"Off the westernmost coast of Japan, is an island called "Gunkanjima" that is hardly known even to the Japanese. Long ago, the island was nothing more than a small reef. Then in 1810, the chance discovery of coal drastically changed the fate of this reef. As reclamation began, people came to live here, and through coal mining the reef started to expand continuously. Before long, the reef had grown into an artificial island of one kilometer (three quarters of a mile) in perimeter, with a population of 5300. Eventually, the mines faced an end, and in 1974 the world's once most densely populated island become totally deserted. The island, after all its inhabitants departed leaving behind their belongings, became an empty shell of a city where all its people disappeared overnight, as if by some mysterious act of God.”" Link (Thanks, Philip!)

Not so fast, cicada-snackers! An Indiana resident who fried then snarfed about 30 "Brood X" specimens had to seek medical treatment when the bug grub experiment caused a powerful allergic reaction. Apparently, some people with shellfish allergies can become very sick from eating the exoskeletous but Akins-friendly critters.

The man showed up at a Bloomington clinic Thursday covered from head-to-toe in hives, and sheepishly told a doctor he'd caught and ate the cicadas after sauteing them in butter with crushed garlic and basil. "He said they didn't taste too bad, but his wife didn't care for the aroma," said Dr. Al Ripani, the doctor who treated the man at Promptcare East.

Link to news article, and link to previous BoingBoing post (Thanks, Pete!)

This National Geographic story by John Roach [hehe, Roach] points out that those gazillions of "Brood X" cicadas unearthing themselves this month also double as an Atkins-compliant meal-on-the-go. Cicada McBuggets, anyone? Pass the dipping sauce.

"They're high in protein, low in fat, no carbs," said Gene Kritsky, a biologist and cicada expert at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. "They're quite nutritious, a good set of vitamins." The largest group of periodical cicadas, known as Brood X, have been crawling out of the ground and carpeting trees along the eastern United States for the past week or so. By July, Brood X will be gone--not to be heard from again for 17 years.

Link (Thanks, Mara!)

The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that Ahmed Chalabi -- who's been getting millions of US tax-dollars to act as a kind of field-snitch for the US military/intelligence complex -- has been basically making it all up, feeding disinfo to the US in order to provoke war on Saddam.

"Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.

Link (via Making Light)

Bruce Sterling gave a screamingly funny talk at Microsoft Research last night, and Al Billings transcribed it on his blog.

This year I had a problem because there were 200 people in my audience and I say "Ok, everybody is going over to my house for beer!" and they say "Yay!" and 600 people show up at my party. They weren't the people in the audience. Half the people in the audience normally attend because it's on the last day and a lot of people leave anyway. They showed up and some kind of flash mob thing occurred. There was some kind of electronically assisted gathering happening at my house. Because people were showing up and they were showing up in buddy lists. It wasn't just the usual foot traffic of one and two people. There would be at half-past one...there were sudden clusters or armadas of taxis coming in from two or three directions and people would get out of the taxis and are name-checking each other and sort of clustering together and coming into the party in a mass. Guys are phone-camming the party. It's like "He's not kidding, look there's a keg here!" <snicka> <z.z.z.z.z> and off they come. Actresses are showing up, which is sort of interesting because there is never much cross-over into the film thing. Guys are coming up and saying "Bruce! Your party's full of hot chicks!" There are girls in lingerie tops with stiletto heels. They aren't actually partying. They're not eating. They're there to display themselves so they kind of swan anorexically through this crowd of unix sysadmins and they're, like... <Bruce makes really goofy surprised face> They're awe-struck. Somebody had told them that it was sort of necessary to go make the scene at the novelist's house and they sort of arrived in a bloc, united by phones, I assume, and then departed.

Link (Thanks, Al!)

This guy wanted to see if penis enlargement pills worked, so he ordered some. Personal account augmented by a chart showing the size of his unit over time, in millimetres! Link (via EvHead)

Great NYT correction. This is why I like the term "world majority":

An article last Wednesday about South Africa's wine industry referred incorrectly to Thabani Cellars, a winery there. It is not minority-owned. (As a black man, the owner, Jabulani Ntshangase, belongs to the country's majority.)

Link

There's a great article on Kuro5hin today about living with Asperger's -- the "Geek Syndrome" that imbues us with obsessive attention to (some) detail, a poor grasp of social cues, and a weird sense of humour.

Aspies tend to take an obsessive interest in detailed things. It is typical for an aspie to take an all-encompassing interest in something for a few months and later become interested in something else after having already learned enough about the first subject. In other words, we aspies have "weird," nerdy interests and hobbies.

This is a chicken-and-egg problem, of course. Do we aspies take up these perseverations because we are unable to occupy ourselves with more neurotypical (NT) (that is, something relating to nonautistics) socializing, or do our perseverations prevent us from socializing? Maybe it's a little bit of both.

Nevertheless, perseveration for me has meant spending my early teenage years learning how to program and becoming especially adept at using Windows. A little later it meant focusing on perfecting my French accent and reading French newspapers like Le Monde. Because of my perseverations, I have a more thorough understanding of history, politics, language, computers, psychology, geography, and numerous other subjects than the average person. In contrast, I have a deficit of knowledge about today's pop stars, actors, and social gossip. This sometimes makes it hard for people to have interesting conversations with me.

Link

Side-splittingly funny account of a Polish expat who returned to Warsaw and got (very incompetently) mugged, then flagged down a vanload of completely bonkers cops who ran around the city, stopping trams and pointing at nuns, businessmen and other improbables and saying, "are these the kids who mugged you?"

Not surprisingly, most people's reaction at seeing a huge police van swerving wildly behind them was to hunker down and gradually go slower and slower. The papers were full of stories about an incident the week before in Poznan, where police had followed a car and then shot the driver dead without warning, only later figuring out that they had staked out the wrong apartment block. Just two days before my adventure, riot police in Lodz had mixed up live ammunition with rubber bullets used for crowd control; they had opened fire into a crowd of students, killing three people. 'Lie low , and hope to God they don't open fire' seemed a prudent strategy, so gradually the traffic around us started to crawl slower and slower.

Fortunately the van was not equipped with any kind of forward-mounted cannon, or Elmer would have surely started blowing little Skodas and Fiats out of the road in frustration. Instead he had to content himself with higher and higher flights of profanity, while the other cops and I held on for dear life. I hoped fervently none of the shotguns were loaded.

Link (via Oblomovka)

The Australian post office has issued a line of Harry Potter stamps. Link (Thanks, Scott!)

An important piece of copyright litigation is in the offing: Golan v Ashcroft challenges Congress's "restoration of copyright" to thousands of works that were in the public domain as of 1994. The Golan legal team is collecting your horror stories about being denied access to works that were snatched from the public domain; they're publishing the stories as they come in:

To win the lawsuit we need your help: we need examples of how people have been harmed by this removal of works from the public domain. You can help us if you have ever wanted to use:

* a foreign sound recording made before February 15, 1972; or
* a foreign work published in or after 1923 that was in the public domain in the U.S. (due to lack of copyright notice, renewal, or national eligilibility of the author), including:

* works of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Khachaturian, and other foreign composers (search for restored works)
* numerous classic British, French, German, and other foreign films (including several Hitchcock films, Faust, Metropolis, and The Red Balloon, Kurosawa's Ikiru, The Third Man, and Intermezzo)
* or any other foreign book, photograph, song, or work subject to a "restored" copyright
* although registration is optional, you can search the U.S. Copyright Office for restored works

Link (Thanks, Jason!)

My pal Matt "Blackbelt" Jones, a user-experience wonk at Nokia, has written a guest-rant on new UIs for the pervasive age over at Warren Ellis's Die Puny Humans.

Drill the digital ground and you'll see that the surface strata of interface has not moved as quickly as what lies beneath.

The shape has changed. We've moved from the discrete, fixed computing of the mainframe, mini and pc to the fluid, agile, grid.

The stuff has changed. We send emotional bits and digital pheremones as much as we send practical packets.

The scale has changed. The corpus has swollen while the skin stayed the same. We stored data the equivalent of 37,000 times the library of congress on our hard drives in 2002, and shunted 3 times that much around the net[1].

