Found in this morning's Flickr RSS photostream of pix of graffiti, a three-storey building in Montreal covered in a beautiful blue anime mural. Link
Update: Andre sez: "Today's Flick image image is not the only anime-inspired mural in Montreal. Check out this one."

The only accessory you need for Talk Like A Pirate Day, September 19. The site's creator, Grant Henninger, says:

"Let me present t' you t' iPatch! It really has no purpose, but it was a fun site t' build. Hope people get a good harty-har-har out o' it."

Arrrrrrrrrr!

I'm stopping at my local 99-cent store today. As reported in Cartoon Brew:

Rivaling Fleischer studios with their abstract rubber-hose animation style and hot jazz musical scores, the RKO Van Beuren Tom & Jerry cartoons (1931-1933) have become classics for their sheer surrealism. Currently in distribution at 99 Cents Only Stores is one of the greatest bargains I've ever seen: a dvd of nine Van Beuren TOM & JERRY cartoons! That's 11 cents per cartoon! And if that's not enough for you, it comes with a free 10 minute phone card inside the package!!

(Semi-related aside: Many moons ago, I wrote about a trip to the 99-Cent Only store for the print edition of bOING bOING) Link

Here's a fun way to look at a bunch of old stereoscope pictures without the stereoscope. The images are blinked. Move the mouse up to increase the blink rate. Link (Thanks, Mark!)

Stephen Holden of the NY Times reviews Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which opens this weekend nationwide.

If nothing else, "Sky Captain" is a landmark in computer-generated imagery. Its actors cavort through an entirely synthetic, computerized retro-styled future world that fuses Art Deco, Futurism, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and the spirit of the 1939 World's Fair into an all-purpose eve-of-World-War-II environment extrapolated into a science fiction limbo. Its cheerfully ominous scenario of a planet invaded by robots that systematically set about stripping the earth of its natural resources resonates in any number of ways without seeming strident or promoting a political agenda.

But the visual elegance of the movie, which opens today nationwide, comes at a price. If its ethereal evocation of a pulp fiction future-past eclipses almost any other sci-fi franchise in subtlety and imagination, its shadowy washed-out color is a far cry from the robust hues of a movie like "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The monochromatic variations on sepia keep the actors and their adventures at a refined aesthetic distance, and the bleached, tinted face of Mr. Law is simply not as real a screen presence as the ruddy, flesh-and-blood Harrison Ford. At times the film is hard to see. And as the action accelerates, the wonder of its visual concept starts giving way to sci-fi cliches.

Link

Over a thousand pounds of pig flesh processed at a Sioux Center meatpacking facility was recalled over fears that a missing microchip could be embedded in the meat.

The Sioux-Preme Packing Co. recalled 110 pork shoulder butts -- about 1,100 pounds of meat -- that could contain the metal devices used to measure scientific data in hogs.

Pass the tofurkey, please. Link

Speaking of energy and excess: The International CXT, short for Commercial Extreme Truck, can haul six tons of dirt and tow a 20-ton yacht at the same time. It's 9 feet high, 8 feet wide, 21 feet long, and weighs 15,000 pounds. Ergo, about 2 feet taller x 4 feet longer than the honkin' Hummer H2. Which, btw, it could tow along with that yacht, if need be. I'm using the word "need" loosely here.

"International built the CXT to make a bold statement," said Rob Swim of International Truck and Engine Corporation in a prepared statement announcing the CXT's launch. Exactly what statement would that be?

Link to CXT debut site, and Link to press release announcing launch.

BoingBoing reader George W. Maschke says,

Saving Energy Without Derision (5 mb PDF) is a new (and free) e-book by former Sandia National Laboratories senior scientist Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff. This book is intended to be a real-world, no-nonsense, thoroughly documented collection of easy-to-implement recommendations to help the average thoughtful person to pick the "low-hanging fruit" of conservation and renewable energy. The author is after the easy 75% of actions we can all take (but almost uniformly ignore) that most certainly make a difference in energy costs (after all that's what most people care about) and adjuring a bit of unnecessary adverse impact on the environment (which a few folks actually think is important beyond the mere dollar valuation).

