Last night, Locus Magazine held its annual Locus Awards Ceremony in Seattle, the winners include several of my favorite books of the year -- and my novella, "After the Siege" -- which was collected in my short story collection Overclocked and adapted for comics in my new collection Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now". (The story's first publication was in the Russian magazine Esli, and the translation is also downloadable). This marks my fourth consecutive Locus Award win!

Many thanks to all who voted for this story, to Eileen Gunn for publishing the story and accepting the award on my behalf, and especially to my grandmother, Valentina Rachman, for sharing her stories of life as a child-soldier in the civil defense corps during the Siege of Leningrad.

SF NOVEL The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
FANTASY NOVEL Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
YOUNG ADULT BOOK Un Lun Dun, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
FIRST NOVEL Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz)
NOVELLA "After the Siege", Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix Jan 2007)
NOVELETTE "The Witch's Headstone", Neil Gaiman (Wizards)
SHORT STORY "A Small Room in Koboldtown", Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Apr/May 2007)
COLLECTION The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories, Connie Willis (Subterranean)
ANTHOLOGY The New Space Opera, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos)
NON-FICTION Breakfast in the Ruins, Barry N. Malzberg (Baen)
ART BOOK The Arrival, Shaun Tan (Lothian 2006; Scholastic)
EDITOR Ellen Datlow
MAGAZINE F&SF
PUBLISHER Tor
ARTIST Charles Vess

Link

Findings presented to ENDO 2008, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in San Francisco this week, show that a spice found in curries has remarkable properties when administered to obese and diabetic mice:

"It's too early to tell whether increasing dietary curcumin [through turmeric] intake in obese people with diabetes will show a similar benefit," Dr. Tortoriello said. "Although the daily intake of curcumin one might have to consume as a primary diabetes treatment is likely impractical, it is entirely possible that lower dosages of curcumin could nicely complement our traditional therapies as a natural and safe treatment."

For now, the conclusion that Dr. Tortoriello and his colleagues have reached is that turmeric – and its active anti-oxidant ingredient, curcumin – reverses many of the inflammatory and metabolic problems associated with obesity and improves blood-sugar control in mouse models of Type 2 diabetes.

Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Gerard Brion's garden in the south France town of Vaissac contains a replica of Paris built from junk, trash, glue and paint.

The Frenchman, 29, has spent 15 years crafting landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Sacré Coeur out of old concrete blocks, baby food jars and soup tins.

Link (via Craft!)

Z sez, "LonelyCylon15 (an ongoing YouTube project edited by ChurchHatesTucker) explains why DRM is a bad idea." Link (Thanks, Z!)

Here's a fine little dance remix of Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice ducking questions about his terrible new copyright proposal, Bill C61 (AKA the Canadian DMCA), on the CBC Radio show Search Engine. Link (Thanks, Rick!)

See also: Canadian Industry Minister lies about his Canadian DMCA on national radio, then hangs up

Spotted on Joi Ito's blog: quick and dirty directions on how to "hack" Firefox 3 into delivering richer, brighter colors more faithful to the original photograph (or graphic).

Snip:

I think that the esoteric discussions about color are interesting, but for most people, the bottom line is, if you turn color profile support "on" on Firefox 3, many images will end up appearing much closer to the color of the original and less washed out. You do this by typing "about:config" in the address bar of Firefox 3. Click thru confirmation page and find: gfx.color_management.enabled. Double click that until it says "true". Then restart Firefox 3.

There are a number of monitor color calibration gadgets and software packages like Eye One Match which will allow you to calibrate your monitor (and camera and printer). If everyone actually did this, we'd all be seeing the same colors.

Downside: you void your warranty (browsers have warranties? who cares) and apparently this tweak causes a non-insignificant performance hit.

Whatever, I'm just thrilled that favorite snaps I shot, caressed lovingly in Photoshop, then uploaded to Flickr don't look so anemic anymore. Like "Daniela," above, an aging camioneta cooling her heels on a beach along the Pacific coast of Guatemala. Or these women from the Gaddi tribe in Northern India, at bottom, climbing a mountain to reach a shrine.

Source: DRIA. Gina at Lifehacker just blogged about it, too.

