I snapped a photo of this sticker in one of the restrooms at Ritual Coffee Roasters in San Francisco's Mission District. There used to be one just like it posted above a small hole in the wall in the other restroom. That sticker was removed though once the hole was patched to, er, block the camera's lens.
Link to a bigger image

UPDATE: In the comments, Sean Savage confesses to being the creator of this fine sticker. He writes:

I made it up last year, originally as a prank for the toilets on the (Burning Man) playa (hence the Bureau of Land Management logo).

Print em out yourself w/ the PDF here, or remix w/ the template file: Link

IEEE Spectrum has published the last interview with the late, great Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Spectrum editor Harry Goldstein emailed me, "In January, we sent Saswato Das to Sri Lanka to interview Clarke, who was in the hospital at the time. We were planning on putting the article and the audio up tomorrow anyway. Eerie timing." From Das's Spectrum article:

I started our interview sessions with geostationary satellites—those in orbit above Earth's equator that have the remarkable property of matching the period at which Earth rotates. As a result, these satellites look stationary to someone on Earth. They are extremely useful for communications, because transmitting and receiving antennas on Earth don't have to track them. In a 1945 article, “Extra-terrestrial Relays,” published in Wireless World, Clarke proposed that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays. I asked Clarke whether he'd ever suspected that these satellites would one day prove to be so valuable to telecommunications.

He laughed. “I'm often asked why I didn't try to patent the idea of communications satellites. My answer is always, ‘A patent is really a license to be sued.' ”

Link

Osian Batyka-Williams's cutlery chair makes lovely use of the mountains of discarded restaurant cutlery. Though, as Make notes, it could probably use a cushion or two. Link (via Make)

Though I could never, ever, ever afford one, I'm in love with the Sarpaneva "bas-relief double moonphase Korona K3" watch, whose Lumiere-brothers-esque moon-face rotates endlessly around the gorgeous, moire-patterned face. Link

DailyLit, the excellent free ebook-by-email service, has been putting a ton of my Creative Commons-licensed works online. DailyLit lets you subscribe to receive books in small, quickly-readable chunks every day. They started with my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and now they've got all my novels and short story collections and a couple of my uncollected stories, too! Link

Mike Disher works with my pals at OpenRoad.tv, the fantastic travel video site for the American West. On the OpenRoad.tv forum, Mike posted about his unusual hobby, constructing beautiful high-end turntables. From his site:

About 5 years ago I decided to try my hand at building a custom turntable. Turntables and mechanical watch and clock movements fascinate me. I view them as functional pieces of kinetic art. I based my turntable design on the legendary Rega P3, and I created a new, custom acrylic plinth and a set of feet. I also devised a way to hide the motor, and I improved the motor mounting system. The plinth rests on small silicone dots, providing added isolation. The result was a very modern looking table. I called it the P3 Skeleton. Skeleton is a watchmaking term for a movement in which material is removed from the plates and bridges to reveal the inner workings. A fellow audio enthusiast saw this table at my house and offered to buy it on the spot. I did not sell it, but I was happy that others appreciated my work.

Link to Mike Disher's turntable page, Link to OpenRoad.TV's forum (Thanks, Jim Wirth!)

Previously on BB:
• OpenRoad.TV and Pesco visit the Musée Mécanique Link
• OpenRoad.TV: Natalie Zee Drieu of CRAFT Link

Chris sez, "I saw your post about the close-up photos done with the Eyeclops camera. Last week, a friend and I dissected an Eyeclops for an art project he's working on, and found something really funny: look closely at the photo and see if you can figure it out!

The Eyeclops contains two circuit boards: one is the real, functional board while the other is a sticker with an image of some circuitry printed on it. Apparently this is an attempt to compensate for the now-puny electronics that go into kids' toys. Makes me nostalgic for the days of my old vacuum-tube Atari that took up the entire family room." Link

See also:
Geeking out over velcro-like fasteners in infant wares
Magnified shots of ziploc seals

James sez, "The slow decline of the US dollar as a global currency continues with the tailors of Bangkok now advertising their rates in Euros. Advertisements for tailors can be found on the free tourist maps of Bangkok. I was in Bangkok in 2005 and all of the prices were in USD. Now the advertisements are in Euros." Link (Thanks, James!)