Link

8am in Tokyo (4pm LA time). I got about six hours of sleep last night, and I'm feeling pretty good right now. (Of course, I just downed an excellent double espresso, so the caffeine is talking right now.)

Despite the typhoon warnings, Yesterday's weather couldn't have been better. The sky was blue, the temperature was mild. I guess the typhoon ran out of juice really fast.

I woke up spaced-out and stupid. I looked in the mirror and was surprised at how glassy my eyes looked. But I wanted to travel around the city, to do some research on the article I'm writing. First, though, I wanted to go to Harajuku and Yoyogi park to take pictures of those crazy kids in the their Elegant Gothic Lolita and Trappist Monk - Rocket Scientist Hybrid getups. I didn't see too many, but I took some pictures of a few kids, who studiously ignored me, the big dopey gawking gaijin with a camera.

But my heart wasn't in it. I was much more interested in checking out the official uniforms almost everyone in Japan wears. Of course the schoolkids all wear uniforms. The girls have the traditional sailor uniforms, and a lot of the boys have these dark blue Chinese-looking jackets with the cylindrical collars and big round buttons. (Why are so many schoolkids always walking around in the middle of the day here? Don't they have classes to attend? Do they get breaks from school at odd hours that allow them to roam the streets?)

I saw a large crowd of "Beauty College" students pouring out of a building. They looked about 17 years old. About half were boys. They had nifty two-tone smock-like uniforms. They raced each other into a 7-Eleven and filled the place up. I took some great pictures of them packed in there.

I went the the big park near Harajuku (Meji something) and saw a worker in a smart gray uniform and pith helmet raking up leaves from the wide, tiny-pebbled, path leading to the Shinto temple. His rake was hand-made bamboo, and the business end of it fanned out about three feet. He had a large woven basket filled with other wooden park-cleaning implements, that looked like the came from the 17th century. I love the way Japan mixes ancient stuff with the brand new.

Back in the shopping area of Harajuku, another uniformed guy was on his knees, wiping one of the ubiquitous outdoor vending machines. He was making the surface *squeak*. After that, I noticed all the vending machines were spotless. The Japanese love to keep things clean. (The day before, two people in yellow raincoat uniforms were walking down a narrow shopping street, picking up wet cigarette butts with poles that have pincers on the end, and depositing the butts in a plastic bag. They were obsessive about it. They didn't even have Walkmans on. -- they were focusing solely on getting every last cigarette butt picked up.)

I spent the rest of the day taking pictures of people in different uniforms. It seems like they have at least four varieties of cops here, judging by the color and style of their caps and jackets.

I was looking forward to getting back to my hotel room so I could upload a "Uniforms of Japan" photo gallery. I am using some new software to deal with digital images, and when I extracted the images from the camera, the application zapped all 45 photos from the camera's memory stick. A full day of photo taking, gone in an electrostatic femtosecond. (I'm not going to say which application it is until I get an explanation from the guy who wrote it.)

I'm headed back to the US today, so unless something bizarre happens on the train to Narita, this will be my last Japan Journal dispatch.

Your faithful scribe -- Mark

Wireless guru Mike Outmesguine says:

A bomb scare occured on an America West passenger plane in Phoenix Arizona this week. Fox 11 News covered the story with people on the ground and a chopper in the air. The Fox11AZ website has 3 videos (about 8 minutes total) online... Re-live the tension! What caused the bomb scare? "An MP3 player wrapped around a soda can." So, next time you de-plane a plane, don't forgot to take your Coke and iPod with you. Check those seat pockets!

Link

Robot1968 is a kickass vintage robot toy website offering info on...

the history of robots and cinematic mechanised figures, inventory with over 2000 photos of all the robot toys from 1940 till now, info on all robot companies from japan-germany-usa and hong kong, vintage arcade games to play, links to all the robot world, forum to talk to other collectors and artists, music and fun!

Link (Thanks, theo)

Club kids who want VIP status at the popular Baja Beach Club in Barcelona can now get implanted with a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. For 25 125 euro, customers can have an Applied Digital Solutions VeriChip, the size of a grain of rice, injected into his or her upper arm. Makes it easier to run a tab. Link (via my journal at TheFeature.com)

Disney is making a new ride-based movie, this time from The Jungle Boat Cruise. Let's hope it's more like the Pirates of the Caribbean than the Haunted Mansion movie (shudder). Link (via Waxy)

These Iraqi torture/iPod ad mashups are appearing around NYC. Link (Thanks, Rich!)

An historic monument in central England that may hold the key to the location of the Holy Grail was damaged by vandals on Tuesday. The BBC reports that "a gang of youths climbed on top of The Shepherd's Monument at Shugborough Hall" and started smashing away.

"The Shepherd's Monument is of international importance, both as a work of art and because of the legend that a baffling inscription on the monument provides clues to the true location of the Holy Grail," said the home's general manager Richard Kemp.

Interestingly, the vandalism came on the heels of a visit by former code-breakers from War II intent on cracking the 10-letter puzzle. The Shepherd's Monument is discussed in depth in the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, inspiration for The Da Vinci Code. Link to a National Public Radio piece about the code-breakers. Link to the BBC story on the vandalism. (Thanks, Kev!)

Boing Boing pal Erik Davis sends us this exclusive bit of insider insight into the Hollywood adaptation of Philip K. Dick's surreal SF novel "A Scanner Darkly":

"This spring, I had the opportunity to read and consult on Richard Linklater’s screenplay for Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, which is set to start filming this July. As I love many of Linklater’s films, this was a great honor, although much less funny than the New Yorker’s description of me as a “Dick expert.” Expert or no, I can tell you that I have every reason to believe that Linklater’s film will be what Dickheads everywhere have been waiting for: the first “real” “authentic” PKD movie. While the film updates the historical vibe from paranoid 70s to paranoid 00s, the script is dark and tart, funny and faithful. Nearly all the dialogue is drawn from the novel, and the few changes sharpen Dick’s themes rather than squelch them. Linklater has kept the story dark, and haunted by rumors of God.

As has been reported, Keanu Reaves will play Bob Arctor, the Orange County narc who goes schizo after being assigned to spy on himself. Linklater has been planning this project for years; it was Reaves’ interest in the story that finally got the ball rolling. As has been already noted, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Rory Cochrane round out the cast, though it also needs to be mentioned that these are some of the most famous druggies in Hollywood. Actually, I don’t know anything about Rory’s personal habits, but he sure spouted convincing cannabinoid bon mots in Dazed & Confused.

During my time at Linklater’s pine-forested getaway pad outside of Austin, which features a pagoda, a huge stone tower, and many pinball machines, I got to meet the genius team whose digital rotoscoping helped make Waking Life one of the few masterpieces of the new millennium. These are definitely the guys you want to bring Bob Arctor’s scramble suit to life."

Phil sez, "My personal take on the Mistaken Identity public meeting re. UK ID cards at the London School of Economics yesterday."

Lord (Andrew) Philips of Sudbury, Liberal Democrat peer, was particularly good - especially in his detailed grasp of the system, e.g. regarding the nonsensical restriction of the powers of the Interception of Communications Commissioner, and his realistic take on the task ahead in persuading the 80-ish% that ID cards backed by a National Identity Register are a BAD IDEA.

He referred specifically to tackling the all-too-common "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" argument and, although he didn't explicitly say the phrase, his comment "We're on no-one's list now" led me to think that "If you're not on their list, you won't exist" might imply/initiate a relevant counter-argument. [Wait for the T-shirt - I'm all for slogans!]

Link

Larry Lessig is speaking on London on the 27th of May at the Royal Geographical Society, SW7.

Lawrence Lessig will put forward in this lecture the hypothesis that innovation and experimentation thrive when ideas and culture can be freely exchanged and circulated. These freedoms are under threat. He proposes that the erosion of constitutional and  civil rights carries with it profound consequences for all those involved in  the arts and the business of ideas.

Flash Link

My cow-orker Jason Schultz identifies a nice bit of Fox statistical chicanery:

Among today's top stories, a new "Fox News Poll" that says 33% of those surveyed think the media is too easy on Kerry and 42% think the media is too tough on Bush. [Of course, if it were limited to FoxNews coverage, you'd probably see dramatically different numbers in the opposite direction.]

