"Dr Hinke Osinga and Professor Bernd Krauskopf, of Bristol University's engineering mathematics department, used 25,511 crochet stitches to represent the Lorenz equations." Link

Many readers wrote in to follow up on recent BoingBoing posts on churches and tombs built from human remains (one, two). Here are some of your suggestions.

Reader Brennen says, "I stayed in Prague for a few days this summer, and blogged about a day-trip to Kutna Hora. The cathedral is spectacular; the ossuary is just weird. One skull might be shocking - several thousand used as decorative elements are bizarrely mundane. Incidentally, I'm told that a portion of the recent Dungeons & Dragons flick was filmed at Kutna Hora." Link

RLD says, "Here are more photos of the Sedlec Ossuary. Very interesting." Link.

JPA in Portugal writes, "After reading your entries about the churches in Poland and near Prague, I should mention that in Portugal we also have a couple of those. The most famous is called Capela dos Ossos, or Bone Chapel. It is smaller than the ones you mention, but no less interesting." Link

Joe Goldberg says, "Saw your post on the Kostnice bone ossuary, and I have a few images of it as well, that capture the scale of what 40,000 dead dudes look like. See: Link, Link, And a coat of arms made of at least one of every bone in the human body: Link."

BoingBoing pal Quinn says, "Even I have a set of pics from the ossuary outside of Prague, with a couple of shots up on flickr: Link."

Mark Gallagher says, "I used to live near a cathedral in Germany that was situated on the narrowest point of the Rhine river. This area was a pretty popular spot for armed conflict throughout the ages even as recently as WWII, when Patton made a fuss about pissing in the river there when crossing on the way to Berlin. Anyway, the story goes that the local cathedral always had kind of a shortage of hallowed ground for burying people due to all the medieval bloodshed, and at one point just resorted to warehousing a lot of the fallen soldiers to make way for more traditional burials for VIPs. I can't seem to find my own photography, but here's a link to a good one. I'm going to say that it looks a lot more impressive in person, but here it is: Der Beinhaus in Oppenheim."

And reader Zizkov in the Czech Republic writes, "Read about the ossuary on BoingBoing. I visited it last year and found it macabre and grotesque, though perhaps not quite as grotesque as the gambolling snaphappy backpackers (mainly American) who were there at the same time. I'm not exactly an ancestor worshipper but I found the general visitor behaviour, uh, distasteful. As I recall, entrance was 35 Kc and a photo pass the same, that is, around $2.50 all in. Many individual opinions available at virtualtourist.com (search keyword: ossuary). For those interested in ossuarys, here is another in Rome: Link. 4,000 Capuchin friars (I passed this one by when in Rome). Merry Christmas -- or whichever festivity you may be celebrating."
Thanks to all.

Snipped from Declan's politech list -- ACLU Technology and Liberty Project Director Barry Steinhardt says,

A September 2004 TSA directive granting airport security screeners broad leeway to conduct "pat-down" searches has led to numerous reports of sexual harassment and abuse.

Victims -- particularly women-- are reporting that they are not being offered private searches or searches by screeners of the same sex, and that "private" searches are being conducted behind screens that provide no privacy. Passengers are reporting rough, rude, and humiliating manhandling and groping of their breasts and crotch areas, demeaning sexual comments, and being forced to remove business jackets in full view of crowds, despite the fact that it is a widespread convention in our society for women to wear only bras or other undergarments underneath such jackets.

The ACLU is assessing possible responses to this policy. In doing so, it is extremely helpful for us to gain a sense of the kinds of abuses that are taking place. If list members have experienced a problem with pat-down searches at airport security, they can help us end this problem by reporting their story here. For more information on the abuses, Politiech readers might want to look here, where we have collected many of the news stories.

Link to ACLU website.

tijuana christmas
santa's lil' gimp
hp holiday cards
typeflake
carnation x-mass jukebox
champion of cheer
carol maker
penguin diving
Image: typeflake. Links: web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

This Fark Photoshop contest offers a multitude of possible answers. Link (Thanks, Scott)

Following up on an earlier BoingBoing post about 1950s Yu-Mex mashups from behind the iron sombrero, reader Mzimu says,

Slavic Mexicans were not limited only to former Yugoslavia - they were also playing in communist Poland during 60s. Nearly everyone here was subjected to torture of listening their biggest hit "Pamelo, Aegnaj" ("Farewell, Pamela"). Some of them are playing to this day - check out Tercet Egzotyczny (or, translated, "The Exotic Trio"). MP3s (unfortunately, only from their recent and not-so-great period - well, they are elderly people now!) and tour dates are available here. If you want to check them out they are playing in US and Canada soon. And yes, they are *very* cheesy.

Link. Borzoj says, "The '60s fake mexican music in Poland is neither only from the 1960s nor only Mexican. Mitch and Mitch, who released their first album around a year ago, are first genuine polish country & eastern band. Very *cheesy*!" Link

On William Gibson's blog, a holiday-themed short which was originally published as "Cyber-Claus", in The Washington Post Book World in 1991. Snip:

In the night of 12/24/07, though sensors woven through the very fabric of the house had thus far registered a complete absence of sentient bio-activity, I found myself abruptly summoned from a rare, genuine and expensively induced examples of that most priceless of states, sleep.

