Boing Boing

Could the Death Star destroy a planet?

David Pescovitz — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:29:19 +0000

Could the Death Star really destroy a planet? Back in 2008, I posted that astrophysicist and mathematician Jeanne Cavelos, author of The Science of Star Wars, speculated that indeed, the Death Star could be that deadly. Last year, another group of scientists published a paper addressing the same question. And these researchers from the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy came to the same conclusion. According to the paper abstract, "A simplified planet is used giving an energy required to destroy as 2 x 10²⁷ J. Since the Death Star's power source has a much greater energy output it is feasible to destroy a planet with such a space station." Of course, such a space station doesn't exist. But, well, yeah. "That's No Moon" (PDF, via Astrobiology Magazine)

Bodybuilder can go from ripped to flabby in a few hours

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:17:11 +0000

Furious Pete, a body-builder, shows how with just a few hours' preparation he can look absolutely ripped or paunchy and out of shape. He starts by doing a brief, intense exercise and cosmetic regime and produces photos that make him look like he's rippling with muscle and completely devoid of body-fat. Then he eats a few "bloating" foods and drinks, waits a few hours, and shows how the result is to make him look like he's several kilos overweight and badly out of shape. The point is to demonstrate that "before and after" miracle weight-loss photos can be trivially staged without any underlying changes to physical fitness.

Shocking Before and After Transformation in 5 Hours - EXPOSED! (via MeFi)

Steve Silberman reports on synaesthesia

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:00:34 +0000

Steve Silberman says:

Perry Hall is a born synaesthete who "hears color and light, and created an iPhone/iPad app called Sonified to let his synaesthesia "loose in the wild, as he puts it. I take Hall's gift as a jumping-off point to talk about Nabokov's "freakish gift" for seeing letters in color, and several recent studies of color-grapheme synaesthesia and other forms of the phenomenon, including a kid with Asperger's syndrome who was inadvertently taught to see emotional "halos" around people's faces.

Inside the Mind of a Synaesthete

Trailer for Iron Sky, a crowd-sourced sci-fi epic

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:52:55 +0000

[Video Link] This is going to be the most awesome movie ever.

In the last moments of World War II, a secret Nazi space program evaded destruction by fleeing to the Dark Side of the Moon. During 70 years of utter secrecy, the Nazis construct a gigantic space fortress with a massive armada of flying saucers.

When American astronaut James Washington puts down his lunar lander a bit too close to the secret Nazi base, the Moon Führer decides the glorious moment of retaking the Earth has arrived sooner than expected.

Trailer for Iron Sky, a crowd-sourced sci-fi epic

Steve Albini's cooking blog

David Pescovitz — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:51:46 +0000

Steve Albini, guitar genius of Big Black, Rapeman, and Shellac, and producer of albums by Nirvana, The Pixies, and hundreds of other bands, is also a delightful food blogger who posts recipes he makes for his wife Heather. Last week, he cooked these yummy-looking saffron potato cashew pancakes. The blog is called mariobatalivoice. Albini says, "The name comes from the way I bring her food in bed and present it to her using an imitation of Mario Batali's voice from TV." mariobatalivoice (Thanks, UPSO!)

Sarriugarte and Mate's Serpent Twins snake vehicles

David Pescovitz — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:34:30 +0000

Above is video of the incredible Serpent Twins, two slithering vehicles created by the incredibly talented maker couple Jon Sarriugarte and Kyrsten Mate. You may recall that Jon and Kyrsten are the creators of such exquisite biomechanical transports as the Golden Mean snail car that I wrote about in MAKE here and the zippy Electrobyte trilobite car. The Serpent Twins are in the running for the Boca Bearings 2012 Innovation Competition grand prize of $10,000 that will be awarded to the best "innovative mechanical project that utilizes ball bearings, roller bearings, linear bearings or any form of full ceramic or ceramic hybrid bearings anywhere in the application." Jon and Kyrsten say that if they win they'll use the prize money to "buy a stacker trailer to transport our beasts to events like Maker Faire, schools, and festivals to inspire the next generation of artists, engineers and makers." All I can say is that they have my vote.

