The greatest Hello Kitty accessory, ever: the light-up Hello Kitty earpick! You know, my greatest eBay regret is losing the bidding for a Tokyo Disneyland ear-wax scraper, but this thing trumps even that for bizarre and cute hygeine accessorydom. LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Drue!)

The Modern Humorist's glossary of alternate definitions for the Potterjargon that today's kooky kids can't stop spouting.

Quidditch: A hole in the ground in which to put your quid.

You-Know-Who: You know who it is. Don't kid yourself. It's Warwick Davis, diminutive star of "Willow" and "Leprechaun"!

Azkaban: Country that borders Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

Hufflepuff: Star of the classic Sid and Marty Krofft show "H.R. Hufflepuff." Still loved by Gen-Xers who assume that the name is a reference to "huffing" inhalants.

LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Jason!)

A new WiFi Standard, 802.11g, was approved yesterday, combining the best of the traditional 802.11b (AKA Airport) and the next-gen 802.11 (which runs five times faster than .11b, but at a different radio-frequency, which means that interoperation requires two different radios tuned to the different frequencies). .11f runs at the same speed at .11a, but in the same band as .11b, and that's great news -- mostly. The only catch is that .11b/f's frequency, 2.4GHz, is also used by BlueTooth devices and some cordless phones, which creates lots of opportunities for radio-frequency interference that can toast your wireless network. Here's Slashdot's rollicking coverage of the news.LinkDiscuss

Growing up in Toronto, my friends and I used to joke that pissing in the Don River actually improved the overall quality of that polluted course. In a similar vein, it turns out that shelling Kandahar actually increases its net worth, so much so that resourceful entrepreneurial scrap-dealers are building faux bunkers with battery-powered lamps to attract US bombs so that they can salvage the shells and re-sell them.

Naimattullah narrates an incident which aptly illustrates how desperation can drive one to desperate measures. A villager from the Dahnd area of Kandahar, according to Naimattullah, had only few thousand afghanis to feed his wife and five children.

"But, instead of buying food, he invested in a small motorcycle battery, a few metres of electrical wire and a bulb. Then he lit the bulb on a hill near Chell Zeena at night and waited for the U.S. bombing, but nothing happened."

The next evening, the intrepid villager revisited the site. "This time, he tied up a dog near the site to show the Americans some signs of life," the Taliban official said. And he finally succeeded in his mission - to make the Americans direct their bombs more accurately, this time at his lone shining light.

"The next morning, he was several times richer than two days ago," the official claimed.

LinkDiscuss (via Robot Wisdom)

BOING: Belligerent, Obtuse Interposer, Nefarious for Greed. The automated acronym expander ("The Bile Machine") generates random, insulting things that any 2-7 letter word can stand for.LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Dave!)

Benjamin Rosenbaum, the talented science fiction writer responsible for "The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale," is doing a monthly series of vignettes describing fantastic stories on StrangeHorizons, an online sf magazine. Wonderful stuff.

The Censors' Building is in an olive grove gone wild (olive oil is no longer among the principal products of Bellur), and during their afternoon break and their evening break the censors wander the groves, picking and nibbling on the bitter olives, searching for inspiration. Censorship in Bellur is an art, it is the Queen of the Arts. Other cities celebrate their poets or sculptors, offer the world their playwrights and clowns; Bellur, its censors. The censors of Bellur can censor the twentieth part of the thickness of one serif of the letter h in 10-point Garamond type, and alter the meaning of a poem entirely; they can censor four thousand pages of a four thousand and fifty page novel, and leave its meaning intact. But this is not the extent of their art; these are mere parlor tricks, mere editorishness. Censorship is a dance with history; by censoring the right word at the right historical moment, the gifted censor can unleash or throttle a revolution.

LinkDiscuss

Incredible archive of television news coverage on 9/11.Link Discuss

Chris Ware, creator of the Acme Comic Novelty Library comic book series, is also an antique-style toy maker. He usually includes a cardboard cut-out toy in each issue of his comic book. I've always wondered what the toys would look like if they were assembled, but I didn't want to cut my comics up. I'm glad somebody else cut their comics up to make this gallery of assembled Acme Novelty Toys.Link Discuss