Here's a fine instructable for making a YipYipYip Martian costume from Sesame Street, consisting primarily of lots of fabric, a couple styrofoam balls, sponge and pipecleaners. Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

Scott sez, "I hosted director Greg Maletic and screened his excellent 60-min documentary, "Tilt," last week. In 1998, Williams saw pinball sales going down and their slot machines going up. Pinball was losing ground in the arcades to the new video machines. In a valiant effort to save their livelihoods, a team of great designers from the video and pinball world decide to combine the technologies into Pinball 2000, a platform the seemed like a great new gaming experience. (I've never played it.) Maletic made a film that is part game history, part product design, and part tragic business story. Well worth watching, and the clip on the website gives a good sense of its quality. " Link (Thanks, Scott!)

(If you can't view the veoh video above, try the YouTube version)

Photographer Clayton Cubitt (disclosure, he's a personal pal) recently returned to NYC after a few weeks in New Zealand on an editorial assignment. During that trip, he also took a series of beautiful (and formal) portraits of interesting people there, including Maori people whose bodies and faces are embellished with traditional tattoos.

He also took one short, informal little video interview (Clayton, what'd you shoot this with?) with a man named Vic Taurewa Biddle, shot with a Sigma DP1 digital snappy cam "as an afterthought during a portrait session." Mr. Biddle speaks about his face tats, known as moko in the Maori language, and shares some insight on how homo/bi/trans-sexuality are viewed among his people -- both historically and now. I wish Clayton had shot more of these, this is short, simple, really interesting stuff.

I've embedded the Veoh video above, here's Clayton's tumblr post with a YouTube version. Incidentally, when Clayton first sent me this link I was in Guatemala, and couldn't view that Veoh item at all. I learned that this is because Veoh is blocked in like 37 countries around the world. WTF, what's up with that?

The folks from Open Source Cinema have reedited their "Copyright Criminals" video to feature Canadian Member of Parliament Charlie Angus and a host of Canadians who don't want Bill C-61, the Canadian Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to pass. You can re-edit it to your heart's content, natch. Link (Thanks, Brett!)

See also: Canada's DMCA: public service announcement

Chris Borroni-Bird is the director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts at GM. He's leading the effort at GM to make fuel cell vehicles, based on a "skateboard" style chassis called AUTOnomy that incorporates the fuel cell, motors and electronics control.

GMnext kindly invited me to visit with Dr. Borroni-Bird and have a discussion with him about "innovation, technology, energy, the environment, and their impact on the future of the automobile." He's a fascinating innovator with ideas that could change transportation around the world. I hope he succeeds.

Here's the first video from our conversation. (Note: GMnext compensated me for my video appearance.) Link

Chris sez, "This is a video of me doing one-handed origami, making a flapping bird in each hand at the same time, one with my left hand and one with my right. I put just a single one-handed video up on YouTube last year and there was like a stream of folk complaining it was fake, so I figured out how to debunk it". Link (Thanks, Chris!)

In this Disney podcast, Chief Imagineer Marty Sklar enumerates Mickey's 10 Commandments of Theme Park Design. MP3 Link (Thanks, Avi!)

Aw, shit. Cody's Books, the half-century-old Berkeley bookstore that has long been an East Bay institution -- one of the truly great west coast stores -- has closed its doors forever.

After 52 years, Cody's Books will shut its doors effective June 20, 2008. The Berkeley bookstore has been a beacon to readers and writers throughout the nation and across the world. Founded by Fred and Pat Cody in 1956, Cody's has been a Berkeley institution and a pioneer in the book business, helping to establish such innovations as quality paperbacks and in-store author readings. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Cody's was a landmark of the Free Speech movement and was a home away from home for innumerable authors, poets and readers.

The Board of Directors of Cody's Books made this difficult decision after years of financial distress and declining sales.

According to Cody's president, Hiroshi Kagawa, "[It] is a heartbreaking moment…in the spring of 2005 when I learned about the financial crisis facing Cody's, I was excited to save the store from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, my current business is not strong enough or rich enough to support Cody's. Of course, the store has been suffering from low sales and the deficit exceeds our ability to service it."

It was an incredible honor to stop at Cody's for a signing on my book tour last month -- I'm really glad I got a chance to connect with the wonderful staff and patrons there while the store was still around. Link (Thanks, Spincycle)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John has spotted this Japanese piggy-bank that includes an RPG that gives you rewards for saving:

This new Tomy piggy bank gives forward-thinking youngsters a reason to save their quarters: it features a miniature RPG game on the front, and every coin you pump into the bank is translated into gold, which can be used to buy weapons, items and armor for your character. Ultima meets Tamagotchi, basically. Although I'd hasten to add that a savings account is a better return on investment than putting your money into a wardrobe for an imaginary elf.

