There are Italian and Spanish direct action groups, very well trained in direct action. They’re doing marvelous actions using blow up pool toys, big happy smiley faces on the strike zones [parts of the body would be likely to be hit by police] so they can protect themselves. Putting pockets into these bright clownish costumes they wear, both mediagenic and highly visual, but also with room for putting in an empty two-liter soda container, with their tops on. These make good protection in the strike zone.

Nonviolent defense is a long tradition. Profoundly misplaced, but necessary. I wish our energies could be better spent. Nonetheless, their threat has to be answered. And systematically, we have to answer every threat of this abuse power, of criminalizing political process, the political right to gather with a nonviolent method.

An anonymous reader points us to two links for listening to Eminem's "Mosh" in its entirety. Real Audio Link, ASX link.

BoingBoing reader David Stein sends a transcript of the song's lyrics: Link

Reader dapulli says, "On wednesday Zane Lowe on BBC Radio 1 in the UK gave out the link to the download of this track on national radio. You can listen to him doing so here on thursday about 90 minutes into the show -- Link"

When the Dutch East India Company set out to build New Amsterdam in the 17th century, it was not as a religious settlement but as a business center. Then Alexander Hamilton decided that New York City was not going to be the agrarian society envisioned by the founding gentleman farmers of Virginia, but an economic engine driving the nation’s commerce and mercantilism. Gov. DeWitt Clinton, who served two nonconsecutive terms (1817-22, 1825-28), followed his lead -- and built the Erie Canal. The canal was the very key to making New York’s port the country’s greatest, eclipsing Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia and Norfolk, and turning the city into a center for national commerce, as well as a gateway to the West. New York thus arguably owes its commercial success to one source: the ability to move goods and people from one place to another efficiently and en masse.

Enter the subway, which turns 100 this month. If anything truly revolutionized the way New Yorkers live, work and play, it’s the subway. On any given weekday, 4.5 million people travel on the 6,400 cars that run along 722 miles of track beneath the city’s five teeming boroughs. For all their complaints about it -- the dirt! the crowding! the noise -- the subway remains nothing short of the miracle it was when the subway opened in 1904.

The play is pretty much what the title implies: an unauthorised pageant performed by - but not necessarily for - children that tells the story of the life of Church of Scientology founder and main man L Ron Hubbard. And before you ask, the L, we learn, stands for Lafayette...

As soon as the Church got wind of an LA Times piece on the production, several editors on the paper received calls from the guardians of L Ron's flame urging them to pull the article. Nothing unusual about that, as any entertainment PR will tell you. But things took a more sinister turn when the phone calls started.

"The parents of one of the kids in the cast were called by members of the entertainment industry that were Scientologists," says Timbers. "They were told that if they were to continue with the show that it might be bad for their future career."

This strict "no blood" policy came to an embarrassing climax following the SNES release of Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat had been one of the most violent games for the Sega Genesis, with wall-to-wall blood and guts. The graphic violence was one of its chief sources of appeal. When the game was released on the SNES however, in coordination with Nintendo's content guidelines all the blood had to be removed. Instead, when the characters smacked each other gray"sweat" flew out of their bodies, certainly a painfully awkward compromise. As well, the gory "fatality" moves, in which characters could formally execute their opponents by decapitating them or ripping out their heart were all removed. The game was a huge commercial failure for Nintendo compared to the success of the Genesis version, and the experience is credited with promoting a significant shift in Nintendo's attitudes towards video game violence.

Update: Tim sez, " "Friendships" are present in all major versions of Mortal Kombat II, including, most importantly the original arcade version. They were not (at all!) introduced by Nintendo in the SNES version to tone down the violence, as this fellow asserts."

Thank you very much for honoring me with what my 13-year-old daughter calls the "Dork of the Year" award.

"She, and everybody else, tells me I'm obsessed with nanotechnology. Guilty. But I look at it much differently than most of you in the room. I'm not obsessed with it as a technology, as a science, as a means of saving or destroying the world, or making a quick buck, or gathering government grants, plotting world domination. That's not what I do. Nanotechnology to me is, pure and simple, a … great … story. It's a story that contains, within it, many chapters large and small. My God, it's a story of grinches and greed, it's a story of men and women with vision, it's a story about humankind's relationship with the world around..."

It can be in a position to flying entire with the night, but can oscillate a party ' to work to the light in advance payment?
It cannot satisfy it with its screw without fine small, but I can break off it outside with my excellent sperm!"
I go I make it, I go I make it, I I go make it, make it, make it.
' they are ' I here I am here, I I am great hank of prohibition, I I am everywhere
The shooting just your hands in on the air and left hardy as in you it is not taken care hardly
We make it, is not arrested, the y' all, a tock of the heartbeat, the y' all, you is not arrested!
Goes the hotel, the motel, whatcha that it goes to make today? (opinion that what)
I am going to obtain a girl of Moscow, andante to obtain the somunchank, eliminate in def a OJ,
Everyone goes, " hotel, motel, inn of festivity"

While we're on the subject, have you noticed how spam these days is the best conceivable source for band names? I mean, while I was publishing this post you're reading now, the following arrives in my in-box:

cannabis camille. chard the itsappian
tribesman blimp marksman torr checkup. drawn we cottrell,
expurgate we harelip Yexpand crayon?
I flack slim pursuant passer drank me albanian louisville dump,
answer is pertain fritz anneal clank chaperon

Philip Glass is suing the producers of Celsius 41.11, a vehemently anti-Michael Moore and anti-Kerry movie, for unauthorized use of parts of his musical score for "Powaqaatsi." They've used it already in commercials, and "if the music was heard in the movie, which is being released today in 40 cities nationwide, [Glass] would consider seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the film from being shown."

