As Mark posted in March, BB pal Kirsten Anderson, proprietor of the pioneering Roq la Rue gallery in Seattle and editor of the mindbending book "Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art," was busy curating a show with same title for the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center in Pueblo, Colorado. The show opened a few days ago and received a great review in the Colorado Springs Independent. So many of my favorite contemporary artists have pieces in the exhibit, like Tim Biskup, Joe Coleman, Don Ed Hardy, Mark Ryden, Isabel Samaras, and Gary Baseman. (Seen here, Baseman's "Dumb Luck V.") I wish I could see the show! From the review:

Kirsten Anderson, owner and curator of Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery and exhibit partner, succinctly if simply wraps words around the basics of the genre in her statement: "This art, while giving a nod of respect to the Great Masters, surrealism, dada, the Pre-Raphaelites, futurism and vintage graphic design, turned around and gave them a hefty kick in the ass..."

Pop Surrealism's honest, sometimes brutal criticisms might leave some exurbanites dumbfounded. How does a tripped-out painting of a communist child saddling Barbie's horse reflect American culture? Search your commercialized soul inside this exhibit, where the Sangre boldly and very commendably gives credence to what artist Robert Williams calls "one of the most aggressive, vital and overlooked art movements since Pop Art."

Link

Responding to my post yesterday about a lesser panda that can stand like a human, my Fortean friend Loren Coleman points to this lovely photo of a "meeting of meerkats." (Link to bigger image.) Link to more about meerkats

mind control
creep
bellyfull
sock monkey
foreign exchange student
not my type
bangcubes
ah pook is here
niiiiiccce
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

Library officials in a Chicago suburb plan to scan and record visitor fingerprints, purportedly to prevent unauthorized persons from using library computers. Way to make libraries a more happyfun haven of knowledge, guys!

The scanners _ to be installed on 130 library computers this summer _ will verify the identity of computer users. Library officials said they wanted to tighten computer access because many people borrow library cards and pass codes from friends or family to log on. The technology also will help the library implement a new policy that allows parents to put filters on their children's' accounts, officials said.

But privacy advocates have criticized the plan, which would make Naperville only the second library system in the nation to use fingerprint-scanning technology, according to the American Library Association. "We take people's fingerprints because we think they might be guilty of something, not because they want to use the library," said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union in Illinois.

Link

Jeff sez, "A few months back, Cory blogged about a tutorial that showed how to do rotoscoped light saber effects in digital video. Very cool, but the techniques used a bunch of expensive, fairly complex software. So, I figured I'd hack out a simple, easy-to-use one to let any George Lucas fanboy (or fangirl, for that matter) create their own effects. The result is available at the URL above, which has a short description of the project as well as links to the application and source code." Link

The Vienna streetcar system (which is excellent, efficient and clean as a whistle) has created an in-city freight service that hauls all kinds of weighty loads around town. Link (Thannks, Alex!)

Ron sez, "On May 10, 1993 a fire broke out in the Kader Toy Factory in Thailand and 189 workers died. It was the height of the Simpsons craze and the factory was producing Simpsons toys. After the fire, labor activists collected discarded toys and a melted Bart became a symbol of the tragedy. Photo from this year's commemoration of the tragedy here." Link (Thanks, Ron!)

This Japanese toilet commercial has a catchy jingle, great Aardman-style animation live actors who look for all the world like Aardman-style animation, and made me laugh aloud. 2.5MB MPEG Link, Manufacturer's site (via We Make Money Not Art)

Earlier this month, we completely creamed the motion picture studios over the Broadcast Flag, an effort to criminalize open source and win a veto over the design of electronics and PCs. Now they're floating draft legal language on the Hill that would put the entire technology industry under their thumb, turning their friends at the FCC into device-czars with jurisdiction over any technology that could be used to facilitate "indiscriminate redistribution" of movies over the Internet (monitors, PVRs, analog-to-digital converters, hard drives, etc).

EFF has an action-alert you can use to tell your elected law-maker how you feel about this. Just enter your ZIP code and click submit, or better yet, rewrite our form letter to express your outrage in your own words.

A lawmaker who breaks America's televisions and PCs has no business expecting to be re-elected. In fact, such a Congresscritter would be lucky to get away with a mere tarring and feathering.

