experience better. Tonight on the Front Porch, we talk with editor, blogger and tech expert Mark Frauenfelder about all the hidden gems the web has to offer. Mark is the founder of the popular technology blog Boing Boing, and he's the author of the new book Rule the Web.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:39:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rule the Web video: Mister Dork and the Phantom iPhone

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:05:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Two cool events at Machine Project in Los Angeles

SEEING ANEW: A LECTURE BY TREVOR OAKES + RYAN OAKES
Co-hosted by The Institute For Figuring and Machine Project
7pm Sunday June 24, 2007
FREE

It is hard to believe there is anything new to be discovered about perspective drawing. But in 2004 twin artists Trevor and Ryan Oakes made a startling discovery about how to render perspectival images on the inner surface on a sphere. Their discovery is all the more intriguing in the light of recent controversy surrounding David Hockney's thesis about the use of spherical lenses in the making of perspective drawings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In their first public talk the Oakes will discuss their perspectival research and will demonstrate their unique spherical rendering technique. The lecture will include a historical account of other optical tools used to depict three-dimensional space - including the concave mirror-lens, the camera obscura, and the camera lucida - by way of introduction to their own method, which explores the interplay between the visual cortex and the human retina using pen and "concave paper."

The Institute For Figuring is a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.

Link

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

Build a Blubber Bot Robotic Blimp - Instructor Jed Berk
Saturday June 30th, 2007
10am - 4pm (w/ a break for lunch)

One-day workshop w/ materials included. $185
Enrollment is limited to 7 people.

Blubber Bots are DIY robotic species that navigate autonomously and intelligently. Blubber Bots float, dance, seek and sing. They are light-seeking helium-filled balloons that graze the landscape in search of light and cell-phone signals. If you make a call and wave your phone near a Blubber Bot, it will go into a flocking dance or sing you a special tune. They bellow sounds similar to a whale’s song and serenade you with melodies. When not being played with, they rest for awhile, awakening periodically and seeking attention.

Join us at Machine Project to build your very own Blubber Bot with inventor Jed Berk. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:59:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dramatic Chipmunk

This is the funniest 5 second internet video ever. Maybe just the funniest internet video ever. Video Link. With all that gravitas, I think he must be Mr. Romance's pet or friend. (Thanks, Kent Nichols!)

Reader comments: Paul Berger says,

The star of "Dramatic Chipmunk" appears to be a Prairie Dog (Cynomys sp.) as opposed to a chipmunk (Tamias sp.). Either a great example of cross=species casting or a call to action for chipmunk-americans to stand up for their rights. Loved the video.

And warning, some readers claim to have experienced possible malware risks at the video link above. Rob says,

using Internet Explorer (I'd rather use FF, but...) and a pop up tries to con you into installing software (and I bet its not something nice).

This one is a bit different from what I've seen before: The pop up is in the same language as the version of IE you are using (when I used a danish IE the popup was in danish, and when I used an US IE the pop up was in English).

Using FF and your are as so often before; immune.

Anyhow: You might want to warn the readers of your great blog (or the poor sods like me, forced to use IE at work, where I really should not surf BoingBoing :o) or perhaps remove the link all together.

The link you guys provided to the dramatic chipmunk (who is very splendid, but not a chipmunk - he's a prairie dog) is heaving with popups, prompts to download spyware and other nastiness. Here's a YouTube link to the same video, without the ads and popups.

I just thought you might enjoy our small friend in animated .gif form. (I didn't make it. I'm not sure who did, actually. I just found it on a message board.)

Rafael says,

Link to the "dramatic chipmunk" video but with dramatic subtitles, hilarious.

After posting the animated .gif version of the dramatic chipmunk Xeni posted earlier, forum members from my website created a number of different versions. My favorite is the one with the monocle. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:59:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chrysler's "Highway Hi-Fi Phonograph"

Back when I was working at Cutler's Records in New Haven, CT in the late (or was it mid?) 1970's my manager Barry told me about these things and how they used to sell 'em like hot cakes back in the 50's. He wasn't the kind of guy to make shit up but I still found it kinda hard to believe that you could have a record player in your car. For some odd reason I was just thinking about it and managed to google up this article.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:52:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Congress holds hearings on tech insecurity at DHS

A House Homeland Security subcommittee is holding a hearing [today] into security breaches, hacking and IT security failure at the Department of Homeland Security, that totaled more than 800 incidents in two years.

