Boing Boing » Andrea James

Loaded terms: How a Pittsburgh artist beat the most bogus trademark in drinking game history

Andrea James — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:00:36 +0000

Cheers to Ali Spagnola, who spent three years and $30,000 to invalidate a bogus trademark awarded on a popular—and decades-old—drinking game.

American intellectual property law is enough to drive one to drink.

Just ask Pittsburgh musician and artist Ali Spagnola, who emerged victorious earlier this year after what has to be one of the weirdest trademark battles in recent history. Spagnola spent three years and $30,000 of her own money to correct an error by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). It’s an example of a larger problem, where people who create and curate for kicks run afoul of those willing to abuse the trademark system to shut down our fun.

The dispute centered around Power Hour, a boozy 60-minute drinking game in which participants throw back a specified number of alcoholic beverages—usually 60 small shots of beer—at one-minute intervals. Setting aside the wisdom of this activity, Power Hour is a time-honored tradition in certain circles, often connected to 21st birthdays, beer pong fatigue, or Edward Fortyhands ennui. The name and concept of Power Hour was already around in the late 20^th century, when I may or may not have played.

Since those beer-soaked days of yesteryear, a generation of entrepreneurs has ushered the game into the digital age, creating a dizzying array of websites with domain names like PowerHourZone, PowerHourHQ, iPowerHour, even sound-alikes like PowerHower. Many of the sites have created or curated Power Hour mixes to play during the game, often user-submitted. The sites’ creators generally started them for fun, with little thought toward "monetization."

“[My site] combines three of my favorite things: web development, music, and alcohol,” Ryan Hogue at PowerHourZone told me. Most of the sites offered a substantial portion of the content at no cost, supported by ads or merchandise alone. They often link to each other, and were in contact before the drama started.

Ali Spagnola’s contribution to this mix is PowerHourAlbum. Spagnola started performing a live concert of the game at bars and events in her senior year in college. She later recorded a catchy little album of 60 different original one-minute songs, and listeners are invited to imbibe between each track. She even has a USB shotglass on a lanyard, which is probably helpful for some participants in the waning minutes of the game.

When she’s not onstage doing her high-energy show, Spagnola is self-deprecating, laid back, and artsy. She jokes she’s a “drinking composer with a music problem.” She's produced commercial art to pay the bills, but much of her creative output is simply for the love of it. In addition to PowerHourAlbum, she’s created a number of other whimsical projects over the years, including giving away a free commissioned painting every day. The wait list on that project is now backlogged for years.

Her chilled-out demeanor becomes energetic, however, when we move from chatting about drinking games and giving away free art to discussing the lawsuit.

"It's way too easy to sneak a trademark through."

She says everything was cool in the Power Hour creative community until Steve Roose, who founded the PowerHourGame website in 2007, became drunk with power. Roose and Spagnola's correspondence was friendly at first; he offered to produce and sell her album on his site. In 2009, though, Roose applied for a trademark for the term “Power Hour” in all digital media: CDs, DVDs, and software “featuring a timed drinking game where players take a shot of beer every minute for an hour.”

Pete Berg of PowerHourHQ says there were several key problems with the filing. First, the Power Hour trademark should never have been issued because the term was in use long before 2000, when Steve claimed in his application that he began using it in commerce.

“If [the USPTO] had done a single Google search for ‘power hour’ in 2009 when Roose filed the trademark application, they would have found thousands of references to the drinking game," Berg said. "We're talking 15 minutes of research––it's not hard to find references to 'power hour' dating back to the '90s.”

Second, Berg said, regular people aren’t cutting into their drinking time to check the USPTO site for recent trademark applications: “There is a period of time where anyone can contest a trademark application, but you have to be watching like a hawk to even know that anyone has applied for your mark."

"This information gets posted on an obscure corner of the USPTO's confusing website. They also don't make any effort to contact anyone who might also have an interest in the trademark. It's way too easy to sneak a trademark through.”

These two problems started a Kafka-esque cascade of legal wrangling that Spagnola had to deal with on her own dime, and on her own time. Once the USPTO granted the trademark to Roose, they reported that to rescind it would require Ali to secure an order from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).

The worst part? Spagnola learned of the trademark filing early enough to file an opposition prior to its registration, “but there was some sort of clerical error, so he was given the trademark anyway, even though my documents were submitted in time and they even acknowledged that they got them."

"After he was issued that trademark, you’d think it would be simple to take it back because it was an accident," Spagnola said. "They said they had made this error, but there nothing they could do about it. So now I had to go though lots more dollars and lots more time.”

Once the trademark was granted in 2010, Roose became enforcement actions: out went nastygrams to other Power Hour site owners, informing them of his trademark registration and ordering them to cease and desist.

“We were just doing this for fun, and Steve tried to ruin it.”

However, Berg says, Roose didn’t Know When to Say When, to quote the long-running Budweiser ad campaign. He went beyond standard trademark enforcement to acting like “a total asshat.”

Moreover, Berg claims, Roose took content from his site after he ignored his letter: user contributions hosted on PowerHourHQ ended up behind a paywall on Roose's homepage.