As a constituent and a proponent of innovation, I am writing to voice my opposition to legislation that revives the FCC's proposed "Broadcast Flag" regulation (47 CFR 73.9002(b)), which was unanimously struck down on May 6th 2005 by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Broadcast Flag cripples any device capable of receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts. It makes digital TV hardware more expensive and less capable, impeding rather than accelerating the digital TV transition. Worse, it gives Hollywood movie studios a permanent veto over how members of the American public use our televisions and and forces American innovators to beg the FCC for permission before adding new features to TV.

The big media companies are threatening an HDTV boycott unless a Broadcast Flag law is passed and implemented this year. This is an empty threat. Viacom made that same threat back in 2002, yet CBS (owned by Viacom), still transmits nearly all of its prime-time shows in HDTV, even without the Broadcast Flag. For that matter, even if broadcasters like CBS aren't willing to provide programming for digital television, there are plenty of innovative new content creators who will.

Link

This week, the Canadian Recording Industry Association had its bid to indiscriminately force ISPs to reveal their subscribers' personal information on the mere say-so of a rightsholder. Seeking to contain the crushing defeat of justice, the head of the CRIA gave a press interview where he attempted to spin this as some kind of victory for his side. Michael Geist has fact-checked his ass, revealing the lies and delusions that this shill told the press:

"The judge has determined that uploading, downloading, it's illegal."

Actually, the court did no such thing. Concluding its copyright discussion at paragraph 54, the court says:

"I make no such findings here and wish to make it clear that if this case proceeds further, it should be done on the basis that no findings to date on the issue of infringement have been made."

Link

Replacementdoc.com is a site that hosts the documentation for thousands of video games. An anonymous reader writes, "The goal of replacementdocs is to preserve and archive game documentation for years to come. They are a community of gamers who appreciate the importance of game documentation and know the frustration that comes when this documentation is not available.

"They have been around for several years now and currently offer Acrobat PDF downloads of over 2000 different game manauals for various platforms. I know they have secured explicit permission to host these manuals from some game publishers and are working on getting permission from others. Some game publishers, like Atari, actually link to replacementdocs from their technical support website." Link

Excerpt:

# When the leader says “Everything’s fine, go wait on the LAVA PLANET", be suspicious.
# Coruscant OB/GYN technology leaves something to be desired.
# Don’t forget what happened to your mother in the last movie, or there will be extra exposition.

Link

Eccentric Texan archaeologist Vendyl Jones--often incorrectly named as the inspiration for Indiana Jones--claims that this summer he will finally excavate the real Ark of the Covenant from its hiding place in the Judean Desert. From Arutz Sheva:

Throughout the many years of his quest, Jones has been in close contact and under the tutelage of numerous Rabbis and Kabbalists. Extremely knowledgeable in Torah, Talmud and Kabbalah sources dealing with Holy Temple issues, Jones has now received permission from both known and secret Kabbalists to finally uncover the lost ark...

He believes the ark will be discovered by Tisha B'Av (Aug. 14), a day of repeated tragedy in Jewish history. Most notably, it is the anniversary of the destruction of both the First and Second Holy Temples.

Link (via MetaFilter)

For today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I visit the annual E3 electronic game convention to report on the movie industry's increasingly tight link with the gaming biz, and current tension between game makers and Hollywood talent unions. I wandered the LA Convention Center halls with geek pals Sean, Macki, Jake -- and Wil Wheaton, the blogger and actor (film, TV, and stage) who is also a celebrity in the world of video game voice-overs.

Link to archived audio. Link to more archived "Xeni Tech" segments on NPR.

Shown here: after a long day of booth babes and nerd herds, Wil and I collapsed on the floor to play video games on our phones. (image: Jacob Appelbaum)

Previously: E3 Snapshots for NPR by Jake Appelbaum, E3 snapshots by Sean Bonner

This LA Times piece points to the the truth behind Dave Chappelle's much-misreported disappearance, and introduces a new piece of media-meme jargon.

In just two weeks, Chappelle's ordeal went from celebrity train wreck to run-of-the-mill exhaustion, a sure sign that today's entertainment news cycle moves faster than the news itself. The hunger for celebrity gossip, particularly scandal, has become more insatiable than ever with the viral proliferation of media covering it, from "60 Minutes" to Internet bloggers to every cellphone camera owner on the street.

Just before the Chappelle story hit, the media had been doggedly covering two lukewarm scandals: Pat O'Brien's rehab for alcoholism and Paula Abdul's alleged affair with an "American Idol" contestant. And as Chappelle's scandal dissipates, the media is poised to move on to more fertile ground, such as Britney Spears' pregnancy and the latest rumored indiscretions of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. "Nowadays, there is no privacy," says Allan Mayer, managing director of the crisis communication firm Sitrick and Co. "Everything is played out in public view ... the more you feed it, the bigger it gets."

As a result, every story has an abbreviated life span, accelerating the demand for more news. Ultimately, this adds up to exaggerated expectations of celebrities. If they can't maintain their public persona, they're devoured for our entertainment instead. "I call it the piñata syndrome," says publicist Howard Bragman, founder of the Hollywood PR firm Bragman Nyman Cafarelli. "It's really about the media. They're only lifting you up so that they can take sticks and beat you and see what comes out."

Link (Thanks, Mark Ebner!)

More E3 snaps -- this batch from Sean Bonner. Shown here, a nifty gizmo called "TV-BE-GONE," which Lazlow (another member of our roaming nerd posse) was using to turn off all the display monitors inside the Convention Center. ROFL.
Link to photo set.

Previously: E3 Snapshots for NPR by Jake Appelbaum, and here's Mark's post about TV-B-Gone (Thanks, Pesco!).

Last night's edition of ABC World News opened with a segment about news that Star Wars: Episode III has become available on filesharing networks. I was interviewed for the piece, about whether Hollywood claims that such leaks hurt profits are well-founded.

Studio executives say the counterfeits and free downloads off the Internet threaten to undercut their industry, as it did with the music industry. But not everyone agrees.

"George Lucas and Fox are still going to make a ton of money off this film," said Jardin. "People who love this film, people who love what 'Star Wars' means are still going to go see it in the theaters."

Link to video (paid subscribers only -- teh suck!) and transcript (free, no reg required).

Previously on Boing Boing: Star Wars III online, all studio countermeasures futile, Lucas still rich

I went to the E3 Gaming expo here in Los Angeles yesterday, to file a report for NPR's "Day to Day" -- I was joined by a roaming posse of uber-nerds: Wil Wheaton, Jacob Appelbaum, Macki, and Sean Bonner. Jacob (website, blog) shot these terrific snapshots. In the image shown here, Macki laments at the "Law Enforcement Sign-In" anti-piracy booth hosted by the ESA.

Link to photo set.

At the "f blog," BB pal Jenn Shreve put together a handy comparison guide to interesting and unusual feline pets like Savannah cats (covered in a NYT article last week), cloned kitties, and robot cats that Mark posted about yesterday. Jenn's chart lists variables like cuteness, size, diet, behavioral quirks, trendiness, and persecution prospects. Link

"Can the IP Justice League save Wil Wheaton from super-villain Jack Valenti? Will they defeat his evil army of psycho culture pirates!? Whose side is Avril Lavigne REALLY on?? STAY TUNED!!!"
Link (Yeah, yeah, I know! psych!)

Futa, a lesser panda at a zoo near Tokyo, stands upright for about 10 seconds at a time. From AFP:

The two-year-old male panda stands up several times a day when "it sees something interesting", said Hiroyuki Asano, an official of Chiba Zoological Park, southeast of the capital.

"We have kept lesser pandas for nearly 20 years at this zoo, but I have not seen one like Futa, which can stand for such a long time," Asano said.

Link

Pope John Paul II's personal car--a 1975 Ford Escort GL--will be on display at the Kruse Automotive and Carriage Museum and then the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas before Kruse International auctions it off. From the Associated Press:

Kruse also sold the car for John Paul in 1996 to Illinois businessman Jim Rich during the firm's annual Labor Day weekend sale in the town about 20 miles north of Fort Wayne. Rich traveled to Rome to give his check for $102,000 to the pope.

Rich has said he's selling the car due to financial troubles at his restaurant, bar and entertainment complex in Sugar Grove, Ill.

The pope used the car when he was a cardinal in Poland and stored it after he became pope in 1978.

Link (Thanks, David "Swapdrive" Steinberg!)

UPDATE: BB reader Christopher Borresen says: "I just moved into Sugar Grove (pop. 6000) with the hope that there would be at least one decent watering hole. The only place *at all* is this "restaurant, bar and entertainment complex" which is currently shuttered. Apparently, there's a father/son battle over the club and the car may not make it to auction on time as a result. It's payday - all I wanted was a beer." Link

Peter Kinne makes wooden cases for iPods and Powerbooks, made from recycled wood from hot tubs and tables. Link (Thanks, Peter!)

It looks like the Italian mobile phone cartels are using their muscle to bust people who unlock mobile phones. You can buy this service on practically every corner in Europe. My own phone, which came from Orange, is unlocked so that I can use it with my T-Mobile SIM while I'm in the USA.

There are dimwitted apologists for this who say that you agree not to unlock your phone when you get it at a discount from the carriers: I've never made any such agreement, nor would I. I read my service contract pretty carefully and it breathes not a word of this alleged agreement.

Closely related is the even dimmer argument that mobile carriers who didn't use locks would have to charge more for their phones -- an argument in pure defiance of the actual facts on the ground: everyone who wants to unlock a phone can, and yet the mobile carriers still turn a profit while giving out discounted phones in connections with set plans.

Set plans with high cancellation fees are what make the carriers their fortune, not chickenshit SIM-locks that can be broken with a little judicious googling or by paying the corner shop a fiver.

Marco, reporting from Italy, sez, "30 people were charged in 11 regions by H3G company for unlocking handsets. Search warrants were issued, criminal charges: unlawful access to informatic systems, detention and transmission of illegal codes. In March the company prosecuted Vodafone Omnitel on unfair competition charges: Vodafone shops were actually unlocking 3G phones and encouraging operator sitch. In January three people were charged, under the same circumstances, for copyright infringement and 'evasione fiscale'. At present it's still not clear if phone unlocking is unlawful." Link (Thanks, Marco!)

Remember when Jabba the Hut caught Princess Leia and made a slave of her and dressed her in a gold bikini with a chain around her neck? Well, the Star Wars site is selling a version of that costume for your pet. This costume is recommended for dogs only. Don't miss the matching pet Darth Vader outfit.

Now, I've seen some disturbing, badly-thought-out Star Wars tchotchkes in my day, but man oh man. I am speechless. Link (Thanks, Jess!)

I just got an email from my friend Jorge Cortell, a copyfighter and academic in Spain, whom I met at the Creative Commons España launch this year.

Jorge teaches "Intellectual Property" in the Masters program at the Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV. He proposed to give a talk on the benefits of P2P and talk about the law relating to P2P and copyright in Spain. He proposed to demo what sort of legal uses one could make of copyrighted works from P2P networks, and informed the Spanish collecting society, the national police and the attorney general to let them know what he was up to.

They responded by leaning on the Dean, who cancelled Jorge's venue. Jorge booked another venue, and the Dean cancelled it. So Jorge moved his talk to the cafeteria, and delivered a five hour session to a packed house.

On May 4, the Dean ordered the director of Jorge's program to demand his resignation, which he tendered. The Vice-Dean then added insult to injury by issuing a statement saying that Jorge had never taught at the university (!), in a surreal, Stalinist purge (Jorge has taught at the University for five years).

This is a shameful act of censorship and a betrayal of the principles of academic freedom. It's a national shame that Spain's powerful collecting societies can simply order the termination of any university teacher who teaches things that displease them. Link

IZ Reloaded sez, "DJ Riko, the man behind the addictive mash-up 'Whistler's Delight' is asking fans to submit photos of them whistling. The photos will be used for the cover art of his new record."

The good people at Prank Monkey Records are planning to release a 12-inch with my "Whistler's Delight" on one side and "P-Funk is Playing at my House" on the other.

I'm putting together the cover art, and that's where you come in. I'm planning to make a collage of photos depicting people whistling, and I want you to take some and send them to me. They can be pictures of you, your friends, members of your family, your priest, your dealer, basically anyone who will play along.

Link (Thanks, IZ!)

This is an inexplicable and compelling collection of videos of people crying while they eat (pictured here: Erin, eating a soft Taleggio; a semi-firm Garrotxa, crying about a pen pal is in the hospital). Link (via Waxy)

The next Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy is coming up at Toronto's Merril Collection, the largest public science fiction reference library in the world. The conference is academic but never dry, and always includes lively and thought-provoking discussions on the field.

When: Saturday, June 4, 2005, 9:00-5:30
Where: The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, 239 College Street (at Spadina), 3rd Floor, Toronto
How much: $25 CAD ($15 CAD Students and Friends of the Merril Collection)

Guest Author: Robert Charles Wilson (The Harvest, Blind Lake, and Spin)
Guest Scholar: Veronica Hollinger (Editor, Science-Fiction Studies)

The Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy is a quasi-annual conference featuring academic papers, guest speakers, and panel discussions on all aspects of the field. The conference has been in existence in one form or another since 1995, and has hosted speakers ranging from Guy Gavriel Kay to Margaret Atwood.

