The amazing Tim Biskup has a slew of new paintings on display at Billy Shire Fine Arts in Los Angeles. Titled "The Push Over," the show opens tomorrow and runs until July 30. Seen here, "White Dragon" (Gouache On Paper, 12" x 9"). Link (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote back to constituents who complained about the Broadcast Flag with this amazing, disingenuous note:

Thank you for writing to me about the digital broadcast flag. I appreciate hearing from you.

I feel strongly that we must prevent the theft of copyrighted works, and that includes digital television (DTV) programming. As we move forward in the digital age, it is increasingly easy for unauthorized copies of copyrighted works to be made and illegally distributed. Over-the-air digital content is the easiest to pirate.

As we contemplate the use of new technologies to protect copyrighted works, we must pay careful attention to ensure that a balance is struck between competitive protections and individual consumer interests. It is important to allow for the continued fair use of copyrighted material, even while we seek to stop unauthorized reproductions from being illegally distributed outside the home and over the Internet.

Again, thank you for writing. Please know that as the Senate considers legislation of the broadcast flag, I will be sure to keep your views in mind. If you should have any questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, DC staff at (202) 224-3841.

Practically every sentence in this letter is a lie:

As we move forward in the digital age, it is increasingly easy for unauthorized copies of copyrighted works to be made and illegally distributed.

Lie: Steps needed to put analog-broadcast video on your computer: 1. Install capture card; 2. Press record. Steps needed to put digital-broadcast video on your computer: 1. Install capture card; 2. Press record.

It is important to allow for the continued fair use of copyrighted material

Lie: TiVo's TiVoToGo service -- designed to comply with the broadcast flag -- limited the number of devices you could watch your recorded videos on to a set number. Nothing about fair use says that n devices is permissible, but n + 1 isn't. TiVoToGo was one of the more permissive services -- systems like 5C and 4C have no consideration for fair use (for example, you can't tell a 5C device that you need to the ability edit a show that you plan on using in connection with criticism or classroom use).

even while we seek to stop unauthorized reproductions from being illegally distributed outside the home and over the Internet.

Lie: because the broadcast flag does not restrict analog outputs, there is nothing about the broadcast flag that prevents Internet redistribution of digital television (steps needed to put broadcast flag content on the Internet: 1. Connect tuner to PC via analog cables; 2. Press record.)

This leaves us with only one question: is DiFi stupid, or is she a liar? Either way, Feinstein should be ashamed of herself. (Thanks, Mark!)

Update: Erik sez, "The TV/music/movies sector is the 4th highest contributor to her campaign, with lawyers being number 1 (two bad tastes that go great together!). Maybe that's why Feinstein is so willing to disregard the opinion of 2600 of her constituents and toe the MPAA's line."

My uncle Kevin Scanlon is one of the railroad junkie photographers behind this site.

One of my earliest memories of my uncle, whom I love very much, is through his photographs -- haunting images of historic railways and elegant old trains throughout Appalachia and Pennsylvania. Documenting these endangered machine beings is his lifelong passion, so he's launched a gallery with words and images on this subject from various shooters.

Uncle Kev sez: "I've been trying to encourage photographers to do a little writing to give a backstory on their images. So far I've had a pretty good response from a wide range of people. Make sure you check out the Archive page for M. Ross Valentine's and Mel Patrick's photos, my favorites so far."

Link to The Photographer's Railroad Page. Above: Pure Serendipity, by Mel Patrick: Link.

Previously on Boing Boing: Kevin Scanlon's heavy industry photography

Indisputable proof of clandestine government hijinks are all over this car. An encrypted moblog of sorts. "My stolen documents. My stolen art. CIA criminales kill my brother last week and sended terrorista to hit my car."

Start here and work back. (via Warren Ellis)

Previously on Boing Boing: Homer Simpson computer key car, Car covered in computer keys

A new study reports that the smell of male underarm funk makes men dig Men's Health magazine. In experiments run by researchers from the University of Ulster and University of Vienna, male and female subjects wore masks sprayed with either androstenol--a pheromone in men's underarm sweat--or a "control solvent." They were then shown issues of Allure, National Geographic, and Men's Health magazine. From New Scientist:

The male participants exposed to androstenol rated Men’s Health as significantly more masculine and more appealing compared with the control group. They also had a higher tendency to report that they might buy the magazine. Women appeared to be completely unaffected by the pheromone...

