As if it weren't bad enough that porn websites cause seizures and blindness -- more proof that the internets are dangerous places:

Laptops, which reach high internal operating temperatures, can heat up the scrotum which could affect the quality and quantity of men's sperm. (...) "It is very difficult to predict how long the computer can be used safely," [ Dr Yefim Sheynkin, an associate professor of urology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook] told Reuters. "It may not be at all, if the testicular temperature goes up high within a very short period of time." Adolescents and young men who use laptops several times a day over many years face the greatest risk. Sheynkin fears that if laptop use is not curtailed, in 15-20 years when they want to start a family the men could face problems.

Link to Reuters story. What the hell is that lady doing in the photo that accompanies the article? Link to the medical journal where the detailed findings will appear: Human Reproduction. Here's the researcher's home page: Link. (Thanks, Steve Rubel)

Reader Jont points us to an inadvertent bit of targeted advertising: "Here's a screen capture from the news story about laptops and infertillity. The look on the guys face speaks volumes." Link

Reader Scotto says, "Hey, if laptops fry sperm, use a 'condom'! This was on my Christmas list before I read about the sperm fear factor, though." Link to the Lapinator.

Reader Gary Peare says,

"Bananaslug creator Steve Nelson was inspired by Mark's recent Mind Hacks post to create Parent Hacks by Lizzie Borden -- a book in the O'Reilly Hacks series that he'd like to see."

Link

BoingBoing reader Apul Patel says,

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently released a pair of posters aimed at assisting authorities with properly identifying and searching Muslims (PDF, 1.5 MB) and Sikhs (PDF, 1 MB).

We were so impressed by the posters that we created one for the DOJ to offer South Asian shopkeepers in rural areas.

Link to Common Redneck Head Coverings (PDF, 255 KB)

Link

Looks like a good exhibit with new art by Tim Biskup and Andrew Brandou is happening at Tin Man Alley in Philadelphia. Link

Rob sez: "Rod McLaren has a fantastic series of blog entries running (indexed in the link above) called 'How we work'. It has insights into the work methods used by the worlds most creative/productive/innovative people.

"So far the range includes Chatwin, Autechre, Giotto and Calatrava to name just a few."

James Ellroy, author, on what to write: "Don’t follow that bullshit of 'Write what you know.' Write what you like to read. Write what you want to read but no one else is writing."

Link

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the problems Louis Rossetto's mother was having trying to get permission from the city to add a small addition to her house in Berkeley (Link). On Monday, Berkeley's Landmarks Preservation Commission held a meeting to decide whether to grant landmark status to the house. In short, his mother got permission to build the addition. Congratulations!

Here's Louis' report from the meeting:

A report from the front: the battle was lost - but the war won!

Last night was my mother's Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing. Her 900 square foot two bedroom addition took three hours of discussion. In the end, the LPC voted 5 to 4 to designate her house a landmark. They then turned around and voted 9 to 0 to accept one of the two designs for the addition that my mother had submitted - proving that my mother wasn't threatening her "historic" Wurster in the first place.

I am both exhilarated and depressed by the experienced. Exhilarated because we beat those motherfucking neighbors and my mother can build her bedroom. And saddened to have witnessed first hand a truly arbitrary, philistine process that must be repeated ad nauseum across America, and that causes neighborhood wars, promotes mediocrity (if not worse), and can leave people emotionally and financially ruined without even protecting the alleged purposes of the landmark ordinances.

As my mother wrote in her ad, this wasn't about preservation, this was about the local Soviet trying to assert its control over the block. After the vote to designate, one of the neighbors behind the landmark petition came over to my mother and magnanimously "welcomed" her to the neighborhood. The problem with that is my mother has been living in her house for four years already, and that their "welcome" amounted to the taking of her property. When they then lost the war when the Commission - shamed by the role they had just played in the obvious injustice visited on my mother - voted 9 to 0 to accept her design, I wanted to go over to this now ashen-faced neighbor and "welcome" him to reality.