Link, Discuss on Boing Boing Gadgets

In an amicus brief filed in the Jammie Thomas trial, lawyers for the MPAA argued that it was unreasonable to ask copyright holders to prove that infringement had taken place before awarding them damages of up to $150,000 per file.

"Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial.

"It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement," van Uitert wrote on behalf of the movie studios, a position shared with the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Thomas, the single mother of two.

Link

Jim sez, "Rutgers has an interesting collection of historic maps online, including what appears to be a 1955 tourist map ... of prisons."

The hand-drawn map has normal touristy captions notations like:
- High Point State Park [Highest Point in NJ]
- Lake Hopatcong (largest in NJ) Popular Summer Resort
- Newark's Airport is world's busiest

But the map is dominated by prisons:
- Here maximum and limited security for industrial type prisoner under 30 (Ref't'y Rahway)
- Here minimum custody for older men of common labor type and men nearing time of discharge (Prison Farm Bordentown)
- Here minimum security for men 18-30 trainable in vocational and agricultural work (Annandale Farms)

GIF Link (Thanks, Jim!)

Remember how awesome and cool it was to hear Gnarls Barkley's cover of the Violent Femmes' classic anthem "Gone Daddy Gone?" Two great summer debut albums, separated by decades, featuring the same song, done two different ways.

This summer, the Violent Femmes have released their own smoky, slow cover of Gnarls Barkley's high energy falsetto anthem "Crazy" and it's exactly as great, in reverse. Link (via Salon)

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz's Travelers series features limited edition prints of grisly, Charles-Addams-esque scenes in snowglobes and on landscapes. Link (via Gizmodo)

My friend Joe Hutsko contacted with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance. I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company's undertaking to create an iPhone-like device.

Here's a link to Chapter 3 as a PDF or a text or a Word file. (Here's chapter 1 and an introduction to the book, and here are the previous chapters)

To buy a paperback copy of the book, visit JOEyGADGET or purchase directly from Amazon.

Lon Harris of Mahalo Daily came to LA Siggraph's Maker Night and checked out some of the cool projects there. Link

Process Media publisher Jodi Wille says: If you're in Los Angeles this coming weekend or next week, we have two very special happenings to celebrate Los Angeles' occult heritage and our upcoming new Process release, Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall by LA Times writer Louis Sahagun.

This is one of the most mind blowing books I've ever worked on, and a perfect followup to The Source.

In the early 20th Century, Southern California became home to one of America’s most powerful occult scenes. Alternative religions, Eastern gurus and esoteric societies compelled thousands to seek enlightenment while mystically inclined civic leaders, artists, and mavericks shaped Los Angeles into a world-class metropolis.

Manly P. Hall was a focal point of this subculture, a striking, self-educated scholar who became the 20th Century’s most prolific writer and speaker on ancient philosophies, mysticism and magic. He was a confidante of celebrities and politicians, and in 1991 he died -- some say he was murdered -- in what remains an open-ended Hollywood murder mystery.

Master of the Mysteries unfolds the dramatic life story of this enigmatic visionary while revealing the occult roots that built Los Angeles and invigorated the rest of the nation for decades to come.

Master of the Mysteries Events Schedule:

Saturday, June 21st, 12pm-3pm
Master of the Mysteries release party and lectures
Philosophical Research Society

3910 Los Feliz Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027
phone 323.663.2167
tickets: $1

This historic celebration includes a slideshow and lecture on the life of Manly Palmer Hall by Louis Sahagun; a talk on Los Angeles’ Freemasonic heritage by of Rex R. Hutchens, PhD., author, historian and 33 degree Grand Cross former Grand Master of Arizona; and an appearance by Manly P. Hall’s surviving step daughter JoAnne O’Connor.

Tea and Manly Hall’s favorite snacks will be served.

Tuesday, June 24th, 8 p.m.
Screening of “The Magician”
The Silent Movie Theater
611 N. Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90036
(323) 655-2510
Tickets - $12/ $8 for members

In celebration of the creation of the new Manly P. Hall biography Master of the Mysteries by Louis Sahagun, Process presents a special screening of Ingmar Bergman’s 1959 supernatural classic The Magician with an original score composed by string arranger Yvanne Spevack and a live ensemble of improvising magicians.

Bergman’s film is a mystical contemplation of a magician and his vagrant troupe of medicine-show performers as they travel through the country in the mid-nineteenth century and are hounded by a skeptical public. Utilizing a combination of traditional orchestral string instruments, electric guitars, keyboards, accordion and electronic beats, the ensemble will be led by Ysanne on acoustic and electric violin, musical saw, midi-synthesized electronic textures and processing. The Magician marks the second time Ysanne has scored a film and performed it live, the first being Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle Of Algiers. Master of the Mysteries author Louis Sahagun will be present before and after the show to meet guests and sign books.

Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1958, 35mm, 97 min.

And this, folks, is why I love Max Silvestri so much. Above, his masterful followup to Gabe Delahaye's "10 greatest lightsaber mashups of all time" series. mildly NSFW Link.

(You may recall these two internet funnyhunters from this very popular BBtv episode).

The Boulder Daily Camera reports that residue from the spill of a "small amount of plutonium" last week at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado has been found on the floor and tabletops.

The plutonium may have been released into the sewer system after two employees "washed plutonium-containing powder off their hands and into a sink" on June 9.

Traces of plutonium from the June 9 spill were found in a laboratory sink, where the radioactive chemical may have washed into the city’s sewer system, NIST announced last week.

Contamination has since been found on the floor and tabletops, consistent of the spread of plutonium by hands and shoes, the agency said. Boulder officials were alerted since the sink drains into the municipal sewer system.

Boulder city officials say there is nothing to be afraid of. All is well. Link

Sam Scheibner says: "This sign appears three or four times in Fremont WA along the canal. I'm no English major but shouldn't it be Dump No Material Whatsoever? Or did the sign writer give up half way through?"

I hope somebody adds funny punctuation to it, like "Dump No Material? Whatever."

This was one of my favorite projects from MAKE Vol. 14: a parabolic mic from dollar-store parts. Here's a video with Kipkay that shows you how to make one. Link

The opening reception for Kyle Ng's We Hear it All exhibition is Thursday, June 26, 2008, 8-11pm, 326 Sunset Avenue, Venice, CA 90291

Flux is proud to present We Hear It All, a breakout solo exhibition and salon by Los Angeles artist Kyle Ng. Transforming the space into a pop-up natural history museum, Ng will unveil a series of life-size dioramas filled with taxidermy animal sculptures, antique artifacts and luxe jewels. The mixed media sculpture exhibition will include an experimental musical performance by artist Tim Biskup and outdoor video installations. A series of limited-edition digital photo prints will be available for purchase. Open to the public, the reception for We Hear It All will take place on Thursday, June 26 from 8 to 11pm, and the show will be on view until July 18, 2008.

Link

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, Joel wished he was part of the greatest NERF office war in history, and Brownlee wtfed over a Texas Instruments ad featuring an evil floating elephant and a girl with her head exploding, while Rob got pissed about a psychic accusing an autitstic girl's parents of child abuse... and how they only cleared their name because of a GPS recording gadget.

We also looked at a scale for professional bodybuilders and this year's Tokyo Toy Show. Joel slummed inside the insidious bowels of some Chinese gadget sweatshops, scheduled a voyage on the world's largest cruise liner and looked at some faux skylights capable of programmable lighting. John looked at a gorgeous $400k watch, a geiger counter case mod and a piggy bank with a built-in RPG. Rob lusted after a prosthetic foot, then locked himself inside a robot vault.

And we couldn't end the week without flipping the double deuce at the pissloafers who convinced Congress to give carte blanche to the government spying on us. Good one, jackwads.

Link

These ultrasuede scarves from MicroFactory are laser-cut with either upper-case, lower-case, or numeric characters in a close pattern. Link (via Make!)

The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy hold more than 8000 mummies, from artists and surgeons to military figures and monks who died between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 20th. The bodies are embalmed, fully clothed, and many of them posed as if they were still alive. As the bodies have decayed, albeit slowly, over the years, the catacombs experience apparently has become even more surreal. Architectural historian Robert Harbison of London Metropolitan University wrote about his visit to the Capuchin Catacombs in Cabinet magazine. The article is accompanied by intense photos by Marco Lanza. From the article:

In Palermo... corpses are treated as characters in a play. Perhaps Walt Disney and Madame Tussaud were inspired by places like this, but the Capuchin crypt will not remind you of their worlds, for in spite of all the talk about the great lengths the monks have gone to in order to create lifelike effects, it feels like somewhere that fell into disuse long ago.

Most of the corpses are wearing clothes, it is true, many of them are sitting up, and whole rows of them are standing. But standing is only a mistake of vision: they are hanging from hooks, so their feet don't normally touch the ground. And the clothe-- there's a kind of allegory in them. They are so dusty and so faded that the whole picture sinks toward something like monochrome. They remind me of a painter that a friend of mine knew who got the idea of painting indoors with the blinds drawn and the lights off. The results were extremely melancholy: muted colors, indistinct forms.

