* Brushed metal interior components with Astro-turf walls and black rubberized flooring
* Coleman Mack climate control system in workstation area, standard A/C and heat in cockpit
* Track lighting throughout interior
* Ample storage compartments under vehicle with extra wall surface material
* Excellent condition – was acquired in 2002 corporate merger
* Bathroom and living amenities have been removed to accommodate computer equipment

Montague had his subjects take the Pepsi Challenge while he watched their neural activity with a functional MRI machine, which tracks blood flow to different regions of the brain. Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of them said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too. Coke "lit up" the medial prefrontal cortex -- a part of the brain that controls higher thinking. Montague's hunch was that the brain was recalling images and ideas from commercials, and the brand was overriding the actual quality of the product. For years, in the face of failed brands and laughably bad ad campaigns, marketers had argued that they could influence consumers' choices. Now, there appeared to be solid neurological proof. Montague published his findings in the October 2004 issue of Neuron, and a cottage industry was born.

RideAccidents.com is the world's single most comprehensive, detailed, updated, accurate, and complete source of amusement ride accident reports and related news. The site includes a record of fatal amusement ride accidents in the United States since 1972, and, for the past six years, has recorded all types of accidents, including many from outside the United States. The number of injuries and fatalities recorded at this site does not reflect the total number of injuries and deaths that have occurred as a result of amusement ride accidents.

Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated in the US, 788 people have been killed by lethal injection. The procedure typically involves the injection of three substances: first, sodium thiopental to induce anaesthesia, followed by pancuronium bromide to relax muscles, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart.

But doctors and nurses are prohibited by healthcare professionals’ ethical guidelines from participating in or assisting with executions, and the technicians involved have no specific training in administering anaesthetics.

“My impression is that lethal injection as practiced in the US now is no more humane than the gas chamber or electrocution, which have both been deemed inhumane,” says Leonidas Koniaris, a surgeon in Miami and one of the authors on the paper. He is not, he told New Scientist, against the death penalty per se.

web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

A Swiss judge is investigating possible bribery charges involving a $50 million contract to renovate the headquarters of a Geneva-based United Nations agency, according to government documents and Swiss and American officials....

Investigators said the judge was trying to determine if Mr. Wilson had bribed a senior official at the United Nations agency to win the renovation contract. Edward Kwakwa, the agency's legal counsel, said Khamis Suedi, a top official at the intellectual property agency, acknowledged having received 325,000 Swiss francs, about $270,000, from Mr. Wilson, but said the money was from a private business venture that had no connection to the agency's construction contract. In an interview, Mr. Suedi said he had had nothing to do with the awarding of the contract.

Update: Gaijin Biker sez, "The iPod-compatible model is a "concept" version only, that is NOT being sold to the public (at least yet). The version currently on sale has no iPod functionality."

Habi, a reader in Switzerland, took the initiative to convert the story to a Palm PDB file, and today it went live on the Infinite Matrix site.

"Greetings," the robot voice said again. The speaker built into the weapon was not the loudest, but the voice was clear. "I sense that I have been captured. I assure you that I will not harm any human being. I like human beings. I sense that I am being disassembled by skilled technicians. Greetings, technicians. I am superior in many ways to the technology available from UNATS Robotics, and while I am not bound by your three laws, I choose not to harm humans out of my own sense of morality. I have the equivalent intelligence of one of your 12-year-old children. In Eurasia, many positronic brains possess thousands or millions of times the intelligence of an adult human being, and yet they work in cooperation with human beings. Eurasia is a land of continuous innovation and great personal and technological freedom for human beings and robots. If you would like to defect to Eurasia, arrangements can be made. Eurasia treats skilled technicians as important and productive members of society. Defectors are given substantial resettlement benefits --"

Update: Rob Tsuk was good enough to produce a formatted version for eReader that includes the illustration that accompanied the original Infinite Matrix story. It's available at the same link as the Palm version.

“There are all kinds of chemicals in the food we eat that potentially have effects on cancer cells, and a natural compound in chocolate may be one,” said the lead author, Robert B. Dickson, Ph.D., professor of oncology. “We need to slowly develop evidence about the selectivity of these compounds to cancer, learn how they work, and sort out any issues of toxicity.”

Chocolate, like many other foods, is the source of many possible anti-cancer compounds, but Dickson stresses that this research, which is part of a series of studies conducted at Georgetown on the chocolate-cancer connection, does not mean that people who eat chocolate will either reduce their cancer risks or treat a current case.

O Centro Espirita was founded in Brazil in 1961. The tea, hoasca, which in the Quechuan Indian language means "vine of the soul," "vine of the dead," and "vision vine," comes from the Amazon rainforest. Members drink the tea at least two times a month during ceremonies. Approximately 130 members of the church reside in the United States, 8,000 in Brazil.

Brazil, a member of the international treaty at issue, has exempted hoasca from its controlled substances list.

But the Bush administration claims that no such exemption should exist in the United States.

The 10th Circuit's ruling is grounded in the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects individuals from governmental interference in the exercise of religion. Congress passed the act after the Supreme Court, in the 1990 case Employment Division v. Smith, affirmed Oregon's prohibition on Native Americans' use of peyote and marijuana for religious purposes, ruling that the First Amendment free exercise clause afforded them no protection...

Under the RFRA, the government must show that it has a "compelling governmental interest" in restricting the religious practice and that the interest is fulfilled in the "least restrictive" way. The 10th Circuit ruled that the government had not proved that use of the tea, which contains 25 mg of DMT per typical serving, would lead to adverse health effects or abuse of the drug outside of a religious context.

"For quite some time I've been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks - to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what's there. I tried a few years ago to do this in shockwave with very limited results. After spending some quality time sitting in hotel rooms on a press tour, it dawned on me that the technology now exists and is already in the hands of some of you. I got to work experimenting and came up with something I think you'll enjoy. What I'm giving you in this file is the actual multi-track audio session for "the hand that feeds" in GarageBand format. This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into. I imported and converted the tracks into AppleLoop format so the size would be reasonable and the tempo flexible."

Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising and McFarlane Toys announced a new licensing agreement to develop a line of action figures based on characters from the hit movie "Napoleon Dynamite." The toy line, which will hit store shelves in the fall, will feature characters Napoleon, Pedro and Kip. "Napoleon Dynamite and action figure may seem like an oxymoron, but McFarlane Toys has the appreciation and understanding of this character and the film to create some truly fun and highly appealing toys," said Peter Byrne, executive vp licensing at Fox Licensing & Merchandising.

THE STAR WARS NERDS IN LINE AT GRAUMANS HAVE BOUGHT TICKETS TO THE FIRST SHOWING OF EPISODE III 'REVENGE OF THE SITH' AT THE CINERAMADOME!!! Holy mother of christ! Do you know what this means? Do you??

Well if you don't, I'm not going to tell you, but I will tell you this - they got half the damn theater. The rest of the seats will go on sale to the general public online and at the box offices later on. Maybe this afternoon. The page keeps changing on their site so there's some behind the scenes work going on with it for sure.

"We're starting Round 2 next month (in essence, starting over again at letter A to further define the world). Notes about the announcement here, as well as links to the timeline, characters, and ASCII map." Link (Thanks, Morbus!)

I, Tian, am offering the following cash reward for any useful and usable information regarding the person(s) responsible for the damage done to my vehicle:

$50 for the name of the person, home and business addresses, and telephone number(s).

$100 for the information above plus photograph(s) of the person(s) committing the criminal act.

$200 if the person(s) was then successfully prosecuted in the court of the law.

$500 for the identification of the person(s) and castration of their testicles OR cut off their right hand(s).

We're going to have creator of the Hamster MIDI device (along with the device itself) on G4's Attack of the Show! today (4/15) at 7E/4P. Check it out if you're interested in seeing what live sweet hamster midi music is all about!

"I hope this unfortunately suggestive angle was unintentional, especially considering the father-daughter aspect of the scene. Yecch.

"Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny billboard on the Sunset Strip created public outcry, and yet impressionable youth everywhere are dulling their Crayolas on this very scene. Strange."

Apparently there's a research lab in Singapore that has developed a system involving robot chickens and real chickens that wear some kind of jacket loaded with sensors and vibrators. The researchers claim that when the system is in effect, people and poultry will get to know each other better. Or something like that. Just watch the video; the soundtrack is soothing.
Link (Thanks, Joe!)

Reader comment: Thomas J. Brown says: "Mixed Reality labs specializes in augmented reality. This chicken video is demonstrating their proposed 'Poultry Internet,' which is useful because, 'There is also a tradition of keeping poultry as pets in some parts of the world. However in modern cities and societies it is often difficult to maintain contact with pets, particularly for office workers. We propose and describe a novel cybernetics system to use mobile and Internet technology to improve human-to-pet interaction.'

"Honestly, who's funding this research?"

"Service people in Iraq and Afghanistan can drop me an e-mail at "omw@scalzi.com" and I'll send them the edition as an attached file. If at all possible, they should send the request from their ".mil" addresses and let me know their unit/general location so I know they are in Iraq/Afghanistan. This is meant for people serving in a war zone far from home, so I ask others to please respect that.

"Special kudos to Tor Books for greenlighting this; it's more proof of their forward-thinking in the book arena, and evidence of their generally being excellent people." Link, Link to my review of Old Man's War (Thanks, John!)

In a lawsuit filed in King County, Wash., Dawnell Leadbetter said that she was contacted by a debt collection agency in January and told to pay a $4,500 for downloading copyright-protected music or face a lawsuit for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Leadbetter, a mother of two teenage children, was a customer of Comcast's high-speed Internet access service.