"What did you find regarding US Visit in terms of cyber security?," Logren asked. Keith A. Rhodes, the director of the Center for Technology and Engineering at the Government Accountability Office, seemed to be waiting for this one:

Security issues are pervasive. As matter of fact, i realize that there was earlier statement that our audit was a year old, but actually our audit started a year ago. As matter of fact, we curtailed our assessment since we kept getting more and more findings. If we continued to this day, we would still be finding problems. The problems are pervasive and systemic.

Actually, a lot could be fixed. Systems were out of date or misconfigured. A lot of them are zero cost fixes. I reiterate the systems are run by contractors.

"Was the US Visit database hacked?" Lofgren asked.

Rhodes hesitated and then said.

"I did not see controls in place that would prevent it and did not see defensive perimeter and detection systems in place to tell whether it had or had not been been hacked.

THREAT LEVEL needs not hestitate, since WIRED already found out through government sunshine litigation that US VISIT computers -- ostensibly not connected at all to the internet -- were hit by the Zotob virus, an infestation the government tried to cover-up.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:42:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Singing Tesla Coil: video

This is a solid-state Tesla coil. The primary runs at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range, and is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones you hear.

What's not immediately obvious in this video is how loud this is. Many people were covering their ears, dogs were barking. In the sections where the crowd is cheering and the coils is starting and stopping, you can hear the the crowd is drowned out by the coil when it's firing.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:25:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Keep Calm and Carry On: sage advice from a sane wartime government

Now you can get it on a shirt, and remember a time when governments tried to keep us safe by making us secure, instead of scaring the shit out of us. Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:08:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Batman cowl hoodie

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:05:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great moments in airline confirmation codes

BoingBoing reader Pete Mortensen says,

My co-worker Isabel O'Meara booked a flight on Southwest a week ago and ended up with the most inappropriate confirmation code ever. It's CUNNTT. Swear to god. I've seen it in person. And she just blogged it, with a scan of the receipt in question here. Amazing customer service. Amazing.

Reader comment: Glenn Fleishman says,

The CUNNTT code reminded me of an anecdote from Nathaniel Borenstein's wonderful, out-of-print book Programming As If People Mattered. In it (I paraphrase from memory), he notes how a system that he was working on that generated random sequences of letters for some file data was producing dirty words that some executives were unhappy with. A group of developers are in a conference room, thinking about generating lists of dirty words and so forth when a snot-nosed intern says, "drop the vowels, use base 30 [10 numbers plus 20 letters], and you're all set."

I used to work for a game company that made kids games for Nintendo DS. We had a cheat code system that used alpha-numeric characters, and these codes would randomly generate after each level you passed. The publisher complained that it was possible to get cuss words as codes at times.

We did the math and figured that the chances of getting a cuss word was about one in one BILLION, but in the eyes of the publisher this was too risky. So, we ended up replacing all vowels with happy faces and such. It wasn't a big deal, but it just amazed me how sensitive the game industry has gotten since the coffee-mod fiasco.

Unfortunately you can't see it clearly, but Cancun's airport code is CUN, and this is a photo of an airport vehicle painted with the code CUNT5: Link.

Back in the day... early 90's, before the interwebs was really popular, I was a travel agent, using Sabre, which is/was (I'm not sure now) American Airlines' reservation system. Those confirmation codes are more commonly known, in the industry, as record locators. Pretty much anyone on the system could retrieve anybody's record by record locator. When I was bored, I would pull up random record locators, by typing in words of the correct length (I believe they were 6 or 8 chars long) Doing this, I found a number of records in which American Airlines employees would chat in the comments fields. I joined them and made some friends that way. The way it works is you would add some comments to the bottom of a record. Then you save the record, and others would add their comments. Unfortunately, if you put your comments in there, but someone else saved before you did, you would lose your changes and get a "SIMULTANEOUS CHANGES" alert. You would then reload it to see whatever changes someone else had added. It was kind of like having a shared text file. I also found a number of records where the American Airlines employees recorded the bizarre behavior of passengers and stuff. It was a good, fun way to kill time before the advent of email and internet. Back in the olde tyme Fax era.

I work as a programmer on an airline reservation system. There is a "dirty words" list that automatically blocks most of those insulting "PNR locators" whick contain rude words. It's obvious why this one got by, since the bad word is misspelled.

Your post reminded me of the Yamaha RY9 drum machine:

It had a simple display, only five characters available for text descriptions of sounds, patterns etc. Some of the sounds were for simple metronome like duties and were called Count1, Count2 etc. I think you can guess which letter Yamaha in their infinite wisdom dropped...

Just google'd it, the manual (with sounds listed in the appendix) is available here: PDF Link.

Maybe not as good as that, but I had an AOL cd once which had the activation code: "cloaca-market". They used to use (they may still) word pairs pull from the dictionary, apparently.

