By Cory Doctorow at 11:25 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years: rows and rows of beautiful decorated papier maché skulls on sale on Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
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By Cory Doctorow at 11:22 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Stop The Spying campaign wants your help to send a message to Congress about granting immunity to telcos that broke the law and helped the NSA engage in indiscriminate mass surveillance of Americans. They're calling on US citizens to snap pictures of themselves holding anti-immunity signs that give city and state, and they're producing a gallery of these to present to Congress, to show the faces of the voters who believe in the Constitution.
# Get out your digital cameras, phone cameras, and webcams.
# Write your message on a piece of paper, and include your city and state.
# Take a photo of yourself holding your message. Be creative and make sure the message is readable.
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Thanks, Cindy)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:17 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted this feature on RoyalPingdom: "When data center cabling becomes art." My cabling tends to look more like an altar to The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:14 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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The Secret Headquarters (my favorite comic store in LA) is finally selling their hilarious "God Save Stan Lee" tees online. My GSSL shirt has been just about my favorite garment for the past six months -- and now you can get one from anywhere.
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By Cory Doctorow at 11:11 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Interesting stuff afoot in the Congressional shuffle: "Hollywood" Howard Berman (who once proposed a law immunizing the entertainment industry for hacking innocent peoples' PCs while undertaking vigilante anti-piracy activities) looks set to leave the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property and chair the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (where the pork makes the money you get from entertainment giants look like small potatoes.
Likely to replace Berman is Rep Rick Boucher, who once proposed the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA), which would have reformed the DMCA to make it legal to break DRM in order to do lawful things. He's the closest thing to a copyfighter in Congress, and you can only imagine that putting him in charge of the House Committee that handles the Internet and copyright will certainly change the game.
God knows what Berman will do once he's running Foreign Affairs, though.
There's no guarantee yet that Boucher will get the job, and he and Berman still need to win their respective elections this fall, but even the prospect of a Boucher-controlled Internet and IP subcommittee in the House feels like an early Christmas present. As the Hollywood Reporter correctly notes, though, the full Committee is still chaired by John Conyers (D-MI), who comes from the Berman School of Thought on such issues.
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By Cory Doctorow at 11:04 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Etsy seller Takeahalliday's "Human Anatomy Science Patchwork T-Shirt" uses "different colored and textured fabric used in patchwork to represent the different human organs and rib cage." Lovely!
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(
via Craft)
See also: Detailed anatomical t-shirts
By Cory Doctorow at 11:00 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Walking-Things's Walking Chair looks like a chair, but it walks -- and you can't sit on it. And it costs €15,000 (which is like ten million American pesos). But the action of its motion (as documented on the site's unfortunately teeny videos) is pure incredibly awesomeness.
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via Gizmodo)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:55 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Chris Harrison's "Visualizing the Bible" project maps every social relationship and cross-reference in the Bible, as compiled by Christoph Römhild.
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via Kottke)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:51 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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All Tomorrow's Condensations is a 45-minute steampunk puppet show written and performed by the net-weirdo artists from Vienna's Monochrom, mounted at this year's Chaos Computer Club conference in Berlin. Many yuks ahoy!
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(
Thanks, Lamin!)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:46 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Lila Dreams is a damned interesting-looking independent massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. The manifesto is inspiring: no extruded fantasy product (ogres, dwarves, elves, etc); no grinding (repetitive tasks are boring) but:
No level grind, but there is combat: juicy, 2d platforming combat with RPG-like mechanics! This wasn’t always the idea, though. I originally wanted the game to not have combat at all, but in the end I decided that combat is something that a lot of people want. And we aim to please! So, then I decided that if there must be combat, I will find a way to avoid level grinding. I’ll talk more about the combat systems in later posts. It’s very early in the development cycle to be giving out details.
Plant diagram There is a kind of crafting, and it’s a central part of the gameplay. All I can say for now is that you don’t craft items–you grow them. Yes, gardening. :) But in a surrealistic game world where plants are not just plants. But I must not give away too much! (It’s very hard for me not to spill the beans! Oh how I fight!)
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via Wonderland)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:34 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Czech researchers ran a test on 390 kids with cold or flu-like symptoms, giving them a nasal spray made from seawater. It reduced their cold symptoms and helped prevent relapses. It sounds good, but it must be noted that the study was paid for by a French company that sells a seawater nasal spray.
It may be that the salt water has a simple mechanical effect of clearing mucus, or it could be that trace elements in the water play some more significant role, though the exact reason why such a solution works is not known, said Dr. Ivo Slapak and colleagues at the Teaching Hospital of Brno in the Czech Republic.
The study, published in the January issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology, was paid for by Goemar Laboratoires La Madeleine, Saint-Malo, France, which makes Physiomer, the seawater nasal spray used in the investigation.
Link (Via TDG)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 5:56 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Artist Amy Crehore designed the logo for the Tickler brand ukulele, and you can get it on a T-shirt. I think it's beautiful!
Very nice quality white, heavyweight, unisex t-shirts, 100% cotton, pre-shrunk.
This 3-color silkscreen t-shirt was made from an original ink drawing by artist Amy Crehore.
For ukulele lovers, cat lovers, girl lovers, little pierrot lovers, & polka-dot shoe lovers.
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By Mark Frauenfelder at 5:21 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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A couple of TEDsters sent me this tip:
One TED2008 Main Hall Pass has just gone up for auction on ebay. It's the only remaining legal way that someone can get into the event. The auction is being done with the approval of TED, because all the
proceeds will go towards the Open Architecture Network, which was
created in response to TED Prize Winner Cameron Sinclair's inspiring
wish.
The pass, which guarantees coveted access to the main theater where
speakers present, includes three special extras:
- a first-day meeting with TED super-connector Sunny Bates
- a coffee at TED with the brilliant founder of ebay Pierre Omidyar
- and a lunch with the charming, insightful and delightful Meg Ryan
TED2008 has been sold out for more than a year, so we suspect this is
going to make someone very happy indeed. It won't be cheap, but the
successful bidder will be making a philanthropic contribution to an
organization that's empowering architects and designers to change the
world.
TED2008 is Feb 27-March 1, in Monterey, California on the theme "The
Big Questions."
Here's the ebay listing:
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By Mark Frauenfelder at 3:03 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Here's a T-shirt design I came up with based on my Lollipopland characters.
You can get the design printed on any kind of shirt you like at Zazzle.
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By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:37 pm Thursday, Jan 24
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Random Good Stuff has compiled a bunch of YouTube videos of people smoking a legal and powerful hallucinogenic plant called
salvia divinorum.
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