Adam Brault sez: "Sixteen year-old Steve Geluso was failed by his English teacher for choosing to distinguish piracy from stealing in an essay.

"Geluso, an 'A' student, recently completed an in-class exit exam for his Language Arts class. The goal of the exit exam was to write a comparative essay on a topic of the student's choice. Being a student who enjoys a challenge, he wrote an essay contrasting piracy with stealing.

"His teacher failed him, saying there was no difference between the two and that he was "splitting hairs". Other teachers who read his essay said that he did well from an organizational and technical standpoint, but because his teacher felt that there was no difference between piracy and stealing, she gave him an 'F' because she disapproved of the content of his essay.

"Check out his several comments regarding this event on his low-fi weblog at http://steve.mathcaddy.com Steve's scanned-in paper is available Here (Note the "Continue to Page 2" link at the bottom of the page.)"

UPDATE: Mike Harris has an HTML version of the essay. He sez: "I transcribed it with errors and cross-outs, along with his teachers' commentary. Useful for those who don't want to go through nine large scanned images to read his essay." Link

A few weeks ago, Mark posted a freaky then/now image of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko. Doctors now believe that Yuschenko suffered from Dioxin poisoning. Dioxin is one of the substances found in Agent Orange. There is speculation that a "third party" put the poison in his soup. From CNN:

One of the doctors at Saturday's news conference said the changes in Yushchenko's face will remain for a long time. More treatment will be needed to determine whether his face can be restored to the way it had been.

Yushchenko had long been known for his good looks.

Link

Make a uke from this $22 kit. I might get one of these and give it a custom paint job. Link (Thanks, David!)

This is the best thing I've seen in a long while. Robyn Miller sez: "This is a photo from a Chinese PDF manual. The manual explains, via text and a lot of fun photos, how to cram as much food as possible on one of those tiny Pizza Hut bowls at the salad bar. They're only allowed one trip. My cousin lives in Beijing. When he goes to Pizza Hut, he says this is what most people are busy building." (Click image for enlargement)

UPDATE: Kurt Groetsch sez: "Two more photos of salad bowl extensions here and here. They made the rounds of the office when I was working in Beijing."

Gregory Lam sez: I have a friend of mine who currently lives and works in China, described the same phenomenon here. "I quote: 'For one price (I think it's approximately 20 RMB), you get a single trip to the salad bar. You get a medium-sized soup bowl to put your salad in. Of course, this is a challenge any structural engineer would love to take upon: putting the most salad you can in this small bowl. I saw people at the salad bar for 5-7 minutes just trying to force more and more salad into their bowl. The highest salad I saw must have rose 9 inches off the top of the bowl.'

"The reason is, Western food is quite expensive in China. Pizza Hut is actually considered to be upscale dining!"

One of the journalists I respect most in this world, Dan Gillmor, is leaving his post at the San Jose Mercury News to "work on a citizen journalism project." I know I'm not alone in expecting continued greatness from this man. Good luck, Dan. Link

My friend Scott recommended Whimsyload.com as a place to buy toys for my 1.5-year-old. He recommended three items: Wooden Man, Crazy Box (shown here), Bird Clock.

These hard-shell iPod covers designed by underground art legend Coop will be available at the end of next week for $50 each. Limited edition of 100, available for many models and sizes. So. Cool. Must. Have. Now. Link to MacSkinz store where the'll be sold.

Doug from MacSkinz says, "Our artist series includes work from Glenn Barr, Andrew Bawidamann, Joe Chiodo, Brian Ewing, Jon Foster, Marc Gabanna, Dave Johnson, Frank Kozik, NeckCNS, Plankton Art, Ragnar, Jeff Soto, Miles Thompson and others."

Link to images 1, 2, 3, 4. See also this previous BoingBoing post: Coop's "Parts With Appeal" show opens at sixspace: Link (Thanks Sean!)

Duane Keiser creates one oil painting every day, and posts it to his blog. He's been doing it since December 3rd. I hope he keeps it up -- he's great! Link

Angus sez: Yet another development in the Flores Hobbits story. Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa claims to have captured one last month...

Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa has a strange tale to tell. Sitting in his bamboo and wooden home at the foot of an active volcano on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, he recalls how people from his village were able to capture a tiny woman with long, pendulous breasts three weeks ago. "They said she was very little and very pretty," he says, holding his hand at waist height. "Some people saw her very close up."

Link (Previous tiny humans updates here.)

In September, friend and EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow was arrested at the San Francisco Airport and charged with the misdemeanor possession of controlled substances that had allegedly been discovered during a search of his checked baggage. He was requested to get off the plane (which was about to take off) by an attendant, who escorted him to the baggage claim area.

He led me to an office in the baggage claim area that was thicker with cops than some banana republics. They greeted me with same distaste they'd likely have shown an actual terrorist and treated me accordingly for the remainder of that very long day. On the counter lay small quantities of marijuana (for which I have a physician's recommendation), mushrooms, and ketamine that had allegedly been encountered in my suitcase. That the total volume of this prize was significantly more compact than the amount of high explosive necessary to endanger an aircraft, and indeed, insufficient to merit a felony charge on any count, didn't matter to them. They clearly regarded me as a threat to public safety. When I pointed out to the officials that they only had authority to search for threats to the aircraft, one of them, a bug-eyed, crew-cutted troglodyte, declared that, if I had taken any of these substances, then I would have endangered Flight 310. That such an obviously ungifted person was capable of so imaginative a conceptual leap remains a marvel to me.

After spending the day locked up in the Redwood City jail, Barlow was bailed out by another EFF co-founder, John Gilmore, who put up the $25,000 in cash to spring Barlow. It's a good thing that Barlow has Gilmore on his side, because Gilmore is a wealthy civil libertarian who has been fighting his own battle against creepy secret airport security laws. Writes Barlow:

We then set about to mount what appears to be the first serious contest of TSA's routinely over-broad searches of checked bags. Apparently, everyone else who has been arrested as a consequences of these inspections, and there have been many, has pled guilty rather than face the cost and trouble of mounting a constitutional defense.

I might have done so myself had it not been for Gilmore's willingness to support the handsome cost of my defense. That, and the recognition that unconstitutional behavior by the authorities is constrained only by the peoples' willingness to contest them. Liberty is preserved not only on the battlefield. More often, it is preserved on the streets, by people who know their rights and refuse to forfeit them at the time of arrest. Failing that, as I did, it is preserved in court. Fortunately, precedent appears to be on my side. The controlling Ninth Circuit case in such matters is US v. Davis (482 F.2d 893) which authorizes warrantless airport searches only for the purpose of detecting weapons and explosives.

The full story on Barlow's blog is worth reading. Good luck John and John! Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Aneequs sez: "Aubrey de Grey seems not to belong to the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, but I think someone should nominate him. (This club is run by the same people who do the IgNobel Awards.) Check out the site for lots of pictures of scientists with luxuriant flowing hair." Link

I've been spending some time in Las Vegas recently. In Spanish, "the fertile valleys," because once the valleys there really were green from artesian springs. The springs are gone, but not the green.

New gambling/restaurant/theme park/shoppingmall/tittybar monstrosities pop up daily, each more expensive and spectacularly gauche than the last. The place is blowing up. Five thousand people move there every month. To LIVE there. Not just sink cash and drink.

Las Vegas is full of math. Each piece of its land has a brand and a url. Each address on the strip is a self-contained kingdom, a discrete casinosphere. The shopping malls have floor shows.

It's not all lowbrow. One hotel near the Disney casino has a Picasso in the lobby. There's a mini-Guggenheim inside the Venetian. But the fact they're there feels wrong.

It's sucking all the glam out of Los Angeles. All of LA's best restaurateurs are opening newer, better venues out there. A number of the larger couture lines are opening virgin boutiques there, before breaking ground in LA. The Chanel shop in Vegas gets the 2005 Spring collection before the Beverly Hills store does. Some of the best plastic surgeons are there now, and hence, so are some of the world's best breasts. Trump's new condo tower is under construction, just down the street from Steve Wynn's new joint, which is already sold out for two full years even though it only opens next April.

One of the finest voices of this place, I think, is a writer named Lloyd Fonvielle. Here is his IMDB listing, and here is his blog. He is also responsible for these cool t-shirts.

