BoingBoing pal JP points us to this post on Evan K's blog:

Further to this suggestion by Glenn Reynolds regarding the Spanish Embassy in Washington: there are also Spanish consulates in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, New Orleans, Boston, New York, Houston and San Juan (addresses below, via this page). Presumably the same goes for Toronto, Montreal, and of course there's a full embassy in Ottawa. I went over to San Francisco's Spanish consulate this afternoon, and they had posted signs indicating that there was a book of condolences available for signing by the public.

Link

CorrectedI'm leaving for SXSW in Austin tomorrow morning, where I'll be speaking at a couple items at the Wireless Future conference:

• Sunday, March 14, 5-6 PM. The Wireless Commons: Is the commons model (where spectrum is treated like a stream that belongs to all of us, and current technological innovations allow multiple signals over shared frequencies) truly applicable to wireless telecommunications? If so, what does that mean for society... culture... business? (Robert Heath, University of Texas (Moderator); Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation; David Weinberger, Author/Consultant; Kevin Werbach; Jim Snider, New America Foundation)
• Monday, March 15Tuesday, March 16, 3:30-4:30PM. Wireless and Grassroots Innovation: WiFi is a grassroots phenomenon where innovation is driven by the DIY gestalt that is so much a part of Internet and Open Source development. What are the latest grassroots developments, and how do they relate to the future of wireless? (Brad King (moderator); Cory Doctorow, EFF; David Weinberger, Author; Joi Ito, Neoteny; Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News; John Quarterman, Quarterman Creations)

Link

The Hugo Nomination ballot closes two weeks today, on March 25. You're eligible to nominate if you're registered for the next or the last WorldCon. For the record, here are the things I published in 2003 that are eligible for the ballot:

Best Novel: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Tor

Best Novelette: Liberation Spectrum, Salon.com

Best short story: Nimby and the Dimension Hoppers, Asimov's
Best short story: Flowers from Alice, New Faces in Science Fiction (DAW)

Link

A handful of updates on blogosphere reaction to today's terrorist attacks in Madrid, which killed more than 190 and injured over 1,000. Informally-constructed "condolence walls" are apppearing online; here is an example of a previously existing page on which the comments section has been transformed into a series of homenajes to the 03/11 dead. (Note: my Wired News colleague Leander Kahney points out that this page seems to have started out as a memorial wall for Miguel Angel Blanco, a Basque politician who was kidnapped and murdered by ETA a coupe of years ago).

This 03/11 site, launched earlier today by popular Spanish weblog Bitacoras, is dedicated to blogosphere coverage of the attacks. This page offers another comprehensive list of blog coverage links (nearly all are Spanish language sites). ALT1040's offering coverage. Victor Ruiz has assembled a good page in English with background. Much activity on blogs in France, as well. Countless homenajes throughout the web, including little graphics like the bandera at left from Patricio Lopez' site.

Massive demonstrations are planned for tomorrow at 7:00 pm local time in cities all over Spain. Expect live blog coverage. Numerous BB readers in Spain and elsewhere write in to remind us that there is much debate over whether or not ETA is in fact responsible, completely or in part, for the attacks.

And finally, this from the weblog called "Lost in Madrid," -- a "Post of Silence." Please excuse my hasty, clumsy translation from the original Spanish.

May they hear our silence in every corner of the Internet, from all of our weblogs. May they hear our condemnation of this massacre. We denounce the ETA; we denounce all forms of violence and terrorism. All we want is to live in peace. Unity and democracy are the most powerful weapons we have against terrorism... Tomorrow [through the demonstrations that will take place] at 7:00PM, Madrid will be inundated with silence. And on Sunday, we will all go to vote, and we will tell those assasins that our votes are the "arms" that we use. We will tell them that peace is the language we understand.

Hoy todos somos madrileños. (thanks, JL, AD, Joi, and others)

Here's a Wiki cataloguing, with cited examples, all the eye-rolling idiot plots from sitcomdom.