Writing in the NYT, David Leonhardt has a good primer explaining the exotic, sleazy economic shenanigans that turned some bum mortgage loans into a multi-hundreds-of-trillions-of-dollars toxic bubble that threatens the planetary economy:

Investors then goosed their returns through leverage, the oldest strategy around. They made $100 million bets with only $1 million of their own money and $99 million in debt. If the value of the investment rose to just $101 million, the investors would double their money. Home buyers did the same thing, by putting little money down on new houses, notes Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com. The Fed under Alan Greenspan helped make it all possible, sharply reducing interest rates, to prevent a double-dip recession after the technology bust of 2000, and then keeping them low for several years...

Many of these bets were not huge, but were so highly leveraged that any losses became magnified. If that $100 million investment I described above were to lose just $1 million of its value, the investor who put up only $1 million would lose everything.

Link (via The Consumerist

A Ghanian entrepreneur makes handsome carrier bags out of recycled disposable plastic bags:

In the Trashy Bags workshop a dozen tailors and seamstresses sit at manual sewing machines stitching together old plastic sachets. In west Africa tap water is not fit to drink so millions of half-litre "pure water" sachets costing only the equivalent of 2p are discarded by thirsty consumers every day. A storage room overflows with more than three million sachets that have been collected and cleaned ready for recycling...

Local people arrive at the Trashy Bags workshop carrying sacks stuffed with thousands of the sachets on their heads. They exchange 1,000 sachets for £2 – good money in a country where the average person earns only £254 a year.

"I collect sachets because I am jobless and this gives me money," said Hadiza Ishmael, a 55-year-old grandmother who had just arrived with 4,000 sachets. "It also makes the place look nicer."

Link (via Link

PG sez, "Mur Lafferty has just released Wasteland, Book Four of her Heaven podcast novel series. As always, Mur is doing something special with her podcast novel (Mur's last, Playing for Keeps, was a multimedia event which included audio chapters, the text of each chapter released in .pdf format, comic book style covers for each chapter, hidden audio easter eggs, and a fan-created audio podcast): Mur is releasing episodes daily on murverse.com, and the entire podcast can be downloaded immediately from Podiobooks.com."

I really liked this one -- I've been following the series since she started. Lafferty is a one-woman podcasting machine, singlehandedly blowing the doors off of what's possible in alternative publishing. Link (Thanks, PG!)

See also:
Mur Lafferty's Heaven: free audiobook of existential comedy
Lafferty's new podiobook: Earth (Heaven, part 3) Playing for Keeps: Mur Lafferty's science fiction superhero podcast

John Stanmeyer's National Geographic photo-feature on malaria is up for an ASME National Magazine Award, and with good reason. These are fantastic, moving pics. Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Headweb is a new DRM-free video service from Sweden that sells feature films as DRM-free video-files; download them as torrents (earn credits for seeding them), burn them to DVD when they arrive. They've got 450 movies now and claim that they'll break 1000 in short order. They're also promising to open outside of Sweden soon. Link (Thanks, Per!)

Tavie sez,

I just found out that my favorite comic series of all time, Elfquest, has announced an initiative to celebrate their 30th anniversary, wherein, by the end of the year, EVERY issue ever will be available online for free.

It's hard to describe it, but it's an amazing body of work. It was one of the first independently published comics in the world and one of the most successful. The core story is about a group of elves from outer space who ride wolves - it sounds crazy when I say it, you just have to read it.

This is a 30 year old universe (older than me!) so there are spinoffs and side-stories and rarities that even I, as a hard-core fan, have never gotten to read. And soon I will be able to enjoy every single shred of it. For free. Just 'cuz.

The internet is beyond words in its capacity to make me happy.

Link (Thanks, Tavie!)

From Book of Joe: "A British businessman fed up with being targeted by vandals has installed a 30-foot Roman-style catapult on the premises to hurl bucket loads of chicken manure at culprits attacking his rural offices."