Back in 2003 I made a reservation over the phone with a very friendly Delta Airlines reservation agent who had a strong Jamaican accent. I give her my details, reserved a flight, and she read me my confirmation number very clearly: "RNIGGR." Needless to say, I didn't repeat it for confirmation.

Back in 1988, I was taking a System Admin course for Prime Computers (remember them?)

The lady who sat next to me was a very outspoken, funny, and very fat woman. At one point the instructor was showing us the automatic password generator - he walked out the room for a moment, and us students were amusing ourselves, generating random words.

At one point, the woman next to me started laughing hysterically. I looked over, and saw the password that had been generated for her.

The password was 'FAT'

She composed herself to normal, and had lots of fun complaining to the the instructor about how their computers had personally insulted her.

Your post reminded me of a the hoops we had to go through to deal with obscene/naughty words in the spell checker of a now defunct word processor app.

There were two real-world scenarios our team heard about: First, a high school principal who misspelled "high school principal" in a school newsletter and got the suggestion "asshole principal"; second, a young girl named Ashley, whose own name was not in our dictionary and so the spell checker suggested "Asshole". Both the principal and Ashley's parents sent irate comments to our support staff.

As we were working on a major rev of the product, we decided to tackle this issue. The first first solution was to just remove all the "bad" words from the main dictionaries. Of course, this meant that a document with correctly spelled obscene words (we envisioned Norman Mailer using our product) would have all of those flagged, which was deemed a poor alternative result, not to mention potentially forcing our users to fill their custom dictionaries with all those words. After much thought and debated, we finally decided on tweaking the spell checker code so that we could give it a list of words that it would never offer as suggestions. Therefore, the spell checker would properly ignore "asshole" as being correctly spelled, while "ashole/asshol/Ashley" would be flagged as as misspellings, but the suggestions would never include "asshole" itself.

After congratulating ourselves on solving the problem, we suddenly realized that we had to create the "correctly spelled obscenity" list, which were sent around the internal email system for review for completeness, appropriateness and much amusement. We had to decide whether words like "asswipe" or "shitfaced" should be included, or does the program only know the hyphenated versions. We had to deal with transatlantic slang: "fanny" and "bloody" in the UK vs. "fag" and "pissed" in the US. Then, our poor, internationalization team had to create localized lists of "bad" words for the 14 Roman based languages (including the two main variants each of Portuguese and Spanish).

I wonder if the airlines people didn't have an inkling of the how much work it'd take to avoid generating "CUNNTT" and decided that it was much easier (and cheaper) to apologize to offended passengers (and maybe offer a voucher).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:01:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Greg Benford and Paul Park in San Fran next Mon

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:00:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Which countries' GDPs are comparable to US states'?

Update:Barry points to the original source of the map.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:58:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mr. Romance

Reader comment: Shannon says,

Just a heads up: the incredibly kick-ass music from the "Mr. Romance" Flash animation you posted is from the equally kick-ass Evil Dead sequel, Army of Darkness.

thank you so much for posting siege's link to mr. romance's flash site. sitting at work (i'm at a computer all day) i thought, "there HAS to be more mr. romance to go around." and then i found his myspace page. YES! this page also has some smooth r&b performed by mr. dunbar himself.

There is a reason that Mr Romance soundtrack is so good - the opening motif is blatantly ripped off from Bernard Herrmann's legendary score for Cape Fear (used for both the 1962 and 1991 versions). Compare: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:26:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Antibacterial products may be bad news

Unlike (soap and other) traditional cleaners, antibacterial products leave surface residues, creating conditions that may foster the development of resistant bacteria, Levy notes. For example, after spraying and wiping an antibacterial cleaner over a kitchen counter, active chemicals linger behind and continue to kill bacteria, but not necessarily all of them.

When a bacterial population is placed under a stressor—such as an antibacterial chemical—a small subpopulation armed with special defense mechanisms can develop. These lineages survive and reproduce as their weaker relatives perish. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is the governing maxim here, as antibacterial chemicals select for bacteria that endure their presence...

As bacteria develop a tolerance for these compounds there is potential for also developing a tolerance for certain antibiotics.