Vote for The Serpent Twins

More about the The Serpent Twins

Supreme Court Justice appears on Sesame Street, adjudicates disputes

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:11:01 +0000

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor did a guest appearance on Sesame Street. She sits down for coffee with Maria, but their chat is interrupted by a series of storybook characters who ask her to adjudicate their grievances. The judge is wise and equitable, and favors arbitration over formal legal remedies. A good approach.

Sesame Street: Sonia Sotomayor: "The Justice Hears a Case." (via MeFi)

The BBC tracks down a troll

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:47:36 +0000

Not a funny or clever sort of troll; just a bottom-feeder who specializes in writing racist remarks on online memorials. [BBC via Waxy and Metafilter]

Freelancer advice image macro

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:43:18 +0000

Nick Douglas devises a new advice macro, but not before checking his tweets again and organizing the client email list and making sure the icons on his desktop are lined up nicely.

Obama tries out MAKE's Extreme Marshmallow Shooter

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:31:43 +0000

[Video Link] Joey Hudy is one of Maker Faire's superstars and we were so excited to see him demo his “Extreme Marshmallow Shooter” in the White House. Here's a fun video of the President giving it a try.

Would you like to make an “Extreme Marshmallow Shooter” yourself? MAKE has Jody's complete plans here.

Joey Hudy Goes to Washington

Collector of 19th century 3D "devil tissues"

David Pescovitz — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:23:41 +0000

In the latest episode of The Midnight Archive, the show's creator Ronni Thomas shares his own collection of 19th century 3D devil tissues. Also known as diableries, they're a particularly unique species of hand-painted color stereogram depicting "Satan's daily life in hell," as Thomas says. "Stereoscopic Terror"

Facebook's funny accounting has "active users" who never use Facebook

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:59:38 +0000

The NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin digs into how Facebook's IPO documents define "active" users and finds that many of them may never visit the site. Facebook counts you as "active" if your only involvement with the service is setting it up to republish your Twitter feed, or if you click "Like" buttons but never log in to the actual service. This should matter to investors, since Facebook earns no advertising revenue from those users, though it may earn some other income by reselling the private details of their browsing habits as gleaned from its tracking cookies.

In other words, every time you press the “Like” button on NFL.com, for example, you’re an “active user” of Facebook. Perhaps you share a Twitter message on your Facebook account? That would make you an active Facebook user, too. Have you ever shared music on Spotify with a friend? You’re an active Facebook user. If you’ve logged into Huffington Post using your Facebook account and left a comment on the site — and your comment was automatically shared on Facebook — you, too, are an “active user” even though you’ve never actually spent any time on facebook.com.
“Think of what this means in terms of monetizing their ‘daily users,’ ” Barry Ritholtz, the chief executive and director for equity research for Fusion IQ, wrote on his blog. “If they click a ‘like’ button but do not go to Facebook that day, they cannot be marketed to, they do not see any advertising, they cannot be sold any goods or services. All they did was take advantage of FB’s extensive infrastructure to tell their FB friends (who may or may not see what they did) that they liked something online. Period.”

Those Millions on Facebook? Some May Not Actually Visit (via Memex 1.1)

Visiting "Battleship Island," abandoned coal facility off Nagasaki

David Pescovitz — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:58:52 +0000

We've posted before here and here about Hashima Island, aka Gunkanjima ("Battleship Island") off the coast of Nagasaki that from 1887 to 1974 was a coal mining facility but is now a compound of abandoned, crumbling concrete buildings. Web designer, Japanese teacher, and urban explorer Gakuranman managed to visit and take some wonderful photos of the Ballardian built environment in its glorious decay. From Gakuranman:

