Hyperlinkomatic is a new web-based bookmark manager that tries to scale up your favorites list to something that can cope with the modern, ginormous web. Link

Lisa Rein has posted some Daily Show clips from June including the stunning segment on Ashcroft's weaselling on torture before Congress. Watching Ashcroft spin and dodge and weave around Contempt of Congress is astonishing -- why isn't this man in jail RIGHT NOW? Link

My cow-orker Fred Von Lohmann has unearthed a plan by Orrin Hatch to introduce a law that would make "counselling infringers" illegal.

Rumor has it that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will be introducing a bill tomorrow that would add a new Section 501(g) to the Copyright Act granting copyright owners a cause of action against those who "induce" copyright infringement (cf. patent law). This bill, dubbed the INDUCE Act, would apparently also reach those who "counsel" infringers.

Even a moment's reflection should make the danger to innovators clear -- you now have to worry not just about contributory and vicarious liability, but an entirely new form of liability for building tools that might be misused. It will be interesting to see whether the bill expressly precludes any Betamax-type defense. This may also pose First Amendment problems, to the extent a journalist or website publisher might be liable for simply posting information about where infringement tools might be found or how to use them.

Link

In reference to my entry below, Will sez: "The Earth Abides (originally published in 1949) is probably the best SF novel out there to explore this theme. A geologist goes solo backpacking, and comes back to find almost all of humanity dead due to a sudden world-wide plague. The novel chronicles the following life of the protagonist and a small band of fellow survivors. The first few years involve the gradual failing of services such as power, water, and the highway system. Later years are more focused on the growing encroachment of wilderness on the former developed world. A highly environmental and ecologically oriented novel; unusual for its time." Link

Fun Neal Pollack article in The Stranger about President Bush's kooky religious beliefs.

This is also the kind of country where the president meets with the members of a radical, far-right millennialist Christian sect three weeks before he counteracts all known international law and opinion regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation. That sect, known as the Apostolic Congress, opposes any deal with the Palestinians because it believes that Christ won't return to Earth until all of Israel belongs to the Jews and Solomon's temple is rebuilt.

Link (Thanks, Kirsten!)

With Ulysses, James Joyce invited us to join Leopold Bloom as he took an epic journey through Dublin. In honor of the Bloomsday centennial, Jess Hemerly points us to the BBC's Cheat's Guide to Joyce's Ulysses. "It's funny if you've read the book, and helpful if you haven't," Jess says. Link (via a great notion)

Great fashion magazine photos of Nico before she hooked up with Warhol's Factory and started singing for the Velvet Underground. Link (Short bio about Nico)

Nice Straight Dope column about electricity generation in a Dawn of the Dead scenario. If various types of power plants (nuke, coal, gas, hydro, wind) were unmanned, when would they stop functioning, and how would the grid handle it?

Bottom line? My guess is that within 4-6 hours there would be scattered blackouts and brownouts in numerous areas, within 12 hours much of the system would be unstable, and within 24 hours most portions of the United States and Canada, aside from a rare island of service in a rural area near a hydroelectric source, would be without power. Some installations served by wind farms and solar might continue, but they would be very small. By the end of a week, I'd be surprised if more than a few abandoned sites were still supplying power.

Link (Thanks, Grum!)

Fleshbot points to a court case weirder than Michael Jackson and the Scott Peterson trial combined. Murder, dismemberment, lapsed Mormons, the death penalty, and Playboy model Kerissa Fare. Oh, and Rohypnol (thanks, virgil).

This week, a jury in Martinez, a small town outside San Francisco, will retire to consider the bizarre, brutally violent cult surrounding one Glenn Taylor Helzer, a lapsed Mormon accused of bludgeoning and dismembering five people in an elaborate extortion racket intended to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Helzer, a former stockbroker who has already pleaded guilty and faces the death penalty, exerted a charismatic hold over an eclectic group of followers including his younger brother, a former girlfriend turned Playboy centrefold model, and a self-described "good witch" who once offered to raise money for Armageddon by appearing in porn films.

Link to story in UK's Independent

On Monday, I posted about nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler speaking out against the fear of "gray goo," out-of-control nano-machines. That reminded our dear old pal Jim Leftwich (AKA Ward Parkway) of this masterpiece he designed circa 1995. It was a continuation of the Urban Absurdist Survival Kit series from the Happy Mutant Handbook. Link (to higher-res image)

Online gallery with images of work by Southern California-based artist, sculptor, designer and machinist Greg Brotherton. Great retro-combat-robot pieces, futuristic weapon porn, and a robo-blog with lines like, "Progress has resumed on my life's work: an army of robot women to take over the earth." Link (Thanks, Aron)

This fellow created an interesting amp design for an iTrip. Boing Boing reader Ian Meyer says, " He said that it would probably be capable of overpowering broadcast stations for a small radium (ie: enough to blast some Queen in place of the hippity-hoppity music that the guy in the car next to me is listening to loud enough to be heard for half a mile)." [Ed: Hippity Hoppity? Did someone see "The Ladykillers"?] Link

Joystiq is a new group blog on gaming from the same people who brought us Engadget. Link