Gilligan Cut
The Gilligan Cut is a classic staple of comedy. A character protests vehemently, "What, you expect me to wear a grass skirt, stand up on top of Empire State Building and belt out the chorus of 'New York, New York'? Well, I'm not gonna... I'm just not gonna..." And then you cut, and see the character doing just that. The Gilligan Cut. Comedy ain't pretty.

Link (Thanks, Gnat!)

Another salutory effect of transitioning to MT: we now have an Atom feed for the latest in syndication goodness. Link

After over four years with Blogger, Boing Boing is now a Movable Type blog! Blogger is an excellent tool, but we'd outgrown it and it was time for a change -- we're immensely grateful to Ev, Steve, Jason, Biz and the gang for all the support over the years.

So now we're an MT blog, which is great news. It means that we've got access to some of the fastest-evolving tools in the business, with all the third-party plugins that talk to MT's API. Expect some cool new features on the blog soon (we're gonna add search right away, and CSS layouts, and other neato crap to follow!).

Enormous, undying gratitude is hereby flung in the direction of Ben Trott, for all the work he did on making the transition smooth and painless. Ben, you are a prince.

Another change that you'll notice straight off: our permalinks are now post-per-page; that is, in order to load an individual post, you needn't load the entire month associated with it. We'll be using some mod_rewrite mojo to make this true of all the backlinks as well -- the bandwidth bills for loading monthly archives were really starting to add up (the reason we did monthly archives was the lack of a good search tool -- at very least, if you could remember what month you saw a post, you could load that month's archive and dig through it).

We still need to convert the guestbar to MT, which will come soon enough.

So, life is good. Beware falling rocks. Welcome to the MT era of Boing Boing. Link

Carl Zimmer has written a great article for the Sunday Telegraph about a brain disorder called musical hallucinosis. The victims hear loud music in their head, and the songs play over and over again.

When Dilbeck tried a new antibiotic for her Lyme disease the songs stopped, but the side effects of the drug were too much for her. Since she went off the antibiotic, the hallucinations have returned. For some reason they are milder now than before -- often just a few notes over and over again -- but they're still a burden. "I'm resigned to them," Dilbeck says. "But I'd give $100,000 -- if I had it -- to make them go away."

Link

Jim sez, "MyStack.com lets you build Stacks - self-updating link lists that you can paste into your blog or web page. You can build a Stack that lists all the posts which link to your site, or a Stack that lists every message talking about a particular topic. MyStack.com uses PubSub's matching engine to match blog entries and newsgroup posts against your request in real time. That means that any time you look at a Stack, you're looking at the most recent set of links - we rebuild the Stack and rewrite the HTML for you, automatically." Link (Thanks, Jim!)

173 dead today More than 185 people lost their lives today in Madrid. This graphic homage at left from an illustrator named Forges at El Pais, by way of Spanish blog caspa.tv. As it was here in New York, in Spain everything will now be spoken of in terms of "before March 11," and after.

El Internet fue formado de seres humanos, como nosotros. Un montón de amor y respeto para todos los amigos de BoingBoing que viven en Madrid, y en España. Queremos paz tambien, igual como ustedes.

Madrid-based blogger Ignacio Escolar has this to say: "ETA ha matado hoy a más personas que en los últimos ocho años....Decir que "no hay palabras" es un tópico tan usado que ha perdido su significado. Pero es que, literalmente, hoy no encuentro en el diccionario nada con lo que nombrar a esta masacre." (The ETA killed more people today than in the last eight years in Spain... to say that 'there are no words' is a phrase so overused that it has lost its significance. But the thing is, literally, today I can't find anything in the dictionary with which to describe this massacre.")

Here is a growing list of Spanish-language blogs, many based in Madrid, covering the terrorist attack and its aftermath. Link. Many other blogs appear to be posting this image on their home pages, as an expression of solidarity. BoingBoing buddy in Spain Antonio Delgado, of caspa.tv, says that the online edition of Spanish newspaper El Pais is a paid-access-only site -- but today, all contents are free, including this PDF version of today's edition. Link. Antonio also says traffic to Spanish news websites is up eight times normal, according to this article and this one -- that's more traffic than they received on 9/11. And Jean-Luc says that Spanish professor Jose Luis Orihuela has built a newsfeed about today's events in this post on his weblog.