By 1974.. petroleum came in place of coal, the mines were shut down and the now jobless workers were forced to leave. In a matter of days the island was deserted – everything left exactly as it was, to slumber eternally in the same position like a broken clock face.
Since then visitors have been prohibited to land on this haikyo (ruined) island. Right up until April 2009, anyway. The landing ban on Hashima was lifted and the first tourist boats in years were to be allowed to land. My dream of secretly chartering a boat and infiltrating the place under cover of night was dashed.
They made it into a tourist attraction?? How could they!?
But my disappointment was not to last. While it is true that it is no longer illegal to land on the island through the designated tours, it is still prohibited to for individuals to explore deep inside. All the interesting places like the well-known ‘Stairway to Hell’ or ‘Block 65′ may as well be invisible for all the view you’ll get from behind those shiny white safety bars. Yes, it was clear no tourist trip was going to satisfy my curiosity to walk the corridors of a 100-year old structure. Live site or not, I needed to get inside those concrete relics.

"Gunkanjima: Ruins of a Forbidden Island" (Thanks, Doug Rushkoff!)

The history of timelines

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:42:18 +0000

The earliest timelines, published in the 1500s and 1600s, were difficult-to-follow mashups that attempted to place all of human history into a list of numbers or an elaborate graphical metaphor. (I imagine the people who made these being somewhat stoned ... "So the fourth millennium before the birth of Christ was totally like a dragon! Here, let me show you ...")

By the 19th century, though, the art of the timeline had progressed significantly, and people like French engineer Charles Joseph Minard were creating infographics that look recognizably like infographics. This one, from 1869, traces the routes taken by Hannibal on his march through the Alps and Napoleon on his march into Russia, showing, through the thickness of the bars, how both armies dwindled during the journey.

This is from a great collection of historic timelines published on The Morning News website. Definitely worth flipping through the entire slideshow!

Via Philip Bump

The Caretaker: soundtrack from 78 recordings of Franz Schubert music

David Pescovitz — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:27:07 +0000

The Caretaker, who I've posted about before, is the alter-ego of musician James Kirby who composes gorgeous haunted music by cutting up, processing, and looping vintage 78s. His last album as The Caretaker, "An Empty Bliss Beyond This World," themed around memory and amnesia, is one of my favorite albums of last year. The Caretaker has just released a new album, a soundtrack to Grant Gee's just-completed documentary film about the German writer WG Sebald. The Caretaker and Sebald are a natural pairing, as both of their work deals with memory (personal and cultural), lost histories, and decay. The soundtrack, titled "Patience (After Sebald)," was composed from public domain 1927 recordings of Franz Schubert's music, including his most famous song cycle for voice and piano, Winterreise. Once again, The Caretaker has created a gorgeous album that will transport you into a dreamlike state that may remind you of The Shining's haunted ballroom scenes, which was one of Kirby's inspirations. Above is a track from "Patience (After Sebald)." (The video is unrelated, but I think it's a nice fit.) I purchased my LPs by The Caretaker at San Francisco's Aquarius Records. More details on The Caretaker's releases at Kirby's History Always Favours The Winners site.

Haunting music

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:58:49 +0000

Quora users offer the most hauntingly beautiful songs; it's a recurring thread there.

Decent EPUB Reader for Macs

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:53:35 +0000

TidBITS introduces Bookle, an EPUB reader for OS X, developed by Peter Lewis and Adam C. Engst: "Rather than write an editorial about how Apple was slighting Mac users, I drafted a spec for a straightforward EPUB reader for the Mac. That, of course, was the easy part."

TOM THE DANCING BUG: Partying Down at the Dance, Louis-Style

Ruben Bolling — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:50:46 +0000

You can follow RUBEN BOLLING on TWITTER, and visit the TOM THE DANCING BUG WEBSITE.