But let's just look at the numbers they've given us. 33% think the media is too easy on Kerry. That means 66% (or 2/3rds) think the media is fair or too tough on Kerry, right? Isn't that the real story?

Link

Great open-mic question on Ask Slashdot: what's the worst bullishit "explanation" you've ever gotten from tech support?

My cable modem connection had stopped work. Given my ISPs track record, this was unremarkable, but after it continued for 2 days, I decided to call the tech support number. After supplying my ID number, the support person told me that my connection was intentionally shut off because I was broadcasting a widely-circulated Windows virus. I promptly informed the tech support person that I did not use the Windows operating system on any of my computers, and that I could not possibly have the virus I was accused of having.

The support rep immediately told me that I had the virus, and that they would not turn my connection back on until I jumped through their anti-virus hoops. I argued for almost 10 minutes with this neophyte that I could not use their Windows anti-virus on my Linux systems, and that even if I could, it would not do a damn bit of good. Did it matter? Of course not.

Finally, in order to get my connection back on, I agreed to perform their anti-virus tricks "to the best of my ability", and install Windows just so I could "remove the virus" from my system. The rep actually thought this was an excellent resolution to the problem, but for some reason didn't believe I would actually do it (could have been my vehement renouncements against the entirety of Microsoft's products). After another 5 minutes of cajoling, I convinced her to turn my connection back on so I could get the anti-virus tools, and access Windows Update.

Link

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: hybrid fruit. Link

My friend John Shirley, author of Crawlers and Black Butterflies and screenwriter of The Crow, etc, will be reading from a new novella and signing at BAYCON 2004 - San Jose, California, the Doubletree hotel, May 29. Link

Boing Boing buddy Steve Silberman sez: "In 1977, poet Allen Ginsberg taught a course called "The Literary History of the Beat Generation" at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. I was in the course, and a couple of friends of mine and I just turned the suggested reading list into a gateway to the texts themselves. If you ever wished that your English-lit teacher had been the author of "Howl"..." Link

Illustrator Danny Gregory has reviewed a bunch of pens, accompanied by his drawings of the pens.

"Rotring Rapidoliner: I am really in love with this pen these days and I never would of thunk it. I first tried Rapidographs when I was a teenager but they always clogged and leaked and were a pain to fill. I was forever dismantling the nibs and washing them in the sink and finding ink blots on my shirts. This pen is perfect. My nib is the finest they make and the pen just won’t clog or skip. The guts are disposable, for $4 you get a fresh new nib and supply of Indian ink. I have been drawing with this pen every day for two months and am still on my original cartridge. The pen’s feeling is ultra smooth, a little creamy and a little brittle, like icing on a cupcake. The best $10 I ever spent."

Link (Thanks, Beleg!)

Photos of "robots" carrying signs written in binary code. They're marching to support underpaid and overworked teaching assistants in Madison, Wisconsin. Such thoughtful 'bots. Update: BoingBoing reader Ryan Whaley says, "They weren't supporting the teachers' union, it just happened to be going on at the same time. They planned it weeks ahead of time. They're all members of the somethingawful forums."

But BoingBoing reader Stef says, "I think your correction might be wrong. Do you have a link to a particular thread on somethingawful that discusses their reasons? I got sent this link by a friend because those bastards ripped off my costume from haloween 1990. No I don't have any photographic evidence and yes, I do live in another country but damnit I sweltered all night and couldn't slow dance with anyone or eat or drink and I want credit! Oh, and there's a press release on that page that says the Robot & Automation Association (RAA) "decided through an internal vote, to join the [TAA] in their strike on the 28th of April". If that ain't a clear message of solidarity, sister..."
Link (Thanks, Noah)

6am in Tokyo (2pm LA time). I'm even sleepier today than I was yesterday. I can't sleep here, even though I've been downing Benadryl, which usually knocks me out. I got about 4 hours sleep last night. I was awakened after an hour by someone in the hall outside my door. He was drunk and angry. I'm not sure if he was talking to himself or to someone on his mobile phone, but I didn't want to open my door to take a peek. (The last time I opened a hotel door to investigate a noisy person in a hallway, years ago in Copenhagen, I was greeted by a young guy out of his mind on drugs who made a beeline to my door and tried to force his way in, spitting and screaming. His eyes were rolled back in his head. After I finally got the door shut and locked, he pounded on the door and howled.) Anyway, this Japanese guy just kept going on and on about something. He'd start mumbling, then build up to loud ferocious staccatto bursts. Then he'd start over. I heard some other guy, maybe another hotel guest, speak to him in a low reproachful voice. It took a while, but he shut the jerk up. Thank you, whoever you are.

I was awakened a second time by the sound of power machinery. It took me a minute or two that it was actually someone in the next room snoring. So now I'm in the cafe, drinking a $6 not-very-good espresso in an attempt to reset my circadian clock. I don't know if it'll help or hurt, but I need to try something.

It's been raining steadily since I got here. From what I've been told, a typhoon is headed this way. I'm upset, because today is my day to go exploring around the city. I'll try to keep a good attitude about it. Tokyo is such a wonderful place, I can't let lack of sleep and lousy weather ruin it.

Clive sez: "Chris Allbritton has begun blogging from Iraq. He's the writer who raised $13,000 last year from his blog readers to fund an indie-reporting trip to Iraq during the war. His readers have asked him to go back, and he raised another $11,000 in the last few months. He just arrived in Baghdad, and has begun writing more of his excellent stuff -- slices of everyday life in one of the most fraught places on earth. The first post describes the crazily harrowing landing you have to endure when you fly into Baghdad, as the plane corkscrews down to avoid shoulder-mounted missiles:"

After a normal flight, we went into a tight, corkscrew dive that sent your stomach up into your throat — and in the case of two passengers, out their mouths and into their laps. It’s a vomit-comet experience. But if you like roller coasters in a sealed container where you can’t really see anything, it’s a lot of fun. Just don’t think about the very real threat of shoulder-mounted SAMs.

Link

My latest article for TheFeature.com is online:

"Each year, Los Angeles drivers spend a combined total of 9,000 years stuck in traffic. Cell phones make it much easier to suffer through the brutal traffic jams that are the bane of city life around the world. Fortunately, wireless technology can also shorten the waiting game of freeway commuting.

From Los Angeles and Seattle to Berlin and Tokyo, city planners and researchers are deploying a slew of wireless sensors, smart street signs, and real-time data services for mobile devices to help manage traffic flow and inform drivers about what they'll face on the road ahead." Link

The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown says he considered including another theory in the book that would have inflamed Christians even more than the notion that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and made babies. What if Jesus survived the crucifixion? According to this AP Article, "Brown said the theory is backed by a number of 'very credible sources,' but that he ultimately decided it was too flimsy." I'm burned out on the whole Holy Blood, Holy Grail trip though. Brown's next book, set in Washington, revolves around the Masons! Apparently, the dust jacket of The Da Vinci Code contains a clue about the sequel. Link

The latest issue of RU Sirius's NeoFiles is online. This time, RU mindmelds with net.culture theoretician Clay Shirky, Brainwaves blogger Zack Lynch, and Will Block, the CEO of Life Enhancements Products. Block's company sponsors the NeoFiles, a fact RU honorably discloses at the top of the interview with his boss:

"If this is an infomercial site, it’s a pretty fucking outrageous (and informative) one. I’ve sat for many hours with my friend Will Block and one thing is certain: his knowledge, enthusiasm, and integrity (not to mention expansiveness) around these topics are impeccable. My readers also, by-and-large, are not idiots, and they can make up their own minds about whether to buy products or simply steal the precursors from Auntie Grizelda’s garden."

Link

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund raises the flag about this profoundly stupid new proposed law:

H.B. 4239, also called the "Parents' Empowerment Act," would allow the parent or guardian of a minor to sue in federal court anyone who knowingly disseminates any media containing "material that is harmful to minors" if the material is distributed in a way that "a reasonable person can expect a substantial number of minors to be exposed to the material and the minor, as a result to exposure to the material, is likely to suffer personal or emotional injury or injury to mental or moral welfare." The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Link (Thanks, Mike!)