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:21:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fashion show promises bioluminescent mechanic cephalopods

Welp, this might prove to be interesting, or it might suck, I do not know. Fashion brand Diesel will webcast a runway show live from Florence tomorrow night, featuring "a futuristic world of bioluminescence, giant mechanic cephalopods, futuristic aquanauts, and mysterious galactic polips." Oh, how you tease us with the couture galactipolyps! Program starts at 930pm CET on June 21. Link, via Show Studio. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:21:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Deconstructing Vanity Fair's "Africa" issue

And here's an excerpt from another recent post by Ethan which explores, among other things, the current Africa-themed issue of Vanity Fair:

In his video interview about the issue, [Vanity Fair guest editor] Bono tells us what these twenty people had in common: “They’re passionate about Africa.” And most of them have highly recognizable faces, which never hurts when you’re trying to sell a glossy magazine to society matrons in Iowa. As Bono says, he was trying to “bring some sex appeal to wanting to change the world.” Well, Somali supermodel Iman helps with her attempts to climb out of her dress. And I do suspect that it would have been interesting to listen in on some of the conversations “depicted” on the cover - what do Chris Rock and Warren Buffett say to each other at a joint photo shoot anyway?

The message of the cover is that Africa is important and sexy because important and sexy people care about it and are willing to lend their “talent” and celebrity appeal to the “cause”. This tends to piss off my friends who are begging the world to think of Africa less as a cause and more as a continent, particularly as a continent open for business. How hard would it have been for Vanity Fair to pair some of these well-meaning celebrities with actual Africans working to build businesses, repair hospitals and save forests? Put Corniele Ewango on the cover and let Brad Pitt look up to him, an actual superhero, someone who has risked his life numerous times to preserve the forests of the eastern DRC. Put Madonna on the cover with William Kamkwamba, the remarkable Malawian youth who built a windmill to power his family’s house. (Wait, scratch that - she’d probably adopt him.)

Or throw this photo on the cover - here’s Bono talking to some of the young entrepreneurs that George Ayittey terms “the Cheetah Generation”. In the straw hat and badass shirt is Eric Osiakwan, one of the very fastest of the cheetahs, a young innovator who’s worked extremely hard to ensure that the submarine cables that connect the African internet to the North will actually bring down the cost of connectivity on the continent. Vanity Fair isn’t going to make Condoleeza Rice any more famous, but it would probably help Eric get more attention for his work.

But that’s not the point of the issue, as the table of contents makes clear. Genocide in Darfur, AIDS in Rwanda, Jeff Sachs’s attempt to raise $200 billion to transform villages, Madonna in Malawi. The only story in the online table of contents remotely connected to entrepreneurship is a slideshow about the airlines that serve as transport infrastructure for the DRC. It’s possible - and quite likely - that some of these stories are excellent and worth reading. But the overall picture is the one that so many Africans find themselves fighting - Africa as basket case.

Previously on BoingBoing:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:09:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creep's threats shut down library reading program

The Pickens County Library System’s half-hour summer programs for middle and high school students were supposed to take a light-hearted look at the topics "Secrets and Spies: How to Keep a Secret by Writing in Code or Making Invisible Ink" and "What’s Your Sign?" Another program was to examine astrology, palmistry, and numerology; and others were to feature tarot cards, tie-dying t-shirts, how to make a Zen garden, and yoga.

Now the programs are cancelled in the wake of phone and e-mail threats from the community, believed to emanate from a single local Baptist church. The astrology program was labeled as "witchcraft" by callers, while the Zen garden and yoga programs were objected to as "promoting other religions." The t-shirts workshop? "Promotes the hippie culture and drug use," callers said.

"If you have an anonymous call of a bomb, what do you do?" asks Library Director Marguerite Keenan, explaining her decision to cancel the YA programs. "You clear the building, you close the building for the protection of the children. And that’s hugely sad."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:32:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Microsoft makes competing apps slow on purpose?

Microsoft initially dismissed the allegations, saying regulators had reviewed the program before Vista launched. However, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said in an interview last week that the company was willing to make changes if necessary.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:29:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SETI observatory to come online

In the Cascade Mountains of northern California, within sight of Mt. Shasta’s snow-topped, 14,000-foot peak, lies the high valley of Hat Creek, where they say the fishing is good. People come here in the summer for a little R&R among the tall trees, away from modern technology and its discontents. Strange, then, that the valley should also be home to one of the most futuristic projects on the planet—the Allen Telescope Array, the first radio observatory built expressly for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The late physicist Philip Morrison, one of the founding fathers of SETI, called the search “the archaeology of the future,” an attempt to learn whether civilizations more advanced than ours exist. Some might call that possibility unlikely. Then again, so may be the long-term survival of humanity. And we still hold hope in that. On this warm day in March, Jill Tarter is sitting at a desktop computer, studying sensitivity data from telescope 2H as it pans slowly across the sky. Outside, visible through the glass doors of this modest office/utility building, are 42 identical dish telescopes, each the size of an apple tree. Only 2H is moving. The orchard’s pattern appears random, with dishes facing all directions. In fact, the arrangement is as random as a computer program can make it.

