SF writer Paul DiFilippo has a wonderful story on SciFi.com called And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon that's funny, dirty, and technologically prescient. It concerns itself with "blebs" -- composite gadget made byt he spontaneous merging of smart household objects that are a little too interoperable.

The Volition Bug was launched anonymously from a site somewhere in a Central Asian republic. It propagated wirelessly among all the WiFi-communicating chipped objects, installing new directives in their tiny brains, directives that ran covertly in parallel with their normal factory-specified functions. Infected objects now sought to link their processing power with their nearest peers, often achieving surprising levels of Turingosity, and then to embark on a kind of independent communal life. Of course, once the Volition Bug was identified, antiviral defenses—both hardware and software—were attempted against it. But VB mutated ferociously, aided and abetted by subsequent hackers.

If this "Consciousness Wavefront" had occurred in the olden days of dumb materials, blebs would hardly have been an issue. What could antique manufactured goods achieve, anchored in place as they were? But things were different today.

Most devices nowadays were made with MEMS skins. Their surfaces were interactive, practically alive, formed of zillions of invisible actuators, the better to sample the environment and accommodate their shapes and textures to their owners' needs and desires, and to provide haptic feedback. Like the paws of geckos, these MEMS surfaces could bind to dumb materials and to other MEMS skins via the Van der Waals force, just as a gecko could skitter across the ceiling.

Link (Thanks, Steve!)

Geek comedian Heather Gold is selling these souvenir aprons at her award-winning, damn funny one-woman show "I Look Like An Egg, But I Identify As A Cookie," ongoing at San Francisco's Penthouse Theater. If you can't see her show in person, you can order the apron and digital audio downloads online.

"Heather searches for genuine connection as she makes the cookies through her own hilarious and provocative exploration of the recipe: heterosexuality (DRY), lesbianism (WET), the Left (MIX) and other tasty 1980s tunes and secret ingredients.... As the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Robert Avila put it, Cookie 'humorously sort[s] out the complexities of modern sexuality through baking's simple truths.'"

Link

Marek sez, "In recent days, people in Poland have flooded the internet in search of the Wildstein's List, a list of 240,000 names of communist-era spys, informers and secret service agents that was secretly copied from The National Rememberance Institute (IPN) by a conservative journalist, Bronislaw Wildstein.

"The list instantly cropped up on many web sites, p2p networks, became available via BitTorrent, while the the term 'lista Wildsteina' (Wildstein's list) became a super-popular query at all Polish search engines. At one (onet.pl, the second most popular after google), people searched for it around 300,000 times a day comparing to just only 9,000 searches for 'sex', the former top query." Link (Thanks, Marek!)

Rick Prelinger sez, "Jason Hartley, writer of the widely read and acclaimed blog Just Another Soldier, writes here how he was demoted to E-4 and fined as a result of his blog. If you haven't seen Jason's blog, it's well worth reading: the perceptive, sometimes disturbing and often self-deprecating words of a citizen soldier." Link (Thanks, Rick!)

"Toronto Crime Stoppers" posts crime scene photos in which victim(s) and perpetrator(s) have been digitally removed. The batch of images linked in this post once depicted acts of violent sexual abuse of a nine-year-old girl, but now contain only inanimate objects -- a sofa, a bed, a wall, a water fountain. They're published online with a public request that anyone who recognizes the site contact authorities.
Link (Thanks, Chad Oakenfold)

steve don't eat it
real meat shakes
8500 calorie sandwich
food anomalies
tortilla breadboard
tortilla art
clay oranges
crazy asian drinks
bad candy
Image: tortilla motherboard. web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

There's an old truism that any artist who responds to her/his critics comes off looking like an asshole, and no more proof is needed than this, an asinine letter that Rob Schneider published in the form of a full-page paid ad in Variety to respond to a critic who slammed Duece Bigalow Two on the front page of the LA Times. Man, he comes off looking like an asshole in spades here. Full page ad in Variety to publish this twaddle? Christ, that's practically the definition of too much money, not enough sense.

