'The admissions executive is in discussions around whether we should introduction a minimum age of 17 for undergraduates,' confirmed Ruth Collier, a spokesperson for admissions to Oxford. 'We have been pushed to consider it, not because of concerns about whether it is psychologically healthy for children to study here, but because of child protection laws which have come into play this year for the first time.'...

Children can no longer live in student accommodation, because the university could not carry out a criminal record check on every other undergraduate sharing the same premises.

16. Secret Agent 3-Z
19. The Cosmic Giant
20. Toxor, the Mist Man
21. Satellite R-45
29. Memory Day
30. The Super Duper Machine
32. The Moon Monsters
35. Planet X
36. The Elixir of Life
39. The Mysterious Cat
41. Deadline to Danger
47. The Gigantic Space Crab
51. Jimbo the Great
95. The Mighty Mite from Ursa Minor
104. Double Trouble

"Lotsa tiki acts and DJs, a slideshow presentation about Tiki through the years by Charles Phoenix, but most importantly: AN APPEARANCE BY YMA SUMAC," says Richard Butner.
Link

The Cardboard House is conceived as a kit of parts comprising a flat pack of frames, and infill floor and wall panels. It uses minimal fixings: nylon wing nuts, hand-tightened polyster tape stays and Velcro fastenings are used to assemble the frames and protective skin system.

The building can be assembled by two people over a six-hour period using appropriate scaffolding, and is transportable in a light commercial vehicle. A series of repetitive portal frames are both spaced and stabilised by a standardised secondary structure, similar to the interlocking spacer sheets found in wine boxes. Once assembled, the structure provides a creative architectural frame from which the house derives its aesthetic.

The show's been getting great reviews in places like Billboard, and now the producers have a new wrinkle: free admission for flight attendants who turn up in uniform.

Yep, that's right, all air crew get into the show for free...they just have to wear their uniform or wings to the show. For free air crew passes to the show, e-mail Plane Crazy's producer, Michael Rubinoff, at mrubinoff@mrubinoff.com (we have to subject this offer to availability just in case it gets out of control...thanks for understanding).

The tiny cube provides a double bed on an upper level and working table and dining space for four or five people on a lower level. The kitchen bar is accordingly arranged to serve these two levels. The entrance lobby has triple use and functions as a bathroom and drying space for clothing. Storage is provided off each of these four functioning spaces.

Just turn the handle and watch this little creature flap its wings in a most convincing manner. The bat is actually life sized, with a wingspan of over sixteen inches! And he comes complete with his own crumbling headstone and rotting trees.

If you fly, you could be among the 100 million passengers whose info the TSA has illegally collected from commercial sources. Ann Harrison has posted a step-by-step guide for exercising your rights to request the TSA's records under the Privacy Act:

In direct violation of the Privacy Act, TSA has collected over 100 million records from commercial data providers to test Secure Flight. If your records are contained in this database, you have a right to obtain them. What would happen if thousands of people requested their TSA travel records every day?

You can request your travel and commercial records under the Privacy Act, but you better do it before TSA destroys the information. TSA spokeswoman Deirdre O’Sullivan told Wired News that the TSA has only destroyed some passenger name records (PNR) from airlines and travel agents, but not information TSA gathered from commercial data bases. You can request both your PNR and commercial data with a Privacy Act request.

Update: Ann clarifies: "I should note that 100 million individual commercial data records does not necessarily translate into 100 million passengers. As explained on the blog, TSA gave 42,000 passenger names to their data contractor who expanded the list to 200,000 names by using name variations. Then that data was compared to the 100 million illegally obtained travel records. But honestly, we don't have a clue how many names are really in that database. It's only an educated guess."

Okay Xeni

I read your Blog about Intellegent Design and the spaghetti monster. Ridiculous. I'd like to know what you think should be taught in the schools.

Certainally not evolution considering there is not one single fact that proves it. No missing links, not even common sense. Lies are still being printed that were proven wrong in the late 1800's but they're still taught as fact.

If you're so positive that you came from a monkey or a rock or whatever you think it is I suggest you debate Dr. Kent Hovind.

Dr. Hovind is willing to pay any individual a quarter of a million dollars to anyone who can give any empirical evidence for evolution. He has had this offer up for a long time but even this country's top scientists have gone up against him and lost the debates.

I suggest you offer this to your avid readers... I'm sure one of them would like some extra cash. You can call 850-479-3466 (8-5 Mon-Fri CST) for more info about the $250,000. Please blog this I'm interested in what you think about evolution and all of its lies.