A 30ft Roman catapult, loaded with chicken droppings from a nearby farm is primed each evening. And a cannon, which Mr Weston-Webb once used to shoot his wife across the River Avon, will fire a railway sleeper if triggered by an intruder.

Mr Weston-Webb was yesterday erecting a sign outside his business, which stands at the end of a farm track in the lower valley of the River Soar in Nottinghamshire — a place known locally as Soar Bottom. It reads: “Warning: These premises are protected by smart-poo and railway sleeper projectiles.”

He told The Times: “I have an exploding coffin too. The intruder would have to climb into the box in order to be blown out of it and I don’t expect anyone would be stupid enough to do that, but I’m working on it.”

Nottinghamshire Police said yesterday that they would send an officer to offer advice on “conventional security techniques” and on the use of “reasonable force”. Mr Weston-Webb promises to be reasonable. “We are putting a rubber block on the end of the railway sleeper,” he said. “It should just knock an intruder down.”

Link

Copyfighters in Tennessee have scored a massive win, defanging a crappy, RIAA-written state bill:

SB3974 is a Bill written by the RIAA, and sponsored by Knoxville Sen. Tim Burchett, that forces any institution of “higher learning” to monitor all public university students and (according to the RIAA) expel any who access copyrighted content...

Earlier today, SB3974 (the “copyright” Bill) was passed unanimously. Remarkably, the Bill was amended to reflect the concerns of all those who had called, mailed, and gathered in protest. As a result, the Bill will no longer:

(1) Prohibit the non-infringing use of copyrighted material

(2) Restrict an educational institution’s use of copyrighted material under the provisions of 17 U.S.C. § 107

Link (Thanks, Chris!)

See also:
Nashville copyright bill protest this Weds
Nashville copyright craziness -- success! Rematch on Mar 5

Compfight is a great new tool that uses Flickr's API to search the database of photos (including the option to do full-text search on titles and descriptions, and to limit searches to Creative Commons licensed works only) and then feeds back the results as live clickable thumbnails. Unlike Flickr's own advanced-search page, Compfight remembers your settings from search to search (great for me, as I'm always foraging on Flickr for CC-licensed stock photos), and the large quantities of search-result thumbnails per page makes this the ideal choice for playing photo-editor. Link (Thanks, JJ!)

WorldChanging has a great post on the move to replace GDP with a better metric -- one that better reflects human quality of life as opposed to mere economic activity. This has been underway since RFK excoriated GNP (GDP's predecessor) as "not allow[ing] for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials."

A National Academy of Sciences panel, for example, has laid out an exhaustive, sober, and detailed plan for issuing regular reports on several “satellite accounts” in tandem with the monetary tally of GDP. The present administration stopped the Department of Commerce from adopting the improved methods.

A new president, supported perhaps by Senator Dorgan and like-minded leaders, will have the opportunity to seize the challenge RFK threw down four decades ago. The implications could be broader than you’d imagine. For example, whether we’re in a recession or not depends entirely on what our system of national accounts includes and excludes.

Imagine the news stories that might follow if satellite accounts were published along with GDP figures: "GDP up; parents' time with kids plummets." "GDP flat; education surges." "GDP and resource depletion both soar."

Link

Cory Arcangel (a great electronic artist whose previous achievements include the infamous modded Super Mario cartridge with everything but the clouds removed) has a new piece up: Permanent Vacation in which "two unattended computers send endlessly bouncing out-of-office auto-responses to each other." Link

Tavie sez,

Fan labor is cheap - and if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself.

In cooperation with their management, I'm running the official Myspace page for the Kids in the Hall 2008 reunion tour. It's pretty fun, although it mainly involves correcting date links and hitting "accept" for a bunch of people several times a day. Soon we'll have some content from the Kids themselves, which ought to be highly awesome.

Can't wait until the show gets to NYC.

This is fandom at its most fun. I love it when the artists enlist the fans to help - this whole tour feels very "homegrown" right now and I'm thrilled to be involved in it.

If they come to your city, I highly recommend you snag yourself a ticket. The Kids are all nearing "50" now, and they seriously are as funny a they ever were, if their show last summer in Montreal is any indication. (Which it is.)