The author (who welcomes comments at zalan8587@qwest.net) intends to continuously update the book (consistent with readership interest) and address many new topics. For example, next on his list is an analysis of the economics and scientific basis of fuel-cell vehicles powered by hydrogen. (Bottom line, he maintains, is that it's a cruel hoax and energy disaster, and far less useful than, for example, heavy hybrid automobiles that get about 50 - 60 miles on an electric charge alone -- which accounts for more than 85% of driving in the US and elsewhere on a daily basis -- and which are available now.)

Link Looks like the link's overloaded with traffic for the time being, but a short preview is available for d/l here.

Newsweek's Brian Braiker interviews T. Coraghessan Boyle (image: AP), author of The Inner Circle. The interview is a terrific read, and I really can't wait to read the book.

Like Boyle's "The Road to Wellville," "Circle" is a fictionalized account of a historic figure. Instead of John Harvey Kellogg, Boyle this time tackles Alfred C. Kinsey, the Indiana University professor who jump-started the sexual revolution with the 1948 publication of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male." The novel is narrated by John Milk, a naive researcher at the center of Professor Kinsey's, or "Prok's," inner circle. Kinsey -- who would have abhorred the euphemism "adult film" -- proposes that poets have had 2,000 years to tell us about romance and love, and now science ought to tell us about the physiology of sex, without regard to emotional content. (Kinsey is also the subject of an upcoming biopic starring Liam Neeson.)

And boy, is the professor ever interested in sex. He charms his researchers into bed, encourages them all to swap wives and generally get it on as much as possible -- all in the name of science, of course. Because the intent behind the sex is clinical, the steady stream of graphic episodes in the novel becomes numbing, unsexy and, well, clinical. But things get sticky when Milk, a married man with a bit of a Stockholm syndrome infatuation for his mentor, fails to disentangle his emotions. Milk is in love with Kinsey. He's in love with Kinsey's wife. And he's in love with his own wife, Iris. In the end, the novel is a meditation on family, on marriage, love and sexuality.

Link

So cool. BoingBoing reader Inder says,

I want to let boingboingers know that WanderPort will be providing a free wi-fi network at the launch of SpaceShipOne for the Ansari X-Prize in the Mojave Desert September 29th through to the second launch. If any bloggers are attending the launch and want to have a mac address pass-through to make sure they can file, just send us an email info@wanderport.com and we'll make sure they can get their blogs posted. We'll also be providing a few WISIP phones for free North America phone calls.

Link to Ansari X-Prize home.

Following up on yesterday's post about an apparent bit of political humor on the Harvard Primate Neuroscience Lab's website, one BoingBoing reader wrote in to tell us that a relative worked at the lab -- and confirmed that indeed, the chimp-to-Dubya morph was no accident. Also, BoingBoing reader Chris Holland says:

That "image" at the top-right corner actually is a scaled-down display of a bigger quicktime movie ... for a more dramatic effect. Now if I could only dig out that morphing I did when I was a kid of Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford.

Link to chimp-Bush-mov. Whoahhhh. If anyone has the url for a chimp-to-Dubya-to-Claudia-to-Cindy morph mov, dude -- send it to us before Fleshbot gets their greedy (and well-lubed) little hands on it.

BoingBoing reader Prodigal Tom says, "This is a fascinating article about deaf and totally neglected children in Nicaragua inventing their own sign language. I was also psyched because I learned there is an actual job called a psycholinguist! There's also a great point about how the language has evolved, so the younger members have a slightly different version than the originators." Link to Reuters synopsis, and Link to Science Magazine article, which appears to be available only to paid subscribers. (Thanks also to Mike Oliveri and others who pointed us to this item)

Update: BoingBoing reader jd says, "This story is a fascinating one - but it originally hit the mainstream media world back in 1999 in the New York Times. Here's the story (featuring Noam Chomsky, as well!) -- A Linguistic Big Bang (Link)."