My cow-orker Jason Schulz is at the DC EDUCAUSE conference, talking about the ways that universities can use computer networks to improve or detract form the educational experience. Some of the current higher-ed thinking is abysmal:

Penn State now has an absolute ban on any student running a server in a residential dorm. Period. The only possible exception is if you swear to only use it for "educational" purposes and get written permission from a faculty member and get approval from the Vice Provost.

So this is part of Penn State's solution to copyright infringement: Take away computing tools from students. As Ed Felten pointed out in our later panel discussion, this is a very dangerous approach for educational institutions to take. Computer science students often learn best through hands-on experimentation and tinkering with technology, and as Jamie Boyle noted in his plenary talk, unplanned experimentation often bears the biggest educational fruit. To paraphrase: "How many times do we learn more from the book next to the book we originally went to find on the shelf, or from the article after the article we looked up in the journal?" Hence, restricting access to content and technology out of fear for infringment can have a very real and direct impact on the ability of students to learn. [Note: Both Yahoo! and Google began as "unauthorized" Stanford student experiments with servers -- should those had been banned as well?]

Link

Today on Worth1000's daily photoshopping contest: "detouched" celebrities with all the blemishes taken out by glossy-mag photo-editors put back in. Link

After the sixth hour of Troy, the new Arm Pitt Men in Skirts epic, I started to remember just how friggin' big that copy of the Iliad I had was. Big. Big, big book. Loooong movie.

So it's a good thing that this blogger has produced a Troy-in-fifteen-minutes abridgement. You know, I like it as much as the original!

AGAMEMNON: Look, there's no reason for me to slaughter thousands of your men. You pick out your best soldier, and I pick out mine.

KING OF THESSALY: Deal. [turns to his army] SOME GUYYYYY!

THESSALIAN ARMY: SOME! GUY! SOME! GUY! SOME! GUY!

Some Guy breaks through the crowd. His neck resembles an Easter ham and his spear is the size of a telephone pole.

SOME GUY: RAAAAAAAAA!

AGAMEMNON [turning to his army]: ACHILLEEEEEES!

GREEK ARMY: . . .

AGAMEMNON: . . .

Hut of Wanton Nudity, Some Village

BOY: OMG Achilles you're late you gotta get up Achilles OMG!

ACHILLES: Dude, I just nailed twins. Call me in the morning.

Link (via Electrolite)

The new Pratimoksha (Buddhist Monastic Code) is out, and it has lots to say about spending too much time with the Interweb and not enough with your Buddha nature:

44. A bhikshu who has his private e-mail account with the result that he spends an inordinate amount of time in making unnecessary communications or communications which foster attachment commits an offence for which he must express regret...

46. A bhikshu who plays electronic games including those on the computer, commits an offence for which he must express regret.

Link (via Oblomovka)

The Tongue-Boy SP is a tongue-based controller for use with the GameBoy targetted at people with quadroplegia.

The NewAbilities Systems TTK or Tongue Touch Wireless Keyboard Transmitter looks like an orthodontic retainer with nine membrane buttons

We add a new jack for the Tongue Boy SP TTK receiver input. We also add a second micro-controller computer chip inside the case to decode the TTK signals from the receiver and activate the Game Boy SP buttons.

Link (via /.)

(I went to Tokyo for a couple of days. I'l be posting excerpts from my journal here.) It's 4am in Tokyo (noon LA time). I just went downstairs to call my wife. First, I had to get change for my 5000 Yen bill. I like the way the desk clerk spread the 1000 notes in a pretty fan shape and offered them to me on a tray. What other country gives you that kind of service?

The flight from LAX to Tokyo was 11.5 hours and uncomfortable. I can never sleep on planes. I tried to nap, but I just fidgeted.

The good news about being stuck in an aluminum tube for hours on end is that I managed to write four pieces for my upcoming book. I used a Moleskine notebook (thanks, David!) and a Pilot Gel pen, which works well with the Moleskine. I'd be interested in hearing about other pens that are good on Moleskine's paper.

I had a window seat on the plane. The 20-year-old guy next to me was really tall for a Japanese and gangly. He was a nice guy, but his elbows and knees frequently crossed the line into my side and bumped me, especially when he was playing Grand Theft Auto on his IBM ThinkPad. He slept a lot, the lucky son of a bitch. The Japanese girl sitting next to him in the aisle seat cried silently and drank cans of Miller beer. She kept her eyes closed and I saw tears falling down her cheeks.

Once we landed in Tokyo, it was smooth sailing. I hadn't checked any luggage, so I breezed through customs. Fortunately, the day before, I went on the Web to find the best way to get to the Shinagawa station from Narita airport. I used the Narita Express. You have to buy a reserved seat from a stall on the main floor before taking the escalator down to the train station under Narita. The girl working at the Narita Express counter was wearing a neat little uniform with a matching cap. She, like all the counter workers I've seen so far, was impeccably groomed, polite, and professional. It's fun to make transactions here!

At the train station, I asked a guy in a uniform to look at my ticket and tell me where to go. He said "Car two." I walked to car two sat down in my assigned seat. The train left the station. At the next stop, a guy walked on and said I was in his seat. I showed him my ticket, and he said "you are supposed to be on car seven." I looked at my ticket, and he was right. I blame it on sleep deprivation.

I got my bag from the storage area and carried it through all the cars. The smoking car was pretty rowdy, and smoke was hanging thick in the air. A middle-aged salaryman, drunk, was standing in the aisle, laughing with a seated friend. His eyeglasses were enormous, and his comb-over was a work of art. Another guy had his shoes and socks off and his feet were dangling in the aisle. I manuevered around them and got to the first class car, number six. It didn't seem much different from the other cars. Less crowded. Slightly nicer seats. You pay to keep other people away from you.

When I got to the end of the car, I couldn't open the door to car seven. I looked through the window and discovered that there wasn't any way to get to the car. I stood there for a moment, wondering what to do. I finally went back through the first class car and the smoking car and sat in an unoccupied 2nd class non-smoking seat. When the conductor came through the car and checked my ticket, he didn't say anything about me being in the wrong seat.

My hotel was right across the street from the station, a nice surprise. The room is tiny. Six feet wide and about 15 feet long. The bathroom is molded from one piece of plastic. There's a tiny desk, a chair, a bed, and a TV. I like it, but it smells like stale cigarettes.

I went to sleep close to 4am Pacific time (8 pm in Tokyo), and woke up at around 10:30 am Pacific (2:30 am in Tokyo). I think I'll try to sleep a little more.

Axil Comras of Green Home points us to PlaNetwork, a conference June 5-6 in San Francisco on technology and social change. Presenters from MoveOn, the Dean Campaign, LinkedIn, and dozens of other outfits will discuss timely topics like e-voting, social networking, and grassroots digital activism. At $100 per day, it's not cheap. However, if you get three other people to list you as the referral when they pay, you get in free. So do a bit of pre-planning with three friends and all four of you can cut 25 percent off the admission cost! Link

On Copyfight, Donna writes,

This just in: the California Institute of Technology and Loyola Law School are presenting a mock trial this Friday, May 21st, to play out a scenario in which a student creates a distributed computing application to crack DRM systems, leading to the criminal prosecution of everyone involved under the DMCA.

The trial will have many realistic touches: a real federal judge will hear the case, the prosecution will be advised by real federal prosecutors, and the defense by EFF 's Fred von Lohmann. Brad Hunt of the MPAA will provide expert testimony for the prosecution, while EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen will provide testimony for the defense.

Even cooler: the event is free and open to the public. If you're in the Los Angeles area and can get away from work or study mid-day, stop by and check it out.

Link

El Casco is a Spanish company that has been supplying desk-accessories and office products to the Spanish rail company since the 1920s. They have a line of premium reproductions of 1920s-era office tools, including a heart-stoppingly lovely stapler and pencil-sharpener (the pencil sharpener has a little window so you can peer into its guts and watch your pencil transformed). Link

etoy, the infamous tech-prankster art collective, is after our kids!

"etoy.CORPORATION's education & training services are preparing for a major upgrade of its social division. 8 etoy.AGENTS in close collaboration with local experts will convert 500 individuals (max.age: 10 years), providing them with an entry point into art production, identity design and electronic authorship.

The etoy.DAY-CARE education program equips etoy.JUNIOR-AGENTS with the tools necessary to out-produce today's most relevant social and technological problems. etoy researches identity issues, group behavior patterns and the creativity potential of children in digital environments.