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:58:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars AT-AT stroller mod

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:30:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Livio De Marchi's wooden Ferrari and other sculptures

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:07:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rule the Web show: David Moldawer, Wednesday, June 20, 2pm Pacific

David is an assistant editor at St. Martin’s Press and the host of one of my favorite podcasts, "Moldawer in the Morning," a rogue punditry program, and a co-host of the "Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas," a podcast about classic science fiction books, television shows, and movies.

To listen to my show, visit BlogTalkRadio at 2pm Pacific Time and call David and me at (646) 915-8698. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:49:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robert Williams line of Vans sneakers

How long have you been wearing Vans?
I've been wearing Vans since about 1970 or '71. I just needed some funky sneakers so I wouldn't wear out my good shoes. Vans was kind of on the hip horizon and they were inexpensive. And at the time you could bring in a swatch of fabric and they would make shoes for you. I thought "What could be more California?" I was running around with surfers and what not, and Vans was the thing to wear.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:39:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Titanic lamp

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:03:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fix the FCC or die

Many Americans don’t have a choice of highspeed providers, and, as Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, Free Press, Media Access Project, and U.S. Public Interest Group recently told the FCC, “Americans pay 10 to 20 times as much [as people do in other countries] for far less service.” The duopoly is something like Shamu and Godzilla on hire for televised wrestling – giant beasts gently swatting at one another for the cameras. They aren’t competing, these giants. There is a clear failure in the market for highspeed internet access in this country...

Many other countries have taken a hard look at their communications policy and have understood that communications and economic growth are tightly intertwined. Economic growth is driven by new ideas creating ever-newer goods and services and new ways of making a living. We have never had an interactive communications platform like the internet before – it’s capable of producing enormously diverse ideas (in the form of new niches, new roles, and new understandings of information) and allowing them to be disseminated on a large scale. Universal highspeed access to the internet could trigger crucial economic growth that would benefit U.S. society as a whole.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:24:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zombie by mail - made to order

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

UK Open Rights Group report: evoting can't be trusted

Becky Hogge, ORG's executive director, says:

ORG is releasing its report into the UK 3 May elections today, where both England and Scotland made heavy use of new electronic voting and counting technologies.

Our report represents observations of 25 volunteer election observers - some of whom count being national experts in computer security and usability as their day jobs.

Our conclusion is that we can have no confidence in the results declared for the ares we observed. We'll be delivering our findings to a roomful of MPs tonight in Westminster.

(Disclosure: I am proud to have co-founded the Open Rights Group, and I presently serve on its advisory board)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:50:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DRM-free EMI music outselling lockware

Since EMI ditched the DRM on iTunes it has seen sales of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon increase by between 272 and 350 percent...

According to Bloomberg, digital sales for other DRM free music increased by between 17 to 24 per cent. OK Go's Oh No increased 77 per cent. Coldplay's A Rush Of Blood To The Head jumped 115 per cent.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:45:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Telly Salvalas sings to a giant floating head

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:27:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Werewolf Specimen and Hunting Kit

Alex CF, who did the amazing "Lovecraftian Specimen Jars" in my Wired Steampunk piece, has a new piece up for auction on eBay UK. It's a seriously cool Werewolf Research Kit, complete with an albino lycanthrope foetus in a jar, handwritten notes and drawings, other forensic samples, and some silver bullets to have on hand, just in case.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:29:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Surreal video for Arkansas seafood buffet

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:25:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wheat field as software

The German programmer, Bernd Hopfengärtner, wrote in Semacode, a type of visual code that contains "machine readable information" that can be used to graphically encode web-links. Since the code is visual, Ben was able to take a picture of his 160 square meter programming artwork from an airplane and have a machine read the code to output the words "Hello, World!"

Update: Nicolas sez, "It's not Semacode, but Data Matrix. All the Semacode company does is offer an SDK that will encode a URL into a data matrix label. Reading Semacode's website, they go out of their way to hide the fact that they use Data Matrix and that they didn't invent it, nor do they own it, nor that anyone can create it."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:33:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Massive margarita mixer

This past weekend, my wife and I attended a family wedding for one of her cousins. My wife's uncle (and the father of the groom) is a bit of a tinkerer and a prankster. We also suspect he's slightly crazy, but that's beside the point.

When you've got a small-block 400, a trailer, assorted parts and the ability to custom fabricate a 6-inch tall replica of a blender blade out of stainless steel, what do you do with your spare time?