Americans explain why jailbreaking should be legal

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:47:45 +0000

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has selected some of the best submissions from the Copyright Office's review of whether it should continue to be legal in the USA to "jailbreak" your devices in order to make them more suited to their needs. In this post, we hear from a deaf man who jailbreaks his phone so that he can use it as an assistive device at work; a military worker in Kuwait who jailbreaks his phone so he can quickly access the flashlight function to scare off dangerous wildlife near the base; and a nurse whose jailbroken device allows her to "track my performance, treatments used on patients, and the effects of those treatments, much faster with customizations that are not available on a device that is not jailbroken."

A note for Canadians: Bill C-11, Canada's proposed copyright law, has no similar exemption-setting process. That means that if MP James Moore succeeds in passing his legislation, it would be illegal to modify your property in the ways described here.

Kevin McLeod is a deaf man who uses his Android phone — a Samsung Epic 4G — to assist him with communication, record-keeping, and time management. Like many deaf people, he uses video relay service (VRS) software on his phone to “work on a level playing field with hearing peers and have productive and meaningful careers.” He had these comments for the Copyright Office:
I need a phone that can run VRS software through the day without having to recharge every other hour. The stock phone I received can't do that. I had to upgrade to a more powerful battery. Then I installed an alternative version of the Android operating system called CleanGB that removes most of the carrier-installed software. This freed up memory and battery resources I need to stay connected.
We need the ability to modify our devices because manufacturers and carriers can't possibly anticipate all the needs of their customers. We need flexibility to make the most of the terrific tools they build for us. I love the power and connectivity my phone gives me. I love that I can customize it to meet my unique needs.

Letters to the Copyright Office: Why I Jailbreak

(Image: Jailbreaking the iPhone - 06, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from yugen's photostream)

Salon cuts post count by a third, gets 40 percent increase in readers

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:44:48 +0000

Salon's Kerry Lauerman found that the given wisdom of publishing more content did not yield more traffic.

[We published] Short (a few hundred words) summaries or explainers about a major news event covered more in depth by somebody else. In its best form, we wrote short little decoders of a big story, and tried to link generously to the original source. At its worst, we monitored Twitter and Google for trending topics, and dispatched an intern to cobble together our own summary, posted it quickly, then prayed to the Google gods that the effort would win, if only briefly, their favor.
I'm not proud of that last approach, a mandate from above, which we were able to quietly scuttle after it was proven to have absolutely zero impact.

They're now publishing a third fewer stories, but have increased traffic by forty percent since cutting out "aggregation" and focusing on original stories.

Fantasy Maps

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:17:18 +0000

Victoria Johnson revisits the maps we "wandered into" as kids:

If I ruled the world, or at least a publishing company, all books would contain as much supplementary information as possible. Nonfiction, fiction—doesn't matter. Every work would have an appendix filled with diagrams, background information, digressions and anecdata. And of course, maps.

I did not accept that I was a map nerd until the day I caught myself scoffing at geological implausibilities in a map in a pulp fantasy novel. An excellent coffee-table compendium is J.B. Post's Atlas of Fantasy, but the itch may be scratched immediately with Google and TVTropes' entry on Fantasy World Maps. Artist Jon Roberts specializes in making them. Mapblogger Jonathan Crowe has an overview of resources for following suit.

Pictured above is fantasy epic Elfquest's world of Abode, a personal fave, and refreshingly geologically plausible until you start thinking about biomes.

Previously: Wondrous, detailed map of the history of science fiction and Maps.

Engineer who warned of Challenger disaster dies

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:45:00 +0000

The night before the Challenger space shuttle disaster, engineer Roger Boisjoly spent hours trying to get the mission called off. He was so certain that booster joints would fail in freezing weather and destroy the craft that he refused to watch it happen. [LA Times]

HOWTO make duct-tape roses

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:39:19 +0000

Here's DIYHacksandHowTos's great Instructables for making duct tape roses. The method is simple and produces a really beautiful (and romantically geeky) end-product.