My name is Rob Schneider and I am responding to your January 26th front page cover story in the LA Times, where you used my upcoming sequel to 'Deuce Bigalow' as an example of why Hollywood Studios are lagging behind the Independents in Academy nominations. According to your logic, Hollywood Studios are too busy making sequels like "Deuce Bigalow' instead of making movies that you would like to see.

Well Mr. Goldstein, as far as your snide comments about me and my film not being nominated for an Academy Award, I decided to do some research to find what awards you have won.

I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind, Disappointed, I went to the Pulitzer Prize database of past winners and nominees. I though, surely, there must be an omission. I typed in the name Patrick Goldstein and again, zippo—nada. No Pulitzer Prizes or nominations for a 'Mr. Patrick Goldstein.' There was, however, a nomination for an Amy Goldstein. I contacted Ms. Goldstein in Rhode Island, she assured me she was not an alias of yours and in fact like most of the World had no idea of our existence.

Link (via Waxy)

The Kleptones (who created the drop-dead, stunning, brilliant mashup album "A Night at the HipHopera") have released another full disc's worth of stupendous mashups, "created for broadcast on "The Rinse", XFM, London, UK. 23rd January 2005." Click below for links to the torrents and let the plunderphonics begin! Link

Gina Kamentsky builds gorgeous kinetic sculptures out of found objects -- they look like something out of a Road Runner cartoon or a Rube Goldberg illustration. The videos are fantastic. Link (Thanks, Madeline!)

The caption for this Reuters photo by Max Rossi reads, "A model presents a creation from Italian fashion academy students for their Spring/Summer 2005 Haute Couture collection, during Rome's Fashion Week." IANAFD (I am not a fashion designer), but I say -- keep studying, guys.

Link to full-size. I'm not sure why, but it sort of reminds me of this NSFW painting by surrealist artist Rene Magritte, Le Viol (The Rape, 1934): Link.

Here's another interesting image from the same collection: Link. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin).

75+ students at Hastings College in Nebraska are building a life-sized version of the Candyland game (pictured here: three students posing as the "Gloppy Chocolate Swamp") next week. This looks like a very ambitious project, and the site claims the inspiration came from "a philosophy paper about Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge." Link (Thanks, Chris!)

In this month's Wired magazine, a thought-provoking essay by Arthur C. Clarke on roles of tech and sci fi in predicting disasters.

The New Year dawned with the global family closely following the unfolding tragedy via satellite television and the Web. As the grim images from Banda Aceh, Chennai, Galle, and elsewhere replaced the traditional scenes of celebrations, I realized that it would soon be 60 years since I conceived the communications satellite (in Wireless World, October 1945 -- I still think it was a good idea).

I was also reminded of what Bernard Kouchner, former health minister of France and first UN governor of Kosovo, once said: "Where there is no camera, there is no humanitarian intervention." Indeed, how many of the millions of men and women who donated generously for disaster relief would have done so if they had only read about it in the newspapers?

But cameras and other communications media have to do more than just document the devastation and mobilize emergency relief. We need to move beyond body counts and aid appeals to find lasting, meaningful ways of supporting Asia's recovery. In that sense, the Asian tsunami becomes a test for information and communications technologies (ICTs) in terms of how they can support humanitarian assistance and human development.

Link (Thanks, Blaise Zerega!)

My friend Roger Wood is a brilliant sculptor who combines kitsch junk, industrial detritus and other bits and pieces to make working clocks/assemblages. Here's his latest, which combines a class Sputnik-style sunburst clock -- I'm speechless with desire. Link

Verisign subsidiary Jamster is the subject of this online petition by annoyed persons who claim to have been charged for ringtones they didn't willingly purchase. If you ask me, though, the obnioxious late-night TV ads are cause enough for civil disobedience. Link (Thanks, Hal! via unwired.)

This chair designed by Gaetano Pesce has a spring on the base of each of its 8 legs. Boing, boing. It costs nearly $1500, though. Bling, bling.
Link (Thanks, funfurde).