“Steve was using an oversight by the trademark office to not only try to line his pockets, but also to ruin the Power Hour party for everyone else," Berg said. " ... We were just doing this for fun, and Steve tried to ruin it.”

iPowerHour was so rattled by the behavior they changed their domain to the ultra-generic iDrinkingGame just to avoid legal hassle. Spagnola’s music was taken down from Amazon and Rhapsody, and Roose threatened to get it removed from iTunes and other platforms.

After talking to a lawyer, who warned of the high costs of fighting a successful trademark registration, Spagnola was ready to walk away. But Berg decided to do something unusual: ask the vast and sprawling Reddit community for help.

His post on the link-sharing site was meant to “unleash the internet hate machine,” and it worked.

“It motivated Spagnola to really fight this case. It helped her raise some money for legal fees, enough to make a small dent in the bill. It also convinced her that there are enough people out there interested in her story and her Power Hour album that it was worth pursuing,” Berg said.

Adds Spagnola: “I tried to keep it light-hearted because the internet doesn’t like people complaining, but the whole time it was really quite frustrating. The hardest part was when Steve kept prolonging things. He had the power to keep draining my money.”

Roose would not respond to her legal papers, Spagnola said, forcing her to spend more money and time to compel him to respond. She decided that since she was putting so much time and energy into saving Power Hour, she should try to recoup her investment by doing a professionally produced album and be ready to rock when the decision came down.

After three years and thirty grand out of pocket, Ali finally got a welcome call from her lawyer on New Year’s Eve, 2012. In trademark law, marks fall along a continuum from “distinctive"–and thus enforceable–to “generic"–uneforceable. The TTAB found that Power Hour fell in the middle, but closer to generic than distinctive. Based on the mountain of evidence Ali supplied, the TTAB determined that Steve’s Power Hour mark “is descriptive and lacks acquired distinctiveness.”

In other words, Spagnola won big.

Roose took down his site right after the ruling, but he still hoped to make one last buck, according to Berg: “Steve sent an anonymous email to Ali and myself a few days after losing the trademark, trying to sell his company and domain name.” The PowerHourGame site’s current design looks like one of those domain name reseller templates on a parked domain. It links to an eBay auction ending on February 25. Bids as of the last day of bidding? Zero.

Roose did not respond to a request for an interview.

Meanwhile, Spagnola and Berg are back to creating. I caught up with Berg during filming on a show in rural Michigan; he said that he and Spagnola became friends during their experiences. As for Spagnola? She’s got an IndieGoGo campaign going to support Ali’s Power Hour Freedom Victory Tour, where fans and drinkers can register their support for Spagnola before it closes at the end of February.

When informed about this story, Spagnola created the delightful song and video “ With a Beer in Your Hand,” in collaboration with filmmakers John and Elaine Wooliscroft and production designer Ben Saks.

Let’s raise a glass to Ali, to the creative spirit, and to her victory.

Illustration: Rob Beschizza. Photo: Shutterstock

Jimmy O'Neill, RIP: Remembering Pandora's Box and the Sunset Strip teen riots

Andrea James — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:56:37 +0000

Last week, deejay Jimmy O'Neill died at his home in West Hollywood at age 73. O'Neill was a central figure in hippie culture, and he got a pretty raw deal from The Man for his efforts. O'Neill was host of the enormously popular teen music show Shindig!, then used his clout to open a nightclub called Pandora's Box on the Sunset Strip and book his favorite acts. This led to massive throngs of teens and traffic on the strip, and soon the killjoys descended. The city hastily enacted a series of loitering and curfew laws targeting teenagers. The footage in this clip from November 12, 1966 shows what happened next.

In what would become a template for youth resistance, young people gathered at Pandora's Box to defy the 10pm curfew. The riots kept growing, and the panicked L.A. City Council quickly moved to condemn and demolish Pandora's Box, which they ultimately did in 1967. The incident inspired many songs, including Buffalo Springfield's anthem “For What It's Worth," often interpreted as an anti-war song. The young people who witnessed this injustice, including Peter Fonda, Phil Proctor, and Jack Nicholson, came away with renewed resolve to fight even bigger political battes.

Outfest 2011: Preview of "Boingier" fare at the world's greatest LGBT film festival

Andrea James — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:40:20 +0000

In July, Outfest has a slew of remarkable screenings and live events in LA. that Boing Boing readers should know about (disclosure: I'm proud to serve on the festival's board of directors).

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye / Thee Majesty concert (July 9, 7pm. REDCAT)

Boing Boing fave and pioneering cult artists Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV) and beloved Other Half Lady Jaye (who passed away at 39 years old in 2007) are the subject of The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye. Director Marie Losier documents the loving relationship of the two soul mates and collaborators, focusing on their Pandrogyne project. As an expression of their love, the pair received simultaneous surgical procedures to merge into a third pandrogynous being. Update from Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: "It's really a love, LOVE letter to Jaye and all the casualties of the pain of bigotry and bias too many of us experience." [apologies for the inaccurate earlier description! -AJ]

Following the film, Thee Majesty will play a full set of their ambient soundscapes and spoken word, led by Genesis. This rare performance will blend poetry, performance with music improvisation, hypnotic loops and blistering noise. Sounds like a Boing Boing lullaby!

This is part of Outfest's special Platinum series 10th anniversary celebration of experimental film and performance. Save your ticket stub for cheap entry to Night Moves: The Platinum 10th Anniversary Party (July 16, 9:30pm, Alexandria Hotel) A blowout night of underground performance, art and music.