People write above about the "benefits" of this kind of kangaroo court to civic and even property values, but from my mother's experience, these kinds of processes protect neither. It was unclear whether a majority of the commission had even visited my mother's house - only one took up her invitation to see it. The Berkeley standard for designation is that the property is the "first, last, or only" example of its kind, but the Commission had done no research into the number of Wurster houses that had been built, whether this one was better or worse than any of the others, or even whether Wurster was really anything more than a local hero. Commissioners pontificated at length on the house and Wurster, but they literally did not know what they were talking about. In fact, if you do a google on Wurster, you get about 700 links (a lot of them having to do with my mother's case). Do one on another local Berkeley architect, Bernard Maybeck, and you get an order of magnitude more - 8K. Do one on another local, Julia Morgan, and you get 30K. That should tell you something about Wurster's relative stature.

The very scariest thing about the proceedings last night was that there were at least two members of the LPC who believed that their job was not just to consider buildings that had been brought to them for landmarking, but they should actively be increasing the number of buildings in the City's "inventory." As one of them put it, "There are 40,000 buildings in Berekley, and we have landmarked only 300." This, in a city that's barely 100 years old, and which already has more landmarked buildings, as I have noted, than San Francisco which is half a century older and has seven times the population.

And their criteria for landmarking? Berkeley has landmarked parking lots, has landmarked empty lots, has landmarked rocks, has landmarked factories where "whites and blacks worked together for the first time." Listening to these commissioners, you can easily imagine them finding something in every building in the city that would justify landmarking, and if not in the building itself, perhaps in its relationship to its neighborhood, to the trees on the site, to the "streetscape," to the feeling of the street, . . .

Anyway, my mother can build her bedroom. And I intend to make a contribution to the Institute for Justice. Once again, we are shown that tyranny isn't just a national threat; it starts, and is perhaps most pernicious, on your own block.

BoingBoing reader Aaman says,

The Feds have raided three Washington DC video game stores and arrested two people for the crime of 'modding' XBox video game consoles - the details are in this Reuters story. The store/company, Pandora's Cube, sold $500 "Super Xbox" consoles.

Link

Reader Mike Harris says,

It's not often I defend the Feds, but let's not forget this particularly relevant point from the article, eh? "The modified consoles, some holding 15 or more games already copied to the hard drive, were on open display in the stores.. 'They were burning games onto the hard drive and equipping the hard drive with copying software so that the average consumer could just go ahead and copy the software themselves.'" It doesn't sound as if it's the fact they were modded that drew the Feds' ire as much as the fact they had 15 pirated games on them.

Reader Bill Reals says,

As a Modded Xbox owner, I can say that if the allegations are true, then these employees are IDIOTS and are screwing the rest of us by doing this. I modded my Xbox to make it into a Media center, I've converted all most all of my legally purchased music collection into MP3s and need a jukebox. An Xbox with a chip and larger hard drive is the only way to go and while it does give you the abilty to back up games to the HD, it shouldn't be used for piracy. However, what this is going to do is equate modchip with piracy.

And BoingBoing reader Karl Reinsch says,

Yes, the allegations about the stores seem to be true. Actually, it's probably a little worse than that.

I stopped in one of the locations just about two weeks ago looking into PS2/XBox mod chips and was stunned to see them selling modded systems with games already copied onto the hard-drive. (They were defintely doing it with XBox systems and may have been doing it with PS2 systems as well.)

They even printed up stickers with the list of included games and attached them to the packaging for each system. You could pick your XBox based on the size of the hard-drive and the list of included games. "Oh look, this one has 'Halo 2' on it!"

They were also preloading the XBox systems with tons of emulators (arcade and console) and as many ROMs as they could find. I watched a customer walk in and ask about a specific original GameBoy game - the employee immediately fired up a GameBoy emulator with the appropriate ROM right there on the demo XBox and handed the customer the controller to play with. I was shocked.

They appeared to be to be doing pretty brisk business. I left the place seriously disturbed by what I had seen and wondering whether to report them. Guess somebody already had. They definitely crossed the line. And it is sad to see that happen with one of the few reliable local suppliers of mod chips.

I know for a fact that this store keeps computer records of their customers/purchases. I doubt that individuals will be legally pursued, but if the company records are turned over then the Feds will know exactly who purchased what system with which illegal games...

Here's a related /. thread: Link

Philadelphia-based public radio journalist Rachel Buchman resigned from WHYY after "making a phone call that would change [her] life." She says she left the now-infamously nasty voicemail for the people at Laptoplobbyist.com because she was posessed by a spam-induced rage.

"I was incensed that I wasn't going to finally get to ask a real person to remove me from the list... The answering machine asked the caller to leave a name and number, and without thinking, that's what I did."

I hear you, Rachel. Link.

I helped the editors of Nerve.com gather up a "best of" collection from erotic photographer and Nerve-blogger Siege. The images, along with a little intro I wrote, are here. You'll need a paid subscription to see them; content is sexually explicit and intended for adults who are not at work. The image cropped here, btw, is a beautiful nude clutching a pig heart. Link to Rear-View Mirror

BoingBoing reader Alfie says,

How rare, I was googling for a subtitle resource (Ed. note: suuuuuure) and i came across this page at the Singapore narcotics bureau, hosting oodles of high quality anti drug campaign movies!

Example: "The Awakening: A 3D animated film using only powerful sound effects and English subtitles. The film recounts the memories of a teenager's painful and tragic past." 60mb!

Link to list of online anti-drug movies created by the Central Narcotics Bureau of Singapore.

When Babs the gorilla died yesterday at the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois, the zookeepers invited the other gorillas to hold a wake of sorts. Apparently, gorillas sometimes "pay respects to their dead" in the wild. The dominant female of her group, Babs, 30, suffered from incurable kidney disease and was put down. From an Associated Press report:

One by one Tuesday, the gorillas filed into the Tropic World building where Babs' body lay, arms outstretched. Curator Melinda Pruett Jones called it a "gorilla wake."

Babs' 9-year-old daughter, Bana, was the first to approach the body, followed by Babs' mother, Alpha, 43. Bana sat down, held Babs' hand and stroked her mother's stomach. Then she sat down and laid her head on Babs' arm.

Link

We've been testing out a demo unit of the new Bose SoundDock here for about a month, and the short version is that I'm digging it. The $300 device has received fair criticism from various sources for not packing more features that cheaper competitors do (for instance: the ability to sync your iPod, or play music coming from your laptop or PC). The sound quality is better than other iPod speakers, though, and it's become a convenient way to avoid sonic warfare among officemates. I share a modest-sized space with other colleagues who also happen to pack 'Pods, and an odd sort of DJ honor-sharing system has evolved among us. My mini sits in the SoundDock one day, someone else's (any size) might rock the cradle tomorrow. It's a relatively small-footprint, low-cost way to meet the jam needs of our shared work space.

Twenty-four years ago today, John Lennon was shot and killed in New York City. A "strawberry fields" memorial stands in his honor in Central Park. Here's a QTVR panorama shot by Daniel Maurer. Link

Two items of interest to BoingBoing readers from the current issue of Kevin Kelly's ezine, Cool Tools.

First: a few hundred copies of the second edition of his Cool Tools book remain available on Amazon. "Some of the items are a bit dated by now, some are simply outdated or obsolete, but much of the book is evergreen," says Kevin, "The best cool tools won't be easily superceded." Link to Amazon listing.

Second: Wired Magazine just launched a trial publication called TEST, sort of a Consumer Reports-style testing guide about electronic gear. Snip from Kevin's review:

TEST comparatively evaluates a surprisingly thorough range of gear, and their judgements seem to be reasonable, rather than just fashionable. The best surprise of all is that TEST does the one key thing so many magazines dare not do -- that is, they actually say: we tried all of these and this one is the best. Why is that so hard to do? Because it steps on advertiser's toes. So, may the force be with TEST. Out of all the many year-end holiday lists of gadgets I've seen online and in magazines, this is the only one I think has any merit as a trustworthy guide. Great job.