Wanita Renea Young, 49, or Durango, Colorado was frightened out of her wits when her neighbors, two girls aged 17 and 18, knocked on her door to leave a gift of freshly baked cookies on her porch. She checked herself into the hospital the next day, fearing she had suffered a heart attack as a result of the girl's thoughtless act.

The girls offered to pay the medical bills, but Young took the matter to court. She sued the girls, winning a $900 judgment. The other neighbors who got cookies that night foolishly didn't sue the girls like clever Ms. Young; instead they wrote letters to the court praising the miscreants for their actions. Link (Thanks, Dan!)

Terrific SF Chronicle article about a Bollywood dance competition taking place in San Francisco tomorrow. Snip:

Growing up in Calcutta, I rarely watched Hindi films. Going to the movies usually meant viewing English-language evergreens like "Born Free" and "Willie Wonka," or hoary literary classics with dialogue in my native Bengali. Bollywood was a risqué world with money but little class where the vamps flashed thigh and cleavage and the heroes kept their shirts unbuttoned. At my school, we had regular "hair check" days, at which school staff made sure our locks were not curling over our collars like some "two-bit Bombay film star." We knew Bollywood produced more films than Hollywood, and millions of Indians queued up on opening weekend to buy tickets on the black market, but I was taught to look down my nose at the genre's kitschy excess.

Now, to my surprise, Bollywood is entering the American mainstream, thanks to movies such as Mira Nair's art-house hit "Monsoon Wedding" and the Bollywood-inspired pageantry of "Moulin Rouge." Indian beauty queen Aishwarya Rai recently appeared on "60 Minutes," and rapper Dr. Dre was slapped with a lawsuit for mixing a snatch of an old Hindi song into his single "Addictive." It's also hit academia in media-studies courses on campuses from UC Berkeley to MIT.

Link (Thanks, Brian "Badass" Lam!).

Update: Boing Boing reader Kevin H points out that the author of this SF Chron story appears to have made a minor error:

Dr. Dre didn't have a single called "Addictive". The single was for Truth Hurts, and it featured a blistering Rakim rap. Truth Hurts is an artist on Dre's label Aftermath Records. DJ Quik produced the single. It drips with hotness.

I LOL'd (guiltily) at this silly, sophomoric collection of old cybersex text pranks that a user named Bloodninja played in AOL chat rooms:

Bloodninja: Wanna cyber?
DirtyKate: K, but don't tell anybody ;-)
DirtyKate: Who are you?
Bloodninja: I've got blond hair, blue eyes, I work out a lot
Bloodninja: And I have a part time job delivering for Papa John's in my Geo Storm.
DirtyKate: You sound sexy.. I bet you want me in the back of your car..
Bloodninja: Maybe some other time. You should call up Papa John's and make an order
DirtyKate: Haha! OK
DirtyKate: Hello! I'd like an extra-EXTRA large pizza just dripping with sauce.
Bloodninja: Well, first they would say, "Hello, this is Papa John's, how may I help you", then they tell you the specials, and then you would make your order. So that's an X-Large. What toppings do you want?
DirtyKate: I want everything, baby!
Bloodninja: Is this a delivery?
DirtyKate: Umm...Yes
DirtyKate: So you're bringing the pizza to my house now? Cause I'm home alone... and I think I'll take a shower...
Bloodninja: Good. It will take about fifteen minutes to cook, and then I'll drive to your house.
**pause**
DirtyKate:I'm almost finished with my shower... Hurry up!
Bloodninja: You can't hurry good pizza.

Link (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

UPDATE: Jeff Mezick says that nearly all of these chats were lifted from Fugly.com. Here's an index he created of all of them. Link

If you read Boing Boing's RSS feed, you've probably noticed that we are now running occasional text ads in selected entries. Unlike many blogs, we syndicate the full text of our entries, which means you don't have go to the web site to read the full story for a particular post. We're working with Feeburner and Overture on incorporating ads in RSS, and it's an experiment. Most of the time, the ads are contextually related to the entries. We're limiting the placement of the ads so they only appear in fewer than a third of our posts. We'll be fine-tuning the process in the days to come and we appreciate your patience and understanding.