Link

Senate House Democrats covered themselves in shame today, joining with Republicans to pass a bill granting amnesty to the cowardly telephone companies who helped the President's office with its illegal bulk-wiretapping campaign that spied on every American call and email without any judicial oversight. What's more, the bill also allows this to continue going on in the future. Who needs the fourth amendment?

The bill (.pdf) could be voted on as soon as Friday in the House, given its backing by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who in February organized a high-stakes showdown with the president over a substantially similar bill. The Senate would likely also quickly pass the bill, despite already vocal opposition from the ACLU, left-leaning bloggers, as well as Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont)...

Additionally, the bill grants amnesty to the nation's telecoms that are being sued for allegedly breaking federal wiretapping laws by turning over billions of Americans' call records to government data-mining programs and giving the government access to internet and phone infrastructure inside the country. The bill strips the right of a federal district court to decide whether the companies violated federal laws prohibiting wiretapping without a court order.

Instead, the attorney general would need only certify to the court either that a sued company did not participate, or that the government provided some sort of written request to the companies that said that the president authorized the program and that his lawyers deemed it to be legal. That would be presented to federal district court Judge Vaughn Walker, who is overseeing the more than 40 consolidated cases against the telecoms. Walker's authority would be limited to judging whether the preponderance of the evidence is that the companies did get a written request, and if he finds that to be true -- as the Senate Intelligence Committee has already publicly stated -- he must dismiss the cases.

Link

Update: Tim from EFF sez, "The Senate vote will probably be sometime next week, could be as early as Tuesday. Folks can contact their Senator here"

GOOD magazine's Matt Schwartz wrote a fun survey of the secret societies that rule the world: Freemasons, Trilateral Commission, Order of Skull and Bones, Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg Group, and the World Economic Forum. Schwarts, a Freemason himself, profiles those "Shadowy Organizations" in easily digestible chunks, highlighting their mythical achievements, actual achievements, membership, alumni, true facts, and what they say about themselves. Remember, just because you're paranoid, don't think they're not after you. (For more on the secret ruling elite, read Jon Ronson's excellent book Them: Adventures with Extremists.) From GOOD:

In the 19th century, the Masons were the favorite scapegoat of frightened jingoists who found themselves at the mercy of history and wanted someone to blame for their problems. In the early 20th century, it was the Jews—I’m one of those, too. These days, the conspirators of choice are the internationalist elites who arrive by chartered jet to mingle with their fellow Murdochs, Soroses, Gateses, and Wolfowitzes (I’m a few dinner parties away from becoming one of these).

With that in mind, we present six organizations that have been accused of plotting world domination, along with an assessment of who they are, what they do, and just how powerful they actually are. From what we can tell, no group on this list is running the world from behind its locked doors. But those without keys can never be sure.

Link

• History Channel on Bilderberg Group Link
• Punks in the Masons Link
• List of the "World's Weirdest/Stupidest Conspiracy Theories" Link
• San Francisco's clubs you can't join Link
• Documentary: Crazy Rulers of the World Link

In this remarkable leaked Powerpoint presentation produced by a Comcast employee to brief co-workers about how incredibly shit their customer service is, a series of frank admissions of total incompetence, inadequacy and pathetic bumbling paint a (fatally accurate) picture of a monopolist in decline. My favorite quote: "On average, gas is $4.07 (too high for unnecessary truck rolls) and very shortly cable will go from a 'need' to an option for some people."

Comcast Quits Early

Technicians are not showing up for appointments and it appears they are not being held accountable.

* Comcast technicians and subcontractors routinely cancel/reschedule customer appointments without approving or even notifying the customer of the change when they are tired of working.

* Several of my customers have complained that the technician was rude or short with them when they refused to let him come earlier than scheduled.

Scott of New Hudson MI (01/29/07) “I made 3 separate appointments to have Comcast come out and install cable, phone, and high speed internet as part of their Triple Play deal. The first appointment came and went, nobody showed up or called. Set up another appointment, but they did call to cancel that one…”

PPT Link (via Consumerist)

In April, I posted about the tragic passing of Phoebe Washer, a hypertalented 20-year-old San Francisco artist who fell off a cliff while hiking with a friend. After I made that post, my wife Kelly realized that we actually knew Phoebe as a little girl. Kelly and Phoebe's mom, Drew, had worked together as fashion designers in the early 1990s. Kelly and I remember Phoebe as a very sweet, quirky, and outgoing 6-year-old. Last month, Kelly and I attended a community memorial for Phoebe in her hometown of Petaluma, California. The words from her family and friends and the slideshows of her artwork were incredibly moving. Phoebe clearly touched the lives of everyone she met, including us.