BTW, this special issue should not be confused with the annual roundup of gadgets and gifts in Wired's December issue, although it will be. And I had absolutely nothing to do with TEST's creation and no foreknowledge about its appearance. I'm just a happy reader. This first issue of TEST was printed in limited quantities, but Wired's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has made a PDF of its content available online exclusively for Cool Tool readers in case you can't find it on your local newsstand, where it should be until the end of the year.

Link to Wired TEST download (PDF).

Shamelessly porn-themed ads: they're not just for J-Pop stars anymore. Wrap it all up in holiday tableau, and voilá: a sure sign of western civilization's imminent decline (as if we needed any more of 'em). Link to the Register's writeup of a Vodfone Live! ad that appeared in UK papers last month. (Thanks, miker)

An interesting study points to a link between obesity and (in)adequate sleep.

The recent rise in obesity may be partly due to the reduced amount of time we spend asleep, according to new research from the University of Bristol, UK. Dr Shahrad Taheri from Bristol University, and colleagues in the United States, examined the role of two key hormones that are involved in regulating appetite -- ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin increases feelings of hunger while leptin acts to suppress appetite. People who habitually slept for 5 hours were found to have 15% more ghrelin than those who slept for 8 hours. They were also found to have 15% less leptin. These hormonal changes may cause increased feelings of hunger, leading to a foraging in the fridge for food.

Link (Thanks, Jobo)

BoingBoing reader Pierre Nel in South Africa says,

A news story is airing on South African television & radio about a locally designed system that enables people to track down missing kids using a dna sample (like a single strand of hair etc) - according to various parents that appeared on the news the system actually works, but the company that invented the device don't want to release any details on exactly how the device works, because it's still in a "testing phase". We were treated to some satellite images on the news story though. Weird.

Link

Glad you asked. Link

Hint Magazine is one of my favorite sources for news about Expensive Shit. This week's edition features a blurb about another fashion publication -- one devoted exclusively to the sneaker freak.

That athletic shoe enthusiasts are no weekend hobbyists is evidenced by Sneakerfreaker.com, the online presence of the eponymous Melbourne-based print magazine devoted to the growing cult of cool kicks. Geared mostly to the skater/urban set, the website features blog-style previews of soles about to hit the market, mainly classic models re-released in limited editions by major and minor brands (as expected, Nike's Dunk gets a lot of attention, but plenty of less iconic laces are duly worshipped), along with short articles on sneaker culture, interviews with collectors, store reviews and city guides for sneaker-hunting. There's even a section devoted to sneaker-inspired street art, as well as a user forum and a shop where you can buy the magazine and T-shirts. If Pumas and Ponies, rather than Manolos and Jimmy Choos, are your weakness, Sneakerfreaker.com is a must.

Link to Sneakerfreaker, link to Hint.

For Hanukkah last night, my wife gave me an excellent book/CD-ROM package called Images of the Human Body. It's a clip-art collection of hundreds of vintage medical illustrations, from detailed renderings of brains and skeletons to, er, "cut-away" depictions of internal organs and musculature. They've even thrown in a couple drawings of such wonderful medical procedures as trepanation and tooth-pulling. Link

The Universal Whistling Machine (U.W.M.) is a human-computer interface based on whistling. Developed by artists Marc Böhlen and JT Rinker, the system extracts the sound of a human whistle, conducts a time-frequency analysis, and then answers with its own call.

Whistling is much closer to the phoneme-less signal primitives compatible with digital machinery than the messy domain of spoken language. As opposed to pushing machines into engaging humans in spoken language, U.W.M. suggests we meet on a middle ground. Whistling occurs across all languages and cultures. All people have the capacity to whistle, though many do not whistle well. Lacking phonemes, whistling is a pre-language language, a candidate for a limited Esperanto of human-machine communication.

Link (via Near, Near Future)