posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:41:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Drunk Astronaut Hall of Fame: Tintin's Capt. Haddock did it first.

BoingBoing reader Ehsan writes in with a correction to this previous BoingBoing post:

You guys made a mistake about naming Homer Simpson a pioneer of "drunk astronauts". Captain Haddock of the Tin Tin series was drunk and flying in space in 1954. Give him some credit! This link is to a scan of page 5 of the TinTin book "Explorers on the Moon" (1976), showing Haddock calling his flying whisky bubble back into his glass.

Previously:

Reader comment: Julian Bond says,

Destination Moon was first published 1950-53. Well before 1976. So even more amazingly prescient. I suspect if you go back to Jules Verne and From the Earth to the Moon the protagonists took a fine sherry or perhaps some claret with them, but I guess that's not quite the same!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:32:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FCC wireless auction ruling: mixed bag for open access advocates

The agency voted to approve rules for an auction of broadcast spectrum that the F.C.C. chairman, Kevin J. Martin, had said would promote new consumer services. The F.C.C. rules will allow customers to use whatever phone and software they want on networks using about one-third of the spectrum to be auctioned.

The F.C.C. did not approve a provision that would have required the winner of the auction to sell access to its network on a wholesale basis to other companies.

In recent weeks Google and other technology interests pressed the commission to create an open-access wireless network — in contrast to today’s closed cellular networks — and to allow owners of the spectrum to sell portions of it wholesale to other companies. That would loosen the carriers’ grip on service offerings and might also open the door to new entrants like Google.

In the model proposed by Google and new entrants to the market, consumers would be able to buy a wireless phone at a store, but instead of being forced to use a specific carrier, they would be free to pick any carrier. Moreover, instead of wireless carriers’ choosing what software goes on their phones, users would be free to put any software they want on them.

"What this means is we won't likely have new companies enter the wireless market -- we'll be stuck with AT&T and Verizon," writes Farhad Manjoo of Salon.com. His blog post about the ruling is here.

More analysis around the web: Ars Technica, Google's Public Policy Blog, Glenn Fleishman, O'Reilly Emerging Telephony, Public Knowledge.

Previously on BoingBoing:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:26:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rule the Web podcast canceled for today

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:07:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

James Fallows at electronics market in ShenZhen

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

Odd fetish toy: Pussy Foot

Pussy Foot is the ultimate fantasy sex toy for foot fetishists. This size 6, 100% silicone foot is cast in pure silicone from a real life actual, beautiful female foot. In the sole of this lovely foot is a fully functional and totally f***-able silicone vagina.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:08:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A surreal and supremely inane compendium of miscellaneous knowledge, Vol 6

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:59:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guns on robots

SWORDS is designed to take on “high risk combat missions,” according to an Army statement. A specialist controlling the robot could send it into a potentially dangerous situation, such as a narrow street infested with snipers, seek targets and take them out before a foot patrol follows.

Reader comment:

Pete says:

Sounds fine to me...so long as it doesn't wind up being like that Star Trek episode in which the wars were simulated in computers, and then the projected casualties were enforced on real people.

I don't have any web link to corroborate the story, but you might find it amusing anyway.

In response to robots like the Talon and PackBot used to disarm road-side bombs, insurgents decided robotics couldn't be that hard. They strapped an artillery-shell bomb to a cart, and powered it with parts from a window-mounted air-conditioner. They aimed it at a bomb-disposal team, let it go, and without any navigation or sensing it promptly crashed into a ditch. As everyone at iRobot knows, making robots is hard!

According to the Washington Post, Soldiers tend to get very attached to their robots.

Interesting and slightly creepy that SWORD was the name of the *fictional* autonomous weapon system that runs amok (in classic robot-rebellion fashion) in the Peter Weller movie "Screamers," based on Phillip Dick's "Second Variety." Life imitates art in a particularly ominous way.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:29:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beer in space

Graduate student Kirsten Sterrett at the University of Colorado in the US wrote a thesis on fermentation in space, with support from US beer behemoth Coors. She sent a miniature brewing kit into orbit aboard a space shuttle several years ago and produced a few sips of beer. She later sampled the space brew, but because of chemicals in and near it from her analysis, it didn't taste great by the time she tried it...

Unfortunately for thirsty astronauts, beer is poorly suited to space consumption because of the gas it includes. Without gravity to draw liquids to the bottoms of their stomachs, leaving gases at the top, astronauts tend to produce wet burps.

"That's one of the reasons why we don't have carbonated beverages on the space menu," NASA spokesperson William Jeffs told New Scientist.

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:19:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rule the Web show: Richard Giles, CANCELED

To listen to the show, visit BlogTalkRadio at 4pm Pacific Time today a time and date to be announced. If you want to ask Richard or me a question during the show, call us at (646) 915-8698. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:16:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NY Public Library giving away free public domain books-on-demand

Library users will have the opportunity to print free copies of such public domain classics as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville, “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake, as well as appropriately themed in-copyright titles as Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” and Jason Epstein’s own “Book Business.” The public domain titles were provided by the Open Content Alliance (“OCA”), a non-profit organization with a database of over 200,000 titles. The OCA and ODB are working closely to offer this digital content free of charge to libraries across the country. Both organizations have received partial funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The EBM, now available for sale to libraries and retailers, can potentially allow readers anywhere to obtain within minutes, almost any book title in any language, whether or not the book is in print. The EBM’s proprietary software transmits a digital file to the book machine, which automatically prints, binds, and trims the reader’s selection within minutes as a single, library-quality, paperback book, indistinguishable from the factory-made title.

Update: Gayle Snible from the NYPL sez, "The Espresso machine at the Library is printing 20 (only one 0!) for this trial run. The 200,000 is the high range that an Espresso machine would print...somewhere else."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:29:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF privacy attorney gets pranked by interns and LOLCats

See also:
EFF privacy attorney is a magnet for privacy invading street-searches
Schroedinger's LOLCat
Pedantic overanalysis of LOLcats not pedantic enough, says blowhard

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Archie becomes tool for the RIAA

Abhishek says:

Seems the RIAA has got to Archie too! The very first story in Archie #577 (September 2007) is a cautionary tale for kiddies called "Record Breaker" wherein all those leechers (and wannabe leecher kids) out there are taught that they're the ones responsible for driving their favorite artists into penury and worse perhaps.

Seems no-one informed them about Prince's business model and how he's been doing a pretty good job of it, or is this story RIAA's response to the new avenues for revenue that Prince is trying to tap into - avenues, in fact, that don't involve suing and pissing off the hitherto loyal fans?

Official story description can be found here.

A page from the story where The Archies realise that file sharing has 'ruined' them [is shown above].

All I can say is, I've never seen an organization so hell-bent on its own destruction and I doubt we ever will again. Of course, we *do* have Hollywood, Major League Baseball...

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Letters to Archie Club newsletter, circa 1979
• Creationist Archie comic
• Little Archie anthology due any day
• Scans of Spire Christian Comics

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:48:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

William Gibson's Spook Country

The cast of characters in this book is gigantic and deeply weird. There's Hollis Henry, a faded pop star who finds herself covering the "locative art scene" for a magazine that may or may not exist -- and that may or may not be associated with Hubertus Bigend, the powerful and lunatic branding exec from Pattern Recognition. Hollis injects the novel with introspection about fame, micro-fame, fleeting fame, and art.

There's Tito, a kind of Cuban ninja, trained by the KGB and raised by a family of heroic spooks, now come to America and gone to ground. He is the excuse for a series of marvellous and meticulously researched spycraft sequences that have the technical fascination of the best technothrillers.

There's Brown, a savage wet-work off-the-books American spook (who may or may not still work for the US government), and his hostage, a junkie translator who is cuffed and kicked into listening in on the Russo-Cuban connection. Brown acts as a kind of meditation on the nature of deep secrecy, the unknowable world of the black-ops spook who can never be sure who he's working for and whether he's gone off the reservation.

Then there's the "locative art" kids, "VR" hackers who create 3D virtual sculptures that can only be seen while wearing goggles and standing in just the right place. These kids are Gibson's nod to his bastard child, "cyberspace," the word he coined in 1982, which has been pimped out by every dot-bomb con-man and gormless policy wonk in the world at this point.

These characters inhabit the exciting, futuristic world of 2006. And it is a futuristic place, our recent past, a place so weird and light-speed that we don't even notice it. Not until a master storyteller and keen observer like William Gibson comes along to show us what we're all living in.

Above all else, this is an exciting and vivid adventure novel, a book that you can't put down (I ended up sitting in a parking lot for an hour, unable to tear myself away from the last 70 pages). That is Gibson's special talent, the thing that makes him -- and science fiction -- such a powerful force for change in the world. Gibson has an agenda, a lot of keen observations, a philosophy, but they're wrapped up in a delightful coating of adventure and excitement.

It's a hard combination to beat -- a book that makes you smarter and sets your pulse racing while it fires your imagination. It's been four long years since we had a new Gibson novel, but it was worth the wait. This may be my favorite Gibson book of all time. Link

See also:
William Gibson explains why science fiction is about the present
William Gibson on writing in the age of Google

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:45:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Howard Waldrop blog

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:27:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls: the lost film

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:52:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazon will distribute the US National Archive on DVD

The world's largest repository of public domain film and video has signed a distribution deal with Amazon's CustomFlix subsidiary to sell DVDs of its holdings.

This isn't another Smithsonian-Showtime debacle. It's a nonexclusive deal, and the Archives gets copies of digitized materials and can make them available to its users. I've got a FOIA request in for the partnership agreement.

Every generation needs to reinterpret history in the light of its own experience, and hopefully this deal will make it just a bit easier for people to get a look at the motherlode that until now has mostly sat on archival shelves.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:46:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ceramic pinhole camera

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:44:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ATT + iPhone int'l. roaming data horror story: $3K bill - UDPATE

- - - - - - - -

BoingBoing reader Dave Stolte says,

I have a caveat emptor to top them all. I purchased an iPhone on opening day to use in lieu of a cumbersome laptop while traveling in Ireland and England for two weeks in early July. AT&T promises "easy, affordable, and convenient plans" in their advertising... turns out I got two out of three.

On the way to the airport, I activated the per-use international roaming data plan - the only one offered to me. The rep quoted me $.005 per KB but did not disclose what that would translate to in layman's language (i.e., X amount per e-mail, X amount per web page, etc.). I'm a web developer as part of my career and I couldn't even tell you how many KB the average web page is, no less a text message to my son, an e-mail with a photo to my mother, or a quick check of Google Maps. That's part one of the trap. However, I now pay $40 per month for unlimited data usage on the iPhone, so really -- how much could it be? $100 at the most, right?

Keep reading.

As we know, the iPhone can't be unlocked to use a European provider's SIM card for more reasonable rates while traveling. There's part two of the trap.

To be safe, I went online to My Account at AT&T a couple days into the trip and again a week later and was told "usage data is currently unavailable"... and that's part three. I had no way of knowing specific usage data until I received my bill over the last weekend.

A bill for $3000.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:02:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Short links

(Thanks, Shane, Ingo, Wayne, Charles, M. Tai, Iain, Jeff Jones, vikingdiplomat, Nathan Torkington, Emeka Okafor, Sean Bonner)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:23:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DIY bike noisemaker

I'm not an engineer type at all (I could short out the power to my television by boiling water in another room), so forgive my explanation...

I live in chicago, and I saw this on Friday night, at the Sheridan red line stop. It's a super crappy cameraphone picture, but what you're looking at is what are either magnets, or small metal rings, zip tied to the spokes. there's a hunk of soldered metal pointing at the rings, like a record needle (though I don't think it actually makes contact). From the soldered piece, there's wires leading up to a 9 volt battery, and from that, wires leading to the speaker (seen in the pic).

Essentially, it's a hacker-esque replacement for the old playing card in the spokes trick. Absolutely awesome.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:20:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIP: film director Michelangelo Antonioni

The 94-year-old director died in Rome on the same day as Ingmar Bergman:

Tall, cerebral and resolutely serious, Mr. Antonioni harkens back to a time in the middle of the last century when cinema-going was an intellectual pursuit, when purposely opaque passages in famously difficult films spurred long nights of smoky argument at sidewalk cafes, and when fashionable directors like Mr. Antonioni, Alain Resnais and Jean-Luc Godard were chased down the Cannes waterfront by camera-wielding cineastes demanding to know what on earth they meant by their latest outrage.

Image: Still from Blow-up (1966), my favorite Antonioni movie (with Vanessa Redgrave, David Hemmings, and Jimmy Page/Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds). IMDB, Wikipedia, Amazon.

A video search at Google turns up lots of clips from the film, and the original trailer.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:43:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yahoo and jailed journalists in China: more documents emerge

Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon blogs about new information related to the case of 'net dissident Wang Xiaoning, shown above with his wife (who is suing Yahoo for helping China jail her husband):

More documents have surfaced showing that Yahoo! employees knew that they were handling political cases when they received information requests from Chinese authorities on at least two people now doing serious jailtime.

This is contrary to previous claims by Yahoo! that "we had no information about the nature of the investigation."  Note that Yahoo! insists that it is wrong to say they were lying,  in spite of that statement made to Congress last year which makes it seem like they were.

This week's documents, also courtesy of the DuiHua Foundation, contain new details from the case of Wang Xiaoning, also doing ten years, for "inciting subversion." The folks at Duihua have examined the new documents, judged them to be authentic, and uploaded the originals plus translations here.

Previously on BoingBoing:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:18:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Books shaped like cigarettes

Tank is launching a series of books designed to mimic cigarette packs – the same size, packaged in flip-top cartons with silver foil wrapping and sealed in cellophane.

TankBooks pay homage to this monumentally successful piece of packaging design by employing it in the service of great literature. Cigarette packs are iconic objects, familiar, tried and tested, and over time TankBooks will become iconic objects in their own right. The launch titles are by authors of great stature – classic stories presented in classic packaging; objects desirable for both their literary merit and their unique design.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Peer to Patent: keeping the Patent Office honest with community review

Peer to Patent invites you to examine pending patents, discover prior art that invalidates or narrows their claims, and hold the USPTO accountable for its reckless creation of monopolies over the ideas that underpin life in the information age.

They're reviewing one hell of a patent application, Microsoft's Off-line economies for digital media, which includes, among other things, "recording a sale" in the scope of the monopoly it seeks.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's column on "Digital Lysenkoism" for the Guardian

The companies that sell this stuff are, at best, bunkum peddlers and, at worst, out and out fraudsters. Their wares simply can't work - not without changing the laws of physics, maths and information science.

DRMs are often designed by ambitious, well-funded consortia, with top-notch engineers from every corner of the industry. They spend millions. They take years. They are defeated in days, for pennies, by hobbyists. It's inevitable, because every time you give someone a locked item, you have to give them the key to unlock it too.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:59:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TSA chief promises an eternity of unshoeing

BS: You don't have a responsibility to screen shoes; you have one to protect air travel from terrorism to the best of your ability. You're picking and choosing. We know the Chechnyan terrorists who downed two Russian planes in 2004 got through security partly because different people carried the explosive and the detonator. Why doesn't this count as a continued, active attack method?

I don't want to even think about how much C4 I can strap to my legs and walk through your magnetometers. Or search the Internet for "BeerBelly." It's a device you can strap to your chest to smuggle beer into stadiums, but you can also use it smuggle 40 ounces of dangerous liquid explosive onto planes. The magnetometer won't detect it. Your secondary screening wandings won't detect it. Why aren't you making us all take our shirts off? Will you have to find a printout of the webpage in some terrorist safe house? Or will someone actually have to try it? If that doesn't bother you, search the Internet for "cell phone gun."

It's "cover your ass" security. If someone tries to blow up a plane with a shoe or a liquid, you'll take a lot of blame for not catching it. But if someone uses any of these other, equally known, attack methods, you'll be blamed less because they're less public.

See also: Bruce Schneier interviews TSA head Kip Hawley

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:55:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant Andes-scaling truck will install Alma array

Look, it's basically a metastasized Hot Wheels toy. I haven't had my pulse so quickened by a truck since I was seven.

The vehicles will have to haul their heavy cargo safely from the 2,900m-high Alma base camp, where the antennas are assembled, to the array site, which lies at 5,000m - about half the cruising altitude of a 747.

The vehicles must therefore be extremely powerful, as the journey will make extraordinary demands on the two 500kW diesel engines.

Because of the low oxygen content of the air at 5,000m, vehicle operators will need to wear portable oxygen canisters. The backrests of the driver seats are shaped to allow the driver to wear his oxygen tank while driving.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:51:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, July 30, 2007

Diethylene glycol in Chinese characters on a T-shirt

Glenn Fleishman says,

My friend and graphic designer extraordinaire Brian Wu has mashed up a bad cultural trend with a political one in creating this shirt: it refers to diethylene glycol (a contaminant found in Chinese-exported toothpaste and cough syrup). This plays off the "tattoo ideograms on yourself even though you don't know what they mean" meme. And it's a cool shirt.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:49:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TSA's gonna love this: The Pursuader, a machinegun-shaped handbag

Designer James Piatt, whose work we've blogged here on BoingBoing before, writes in to share word of something new that is sure to win a girl new friends at airport screening lines. James says:

One of my new handbags is the Pursuader that resembles a machinegun with a cel phone compartment in the clip. The other is the Chesterton. Both bags are consructed with a process I developed by interlocking laser cut leather. There is no stitching.

This link contains a gallery with glamour photography of the new bags. I haven't decided if the photos are anti or pro-totalitarianism. The first shot is of a military parade of girls sporting Pursuaders and the second involves a sexy girl posing in a pile of potatoes. The submarine pictures are also fun.

