By Cory Doctorow at 9:40 pm Saturday, Dec 24
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Lee Winters’ Last Christmas
One of my favorite Christmas songs is Young Bison's "Lee Winters’ Last Christmas," which I found on the 2007 edition of the SSMXMAS collection. I don't know anything about the band, but this sweetly melancholy Christmas song makes me happy every time it shuffles into my player.
Lee Winters’ Last Christmas by Young Bison
By Cory Doctorow at 9:31 pm Saturday, Dec 24
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Some unknown genius (possibly redditor Tmyakal) created this insanely great Portal-themed Christmas Tree that presents the illusion of a tree being shoved through one of the interdimensional portals in the kick ass Valve game.
Update: Ryan Kelly sez, "I'm a big fan and can't tell you what a great Christmas present it was to see our Portal themed Christmas tree posted on Boing Boing. It was done by myself and my two business partners as a nice, stress-relieving break from working on a film we are making and was posted by a friend of ours on Reddit."
A Very Portal Christmas Tree (imgur.com)
(via Super Punch)
Read the rest
By Amy Seidenwurm at 2:11 pm Saturday, Dec 24
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Sound it Out #11: Squirrel Bait "Sun God"
Squirrel Bait was a band of teenagers from Louisville, Kentucky that formed in 1983. All of their releases (one EP, one album, two singles) add up to less than an hour of music. The band broke up in 1988 when a couple of them went off to college.
Incomplete list of bands that include ex-Squirrel Bait members: Bastro, Bitch Magnet, The Lemonheads, Gastr del Sol, Big Wheel, Red Krayola, Love Jones, Slint, The Breeders, King Kong, Palace Music. I also like this hand-drawn Squirrel Bait family tree.
"Sun God" is on the first/self-titled EP that came out in 1985. It's a beautiful, troubled, messy song that helped pave the way for non-stupid rock music as we know it. It changed the way I listen to music and remains one of my favorite songs ever.
The band has graciously allowed this free download. I can't think of a better holiday gift.
By Cory Doctorow at 12:58 pm Saturday, Dec 24
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I am slowly digesting a rather large semi-traditional Christmas dinner, courtesy of my Welsh-English wife, but this glorious sign brings me vividly back to my childhood with my Jewish-atheist family.
Update: Looks like this is a tribute to a David Mamet cartoon.
What Us Jews Do for Christmas (imgur.com)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 12:42 pm Saturday, Dec 24
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About the biggest crime in wheels is where the fathers pressed the bearings out and put precision-made ball bearings in. Also they will buff the rubber down about one-eighth of an inch, and then dip the whole wheel in a solution or just plain white gas and by chemical reaction the rubber will react to this treatment and will be twelve inches again (wheels are all the same diameter: 12"). The rules specifically say you must not tamper with the wheels at all.
My late father-in-law wrote this in 1957 for his high school composition class. I just found this paper about his experiences as a soap box derby builder today as I was cleaning up the house. He got a C+ for the paper (see the teacher's remarks at the end). He never was a very good speller. I think he had a touch of dyslexia. In any case, it's an interesting look at soap box racing in the 1950s.
Download the five page paper as a PDF here.
By Cory Doctorow at 9:14 am Saturday, Dec 24
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DeviantArt member Tom Banwell made this "fire breather" mask; it's just one example of the many wonderful pieces in his DeviantArt gallery.
Fire Breather mask front view
(via Super Punch)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:07 am Saturday, Dec 24
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This early 16th century German rosary from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection is a fabulous bit of memento mori, with callow, living mortals on one side of each bead and grinning death's heads on the other:
Each bead of the rosary represents the bust of a well-fed burgher or maiden on one side, and a skeleton on the other. The terminals, even more graphically, show the head of a deceased man, with half the image eaten away from decay. Such images served as reminders that life is fleeting and that leading a virtuous life as a faithful Christian is key to salvation.
Rosary, ca. 1500–1525
(via Neatorama)
Clones of popular games are nothing new to the video game business. But the modern ease of it, and ready access to online marketplaces, creates a ready supply of shameless knockoffs.
The law, however, doesn't always side with outrage. [Guardian]
— Rob
By Cory Doctorow at 7:01 am Saturday, Dec 24
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation rounds up "the year in secrecy," a year's worth of shame and excuses in the realm of official secrecy from "the most transparent administration in history." As catalogs of outrage go, it's a pretty fine example.
* Government report concludes the government classified 77 million documents in 2010, a 40% increase on the year before. The number of people with security clearances exceeded 4.2. million, more people than the city of Los Angeles.
* Government tells Air Force families, including their kids, it’s illegal to read WikiLeaks. The month before, the Air Force barred its service members fighting abroad from reading the New York Times—the country’s Paper of Record.
* Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees were barred from reading the WikiLeaks Guantanamo files, despite their contents being plastered on the front page of the New York Times.
* President Obama refuses to say the words “drone” or “C.I.A” despite the C.I.A. drone program being on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers every day.
* CIA refuses to release even a single passage from its center studying global warming, claiming it would damage national security. As Secrecy News' Steven Aftergood said, “That’s a familiar song, and it became tiresome long ago.”
2011 in Review: The Year Secrecy Jumped the Shark
By Cory Doctorow at 5:51 am Saturday, Dec 24
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A reader writes, "Boston PD subpoenas Twitter for info on users tweeting about Occupy Boston; they say it relates to a 'criminal investigation'. Also notice their ignorance when asking for account info on tags such as '#occupyboston'. Smart cookies over there."
Note that they're also looking for IP addresses for Guido Fawkes, a well-known, right-leaning British blogger (real name Paul Staines) who -- as far as I know -- has nothing to do with Boston (let alone Occupy Boston). My guess is that they've somehow mistaken Guido Fawkes for some kind of superdistributor of Guy Fawkes masks or similar (the historical Guy Fawkes did adopt the name Guido while fighting in Spain in the the 16th cen), which is to say that they're not just on a fishing expedition, they're on a fishing expedition that's grounded in profound ignorance.
And yup, they don't know the difference between a hashtag and an account.
Subpeona on @p0isAn0n @OccupyBoston #BostonPD #d0xcak3