Opening night Gala (July 7, 8pm Orpheum Theatre)

We're screening Gun Hill Road, a Sundance hit about an ex-con returning home to find his teenage child is transitioning. Plus RuPaul is presenting the Outfest Achievement Award to World of Wonder's Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato, the producers of Party Monster, RuPaul's Drag Race, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Becoming Chaz, and a kajillion unscripted shows about sex and gender minorities.

Hit So Hard: The Life & Near Death Story of Patty Schemel (July 14, 8:30pm, Ford Amphitheatre)

This documentary about Hole drummer Patty Schemel gives a behind-the scenes look at the Seattle music culture of the 1990s and her collaborations and friendships with Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, and other notable Seattle musicians. Much of the film is crafted from Patty's home video and photographs, documenting the intense highs and lows of these relationships, which were often shaped by drug use that consumed her life and almost killed her.

Patty and friends will be performing after the film. Many amazing unannounced guests have shown up at other screenings to play along. This is a great outdoor venue where you can bring your own refreshments and make a night of it.

Just a few more highlights:

She Monkeys ('Mean Girls' meets Swedish lesbian equestrians)
Circumstance (Atafeh's lesbian relationship is threatened when her brother joins Iran's Morality Police)
Shut Up Little Man! (Documentary on recorded arguments between two middle-aged alcoholics, one gay, the other a homophobe, a viral hit of the audiocassette era)
25th Anniversary Teddy Awards screenings (some classic LGBT winners from the Berlin Film Festival)
Becoming Chaz (Doc on Sonny and Cher's child's transition to male; he'll appear in person)

Browse all the films and order online, and please say hi when you see me around!

Strangely hypnotic mashups of ambient and live police radio

Andrea James — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:16:35 +0000

BB Submitterator idontlikewords mentioned the youarelistening.to websites last week, a soothing mix of police radio chatter and ambient music. Choose from Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, or my personal recommendation, Montréal. French police chat really blends into the music nicely. You may need to adjust the balance of each stream a bit to find the right mix.

youarelistening.to

Image: Mount Royal Montreal Lookout by Diliff via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

If Meat Loaf had a son who did Rebecca Black covers...

Andrea James — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 10:51:28 +0000

...It would be a lot like the Matt Mulholland version of the execrable "Friday." Whenever that song goes back in my head, Matt's version pulls me back from the brink of insanity. Thank you Matt, for proving turd-polishing is not a lost art. Video link. (PS: Sorry for breaking the BB press blackout on she who must not be named.)

Nice survey of great title design

Andrea James — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 11:24:42 +0000

A Brief History of Title Design from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

Last year, Pesco mentioned the new SXSW Title Design Competition. Ian Albinson's presentation video for this year's SXSW "Excellence in Title Design" competition screening summarizes a lot of the really good work in film (and some recent television), from Intolerance, to Enter the Void. Some good films to add to your watch list, too. Link has full list of titles. Video link.

Dead tree book kills copyright lawyer; he blames "the internet"

Andrea James — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 10:16:02 +0000

Zick Rubin is a copyright/trademark lawyer who used to teach psychology. His work was notable enough to be cited in the The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology . Unfortunately, that book listed him as having died in 1997, as shown above. Wikia, the for-profit wiki farm, has a Psychology Wiki entry for Rubin which included his death date, citing the Penguin book. Rubin, still very much alive, was doing a little vanity Googling when he learned of his death. He sent a note to Wikia's Angela Beesley, who corrected the article, only to have it reverted. Rubin then wrote a New York Times piece blaming "the internet" for trying to kill him, currently one of their most e-mailed stories.

The New York Times loves stories claiming the internet is full of dopes who generate misinformation when they aren't stealing from others (see the epic Bill Keller/Arianna Huffington beef this week). Psychology Wiki, like the unrelated Wikipedia project, requires a reliable source for any disputed fact, but that is one of those things that's very hard for people outside of wiki-world to understand. Wikipedia's policy is verifiability, not truth. This simple rule is a cornerstone policy, one of the five pillars.

The editor who reverted Angela's change was following policy, though it would have been better to go the extra step and find one of the many reliable sources stating that Rubin has been above ground since 1997. The good thing about the internet is that these changes can be made quickly and easily. So I wrote him a nice proper Wikipedia article today, citing his Times Op-Ed and putting that content into the Creative Commons. So Psychology Wiki is corrected, he has a new Wikipedia entry, and the Penguin dictionary is... still floating around with its misinformation. Can't blame "the internet" any more.

Using EXE files to create found audio

Andrea James — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 05:04:59 +0000

Turning data strings like DNA and what-not into audio can produce interesting results. YouTube user r2blend says, "If you import an EXE file into an audio program as audio data, you hear all kinds of cool stuff. The most awesome by far for me was MS Paint." Fisco130 then made a club remix of the MS Paint data audio. Wonder if any scans of great works of art contain secret music? Does malware translate to sad trombone sound, or Rick Astley? [Video link]

Interview with Ted Molczan, citizen satellite tracker

Andrea James — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 05:27:12 +0000

Video: Chiefland Star Party Skyscape Time Lapse by William Castleman

The skies have stories to tell. Some of the stories make for interesting puzzles, particularly sightings of previously unseen objects in earth orbit. My friend Ted Molczan is part of a small but dedicated group of private citizens who track satellites, with a special focus on unannounced/secret satellite launches. 2011 has already been an interesting year for the group, who post their findings at the SeeSat-L website (satobs.org) and others. Ted presented compelling evidence that he had spotted a possible Prowler satellite that may have been secretly launched in 1990 on space shuttle launch STS 38. Today, Greg Roberts of their group found the USAF's X-37B OTV 2-1 spaceplane, launched into a secret orbit on Saturday. Ted was kind enough to share his philosophy, techniques, and consumer-grade equipment, all of which is easily available for interested citizens wishing to get involved.

