Check out the "New! Other blogs commenting on this post" at the bottom of our posts -- this is a link to Technorati's index of all the blogs that have linked to each of Boing Boing's posts. It's not quite a Discuss link, but if you have a blog and you post a comment about one of our posts to it, Technorati will find it and index it. Just make sure that your blogging tool is pinging one of the major pingsites, like blo.gs, weblogs.com or Technorati's own pinger (if you're using TypePad, Blogspot, Livejournal or one of the other major hosted services, this is already the case; most host-your-own tools like Blosxom, Movable Type and Radio have a setting for this). Link

Remember when JetBlue and Delta got caught firehosing their customers' data all over the place in the name of "national security?" Well American Airlines just got caught doing the same thing.

Anyone who flew American Airlines during June of 2002 should assume that all information given by them to American Airlines, including credit card numbers, is in the possession of both the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the following TSA subcontractors: HNC Software; Infoglide Software; Ascent Technology; and Lockheed Martin. Furthermore, as the passenger records were used to test the CAPPS II passenger profiling system, it should be assumed that the Social Security number, date of birth, as well as the associated credit histories and law enforcement records of many of the 1.2 million customers affected were combined into a single file and are now in the possession of the above-named companies as well as the Department of Homeland Security.

Link (Thanks, Bill!)

This living shelf from Mosley meets Wilcox is made of transparent plastic with ivy growing in it. Link (via Gizmodo)

Fleshbot points to some hoo-ha around the yet-to-be-launched print magazine (sneak peek at the cover) bearing the Suicide Girls brand:

Will the new Suicide Girls Magazine be over before it even begins? We've just received a copy of a legal notice signed by nine writers whose work was supposed to appear in the debut issue denying the magazine the right to print any articles submitted by them; according to our tipster, "The writers, who are all without contract, lost interest in the magazine when it became clear that it would be little more than a hipsterized Maxim with nipples." (Hmm, "a hipsterized Maxim with nipples" ... doesn't sound so bad to us, actually.) We'll keep you posted.

I've seen a copy of the letter. I'm told by writers and photographers involved that none were being paid; all were said to be contributing gratis to get a cool, underfunded project off the ground. Link to previous BB post on SG's print plans. Suicide Girls online? Alive and well, and apparently not as directly involved with the magazine as many had assumed.

UPDATE: Suicide Girls founder Sean tells BoingBoing: "SG Pin-up (that's the official name of the mag, advertisers don't like the name Suicide in the title - shocking, no?) is a licensee of SuicideGirls. A company in New York is creating the magazine, which Missy and I get to approve. It is my understanding the Publisher and the editor had some disagreements about the direction of the mag and the editor is pissed off with a capital P and is throwing some kind of fit. I'm sure the publisher will work it out and get us an issue to approve, everything I've seen so far has been really good, but I'm not involved in the production of the magazine so I don't know if the stuff I've seen will be in the final first issue or not. In any case, news of our magazines demise has been reported prematurely, I hope. I think they're just going through the kinds of things you go through when creating a new magazine. Although honestly, I have no idea, as I've never worked in publishing and my only contact has been with the publisher and the art director, both of whom I think are doing a great job with everything they've shown me. I sent them the link and I'm sure they'll respond to you as well, but feel free to print my comments."

The cold remedy Zicam (which I swear by) has been under attack for possibly causing permanent anosmia (loss of the sense of smell). But a new product on the market called sinus Buster, made from capsaicin (the ingredient that makes chili peppers hot) might reverse anosmia when you squirt it up your nose.

"When my husband ordered the sinus buster over the internet I was skeptical. But I said okay I’ll give it a try. As soon as we got it I used it that night and the next day I noticed I could smell certain odors. I couldn't believe it. The first thing I smelled was my daughter coming home after a night of partying, and I could smell cigarette smoke all over her. I had to bring her coat out to the garage because the smoke odor was so strong. Then my daughter told me that’s how she always smells after going out, but I never smelled the smoke before. It's absolutely amazing," Anderson added.

