A reminder of my upcoming Austin signing, this Sunday:

I will be signing copies of Eastern Standard Tribe Austin at the SXSW conference, immediately following the Bloggie Award Ceremony on the trade-floor.

March 15, 1:30PM, at the book signing area of the SXSW Interactive Festival Trade Show & Exhibition on the third floor of the Austin Convention Center.

If you're not a registered attendee at SXSW, you can get a free trade-floor pass here.

Link

iGod: an iPod ad parody that speaks to the Mel Gibson Vanity Project zeitgeist. Link (Thanks, bturner!)

Howard Lovy's NanoBot alerts us to the death of John-Henry Williams, son of baseball great Ted Williams who was put in a cryogenic deep freeze in 2002. Apparently, John-Henry and his sister signed a pact with their father declaring their desire to be frozen. No word though on whether John-Henry went through with it. Link
Update: bb reader Bryan Maloney points us to an ESPN.com article that says: "The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, citing family sources, reported John Henry Williams' remains were delivered to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., where his famous father's body has been stored since his death."

A reader writes, "Stephen VanDyke analyzes how news travels on the Internet. He uses a nifty graphic that resembles a kabbalah diagram. (In the process of doing this, VanDyke's post becomes a textbook example of how news travels." Link

Oh, how I love this. There's an actual tribe on Tribe.net called "Anti-Two-Buck-Chuck," for people who are sick of other people bringing the infamous brand of dollar-ninety-nine wine from Trader Joe's to parties and potlucks and whatnot. For the record, If I invite you to my house for a party, and the invitation says BYOB, which it wouldn't, but I'm just saying, I'd rather that you bring a brown bag of fo'teez than Charles Shaw, plus it would cost less anyway. Link
Update: Better yet, why not go for Bum Wine? Even cheaper than Charles Shaw, offering a heady bouquet with crack-whore insouciance and subtle drainpipe undertones. (Thanks, Eli the Bearded!)

BoingBoing pal du Paris Roland Piquepaille says:

There's a new robot in town who wants to guard your home. This new security robot, which currently has no name, is designed by the Korean company Mostitech and will be distributed starting in June by Korea's top mobile carrier, SK Telecom. With its price tag of only $850, it will be a serious competitor for Banryu, which costs $18,000. The unnamed robot is 50 centimeters tall and weighs only 12 kilograms. In case of emergency, such as a fire, its cameras can take snapshots and send them to the owner's cell phone. Likewise, if an unexpected visitor is entering your home, you'll receive his picture on your phone. It also can entertain your kids by reading them a book. The Korea Times tells us the story while this overview provides some pictures of the cute unnamed robot.

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Following up on last week's post about a woman's photoblogging-by-motorcycle in the Chernobyl dead zone, this somewhat older collection of poems by a Chernobyl survivor -- and an online collection of images documenting her journey back to the site.

Lybov Sirota once worked as director of a writing program for children near the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station. Before April 25th, 1986, she'd never written poetry. That night, she needed a breath of fresh air; she walked out on her balcony in Pripyat and watched Chernobyl's nuclear reactor explode. The radioactivity exposure caused Sirota and her son, Sasha, to become very ill. She began writing poetry about the experience. In 2000, her son persuaded her make a pilgrimage to their their former home; that journey is documented here.

Link to poems, Link to photo series. (Thanks, muonzoo.)

BoingBoing buddy Hutch (pyrotechnics guru who works on the Burning of the Man, as well as Hollywood stuff) points us to a series of workshops in Southern California where you can learn to operate fireworks and do pyro stage effects.

The seminars cost only $15 each to attend (what is that in Starbusian currency, like, four venti cappucinos?), and they're offered by a group called Fireworks America. This year, they'll be held in three locations: March 13 - Los Angeles area, March 20 - San Diego area, March 27 - Stockton area. Hutch says, "This is a great opportunity to learn more about fireworks and stage effects. Courses are available for every level of experience. There will be special 'get your license' training for those that want it (please note: this is for Public Display and Theatrical licenses, it does not include Special Effects licensing information). These seminars are always informative and a lot of fun! I learn new stuff every time I attend. If you're interested in doing more shows, this is the place to meet other operators and get on their crews."