“This opens up the possibility of using odours to give specific emotional meaning to products – and creates ethical issues about whether this should be done if they are used at imperceptible levels,” (says University of Ulster professor Michael Kirk-Smith).

Link

Following up on an earlier post about a neat car I spotted in LA covered in a mosaic of computer keys -- a Boing Boing reader sends better snapshots of that car, and of other keyboardmobiles by the same creator. One of them bears Homer Simpson's mug on its front hood. Link to flickr gallery. J-Walk blog phonecammed some of these cars in LA, too: Link. (Thanks, Sean Bonner, and fattymarmot!).
Previously on Boing Boing: Car covered in computer keys

William Simons of Clickwheel says: "We've just created the world's first and only desktop application for downloading digital comics to the iPod photo. It's currently available as a demo version, which you're free to download from www.clickwheel.net."
Link

Comix artist Daniel Clowes of Eightball and Ghost World fame was on National Public Radio's Fresh Air yesterday talking about his new comic strip novel, Ice Haven. It's loosely based on the Leopold and Loeb murders of 1924. Clowes also rapped about his latest collaboration with director Terry Zwigoff, the filmic adaptation of the comic Art School Confidential. The interview is archived at the NPR site. Link

UPDATE: If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, Clowes is signing books tonight at the Booksmith on Haight Street at 7pm. Link

Karpar says she found a small frog in her salad on Wednesday.

[T]oday, I found a frog in my salad from the company cafeteria.  Rest assured, I did not eat any of the frog, but it certainly was...erm- startling to say the least.  I returned the lunch to the cafeteria and got a refund.   The general manager will be contacting me later (he was not there when I returned the lunch).  My co-workers have reminded me that I have totally blown it since I could have sold it for big bucks on eBay to some casino.  Anyway, beware of the "organic" salad greens from Bon Appetit! 

Link (thanks, Jean-Paul!)

More than a few people I know have told me horror stories about moving companies ripping them off when they've moved to a new house or apartment. Their stories are similar: the moving company loads your stuff on the truck(s) and then it tells you to pay a lot more money than the written estimate. Movingscam.com is an information clearing house about moving company scammers, with tips for finding honest movers.

One thing I should point out, is that the bids from these companies that I have seen often quote you by cubic footage not by weight. If you get a quote that is priced by cubic footage, that should raise a red flag right away. The reason for this is that if they charge you by weight, they have to provide proof of the weight of your belongings at no charge to you. Current laws regarding the moving industry do not cover moves based on cubic feet.

Once the movers show up and most or all of your things are in their truck, they will hit you with the real price of the move. By then it's too late. Your things are on their truck, and they won't get anything off of it without full payment in cash. They will tell you that if you don't pay up, that they will take the truck and sell everything you own to cover the contract. In my case, I put down a $150 deposit, and was told before the movers showed up that the rest of the $1869 would be due on delivery. When the movers showed up, the price jumped to $5012.50, and the movers demanded half of that on the spot or else there wouldn't be a delivery!

Link(via Sensible Erection)

This gallery of misbegotten Nintendo Entertainment System schwag features NES cologne, soda pop, novels, and underwear -- and that's just for starters. Link (Thanks, Jake!)

A hacker gutted a Targus wireless mouse and installed the Bluetooth board into a Monster Gecko PistolMouse for cord-free firing fun. DIY details embedded in this Flickr photo set. Link (via Gizmodo)

Thinkgeek is selling a miniature USB-powered lava-lamp for $10 -- now that's a good buy! Link (via Gizmodo)

test cards
vanity cards
canadian tv themes
rainbow
the adventures of superpup
grover is bitter
law and order plot generator
super doppler
tv squad
trio
concrete tv web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

An anonymous reader sent this image, identifying it as the creation of some dude named Al Cabino. It is said to be a sneaker constructed from pure Swiss chocolate. This blog posts the same info. It's either a silly hoax, or a brilliant exercise in choco-licious but impractical footwear.

Kickass Kung Fu is a video-game in which you use real martial-arts moves to control an on-screen kung-fu fighter in order to best both human and AI opponents.

The game takes place on a 5 meter cushioned playfield suitable for martial arts and acrobatics training. Using custom computer vision technology, you are taken inside an artificial reality where the normal laws of physics no longer apply. Your movements are exaggerated so that you can easily dodge your opponent's bullets by jumping five meters in the air and landing behind his back. Using the dual projected screens, one at each end of the playfield, you can also continue by counter-attacking your stupefied enemy from the behind.