Eureka Aerospace in Pasadena is developing a High Power Electromagnetic System that can fry a vehicle's microchips and slow cars to a halt. According to a Wired News report, the 5 foot by 4 foot antenna array could be mounted on police pursuit vehicles or helicopters. It's slated to be ready for testing by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department by late summer.

"The beautiful part of using the (microwave) energy is that it leaves the suspect in control of the car," (LA Sheriff's Department Commander Sid Heal) said. "He can steer, he can brake, he just can't accelerate."

Another benefit to such a technology, Heal said, is that it would give officers the ability to pinpoint where they want to stop a car -- on a freeway overpass, for instance -- which would limit a suspect's opportunities for escape.

"It's going to change law enforcement tactics," he said.

Link

Paul Bourke's iPod-Photo Stereoscope is an exquisite retro tech/new media mash-up:

For those wondering what "stereoscopic" is all about, viewing stereoscopic images give an enhanced depth perception. This is similar to the depth perception we get in real life, the same effect IMAX 3D and many computer games now provide. Stereoscopic viewing of any sort involves independent presentation of a different image, called a stereopair, to each eye. These stereopairs are essentially two different views of the world corresponding to the slightly different views our eyes see because they are separated horizontally....

Images can be downloaded to the IPOD-Photo, the images can subsequently be recalled and presented on the colour display. A series of images can also be presented manually or as a self running slide show with some user selected delay between each image. So to use this as a stereoscopic storage and presentation device one simply labels two IPOD-Photos as "left" and "right", the images corresponding to each eye are installed on the appropriate IPOD-Photo.

Link (via Leander Kahney's The Cult of Mac)

I had the pleasure of having hardware hacker Joe Grand come to my house for dinner last night. (He was in town to appear on G4 TechTV to talk about his new book, Game Console Hacking.) He showed me a bunch of his amazing electronic projects, which I'll be mentioning soon on Make's new blog.

Joe also told me about his cross country trip to relocate from Boston to San Diego, and he pointed me to his journal about the trip. It's a fun read, and I love this picture he took of a cool UFO house in Chattanooga, TN. Link

Found in the Osamanoidea shop in Shinkuku, Tokyo, this is an object-finder with a whistle interface . The yellow tag can be attached to your TV remote or keychain. Then if you lose the object, you blow into the black whistle. The tag responds with a sound and a flashing LED. Link

UPDATE: Several readers point out that Radio Shack sells a similar device. Of course, the packaging can't compete though. Link

Check out these amazing vintage ceramic Star Wars household items for sale -- C3PO soap dishes, Yoda bud-vases, and a Taun Taun teapot! Link (via Wonderland)

Artist Benedict Carpenter asks people to email him descriptions of everyday objects without disclosing what the objects are. Then he draws them based on the description. Then the person who submitted the description tells Carpenter what the object is. Shown here, Carpenter's drawing based on a description of a spoon.

"My body is framed by one long smooth line,
An axis of symmetry down my spine,
My stalk is long, with a quick swell and bend,
And four small birth marks cut into the end.
My body is smooth like a fresh-laid egg,
I look like an octopus with one leg.
My surface was bright like the sun at noon,
Now marked and scarred like the face of the moon."

Link (Thanks, Mary!)

Steve Silberman has turned in a fantastic long feature for Wired Magazine in which he describes the way that the advances in body armor (which doesn't cover legs or arms) has created a new cohort of disabled veterans with missing or badly disabled limbs. Concomittant with this is the rise of terrible, chronic pain, something that is being treated with new technology that blocks specific nerve-endings. This is a disturbing, fascinating piece.

The blocks used by Buckenmaier and his team are made possible by the recent invention of small, microprocessor-controlled pumps which bathe nerves in nonaddictive drugs that discourage the transmission of pain signals. The pumps also can be used for weeks after surgery, enabling soldiers to adjust the level of medication themselves as they need it.

For soldiers evacuated from the battlefield, the advantages of nerve blocks over traditional methods of pain control are clear. The wounded troops flying in and out of Landstuhl are often in misery or a narcotized stupor, while those treated with blocks remain awake and pain-free despite massive injuries.

