Boing Boing » ZOMGWEREALLGONNADIERUNHIDE

What's big, corrupt, terrifying and worse than ACTA? TPP. Here we go again!

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:02:54 +0000

Remember ACTA, the terrifying, secret SOPA-on-steroids copyright treaty that the US government tried to ram down the world's throat? Well, it's back, only this time it's called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it's limited (for now) to the Pacific Rim. The TPP negotiators are meeting (in secret, natch) in Peru to twirl their mustaches and cackle, and EFF has posted a great infographic summing up their nefarious plan (see the whole thing after the jump):

The TPP is likely to export some of the worst features of U.S. copyright law to Pacific Rim countries: a broad ban on breaking digital locks on devices and creative works (even for legal purposes), a minimum copyright term of the lifetime of the creator plus seventy years (the current international norm is the lifetime plus fifty years), privatization of enforcement for copyright infringement, ruinous statutory damages with no proof of actual harm, and government seizures of computers and equipment involved in alleged infringement. Moreover, the TPP is worst than U.S. copyright rules: it does not export the many balances and exceptions that favor the public interest and act as safety valves in limiting rightsholders’ protection. Adding insult to injury, the TPP's temporary copies provision will likely create chilling effects on how people and companies behave online and their basic ability to use and create on the Web.

The journal of horrifying science

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:28:52 +0000

Science Horrors is a tumblr blog that compiles stories about the discomfiting, disturbing, and just plain terrifying parts of science. From 13th-century bioterrorism to the killer carbon dioxide gas bubbles of central Africa, there's plenty here to amaze you and freak you the frack out.

What are the chances of a large meteor destroying a city?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:47:55 +0000

Good news: This is probably not something you have to worry too much about during your lifetime.

The real end of the world

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:33:14 +0000

Once again, Earth has not been destroyed in a fiery apocalypse. But, someday, our luck will run out. Be prepared! At The Guardian, Ian Sample and Alok Jha helpfully explain how our universe will one day (finally) be destroyed. The good news: By the time that happens, you'll already be dead. [Watch Ian Sample demonstrate different scenarios for the destruction of Earth] [Watch Alok Jha describe the ultimate fate of the universe]

Golden eagle snatches kid

Dean Putney — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 18:07:00 +0000

One second this eagle is gliding around above a park, majestic, then moments later it swoops down and tries to grab a toddler. It's just so sudden and unexpected: the bird looks small when it's far away, but oh god nope that's one of those Hobbit-carrying guys and little red monkey hat is off to Mordor.

It may not be real, but damn it's a good fake. There's more info here.

Video Link: Golden eagle snatches kid

School freaks out because students making a science video with an umbrella were mistaken for school shooters

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:31:09 +0000

A school in Pennsylvania went into full-on lockdown when some children who were making a video about the immune system, which involved some sort of play-fighting with an umbrella, were mistaken for gun-toting lunatics. There is a balance between disaster preparedness and "when in trouble, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout," and this isn't it. A deputy chief in the video excuses the exercise because the kids were doing something "suspicious," but of course, there's a difference between being secure and being terrified of anything out-of-the-ordinary. Alerting parents and locking down kids when nothing bad is happening isn't making us more secure, it's making us more scared.

School Goes Into Lockdown — Complete with Kids Crying in Closet — Over Umbrella

Donate to Public Knowledge, avert the Mayapocalypse

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:19:27 +0000

Michael sez, "While preparing the PK bunker for the December 21st Mayan Apocalypse, we made a startling discovery: a machine powerful enough to prevent the end of the world. Needless to say, we were excited. The only problem? The machine's only power source is donations to Public Knowledge. And, yes, we shot some video. We are so confident that this device will work that we offer you this UNCONDITIONAL GUARANTEE: if you donate to Public Knowledge before the Mayan Apocalypse, the world will not end on December 21st."