At 2pm this Sunday on the Bay Area's KALW (91.7), Benjamen Walker's "The Creative Remix" will debut on the airwaves. The main point of the show: "If remixing is an art form why are the lawyers running the conversation?" Follow Ben, whose insight and sense of humor have drawn him a cult radio following, as he speaks with artists about traditional kinds of collage -- like DJ Dangermouse's Grey Album -- but also art you might not have considered "remixing" -- historical fiction, for example, or an ancient poetic form called the Cento. Read more about the show. And Bay Area people, mark your calendar: 2pm, this Sunday, KALW (91.7).

In addition, the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes' survey also found that a majoroty of supporters of President Bush mistakenly believe that the President supports the Kyoto global-warming treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the treaty banning land mines, when he in fact opposes them. A majority of Bush supporters also think that most of the people on the world hope the President is re-elected. This is not the case.

Steven Kull, program director, said that Bush supporters' "resistance to information" on several fronts reflected a powerful bond with the president formed after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the perception - shared by Kerry supporters - that Bush still asserts that Iraq had WMD.

...

"To support the president and to accept that he took the United States to war based on mistaken assumptions is difficult to bear, especially in light of the continuing costs in terms of lives and money," Kull said.

"Apparently, to avoid this cognitive dissonance, Bush supporters suppress awareness of unsettling information."

A spokesman for the Bush campaign, Reed Dickens, said the perceptions on weapons were understandable "given that it's only in the last few weeks we've had this definitive finding" of the Duelfer report.

"The team expects it will take two to three years to develop the mathematical models for the hippocampus of a live, active rat and translate them onto a microchip, and seven or eight years for a monkey. They hope to apply this approach to clinical applications within 10 years. If everything goes well, they anticipate seeing an artificial human hippocampus, potentially usable for a variety of clinical disorders, in 15 years."

We've been filming the great and the good of science and film for a while. The aim is to provide coverage of as many areas as we can, [with subjects] telling their life stories in their own words. Sadly, Francis Crick died last month, but we were lucky enough to gain permission to place online his last ever filmed interview which has never been seen publicly before today. The site is subscription only (it's video on demand and we have to find a way of paying for it somehow!) but some clips are available free in the trailers area. The press release can be found here: Link.

"Israel has a higher density of fighter aircraft in its airspace than anywhere else in the world. So there is a huge conflict between flying machines and flying birds. Collisions are a big danger, for the birds of course, but also for our aircraft. Many more Israeli aircraft have been downed by birds than by enemy air battles in the last three decades... When a white pelican weighing 10 kilograms hits a plane going at 800 kilometres an hour, at the point of impact there will be a force exerted on the plane equivalent to about 100 tonnes. It's devastating"

“It’s essentially a dish with 60 electrodes arranged in a grid at the bottom,” (bioengineer Thomas) DeMarse said. “Over that we put the living cortical neurons from rats, which rapidly begin to reconnect themselves, forming a living neural network – a brain.”

The brain and the simulator establish a two-way connection, similar to how neurons receive and interpret signals from each other to control our bodies. By observing how the nerve cells interact with the simulator, scientists can decode how a neural network establishes connections and begins to compute, DeMarse said.

To me, HP's problems spawn from the death of... their operating system, HP/UX. Like IBM, they've elected to ask their customers and ISV's to move to Red Hat Linux or Microsoft Windows on x86 systems. And if you're an ISV, how does that differentiate HP? - they're a box vendor. If you're a customer, where does that leave you with your HP/UX investments? Facing untimely change - with a vendor no longer in charge of their OS.

Well, HP didn't think so. They had their jackass lawyers send a nastygram to Sun, demanding that they take down the blog entry. Riiiiight.

Give it to Sun -- they didn't waver. Instead, they sent their own nastygram right back, and promptly delivered both letters to the ChillingEffects clearing-house for public humilation.

Once again, in certain of the places this is a statement of opinion by Jonathan Schwartz. His opinion is based on his good faith assessment of the current climate of HP. Alternatively, however, Sun will also stand behind this as a statement of fact that is true and accurate based on the above substantiation. As detailed by the above facts, we have seen signs that HP is abandoning HP/UX.

Jonathan Schwartz's opinions and even his vigorous debate on this subject as well as Sun's product comparisons and dialog on these commercial matters are inherent in Sun's competition with HP and are part of the free market system in which our companies operate. For our statements of fact, Sun has valid, objective and verifiable evidence. Accordingly, and based on the above, Sun affirmatively stands by its claims regarding HP/UX and will not agree to cease making such truthful and/or subjective claims.

He described the problems he encounters in his work: "Technically, there are increasing distribution possibilities. However, [distribution] rules are the obstacles. Even a broadcaster's own production rights forbid online distribution. Programmes made with public funds belong in the public domain."

"Based on my experience in education, you just about have to fall on your knees and beg for images. This is ridiculous," said Ms Broekers-Knol, member of the Upper Chamber, supported by her fellow parliamentary colleagues.

Update: Turns out you can get responses to your Slashdot posts by email! (Thanks, Jamie!)

UPDATE: Suresh Venkat sez "should be careful with the betel leaf ;). it is the preferred after-dinner digestive in India, where it is called 'paan', and is sold on streets often right outside a restaurant.But there they often mix tobacco in it for that extra kick. Needless to say, mouth cancer follows shortly thereafter...