We are willing to pay any individual *$250,000 if they can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

You may submit entries here.

Suggested reading in Scientific American, "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense: Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up." Link to SciAm article (paid sub required); Link to a subscription-free PDF copy. (Thanks, Dan Strunk). See also this website with criticism of Dr. Hovind's challenge: Link

Previously on Boing Boing:

Pastafarianism: Flying Spaghetti Monster cult grows

Dear Kansas: Why stop at "Intelligent Design?" What about Spaghetti Monsters?

* Prize to be awarded with Intelligently Designed currency; void where prohibited by logic.

Challenge Grant Update: Recently converted Pastafarians are adding matching reward funds to the Boing Boing Intelligent Design Challenge. Jason Kottke of kottke.org (Link) and Sean Bonner of metblogs (Link) have each offered an additional $250,000. We've been flooded with still more donations, and have decided to cap the purse at $1 million -- in part because the number contains a lot of pretty, round zeroes that resemble holy meatballs. But also because many of you offered sums payable in "whisky and wenches," or "ho's 'n' blow," neither of which really count. Thanks all the same.

Here's a translation (courtesy of Ben List):

"bOING bOING" began before the word "blog" began appearing circa 2000. Mark Frauenfelder has reached the top position in the world of bloggers. We flew to LA to hear his secret.

1. The power of persistance

"We started early, and found our readership. It was really just lucky." he says modestly, however the popularity of the site is largely due to "frequent updating." Though "bOING bOING" was essentially started by Mark, he now collaborates with three writer friends contributing material from their various fields of interest.

"The readership of a blog is proportional to how frequent one is able to update." Frauenfelder spends only two hours a day on the blog, however is able to keep the content fresh with the aid of his partners.

2. Curiosity and the spirit of fun

"bOING bOING's" core staff are all professional writers having gained experiences writing for such publications as "Wired." "By nature, our curiosity is twice that of most people and are able to keep the content fresh." In their search for interesting content they do daily searches through magazines, newspapers, nerdy trade publications, and the internet. There was never any intention of making a profit (with "bOING bOING"), so they are driven mainly by "simply having fun with it." Unlike traditional media, the instant feedback of publishing on the internet, and direct contact with the readership is also part of the appeal. "The improvisational aspect (?) is as addictive as an adrenaline rush"

3. No compromising to advertisers or to readers

While they haven't created a corporation in the traditional way, "bOING bOING" has become a true business. With 200,000 hits daily from inside and outside the U.S., the company made $20,000 in advertisements from skateboard brand and a T-Shirt company in March, however maintaining an independent spirit is the the most important thing.

"We have been known to criticize corporations, but we don't kowtow to our advertisers. The popularity of the site was earned by writing what we want, but we aren't looking to change anything for our readers.

4. The key is in community collaboration

"The best part is the spirit of being able to share your thoughts and what interests you with the readers and community" Frauenfelder says. Communication with other bloggers has been the key to increasing the readership. By trading links with other blogs, communication becomes much more active, and traffic to and from the site increases. "The world of blogs is made up of innumerable tiny islands in a vast ocean all communicating with each other. It's the ultimate success for a blog to become part of that community."

Using components from the first person shooter Full Spectrum Warrior, researchers at a Southern California thinktank have created a "virtual" world that simulates the sources of combat stress. In trials at three military hospitals, they're now using the sim in therapy sessions to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for personnel returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I filed a "Xeni Tech" report on the system for NPR's "Day to Day." Link to radio segment with archived audio, video, and images from inside the simulation. An in-depth report for Wired News is coming on Monday.

[It] begins by tracing the evolution of mobile media from its roots in the wireless telephones found on '50s-era merchant ships, through '90s pager culture to contemporary smartphones. Then it explores how those devices became a source of pervasive connectedness to friends, family, lovers and co-workers -- a completely different kind of connectivity from the "other-world" internet space experienced through personal computers.

The Japanese word for cell phone -- keitai, meaning "something you carry with you" -- provides a hint about its role within Japanese culture. Over time, mobile devices in Japan have come to be perceived not so much as bundles of technical features, or tools for replicating PC functions from the road, but personal accessories that help users sustain constant social links with others.

In one essay, Ichiyo Habuchi describes that always-on state of wireless closeness as a "telecocoon" -- "a zone of intimacy in which people maintain relationships with others who they have already encountered."

And contributor Kenichi Fujimoto refers to the devices themselves as "territory machines" capable of transforming any space -- a subway train seat, a grocery store aisle, a street corner -- into "(one's) own room and personal paradise."