This new war on pain is the brainchild of John Chiles, the Army's chief anesthesiologist. "Places like Duke were doing great things with peripheral nerve blocks, but they had fallen by the wayside in the Army," he says. "I wanted us to be on the cusp of these advances." The Walter Reed program is supported by grants from the Murtha Neuroscience and Pain Institute, founded by the US representative from Pennsylvania. John Murtha, who was wounded in combat in Vietnam, visits the troops once a week at Walter Reed.

Link

The Recording Industry Association of America is getting soft. RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy announced that they will drop their lawsuit against a woman who died last month at the age of 83 and didn't own a computer.

A group of record companies named Walton as the sole defendant in a federal lawsuit, claiming she made more than 700 songs available for free on the Internet.

Walton's daughter, Robin Chianumba, lived with her mother for the last 17 years and said her mother objected to having a computer in the house.

"My mother wouldn't know how to turn on a computer," Chianumba said.

Link (Thanks, Henry!)

This heavily modded hearse has working flamethrowers on the bonnet and a badazz control panel inside. Link (Thanks, Michael!)

The Cuddly Menace is a remix of a saccharine picture-book called "My Little Golden Book About God." The author has replaced the revoltingly sweet captions with his own twisted, angry ones, to very very good effect. Link Better Link (via Waxy)

British designer Onkar Singh Kular has created a series of ingenious household objects, including a self-leveling picture frame with a spirit level embedded in it and a pair of socks with an extra thrown in against sock disappearance incidents. Best of all are these "Pantone" mugs whose colours correspond to a specific ratio of milk-to-tea -- you know you've added enough milk once the colours match. Link (Thanks, Joy!)

The Ballistics photoset on Flickr showcases one user's high-speed photos of everyday objects -- crayons, lightbulbs, bars of soap -- being shot with a .22 caliber slug. Link (via Flickr Blog)

A recent "independent" report did a hatchet job on municipal wireless networks, damning them as an expensive failure. Glenn Fleishman took the report to pieces in a series of long blog-posts, exposing its shoddy methodology and dubious provenance. Now he reports that the organization that produced it, the New Millennium Research Council, is a front for the telecoms lobby.

The ever-insightful Carol Ellison also weighed in about the NMRC report. She summarizes the phone conference about the release of the report today as, "The rollout of municipally held Wi-Fi networks will likely have a detrimental effect on city budgets and on competition." Ellison castigates the press event and the report, noting, "But while the session promised to fill the gap on the dearth of in-depth analysis on the subject, it and the report that accompanied it offered many more sweeping statements about failed projects than information about why they failed."

Ellison shreds the NMRC for its undisclosed connection to Issue Dynamics: "The NMRC made a point to say that none of the researchers who participated received any money from NMRC. But in case you're wondering who's paying the bills at IDI, take a look at its client list. If you don't want to read the whole huge thing, let me summarize those of interest in this issue: Ameritech, Bell South, Comcast, Pacific Bell, Qwest, SBC Communications, Sprint, U.S. West, Verizon and Verizon Wireless."

Link

Check out this old-timey chocolate record player that played sugar-and-chocolate records!

The ad on the left promotes a toy turntable that played records made of sugar and chocolate. The price of six records was 1,90 francs while the turntable was 3.90. The thing was produced by a well known german candy manufacturer 'Stollwerk' in 1905. The dimensions of the box are 16x12x5,5cm, while the horn is 18cm long.

Link (Thanks, vuk!)

The China Economic Daily has issued a special edition called "China's Flourishing Period," printed on 500g of gold, "to celebrate the achievements of the last 10 sessions of China's top legislative body." Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

Many one-letter stock-ticker-symbols are going up for grabs on the NYSE -- quick, go public and get 'em!

Gillette (G) is merging with Procter & Gamble; Sears (S) will be acquired by rival Kmart (and move its stock from the New York Stock Exchange to Nasdaq); and AT&T (T) is to be swallowed up by its former offspring, SBC Communications.

When the transactions are completed, it could leave as many as 11 of the potential 26 one-letter symbols unoccupied, if no other companies assume their places.