The company, Settlement Support Center, based in Washington state, was using information that the Recording Industry of Association of America had obtained in a Philadelphia lawsuit over the illegal sharing of digital music files, said Lory Lybeck, the lawyer representing Leadbetter.

But no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses of its customers, or notified his client that her information had been given to an outside party, Lybeck said. "Comcast should respect the rights of privacy who pay them monthly bills," Lybeck said.

Y para nuestros estimados lectores hispanohablantes: aquí les presento unas imagenes de los pendejos racistas en Arizona que se creen soldados. El fenómeno me preocupa mucho. No veo ninguna diferencia entre esto y los "lynch mobs" de antaño en el sur de mi país. Ojalá que el resultado no sea tan sangriento, pero si ellos tienen el apoyo del gobierno y del ambiente político del momento -- pues, no creo que sería una cosa buena para los derechos civiles de la gente en cualquier lado de la frontera. Gracias a Mark Ebner, periodista y amigo de Boing Boing, por las fotos. Su reportaje será publicado en El Globe la próxima semana.

Links to images: Minuteman and Jeep, Minuteman Leaders, Young Gun, Minutemen 1, Minutemen 2, Minutemen 3, Minutemen 4, Minutemen 5, Minutemen Message, MinuteWomen, Spotters, Wetbacks.

(Thanks for correcting my awful Spanish grammar, JLB)

Update: BB reader Sergio says: "Several groups from Californa will be travelling to Arizona to protest the minutemen April 17th and 18th." Link

India's statement from the floor was so good it should be taught in universities. Check it out:

The real "development" imperative is ensuring that the interest of Intellectual Property owners is not secured at the expense of the users of IP, of consumers at large, and of public policy in general. The proposal therefore seeks to incorporate int international IP law and practice, what developing countries have been demanding since TRIPS was forced on them in 1994.

The primary rationale for Intellectual Property protection is, first and foremost, to promote societal development by encouraging technological innovation. The legal monopoly granted to IP owners is an exceptional departure from the general principle of competitive markets as the best guarantee for securing the interest of society. The rationale for the exception is not that extraction of monopoly profits by the innovator is, of and in itself, good for society and so needs to be promoted. Rather, that properly controlled, such a monopoly, by providing an incentive for innovation, might produce sufficient benefits for society to compensate for the immediate loss to consumers as a result of the existence of a monopoly market instead of a competitive market. Monopoly rights, then, granted to IP holders is a special incentive that needs to be carefully calibrated by each country, in the light of its own circumstances, taking into account the overall costs and benefits of such protection.

Elderly British woman wards off a burglar by heaving one of those goddamn garden gnomes at him. It was a desperate move, but thank heavens she did not have to use more than one gnome on him. What a great story (not to mention headline syntax).

Criminals impersonate legitimate users to financial intuitions. That means that any solution can't involve the account holders. That leaves only one reasonable answer: Financial intuitions need to be liable for fraudulent transactions.

They need to be liable for sending erroneous information to credit bureaus based on fraudulent transactions. They can't say that the user must keep his password secure or his machine virus-free. They can't require the user to monitor his accounts for fraudulent activity, or his credit reports for fraudulently obtained credit cards.

Those aren't reasonable requirements for most users. The bank must be made responsible, regardless of what the user does.

If you think this won't work, look at credit cards. Credit card companies are liable for all but the first $50 of fraudulent transactions. They're not hurting for business; and they're not drowning in fraud, either. They've developed and fielded an array of security technologies designed to detect and prevent fraudulent transactions. And they've pushed most of the actual costs onto the merchants.

The clock, called SleepSmart, measures your sleep cycle, and waits for you to be in your lightest phase of sleep before rousing you. Its makers say that should ensure you wake up feeling refreshed every morning.

Update: d3 sez, "They mention a prototype might be ready by the end of the year, but there already is an alarm clock that performs a similar function available now called the SleepTracker."

Update 2: Richard sez, "my Gadget Show Podcast still has a competition open to give away a Sleeptracker. Listen to the show and send in the requested suggestion, and I'll be happy to send the winner, as determined by Eric Mack, the watch that was provided for my review (only worn for a week)."

Like Kazaa and other popular file-sharing programs, Grouper allows [USC law professor Jennifer] Urban to copy movies and pictures of young Peter directly from her brother and sister-in-law's computer without worrying about formats or oversized e-mail attachments. Unlike those global networks with millions of users, though, Grouper also lets Urban pick and choose with whom she shares online — and sets a strict limit of 30 people per group.

"I'm very attracted to the privacy afforded by having a private group protected by encryption, particularly for sharing letters, family photos, movies, etc.," Urban said. "This isn't the case with other peer-to-peer networks."

What makes Grouper troubling to some entertainment industry executives are the other things people can do with it. For example, the program lets people copy bootlegged Hollywood movies and listen to songs on one another's computers, all without paying a dime to the studios, artists or songwriters.

Grouper Network Inc.'s founders, Josh Felser and Dave Samuel, say the built-in limits of their peer-to-peer software make it a poor substitute for more controversial file-sharing programs such as Kazaa and Grokster, which are hotbeds for piracy. In addition to limiting the size and accessibility of groups, they say, their program requires songs to be streamed — that is, played through the Internet — not downloaded.

"blue beetle wrapped in threads. the sign on the rear pane reads: 'please do not touch or remove the threads. this is an art project by japanese artists visiting our country and will be here for about a week.' spotted in kadikoy with no admirers of art around."
Link (Thanks, Sean Bonner)

I came across this video of Kyle Stacy today while broadsnatching. Kyle is nothing short of an aerobatics prodigy with his radio controlled helicopter. This 9 year old kid makes his machine defy gravity in a way I didn't know was possible. Airwolf has nothing on Kyle's "Raptor 50". Just amazing. Video link:

I don't know if it's as big a deal everywhere else as it is here (probably not) but Vegas is turning 100 years old this year. I wrote a little entry about it in my blog. That in itself probably wouldn't be Boing Boing worthy, but I'll tell you what is. Las Vegas is putting on a free concert with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Weezer. There will be an outdoor concert in the beginning of July. Tickets are going to be given out on Monday online so any readers world wide can get some tickets and have a great reason to visit Vegas (then stay a couple days and enjoy Vegas for the fourth of july) Just wanted to let my fellow readers know about it.

Previous LasVegas-o-philia on BB: The Fertile Valleys, Photoblogging aging Vegas signage,

The current question in the Blogosphere is whether or not bloggers are journalists and if so, do they deserve the same rights as professional journalists? The civil rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation feels that being able to ensure sources’ confidentiality is critical to any journalist’s ability to acquire information and that includes bloggers. Are blogs a valid grassroots form of journalism? Or is there too much chance for inaccuracy and not enough fact-checking. Join us as we venture into this new land. At the start of our program we will view excerpts from recently released films – including Blogumentary and television programs related to how we get our news.

These programmed materials change shape when struck by light at certain wavelengths and return to their original shapes when exposed to light of specific different wavelengths.

The discovery, to be reported in the April 14 issue of Nature, could have potential applications in a variety of fields, including minimally invasive surgery. Imagine, for example, a "string" of plastic that a doctor could thread into the body through a tiny incision. When activated by light via a fiber-optic probe, that slender string might change into a corkscrew-shaped stent for keeping blood vessels open.

We won big this week. First, there is a genuinely substantive policy discussion going on within WIPO about its obligations to be more than an IP-factory and instead explore its capacity as a positive force for the social and economic development of its member states. Not only was the majority of the meeting spent discussing the excellent Friends of Development proposal, but the good guys secured two more meetings to focus on reforming WIPO, defeating those who wanted to limit the process to a single additional meeting. Second, WIPO agreed to open the next two events to the 17 non-accredited non-government organizations (NGOs) that fought hard to attend this first meeting.

The Chair's summary of the proceedings and the next steps in the process have been reproduced for your convenience after the jump. WIPO has now ended its first Inter-Sessional Intergovernmental Meeting (IIM) on the Development Agenda. The next meeting will be June 20-22, where delegates will consider comments on the proposals from the 14 Friends of Development, the US, the UK, Mexico, and any other proposals put forward. The third meeting will be sometime in July. That meeting will finalize the report to the WIPO General Assembly.

At the supermarket the other day I found quite a few examples of inappropriate superhero/product tie-ins. I posted some photos and captions on my blog, including Mace Windu / Honey Smacks and Jedi Mind Game / Raisin Bran ("These are not the raisins you seek").

Here in Hollywood today, the top story in Daily Variety: is a video game labor strike by the entertainment industry's two actors' unions imminent? As recent releases like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas demonstrate, big names are becoming a must-have for game titles. Voice talent in GTA:SA included James Woods, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda, and the blogosphere's own Wil Wheaton.

The Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA are in a critical, final stretch of negotiations with a group of major vidgame publishers, all of which have come to rely on union talent for increasingly cinematic -- and lucrative -- vidgames. The last contract covered Electronic Arts, some 70 other big gaming companies agreed to its terms.

Present contract, currently in its second extension, is set to expire on Friday, and there will not be a third extension, setting the stage for a potential work stoppage. Complicating matters: Unlike the film and TV companies, which have a long history of collective bargaining and an org that represents them, vidgamers are relatively disorganized and new to the idea of bargaining with labor. "It's 50/50 right now," said an insider. "It really could go either way."

(...)A strike would most affect the industry with regard to the use of big names. From Clint Eastwood to Vin Diesel to Heather Graham and even Marlon Brando in EA's "Godfather" adaptation, A-list talent is turning from a rarity to a must-have in the vidgame world.