A preeminent neuroscientist, a Fulbright scholar, was removed from an Alaska Airlines flight on Sunday. An anonymous passenger reported that he was "acting strangely" (he was reviewing a complex scientific paper he was to deliver at a scientific symposium). The strangest thing about him, of course, is that he is Greek, olive-skinned, and easily mistaken for an Arab by people who are not ever going to receive a Fulbright scholarship. The scientist was not given the opportunity to explain himself, he was not searched. No one attempted to assess the notional risk he presented to the flight. He was simply removed, with no appeal. The guy flies Alaska fifty times a year in a good year, but that didn't make a difference either. Here's an idea: Let's invite every hair-trigger, hysterical jackass who doesn't feel safe flying with nonwhites to take the goddamned train and leave the skies open for the rest of us.LinkDiscuss (via MeFi)

A new censorware app lets parents virtually delete certain scenes from DVDs to protect their kiddies from violence, nudity, cussin' and product-placement.LinkDiscuss (via On Lisa Rein's Radar)

The Homies -- tiny LA Chicano gangsta figurines sold in gumball machines -- are drawing fire from the LAPD, who want their sale discontinued on the grounds tha they provide a poor role model for Hispanic children.

My favorite Homie is rapping into a black microphone. His name is Ice, and he looks a bit like Kid Frost, whose hit song "La Raza" introduced Mexican American pride to the hiphop world in the early '90s. Ice likes to let his pants sag, so that the top part of his boxer shorts is visible, and he has a pager just above the right butt pocket. The next Homie I adore is the blind Homie--or at least I think he is blind. He wears dark sunglasses that hide his eyes, and a white, long-sleeved shirt that's buttoned all the way up to his neck and runs down to his knees. The blind Homie holds a brown cane with ringless fingers, and has a mustache that looks like two leeches sucking the life out of his nostrils.

LinkDiscuss (via Memepool)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone streaming audiobook on Salon today.LinkDiscuss

Anarchist Santa impersonators around the world take to the streets, stage mock lynchings of one another, stagger drunkenly through shopping malls, aggressively panhandle gawkers. Just a little holiday cheer, folks! Link Discuss (Thanks, Evan!)

Don't ship your computers UPS! A poor geek shipped his boxen from Canada to the US and they arrived in bits and pieces. UPS Canada blames UPS USA and vice-versa and neither will reimburse him for a some pretty nasty and gratiuitous damage. He gets his revenge, tho' -- posting his story to Slashdot is sure to get someone's attention at UPS. LinkDiscuss (via /.)

Can you tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans? Take the test. I scored a 9. Average is 7. Link Discuss

Great Usenet math and candy rant:

Hershey Bar, Now With Natural Logarithms!

.02 oz. Fun Damentalparticle Size Hershey Bar
.05 oz. Fun Size Hershey Bar
.14 oz. Junior Size Hershey Bar
.37 oz. Mini Hershey Bar
1.0 oz. Regular Hershey Bar
2.7 oz. Hungry-Man Hershey Bar
7.4 oz. Giant Size Hershey Bar
20 oz. Ultimate Hershey Bar
55 oz. Nuclear Evil Tooper BOOM! Size Hershey Bar

Also try new Twinkies with golden ratio!

In other mathematical candy news, Google.com has purchased the company thatmakes the 100 Grand bar and has changed its name to the Femto-Google bar.

LinkDiscuss (via Robot Wisdom)

I've been running the breveWalker OS X screensaver for a couple months now. breveWalker is a four-legged critter that uses genetic algorithms to learn how to walk through exploiting your idle CPU cycles. Now 'Walker's got a family: the breveSwarm, a screensaver that simulates flocking behavior. Too cool. Link Discuss (Thanks, Rael!)

Email from beyond the grave: Queue up your last words, address 'em, and wait. Once you croak, the service spams your loved ones with your pithy commentary. Link Discuss (Thanks, Joey!)

Punk Sims and punk Sim decor! Posters, records, S&M gear and guitar amps!LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Alex!)

Famous sideshow perfomer Melvin "The Human Blockhead" Burkhart died last week at the age of 94.

"He was the Anatomical Wonder who could breathe with one lung at a time, the Two-Faced Man who could frown with half his face and smile with the other, and the Rubber-Necked Man. He swallowed swords, threw knives and gobbled fire. He said he was a freak and was proud of that too."

Link Discuss

The Teletubbies shooting gallery. This is so wrong, but it feels so right.LinkDiscuss (via On Lisa Rein's Radar)

The entire film Star Wars, adapted for ASCIImation -- this time, without any crazy Java applets. Just telnet to towel.blinkenlights.nl and watch in amazement.Discuss (Thanks, monkbryson!)

Charming first-person account of the hunt for the perfect Godzilla toy.

