A tranquil little online gallery of female nudes shot by Tel Aviv-based web designer Boris Mandel. Link (contains nudity, duh -- via indienudes)

BoingBoing reader TabulaRasa in Germany says,

"In the late 1980s, the Russians tried to develop their own Space Shuttle. Well, actually -- one even ended up flying into space just one time -- Buran. After this flight, the hangar where it was housed in Baikonur collapsed and destroyed the craft.

"This is an online photo gallery of Buran 002, another prototype that was sold to an Australian businessman named David Hammer. During the Olympic Games in Sydney, the prototype was part of an exhibition. Then it was sold to a company in Singapore, and was shipped to Bahrain, where it became stranded somewhere in the desert.

"Eventually it was sold to a German museum, and will soon be shipped one last time -- to become part of an exhibition. Some things are still working, as you can see from the photos in this online image gallery. Guess I'll have make a visit to this museum when the shuttle has arrived!"

Link to image gallery from Der Spiegel magazine (text in German)

Bushisms the book is now Bushisms the DVD -- hosted by comic uber-genius Brian Unger of The Daily Show. The DVD features Al Franken and others commenting on nucular-strength malapropisms from the presidentiary such as:

# "War is a dangerous place."
# "Karyn is a West Texas girl, just like me."
# "Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning."

Link (Disclaimer: I'm proud to be Mr. Unger's colleague/co-contributor on the NPR show "Day to Day").

Hal Robins is a wonderful cartoonist and a delightfully peculiar guy. He's from the past and future, and the distant present all at once. I wish you could hear his grandiose speaking style and high pitched voice. He's also got a new book out, The Meaning of Lost and Mismatched Socks, which John Shirley reviews in his blog.

Hal Robins (in the guise of Pedale) has discovered--and the very amusing, detailed drawings he's put in this slim volume from North Atlantic Books illustrate--that while the mysterious appearance of Unknown Socks in your drier (and the mysterious disappearance of the socks you expected to find) may be  conventionally explained, deeper, darker explanations can be found by looking farther than the interior of the drier mechanism: “It has long been thought that life  must also exist on other planets. These life forms most likely have appendages for the purpose of locomotion. It follows then that such beings have a practical need to keep these appendages warm, hence alien footwear. . .As we employ rebellious machines, which from time to time  squirt our stockings into the abyss of space, so do they. And as we receive theirs, it follows that their sock drawers must also receive ours. Even as you read these lines (relativistically speaking), some alien eye or eyes, perhaps set in chitinous, horny lids, are perplexedly scanning one of a pair of argyles which you lost last Tuesday. Some unthinkable thing may be fingering, with its spatulate claws, in the reddish light of a giant sun, a missing unit of your support hose...”

Link

UPDATE: Simone sez: "Lovely to see Hal's book boingboinged. . .you might also let your readers know that the utterly stupendous Ask Dr. Hal Show can be see every single solitary week (except when they don't feel like it) at the Odeon Bar at Mission and Valencia (yes they do) in San Francisco.

Hal and Chicken sit up onstage and are bombarded with sealed envelopes containing questions from the audience. Chicken opens and reads the question, and Hal answers the question in his inimitable Hal way.

If the necessary honorarium included with the question is sufficient, the audience is treated to a Bardic Recitation of Hal's Choice. Once someone gave fifty buck and Hal recited, in its entirety, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, from memory, with all the voices, bringing the bar to a shrieking collapse upon his completion.

Anyhow the show is every wednesday around Nineish pm at The Odeon Bar; On the First Wednesday of every month Chicken gets the bus out and we all go bowling after the show. We pretty much just load the entire bar into the bus and take off for Daly City. It's great.