I've always had a pretty bad sense of smell. Maybe I should give this stuff a try. Link

(Some links in post not worksafe.) In today's Wired News, I interview Peter Payne, founder of J-list. They sell products for all ages, but in their adults-only section you'll find everything from "Cup o' Pussy" sex toys to "Poop Aid" and "Kanji Quiz" toilet paper to adult computer games to porn DVDs that combine the time-honored themes of bukkake and car-racing (cover snapshot below). Along the way, Payne offers some insights on why Japanese pop culture is so delightfully wacky. Oh, and he schools us on the history of bukkake. Hint: It's all Macarthur's fault. Snip:

It's hard for non-Japanese to understand why something becomes popular, or is perceived as delightful or funny in Japan. In the Japanese language, describing the color green -- a green stoplight for instance -- they say "blue." Looking around this country through the eyes of a gaijin -- a foreigner -- things are just different.

Take the bad words, for instance -- even the letter "h" is loaded. If a guy grabs a girl's breasts in a Japanese porn video, she might say "H!" with a Japanese accent -- like, ACH-ay. That's because H is for hentai, sexually explicit comics. It's like saying, "Pervert!" So, "H-suru" in Japanese means "to have sex." You don't want to actually say "have sex," so it's like saying, "do it."

Link

On "Freedom to Tinker," Ed Felten writes:

Recently we've seen several studies of the impact of filesharing on CD sales. We have enough data now to draw some (very) preliminary conclusions, assuming the studies are correct. Despite the apparent contradictions between the various studies, I think there is a plausible theory that can explain them all -- a Grand Unified Theory of Filesharing.

Link

Hossein Derakhshan publishes this insightful post on how to foster the development of "a local blogosphere in a community, based on the experience of Iranians." Link

Online photo gallery exploring the sensual female form in cemetary memorial markers.
Link (Via MeFi)

Today on the NPR program "Day to Day," I talk with host Alex Chadwick about recent actions in Congress and the Department of Justice to crack down on filesharers, and new studies that show a rise in P2P popularity. Link for today's show, scroll down for online audio of "Peer-to-Peer File Sharing On the Rise"

Scary Business Week article about an anti-biotic resistant strain of staph.

For the past 30 years, hospitals have been battling a mutant form called methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) that is resistant to penicillin-related antibiotics and is especially lethal. Now this drug-defying strain is showing up in the general population. It can be deadly if it enters the blood stream, heart, or lungs, killing anywhere from 25% to 43% of its victims. For years, the best treatment for MRSA was the powerful antibiotic vancomycin. But even this weapon has failed against new strains of staph that have emerged. Some infectious-disease experts predict that by 2010, 40% of staph infections will be vancomycin-resistant.

Link (Thanks, Scott!)

This infomercial-ish device uses water an ice to quickly chill a can of beer (or soda). It works by spinning the can in a bath of very cold water. The can also wobbles slightly, to push the layer of warmed water away from the can. Link (via ZZZ)

Here's an article I wrote about Electronic Arts and 3D0 founder Trip Hawkin's new mobile games company, Digital Chocolate. Link

Archaeologists have found 9,500-year-old cat bones on the island of Cyprus, where felines are not native. The cat was buried beside a human skeleton, suggesting that it was a pet. Previously, historians though that the Egyptians were the first to domesticate cats about 4,000 years ago. According to the researchers, the eight-month-old cat may have been put to sleep so it could be buried with its caretaker. Poor kitty. Link

Blogger and MSNBC combat correspondent Kevin Sites has returned to assignment in Iraq after a short break home in the US. A year ago last Friday, the famous statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was toppled; Kevin has posted a new essay about the state of Iraq since then. But in light of the multiple hostage situations in Iraq right now, I want to mention one thing that he does not. This also marks the one year anniversary of his capture and subsequent release by Iraqi Fedayeen soldiers. We're glad that this story ended with Kevin free and unharmed. Snip from his latest post:

How did things turn so bad so quickly--in which a scattered insurgency gains broader support and the coalition Shiite alliance begins to crack? Some critics say it's a combination of a year of mismanagement by the Coalition Provisional Authority in which the lives of most Iraqis have not improved much since the reign of Saddam Hussein and the hardball tactics of occupation military forces that are alienating the people they were intending to help.

One member of a Ramadi-based Sunni insurgent cell who calls himself "Continuous Jihad" says the Coalition hasn't delivered on anything. "They break into houses in the middle of the night and arrest innocent people," he says, "and they've given us less then we had under Saddam. People are jobless, they distort our religion, and they're taking our oil and living in Saddam's palaces. Nothing has changed. They've become like him, yet they pretend they're here to help us."