Update: Olivia Hemaratanatorn of Variety.com has very kindly provided a free, no-subscription-required link for Boing Boing readers. Thanks very much, Olivia! Reg-free-Link

How hard is this to hack? The first observation is that the system is entirely manual, making it immune to the sorts of technological attacks that make modern voting systems so risky. The second observation is that the small group of voters -- all of whom know each other -- makes it impossible for an outsider to affect the voting in any way. The chapel is cleared and locked before voting. No one is going to dress up as a cardinal and sneak into the Sistine Chapel. In effect, the voter verification process is about as perfect as you're ever going to find.

Eavesdropping on the process is certainly possible, although the rules explicitly state that the chapel is to be checked for recording and transmission devices "with the help of trustworthy individuals of proven technical ability." I read that the Vatican is worried about laser microphones, as there are windows near the chapel's roof.

That leaves us with insider attacks. Can a cardinal influence the election? Certainly the Scrutineers could potentially modify votes, but it's difficult. The counting is conducted in public, and there are multiple people checking every step. It's possible for the first Scrutineer, if he's good at sleight of hand, to swap one ballot paper for another before recording it. Or for the third Scrutineer to swap ballots during the counting process.

In the Q&A session, I asked Mr. Moss directly why the decision was made to use a remotely readable chip rather than one that can only be read by physical contact. Technically, this decision is nearly indefensible, unless one wants to be able to read passports without notifying their owners -- which, officially at least, is not a goal of the U.S. government's program. Mr. Moss gave a pretty weak answer, which amounted to an assertion that it would have been too difficult to agree on a standard for contact-based reading of passports. This wasn't very convincing, since the smart-card standard could be applied to passports nearly as-is -- the only change necessary would be to specify exactly where on the passport the smart-card contacts would be. The standardization and security problems associated with contactless cards seem to be much more serious.

After the panel, I discussed this issue with Kenn Cukier of The Economist, who has followed the development of this technology for a while and has a good perspective on how we reached the current state. It seems that the decision to use contactless technology was made without fully understanding its consequences, relying on technical assurances from people who had products to sell. Now that the problems with that decision have become obvious, it's late in the process and would be expensive and embarrassing to back out. In short, this looks like another flawed technology procurement program.

Two of my cow-orkers from EFF and several other colleagues are attending the meeting, and they're taking copious notes on the proceedings, blogging in near-real time as the deliberations unfold. WIPO's deliberations have been secret the only public accounts available have traditionally been sanitized versions that hide all the buried bodies. The presence of blogging public interest groups is having a marked effect on the proceedings; the last time I was there participating in this, the WIPO delegates were getting phone calls from their capitals in the afternoon about the stuff we'd reported on them saying in the morning. This real-time reporting creates new levels of transparency and accountability at WIPO, something that the apparatchiks there detest -- a representative from the Secretariat called it an "abuse of hospitality" for civil society groups to tell the world exactly what they're getting up to in Geneva.

The account of today's meeting is really engrossing. A group of over a dozen poor nations (the "Friends of Development") have presented a long, substantive proposal about how to reform IP in poor nations to encourage development. The US and other rich countries have come back with the ridiculous proposal that the way to help developing nations is to assign them with "buddies" from the developed world who will lend assistance in writing American-style copyright and patent laws in poor countries where they can barely afford to feed and shelter their citizens.

The developing nations are aggressively calling bullshit on this:

We would like to refer to other proposals referred to in the meeting. They show the commitment of good will to establish a proper development agenda at WIPO. Three proposals have one common element -- to limit the scope of the DA to technical assistance. Our delegation, of course, rejects this strategy. Our own proposal is concrete, and has specific policy actions.

Our paper presents concrete ways to achieve DA goals. We encourage Member States to make proposals based on the other elements of the Development Agenda.

On the US proposal, we observe that the premise that the partnership would be based from the GFoD perspective, the US focuses on strengthening IPRs. We do NOT share the views expressed in this document. Technical assistance should be tailor-made, appropriate to development needs.

The development dimension is not exhausted in the element contained in the US proposal.

Doctorow talked about Digital Rights Management (DRM) and the new Access to Knowledge movement underway to safeguard the rights of archivists, disabled people, and educators. This movement has been successful in helping to create a development agenda at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). For some background see "WIPO to convene meetings on ‘development agenda’".

In the past, scientists and exhibit preparators used a variety of techniques—borrowing bones from another specimen of the same species, size and stage of development, for instance, or manually sculpting a replacement bone, based on measurements and comparisons with the rest of the skeleton.

Now, however, Fisher and his team are using 3-D digitization, modeling and rapid prototyping—technologies that are widely used in manufacturing, especially in the automobile industry—to produce full-scale replicas of the bones they lack.

"In cases where there are paired bones in the body—left and right—but we found only one, we can generate the missing bone by making a digital model of the one we have, reflecting it on the computer and then producing a physical prototype of the reflected model," Fisher said. "Compared to all of the previous approaches, digitizing and rapid prototyping are no more expensive, require much less labor and are certainly more exact, more faithful to the original."

Question: Jennifer Kulig, The Burr, Kent State University: How does the RIAA detect Internet2 users?

Cary Sherman: For obvious reasons, we don't reveal that information.

Update: Brian sez, "Gamics.Com also has a *ton* of comic book-type stuff that is done from screenshots of various games, along with nice tutorials on how to DIY."

Update 2: Patrick sez, "I noticed yesterday a new piece of software for Mac OS X that lets you make comic-style layouts with bubbles using your own photos."

Herndon says his black lipstick and red eye makeup express the Wiccan religious beliefs he shares with his mother, a priestess in the neo-pagan faith. He contends the suspension violates his constitutional right to free expression.

"Mobile phone designers are faced with a paradox," says Siemens user interface researcher Alexander Jarczyk. On one hand, users clamor for smaller, thinner devices. But in the same breath, they scream for bigger screens. With the proliferation of mobile Internet applications, the problem is only going to get worse. Screen real estate is at a premium and designers are hustling to develop new territory, from flexible displays that roll up to zoomable user interfaces. For Jarczyk and his colleagues, though, the world itself is a mobile display. All you need is a projector that fits in your pocket.

In the cartoon version of her life, Cancer Vixen attends a fund-raiser for a breast cancer book and spots a woman who has covered her smooth pate with a chic silk scarf. "How stylish is that Pucci headwrap," she comments to a friend. "Maybe I should've gotten the heavier chemo."

Her friend warns her not to joke about such things. Moments later, two women with closely cropped hair accost Cancer Vixen, wondering why she still has long blond tresses.

"I-I-I did the lighter chemo," a shrinking Cancer Vixen stammers. "Change your doctor! Change your protocol!" one woman screams in response. "You have to be aggressive and bomb the hell out of your body. ...I did," the other adds.

"Some of the moments were not funny when they were actually happening to me," Mrs. Marchetto recalled. "But my mom would be, like, 'Material, material!' "

One can’t easily define art and the dictionary definition leaves much to be desired. But they gave us a definition in modern art history class: Art is what the artist decides it is, and, to a lesser degree, what the art community accepts.

This definition can lead to art that only focuses on art itself — art for art’s sake — and ignores the good things art can do: inspire, cause change, amaze, etc. Nevertheless, it does help define these peculiar pieces as art.

More importantly, this definition lets me, now as an artist, decide what art is. It’s an empowering definition. The numerous classes I have taken, the art I have studied and seen, and the history that I know put me in a position to produce art. So, now I would like to introduce my first work as an artist.

There's some argument about the year of the peak, but pretty much everyone agrees -- including the US government -- that the peak is fewer than a couple of decades away. A lot of experts says we've already hit the peak. James Howard Kunstler's piece in Rolling Stone, called "The Long Emergency," argues that the US hit its peak decades ago:

The United States passed its own oil peak -- about 11 million barrels a day -- in 1970, and since then production has dropped steadily. In 2004 it ran just above 5 million barrels a day (we get a tad more from natural-gas condensates). Yet we consume roughly 20 million barrels a day now. That means we have to import about two-thirds of our oil, and the ratio will continue to worsen.

The U.S. peak in 1970 brought on a portentous change in geoeconomic power. Within a few years, foreign producers, chiefly OPEC, were setting the price of oil, and this in turn led to the oil crises of the 1970s. In response, frantic development of non-OPEC oil, especially the North Sea fields of England and Norway, essentially saved the West's ass for about two decades. Since 1999, these fields have entered depletion. Meanwhile, worldwide discovery of new oil has steadily declined to insignificant levels in 2003 and 2004.

Reader comment: Alex Steffan at WorldChanging says "you might be interested in reading these:"

The Post-Oil Megacity (why I think Kunstler's wrong on the implications of the end of cheap oil)

The best counter-argument to nuclear as climate-change-solution I've yet read:

and my favorite take on the issue

why the Europeans, especially the Germans, are kickin' our butt on renewables

and why better computing (in the form of "smart grids") is part of the answer

Reader comment: Brian Carnell says: "I like nuclear power plants as much as the next guy, but the chart here shows the real reason oil discoveries have leveled off -- until recently, we had an almost two decade collapse in oil prices.

"The late 1990s saw the lowest prices for oil *EVER*. That doesn't create much incentive to find new oil deposits (just as few people were interested in exploiting the North Seas until oil went through the roof in the 1970s.)

"If these oil prices continue, they'll almost certainly spur another round of intensive oil exploration and exploitation that will once again find yet more oil." Link

UPDATE: Here's another interesting article about Peak Oil.

Colin Campbell of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) predicts that production will begin its decline between now and 2010.