Help Us Stop the Mayan Apocalypse (Thanks, Michael)

Mother Jones ecotastrophe headline generator

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:09:05 +0000

"Who Paid Al Gore to Slowly Destroy This Baby Octopus" is a headline that just came up on when I tried out the Mother Jones Eco-Doom Headline Generator, which, in lampooning some of MoJo's real headlines, tends to come up with stuff you might otherwise see on The Onion or (dare I say it?) BoingBoing. It may well be the best waste of five minutes you'll find all day.

Mad Max meets zombies in indie Aussie movie "Wyrmwood"

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 23:15:59 +0000

Here's a seven-minute teaser for "Wyrmwood," an indie zombie movie from Australia that merges zombies with Mad Max. It's really a very, very good little short on its own, and convinced me to kick in $20 towards the production fundraiser on Indiegogo. I want to see this movie get made!

About two years ago my brother and I came up with the idea to meld Mad Max with Dawn of the Dead and make the best zombie film ever produced in Australia. Cut to now and we’re about a third of the way through the film and still going strong.
We’ve assembled a cracking cast & crew of disgustingly talented actors, filmmakers & make-up artists who are all working their guts out in order to deliver a piece of ‘Oz-ploitation’ cult cinema that will sit easily next to the likes of Evil Dead, Bad Taste & 28 Days Later …

WYRMWOOD: An Aussie Zombie Film (Thanks, Sam!)

Caviar vending machines in LA malls

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:00:47 +0000

Caviar vending machines have been installed in three upscale malls in LA. In addition to $500/oz caviar, they also dispense blinis, mother of pearl spoons, and other caviar essentials. The vending machines (they're billed as "ATMs for caviar") can be found at Westfield Century City, Westfield Topanga, and the Burbank Towne Center. Apparently, these are old news in Russia, where they are favorites of oligarchs and their entourages.

Finally! Caviar by ATM (via Super Punch)

Artist arrested at Oakland airport for wearing ornate watch

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 19:01:08 +0000

Geoffrey McGann, a southern California artist, was arrested at Oakland airport for wearing an assemblage sculpture/watch he'd made. The TSA were also worried because he had a lot of insoles in his shoes. He was eventually released on $150,000 bail.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- A Southern California man was arrested at Oakland International Airport after security officers found him wearing an unusual watch they said could be used to make a timing device for a bomb, authorities said Friday... McGann told Transportation Security Administration officers that he's an artist and the watch is art, Nelson said.

Geoffrey McGann, Man With Strange Watch, Arrested At Oakland Airport [AP] (Thanks to everyone who suggested this!)

Temper tantrums considered for addition to DSM

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 03:56:01 +0000

The American Psychiatric Association is set to add "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder" to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM), the bible of psychiatric disorders. A kid has "DMDD" if she or he has "severe recurrent temper outbursts that are grossly out of proportion in intensity or duration to the situation... at least three times a week."

As Wired's David Dobbs notes, this describes basically all kids ("No, I don't want to wear my rain boots!") at some time or another. So why is this being considered? Here's Neuroskeptic's explanation:

DMDD seems to be nothing to do with mood, but instead covers a pattern of misbehavior which is already covered by not one but two labels already. Why add a misleadingly-named third?
Well, the back-story is that in the past ten years, many American kids and even toddlers have got diagnosed with ‘child bipolar disorder‘ – a disease considered extremely rare everywhere else. To stop this, the DSM-5 committee want to introduce DMDD as a replacement. This is the officially stated reason for introducing it. On the evidence of this paper and others it wouldn’t even achieve this dubious goal.
The possibility of just going to back to the days when psychiatrists didn’t diagnose prepubescent children with bipolar (except in very rare cases) seems to not be on the table.