I'm not sure why it's so compelling right now, but it is. Sometimes, a thing swells to a scale so tasteless, so grotesque, it crosses a magical threshhold and becomes beautiful. Like matter to antimatter. Beauty from antibeauty.

How did a place so full of decay become an emblem of growth? The future is here. But I'm not sure what that future is. Trying to call that is like trying to call a dice roll before the dice stop rolling. Las Vegas is perpetual motion. Los Angeles is not truly a 24 hour city. Neither is New York. That title now belongs to this place.
Image: a phonecam snapshot I took of Dale Chihuly's glass bloboforms hanging en masse from the ceiling at the Bellagio. Link to full-size image.

Here we go.

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether two Internet file-sharing services may be held responsible for their customers' online swapping of copyrighted songs and movies.

Link (thanks Jason)

Cambridge computer scientist Aubrey De Grey is profiled in the latest Popular Science about his controversial views on anti-aging. He also has a cool beard.

De Grey contends that we know enough to intelligently map out a program of anti-aging intervention research such that sometime in the next 100 years, and quite possibly much sooner, the average human life span may be 5,000 years, a figure brought short of outright immortality by the small number of people who will die from non-age-related diseases and everybody else who, given the boggling amount of time available to them on the planet, will eventually do something unlucky or stupid like walk in front of a moving rocket car.

Link

Myles Weissleder, VP of communications for Meetup.com asks for your help: "Soon after Meetup.com launched, members of bookcrossing.com, a fledgling web community where book lovers 'set books free', starting having Meetups in their towns to trade books and chat. And since, a wonderful community has flourished on- and off-line. (Over 4,500 Bookcrossing Meetups to date!) "It was a real shocker to learn a few weeks ago that Daniel Clune, the head programmer at bookcrossing.com, disappeared on November 6th in Sandpoint, Idaho. "Please consider this plea from a bookcrosser:"

His family is devastated and the community dumbfounded. A young, healthy man, Daniel, 29, is known for his reliability... a stand up guy. Not the sort to take off on a flight of fancy. No one believes that his disappearance is voluntary. Something happened to Daniel Clune, and his family and friends need to know just what that something is. Please consider featuring the story of Daniel's disappearance. The key to finding him is out there somewhere, but has not yet been found. Exposure is badly needed.

Link

Yesterday, I wrote about a super simple recorder for OS X, called Audio Recorder. I've been using iTunes to play back the files, but last night Boing Boing reader Mason told me about a $20 transcribing program called Listen&Type. I gave it a whirl, and I'm sold on it. Here's why: (1) You don't have to switch back and forth between iTunes and a text editor to stop and start the recording. Listen&Type lets you set up keyboard commands so you can stop and start the audio without leaving your text editor. (2) You can skip back 5 seconds by entering a keyboard command. There are some other functions, too, such as marking, but features 1 and 2 have made me an instant fan. Now, I'm really set! Link

BoingBoing pal Brian Lam, who is an editor at Wired Magazine, just returned from a trip to Japan. During his adventures abroad, he helped a friend teach English. Brian brought in some copies of Wired for the students to read, and ended up capturing this mindbogglingly recursive snapshot of Japanese School Girls reading Japanese School Girl Watch. Ouch, my brain! Link

An ensemble of ten people playing an orchestrated musical number on Nintendo Dual Screen units. Link to *.asx video. I believe it has something to do with Daigasso! Band Brothers, aka Jam With The Band! but perhaps someone (a) more game-literate or (b) Japanese-speaking can (c) clue me in. (Thanks, Marcus)

Reader Brent says,

"The video is just a demonstration for the game. The Japanese test describes some features of the game, such as 8 people can play off a single cartridge (might want to double-check how true that one is) and that there is a two-button beginner mode."

Reader Ian Hammond says,

I don’t know enough about the DS to tell you whether they were indeed playing Diagasso! Band Brothers. However, it warmed my heart to see a bunch of Japanese adults geeking out to an anime intro theme song. If you’re interested, the song is from the recent series “Fullmetal Alchemist,” and I believe the track is titled “MELISSA” (a clip is apparently available on the site I linked). Thanks for making my Friday that much happier!