Update 2: Reader Paul Camp of the Spelman College Department of Physics in Georgia says,

Yet another update: this story is way older than either of your current sources. I remember reading about it in The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by MIT psycholinguist Stephen Pinker (which you and everyone else should read), published in 1994.

In fact, Pinker makes a case that this mechanism is how pidgins become creoles generally. Pidgins are work languages without significant grammatical structure, created by adults who speak different native languages. But children have a critical developmental period when they are learning language and imposing what appear to be innate grammatical structures on the language-like things in their environment (Chomsky's Universal Grammar). Pinker describes several examples of the process, including the Nicaraguan children as well as American Sign Language, and several verbal creoles.

My friend Barnaby Whitfield is a pastel artist in New York City. He's listed in the prestigious White Columns Curated Artist Registry and is represented by the 31GRAND gallery in Brooklyn. Barnaby's work is incredibly beautiful and deeply twisted. I'm proud to know him. Link

Harvard scientists report that Rembrandt may have suffered from stereoblindness. The neurobiologists believe that many of Rembrandt's self-portraits show his eyes focused assymetrically. From the New England Journal of Medicine:

Stereopsis is an important cue for depth perception, yet it can be a hindrance to an artist trying to depict a three-dimensional scene on a flat surface. Art teachers often instruct students to close one eye in order to flatten what they see. Therefore, stereoblindness might not be a handicap — and might even be an asset — for some artists.

Link (to Boston Globe article)

Last night, we visited the Palais de Tokyo to see the work of Wang Du, a Chinese artist living in Paris. Du creates massive sculptures and installations that manipulate and deconstruct mass media and pop culture imagery. In "Oarribeancom," surreal graphics from a Japanese erotic Web site are recreated in a collection of much larger-than-life resin models like the one pictured here. (Click on the photo for a larger version.) Link

Spencer sez: Tognazzini has a great column up from July about what he calls "The Worst Interface Ever":

For $1500, you can equip your luxury car with a genuine self-destruct switch. Once it’s in place, you must remember to flip it whenever you shift from driving your car to not driving your car. Forget once or do it wrong, and your engine and transmission will self-destruct. “

Ah, a fictitious switch,” you say, but no, it is all too real and all too destructive.

The switch is hidden under the hood, where you cannot visually inspect it. To increase the sport, it's not only left unlabeled as to function, its two positions are unlabeled, too— -- make a mistake and, boom!, no more engine.

Link

In today's Wired News, a report I filed on my experience in zero gravity earlier this week. Also, on today's edition of the NPR show "Day to Day," I speak with host Noah Adams and share sounds from the weightless joyride. In space, no one can hear you squeal.

Image: floating with other passengers, including Dr. Buzz Aldrin and Zero Gravity Corporation founder Dr. Peter Diamandis, on board G-Force One. Shot by Jim Campbell.

Link to Wired News story.

Link to NPR Day to Day: "Zero Gravity Flight" audio and images.

More images: Alan M. Ladwig, former NASA Assoc. Admininstrator, now COO of Zero-G Corp, coaches me and others into weightless backflips -- Link (image: Jim Campbell). Passengers assume seated pose during the heavy-g "pullup" period prior to a weightless parabola -- Link. (XJ) NASA astronaut and space celebrity Dr. Buzz Aldrin is superman -- Link. (JC) Dr. Aldrin hovers -- Link. (JC) Flight attendant and CalTech researcher Loretta Hidalgo gives pre-flight emergency safety instructions -- Link. (XJ) "G-Force One" in hangar before liftoff -- Link. (XJ) Interviewing passengers for NPR while floating -- Link. (JC) Landing after a parabola, guided by Mr. Ladwig. -- Link. (JC) ABC News reporter Judy Muller levitates, while Dr. Aldrin flies -- Link. (JC) Xeni flies -- Link. (JC) Floating with Dr. Aldrin -- Link. (JC) Dr. Peter Diamandis, Zero G Corporation founder, greets passengers exiting "G-Force One" -- Link. (JC)

Link to previous BoingBoing posts -- "Xeni flies zero-g." For the record, I did not blow donuts.