Link (via Fark)

Mystery novelist and comedy country-western star Kinky Friedman (of Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys) is running for governor of Texas again. I think he's the best man for the job.

"We're Number One in executions and we're Number 49 in funding public education," Friedman said, and then later told the crowd he's for nondenominational prayer in public schools.

"What's wrong with a kid believing in something?" he asked.

An animal lover, Friedman vowed to outlaw the declawing of cats and promised to appoint singer and well-known marijuana smoker Willie Nelson as head of the Texas Rangers.

Like Minnesota's Jesse Ventura in 1998 and California's Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, Friedman's nontraditional candidacy could garner serious support, said political analyst Larry Hufford of St. Mary's University in San Antonio.

Link (Thanks, JoeK!)

This 9-foot-tall statue is being auctioned on eBay. The solid Oak statue is estimated to have been carved during the middle of the 18th century. Bidding starts at $1.6 million. Here's why the owner thinks it's so valuable:

In 1992, current owner of Gargoyle statue worked as a ranger officer in Austin, TX. In fall of 1992, officer responded to 911 distress call routed through dispatch indicating "GARGOYLE HAS COME ALIVE!!". Two minutes later, radio dispatch announced that gun shots had been fired from the same location. Officer was provided address where 911 call was initiated to investigate incident.

Officer pulled up to address where 911 call was made to find male & female homeowner standing in yard waiting for police. Officer notified them to immediately place any weapons they had on the ground (male was holding a 357 magnum pistol). Female approached officer in clear state of hysteria screaming that the Gargoyle statue had come alive. Male homeowner was asked to explain what had occured before the officer arrived at the residence.

Male indicated that the 911 call was placed immediately after they saw the Gargoyle statue moving its head and wings. Homeowner then proceeded to fire two rounds point-blank from a 357 magnum pistol into the moving Gargoyle statue. Male indicated that he ran away after seeing both bullets bounce out of the front of the statue...

Homeowners sold Gargoyle statue to ranger officer upon agreement that it would be immediately removed from the property. Now, 12 years later, there is an opportunity for one lucky bidder to be part of this Gargoyles' illustrious past & future.

Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

Lileks delivers a fantastic illustrated rant on Big Little Books -- "They're comics! They're books! They're a joyless synthesis of both!"
Link (Thanks, Nick!)

A giant canine creature, possibly a coy dog (a dog/coyote hybrid), has been leaping over six-foot fences to devour house pets in a Chino Hills neighborhood, and the residents are quaking in fear of further attacks.

Those who have seen the animal say it attacked their dogs faster than they could scare it away.

Typically, coyotes don't attack during the day and jump over five feet," said Clifford Clark, whose dog was killed last month. "My back wall is 6 1/2 feet. It got Molly, a Cairn terrier. It happened when she was going potty. It is either a wolf-dog or coyote-dog."

Clark said he is working with the city to install an 8-foot fence to replace his 6 1/2-foot fence.

Link (Thanks, Dr. Mysterian!)

Yesterday, three Los Angeles city council members announced a plan they say could provide millions of dollars to put more police on the street -- by converting the city government's IT infrastructure to open source software. I spoke with the author of this proposal, Eric Garcetti, and filed a report for the NPR program "Day to Day."

Link to archived audio for this story with expanded online coverage. Link to NPR Day to Day home. Previously on BoingBoing: LA city councilman says open source = more cops.

Here's the Wired Magazine article about Brazil's open source movement which Mr. Garcetti said inspired the idea... his spokesperson says he first saw it here on Boing Boing. An excerpt from the Wired story is included in the text of the city council proposal. Link to "We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin" by Julian Dibbell.

Crown Dozen has a nice interview with artist Gary Baseman.

I remember I was pissed at the MOMA Hi/Low Art show when they put a Warhol on the wall in a place of honor and a George Herriman cartoon on a table given the same level of importance as a detergent box. Now, I may be offending detergent box designers here, but my point is that the best art from any medium should be respected.

