Becky sez, "The Boing Boing discussion of the woman who let her kid find his way home alone on the subway got me interested in comparing that risk relative to the risk of a child dying in a car accident. What I discovered en route is a treasure trove of car accident data, which can be sliced and diced any way you want it--click the Query tab for an array of very specific variables. (Want to know how many people died in car accidents in Tompkins County, New York, on Martin Luther King Day in 2004 while riding in the back seat on the right-hand side of a vehicle traveling at 23 miles an hour driven by a female living in zip code 60656? No problem. And that barely scratches the surface of the possibilities.) I answered my initial question, then played with the thing for hours." Link (Thanks, Becky!)

I love Wikipedia's chart of the video game Quake and its many descendants unto the nth generation. Link (via Wonderland)

Meredith sez,

There's a bunch of FUD going around the internets today about orphaned works, thanks to this article by Mark Simon of Animation World Network. He's urging artists to write their Congresscritters about eeeeevil orphaned works legislation and screaming about how it will effectively invalidate copyright for everyone except big evil registrars.

The problem? There is no such legislation before Congress (there was a bill in 2006, but it was never voted on; Marybeth Peters of the Copyright Office recently spoke before a subcommittee, but that's not a bill), and Simon is flat-out wrong about every concern he raises.

I've distilled his article down to six key misconceptions, and explained why each is wrong.

This is a really well-written piece. I've gotten a ton of email about Simon's bizarre rant, and it's nice to have a single, central place to point people to. Link (Thanks, Meredith!)

Greg Maletic's added another poster to his collection of wonderful fan-made attraction art for Disneyland rides; this one's for Space Mountain. Link

See also: Fan-made Disneyland attraction posters (Thanks, Greg!)

Today on Jon Taplin's blog, a sobering reality check on US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's irrational exuberance at the G-7:

Treasury Secretary Paulson, meeting with the G-7 Finance Ministers in Washington, tried to reassure them that the U.S. economic slump was only temporary.

He said he told his counterparts that checks from the stimulus package would go out in May and June and that they would add 500,000 to 600,000 jobs to the economy. He said that the federal government was helping more than a million homeowners keep their homes.

I worry that Paulson is engaging in reckless speculation about the future of the American job market. That somehow a flood of $600 checks next month from the government is going to lead to the creation of 600,000 new jobs is pure fantasy. That money is going to be used to pay down maxed out credit cards or keep cars from being repossessed. As Floyd Norris points out, the real jobless number (chart above) number for working men in America is not 4% but 13%. When someone gives up looking for work, the government no longer considers them unemployed–thus the huge discrepancy in the two figures.

Link

Boris sez, "A great video showing Bruce Sterling giving the closing talk at the conference 'Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign' in Potsdam, Germany. As usual, he creates a weird and wonderful vision of a technological and interface-driven future. The 'Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign' was one of the most important conferences on interaction design in 2007. All presentations from the conference are available as videos on the conference site."

Just listening to Bruce lay out the litany of devices that the mobile phone has replaced is a moment of sheer technological hilarity; and hearing him talk about why science fiction writers love talking computers (which all turn into Mr Clippy in the real world) is an eye-opening exercise in the difference between sensawunda and cognitive loading. Link (Thanks, Bruce!)

Lenore Skenazy, the author of the kick-ass column about letting her kid ride the subway alone, has started a blog called Free Range Kids, with a stirring call to action:

Do you ever... ..let your kid ride a bike to the library? Walk alone to school? Take a bus, solo? Or are you thinking about it? If so, you are raising a Free Range Kid! At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting. Share your stories, tell your tips and maybe one day I will try to collect them in a book. Meantime, let's try to help our kids embrace life! (And maybe even clear the table.)

Link (via Making Light)

The Retro Robot built-your-own kit from JojoMangoes consists of panels that you stitch together with thread to make a handsome, Lost-in-Space-esque bot. Link (Thanks, Alice!)