Previously on BoingBoing:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:39:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pirate Party founder at Stanford tomorrow night

"The Swedish Pirate Party strives to reform laws regarding intellectual property, including copyright, patent and the protection of design. The agenda also includes support for a strengthening of the right to privacy (such as private property and private information), both on the Internet and in everyday life." Link (Thanks, James!)

(CC-licensed Falkvinge photo Rick Falkvinge talar ganked from Jonas_H's Flickr stream)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:46:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unicorn Chaser

By popular demand: this post-lobotomy unicorn chaser brought to you by "Tinkler," link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:15:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

History of the lobotomy

The Freeman-Watts Standard Procedure was used for the first time in September 1936. Also known as "the precision method", this involved inserting a blunt spatula through holes in both sides of the skull; the instrument was moved up and down to sever the thalamo-cortical fibers. However, Freeman was unhappy with the new procedure. He considered it to be both time-consuming and messy, and so developed a quicker method, the so-called "ice-pick"lobotomy (photo above -ed.), which he performed for the first time on January 17th, 1945.

With the patient rendered unconscious by electroshock, an instrument was inserted above the eyeball through the orbit using a hammer. Once inside the brain, the instrument was moved back and forth; this was then repeated on the other side. (The ice-pick lobotomy, named as such because the instrument used resembled the tool with which ice is broken, is therefore also known as the transorbital lobotomy...)

Freeman's new technique could be performed in about 10 minutes.

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:48:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chuck E Cheese bots modded to play hiphop

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:47:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CALL CONGRESS NOW: NSA wiretapping to be legalized THIS WEEK!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:45:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Avoid paying corrupt traffic cops in Bali

Don’t stop in the first place. Am I kidding you? Not! As the ‘Patroli’ are usually waiting for their prey in not easily visible corners or side pockets of the road; it’s pretty easy to miss them. They don’t use whistles or other signals as well, just a lame hand waive to flag you down. It’s easier when riding a bike - just look in the opposite direction (usually the right side of the road, it also helps if you wear sunglasses). This way you missed them ‘by accident’, don’t worry: they will not follow you - there is much easier prey for them than abandoning their favorite sweet spot to follow one single victim.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:33:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Laugh Out Loud cats: now in color comic strip form

Link to Adam Koford's Sunday Strip #1 of the Laugh Out Loud Cats: "How they Met." Above, detail. Poster here, you can has original art here.

Previously on BB:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:07:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Magazine for Indian prostitutes

With a little help from a voluntary group, the magazine prints about 1,000 copies in Hindi and English and is distributed free among prostitutes and residents of red light districts...

"We have little money, but we still pay our writers small amounts so that they realize they can earn a respectable living as well," said editor (Anurag) Chaturvedi.

For its reporters, getting stories from brothels is not a problem because "we are accepted as one of them".

"When we go to people's homes they are comfortable and they talk," said (health volunteer and magazine contributor Anita) Khude. "In the next issue we will write about how a 'normal' man -- a poor roadside snacks seller -- fought prejudices and married a prostitute he fell in love with."

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:53:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FCC to rule on wireless auction Tuesday; Google and telcos at odds

Google, the giant Internet search company, wants to extend its popular tools, which include e-mail and video, to the rapidly expanding mobile phone market. To do so, it may spend billions to build a new, open network it says will loosen the grip telecom operators have over how consumers use their cellphones.

Currently, the major U.S. wireless carriers, including AT&T and Verizon Wireless, largely decide which Web sites, music-download services and search engines their customers can access on their cellphones. This is accomplished by wireless companies determining which cellphones will receive their services: AT&T, for example, is the only carrier available to users of Apple's iPhone.

Google wants to end that restriction and has urged the FCC to require the winner of the auction to build a network that will be open to all cellphones and services, so any consumer can have access to Google's array of offerings.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:50:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sen. Ted Stevens' home raided by FBI, IRS

Various news outlets are reporting that FBI and IRS agents are raiding the Girdwood, AK home of Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) this afternoon. Stevens is most known for explaining the "...internet is a Series of Tubes" last year [ed note: and for wanting to switch phones "while i ride my motorcycle"].

"All I can say is that agents from the FBI and IRS are currently conducting a search at that residence," said Dave Heller, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Anchorage office. The search began this afternoon, and is said to be the only such search warrant currently being served. Heller directed other questions to the U.S. Justice Department's Public Integrity Section in Washington, and a spokesman there had no comment.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:30:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weird 1940s tourist attraction ad: "The Midget Palace"

Anonymous reader says,

This is a brochure for an offbeat tourist attraction from the 1940's called "The Midgets Palace". It was owned by the "King and Queen of All Midgets" who had the "only child born to midgets". Incredibly politically incorrect.

Update: The Midget Palace is now a bathhouse for gay men? Link to section of website promoting giant crotches and hourly sauna rates for men only, at the same address where the Midget Palace once stood. Wow. (thanks, marc pageau)

Ed Deasy says,

I was surprised to see an article on the Museum in Montreal. I took photographs there about 20 years ago, when visiting the City. The most interesting item: the brochure linked to from your article mentioned the birth of their Son. It was thought he might be of even smaller stature than the parents at the time the brochure was published. Not so. He was normal. This must have been a somewhat disorienting experience for the parents. I've got a close-up of a photograph with his father that was in his room at the Museum. Link to the photograph.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:24:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AdultVest.com: srsly, have you seen the profit margins on boobies?

Business 2.0 has a feature on AdultVest.com, a service that matches investors (with purses of varying depth) and adult entertainment companies (with profit margins of various girth).

Whenever mainstream news reports repeat rosy, seldom-factchecked figures like $12 billion to describe the size of the porn industry, I cringe. Porn =! get rich quick, any more than internet = get rich quick, and there's more to those numbers than typically meets the ink.

Leaving aside what feels like an oversimplified and overeager portrayal of the sector's investment risks (actual f'in quote: "there's silly money to be made here"), it's still an interesting feature. Just read with an extra-healthy helpin' of skepticism.

Snip:

The response has been strong: Koenig says he's signed up well over 1,000 potential investors since January. For now, he's catering to investors with big money, although he says his approach will eventually evolve to serve the investing masses. He's raising money for two funds: a $100 million fund that requires a minimum investment of $1 million, and a $10 million fund with a $100,000 minimum.

Accredited investors can sign up on AdultVest.com to qualify, and Koenig says people are signing up at the rate of 15 per day. Roughly 300 companies - including website-porn subscription businesses, escort services, and strip clubs - have registered. Investors can also use the AdultVest marketplace to hook up directly with companies.

Koenig has a good track record: The New World Partners hedge fund, where he was a managing director, posted double- and triple-digit returns through the late '90s - and he thinks similar returns are possible with porn. His funds are set up like any venture capital fund and will invest in a range of businesses, with a portion of each earmarked for buying and running strip clubs.

Here's the AdultVest website: Link (warning, annoying loud sound, obnoxious Flash, and silly looking porno spokesavatar).

At left here, my favorite part of the AdultVest.com design aesthetic.

It's like -- "Investors, have the first look at all the hot new deals... UP OUR ASS!"

(thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Reader comment: Cory Silverberg says,

There was a piece in the Times a few days ago by Matt Richtel ("A Thaw in Investment Prospects for Sex-Related Businesses? Maybe" -- Link). The piece displays a similarly simplistic understanding of the place and meaning of sex businesses in our society ("they like us, they really like us"), but at least it highlighted one of my favorite high end sex toy makers.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:09:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mars Library of books, DVDs, and database is now ready for launch

The Planetary Society DVD will likely appear in some of the calibration images sent back to Earth by the Phoenix lander. The disc is attached to the lander's deck, and includes a collection of 19th and 20th century stories, essays and art inspired by Mars, as well as the names of more than 250,000 humans. Snip from announcement:

This first library on Mars contains materials that represent 20 nations and cultures. Visions of Mars includes works by The Planetary Society's co-founder Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Kim Stanley Robinson, Arthur C. Clarke, Percival Lowell and many more. (...)

Phoenix will be the first lander to explore the Martian arctic, landing near 70 degrees north latitude. Designed to search for and study water ice, the spacecraft is a fixed lander with a suite of advanced instruments and a robotic arm that can dig up to half a meter into the soil. The Phoenix team hopes to uncover clues in the icy soil of the Martian arctic about the history of near surface ice and the planet's potential for habitability. The first possible launch date for Phoenix is August 3, 2007, with a landing slated for 2008.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:34:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plushie vehicles and auto parts

Rocket Craft's crafts are not just off-the-shelf; they're faithful re-creations of your own vehicle; which is why the license plates are mosaicked out on cars in the portfolio. That's not just a generic Renault 5 Turbo; it's a client's. A Nissan Cube. A Honda Fit. A Volvo 240GL. Rocket Craft appears well-connected among the riceburner J-car enthusiasts in their home country. There are precious few wagons--though there is a Mitsubishi Delica offroadish minivan--and thankfully few SUV's... 35-45cm in length, depending on the model. 25,000-30,000 yen, plus 4,000 for the [optional] license plate.

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:48:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A surreal and supremely inane compendium of miscellaneous knowledge, Vol 5

Video -- 1961 Rural Civil Defense TV spots use marionettes. (Via Endless Parade of Excellence)

How to wind a center-pull ball of yarn or twine.

"Goblin's Ball" -- creepy one-page comic story from 1962 horror comic.

Rescued ducklings enjoy life in a teacup.

Free ebooks: Three 1940s mystery novels "featuring private eye Doan and his remarkable sidekick, a gigantic fawn-colored Great Dane named Carstairs."

Reader comment:

Eric says: "I don't know if you're aware, but one of the novels you linked to a free ebook of, "The Mouse in the Mountain" by Norbert Davis, also called "Rendezvous with Fear," was one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's favorite novels, so much so that he almost wrote a letter to Davis, and loaned it to his students to read. (Reference: Ray Monk, The Duty of Genius, p. 528-529)"

Video -- How psychic con artists use cold readings to bilk rubes.

MP3s -- Goobers: anthology of 26 kids songs by artists like Foetus and Tiny Tim.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• ASASICOMK, Vol 1
• ASASICOMK, Vol 2
• ASASICOMK, Vol 3
• ASASICOMK, Vol 4

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:24:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weirdomatic's collection of odd vintage ads

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:13:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ridiculous mating dance of the Waved Albatross

This is some mating dance -- like the elaborate gang-handshakes we used to think up when we were stoned, but a thousand times sillier, with funny noises, beak-fencing, and a lot of general bobbing up and down. Link (Thanks, David!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:12:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crowd Farm to collect energy

The electric current generated by the Crowd Farm could then be used for educational purposes, such as lighting up a sign about energy. "We want people to understand the direct relationship between their movement and the energy produced," says Juscyzk.

The Crowd Farm is not intended for home use. According to Graham and Jusczy, a single human step can only power two 60W light bulbs for one flickering second. But get a crowd in motion, multiply that single step by 28,527 steps, for example, and the result is enough energy to power a moving train for one second.

And while the farm is an urban vision, the dynamo-floor principle can also be applied to capturing energy at places like rock concerts, too. "Greater movement of people could make the music louder," suggests Jurcyzk.

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:26:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Odile Crick, DNA illustrator (RIP)

In a brief interview on Thursday, Dr. Watson recalled why he and his colleague had asked Mrs. Crick to make the original black-and-white sketch — based on their mathematical analysis of a pattern of spots revealed by a process called X-ray crystallography — for the April 1953 issue of the journal Nature.

“Francis can’t draw, and I can’t draw, and we need something done quick,” Dr. Watson said. The drawing “showed the essence of the structure,” he said. “And it became historically important, reproduced over and over.”

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:12:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Oldest prosthetic

A Manchester University team hope to prove that the leather and wood "Cairo toe" not only looked the part but also helped its owner walk.

They will test a replica in volunteers whose right big toe is missing.

If true, the toe will predate the currently considered earliest practical prosthesis - a fake leg from 300BC.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:35:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Haunted books

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:26:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

List of 50 best movie robots of all time, with video

The guys at Times Online (UK) have compiled a list of the 50 coolest movie robots, measured with the following factors in mind:

Plausibility (meaning how likely it would be that, with advances on currently existing technology, such a device could be built)

Coolness (just how well designed, shiny or generally well-appointed the robot appeared to be)

Dangerousness (scoring not only on built-in weaponry, but the robot's eagerness to use it) Related Links

Comedy Value (how effective the robot is at providing light relief in the film in which it appears)

Reader comment: Mark Christian says,

Heya. If you feed that link into Chime.TV, you can watch all the video clips in one go. :) Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:45:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIP: Ingmar Bergman

The legendary motion picture director was 89. Snip from NYT obit:

In his more than 40 years in the cinema, Mr. Bergman made about 50 films, often focusing on two themes — the relationship between the sexes, and the relationship between mankind and God. Mr. Bergman found in cinema, he wrote in a 1965 essay, “a language that literally is spoken from soul to soul in expressions that, almost sensuously, escape the restrictive control of the intellect.”

Image above, Bergman working on the film "Wild Strawberries." Here's a 4:35-minute clip from that film: Video Link. Here's a DVD link.

(Thanks, Eugene Belford)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:34:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ad campaign for Nokia: faces battered by jealous computers

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:24:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LA hospital will give out your info "to protect the President"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:44:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO shoot macrofocus bug pics

* Remember, you are surrounded by millions of insects every day and if the first one you see gets away, there'll be another soon enough.

* Patience is the key. Think of insects like they are two year old kids running around without a break. But everyone, even bumblebees and toddlers eventually needs a break, so that's when to make your photos. It may only last for a few moments, so be ready.

* Most insects are very sensitive to carbon monoxide, and will run or fly away if you breathe directly on them; however, certain beetles will freeze when breathed on -- experiment!

See also:
Insect photos in naturalistic macro-focus
Macrofocus bug photos for sale

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

Unfortunate Spanish acronym for shop in Catalonia

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:31:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google Transit plans trips on public transit

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:27:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bruce Schneier interviews TSA head Kip Hawley

Schneier is one of the great popularizers of the idea that there can be no security in obscurity -- how can Hawley know that his s33kr1t back-end for preventing moisture bombs and evil shoe-wearing aviation threats works unless it's subject to public scrutiny?

If you don't publish your findings, you're not doing science, you're doing alchemy, and every alchemist had to discover for himself, the hard way, that drinking mercury was a bad idea.

So without getting into specifics on the test results, of course there are times that our evaluations can generate high failure rate numbers on specific scenarios. Overall, though, our ability to detect bomb components is vastly improved and it will keep getting better. (Older scores you may have seen may be "feel good" numbers based on old, easy tests. Don't go for the sound-bite; today's TSOs are light-years ahead of even where they were two years ago.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:22:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stuff on my iphone.

- - - - - - - - - -

Images: Larger size. From this post on Bibliodyssey blog, a detail from a manuscript produced in 1650 by Athanasius Kircher: "Musurgia Universalis."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:21:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jacob's Ladder as USB hub

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Footbridge made from cardboard tubes

Built half a mile from the Pont du Gard -- a section of ancient Roman bridge classed as a UN World Heritage site -- Shigeru's cardboard-tube structure is strong enough to carry 20 people at a time.

Reaching over the water to a sandy islet mid-river, it opens to the public for six weeks starting on Monday, before it is dismantled for the rainy season...

Weighing 7.5 tonnes, the bridge is made from 281 cardboard tubes, each 11.5 centimetres (four inches) across and 11.9 millimetres thick. The steps are recycled paper and plastic and the foundations wooden boxes packed with sand.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shark-hunting games uses telemetry from real sharks

Players are given a virtual boat and virtual crew. They use it to track real-life sharks that have been tagged with a GPS receivers. When a boat encounters a shark the player is alerted via email and/or SMS. The player has three hours to select how to try to collect data about the shark and its behavior. The goal is to gather as much data about sharks as possible.

IN Sharkrunners my boat, the Roo, has just left the port of San Luis Obispo. We had our first encounter 15 minutes after leaving port. Now that I have some funding I'll probably get another crew member (which increases the likelihood of my getting data and decreases the likelihood of my crew dying) or upgrade my boat (a better craft allows me to stay out to sea longer). My single shark encounter netted me $2,200. Given that the game launched a week and players already have over $700,000, I think the players really like it.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:01:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BoingBoing week in review: July 22-29

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:54:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Ragnar's "Got Your Nose" - gross-out kids' book

See also: Ragnar's "Maltese Chimp" as a sculpture set

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:42:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My ComicCon photos

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:37:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Defense Ministry logos from around the world

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:32:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cursing: the neurology, law and sociology of cuss-words

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown that the higher and lower parts of the brain can struggle with each other when a person swears [ref]. A New York Times article cites several other studies that involve how a healthy brain processes swearing. For example, the brains of people who pride themselves on being educated respond to slang and "illiterate" phrases the same way they do to swearwords. In addition, in studies in which people must identify the color a word is written in (instead of the word itself), swearwords distract the participants from color recognition. You can also remember swearwords about four times better than other words [ref].

Swearing can also be a symptom of disease or a result of damage to parts of the brain. We'll look at swearing and brain disorders next.

(Creative Commons-licensed image, oh ( ---- )!!! ganked from Debaird's Flickr stream)

Update: Get your cussin' button here

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:29:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Holy Surveillance: Tammy & Jim Bakker & Friends

BB reader wishbook says,

With the recent passing of televangelist Tammy Faye Messner, I thought it was a fitting time to share the shrill sounds and sights of the 1975 album, "Oops! There Comes A Smile: Songs & Stories By Jim & Tammy & Their Friends."

To that end, I've flickr'd scans of the album and created a link to the creepy track, "God Is Watching You," in which the Tammy-voiced pig puppet proclaims "he sees everything you do, and he hears everything you say; my God is watching all the time!" For the penitent or masochistic, there is alo a megaupload link to the entire album.