Then my foot hit a cardboard box down on the floor, one that I hadnâ??t previously noticed. I looked down to see that it was filled to overflowing with cheap plastic Godzillas. And not just Godzillas, either! Mothras and Baragons and King Ghidorahs as well! Then I heard another voice. A voice that wasnâ??t in my head this time.

"Mommy! Mommy! Look! Godzillas!"

Just as I was bending down toward the box (a slow and laborious process, mind you), my passage was blocked by this little blonde girl, who savagely commandeered the box of affordable Godzilla merchandise.

I made a sound deep in my throat, a sound of panic and hatred, half-growl and half-whine, as she started pulling things out of the box and announcing them to her very patient mother.

LinkDiscuss (via Robot Wisdom)

A paeon to spam:

The sheer number of people out there trying to sell me ink cartridges, chain letters and bogus university degrees -- on an hourly basis -- is starting to give me a kind of strange high. Remember those books about prosperity thinking? How the world is overflowing with digitally encoded cash, brilliant ideas, truckloads of freshly baked bread, sports bags filled with emeralds, whatever? Well, what could give a better sense of abundance and vastness and plenitude than masses of desperate, corny sales pitches delivered right to the desktop? He has only to log on and his in box shall be filled until it brimmeth over.

Link Discuss

Normally, kit rockets are things you launch while standing safely to one side. Now, a company has announced a hobbyist's kit jetplane that will actually launch you into orbit.

"Currently the price of getting a satellite into orbit is at least $12 million," said DeLong. "We think we could cut the price to about half a million dollars," he added.

XCOR's supersonic craft might look somewhat similar to the Concorde airliner with a wing form like a Mig-15 or Mig-21. The engine would be a larger version of the one on the EZ-Rocket, said DeLong.

The plane could potentially be ready within two years and ready for operation in three.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

No good deed goes unpunished. A Canadian lumber company's charitable donation of five bits of wood is construed as dumping by the US Commerce company, which levies a $10 million fine against the giver.

A gift to charity of five pieces of lumber is going to cost Slocan Forest Products more than $10 million in anti-dumping duties after U.S. investigators used the lumber as evidence the Richmond-based company is dumping into the American market.

The U.S. commerce department made an error by placing a value on the donation and then refused to correct it, slapping a 19.2-per-cent anti-dumping duty on Slocan last week, company president Jim Shepherd charged Thursday.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Michael!)

Memes.org: Attempting to track and consolidate every meme in popular culture. Cool site, miserable popup ad when you close the window. Turn off Javascript first!LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Chris!)

Great gallery of pictures taken with a teeny weeny Casio WristCam, a camera in a watch. Like the eyemodule and the PenCam, the low shooting angle and the contrasty (almost PixelCamesque) B&W imaging gives these shots a marvellous, dramatic flair.LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Bob!)

Artists file a brief in support of Napster! The RIAA's members are suing Napster on the grounds that Napster violated their copyrights when the service allowed MP3s of popular music files to circulate. The artists in question are signed to the labels whose members make up the RIAA, and they contend that the copyrights to their music doesn't belong to the labels, but to the artists themselves, and the artists don't mind if their stuff circulates online.LinkDiscuss

Goodbye polygraphs, hello brainscans!

Unlike conventional polygraphs, which assume that liars are anxious and that such anxiety causes measurable changes in skin and blood pressure, brain scans offer even coldblooded liars little opportunity to cheat because people cannot mask the mental processes responsible for lying.

Link Discuss

Here's the full text of Hilary "RIAA" Rosen's talk at the O'Reilly P2P conference, in which she told us that P2P needed to be reigned in, not just to save the poor artists whose music is being stolen -- that being uppermost on the RIAA's list of priorities, natch -- but also to keep terrorists and chickenhawks from doing their dirties. Let's see, Hil, P2P is about theft, terrorism and tot-fondling; any other fearmongering quarter-truths missing from your list? Is P2P Communism?

Increasing security concerns and even national security concerns at this delicate time. Peer-to-peer will get attention because of the soldier risk in denial of service attacks, the spread of viruses that endanger national computer network infrastructure and other things of current concern.

The fact that it is also used as a transmitter of child pornography has not gone unnoticed by many federal and law enforcement authorities.

LinkDiscuss (via On Lisa Rein's Radar)

Scientology Fan Fiction! It's a sick old world, all right. Link Discuss (via Electrolite)

Here are Meg's slides from her "Weblogs as P2P Journalism" talk at last week's O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer conference. Good stuff, great talk!LinkDiscuss

"Folky Song Funny Note" is one of the creepiest, coolest and stickiest novelty songs I've ever heard. It's the final track on Vinnick Sheppard Harte's first disc, "And They All Rolled Over..." and it will indeed make the hair on your neck stand up, straight up. Here's the track itself, ripped and posted with the artists' permission. Link Discuss

This week's Guestbar editor is Dan Moniz, boy wonder. Dan's young enough to make me feel old (and I'm just a punk kid myself), and is blindingly smart. He's a security d00d, a self-taught math genius, and an unapologetic Rush fanatic. Discuss

Jason Salisbury of Atom Grid made a little Boing Boing icon that shows up in your browser menu when you select it as one of your favorites. Thanks Jason! Here's where you can find out how to do it for your own site. Link Discuss

Stefan sez: Fox's Saturday Morning lineup includes something mighty peculiar: A superhero spoof called Ripping Friends.

There have been plenty of those through the years, but this one is masterminded by John Kricfalusi, the brilliant but notoriously difficult animator who created Ren & Stimpy. Last I'd heard had been banished to web animation land by freaked-out producers. It appears he's returned . . .

The Ripping Friends are a team of superheroes. Their sidekick is Kricfalusi's Jimmy the Idiot Boy. (No sign of George Liquor: American yet.) I caught a couple of episodes. It's mightily perverse. I can't imagine how they got this one on the air. This morning's adventure pitted the Ripping Friends against a shrimpy villain with the power to emit hideously stinky farts. And they call them farts, almost certainly a first for Saturday morning. Link Discuss

This is more along the lines of what I was hoping Apple had in store for us instead of the iPod. The Geode Origami, National Semiconductor's concept PDA, combines eights handheld gadgets: digital camera, video camcorder, smartphone, MP3 audio player, PDA, Internet access, Internet picture frame, email device, and video conferencing terminal. Link Discuss

HyberBee, a distributed search engine that uses SETI@home-style distributed computing to crawl the Web, is set to launch January 1, 2002. Link Discuss

The Crazed Twins story below is a hoax. Dammit. Link Discuss

Crazed identical twins -- one of them's a surgeon -- realize that there's no rejection risks associated with transplanting bits of their bodies from twin to twin, and so they do. No word on what their mom thinks.

BME: The arm is amazing, but I've got to admit that this "alien finger" thing you've done is really something. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's actually quite disconcerting!

RYAN: Yeah, we're very proud of it. When people see the arm, they think it was an accident -- transplants like this do get done every once in a while for medical reasons. The finger though, that's art. We challenge anyone to take body art to a higher level.

BME: How did you pull this one off?

DAVE: First we removed the centre joint of my finger, along with the skin and just over an inch of overhanging tendon. Then we split Ryan's finger at the end of the first joint. It was relatively easy to insert the extra joint, especially since we had so much extra tendon to play with. The amazing thing is that Ryan actually has feeling in the end of that finger now -- the nerves were compatible!

LinkDiscuss (via MeFi)

The alarming story of MathWorld: originally the pet-project of a math-obsessed high-school student, the site grew to be one of the definitive resources for math online. By the time the author was in college, he had a book deal to publish a math encyclopedia based on the site. Almost immediately, it became apparent that his publisher thought that now that the material was available in book form, it should come down off the Web. The author got a job with a research institute and moved the site from his school's server to his employer, and before he knew it, his publisher had sued him for copyright violation. Now, after a long hiatus, the site is back online.

Another important consequence is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the web site. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the web site unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form. This form is endorsed by neither Wolfram Research nor myself, but, as part of the settlement agreement, we are required to ask contributors to sign it. Since our goal is and always has been to provide your contributions online to the worldwide math community, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or imposition this CRC-mandated form may cause you.

LinkDiscuss (Thanks, JIMwich!

From the lastest ish of Ansible, a science fiction zine:

China Mieville has the inside story: `My supervisor, an expert in the Middle East, told me about a rumour circulating about the name of Bin Laden's network. The term "Al-Qaeda" seems to have no political precedent in Arabic, and has therefore been something of a conundrum to the experts, until someone pointed out that a very popular book in the Arab world, Arabs apparently being big readers of translated sf, is Asimov's Foundation, the title of which is translated as "Al-Qaeda". Unlikely as it sounds, this is the only theory anyone can come up with.'

Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

The Iranian is a newspaper full of irreverance and alternative views on Islam and politics.