Do you consider yourself a government transparency activist?

Ted: "I see myself as a hobbyist who enjoys solving technical puzzles that help to increase public knowledge of space flight, and improve the transparency of activities taking place in Earth orbit."

How do you respond to your critics within government intelligence agencies?

Ted:"The most common criticism is that by publishing the orbits of intelligence gathering satellites, we may enable adversaries of the U.S.A. and its allies to conceal their activities, by scheduling them to avoid periods when the satellites are overhead. Since our informal little group uses very simple equipment and methods to find and track nearly all of the more than 300 objects currently in secret orbit - launched by France, Germany, Israel, Japan and the U.S.A. - it seems reasonable to conclude that given sufficient motivation, even the poorest nation could accomplish at least as much. Moreover, at least a few nations have the means to conduct far more sophisticated space surveillance. Therefore, it appears that the secrecy of orbits depends entirely on the cooperation of adversaries, in which case they cannot practically be considered secret, and to pretend otherwise is a potentially dangerous self-deception."

In what ways do you consider your work valuable to other citizens?

Ted: "Our small contribution to public knowledge, potentially enables citizens to make more informed decisions regarding the activities that their governments conduct in space on their behalf."

How did you get started tracking satellites?

Ted: "I was fascinated by the start of space exploration when I was growing up in the 1960s. Television coverage was very extensive, especially of piloted missions, but seeing satellites from my own backyard made it seem more personal and more tangible."

What equipment do you currently use?

Ted: "I track objects and measure their positions relative known stars with 25 X 100 binoculars, mounted on a tripod with fluid pan head. I make timings using a stopwatch with a 200 split time memory, which I manually synchronize to a high precision time signal."

What would be on your wish list of equipment?

Ted: "I would like to replace the stopwatch with a device of similar size, operation and precision, but which records absolute time instead of relative time, to eliminate the need to synchronize with a time signal. I have never found anything like that for sale."

What is the climate of collaboration with other citizen satellite observers?

Ted: "There has long been excellent collaboration among the small worldwide group of satellite observers. Our group is highly informal; we have no name and no leader. It is no one's responsibility to do anything, yet we track nearly all of the objects currently in secret orbit. Statistics compiled in 2008, revealed that twenty observers located in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, UK, and USA, produced more than 20,000 observations annually."

Your most recent white papers at satobs.org were about a possible Prowler satellite that may have been secretly launched in 1990 on STS 38. Can you describe the process and information you used to come to that conclusion?

Ted: "The unknown object I suspect is Prowler was one of a small number left over after researchers had identified the current orbit of each of the more than 150 objects acknowledged to have been placed in secret geosynchronous orbit. It had been discovered in 1998 by fellow hobbyists Ed Cannon and Mike McCants, of Austin, Texas, who reported optical characteristics much more typical of a payload than a rocket body or debris. Information from a trusted source, that Prowler was built on the common HS-376 satellite bus, enabled testing the hypothesis that the unknown object was Prowler, by comparing its brightness with known HS-376 satellites, which revealed a striking similarity.

Analysis of the object's orbit reveals a strong correlation with the STS 38 shuttle mission, as well as the constellation of Soviet geosynchronous satellites at the time, which Prowler reportedly was designed to surreptitiously inspect at close range. That its present orbit librates (oscillates about a given longitude, instead of drifting all the way around the planet) makes it statistically highly probable that the object is a satellite, and not a rocket body or debris.

Prowler had reportedly been designed to be optically stealthy when operational, but that capability would have been lost upon decommissioning, which would have complicated its disposal. The Prowler suspect appears to have been decommissioned by the mid-1990s, and its orbit shows signs of having been designed to avoid detection by Russia, by limiting the range of longitude over which it librates to a portion of the western hemisphere out of sight of space surveillance stations on Russian territory.

Librating orbits are frowned upon for satellite disposal, because they remain close to the altitude of operational satellites, creating a collision hazard that lasts for many thousands years, at least. The Prowler suspect's librating orbit appears to have been designed to mitigate this problem, by making it slightly eccentric, such that over the long term its presence in the most critical zone would be reduced to about one percent of the time.

I believe that I have presented a strong circumstantial case that the unknown object is Prowler, but since its existence remains unproven, there is room for doubt. In an effort to test the veracity of the Prowler story, I made a retrospective analysis of the opportunity for STS 38 to have launched Prowler. I found that the shuttle could easily have launched the combined mass of both Prowler and the one satellite STS 38 was known to have launched, and accommodated both within its payload bay. The orbital and observational history of STS 38 reveals the time of both payload deployments, and narrows the time of their manoeuvres to GEO to a roughly half day period.

Prowler was at risk of detection by the Soviet Union's space surveillance and signals intelligence (SIGINT) systems, from deployment until arrival at its initial location in GEO. Taking into account likely detection avoidance measures narrows the time of its manoeuvre to GEO, to three revolutions. Evidence of deception consistent with providing cover for Prowler is found in the shuttle's nonstandard payload separation manoeuvres after both satellite deployments, and the apparent timing of Prowler's deployment to avoid detection by the Soviet SIGINT facility at Lourdes, Cuba."

Your group announced today that Greg Roberts has found the USAF's X-37B OTV 2-1 spaceplane that was launched into a secret orbit on Saturday. Can you give some background on the new find?

Ted: "The USAF has procured two X-37B space planes, which are small, experimental, unpiloted, shuttle-like vehicles. The two spacecraft are called OTV (Orbital Test Vehicle) 1 and 2. OTV 1 was launched first, in April 2010. Our group discovered it several weeks later, and due to a sort of a fluke, the NYT broke the story as an exclusive. As you can imagine, that resulted in huge worldwide news media interest, that in my opinion far exceeded the importance of either X-37B or our discovery of it.

OTV 1 landed successfully in December, and now its sister, OTV 2, is on its maiden voyage - it was launched on Sunday. Greg Roberts, who was one of the co-discoverers of OTV 1, found OTV 2 this morning, and we now know its approximate orbit, which we made public. [ here -aj]

What has been the observation you are most proud of to date?

Ted: "I take the greatest pleasure in the discovery of AFP-731 in October 1990, by Russell Eberst, of Scotland, and Daniel Karcher and Pierre Neirinck, of France. It had been launched on a secret shuttle mission in February 1990, and suddenly disappeared a week later, leaving behind only debris. It had been thought to have exploded, but my colleagues found it apparently intact, in an orbit of higher altitude and inclination than the one into which the shuttle had placed it. Years later, the satellite's true identity and mission leaked out: it was a stealthy imagery intelligence satellite called Misty, designed to be more or less invisible at visual and radar wavelengths. The optical stealth mechanism is believed to have been a mirror that could be accurately aimed to reflect the blackness of space toward detection threats. Our hobby was not well known at the time, so it is unlikely that we were among the identified detection threats, which explains why Misty was about as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper when my colleagues spotted it by chance, on different nights over a several day period.

If someone wanted to get involved in citizen satellite tracking, what basic equipment, tips, and location do you recommend for optimal results?

Ted: "Equipment ranges from binoculars and stopwatch, to telescopic, computer driven still or video CCD cameras. Computer software is available to assist in data reduction. Most of us observe from urban locations. The basics of making the precise positional observations required to maintain accurate orbital elements of satellites are explained here:

http://www.satobs.org/position/posn_measure.html

Several observers track satellites through the analysis of the Doppler shift of their radio transmissions, which has proven to be a very useful technique.

We share our observations via the SeeSat-L mailing list, which is devoted to all aspects of visual satellite observation. Subscription information and the public archive are available here:

http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html

Thanks for sharing your work with everyone, Ted!

Image: Ted's tripod-mounted binoculars on the balcony of his Toronto home. Used with permission.

Terminator hand will destroy you (in Rock Paper Scissors)

Andrea James — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:21:13 +0000

Forget beating Watson on Jeopardy. I just got dusted by The Terminator in Rock Paper Scissors. Skynet is nigh!

Evolution Control Committee's 'All Rights Reserved': Old school mashup

Andrea James — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:53:57 +0000

Evolution Control Committee's new compilation collects all the cool stuff they have released in bits and pieces over the last few years. Who knew we'd reach a point where there were mashup nostalgia acts! It's hard to believe ECC has not been sued into oblivion since their seminal Rocked by Rape* single took aim at how the mainstream news packages fear for consumption (between similarly-themed television commercials). Well, Dan Rather is retired, but ECC is still here in all their parodic/fair-commenting glory. If you haven't heard them before, "Stairway To Britney" is hard to beat in the mashup pantheon, and "Pwn Monkey" blends Jonathan Coulton's "Code Monkey" with a manic pastiche of samples not seen since Paul's Boutique. They even start the album with a funny EULA-pimping "Listener License Agreement" track. You can find ECC on Amazon, iTunes, most major P2P sites, or below. They're doing live shows to support the album, too, so check it out.

*Imma let you finish, but "Rocked by Rape" is the greatest mashup of all time.

Technology and porn: San Francisco's 1969 rise as 'Smut Capital of America'

Andrea James — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 06:12:09 +0000

NSFW: clip contains nude-idity. Mikl-Em at Laughing Squid has an excellent post today about how San Francisco became the epicenter of the professionalization of America's pornography industry. Sex and early adoption of technology are always closely intertwined, and many new technologies become widely adopted because they improve the means of production and/or distribution of pornography. San Francisco's mix of hippies, recently discharged Vietnam veterans, burlesque halls, and shuttered film houses created a perfect storm of opportunity in 1969 for amateur stag films to evolve into a nascent film industry. I can't wait to see the full-up version of this documentary.

Documentary On When San Francisco Was Smut Capital of the USA (via laughing squid)

Float: ultralight rubber-band-powered duration model planes

Andrea James — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 10:14:49 +0000

Float Documentary Trailer from Phil Kibbe on Vimeo.

These beautiful dragonfly-like model planes can float for up to half an hour under the power of one single-wound rubber band. Check out the trailer for Float posted by Phil Kibbe. Amazing craftsmanship and techniques! Video link. (via devour.com)

Brr.

Andrea James — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:03:45 +0000

It looks as if this guy filmed this whole crazy clip himself with no one else around. (via The Awesomer)

Cockfighting rooster kills California man

Andrea James — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:55:06 +0000

We've seen matadors get their comeuppance before, but here's another entry in Boing Boing's ongoing series of animal karma: during the commotion at a police raid of a cockfight, one of the roosters decked out with razor-sharp blades cut a guy so badly he died. The headlines write themselves, so please add yours in the comments. Also, cocks.

Tulare County man dies after being cut by knife attached to cockfighting rooster's leg (Tulare Advance Register) Image: Cockfighting spurs via Wikimedia Commons

Hymn to evolution sung by an innocent child

Andrea James — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 10:17:24 +0000

Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

Boing Boing fave Richard Dawkins points us to Ben Hillman's lovely hymn about evolution that should be taught in all schools. Sung by the angelic Beatrice Athene. Video link

RIP LeRoy "Granny" Grannis, surf photography pioneer

Andrea James — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:02:17 +0000

Iconic images by Gannis: Mike Doyle surfing Waimea in 1967 and "Midget" Farrelly surfing Shore Break, Makaha 1968. Gannis was a master of using light to convey emotion.

LeRoy Grannis, who along with "Doc" Ball helped revolutionize the field of surf photography, has died. He also co-founded what's now Surfing Magazine. A lifelong surfer himself, Grannis didn't take up photography until 1959, when he was 42. That was the year surfing hit mainstream consciousness through the film Gidget.

Grannis' amazing black and white photos really give a sense of surf's rapid shift from subculture to mainstream as Gidget and Beach Boys mania took hold. If you love beautiful photo books, the retrospective Leroy Grannis: Surf Photography of the 1960s and 1970s is one of those crazy-expensive Taschen books that really shows his work beautifully. (LA Times obit)

Bryan Lewis Saunders' 15+ years of drug-induced self-portraits

Andrea James — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 18:42:17 +0000

Images: Bryan Lewis Saunders self-portraits on crystal meth (left) and huffed gasoline (right).

Cord Jefferson at Good posted a cool piece on artist Bryan Lewis Saunders. Since 1995, Bryan has created about 8,000 self-portraits, one each day, some of them while under the influence of various chemicals. He believes this has caused brain damage, so he says he now does that series while under medical supervision. Bryan does a lot of other work that mixes creativity with self-experimentation, so check out his site! (Thanks, Calpernia!)

Slideshow: This Is Your Artistic Brain on Drugs

Bryan Lewis Saunders: Self-Portraits

"Skateistan: To Live and Skate Kabul" at Sundance 2011

Andrea James — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:59:09 +0000

Two years ago, Xeni posted about Skateistan, an innovative skate park in Kabul, Afghanistan. This year's Sundance short film program features a great 9-minute documentary on the park, including brief interviews with the manager and young people who skate there. Directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, it contains some pretty shocking images of the damage the war has caused throughout Kabul. It also hints at the possibility for building "the kind of cross-cultural relationships that Afghanistan needs for future stability." Video link. (via SFF)

Iggymoticons

Andrea James — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 07:48:41 +0000

From the Can-You-Tell-It's-Friday Dept.: Maureen O'Connor at Gawker noticed that Iggy Pop's torso kinda looks like a face. I happen to agree, and to prove it, I headswapped it onto Sarah Palin, Sad Don Draper, and Iggy himself. Other LOLiggy possibilities included Joe Lieberman and Admiral Ackbar, both of whom have a striking resemblance to his torso. As a connoisseur of torsos that look like faces, I can say with absolute certainty that no torso-face lookalike has ever topped this NSFW Homer Simpson ladytorso lookalike.

Unicorn of the sea chaser (for Chase No Face)

Andrea James — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:11:27 +0000

For those troubled by Chase No Face, the good-natured but facially disfigured kitty (link to potentially disturbing post), here's an interesting unicorn chaser about the unicorn of the sea, the narwhal. National Geographic got dentist Martin Nweeia up to the Arctic to look into the male narwhal's left tooth, which forms a unicorn-like tusk. In the video above, he examines a narwhal tusk up close and discusses its function. Note: If you are squeamish about seeing someone get dental work, you might need to skip this one, too, ya big wimp. (Video link, via National Geographic's Wild Chronicles)

Alex Roman's astonishingly hyper-real CGI animation

Andrea James — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:07:38 +0000

Animator Alex Roman's beautiful work has been discussed here in the past. He also made a great "making of" video of his acclaimed The Third and The Seventh. Late last year, he posted this lovely montage of unbelievably believable CGI, created for kitchen countertop company Silestone. Be sure to watch it in HD for maximum amazement.

Above Everything Else (Video link).

Can Jared Loughner help us get beyond good and evil?

Andrea James — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:35:51 +0000

Sarah Palin was on Sean Hannity's Fox show this week, and between breaths joined the many commenters who've labeled the Tucson shootings suspect with the "E" word: she mused on "...how, um, evil a person would have to be to kill an innocent." Since prime suspect Jared Loughner cited Nietzsche's Will To Power as a favorite, this seems like a good moment to bring up the problems with "good vs. evil" ideology. It has a peculiar geek resonance because of the ideology's heavy use in comic books and roleplaying: superheroes, arch-villains, chaotic good, lawful evil, and what-not. It's also infused in our political discourse, with someone like Palin or Obama being good or evil depending on your point of view.

Nietzsche is frequently a fave of angry young men who might qualify as what Pesco called confident dumb people. Nietzsche works well for the modern kook with web-induced attention deficits: The fourth chapter of Beyond Good and Evil is a series of 122 Twitter-length aphorisms, and his work is snarky and occasionally humorous. Nietzsche wrote Beyond Good and Evil to criticize earlier philosophers who made assumptions about morality based on pre-Christian and Christian beliefs about "evil." Below I discuss why we need to steal Nietzsche back from these people, and I look at a couple of other writers who have examined what gets called "evil" and have attempted to explain it in more nuanced and rational terms.

(Image: Devil vs Jesus (2008) by ongchewpeng at Deviant Art. Print available. Used with permission.)

For a little background, Matt Feeney posted a terrific piece in Slate last week about the Angry Nerds who embrace a version of Nietzsche:

If your social world fails to appreciate your singularity and tells you that you're a loser, reading Nietzsche can steel you in your secret conviction that, no, I'm a genius, or at least very special, and everyone else is the loser. Like you, Nietzsche was misunderstood in his day, ignored or derided by other scholars. Like you, Nietzsche seems to find everything around him lame, either stodgy and moralistic or sick with democratic vulgarity.

Feeney's piece is worth reading in its entirety, as is Beyond Good and Evil. It's a lot to sum up in a blog post, but Nietzsche basically says there are two types of moral systems: master-morality and slave-morality. His best summary is section 260. In master-morality, the ruling class makes the rules and thus considers itself noble, while in slave morality, there is a suspicion of those in power and in what they consider "good." So in slave morality:

Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis "good" and "evil":--power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the "evil" man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the "good" man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded as the despicable being.

In other words, it's all a big misunderstanding based on your point of view, kind of like how you might see Palin as evil when your neighbor sees her as good. As Feeney points out, Nietzsche has been distilled into a nihilist in popular culture, which isn't accurate or fair. His aphoristic style means that quips like "God is dead" get stripped of meaning and turned into soundbites. We need to reclaim Neitzsche from angry nerds and deists who distort his writings.

In the case of someone charged with serious crimes like Loughner, there is often a meeting of the minds on the E word. People want to create a simple label to separate someone like him from the rest of us. We say he is sick, or crazy, or evil. Two books on criminals made me rethink my use of those terms: Eichmann in Jerusalem and Speaking with the Devil.

Pretty much everybody is in agreement that Adolf Eichmann or Jeffrey Dahmer were not great guys, so Hannah Arendt and Carl Goldberg use them as jumping-off points for larger discussions. Arendt of course summed up Eichmann's action with the phrase "the banality of evil" (also a meaning-stripped soundbite now). After sitting through his trial and execution, she observed that he seemed to do everything by rote, even his last words. He was able to do the unthinkable because he was "unthinking." He didn't seem to have a fanatical hatred of Jews, he was just following orders. What's interesting in relation to mass murders like the Tucson incident is that people can rationalize their way into an internally consistent logic that normalizes their thoughts and actions. I recommend reading Arendt, because she also has a great deal to say about how incidents and events get seized upon by people interested primarily in facts, and therefore try to distort the facts, and intellectuals, who have little interest in the facts and use them as a springboard for ideas. We've seen a lot of both since Tucson.

Goldberg takes a much more behavioral approach to the question. He recommends avoiding terms like "evil" and using the term "malevolence" instead. Using Dahmer and other extreme cases as examples, he lays out a case that most criminals engage in what he calls experimental malevolence, where their bad behavior escalates over time. It's clear that in the case of Dahmer that he had begun exhibiting signs of trouble in early life, including aspects of the Macdonald triad and a later pattern of murders that increased in frequency and brazenness. Looking at Jared Loughner's actions prior to his arrest, he had been ramping up his troubling behavior with a number of incidents that raised red flags with observers. Various opportunities to intervene and get Loughner some help did not materialize.

What I find most interesting about people who justify violent actions is the production of a script. They have a story they tell themselves about how the world works, a story that explains why they need to do what they plan to do, and often a fantasy about how their actions will play out. One of the things they teach you in assault prevention classes is to try to get someone off their script if you are being attacked. Many instructors suggest saying or doing something unexpected, to snap them out of what's running through their heads as they commit the attack. All people produce a script about who they are and why they do what they do. That process only becomes a problem when that script lacks empathy, the ability to comprehend and embrace the thoughts and feelings of others.

When Giffords gave an apparently unacceptable response to Loughner's obtuse question about language not being real, she seems to have caused him some cognitive dissonance. He apparently expected her to recognize his intellectual superiority, and when she didn't, he became fixated on what he saw as a slight that threw his self-assessment into question.