Each little test pilot will be outfitted with a protection suit, various etoy.TOOLS, its own identity tag (an individual encrypted 2D-barcode) and a customized etoy.DATA-TANK online to grow a subversive identity-extension and a long term relationship with etoy.CORPORATION.

Care personnel and in-house software agents will actively monitor the condition of each child and will stay in close contact with parents and human rights organizations.

etoy.SHAREHOLDERS and an international audience can follow the operations. Invest in the code of tomorrow!" Link

A man got too close to a jaguar at the Rio Grande Zoo and lost a finger. Before zoo employees realized what had happened, the guy fled the scene. Apparently, it's illegal to pet the predator. After the finger was found outside the jaguar's cage, police took a print from the detached digit and tracked the guy down through his zoo pass. Sadly, the frequent visitor who came to the zoo almost daily is now banned. I bet the jaguar will miss him. "They're not your friends, they're not your pets," the zoo director said. "They're wild animals." Link

I've uploaded some of the snapshots I took during a recent trip through indigenous communities in Guatemala. Here they are, come have a look.
Link

Fun online piece about setting up free wireless broadband access for a small apartment complex -- and how the unwiring paid for itself by helping fill empty units. Link

Tagging a penguin's wing with a research tag changes their drag coefficient, resulting in altered social behaviour, most notably less success in breeding.

As well as hindering conservation efforts, the penguins' poor breeding success may also mean that birds tagged in previous experiments have yielded misleading scientific data.

"We may have to reconsider our present knowledge on the life-history traits of penguins, such as breeding success and chick survival, which over the years has been drawn almost entirely from flipper-banded birds," warn Gauthier-Clerc and his colleagues in their paper in Biology Letters.

Link

CarbWire is a great new low-carb blog. Link (via Dan Gillmor)

The state of Texas has denied Unitarians tax-exempt religious status because the church "does not have one system of belief." As Julia notes, Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams were sufficiently convinced of the Unitarians' religiosity that they actually were Unitarians.

Never before -- not in this state or any other -- has a government agency denied Unitarians tax-exempt status because of the group's religious philosophy, church officials say. Strayhorn's ruling clearly infringes upon religious liberties, said Dan Althoff, board president for the Denison congregation that was rejected for tax exemption by the comptroller's office.

Link (via Electrolite)

Today on Engadget: a HOWTO for using the open-source hymn utility to strip the access-controls out of iTunes Music Store tracks so that you can play them on devices that Apple hasn't approved. Link (via /.)

If you use an OS 10.3 Mac with Safari or MSIE, you absolutely must follow the instructions in this post to block a really serious attack that Apple hasn't patched (though they've reportedly known about this since February). Alternatively, you could always run Mozilla or one of its variants -- a free, open source browser in which vulnerabilities are corrected as soon as they're discovered (not when Apple decides to get around to it). I stand corrected -- this effects Mozilla, too. Link (via Electrolite)

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: creative use of spoons. Link

The mystery of the boy voice behind cult antiporn anthem "Please Don't go Topless, Mother" has been solved. Troy Hess has a web page. Link, and link to previous BoingBoing post which includes MP3 file link.

A Swedish cult-leader implicated in serial murders is in trouble because of the damning, deleted SMSes recovered off his mobile-phone's SIM.

The case has been creating headlines for months in the Scandinavian media and the latest thrilling development is that computer forensic company Ibas has been able to recover 13 of the messages from the SIM card in the nanny's mobile. Here's a quick translation of some of the messages from the minister (just like the Bible they can be interpreted in any old way):

* 5 December 2003 04:53. You need to make a decision and not wither. Find a safe solution. You prove your love by liberating him. His limit is soon reached.

* New Years Eve 2003 15:21. It's not your fault, there is still time. For his sake and because of his message to you it will not be too late. Finish it now!

Link (Thanks, Halvard!)

Glenn Fleishman says, "Cometa shuts down. This doesn't show the model of for-fee Wi-Fi is broken, but rather that a company with hype and high expectations can fail to execute and then shut down." Link

This hands-free panda is only $19 -- Jed sez, "It's a stuffed panda; when you attach your cell phone to it, it moves its mouth and head in sync with the voice of the person you're talking to." Link (Thanks, Jed!) UPDATE: The Panda and other "Talking Toonies" are now exclusively available here.

San Diego-based blogger Joe Crawford brings news of "JBX," a new experiment by San Diego-based fast food giant Jack in the Box.

[N]ot exactly fast food. The look of the stores is quite different -- Chipotle meets Starbucks, but they still have the classic tacos. There are two of these stores in San Diego - pilot stores. They're like concept cars, but restaurants.

Non sequitur: One of my first geek jobs was working in a sweatshop full of nerds an Internet Professional Services Firm in San Diego. One of my first big client meetings there was a bid for a redesign of the Jack in the Box website, which had only just launched the year prior. This was, like, the paleolithic era of the Interweb. Anyway, in the pitch meeting, one of my co-workers -- a webmonkey who really wanted to be an ad man -- said to the Jack in the Box execs, "Come on, nobody actually comes to your restaurant because the food tastes any good -- we're selling IMMERSIVE USER EXPERIENCE here, not flavor." We lost the bid.
Link

Google has posted a list of proposed best-practices for Internet software, such as toolbars, which aims at separating spyware from other apps. One of the big problems with the spyware fight is that the legal theories employed (as in the lawsuits against Gator) often have the potential to break the Internet in important ways. For example, the plaintiffs in Gator say that Gator violates their copyright in their webpages by putting new windows onscreen when they're loaded with competitors' info (i.e., you load up www.deliveryservice1.com and a window pops up for deliveryservice2.com). If a court agrees with this theory, it means that the org responsible for the contents of the foremost window in your browser get to control all the other windows on your screen -- that you violate their copyright if you install, say, a price-comparator that loads Amazon's comparable sell-pages when you bring up a bn.com page so that you can check who's cheapest.

Google's principles seem, to me, to be much more thoughtful and respectful of the Internet and its users. They revolve around key notions in consumer protection: clarity, honesty, and easy opt-out. Not committing fraud, IOW.

Applications that affect or change your user experience should make clear they are the reason for those changes. For example, if an application opens a window, that window should identify the application responsible for it. Applications should not intentionally obscure themselves under multiple or confusing names. You should be given means to control the application in a straightforward manner, such as by clicking on visible elements generated by the application. If an application shows you ads, it should clearly mark them as advertising and inform you that they originate from that application. If an application makes a change designed to affect the user experience of other applications (such as setting your home page) then those changes should be made clear to you.

Link (Thanks, David!)

Gregr sends us this pointer to his deluxe, two-tone duct-tape messenger bag, with a cellphone pocket and everything -- wish he'd posted build-notes! Link (Thanks, Gregr!)

72s2CD.com is an online retailer that sells public-domain 78RPM albums (lots of Gilbert and Sullivan and Alma Gluck!) that have been converted to audio CDs. Link

Teresa Nielsen Hayden -- a swell writer and respected editor -- may not have invented the genre in which clueless advice to new writers is mercilessly dissected, but she certainly perfected it. Today. Teresa shreds a really stunningly gormless "cover-letter advice" page:

Tip Eight: Call. That's right, Call. Introduce yourself. Be confident. Let them know your work is coming. It's the surest way to get out of that slush pile and on to a desk. Too afraid to call? Write out what you want to say, call AFTER HOURS, leave a voice message. It's not as good talking to a real person, but hey, it's better than nothing.

The surest way? Say what? Calling in advance is an irritating waste of the editorial department's time, and will do nothing to get you out of a trade publishing slushpile. Leaving a message after hours is even more clueless. I can't imagine where he got this idea, unless he's been taking advice from someone who's secretly out to get him.

There is one significant effect this might have. Because you've phoned to say something about a submission, someone may write down your name and the title of your book, and pass the note on to the slush readers. They'll be puzzled--why did you say you were phoning again?--and will stick the note up on their bulletin board. When your manuscript crosses their desk, they may remember that there was something-or-other they were supposed to remember or do about it, and will set your manuscript on the "inscrutable problems" stack for later diagnosis. Some slow afternoon--of which there aren't many--they'll have a go at the "inscrutable problems" stack, and will look at your manuscript again. They won't be able to tell what the problem was. They'll set the manuscript aside for later. After several cycles, they'll either figure that any manuscript that's been around this long should be returned to its author on general principles, or they'll move on to another job and the new slush reader will run your manuscript through several more "inscrutable problems" cycles before returning it to you on general principles.