Reader comment: Anonymous says,

The lizard looks suspiciously like the Winslow from various Phil Foglio comics, chiefly Buck Godot. Perhaps the Bakkers were really Winslowists in disguise!

I noticed that you posted the cover of Tammy Faye's "Oops, There Comes A Smile" today and I wanted to let you know that last week we posted that and two other Tammy Faye covers, as well as a ten-record discography of people in the Bakker/PTL orbit (mostly Tammy, but Jim and others as well - yes, we have all of them in our collection). You can see the covers here: Link (Click on them for a larger view.) While "Oops" was perhaps the "best" for music, "Run Towards the Roar" was everyone at the ARChive's favorite cover. It's precious and she looks really sassy.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:47:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vania Zouravliov's illustration

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:56:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Image: Optimus Prime gets hassled at the mall food court

Link. Snapshot of cosplay competition participant just trying to score some dadburned pansit or something for chrissakes, at a mall in the Philippines. (thanks, Rain)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:06:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Homer Simpson, Drunk Astronaut Pioneer

From Wikipedia:

NASA takes both Homer and Barney to Cape Canaveral to train them into astronauts. They pit the two in competition against one another as they can only take one to space. With NASAs' alcohol ban, the training goes well for Barney (he even does a backflip and sings the opening lines of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major General's Song"), but the future is grim for Homer when he learns that Barney has been chosen to go on board with Buzz Aldrin and the fictional astronaut Race Banyon (whose name parodies Race Bannon). However, when Barney has a toast with the people at NASA, he drinks champagne that was apparently non-alcoholic, goes berserk and fastens himself to a jet pack. After taking off, the jet pack fails and he bounces off the roof of a pillow factory and onto the road, where he is run over by a marshmallow truck. A scientist declares Homer the default winner of the competition, and he goes up into space with the two other astronauts.

Reader comment: Alan says,

You would be remiss in your Homer astronaut post if you didn't at least mention the genesis of the overlords meme. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:01:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYT mag: The Real Transformers

At the Humanoid Robotics Group at M.I.T., a robot’s “humanoid” qualities can include fallibility and whininess as much as physical traits like head, arms and torso. This is where our cultural images of robots as superhumans run headlong into the reality of motors, actuators and cold computer code. Today’s humanoids are not the sophisticated machines we might have expected by now, which just shows how complicated a task it was that scientists embarked on 15 years ago when they began working on a robot that could think. They are not the docile companions of our collective dreams, robots designed to flawlessly serve our dinners, fold our clothes and do the dull or dangerous jobs that we don’t want to do. Nor are they the villains of our collective nightmares, poised for robotic rebellion against humans whose machine creations have become smarter than the humans themselves. They are, instead, hunks of metal tethered to computers, which need their human designers to get them going and to smooth the hiccups along the way.

But these early incarnations of sociable robots are also much more than meets the eye. Bill Gates has said that personal robotics today is at the stage that personal computers were in the mid-1970s. Thirty years ago, few people guessed that the bulky, slow computers being used by a handful of businesses would by 2007 insinuate themselves into our lives via applications like Google, e-mail, YouTube, Skype and MySpace. In much the same way, the robots being built today, still unwieldy and temperamental even in the most capable hands, probably offer only hints of the way we might be using robots in another 30 years.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:45:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Did Yahoo lie in case of jailed Chinese blogger Shi Tao?

Yahoo! executives say one thing in public, an official Chinese document says something else. Oops.

I just discovered today that the Dui Hua Foundation, which does excellent, low-key work on Chinese human rights issues, has a blog. Last week they posted a full English translation (PDF) of a document that has surfaced recently on the web: the Beijing State Security Bureau'€™s request to Yahoo!'s Beijing office for information about the e-mail account huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn. That's the account used by Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who is now doing 10 years in jail for divulging state secrets.

The folks at Dui Hua say they've examined the document and believe it to be authentic. If it is indeed authentic, this document would seem to clear up any lingering questions about whether Yahoo!'s Hong Kong office was involved in handing over Shi Tao's account information.

But it also raises new questions. Here is what the document says (emphasis added)...

Previously on BoingBoing:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:36:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

National Space Society fund for Scaled Composites accident victims

Previously on BB:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:32:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Data mining prompted fight over NSA domestic spying program

A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.

The N.S.A.’s data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it figured in the March 2004 debate helps to clarify the clash this week between Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senators who accused him of misleading Congress and called for a perjury investigation.

The confrontation in 2004 led to a showdown in the hospital room of then Attorney General John Ashcroft, where Mr. Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff, tried to get the ailing Mr. Ashcroft to reauthorize the N.S.A. program.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:30:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web contracts can't be changed without notice

This is a rare, overdue moment of sanity from the legal system about web agreements, which are universally abusive and one-sided.

"How hard is it to send out an e-mail letting people know about [any changes]?" she said.

According to the court documents, Douglas signed a contract for service with America Online. The business was then acquired by Talk America, which continued to provide telephone service to AOL's former customers. However, Talk America changed the contract AOL had with its customers and posted those changes on its Web site without notifying the customers first.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:23:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Skellramics: comic skull-themed ceramics

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:23:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Ikea opens free hostel for shoppers who don't want to leave

"There will be the regular dormitory with lots of beds stacked up together. We will also have a bridal suite, with a round bed and a hanging chandelier, and the luxury suite, where customers can enjoy breakfast in bed," he said. Family rooms will also be available for parents and children to join into the Ikea fun. None of the guests will be charged for their stay.

Mr Ullebust said that, as far as he knew, this was Ikea's first foray into the hotel business. Every night, the 30 lucky few will be able to stack up on meatballs, Norwegian salmon and cranberry mousse, as Ikea is offering free dinner and breakfast at the usual canteen.

See also:
HOWTO make a cheap coffin out of Ikea parts
If IKEA was a video game
IKEA product names demystified
IKEA Hacker -- torquing your flatpack
Prefab housing by Ikea
IKEA insists photo of dog does not show human-like penis
Saudi stampede over Ikea store launch results in 3 deaths
Ikea flat-pack houses come to Glasgow
IKEA stores make great babysitters, soup-kitchens
$1500 electric guitar made from 1/3 of a $15 Ikea table
10% of Euros conceived in an IKEA bed

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:54:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Strange Horizons stories go Creative Commons - fundraiser, too!

Ben Rosenbaum asked us Strange Horizons editors a few months back to put a CC license on his Hugo-nominated story "The House Beyond Your Sky." After we did that, we asked our other authors if they would like us to put CC licenses on their works in our archives.

Over a dozen of our other authors decided to license their archived stories, poems, and articles, with various licenses. I've now listed most of the newly licensed pieces in two entries in my journal: One, Two.

We're a nonprofit online speculative fiction magazine that pays professional rates for fiction; we're run by a staff of 30 volunteers; we've published new material every week, freely available online, for nearly 7 years (and almost all of it is still available in our archives), including fiction, poetry, articles, reviews, art, and columns; we're funded entirely by donations, in a sort of public-radio-like model; in the US, donations to us are tax-deductible. Stuff we publish gets picked up regularly for Year's Best reprint volumes. This year a story we published was on the Nebula ballot and another is on the Hugo ballot.

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

Incredible Polish movie posters

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:06:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aluminum sea-urchin espresso maker

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:16:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sleazy instrumentals vs pop trash mashup album

I'm partial to Superfreak Twisters, Copycat's mashup of The Twisters VS Rick James's Superfreak. Link (Thanks, Simon!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:10:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Origami Cthulhu

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:03:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Secret Jewish identity of comic book heros

WN: You're Jewish yourself. Are you worried that your book might give ammunition to anti-Semites who like to make claims about Jewish domination?

Fingeroth: My joke is that it's of most interest to Jews and anti-Semites. Most other people don’t give a shit. I think it's one of the best things I've written, but it was one of the hardest to write, too, because of how careful I wanted to be about how I framed things so as not to give ammunition to bigots who might want to twist what I was saying. I ultimately decided that if I was going to write this book, and I did and do think it was important to write, I had to put that fear out of my mind and figure that if someone has a reason to hate Jews, they don’t need to me as an excuse to do it.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:58:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Penguin Teaboy, for the cutest, most perfect cuppa

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:49:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, July 27, 2007

Japanese Rube Goldberg videos

See also:
Ultimate rube goldberg machine
Rube Goldberg style contraption video
Rube Goldberg: 125-step flashlight battery changer
Rube Goldberg machine built out of sticks and stones
Mesmerizing Rube-Goldberg Honda ad
Rube Goldberg machine to be demoed tomorrow in NYC

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:30:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vaporub solves meerkat gang-wars

Livestock manager Geoff Masson said: "It is normally extremely difficult to integrate new meerkats into an existing group - their usual instinct is to try to attack any newcomers.

"However, thanks to a suggestion from our vet, Kate Chitty, we were able to neutralise all odours by using a little of the VapoRub on the nose of each meerkat.

"The meerkats then all smelt the same to each other and gladly accepted the new arrivals."

(Photo entitled Meerkat 2 ganked from Ltshears's Flickr stream)

See also: Short link amuse bouches for Friday

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:17:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comic-Con through Star Wars eyes

Bonnie Burton says,

Stormtroopers in line for lattes, a gigantic LEGO Death Star looming over the crowd, Slave Leias flirting with superheroes, celebs talking movies (*cough*Indiana Jones*cough*) -- yup it's time for San Diego Comic-Con International, and starwars.com is there taking snapshots, shooting video and reporting the latest news tidbits daily on the Official starwars.com Blog. Link. Check out our Flickr blog too.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:19:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Are you a drunk astronaut?

Following up on this much-covered story today about a report alleging alcohol abuse among NASA astronauts, hurtyelbow says:

NASA probably has powdered beer in space, because NASA knows how to prioritize. It's like Tang. Except it's beer. So what do you do when you feel your fellow astronaut might be orbiting under the influence? Nothing, because you're an astronaut and you're drunk too.

Let's say there were interstellar law enforcement spaceships that could police the area around earth (Who cares about the other planets really?). Typical symptoms of drunk driving wouldn't apply. First of all, flying isn't driving and secondly there's nothing to run into in space anyway.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:55:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guy who lost online trollfight drives 1300 miles, burns dude's trailer

Tavares photographed road snapshots along his route, and posted the images online, as if to prove to his internet peers that he was not a luzer. When he got to there, he burned the dude's trailer down. Tavares has been sentenced to 7 years in prison for arson. Snip:

The feud started when Anderson, who runs a haunted house near Waco, joined a picture-sharing Web site and posted his artwork and political views. After he blocked some people from his page because of insults and foul language, they retaliated by making obscene digitally altered pictures of him, he said.

Anderson, who went by the screen name "Johnny Darkness," traded barbs with Tavares, aka "PyroDice." Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high-water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a "Revenge of the Nerds" sign.

Tavares obtained Anderson's real name and hometown from Anderson's Web page about his Museum of Horrors Haunted House.

Reader comment: Anonymous says,

First off - Tavares was sentenced today, but the incident happened two years ago.

Here's a video from Waco local news: Link.

And a more in-depth story from the Waco tribune, with photos of John Anderson and the ruined trailer: Link.

The site in question was Orfay. PyroDice's account is deleted (Link) but the Google cache love is there for all his photos (Link). A few of the pics hit on some 4chan memes. He's got a MySpace (Link) - his mood is "distressed." His Flickr stream (Link) shows he made it to Anime Expo in GTA cosplay garb.

Johnny Darkness goes by the Grand Goblin on Orfay: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:36:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BBC's online media now requires MSFT player, DRM

Today the BBC made it official—they have been corrupted by Microsoft. With today's launch of the iPlayer, the BBC Trust has failed in its most basic of duties and handed over to Microsoft sole control of the on-line distribution of BBC programming. From today, you will need to own a Microsoft operating system to view BBC programming on the web. And you must accept the Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) that the iPlayer imposes.

Reader comment: jmhz says,

Engadget commenters report that FairUse4WM strips DRM from BBC iplayer downloads so they can be watched in VLC on the MAC.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:30:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vegas neon graveyard snapshots

BoingBoing reader Carl says,

I was recently in Vegas and took a tour through the Neon Graveyard. It was fascinating and gratifying to see that so many of the old neon signs are being preserved for public viewing. Everyone should go when they're in Vegas.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:14:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

African journalists using GPRS, mobile phones for video reports

Blogger White African has an item up today about the mobile reporters of AfricaNews:

Africans are reporting via their mobile phones. Using GPRS-enabled phones, anyone can send images, articles and video to someone else. This is a huge, primarily because it means that the on-ground reporters don’t need an internet connection at all - only access to a cell phone tower.
The Voices of Africa project is being piloted by 3 reporters right now - one from Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. They are using Nokia E61i phones to send in their stories, working through the technical issues to ensure that it can be rolled out to a much larger group of reporters around the continent.

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

Mojave Space Port blast kills 3 Scaled Composites employees

"We don't know why it exploded," said Burt Rutan, the owner of Scaled Composites. "We just don't know." Rutan was visibly distraught as he appeared in public for the first time Thursday night following the tragedy. He said he still can't believe three of his employees are dead, and three others critically injured. "We were doing a test that we believed was completely safe... which is why we don't remove the people from the area like we do on a rocket test," said Rutan.

Previously on BoingBoing:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:53:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web zen: drawing zen

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

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:47:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Short link amuse bouches for Friday

(Thanks, Violet Blue, delrocco, Nathalie, Mike, Jacob Appelbaum, Fred Benenson, Adam Koford, B. Fezzi, AJ)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:13:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Busted: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters

The "Never Get Busted Again" video is indeed lousy, and gives lots of terrible advice that involves 'cooperating' with cops and renouncing your constitutional rights (4th and 5th Amendments, especially). It's received a bit of angry discussion elsewhere for awhile now.

This video, however, created by the ACLU and Flex Your Rights, (I am not affiliated with either group), does a much better job, and can be seen for free on youtube, unlike the Never Get Busted Again video.

Barry N. Cooper, CEO/NeverGetBusted says:

Eric is lying about my film. There is some jealousy taking place in the drug reformation community. The few who have attacked my DVD are motivated by other agendas besides true drug reform. Drug reform needs reformation. Never Get Busted Again is a high quality film full of great information...it will be released in major book and record shops in September. My second film will be shot in Hollywood, California and should do great things for drug reform. Click on this link to read a real review of Never Get Busted Again. It was written by one of the greatest names in Marijuana Reform, Jodie Emery...Owner of Cannabis Culture Magazine and wife of Marc Emery.

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

A surreal and supremely inane compendium of miscellaneous knowledge, Vol 4

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:02:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aquafina is made of people!

Reader comment: Jon Power says

Following your Aquafina story, did you know that Coca-Cola already failed to sell the UK bottled tap water, three years ago. It was a total PR disaster and was withdrawn. Yay for us! Oh, and it gave you cancer. So now you know. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:46:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Slave labor used to build US Embassy in Iraq?

He testified before the US Congressional Oversight Committee's "Allegations of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse at the New U.S. Embassy in Iraq" hearing that First Kuwaiti used Filipino slave labor to build the embassy, and that the State Department is covering it up.

The Star-Telegram has a short article with more details here. Link (Via Why, That's Delightful!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:40:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paul Krassner profiled

When Jack Weinberg said, in 1965, “ ...we don’t trust anybody over 30,” Krassner was 33, an old, old man. But with the gargantuan reputation of his magazine, The Realist, the flagship publication of the radical left at the time, perhaps of all time, and indispensable rag to the hemorrhaging bleeding heart of the Vietnam War–addled counterculture, Krassner was definitely an exception to the new adage. He established himself as the Walter Cronkite of the underground press and was considered the most trusted investigative satirist working in Amockrica.

“The irony is that I’ve always tried to uphold the virtues of the Constitution and I never took an oath to do it, while [the politicians I target] did take an oath, and they’re the ones trying to destroy the Constitution,” he said.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Paul Krassner on Supremes' "Bong hits 4 Jesus ruling"
• Boing Boing interviews Paul Krassner
• The Sopranos Meet The Hippies by Paul Krassner
• Paul Krassner on RU Sirius Show
• Paul Krassner on Secret Bullshit
• Paul Krassner on the parts they left out of the Abbie Hoffman movie
• Realist archive project

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

Jonathan Gold praises lardo

At Dario Cecchini’s famous butcher shop in Panzano, the one featured in the best-selling kitchen memoir Heat, his version of lardo is whipped into a stiff, shiny paste that billows from his meat case like Miracle Whip. In the Val d’Aosta, chunks of pickled lardo bob in canning jars. Artisanal meat men in south Tuscany make a kind of lardo too, from the fat of plump, lovely Cinta Senese pigs, a local breed of black swine that look as if they have the white belts of Elvis impersonators wrapped around their midsections.

If you are very, very lucky in Italy, you can sometimes find somebody to grill a thick steak over a hot olive-wood fire, then gild it with just enough lardo to dissolve into the meat and scent it with the supreme fragrance of rosemary, spices and profoundly matured pork.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:36:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Update to "Never Get Busted Again" video

Lorretta Nall, who founded the US Marijuana party and ran for Governor of Alabama on the Libertarian ticket, already got into a tussle with that guy.

Here's where she hears about the DVD and thinks it will be great.

Here's a blog post where she reviews his DVD.

Here's where he threatens her with legal action if she doesn't take down her review of his video.