Link to "Toppled", blog post from Iraq by Kevin Sites, Link to discussion forum.

House Industries, the world's greatest typeface designers, have published a 240-page book chronicling their work. I haven't seen the book itself, but the sample spreads shown here are stunning. The $69 book has a 32-page section on House's design process and it comes with four fonts.
Link

MIT researchers report in the journal Science that the brain relies on context to compensate for images that are noisy or degraded. For example, if you look at a person from very far away, their face may look like a blurry blob with no discernible features at all. Still, thanks to the contextual cues (in this case, the attached body), you still can classify the blob as a face. That seems obvious, of course. What's novel about this work is that the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to actually show that "the specific brain region known to be activated by clear images of faces is also strongly activated by very blurred images, just so long as surrounding contextual cues are present." Of course, surrealist artists like Rene Magritte have known this for years. Link

BoingBoing reader kowgurl says, "About 50 wax figures--all your favorite country and western stars. I saw it this weekend--they are creepy as hell. The sets are not 'museum quality' by any stretch. I would love to bid on it!"
Link. Beware the evil audio soundtrack! Almost as evil as the satanic grin on Minnie Pearl's waxen visage.

Our pals at Gawker forward this tip from reader Audrey Bath about a bizarre power outage affecting casinos and hotels in Las Vegas for the past couple of days -- sounds uncannily like a scene from a recent movie filmed at the affected property:

I thought you might be amused to learn that Las Vegas' premiere hotel, the 5-star Bellagio Hotel, lost all power at 2:30am Sunday (Easter) and power has not yet been restored. As of right now, there is no access to their website, and no updated information. It is THE big story in Las Vegas.

No definitive word yet on why no power, but it appears a truck hit a transformer behind the hotel, on the new Frank Sinatra Drive. The hotel is said to have been 2/3 full (2,000 guests) and thousands of employees have not been able to go to work. All of the hotels' restaurants are closed, every gaming table and slot machine is dark, even the fountains are not operating. There are no elevators, no escalators, no Cirque du Soleil. Only the Bellagio Hotel is affected by the outage, and generators have not kicked in. (It's eerily like "Ocean's Eleven" which was filmed in part at the hotel 3 years ago.)

Some guests have insisted on remaining at the dark hotel; all others have been transferred to the "sister properties" like the Mirage, Treasure Island and MGM Grand. My husband is a chef at Picasso, the top restaurant in Las Vegas, located at the Bellagio, and he was told not to return to work tomorrow because power will not be back on. Power is not expected to be restored until possibly late Monday night. It's a very weird scene.

Link to story in Las Vegas Review-Journal

Great piece by Joanna Glasner in today's Wired News about a number of websites that help you track campaign contribution history of US politicians. Link

Microsoft has settled its patent dispute with Sony/Philips, who acquired a company called Intertrust solely for its patent on DRM, which conflicted with the patent that Microsoft got when it took a controlling interest in another company called ContentGuard.

Microsoft is paying $440m to settle its long-running digital rights management (DRM) patent infringement dispute with Intertrust. The one-off pay-out means that Microsoft customers can use their software "as they are intended to be used without requiring a license from InterTrust".

Link

Lore "Brunching Shuttlecocks" Sjöberg has turned in a lyrical reminiscence about the glory days of gopher, the Web's predecessor. My first net-job (after the CDROM crash in the early 90s) was as a commerical gopher developer, and it turns out that were are lots of gopher sites still online:

Despite its relative obscurity, gopherspace is accessible to many more Web users than people realize. Gopher support is built into Mozilla-based browsers including Firefox, most versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer up to version 5, although the degree of support varies. People who want to stick with the familiarity of http can use the public gopher proxy at Floodgap.com, which translates gopher pages into HTML.

Visitors to gopherspace will find a piece of the Internet's history, some of which, Goerzen says, isn't available anywhere else. They will also find The Gopher Manifesto, a document praising gopher's simplicity and elegance.

The Gopher Manifesto describes gopher as "a hypertext Eden" that existed before the clutter and commercialization of the Web. "Is it time for a new Renaissance on the Internet, to bring back the promise of the early years?" it asks.

Link