This revolution is not about Reza Pahlavi or anybody else. It is not about monarchy or communism. We are sick of these labels and these discussions about individuals (which were prevalent in your generation's time). It is about something that the previous revolution neglected: DEMOCRACY. Government of the people, for the people, by the people. It is about inclusion, not exclusion.

Link)Discuss (via Electrolite)

Read about the Current Situation through Middle Eastern news sources: the Middle East Media and Research Institute is "an independent, non-profit organization providing translations of the Arabic and Farsi media and original analysis and research on developments in the Middle East." LinkDiscuss (via Electrolite)

Al Gore actually won the election. Yawn.LinkDiscuss

Sue Townsend is continuing Adrian Mole's adventures in her topical Guardian column -- Adrian Mole is the fictional character whose fantastic "secret diaries" are UK classics and my personal angst bible.

Dear Mr Mole,

In this time of national crises, it is incumbent on us all to support our government. During a senior pupils debate, chaired by myself, your son Glenn succeeded in undermining the morale of teachers and pupils alike by his passionate denunciation of the bombing of Afghanistan. He also called our great leader, Mr Blair, 'a leading Twat'. I have therefore excluded him from the school premises for the duration of the war.

I hope to God (or Allah) that the war will be over by Christmas. I can't have Glenn hanging around the house all day. It is imperative that I finish my post-twin towers novel quickly. The book (as yet no publisher) must be ready for publication in the spring.

Glenn protested his innocence, saying, "I didn't say Tony Blair was a leading twat. I said he was leading TWAT (The War Against Terrorism)."

LinkDiscuss (via LinkMachineGo)

Alleged -- and very funny -- resignation letter from a sysadmin at an educational institution to his supervisor.

* I have all the passwords to every account on the system and I know every password you have used for the last five years. If you decide to get cute, I am going to publish your "favorites list", which I conveniently saved when you made me "back up" your useless files. I do believe that terms like "Lolita" are not usually viewed favourably by the administrators.

* When you borrowed the digital camera to "take pictures of your mother's birthday", you neglected to mention that you were going to take pictures of yourself in the mirror nude. Then you forgot to erase them, like the techno-moron you really are. Suffice to say, I have never seen such odd acts with a ketchup bottle, but I assure you that those have been copied and kept in a safe place, pending the authoring of a glowing letter of recommendation (try to use the spell check please: I hate having to correct your mistakes).

LinkDiscuss (via LinkMachineGo)

David Pogue, my favorite Mac columnist, has written a book on OS X for O'Reilly, OS X: The Missing Manual. Pogue is consistently funny, and has a clear, concise prose-style as well as Mac chops to spare. This is on my must-read list -- if you've got an OS X box (or plan on getting one), it should be on yours, too.LinkDiscuss (via Meerkat)

Apple's new iPod has more computational punch than a Palm PDA, and runs an OS called Pixo that's been designed for PDAs and smart phones. Could Apple be laying the ground for a souped-up PDA disguised as a kickass digital Walkman? Or will smart Pixo haxors start writing organizer apps for their iPods?

Equipped with 2 ARM processors, the iPod packs more punch than you'd expect it to -- and it runs an OS developed by a company called Pixo, a company founded by a once "key member" of the Newton team. Their OS is intended for cell phones and other embedded devices

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

WayTooPersonal.com: A mate-seeking woman reposts the weirdest, grossest and worst responses to her Internet personal ad.

My crew call me KingPin. I am a 5'11" 200lb, 10'&thick, healthy, fit, Italian Scorpio from NYC. I am a 40 year old who looks 30, has a light complexion, hazel eyes and a full head of black/silver hair. By day a successful shirt and tie businessman, by night a member of a fameous national motorcycle club, actor and model currently in a highly successful HBO series. I seek someone that shares the same fearless sence of adventure and excitement that I do. You must have great legs, big natural tits, a muffin shaped ass and love all kinds of sex. And most of all look great on the back of a big black and chrome custom Harley Davidson. My two major faults are generosity and insecurity so I need my ego stroked constantly. I don't like movies, television, sports or any other substitutes for having a real life. Do you think you could play this part?KP

LinkDiscuss(Thanks, Patrick!)

Welcome to the woo-woo war: The CIA has renewed their interest in tactical ESP -- "Remote Viewing" in defensespeak.

Prudence Calabrese, whose Transdimensional Systems employs 14 remote viewers, confirmed that the FBI had asked the company to predict likely targets of future terrorist attacks.

"Our reports suggest a sports stadium could be a likely target," she said.

The FBI and CIA refused to comment but confirmed investigators have been told to "think out of the box".

Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

Gavin Grant, co-publisher of the amazing sf zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, reviews Geoff Landis's new short-story collection, Impact Parameter and Other Quantum Realities. Geoff's an amazing writer and a kickass science-dude, a bona-fide NASA scientist who can (and does) point to the spot on a HotWheels miniature Mars Pathfinder that he's resposible for designing. His short stories have won oodles of Hugos and Hugo noms, each more deserving than the last. It's great to see that SF small-presses are bringing back the short-story collection.LinkDiscuss

Seeing pretty female faces generates brain-reward in het men:

When men in the study were shown pictures of various faces, only the female faces deemed beautiful triggered activity in brain regions previously associated with food, drugs and money...

LinkDiscuss (via MeFi)

Eulogy for the Sony Metreon, a googleplex in downtown San Francisco with all the zest and originality of a Taco Bell Gordita^TM:

And that's the problem with Metreon. "A celebration of urban life and vitality" is fine when the competition is a stale shopping center or a hollowed-out downtown. But for all of San Francisco's rough edges, make no mistake: This is still a city that knows how to put on a show. "Authentic urban districts offer creativity and surprise . . . the place is the major attraction, the crowds, the people-watching," Musbach says. "If you have the real experience at hand, why pay

LinkDiscuss (via EvHead)

Friends Reunited -- a website where British schoolchums to find each other post-graduation and reminisce about the Old Tie -- is in danger of being shut down by the British Teachers' Unions. The teachers are concerned that the gossip areas of the site contain less-than-pleasant memories from their former students, who are trading notes about which teachers were chickenhawks and which ones were drunks, and which were both. The UK -- and indeed, the Commonwealth -- has pretty strict libel and slander laws, far stricter than in the US. I think the chances are good the teachers will get their way.LinkDiscuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

Basta is one of my favorite music labels. Based in Amsterdam, they've reissued a lot of Raymond Scott's work, from his early big band songs (many of which were used in Warner Brothers cartoons) to his mindblowing 1950s and 1960s pre-Moog electronic music. Their CD covers are illustrated by the likes of Robert Crumb and Chris Ware.

Doug Rushkoff let me know about Basta's release, The Langley Schools Music Project: "INNOCENCE AND DESPAIR" and the clips are great. Check it out.

The Langley Schools Music Project is a 60-voice chorus of rural school children from western Canada, untrained but captivated by melodic magic, singing tunes by the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, The Bay City Rollers, and others. The students accompany themselves with the shimmering gamelan chimes of Orff percussion, and elemental rock trimmings arranged by their itinerant music teacher, Hans Fenger. These 1976-77 recordings, captured on a 2-track tape deck in a school gymnasium, weren't staged to achieve money or fame, to sell albums or land a record contract. These kids played music because they loved it. Innocent, flawed and bittersweet, guided by Fenger's unsuspecting genius, these recordings deserve to be heard and preserved. They brim with charm and youthful elan, sparked by flashes of lo-fi Spectorian majesty and Pet Sounds subtlety. Call it folk art, outsider, or campfire rock -- the labels don't matter. These are gorgeous, heavenly artifacts. Period.

Link Discuss

Conceptual art comes to eBay:

Please note that according to the Ebay User Agreement, section 7, Access and Interference:

Much of the information on our site is updated on a real time basis and is proprietary or is licensed to eBay by our users or third parties. You agree that you will not copy, reproduce, alter, modify, create derivative works, or publicly display any content (except for Your Information) from our website without the prior expressed written permission of eBay or the appropriate third party.

Therefore, the artist is neither offering this listing nor any derivative work nor any of the content from this nor any other website. You are bidding strictly on the auction. However, the artist has personally overseen and approved of the composition of this listing. The artist will print and sign this listing and send it to you to confirm that he has relinquished any claim of ownership over this transaction.

This is a very rare piece and this is the first time it has been made available on Ebay. This is a limited edition of one. The artist affirms that any future transactions taking place on Ebay for works or items sold by the artist will not be sold and will have, in fact, no owner.

This is a no reserve sale. Winning bidder will pay by check, money order or Paypal within 10 days of auction close. The item will not be shipped because it is conceptual. The signed, printed copy of this listing will be sent to the winning bidder at the seller's expense. Please email with any questions prior to bidding.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jason!)

The Wildlist is a nonprofit organization where malware experts converge to report and discuss new virii, worms, and trojans discovered in the wild. Discuss