I did not learn any way to keep a narcotics dog from detecting my bag nor to keep a cop from searching my car. Having to sit through 90 minutes of being told things even the most amatuer pot smoker should already know was insulting. The fact that this DVD has been packaged and marketed as a way to help people stay out of jail and sold for a massive profit does not lend any credibility to the notion put forth by Mr. Cooper that he wishes to atone for his sins as a narcotics officer. If that notion were true then this video would have contained information that is actually useful when trying to avoid narcotics dog and officer detection and it would have been disseminated for free. However, according to this video there isn't a damn thing I can do to ensure I will "Never Get Busted Again".

I say it's false advertising and I want my money back.

Read the truth about the problems between me and Loretta [Nall]. Read a non-biased review of my film from one of the most respected names in marijuana reformation, Jodie Emery. She is the wife of Marc Emery. They are the owners of Cannabis Culture Magazine and Marc is currently one of DEA's most wanted for selling pot seeds.

There must be something to my DVD if the major chains are placing it in their stores. There must be something to my second film considering Hollywood has reached out and we are negotiating contracts now.

Please take a moment and click the link. It is a message board discussion that might help you see the other side.

It is discussed here as well.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:22:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My Homeland Security t-shirt design for sale at Shirt.Woot

My shirt features the text, "ZOMG TERRISTS GONNA KILL US ALL ZOMG ZOMG ALERT LEVEL BLOODRED RUN RUN TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES MOISTURE BOMBS ZOMG!" around a modified DHS logo, with the eagle clutching an empty water bottle and a pair of shoes.

Shirt.Woot has a funny pricing model. On the first day -- today -- the shirts cost $10 (including shipping!), but only 1000 of them are sold. Starting tomorrow, the shirts go up in price to $15 until August 6. After that, only the top selling Shirt.Woot designs will be offered for sale.

Woot and I have released the shirt's art under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license for your remixing pleasure. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:38:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Heathrow airport tries to ban the Queen and 5 MILLION Brits from its premises

Heathrow's carbon footprint is larger than many nations'.

The industry seems to want to ban five million of us from Heathrow and all routes to the airport, including the Piccadilly line, parts of the rail network, and sections of the M25 and M4.

In three weeks' time, the Camp for Climate Action is due to gather near Heathrow to peacefully protest against Heathrow's vast contribution to climate change (the airport's planes emit more greenhouse gases than many individual countries) and its planned third runway expansion.

The owner of Heathrow, the British Airports Authority (BAA), seems to be, frankly, terrified.

It's seeking an injunction, which names as defendants "all persons acting as members, participants or supporters" of anti-aviation group Plane Stupid, anti-noise group HACAN and AirportWatch. The injunction is to stop people from setting foot on Heathrow and "the arterial infrastructure serving" it.

(Image, 747 at Heathrow airport, ganked from Alistairmcmillan's Flickr photostream)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ID thief targets pedigree poodle

A suspected conman has been passing Blue off as his own, claiming the dog has given birth to pups which he tries to sell to unsuspecting customers...

Mrs Day said Blue's details were mistakenly put online by somebody she employed to work on her website.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amerca's Army recruiting game coming to arcades

The “green label”, coin-operated AMERICA’S ARMY game is the result of a unique partnership between the U.S. Army and GLOBAL VR. The partnership which encompasses the development and manufacturing of an official U.S. Army game for the arcade market, will create a new communication channel with young Americans.

Working hand-in-hand with U.S. Army Subject Matter Experts and with the full cooperation of units of the U.S. Army, the coin-operated AMERICA’S ARMY is a realistic and engaging game centered on exciting training exercises, and includes a significant amount of authentic Army videos and other information designed to immerse the player in the Army culture.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pinball machine photoshopping contest

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Happy Sysadmin Day, Ken!

Systems administrators are the unsung heroes of the twenty first century, our tireless morlocks who keep the entire universe running. The best sysadmins I’ve met treat their jobs as holy callings. They understand that they’re keeping the infrastructure of the information age alive and functional.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:10:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Early Epcot brochure

New Horizons: An underwater colony is one of the future habitats highlighting your journey through New Horizons, presented by General Electric, In the Omnimax Theatre, you'll spiral through eight-story-high projections of the macro and micro worlds that form the building blocks of our future. And you'll take a whimsical look backwards at the tomorrows imagined by visionaries of the past.

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

Kenyan carvers do the Simpsons

The Tabaka Classic Carvers are licensed to produce 12 models of the show's characters, and they are keen to expand their portfolio.

Pauline Kemunto and her husband work with the Simpsons team in Tabaka; he carves the figures and she smoothes the soapstone afterwards

"I don't know who they are," she says about the dysfunctional cartoon family.

"But I like them because I earn from them."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:01:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ComicCon voice post

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

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Songs for Ice Cream Trucks

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:02:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant monster-head belt-buckles

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:51:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Housecat history

When humans were predominantly hunters, dogs were of great use, and thus were domesticated long before cats. Cats, on the other hand, only became useful to people when we began to settle down, till the earth and—crucially—store surplus crops. With grain stores came mice, and when the first wild cats wandered into town, the stage was set for what the Science study authors call "one of the more successful 'biological experiments' ever undertaken." The cats were delighted by the abundance of prey in the storehouses; people were delighted by the pest control.

"We think what happened is that the cats sort of domesticated themselves," Carlos Driscoll, one of the study authors, told the Washington Post. The cats invited themselves in, and over time, as people favored cats with more docile traits, certain cats adapted to this new environment, producing the dozens of breeds of house cats known today. In the United States, cats are the most popular house pet, with 90 million domesticated cats slinking around 34 percent of U.S. homes.

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:55:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Salt hotel

The blindingly white flats stretch as far as the eye can see, except for a few raised mounds of salt. Despite its barren appearance, the desert hosts cacti and rare hummingbirds, and three species of flamingos stop over each year to breed.

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:36:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Former narc teaches potheads how to stay out of jail

Now he has made an instructional video called Never Get Busted Again. Radar Online has printed some of Cooper's tips.

• The best advice I can give you is this: Never carry more marijuana than you can eat. If the police turn on the red and blues, just eat it. It's not illegal to smell like pot—it's just illegal to possess it.

• Don't think that by hiding pot in coffee grounds, or masking the scent with Bounce fabric softener or vanilla extract, you're gonna be okay. Police dogs are trained to cut through these scents. Petroleum and cayenne pepper don't work either—a dog may jerk back after smelling it, but humans will recognize the reaction.

• If you are going to travel with marijuana, place it in a non-contamined container right before you leave. The drug odor won't have time to permeate through the plastic. If you are handling pot at your house, wear latex gloves or wash your hands—marijuana dust can reside on your fingers, and dogs can smell it. You'd be surprised at how many people get busted when dogs start sniffing around car door handles.

• Hiding your drugs in food is also a wise move. The mixed smells will throw off a dog.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:44:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The largest island on an island on an island (update)

A couple of days ago you noted Elbruz.org's geographical claim, in this post:

There is a larger one on Glover Island on Newfoundland.

I should know: I believe I'm the only person to have ever slept on an island on an island on an island. I went to Newfoundland once and camped on one the islands in the lake on Glover.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:07:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video: Christians United for Israel Tour

In its call for a unilateral military attack on Iran and the expansion of Israeli territory, CUFI has found unwavering encouragement from traditional pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and elements of the Israeli government.

But CUFI has an ulterior agenda: its support for Israel derives from the belief of Hagee and his flock that Jesus will return to Jerusalem after the battle of Armageddon and cleanse the earth of evil. In the end, all the non-believers - Jews, Muslims, Hindus, mainline Christians, etc. - must convert or suffer the torture of eternal damnation. Over a dozen CUFI members eagerly revealed to me their excitement at the prospect of Armageddon occurring tomorrow. Among the rapture ready was Republican Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. None of this seemed to matter to Lieberman, who delivered a long sermon hailing Hagee as nothing less than a modern-day Moses. Lieberman went on to describe Hagee's flock as "even greater than the multitude Moses commanded."

...

I have never witnessed any spectacle as politically extreme, outrageous, or bizarre as the one Christians United for Israel produced last week in Washington. See for yourself.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Generation Chickenhawk: the unauthorized College Republican National Convention Tour
• Blog about end times
• The Rapture Index: Quantifying the end-times
• Honky Tonk Badonkadonk: proof end times are upon us
• Yisrayl Hawkins' end of the world videos, remixed
• World will end on 9 September 2006

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:48:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mickey Mouse shaped vegetables at EPCOT farm

I thought you might be interested in this little article I just wrote up on the "sustainable" farm exhibit at Disney's EPCOT center, which features lots of genetically modified crops and vegetables grown in the shape of Mickey Mouse heads.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:33:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pilots' security org: "Our entire approach to airline security is almost completely ineffective"

Immediately after 9/11, the Administration deployed the National Guard to airport checkpoints to reassure the public, though the terrorists’ objective was not the checkpoint, but the aircraft. The Airline Pilots Security Alliance (APSA) called for putting National Guardsmen on airport ramps to monitor anyone around the aircraft, conduct random ID checks, and protect the aircraft from anyone putting suspicious cargo in the holds or cabin. We also called for 100% ground employee security screening, which, while flawed, provided some layer of prevention against minimum wage employees planting illicit weapons on commercial aircraft; we also called for behavioral profiling of passengers at security checkpoints.

None of this was done, and the aircraft on the ramp were “protected” only by vigilant employees who had other, more primary responsibilities. These aircraft were still freely accessible to many other employees who worked on the strength of a background check that said they hadn’t done anything yet.

...

Almost six years after 9/11, it is inexcusable that — in an environment where TSA misses more than 90% of weapons, RON aircraft are not secured, and ground employees are not screened — fewer than 2% of our airliners have a team of armed pilots aboard, fewer than 5% have air marshals, and the flight attendants have no mandatory tactical or behavioral assessment training. $24 billion dollars later, we are not materially safer, except in the areas of intelligence that prevent an attack from getting to an airport. Once at the airport, there is little reason to believe the attack won’t succeed.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:28:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A surreal and supremely inane compendium of miscellaneous knowledge, Vol 3

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:45:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blogging a satyagraha - hunger strike - to save homeland in Sikkim

BB reader Jim Ratcliffe writes,

This link points to "Weeping Sikkim," a blog that chronicles an ongoing hunger strike by the youth of Sikkim, India to demand goverment transparency and accountability regarding hydroelectric projects in Dzongu, the homeland of the Lepcha people.

The good news is that hunger strikes by the Buddhist community in Sikkim have sucessfully stopped hydroprojects in the past. However, the projects planned for Dzongu are much much larger. The government of Sikkim is not evil, and has made remarkably progressive environmental moves in the past (e.g Sikkim was one of the first states in India to ban plastic bags).

Sikkim works hard to position itself as an ecotourism/buddhist pilgrimage destination for western tourists, so getting the word out about this hunger strike may help tip the balance.

The latest post on this blog includes a statement from the government of Sikkim demanding that the hunger strikers stop within 24 hours, or face punitive actions for a protest that now deemed illegal.

More here.

The hunger strike is being described as a form of satyagraha. Here's more on the origin and meaning of that word.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:14:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fans translate new Harry Potter into Spanish and post online

The main Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio, is reporting that some Harry Potter fans have read, translated and posted online a spanish version "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". It can be downloaded as a PDF or read online in blog format. They even tried to copy the font etc... The translation isin't perfect - some grammar errors and typos - but still. Impressive. Link. Blog version: Link. PDF Versions: Link 1, Link 2.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:06:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Girl Guides want badges for "safe sex" and "flat pack"

The demands emerged in a survey of more than 1,000 Guides by Girlguiding UK, which is striving to keep itself relevant to the lives of young women. A spokeswoman said that the movement would act on the findings and make sure that the appeal for more information on sex and money was met.

In the poll, senior Guides, who are aged over 16, said that managing money was the most important skill to master as they contemplated leaving the family home. “Practising safe sex” was placed fourth, with “assembling flat-pack furniture” eighth. Younger Guides, aged from 10 to 15, valued more traditional skills. Top of their list was “cooking a healthy meal” and “pitching a tent”, although “standing up to boys” came fourth.

The youngest Guides, aged under 10, said that they wanted to know how to surf the web safely and how to cross the road.

Reader comment:

Susannah says:

The piece on UK Girl Guides made me think of Mary Yaeger's "Female Merit Badges," which recognize milestones from getting pubic hair to wearing your first pair of high heels to having a mastectomy. They took my breath away when I first saw them several years ago.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:54:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Congress votes to raid medical marijuana dispensaries

To celebrate, the DEA raided six medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, even though the people of California passed a law that allows dispensaries to operate in the state.

Another examples of how states rights only matter to politicians when it furthers their ideological agendas. Link

Reader comment:

Lee says:

I wanted to give you all the full picture of SoCal and the DEA. The following (here) was played on the local Pasadena NPR affiliate 89.3 KPCC this morning. It states that 10 clincs were shut down yesterday.

This also does not count an additional two in the Inland Empire region of SoCal which were shut down as recently as 2 weeks ago, I have provided the notices provided to patients through the local Patient Group (of which I am a member).

I'm sure you know, and any copy of next weeks LA-Weekly or The Onion you pick up will prove this doesn't change anything about access to medical pot in LA. and despite the feds we have the support of local legislators.

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

Building a super cool private astronomical observatory in NM

Architect and BoingBoing reader Greg La Vardera in New Mexico Jersey read the post here yesterday about planned housing communities for amateur astronomy buffs, and wrote in to share word of an interesting project he's working on for a client in New Mexico:

We are building a small private observatory as part of a new house - although housed in a separate structure. Located in New Mexico, very remote, for all the same reasons you describe. Thought your readers might enjoy some of the back ground about designing a small observatory which are elaborated in the second half of this post from my blog.

Working on this design was an education for us. I've always been interested in space and astronomy but never had a telescope. My brother and several friends have good telescopes but nothing that a consumer could not order from a catalog. This was different.

The scope in this case is a precision instrument. It was going to be housed in a 16ft diameter dome with an operating aperture and motor driven base - just like the big boys.

We did not have to design this - it is procured from a company that specializes in their fabrication. But we had to design up to it and support it.

Adjacent to the dome is an equipment room. Here will reside computer equipment and tools and supplies to maintain the instrument. The computers control the tracking of the instrument, as well as manage image acquisition.

You an use an eye-piece with the scope but the primary mode is a high res CCD capturing images and serving them to the operator who is remote. A web based interface allows for control as well as imaging so this is something that can be used where ever you have an internet connection. You do not need to be at the facility.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:25:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Update on Jeremy Blake, Theresa Duncan: body found + CoS claims - UPDATE

The artist and video game designer is believed to have killed himself last week, just after his filmmaker/writer/blogger companion Theresa Duncan took her life in New York City.

In related news, the LAT reports a weird Scientology element to the story:

"They thought Scientologists were really harassing them," [friend and gallery owner Christine Nichols] said. "They would say, 'They are following us, harassing our landlord.' I did not see any evidence of that.

"But it got to be something that was huge to them -- a 'You're either with us or against us' thing where if you didn't believe them, you weren't on their side. The story they had woven in paranoia and conspiracies took over part of their lives. A lot of us couldn't understand that acting out."

Two other art world sources corroborated Nichols' characterization but declined to speak on the record out of concern that Blake may still be alive.

Beck was unavailable for comment, but his manager, through a publicist, let it be known that things were "extremely cordial" between the singer and the artist the last time they talked three years ago.A spokesman said the New York Police Department was not investigating any involvement by the Church of Scientology. Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology, denied the allegations, saying, "Never heard of these people. This is completely untrue."

Reader comment: Jon says,

I really wish you'd include a link to a post on Jeff Wells' Rigorous Intuition blog, regarding Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake's "suicides". Theresa Duncan herself was an avid reader of Rigourous Intuition, and some of the details surrounding her harrassment were gleaned, seemingly, directly from this blog. It's like a web of intrigue on the world wide web! The post "Imitation of Life" contains more info on the Theresa Duncan/Jeremy Blake suicides.

Update: David Newton was among the BB readers who wrote in to point us to this statement from Beck, published today:

"I am deeply saddened at the news of the loss of Jeremy Blake. I got to work with him back in 2002 on the art for the Sea Change album. His pioneering video paintings had an intelligence and power that seemed to open the door to the possibilities of what the medium could become. I had not heard from him in a few years, so it was heartbreaking to learn of this turn of events. I feel really privileged that I got to collaborate with him, and be a part of the world he created with his work. My condolences go out to his family and friends. We'll be forever in his debt for the stunning images he gave us."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:17:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MP3 Mixtapes: Balkan hotsteppaz, hardcore klezmer, Roma rap, Raï

(1) A Belgian DJ named Typsy Gypsy (half of the Balkan Hot Stepsoundsystem duo) has uploaded a srsly kickazz 2-part mixtape set featuring a wide array of Balkan, Gypsy, Raï, and Klezmer beats -- all over 150 bpm -- that will make you go hopa.

Link to the referring blog ('T Nieuwe Werck), which posts direct MP3 links and a detailed tracklist so you can go out and buy some of this great stuff after you've tasted it.

A quick exploration of Typsy Gypsy's MySpace page leads to two even more recent mixtape uploads, which are part of a regular podcast transmission: check out "Balkan Bangers," July 26, 2007, Link to part 1, Link to part 2. Check out the Beastie Boys mix on that myspace page, too.

Subscribe to the podcast here: iTunes Link.

(2) In a similar vein, here's a mix set featuring "Sinti- and Roma (/ -inspired) tunes, ranging from Paris to Bucharest and several places in between." Link.

(3) While you're at it, here's another sweet download -- flowing Spanish-language rap over dance beats: Link.

(Balkan stuff via Blentwell / all of it thanks Brendan!)

Update: Schobbejak of the T Nieuwe Werck blog where we found this stuff says:

Thank you for your post on boingboing.net. The Typsy Gypsy mix is one great mix! And you can also tell people that there will be another typsy gypsy release soon!