Realistic Duct Tape Rose (via Craft)

Path grabs your iPhone address book

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:30:44 +0000

Path, an app to access the eponymous social network, uploads your entire iPhone address book to its servers. The CEO considers this "industry best practice" and OK because iOS allows it to. [mclov.in] Update! They apologized and deleted the info. Yay!

Welcome to the Enchanted Forest

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:19:17 +0000

Photo: Urban Trophy

"The carefree sensations that once permeated the park are lost, only to be replaced by a grim sense of nostalgia and unease." [Atlas Obscura]

Porn in parliament ends ministers' careers

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:13:30 +0000

Conservative legislators in India resigned Wednesday after being caught enjoying mobile phone smut during a session of parliament.

Karnata state's Minister for Cooperation Laxman Savadi and Womens' and Childrens' Development Minister C.C. Patil were broadcast on TV sharing the porn clip, according to Reuters' Nila Bhalla. A third minister, the owner of the phone, also quit.

"We live in a country where there already is this social mindset that women are disposable commodities and are seen as transferable properties," Renuka Chowdhary, a former federal minister for women's development and a member of the Congress Party. "It really is troubling that the people who are in positions of power and have the responsibility to change things actually have the same mindset and are busy watching porn."

India ministers quit after caught watching porn in parliament [Reuters]

Apps for Kids podcast 008: Mad Chef

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:00:26 +0000

Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 8-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In episode 008, we review game called Mad Chef. It's 99 cents iPhone and iPad in the iTunes store.

[Video Link] Here's a video of me playing Mad Chef.

If you're an app developer and would like to have Jane and I try one of your apps for possible review, email a redeem code to appsforkids@boingboing.net.

To get a weekly email to notify you when a new episode of Apps for Kids is up, sign up here.

Pop science book on how willpower works and how you can improve yours

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:00:25 +0000

The Guardian's Jon Henley reviews Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, a popular science/self-help book by Roy F Baumeister, "eminent American social psychology professor" and NYT science writer John Tierney. It sounds like a practical guide combined with a literature review on the lines of such excellent books as Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness.

Henley describes the book as a good mix of science, practical advice, and clear writing, which is pretty much right up my street, as is the subject-matter: understanding why it's hard to get your brain to do what you want to do. "Willpower" is something of a catch-all term, but in general, it's the source of all my pleasures and many of my sorrows: it's the secret to regular writing and good health, but it's also the source of a fixity of purpose that sometimes blocks out other considerations.

Like a muscle, it can get tired if you overuse it. Exercising willpower, but also making decisions and choices and taking initiatives, all seem to draw on the same well of energy, Baumeister has established. In experiments, he found that straight after accomplishing a task that required them to restrain their impulses (saying no to chocolate biscuits, suppressing their emotions while watching a three-tissue weepy), students were far more likely to underperform at other willpower-related jobs such as squeezing a handgrip or solving a difficult puzzle.
"The immune system also dips into the same pot, which is big, but finite," says Baumeister, "and, we are pretty sure, so does women's premenstrual syndrome. Having a cold tends to reduce your self-control, and PMS does the same. We get cranky and irritable, but it's not that we have nastier impulses – it's that our usual restraints have become weakened."
So best avoid trying to do too many things involving mental effort at the same time, or if you're ill. As with a muscle, though, you can train your willpower. Even small, day-to-day acts of willpower such as maintaining good posture, speaking in complete sentences or using a computer mouse with the other hand, can pay off by reinforcing longer-term self-control in completely unrelated activities, Baumeister has found. People previously told to sit or stand up straight whenever they remembered later performed much better in lab willpower tests.
The final way in which willpower resembles a mental "muscle" is that when its strength is depleted, it can be revived with glucose. Getting a decent night's sleep and eating well – good, slow-burning fuel – is important in the exercise of willpower, but in times of dire need a quick shot of sugar can, according to Baumeister's lab tests, make all the difference.

Why willpower matters – and how to get it

Saucy dog head ad complaint dismissed

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:56:10 +0000

British advertising regulators have dismissed a complaint against an ad that portrayed terrier-headed playboy "Trevor Mountleg" and sexual antics in the presence of animals.