BoingBoing reader Juergen says,

In 1993 the Ski Dome SSAWS (located in Chiba, Tokyo, Japan), which stands for Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Snow, opened its doors. In 2004 it was gone. SSAWS, also known as Tokyo Ski Dome was the worlds first and largest indoor ski area ever built. Even in the hottest Summer you could enjoy skiing on a 500 meter snow covered slope with a 80 meter vertical drop.

Unfortunately it was not as successful as planned and closed its doors in 2001. After a lengthy planning period the demolishing of SSAWS started in Autumn 2003 leaving the whole area covered in fine white dust for months. This documentations shows impressions of the demolishing until the end in Spring 2004 and gives you an idea how huge this building was.

Link

BoingBoing reader Paul Vallee says,

I was reading this interesting story about a new font being developed for use on roadsigns and with likely broad applications in general legibility. It turns out, disappointingly, that this font is not going to appear in the public domain and is thus not available for download. The reason is that the project is not pubclically administered, rather it is a joint venture between the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and several University and private entities. Looks like the copyright for the font remains in private hands, namely Meeker & Associates Inc. and Terminal Design Inc. You can buy the fontface online but it doesn't come cheap!

Link. Also see: Clearview website with abundant type-geekery: Link, and a spirited discussion here: Link. (Thanks, Oscar Bartos)

Pho list cofounder Jim Griffin says,

Fonts are not copyrightable. Fonts receive no protection under U.S. Copyright law, no matter what font purveyors tell you. It pisses them off, but it's true: Typefaces are not properly the subject of copyright.

Reader Spencer Cross says,

Mr. Griffin's claims about typeface copyrightability are an extreme oversimplification of a very contentious issue. On the same site he's referencing (typeright.org via about.com), you'll find another article about a US District Court judge affirming the copyrightability of font outlines. As with any copyright issue, it's not as cut and dried as we wish it were.

Likewise, I wanted to mention that I think it's interesting that we seem to be assuming that the typeface should be in the public domain because it's being used for highway signage. I'll withold judgement on that idea, but I think it's worth thinking about whether it's the conclusion to which we should leap without deeper thinking.

Link

Oh my, this does looks promising. Link to trailer, and link to movie website. (Thanks, Tony)

More good news from Talibama North Carolinastan:

Students at one of the area's largest Christian schools are reading a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery with its view that slaves lived "a life of plenty, of simple pleasures." Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using "Southern Slavery, As It Was," a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people think.

Link (Thanks, Ethan)

Reader ttrentham says, "The Cary Christian School home page now redirects you to the News and Events section (Link) which includes a press release stating that, because of the article in the Observer, they've dropped the book from their curriculum."

Well, praise the Lord.

Trailer's out for the forthcoming Spielberg film starring Tom Cruise, War of the Worlds. The movie is based loosely on H.G. Wells' classic novel (and the 1953 film) in which giant Martian spaceships menace earth. trailer sites: IFILM, Apple (Thanks, David B.)

Following up on a series of previous BoingBoing posts (one, two) about what would appear to be rather unorthodox recruiting tactics from the US Army in Austin, Texas, BoingBoing reader Mark Miller writes,

After going into the Dobie Mall (a private dorm here at UT Austin), where the Army Recruitment Office is, and politely giving my name an e-mail, and requesting that they never contact me again, I just received *another* call from the US Army, the same pre-recorded message.

But this time I had a pencil and a pen handy, and caught the number that was stated in the message, +1 (512) 326-2828. After a quick Google, I discovered the Austin Army Recruiting Company. Their address being 2101 I-35, South Suite 414, Austin, TX 78741. Apparently, there exist the San Antonio U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion, with the mission statement of, "The San Antonio U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion's mission is to recruit qualified men and women from south and central Texas, in order to provide the strength needed to uphold and defend Freedom and Democracy."

The US Army Recruitment Office in Dobie is located at 2025 Guadalupe, Suite 258, Dobie Mall-UT Campus, Austin, TX 78705.

This leads me to believe that the Dobie Mall recruitment office is responsible for sending the spams, while the San Antonio U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion is responsible for the phone calls, by contracting out someone in Las Vegas to send automated pre-recorded messages to college students. (The message specifically states if you're 18 to 22, and enrolled in college) [+1 702-671-0040 is the number they're calling from]

I've been advised after noting the TCPA legislation making illegal such an act (pre-recorded messages to any service where the recipient pays for the phone call [id est, my cell phone]), the Army may claim sovereign immunity (An interesting legal concept where, if the US Government does not specifically have in legislation when you can sue them, you can't.) Instead, I will proceed with filing a FOIA to garner more info about who is ultimately responsible in the Chain of Command for these proceedings. If any other readers of BoingBoing wish to help with this, (having the recording still on voice mail, the number they called you at in order to specifically request how that number got on the list, et cetera), contact me at mirell@gmail.com.

Link

A model wearing the work of French designer Sonia Rikyel on a Bucharest runway. Link (Thanks, Susannah)

Reader Ben says,

It would appear that the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) is finally exporting RSS feeds. Prior to this they had a headline service, but it was not wildly used -- though widly critized. Unfortunately they have included a required User Agreement that boggles the mind in some places. My favorite bits so far: Guarantees. You represent and warrant that:

*snip*
e) you will not remove, conceal or obliterate any copyright or other proprietary notice or any credit-line or date-line or other mark or source identifier included on the CBC Feed and Feed Content, including without limitation, the size, color, location or style of CBC/Radio-Canada'™s trade-mark [AGAIN WILL THERE BE ANY?]

Ok boys and girls. Leaving [ COMMENTS IN YOUR AGREEMENTS IS PRETTY DUMB ]. [ GO DEVELOPERS ] Another fun bit:

Promotion. You shall not make any promotion or advertisement of the CBC Feed or Feed Content, without the written authorization of CBC/Radio-Canada.

So by firing this off to the BB crew, I'm in violation?

Mounties, arrest that BoingBoing reader! Link

Reader Brandon Ellis says,

So stupid.. not to mention that the page listing the rss feeds is unprotected AND listed in the source page with the EULA agreement. Think I'll build a web service that illegally accesses their feeds and runs teh results through the Shizzolator.. then I'll sell it. :-)

Reader Chris Beck says,

I think the most egregious portion of the RSS EULA is: "Website Exclusivity. You guarantee that the CBC Feed or Feed Content shall be the exclusive content on your website from a general news and information provider."

Reader Boris says,

The CBC feed "agreement" has already been fixed! Quick! Personally, I feel the best part of the agreement is certainly: "g) for the duration of the Agreement, you shall not behave in any way or participate in any activity deemed by the Canadian public to be morally reprehensible." So canadian!

Arnocorps is an Arnold Schwarzenegger tribute band. Song lyrics are comprised of scripts from the Calilfornia governor's movies. The lead singer sings in a schwarzeneggeuro accent. This is wrong for so many reasons. Almost as wrong as the fact that last night, when I was browsing magazines in a Burbank newsstand with a friend, my governor's ripped, cut physique blared out at me from the cover of several bodybuilding magazines, all oiled up and steroidy looking. Then, when I was driving home, there was a big billboard off the 101 for the Terminator DVD set, and again, my governor's uber-mänly face. How can this be? I do not understand. This, I suppose, is future shock. Link (Thanks, Madvoodo)

Update: Arnocorps says all of Schwarzenegger's blockbuster films are ripoffs of ancient Austrian legends, and they're launching a class action lawsuit for damages.

"The Austrian community," says attorney Paul Marquiwitz, "is deeply saddened and dismayed by the fact that the Hollywood motion picture studios have chosen to exploit the rich cultural heritage of Austria to both expand their global profit and further their lies regarding conceptual originality."

Action-adventure band ArnoCorps is spearheading a class action lawsuit against several major motion picture studios in the US. The lawsuit charges these studios with stealing the lore and mythology of Austria for plot material and dialogue in big-budget, not to mention very profitable, films. The band's motivation stems from the common misperception that ArnoCorps performs music based on these films, rather than ancient lore. This erroneous view has plagued the band since their reformation in California in 2000. Holzfeuer, lead vocalist of ArnoCorps, adds, "These picture studios should admit, for once and all, that they have been stealing. It wasn't until ArnoCorps began to rock about these ancient tales, that the publics began to question, 'Hold a minute. Which came first, the chicken with the egg?' Exactly. That's right."