The Order of Maternal Glory, 1st class, was awarded to mothers of nine children. If you had one more, you got the Order of Mother Heroine. Awards came with serious benefits. If you became a Hero of the Soviet Union, you also got "first priority on the housing list, 50 per cent rent reduction, reduced taxation rates (in 1985 this was changed to tax exempt status), up to an additional 15 square meters in living space, free yearly round-trip first class ticket, free personal bus transportation, free yearly visit to sanitarium or rest home, as well as entertainment and medical benefits."

Armageddon came early for George Bush this year, and he was not ready for it. His long-awaited showdowns with my man John Kerry turned into a series of horrible embarrassments that cracked his nerve and demoralized his closest campaign advisers. They knew he would never recover, no matter how many votes they could steal for him in Florida, where the presidential debates were closely watched and widely celebrated by millions of Kerry supporters who suddenly had reason to feel like winners. Kerry came into October as a five-point underdog with almost no chance of winning three out of three rigged confrontations with a treacherous little freak like George Bush. But the debates are over now, and the victor was clearly John Kerry every time. He steamrollered Bush and left him for roadkill.

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him "Mister President," and then I felt ashamed.

The can-do attitude of old hobbyist magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics inspired the spirit of the new magazine, (O'Reilly VP Dale) Dougherty said.

"That was kind of lost in the '70s and '80s when people started becoming more consumers," said Mark Frauenfelder, editor in chief of Make. "People didn't need to make things anymore. It was cheaper to buy them."

While that still may be true today, "there is a satisfaction in making something rather than buying it," he said.

The guy in the middle is the famous and pioneering American private investigator Jay J Armes, who lost both his hands in an explosives accident as a kid. He learned to use those hooks they gave him and became immensely successful and wealthy. He's the guy who rescued Marlon Brando's son from kidnappers. I mean, this guy once had his own action figure (my little brother owned it).

BoingBoing reader Lloyd Vancil says, "The action figure is still out there. Isn't the net wonderful? Link." (Ed. note: OMG check out the "bio-kinetic hand" action!)

During his physics classes, (high school teacher Tom) Rogers also presents accurate cinematic depictions of science. "It's harder to find good stuff," he notes.

For example, he shows excerpts from 2001: A Space Odyssey to teach the concept of artificial gravity. In the film, it's generated along the rim of the rotating space station by centrifugal force. Students use visual clues to estimate the size of the space station and its rate of rotation. They then plug those numbers into the appropriate formula. If they do this correctly, they determine that the gravity at the outer rim of the station is about 90 percent of that on Earth.

"It's like When Worlds Collide, y'know? I'm a big fan of things like when Spider-Man and Daredevil meet. I go ape-(bleep) and bust a nut," said director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy), who is finally getting his chance to take part in the cult series he idolizes by starring in a three-episode arc on Degrassi: The Next Generation.

In a hilarious and profane press conference here yesterday with past and present Degrassi cast, creator Linda Schuyler and her creative team, Smith confirmed that he and pal Jason Mewes (aka "Jay" from Clerks and Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back) will start filming their parts next week through mid-November.

The episodes, which will air early next year, have Kevin Smith playing himself directing the next Jay and Silent Bob movie, "Jay And Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh?" In the fictional film, the slacker duo come to Toronto because they need to get a high school diploma and no school in America will take them.

Seventy-five years ago, a group of eager engineers convinced entrepreneur Paul Galvin that young people would do well with some mood music when they went parking on Lovers Lane. The following year, Galvin Manufacturing Corporation launched its first car radio, named by fusing the words "motor" and the suffix "ola," borrowed from the popular Victrola phonographs. In 1930, the state-of-the-art Motorola car radio defined music in motion. The next revolution in mobile music wouldn't happen until 1979. Indeed, this year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Sony Walkman, wearable technology that provided young people with a private soundtrack for the movie of their lives. Since then though, the song has remained the same... Listen carefully though, and you'll hear the opening strains of new mobile listening experiences in development at research laboratories around the world.

"Samson Projects, Boston’s newest contemporary art gallery, and Newbury Street’s 9 Months, announce a new arrival: a provocative one-night exhibition and fashion show on Thursday, October 21. A video installation by Brooklyn-based artist, Amy Jenkins, will be shown on a 60 inch plasma screen. The same evening, the latest belly-baring, runway maternity looks will be modeled by local, pregnant celebrities."

Disc One:

01 Tarantula Ghoul and The Gravediggers - Graveyard Rock
02 Don Hinson and The Rigamorticians - Riboflavin-Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Polyunsatured Blood
03 Movie Trailer - Vampire Playgirls
04 Bobby Bare - Vampira
05 The Crewnecks - Rockin' Zombie
06 Griz Green - Jam At The Mortuary
07 Movie Trailer - Monsters Crash the Pajama Party
08 The MSR Singers - Monster Man
09 The Abominable Surfmen - Monster Surfer
10 Bobby 'Boris' Jones - Surfer Smash
11 Jupiter Jones - The Spook Spoke
12 Bob Mcfadden and Dor - I Dig You Baby
13 Movie Trailer - The Mind of Mr. Soanes
14 Albert DeSalvo - Strangler In The Night
15 Kenny and The Fiends - House on haunted hill
16 Winchell's Donut House Halloween Record - Hear The Monsters (Spooky Sounds and A Spooky Tale)
17 Buddy Morrow and His Orchestra - The Raven
18 The Modernaires - The Rockin' Ghost
19 Bob Rosengarden and Phil Kraus - Satan Takes a Holiday
20 Boris Karloff and Friends - Ha Ha Ha/The Bride Of Frankenstein
21 Movie Trailer - Brain Eaters
22 Groovie Goolies - Goolie Garden
23 Hap Palmer - Haunted House
24 Bruce Haack and Norman Bridwel - The Witch's Vacation
25 Sounds of Terror! - Burned at the Stake
26 Louise Heubner - Intro Orgies, A Tool Of Witchcraft
27 Marty Manning and His Orchestra - Night On Bald Mountain
28 Criswell - Someone Walked Over My Grave