Link

I've just finished reading Siva Vaidhyanathan's excellent new book The Anarchist in the Library, a discourse on the real culture war: the fight between open systems for exchanging knowledge and closed systems that see knowledge as a marketable commodity. The best part of this book is that it repudiates technology as a tool for making policy, calling for deliberation instead: in other words, copyright strictures should be created by courts and lawmakers, not DRM.

Both visions of the perfect library -- utopian [all knowledge available for free, organized by volunteers] and dystopian [child-porn, spoilers and amateurish information supplanting high-quality research] -- are overstated. We are not close to constructing the perfect library, but we can imagine how it might look and act. Many of our communal efforts since the early 1990s seem to be moving our information ecosystem toward that vision. Yet long before we ge there, many are sounding alarms about the ways people might abuse their freedoms to use and move information. Even though the perfect library is not imminent, many are acting as if it is. The strong reactions of those who would squelch these freedoms might render our information systems unable to perform the positive functions of the perfect library because of the unexamined -- often merely assumed -- threats to the status quo. The closer we get to the perfect library the more the oligarchs undermine it.

Link

Dmitri Puchkov is a Russian ex-cop who goes by the alias Goblin. "Goblin" is his nom-de-edit when he's remixing Lord of the Rings, dubbing in Russian dialogue to lampoon cops, oligarchs, and gangsters. He's working on a re-cut of Star Wars now. (This is old news, but I only just read about it)

Frodo Baggins is renamed Frodo Sumkin (a derivative from the Russian word sumka, or bag). The Ranger, Aragorn, is called Agronom (Russian for farm worker). Legolas is renamed Logovaz, after a Russian car company famed for its Ladas. Boromir becomes Baralgin, after a Russian type of paracetemol.

Gandalf spends much of the film trying to impress others with his in-depth knowledge of Karl Marx, and Frodo is cursed with the filthy tongue of a Russian criminal.

The films - which Puchkov says were originally made for his close friends but have now gone out on the internet - have found cult appeal in Russia's crowded pirate market, where a pirated, high-quality DVD in both Russian and English costs £5. That is all ordinary Russians, who earn only $300 a month in Moscow, can afford. The Russian pirate industry is worth $311 million, and has grown by 25 per cent since last year, pirates making more than 40 million disks a year.

Link

Governor Schwarzenegger has made good on his threat to sue a bobble-head-doll maker for putting his pardoical likeness on a bobble-head doll. Link

This duct-tape messenger bag is totally rad. Link (via Gizmodo)

Jouer is a new line of cosmetics that comes in Lego-like stacking containers:

The products -- lip glosses, blushes and concealers -- come in trim compacts ($18 each at Sephora stores) that can be attached to one another, Lego-style, in any configuration.

Link

Here's a first-person account of Brian's marriage under Massachusetts's new gay-marriage law.

Suddenly a roar erupted all around us. Things began to move more slowly. I grabbed Aaron's hand tighter and started running forward up the steps. Everything was a blur. I lost his grip briefly as he stopped close to the entrance to accept a rose from someone in the crowd. I paused at the top of the steps, and turned to wait for him.

I've been in front of some large, happy, and cheering crowds before, but only on a stage -- never with a throng pressing in from all sides, with clapping hands outstretched, cameras flashing, and a deafening roar.

I stood there facing the crowd as Aaron walked towards me with a sparkle-encrusted yellow rose and a huge grin on his face. As he reached me, I put my hand around his waist and waved to the crowd. I tried to look at all the people, but my eyes couldn't focus.

We turned and walked into City Hall. My head spun. The lights seemed blinding after coming in from the street. A man in a tuxedo sat at a table and said something like "What are your intentions", through it was probably more like "Are you here to declare your intentions?" A reporter stood behind him pointing a microphone connected to a minidisc recorder at us. People and press thronged around.

I looked at Aaron. He shrugged.

"Um, we're here for a marriage license...?" I said.

Link (Thanks, Brian!)

Micah Joel is running an open WiFi network in order to give himself plausible deniability for bad acts that can be traced to his IP address:

I've already composed my reply in case I receive one of these letters someday. "Dear Comcast, I am so sorry. I had no idea that copyrighted works were being downloaded via my IP address; I have a wireless router at home and it's possible that someone may have been using my connection at the time. I will do my best to secure this notoriously vulnerable technology, but I can make no guarantee that hackers will not exploit my network in the future."

If it ever comes down to a lawsuit, who can be certain that I was the offender? And can the victim of hacking be held responsible for the hacker's crimes? If that were the case, we'd all be liable for the Blaster worm's denial of service attacks against Microsoft last year.

Link

PayPal has frozen the account used to collection donation for FreeNet (a censorship-busting technology used by world dissidents to anonymously publish without risking government retribution). Shame on them.

Paypal has frozen the account we use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than "use of an anonymous proxy", which suggests that someone at Paypal took a dislike to the goals of our project, since I have never used an anonymous proxy to access Paypal (this being the activity I assume they sought to prevent). It is fortunate that Johann Gutenberg did not rely on Paypal to fund his work on the printing press, which also allowed anonymous publication of information, since his account would probably have been frozen too.

If you are concerned about whether your account might be at risk due to your political opinions you may wish to speak to their PR contact Hani Durzy at (408) 376 7458. If you are an investor and you would like to see what other political opinions Paypal doesn't like, you may want to speak to their Investor contact Tracey Ford at (408) 376 7205.

Link (via /.)

On today's Worth1000 photoshopping contest: create a chimera consiting of the combined body-parts of three or four animals. Link

Here are some snapshots I took at Wired Magazine's NextFest this weekend. At left, a young man named Cameron Clapp who became a triple amputee at age 15 in a train accident. He now uses "smart" prosthetic limbs that have to be charged up at night like a cell phone. The computer-aided devices give him greater mobility and independence than conventional prosthetics -- he's a champion amputee athlete.

Other memorable moments -- Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson asks NASA Space Architect Gary Martin about the search for life "out there;" Martin says, "It would be even more frightening if we never find life out there -- it would mean that we are entirely alone, in a very big universe."

Andrew Stanton from Pixar pulled aside the curtain to give us a glimpse into the creative process behind Toy Story and other blockbuster CGI features. Wired entertainment editor Jennifer Hillner hosted exclusive previews of mindblowingly cool footage from the forthcoming Fox/Blue Sky Studios animated feature Robots (due out Spring 2005), and from the CGI/bluescreen project Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (opening this September). Sunday ended in an incredible roundtable discussion with space entrepreneurs including ID/Quake/Doom software wizard John Carmack; Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson, Xcor CEO Jeff Greason, and Xprize founder Peter Diamandis. News there included never-before-seen footage of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, and of a new R+D effort from Carmack.
Link to Xeni's gallery of NextFest snapshots.

Update: Looks like John Dvorak had a good time, too: Link to PC Magazine article, and Dvorak's snapshot gallery. Extreme Tech also covered the event; story and two photo galleries are online here.

Dan Gillmor blogs today:

You've probably read about the HIV scare in the porn business. The San Francisco Chronicle suggests that the adult-entertainment industry look to lessons learned in San Francisco during the 1980s. And an industry-news site (note: this site may not be work-safe) takes an even sterner approach, urging a massive database tracking just about everything an individual actor may have done.

Link

"Dunny" is a 20-inch tall vinyl action figure designed to be customized by diverse artists working in different mediums. A show of "Dunny"-derivative art opens this week in NYC.

Among the artists and designers who will personalize a Dunny for the exhibition are world-famous graffiti artists Doze Green,Tilt and Fafi, and Seen; renowned toy designers Jason Siu and Pete Fowler; illustrators including Disney's "Teacher's Pet" creator Gary Baseman; graphic artists including The Designers Republic; fashion designers Diane von Furstenberg,and Heatherette, and a number of fine artists, including Alexis Rockman and Jessica Stockholder. Design studio participants include artists from PDI/Dreamworks Animation Studios and Steuben Crystal. And many more."