Link

BoingBoing reader Laura says, "Apparently 1 in 200 men have a penis shorter than 7 cm when erect, because of birth defects or side effects from childhood cancer treatment. A new surgical procedure brings hope to the lives of the differently-hung, as it not only adds length needed for activities like sex and standing urination, but also retains much of the organ's erogenous sensation capabilities." Link

wrapped up in books
textfiles
pop references in sock
lightwedge
technical books
challenged books
paperback covers
classics re-written by maxim
(how) to kill a mockingbird
yiddish with dick and jane
alice in wonderland
826NYC
word pirates
worst sentence
punctuation game
Image: LightWedge. web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

New Scientist interviews Aleida Guevera. Che's oldest daughter by his second wife is a pediatrician in Cuba.

Should science have a higher profile with people who say another world is possible?
We who are of the left are fighting so that there will be more people in the world who will have all of the possibilities. I think that for us science is crucial, starting from the way we use our resources to the way we will be able to use whatever comes to us. For example, in the early 1960s my dad said that he would like to study nuclear science because at the time it was something from the future.

He also wanted to bring it into perspective, bearing in mind the realities of the planet - to develop science without killing the world. That is something we must bring back in our time. The challenge is to make use of the very interesting scientific developments that are being carried out without destroying the environment. There has to be a balance.

Link

A neuroscientist at the University of Minnesota reports has developed a computational model of drug addiction. The aim is to test hypotheses about how the brain "learns" addictive behaviors. From the University's announcement about the project, described in this week's issue of the scientific journal Science:

"Natural increases in dopamine occur after unexpected natural rewards; however, with learning these increases shift from the time of reward delivery to cueing stimuli. In TDRL (temporal-difference reinforcement learning), once the value function predicts the reward, learning stops. Cocaine and other addictive drugs, however, produce a momentary increase in dopamine through neuropharmacological mechanisms, thereby continuing to drive learning, forcing the brain to over-select choices which lead to getting drugs."

Link

Artist Crispin Jones's "An Invisible Force" is a beautiful antique desk that answers your Magic 8 Ball-esque questions:

"The surface of the desk is laser-cut into a grid. The user selects a question they want answered from the special packs of question cards. The user then inserts the card in the slot on the table, they press the card down and hold it down until the end of the answer. The answer to the question is gradually spelt out on the surface of the desk, the surface of the desk becomes a sort of physical dot-matrix display. A metal plate under the user's hand heats up, so the user if forced to endure a level of pain in order to see the final answer."

Link (via Near, Near Future)

Purdue University researchers are devising a way to fabricate better artificial bones using carbon nanotubes to mimic the natural fiber-like structure of real bone. From Technology Review:

"The researchers' petri-dish experiments show that orienting artificial joint material nanotubes in the same direction made bone cells attach better to the material. It also stimulated the growth of more new bone tissue, which is important for anchoring implanted artificial joints. Finding better artificial joint material is motivated in part by the 15-year lifespan of today's artificial joints."

Link

I hate tape recorders and tape recorders hate me. On at least a half-dozen occasions, I've tried to tape an interview for a story I was working on only to discover the recorder didn't capture the conversation. Half the time it's been my fault (not hooking up the cables between the phone and the recorder properly) and half the time the recorder just didn't do its job, as far as I can tell. It's embarrassing when that happens!

A few weeks ago, I discovered Audio Recorder, a freeware program for OS X that records audio input as MP3 files. The interface couldn't be simpler. I've used it three times so far and the results have been flawless. I use it with the $25 RadioShack Wireless Phone Recording Controller, which is also great. I play back the interviews in iTunes and transcribe them in BBEdit. Man, I'm set. Link

I enjoyed reading about the lost art of safecracking in this illustrated lecture by Tim Hunkin.

The nobel prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman, became very interested in combination locks while working on the atomic bomb in Los Alomos during the second world war. Los Alamos was in the middle of the desert, so there wasn’t much to do when he wasn’t working, and safe cracking became a sort of hobby. As the project was all top secret, every office had combination locks on its filing cabinets. Feynman first discovered, playing with the locks on his own filing cabinet, that the numbers did not have to be that precise, each one could be up to two digits either side of the true number and the lock would still open. This enormously reduced the number of possible combinations (from 1,000,000 down to 8,000). With practice he found he could try 400 different combinations in half an hour, so trying every single combination it would take on average 4 hours to open the lock. A modern version of this, advertised on the internet, is a motorised German device that turns the dial, trying every combination in turn, for use by locksmiths trying to get into a safe whoes combination has been lost.