Make the world's fastest margarita machine.

Update: Autumn sez, "I thought you might want to tell folks in the SF bay area that tomorrow (Wed 6/20) there's a class at the TechShop on making a DIY Margarita Machine that still has lots of seats left open."

Update 2: Brett sez, "Here's the Flickr set of that wonderful machine."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:30:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crazed freeway interchanges

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:26:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lessig switches from copyright to corruption

Larry has posted an expanded piece about this to his blog, explaining his decision to move on after ten years. He suggests that the open Internet and a culture of sharing and remix will make it easier to fight the bigger problem of corruption.

Lessig inspired me -- his writing and work changed my life forever, and I'm not the only one. It's amazing to see him moving on to tackle this new issue. I'm looking forward to following where he leads.

From a public policy perspective, the question of extending existing copyright terms is, as Milton Friedman put it, a "no brainer." As the Gowers Commission concluded in Britain, a government should never extend an existing copyright term. No public regarding justification could justify the extraordinary deadweight loss that such extensions impose.

Yet governments continue to push ahead with this idiot idea -- both Britain and Japan for example are considering extending existing terms. Why?

The answer is a kind of corruption of the political process. Or better, a "corruption" of the political process. I don't mean corruption in the simple sense of bribery. I mean "corruption" in the sense that the system is so queered by the influence of money that it can't even get an issue as simple and clear as term extension right. Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide. In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars.

The point of course is not new. Indeed, the fear of factions is as old as the Republic. There are thousands who are doing amazing work to make clear just how corrupt this system has become. There have been scores of solutions proposed. This is not a field lacking in good work, or in people who can do this work well.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:24:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

We-Fi, collaborative open WiFi mapping

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:16:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

An exquisite popsicle that puts all other ice cream bars to shame

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Popsicle parody ad
• Turtle popsicle reflects pride in workmanship
• Bugs Bunny popsicle
• Tweety Bird popsicle doesn't look like Tweety Bird
• Ice cream patent wars in the 1930s
• Expertly produced Korean red bean ice cream fish
• Ice cream treat resembles heinous murderer

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:31:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Last photographs from Iraq

A first-person essay by photographer Ashley Gilbertson, whose work from Iraq has appeared in the New York Times:

I didn’t want to go back. When I began reporting from Iraq in 2002, I was still a wild and somewhat naïve twenty-four-year-old kid. Five years later, I was battle-weary. I had been there longer than the American military and had kept returning long after most members of the “coalition of the willing” had pulled out. Iraq had become my initiation, my rite of passage, but instead of granting me a new sense of myself and a new identity, Iraq had become my identity. Without Iraq, I was nothing. Just another photographer hanging around New York. In Iraq, I had a purpose, a mission; I felt important. I didn’t want to go back, but I needed to—and for the worst possible reason: I wasn’t ready for it to end. After twelve months away, I had a craving that only Iraq could satisfy.

Gilbertson has a book coming out soon -- Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, "A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War." Here's a recent radio interview on NPR's "Fresh Air."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:23:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Furries and an Escalade (video)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:10:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

eBaywatch: Playboy "Big Bunny" DC-9 stuff from 1970

Whoah, much badness of ass in this eBay auction, spotted by Fleshbot -- sexy avionics kitschery from Hugh Hefner's 1970 "Big Bunny" DC-9 aircraft:

Described in press materials at the time of its inaugural flight as "Hef's sky-high hutch" and "a floating bachelor pad", the "Big Bunny" was the ultimate in sexy jet-set fabulosity ... and now you have a chance to own the actual fiberglass panels from the original model of Hef's private quarters on the plane as well as a pile of ephemera related to the project (even if you'll have to go to London to pick them up if you're the lucky high bidder).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:03:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Deconstructing scammy junkmail

I got this piece of junk mail today ["A Message From The Administrative Offices of The Billing Audit Bureau"] that I thought was pretty funny. It came from The Administrative Offices of The Billing Audit Bureau. In reality, it's from some publishing house in Denver, Co who won't leave me alone and let my subscription to their Inside Photoshop magazine expire. I almost don't want to call them because they keep getting more and more inventive with their junk mail.