The POVevolving Gallery & Print Studio in Los Angeles will host a retrospective of Phoebe's work opening on July 5 and running through July 30. The exhibition is titled "Phoebe Washer - How Well Do You Remember?" All of the art is also viewable online. A limited edition print set will be available at the show and on POVeditions.com. (For those unable to attend, Drew mentioned that another exhibition of Phoebe's work is planned for September in Petaluma.) From the POVevolving Gallery:

It is with a deep and profound sadness tempered with gratitude and pride that we would like to announce "How Well Do You Remember?", a retrospective of the works of Phoebe Stewart Washer. Phoebe was at the beginning of a very promising career when her life was cut short by a tragic accident. She was a gifted, essentially self-taught artist whose works show a depth of feeling and spirit rare in someone so young.

We are grateful and proud to have the opportunity to showcase her work in a show at the POVevolving Gallery in Los Angeles. The show will feature a number of paintings and sculptures by Phoebe Stewart Washer. In addition, we have invited a number of artist friends including Attaboy, Huck G, Will Smith, Todd Barricklow, Leigh Barbier, David Best and Phoebe's special protege Stella Brown and many others to create pieces specifically to benefit the newly formed Phoebe Washer Foundation for the Arts.

Link to Phoebe Washer: How Well Do You Remember? online gallery
Link to Phoebe Washer's site
Link to POVevolving Gallery & Print Studio

Attaboy, who co-edits my favorite art magazine Hi-Fructose, sent me this fun video of artist Sako Kojima who lived like a hamster in a storefront window for almost a week. According to Kojima's Web site, "This performance is so hard bacause sako was moving all day long as a hamster. quickly running, biting wood, paper and scratch wall. It continue about from 3 to 6 days. After the days sako come back human." Link

An unofficial group of NASA employees and veterans are spending their off-hours considering how to send a human crew to an asteroid. They're eyeing possible near-Earth objects as landing points, not the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The "Asteroid Underground" crew is analyzing all the details, from the tech needs to the trajectories to the scientific potential of such a journey. From Air & Space Magazine:

The group also wrestled with the problem of communicating with a spacecraft more than two million miles from home. “At even a near-Earth asteroid, you’re 10 voice-seconds away,” says (NASA engineering Dave) Korsmeyer. “You’re not really conversing with Earth at that point. The whole nature of the interaction becomes like the old ship-to-shore communications, a fancy telegraph, a voicemail. Not in real-time.”

An asteroid-bound crew would therefore need to “bring mission control on board,” says Korsmeyer, in the form of highly automated decision-making software. “When something bad happens, which tends to happen quickly, the crew and systems will have to manage it on their own. This is something humanity hasn’t done yet. But that makes it the best of all possible testing grounds for Mars, which, without an asteroid mission, will be like jumping into the deep end without practicing in the shallow end.” In comparison, “the moon is like the baby pool. I don’t mean to minimize that—Apollo 13 showed us you can drown there too.” But, he says, an asteroid “would really be someplace fabulously new. You’re talking 2.5 million miles, more than 10 times the distance between Earth and the moon. You’d be so far away you could cover up Earth with your finger. It would be no more than a beautiful, pale blue star.”

Link

Macrida Patterson, 52, of Los Angeles, is suing Victoria's Secret because when she was slipping on a pair of their "low-rise v-string" panties, a metal decoration popped off and hit her in the eye. From the Smoking Gun:

Patterson's lawyer, Jason Buccat, told TSG that a "design problem" caused the decorative piece to come loose and strike Patterson in the eye, causing damage to her cornea. He added that the eye injury, which caused Patterson to miss a few days of work, will be "affecting her the rest of her life."

Link

A couple of weeks ago we came across a lovely YouTube video from London-based, Japan-born ukulelist Clara Belle. We posted it to Boing Boing, and her performance was such a hit with readers that we asked Clara to make another video so we could premiere it here on Boing Boing tv. Clara kindly agreed and just sent us this brand-new video of her song, "Summer Face."

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video, and Boing Boing's Q&A with Clara, which answers some of our readers' questions.