Sony's new XYZ in-car GPS navigation system presents a ground-level visualization of your route that looks like a low-rez Grand Theft Auto. I became a loyal Hertz renter when they introduced their crappy-but-serviceable Neverlost GPS a few years back (I have no sense of direction and sometimes get lost playing Quake), and this week I took a flyer and tried out Avis's new GPS system, which is unspeakably shit: it's a Nextel phone that you suction-cup to your windscreen. You call a call-center and wait on hold, then tell a person over the speakerphone where you're going and they program a route into the phone, which then reads you directions in a robot voice. It's such a dumb setup that I was half sure I'd screwed up, but no, that's how it's supposed to work. Link

Bring on the kakerlaken! Following up on a previous post about the v hot Euro party game trend of Cockroach racing, Boing Boing reader Rochus Wolff says:

"Cockroach races have been up and about here in Berlin for a couple of years now, apparently introduced by the russian painter Nikolai Makarov. He claims (and I have no way of disprove him) that this is an old Russian tradition. I attended one of these races in January 2001 - it was a celebration of the Russian New Year, and a very odd mixture of betting on the cockroaches, drinking, eating and socialising.

"The race I attended was also quite fun because of the silly stories they made up about the roaches racing against each other. Apparently, one of them (Olga) was the daughter of another one, had then killed and eaten her father, but only after mating with him and having a child (Olga II), which was now racing not only against her mother, but also (I think) against another one of her father's children... or something. It was pretty weird, and quite funny.

"There are photos online (not mine, though) of a similar event in November 2002 here."

Sharp's new Fappy fax machine will detect intruders to your home and fax a notice of their incursion to a preset panic-number. Link

Old-school bOING bOING contributor Robert Anton Wilson is now teaching courses online. Wilson is the fringe philosopher/novelist/comedian who wrote such classics as Illuminatus!, Prometheus Rising, and Cosmic Trigger, key texts that shaped the birth of bOING bOING. The Maybe Logic Academy launches this summer with classes like "Conspiracy, Coincidence and Code" and "8 Dimensions of 'Mind." Each course is $125, but a package is available for $200 that includes membership in an online forum and a series of email correspondences with RAW himself. Fnord (Thanks, Dr. Maz!)

MMOdating is a dating service targetted at people who live and die by Massively Multiplayer Online games.

I should state outrIght that i'm Not a real person. i'm an imaginary friend. in front of the computer, of course, who could tell the difference? i loVe getting involved In a chat and forgetting all about the outSide world; for a moment then i can believe I am real. furthermore, i'm not entirely human. my mother was a human and my father was - or is - a dragon. i've had a very, very long life full of dragedy and adventure, Beautiful worlds have crumbLed before my Eyes. . . i'm dramatizing, yeah, i love playing the drama QUEEN, but there's really been more than i can easily talk About. three daughTers i've Had, marvellOus things have lived in my veins and leT Me work miracles. i've Always believed In doing good by alL the people in the world. but i'm retired from saving the world now. it all got too much, and now i'm just looking for a good time.

Link

The Vatican has "downsized the Inquisition," reducing the estimate of witches burned at stake:

he Vatican said Tuesday that fewer witches were burned at the stake and fewer heretics tortured into conversion during the dark centuries of the Inquisition than is generally believed.

Link (via Out of Ambit)

Pete Rojas of Engadget says, "There is way more video game news out there than we could possibly cover here at Engadget. So in partnership with Weblogs, Inc. we've created Joystiq, a new weblog covering everything related to video games." Link.

A Norweigan company has shipped a teflon-coated knitting yarn that sheds water and is intended for use in all-weather knitting projects.

I was curious to see if the fibers would even allow water, being coated with Teflon and all. They did, but not before showing a curious phenomenon: the water lodged itself in the pockets of each stitch, making hundreds of tiny diamond-like bubbles all over the fabric surface.

Link (Thanks, Miriam!)

Folllowing up on this post about Yahoo webmail users receiving upgraded storage capacity in an apparent attempt by Yahoo to compete with Gmail, Boing Boing reader Brian says, "As a member of SBC Yahoo dial-up service, I received a notice yesterday that my email account now has a 2 Gig storage capacity. Obviously, this is separate from the free web-based email service from Yahoo, but 2 Gigs is bar far the most storage available to date, worldwide."

The organizers of Artbots: The Robot Talent show have announced the names of the twenty artists and groups participating in this third annual art exhibition for robotic art and art-making robots. Show takes place September 17-19, 2004 in Harlem, NYC. Link

Julia Solis is the intrepid explorer behind Dark Passage, a magnificent Web site showcasing the urban ruins of New York City and elsewhere. An abandoned hospital, a deserted jail, a hollow subway tubes... all are subjected to Soils's "exercises in forensic archaeology." Smithsonian magazine recently published a profile of Solis:

"These places contain the residue of the many souls that have passed through over the years," she says. "The less a place has been explored, the better, because the air hasn't been diluted and the soul marks are fresh."

Link

Boing Boing reader Beej says:

Griffin's stated range for the iTrip is a little inaccurate: I once left my iPod playing over the radio in the office, got in my car and drove out of the parking lot, around the corner and down the street. The signal petered out at about 150 feet. This is through the walls of my office and several intervening buildings! I've been running around for the past several months with this bumper sticker on my car. It's an ink-jet job and as you can see, it's getting a little faded. I figure that anyone that can read the bumper sticker-- on the I-5, at a stop light-- if intrigued could tune in and listen to whatever I'm listening to. No, I don't take requests. T-Shirt coming soon!

Link to full-size image.