Reader comment: Jordan says,

I wanted to mention a short remix of a Bosnian pop song I did: MP3 Link. It was for the stepmania stepmix contest, where you make your own custom dance dance revolution levels, downloadable here: Link.

It's great to see the fusion of Balkan/Gypsy and electronic music gaining momentum. I'd like to offer another suggestion in this genre, it can be found at this link, or here is a direct download URL.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:18:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A veritable pu pu platter of short links

(Thanks, Andrew Tonkin, Susannah, jarod, David, K-Milo, Pim, The Guy on the Couch, Borja, Aaron, and the dozens of readers who suggested the cat death thing)

Reader comment: More on the grim reapurr item -- BWJones says,

This story indicates that cats may be better detectors of metabolomic status than we give them credit for. Here's a related article in the New England Journal of Medicine BBC link here. CBS link here.

Deth Kitteh pays a visit to the original Laugh-Out-Loud Cats. My great-grandfather was truly ahead of his time. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:56:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Delusional UK millionaire leaves Tories fortune to fight sexually perverted pharmaceutical execs

Both sides accept that Branislav Kostic, Zoran Kostic's father, had been "delusionary insane" since 1985 when he divorced, broke off relations with his son and sister and claimed there was an international conspiracy of more than 100 people masterminded by sexually perverted pharmaceutical company executives to destroy "freedom, democracy and human purity".

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:23:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report: Rape cases on Indian reservations go uninvestigated

When Archambault found her friend in a Bismarck, N.D. hospital, she was black and blue.

"'I said, 'Leslie, what happened?.' She said, 'Rhea, is that you? Turn the lights on, I can't see.' But the lights in the room were on. She said, 'Rhea, I was raped,' and she was just squeezing my hand," Archambault recalled.

Archambault called the Bureau of Indian Affairs police, a small department in charge of all law enforcement on the reservation. A few days later an officer arrived in the hospital room, and Leslie scratched out a statement on a tablet laid across her stomach.

Ironroad told the officer how she was raped and said that the men locked her in a bathroom, where she swallowed diabetes pills she found in the cabinet, hoping that if she was unconscious the men would leave her alone. The next morning, someone found her on the bathroom floor and called an ambulance.

A week later, Ironroad was dead — and so was the investigation. None of the authorities who could have investigated what happened to Leslie Ironroad did — not the Bureau of Indian Affairs, nor the FBI, nor anybody else. People who know the men who likely attacked her say they were never even questioned.

Reader comment: Jason Pitzl-Waters says,

Thanks for picking up on this issue, perhaps you might want to provide a link to the recently released Amnesty International study on the issue entitled: "Maze of Injustice The failure to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA". Link.

Some of the statistics in the report are simply chilling. Including the fact that a vast majority of sexual assault and rape cases against Native women are committed by strangers and outsiders (which is at odds with the typical rape statistics), and that 1 in 3 Native Americans will be raped in their lifetimes.

I'd like to point out this current case involving an indigenous woman in Canada: Link. It's over 7 months now, and still nothing done, nothing found. A man has started a Facebook group about her murder here: Link. and on Facebook: Link. Yes, I'm a member of it, and yes I'd like to see some closure brought. It is sickening to hear of the double standard that police have in the U.S. and Canada, and even Australia in regards to native peoples assaults, rapes and murders. They are not second hand citizens. They deserve just as much justice as anyone. Doctor's group lifting the reward money: Link.

Congress moves to put nearly a 100Mil to stop the serial rapists and to find out what's going on: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:19:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warren Ellis's CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, comic net-perv novel that would make Goatse blush

This storyline - a hardboiled dick and his h4wt, tattooed, polyamorous sidekick -- is the perfect vehicle for a blazing, hilarious tour across America and its myriad daytime talk-show perversions (the narrator has his balls injected with saline in the first fifty pages). Ellis is a connoisseur of the weird and squicky, and he's saved his best material for us in this volume. This is a book that would make Goatse blush in places, and laugh in others, and do some discreet mail-order shopping in others.

But there's more to this book than just chuckles. Slyly hidden in this book's depths is an absolutely brilliant little message about the how and why of Internet perversity, the reason that America and the world have found themselves getting magnificently weirder in the last decade, and why that's a Good Thing. This is a celebration of following one's weird, one that is open-eyed to the pain and problems of that path, and one that embraces it anyway.

Ellis is a great storyteller, and this little sucker just rips along. I just finished it in 90 minutes on an airplane and it left me hungry for more. Go on and read this one, it's NSFW-ariffic. Link

See also:
Warren Ellis's NEXTWAVE: subverting the underwear perverts
Warren Ellis' graphic novel FELL #1 online for free
Warren Ellis's Desolation Jones - Savage noir spy comic
Warren Ellis's Mek and Reload omnibus edition
Complete Warren Ellis comic online
Transmetropolitan #1 as a free download
I come to praise Transmetropolitan

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:49:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Comic about Harry Potter spoliers (no actual spoliers)

See also: Strategy behind using liquids to threaten planes

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:05:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creative Commons for education

Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

* With legal barriers, we advocate for licensing of educational materials under interoperable terms, such as those provided by Creative Commons licenses, that allow unhampered modification, remixing, and redistribution. We also educate teachers, learners, and policy makers about copyright and fair-use issues pertaining to education.

* With technical barriers, we promote interoperability standards and tools to facilitate remixing and reuse.

* With social barriers, we encourage teachers and learners to re-use educational materials available on the Web, and to build on each other’s contributions.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:03:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EZ-Bake oven for your PC

Now the computer savvy among us can relive the fun of having your very own personal mini-oven with the PC Ez-Bake oven! It fits in a 5 1/4" drive bay and plugs right into your power supply with the included Molex connector. Also included is "PC Ez-Cook", the open-source oven controller software with hundreds of easy and creative recipes for your PC Ez-Bake oven, and even a fuzzy-logic cooking control system to precisely measure the doneness of your cake, cookie, or cheese souffle. The PC Ez-Bake oven can even be used to cook your Pop Tarts, Bagel Bites, or any tiny or flat food. YUM!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:54:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage Planned Parenthood issue of Spider-Man comic

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:26:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animated flashlight film

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:09:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Planned communities for amateur astronomers

Here's a Reuters profile of Arizona Sky Village, a planned community for astronomy lovers in Arizona. Above, a building there shown with observatory dome. This is not the only such purpose-built community for stargazers; others include Deerlick Astronomy Village in Georgia and Chiefland Astronomy Village in neighboring Florida. Snip:

The communities are all located in remote areas far from flaring city lights that spoil views of the night sky. Residents abide by rules forbidding bright lights anywhere from dusk till dawn to preserve optimum viewing.

With its stable weather conditions, bone-dry air and isolated location, the Arizona Sky Village offers a near-perfect setting for astronomers, allowing them to see even faint objects like the swirling clouds of gas that make up nebulae and the spiral arms of far-off galaxies in transparent detail.

"It's ink-black, dead-dark, one of the darkest places in the country," says Gene Turner, an amateur astronomer and one of the project's developers.

"The Milky Way is so bright here, it's three-dimensional. In 1500 you could see it everywhere like this but now that's very rare," he said.

Reader comment: Tom says,

Planned communities are nice. But the pro's and filthy-rich dot.commer's go to NM Skies.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:26:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weekly World News dies after 28 years of awesum, Bat Boy bummed

Lesbian Space Alien and Vegan Vampire Lady could not be reached for comment.

As you can see here, Bat Boy remains inconsolable.

SF Scope has more: Link 1, Link 2. WaPo: Link. Reuters: Link.

Reader Comment: Nathan Cobb, MD, says,

While the cover stories of the Weekly World News were always amusing, it was in reality a sleazy tabloid that used its fictional stories to protect itself from charges of libel and slander. Inside the stories were often adopted from real news and freely changed or embellished. I'll never forget being in the supermarket with my college roommates, picking up the WWN and laughing at the headlines - only to open up to an "article" on the recent murder of one of my relatives by a mentally ill handyman (in front of her two little children.) The crime was horrific; the fact-free hatchet job they did on her husband for opposing the death penalty was over the top. Good riddance.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:13:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chris Jordan's photos of disturbing consumer stats: interview

Chris Jordan renders American consumer statistics as art. For instance: above, 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day. At left, an idea of what the 60 x 100" piece looks like from a distance; at right, detail view. I imagine they'd look amazing IRL.

We've blogged his work a number of times here on BoingBoing (1, 2), but here's a Link to a new interview with him, by Nicole Pasulka in The Morning News.

Reader comment: Mark Hurst says,

Here's a video clip of Chris Jordan speaking at my Gel 2007 conference this spring.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:53:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Musurgia Universalis: 17th-c text on music, math, machines

Above, a detail from a page in Athanasius Kircher's "Musurgia Universalis," printed in 1650. Snip from a post on Bibliodyssey:

A large part of the book is devoted to the history of instrumentation, including the anatomy of voice and hearing, and an extensive theory on acoustics entitled 'Magia Phonocamptica, sive de Echo', in which he described sound as 'the ape of light.'

Kircher professes the Boethian concept of musical harmonies' mathematical correspondences within the body, the heavens, and the natural world, and concludes with a discussion of the unheard music of the nine angelic choirs and the Holy Trinity. Kircher's research in music and acoustics led to many innovations and inventions, particularly in the area of amplification and sound design, which he would expand upon in his Phonurgia nova (Kempten 1673).

Other devices created the illusion of talking statuary, hydraulically powered mechanical music-playing automata, the aeolian harp (which was revived and venerated by the English romantic poets as a model of divine inspiration), the hearing aid, and the arca musarithmica: a primitive mechanical computer that would compose simple random compositions, as well as write messages in cipher, calculate the date of Easter in any year, and design fortifications.

Previously on BoingBoing:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:27:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LAT kills column that suggested free CDs instead of Page One ads

Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein wrote an article suggesting it might be a good idea give away CDs inside the paper, instead of putting lots of advertising on Page One. The column got spiked by an associate editor, and the Times simply said Goldstein was "on assignment".

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:10:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Religious "priming" promotes cooperation

"One idea that we seriously considered was that God, to those who believe, is a supernatural policing agent," says psychologist Azim Shariff...

"We can't compare the relative strengths of religion and civics, or draw tight analogies to real-world situations," says Shariff. "What we can do is identify that both concepts have substantial effects on prosocial behaviour."

David Sloan Wilson has written extensively about theory in this respect in "Darwin's Cathedral," and this research supports his hypothesis.

If you want to get into real detail, there's Henrich and Henrich's recent book, "Why Humans Cooperate" that details how cultural evolution works with groups: individual humans learn by imitation; when one member of a group makes a discovery that enhances survival value, and that discovery spreads through the group, the fitness of the group improves. Again, according to cultural evolution theory, religion is an example of a norm that is internalized by members of the group, thus reducing dramatically the cost of policing, that constrains individual behavior but improves group fitness.

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:49:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cry havoc, and let slip the squirrels of war

A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country's borders.

These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes.

According to the announcement made by Iranian intelligence officials, alert police officials caught these squirrels before they could carry out any task.

Update: Wired's Danger Room blog has more: Link. And while I'm at it, here's another post there about Pentagon researchers looking for "crystal balls" and electronic choose-your-own-adventure novels: Link. (thanks, Noah!)

BB reader Dappledthings asks,

Any connection to the death badgers we've apparently inflicted upon Iraq, do you think? Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:40:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Artist Jeremy Blake missing, and his girlfriend has committed suicide

In NYC, a filmmaker/games designer committed suicide last week. Her companion, a well-known contemporary abstract artist, has gone missing for 8 days and is presumed dead:

The filmmaker, Theresa Duncan, 40, who has also drawn attention for her writings on cultural topics, committed suicide in their East Village apartment on July 10, the police said. Her companion, Jeremy Blake, 35, a well-regarded artist known for digital animation that blurs the line between abstract painting and film, has been missing since his clothes were found on a beach in the Rockaways on Tuesday evening, they added.

Above: still from Jeremy Blake's 14-minute DVD art piece "Sodium Fox," 2005. Link to Theresa Duncan's blog.

Snip from the last entry on Ms. Duncan's blog, dated July 10, 2007:

"A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths."

--Reynolds Price

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:33:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Smorgasbord of short links

(thanks, John Parres, Kim, Alfred, Wayne Correia, Bonnie, axlrosen, John, Katherine Hannaford, Destiny, Susannah Breslin)

Reader comment: Jesse Raub says,

It should be noted that the other guy in the Kanye video is none other than Will Oldham, otherwise known as Bonnie “prince” Billy and of Palace Records. This is funnier to me than Zack Galifinakis.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:59:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Inside the High-Tech Hunt for a Missing Silicon Valley Legend

The story is partly about the massive and fascinating DIY effort to try to find Gray and his sailboat -- involving satellites steered over the Pacific, NASA planes, ocean simulators, and 12,000 volunteers analyzing images on Amazon's Mechanical Turk -- but it's also deeply about who Jim Gray was, and why his loss at sea was such a loss for our collective future. Gray was an brilliant, generous, self-deprecating man who routinely gave his expertise away, acting as a mentor to dozens of scientists all over the world, and building enormous resources for amateur science. As I say in the article:

He turned a dorky Windows NT marketing concept ("Scalability Day") into an excuse to build TerraServer, which brought satellite imagery - previously the exclusive domain of intelligence agencies and weather forecasters - to the masses. Then Gray teamed up with astronomer Alex Szalay at Johns Hopkins University to port a massive star-mapping project - the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - to the Web, making the data accessible to professional astronomers, backyard stargazers, and students. Since its debut in 2001, SkyServer has become the most widely used astronomical resource in the world, sparking discoveries about dwarf galaxies, dark matter, and sonic waves triggered by the big bang.

To Gray, both sites were teasers for the coming era of data-centric science made possible by the proliferation of cheap sensing devices, very large data bases, and online interfaces. For life-science researchers, he was like an ambassador from the future who spoke their language. The morning he set sail for the Farallon Islands, he had collaborations under way with oceanographers, soil ecologists, and public health officials.

And he was at least as interested in the scientists themselves as in the petabytes of data they produced. "We connected so deeply," Szalay says. "Sometimes you make these kinds of connections very early in life or in graduate school. But by the time you get to 50, it's rare to meet someone who is so much on the same wavelength. We talked this way, usually several times a day, for eight years."

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Database pioneer Jim Gray missing at sea

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:57:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fighting the pirates

The attack came after daybreak. The Delta Ranger, a cargo ship carrying bauxite, was steaming through the ink-blue Indian Ocean in January 2006, about 200 nautical miles off Somalia's coast. A crewman on the bridge spied two speedboats zooming straight at the port side of his vessel. Moments later, bullets tore into the bridge, and vapor trails from rocket-propelled grenades streaked across the bow: pirates.

A member of the Delta Ranger's crew sounded the ship's whistle, and the cargo ship began maneuvering away as bullets thudded into its hull. The captain radioed a message to distant Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) operates the world's only pirate reporting and rescue center. In describing the attack, he added that the pirates seemed to be using a hijacked Indian dhow, a fishing vessel, as their mother ship.

The center's duty officer immediately radioed an alert to all ships in the Delta Ranger's vicinity and found that two other cargo ships had escaped similar attacks in recent days. The duty officer's next message went to the USS Winston S. Churchill, a Navy guided-missile destroyer on patrol about 100 nautical miles from the pirates' last reported position. Soon after, the Churchill headed for the dhow....

...As governments cut their navies after the cold war, as thieves have gotten hold of more powerful weapons and as more and more cargo has moved by sea, piracy has once again become a lucrative form of waterborne mugging. Attacks at sea had become rare enough to be a curiosity in the mid-20th century, but began to reappear in the 1970s. By the 1990s, maritime experts noted a sharp increase in attacks, which led the IMB to establish the Piracy Reporting Centre in 1992—and still the buccaneering continued, with a high of 469 attacks registered in 2000. Since then, improvements in reporting, ship-tracking technology and government reaction have calmed the seas somewhat—the center counted 329 attacks in 2004, down to 276 in 2005 and 239 last year—but pirates remain very much in business, making the waters off Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Somalia especially perilous. "We report hundreds of acts of piracy each year, many hundreds more go undetected," says Capt. Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Centre, in Kuala Lumpur. "Ships and their crews disappear on the high seas and coastal waters every year, never to be seen again." Even stationary targets, such as oil platforms, are at risk.

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:54:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Afrigadgets: homemade model airplane from Kenya

Erik at Afrigadget.com has an interesting post up about a Kenyan metal craftsman named Phillip Isohe, who builds wonderful little models of planes and buses in his spare time. Snip from post:

This seems to be an extension of what many of us did while growing up in Africa - building wire, or tin can, cars. What’s most interesting is the excruciating attention to detail that he puts into each one. In fact, they each have motors with working lights, steering, engine and interiors.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:15:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

San Francisco's devil taxi 666

Byrne, a 30-year veteran driver, was assigned No. 666 only last August, Thigpen said, after another applicant refused to accept the number. Since then, sources said, Byrne has been involved in at least one accident -- even after taking the precaution of having the cab blessed at Mission Dolores.

"Do I believe in the Mark of the Beast myself?'' Thigpen said in an interview. "No. But there is a lot of negative energy around that cab. If we can help somebody out, why not do it? If something's a nuisance, it's our duty to get rid of it, right?''

A commission clerk, who asked not to be identified, said Byrne "had many deaths around him and his family'' and that getting rid of the cursed number "is an idea that speaks for itself.'' Link

"How dare you take Lucifer's number away,'' said Thomas George-Williams, president of the cab drivers union, who was sporting the red horns (at the hearing). "This is a serious issue.''