BoingBoing pal and former guestbar resident Todd Lappin says, "FYI, comrades... the 2004 Art Car Fest will be in the Bay Area this weekend. On display outside the San Jose Museum of Art on Saturday, then parading on the streets of Berkeley on Sunday." Link

talk like a pirate day
pirate info
pirate bath 1
pirates and pivateers
capn crimson
which pirate are you?
spooneye! the card game
pirate bath 2
pirates of the bahamas
pirate flags
pirates of penzance
pirate supplies
yar! pirate zen 2003
and for a limited time...
david byrne's pirates
(this will disappear on 09.20.04)
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

The Wired Magazine / Creative Commons benefit concert with David Byrne and Gilberto Gil happens next Tuesday at Town Hall in NYC. It appears that tickets are still available, and it looks like it's going to be an awesome event. For those (like me) who can't make it to NYC then, a live webcat will be offered on September 21st, 8pm EST. Link to webcast info, Link to event info, and link to ticket site.

BoingBoing reader micah says,

On Monday, September 13th the Nasa indigenous people of Colombia launched a big three-day march. Included in the march is a low-power FM radio station, broadcast from a radiocicleta (an adapted bicycle equipped with a radio transmitter and antenna that will accompany the march). The signal will be picked up along the route by different indigenous community radio stations and then streamed on the internet. It is likely no coincidence that on Friday Septemer 4, the indigenous community station Radio Nasa was shut down by the government of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The indigenous groups, composing tens of thousands of people are marching to protest against the war, neoliberalism, the FTAA, and constitutional counterreforms planned by the government. The Colombian Indymedia has ongoing coverage of the event.

Link

Dallas Mavs and HDNet owner Mark Cuban has an interesting blog entry today on the future of DVDs and PVRs:

I love looking for ways to screw up conventional wisdom. Right now in the entertainment world, the conventional wisdom is that both sides on the HD DVD vs Blue Ray DVD will battle it out and a standard for HD on DVD will emerge. No one is trying to rush to a compromise because the big media companies want to squeeze as much money as they possibly can out the current DVD business cycle.

Good. The longer it takes, the less chance any format of DVD has of having a place in the future of home entertainment. Don’t look now, but the price and size of hard drives have fallen like a rock, while capacities have soared, with no slowdown in site.

Which leads to the question — What is the best way to distribute content? DVDs which will be limited in capacity to 9.4gbs on a single DVD for another year, and then after that 50gbs on a single disk for years to come after that, or rewritable media that can hold 2gb already in a device half the size of a pen, or in a hard drive that can hold 200GBs plus in a drive the size of your cell phone?

Link

BoingBoing reader Theron says, "Somebody's at Harvard's having a little fun at George W.'s expense. Check out the Bush to monkey morph in the top right. No idea if this is a subtle hack, or really the Harvard PCNL having some fun." Link

This stunning photo of ferris wheels at Odaiba, Tokyo came into my RSS reader today via my Flickr Tokyo photo watchlist. Gibsonoid and pretty-shiny! Link

SpamShirt is a service that will print and mail you a custom t-shirt with a subject line from a spam message on it -- this is the one I just ordered. You can also add your own favorite spam subjects if you care to. This is so awesomely perverse. Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

In March, a savant in England recited π from memory to more than 22,000 decimal places. Still, he wasn't even halfway to the world record set by a Japanese man in 1995. This article in Plus magazine describes how these amazing memory feats are accomplished and how to improve your own remembrance of numbers past.