Link (Thanks, John!)

Grand Theftendo is a port of Grand Theft Auto, a modern, graphics-intensive video game, to the Nintedo Entertainment System, an 8-bit game-system of relative antiquity. It's quite an amazing undertaking, funny and fun and kind of perverse. Here's a site with extensive details on the project as well as links to a Sourceforge repository of the code, so that you can modify it and create your own sequels. Link (Thanks, Nervous Pilot!)

The wonderfully named British town of Staines (there was a Siemens office there where they answered the phone "Hello, Siemans Staines!") has hand-painted road-signs indicating its pedestrian crossings. Each of the crossing peds is a little different, and a Flickr user has compiled a lovely mosaic showing all the different peds around his neighborhood. Link (Thanks, Martin!)

Steve Lodefink owns an incredible painting by Steve Keene, and he's giving it away to the reader of his blog "who seems to want it the most."

If you want it, you have until June 13 to try.
Link

Buddy says: "There's a program on Discovery Health TV Channel tonight about when (human) embryos fuse together during pregnancy. The title is I Am My Own Twin."

Babies are being born split right down the middle, half black and half white, a testicle on one side and a vagina on the other. Explore the extraordinary medical phenomena that causes two different babies to fuse together in the womb.

Link

A round of applause for Matt Katz, who has written a greasemonkey script that changes all the stream links for This American Life to download links.

If you don't use Firefox, you can still download any episode by pointing to http://www.wbez.org/ta/[EPISODENUMBER].rm Link

Here's a great HOWTO on making your own Jedi robes, even if you've never sewn or worked from a pattern. Link (via Make)

This hardshell backpack is billed as a "personal safe." Though soft on the inside, it can be sealed shut and locked to a lamppost. Don't know how safe this is -- I don't think I'd leave my laptop in one. Link (via Gizmodo)

Lovely appreciation of a vintage Amdahl mainframe processor acquired via eBay. The coolest part is the back of the board, wherein all the chips are joined by hand-soldered wires. Link (Thanks, Deadprogrammer!)

OK, this homemade Dalek cake is pretty damn bad-ass. Link (Thanks, Feren!)

360electrical makes electrical outlets that swivel in your wall to accommodate bulky plugs and transformers -- if your plug blocks the other outlet, just rotate it until it doesn't. Link (Thanks, Aaron!)

Una huevera al día [An egg cup a day] is a blog about eggs cups. "Each day we introduce to the world a different strange egg cup," says Gloria. "You're not obliged to read spanish to follow, just enjoy the pictures."
Link (English translation here)

Edd sez, "Another classic comedy bit may come under the axe, as a major hot dog maker and a big bun baker agree to sell their products in packages of eight each. The news article startlingly states that more than 2 million buns a year are wasted." Link (Thanks, Edd!)

Today, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeals brought down a ruling on the much-watched BMG vs Doe case, in which the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA, CRIA, was demanding that ISPs release the names and personal information of a number of people whom they accused of file-sharing.

The good news is that the court threw out CRIA's claims, saying that they'd been so sloppy in gathering their "evidence" that they had no business invading Canadians' privacy.

The bad news is that this implies that if CRIA is more careful, they'll be able to compel ISPs to disclose customer info, paving the way to thousands of US-style lawsuits in Canada.

Canadian copyfightin' professor Michael Geist has an excellent analysis of this, explaining why it means that Canada needs to fix its copyright laws ASAP.

The court focused much of its discussion on the privacy concerns associated with disclosing the identities of the file sharers. Although it noted the importance of intellectual property protection, it emphasized that in the Internet age "the potential for unwarranted intrusion into personal lives is now unparalleled." The court was clearly sympathetic to the privacy issues raised by the case and sought to map out some significant privacy protections. For example, it concluded that data associating users with an IP addresses goes stale very quickly and therefore evidence that is not current may be sufficient reason to dismiss a motion to disclose user identities. The court also noted that there must be care taken to ensure that personal information beyond the copyright allegations are not disclosed and that the identities of the individuals may be protected through confidentiality orders or by using initials.

Link

College Humor interviews the creators of Oregon Trail, the old computer game famous for the "YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY" screen.

Brandon Berkenstein, age 9, writes: "What are the dirtiest words you've ever used for your team names?"


Paul: How about the mud-hens or something like that?