A cabbie named Tom warned the commission that it was "opening a can of worms" and would soon be deluged with requests to retire other numbers. A cabbie named Barry pointed out that 666 was the address of SS Peter and Paul's Church on Filbert Street, an outfit not thought to be in Satan's pocket. A cabbie named Grasshopper said it was a "bad idea to get into mysticism and voodoo.'' Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:42:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ARC, by Christopher Louie

"ARC is a short movie-come-music video concerning the only slightly implausible affair between a young man with Down's syndrome and a very beautiful young blonde." -- Ben Marshall, Guardian Unlimited

Music by Why? "Gemini (Birthday Song)"

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:12:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BBC: W's grandpappy planned fascist coup of USA

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

Reader comment:

Steve says:

Prescott Bush stole Geronimo's bones! This has even been fact-checked: The skull of Geronimo, Fort Sill's most illustrious prisoner of war, no longer occupies his tomb on the base; the Apache warrior's cranium was reportedly exhumed one night in 1918 by a group of Army officers and smuggled to Yale, where it resides in the vault of the Skull and Bones society. The young officer who wielded the shovel, according to university historian Alexandra Robbins, was the President's grandfather, Prescott Bush.

The BBC was in touch with me about its Fascist Coup program, as much of its information came from the Feral House release, War is a Racket by General Smedley Butler. My introduction discussed the coup attempt, which was first revealed to Congress and the press by General Butler, and it had material that was initially covered up in the public release of the Congressional Investigation into the fascist coup and later revealed in an obscure book called 1000 Americans: The Real Rulers of the U.S.A. by George Seldes.

I think I should also mention that Prescott Bush, though he later openly expressed sympathies to Hitler, was not specifically involved with the 1933/34 coup attempt. This was mainly engineered by J.P. Morgan's forces.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:23:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony Spyware license-agreement performed by a women's choir

Celebrate Sony/BMG's lawsuit against SunComm, the company that provided the rootkit spyware that caused such a ruckus, with this oddly powerful rendition of the Sony/BMG End User License Agreement -- arranged for women's choir and recorded by Toronto recording artist Brian Joseph Davis.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:15:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Analysis of poster colors of top grossing movies

The trend seems to be: the more risqué the movie, the redder and blacker the poster. Link (Thanks, hurty elbow!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:10:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

YouTube remains blocked in Thailand, nevermind

Last night I posted word from a few BoingBoing readers in Thailand that YouTube was suddenly, without notice, available once again in Thailand (Link to BB post). Authorities had blocked the site for months, as we understand. Looks like it's still blocked for some? Maybe the accessibility will come in waves, or maybe the whole shebang is still off limits? I'm confused, and have asked YouTube and others to help us sort out what's going on over there.

Meade in Bangkok shares the screengrab above and says,

I'm in Bangkok, and, as of 16:24 Wednesday 25 July 2007, YouTube is still blocked. When I try to access it, it redirects to the usual "Police Aleart [sic]," as shown in attached.

Unblocking YouTube would make one of the local English-language newspapers here (Link 1, Link 2). Nothing in the news today.

Can finally get get YouTube again tonight in Bangkok via my True DSL account. Haven't yet tried other providers. The discrepancy could have to do with sites being blocked at two points. The ISPs have their own blocks, based on govt "suggestions." But the govt controls (officially, anyway) the intl gateways, and makes some effort to block there. It seems likely that the gateway block is lifted but some ISPs haven't lifted their redundant blocks yet. Interested in censorship in Thailand? Here's the site to go to: Link.

I received a lot of comments from Thailand local bloggers told me that they can't still access to YouTube from their home. Actually, I watched YouTube in News Reader when I arrive at office in this morning. I gave a tip to boingboing as soon as I posted about this in my blog. On tommorow I'll post again with some snapshots If I can still watch YouTube. I'm still confused that this is a technical problem of government ISP (I think that we're directly using from Government but I'm not still sure). The reason why I give tip to editors from boingboing again is that BoingBoing is my favorite blogs and I don't want to give you wrong information because you're #1. I do apologize If I will not access YouTube on tomorrow. I hope I posted correct information.

As of 00:05 local time, YOuTube is still blocked in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in the Northern part of the country. Can anyone recommend a good proxy service that actually has decent upload speeds? Oh wait, forget that last part. As of July 18th, the police can kick in your door for that.

Link to block status.

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

Wooden car

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:52:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A surreal and supremely inane compendium of miscellaneous knowledge, Vol 2

Previously on Boing Boing:
• ASASICOMK, Vol. 1

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:44:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Top ten spacewalks

3. Bruce McCandless, floating free in space (1984)

At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was further out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured above, was floating free in space. McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk" during Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:12:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Peter Bagge in the Washington Post

"I call it cartoon journalism," Bagge, 49, said in a phone interview from his home in Seattle. "I don't know what else to call it."

Over the past six years, Bagge has covered political campaigns, protest marches and, in one hilarious piece, a very earnest convention of polygamists, swingers, sadomasochists and transsexuals, where a panel discussion on legal issues inspired a rather dumpy woman to ask this question: "If I adopt my live-in lovers, would I be violating incest laws?"...

In the current Reason, the one with his hideous self-portrait on the cover, Bagge travels to a gun show, interviews people on both sides of the gun control issue and ultimately concludes that, yes, an American should be able to own a bazooka: "If I don't hurt, threaten or disturb anyone with it, then why can't I own one?"

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:22:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

YouTube unblocked in Thailand, after helping gov block political clips - UPDATED

BoingBoing reader and Thai Burmese blogger Myo Kyaw Htun was among many to share the news with us today that YouTube is -- as of today -- once again accessible to users inside Thailand.

It has been more than three and an half month since April 3, 2007 after YouTube was blocked in Thailand. Finally, YouTube is back here again.

Various sites are reporting that part of the reason for the "unblocking" is that YouTube offered to help the government block access to specific video clips considered offensive to the nation's monarch, Bhumibol Adulyadej. This way, the logic goes, Thailand's internet censors would not be compelled to block the entire YouTube domain: Link, and Link.

Insulting the monarchy in Thailand, through silly YouTube parody videos or otherwise, is a crime known as lese majeste.

Previously on BoingBoing:

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:09:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: illustrated history of Tokyo's lightspeed subcultures

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:35:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Trailers from Hell: directors muse on schlocky movie faves

The idea behind the recently launched "Trailers from Hell" website is simple and fun. Each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, there's a new video segment in which a renowned movie director comments over one of their favorite b-movie / exploitation / grindhouse flick trailers. Lots of personal memories, inspiration revelations -- it's like having a beer with a filmmaker whose work you dig, and fessing up about crappy movies you're both ashamed to admit loving.

One of this week's uploads is Mick "Masters of Horror" Garris waxing poetic about "The Vampire Lovers": Link.

What's extra cool here is the fact that each trailer is offered both with and without commentary. Great picks, and the commentaries I've watched are most watchable.

For instance, John Landis pointing out people he went to high school with who appear in "The T.A.M.I. Show," the musical variety epic filmed in "Electronovision" in 1964: Link.

Or Joe Dante on the sciencesploitation crapsterpiece "Incredible Petrified World": Link. ("You gotta hand it to [Jerry Warren] -- he made Ed Wood look like Bernardo Bertolucci, but he got these things made and people paid to see 'em!").

The commentaries feel authentic. You can't really fake this stuff, so there's a lot for fringe movie buffs to enjoy.

The only criticisms I have about the project are nitpicky UI issues -- I can't subscribe to an RSS feed (opt-in email updates, but that's kinda lame) Hey look, an RSS feed!; the website has a big-ass noisy Flash intro at the front gate; audience comments would be nice; and I wish the content were available on some of the web video networks I get most of my daily video pickins from.

Still, I'm totally bookmarking it and planning to come back regularly. Here's hoping they'll make these very good goods a little easier to access as time goes on. (Thanks, Elizabeth Stanley!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:52:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Massive power outage in SF's Soma district takes many websites offline

6 back-to-back power outages hit the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco Tuesday afternoon causing major havoc with popular web services. 365 Main is down, along with craigslist, Netflix, Technorati and SixApart.

Reader comment: Adam Glenn says,

I was poking around on 365 Main's website and found this press release ("REDENVELOPE REPORTS TWO YEARS OF CONTINUOUS UPTIME AT 365 MAIN’S SAN FRANCISCO DATA CENTER"). Take a look at the date :)

AP is reporting that it appears Netflix was not effected by the power outage.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:15:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark interviews Martha Stewart

Stewart: When the Walkman first came out, I called it the Rudeman: Everybody who's listening to those is rude to me. I think part of the reason I got divorced was because of the Rudeman.

Wired: Really?

Stewart: Oh yeah. I'd be in the garden, weeding and chatting away and no answer! [Laughs.] That was like... when was the Walkman?

Wired: The early '80s, I guess.

Stewart: Yeah, that's it. He had one. Boy, he got out of there fast.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:22:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless power explained in Science News

In the early 1900s, long before the power grid made electricity widely available, electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla devised a grand scheme to transfer large amounts of power over long distances from a tower 20 stories tall, to be built on Long Island in New York. To this day, historians puzzle over how Tesla's system was supposed to work, or whether it could have worked at all, says Bernard Carlson, a historian of science at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville who is writing a biography of the great engineer. "We can't even begin to understand what he was doing with this power stuff," Carlson says.

The project died when Tesla's financial backers pulled the plug, possibly because Tesla seemed unclear as to how to bill customers receiving wireless power. Ironically, Tesla also invented the alternating current (AC) system of power production, transmission, and distribution that would become the standard for the modern grid.

But electromagnetic radiation can indeed carry energy through air or empty space and over large distances.

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:14:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Peanuts by Charles Bukowski

It began as a mistake.

The first time that Charles Branaski met Lucy Van Pelt, she was holding a football. He didn’t care for the game, baseball was his thing. Still, she held out that old football.

“Just kick the fucking thing,” she said.

“Listen, babe. You just hold that thing steady and I’ll kick the shit out of it.”

She threw her head back and laughed. She laughed long and hard and propped up the football. Charlie took a running start and he reared back his leg and kicked as hard as he could. Lucy was laughing too hard to hold the ball steady and it slipped out of her hand. Charlie missed the ball and flew straight up in the air and landed flat on his back.

Reader comment:

Sarang says:

I noticed the warning you posted in response to a reader's concern. The malware he mentions is an impolite ad for "DriveCleaner" and I've seen it before. I normally use Safari on a Mac, and the first time I experienced it, I was shocked that it manages to manipulate windows and navigation on it. Presumably even nastier stuff happens on Windows/IE.

Even more surprising was that this kept happening while visiting wunderground.com, which I considered to be a reputable site. It turned out that the DriveCleaner malware was served through a banner ad service, and seemed to be targeted to non-US IP addresses -- it started happening immediately after I moved from San Francisco to France! To wunderground's credit, they were extremely responsive to my complaint and took care of the issue promptly. They confirmed that only European visitors were being served the ad. I suspect this is common practice -- American Web site operators wouldn't see these malicious ads themselves, and would have no idea until foreign visitors started complaining...

I'm on Verizon in North Carolina and that malware/ad pounded me pretty hard. It might not be everywhere, but it's not limited to non-US.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:12:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

W magazine gets yiffy

Funny how that works. When the people inside the furries costumes are underfed Eurobabes with translucent skin and beestung lips, the notion of yiffery doesn't seem so objectionable. Oh, wait, though -- (reads credits) okay, that's real fox fur. Nevermind, buzzkill again. Link to furry-themed photo spread in this month's W Magazine. (thanks, Susannah!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:45:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jasmina Tešanović: Serbia and the Flames

(text: Jasmina Tešanović)

Today was the hottest day in Serbia ever since the temperature has been measured, 45 C.

If we we Serbs were truly interested in our survival as a nation, we'd be scrambling to get some modern hardware for dealing with ecological catastrophes. It's been ten years since Milosevic sold off our forest fire-fighting aircraft and pocketed the money.

We would talk together seriously about last year's massive floods throughout the Danube basin, about this year's deadly heat wave in Serbia and throughout the Balkans, about the state of emergency in our neighbor Greece, about the electricity shortages and blackouts throughout the regions, about the woods of our homeland set on fire.

Even tidy Britain is being overwhelmed with their flood catastrophes, while here in Serbia we lack any organized emergency-response because the Serbian state is, by its nature, in an emergency situation all the time.
More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:31:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Skull Project book

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:17:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Outtakes from Outfest '07 shorts program

The annual GLBT film festival Outfest unfolded in LA over the past couple of weeks. There's always much here of appeal to broader audiences. As an aside, the abbreviation "GLBT" always sounds like a sandwich to me. Maybe a BLT with gouda.

I didn't get a chance to check out as much as I'd wished, but one screening of short films by female directors this past Sunday ("Girls' Shorts") contained three gems I wanted to jot down here.

First -- the delightful "Casting Pearls," with Calpernia Addams and Andrea James (you might know them from "Transamerica," or "Soldier's Girl"). Link to trailer.

"Pearls" is a sharp, funny comedic short told from the pov of a transgendered actress doing her best to remain human while trying to make a living in Hollywood. Contains the most hilarious use of a plastic sausage biscuit ever captured in a motion picture.

Another standout was "Make a Wish" (Itmanna), about a young Palestinian girl who will do just about anything to buy a chocolate birthday cake for someone she loves very much. Filmed on location in the West Bank by director Cherien Dabis, produced with help from the media center at Al Quds (I've blogged about the work of Daoud Kuttab from that institution before). Link to "Make a Wish" website with trailer.

And another obvious crowd fave was "Pariah," directed by Dee Rees: Link to website with trailer. A lush, beautiful short about a young woman in the Bronx growing up gay in a conservative home. There's so much for non-gay audiences to appreciate in this tale about identity and family. If I understand correctly, Spike Lee provided some form of support in the production, and there are plans to do a feature. Image in this post: detail from "Pariah" promo poster. Seriously, any dramatic short that opens with this song is not fooling around.

Here's a silly snapshot of me saying hi to the "Casting Pearls" filmmakers after Sunday's screening: Link.

Update: "Pearls" director Andrea James tells us,

"FYI, today Outfest added the Girls' Shorts program to their schedule on September 26 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood (6712 Hollywood Boulevard). We are scheduled to attend. Outfest Wednesdays: Link. And for those who prefer male bonding: Link to the "Boy's Shorts" program. Check their site and ours for more information as it becomes available."

Check it out. Consider it cultural penance for the fact that this is the number one movie in America right now. {gags}. As if a 14% Rotten Tomatoes score were a bad thing.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:09:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funny prank call to electronics store

The page also has a funny call about a pigeon stuck in a bank vault. Link

Reader comment:

Chris says:

I've spent the last few hours since reading your post watching clips of this show. It's called Fonejacker and is basically a much funnier version of Crank Yankers with amusing visuals that don't involve annoying puppets.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:59:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mystery pattern in old building's bricks

The triangle has traditionally been used to represent the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity. Some scholars, while stressing the need for more research, think the Pearl Street symbol evokes esotericism — efforts to delve for divine meaning in numbers, geometry, nature and elsewhere. The symbol was even the subject of a presentation at an academic conference on esotericism in Amsterdam in 2005.

The triangular forms could encode a message in their proportions, said Joscelyn Godwin, a Colgate University music and medieval studies professor who examined esoteric ideas in "The Theosophical Enlightenment."

Alfred Willis, a scholar of esotericism's influence on architecture and a university librarian at Hampton University, suggested that the proportions may point to Bible verses.

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:58:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fish heads pose a threat to Homeland Security

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Complete Fish Heads video

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:29:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cramps play live at mental hospital -- 1978 videos

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:47:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Five-toed athletic sandals for barefoot comfort

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:40:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dead frog with a webserver can be controlled over the net

Experiments in Galvanism is the culmination of studio and gallery experiments in which a miniature computer is implanted into the dead body of a frog specimen. Akin to Damien Hirst's bodies in formaldehyde, the frog is suspended in clear liquid contained in a glass cube, with a blue ethernet cable leading into its splayed abdomen. The computer stores a website that enables users to trigger physical movement in the corpse: the resulting movement can be seen in gallery, and through a live streaming webcamera.
- Risa Horowitz

Garnet Hertz has implanted a miniature webserver in the body of a frog specimen, which is suspended in a clear glass container of mineral oil, an inert liquid that does not conduct electricity. The frog is viewable on the Internet, and on the computer monitor across the room, through a webcam placed on the wall of the gallery. Through an Ethernet cable connected to the embedded webserver, remote viewers can trigger movement in either the right or left leg of the frog, thereby updating Luigi Galvani's original 1786 experiment causing the legs of a dead frog to twitch simply by touching muscles and nerves with metal.

Experiments in Galvanism is both a reference to the origins of electricity, one of the earliest new media, and, through Galvani's discovery that bioelectric forces exist within living tissue, a nod to what many theorists and practitioners consider to be the new new media: bio(tech) art.
- Sarah Cook and Steve Dietz

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:34:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A surreal and supremely inane compendium of miscellaneous knowledge, Vol 1

Drawing by three girls who spotted a UFO (with detail photo of UFO drawing)

RIP to artist Charles Harper

Soupy Sale's sons perform Day Tripper

Introducing "finger vein money" payment system in Japan

What is the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island?

"Need Caffiene" (sic) eyemask wrong for at least two reasons

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:33:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

William Gibson on writing in the age of Google

Gibson holds forth on "writing in the age of Google," advancing the hypothesis that the Internet is more stimulus than distraction for the working writer.

We'll be interviewing Bill for the Boing Boing Boing podcast shortly, and I'll run a full review of the book then.

Amazon.com: You need a certain stimulation to work off of.