Richard Allen, Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield UK and Jeremy Corbyn (MP for Islington North) posed official Parlimentary questions to the Home Office about what happened with the Indymedia servers. Their response indicates that no UK law enforcement agencies were involved, see here for the full response:

Caroline Flint [holding answer 18 October 2004]: I can confirm that no UK law enforcement agencies were involved in the matter referred to in the question posed by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam.

(1) what you'll see at the dentist's office when the gas kicks in
(2) a Furry Fetish website come to life, minus the creepy sex stuff
(3) where lonely old sports mascots crawl off to die.

Link to quicktime video for "Nature Anthem." Not new but still worth a stream. (thanks, David)

BoingBoing reader Stiv says, "That movie theater building currently houses Warthog: Texas (a computer game company, Link). Located on South Congress [street], the building used to be an adult theatre named Cinema West that got converted during the tech bubble. I fondly remember the porn titles they'd run on the marquee (my favorite was Passage through Pamela)."

Link to original. (thanks, Sean)

My dad, dear misguided soul that he is, gave some money to the RNC but listed one of my e-mail addresses because he didn't have one at the time. So I've been getting urgent GOP "Give money now!" e-mail since last spring.

The latest RNC newsletter urges a contribution of $200, which it said "will pay for a PDA to help our canvassers contact Republican voters quickly accurately" and notes that "the RNC is shipping 3,000 out to volunteer captains."

I suppose $600,000 is a drop in the bucket if you're still coasting on Enron donations, but I have to wonder: 1.) What PDAs still cost $200? 2.) Do they get to keep the PDAs, and isn't this bigger partisan payola than Michael Moore giving away clean underwear?

I'm working on the campaign right now trying to increase Dem. voter turnout in FL. With regard to the PDA stuff, canvassing operations have been using them to enter data at houses about voters. They use them to store maps of neighborhoods. This helps them control their databases and collect information more efficiently. There's no way canvassers get to keep the PDAs.

Also, when contacted voters reveal their preferences and begin discussing what issues are important to them, some of the canvassers use the PDAs to show commercials and videos that specifically target the things voters are discussing.

Look into it a little more. It's pretty fascinating how much technology is being harnessed by campaigners this year.

"Queen of Sky is a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines. Three weeks ago she was suspended without pay for the sole reason of posting pictures in uniform on her blog. She was given no warning or chance to remove the pictures before that time. Queen of Sky has since removed the pictures from her blog, but one of them can be found here: Link."

A teenage arsonist threatens a partially submerged mid-22nd century San Francisco. As a Public Investigator "€œtryout"€ seeks evidence across the utopian city full of canals and veloways, political and social conflicts erupt. When there is no such thing as property, what is crime, and how does a utopian society protect itself from bad behavior? Should scientists be as free as artists to create? What is a "free market"€ for work without and money and commodities?

"Legally share your work without losing copyright protection..."

Free legal service for intellectual property creators looking to share.

Share your cake and keep it too

"Legally share your work without losing copyright protection."

Alternative to traditional copyrights that allows authors and artists to share their work and still protect the specific rights important to them.

We are asked to decide whether the world's cetaceans have standing to bring suit in their own name under the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. We hold that cetaceans do not have standing under these statutes.

[H]is captors agreed to release him after they were convinced he was not working for the CIA or a US contractor...

"They Googled him and then went onto a web site - either his own or his book publisher's web site, I don't know which one - and saw that he was who he was, and that was instrumental in letting him go, I think, or swinging their decision," he told AP news agency.

5. Small noises should be ignored at night. We were pretty ready to jump up and feed or comfort Ben when he made any sound at night. And that was fine in his early weeks when he wasn't a good sleeper and his melatonin hadn't kicked in to start helping him tell night from day. But more recently, we were still doing it. Our post-partum doula/sleep consultant said more or less, he'll tell you when he needs something; his peeps and snorts can be safely ignored because he'll rise out of heavy sleep into light and back into it many times a night. She was right. The minute we started waiting for real action--not minutes of screaming, but a real "wah wah"--we started getting real sleep. It's tough. But it's the way to go and doesn't damage the kid. When you leap up every time he or she peeps, you're disturbing his or her sleep, the sleep folks say.

No, I'm not talking about Jack Valenti. On November 29, Godzilla finally gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Link to blogging.la post, Link to Japan Today story, and Link to Godzilla, Final Wars -- the 28th Godzilla film, due out on 12/4/2004, and purportedly last in the series.

A new CD remix collection of his work was released this week. Future Past Tense documents selected tracks from 1998 to present, and you can listen to the entire album online by way of a spiffy flash player here: Link. Admission to the listening party is free, but strictly BYOB: bring your own broadband.

Mobilehookup's patent pending 'Talk Now' combines text messaging's fun and convenience with speed-dating's functionality. A key industry innovation, 'Talk Now,' allows Mobilehookup members to further pursue a budding connection by talking live - for five minutes - on the telephone while protecting user privacy and anonymity. (...) One of the fastest growing communities of its kind in Canada, Mobilehookup offers 'Talk Now' users the unique opportunity to get to know a person better without having to exchange key personal information - like phone numbers or addresses. Not only does this mean members retain control of the dating situation but similar to speed-dating, they are better equipped to quickly decide whether or not to continue with a relationship.