Psychiatry Set to Medicalize Hissy Fits

How a multinational beer giant is making bank by destroying the world's beer and laying off the world's brewers

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:08:39 +0000

In "The Plot to Destroy America's Beer," Businessweek's Devin Leonard chronicles the rapacious AB InBev, a multinational, publicly traded giant corporation that is buying up American (and European, South American and Asian) family owned breweries, cutting them to the bone, lowering the quality of the ingredients used, shutting down breweries that have been running for more than a century, laying off thousands of workers who've given their lives to the companies AB InBev acquired, and changing the recipes to make all the different sorts of beer once on offer taste more or less the same.

InBev was never a sentimental company. Shortly after the merger, it shuttered the 227-year-old brewery in Manchester, U.K., where Boddingtons was produced. It encountered more resistance in 2005 when it closed the brewery in the Belgian village of Hoegaarden, from which the popular white beer of the same name flowed. InBev said it could no longer afford to keep the brewery open. After two years of protests by brewery workers and beer aficionados, it reversed itself. Laura Vallis, an AB InBev spokeswoman, says Hoegaarden exports spiked unexpectedly. “The brand’s growth since is positive news for Hoegaarden and for consumers around the world who enjoy it,” she says.
Yet some Hoegaarden drinkers say the flavor of the beer changed. “I think now it’s not as distinctive tasting,” says Iain Loe, spokesman for the Campaign for Real Ale, an advocacy group for pubs and beer drinkers. “You often see when a local brand is taken over by a global brewer, the production is raised a lot. If you’re trying to produce a lot of beer, you don’t want a beer that some people may object to the taste of it, so you may actually make the taste a little blander.” (Vallis’s response: “The brand’s commitment to quality has never changed.”)
Despite occasional setbacks, Brito’s assiduous focus on the bottom line produced the intended results. InBev’s earnings margin (before taxes and depreciation) rose from 24.7 percent in 2004 to 34.6 percent in 2007. Its stock price nearly tripled. Then he started running out of things to cut. In early 2008, InBev’s results plateaued, and its shares stumbled.
Investors hungered for another deal. Brito complied with the takeover of Anheuser-Busch. He had intimate knowledge of his target: America’s largest brewer had distributed InBev’s beers in the U.S. since 2005. Anheuser-Busch’s CEO, August Busch IV, the fifth Busch family member to run the company, was no match for La Máquina and his mentor, Lemann, who was now an InBev director. Anheuser-Busch’s board of directors accepted InBev’s bid of $70 a share on July 14, 2008.

The Plot to Destroy America's Beer (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Justin Bieber duct tape

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:44:17 +0000

Sign of the end-times part MMMLXVII: Justin Bieber duct-tape is a thing. "Containing four black and white images of the teen idol and incorporating hints of his favorite color -- purple -- the tape is sure to be a number one hit with 'Beliebers' everywhere."

Duck Tape® and Bravado Catch "Bieber Fever" (via Accordion Guy)

High-flying financiers subscribe to high-ticket astrologers

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 21:19:42 +0000

According to Heidi N. Moore's report in Marketwatch, thousands of high-flying Wall Street traders secretly rely on advice from "financial astrologers" who tell them what the stars and planets predict for the market. One trader requests his newsletter in a plain brown wrapper so that his colleagues won't know his secret.

Financial astrologers like Karen Starich say traders know they're up against a lot of rich, smart people.
"They want to have that edge," she says. "They want to know what the future is."
Starich chargest $237 annually for her newsletter, which 300 traders subscribe to for news of what will happen to the stock prices of companies, or even bigger, to the Federal Reserve. She sees dark times ahead in the Fed's horoscope.
"They now have Saturn squared to Neptune, which is really bankruptcy," Starich explains.

Astrology guides some financial traders (via Lowering the Bar)

(Image: Astrological Clock, Torre dell'Orologio, Venice, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from spencer77's photostream)

Great historical disasters in papercraft form

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:15:35 +0000

Here's a series of "Disaster Dioramas" (dioramae?) -- papercraft models of historic disasters to download and print. Included in the set are the Titanic, the Hindenberg, Sir Shackleton's Endurance, Apollo 13, the Boston Molasses Disaster and the Chicago Fire, pictured here.

