Pop culture humorist Charles Phoenix (previously) has been busy this year. He's written a book:

Holiday Jubilee is loaded with original eye-popping “test kitchen” recipes and over 500 vintage images, serving up an intoxicating, action-packed extravaganza of America’s favorite seasonal traditions past, present, and future. Your imagination will be inspired and your spirit will soar!

And he's created this hilarious and kitschy "Raw" Turkey Tiki Meatloaf Mug ($80). This "meatloaf pan-shaped Moai" is inspired by his Tiki Turkey Dinner, an alt-Thanksgiving recipe found in the book.

Hey! Charles will be at Soap Plant WACKO in Los Angeles this Sunday, September 15, signing that new coffee table book of his from 2 to 4 p.m. This line alone, from the event page, makes me want to hop down to LA this weekend: "LIFE ALTERING SNACK and ARTIFICIALLY COLORED AND FLAVORED REFRESHMENTS will be served." Read the rest

For the first time ever, a collection of original paintings by the late TV painter Bob Ross will be exhibited on the east coast. "Happy Accidents" opens September 10 and runs through Oct. 15 at the Franklin Park Performing and Visual Arts Center in Purcellville, Virginia (which is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Bob Ross headquarters in Herndon, Virginia).

Hyperallergic:

"...The exhibition will feature 24 original Ross paintings created on The Joy of Painting, the largest collection of Ross paintings to ever be displayed at a gallery. It will also be the first Bob Ross exhibition on the East Coast...

This past March, following a torrent of requests from Bob Ross fans, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art announced that it’s including a collection of the artist’s paintings, along with other items from The Joy of Painting (including the converted stepladder he used as an easel), in its permanent collection. Alas, the Smithsonian later said it had no plans to exhibit the new acquisitions. In April, Ross made his first museum debut when DePaul Art Museum in Chicago included four of his paintings in the exhibition New Age, New Age: Strategies for Survival...

Along with the unprecedented display of Ross’s paintings, Happy Accidents will also feature three workshops with Bob Ross-certified instructor Sandra Hill."

If you can't make it to the show and want to see the entire The Joy of Painting collection, go check out all six seasons of his art at TwoInchBrush. Read the rest

If you've ever wanted to put on a one person show, and you're in or around San Francisco next weekend, Jane Morris' workshop is the one for you! Aside from being talented, intelligent, and one of the most delightful people to work with that you'll ever meet, she also helps folks put up amazing shows! Read the rest

This Thursday, August 27th, at the PianoFight theater in San Francisco, Imran G and Red Scott present their new monthly comedy show #PhotobombSF, a one-of-a-kind show that asks comedians to answer for their their own Instagram, Facebook, and snapchat photos. Read the rest

Hugh writes, "The whisper is that Banksy is involved in the staging of some sort of pop-up show/exhibition/thing called Dismaland -- apparently a swipe at Disneyland. Read the rest

Angelenos! On Tuesday, July 28th at 8pm 2 Headed Dog takes the stage! Their surreal, irreverent sketch and improvised comedy are a Boing Boing favorite!

Jim Turner, Mark Fite, Dave "Gruber" Allen, and Craig Anton are offensive, hilarious, and more than often brilliant! Their musical guest this month will be the fantastically talented Renee Albert, and I see that one of my favorite all-time improvisational actors Ken Campbell will also be joining them!

Mark and Jim will be joining us at Boing Boing's Weekend of Wonder in September.

Join me at the Steve Allen Theater, next week. You'll laugh your ass off.

2 Headed Dog

4773 Hollywood Blvd

LA CA 90027

(plenty of free parking in back)

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

8:00pm

$12

See Jim Turner and Mark Fite, incredible improvisational actors, at the Weekend of Wonder, running Sept. 18-20. A weekend of workshops, tech demons and wild performances, there'll be plenty of fun surprises! Read the rest

Tuesday in LA, the place to be is at Meltdown Comics. Pittsburgh-based cartoonist Ed Piskor has pop and locked, Heavy D Shaked and prepped his way over to come out and give you one hell of a party along with the crew at Meltdown. A special guest DJ will be spinning the vintage hits from 4-6pm and at 5pm in the NerdMelt Showroom you’ll find Boing Boing founder’s Mark Frauenfelder in conversation with Piskor about the Hip Hop Family Tree series, his Rob Leifeld mini-comic and much much more.

Last night, the PBS show Frontline aired a new documentary about antibiotic resistance and the growing risks we all face from the increasingly untreatable bacteria that live in both hospitals and our communities. Starting at noon Eastern/11:00 Central, I'll be moderating a live web chat with the documentary's producers and infectious disease expert Dr. Sean Elliot. We'll be talking about the film, but we'll also be taking your questions and trying to add some context to the fear. We know antibiotic resistance is a big problem. So what can we actually do about it?

You can follow along with the chat and submit questions here: Read the rest

I'm going to be hosting a Q&A on Wednesday with Curtis White, essayist, novelist, and professional curmudgeon. He's got a new book out called "The Science Delusion", which ties together critiques of Richard Dawkins and The New Atheism with critiques of pop-neuroscience like Jonah Lehrer's work. If you're going to be in Minneapolis, you should join us — it should be an interesting conversation. The event starts at 7:00 pm at Magers and Quinn Booksellers. Read the rest

This is it, folks. Today at 6PM the SFMOMA closes to begin its three year long expansion. It'll be reborn sometime in 2016 clad in shining armor, engulfing the rest of its current city block. Get in your last run through the current exhibits, explore a new corner of the building before it changes.

Join me and David at the museum at 5:30 for the farewell procession. Local artist Desiree Holman is curating the procession, which recasts the Young American Patriots fife and drum core and Dance Sanctuary dancers as docents for the future. You're encouraged to come in your best future time traveler costume, and Teri Sage from TS I Love You Hats will be helping everyone make awesome tin foil future hats as well.

This will be my 56th visit to the museum. For the last year and a half I've been coming almost every week, writing software, meeting friends and making new ones on the rooftop sculpture garden. It's been a great pleasure to learn so much about art, people and myself. While it's painful to have to be away for so long, I have great faith that the museum's future will be spectacular. Come celebrate that with us.

SFMOMA Countdown Celebration: May 30 - June 2 RSVP on Facebook Read the rest

I'm late getting to this (my own fault, I missed an important email), but We: Robot, the Robotics and the Law Conference at Stanford Law School is still accepting papers until Jan 18. Last year's event was apparently smashing, and this year's CFP is quite enticing:

The following list is by no means exhaustive, but rather meant as an elaboration on conference themes:

* Legal and policy responses to likely effects of robotics on manufacturing or the environment* Perspectives on the interplay between legal frameworks and robotic software and hardware* Intellectual property issues raised by collaboration within robotics (or with robots)* Perspectives on collaboration between legal and technical communities* Tort law issues, including product liability, professional malpractice, and the calculation of damages* Administrative law issues, including FDA or FAA approval* Privacy law and privacy enhancing technologies* Comparative/international perspectives on robotics law* Issues of legal and economic policy, including tax, employment, and corporate governance

In addition to scholarly papers, we invite proposals for demos of cutting-edge commercial applications of robotics or recent technical research that speaks one way or another to the immediate commercial prospects of robots.

Call For Papers: Robotics and the Law Conference at Stanford Law School Read the rest

The cost of genome sequencing is starting to sink into the affordable range. (In comparison to its previous cost. We're talking "within reach" the same way Design Within Reach uses the phrase.)

Companies are starting to claim that a $1000 personal genome sequence is on the horizon. But what does that mean for you? Should you save up and get one? Can it really tell you anything meaningful at all? Who is going to sift through all the information your genome represents — and how will they do it?

Tonight, starting at 7:00 Eastern, Science Online New York City is hosting a round-table to discuss these issues, especially the problems associated with collecting, making sense of, and protecting a massive new stream of personal data. The live event is sold out, but you can watch whole thing streaming online.

Panelists: Ronald Crystal, the Chairman of the Department of Genetic Medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, who has had his genome sequenced and analyzed it himself. Virginia Hughes, a freelance author who has written about her experience with the 23andMe genotyping service. Manish Ponda of Rockefeller University, who has experimented with other -omic type analyses.