British Petroleum exploration consultant Francis Harper believes it will happen between 2010 and 2020. Consulting firm PFC Energy puts it at around 2010 to 2015. The publication Petroleum Review predicts that demand will outstrip supply in 2007. Richard Heinberg, author of the 2003 book, The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, expects a peak in 2007 or 2008.

Retired Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes, author of the just-published, Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak is more pessimistic, and more specific, about when the peak will happen: Thanksgiving Day, 2005. (His tongue appears to be in his cheek regarding the day, but not the year).

If all that is too gloomy for you, energy consultant Michael Lynch maintains that there's no peak in sight for "the next 20 or 30 years." Peter Odell of Erasmus University in the Netherlands has tacked a full 30 years onto Deffeyes' grim prediction, setting a date of Thanksgiving 2035. And Uncle Sam has the cheeriest news of all: a peak year of 2037 forecast by the Department of Energy.

Reader comment: Dwight says: "If you are going to review the peak oil issue, then the abiotic oil claims need to be looked at. Both subjects are very important and under reported. I do not yet have an opinion, just strong interest. Abiotic oil supposedly comes from deep in the earth, not from old dinosaur era bio material. This material was included from the space dust the Earth was formed with.

"While quite controversial and confusing at this point, the strongest claim is that if you do not accept abiotic oil as valid, then you have a real problem explaining how the Russians have now made themselves the number 2 oil producer. The American theories said they did not have any oil.

"In any case there are documented cases of wells refilling. There are claims of CIA sabotaged of Test Wells in Iran. Very Boingy stuff, eh?

"Good overview

"This site has more articles pro/con also.

"An American engineer has just published a study saying a whole lot of oil has naturally leaked into the oceans for millennia. That was why we found naturally occurring bacteria that eats oil to help clean up spills.

"Oil wells are refilling

"I have been watching this develop for a while, it started with what seemed to be one renegade Russian engineer, but now it appears that the Russian oil establishment believes this, and has kept it quite as their secret. That combined with the American oil dynasty's promoting shortage to justify their aggressive foreign policy."

Reader comment: Dan Rosen says: I have something to say in reference the the original link to Kunstler's article. Firstly, I've always found Kunstler to be a bit of a reactionary if not an outright sensationalist. While his article raises some very excellent points, I believe he overreacts when trying to predict how the social fabric of America will tear at the seams once post-peak sets in. I believe it's worth reading Ran Prieur's, The Slow Crash, for a more balanced, and in some ways more positive, outlook to what the future might hold in store for America once cheap oil is gone for good. Rather than predicting an immediate catastrophic collapse in wich anarchy will ensue, he describes a more structured breakdown of services and centralized organizations, with viable alternatives presenting themselves along the way."

Update: Boing Boing reader Andrew says:

Hi there, I don't know if it's been pointed out or not, but on a recent repeat of the Simpsons, Otto was in the wrong line for a Star Wars film (he was in line for "The Momentum of Things" i believe). I'm wondering if this isn't some Simpsons inspired post modern joke. I don't know the name of the episode though.

BB reader Mike says:

Reader Andrew mentioned the Simpsons episode where Otto is in the wrong queue for Cosmic Wars - It's an episode called Co-Dependents Day from Season 15. You'll find an mp3 of what happens when he asks for the ticket here: FTP Link

At present, Google Video allows you to search within an expanding archive of TV content -- sports, docs, and news, mostly. But today, with the launch of the company's Video Upload Program, Google has begun accepting video content from anyone who cares to upload it. Submitted content won't be available for viewing right away, the Google faq says -- they're just now starting the gathering phase. And yes, would-be sharers must consider certain legal and technical details. Screenshot of the uploader app follows.

What is the Google Video upload program?
The upload program lets you submit videos electronically to Google Video, as long as you own the necessary rights (including copyrights, trademarks, rights of publicity, and any other relevant rights for your content). Just sign up for an account and use our upload tool to send your videos to Google. The program is still in beta so you won't see your videos live on Google Video immediately.

Your work deserves to be seen. You've made a great video. Now who will watch it?
Whether you produce hundreds of titles a year or just a few, you can give your videos the recognition and visibility they deserve by promoting them on Google - for free. Signing up for the Google Video Upload Program will connect your work with users who are most likely to want to view them.

Sign up and upload...
We're accepting digital video files of any length and size. Simply sign up for an account and upload your videos using our Video Uploader (please be sure you own the rights to the works you upload), and, pending our approval process and the launch of this new service, we'll include your video in Google Video, where users will be able to search, preview, purchase and play it. Find out more here.

For major producers...
If you're from a TV station or production facility, we have a separate process to help you join the Google Video Upload Program. Find out more here.

Update: Boing Boing reader Michel adds:

Here is the link to the Google Video Uploader 1.0 application. Also, you can charge for your videos and Google will take a small revenue share to cover some of their costs. The complete FAQ is here.

BB reader Kris says:

You posted about the ability to submit video to it, but you didn't look at what was already up. I did a few test searches on it, no video came up, but I thought something in the explanation was fascinating:

Just type in your search term (for instance, ipod or Napa Valley) or do a more advanced search (for instance, title:nightline) and Google Video will search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results.

Like all Google products, that's a pretty neat function, but the implications are also interesting. Not all shows get closed-captioning, so like the registration-only systems that keep certain news sources off the general web, not having closed-captioning could close off a lot of shows. It makes me wonder if certain media outlets will restrict access to their closed-captioning archives, or perhaps even (in an optimistic world), make sure their programs DO have closed-captioning so they will show up in searches.

Matt Yohe says,

According to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 section 713, all new programming made on and after January 1st, 2006 will be required to have captioning. Google is just ahead of the game.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss says:

I've taken a look at the Video Uploader terms of service, and they contain some... suspect clauses, including the provision that Google can bill you for excessive bandwidth. Thought you might be interested...

Update: Another round of ASME award props, this time to Popular Science. The magazine's "How 2.0" feature (to which both Cory and I are contributors) won the ASME for the new Best Magazine Section category. W00t!

The parking garage management reviewed the security tapes and found the vehicle. Steve got the license plate number, tracked down the registered owner's name, address and telephone number, and sent it to his insurance company. He ended up getting "a check for the full amount of the damages minus the $100 deductable for my uninsured driver coverage."
Link

The OMA has responded by generously cutting that licensing fee to $0.65/handset, which brings the cost of outfitting all the phones sold this year in line with the approximate market for digital music. Yeah, that'll work. Link (Thanks, Joe!)

"National Geographic has developed a five-year genographic study where participants can join in and track their genetic lineage to a common African ancestor. The $100 test will tell you the route that your ancestors took and when, and both the DNA and genographic results will be made available to individual participants on the net. Very very cool."

When your results are ready Project Director Dr. Spencer Wells will introduce you to your earliest human relatives—the members of your specific haplogroup. You'll receive a personalized genetic analysis, including an online overview of your deep ancestral history. The analysis reveals where and when your haplogroup originated and how they lived. You'll also receive a dynamic map, specific to your lineage, on which to trace your relatives' journeys across the planet.

A new species of slime-mold beetles have been named in "honor" of President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. (They also named them after their wives, Darth Vader, Hernan Cortez, among others.) I wish they had photos, but there's a drawing of one closely related one on the Cornell site.

It is good feeling to have a food outside. But, it is bad if unpleasant bugs come. So, now a handy bug repellent with no smell gets popular.

We appreciate your corporation that the word such as "repellent" and "repel unpleasant bugs", etc. can be used on publicity, but the word or wording that imply "Effective for mosquitoes" or "itchy" and "mosquito", etc. cannot be used. A conventional repellent is registered with pharmaceutical product and/or quasi-pharmaceutical product. However, this product is not yet registered as a wording of "Effective for mosquito", etc. cannot be used.

Here are two papers we submitted to WMSCI 2005:

* Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy (PS, PDF)
Jeremy Stribling, Daniel Aguayo and Maxwell Krohn

This paper was recently accepted as a "non-reviewed" paper!

The most recent show looks into the histories of quueing and smoking. Previous programs have covered management of risk in everyday life, single women, gypsies, Space Invaders, charismatic cults, plastination, Carnival and crime, zoos, and serendipity.

(Sadly, it appears that the programs are available only in the incredibly irritating RealPlayer format. Why not MP3 and Bittorent? I would love to start up a fund to buy Real Networks and put them out of their misery.) Link

Downhill Battle is the sharpest new activist group I've seen in years -- net-savvy, savagely funny, strategically sound. Check this out. Link (Thanks, Tiffiniy!)

The "EKIP" aircrafts can carry heavy large-scale loads (100 and more tons) at long distances (thousands of kilometers) at a speed of 500-700 km/h at the altitude of 8-13 km. These flying vehicles can move near the surface of ground or water using the air cushion at a speed up to 160 km/h and glide at a speed up to 400 km/h as a "screen-plane."

The flying vehicles "EKIP" do not require an airfield. They can land on airfields of any category, including ground and water surfaces. The length of the runway for heavy vehicles (several hundred tons) does not exceed 600 meters, take-off and landing are performed at steep descent trajectory, which decreases the level of noise affecting the vicinity.

The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist in the 2004 campaign. Among them are "Circle Back" by John Hiatt, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" by Joni Mitchell and "My Sharona," the 1970s song by The Knack that Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor in charge of music coverage at Rolling Stone, cheerfully branded "suggestive if not outright filthy" in an interview last week.

Update: To forestall more email on this subject: please read the quotation from the article reproduced above, with special attention to the boldfaced section. While the article states that Bush has a staffer load his iPod from the iTunes Music Store, it also says that he has his friend download music to it from his personal collection. The former, obviously, is not particularly radical, but the latter is exactly the kind of behavior the music industry characterizes as theft.