Todd Lappin sez: "The Oddio Overplay website is one of the true jewels of the Interweb. Dedicated to odd, obscure, and out-of-print music, the site is packed with free, downloadable retro-themed mp3s. The special compilations are a hoot, and exploring the links to other free music sites is an activity that's guaranteed to gobble up hours and hours of otherwise productive work time. The latest Oddio find made my day: A downloadable LP of the in-store background music played in S.S. Kresge five-and-dime stores during the early 1960s. It sounds like a perfume counter. And it makes me want to spend money!" Link

Mike Essl sez: "This guy takes USPS stickers, runs them through his printer and prints 'USPS does not acknowledge the authority of the Bush administration.' and then puts them back in the rack at the post office." Link to Quicktime movie

Jason Powell sez: I've had a rash of telemarketer calls in the last few days for "Police" or "Sheriff's" charity organizations. In the past, I've always just said "take me off your list" and hung up--problem solved. However, this latest call troubled me on new levels. I'm not sure I'd call it intimidation, but some of the comments did have a hint of something just slightly less than that. For example, the caller made several references to my home address..."how's it going out there on Elm Avenue today?" I guess the intention is to play on the fear that if I don't donate, I can expect trouble (“we know where you live”). The only thing that troubled me about that is the idea that they're using this tactic on others who would fall for it.

Suspicion of these callers led me to Google for answers, and I wasn't too surprised by what I found. While some of these calls are outright scams, the other, more "legitimate" callers do little to nothing for the groups they claim to represent--in most cases, the telemarketing company working on behalf of a police charity give as little as 15% of the "take" to the charity.

Below are some links I found of interest. I also ran accross the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement site’s page that warns specifically about fraudulent charitable organizations: "They also call claiming to represent police or firefighter organizations. They typically ask victims for donations to help police officers buy equipment or to assist families of officers disabled or killed in the line of duty." Link

Additional links:
The Attorney General's site concerning charity telemarketing (Includes a list of what the caller must/can do according to law).

The FTC site concerning charities (Includes information on how to check up on an organization before you donate).

Dan sez: If you enjoyed glancing over the Google results for 'necessary' (from your earlier item), you might like to know that author Dorothy Gambrell of the webcomic Cat and Girl tackled the same subject a little while ago and breaks it all down in helpful/surreal chart-and-outline format in the current installment of one of her side projects, I Have No Superflous Leisure. Link

On today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day" -- snip:

Old-time professional wrestling fans nostalgic for the days when camp was king and characters like Junkyard Dog and Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka ruled the squared circle have a whole new set of heroes to cheer for -- on the Kaiju Big Battel wrestling circuit. Think of Kaiju Big Battel as the horrific spawn of Japanese monster movies and the WWF ("Kaiju" means "monster" in Japanese). It's a tongue-firmly-in-cheek contest of "athletes" wearing patently silly costumes, looking to give their opponent a solid (and likely pre-ordained) smackdown.

In the mythology of Kaiju, the matches are part of the balance of the universe, where earthly forces of good counter evil creatures invading our planet, bent on world domination. Or something like that... Day to Day technology contributor Xeni Jardin recently infiltrated this underground wrestling circuit, filled with far-out science-fiction characters with names like Silver Potato, Gomi Man and Louden Noxious. She was witness to the coming-out party of Kaiju's rising star: Dr. Cube, a "human-genius-turned-quasi-monster" who, with his evil army, continues his quest for world domination.

Link to archived audio: NPR Day to Day "Kaiju Big Battel: Wrestling Meets Godzilla". Link to previous BoingBoing post.

During a recently broadcast sermon in which he discussed his opposition to gay marriage, evangelical telepreacher Jimmy Swaggart said:

"I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died."

Link (via Warren)

Interstate Bakeries files Chapter 11. And with it, an era of American pop gastronomy may meet its end. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the carb; For in that sleep of death what Twinkies may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal Ho-Ho, must give us pause; there's the respect that makes creme-filled treats of so long life.

Link to Business Week article. But Newsday wins the best hed award: Twinkies Maker Out of Dough. (Thanks, Jim OConnor)

Update: Reader Kate says, "I read your post on the bankruptcy of the Interstate Bakeries, alluding to the fact that Twinkies have now met their end. But Chapter 11 bankruptcy is not about ending a company or specific product lines, but rather re-organizing a companies debts (Link to explanation). Although its possible that twinkies, ho-ho's and hostess pies may be gone in the near future, it is just as likely that they will remain. So in short, reports of Twinkies death have been greatly exaggerated."