"Like most people, you have probably had the odd experience of smelling, say, an old piece of furniture and being reminded of something that happened to you in the distant past. Smell has a particularly strong connection with memory, perhaps because the part of the brain that deals with smell is close to the hippocampus, which is where it is believed long term memories are formed. If you deliberately surround yourself with a particular smell when trying to memorise something, that smell is likely to help trigger the memory later when you need to recall it."

Link (via Reality Carnival)

The TSA has decided that it will catch more terrorists by giving airport screeners the authority to maul your crotch.

Currently, they concentrate mostly on arms and legs. Now, they'll be able to pat other areas if they look suspicious. TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark would not elaborate, citing security.

Link

How do animals walk without falling over? A multi-university research effort led by UC Berkeley will try to answer that question by studying a small robot that imitates cockroach locomotion. Berkeley biologist Robert Full's insights into animal movement have informed the design of other robots as well, including the wall-climbing Mecho-Gecko. By simultaneously studying the cockroach-bot and various insects, the researchers hope to identify the muscular and neural networks that result in the whole-body motion of a wide range of animals, including humans.

"The robot has to operate in the real world, like the animal does, so we can use it for testing hypotheses," Full said. "We know, for example, that the body's center of mass bounces along like a pogo stick, which is embodied in the robot, but we don't know how its parts - its legs, feet, actuators or muscles - sum up to give that remarkably general pattern of movement. Now we can ask questions like, 'What if you had a more compliant leg? What if you had two joints in that leg, what does that give you versus one joint?'"

Link

A friend working at the Toronto Film Festival has this scoop: "At the Toronto International Film Festival each film gets two screenings. The highly anticipated action film Kung Fu Hustle by Stephen Chow from China screened last night Sept 15th, and was supposed to get its re-screening today. However, the distributers: Sony/Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia/Beijing Film Studio of China Film Group Coorporation/Huayi Brothers & Taihe Film Investment Co. Ltd./The Star Overseas Ltd., did not feel that security was adequate and did not like the number of digital cameras etc in the audience. Audience members are allowed to bring cameras/recorders into the screenings to record the talk backs with the stars and directors that go on before and after the film. Feeling this was too risky Sony pulled the film's second screening, this is unheard of at the festival. The official reason from The Festival Staff is that the print was damaged in the first screening, could not be repaired and was un-showable . All tickets for the cancelled screening had to be refunded. The public does not know about the cover up. This kind of corporate paranoia is very bad, if distributors get all freaked out about possible bootlegs what will happen to the festival?" Link (Thanks, Anonymous Tipster!)

A reader writes, "Many in the industry have been saddened to learn that David C. Sutherland III, one of the first well-known TSR artists, has a terminal illness. An auction of Sutherland's gaming collection is currently being held on Ebay to help pay for his medical bills and supplement his estate for his remaining family. From the original Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide to the incredible castle map in the original Ravenloft module, and a fair amount of game development besides, many gamers are sure to be familiar and fond of Sutherland's works. Have a look at the auction and see some of the gaming treasures you have a chance to bid on, and help the Sutherland family out at the same time." Link

Here's the first-person account of a summer student intern at Walt Disney World who got the killer assignment of working at the Haunted Mansion (what a dream gig!):

I hated being told I wasn’t scary. I hated being made fun of for my deep Southern accent. I hated the fact that I was a southern happy blonde with pigtails stuck in a dark damp Mansion. Then I gave it a chance. I realized I was lucky to have such a highly coveted position. I slowly let myself fall into the role and was thrilled the first time I actually scared a guest. I learned that many of my fellow cast members weren’t as rude and sarcastic as they seemed, they just really took pride in their job. And I found my spot in the Mansion crew. I was the one that lost children were taken to because I was probably the least scary. I was the one that parents turned to for an encouraging word to convince their children to try the ride. The first time a six year old boy came running out of the Mansion with a huge smile to give me a hug before getting back on the ride, I finally felt like I had a place at the Mansion.

