By Mark Frauenfelder at 3:10 pm Sunday, Jan 25
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Here's Bob Turek's MP3 player speaker system, built into a mannequin.
speakers, fiberglas mannequin, hand built stereo amplifier
36" x18" x12"
2008
As part of my object remix series, this stereo forces the music source into the center of attention and creates a radically new user interface.
By Danny Choo at 1:01 pm Sunday, Jan 25
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Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America, for which he is currently on book tour. He's also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.
I have the distinct honor of editing this year's edition of Best Of Technology Writing, which has in past years featured many BoingBoing regulars. We're putting together the final submissions, and while we have a great supply of magazine writing to choose from, the blogosphere pile seems a little thin to me. So I thought it might be a nice end-of-year exercise for all of us to think back on the blog posts from 2008 that most intrigued and inspired us. Slightly longer posts will be more likely to make it into the collection, but who knows -- perhaps there's a particularly momentous tweet that deserves a place in the 2009 book. Obviously, posts that originated here at BoingBoing will have a special place in my heart. So feel free to share amongst yourselves in the threads below: what was the most memorable blog post you read last year? Surely, some of you remember last year...?
By Cory Doctorow at 6:57 am Sunday, Jan 25
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Marilyn points us to Hospitalis in Riga, Latvia, a hospital themed restaurant where, "the food is served in syringes, flasks and operating-room dishes, and customers can be tied up in straight jackets." The waitresses all wear fetish-nurse outfits and Milla-Jovavich-in-Fifth-Element red wigs:
The food is served in flasks and operating-room’s dishes and isn’t that cheap (7 and more lats per meal), but this is a bizarre experience that is worth breaking the bank. Besides, the place is owned by local doctors, but unfortunately, the president of Latvia, who is also a doctor, declined his appearance at the opening once he realized how weird this place actually is.
Hospirestaurant - Hospital Themed Restaurant in Latvia
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Thanks, Marilyn!
By Cory Doctorow at 3:19 am Sunday, Jan 25
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Patrick Boland's photo-gallery from the abandoned shipyards of Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour are a love-note to ancient, rotting machines, each more delightful than the last:
Cockatoo Island is like Peter Pan’s Never Never Land for a photographer who likes industrial and historical decay. It’s a wonderland of rusted colour. Machines smeared with grease from a thousand men’s hands. Sandstone hewned by convicts. An apocalyptic museum of towering H.G. Wells tripods and cranes. I was entranced the minute I stepped off the ferry.
Cockatoo Island Project: Photography by Patrick Boland
By Cory Doctorow at 3:13 am Sunday, Jan 25
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An Australian family who traveled to the US to visit a dying relative were accused of attempting to illegally immigrate by US Customs and Border Patrol officials, who caged them, detained them, starved them overnight, and then sent them back on the next flight to Australia. The US consulate's only comment? "We reserve the right to refuse entry to visitors to the United States."
A reminder to the US CBP: what you do to foreigners, their governments are apt to do to Americans. When you treat foreigners this way, you put Americans who go abroad in harm's way.
Over the next 24 hours, officers questioned the Thornleigh taxi driver and his aged-care worker wife, patted them down and searched their luggage before sending them to a detention centre in a caged van. They were then taken to a hotel with other detainees at 2.30am to sleep with armed guards by their bedside before being woken at 4.30am and put on a flight back to Sydney...
"They treated us like terrorists," Mr Rabbi said. "We are Australian citizens. Why did they have to keep us in a detention centre? Why did they have to lock up my kids?"
Mr Rabbi says that when he explained he was in the US to visit his father, the officers threatened him.
Despite producing the family's $6400 return tickets, dated February 5, he says the officers accused him of attempting to illegally stay in the US...
The family, tired and hungry after their 18-hour flight from Sydney to Los Angeles via Melbourne, were given minimal food and drink during their time at the airport.
"We were given no food, apart from a few biscuits," Mr Rabbi said.
Mercy dash family denied entry to US
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Thanks, JK!)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:06 am Sunday, Jan 25
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Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: Star Wars mashed up with fine art. Love this Gigervader!
Star Wars Ren 2