Attendees must be 18 years or older. And if you're coming with no prior experience or pyro scene connections, don't expect to walk away with an invitation to join someone's crew. For good reasons, that tends to take time, say folks in the biz. To RSVP for one of the seminars, FIRST visit this link for background info, then call Ashley or Dianna at 800-464-7976, and for more background visit the Fireworks America site.

Susannah spotted this lovely comic art piece by this guy (via Keaner).
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Ernie the Attorney Ernest Miller analyses the question, "Can the Klingon language be copyrighted?"

However, can you really copyright a language? You can copyright a dictionary, certainly, but can you copyright grammar? I'm not sure you can copyright grammar at all, since it is a set of rules regarding word usage. Grammar is an idea, that can probably only be expressed in a fairly limited number of ways, even if fanciful.

Additionally, each Klingon word would seem to be too short to qualify as copyrightable individually. I don't think that a list of words in a dictionary format would be copyrightable under Feist. So, I'm not sure at all how one could copyright a language. The individual descriptions of the words might be copyrightable, but as long as they aren't exact copies, the idea/expression dichotomy should provide only limited copyright protection to Paramount.

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The Klingon language is apparently copyrighted by Paramount Studios. The nonprofit Klingon Language Institute does not distribute any kind of canonical Klingon-English dictionary, because it fears litigation from Star Trek's parent company.

But the problem is, the Klingon language belongs to Paramount; it's copyrighted. If someone started distributing lists of Klingon words (or descriptions of grammar, etc.), then Paramount might view this as competition for the legitimate sale of their own products, which would be A Bad Thing.

Besides, the very act of compiling your own list, even if it's just from TKD , can be extremely educational

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(1) test cards (2) logo animations (3) vintage kids shows (4) rainbow (5) tv weebl (6) law & order: plot generator (7) commercial break (8) law & order: artistic intent (9) television heaven (10) zap-o-matik
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

"You're a Bad Man, Aren't You?" author Susannah Breslin has a new graphic work up on Artbomb. It's all about her experiences witnessing bukkake video shoots in Porn Valley. Brilliant. It's art, not porn, but deals with explicit subject matter so may or may not be worksafe. To quote Warren, go and have a look.
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The Nostromo is a new programmable game-controller from Belkin, with over 100 configurable key-combos and a sweet configurator. The rad, (useful-for-the-right-handed-only) alien appearance is allegedly ergonomically optmized for twitch-gaming and the Tom's Hardware reviewer says that it's also a pretty good paintmonkey's Photoshop-controller. Man, this thing is teh s3xy. Link (via Wonderland)

The Burpee Seed Company has put an archive of its seed-catalog covers, stretching back to 1884, online. They are remarkable. Ethan, who suggested the link, notes that the 1945 wartime catalog features a subtle V-for-Victory rhubarb (chard?) and bomb-shaped carrots. Link (Thanks, Ethan!

Russell Buckley is creating found haiku out of spam subject-lines.

Re:

Terry Tate is back
gallop easel fanny coop
Good Sense Automation

Link (Thanks, Russell!)

Lisa Rein has posted a fine Daily Show take on the ongoing conflict in Haiti and the US goverment's spin thereupon. 9.3MB MOV Link

John Buckman, the founder of the Creative Commons-licensed music-label Magnatune, has a very good blog where he talks about the trials and tribulations of running a record label that is non-evil.

I received two great African music CDs recently. These are musicians from Africa, recording in London. However, I can't accept that CD for Magnatune, because the recording is totally owned by a producer in London, who would then receive all the sales royalties, and none would go to the actual performers. This situation, where the recording company or producer owns all the rights to an album, is the norm in world music...

Basically, I'm not willing to have Magnatune prop up the "world musician gives up all his rights to his recordings" system which mostly exists today, and that philosophy limits what I can sign (and also what gets submitted). But, like "free trade coffee" I think people expect Magnatune to do this "fairness audit" on their behalf, and trust that half the money from their purchasers really does go to the musician.

Link (Thanks, Christopher!)

A blog from the Queens University Human Media Lab reports that the PowerBook/iBook trackpad can sense not only x and y data, but z-axis as well, being sensitive to pressure gradients. Nice potential for human interface work. Link (Thanks, Connor!)