Link (Thanks, CC)

Boingboing pal sean bonner points us to some emerging words to describe PVR-related activities.

# Passkilling is when someone cancels a Tivo request to change channels and record a Season Pass show.
# A Passkiller is someone who cancels an in-progress Season Pass recording or cancels a channel change request.

link

Congratulations to the Civilian Space eXploratiion Team, whose amateur rocket was the first of its kind to make it into space! The seven meter tall rocket, GoFast, reached an altitude of 100 kilometers yesterday, the "official edge of space," according to New Scientist magazine. GoFast transmitted its position and altitude data from high above the Nevada desert back to Earth via ham radio.

"The Civilian Space eXploration Team (CSXT) is an all-civilian team comprised of about 30 amateur rocketeers from all walks of life -- from a retired Hollywood stunt man, to teachers, scientists, inventors, television engineers, ham radio enthusiasts, students, and -- yes -- even honest-to-goodness rocket scientists. Their common bonds: a love of rocketry and an unyielding desire to succeed even against the toughest odds and the greatest skeptics."

Link

According to this Reuters report, the travel industry is beginning to ease the trials of traveling when you're tall. For instance, the Hotel Monaco Group offers "tall guestrooms" with higher ceilings, longer beds, and raised showerheads. The "NBA Suites" in the Palms Casino in Las Vegas were also designed with verticality in mind. At 6'2", I don't bang my head on doorframes, but I am cramped as hell in most airlines' coach cabins. Of course, I'm certainly not the only one, or the tallest one for that matter. Apparently, there are now 8.8 million men over 6'2" and 5.5 million women over 5'9" in the US. Now, those rising numbers have their own magazine: TALL, "a lifestyle magazine for a heightened culture." Link

In The Hollywood Reporter today, an item about t-shirts that display movie trailers -- as seen at both E3 and NextFest last week.

Coming soon to a T-shirt near you: trailers for "I, Robot," starring Will Smith. In the never-ending search to capture the attention of consumers bombarded by commercials, billboards and a massive array of other advertisements, 20th Century Fox debuted an innovative new guerilla marketing tactic at E3 last week -- T-shirts embedded with video screens that played "I, Robot" trailers.

The two women who wore the video T-shirts as they walked around E3 drew crowds and TV news crews on hand to cover the gaming conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center. 20th Century Fox is the first studio -- or business of any kind -- to use the video T-shirt marketing tactic developed by San Francisco-based Brand Marketers.

Link (Thanks, Jeff; photo by Kurt Rogers of the SF Chronicle, Link to SF Chron story)

I filed this story/photos for Wired News about an unusual publicity stunt staged by the US Army at last week's E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles.

On a sweltering afternoon, the line between video games and reality was temporarily erased at the Los Angeles Convention Center. For about 45 minutes, one downtown street was transformed into a scene from a military first-person shooter game -- complete with helicopters, machine guns and face-painted soldiers leaping off tall buildings, while the jaws of shocked onlookers dropped.

To promote America's Army: Overmatch, a free game created by the Army as a recruitment tool, a group of Army Special Forces personnel staged an urban tactical assault exercise outside the L.A. convention center where the E3 gaming expo was taking place. It may have been a staged promotional event, but judging from the panicked expressions on pedestrian faces, some may have thought it was the real thing.

In Hollywood terms, the effect was Black Hawk Down, directed by Fellini. Unsuspecting local workers clutched lunches and scurried off for cover. Bullhorns blared the voice of an America's Army spokesman who delivered a play-by-play, encouraging attendees to download the free online game for more hot combat excitement. A charging soldier affixed a mobile camera to his helmet to record home videos of the stunt for his family. One trade show attendee who appeared to be of Arab descent walked toward the convention center doors, halted at the spectacle, and said to no one in particular, "It's all brainwashing."

Link to story, and links to more E3 snapshots from Xeni: one, two

BoingBoing reader Stefan Jones says,

Model rocket supplier Estes Industries got hammered by the failure of a line of licensed "The Phantom Menace" models. They're starting to appeal to those of us who geek out on real-life rockets again, with eight models based on entries in the X-Prize suborbital rocket competition. The variety of approaches is astonishing. The second page has a mystery model that's obviously Rutan's Spaceship One. I guess some people charge more for licensing than others . . . And -- whoo! -- they're selling a video camera rocket to replace the 8mm Cineroc movie camera that was last offered thirty years ago.

Link

Retired Congressman Al Smith testified on the DMCRA, Rep Boucher's bill to reform copyright. Smith's been home-taping for 54 years, and he knows what's what:

When I buy a CD or a DVD, that content should be wholly mine to do with as I please as long as I am in no way selling its contents or profiting from it. ... Present law is predicated on the assumption that consumers will rip-off copyright holders. The vast majority are innocent of that assumption, but all are treated as guilty.

Link

So, I spent a fair amount of my waking hours in recent months programming the Main Stage portion of NextFest, the Wired Magazine event sponsored by GE that took place at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center this weekend. I took lots of snapshots, and I'm eager to share them -- along with some of what I observed at the event. But right now, I'm still peeling my brain off the floor. I'm exhausted. More soon, but for now this quick snapshot that kind of sums it all up for me. Seeing so many families and children experiencing technology first-hand with this look of sheer amazement and delight on their faces made all the work feel worthwhile.
Link to some news clips on NextFest.

BoingBoing pal Mike Outmesguine (who you may have spotted on CNN this weekend talking about why it would be A Bad Thing for the federal government to have the power to jam your cellphone in the name of counter-terrorism) says:

David Landers plays the voice of Henry the penguin on the kid show "Oswald" (Oswald the octopus is voiced by Fred Savage) playing on Nickelodeon. I sometimes watch it with my 3 year-old. One episode had Henry's cousin come in from out of town. His cousin was voiced by Michael McKean (who played Lenny.) I can't tell you how funny it was to hear Lenny and Squiggy pestering eachother in a children's show - while appearing as penguins!

Link

ice cream | bento | biscuit of the week | biscuithenge | mango biscuits | donuts | marshmallows | bad candy | name that candy bar | rude food | pork faggots | cooking with crisps | cheese doodles | and the classic: twinkies project
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

Jason Schultz of the EFF attended NextFest this weekend, and photoblogged these observations.
Link

Tossing back two shots of coffee each hour may provide more sustainable stimulation than gulping down a large cup in the morning, scientists from Rush University Medical Center report in the journal Sleep. In the study, sixteen men stayed in windowless rooms for nearly a month while the researchers screwed with their circadian rhythms. From a Scientific American article about the findings:

"In the new study, the scientists... tested the effects of administering an hourly, low dose of caffeine equivalent to about two ounces of coffee to one group, while the second group received a placebo. The caffeinated men performed better on cognitive tests than the control individuals did, and dozed off less often. And though they received the same cumulative dose as subjects in previous, single-dose studies, taking many small doses minimized some of the negative side effects that caffeine can have, such as tremors." Link

Vice-cards are the glossy cards advertising prostitutes' services that are placed in phone booths all over London. The tradition goes back decades, and a Graphic Communications conference recently heard this paper on the design evolution of the vice-card.

As more girls advertised their services the cards became larger - A7 or less frequently one third of A5 - and more distinctive. Girls developed their own recognisable style. Specialised services were offered and a visual and written vocabulary began to evolve to reflect each specialism. Cards offering schoolgirl services or Le Vice Anglais had a Victorian feel and accordingly used nineteenth-century typefaces; domination cards used stern words set in Gothic letters; cards proffering massage needed a luxurious and whimsical script.

These mid-period cards were predominantly typographic and were supported by roughly drawn, but often delightful, line illustrations. They managed to maintain both a sense of mystery and a sense of humour. Eventually the ISO standards made themselves felt even in the vice industry, and by January 1994 nearly all the cards had been enlarged to A6 postcard size. Four-colour started to be seen on the cards during the summer of 1997, and by the summer of 1998, four-colour, and ‘proper' typesetting was the norm.

Today's cards depend upon full-page, sometimes explicit, glossy, photographic images to put across their sales pitch. The images are downloaded from the Internet and are never of the person offering the services, although they are often advertised as ‘genuine'! The charm and allure apparent in the early cards has gone from the modern cards, individuality and originality has been lost...