Spitefuls: [Disaster Dioramas!] (via Making Light)

Candy-corn flavored Oreos are a thing

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 16:49:02 +0000

The end-times are upon us (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Compelling bad news about the economy

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:53:41 +0000

Ian Welsh writes on Naked Capitalism with 21 dismal and compelling "basics" about the economy and the so-called "recovery."

7) Europe, ex. Germany, is in recession.
8 ) the developed world is in depression, it never left depression. During depressions there are recoveries (such as they are) and recessions, but the overall economy is in depression.
9) China’s economy is slowing down. Since China is the main engine of the world economy, followed by the US, this is really bad. If it goes into an actual recession, bend over and kiss your butt goodbye.
10) Austerity is a means by which the rich can buy up assets which are not normally on the market for cheap.
11) the wealth of the rich and major corporations has recovered and in many countries exceeded its prior highs. They are doing fine. Austerity is not hurting them. They control your politicians. The depression will not end until it is in their interest for it to do so, or their wealth and power is broken.
12) The US play is as follows: frack. Frack some more. Frack even more. They are trying the Reagan play, temporize while new supplies of hydrocarbons come on line. Their bet is that they’ll get another boom out of that. If they’re right, it’ll be a lousy boom. If they’re wrong (and the Saudis think they are, and the Saudis have been eating their lunch since 2001) then you won’t even get that. Either way, though, they’ll devastate the environment, by which I mean the water you drink and grow crops with.
13) For people earning less than about 80K, the economy never really recovered. Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/some-basics-on-the-economy.html#0PPQV6PGXuqWiWc9.99

Ian Welsh: Some basics on the economy

How to talk about technology in education without losing your mind to fear

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:00:32 +0000

Dangerously Irrelevant's "26 Internet safety talking points" is just about the best essay I've read on creating a sane, evidence-led, pro-education, anti-fear Internet safety policy for a school. Given that schools are third in line to receive oppressive technology mandates (behind autocratic nations and prisons, ahead of corporate enterprise users and the general public), this is desperately needed.

B. The technology function of your school organization exists to serve the educational function, not the other way around. Corollary: your technology coordinator works for you, not vice versa.
C. Mobile phones, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, blogs, Wikispaces, Google, and whatever other technologies you’re blocking are not inherently evil. Stop demonizing them and focus on people’s behavior, not the tools, particularly when it comes to making policy. You don’t need special policies for specific tools. Just check that the policies you have are inclusive of electronic communication channels and then enforce the policies you already have on bullying, cheating, sexual harassment, inappropriate communication, illicit behavior, etc.
D. Why are you penalizing the 95% for the 5%? You don’t do this in other areas of discipline at school. Even though you know some students will use their voices or bodies inappropriately in school, you don’t ban everyone from speaking or moving. You know some students may show up drunk to the prom, yet you don’t cancel the prom because of a few rule breakers. Instead, you assume that most students will act appropriately most of the time and then you enforce reasonable expectations and policies for the occasional few that don’t. To use a historical analogy, it’s the difference between DUI-style policies and flat-out Prohibition (which, if you recall, failed miserably). Just as you don’t put entire schools on lockdown every time there’s a fight in the cafeteria, you need to stop penalizing entire student bodies because of statistically-infrequent, worst-case scenarios.
E. You never can promise 100% safety. For instance, you never would promise a parent that her child would never, ever be in a fight at school. So quit trying to guarantee 100% safety when it comes to technology. Provide reasonable supervision, implement reasonable procedures and policies, and move on.

It starts at A and goes all the way down to Z. Every one of 'em's a gem.