Link (Via Sensible Erection)

Using his special robot-voice, BoingBoing reader Michael Buckbee says:

The latest Phillip Torrone Engadget Podcast mentions a freeware app I wrote: FeedSpeaker. It will save any RSS feed off to a MP3 file. He describes it like a robot, I describe it like Stephen Hawking, so it probably sounds like a Stephen Hawking robot. After testing it on the BoingBoing RSS feed, I've determined that if robots ever take over the earth, they'll eventually be defeated in an attempt to pronounce 'Xeni'.

Link to BoingBoing MP3 (3MB)

BoingBoing reader Nick Mamatas says, "I've been getting a little sick of all the dumb religious pareidolia being put up on eBay (e.g., that cheese sandwich, the "ghost" in the cane etc.) , so I started an auction of my own...a piece of Advent candy that looks like a tiny chocolate Cthulhu."
Link

These websites could sure come in handy during the holiday travel season. This java-based web app (Link) allows you to observe the movement of flights and air traffic patterns in the Bay Area, surrounding SFO airport. Watch animated simulations of flight tracks taken from actual radar data, with about a 10 minute lag time. The site also includes links to other airports such as LAX and JFK. Here are sites for more airports: Link. (Thanks, Markus, and Matt)

It was only a matter of time (and pixels) before the more explicit version of that marionette sex scene from Team America made it online. As you may recall from earlier BoingBoing posts, the simulated, stringy, smutty bits were severed so that the film could receive an "R" rating from the MPAA. I saw the, ahem, uncut fullscreen original at a Paramount press preview earlier this year, and can vouch for the salad-tossing authenticity of this wmv clip. Too bad there's no sound. I believe another still-more-hardcore edition was created with a puppet golden shower sequence... AFAIK that hasn't leaked (heh) online yet. Link, and previous BB posts: Team America preview, and TA tech backstory in Wired Magazine.

BoingBoing reader Dan Washburn is a journalist based in Shanghai, China. He hauled a bunch of gadgets on a four-month, solo trip through China. "Well, the trip is finally finished," says Dan, "And now I have reviewed all of the gadgets." Link to "The Trip: Gadgets get graded," and Link to the main page for Dan's trip journal.

Short, to-the-point messages for use on the freeway as needed. Link (Thanks, Sean. Also spotted at Autoblog, LA Voice).

See also these STFU cards you can hand to strangers who are talking too loudly in their cellphones about stuff you don't want to hear. Link to SHHHH! Society for Handheld Hushing printable cards (PDF)(thanks, Russell)

Make way for VoIP videophones, or a whole lotta hype over nothing? Time will tell. Vonage today announced a partnership with video communication technologies maker Viseon to create just a VoIP video chat device for release in 2005. A beta is scheduled for debut at CES in January. Image: Viseon's current videophone, which retails for about $500. The Vonage-ified version is expected to look similar. Link to Vonage press release, and link to Forbes story.

Interesting piece in the NYT about inventor Clifford Ross, and an analog camera he developed which is capable of capturing astounding detail from great distances.

[The camera was] unusual enough to capture the attention of serious scientists, including the kinds who work for the government, experimenting with nuclear fusion, space travel and spy systems. What grabbed them were photographs Mr. Ross took that allowed them to see with astonishing clarity a tiny footpath on the top of a Colorado mountain seven miles from the camera.

Yesterday and today, Mr. Ross is talking gigapixels, art and the essence of visual comprehension with a dozen scientists, at a meeting at New York University. This summit, closed to the public, was organized by Mr. Ross and his new scientific pals at the government's Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, which specializes in matters pertaining to nuclear weapons and threats to national security.

"We're good at making big computers," said Carl Diegert, lead computational and imaging scientist at Sandia. But, Mr. Diegert said, when scientists look at pictures of the space shuttle, for example, they may not see things as clearly as they might. "We're trying to find how the human emotional part comes into play in finding a crack in the space shuttle. Clifford has figured out how to catch all this information at a moment in time."