Staci Kramer agrees. "It's not RIP quite yet. The company is reorganizing -- not liquidating -- and, according to the same Business Week article mentioned in your post, 'Interstate spokeswoman Maya Pogoda says the outfit plans to continue operating the rest of its bakeries and distribution centers.' I just don't want to write off Twinkies and other delicacies like orange Hostess cup cakes and Devil Dogs too soon. It would tilt the time-space contiuum."

And reader Stephen A. Kupiec says, "Twinkies have an infinite shelf life! They cannot die! Whoever speaketh of Twinkies shall remember that he but seemeth dead, he sleeps, and yet he does not sleep, he has died and yet he is not dead, asleep and dead though he is, he shall rise again. Again it should be shown that

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and with strange aeons even death may die."

From the National Weather Service Tropical Prediction Center:

"AFTER CONSIDERABLE AND SOMETIMES ANIMATED IN-HOUSE DISCUSSION OF THE DEMISE OF IVAN...IN THE MIDST OF A LOW-PRESSURE AND SURFACE FRONTAL SYSTEM OVER THE EASTERN UNITED STATES...THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER HAS DECIDED TO CALL THE TROPICAL CYCLONE NOW OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO TROPICAL DEPRESSION IVAN. WHILE DEBATE WILL SURELY CONTINUE HERE AND ELSEWHERE...THIS DECISION WAS BASED PRIMARILY ON THE REASONABLE CONTINUITY OBSERVED IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE SURFACE AND LOW-LEVEL CIRCULATION."

Link (Thanks, C-Lo!)

NBC combat correspondent and blogger Kevin Sites is back in Iraq, and posts a new dispatch with some amazing photos on his blog today.

We've been up since 3am--waiting for Hilla SWAT. It's now 4:30. Despite their annoyance--the Force Recon squad from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit seems extremely patient--at least around Kuni Takahashi, a photographer for the Chicago Tribune and me. Instead they look at their watches--bullshit each other about their individual depravities--like masturbating in sweat socks. Typical life details at a military FOB or forward operating base in Iraq.

These marines at FOB Kalsu still sleep in tents, shit in porta-johns, live in the dirt. This is no Camp Victory green zone paradise with guys chilling in air-conditioned trailers and eating at the Bob Hope Dining Facility--a zeppelin hangar of a building just down the road from Baghdad International Airport. Everyone here has heard the stories--or maybe, been on a convoy through the green zone, briefly glimpsed the way that other half lives. They piss and moan about it--but don't denounce its existence. They are, after all, Americans--it's about aspirations--still believing that hard work and perseverance may someday get you to the Promised Land.

Link, and link to Discuss

In this Photoshop contest, Fark members bling out Burt Rutan and Paul Allen's SpaceShipOne. The craft, which had a successful and historic test run in June, is scheduled to make a go for the $10 million Ansari X-Prize next Wednesday in the Mojave desert. I'll be there, covering the presumably unphotoshopped event for NPR.

If Snoop does indeed show up with "Space Shizzle One," as one Farkster creatively visualizes here, well -- goodbye planet earth. Look for me on the mothership, baby, for I will be gone.

Link (thanks, Susan Kitchens)

California governor Arnold Schwarzenneger -- a man who found considerable fame and fortune in Hollywood -- signed an MPAA-backed bill into law Tuesday that requires anyone sharing a file that goes to more than 10 people outside their immediate family to provide a valid email address and title of the work.

California file sharers who trade songs or films without providing an e- mail address will be guilty of a misdemeanor, under the first-in-the-nation measure that could make it easier for law enforcement to track down people who illegally download copyrighted material. The bill is the latest attempt by film and music trade associations to combat the hard-to-police use of file-sharing software.

The signing was hailed by the bill's sponsor, the Motion Picture Association of America, whose president, Dan Glickman, noted in a statement that Schwarzenegger had "a unique understanding of the powerful impact of piracy.'' The governor remains a member of the Screen Actors Guild, which supported the bill.

Link to SF Chronicle story, link to SB 1506 bill text. (thanks Michael Parenti, Matthew Mills, Andy, and others)

Sony confirmed yesterday that it plans to add native MP3 support to digital music players, in a move that will likely help the products compete more effectively with more popular competitors like Apple's iPod. Until now, the Sony devices were designed to only play files encoded with Sony's proprietary Atrac music file format.

The shift from reliance on its proprietary format will begin with flash memory-based players, the electronics giant said, but plans are still being finalized on how and when products will add MP3 support. CNET News.com affiliate ZDNet France first reported of the change in Sony's strategy for the European market. U.S. representatives said the company is making similar plans here.

Link

Gary Peare says, "Yesterday, Dan Gillmor and Orville Schell were on KQED's Forum show discussing the impact of blogs on mainstream media news in light of the Dan Rather/CBS memo incident (aka 'Rathergate'). This page has a link to the audio archive for the segment." Link

Last weekend, I represented EFF at a meeting in Geneva of several disparate activit and non-govermental orgs, working to draft a joint doc called "Future of WIPO," (or, more formally, "Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization"). This doc is a call to arms to orgs that would see WIPO revisit its role in the world, to take into account the public interest when formulating and promulgating IP policy. The doc has been finalised and is online -- we're collecting signatories for it, and you're invited.

Humanity faces a global crisis in the governance of knowledge, technology and culture. The crisis is manifest in many ways.

* Without access to essential medicines, millions suffer and die;

* Morally repugnant inequality of access to education, knowledge and technology undermines development and social cohesion;

* Anticompetitive practices in the knowledge economy impose enormous costs on consumers and retard innovation;

* Authors, artists and inventors face mounting barriers to follow-on innovation;

* Concentrated ownership and control of knowledge, technology, biological resources and culture harm development, diversity and democratic institutions;

* Technological measures designed to enforce intellectual property rights in digital environments threaten core exceptions in copyright laws for disabled persons, libraries, educators, authors and consumers, and undermine privacy and freedom;

* Key mechanisms to compensate and support creative individuals and communities are unfair to both creative persons and consumers;

* Private interests misappropriate social and public goods, and lock up the public domain.

Link to declaration, Mailto link for signing on (via Copyfight)

German scientist Meinhart Zenk at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg has proven once-and-for-all (?) a long-held theory that the human brain naturally produces morphine. Kristen Philipkoski reports on the findings in Wired News. Zenk's claim is supported by other recent work by neuroscientist George Stefano of the State University of New York at Old Westbury. Stefano believes that doctors could eventually teat a patient's pain by providing a precursor to morphine instead of the drug itself. From the Wired News article:

The discovery could also explain why some people are more susceptible to addiction -- they may have a morphine deficiency.

"All of a sudden," Stefano said, "(morphine-deficient individuals) take this compound (and) it really makes them feel not only good but normal."

Link

These origami insects and arthropods are incredibly beautiful. This 5" Acrocinus longimanus (Harlequin beetle) was folded from a single uncut square of paper. Master origami artist (and "origami mathematician") Robert Lang explains how it's done in a series of books. Link

Researchers from the University of Florida are outfitting trained rats with neural implants and a wireless radio so that the rodents can scurry through collapsed buildings searching for survivors. The electrodes are implanted in the rat's olfactory cortex, motor cortex, and reward center. When a rat--trained to seek out the smell of human--finds its target, the "aha! moment" can then be wireless transmitted back to headquarters. From a New Scientist article about the DARPA-funded work:

The researchers trained the rats to search for human odour by stimulating the reward centre when it found its target smell. Once the rats were trained, they were set to forage for the target smell, while electrodes recorded their neural activity patterns. This allowed researchers to identify the brainwave patterns associated with finding that smell. They were also able to train the rats to sniff out the explosives TNT and RDX – key after terrorist attacks that may leave buildings harbouring unexploded bombs.

Link