SoNYC's livestream feed

Via Lou Woodley

Read the rest

Wikipedia's entries on women in the sciences are lacking. The Royal Society has an extensive collection of original sources documenting the work of women in the sciences. On October 19, the nail will meet the hammer in the form of a group Edit-a-Thon and workshop. The event is especially aimed at fledgling Wiki editors, who might be intimidated by the job of editing the Internet's primary source of basic information. Representatives from Wikimedia UK will be on hand to show you how the site works and answer questions. They're going to pick the entries that need improving. Participants will get access to the Royal Society archives and will work together to make Wikipedia better. What a cool program! More museums should totally do this! (Via Ed Yong) Read the rest

Isabel sez,

We've created a conference that brings together some of the most cutting edge artists and curators working in new media and software art today...now we just need people to buy the conference tickets and attend. We're using Kickstarter for that, and the conference is October 16th at a major museum in New York City.

If you have a career at an interactive marketing or advertising agency, publisher, or software company, this is where you'll find the people making the inspiring work that you'll be referencing for the year to come. If you're in the gallery space, a museum curator or an art buyer, we hope you will come be blown away by the amazing new work that's exploding into the contemporary art space. Even if you're just personally interested in art that's made using a technological process, you can still support the cause (and get a mesmerizing t-shirt).

The LISA Conference: Leaders in Software and Art Read the rest

Charlie Stross and I are doing a text and voice chat with Internet Evolution today at 11AM Eastern, in celebration of our forthcoming novel Rapture of the Nerds. Hope to see you there!

Look out! The team of Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow has produced upcoming science fiction novel Rapture of the Nerds, due out in September 2012, dealing with a disturbing future in which "metaconsciousness" roams the solar system. Both authors join us to discuss their work and the future of the Internet.

Cory Doctorow is a coeditor of Boing Boing and a columnist for multiple publications including the Guardian, Locus, and Publishers Weekly. He was named one of the Web’s 25 influencers by Forbes magazine and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. His award-winning novel, Little Brother, was a New York Times bestseller. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.

Charles Stross, author of several major novels of SF and fantasy, including Singularity Sky, Accelerando, Halting State, and Rule 34, is widely hailed as one of the most original voices in modern SF. His short fiction has won multiple Hugo and Locus awards. He lives in Edinburgh.

We've also got a meatspace mini-tour lined up in September, with stops in Brookline, MA; Brooklyn, NY; Lexington, KY and Rochester, NY.

Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross Read the rest

Sue sez, "If the LibraryCamp Crowdfunder pitch reaches its target, library workers from across the UK be heading to Birmingham in October to attend LibraryCamp 2012 (think Barcamp). The volunteer organisers decided to set up their own DIY conference last year because traditional conferences were too expensive and often staff on the frontline weren't allowed to go. But Library camp is different - it's an unconference for a start, so anyone can lead a workshop or facilitate a session. It's also free to attend and you don't have to be a librarian or even work in a library, you just need to be passionate about the future of libraries."

Library Camp brings together people who are interested in modernising and transforming libraries for one day of intensive debate, knowledge sharing and ideas. It's an unconference so anyone can lead a workshop or facilitate a session and it's free to attend. You don't have to be a librarian or even work in a library, you just need to be passionate about the future of libraries. This year the unconference will be back in Birmingham in October and we want to invite 200 people so we need to raise £1000 to pay for a venue and feed the campers!

Library Camp 2012

(Thanks, Sue!) Read the rest

George writes,

ToorCamp, the American Hacker Camp, is back again this summer! Although there is no missile silo this time, the weather/environment should be a lot more pleasant on the beach in Washington state. The 5-day (August 8-12) open-air event is open to all hackers, makers, breakers, and shakers to build projects, exchange ideas with the brightest technology folk from around the world, toast a few marshmallows, and just geek out amongst the trees.

There are on-going talks, workshops (including things like hardware hacking, welding, penetration testing, brewing and others), contests, and art projects. [PRO-TIP: We're still accepting submissions if you have something you'd like to present.] And of course, there is plenty of outdoors -- stunning scenery, whale watching, surfing, birding, etc. The camp itself has everything you need: power, internet, food and fun.

We are encouraging attendees to set up a campsite with their friends/maker-space/group, and we'd like to offer all Boing Boing readers a discount code ('bboingrocks!' good until July 1st) for an Happy Mutants Campsite!

Bring a tent, make some friends, and learn a few things. Look forward to seeing everybody there!