Link (via The Disney Blog)

Here is Johnny's guitar solo on the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated":

E-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-|0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
B—————————————————|—————————————————|—————————————————|——————————————
G—————————————————|—————————————————|—————————————————|——————————————
D—————————————————|—————————————————|—————————————————|——————————————
A—————————————————|—————————————————|—————————————————|——————————————
E—————————————————|—————————————————|—————————————————|——————————————

(Via Crooked Timber)

My short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More, won the Sunburst Award for the best Canadian sf book of the year. There's a ceremony commemorating the event on the 23d of September in Toronto, at the Merril Collection. I (really!) wish I could be there, but I'm committed to speaking at a UN meeting on Free/Open Source Software in Geneva on that day, so Karl Schroeder, the brilliant author of Permanence and Ventus, will accept on my behalf.

SUNBURST AWARD CEREMONY
September 23, 2004  7-9pm
Merrill Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, Lilian H. Smith Branch of the Toronto Public Library
239 College Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto
for more info: (416) 393-7748
The event is open to the public and free of charge. Refreshments will be served.

Link (Thanks Peter!)

Comic book and book publisher Fantagraphics is an international treasure. I love their books and comics, and I love their production values. On those days that I feel that life is not worth living, I remember that Fantagraphics exists and I cheer up tremendously.

...Fantagraphics is more like Sub Pop—a well-known, highly regarded, but still relatively small publisher, most of whose best sellers wouldn't sell enough to stay on a major label for more than an album or two. For Fantagraphics, being put in charge of The Complete Peanuts is akin to Sub Pop being handed the Beatles' master tapes for reissue. And Fantagraphics has done the strip right, with gorgeous design (the art director is Palookaville artist Seth, aka Gregory Gallant, whose style was deeply influenced by Schulz) and ambitious outlay (Fantagraphics is planning two a year for the next 12 and a half years, 25 volumes covering 50 years of weekly strips, including Sundays).

Link (Thanks, Kirsten!)

It's been years since I lived in Toronto (near my grandparents), and consequently, it's been years since I've celebrated Rosh Hashanah -- the Jewish New Year that rang in last night. Maybe that's why it took me a minute to get the punchline of this screamingly funny Rosh Hashanah cartoon -- and why I laughed so hard once I did. Link (via AccordionGuy)

43 Folders writes about a great little bookmarklet maker that lets you request the book you're looking at on Amazon.com from your local library.

I’ve combed through my Amazon wishlist over the past month and have been able to find almost 20 books I was going to buy—all of which have since been shuttled from SF’s many branch libraries to the cozy little outpost just beyond my front yard.

Link

Link

NASA scientists are developing a laser link from Mars to Earth that's ten times faster than current radio frequency systems. According to an article in New Scientist, the laser will transmit up to 30 million bits per second at a lower power and mass compared to traditional wireless approaches.

"That leap in capacity is due to the different wavelengths of light carrying the data. The laser will use infrared light with a wavelength of 1.06 microns, which is thousands of times shorter than radio waves. Since all light travels at the same speed through space, shorter wavelengths carry more information in the same time."

Of course, clouds present a problem for optical communications. The beam will also be a few hundred kilometers wide and very faint by the time it reaches Earth, making the signal tricky to pick up. Still, a fully-functional system is expected to make a trip to the Red Planet in 2009 on board the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter. Maybe Xeni can ride along too. Link

First used centuries ago to treat battlefield wounds, maggots are proving to be a useful treatment to prevent post-operative infections. Maggot debridement therapy (MDT) calls for maggot dressing to be applied to wounds twice a week for up to 72 hours each time. From the press release about a recent study on MDT in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases:

"Debridement, or the removal of contaminated tissue to expose healthy tissue, can be done surgically. However, maggots that have been disinfected during the egg stage so that they don’t carry bacteria into the wound have their advantages. The larvae preferentially consume dead tissue (steering clear of live), they excrete an antibacterial agent, and they stimulate wound healing--all factors that could be linked to the lower occurrence of infection in maggot-treated wounds."