I guess as long as they keep sending me them, I'll keep reading them. And as long as they are not invoices, I'll keep not paying them.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:52:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Josh Wolf on Colbert Report

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Free Josh Wolf: update on jailed San Francisco video-blogger
• Josh Wolf remains in jail, dad starts "nonstop" vigil
• Vlogger Josh Wolf breaks jail time record for subpoena refusal
• Videoblogger Josh Wolf returns to prison today
• Court rejects Josh Wolf's appeal, return to prison possible
• Josh Wolf released on bail from SF Bay Area jail

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:01:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Profile and videos of New Hampshire tax protester

A standoff [is] brewing in New Hampshire where tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown have barricaded themselves in what has been described as a “fortress-like compound” after they were convicted of refusing to pay income tax to the federal government earlier this year. In recent days their phone, power and internet have been cut off and camouflaged SWAT teams, helicopters, armored vehicles and possibly combat robots have descended on this formerly quiet area. Supporters of the Browns have also flocked to the compound and Ed “is armed and has promised a Waco like ending … he will not be taken alive.”

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:42:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to spend $1.13 mailing a letter that should be 41 cents

I thought you'd get a kick out of the ridiculousness that is the United States Postal "Service." I'm getting married at the end of the summer and am using a lovely red No 10 standard size envelope. The problem is that I decide to get funky. Instead of addressing the envelopes normally, I decided to orient the envelope vertically and put the stamp at the top (what would be the lower right-hand corner in a normal horizontal envelope).

Since the envelope is still the same size, I mistakenly thought that the postage would be 41 cents. Oh how I was wrong! My invitations all came back to me asking for 17 more cents. I brought them back to the post office, where the surprisingly friendly staff explained that since the simple act of spinning my envelope 90 degrees increased my postage to 58 cents. So I bought the extra stamps and sent the invitations on their merry way. Friends emailed and called to say they received their invites. All but one, that is, because one invitation was returned to me AGAIN. This time the post office was asking for 22 more cents.

So I returned to the post office and was told that the previous post office employee who told me that the envelopes were 58 cents was wrong. And the postal employee who thought that the envelope should’ve been 80 cents and returned it to me again was also wrong. Instead the envelope should be $1.13 and I owed 55 more cents to mail the letter. Apparently, I was lucky that the other 47 invitations were mailed out and delivered in a timely fashion. They all should’ve been $1.13, not 58 cents.

When I asked the postal employee how I could insure that any of my other letters would be delivered if no one seemed to know the correct postage she didn’t have a good answer for me.

Reader comment:

Michael says:

I work in a post office, so I think I can clear up some of this, but mind you this is off the top of my head.

We have a template that shows the acceptable fraction of height to width for a standard 41 cent letter. Now, while you might think it would be the same either way, remember what has to read this: Machines. If it doesn't fit the template, it won't fit through the machine correctly, and has to be sorted differently. 58 cents is the postage for an oversize envelope (Or one that is 1-2 ounces.)

Now where do the other numbers come in? I couldn't explain the 80 cents, because it is not a common charge, but $1.13 sounds like it was mailed as a "flat," which is in line with most sheet-sized manila envelopes, because it failed one of the maximum dimensions for a letter, namely the height. The first group sent back probably occurred when they were loading letters into the machine scanner, while the last one may have simply been a random occurrence of over-zealous postmaster.

What can you do to prevent this in the future? Well, obviously, not do this again, believe me, its a hassle for the postal employees too... we're not just out to get you! But other than that, mail them at the post office. They can tell you exactly if anything is wrong with the postage, and also you might get a lenient or simply nice one who will postmark it before accepting it, which effectively states that this envelope is OKed. You might have some luck, or you might get someone explaining the same thing I did and require you to pay more.

Good luck!

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:31:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bicyclist's account of getting tased by cops at Minneapolis St Paul international airport

I stated again, 'You are being rude to me and I want to speak to your supervisor'. Officer Wingate then said, 'Look, you're wasting our time. We were on a call to the Humphrey Terminal for a runaway teenage girl, and we would have been there by now.' I completely agreed that it was a waste of time for everybody. I noted that I was not being cited for any violation, nor told any statute that I had violated. I explained that I would follow the first and most reasonable, safety-wise, of the conflicting orders given to me, and then said 'I'm going to wish you both a good evening, and hope the rest of it goes better than this has gone.' I then got on my bike and began to leave.

