A bit of genius unsourced net.stuff: if Shakespeare wrote the Hokey Pokey. "The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt/Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about."

Update: And we have a source! It's from a "Washington Post Style Invitational contest that asked readers to submit "instructions" for something (anything), but written in the style of a famous person. The winning entry was The Hokey Pokey (as written by William Shakespeare)", "Written by Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls, Maryland, and submitted by Katherine St. John." - Thanks, princessalex!

Shakespeare Teaches the Hokey Pokey

Prada's fall 2012 menswear line is awfully steampunky -- modelled by Gary Oldman, Jamie Bell, Garrett Hedlund, and Willem Dafoe.

Prada Menswear Fall 2012 Ad Campaign (Thanks, Matthew)

(Images: Steven Meisel/prada.com)

The good folks at Domeorama have got all your geodesic needs covered in a thorough and awe-inspiring list of all the different kinds of geodesic hub connectors you can buy:

This is the classic way to connect geodesic struts together. A hole is drilled in the flattened ends then bolted together.To accommodate a drilled hole into your struts, the length of the strut needs to be longer.For example a 36 inch pipe/conduit strut will need to be extended at both ends to drill holes. A rule of thumb is to add 2 X 3/4 inch = 1.5 inches (or about 8cm) more to all struts. That means the center of the holes would need to be drilled 3/4″ from each strut end.

...This is another way to attach geodesic struts together to form a hub. Inexpensive and something you can do yourself, this hub has 5 bolts instead of just one, so very solid. Keep in mind you need to cut your struts accordingly: since connections are vertex to vertex, the total length between centers of the round tube needs to be the length of your strut that was calculated. In other words, your real length will need to be longer because ends are bent.

Geodesic Hub Connectors (via Crib Candy)

Yesterday I reviewed a realistic and unusual novel called Dead Inside: Do Not Enter: Notes from the Zombie Apocalypse. Twenty-four hours later, I figure it's time to review another zombie book. This one is a graphic novel called Daybreak, by Brian Ralph. He's a "professor of sequential art" at the Savannah College of Art and Design, but don't let his academic title scare you off. His 160-page novel is a creepy look at a day in the life of people who are scratching out a miserable existence in the aftermath of a zombapocolypse.

Ralph cleverly presents the story as if you, the reader, are living in this grim, horrid wasteland. Each panel is angled from the perspective of the reader. The characters talk to you. Here's the first page:

Your companion in this story is a young one-armed man who discovers you staring in a field of rubble and takes you under his remaining wing by inviting you into his hideout. He has good intentions, but since this is a zombie novel, things quickly go to hell. And while the threat of zombies is ever-present, the real trouble comes from another source. I won't spoil the story by telling you what happens.

Ralph's fine storytelling is matched by his textured, deceptively cartoony artwork. After reading Daybreak (it's a fast read), I went back and studied the panels so I could soak in the backgrounds and linework. I missed Ralph's earlier work, the award-winning Cave-In, and now I'm looking forward to reading it.

Daybreak

On the occasion of the publication of a new book, behavioral economics writer Dan Ariely (a great favorite of mine) answers questions with Wired about the underlying causes of lying and cheating, and the huge gap between what the evidence tells us and what be intuitively believe.

Ariely: If you thought that crime or dishonesty is driven by a cost-benefit analysis, then you have some very basic solutions — for example, put people in prison. And people who were going to commit a crime would say, ‘Okay, I’ll go to prison, not worth it.’ I’ve been talking to big cheaters, including people who have been to prison, and I tell you, nobody I’ve talked to has ever thought about the long-term consequences of their actions. How many people who did insider trading thought about the probability of being caught and how much time they would get in prison? The number is incredibly close to zero, maybe exactly zero. What will happen if we increase the prison sentence? Basically nothing, because it’s not part of their mindset. What we need to understand is the process by which people become dishonest.

We can look at a cheater and say, we would have never been able to do that. But when we look at the long sequence of events, you see it happened over time. You can ask, did the person who was the criminal think they would take all of these actions, or did they just take one? They took one step that they could rationalize. And after they took one, they became a slightly different person. And then they took another step, and another step. And now you think very differently about dishonesty.