My literary agent wrote to me this morning to tell me about a letter his agency just received from Blackstone Audio, one of the largest audiobook publishers in the world, announcing that Blackstone was phasing out its use of DRM. Blackstone is contacting the rightsholders for all its titles notifying them that they'll be releasing their catalog in DRM-free MP3 (with some kind of watermarking -- I'm skeptical that this will work to stop pirates, since all imperceptible watermarks can be trivially removed through simple means like diffing two files) format unless they hear otherwise by a certain date.

Blackstone now joins with Random House Audio (the audio division of the world's largest publisher, Bertelsmann) in rejecting DRM for its audiobooks and I've heard off-the-record accounts of other major audiobook houses planning to do the same.

All this raises the question: when will Audible -- the largest audiobook retailer in the world and the exclusive provider of downloadable audiobooks for iTunes and Amazon -- drop the DRM on its audiobooks? I was shocked a month ago to hear from Amazon that they would not carry the Random House Audio audiobook of my NYT-bestselling novel Little Brother because it was only available as an MP3. Official Amazon policy on audiobooks still seems to be no DRM = no dice.

Bravo to Blackstone for taking a stand for its customers' rights!
PDF Link to Blackstone Audio letter

See also: Random House Audio abandons audiobook DRM

watermelon haiku
haiku
2004 oscars in haiku
font haiku
yard haiku
pieku

(Image: "Koumyouzenji @ Dazaifu ( Fukuoka-ken, Kyushu, Japan )", by Flickr user e-chan.)

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

In today's episode, Mark Frauenfelder brings his own espresso machine to US Barista Champion, Kyle Glanville, to learn how to make the perfect espresso. Kyle also gives a hands-on demonstration of the "ultimate nerd's way to make coffee."

This weekend, Kyle will be competing against the best baristas from around the globe in the 2008 World Barista Championship. The final round and awards ceremony are on Sunday, June 22nd, and streaming video of the competition can be seen now and through the weekend at worldbaristachampionship.com.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video and links to previous episodes featuring Kyle Glanville and Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea.

Earlier this week, Blackstone Audio sent me a box containing all three volumes of collected Twilight Zone radio plays, produced in 2004 for CBS radio using Rod Serling's original scripts, with Stacey Keach narrating and hosting. Each volume contains ten episodes, and each episode has a celebrity actor in the lead role, from Lou Diamond Phillips to Ed Begley Jr to Adam West to Kim Fields.

I'm an enormous fan of the original Twilight Zone series (even moreso since I heard the excellent Tank Riot podcast on Rod Serling) and I really enjoyed the 30 episodes in these collections, though a few were weaker in the adaptation and acting than others. Keach does a surprisingly good job standing in for Serling, and the scripts -- lightly updated for contemporary performance -- are really well-suited to audio. There's a good mix of comic and spooky, dark and light in the stories adapted, too.

This strikes me as really top-notch cross-country driving audio, the kind of thing you could listen to in 40-minute chunks with your kids, each episode sparking a discussion about social issues, technological speculation, or moral questions. A few of the episodes are spooky enough to qualify as campfire stories, too. At about $30/box, it works out to $3 per episode, which seems about right -- a little expensive for a couple of the weaker ones and a real steal for the great ones. Link to Volume 1, Link to Volume 2, Link to Volume 3

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have demonstrated an attack against some encrypted Voice-over-IP traffic that uses the size of encrypted packets to make highly accurate guesses at whole words and phrases:

That happens because the sampling rate is kept high for long complex sounds like "ow", but cut down for simple consonants like "c". This variable method saves on bandwidth, while maintaining sound quality.

VoIP streams are encrypted to prevent eavesdropping. However, a team from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, US, has shown that simply measuring the size of packets without decoding them can identify whole words and phrases with a high rate of accuracy...

a few services currently employ the vulnerable compression method, but more networks had hoped to include it in future VoIP upgrades, says Charles Wright, a member of the John Hopkins team. "We hope we have caught this threat before it becomes too serious."

Eavesdropping software the team has developed cannot yet decode an entire conversation, but it can search for chosen phrases within the encrypted data. This could still allow a criminal to find important financial information conveyed in the call, says Fabian Monrose, another team member.