26 Internet safety talking points

Survivalists are the prosumer reviewers of pouches and bags

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 22:00:21 +0000

Core77's hipstomp looks at the arcane world of survivalist bag reviewers. These brave souls (who both fear the end of the world and prepare for it) are experts at cramming a metric asston of stuff into webbed ripstop nylon enclosures, and represent a kind of connoisseur Ur-audience for anything meant to hold a lot of things. Some of these individuals are quite skilled at solving the literal knapsack problem, coming up with unexpected and ingenious configurations of odd-shaped gear that minimize wasted space. The video above shows one such gent, reviewing the Maxpedition FR-1 pouch:

Here's why: They are completely obsessed with both gear and the idea of self-sufficiency. They prize durability and functionality in a product because their fervency makes them believe their lives will depend on it. They build backups and redundancy into their carry systems to compensate for product failure or unforeseen problems.

More importantly, unlike a soldier who is assigned a standardized piece of kit, survivalists scour the product landscape for the best, and can freely hack the gear to suit their needs. Soldiers must rely on the design talents harnessed at Natick (click here for our entry on a recent first-aid kit re-design), but the survivalist and his or her discretionary income have companies actively courting them.

One such company is "hard use gear" manufacturer Maxpedition, whom we last looked in on in 2010. Through customer feedback, they realized that their FR-1 pouch, which they had designed as a medical kit, was being subverted by users into a "survival pouch." The company must consider it a godsend of free advertising, because here you have survivalists making their own videos to explain to other survivalists what they like about the bag and how they pack it.

Why Survivalists Make Great Bag Reviewers

High velocity trading rendered visceral

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 17:29:57 +0000

The latest installment of Tim Harford's BBC/Open University podcast (RSS) More of Less has a fantastic and chilling look at the world of high-frequency automated stock trading, where warring algorithms execute millions of trades in an eyeblink. The story's jumping-off point is Knight Capital, whose faulty algorithm hemorrhaged $10,000,000 per minute, ultimately costing the company nearly half a billion dollars. But from there, Harford and co do a great series of examples trying to convey the sheer velocity of these markets. I've been following this stuff reasonably closely and had an abstract sense of it all, but this brought it home for me so firmly that it raised goosebumps.

Last week Knight Capital lost a lot of money very quickly. It was the latest chapter in the story of something called ‘high frequency trading’. Investors have always valued being the first with the news. But high frequency trading is different: algorithms execute automatic trades, conducted by computers, at astonishing speeds. We ask: is the rapid growth of high frequency trading progress, or – as some think – a threat to the stability of the entire financial system?

BBC - Podcasts - More or Less: Behind the Stats

MP3 link

HOWTO survive a robot uprising (just add water)

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 01:03:15 +0000

Randall "XKCD" Munroe's "What If?" site continues to shine -- and possibly even to outshine his most excellent webcomic. This week, Randall (whose background is in robotics), looks at what would happen in a robot uprising. He's rather sanguine about this, given the general uselessness of robots in the field.

Those robots lucky enough to have limbs that can operate a doorknob, or to have the door left open for them, would have to contend with deceptively tricky rubber thresholds before they could get into the hallway...
Hours later, most of them would be found in nearby bathrooms, trying desperately to exterminate what they have identified as a human overlord but is actually a paper towel dispenser...
Battlebots, on the face of it, seem like they’d be among the most dangerous robo-soldiers. But it’s hard to feel threatened by something that you can evade by sitting on the kitchen counter and destroy by letting the sink overflow.

Robot Apocalypse

Cops in USA to drive around in pornoscannerwagons, covertly irradiating people and looking through their cars and clothes

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 19:40:15 +0000

American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering's Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call "the amazing radioactive genital viewer," now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).

These pornoscannerwagons will look like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America's streets, indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don't worry, it's not a violation of privacy. As AS&E's vice president of marketing Joe Reiss sez, "From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be."

You know, I never looked at that way. I guess that's why I'm not the VP of marketing and he's getting the big bucks.

It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)
“It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

Also: "the vans do have the capability of storing images."

Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans

Switzerland is one gigantic booby-trap

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 13:19:31 +0000

Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG has been exploring the bizarre world of Swiss self-destructing infrastructure, documented in La Place de la Concorde Suisse, John McPhee's "rich, journalistic study of the Swiss Army's role in Swiss society." It turns out that the Swiss Army specifies that bridges, hillsides, and tunnels need to be designed so that they can be remotely destroyed in the event of societal collapse, pan-European war, or invasion. Meanwhile, underground parking garages (and some tunnels) are designed to be sealed off as airtight nuclear bunkers.

To interrupt the utility of bridges, tunnels, highways, railroads, Switzerland has established three thousand points of demolition. That is the number officially printed. It has been suggested to me that to approximate a true figure a reader ought to multiply by two. Where a highway bridge crosses a railroad, a segment of the bridge is programmed to drop on the railroad. Primacord fuses are built into the bridge. Hidden artillery is in place on either side, set to prevent the enemy from clearing or repairing the damage...

There are also hollow mountains! Booby-trapped cliff-faces!

Near the German border of Switzerland, every railroad and highway tunnel has been prepared to pinch shut explosively. Nearby mountains have been made so porous that whole divisions can fit inside them. There are weapons and soldiers under barns. There are cannons inside pretty houses. Where Swiss highways happen to run on narrow ground between the edges of lakes and to the bottoms of cliffs, man-made rockslides are ready to slide...
The impending self-demolition of the country is "routinely practiced," McPhee writes. "Often, in such assignments, the civilian engineer who created the bridge will, in his capacity as a military officer, be given the task of planning its destruction."

Various forms of lithic disguise (Thanks, @MagicPeaceLove!)

UK economic crisis ends, Tories celebrate by committing £1.8B to spying

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:13:11 +0000

The pricetag for the UK "snooper's charter" -- a comprehensive warrantless spying proposal from the government -- is in: "at least £1.8 billion." This is how the coalition fight crime, even as thousands of police take to the streets to protest cuts in front line patrols, and even as private companies are taking over "policing duties" in cities and towns across the nation. What austerity, huh? Nothing's too dear when you're spying on an entire nation's entire digital life.

Rocking Horses of the Apocalypse

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:08:57 +0000

Artist Carrin Welch's first foray into sculpture is a marvellous set of "Four Rocking Horses of the Apocalypse," made from wood. They're nearly finished, and eminently ridable.

My interpretation of these horsemen from Revelations in the Bible is very loose, it's an artistic idea based mostly on how I want them to look, and less on the many academic and theological interpretations. I want them to appear ominous and imposing, but the catch is that they are giant toys. They are meant to be fantastic and absurd, but also beautiful and magical. You cannot ride one of the mammoths without feeling a little joy. With this world feeling so unstable, and all the theories of its end, the rocking horses bring light to a dark time.
All four horses are expected to be completed by end of May 2012, when they will travel to Burning Flipside for their collective debut. After that I will be collaborating with fellow artists to produce some fun, fantasy images of the rocking horses, and seeking opportunities to show them and let people interact with them.

Welch completed the horses during a period of unemployment, thanks to funding provided by her fans on Kickstarter.

The Four Rocking Horses of the Apocalypse (via Neatorama)

East London residents warned of surface-to-air missiles sited on their roofs for the Olympics

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:00:30 +0000

Residents of a gated community in east London got Ministry of Defence leaflets through their doors advising them that their roofs might be commandeered for surface-to-air missiles during the London Olympics this summer. The MoD assured them that the missiles on their roof "will only be authorised for active use following specific orders from the highest levels of government in response to a confirmed and extreme security threat". Gosh, the Olympics sure are wonderful.

Journalist Brian Whelan, a resident at the flats, said: "They are going to have a test run next week, putting high velocity missiles on the roof just above our apartment and on the back of it they're stationing police and military in the tower of the building for two months.
"It's a private, gated community... We have an MoD leaflet saying the building is the only suitable place in the area.
"It says there will be 10 officers plus police present 24/7. I'm not sure if they are going to live in the building."