Easy to use, 'Talk Now' is activated by sending a message to the Mobilehookup server. After getting approval from the other party, the Mobilehookup server connects the two members by bridging a telephone call, ensuring that total anonymity is maintained. Whether they're simply having fun or connecting with a potential life partner, the members receive five minutes from VoCoMo to talk to each other.

The series is loosely based on Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," and it's a magic-realist, metafictional, cowboy, horror, fantasy, science fiction saga epic that runs nearly a thousand pages to the volume, and took the man a lifetime to write.

The seventh volume highlights all that is good and all that is poor in this series. It is, of course, self-indulgent. This series contains (lots) more verbiage than the Bible and Kapital combined, and says much, much less than either. Of course. It goes without saying. King is indulging his imaginaton, and we have to indulge his indulgence if we're going to enjoy this.

And it is marvellously enjoyable. From the first page of the first book, I've been quietly engrossed in the outcome of King's questing heroes. And at the end of this seventh book, I found out how it all came out, and I wasn't disappointed. This was a tale worth traversing.

If you ask me, these are King's best books. The basic premise -- a cadre of mystic, gunslinging knights traversing the worlds and all time to reach the mcguffin that holds the universe together -- is the perfect, relentless drummer, pounding out the tempo of the story, dragging them through hardship beyond hardship. The science fiction elements are cool; the fantasy elements are heroic; the horror elements are creepy as hell. The plot doesn't slacken, and the characters are deeply and thoroughly drawn.

i'm glad it's over, though. After thousands and thousands of pages, I just wanted it to end. And I'm grateful it ended so well. Link

The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.

The second time was a few years later when Gibson came through Seattle on his IDORU tour. Between doing some drive-by signings at local bookstores, he came and devastated my quarter of the city. I had been in a trance for seven days and seven nights and was unaware of these goings-on, but he came to me in a vision and taunted me, and left a message on my cellphone. That evening he was doing a reading at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. Swathed in black, I climbed to the top of the hall, mesmerized his snipers, sliced a hole in the roof using a plasma cutter, let myself into the catwalks above the stage, and then leapt down upon him from forty feet above. But I had forgotten that he had once studied in the same monastery as I, and knew all of my techniques. He rolled away at the last moment. I struck only the lectern, smashing it to kindling. Snatching up one jagged shard of oak I adopted the Mountain Tiger position just as you would expect. He pulled off his wireless mike and began to whirl it around his head. From there, the fight proceeded along predictable lines. As a stalemate developed we began to resort more and more to the use of pure energy, modulated by Red Lotus incantations of the third Sung group, which eventually to the collapse of the building's roof and the loss of eight hundred lives. But as they were only peasants, we did not care.

When: 28 October 2004, 18:45 for a 19:00 start
Where: Venue - LWT South Bank, Upper Ground, SE1, London. (Nearest stations are Waterloo and Southwark: map) Link

"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress." None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush's much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss. The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain. And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.

For [James Fallow's] article, rather than talking to campaign spinners for each side and reporting what they said, he dove into the archival record of each man's debates, and made an astonishing discovery: 10 years ago, George W. Bush was an articulate, forceful debater. Tough to belive, but when Fallows reviewed the tapes of Bush's 1994 debate with Anne Richards, he found that not only did Bush win the debate, but he spoke well.

US citizen Ilya Mafter has been detained in Belarus because he was believed to have caused about 100,000 US dollars in damage to the country's communications providers, the Interfax news agency cited sources in the State Security Committee as reporting on Tuesday.

"A preliminary report suggests that damage of about 100,000 US dollars was caused to Belarussian communications providers, including the Beltelecom company, as a result of illegal communications services using IP telephony that were organized by Mafter," the source said.

The US citizen, who was detained on Oct. 16, is also suspected of "working as an entrepreneur without registration or permission," said the source.

U2 and Apple Computer Inc. are expected to announce next week that they have signed a deal to sell custom iPods. According to a source, the Irish rock band's upcoming album "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," due Nov. 23 via Interscope Records, will come preloaded on iPods that will be available the week of street date.

* Supernovas illuminate dark energy

* Neurobiology's lighter side

* A twist on Cancer DNA

The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.

(Shatner) had so many ideas, and they're ideas coming from a 73-year-old actor. And that's a great perspective. It's moving. We hear kids all the time. Rock and roll is--and should be--a kid's place, and they're coming of age--18 years old--and they're going, "There's something out there. I want to get it. There's something." And those things that they're saying... They've been said over and over, which is OK, because this is their first time living. But what Shatner's saying in the record so much is that he still feels that at 73 years old. It's like you don't just age to 25, 30, 40 years old--and all of a sudden you know everything. It's that perspective that bridges any kind of generation gap you could have in rock-and-roll music.

As I'm saying it, I think it's kind of monumental. I don't know that anyone's ever done that before--actually said, "I'm 73 years old, and I cannot get my s*** together." That's cool!

1982. Atari Games, to celebrate the creation of their Atari 2600 Pac-Man Game (which, I might add, was one of the most pathetic, slapdash, slipshod piece of programming ever to churn out of a development studio) held a massive "Pac Man Day" in Citicorp Center in New York City. Being a confessed "Pac Maniac", I couldn't resist. To complete the picture, you have to know that I had that great uncontrolled 11-year-old hair of unequal length, and an old army fatigue jacket with a "PAC MAN" t-shirt transfer on the back. Now, it was me and literately THOUSANDS of kids jammed into the inadequately-planned celebration area at the Center, with all of us vying for places to stand and have fun. They had the contest, which only had maybe a dozen of us actually show enough nerve to go up on stage, and due to a REALLY LOUD chomping sound, I placed somewhere around third. Of course, this is up to dispute, because the place essentially turned into a riot (I can still recall my father up on a balcony, screaming at me to stand against a wall so I wouldn't be stepped on) and they generally just THREW stuff into the crowd, but I was third.

This is a memory I will hold dear until all of time. It was not a depth. It was a pinnacle. It was a heady, breathless moment in time in which my own fannish interest in something led me to a situation, a unique situation, that could barely be explained to others without sounding truly off-the-wall, absolutely beyond saving. And like many such unique events, you hold a fear in your heart, beyond the memory, a fear that as time goes on you will not feel such things again.So, as I sit here typing these words to you, I know I have achieved something of equal, deep geekdom. I have attended an off-broadway musical based on The Last Starfighter.

There's some idle suspicion that Google intends to expand their functionality to include sharing of desktop files. This seems pretty likely given their acquisition of Picasa, which included something called "Hello" - an IM-like application for chatting and sharing pictures. Moreover, if they decide to merge this with orkut, to allow file sharing just with your friends network, then that's a pretty compelling offering.

HOWEVER... The orkut terms of service are still extremely unfavorable to the end user. This is not too bad when it just applies to your profile and to chats on their message boards. It is REALLY bad when it applies to other forms of personal content that may be shared using the system.

I blogged this earlier: Link. As I said, this is just idle speculation, but it seems like something we all ought to watch out for.

Cuban's ideas--like others that have materialized on his Web log--center around the emerging industry for personal video recorders (PVRs), such as TiVo, and video on demand (VOD). VOD is not as widely available as PVRs are, but the idea has shown some recent signs of life with a movies-on-demand deal between TiVo and Netflix, and with the VOD service--offering mostly obscure programming--of Akimbo.

Cuban says, "If I were a patent terrorist like some, I could probably even patent these ideas. Isn’t it a shame that in this country today, you can have nothing more than an idea, do nothing with it, but still have a chance to make money?" Link to Cuban's blog entry with details on the proposed ideas.

UK medical authorities say they will almost certainly approve the application in the next few weeks. The aim of the technique is to prevent mothers passing on degenerative genetic diseases to their children. But campaigners say it could lead to significant increases in elderly women having children. They also claim it represents an unacceptable step towards the creation of designer babies.

'By creating a child with three genetic parents, these scientists are taking the first step towards genetic engineering of human beings. That is not a direction in which we should be going,' said Dr David King, director of Human Genetics Alert.

BoingBoing reader Chris says, "Actually, this is not completely new: Link."

Pollworkers in Santa Clara County are being trained not to offer voters a chance to use paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has learned. California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley mandated in May that all polling places offer a paper ballot option, which would allow people concerned about e-voting machine reliability a chance to vote on paper ballots at the polls. But pollworkers in Santa Clara County are being instructed not to tell voters that this option is available. Instead, they will make paper ballots available only if voters specifically request them.

Ed Cherlin, a pollworker being trained in Santa Clara County, said he was very disturbed to learn that he was not supposed to mention the paper option. "I object to the government telling me that I can't tell people about their rights," he said.

[T]oday's mobile phones -- not including ones that have non-traditional form factors -- have become about as tiny as human anatomy allows. Does that mean miniaturization is coming to an end? For the phones themselves, the answer is probably yes. For the components inside the phone, the answer is definitely no.

The advantages to shrinking and integrating the internal components of mobile phones are obvious. Component miniaturization means that manufacturers can pack more functions into phones, and integration ultimately leads to lower manufacturing costs.

At the Wireless Integrated Microsystems Engineering Research Center (WIMS ERC) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, two different research projects -- one involving antennas and the other involving frequency resonators -- could help achieve a long sought-after goal -- a true single-chip wireless transceiver.

Thus, the metadata most of us attach to our photos is pretty pathetic. We can name them when we transfer them to a computer, but most people don't bother and end up with a hard disk full of photos with names like DSC00012.jpg and DSC00234.jpg. As the years go on, DSC00234.jpg will become an archaeological artifact that might as well be labeled Don't_Know_Don't_Care.jpg. If we're to have any hope of preserving our memories, we'll need to be more clever than that. Much more clever.

What do you do if you're too lazy - or overburdened or preoccupied - to tag your photos? Let a machine do it. Digital cameras already capture critical data points at the moment the shutter clicks. Most models record - in the image file itself - not only the date and time a photo was taken but also the focal length, the aperture setting, and whether the flash fired. These tidbits can provide clues about whether the photo was taken indoors or out, during the day or at night, focusing on something close up or far away. Scanty metadata, but potentially helpful.

But why limit the possibilities to what today's cameras can do? The image file format most cameras use includes fields for longitude and latitude, in anticipation of the day when global positioning systems are built in. That day could be soon. Cell phones already gather some positioning information, and by the end of 2005 all new cell phones in the US will be locatable to within 500 feet or so. Establish a Bluetooth wireless connection between phone and camera and the camera will know where it is. Web sites already exist that use GPS data to let you upload photos pegged to spots on maps, and a Stanford research project compares photos with shots of known locations, automatically annotating snaps with information about where they were taken.

In 1971, Ed Wood's "Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love" -- one of the last of over two dozen porn flicks made in the 1960s and early 70s by the cinematic genius responsible for such classics as "Glen or Glenda?" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space" -- opened at the Hudson Theater in Times Square for an extremely limited run ... and the full hardcore version of the film hasn't been seen in its entirety since. Until this month, that is, when it becomes the first DVD released under the Fleshbot Films imprint. Yes, we're very proud. Wherever he is, we hope Ed is too.

The iFilm version currently has 99,228 views. Sites don't make Blogdex without 250,000 views. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe 350,000 is more viewers than the original Crossfire interview probably had. (I can only find that CNN averages 757,000 viewers during prime time).

Update: From the time I posted this until the time I finished an email with similar content, 40,000 people viewed the iFilm version of the Crossfire interview. Everytime I've checked BitTorrent, there have been more than 100 people sharing the file.

Another Update (10/16/04 7:56 PM): Leonard Lin is saying there are 4,000 BitTorrent seeds and his Apache server is now "handling 100+ simultaneous connections and avg'ing 7.0MB/s right now, 25GB/hr"

Yet Another Update (10/17/04 7:47PM): The Stewart/Crossfire torrents are now number 5 on Blogdex and has 291,863 on iFilm. The BitTorrent page lists 54,206 download, but I can't imaging how they're coming up with this number.

Now that you are in your 40s and your characters have aged along with you, have the things that have happened to you as you've grown older played a large part in the way you look at the world?

I do really pay attention [to] how life is in the mid-40s and how it affects them. Even if we try not to live life by this timeline, we do. You're at a certain age where you say, "Where do I go from here? Do I want a family? By the time I'm this old, do I want a house?" Things like that. When you're younger, you don't think about that stuff, and some people are forced to think about it. It doesn't work out that well for some people. And so, so that's what I think about a lot. I think about which of my characters are going to slide into old age gracefully and which ones are going to go in kicking and screaming. That's an important point in my work right now. That's one of the things I think about a lot. "Ok, I'm doing a character here, where are they going? They're this age, they should be at this point, or maybe not, why aren't they? Why aren't they married and have kids?"

The amazing degree of variation in the experiences of asexual people suggests that the underlying causes of their lack of sexual attraction are very different. Some asexuals might simply have extremely low sex drives in spite of an innate orientation towards males or females. Other asexuals might form a fourth category of sexual orientation in addition to the hetero-, homo- and bi-sexual ones, namely people who are attracted to neither gender, even if they have normal sex drives.

There is no official definition for asexuality yet, but it probably needs to take all these variations into account, says Anthony Bogaert, a psychologist and human-sexuality expert studying asexuality at Brock University in St. Catherines, Canada. “The place where we draw the line is the desire to interact sexually with other people,” says Brian (name changed), a navy veteran from Virginia. When it comes to having children, some asexuals say they would like to have a baby, but most would use IVF to avoid having to have sex.

"The ability of some people to see the coloured auras of others has held an important place in folklore and mysticism throughout the ages. Although many people claiming to have such powers could be charlatans, it is also conceivable that others are born with a gift of synaesthesia. GW does not believe she has mystical powers and has no interest in the occult, but it is not hard to imagine how, in a different age or culture, such an interpretation could arise."

Everyone knows that [Francis] Crick (along with his colleague James Watson) unraveled the double helical structure of the DNA molecule but not everyone appreciates the even greater contributions he made soon afterwards. He went on to decipher the genetic code (three nucleotides coding for an amino acid; the mechanism of DNA replication, the transcription of the code by mRNA and its subsequent translation into amino acid sequences mediated by transfer RNA) With these achievements in place Crick soon came to be regarded as the founder of the new science of molecular biology and occupied the same place in twentieth century Science as Darwin did in the 19th century.

I have been asked to take a year-long guest residency, teaching design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

This school is in the Los Angeles basin, the epicenter of Southern Californian car culture, the etymological origin of the term "smog," and a metroplex that arm-wrestles Houston every year for the crown of the most polluted city in the USA. If there's a heart to the Greenhouse beast, well, it can't be far from Pasadena.

I'm taking the job. It's time to become the change we want to see. For the year 2005, the Viridian Pope-Emperor is becoming a design professor. I have a number of ambitious developments in mind for Viridian list, because, starting January, design will become my career. I'm leaving Texan and I'm becoming Californian. For a while, anyhow.

Often-BoingBoinged photographer Clayton Cubitt shot the stills for their website, and the video for their first single is nonworksafe genius.

Link to website. High-bandwidth Quicktime video link, Low-bandwidth link (video contains ironic nudity).

Fleshbot has more on "the making of" -- the video's comprised entirely of borrowed clips from a classic '80s TV show:

Anyone who's watched Manhattan cable television over the past 27 years needs no introduction to Robin Byrd, the pornstar-turned-Oprah of the smut set whose late night talk show has featured practically every adult entertainer ever to grace the marquees of the strip clubs of Times Square (back when Times Square actually had strip clubs, that is.) New York City band Fiasco pays homage to Robyn and her many guests over the years—not to mention their hairstyles, lycra unitards, and box-bangin' dance moves -- in a cleverly edited new video for their song "Those Feelings" ... lie back, get comfortable, and enjoy.

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

We didn't find it difficult to get along despite the obvious political differences we'd had during the decades when he has been literally engaged in war-mongery and I have been a hippie peacenik. The interesting thing was that we didn't disagree on much now. We both believed that the invasion of Iraq and its subsequent occupation was a tragic catastrophe that could only get worse.