Why We Lie, Go to Prison and Eat Cake: 10 Questions With Dan Ariely

Yeongkeun Jeong and Aareum Jeong created the "Reel," a bike accessory that invites you to create a woven container on your frame, using a clever system of adhesive buttons to keep it secure:

The concept is fairly simple. Reel comes in two parts: a long piece of strong red rope, plus a sheet of clear plastic buttons. Peel a buttons off the sheet and attach them at regular intervals along your bike’s frame (they form teeth to keep the rope in place, preventing it from sliding to the bottom of the frame). Then uncoil the rope and start looping it around the diamond-shaped hole that’s formed by your top tube, down tube, and seat tube. When you’re done, you’ll have an ad-hoc “basket” to portage everything from patch kits to baguettes (just like on the Tour!).

Although, to be frank, Reel seems like it’s tempting fate. Twisting a thick rope around your frame, only millimeters away from complex mechanical system that keep your body in motion in traffic… Well, let’s just say, we’d test it out on the sidewalk first. Ride safe!

Bike Storage at High Speeds (via Crib Candy)

As part of Japan's batshit new 10-years-in-jail-for-uploading copyright law, the Recording Industry Ass. of Japan is demanding that ISPs install network filters that spy on all user activity and attempt to detect copyright infringements by comparing every user upload to a massive, secret database of "fingerprints" of copyrighted music, created by Gracenote. Those uploads would be shut off, without review, trial, or notice. One proposal would even require ISPs to send three-strikes-style notices to customers whose connections had been censored, warning them of impending disconnection from the Internet if they continue to trigger positives on the secret, proprietary system. They want ISPs to pay for a monthly software licensing fee for the privilege of running this surveillance/censorship technology.

Torrentfreak reports:

Several music rights groups including the Recording Industry Association of Japan say they have developed a system capable of automatically detecting unauthorized music uploads before they even hit the Internet. In order to do that though, Internet service providers are being asked to integrate the system into their networks.

The system works by spying on the connections of users and comparing data being uploaded to the Internet with digital fingerprints held in an external database. As can be seen from the diagram, the fingerprinting technology employed is from GraceNote, with intermediate systems provided by Copyright Data Clearinghouse (CDC).

Jail For File-Sharing Not Enough, Labels Want ISP-Level Spying Regime

A tour operator in Nepal runs what they claim is the world's fastest zip-line, a 1.8km run that drops 600m and attains speeds of 160km/h. Watching the helmetcam sections of this video actually made the blood drain from my face.

What is Zip-flyer?
Basically, zipline is a cable mechanism used for transportation across a river, gorge etc. In our context, it is a piece of recreation equipment consisting of a cable stretched between point of different elevations, a pulley, and a harness or a bar for attaching a rider, who moves by gravity. Zip-flyer Nepal also works with the same mechanism and is categorized as an adventure sports.

How long is it and what would be its max speed?
Well, its 1.8 km long and has the speed of 160kmph making it the world’s most extreme ride.

Welcome to High Ground Adventures (via Neatorama)

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has launched a signature drive to get the UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, to intervene to stop the extradition to the USA of Richard O'Dwyer, who created the TVShack website. TVShack had links to places from which users could download TV shows, and was legal under UK law. The US entertainment lobby has demanded O'Dwyer be rendered to an American court, which may persecute him for violating the law of a distant land. As Wales writes, it's time to stop letting the entertainment industry's priorities define the regulatory regime for the Internet.

Copyright is an important institution, serving a beneficial moral and economic purpose. But that does not mean it can or should be unlimited. It does not mean that we should abandon time-honoured moral and legal principles to allow endless encroachments on our civil liberties in the interests of the moguls of Hollywood.

One of the important moral principles that has made everything we relish about the internet possible, from Wikipedia to YouTube, is that internet service providers need to have a safe harbour from what their users do. There are and should be some limits to this. Under US copyright law, there are notice and take-down provisions requiring service providers to remove content under a properly formatted notification. And there is a distinction between hosting copyrighted material and telling people where it is. The latter is protected under the first amendment.

When I met Richard (along with his mother), he struck me as a clean-cut, geeky kid. Still a university student, he is precisely the kind of person one can imagine launching the next big thing on the internet. Enthusiastic, with a sharp mind and a quick wit, he reminds me of many great entrepreneurs. He tried to follow the law, and I would argue that he very likely succeeded in doing so.

Given the thin case against him, it is an outrage that he is being extradited to the US to face felony charges. No US citizen has ever been brought to the UK for alleged criminal activity on US soil. There is a disparity here that ought to raise concerns at the highest levels of government in both the US and UK.

Richard O'Dwyer and the new internet war

Nate Phelps, the 6th of 13 of Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps's kids, took to Reddit for an Ask Me Anything Q&A. Nate escaped his father's notorious, hateful "church" when he was 18. As you'll see from the interview, the Phelps household was a microcosm of Fred's hateful, loony doctrine -- a place of grotesque violence and lunatic belief.