Link (Thanks, Tavie!)

Ruben says: "This is a summary of a documentary that aired recently on Dutch national television. The documentary was based on a script made by an economist who was assigned the task to make a 'what if' scenario about how the dollar could crash within 24 hours."

Americans are living beyond their means and Asia is currently financing that. But eventually the Asians/Europeans will stop financing the USA and then the bubble will burst.

Euro to U.S. Dollar Exchange Rate

Canadian high schooler's Arman Noory's "The War on Terror" is a short film that includes safe-for-work scenes of a 1980s porn video.

Gradually the true nature of the porno begins to show as you go further into the film. For the record, for anybody curious, my teacher knew I had edited an early 80s porn for the video, though the students generally had no idea. It was a bit of a mindfuck for everybody. All voices are done by yours truly.

I chose to make a video for my culminating task for senior-year (Canadian) Politics class was regarding the war on terror and whether or not it's effective/justified. I wanted to incite a variety of emotions in the viewer while still being educational and entertaining - so I took a porno from '81, remixed it into an an American-perspective War on Terror Porno Musical where the main character goes into trances at the subject of discussion and, gradually, the true nature of the porno begins to rise (especially the ending).

My goal was to have a video in contrast to the one-dimensional views we are fed by the media on everything surrounding the war on terror, from the history of US intervention in the middle east to the economy and compromises to liberty, incite all forms of emotions from the viewer within the 15-minute timespan (sexy, funny, depressing) while still being entertaining and educational.

Link

Brian Corcoran says: "Here's archived footage covering an attempt in the 70's to smuggle Jamaican dope into Canada by pressing it into circular discs and concealing them within LP album sleeves." Link

From ThinkGeek, this $25 tormentor:

The Phantom Keystroker may look like a harmless circuit board, but it's actually a devious contraption of unlimited office-based torture. Simply discreetly attach the Phantom Keystroker to any extra USB port on your victim's computer, no drivers needed. The Keystroker emulates a keyboard and mouse and periodically makes random mouse movements and types out odd garbage text and phrases.

Link

These mug shots of 48-year-old Floyd Bebees and his 21-year-old son, Justin, were taken on different dates.

If you look closely, you'll notice that each gentleman sports a forehead tattoo.

In [Smoking Gun] interview, Floyd Bebee, a father of eight, said that he has a tattoo on the back of his head reading "Got-R-Did." The ink on his forehead cost $125 and took about 45 minutes to complete, Bebee said, adding that he was the family trendsetter when it it came to such head art. Bebee, who does odd jobs like home remodeling and demolition, said that his wife has a succinct response to his forehead ink: "You crazy," she said. Bebee noted that since his son's eyes are open in his mug shot, the photo does not reveal a hidden surprise: Justin has the words "Fuck" and "You" tattooed on his eyelids.

Link

Mexican soldiers in Tamaulipas nabbed members of a drug gang driving an SUV tricked out with some James Bond-esque features. Sadly, the vehicle did not include an aftermarket ejector seat. From Reuters:

Following a shootout with the gang, soldiers said they... confiscated an armored Jeep Grand Cherokee equipped with a smoke machine and spike sprayer meant to deter pursuers.

Soldiers also confiscated dozens of rifles, pistols and hand grenades, 3,000 of rounds of ammunition and $20,000 in cash, the army said.

Link (via Dethroner)

Deadlicious has a small gallery of ads from 1960s magazines, including the "full length" Vibra Finger (for massaging "soft irritated gums" only, mind you) and a "darling pet monkey" with "live delivery guaranteed" for under $20. Link (Via Eye of the Goof)

A number of credit card companies now issue credit cards with embedded RFIDs (radio frequency ID tags), with promises of enhanced security and speedy transactions.

But on today's episode of Boing Boing tv, hacker and inventor Pablos Holman shows Xeni how you can use about $8 worth of gear bought on eBay to read personal data from those credit cards -- cardholder name, credit card number, and whatever else your bank embeds in this manner.

Fears over data leaks from RFID-enabled cards aren't new, and some argue they're overblown -- but this demo shows just how cheap and easy the "sniffing" can be.

Link to complete Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video.