Gibson: Yeah, I need a certain stimulation. It kind of feels like when you're floating underwater and you're breathing through a straw. The open Firefox is the straw: like, I can get out of this if I have to. I can stay under until I can't stand it anymore, and then I go to BoingBoing or something.

Amazon.com: I think for some writers, they'd never get back in the pool with Google open to them.

Gibson: It's not that interesting for me. I'm okay with it because it doesn't pull me in that much. The thing that limits you with Google is what you can think of to google, really. There's some kind of personal best limitation on it, unless you get lucky and something you google throws up something you've never seen before. You're still really inside some annotated version of your own head.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:27:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reading Frenzy zine store seeks donations for fundraiser

* Books, all subjects
* Children's books
* Comics and graphic novels
* Zines, pamphlets, broadsides
* Magazines, alternative/independent, vintage
* Paper ephemera, posters, prints, mail art materials, rubber stamps
* Reading accoutrement's: magnifying glasses, reading glasses, book ends, book stands, bookmarks, pipes, slippers, footstools, small lamps
* Blank journals

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:22:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Swiss city's carpeted financial district

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:30:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Secret list of buildings you can't photograph

The bottom line is that McCammon was caught in a classic logical trap. If he had only known the building was off-limits to photographers, he would have avoided it. But he was not allowed to know that fact. "Reasonable, law-abiding people tend to avoid these types of things when it can be helped," McCammon wrote. "Thus, my request for a list of locations within Arlington County that are unmarked, but at which photography is either prohibited or discouraged according to some (public or private) policy. Of course, such a list does not exist. Catch-22."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:04:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Games that get people to donate brainpower

Von Ahn has figured out how to get this labor — and tons of it — for free. But because it's so devilishly hard to make things fun, he's in a category by himself: No other researcher or company has successfully turned a collaborative project into a game. Two years ago, Bryan Russell, a graduate student at MIT, launched LabelMe, a project in which contributors draw outlines around objects in photos. The goal is to produce marked-up images that can be used to train visual- recognition software. Russell says he considered making it a game but ended up relying on the altruism of other researchers in his field. Boundary drawing is a tedious task, he says, and it's best performed by visual-recognition experts.

"We wanted high-quality labeling, and it's hard to get average people to do it well," Russell says. "I'm not sure you could make a game out of it."

(Image thumbnail ganked from a larger pic by Mike McGregor)

Update: Robin passes on this video of a Google tech talk that von Ahn gave on the subject.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:01:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Femi Kuti: Don't pity Africa, visit it and trade with us

Snip from an LA Weekly interview with Nigerian music star Femi Kuti, whose father was afrobeat icon and "Black President" Fela Kuti:

Q: What’s your take on Bono and concerts like Live 8 that campaign on behalf of Africa?

A: Bono doesn’t need to tell us that we are poor. We know we are poor. All these concerts come and go and nothing changes in Africa.

Q: So then what’s the best way for concerned Americans to get involved with helping Africa?

A: Not to feel sorry for us but to be positive toward us. Do more business with us. Come and visit us. We, in turn, have to get stronger and not rely on leaders to do everything for us. We must take action ourselves. But Western democracies must also stop turning a blind eye to African corruption and start taking action — then we can start moving forward as a nation.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:53:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brits reject copyright term extension for music!

This is the first time that I know of, in the history of the world, that any country has given up on extended copyright terms. In the US, the Supreme Court found that 98 percent of the works in copyright were "orphans" with no visible owner and no way to clear them and bring them back into the world. Extending copyright dooms nearly every author's life's work to obscurity and disappearance, in order to make a few more pennies for the tiny minority of millionaire artists like Cliff Richard (and billionaires like Paul McCartney). Link (via Michael Geist)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:50:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wrecked container ship photo gallery

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:40:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, July 23, 2007

Dorkbot Vienna video: how to hack pinball machines and game consoles

summary: games are a defining medium of our time. the majority of them is produced by multinational corporations, designed to appeal to the mass audience, locked on drm-protected and region-coded data media, and sold, shrink-wrapped in plastic. yet resourceful hackers and artists are working on the liberation of this medium. serious games, homebrew games, and game art are results of their great efforts. martin pichlmair and his guests will present a number of game machine hacks - from a modified pinball machine dating back to the 70s to musical instruments running on the nintendo ds. let's crack open the game machine a bit further.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:23:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant rice paddy art

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:56:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Miniature dress sewn from vintage letters

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:48:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bruce Sterling's fictional geoblog from 2017

The US should do what the Japanese do: track every foreigner's mobile. If he does anything freaky, jump on him.

"But Mr. Feldspar, suppose this international criminal doesn't carry a mobile?" demanded representative Chuck Kingston (R-Alabama). It would have been rude to point out the obvious. So I didn't. But look, just between you and me: Anybody without a mobile is not any kind of danger to society. He's a pitiful derelict. Because he's got no phone. Duh.

He also has no email, voicemail, pager, chat client, or gaming platform. And probably no maps, guidebooks, Web browser, video player, music player, or radio. No transit tickets, payment system, biometric ID, environmental safety sensor, or Breathalyzer. No alarm clock, camera, laser scanner, navigator, pedometer, flashlight, remote control, or hi-def projector. No house key, office key, car key... Are you still with me? If you don't have a mobile, the modern world is a seething jungle crisscrossed by electric fences crowned with barbed wire. A guy without a mobile is beyond derelict. He's a nonperson.

I didn't say any of that to the politicians. They don't want to be taught things by bloggers in public. They consider it an act of enmity.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:44:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mull of Kintyre pornography test

The Mull of Kintyre test was an unofficial guideline said to have been used by the British Board of Film Classification in the United Kingdom to decide whether an image of a man's penis could be shown.

The BBFC would not permit the general release of a film or video if it depicted a phallus erect to the point that the angle it made from the vertical (the "angle of the dangle" as it was often known) was larger than that of the Mull of Kintyre, Argyll and Bute, on maps of Scotland.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:55:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amanda Visell's book and toy sculpture

The wonderfully talented Amanda Visell has a new art book, called Popping Through Pictures. In Amanda's world, children play with nanny robots and hide under their covers from closet-dwelling beasties, animals sit on the porch and play old timey music, and elephants happily swallow English double decker buses.

Her use of gouache (opaque water color paint) brings to mind the whimsical work of Disney concept artist Mary Blair.

She'll be at the ComiCon in San Diego, signing copies of her book and selling her "What did I eat? -- Ephunt" set which includes a unique hand painted sculpture and print, in a limited edition of 25 for $300.

Visit her at the Munky King booth #4639 Friday and Saturday 11-12, and at the Baby Tattoo booth #601 Friday at 4.

$16.50 at Amazon.com

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:14:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

One Laptop Per Child machines for sale this Xmas?

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation's rugged XO laptop could initially sell for just $350, or twice its production cost, although the group is also considering a $525 price tag, said OLPC chief technology officer Mary Lou Jepsen.

If the XO laptop does make its way onto the market this year, it could surprise personal computer makers who have already spent months planning their strategy for the 2007 holiday season.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:21:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gamer kidnapped, ordered at gunpoint to release his password

According to the police, the captive is the world leader in GunBound, a turn-based RPG-style multiplayer online game. Developed in South Korea, in this artillery game you get more experience points, offensive and defensive capabilities depending on your skills during battle, as well as money to buy more weapons, armor and all kinds of gear for your multiple avatars. You can only play with one of your avatars each time, but all of them belong to a single account.

The game looks to be quite popular, so the four gangsters decided they could make some quick cash if they kidnapped him to steal his user. Their plan: use one of the criminal's girlfriends, called Tamires, to get him into a date using Google's online social network Orkut, which is also extremely popular in Brazil. After contacting and seducing him, she told the GunBound wizard to meet her in a shopping mall.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:15:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DIY digital clock-mod contest

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:12:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Statetris: Tetris with US states

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:11:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CALL YOUR SENATOR NOW! Senate trying to force colleges to buy snoopware for copyright enforcemen

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:57:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jessica, the pet hippo

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:41:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wal Mart flip flops cause nasty chemical burn

When she took the matter up with Wal Mart, they told her to take it up with the Chinese manufacturer.

Apparently, Wal Mart is still selling the flip flops. Link (Thanks, Joanna!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:14:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Letters to Archie Club newsletter, circa 1979

Dear Archie,

I'm Starchild and the school I attend is called the Space Dome. The school floats on a cloud and is in the shape of an egg. The school starts at the fibus (5th) grade and goes to colony (college). Here at the Space dome, fibus and colony are only 4 grades apart. The reason for that is the highly programmed computers we have teaching us are most effective. We have recess every cardi (3 hours) and of course, lunch time is great. Just push a button and it's anything your heart desires! Subjects consist of Mathdust, Language and Job Careers, Historic Events, and Science 5. We write with small machines similar to calculators. We don't have any books because we use mini-recorders. Imagine what would happen to all of our learning if accidentally we stepped on our mini-recorders & squashed them!

Brenda Dobson
13541 Kaslo Drive
Woodbridge, Va. 22193

Brenda (Starchild)'s letter was the winner of the five dollar grand prize this issue.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:45:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Make a jam jar jet

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:23:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guerilla gardening

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:30:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fly larvae shelled in bling

Duprat traces his work with the caddis fly larvae back to pioneering nineteenth-century entomologists such as François-Jules Pictet and Jean-Henri Fabre, who both conducted experiments in which structure-building insects were given alternative, non-indigenous materials. Seen within the context of the artist’s work—a practice that has often addressed aspects of mimesis in the realms of both nature and facture through his conceptual sculptural activities—the caddis fly larvae project is an example of Duprat’s ongoing interest in productive collisions between organic forms and technologized materials.

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:51:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comix icons on Simpsons

The plot is all about our beloved Comic Book Guy (pictured), who gets some competition in Springfield from a new store, "Coolsville Comics & Toys," run by "hipster" Milo, voiced by Jack Black.

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

Tokyo Commuter alarm clock shows train times

Update: Russell sez, "The clock listed only gives the times for a single line--the Yamanote Line. This line loops around Tokyo with stations roughly two minutes apart. It does go through many major stations including Shinjuku, Tokyo, Akihabara, Ueno, Ikebukuro, and Shinagawa. The Yamanote line is only one of many JR Lines (Japan Rail was privatized but previously run by the government). There are also many subways and private lines."

Update 2: Dan sez, "Unfortunately, it doesn't keep real-time information about where the trains are, it just syncs to a radio frequency clock signal broadcast in Japan to keep accurate time."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:21:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scan 1970 anti-drug comic

The first panel seems to be a swipe of William Steig's "People are no damn good" cartoon.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:02:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scooby Doo plot or news story?

Question 8 Police were baffled by the case of the silent grandma. In what may have been the perfect crime, an elderly woman who sat entirely still for an entire afternoon got up while a cash box was unattended and walked away with it, undetected by security.

Real Story? Scooby Doo Lab?

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:45:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Twirling dancer optical illusion

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:30:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with Jesse Thorn, host of The Sound of Young America

MEDIA BISTRO: Do you believe newspapers are going to die? If so, when?

JESSE THORN: They tell me that they are, and who am I to disagree? My hope is that if and when that happens, news that isn't tied to a deadline cycle will grow. The internet makes scoops important, but once someone has the scoop, everyone else has to do analysis, which I think is kinda great.

Cable news is unwatchable to me, and many newspapers are equally lame but I enjoy listening to public radio news. I think it's because in public radio, there's no deadline culture--partly because they were incapable of breaking news in the early days, since they had so few reporters. The joke motto was "report it a day late, call it analysis," but I think it's of much greater service to the citizen to convey information in context than it is to "break" a story. For most stuff, what day you find out is much less important than what you find out.

In other words: what the fuck do I know? I'm not a real journalist. I didn't even write for the high school newspaper.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:46:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cartoon for Rule the Web

My friend Bill Barminski of WalterRobot.com created this short animated video for my book, Rule the Web. It's about a couple of space aliens who visit Earth and discover they're low on saucer fuel. He did an amazing job! Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:04:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fake ATM receipts for sale

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:14:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Famous poems as limericks

There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says "Nevermore."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:27:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scary pix from a ventriloquism museum

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:46:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BoingBoing week in review: July 15-21, 2007

- - - - -

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:29:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Report: security flaw lets hackers pwn iPhone

Computer security researchers at Independent Security Evaluators say they've found a way to take control of an iPhone by way of a WiFi connection or by tricking users into accessing malware on a website. Basically, a Safari vulnerability, and the preventive takeaway tips are pretty much the same as with your computer: beware of connecting to untrusted open wireless networks, beware of links in weird emails, and beware of untrusted websites that may be malware-laden.

This is the first such report of a verified data security vulnerability with Apple's iPhone, but no known exploit incidents have occurred. Apple says they're evaluating ISE's findings.

John Schwartz reports in Monday's New York Times:

[ISE's Charles A.] Miller, a former employee of the National Security Agency who has a doctorate in computer science, demonstrated the hack to a reporter by using his iPhone’s Web browser to visit a Web site of his own design.

Once he was there, the site injected a bit of code into the iPhone that then took over the phone. The phone promptly followed instructions to transmit a set of files to the attacking computer that included recent text messages — including one that had been sent to the reporter’s cellphone moments before — as well as telephone contacts and e-mail addresses.

“We can get any file we want,” he said. Potentially, he added, the attack could be used to program the phone to make calls, running up large bills or even turning it into a portable bugging device.

exploitingiphone.com has more info, including a preliminary version of the paper describing the attack. the ISE's Dr. Miller is scheduled to present the details of the exploit at BlackHat in Las Vegas on August 2.

The website also includes an h.264 (= iphone-compatible) video that demonstrates the exploit: Video Link. Note that scotch tape and pretzels are required to complete this sophisticated hack.

Now, given all that, I love the way the NYT story ends:

[ISE founder Aviel D.] Rubin said, “I will think twice before getting on a random public WiFi network now,” but his overall opinion of the phone has not changed. “You’d have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands to get it away from me,” he said.

Reader comment: Will Sheward of ISODE says,

Just read your post on the hack discovered by ISE. A few days ago one of our engineers in the US bought an iPhone and, as we're professionally interested in IMAP, we decided to look at how the phone handles e-mail, specifically the so-called 'push' Yahoo mail which we suspected used dodgy proprietary mechanisms (and, of course, it does).

Whilst tracing the iPhone we found another security vulnerability, this one specific to the partnership between the iPhone and Yahoo mail, which leaves the user open to a replay attack. Basically Yahoo IMAP mail doesn't support the security standards it ought to (although the iPhone does). The problem is specific to Yahoo's IMAP service, which they only provide to the iPhone, and which doesn't implement the standards it ought to.

We've posted on this at our blog (Link) and the engineer who discovered the problem posts more entertainingly on it on his personal blog (Link).

I particularly enjoy his description of the iPhone as "A shiny box of stupidity", although it doesn't change my determination to get my hands on one as soon as I can.

This is just in response to the fellow responding to the iphone security flaws. he was saying that yahoo only provides IMAP service to the iphone but i don't think thats necessarily true. If you set up a yahoo address on a blackberry through their Blackberry Internet Service, it gets set up as an IMAP address as well. so if there are security flaws with the yahoo IMAP service then i suppose blackberries could be affected also. I'll leave testing that to the experts though.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:11:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Red rover, red rover: NASA's explorer 'bots caught in big dust storm

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:44:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Supremely bad Harry Potter knockoff books from China and Japan

BoingBoing reader Roy Berman says,

On this day of the release of the final Harry Potter volume, I thought other BB readers would be interested in seeing some scans from two completely fake sequel novels published in China, as well as a very slick Harry Potter fan manga published in Japan.

The two Chinese books, "Harry Potter and the Filler of Big" and "Harry Potter and Beaker and Burn," were purchased in ordinary bookshops in China about 4 years ago, shelved with the Chinese translations of the real novels.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:30:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Harry Potter dies on page 132

Relax, just kidding! I have no idea what happens, I'm not a big Potter fan and don't know how this one unfolds.

Rick Prelinger says,

I know the net is clogged with Potter pix right now, but it was wonderful in London last night -- a queue of perhaps 1000-1500 fans with at least as many spectators, all shooting off digicams with flash. Media hype lives on, but so does fantasy!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:23:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Talking Heads live in Rome 1980 concert vids

Songs performed:

* Psycho Killer
* Stay Hungry
* Cities
* I Zimbra
* Drugs
* Take Me to the River
* Crosseyed and Painless
* Life During Wartime
* Houses in Motion
* Born under Punches
* The Great Curve
(via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:22:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, July 20, 2007

Celebs photoshopped to dumpy normalcy

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:39:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIP Peter Stafford

Peter Stafford (1941-2007) author of Psychedelics Encyclopedia, and LSD in Action died last night in Santa Cruz, California. Peter was a friend of mine since we met in Canada back in 1971 and I will miss him.

I will add more to this post in the next day or so.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:36:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Get Illuminated! podcast #12: R.U. Sirius

Truly, the fun never stops around here. Hot on the heels of the Drew Friedman podcast, here's an interview with longtime Boing Boing pal R.U. Sirius, co-creator of the mind-bending magazines High Frontiers, Reality Hackers and Mondo 2000, the host of the RU Sirius Show, a contributor to 10 Zen Monkeys, and the author of True Mutations: Interviews on the Edge of Science, Technology, and Consciousness

RU and David Pescovitz will be at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco on Tuesday, July 24th, 7pm to conduct a live taping of the RU Sirius show. They'll be joined by Lynn Hershman, Jamais Cascio, and Howard Rheingold.