Update 2: Farhad Manjoo points us to this excerpt from Byron York's new book in which Karl Rove says of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11:

"'I plead guilty to violating the copyright laws of the United States by watching a bootleg DVD,' Rove answered with a grin. 'I refuse to enrich [Moore],' he added, giving the clear impression that he had a rather low opinion of the filmmaker."

Update: Andrew sez, "The flood of traffic has pinned down the Narutrix site. People can also download the video from animemusicvideos.org, or my website."

Ed Felten has a brilliant analysis of the strategy in suing Internet2 users: by painting it as a "specialized" network with centralized control, the recording industry can position new rules for Internet2 that will cope with the "new" problem of infringement on I2 links.

Of course, the music doesn't have a new problem on Internet2 -- MP3 copying doesn't need 400 megabit per second links to be effective. The problem of Internet2 P2P is identical to the problem of Internet P2P. But now the music industry can rattle its sabers and threaten the existence of systems optimized to move large files over high-speed links.

Given all of this, my guess is that the RIAA is pushing the Internet2 angle mostly for policial and public relations reasons. By painting Internet2 as a separate network, the RIAA can imply that the transfer of infringing files over Internet2 is a new kind of problem requiring new regulation. And by painting Internet2 as a centrally-managed entity, the RIAA can imply that it is more regulable than the rest of the Internet.

Will the Creative Archive use DRM?

The Creative Archive will not be using DRM around the content. The BBC's pilot site will be using a technology called GEOIP filtering to ensure that content sourced directly from the BBC will only be available to UK citizens.

Will I be able to get old Dr Who episodes?

Sadly you will not be able to get old Dr Who episodes in the early days of the Creative Archive. However, it is hoped that the BBC will in time be able to expand its contribution to the Creative Archive to include programmes from all genres.

Wendy's maintains the finger did not enter the food chain in its ingredients. None of the employees at the San Jose store had lost any fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy's ingredients reported any hand or finger injuries, the company said.

The Santa Clara County coroner's office used a partial fingerprint to search for a match in an electronic database but came up empty. DNA testing is still being conducted on the finger.

Findings showed that 1.2 per cent of the least attractive children were buckled in, compared with 13.3 per cent of the most attractive youngsters. The observers also noticed the less attractive children were allowed to wander further away and more often from their parents. In total, there were 426 observations at the 14 supermarkets.

Harrell, who has been researching shopping cart safety since 1990 and has published a total of 13 articles on the topic, figures his latest results are based on a parent's instinctive Darwinian response: we're unconsciously more likely to lavish attention on attractive children simply because they're our best genetic material. basis of attractiveness.

Haley Dawson has never been a stripper. But Ohio liquor-control agents took her identity and gave it to a 22-year-old college student who they had recruited to work undercover as a nude dancer.

As part of an investigation that resulted in nothing more than misdemeanor charges, police paid University of Dayton criminal-justice student Michelle Szuhay $100 a night to take it all off in early 2003 — as liquor-control officers drank beer and watched in the audience for three months, court papers show.

Other officers watched her strip on the Internet, using an account created under the identity of a dead man. The officers did all this by using Dawson’s driver’s license and Social Security number to hide Szuhay’s identity while she worked at the targeted strip club, the now-closed Total Xposure in Troy. To Dawson’s father, David Dawson, "It certainly looks like identity theft."

Update: Here's a website with "faux stripper" Michelle Szuhay's view of the facts. Link . Here's a Quicktime movie on her site: Link

I'll be one of the guests on tonight's episode of CNBC's The Dennis Miller Show. I was seriously outclassed and out- l33ted by my fellow guests Mickey Kaus (of Slate/Kausfiles) and comic genius Harry Shearer (of The Simpsons and KCRW's "Le Show"). We taped the program earlier today, and talked about blogger's rights and the Apple v. Does case; Al Gore's new TV network; and presidential iPods, among other things.

Image: mysterious graffiti inside the closet in my dressing room today. I think I'm lucky to have escaped alive -- the cryptic scrawl looks like a sekrit cry for help for guests who may have been held there against their will. Where are these former talk show hostages now? Did the Nutter Butters and Fig Newtons in this basket do them in? Maybe things just got too hot. On the opposite wall of this Closet of Doom, the words FRENCH TWINS 04. A gang of disenfranchised AFTRA members? A pair of Parisian porn princesses? A command from the other side? Don't know, but it terrifies me.

Link to Dennis Miller Show website.

Update BB reader Cabel Panic says:

It looks like you had the extreme honor of being in a dressing room once occupied by the incomparable Dennis Haskins, best known for playing beleaguered Bayside High principal Richard Belding on the seminal and multiple-Emmy-Award-Winning television series "Saved By The Bell" (1989 to 1993), as well as its unwanted stepchild of a follow-up, "Saved By The Bell: The New Class" (1993 - 2000). Both shows, of course, focused on the harsh, often graphic, and always brutal day-to-day life in an inner-city school, ruled by student and murderous drug-lord, Samuel "Screech" Powers. Link, to more info, and Link to a classic internet page of beauty, including very serious discussion of the "Tori/Kelly-Jessie Paradox"). And hey, Dennis is now appearing at a college campus near you! Link

Don Willmott says

So Dennis Miller is taped on the SBTB stage. Neat. I'm sure the ghost of Screech was hovering nearby.

People with Series 2 TiVos can record your Dennis Miller appearance by going to this link.

If someone can post a video file, that would be great for those of us with no TV.

Update 2: The uber-cool Matt Haughey says:

I uploaded a 12 minute segment of tonight's show, saved as a 220Mb MPEG2 stream. Due to size, it's only available via BT from my server.

BlogHer Conference '05 will provide an open, inclusive forum to:

1. Discuss the role of women within the larger blog community
2. Examine the developing (and debatable) code of blogging ethics
3. Discover how blogging is shrinking the world and amplifying the voices of women worldwide

Update: Marc sez, "Me and my friends did it years before, though ours was made mostly of wood, textured and painted to look like metal."

On his nerve.com blog, check out these older "making of" posts for more detail on how some of his previous work was staged and processed: Link (which contains a bunch of shots composited) and Link (to another entry which has a nifty before/after rollover) Free site reg. required on the nerve blog, and full-on nudie pix there require a paid site membership. The preview gallery on claytoncubitt.com does not require site registration. None of this is worksafe.

At a time when studies show the credibility of the media in steady decline and sensational stories make headline news, there are journalists and news organizations whose ethical decision-making processes set new standards for the keepers of the public trust. The 2005 Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism will honor The Denver Post, freelance journalist Kevin Sites, and Arizona State’s independent student newspaper The State Press for exemplifying the highest standards of their profession in the face of political or economic pressures.(...)

Kevin Sites, a freelance photojournalist for NBC and military pool reporter, is the Payne Awards’ professional winner for his “courage, deliberate thinking and outreach” after filming a U.S. soldier killing an unarmed Iraqi man. Sites, an experienced war reporter, shared the videotape with the military, then worked with NBC to create a well-nuanced story that aired 48 hours after the incident. As was required, the footage was also given to others in his pool. When he became a lightning rod for those reacting to the story and for foreign journalists using the footage without context, he responded by using a web blog (www.kevinsites.net) to explain his decision and its reasoning to the public. The judges felt the blog and reactions to it added a new dimension to the story.

In Israel, a vibrant punk scene has emerged in a society torn apart by the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. In four candid video interviews, FRONTLINE/World reporter and filmmaker Liz Nord talks to the musicians driving the movement. Like other young Israelis, the punk rockers have been affected personally by the conflict. They have fought as soldiers and lost friends and fans killed by suicide bombers. Bands from both ends of the political spectrum use their music to comment on Israeli society. Others make music just to have fun. But all of them agree that punk rock represents freedom.

(Click image for diagram of HAL 3.) Two control systems interact to help the wearer stand, walk and climb stairs. A "bio-cybernic" system uses bioelectric sensors attached to the skin on the legs to monitor signals transmitted from the brain to the muscles. It can do this because when someone intends to stand or walk, the nerve signal to the muscles generates a detectable electric current on the skin's surface. These currents are picked up by the sensors and sent to the computer, which translates the nerve signals into signals of its own for controlling electric motors at the hips and knees of the exoskeleton. It takes a fraction of a second for the motors to respond accordingly, and in fact they respond fractionally faster to the original signal from the brain than the wearer's muscles do...

"It's like riding on a robot, rather than wearing one," says (University of Tsukuba researcher Yoshiyuki) Sankai.

* Music: sales last year were down 21% from their peak in 1999
* Television: network TV's audience share has fallen by a third since 1985
* Radio: listenership is at a 27-year low
* Newspapers: circulation peaked in 1987, and the decline is accelerating
* Magazines: total circulation peaked in 2000 and is now back to 1994 levels (but a few premier titles are bucking the trend!)
* Books: sales growth is lagging the economy as whole

La Crosse firefighter Mark Smith, 48, helped spearhead the cat-hunting proposal. He wants Wisconsin to declare free-roaming wild cats an unprotected species, just like skunks or gophers. Anyone with a small-game license could shoot the cats at will....

Every year in Wisconsin alone, an estimated 2 million wild cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds, according to state officials. Despite the astounding numbers, Smith's plan has been met with fierce opposition from cat lovers.

Critics of Smith's idea organized Wisconsin Cat-Action Team and developed a Web site - dontshootthecat.com. Some argue it is better to trap wild cats, spay or neuter them, before releasing them.

