Jason Torchinsky was cleaning his ear canal with a twisted piece of tissue paper recently. When he pulled it out for inspection, he was surprised to see that the bits of earwax stuck on the tissue looked like a little man's head. So cute!
Link

A ringtone featuring a clip of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo fixing her election is sweeping the Philippines.

Text message consumer rights group TXTpower said its site (www.txtpower.org) had been overwhelmed by demand for the clip taken from a recording at the centre of allegations Arroyo tried to fix the result of last year's election...

In the full conversation, which the government says was illegally wiretapped and then doctored, a woman who sounds like Arroyo asks senior election official Virgilio Garcillano whether she would win by more than 1 million votes in a southern area.

Link (via Smartmobs)

Danny sez,

We've heard rumors that the Broadcast Flag that Cory, the EFF, and a coalition of pressure groups have fought so hard against (and beat in the courts) will be sneaked back via an amendment to the giant Senate Appropriations Bill in a sub-committee at 2PM EST on Tuesday 21st. This week is Hollywood's last chance to ram the flag past Congress, and they're working hard to get it under the radar.

There's no time to write letters or start a media campaign: but folk in the states below have just enough time to warn their senators, who are all on the sub-committee. People of Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin - it's up to you!

There's a sample script after the phone list. Remember: be cool, collected and polite. Most of these senators won't know a thing about the flag, until one of them makes it a throwaway amendment tomorrow. Make sure their ears twitch when they hear "broadcast flag" today.

ALABAMA Senator Richard Shelby (202) 224-5744
ALASKA Senator Ted Stevens (202) 224-3004
HAWAII Senator Daniel Inouye (202) 224-3934
IOWA Senator Tom Harkin (202) 224-3254
KANSAS Senator Sam Brownback (202) 224-6521
KENTUCKY Senator Mitch McConnell (202) 224-2541
MARYLAND Senator Barbara Mikulski (202) 224-4654
MISSOURI Senator Christopher Bond (202) 224-5721
NEW HAMPSHIRE Senator Judd Gregg (202) 224-3324
NEW MEXICO Senator Pete Domenici (202) 224-6621
NORTH DAKOTA Senator Byron Dorgan (202) 224-2551
TEXAS Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (202) 224-5922
VERMONT Senator Patrick Leahy (202) 224-4242
WASHINGTON Senator Patty Murray (202) 224-2621
WISCONSIN Senator Herb Kohl (202) 224-5653

"Hello, Senator _________'s office"

"Hi, I'm a constituent. [Remember: Only say 'I'm a constituent' if you really are -- if you're calling the Senator from _your own state_] I'm registering my opposition to the broadcast flag amendment being introduced in the Senate Commerce Justice and Science Appropriations subcommittee mark-up on Tuesday, and in full committee on Thursday."

(*** You can give your own reasons for opposing the flag here. Here's a sample: ***)

"The Broadcast Flag cripples any device capable of receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts."

"It give Hollywood movie studios a permanent veto over how members of the American public use our televisions."

"It forces American innovators to beg the FCC for permission before adding new features to TV."

"It will prevent fair use of copyrighted works: critical review, and use of material in distance learning"

"This is an important issue which will affect all Americans, and should not be inserted in a large bill, at the last moment, with no debate."

"Please oppose the broadcast flag amendment. My name and address are ___________________."

"Thank you for your time."

Good luck!

Link (Thanks, Danny!)

Update: You can now fax and email appropriation committee members for free at the EFF's action center. Do it tonight, or live with the consequences of a Hollywood veto over your PC forever.

Flynn sez, "The unaired pilot for the tv show 'Global Frequency' was leaked on the net. Global Frequency [ed: from the brilliant Warren "Transmetropolitan" Ellis comic] is an active 'smartmob' consisting of 1001 people organized through advanced cellphones who respond to global emergencies and phenomena ranging from Heaven's Gate-esque cults to rogue military operations."

Global Frequency screenwriter John Rogers has been posting a series of bittersweet and amazed entries to his blog about what it's like to have a burgeoning fan-base for a show that never got picked up, never aired, and only exists as illegal art:

I'd also like to remind you that illegal file-sharing is a bad, bad thing, and I in no way encourage it. All references to downloading sites will be immediately deleted from the this website. You, despite your enthusiasm, should be ashamed of yourselves. Ashamed.

Now, for a small sample for the suits (no links, and I think you know why) of responses from your emails, comments, and websites and messageboards around the world:

"one of the smartest and stylish pilots I've seen in all my years of watching the goggle box ... [If] the DVD comes out I'll have link to Amazon and a write-up on the show."

"Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank everyone for me, will you. Thank you all so much. Thank you. If you haven't noticed, I cannot stop saying this: thank you."

Link (Thanks, Flynn!)

Dave sez, "I'm an editor at Dark Horse Comics and I'm working on a free online adaptation of H. G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' by writer Ian Edginton and artist D'Israeli. When all is said and done the adaptation will be about 120 or so online pages. Right now the first twelve pages are up. We'll be adding new pages weekly." Link (Thanks, Dave!)

Deadprogrammer sez, "An illustrated history of the Starbucks Siren logo, from the original 15th century engraving with naked chest, fat belly and spread tail-legs to the current sterilized "family friendly" version." Link (Thanks, Deadprogrammer!)

Robert Neuwrith, the author of the stupendous Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World has a blog where he documents his ongoing research on squatter cities.

Consider this: "As police in full riot gear moved in to torch shacks using petrol, many residents tore down their own homes to salvage some of the building materials." Victoria Muchenje, whose shack in Mbare, a densely populated township just outside Harare, was destroyed in the government pogrom, told the IWPR, "We are suffering, we have nowhere to go. Our children are not going to school, we are sleeping outside everywhere. If you walk, everywhere you see people sleeping in the road."

Link (Thanks, Simone!)

Jeff sez, "CommonTunes.org, a community directory of freely distributable music, has been released to the wild as a beta this weekend. CommonTunes features music which can be freely redistributed. Users, bands and music bloggers can upload their own music for distribution via BitTorrent or link to legitimate hosted files on other sites and share the feeds as podcasts with friends." Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

BB pal Eric Paulos points to an animated gif video of a guy who "games himself into himself." Link

UPDATE: Thanks to all the readers who informed me that this video is the work of David Packer. High quality versions of this piece, titled "FPS," and his other recursive masterpieces are available at his site. Link

Piñatas fashioned after popular cartoon characters and sold by small-time street vendors are the subject of a new legal crackdown by big entertainment companies including Disney.

The two men browsing in Benjamin Santoyo's downtown Los Angeles produce store acted like many of his customers, not so much interested in fruit and vegetables as in the enormous pinatas of Winnie the Pooh, The Incredibles, and an orange fish named Nemo, all bobbing from a string tied to the ceiling. But theirs was an undercover visit on behalf of Disney Enterprises Inc. and four other entertainment industry giants aiming to stop the sale of counterfeit pinatas just as the bust-it-up party activity has become about as mainstream at Southland kids parties as cake, streamers and tortilla chips.

Disney and the other companies, in what experts said was an understandable move to protect their popular cartoon and character properties, filed copyright and trademark infringement lawsuits against Santoyo and another nearby shop owner for allegedly selling the counterfeit pinatas.

Although Santoyo settled last month for an undisclosed sum, word of the legal action against these two small Los Angeles vendors — who peddle their wares in an informal pinata district centered along Olympic Boulevard and Central Avenue — has reverberated through the garages, backyards and warehouses of pinata makers as far away as Santa Ana, who worry that they too will be targeted. But will they stop making the images of Cinderella and Dora?

"Without that, we don't have much of a business," said South Los Angeles pinata maker Marta Garcia. "We need to be careful, but it's hard because the demand is for the characters on television and in the theaters."

Link. Previously: Copyright cops crack down on cooks over cakes, Hollywood foots bill for LAPD spy cams

Update: no keylogger here, according to folks who've parsed the code. Details at end of post.

A sekrit Boing Boing source in Hollywood says, "A USA network show I used to work on has distributed a screensaver to fans of the show that secretly logs their keystrokes." Link to a discussion board thread in which fans of the show who downloaded the screensaver discuss this allegation. According to reports, the file has since been removed from distribution by USA. Anybody out there have a copy of the file, or have proof whether this is true or hoax?

Reader comment: Joe Moore says:

I downloaded the Season 3 screensaver from The Dead Zone show, and found something strange. I pulled the setup file for the Season 3 screensaver (available here) and ran it through a program called ICY Hexplorer, and saw something weird. There's a reference in the install file to a parody site of Marisleysis Gonzalez (Link), who is a cousin of Elian Gonzales, the kid a few years ago who was deported back to Cuba. Why was this site in the .EXE file for the install of The Dead Zone Season 3 screensaver, I have NO idea at all!!! You can see a screenshot of me having the file open in ICY Hexplorer here: Link. It lists the parody website, then her first name. Just strange! No idea yet on if there's a key logger or not, though.

Update: Dan Kaminsky is one of several Boing Boing readers who've taken a close look at the code and say there is no keystroke logger within. "Move along, nothing to see here," says Dan.

Special thanks to Dave Maynor of Internet Security Systems who completed the reversal.

Snipped from Radar:

When MTV Networks’ new gay channel LOGO debuts this month, it will join a kicky set of companies whose trademarks — intentionally or not — are a little light in their serifs.

link (thanks Andrew)

Mark Hurst says, "Spotted this past weekend at a Long Island wedding. I doubt if the venue paid the licensing fee." Link

Scientists report that parts of a woman's brain switch off when she has an orgasm, including regions involved with emotion. Neuroanatomists from the University of Gronigen ran PET scans on women as they were resting, getting diddled by their partner's fingers, experiencing the "big O," or faking it. From New Scientist:

“At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings,” says Gert Holstege of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands....

As the women were stimulated, activity rose in one sensory part of the brain, called the primary somatosensory cortex, but fell in the amygdala and hippocampus, areas involved in alertness and anxiety. During orgasm, activity fell in many more areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, compared with the resting state...

In one sense the findings appear to confirm what is already known, that women cannot enjoy sex unless they are relaxed and free from worries and distractions. "Fear and anxiety levels have to go down for orgasm. Everyone knows this but we can see it happening in the brain," (Holstege) explains.

From an evolutionary point of view, it could be that the brain switches off the emotions during sex because at such times the chance to produce offspring becomes more important than the survival risk to the individual. Holstege points to the extraordinary behaviour seen in some animals during the breeding season, such as March hares, when the urge to mate seems to override the usual fear of predators.

Link

Over at the MAKE: Blog, Phil Torrone says:

"I've been having a lot of fun with the Portable Rotary Phone from Spark Fun Electronics. It's a GSM cell phone built inside an old rotary phone. You pop your SIM card in, it dials out, rings and acts just like an old fashion phone, but it's now my full time cell phone. I'll have a full review of it up soon, and will be using it at Gnomedex this week in Seattle. For now- check out the photos and video I shot so far..."

Link