The commercial, for Electronic Arts' Sims 3 Pets, has the hybrid creature describing what players can get up to in the game.

"Are you an animal person?" he says, waving a hand over his mansion as an entourage of full-blooded dogs drink water from a golden toilet. "Well, not like me, because most people are made up entirely of person. And if you're a person person, then you'd be missing out on the duality of life. With the Sims 3 Pets you can have a pet or be a pet."

"You can play both ways, and there's no shame in that," he continues, as a dog watches a couple dive into an opulent bed. "So, go on, experiment. Chase some tail. Lick your paws. You naughty little minx. Play with life."

After receiving complaints, the Advertising Standards Authority determined that the ad was clearly "silly" and unlikely to cause serious or widespread offense.

"We acknowledged some viewers might find the content of the ad, in particular the scene of the couple on the bed, distasteful," it says in its assessment, "but considered most viewers were likely to interpret it as being light hearted and mildly suggestive."

ASA Adjudication on Electronic Arts Ltd [ASA]

What's causing Europe's cold snap?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:49:13 +0000

One of the things that makes it difficult to understand weather, climate, and long-term climate changes is the fact that, when something noticeable happens, there's a good chance it's being caused by more than one thing. So, when you look at a weather phenomenon and ask, "Is this being caused by anthropogenic climate change?", there's several (technically correct) ways that question could be answered.

Take, for instance, the recent cold snap in Europe that's killed more than 300 people and dropped snow as far south as Libya. As Andrew Freedman explains on Climate Central, this particular bit of weather weirdness is being caused by natural variations in the air currents over the Arctic:

The Arctic Oscillation, or AO, is is a climate index that describes the characteristics of the atmospheric circulation over the Arctic, and a related index describes the circulation over the North Atlantic. Depending on whether it's in a "positive" or "negative" phase, the Arctic Oscillation can bring warmer or cooler than average wintertime conditions to the U.S. and Europe.

Right now the Arctic Oscillation is in a negative phase, which tends to favor colder than average weather in Europe and the U.S. Scientists don't fully understand what causes the Arctic Oscillation to switch from one phase to the other, which limits their ability to forecast these changes ahead of time beyond a week in advance.

But (and, ladies and gentlemen, this is a great big but) scientists have noted that the Arctic Oscillation has been behaving more strangely than usual for the last decade. In fact, Freedman points out that several record-breaking positive and negative oscillations have coincided with extreme weather events you probably took note of: December 2009's Snowpocalypse, February 2010's Snowmageddon, and April 2011's massive outbreak of tornadoes (which, thankfully, doesn't have a cutesy name associated with it).

And this is where the lines between "naturally occurring" and "anthropogenically caused" get blurred. Because this record-breaking decade of Arctic Oscillations has coincided with a record-breaking decade in loss of Arctic sea ice and there's good reason to suspect that the two might be related.

... in recent years there have been studies examining how the global warming-related loss of Arctic sea ice might affect winter weather patterns in the northern hemisphere. Some of this research shows that sea ice loss may favor winters with predominately negative phases of the Arctic Oscillation. One potential result of global warming, referred to as the "Arctic Paradox," is that sea ice loss can help warm the Arctic during the winter, while setting in motion a chain reaction of events that make winters colder than they otherwise would be in Europe and the U.S.

This actually gets even more complicated, because it also appears that AO can affect the amount of sea ice that melts in a given year, which can, in turn, affect what happens with the AO. For more information, check out:
— An explainer from The National Snow and Ice Data Center
— A NASA explainer from a couple of years ago that talks about the relationships between climate change, AO, and cold weather.

Also, just so we're clear, the AO is not the same thing as the climate systems that could drive "abrupt climate change"—a possible scenario that served as the basis for the highly fictional movie "The Day After Tomorrow". You can read more on that at the Weather Underground blog.