From Dark Roasted Blend, a gallery of GM concept-bus designs built for an event called the "Parade of Progress": "One of twelve beauties built by General Motors, this is a self-contained display and transport vehicle created by the GM design staff under Harley Earl's direction. — Read the rest

The news arrives with disturbing regularity: 72 bodies found, a federal policeman killed, 4 men decapitated and hung from a bridge, 19 corpses found, 33 men executed, a massacre at a La Quinta Inn, Girl Assassin Squad Discovered. This isn't news from Baghdad, it's a single week of headlines from Blog Del Narco, Mexico's rawest source of news on the ultraviolence engulfing the country. The anonymous author agreed to a interview.

Michael Geist writes in with more analysis of the recently leaked draft of ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret treaty being negotiated among rich countries whose entertainment lobbyists have decided that the United Nations is too open and balanced to be used for future copyright negotiations. — Read the rest

Michael Geist writes in with the latest news on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the secret, closed-door copyright treaty that will bring US-style copyright rules (and worse) to the whole world. Particularly disturbing is the growing support for "three-strikes" copyright rules that would disconnect whole families from the Internet if one member of the household was accused (without proof) of copyright infringement. — Read the rest

HP has offered three splendid "Back To School" machines to give away to Boing Boing readers:

First prize is an HP dv6 15.6" laptop with an AMD Phenom Quad Core Processor

Second prize is an HPE Elite 210f desktop computer with an AMD Phenom Quad Core processor. — Read the rest

I've posted in the past about biological anthropologist-turned-geeky Martha Stewart Not So Humble Pie—especially the magical way she has with science-themed baked goods.

Now there's a quick way for less-ambitious cooks to capture a teeny bit of the Not So Humble ambiance—a set of four science cookie cutters, featuring beaker, flask, test tube and atom shapes. — Read the rest

I've just read the twelfth collection in the chilling, gripping Walking Dead zombie comic series, Life Among Them, and as always, I raced through the pages, on edge to discover what happened next.

The Walking Dead is remarkable for both its relentless pacing and its relentless pessimism, a series in which the plight of characters who have endured the unimaginable nevertheless grows steadily and intractably worse. — Read the rest

Michael Geist sez, "The latest ACTA [ed: the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty currently under negotiation among the world's rich countries] leak of the text following the June meeting in Lucerne has provided fodder for several posts, including one assessing the growing rift between the U.S. — Read the rest

The latest music and choreography from British animator Cyriak = cows getting down. He writes: "No cows were harmed during the making of this video, though their future prospects probably aren't as optimistic." Video link.

SF designer Yves Béhar has teamed up with General Electric to come up with a cool new concept for car charging stations.

The WattStation comes imbedded with GE's Smart Grid technology which enables the station to charge a vehicle in 4-8 hours compared to the typical 12-18.

In John Brockman's Edge newsletter, an essay by Scott Atran (left) and Robert Axelrod (right), two social scientists who study and interact with violent groups "to find ways out of intractable conflicts." The piece is a response to a recent Supreme Court decision that amounts to a real "chilling effect" for anyone working for peace and reconciliation through dialogue with foreign groups that have a history of armed conflict. — Read the rest

We've featured Brain Dereu's hollow spy coins before. Have you ever wondered what Brian does with the milled out silver shavings? He makes 1.5-inch long silver pill fobs out of them, naturally! This $68 creation would make a terrific gift for a loved one. — Read the rest

Michael Geist reports in from the latest round of secret negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a radical copyright treaty being negotiated without public oversight or participation:

The International Trademark Association (INTA) and International Chamber of Commerce have issued a release on ACTA urging countries to drop the de minimis provision that is designed to allay fears of iPod searching border guards.

The US IP Czar, Victoria Espinel, has released her long-awaited "Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement," and from my cursory read, I have to say it's quite a disappointment. The three areas where US policy is completely out to lunch — secret treaty negotiations, watchlists of "pirate nations," and evaluating claims of losses due to piracy — are not adequately addressed in this document, which mostly focuses on flexing US trade muscle to force other countries to adopt policies that suit US needs, even if they run contrary to their own domestic priorities. — Read the rest

The U.S. State Department now considers Internet censorship a high foreign policy priority, and factors the issue into diplomatic relations, according to a public statement last Friday by a department official:

In every meeting with foreign dignitaries, "this issue is on the table," Alec Ross, senior advisor for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said here at an event hosted by the Media Access Project, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy group.

Earlier this week, the New York Times published the first part of a two-part series by John Tierney looking at the current state of women in the sciences—in particular, whether the playing field can ever really be level, or whether innate neural differences mean there will always be more men getting ahead in science and math careers than women. — Read the rest

Michael Geist sez,

The Government of India came out forcefully against ACTA this week in an intervention at the World Trade Organization. The India position, which may well reflect the views of other ACTA-excluded countries, demonstrates that ACTA is emerging as a contentious political issue that extends well beyond civil society and business groups concerned with the agreement.

A Dutch court has ruled that disclosing the general location of files that infringe copyright is the same thing as infringing copyright itself. The website FTD has a forum where users discuss which Usenet newsgroups contain infringing movies. They do this in plain language, the Dutch equivalent of, "Hey, the group $FOO has the movie $BAR in it." — Read the rest

Michael Geist sez, "The day after the Canadian government introduced the Canadian DMCA, I spoke at the GRAND Annual Conference in Ottawa. While the full talk discussed recent attempts at copyright reform, I've pulled the discussion on C-32 into its own video. — Read the rest

Michael Geist sez,

As expected, the Canadian government today introduced its own DMCA [ed: the US copyright law that has been in place for 12 years, resulting in tens of thousands of lawsuits against Americans without having any effect on infringement or delivering any new income to artists].