Link to story. Image: A photo of Mount Sopris in Colorado, taken by Clifford Ross with his camera invention. (thanks, Susannah)

BoingBoing reader Ted says,

The mountain pic, while impressive, is not unalerted - it has been photoshopped. From a 5/2004 AP story, "Because the camera uses film meant for aerial shots, its negatives must be chemically treated to reduce their unusually high degree of contrast. That leaves sharp details but muddy colors. So after digitally scanning the negative, Ross and his assistants must manipulate the image using Adobe Systems Inc.'s Photoshop software to return the mountain's colors to their initial vibrancy."

Link

Yan Feng says,

Possibly triggered by the New Scientist article The 'blog' revolution sweeps across China, suggesting that blogger is called as Bo Ke in China, and a post on Boing Boing, which referenced the article, there is a big tide of voice saying I am not Bo Ke. (See bookmarks at del.icio.us and a collection of ImnotBoKe icons at flickr).

Link. Hey, how about just calling them "Bloggers in China?"

Mobile phone makers Nokia created some free plugins for Cubase that allow musicians to simulate the sound of their music being played on (or through) any one of Nokia's cellphones.

"Is this interesting? Probably not, but I just like the idea of being able to make my recordings sound exactly like they are coming out of a mobile phone." To test the thing out, I used a MIDI file of Radiohead's 'Paranoid Android'. Click to hear a N-Gage take on the intro, a Nokia 3200 doing the first choral bit, a Nokia 6650 doing the exciting bit in the middle and a Nokia 6100 rather mangling the spazz-out bit at the end.

Link

For twelve years, marine biologists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have tracked a lone whale whose song is at a completely different frequency from any other whale. This particular baleen whale calls at 52 hertz while whales usually sing at frequencies in the 15-20 hertz range. The whale doesn't follow normal migration patterns either. Link

Following up on this previous Boingboing post, reader Avi Solomon says, "Looks like the entire Nmap episode from the geek-themed porn DVD "HaXXXor 1" is available for download. Happy Compiling :)" For those readers who do not spend twelve or more hours a day behind a computer, here's some background from the site hosting the clips:

Nmap was demonstrated in the Matrix Reloaded. Nmap trivia buffs may also know that Nmap source code was displayed in the 2000 movie Battle Royale ( [Screen1] [Screen2] [Trivia]). Lesser known is that it was featured in a 3rd movie after these two appearances. Nmap made the leap from Science Fiction to "hacker pr0n" with the release of HaXXXor Volume 1: No Longer Floppy. In a seven-minute chapter, the lovely E-Lita walks us through downloading, compiling, and executing Nmap while keeping our attention by methodically removing her clothing :). You can buy the DVD (cover image) for $10 at conferences such as Defcon or from the HaXXXor Girls web site. It contains other chapters such as "Naked Dumpster Diving" and "Young Love (Of Government Encryption)".

Link, and more background on nmap here: Link.

British Telecom is advising resellers that some broadband service problems reported by end users during the holiday season may be due to radio frequency interference caused by poorly-engineered blinking Christmas lights.

"We are asking Service Providers to talk with their End Users where loss of synchronisation is reported over the Christmas period to determine whether they or their immediate neighbours have a set of these lights, and if so to ask them to set them to steady state which should overcome the loss of service."
-- BTWholesale briefing

Link to UK broadband user group post. (thanks, Cristiano)

Cued by my post yesterday about antique medical illustration clip-art, reader Jim Bacus pointed me to this wonderful online exhibit by the National Library of Medicine about the history of anatomical imagery:

"The interior of our bodies is hidden to us. What happens beneath the skin is mysterious, fearful, amazing. In antiquity, the body's internal structure was the subject of speculation, fantasy, and some study, but there were few efforts to represent it in pictures. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century-and the cascade of print technologies that followed-helped to inspire a new spectacular science of anatomy, and new spectacular visions of the body. Anatomical imagery proliferated, detailed and informative but also whimsical, surreal, beautiful, and grotesque — a dream anatomy that reveals as much about the outer world as it does the inner self."

Link