Link

The Queen met with Howard Stringer, the new CEO of Sony, and told him off for designing remotes that are too hard to use:

According to Stringer the Queen told him: "I have a lot of trouble with your remote controls. Too many arrows."

Link (via Gizmodo)

This catalog company sells rolls of adhesive-backed magnetic tape in traditional sticky-tape dispensers. Link (via Red Ferret)

Gizmodo has an hilarious, in-depth story on the history of the E-Meter, the "religious artifact" used by the "Church" of Scientology to detect and clear "engrams" -- negative energy left behind by unhappy events in this life or lives gone past.

The Cadillac of current official offerings, the Quantum Super VII is the ultimate in e-meter artifacts, priced at over $4,500 new. From e-meter.org.uk's Quantum Super VII page, which may or may not be an official outlet of the Church: "Using the meter, the auditor ensures the process covers the correct area in order to discharge the harmful energy connected with that portion of the preclear's reactive mind. When charge lessens, the person heightens his ability to think clearly in the area being addressed and his survival potential increases proportionately. As a result, the preclear discovers things about himself and his life – new realizations about existence, the milestones that mark his gains."

Link

Malls of America is a blog that lovingly documents the lost shopping mall glory days of the 1960s and 1970s. Link (via Kottke)

I'm delivering a midnight keynote at this year's ADHOC conference (ADHOC is also known as "MacHack") in Detroit, July 27-31. Hope to see you there!

The Advanced Developers Hands On Conference (ADHOC) is an annual event that provides a unique environment for computer programmers, engineers, students, and technology enthusiasts. At ADHOC they learn the cutting-edge technologies of the day not only from experts in classroom and conference sessions but also from each other in intense coding marathons. The conference is well rooted in the Macintosh platform - it is also called MacHack - but over the last few years the conference has grown to encompass other technologies, such as UNIX, open source, mobile devices, and more...

The showcase is an intensive, multi-day contest where you try to make something to impress everyone else at the conference. Ideally, you start it when you arrive, and you finish sometime before you go on stage to show it. Many of the coolest bits of software that came out for the Mac started in the Showcase. And, because everyone wants to see something cool, if you need the help from a programming expert who just happens to be at the show, you can ask them, and you'll learn what you need. You can learn more about the Mac OS in a very short amount of time just by trying to write a showcase entry.

Link

The Heinlein Society has a collection of photos of the groovy, circular California home of Robert A Heinlein, legendary science fiction author. Pictured here: Heinlein's groovy rec-room. Link (Thanks, Kirby!)

This well-developed project from Columbia University walks through the realities, possibilities and constraints of multi-storey, urban, high-rise farming:

What is proposed here that differs radically from what now exists is to scale up the concept of indoor farming, in which a wide variety of produce is harvested in quantity enough to sustain even the largest of cities without significantly relying on resources beyond the city limits. Cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and other large farm animals seem to fall well outside the paradigm of urban farming. However, raising a wide variety of fowl and pigs are well within the capabilities of indoor farming. It has been estimated that it will require approximately 300 square feet of intensively farmed indoor space to produce enough food to support a single individual living in an extraterrestrial environment (e.g., on a space station or a colony on the moon or Mars)(35).

Link (Thanks, John!)

If you had any reason to doubt that Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe, is a malign thug, here's more proof: a before-and-after pair of satellite photos showing the destruction of a 200,000-person shantytown on the outskirts of Harare. Link (Thanks, Toni!)

The Brick Journal is a new independent magazine for Lego junkies, featuring HOWTOs, reviews, history and interviews with Lego engineers. It's like a very, very, very specific version of MAKE! Link (Thanks, Bill!)

A Nepali radio station that has been banned under the new, post-coup regime has gone back on the air. Every night, a commentator stands on the roof of his now-useless radio-station and reads the news over a megaphone to an audience of hundreds.

Every evening, about 300 people gather on a roadside in Biratnagar, 500 kilometers (310 miles) east of Katmandu to listen to Keshav Bhattarai read out the news from an open air studio on the roof of a narrow, three-story building.

As well as spreading the news, the service stands for a free media, Bhattarai tells his audience, a motley collection of politicians, teachers, students, traders and anyone who just happens to be passing.

Link (Thanks, Kyle!)