I was instantly and with absolutely no verbal warning whatsoever attacked from behind and thrown to the ground. I received wounds to chin and arm. The impact put a new casing crack on my helmet. My glasses were thrown off by the impact and bounced several feet away. The bicycle continued to roll forwards a few feet, coming to a stop in the center of the road. (A gold van would later have to stop, because the bike was crumpled in the middle of the one lane road.) Officer Wingate then came up behind me and jerked me up into a standing position. I then heard him yell an order to Officer Bryant -- 'Shoot him!'. Officer Bryant then shot me with the taser. I fell uncontrolled to the pavement for the second time, experiencing the full force of a weapon that can only be considered barbaric.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:25:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Printers lie about empty carts

The study by TÜV Rheinland looked at inkjet efficiency across multiple brands, including Epson (who commissioned the study), Lexmark, Canon, HP, Kodak, and Brother. They studied the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges. Espon's printers were among the highest rated, at more than 80 percent efficiency using single-ink cartridges. Kodak's Easyhare 5300 was panned as the worst printer tested, wasting 64 percent of its ink in tests. TÜV Rheinland measured cartridge weights before and after use, stopping use when printers reported that they were out of ink.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:55:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Email gets fourth amendment protection again

In a tremendous victory for privacy rights, the US 6th circuit court has restored the power of 4th amendment protection to emails stored on a remote host like an ISP or Webmail, striking down sections of the Stored Communications Act which have been routinely used to grab emails without a warrant.

The court agreed with an amicus brief filed by EFF attorney Kevin Bankston that people did have a reasonable expectation of privacy on their emails even when not stored on their home systems. This decision will make life far easier for users, and for operators of hosted email services like Google's Gmail.

The irony is that the brief was written by the same Kevin Bankston reported last week in Boing Boing who got such a runaround from Google over a request to pull his face from Google Street View.

Update: EFF's Kevin Bankston adds, "You should point out that the amicus effort in Warshak was a joint one--our cosigners ACLU (special thanks to Catherine Crump) and CDT (special thanks to Jim Dempsey) played a key part in creating our amicus brief, as did my colleague at EFF, Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. Credit is also due to law professors Susan Freiwald and Patricia Bellia who also wrote an amicus brief--signed on to by an impressive coalition of professors--that the court relied on very heavily. Finally and of course, credit goes to Mr. Warshak's counsel Martin Weinberg, who brought the case and successfully argued it in front of both the district court and the appeals court."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:50:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video games hidden in the grooves of LPs

A gigantic step up from encoded text files were actual games included in the grooves of records. In 1984, The Thompson Twins released 'The Thompson Twins Adventure Game' in both regular vinyl and flexi disc formats.

This one has survived the ravages of time and is available for download online. You can play it in your web browser by clicking this link. The game is a bizarre text-based adventure in which you guide the Thompson Twins around a land of beaches and caves. If you didn't grow up playing these games, in which you have to keep a map on paper and guess which key verbs the programmers used for certain actions, you may find it a bit frustrating. I poked around a little, but I haven't played it enough to see how it ends. If you go north from the first screen, the Thompson Twins drown en masse. As always, the British say it best: "And, what a surprise, having deafened my family recording it onto tape on our dodgy stereo, when the game finally worked, it was crap. Bloody stupid Eighties floppy haired innumerate Chesterfield talentless ponces."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:47:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

World's worst currencies

I bought some 100,000,000 Dinar notes in Serbia last week with Nicola Tesla on them -- I think I paid about $1 for the note, and apparently, this is the highest value that note ever had.

Zimbabwe
Currency: Zimbabwean dollar (ZWD)
Inflation rate: 3,714 percent and rising
Exchange rate: Officially, 250 ZWD per US$1; unofficially, as high as 750 ZWD to the U.S. dollar

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:41:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, June 18, 2007

Comic gems: tragi-condom-edy, and the golden age of nukes

Fringe comix archivist Ethan Persoff has just scanned and posted two new mindblowingly awesome classics:

(1) Condoms and the Pill, 1956/1962 Planned Parenthood comic on Birth Control. Features a women so terrified at the thought of having a fourth baby she won't even let her husband KISS her. The husband gets so starved for sex he can't concentrate and jams his hand into heavy machinery at the plant! Amazing time capsule showing US views toward condoms and other birth control to be still heavily stigmatized as late as 1962. [Ed. Note: Boy, good thing all THAT's changed!]

Contains my favorite single comic panel seen in some time: JPEG Link (shown above). Be sure to stick around for the Malaysian version.

(2) POWER FOR PROGRESS (1972) -- Nuclear Power Plant Comic Book. Further description is not necessary here.

Previous BB posts about Ethan Persoff's archives: Link.

Reader comment: Josh Moulds says,

I enjoyed Xeni's post linking to Ethan Persoff's blog showcasing some of the outrageous attitudes towards birth control and the associated "abstinence programs" advocated by conservative groups.

I couldn't help but be reminded of this not-quite-so recent article in the Onion. Whilst BoingBoing is probably above simply linking to Onion articles, I thought you may appreciate the satire aimed at proponents of such archaic schools of thought still exercised by people today.

Link

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

Record company EULAs were abusive before 1909!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:08:51 PM permalink