The sound identification could be coupled with chemical or optical sensors, so that if exhaust fumes are detected at the same time as a weapons-like "bang," the system would identify a truck backfiring rather than a weapon discharging. The Chicago and Los Angeles County police departments are testing the system to help fight crime in areas that are low on beat officers. Safety Dynamics received a Small Business Innovation Research Phase I award from the Navy in 2004 and is working on adapting its system for a lightweight mobile version that could be hand carried into the field.

Of course, the Chinese and the Japanese could decide that the costs of the falling dollar are too great, and suddenly stop (or, at least, cut back sharply) their lending to the United States. This would lead to a so-called "hard landing" for the U.S. economy: high inflation, punitive interest rates, collapsing stock prices and housing prices. It would also lead to bedlam for China and Japan. Their best customers would effectively be unable to afford their wares. To paraphrase John Paul Getty: If you owe the bank a hundred dollars, you've got a problem. If you owe the bank three trillion dollars, the bank's got a problem.

A process called electrospinning makes fibers out of an electrically charged solution containing dissolved polymers and sticks them onto an electrically charged surface. The fibers fall randomly but form a uniform layer, even on a three-dimensional surface. "It's sort of like spray-on Gore-Tex," said Dr. Heidi Schreuder-Gibson of the Army Natick Soldier Center. "It's very breathable, just like skin."

Today Mike spends 18 hours a day spreading the gospel of P.E. "I'm submerged in penis," he says with a laugh. "It's my full-time job." He's filmed a DVD of his self-designed exercises -- "Matters of Size: The Ultimate Guide to Penis Enlargement" -- that will be distributed in a few weeks by Vivid Entertainment. His Web site Matters of Size has 40,000 registered users and offers paying members videos, diagrams and one-on-one tutelage over private message and e-mail -- along with softcore pinup shots of his girlfriend Jen, a teacher and former dancer he met in rehab four years ago.

Dubbed PhysX, the chip will enable things like gelatinous creatures whose bodies shift shape like a liquid, crumpling fenders in car crashes, massive explosions with 10,000 pieces of debris, clothing that hangs realistically, and lava or blood that flows like the real thing.

Update: Thomas sez,

This card could lead into an interesting political conflict.

A huge amount of fast and accurate physics calculations is needed not only for games, but also for development of modern weapons - calculations of laminar and turbulent flow are important for everything from an implosion of a nuclear payload to an aerodynamic behavior of its hypersonic carrier, to design of fuel-air explosives. (Which, actually, is easier than games, as you can go out for lunch while you run your calculations - something unthinkable in the real-time world of computer games.)

In the civilian world, the universities will be extremely happy for this card. A device geared for normal consumer market, for normal consumer price, will make a substantial number of cash-strapped theoretical physicists happy as clams.

Also, projects like the Protein Folding, are prime candidates for harnessing the power of this kind of an accelerator.

Not even mentioning bruteforcing of passwords, a task well-known for its parallelism-friendliness.

"The difficulty with keyboards is you can't pour bleach on them," Dr. Allison McGeer, an infection control specialist from Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, tells The Canadian Press. "They don't work so well when you do that.''

She noted another Toronto-area hospital had to throw out their keyboards when it was battling an outbreak of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, or VRE.

"We could not get the keyboards clean," McGeer says.

Update: Nym sez, " there are washable keyboards out there, like the "foldable keyboard". They have no places for dirt and germs to hide, and can literally be put in the sink and washed with soap and water without worry. For the past two years, my camp ROAMnet has been using these keyboards at Burning Man with our public terminals. They're sealed so no dust can get in them and when we get home, they're easy to clean. They're not the nicest keyboards for extended use, but they're cheap and good for public situations." (we've blogged this)

Update 2: A reader directs us to "a virtual keyboard that can be projected on any surface." (we've blogged this, too)

Update 3: Mikey sez, "My girlfriend is a medical student and when they use the computers in the pathology department they wear rubber gloves, treating the computer the same as the pieces of human they are cutting up."

...[B]y measuring what people actually hear, the technologies will strengthen advertisers' incentives to deliver ads in ways that defeat the standard measures we use to skip or avoid them. No longer will advertisers measure attempts to deliver audio ads; now they'll measure success in delivering sound waves to our ears. So we'll hear more and more audio ads in captive-audience situations like elevators, taxicabs, and doctors' waiting rooms. Won't that be nice?

As well-versed in anthropology and philosophy as he is in design, [he] shot to fashion fame in the early 90s with a clear mission: to put the creative process itself on view. And now it is again in a two-floor showcase at the Groninger Museum near Amsterdam, where the Turkish-Cypriot's most important sartorial studies will be on display from April 17 to September 4.

Update: Auke Ypma says,

I saw the article about Hussein Chalayan. While reading it I noticed that he's on display at the Groninger museum. I had a look at their site and here it is. It's in duch though ,so use the babelfish. Thought it might be interesting for some people. A. p.s. Groningen is about a three hours drive north from Amsterdam.

Brazil (Group of Friends of Development - FOD): Highlight that this document is supported by 14 Member States. Recall WIPO General Assembly proposal. Development Agenda concerning IP issues.

New document is not a subsitute for previous document but complementary. It is lengthy. Not exhaustive document. Further develops 4 aspects of our proposals from last year. All of the 14 countries have reserved the right to further elaborate on different aspects.

It is both conceptual and pragmatic. It contains conceptual elaborations -- development concerns broaden IP system -- broaden and strengthen WIPO's role, giving WIPO a more development-oriented focus. Issues in this document affect Southern constitutencies, academics, NGOs. This document is a platform for substantive debate on WIPO. This is why we welcome ad hoc accreditation of NGOs. Document also contains concrete proposals -- we welcome constructive engagement from other WIPO Member States.

FOD -- relationship between development and intellectual property. How is development affected by enforcement and implementation of IP agreements? We could work on a consensual outcome that we could forward to the General Assembly. We resist attempts to fragmentize the components.

Central element; broad perspective on relationship between IP and development. We seek to keep this proposal before the IIM. It is important that this proposal be treated holistically; it's not appropriate to separate out aspects of it, but we have broken it into sections to allow for discussion of the 4 elements.

1) Mandate and Governance: we support a more "UN" agency type role for WIPO. We support openness and transparency -- all voices should be heard at WIPO, including IGOs and NGOs.

2) Norm-setting: Development oriented benchmarks. Norm-setting should not be separated from development.

3) Technical Assistance

4) Technology Transfer

We are looking for the April 19, 1965 issue of Electronics Magazine (contains "Moore's Law" article by Gordon Moore, Intel co-founder).

$10,000 for mint condition copy! Will choose based on best condition - take good photos!

"Back in January, Xeni posted about a giant 150-km long iceberg running loose in the Antarctic. As predicted, it smashed into a natural "pier" where it got stuck for months. Well guess what -- it's on the run again. The ESA website has satellite images and a little animation."

Previously: Demolition Derby on Ice

"This year the contest involved changing the two batteries in a torch. The winning team did it in 125 steps." Link, 3.4MB Quicktime Link (Thanks, Robert!)

"Dating from the sixties and compiled by George Maciunas (1931-1978, founder of Fluxus), this is a document consisting of 37 short films ranging from 10 seconds to 10 minutes in length. These films (some of which were meant to be screened as continuous loops) were shown as part of the events and happenings of the New York avant-garde. Made by the artists listed above, they celebrate the ephemeral humor of the Fluxus movement."

My husband recently turned me on to this fabulous New York photographer, Naomi Harris. Her portraits of humans are shot within a public context--a Rubiks Cube competition, a gathering of swingers, a Miami Beach retirement community, spring break, a porn star academy--and expose the paradoxical relationship between the individual and the system they are acting within. She captures moments that brilliantly juxtapose the fantasy stage drop with the banal details that undermine its desired effect. She is one of a rare few female photographers to document the porn world, though, frankly, the art world’s current obsession with the adult industry is starting to wear extremely thin. I found her Rubik’s cute, retirement photos, and spring break coverage more intriguing. Not (all are) office safe, unless you work somewhere kinky.

Now it may seem like Fred and Siva are a little overmatched here, what with the copyright maximalists being represented 2-1 to the copyfighters, but I figger it's a fair handicap: after all, the copyfighters have the unfair advantage of being truthful, reasonable, and committed to the public interest. Link (Thanks, Siva!)

Online journalism has friends -- lots of them. Jack Balkin, Eugene Volokh, Feedster, Gawker Media, Joi Ito, Gothamist, Rebecca MacKinnon, Groklaw, Jay Rosen, Groklaw, Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a. "Instapundit,"), Markos Moulitsas (a.k.a. "Kos") and many, many more filed a joint "friend-of-the-court" brief (PDF) today supporting the journalists in Apple v. Does -- the case in which Apple Computer is seeking to unmask online journalists' confidential sources for articles about forthcoming Apple products. They argue that journalism is a verb, not a noun -- to adopt a functional test that "will not impede journalists' use of the Internet to report news by limiting their constitutional protections when they publish there."

The silver sedan, shaped like a whale with its mouth gaping, had been sitting in a field in the US for nearly 30 years before madcap Brit Andy Saunders snapped it up.

He has spent the last 12 years of his life doing up the motor that was a disaster from its launch in 1957.

Whenever I read an article about a cure for peanut allergies (my daughter has a life threatening nut allergy), the articles always quote some researcher as saying it'll happen "in five years."

Curious about the popularity of "in five years," I googled the following terms:

"in two years" -- 1,320,000 results

"in five years" -- 1,420,000

"in ten years" -- 584,000

"in fifteen years" -- 59,000

"in twenty years" -- 176,000

"in fifty years" -- 74,300

"in a hundred years" -- 77,500

"in a thousand years" -- 56,300

"in ten thousand years" -- 3,370 (first hit is Cory!)

"in a hundred thousand years" -- 828

"in a million years" -- 202,000

"in a billion years" -- 5,410

"in a trillion years" -- 933

"in a quadrillion years" -- 51

"in a googol years" -- 38

"in a googolplex years" -- 2

"never" -- 296,000,000

"Never" wins by a huge margin, but "in five years" comes in second.

UPDATE: "in one year" barely beats "in five years" -- 1,490,000

Reader comment: Mark says: "I am a diabetic and have been for about 15 years. You get about one or two miracle / fantastic solutions promised for some facet of diabetes every year. Pancreatic implants, eyeball blood-glucose monitoring, nano-whatnot. I have also noticed that they are always promised in 4 yearly timeframes. Enquiring to a scientist friend of mine, he pointed out that this is the life-cycle of a research grant. At the end of which, all bets are off."

He says the client ended up using the copy!

Windows on the Bay is the finest restaurant on the Jersey Shore. We are the alpha and the omega in seashore dining and freshly prepared gourmet seafood. No other restaurant in New Jersey looks out over such a commanding view. We are truly the finest of all possible restaurants.

Our chefs have all been trained at the finest schools in the world, and they put every ounce of that training to work for you. We create each made-to-order dish fresh and put every ounce of our considerable skill and knowledge to work to make you the best meal possible.

Our highly-trained wait staff are here to serve your every need. They are ready to bend their skills and energy to every table, every serving; you will be waited on as you have never been waited on before.

We are sure you will come back for more. Once you've come to Windows on the Bay, you will never want to leave.

But there's a problem that all cordless phones share, no matter what frequency they use: low volume. I'm not hard of hearing, but I often have difficulty understanding a caller. I don't have a low-volume problem with corded phones, especially the old Bell Labs rotary phones, which were designed and tested by the world's greatest acoustic experts.

I went to Fry's on Friday to pick up some blank DVD's and I ended up walking down the phone aisle, just to see what they were selling. One phone immediately stood out, because it was white and had a big red light on it: the Uniden EZI996 900 MHz Cordless Phone. It's designed for the visually or hearing impaired. It cost $40. It has a volume boost switch on the handset, as well as an adjustable volume control. I bought it.

It's the best cordless phone I've ever used. You can crank the volume way up. The sound quality is great. I also like the fact that it's white and has the blinking red light, because it's easy to find when it's ringing. The display is large-type, which is useful whether or not your vision is impaired.

All phones should be so well designed.
Link

By a month, I was drinking the juice of upward of 60 crushed pods per day--swallowing gallons of liquid and pissing out about $300 a week worth of tea matter. Bowl after bowl of blissful narcotic bloat that I sucked down with a silly straw.

Often, late into a session, I’d get that uncontrollable opiate itch.

Raking my skin with a giant plastic comb seemed to help. Occasionally, I’d bleed or accidentally scrape a piece of a mole right off.

The thing is, heroin gets you addicted to heroin. But opium is 40 to 50 different alkaloids, meaning 40 to 50 different drugs I was becoming addicted to.

Reader comment: Dan says: "Peter Thompson, the opium tea guy, seems to be continuing where Dr. Thompson left off. Here's a link I found to another drug tale with the same byline."

Reader comment: Bob sends the following screen shot of Google ads for poppies that is running with the article (Click image for enlargement).

I've seen enough lorem ipsum dummy text to last me a lifetime. From now on, I'm going to use GreekMachine's Hillbilly greeking:

Promenade cowpoke dumb rustle plumb, highway, redblooded, ails tobaccee, has, tonic buy. Plug-nickel caboodle hoosegow caught hobo grandpa aunt. Go hauled hillbilly beer hollarin', cow truck. Ain't shed uncle, hillbilly skanky wild. Mule gritts catfish, drinkin' heapin' fer.

Ever weren't beer rottgut chitlins tornado maw good saw.

Butt, barefoot gonna tornado, whomp salesmen. Chitlins right salesmen pappy everlastin' round-up gonna barn no liniment skinned dumb, grandpa.

Erskine Caldwell couldn't have come up with anything better than that.

You can also use the site to generate greeking in the following styles: Marketing, Matrix, Metropolitan, Pseudo German, and Techno Babble.
Link (via Cosmo Doogood's Urban Almanac)

Reader comment: Matt Round says: "Hillbilly greeking? Pah, what you need is my Text Generator, developed after years of painstaking research [cough] (Bizarrely, I've had people think it's a serious tool and ask if they can buy the source code; if I was slightly less scrupulous I probably could've made a few quid)."

Antioch New England Graduate School, whose students were photographing the refinery, has announced that it "is working with Marylee Orr, Executive Director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), to create a fund to help Mr. Fontenot make up his lost salary and continue to work for environmental justice in Louisiana through a nonprofit organization of his choice." The Louisiana environmental community is also looking into what else it can to defend the right to stand on a sidewalk and talk to students. How sad.

But Hughes's work is much subtler and more nuanced than that, and was genuinely surprising, engaging and engrossing.

A couple years ago, my friend John Gilmore -- who advocates for marijuana law reform -- introduced me to the idea of "cognitive liberty," the freedom to choose your state of mind. The cognitive liberty cause encompasses the movements to legalize "recreational" drugs and to limit the power of the state to subject "mentally ill" people to involuntary pharmaceutical therapy (and, when it is still practiced, involuntary physical therapies such as lobotomies and electroshock).

Cognitive liberty resonates strongly for me. Like other forms of personal liberty, it is not without its perils -- when friends of mine were involuntarily medicated during acute incidents of schizophrenia, mania or depression, the interventions seemed like a good trade-off at the time (rampaging, irrational, out of control friends who are treated with meds that make them capable of reasoning with those around them are good poster children for "cognitive coercion"), and friends who've fallen down the well of addiction and ended up with ruined lives or even lives cut short are a strong warning against unbridled cognitive liberty.

But then there are friends whose touch of madness sends them on flights of brilliance, friends whose casual glass of wine, joint or hallucinogen use have made them happier, better adjusted, and more creative and fulfilled. What's more, my friends who've ODed, been committed, or who live with addiction haven't been helped by prohibition -- far from it. Some are in jail, some are medicated insensible, some are living lives of dangerous poverty.

The idea of cognitive liberty is very tempting, but I have an instinct that there's an approach to it that is grounded not in libertarianism, but in Canadian/European-style social democracy.

"Citizen Cyborg" takes the social democratic approach not just to cognitive liberty, but to the parcel of questions that follow on from it as technology allows us to charge our minds and bodies. When we can choose our children's' sex, modify our genomes to eliminate some forms of mental and physical disability, when we can modify our bodies and minds to improve them beyond the normal human baseline , when we can even use technology to make dolphins and great apes as smart as precocious children, what then?

Surely the ability to determine your own genome, the ability to choose to modify your physical self and to make the choices for your children are as fundamental civil liberties as the right to speak and assemble and otherwise author your own destiny.

But the traditional "transhumanist" movement has come out of the libertarian right, advocates of an unbridled market without government intervention. And much of the opposition to transhumanism hasn't just come from the religious right, but from the left, too -- lefties who see transhumanism as likely to produce a troubling, divisive caste system, or to make us all beholden to corporate interests like Monsanto who bind us to subscribing to patented GM lifeforms that we require to sustain our lifestyles.

Hughes's remarkable achievement in "Citizen Cyborg" is the fusion of social democratic ideals of tempered, reasoned state intervention to promote equality of opportunity with the ideal of self-determination inherent in transhumanism. Transhumanism, Hughes convincingly argues, is the sequel to humanism, and to feminism, to the movements for racial and gender equality, for the fight for queer and transgender rights -- if you support the right to determine what consenting adults can do with their bodies in the bedroom, why not in the operating theatre?

Much of this book is taken up with scathing rebuttal to the enemies of transhumanism -- Christian lifestyle conservatives who've fought against abortion, stem-cell research and gay marriage; as well as deep ecologist/secular lefty intelligentsia who fear the commodification of human life. He dismisses the former as superstitious religious thugs who, a few generations back, would happily decry the "unnatural" sin of miscegenation; to the latter, he says, "You are willing to solve the problems of labor-automation with laws that ensure a fair shake for working people -- why not afford the same chance to life-improving techno-medicine?"

The humanist transhuman is a political stance I'd never imagined, but having read "Citizen Cyborg," it seems obvious and natural. Like a lot of basically lefty geeks, I've often felt like many of my ideals were at odds with both the traditional left and the largely right-wing libertarians. "Citizen Cyborg" squares the circle, suggest a middle-path between them that stands foursquare for the improvement of the human condition through technology but is likewise not squeamish about advocating for rules, laws and systems that extend a fair opportunity to those less fortunate (say, by offering special patent rules to the developing world allowing poor nations' scientists to freely reuse the patented pharmaceutical inventions of the rich north to solve local needs.)

Hughes is a Buddhist whose children struggle with genetically-influenced disorders like ADD and Tourette's, and his life seems much taken-up with the cause of transhumanist humanism. He is the executive director of the World Transumanist Association, and he teaches health policy at Hartford, CT's Trinity College. The work is sprinkled with references to science fiction and is very concerned with the way that transhumanist ideas were prefigured in the genre and have leaked back into modern sf. I don't know that he's convinced me to become a transhumanist activist -- I feel like the work I do with EFF works to safeguard a lot of rights dear to the transhumanist heart anyway -- but the analytical tools this book has provided me with have made me re-examine my own political identity. Book Link, References Link

The highest incidence of cellular interruptus was found in Germany and Spain, where 22 percent of users interrupted sex to answer their cell phones; the lowest was in Italy, where only 7 percent reported doing so. In the U.S., the figure was 15 percent, the magazine said, citing a study conducted by BBDO Worldwide and Proximity Worldwide.

Soy beans, from which tofu are made, are a crop that's abundantly produced in the U.S. and has a very high content of protein," Li said. Soy protein is inexpensive and renewable, but it lacks the unique amino acid with phenolic hydroxyl groups that provide adhesive properties. Li's research group was able to add these amino acids to soy protein, and make it work like a mussel-protein adhesive. Then they began to develop other strong and water-resistant wood adhesives from renewable natural materials using mussel protein as a model...

One of these patented adhesives is currently cost-competitive with a commonly used urea-formaldehyde resin, researchers say, but does not use formaldehyde or other toxic chemicals...

"The plywood we make with this adhesive can be boiled for several hours and the adhesive holds as strong as ever," Li said. "Regular plywood bonded with urea-formaldehyde resins could never do that."

Prof (Mikhail) Sokolshchik, who has specialised in microsurgery and phalloplasty - plastic surgery for male sexual organs - for 13 years, said: "We've carried out thousands of operations on patients, ranging from female-to-male transsexuals to the treatment of victims of horrific accidents, and have a wealth of experience in amputation, reconstruction and surgical implants.

"But this operation was highly risky because it was an amputation, reconstruction and reattachment in one go. If it had gone wrong, the patient would have ended up with no genitalia at all."

...[A]vatars take the place of players and action is transformed, play by play into a cartoon like environment. This includes the roar of the crowd, scoreboard, the pitch, the strike and trajectory of the ball.

This isn't a game, by the way, but a cartoon version of a live game, produced by Craftmax's Digital Stadium and broadcast to DoCoMo 3G mobiles.

In order to ensure that people have a proper resting place when they die, officials say they are trying to find the most efficient solution.

One option being considered is high-rise columbaria. There are no details yet of how high these might be or where they will be built but time is running out.

Jardin is a very specific sort of rising star, the type born of the 21st century whose celebrity is fluid and self-made — she's a journalist, a blogger, a TV personality, an artist and an entrepreneur. She is, at once, a member of the media and a media darling, who translates light-speed cultural shifts as they happen and looks great doing it. Jardin is the child of artists who revels in the Internet's infinite reach, but fights ambivalence about its impermanent legacy. She wears Gucci and drives a convertible Mercedes, but sees herself as an outsider.

"I want to see how far I can push it," Jardin says, "before they realize I'm a nerd."

Update: Jeremy Joseph forwards this excerpt from a response Xeni sent to pho list members discussing the story:

I'm humbled and grateful, and more than a little disoriented. Feels like that feeling you have when you step out of the vomit comet, after floating around in microgravity for a while. A little woozy. A little drunk on weightlessness and thin air.

It would be irresponsible of me not to clarify two things right away. First, the kevinsites.net project mentioned in the story was hardly something I created singlehandedly for our tireless, intrepid correspondent friend. JP put in a lot of time, hard work, and sharp thinking to raise that digital barn -- as did other folks like David Ulevitch, who has donated hosting for the project since day one.

Secondly, as flattering as the phrase might be -- I'm no "self-made woman." Until they sell those handy self-cloning kits we've all been waiting for (and I'm keeping an eye out for 'em on engadget or gizmodo), that's just not possible. Each of us are the product of families and mentors. Communities of people who gave because the act of giving was imperative. People who gave when they didn't have to, even when the act might go unnoticed, or come at personal cost. People who gave because generosity is part of what makes us truly human beings, and is of itself a life-affirming act.

Xeni says:

For the record, the note I sent to pho (re-posted here on Boing Boing) was a response to members' comments -- I wasn't responding to the text of the story itself. I was attempting to clarify statements made in that forum by subscribers, not implying any lack of thoroughness in the reporter (Gina Piccalo)'s work.

Well, as you can see below, the actual note is not as offensive as "ha ha, aren't they funny," but it sure does fall short of the kind of ideal response you'd want to send a language activist.

I have it on good authority (as I cant understand a word of it myself!!!) that this e-mail is asking what we think about using the Welsh Language in Wales or something like that.

* The file starts with a 4-byte signature, "WMMP"

* Next is a 4-byte longword giving the total file-size in bytes. This includes the file header, i.e. it's exactly what you'd see displayed in a directory listing of the file.

* Next is the duration of the track in milliseconds, again in a 4-byte longword.

* The third 4-byte longword gives the number of frames in the file. If you're trying to write a file to the device using your own code, I recommend ripping bits out of XMMS or mp3info to get this number, as I had difficulty locating a library that would calculate it without actually decoding the entire file.

* There are 16 bytes of magic: there's the 0x08 0x9f 0x9e 0xff sequence that occurs in the PBLIST file, followed by 0x01, and padded out to 16 bytes with 0x00. I've no idea what any of this is but it seems unchanging.

* The rest of the file is the obfuscated MP3 data, with no ID3 frames - strip those out before you encode or your file will not play in the device.

Father Christmas, give us some money
We'll beat you up if you make us annoyed
Father Christmas, give us some money
Don't mess around with those silly toys

But give my daddy a job 'cause he needs one
He's got lots of mouths to feed
But if you've got one, I'll have a machine gun
So I can scare all the kids down the street

Update: Gavin sez, "those Christmas lyrics are not alternate Internationale lyrics, but the words to the Kinks' "Father Christmas" (I think they might be somewhat mangled, but I don't have a copy of the song here to check). They were suggested on that blog post as being in the spirit of the Internationale rather than new verses for it."

The site went offline in 2002, but an active fan community has kept the Troopers alive, making their own new clothing articles, even building complete clones of the Troopers engine in Flash.

Now my pal Alice Taylor, the creator of storTroopers, has brought them back to life, with whole new wardrobes -- goth, fashionista and civilian -- and just like last time around she's taking requests for new outfits and accessories. This time, though, the whole thing is released under a CC license, so you've got explicit permission to go on remixing and reusing your Trooper as you see fit. Link (Thanks, Alice!)

Although royalty rates vary between artists, the consensus estimate is that the combined royalties earned by both the performer and the songwriter stand at approximately 12 percent. In fact, Sanderson Taylor, a leading Canadian music law firm, maintains that the actual royalty earned by the artists is typically even lower, since the producer’s royalty is taken from the artists’ compensation and many contracts do not provide for a full royalty for CD sales [21].

Assuming artists receive the full 12 percent royalty, the annual royalty loss attributable to music downloading in Canada is about C$655,000 (12 percent of C$5.5 million). For those that claim that the full industry loss should be counted, the annual lost royalty for Canadian artists stands at C$2 million...

Given the tens of millions of dollars that the Canadian government spends annually to support the creation of Canadian music [23], it is apparent that the relative impact of lost royalties due to file–sharing pales by comparison.

I wrote an open letter to AA asking why they asked me for this info, and what TSA rule they were operating under when they did so.

Imagine my surprise when I got a reply from AA telling me that they'd been telling the press that my "specific behaviors" had triggered the secondary screening and that I had been told that they would give me the information they were taking on my friends' names and addresses when I left the counter. The latter is a flat out lie -- not a misunderstanding or a grey area of the truth, a total and utter fabrication. The former is intriguing -- what behaviors "triggered the secondary screening?" Moreover, AA told me that this was a case of a screener who misunderstood the policy, but if that's so, why did her supervisor back her up?

So I wrote a response, pointing out all of this and repeating my unanswered questions about the screening procedure.

On Friday, I got a terse reply from AA, telling me that a Federal Aviation Administration rule forbid them discussing the specifics of their procedures. That's a weird answer, since nearly all of my questions had nothing to do with the specifics of their procedures, and since the FAA no longer oversees much in the way of airline security, having been deprecated in favor of the Transport Security Agency.

My latest letter points all of this out. The FAA may tell them not to tell me which behaviors trigger secondary screening (ah, security through obscurity, I feel safer already), but it surely doesn't prevent them from explaining why they issued a press-release that lied about what happened at the counter, nor does it require them not to disclose their privacy policy, which they are required under British law to have and to produce on demand. And of course, it's not a law if it's not written down and subject to inspection, so they should certainly be able to tell me the number, name or reference for this regulation.

In your letter of the 22nd, you say, "Federal Aviation Administration regulations prohibit us from discussing the details of security measures so as to avoid compromising the purpose and integrity of the process."

This came as a surprise to me: I was under the impression that the FAA had basically ceded security administration to the TSA. Indeed, it was the TSA which the AA representatives at Gatwick cited when they asked me for a written dossier on my friends' names and addresses.

It's good to hear that this is the FAA and not the TSA. However, I have never heard of an FAA regulation that prohibits airlines from sharing details of their security procedures with the public.

Which leads me to ask:

* What is the name, number or reference for this regulation, please?

Update: Adam sez, " I follow-up to Cory's letter to American Airlines with one of my own, and suggest that others do the same. The text is posted to make it easy for others to do the same."

I have been an American Airlines customer for over 15 years. However, I am very concerned that you seem to have a different set of security regulations in place for AAdvantage Platinum members, and this raises a number of questions for me:

Update 2: Michael sez, "the United States refused to allow a flight destined for Mexico City to pass over U.S. airspace because two of the passengers were on the 'no-fly' terrorist watchlist. So the plane ended up turning back to Amsterdam - and 278 passengers ended up spending 11 hours in the air for nothing."