Even as I hurriedly dressed, I knew that dozens of telepresent armed-response drones would already be sweeping in from the District, skimming mere inches above the chill surface of the Potomac. Vicious tri-lobed aeroforms that they were, they resembled nothing more than the Martian war machines of George Pal’s 1953 epic, “The War of the Worlds”.

And while, from somewhere far above, now, came that sound, that persistent clatter, as though gunships disgorged whole platoons of iron-shod mercenaries, I could only wonder: who? Was it my estranged wife, Lady Betty-Jayne Motel-6 Hyatt, Chief Eco-Trustee of the Free Duchy of Wyoming? Or was it Cleatus “Mainframe” Sinyard himself, President of the United States and Perpetual Chairman of the Concerned Smart People’s Northern Hemisphere CoProsperity Sphere?

Link

[NSFNLG warning: Not Safe For Non-LawGeeks.] A recent post on BoingBoing sparked debate among some readers about whether or not U.S. copyright law makes it possible to protect typefaces. Digital music guru Jim Griffin maintains that the answer is no. He points to Volume 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations (Link) as one of several portions of US law that back his assertion. Snip from the text of the law, with his comments:

"The following are examples of works not subject to copyright and applications for registration of such works cannot be entertained: (...) typeface as typeface" 37 CFR 202.1(e).

House of Representatives report accompanied the new copyright law when passed in 1976: "The Committee has considered, but chosen to defer, the possibility of protecting the design of typefaces. A 'typeface' can be defined as a set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic characters, whose forms are related by repeating design elements consistently applied in a notational system and are intended to be embodied in articles whose intrinsic utilitarian function is for use in composing text or other cognizable combinations of characters. The Committee does not regard the design of typeface, as thus defined, to be a copyrightable 'pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work' within the meaning of this bill and the application of the dividing line in section 101." H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, 94th Congress, 2d Session at 55 (1976), reprinted in1978 U.S. Cong. and Admin. News 5659, 5668.

It's also in accordance with a court case that has considered the matter: Eltra Corp. V. Ringer, 579 F.2d 294, 208 USPQ 1 (1978, C.A. 4, Va.).

The U.S. Copyright Office holds that a bitmapped font is nothing more than a computerized representation of a typeface, and as such is not copyrightable:

"The [September 29, 1988] Policy Decision [published at 53 FR 38110] based on the [October 10,] 1986 Notice of Inquiry [published at 51 FR 36410] reiterated a number of previous registration decisions made by the [Copyright] Office. First, under existing law, typeface as such is not registerable. The Policy Decision then went on to state the Office's position that 'data that merely represents an electronic depiction of a particular typeface or individual letterform' [that is, a bitmapped font] is also not registerable." 57 FR 6201.

BoingBoing reader John Todd, formerly of Emigre Inc., says:

In the late 90's I worked for Emigre Fonts in Sacramento. Emigre is the developer and publisher of some of the worlds best known typefaces. While I was there we became very agressive in protecting Emigre's type, on the internet and elsewhere. I refer you to this link, where you can see that in 1999, Emigre and Adobe sucessfully sued a software publisher, preventing him from selling fonts based on Emigre and Adobe Designs. The press release reads:

"Defendants Paul King and Southern Software agreed to have judgment entered against them in each case for copyright infringement and intermediate copyright infringement of more than 1,100 Adobe font software programs and 35 Emigre font software programs, and agreed to have permanent injunctions entered against them barring them from distributing the font programs they created by copying Emigre's and Adobe's font software programs. The permanent injunctions also bar defendants from creating or distributing any font software which copies or extracts the points in an Emigre or Adobe font software program."

And BoingBoing reader Rob Myers adds,

My understanding is that you cannot copyright the design of the font, but you CAN copyright the PostScript program or TrueType data that draws it. Copyright a font design: no. Copyright program, data or other "writing": yes, even if it draws a font. So you can make your own fonts that look the same as another font without infringing copyright, but you can't copy another program or dataset that draws the font. IANAL, but I've worked in design and repro.

Link to previous BB post.

BoingBoing reader Alex says,

On his blog, Lawrence Lessig has announced a new experiment for his first book Code and other Laws of Cyberspace. He's going to post version 1 (that's the original published version) to a wiki under a Creative Commons license. Updates and corrections will then be supervised by "chapter captains", and around June time Lessig will take the contents of the wiki, and mould it into Code v2. All royalties from the book will be donoated to Creative Commons, and the wiki will live on 'for ever'. He has an email address up if you have expertise and are interested in volunteering to be a "chapter captain".

Link

Organizers of Peace Art Project Cambodia describe their venture's three main goals:

"Introducing Young Cambodian Artists to new artistic methodology and materials and training them in metalwork skills, producing, exhibiting and selling sculpture made from de-commissioned weapons & promoting a Weapon-Free Society and Young Cambodian Artists in Cambodia and internationally... These sculptures are political art at its most powerful - relics of a violent past transformed into expressions of hope for a more peaceful future."

Link (Thanks, Reevo)