"I'll tell you," he said, "before we get out of Iraq, it's going to make Viet Nam look like a good idea." And this from someone who thought that our clandestine overthrow of the Sandinistas, in which he had taken part, "was" a good idea. But now he's mostly in it for the money. Besides, armed conflict is what he knows.

Today, Monday October 18, is the deadline to register to vote in the upcoming Presidential election. To be able to vote your registration form needs to be postmarked by midnight tonight.

You can download registration forms and info from DeclareYourself.com. Physical forms are available at the post office, library or at your local registrar of voters (you can find the location of the registrar nearest you at vote-smart.org)

So -- if you haven't registered, take a couple of minutes to download the form, print it out and drop it in the mail. Don't wait until later, do it now!

True, today is the last day to register to vote for those in California, Kansas, and South Dakota, but the deadlines are later for other states (see the linked page on the FEC website). In fact, in my home state of Maine, you can actually register to vote in person up to and including election day!

The words “Happy Birthday” can no longer be legally used if they are pinned to any other product, as a private Chinese company has claimed to have registered them as its trademark in 25 countries, including the US, Japan and European Union members this month. The Fufeng toy plant in East China’s Anhui province said it has more than 70 products with the “Happy Birthday” brand, including industries like toys, dresses, shoes and hats. With increasingly fierce competition in the world toy market, the company realised the importance of branding.

BoingBoing reader Neil Turner says,"The song, Happy Birthday To You, is actually copyrighted, according to Snopes, and the copyright doesn't expire until 2030. This means that any time the song is used in films, TV shows etc. royalties have to be paid. Link."

On the derivative works tip, BoingBoing reader Neil says, "Ever notice how when you go to a restaurant like Red Robin or Applebees, they'll sing birthday wishes for you using their own 'special' songs? It's so they don't have to pay royalties for singing Happy Birthday! I wonder if that'll all change in 2030."

BoingBoing reader Eric A. Farris says, "The copyright of the song Happy Birthday to You was used as a story element in the first season of the most excellent and now defunct Aaron Sorkin sitcom Sports Night, episode four, Intellectual Property. A 'script' of that episode is here: Link."

What: University of Reading's Copyright vs. Creativity night
When: Tuesday October 19, 8pm
Where: University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, Palmer Lecture Theatre (Map)

Link

I had my 9 a.m. acting class (Shatner method) to teach to our platoon of body doubles. Ali was the star out of the three unemployed Saddams we had recruited. He was dating J. Lo #2, Esmeralda Nuñez, and we needed to get them ready for their first op—a masterful bit of paparazzi placement I'd engineered for the next slow news week...

Womack set up his 12-inch Presidential Aviator George W. Bush in an on-deck leadership pose between the ketchup and the salt shaker. Fully outfitted with flight suit, pressure gear, and sidearm, the Prez usually stayed on the dash of Womack's Lincoln Continental, but turned into a worry ball when the boss was preoccupied. A worry ball that also served as a vehicle for Womack to practice the masterful voice-throwing he had honed in two decades as a practitioner of dirty tricks and kids' party ventriloquist.

"We're working hard to put food on your family," said the mini-Prez. "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."

Esther Wong, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong Disneyland, said that the company had rotated the orientation of the entire park by several degrees in the early design phase after consulting a master of feng shui, a Chinese practice of seeking harmony with spiritual forces.

• The Smart Car: a $10,000 plastic car with an integrated steel roll-cage that you can buy out of a vending machine. They park two to a parking space and get 50% better mileage than a Prius. These things are all over the road in Europe, but to make them work for the US market, they're rolling out an SUV -- a tiny, cute, fuel-efficient SUV.
• fMRIs to measure cool: a hipster scientest is putting peoples' heads in a functional MRI box and showing them pictures of cool and uncool objects to see how dorks' and beautiful peoples' brains differ; charmingly told by a dorky scientist ("Fifth grade was also the year that I discovered, to my shame, that the seventh grader I had privately idolized was actually the class dork, a turtleneck-and-glasses-wearing nerd incarnate"), the kicker is the junk science behind the interpretation of the results and the triumph of nerdliness over flash.
• Anti-Darwinists: Religious fundies (and, strangely, George Gilder) have gussied up Creationism with a cloak of information-theory science rhetoric and have successfully lobbied various school districts into getting "Intelligent Design" (dishonest new buzzword meaning "God|Aliens are responsible for humanity") onto the curriculum alongside of Darwin. Infuriating piece, and a textbook example of dirty poltiicking; the author does a fine job of deconstructing the arguments of the Creationists.

To the Department of Homeland Security, you are no longer an American, you are a potential terrorist. Unless immediate action is taken by you, anyone who flew on any airline in the United States during the month of June 2004 will have a government dossier opened-up on them.

In order to test a new Orwellian airline security program called 'Secure Flight', the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration will force the airlines to turn over all their their passenger's travel records -- which include everything from credit card numbers to whether a kosher meal was requested -- from June of 2004.

If this test isn't stopped, there will be little left to stop the TSA from running checks on everyone who flies. 'Secure Flight' will make our country less like the America we grew up in and more like Communist East Germany circa 1974. All patriotic Americans must work to make sure this invasive, unconstitutional program never comes to fruition. Homeland Security needs to stop treating ordinary American citizens like criminals.

Update: Kevin sez, "I called Pioneer and TiVo to see if there was a way around this, but they said they weren't trying to prevent us from doing this... it was a codec/compression issue. OK, fine. I can see that having the additional DVDR hardware in one box would give you options the standard Series2 wouldn't have for encoding, but TiVo needs to make potential customers aware of this limitation."

"We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War of Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over," Judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote for the three-member court. "September 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country."