Thanks! The first three nights after I ran away, I slept in the bathroom of a gas station near the high school I attended (Topeka West). From there, my brother's (Mark) mother-in-law offered me a room at her home. Very little I miss. It was so destructive and took years to undue. I have talked about the sense of security and belonging I can recall feeling from time to time when we were having church services on Sunday evenings. Something about being tucked in that building that's half buried and feeling like we're the only one's that god loves...it's hard to articulate...

My father believes homosexuality is a special sin you can't recover from. He get's this from some obscure passage in Romans. Yes, there is a tremendous amount of selective quoting. But this is lost on them because they never really were taught to examine the Bible and decide for themselves. They were taught to believe what he believes. This leaves them wholly unable to truly debate anyone. They recognize certain sounds and respond to those sounds with the sounds they learned. They don't critically analyze the incoming sounds at all.

One of those sounds they recognize is "why do you preach if you don't think people can be saved" to which they respond with the sound "it's not our job to save, only to preach". It's what I call the divine Nuremberg defense...

I remember one of the Shawnee Mission (I think East) schools doing a killer counter protest. My personal favorite is the Jewish Center down in Texas that raised enough money at one of their protests to buy a new ice making machine for the center. They put a plaque on it that said something like: "The Fred Phelps Memorial 'Hell Froze Over' Ice Machine".

IAmAn Ex-Member of the Westboro Baptist Church (via MeFi)

Are you in Knoxville? Do you want to own a hybrid vehicle? Craigslist's pjbxr-3091802234 has the answer:

for sale 1962 international truckcar, has every optional that a car could have ,has frontwheel drive driveline disk brakes all around , has air bags that are in working order has oldsmobile dash with tilt cruise , power seats , air -did work but i low of freon due from setting -can drive it anywhere, every light works as well as new cab lights allready has grandam door handles installed and work great, has alloy wheels and this truck has a good title which is titled as a international, has a grand am rear with the original duel exhaust, car is fuel injected and there are no check engine lights on?everthing is in working order but the aircondition is low of freon call if interested to much to list lots of time put in this car , have to many other projects to ,do so call 606 456 XXXX -no emails please -price is firm -have probly twice as much invested .-this vehicle will be sold where is as is...thanks

1962 International rat rod? - $3000 (pike) (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Much-loved Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry delivered the convocation speech to graduates at Ryerson University in Toronto, in the form of a fairy-tale based on A Christmas Carol, by way of a critique of the Canadian swing to a neoconservative right, where social spending exists only to promote "moochers" and society is a fight between bad guys (who need to be surveilled all the time in every medium) and good guys (who don't mind being surveilled in such a way), and where no amount of "security" is ever enough.

The Globe and Mail has a transcript and an (unembeddable) video, which is rather good.

The pair flew on. The professor spotted a Ferris wheel by the water’s edge. “Aha, an amusement park. This enlightened Acadan provides well.”

“I’m afraid things are not what they seem. Navigating the warp and weft of time, we’ve now arrived in a different version of Acadan. This place is the result of greed, vanity, sycophancy and ideology.”

“All because of a Ferris wheel?”

“That’s what it used to be, before it was converted into a Snipers’ Wheel. Part of the security apparatus of this world-class city. It not only revolves, it rotates, giving it a 360-degree view, horizon to horizon, clear sight-lines for marksmen. Comes in handy when world leaders hold summits to make the world a safer place. Every street can be targeted accurately, curfews enforced to perfection – pepper spray is so yesterday in this town.”

The professor felt a shiver run down his spine. “How did things come to such a pass?”

“It’s always a function of microscopic increments in citizen apathy. But you ain’t seen nothing yet. B-b-baby, you ain’t seen n-n-nothing yet.”

The comments on the Globe's website are like a parody of Canadian right wing anti-intellectualism: "We do not live a a poetic world anymore ... if we ever did ... we need straight talk and logic. Leave this pansy prose to the less-motivated, self-important mooches, the rest of us need to get on with purging those who chose the 'trough' and getting our a$$es out of debt;" "What a load of left wing garbage! No better than the babble of some Hollywood actor with outlandish pretensions!"

Gravy trains for the masses and Rohinton Mistry’s other visions for the Class of 2012 (via MeFi)

(A couple of caveats: The video linked above auto-plays and starts with a short ad, though it's quite good once you get past that. Also you'll likely get a bunch of errors from the Globe and Mail's website, which uses an improper TLS certificate)