Bill: They have team names now in Oregon Trail? We didn’t do that back then... we just typed in our own names and I think I recall that if you died the next person on the trail would pass a gravestone with the name of the previous person that was on the trail.


Don: In the Apple version, if somebody died, you were asked to type in what you would like on the tombstone, and that was an opportunity for kids to practice all the bad words that they knew.


intern jeff: but you guys must have done it too, right?


Bill: It was too long ago.


Don: Otherwise we would have screened them out.


Paul: We put some silly things in.


Bill: We have probably expressed obscenities over the fact that at the time the game was invented, nobody knew about software royalties. If we had, we’d each own an island today.

Link

About six years ago, artist Eric Doeringer made a set of toys with outlaw/lowlife/modern problem themes. They look just like the kinds of cheap toys that grocery stores sell.

These toys are designed to imitate the look of the toy accessory sets commonly sold in grocery or 99-cent stores. Instead of the usual fantasies (Cowboy, Princess, Doctor) I have substituted more realistic urban futures. Most of the toys included in the sets are "ready-mades". They are actual toys, but when reassembled and repackaged they take on more sinister overtones.    I designed the packaging and custom vacuum-formed the clear plastic blisters, so the toys are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

Link (Thanks, Courtney!)

The creators of the NeCord Necoro cat robot should be fined and jailed for ignoring the the Uncanny Valley study, which found that robots that are almost-but-not-quite-completely lifelike are scary.
Link (Thanks, Tim!)

This Pizza Hut ripoff in Baghdad reminds me of the 6-Elevens we saw in Rarotonga.
Link (Thanks, Brian!)

Reader comment: Jonathan says: "Along the lines of 6-Eleven and Pizza Hot is a soft drink from Laos called "Cosco Cola." The logo, pictured on an umbrella in the linked photo I took, may look somewhat familiar."
Link

The Citroen Penthouse was a 1980 concept car. It's a prototype for a six-wheeled futuristic camper, boasting two doors on the right-hand side and one on the left. Most impressive though is the electric "bellows" roof. Link (via We Make Money Not Art and Jalopnik)

For the first time in Africa in more than 20 years, scientists have discovered a new species of monkey. The species, Lophocebus kipunji, calls Tanzania's southern highlands home. The researchers report in tomorrow's issue of Science that there are fewer than 1,000 of the monkeys living in the forest's trees at elevations up to 8,000 feet. From Reuters:

"This exciting discovery demonstrates once again how little we know about our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates," said Russell Mittermeier, chairman of the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN-The World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission.

"A large, striking monkey in a country of considerable wildlife research over the last century has been hidden right under our noses."

Link (Thanks, Loren Coleman!)

UPDATE: BB reader Mechum points out an error in the Reuters article that I paraphrased above. The Highland Mangabey was the first species of monkey discovered in more than twenty years in Africa, not the entire world. Link to press release from the Wildlife Conservation Society

Soupface sez,

A sex-change operation will be broadcast live on the web (through a Java applet) this afternoon (14:00, UTC -3:00). A 25 year-old man will undergo transgenitalization surgery at Hospital de Base in São José do Rio Preto (roughly 400 km north of São Paulo), Brazil. He, who calls himself Patrícia, hopes that the broadcast will help others who want to know more about the procedure. The surgical team will be led by Dr. Carlos Abib Cury (medical urologist) and Prof. Dr. Sérgio J. A. Almeida (described as doctor, psychologist, and sexologist). It will the the 50th such procedure carried out at the hospital since 1998.

The site is in Brazilian Portuguese, but Babel Fish may be capable of a passable translation (the link-text for the Java applet is "A CIRURGIA"--"the surgery"). There's a short article about it (also in Portuguese) at the website of the Folha de São Paulo.

Link (Thanks, Soupface!)

Update: Ruby takes issue with the pronouns in this post and suggests "A 25 year-old WOMAN will undergo transgenitalization surgery at Hospital de Base in São José do Rio Preto (roughly 400 km north of São Paulo), Brazil. PATRICIA, hopes that the broadcast will help others who want to know more about the procedure."

Update 2:: Philip sez, "There is now a message that says roughly this:"

Because of the stance of the Regional Council of Medicine of Brazil, we are not transmitting today the transgenitalization surgery, as had been previously announced.

As soon as we have a new understanding with the council, we will transmit the recording of the surgery, with the participation of the team, which will be at that time available to respond by e-mail to any doubts about the subject.

Dr. Carlos Cury and team