Nishad sez, "Ever wanted to have a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or ad campaigns? Well now you can, using the WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned image of the font and we'll show you the closest matches in our database!" Link (Thanks, Nishad!)

The Jewish.com store sells a bag of 10 plush plagues, one for each plague called down by Charleton Heston on the Pharoah.

A fun and educational way to involve children in the Passover experience. Symbols for each of the 10 plagues are included.

Link (via Fark)

Funny Javascript mad-libs toy generates random synonyms for masturbation:

Charming the mink
Violating your goalie
Using the Force on the witness
Punishing the gator
Tenderizing the unicorn's horn
Loving Isaiah
Assaulting the possum
Twanging the antenna

Link (via Fleshbot)

Jason Schultz has reproduced a bunch of Steve Martin's high-larious script notes for "The Passion" from this month's New Yorker.

* Love the Jesus character. So likeable. He can't seem to catch a break! We identify with him because of it. One thing: I think we need to clearly state "the rules." Why doesn't he use his superpowers to save himself?

* Does it matter which garden? Gethsemane is hard to say, and Eden is a much more recognizable garden. Just thinking outloud.

* Our creative people suggest a clock visual fading in and out in certain scenes, like the Last Supper bit: "Thursday, 7:43 P.M.," or "Good Friday, 5:14 P.M."

* Also, could he change water into wine in Last Supper scene? Would be a great moment, and it's legit. History compression is a movie tradition and could really brighten up the scene. Great trailer moment, too.

Link

E! Online asked Johnny Depp how he felt about his doppelganger in Edward Penishands, the pr0n parody of Edward Scissorhands. Depp is surprisingly cool about it!

I think it was either Tim [Burton] or John Waters who sent it to me. It might have been both. Tim and I were both quite proud they decided to do that. It was low budget and cheesy, but it was hilarious to watch. Those hands...they served him well.

Link (via Fleshbot)

Inspired by the Jay-Z Construction Set (a CDROM and .torrent full of Jay-Z vocal tracks, samples and art, intended for remixture), Ernest Miller has written a shrewd editorial about a potential path for musicians to engage their fans with their work through the release of similar kits -- he likens this to videogames that encourage players to invest in making or seeking out custom mods.

Many videogames permit players to create new content for the game engine, such as levels, maps and mods. This new content is freely distributable (at least for noncommercial purposes) and frequently incorporates content created by the original game designer along with new user-created content. This has been incredibly successful for videogame companies. The more content there is, the more popular the game becomes. The ability to create and add content creates feverish and committed communities of fans for a game. Imagine if musicians had such communities working for them.

Link (via A Copyfighter's Musings)

Al Franken is hosting a new lefty radio show called "The O'Franken Factor." Franken has gone on record as begging Bill O'Reilly to sue him. Link

Republican lawmakers are trying to enact the "Cheeseburger Bill," which will sheild restaurant chains from lawsuits fo inducing super-sized obesity in their customers.

Opponents said the legislation was unnecessary and irresponsible in light of this week's government report identifying obesity as a condition fast catching up to tobacco as the No. 1 preventable cause of death in the United States. Democrats said the fact that the House was devoting almost a full day to the proposal illustrated the misplaced priorities of the Republican majority.

Link

Puttyworld sells a $9 magnetic silly putty substance -- and it's goth black to boot.

Black Thinking Putty noticably responds to a magnet. Try pulling out a thin strand with your fingers and holding the magnet nearby. Or roll it into a ball and watch it roll right to the magnet, even uphill. The stronger the magnet the better the result, Neodymium Iron Boron works best. You can purchase some from our accessories category.

Link (via FARK)

Disneyland is adding a Green Line -- a security gate to "stop terrorists."

Reality is coming to Disneyland's fantasy world, in the form of permanent security gates. Bowing to terrorism fears, the Walt Disney Co. plans to build the gates at the Disneyland Resort next fall. The company had resisted security gates around Disneyland and the California Adventure theme park next door, believing the sense of fantasy would be spoiled.

Link (Thanks, Ian!)