True Mutations looks at the wild changes that may be coming to the human species during the 21st Century. In a series of interviews, author/host RU Sirius explores a series of (r)evolutions in disciplines ranging from the evolution of clean energy to the possibilities of endless neurological ecstasy; from open-source free access to nearly everything under the sun to self-directed biotechnological evolution; from psychedelic culture mash-ups to the possibilities of a technological singularity that alters not only humanity but the entire universe.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:03:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Get Illuminated! podcast #11: Drew Friedman, comic artist

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:48:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Psychology, design and economics of slot-machines

The layout also takes advantage of the differences between slot and table players. In general, table players do not like the noise of slot machines because they find it distracting. In addition, they may sometimes play a few rounds on slot machines spontaneously, but obviously prefer table playing. At the same time, however, spouses or partners of table players will often wile away time playing at a nearby slot machine. Thus casinos are planned such that there are slot machines lining walkways around tables. However, these slots are always tight. This cuts down on the noise and distraction to table players, and makes sense because the majority of players on these machines are playing spontaneously, with little expectation of winning. This demonstrates to what degree casino layouts are optimized—in this case, to the point that a complex system is implemented simply to clean up loose change from spontaneous players.

Update: Andy sez, "Just for accuracy's sake, the report on slot machines is actually a student project by William Choi and Antoine Sindhu."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:15:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make shadow sculptures

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:00:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CraigStatsSF: craigslist housing rental data

After living in this city for 8 years, living in a lot of horrible neighborhoods, and doing the eternal run-around to find a decent apartment I have become fascinated with the San Francisco rental market .

At the end of the August 2006, I was dealing a really shady landlord whose house was going into foreclosure as he (like a lot of the city) had speculated on an adjustable rate mortgage...and he was desperately trying his best to get as much money as he could out of me in any illegal way possible.

Not wanting to deal with such a shady landlord, I broke the lease, and fled to find a new place.

As I started looking for places, I noticed everything that used to be for rent was now for sale due to the same forclosure effect that happened to my landlord.

It also appeared that the rents were going up..... but... were the really? or am I just paranoid and bitter?

Since I was waiting to get my research published, I figured I could waste ample amounts of time coding perl scripts and learning google maps.

This project was born out of boredom.

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:36:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Syd and Rodney's "Jack Chick's Titanic" video

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:35:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Series of Tubes as a Tube-map

Update: Thanks to everyone who noted that this is the Tokyo rail map, not the London Underground

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:07:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

University of Kansas threatens to permantly lock downloading students out of its network

The law doesn't require universities to spy on their students' network use. It doesn't require them to bear the enforcement costs of the RIAA's business model. Students' tuition is being spent to subsidize giant corporations bent on subverting the rule of law, free speech and free inquiry, and now, students caught in the entertainment industry's fatwa will be locked out of the network.

Honestly -- doesn't the University of Kansas have a law-school? What the hell is wrong with Kansas?

A brief notice on the University of Kansas ResNet site explains the university's new position very succinctly. "If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever," reads the notice. "No second notices, no excuses, no refunds. One violation and your ResNet internet access is gone for as long as you reside on campus." Presumably, the University is referring to illegally downloaded copyrighted material, as there is plenty of copyrighted material that can be downloaded legally.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:05:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chore Wars turns chores into a game

Chore Wars lets you claim experience points for household chores. By getting a few people in your house or workplace to sign up, you can assign experience point rewards to individual chores, and see how quickly each of you levels up.

Experience points are tracked both as weekly high-score charts, and as ongoing character sheets - every time you rack up 200XP of chores, your character gains a "level", and their class changes to match the type of chores that they've been doing.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:04:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amy Crehore's Tickler ukulele

Here is my very first fine art ukulele ("Tickler" brand label). This is a soprano uke that was lovingly hand-built by luthier Lou Reimuller, creator of Teenar Girl Guitar.

It has a solid mahogany body and neck with a rosewood fingerboard and bridge. It plays and sounds great!

This "Tickler" brand uke is a one-of-a-kind fine art object which is entirely painted in oils on all sides by myself, Amy Crehore, with my trademark motifs: "The Banana Eater" image is on the back (from my "Monkey Love" series), a monkey and "little pierrot" combination are painted on the front.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:48:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robofly takes off

"Nature makes the world's best fliers," says Wood...

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding Wood's research in the hope that it will lead to stealth surveillance robots for the battlefield and urban environments. The robot's small size and fly-like appearance are critical to such missions. "You probably wouldn't notice a fly in the room, but you certainly would notice a hawk," Wood says.

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

SeeqPod for iPhone plays MP3s scraped from the web

[Y]ou can search for any artist and play their songs within seconds, for free. SeeqPod doesn't transcode the music as it streams, so you hear it in its original form as scraped from MP3 blogs, personal web pages, and anywhere else on the internet that hosts MP3s.

Or, you can use SeeqPod on an iPhone to browse the internet's music pretty much as you would the music on an iPod. Choose a letter, then an artist, and boom -- you see a list of songs by that artist that are playable right then and there (thus the tagline: "playable search").

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:46:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Miniature anatomical toys from Japan

He says:

Dunno if two things make a trend but "anatomical toys" seemed to be all around. This isn't new, of course, we all remember the "Visible Man" model by Revell, but in true Japanese mode, the idea has been miniaturized and taken to a whole new level of detail and collectability.

This one was a really cool line of tiny anatomical models of human anatomy. Sold as a blind assortment in a closed box you don't know which one you'll get: surprise!--it's a pop-open stomach! Or you might get a skeleton, or a see-thru uterus with a removable fetus, or one of 15 different organs. Thanks, Mom!

They are so unbelievably cool and well done, they are to the Revell Visible Man model as the Nozomi Bullet train is to Amtrak. They come completely finished and assembled. I count 10 different colors of paint in dozens of paint operations in fantastically perfect tiny detail. It's like one of those doctor's office models, only tiny.

And they all come with one cello-wrapped piece of chewing gum. Cuz it's always more fun to chew while you learn about the pancreas.

Collect them all.

And speaking of collecting, I found another line of anatomical toys, this time in the gashapon machines: Visible Animals! These aren't quite as deluxe, but they're also very cool and take the Visible Horse model concept even further. I was so hoping for a Visible Puffer Fish ...but I got the Visible Chicken out of the machine.

These kind of remind more of butcher’s models, showing various cuts of meat, hmm, ....let’s see, there’s beef, pork, chicken, tuna, fugu, “long pork”...

I see that my favorite on-line source for fun Japanese stuff, J-List, has some of these. They were about $4.30 US in Tokyo, so J-List’s price isn’t really too bad.

Reader comment:

Ryan says: Regarding your post on the Japanese anatomical you can buy these at the Giant Robot store in Los Angeles, or from their online store, the link is here and here.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:31:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Short bio wealthiest Americans

Made most of his money on Wall Street, where he is credited with creating puts and calls. Known as a shrewd pinchpenny, he was once caught stealing a fan out of the offices of Western Union, where he was a board member. Arrested for loan-sharking in 1869, he used his powerful connections to avoid a sentence.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:28:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Childbirth simulator

The device simulates various types of delivery, including breech birth, birth on all fours, forceps delivery and the delivery of the placenta.

The simulator also allows students to practice extricating babies when their shoulders get stuck during delivery, said (Harvard obstretician Dr. Roxane Nelson). "We can learn how to recognize a situation and use the proper maneuvers."

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:13:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cleveland pol sends drug suspect profanity-filled letter

I just love that he puts quotes around any obscenity or colloquialism, such as 'dumber than mud,' and even random phrases, such as, 'not for losers!'" Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:33:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Kelly: The Technium and the 7th kingdom of life

The main question that I'm asking myself is, what is the meaning of technology in our lives? What place does technology have in the universe? What place does it have in the human condition? And what place should it play in my own personal life? Technology as a whole system, or what I call the technium, seems to be a dominant force in the culture. Indeed at times it seems to be the only force - the only lasting force - in culture. If that's so, then what can we expect from this force, what governs it? Sadly we don't even have a good theory about technology.

I'm trying to investigate ways to understand the long-term consequences of technology in the world and place it into some position along with other grand things like biological nature, big history, the physics of the cosmos, and the future. It's a very ambitious project and, surprisingly, there isn't really much thinking about technology in terms of its sphere of influence in a way that might be useful to thinking about how to evaluate what we make.

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine and author of books including New Rules for the New Economy, and Out of Control. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools, True Film, and Street Use websites. (thanks, John Brockman)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:05:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iPhones of summer

BoingBoing reader Chris says,

While on vacation on North Carolina's Outer Banks, my kids and I thought quite a bit about what to sculpt from in sand. Apple's "most successful product introduction in history" provided ample inspiration. The sand iPhone attracted quite a crowd, although none were willing to buy it at my asking price ($599 plus service, of course).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:42:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: collecting art zen

* vvork
* 4x6 art
* surreal art
* hot lunch
* swap meat
* we heart prints
* fine art adoption network

Image: Pictures from the series “Blast” by Naoya Hatakeyama, via vvork.com: Link.

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

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:37:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Philippines prisoners reenact Thriller

See also:
Lego Thriller

Update: Toshi.M sez, "The Japanese kids' show Pitagora Suicchi has a recurring segment called the Algorithm March in which they do a little dance with a different group of people each week; here it is with ninjas. And, the relevant bit, here it is with 967 Filipino prisoners."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:26:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Song titles as movie posters photoshopping contest

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:21:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japan's weirdest condoms

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:16:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kids in Guinea study by the airport lights

The lot is teeming with girls and boys by the time Air France Flight 767 rounds the Gulf of Guinea at an hour-and-a-half before midnight. They hardly look up from their notes as the Boeing jet begins its spiraling descent over the dark city, or as the newly arrived passengers come out, shoving luggage carts over the cracked pavement.

"I used to study by candlelight at home but that hurt my eyes. So I prefer to come here. We're used to it," says 18-year-old Mohamed Sharif, who sat under the fluorescent beam memorizing notes on the terrain of Mongolia for the geography portion of his college entrance test.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:15:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Webcasting reprieve carries a dangerous payload

Now they've offered a dangerous reprieve to the largest webcasters: add DRM to your streams and you can pay a lowered rate. As EFF points out, this won't stop programs like Audio Hijack and Total Recorder from recording these streams, but it will give the entertainment industry the right to dictate technology choices to webcasters. Imagine if the record labels had been able to tell your local radio station that they had to play CDs, and weren't allowed to DJ from their MP3 payers -- it's invasive, overreaching and unreasonable.

SoundExchange is a front for the RIAA. It was part of the RIAA until 2003, and even today, each major label has a seat on its board. Independent labels and artists have reported that SoundExchange won't pay them the royalties they're owed -- instead, all that money seems to flow straight to the majors.

What's at stake here isn't just the implementation of DRM-laden streaming formats like WMA but also whether the RIAA will get to dictate the sorts of technologies that webcasters use in the future. After all, while DRM would certainly frustrate certain tools that allow users to time-shift, it won't make a lick of difference to software like Total Recorder and Audio Hijack that can record sound as it's outputted in unencrypted form to a sound card. You can bank on the RIAA coming back for more restrictions once it gets DRM in the door, as long as it can hold the threat of ridiculous royalty rates over webcasters' heads.

See also:
SoundExchange won't enforce new royalty rates on Sunday?
Ex-RIAA agency "can't find" artists it owes money to, like Public Enemy

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

Hand-powered chainsaw

The High limb Chain Saw has introduced a whole new method of cutting down high tree limbs. Because of this new "saw on a rope", the job of tree trimming in now safer and easier than ever before and can be done while standing on the ground.

Update: Dan sez, "I have had one of those 'new' chain-on-a-rope saws for almost twenty years. Exactly the same as pictured - yellow rope, red throwing bag, metal plate hanging off one end of the chain. It works, but it is by no means 'effortless'. This is especially true if the limb sags in such a way as to pinch the chain. If that happens, you've got to climb the tree or a ladder to finish cutting with another saw. The simplest way to make sure the cut doesn't pinch the chain is to stand under the limb as you pull the ropes, so the chain is always cutting straight down. That's not usually a good idea."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:58:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Barbie in Wonderland

Update: Ben sez, "I think the Red Queen is on this pic."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:53:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Trekworld photoshopping contest

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:50:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nixie tube wristwatch!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:48:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TSA head calls lighter-ban "security theater"

Lawmakers said that if Mr. Reid had used a lighter, instead of matches, he might have been able to ignite the bomb, but Kip Hawley, assistant secretary for the Transportation Security Administration, said in an interview on Thursday that the ban had done little to improve aviation security because small batteries could be used to set off a bomb.

Matches have never been prohibited on flights.

“Taking lighters away is security theater,” Mr. Hawley said. “It trivializes the security process.”

*One arm to hold your boarding pass, one to hold your shoes, one to hold your freedom baggie, one to hold your phone, one to hold your laptop, one to hold your coat, one to hold your belt, one to hold your coins, and one to salute the flag as you bend over and let someone from the TSA shine a flashlight up your colon.

See also:
TSA: calling Kip Hawley an idiot is not allowed
HOWTO make a "Kip Hawley is an idiot" Freedom Baggie

Update: Damien sez, "They also now allow 'mothers flying with or without their child [..] to bring breast milk in quantities greater than three ounces' Lets hear it for *some* common sense."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:44:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Color footage from 1941 Disney strike

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:35:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Jenny Holzer: the only person who should be allowed to use Twitter

So says Lemonodor blog (John Wiseman), pointing to a Twitter stream attributed to the conceptual artist Jenny Holzer: Link. Whether it's real or fake (my money's firmly on the latter), it's good stuff. (Thanks, Javier Candeira)

Reader comment: J Hyde says,

Surely Othar Trigvorsen: Gentleman Adventurer! also deserves to use twitter. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:26:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Generation Chickenhawk: the unauthorized College Republican National Convention Tour

Max Blumethal went to the College Republican National Convention Tour and discovered that these well-groomed young men and women strongly support the war in Iraq. But when Blumenthal asked them why they weren't fighting in Iraq, the students offered creative and entertaining excuses. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:51:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

White House Kisses Goodbye to 5th Amendment

The latest Executive Order from the War Criminal Administration facilitates and sanctions the taking away of property of anyone who is deemed to be "undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people". Left in those terms, it isn't too much of a stretch to envision this Administration deciding that any particularly vocal critic of the Iraq occupation is "undermining efforts" and thus a target for seizure of property or assets, Fifth Amendment be damned.

Big news indeed, and yet it has received scant little attention in the media. Shameful in every regard, but it troubles me even more that this latest criminal act has crossed a new threshold in reckless disregard for the US Constitution, and yet hardly a soul even knows about it.

Link to the White House's Executive Order

Reader comment:

Robert says:

Sorry to criticize, but you screwed up on the White House Executive Order story.

The Order clearly only applies to people who have "committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of: ... (B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people"

In other words, it doesn't apply to anyone who is "undermining efforts." It requires violence + undermining efforts. You left off the first part. I'm not saying that this makes the order any better, but at least it limits it.

Further, the President cannot take away property of US citizens by fiat. That's prohibited by the Fifth Amendment. This is directed to foreign nationals who are holding their assets in the US.

Robert is incorrect about the scope of the executive order and who it applies to.

1) it has a broad theoretical reach, i.e., anyone who the executive branch says "pose[s] a significant risk of committing" acts of violence that "undermine efforts" in Iraq. It's like the Dept. of Pre-Crime.

2) the EO applies to "U.S. persons," a group which includes U.S. citizens, not just foreign nationals parking their money in the U.S.

Talking Points Memo has some analysis from the ACLU and other experienced voices on the topic.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:40:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Which seats on a plane are the safest?

In the wake of nearly 200 people going down in flames with a Brazilian airliner this week, we took an exclusive look at 36 years’ worth of NTSB reports and seating charts. The best way to live through a disaster in the sky? Move to the back of the Airbus.

Reader comment: Dan Hoyt says,

In the 1948 book No Highway (Made into the 1951 movie No Highway in the Sky), Nevil Shute makes the point that the rear of a plane is the safest place to be. He has his scientist protagonist tell another character to sit there if she has to fly in a plane he knows to have a fatal design flaw.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:50:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FBI's Spyware Tracks Down Teen Who Made Bomb Threats

Last month the FBI sent a program it calls a "computer and internet protocol address verifier," or CIPAV, to the owner of an anonymous MySpace profile linked to bomb threats against a high school near Seattle. The code led the FBI to 15-year-old Josh Glazebrook, a student at the school, who pleaded guilty Monday to making bomb threats, and related charges. From my article:

The spyware program gathers a wide range of information, including the computer's IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer's registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL. The CIPAV then settles into a silent "pen register" mode, in which it lurks on the target computer and monitors its internet use, logging the IP address of every computer to which the machine connects for up to 60 days.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:48:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Inmates accused of copyrighting own names in jail release scheme

Four federal inmates were indicted Tuesday on allegations that they copyrighted their names, then demanded millions of dollars from prison officials for using the names without authorization.

The inmates sent demand notices for payment to the warden of the El Reno federal prison and filed liens against his property. They then hired someone to seize his vehicles, freeze his bank accounts and change the locks on his house. Unfortunately, the person they hired turned out to be an FBI agent.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:43:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Press release of the day: Harry Potter grief counseling

[Counselor name] is available to speak with parents and children, as well as the media, on how to cope with feelings of grief and loss. This is a particularly timely issue with the release of the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows scheduled for release this Saturday, July 21, 2007. Recent articles have sparked rumors suggesting that one or more main characters will die. This could have a serious impact on children, millions of whom have grown up reading, watching and profoundly enjoying the characters and storylines of the Harry Potter series.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:41:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos from top of Bay Bridge

I work for a company who does wireless networks and IP camera systems. We had some equipment up there that wasn't working properly and when the opportunity arose in talking to them I basically made it absolutely clear that I would definitely have to go up there to fix it.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:26:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments