Boing Boing » Video

NYPD wrongfully seize wrong SD card

Jason Weisberger — Sat, 18 May 2013 23:53:21 +0000

Photography is not a Crime shares the story:

New York City police officers arrested a woman who was video recording them from a public sidewalk as they conducted some type of “vehicle safety checkpoint.”
The officers apparently stole a memory card from a camera, which turned out to be the wrong one, allowing us to view the video.

Is this the best song from this year's Eurovision Song Contest?

Rob Beschizza — Sat, 18 May 2013 20:20:31 +0000

The battle of the bands, featuring acts from Ireland to Israel, is underway as we speak. Embedded above is Cezar Ouatu's particularly excellent It's my life, this year's Transylvanian entry. Our Europe Correspondent Leigh Alexander will be filing a report, but not until she's had a bit of a lie down.

World's tiniest monkey eats a noodle

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:28:01 +0000

About this video, which shows a Pygmy Marmoset noshing on a macaroni, Meredith Yayanos says: "The tinier the primate, the deeper the Uncanny Valley." I don't know anything about the conditions under which this video was shot, but obviously monkeys belong in their natural habitat, not in someone's home eating macaroni. Still, wow: how amazing and adorable the creature is.

Yuck! NYC fourth grader sneaks camera into school, makes documentary about gross cafeteria food

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 18 May 2013 13:20:58 +0000

http://vimeo.com/64607150

Here's a clip from an upcoming documentary by a fourth grader who snuck a camera into school to document his horrible school lunches and the vast distance between the food that the school claims to serve and food he and his friends end up eating.

Zachary is a fourth grader at a large New York City public elementary school. Each day he reads the Department of Education lunch menu online to see what is being served. The menu describes delicious and nutritious cuisine that reads as if it came from the finest restaurants. However, when Zachary gets to school, he finds a very different reality. Armed with a concealed video camera and a healthy dose of rebellious courage, Zachary embarks on a six month covert mission to collect video footage of his lunch and expose the truth about the City's school food service program.

Yuck: A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch (via Reddit)

Brain hacking: using neurofeedback to master conflicting wills in your mind

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 18 May 2013 02:12:52 +0000

I've written before about Moran Cerf -- celebrated neuroscientist, former military hacker, and good-guy bank robber -- who also happens to be a great storyteller. Here's a video in which Cerf recounts some clever and fascinating neuroscience experiments that use neurofeedback to help people resolve competition between different thoughts and wills in their minds. The applications are even more interesting -- mentally controlling a robotic arm, for example.

Moran Cerf: Hacking the brain (Thanks, Moran!)

Grizzly bear eats video camera: close up of terrifying maw

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 22:16:59 +0000

Here's a video of biologist Brad Josephs's GoPro camera being eaten by a grizzly bear in Alaska; he'd set it out in order to get footage for a BBC documentary. The grizzly went above and beyond the call of duty.

A grizzly Ate My GoPro!!! GoPro HD (Thanks, Hugh)

11 year old and his 3D printer

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:53:51 +0000

Alex sez, "My colleague Chris Neary and filmmaker Nathan Fitch made this great short film about 11-year-old inventor Andrew Man-Hudspith, who was so intent on getting a 3D printer he made a PowerPoint presentation to convince his parents to help him get one."

An 11-year-old and his 3D printer (Thanks, Alex!)

NMA on Rob Ford's crack video

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:05:14 +0000

Taiwan's Next Media Animation -- basically, news-of-the-weird, made weirder with instant machinima-esque videos -- weighs in on the allegation that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was caught on video smoking crack.

Crack smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford caught on tape!

Printing a gun is hard

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:38:33 +0000

Caleb sez, "The Department of Defense ordered that 3d printed gun removed from the Internet. That didn't work out. You can still download it and print it. I did, and found that the files are a mess and not really functional. I also took a cool timelapse video of the printing."

1. the scale on the individual files was way off.
I suspect this has something to do with the printer it was designed for. It seemed very close to being 1 inch = 1 mm. Not a completely uncommon problem. Manually resizing got some files to look right, but I found many simply wouldn’t resize.
2. Almost every single item had errors.
If you’ve done 3d printing, you’ve found that a model can have all kinds of issues that will stop it from printing correctly. I found every single item for the gun had errors. I actually learned a lot about how to repair non-manifold items from this exercise, so it was good in the end.
Some items, like the hammer and the hammer springs simply would not print. I ran them through systems to repair them and fix errors. It would say that everything was fixed, but when I tried to “slice” them for printing, the software would crash. This means that my gun is incomplete. It has no hammer. Not really that big of a deal to me.

Timelapse of the 3d printed gun being printed. (Thanks, Caleb)

Help Young Knives get their record finished

Amy Seidenwurm — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:35:55 +0000

I'm still mad that Young Knives' fantastic last record Ornaments from the Silver Arcade never got released in the U.S. (though we featured a song from it). They've been doing a lot of experimenting with ambient sound recording and have even created a custom synthesizer from all of the sounds they gathered. Their extremely entertaining Kickstarter campaign invites you to contribute towards the completion of their forthcoming album Sick Octave. You can get everything from a download of the record to one of the aforementioned custom synths for your contribution. Plus, you'll have the satisfaction of supporting true artists who are going it alone.

Woman smacks cop so she can go to jail and quit smoking

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:43:58 +0000

Sacramento's Etta Lopez apparently waited outside the Sacramento County Jail for a cop to emerge and then slapped him, so that she could be thrown into jail. She wanted to go to jail because she believed it would help her give up smoking.

According to deputies, Lopez knew she'd immediately be arrested, and slapped a cop to kick a habit. Lopez allegedly admitted she sat in front of the county jail for hours intent on assaulting an officer to get arrested and be put in jail, where she would be forced to stop smoking cigarettes.
"There's easier ways to stop smoking besides hitting a cop," Roger Spearman, a neighbour, said. The neighbour Lopez says she does smoke a lot, and they used to smoke together. "I have not heard of something like that before," Kimberly Bankston-Lee with the anti-smoking group Breathe California said. "If it led somebody to doing something like that to quit, that lets us know in the community that we have a real problem."

Woman accused of slapping police officer so she could be jailed and forced to stop smoking [Arbroath]

(via Dan Hon)

Hacking Politics: name-your-price ebook on the history of the SOPA fight

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:37:09 +0000

Hacking Politics is a new book recounting the history of the fight against SOPA, when geeks, hackers and activists turned Washington politics upside-down and changed how Congress thinks about the Internet. It collects essays by many people (including me): Aaron Swartz, Larry Lessig, Zoe Lofgren, Mike Masnick, Kim Dotcom, Nicole Powers, Tiffiny Cheng, Alexis Ohanian, and many others. It's a name-your-price ebook download.

Hacking Politics is a firsthand account of how a ragtag band of activists and technologists overcame a $90 million lobbying machine to defeat the most serious threat to Internet freedom in memory. The book is a revealing look at how Washington works today – and how citizens successfully fought back.
Written by the core Internet figures – video gamers, Tea Partiers, tech titans, lefty activists and ordinary Americans among them – who defeated a pair of special interest bills called SOPA (“Stop Online Piracy Act”) and PIPA (“Protect IP Act”), Hacking Politics provides the first detailed account of the glorious, grand chaos that led to the demise of that legislation and helped foster an Internet-based network of amateur activists.

Hacking Politics

Chasing away the big black bird: a monologue on cancer and depression by Jeff Simmermon

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:41:56 +0000

My friend Jeff Simmermon talks in this video about cancer and depression. He nails it. Jeff explains,

I had testicular cancer in the spring of 2009. The cancer wasn't really the hard part, it was mostly the depression, combined with all the dumb shit that people had to say about it. I told this story at The Moth on February 13th, 2013 - the theme was "Love Hurts." A version of this was published in a cool book illustrated by Arthur Jones called "The Post-It Note Diaries," but this is pretty different. If you want to see more stories, art, or information about where else I might be performing, check out my blog at andiamnotlying.com.

EFF beats the Trans Pacific Partnership to Peru, sounds the alarm about upcoming brutal, secret copyright treaty meeting

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:00:44 +0000

Danny O'Brien from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez,

The latest round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership starts today in Lima, Peru. Embedded in the trade agreement is an IP chapter that, according to leaks, exports the worst of US copyright law -- DRM blocks, extended copyright terms, ISPs as copyright cops -- without even of the judicial and constitutional counterbalances that US activists have fought so hard for.
In such a giant trade agreement, the Internet issues have sometime risked getting ignored by the mainstream press, and missed by the techies who'd be most affected.
But EFF's international rights director, Katitza Rodriguez, is Peruvian. She's spent the the last month working out of Lima's Escuelab hackerspace, talking to hackers, makers, journalists and artists about the dangers of IP chapter. The result has been petitions, memes, and videos, as well as meetings with politicians and articles in the Peruvian press.

We Beat Them to Lima: Opening a New Front Against Secret IP Treaties (Thanks, Danny!)

Monkey shares lollipop with puppy, then beats him with it

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:23:01 +0000

Because monkeys. (thanks, Tara McGinley!)

HOWTO make glowing Converse

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:50 +0000

The good people at Adafruit have an easy way to make your Chucks glow!

Make your logo light up with this simple Converse sneaker mod. All you need is EL panel and an inverter tucked into the tongue of your shoe to get the stars in your Chuck Taylors glowing. Two styles!

Glowing Star Chuck Taylor Sneakers

Book-and-record set for the League of Space Pirates

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 01:09:58 +0000

Noah Scalin sez, "Thought you might enjoy this little video I made to promote the latest release from my science fiction project League of Space Pirates (yes, apparently they still have As Seen On TV commercials in the future). It's a return to the classic book & record format of the 70s/80s. In this case the 16 page comic book features illustrated stories based on the lyrics of two original songs from the League of Space Pirates band"

Book & Record single now available throughout the galaxy! (Thanks, Noah!)

Help make Abercrombie and Fitch synonymous with homelessness

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 May 2013 23:18:03 +0000

As you know, Abercrombie and Fitch is a horrible shitshow of a company whose owner refuses to make large sized clothes so that "unattractive people" can't wear them, and who burns surplus clothing rather than donating it to charity to keep their clothes off poor peoples' backs. So Gkarber has set out to make the brand synonymous with homelessness, by clearing out thrift shops' supply of A&F and bringing it to skid row and giving it to homeless people. He'd like you to participate by clearing out your closets and donating any A&F to your local homeless charity..

Abercrombie & Fitch Gets a Brand Readjustment #FitchTheHomeless

Dictionary of Numbers: browser extension humanizes the numbers on the Web

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:03:07 +0000

Dictionary of Numbers is a Chrome extension that watches your browsing activity for mentions of large numerical measurements and automatically inserts equivalences in real-world terms that are meant to clarify things. For example, a story about a 300,000 acre forest fire would be annotated to note that this is about the area of LA or Hong Kong; or that 315 million people is about the population of the USA.

I noticed that my friends who were good at math generally rely on "landmark quantities", quantities they know by heart because they relate to them in human terms. They know, for example, that there are about 315 million people in the United States and that the most damaging Atlantic hurricanes cost anywhere from $20 billion to $100 billion. When they explain things to me, they use these numbers to give me a better sense of context about the subject, turning abstract numbers into something more concrete.
When I realized they were doing this, I thought this process could be automated, that perhaps through contextual descriptions people could become more familiar with quantities and begin evaluating and reasoning about them. There are many ways of approaching this problem, but given that most of the words we read are probably inside web browsers,** It might be interesting to to develop a similar system for use in spoken lectures. I decided to build a Chrome extension that inserts human explanations of numbers into web pages.

Dictionary of Numbers

(via XKCD blog)

Watch a caterpillar turn into a butterfly, in 3D

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:03:36 +0000

What happens inside a caterpillar's cocoon? Scientists got to watch the whole process with the help of X-ray 3D scanning technology. In the video above, you can watch a caterpillar turn into a butterfly. Over the course of 16 days its breathing tubes (shown in blue) and its digestive system (shown in red) change shape and position within the body, while other structures grow from scratch.

Ed Yong has a great story to go with this, too. All about why it's important to actually watch the process happening in a single caterpillar, instead of just relying on the data scientists have collected from years of dissecting different caterpillars at different stages in the transformation.

Xeni on PBS NewsHour, in Guatemala: Ríos Montt genocide verdict and aftermath

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:10:47 +0000

Before leaving Guatemala today, I spoke with PBS NewsHour host Hari Sreenivasan about the aftermath and significance of Friday's court decision to convict former US-backed military dictator Rios Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The report is archived here on YouTube, and here on the PBS NewsHour website with a full transcript, also below.

Related: My reporter's notebook on NewsHour from Guatemala, and a full report on the trial I produced with Miles O'Brien.

TRANSCRIPT

HARI SREENIVASAN: Xeni Jardin has been following the story in Guatemala and was the producer on Miles O'Brien's earlier report.

So, Xeni Jardin, give us an idea, how significant was this trial for the people there?

XENI JARDIN, Producer, Boing Boing: This is huge.

This is the first time in modern history that a domestic court has convicted a former head of state on these kinds of charges, genocide, crimes against humanity. But for both sides in this case, for the people who support the military, who support Rios Montt, and for the nation's majority indigenous population, this is huge.

This -- you know, it's fair to state that for many people this reopens old wounds. The country's 36-year civil war is not that long ago. And literally everyone in this country is still touched by that legacy in one way or another, some people very directly.

HARI SREENIVASAN: You were in the courtroom during the verdict. And for those of us not who are following you on Twitter and other social media, what was the scene like?

XENI JARDIN: It was completely surreal, Hari.

The courtroom holds about 400 people. There are seats for 400 people. And I think there were easily 500, possibly 600 people packed into that courtroom. When the verdict was read, you know, Judge Jasmine Barrios began by explaining why Rios Montt was considered by the court to be guilty of genocide, of crimes against humanity.

But then when she actually got to the point of saying that he was guilty, there were claps. There were cheers. And then people kind of calmed down to hear the rest of what the court had to say. And then after -- after she slammed the gavel on the desk, total chaos broke out.

There was, you know, a swarm of cameramen who just encircled the defense table, and specifically Rios Montt, looking for that shot of the century of this man's reaction, this man who -- whose legacy is indelibly imprinted on this country.

And then back in the gallery, behind where I was sitting with members of the press, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people were chanting, "Justice, justice," and, "Yes, it was genocide," which was a rallying cry on Twitter and in the streets in weeks before this verdict arrived.

You could see as you looked around the courtroom, Hari, that people were weeping. There were mothers holding their children and kind of swaying to the rhythm. The Ixil grandmothers who had testified of being gang-raped by 20 soldiers at a time for weeks on end, many of these women, they weren't cheering. They were weeping. It was just such a powerful, powerful moment.

HARI SREENIVASAN: How significant is it that they were even able to reach a verdict?

XENI JARDIN: I think it's extraordinary that the trial came to any conclusion at all.

You know, the U.S. Embassy here in Guatemala issued a statement today urging the society and the Guatemalan government to respect the court's outcome. And I think that everybody -- you know, part of why this matters is because of the question of whether Rios Montt is an individual is guilty.

But part of why this trial matters is that the judicial system here is so fragile. And it's just incredible that any case of this substance could come to a completion in a country where a tiny fraction of murders, just murders of everyday citizens now are ever brought to trial, let alone convicted.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So what happens to these victims now? Is there a compensation? Who pays?

XENI JARDIN: Victims' representatives say that, look, these indigenous campesinos, they were robbed of their land. They were displaced from their land. They are subsistence farmers.

Many, many families in that region lost their breadwinners. Who should be responsible for them? Is that Rios Montt's estate who should pay that out? What about the government of Guatemala?

I almost think that this is the more contentious issue than whether or not Rios Montt as an individual can be found guilty of these crimes. The idea of reparations to victims in this case is something that many people in Guatemala are -- have a very hostile reaction to.

So, you know, I spoke with some of the Ixil observers and querrelantes, which is the word for basically criminal witness in the trial. And I remember one of them said, you know, even assuming that the General Rios Montt stays in jail, "He will be fed every night," this woman said. "What about us? We still have to worry about whether we will die of hunger."

HARI SREENIVASAN: Xeni Jardin joining us from Guatemala, thanks so much.

XENI JARDIN: It's my pleasure, Hari.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And an update from Guatemala.

After Hari's interview, the court ordered reparations for victims, including official apologies by the state and a national day of remembrance. But the victims won't get the land they requested or any monetary compensation from the government.

And late today, the Associated Press reported that Rios Montt had been taken to a military hospital after fainting.

Photo: James Rodriguez, mimundo.org. Xeni live-blogging from the court in Guatemala City where Rios Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity in an historic trial.

PREVIOUSLY ON BOING BOING
• Guatemala coverage archives
• Guatemala: Judges rule on reparations; no land to be returned to Ixil victims
• Rios Montt found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity
•1983 "MacNeil/Lehrer Report" on debate over military aid
• 1982 MacNeil/Lehrer on reports Ríos Montt committed atrocities
• "I am innocent," Ríos Montt tells court in genocide trial
• Ríos Montt trial enters final phase, 75 years sought
• The science behind historic genocide trial of General Ríos Montt: PBS NewsHour video report
• Guatemalan Government declares State of Siege after Mining Protests: PBS NewsHour video report
• PBS NewsHour reporter's notebook: Guatemala—Why We Cannot Turn Away
• Waiting. Snapshots from Ríos Montt genocide trial courtroom
•Guatemala: Rios Montt supporters protest; court considers reparations for genocide victims

Grandson explains reddit-restored, 60-y-o navy portrait to amazed Grandad

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 05:15:18 +0000

Stephen sez, "I recently helped set my grandad get set up on his new PC and spotted a photo of him from when he was about 20 years old. It was in a sorry state, so I emailed it to myself and posted it on Reddit, where the community came together and restored it beyond its original state! It was amazing what they did, and so I printed off everyone's contributions and framed my favourite. I then got my girlfriend to record the moment I gave my Grandad, so that I could share it with the people who did the work! The result is a funny, yet heart-warming video."

Reddit and I give my 87yo Grandad a wonderful gift! (Thanks, Stephen!)

You cannot light a candle with a taser

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 03:01:16 +0000

In case you were wondering. (Also: tasers play merry hell with digital video cameras, it seems)

Taser Candle (via JWZ)

It's a face! A skull! A mushroom! Psychedelic drawing lesson

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 01:58:09 +0000

Katana Leigh sez, "I want to provide memorable ways to learn to draw that are interesting and visually entertaining. The proportions of a red spotted button mushroom are the same as a skull and these LSD colors provide maximum contrast so you can see the process and hopefully copy it. Not your boring art lessons but a new way to think about seeing."

How To Draw A Skull 2: when a mushroom is like a face (Thanks, Katana!)

Self-assembling foldable inchworm robots

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:55:02 +0000

Here's a quick and fascinating look at "Robot Self-Assembly by Folding: A Printed Inchworm Robot," presented at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The authors demonstrated a foldable inchworm robot that actually folds itself into shape. The goal is to have all the components placed on the robot's shrinky-dink surface using a robotic pick-and-place machine, so that the inchworm robots can be produced, assembled, and set a-inching on their way without human intervention.

The tricky part of the process is the folding of the robot itself: installing the battery and motor is trivial enough for a human to do, which means that a relatively simple pick and place robot should have no problems doing the same thing. This means that these robots have the potential to scale massively: they can be printed out of cheap materials, they fold themselves together, and another robot can plonk some hardware on them and they’re good to go.

This Crawling Inchworm Robot Can Be Printed Out and Folds Itself [Evan Ackerman/IEEE Spectrum]

(via Beyond the Beyond)

Kool & The Gang's "Summer Madness" (1975)

David Pescovitz — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:49:30 +0000

From the February 22, 1975 episode of Soul Train, the marvelous jam "Summer Madness" by Kool & The Gang, whose slick suits beat robot helmets any year.

Kickstarting a short film based on Daniel "Robopocalypse" Wilson's story "The Nostalgist"

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:11:04 +0000

Daniel Wilson, whose novels Amped and Robopocalypse" were just terrific, is raising money on Kickstarter to complete a short film based on his short story The Nostalgist. The film has already been shot and the money is being raised for effects production. The cast are tremendous, the production team accomplished, and the story is beautiful, so this is a really good kind of project to find on Kickstarter.

In details your support will enable us to complete:
* CG character design, modelling, animation, texturing, lighting and final rendering
* Digital Set Extensions (matte paintings, digital environments, effects)
* Compositing: rotoscoping, green screen keying, plate clean up, CG implementation into live action footage
* Conforming and Grading
Furthermore, your contributions will help us cover the costs of:
* Post production Sound and Film Soundtrack
* Film Identity Design (Titles, Poster, General communication material)
* Deliverables (DVD/Blu-Ray masters, digital master, materials, legal documentation)
* Marketing and Publicity
* Festival submissions and Distribution costs

The Nostalgist - A sci-fi short film

53 years of nuclear tests as electronic music

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:53:56 +0000

I've seen this video described as a musical depiction of all the nuclear bombs ever detonated. But that sort of makes it sound like you're about to get a particularly bombastic version of the 1812 Overture. Instead, "1945-1998" by Isao Hashimoto is more like an infographic with sound effects — or, possibly, a mash-up of the games Simon and Global Thermonuclear War.

What you get is an interesting depiction of nuclear tests through time — 2053 of them (including the non-test explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki). I found it particularly interesting to watch the slow ramp up over the course of the late 1940s and early 1950s, when months or years would tick by between tests. After that, beginning in the late 1950s, you see these patterns of sudden flurries of explosions, usually happening in the US and the USSR almost simultaneously. The cultural sense of panic is almost palpable.

MC Frontalot's "I'll Form the Head" - crowdfunded voltronoid nerdcore

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 11:23:26 +0000

MC Frontalot sez, "At long last, here's the third of three videos from my album Solved that were funded by fans via Kickstarter. It was directed by Carly Monardo and features my nerdcore rap compatriots ZeaLouS1 and Dr. Awkward. Lyrics and credits are on the youtube page. The single is out today, too, and it's free at frontalot.com.

Bright-colored robotic space rhinoceri
that we pilot — why? 'Cause they're in supply.
Plus, we heed the cry of our planet's population
to defend them. We report to battle stations!
Split screen — ready! — and our rhinos are rocket ships
with fully articulated tusk, jaws, and hips.
They come equipped with individual special attacks,
none with a lack (but a couple a little bit slack).
I'm not naming any pilot specifically,
but we're all color coded so you notice that typically
I (in the gold) lead the charge, do the most damage
to whatever very giant space invader managed
to threaten the globe in yet another of our episodes.
This week? Malevolent galactic nematode!
Already beat up the squad when we faced him.
I'm calling it: let's form a giant robot and waste him.

MC Frontalot - I'll Form The Head [OFFICIAL VIDEO] (Thanks, Frontalot!)

Astronaut Chris Hadfield performs David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on the ISS

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 12 May 2013 14:38:34 +0000

Astronaut Chris Hadfield -- the tweeting, tumbling Canadian astronaut who's a one-dude astro-ambassador from the space programme to the Internet -- has produced and released a video of his own performance of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" (AKA the "Major Tom song") on the ISS. He adapts the lyrics a bit to his own situation -- and changes out the whole dying-in-space chorous -- but is otherwise pretty faithful. From the credits, it appears that David Bowie gave permission for this, though that's not entirely clear. I would think that not even a major record label would be hamfisted and cack-handed enough to send a takedown notice over this one (it's been suggested for Boing Boing more than any other link in my memory), but I'm prepared to be surprised.

Space Oddity