Link

My latest article for TheFeature is about the Urban Pollution Project, a big research effort in the UK that uses bike-mounted carbon monoxide sensors and bluejacking to rate the air we breathe.

"Mobile sensors that are geographically tracked could... give a broad and dense picture of how pollution affects urban spaces and the people within them," says Urban Pollution investigator Anthony Steed, a computer science researcher at the University College London. "If you have several hundred or thousand sensors, you could give them to commuters and they'd make a map of the city's pollution."

Link

Scientists may have identified a region of the brain instrumental in the creation of dreams. Neurologists at the University Hospital of Zurich studied a 73-year-old woman who suffered a stroke in her occipital lobe, known to be the brain's vision processing center. The patient predictably lost her sight for a few days, but she also lost the ability to dream. Link

ID Software allowed a gaming magazine to publish some screenshots from Quake 4 -- here's the scans. Link (via Waxy)

Earthlink has released a new file-sharing tool based on SIP, the protocol underlying Voice Over IP and other systems for peer-to-peer connectivity. What's coolest about this is the manifesto they posted along with it:

EarthLink believes an open Internet is a good Internet. An open Internet means users have full end-to-end connectivity to say to each other whatever it is they say, be that voice, video, or other data exchanges, without the help of mediating servers in the middle whenever possible. We believe that if peer-to-peer flourishes, the Internet flourishes. SIPshare helps spread the word that SIP is more than a powerful voice over IP enabler --- much more. SIP is a protocol that enables peer-to-peer in a standards-based way.

Link (Thanks, Clay!)

AdBusters is suing Canadian broadcasters for refusing to air their anti-ad ads.

Activists concerned with almost every social issue -- from the environment, worker rights, electoral politics . . . you name it – have had their messages rejected by media corporations. If you walked into your local television station today and tried to buy 30-seconds of airtime, you would likely get the same response we continually get. Boiled down, the refrain goes something like this: We will not accept your money. We will not accept your messages. We're in the business to sell ads, not spread your ideas.

Link (via Waxy)

Dave sez, "Deutsche Welle, a government-funded radio and television network that broadcasts mainly for German expatriates and Germany enthusiasts, added Klingon to the 30+ languages on its site, in celebration of the site's 10th anniversary (in Earth years). 'The dialogue of cultures does not end at the edge of our solar system,' Deutsche Welle director Erik Bettermann said in a statement." Link (Thanks, Dave!)

Remember dreaming you could fly? It's exactly like that.

Before you move into weightlessness, between parabolas, g-force is about double what it is on earth. Suddenly you're 300 pounds, and it pushes your hair to your skull to your spine to your tail to the floor and the meat on your body is suddenly stone. They tell you not to look back, to keep your head still and aligned when the pressure starts. Anything to avoid vertigo, because where there's vertigo there's vomiting.

Waiting, your face becomes newly dense. You're a chipmunk carrying cheeks full of bullets. Your blood strains. Your veins are streams carrying too much silt.

And then, when the weight is worst, the invisible hands cramming your spine into the plane's padded floor lose interest and lift away. What was concrete becomes cotton. The hands reach beneath you, and lift you up into nothing, and you float. And all there is to do when this happens for the very first time is to laugh. Because it's impossible. Because it's unnatural.

But the joke in your bones is that it feels perfectly natural, like all your life you were intended to float. After all, just before you came into the world, that's what you were doing in liquid. And when your life ends and you leave, there you are again, becoming vapor. Breaking down from matter to dust to air. Floating.

Last week, a friend said, "You'll tell children and grandchildren when you're old, over and over again. Your family will be totally sick of you explaining how awesome this felt the first time." He was only half right. The grandchildren won't need my explanation. They'll know it better than I do now. These zero-g joyrides will seem as crude and dated to them as Model T Fords or ink-ribbon typewriters are for us. They'll be floating plenty.

As I sit here, I can still feel it in my body. It comes in waves. I want to hit "post," shut the application, close the laptop lid. Then bend my knees a little and shove off, push up into the air above my desk. Do the superman. Do a backflip. Bust a "crouching tiger hidden dragon" move, karate-chop martian foes mid-air. And float away into bed. It's natural now, and will remain that way forever. I miss it already.

Images: (1) A weightless photo from today (Link to full-size). (2) Floating with Dr. Buzz Aldrin in a zero gravity moment during today's preview flight. While we crouched on the floor waiting for that parabola to hit, Dr. Aldrin, one of the first two humans to touch the moon, told me that today was the first time he'd experienced weightlessness since having felt "the real thing in space" -- not counting scuba diving, which he does often because he gets homesick for floating. (Link to full-size image). Both images courtesy of Jim Campbell, Aero News Network.

Previous BB posts: 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Also: here's the Zero Gravity Corporation's patent listing for "A system and method is provided for rapidly reconfiguring a jet aircraft from a cargo or passenger configuration into a parabolic flight configuration." Link (Thanks, Jason)

Paul sez: "Handy advice (from one of those airline folders in the back of the seat) on what to do if your Tajik Air flight is hijacked. Apparently, it has a great deal to do with fondling space aliens, mutant airplane doors that eat people, but definitely not drinking. I'm guessing from the pictures. Last few lines of each section are in English. Sort of. Do not express you angry, do not wipe in voice, our cough. Close your eyes and do not stir them. "Link

Here's the first issue of the Make email newsletter. I'm the magazine's editor-in-chief. To sign up for the email newsletter go here.

=======================

MAKE NEWSLETTER 01

September 14, 2004

http://make.oreilly.com

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Thanks for signing up for the Make newsletter! Since announcing the magazine at the O'Reilly ETech Conference in Portland in July, we've been busy creating the first issue, which will be published in January. We've also received many suggestions about how we can make Make a great magazine.

There's still time for you to give us your input. We want Make to be a reader-created magazine, and if you're interested, here are some ways you can join us in the creation of the world's greatest technology-project magazine:

1. THE MAKE WORKSHOP. Imagine somebody took all your tools away and handed you a $100 gift certificate that you could spend on hardware at Home Depot and Fry's. What are the essential things you'd buy? Now, up the price to $300 -- what would you outfit your workshop with? How about $750?

2. WHAT ARE YOU USING THESE DAYS? In each issue of Make, we'll run reviews of stuff. We're not interested in assigning things to be reviewed. We're interested in hearing about the things you already use and love. Tell us about your favorite new (or old!) tool, magazine, book, instructional video, gadget, web site, etc. in a 300-word email. If we decide to run it, we'll pay you.

3. PROJECTS. Do you have an idea for a technology-related project? It doesn't matter if it's large or small. Tell us about it. If we like it, we'll ask you to write it.

4. WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS NEWSLETTER? Finally, we need a name for this newsletter! Please send us your suggestion by Tuesday, Sept. 21. The winner will get a book of his or her choice from the O'Reilly Hacks Series (http://hacks.oreilly.com).

Thanks, and we'll see you in January!

Mark Frauenfelder

Make Editor-in-Chief

markf@oreilly.com

Becky sez: "Plumbing the depths, in terms of profiting from 9/11's victims: these people are selling coins made with silver they say they got from Ground Zero. I guess they couldn't get their hands on any human remains to use."

The silver used in each gleaming dollar coin is from Ground Zero! You see, when the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, a bank vault full of .999 Pure Silver bars was buried under hundreds of tons of debris. After months of salvage work, many of the bars were found. Now, the same silver that was reclaimed from the destruction has been used to create the magnificent 2004 “Freedom Tower” Silver Dollar.

On its website, National Collector's Mint asks: "How many would you like to order today?" Here's the company's email address so you can answer that question. Link

UPDATE: Here's a link to a Daily Show segment about this coin. (Thanks, Dan!)