It's entirely possible to explain these behaviors without resorting to some facile descriptor like "sick" or "evil." Loughner's videos and writings suggest he held a set of beliefs that were delusional, about himself and the world and how it works. Everyone, myself included, probably has a delusion or two in their belief system. Once in a while they combine with other factors in a person to create a lethal combination: anger, incompetence, rejection, isolation, lack of empathy, drug-induced hallucinations, participation in economies of violence, unthinking behavior, production of a flawed script. That's not evil. It's simply a tragic nexus of human flaws that can culminate in what is too easily dismissed as evil.

Zero-gravity space kittehs: then and now

Andrea James — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:45:34 +0000

Xeni wisely didn't bring a cat into zero gravity during her trip. Other videos indicate cats don't appreciate it. Apparently, feline veterans of the early days of subjecting cats to zero gravity had it easier than zero-gravity NASAcat in the 80's, who gets tossed and spun like, well... like a cat in a vomit comet. NASA video link. Excerpt link. Full Air Force video link. (airboyd.tv)

UPDATE: I forgot the NOW kitteh! (Video link).

Shooting a super-soaker at -45F

Andrea James — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:28:03 +0000

Being in cold climates has its charms, as evidenced in this video of a Super-Soaker shot in temperatures no humans should have to endure. Combine this with a FireHero, and you would have a formidable winter weapon. Video link.

On-duty cop rapes woman, she says; pleads sentence down to one year

Andrea James — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:10:55 +0000

I usually don't post these because of their regularity, but this one really stands out. San Antonio police officer Craig Nash raped a woman while on duty, she said. He faced a life sentence for the felony charges, but he was able to plead that down to a misdemeanor and will serve just one year. Why? I'm sure it's not because the woman who said he raped her was a transgender sex worker. Reminds me of the Memphis cop who pleaded down to two years after beating the crap out of Duanna Johnson using his handcuffs as brass knuckles. Texas is the worst place in America to be transgender, as evidenced by two widows whose marriages were legally challenged after their husbands' deaths. Christie Lee Littleton's marriage was declared illegal after she brought a suit against her dead husband's doctor. That set the legal precedent for the whole state, which means Nikki Araguz faces an uphill battle after her firefighter husband died on duty last year. Her in-laws are challenging the death benefits she's entitled to receive.

Official oppression earns ex-cop a year behind bars

A decade of Wikipedia: lesser-known miracles

Andrea James — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 07:49:29 +0000

Image: a few of the remixable design elements, via Wikimedia Commons

It's no secret that I love Wikipedia, which I consider one of the grandest and most radical social experiments of our time, and the very best example of what the free culture movement offers for the world's future. I even love Wikipedia critics. There's nothing I love more than to improve an article after some whiny-baby complains about its quality with a copypasta example. For instance, novelist Jonathan Lethem was bagging on "the infinite regress of Wikepedia [sic] tinkering-unto-mediocrity" the other day. Too bad The Atlantic has no way for readers to fix that typo in the way I updated the article on Blake Edwards' cult classic The Party, which was the object of Lethem's scorn. He seems to miss the point that an encyclopedia article, even one about a screwball comedy, is supposed to be dry, factual, and not especially screwball. Just the facts, ma'am. I also love that his snapshot of the page is no longer that relevant.

In the past I have discussed Wikibumps (like the spike of a million readers who checked out the Salvia article in the week after the Miley Cyrus bong video) and the Click to Jesus game, where you see how few links it takes to get from a random Wikipedia article to the Jesus article. Here are a couple of other good reasons to love Wikipedia and its sister projects which you may not have seen:

• Best of Wikipedia Tumblr page
• Raul's Laws, possibly the best and wonkiest explanation of how Wikipedia works

• Commons Picture of the Year contest winners
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• 2009

I hope you'll swing by, learn some things, maybe improve something (they even have a secure server option). There is still plenty to do, and it will never be completed. At the very least, just marvel at the possibilities for the future of free culture embodied in the project. What are some of your favorite things about it? Please share in the comments.

AC/DC + OswaldOnFire + Guitar Hero + propane + YouTube = pure win

Andrea James — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 01:26:21 +0000

AC/DC's Back in Black was the first album I bought with my own money. The severity of their badassness has only increased in the ensuing three decades. Now comes New Jersey resident Chris Marion, whose YouTube channel adds choreographed fire to some of the best straight-ahead rock ever recorded, including Mötley Crüe and Black Sabbath (the latter unsurprisingly DMCA'd out of existence by Ozzy and Sharon's people). Oh, and because I am always interested... what was the first album (or if you're a whippersnapper, mp3) you bought with your own money? (via last.fm)

Discussing Wikipedia's first decade on The Takeaway, 7:20am Eastern

Andrea James — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:10:01 +0000

For you early risers, I'll be discussing the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia with John Hockenberry on The Takeaway at 7:20 am Eastern time. Check your local listings or the live stream. Here's the show archive. The producers made a fun listener quiz for the occasion. Happy anniversary, Wikipedia!

Download full screenplay for 'The Social Network'

Andrea James — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:54:12 +0000

If you don't follow the pirate sites that make screenplays available for download, Nikki Finke at Deadline.com has just made Aaron Sorkin's script for The Social Network available online. It's an excellent example of an adapted screenplay if you want to compare it to Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires. Biopics and "ripped from the headlines" stories are among the hardest to write, and this is a good example of both. Her article also has a good Q&A with Sorkin: EXCLUSIVE: Aaron Sorkin's Full Screenplay For 'The Social Network' - Plus Q&A