Link (via Schneier)

Yesterday, Canada's Parliament rocked with a ferocious debate between NDP Member of Parliament Charlie Angus and Tory Minister of Industry Jim Prentice. At issue was Canada's new copyright law, Bill C61, the Canadian DMCA. Angus asked the Minister why he is granting legal protection to DRM, even when that DRM overrules the copyright freedoms being guaranteed under the bill. The Minister refused to answer the question -- he just kept shouting that his law allows for backups and format-shifting, refusing to say anything about how the DRM rules make all those rights moot. Link

Michael Geist continues his ongoing series on activities that will be illegal under Canada's new copyright act, the so-called Canadian DMCA (Bill C-61). Today, backing up DVDs and scanning school photos:

Diane, who is four years old, is a huge fan of the popular TV character Dora the Explorer. For her birthday, she received four Dora DVDs. Given Diane’s habit of scratching them, her dad has begun to create backup versions. That day, Diane brings home her kindergarten class photo, which was taken by a local photographer. Josee digitizes the photo and sends a copy to Diane’s grandmother.

If Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s Bill C-61 becomes law, all of these copying activities arguably violate the law.

Bill C-61 does not allow users to make backup copies of DVDs. The act of backing up the DVD is an infringement. Moreover, in order to make the backup copy, users must typically circumvent the copy-protection on the DVD, also an act of infringement.

For decades, Canadian copyright law has vested copyright in commissioned photographs – like school photographs – in the person who commissions the photo. Bill C-61 reverses that practice so that copyright now belongs to the photographer. (repeal of Section 13.2) Assuming the photograph came with an all rights reserved restriction, the act of distributing the digitized photo to Diane’s grandmother now violates the law. (Section 29.21 (1)(e))

I'm pretty sure that every Canadian reading Boing Boing knows about this law and what's wrong with it, and I hope you've all contacted your MPs. But the point of these posts is to help you communicate to your less tech-savvy friends about these issues. Did you email your grandmother a photo of your kids' kindergarten photos? Call her up and tell her that you won't be able to do it again with the grade one pics next year unless she calls up her MP and puts him on notice that he'd better oppose the CDMCA or lose her vote. Did your brother back up his DVDs to his laptop when he went away to university? Call him now and let him know that he'll be a criminal next year unless he calls and writes to his MP and lets her know what he thinks of Bill C-61. Link

Here's a fantastic gallery of Dungeons and Dragons miniatures folded origami-style to match the Monster Manual and its successors (shown here, the Mind Flayer!). The creator is Joseph Wu, who clearly knows when to fold 'em. Link (Thanks, Andrew!)

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

Justia and Public.Resource.Org were invited, along with Karl Olson our counsel, to testify before the Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee. We were joined by a public panel of wikipedians and open source advocates.

The process was incredibly well organized. There was a comprehensive briefing packet prepared for the committee, the members asked lots of intelligent questions, and then Dexter Johnson the Legislative Counsel recommended to the committee that they waive assertion of copyright on their statutes. The Majority Leader placed the motion, the President of the Senate called the vote, and the vote was unanimous. This was democracy in action and was great to watch.

Link, Link to the prepared statements submitted by Public Resource (Thanks, Carl!)

Mars Phoenix Lander Twitter says: "Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!" Link

TJ Dietsch reviews Jack Kirby's OMAC.

I bought the first issue off the newsstand in 1974, and the story, about suicide-bomber sex-robots, blew my mind.

DC recently released an anthology of all 8 issues of the short-lived series.

Which brings us to Buddy Blank, a regular dude who works for Build-A-Friend until he’s selected by the faceless Peace Agency to become the One Man Army Corps. When OMAC takes over, Buddy disappears, but does return later on in the series.

Over the next 8 issues, Kirby throws OMAC against everything from a rented city of assassins trying to kill him, a giant spider-like monster, future gangsters, a vast cloning ring, a mad scientist stealing the Earth’s water and more. Kirby’s wild pencils really bring these out-there concepts to life, punching you in the eyes with incredibly crisp pencils.

Link | Buy OMAC anthology on Amazon. (via Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat)

Harvard Business Review has an answer to why women get sick of the tech business, despite excelling in it. It is because of "antigens" -- elements of the culture that actively repel women. Which is another way of saying that it's full of misogynistic dicks. From Computer World:

We found that 63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment. That's a really high figure. They talk about demeaning and condescending attitudes, lots of off-color jokes, sexual innuendo, arrogance; colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don't have what it takes -- who see them as genetically inferior. It's hard to take as a steady stream. It's predatory and demeaning. It's distressing to find this kind of data in 2008."

The other "antigens" are consequential from this. Women feel isolated, because there are so few women in the trade. Women tend to see less long-term opportunities, because they don't bond with colleagues as a result. IT outfits also reward employees involved in patterns of ostentatious failure and rescue, "the diving catch" -- Women, of course, get shit fixed before it starts to break.

Why women quit tech careers [Computer World]