I'm just waiting for some of our local gang-kids to swipe a few of these.

Here's the brochure (PDF).

Charlie Stross points out that a wily terrorist who buzzes east London with an RC airplane and triggers a launch would succeed in tricking the MoD into showering a crowded residential area with blazing supersonic shrapnel. For bonus points, aim the RC plane to get the missile to shower the white-hot shrapnel over a crowded train station.

London 2012: Missiles may be placed at residential flats

US government orders UK carriers to extend no-fly list Brits travelling to non-US destinations, even on flights that don't pass through US airspace

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 06:10:44 +0000

The Independent's Simon Calder reports that the US Department of Homeland Security has ordered air carriers to hand over the personal information of British people travelling to the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada, even for flights that don't fly over US airspace. What's more, they demand the right to order passengers to be yanked from flights right up to boarding time, without explanation. Essentially, they're extraterritorializing the No-Fly list, a list of thousands and thousands of people who are deemed -- for secret reasons -- to be so dangerous that they're not allowed to fly, but not so dangerous that they can be arrested.

Given that this is April 1, I'm slightly suspicious, as this is so blatantly evil that it's hard to believe that UK carriers would capitulate to it. On the other hand, everyone capitulates to the undemocratic absurdities of the American security-industrial apparatus.

Simon Hughes, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, told The Independent: "The concern by the US for its own security is entirely understandable, but it seems to me it's a whole different issue that American wishes should determine the rights and choices of people travelling between two countries neither of which is the US."
...Any passenger who refuses to comply will be denied boarding. Those who do supply details may find their trip could be abruptly cancelled by the Department of Homeland Security, which says it will "take boarding pass determinations up until the time a flight leaves the gate ... If a passenger successfully obtains a boarding pass, his/her name is not on the No Fly list." In other words, travellers cannot find out whether they will be accepted on board until they reach the airport...
The US will have full details of all British visitors to Cuba, including business travellers, which could potentially be used to identify people suspected of breaking America's draconian sanctions against the Castro regime.
Neil Taylor, a tour operator who pioneered tourism to Cuba, said: "Imagine if the Chinese were to ask for such data on all passengers to Taiwan, and similarly if the Saudis were to ask about flights to Israel – would the US government understand?
"One also has to wonder how an American traveller in Europe would react if he were denied boarding on a flight from London to Rome because the German government had not received sufficient data from him."

Planning a trip to Canada or the Caribbean? US Immigration may have other ideas... (via /.)

(Image: Malleus Maleficarum (title page) by Heinrich Kramer, Wikimedia Commons)

Ride out the apocalypse with tinned sammiches

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 23:29:53 +0000

Why would you buy a Candwich-brand sandwich in a can? Helpfully, the site lists three value propositions: "Healthy fast food," "Great for vending," and, of course, "Disaster preparedness."

With an extended shelf-life, Candwich™ is ideal for emergency food storage needs in the event of a natural disaster. Candwich™ tastes great, and because of the special Army formulated recipe, the bread stays as soft and sweet after one-year in storage as it did the day it was made (If you can ever keep them around that long)!

It comes in 24-packs, too.

Candwich - The Go Anywhere Sandwich (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

The (horribly awesome) things that live on Ball's Pyramid

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:58:51 +0000

Ball's Pyramid looks like a place where nothing could survive. The remnants of a long-dead volcano, it sits alone in the South Pacific ... a narrow, rocky half-moon some 1800 feet high.

But Ball's Pyramid isn't devoid of life ...

for years this place had a secret. At 225 feet above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don't know.

What they found is horribly awesome and awesomely horrible and you need to read the whole story, written by NPR's Robert Krulwich.

Via Elizabeth Preston. If you want a hint, she described this as, "a really beautiful story about some really disgusting giant insects."