The cards are placed in the boxes on behalf of the girls by people known as ‘carders' who are frequently students or unemployed. It is a highly lucrative trade and the carders can earn an average of £30 for 100 or £200 per day for between 600 and 700 cards placed. The girls pay for the carders out of their own wages, and with thirteen million of them placed annually, the wages of sin are in the region of £4 million.

Link (via Foe Romeo)

Humans have an incredibly acute sense of smell, but a new study shows that our perception of odors is dramatically reduced when we're snoozing. Researchers at Brown University published a paper in the journal Sleep showing that individuals slept right through the introduction of intense scents indicative of fires. A moderately loud sound woke people right away though.

“As the saying goes,” said the paper’s co-author Mary A. Carskadon, “we ‘wake up and smell the coffee,’ not the other way around.”

Still, I wonder if this is because we're trained from a young age to respond to buzzing, radio-blaring alarms. It would be fun to have an alarm clock that at a pre-set hour spewed a refreshing blast of peppermint! Link

I don't know what to make of this. It's a very well-researched, non-hysterical collection of 50 seeming contradictions in the Berg decapitation video. The author states that a number of these will likely be explained away, but taken as a whole, this very convincingly implies that Berg was not killed by the terrorists that the CIA fingered, and may, in fact, have been killed by westerners.

34) "Terrorists" were fat
Several of the men in the film were fat by Iraqi standards. If they were Feyadeen or Mujahadeen, they probably have been living underground since the first days of the occupation. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been shown on news stories as they have marched and demonstrated. One would be hard pressed to point out a single fat man among these thousands.

35) White hands of "terrorists"
Some of the "Arab terrorists" have pasty-white hands and (other exposed) skin. One would be hard pressed to find Arab men with pasty-white hands. (See: Nick Berg Conspiracy Theories Abound.)

36) Wrong accent
Al-Zarqawi is/was Jordinian. Arab linguists have said the man posing as Al-Zarqawi did not speak with a Jordanian dialect. Others have suggested the man reading the written statement may not have been a native speaker of Arabic....

39) Al-Zarqawi's missing leg
Al-Zarqawi was missing one leg. Al-Zarqawi allegedly wears a prosthetic device, according to previous CIA reports. (See: IHT Protrait of Al-Zarqawi.) There is no evidence that the killer wore a prosthetic device. Further, Al-Zarqawi had been outfitted with an artificial leg that did not fit or function properly. He was unable to walk or stand normally. No man in the group showed evidence of such infirmity.

40) Missing tattoos?
Large green tattooed "dots" are known to be on the back of Abu Musab Zarqawi's left hand. These tattoos cannot be seen in the close up video of the execution, though the back of his hand is fairly visible. (See: IHT Protrait of Al-Zarqawi.)

Link (via Nelson)

My friend Guy is considering the purchase of a stylish prefab home. He pointed me to FabPreFab, a mind-blowing clearinghouse of prefab dwelling design.

"Predominant mass-market housing programs such as project homes or tract housing largely fail to meet the desires of people who appreciate a modernist design aesthetic. Custom-designed modernist architecture is beyond the financial reach of many people and so prefab is viewed as a design and production ideology that has the potential to deliver affordable modernism."

Some of these abodes can be ordered online and delivered on several trucks. Others are airlifted onto rooftops. Don't miss the transformed shipping containers either! Link

Colin Powell appeared on Meet the Press this weekend, and his appearance was marred by his press secretary moving the camera and attempting to end the interview early when Russert, the interviewer, started to ask a hardball question about the fictional Nigerien yellow-cake uranium that Powell used as an excuse to go to war in Iraq.

Most noteworthy about this event was that Powell, rebuked the press-secretary on air, demanded that the camera be trained on him again, and then answered the question, describing the intelligence he'd received as "deliberately misleading."

Lisa Rein's got the video up -- highly recommended.

EMILY MILLER, STATE DEPARTMENT PRESS AIDE: You're off.

SECRETARY POWELL: I am not off.

EMILY MILLER, PRESS AIDE: No. They can't use it, they're editing it.

SECRETARY POWELL: He's still asking the questions.

EMILY MILLER, PRESS AIDE: He was not ...

SECRETARY POWELL: Tim, I am sorry I lost you.

MR. RUSSERT: I am right here Mr. Secretary. I would hope they would put you back on camera. I don't know who did that.

EMILY MILLER, PRESS AIDE: He was going to go for another five minutes.

SECRETARY POWELL: We've really scre...

MR. RUSSERT: I think that was one of your staff Mr. Secretary. I don't think that's appropriate.

SECRETARY POWELL: Emily, get out of the way. Bring the camera back please. (Camera returns to the interview subject) I think we're back on Tim, go ahead with your last question.

Link Mirrors here

Gum-posters featuring celebrity faces are appearing in London, and locals are encouraged to dispose of their wads by sticking them up, rather than dropping them underfoot.

Londoners are being urged to stick their chewing gum on celebrity posters rather than dropping it on the streets.

Ealing Council hopes posters featuring Shane Richie, Jordan and Peter Andre among others will prove a more tempting target in Acton, west London.

Posters have removable sheets which will be changed six days a week to stop the gum building up...

It is estimated that UK local authorities spend £150m a year tackling the problem.

Link (via Ben Hammersley)

John Scalzi, a very talented humour writer and novelist (I like to think of him as the "edgy Dave Barry"), has written a bunch of notes for the newly married gays and lesbians of Massachusetts:

It's your best man's (or the equivalent's) job to remind people that at a wedding reception, as at the Academy Awards, speeches are best very short. You didn't spend an obscene amount on the catering just to have it grow cold as Uncle Jim blathers on.

Remind the DJ or band that they work for you, and they'll damn well play anything you want. For some reason I think this may be less of a problem at gay weddings. Thank God.

There will be drama of some sort at the reception. If the wedding party lets any of it reach the newlyweds, they haven't done their job.

Don't fill up on bread. You'll have to dance later.

Link (via Electrolite)

Connor Dickie, a student at Queen's University's Human Media Lab, has developed these video-shooting glasses with an eye-contact sensor, and a companion app called eyeBlog that allows the wearer to videoblog her/his PoV. Link (Thanks, Connor!)

David Lander, who played Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley, is now a talent-scout for the Seattle Mariners. Link

Excellent first-person account of a security consultant who entered a store (at management's request) and conned the staff into helping him boost nearly $4,000 worth of computers and walk out the front door with it all.

I was trying to find some paperwork that I could carry into the warehouse to use as 'official company documents'. I hit the jackpot when I opened the breakroom door when I noticed that the store had a seperate room for smokers as well, so I decided that I had worked hard enough so far and I deserved a break. After a refreshing dose of a nicotine inhaler I was back on the job. A quick survey of the non-smoking break room turned up a printout of employees who were scheduled to work that day.

Link (via /.)

"Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water," is a documentary on Klingon-speakers debuting in Cannes. In conjunction with the release, the Klingon Language Institute is holding a workshop/confernece at Cannes for interested parties.

KLI members featured in the film include Dr d'Armond Speers, a linguist who spoke only in Klingon to his son until age three and a half, and Rich Yampbell, composer of Klingon national anthem taHaj wo.

Link (via Ambiguous)

I'm giving a talk in Barcelona on Wednesday about the USA PATRIOT Act, and so I've been boning up on EFF's analysis of this sweeping, unconstitutional law. Of particular help has been the clause-by-clause analyses that our staff attorney Kevin Bankston's been writing for EFFector, EFF's weekly newsletter. If you ever wondered what the big deal was about PATRIOT, Kevin's blurbs will explain it all -- in bite-sized, layperson-friendly chunks.

Apologists justified the broad, civil-liberties corroding powers granted to the government under the USA PATRIOT Act by arguing that they would be used to put terrorists behind bars. Yet several provisions can be used against Americans in a wide range of investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism. Others are too vague, jeopardizing legitimate activities protected under the First Amendment. Worse, the Department of Justice has worked to expand and/or make permanent a number of these provisions -- despite the fact that they were sold to the public as "temporary" measures and are scheduled to expire, or "sunset," in December of 2005.

Link