Flavour Designs' "And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon" bowls have a place to rest your spoon while you eat, sparing the tabletop/linen napkin between mouthfulls. Link (via Neatorama)

Red light cameras cause more accidents, and not just because drivers slam their brakes to avoid getting a robo-ticket -- also because the optimal money-making strategy for red-light cams is to make them less safe.

If city planners want to reduce traffic accidents at intersections, the best practice is to make the yellow last longer and insert a pause between the red signal on one side and the green on the other. However, if the objective is to make as much money as possible from red-light cameras, the best thing to do is shorten the yellow signal, eliminate the pause, and enrich the city coffers (even as you kill its citizens).

Leftlane reports that six cities have been caught turning down the yellows to make more money. Link (via /.)

The amazing illustrator Jordan Crane has produced a beautiful cover for Michael Chabon's forthcoming book Maps and Legends. It's pure Crane, that dreamlike, old-timey (but still sharp-edged) style that makes books like The Clouds Above so memorable. The treatment is really elaborate and luscious, an object lesson in making the physical book into a piece of genuine desiderata, an artifact you want to own as well as read.

The black cloth (or paper that resembles it) wraps around the hardcover jacket with debossing and foil. Then there are three bellybands with Jordan Crane’s illustrations (has anyone seen a book with three different belly bands?).

Link, Link to Maps and Legends (via Making Light)

Here's a great Naughty Secretary Club project for turning dead watches into weird-ass wrist-art with a little spray-paint and patience. In the era of wristwatch obsolescence, why not turn a dead cheap timepiece into a brightly colored commentary on time itself:

After your several thin coats of paint have dried slap those babies on your wrist and sport them around town. I have a hot dinner date and art viewing with my lady friends this evening and I fully intend to work these bad boys into my outfit. I think I might even wear all 3 at once because I am crazy like that.

Link (via Craft)

Jayel sez,

We have been trying to raise awareness about British MP Austin Mitchell's crusade to protect photographers' rights in the UK in FlickrCentral. And we are trying to help him out via a write-in campaign to other British MPs. It is a slow start, but we are doing everything we can including asking your readers for help.

We need information about:

1) Names and contact information of MPs
2) Civil liberties group that we can contact
3) Other ways we can raise awareness about this issue.

Link, Link to They Work For You (all MPs contact details and more) (Thanks, Jayel!)

See also: Brit MP calls for photographers' rights

Brad Emerson uses some python code to stitch together his time-lapse photos into animated impressionist paintings (he uses the free program Imagemagick to process the images). Link (Thanks, Brad!)

The European Court of Justice is forcing the EU into publishing its top-s33kr1t list of things you're not allowed to take on airplanes. Oh noes! Now the terrists will have the complete, exhaustive list of all the devices it is possible to crash an airplane with. We are doomed.

The fight waged by the Austrian passenger, who had been ordered from a plane before takeoff because of his sports equipment, forced the European Commission on Thursday to agree to publish a secret list of banned items for air passengers...

The case arose from an episode in September 2005, when Gottfried Heinrich was stopped at the security control of Vienna-Schwechat Airport because his carry-on baggage contained tennis rackets...

The criticism of the EU policy came in an opinion from an advocate general Eleanor Sharpston, a legal adviser to the European Court of Justice.

In unusually tough language, she attacked what she described as the "fundamental absurdity" in the position of the European Commission, which had kept the annex secret but had issued a press release describing some of its contents.

The adviser said the error was so big that EU rules on aircraft security should be declared "non-existent."

Link (Thanks, Loren!)

Matt sez, "A researcher at my University is working on modeling the behaviour of fruit flies. Turns out they have something like a Free Will, or at least they are not completely random in their flying patterns. Check out the video of drosophila in the flight simulator."

Their results caught computer scientist and lead author Alexander Maye from the University of Hamburg by surprise: “I would have never guessed that simple flies who keep bouncing off the same window otherwise have the capacity for nonrandom spontaneity if given the chance.” Previous studies have shown that in nature, flies do not buzz about aimlessly but forage according to a sophisticated search strategy (this is how they find our wine glasses). The new research now suggests that such strategies arise spontaneously rather than being induced by spatial cues.

Link (Thanks, Matt!)