Link

Star-nosed moles detect an edible treat like an insect larva or worm and gulp it down faster than the human eye can follow. Researchers at Vanderbilt University timed the moles' actiosn as part of a new study published in this week's issue of the scientific journal Nature. From the press release:

(Biologist Kenneth) Catania, working with laboratory assistant Fiona E. Remple, captured the elusive moles' feeding behavior with a high-speed video camera. Because they live in darkness, the moles have very poor eyesight. So they continually survey their environment by repeatedly touching the objects around them with their star appendages. Timing the moles' actions, the researchers found that after touching a small piece of food they took an average of 230 milliseconds to identify it as edible and eat it....

"The star-nose has the strangest teeth," Catania says. Its incisors are very small compared to other moles and are formed like tweezers. "This allows them to grasp small prey very precisely," he says.

Link

A bunch of artists bought thrift store art, modified it, and are offering it for sale. Link (via Lonita's Links Log)

Researchers at Accenture Technology have devised a "mirror" LCD display that purports to show how your current lifestyle will affect your appearance. Webcams around your home monitor your activities (or lack thereof) and text/verbal surveys are used to log your diet. From New Scientist:

Once the computer has built up this profile, a different software package will extrapolate how this behaviour is likely to affect your weight in the long term. If the computer feels you are eating too much, it will calculate how many pounds to add to the image of the person standing in front of the mirror.

Another package will work on your face. Too much alcohol? Expect early wrinkles and blotchy skin. "Technology can be quite persuasive," Illsey says. "There will be several options for the visual feedback the user gets, ranging from weight gain to modifying skin tone to increasing the shadows under the eyes."

Link

This nifty page lets you click on a color and it returns all the photos from Flickr's squared circle group that match the color. Link

Nine-month-old Milagros Cerron has sirenomelia, a rare condition characterized by fused legs and feet. Peruvian doctors will try to separate Cerron's legs later this month. From a Reuters report:

From the waist up, Milagros smiles and babbles like any healthy infant. Below the waist, her stomach merges seamlessly into her legs, which are joined all the way to her heels.

With her tiny feet splayed in a 'V', the impression of a mermaid's forked tail is complete.

The bones of both legs are visible and move separately, "as if she wanted to get free of this sack," (doctor Luis) Rubio said.

Link

This is a pitch-perfect satire of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back," rewritten as an evangelical paean to the Bible. It's laugh-out-loud funny -- a kind of with-it Christian MAD Magazine send-up:

I like big Bibles I can not lie,
You Christian brothers can't deny,
When a girl walks in with a KJV
And a bookmark in proverbs, You get stoked.

It got a name engraved,
you know this girl has been saved
It looks like one of those large ones,
With plenty of space in the margins,
Oh baby, I want to read it with you,
Because your Bible has got pictures,
My minister tried to console me,
But the book you've got makes me so Holy.

19MB AVI Link (Thanks, Tian!)

Update: Dan Smith, the comedian who made this, asks us to link to his site. And now we have.

The The Internet Museum of Flexi/Cardboard/Oddity Records is a fantastic gallery of novelty records from days gone by. Link (Thanks, Phil!)

These piggybanks are built into oversize computer keys -- wish my keyboard had a £ and SAVE key! Link (via Red Ferret Journal)

Defense contractors are shaking down model airplane and tank makers for punishing royalties on their model kits. One result is that kit makers are switching to WWI models and to models of enemy armaments. Nice going, defense contractors, you took our tax dollars and used them to rid the market of all military toys except Nazi tanks and planes.

For over half a century, kits have been sold that enable military history buffs to assemble scale models of military ships, aircraft and vehicles. But that era is coming to an end, as the manufacturers of the original equipment, especially aircraft, are demanding high royalties (up to $40 per kit) from the kit makers. Since most of these kits sell in small quantities (10-20,000) and are priced at $15-30 (for plastic kits, wooden ones are about twice as much), tacking on the royalty just prices the kit out of the market. Popular land vehicles, which would sell a lot of kits, are missing as well. The new U.S. Army Stryker armored vehicles are not available because of royalty requirements. Even World War II aircraft kits are being hit with royalty demands.

Link