Previously:
Keitai culture book by Mizuko Ito is now out

Update: RBP sez, "Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have similar book-vending machines on underground stations. Sao Paulo also has a public library in one station, where people can register and borrow books for free, including a few in Braille." Also: book-vending machines are on the streets of Barcelona, apparently.

Of course, there are lots of Halo players who aren't in on the gag, crashing through the "set" and opening fire on the apparently slow-moving and non-lethal guest, host and crew, which only adds to the general awesomeness of this thing (excellent commentary on this here). Link (via Gizmodo)

To make the projection fit on the models, the architecture of the webcam-places was rebuild in a 3D-application and printed on a 3D-plotter. That way, the picture information is displayed on the same geometrical shapes, it is filmed from. The result are four "live-models" from a distant space, which can be regarded three-dimensional and are touchable. With this material manifestation, the transmission, in contrast to the usuall webcam, where transmission is not finished, is completed.

"Activists from the youth chapter of the German Greens party and the Berlin division of German hacker association CCC showed up in penguin suits and with a big 'Alt+F4' banner. They even managed to sneak in a PowerBook and deliver an audio stream via UMTS mobile internet connection." Link (Thanks, Philip!)

Update: NB: Alt-F4 is the Windows shortcut meaning "Close Windows." Gettit?

But according to this Wired News article, there's precious little evidence of any organized crime involvement with CD and DVD counterfeiting in the USA. That makes sense: organized crime likes the kind of business where they supply something the customer can't get for herself, preferably at a gigantic markup -- guns, hot goods, drugs, etc.

But while the average crack customer lacks the wherewithal to cultivate his own coca or machine his own handgun, practically all the customers for counterfeit CDs and DVDs are just as capable of cranking them out as the mob is. All you need, after all, is a burner, and Internet connection, and a file-sharing client.

So there's got to be a lot of downward pressure on the price of bootleg CDs and DVDs -- the only customers for these things have to be people who are too poor to afford their own burning rigs (who, by definition, won't be able to afford high-priced bootlegs either) or people who are willing to shell out a few bucks for the convenience of not having to go to the bother of downloading and burning themselves -- and for this latter, you have to ensure that the monetary cost of buying the discs never exceeds the convenience cost of downloading it yourself.

Considered that way, it's not surprising that there's not much evidence of mob activity in this realm -- the mafia is smart enough to stay in those businesses where it doesn't compete with its own customers.

Asked to cite actual U.S. convictions involving organized crime, the RIAA and MPAA instead presented a handful of pending piracy cases against warez networks, commercial replicators, a few members of street gangs and a smattering of individual drug dealers -- but no John Gotti or Tony Soprano.

"It's not organized crime families, as in 'the mob,'" admits Bradley Buckles, head of the RIAA's anti-piracy unit and former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "But large groups engaged in organized criminal activity are involved."

Two months ago, Cory was among the first to blog about "Flying Spaghetti Monster" -- the overlord of a new parody religion created to protest a Kansas State Board of Education decision allowing so-called Intelligent Design to be taught in science classes.

The FSM cult now has a Wikipedia entry, with details that indicate that followers of His Noodliness -- Pastafarians -- are growing in number, like so many meatballs accumulating on a plate of linguini. A few of the facts I learned:

Codes of conduct:
# Prayers are ended with the word RAmen rather than Amen.

Benefits of conversion:
# Like the great noodles they worship, Flying Spaghetti Monsterists have flimsy moral standards.
# Promise of a stripper factory and a beer volcano in Heaven.

A rival faction, based on SPAM (Spaghetti & Pulsar Activating Meatballs), has formed and is calling for a Holy War against FSM. SPAMation claims to have the One True Letter to the Kansas School Board.

So, here's a question. If some people see Jesus in a tortilla, or the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, where does the Flying Spaghetti Monster show up to avoid redundancy?

Previously: Dear Kansas: Why stop at "Intelligent Design?" What about Spaghetti Monsters?

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!

Come, every frustrum longs to be a cone
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

A group of Alaskans filed suit against the Transportation Security Administration in Federal District Court in Anchorage today.

At issue is TSA's refusal to comply with the Privacy Act while testing the Secure Flight air passenger profiling system. The Alaskans are asking the court to order TSA to stop destroying Secure Flight test data until the Alaskans are given all records collected on them by TSA, including commercial records.

TSA collected over 100 million travel and other commercial records on US citizens into a secret database in order to test Secure Flight. It is high time for TSA to comply with the Privacy Act and show the American people their files.

The National Labor Committee, an anti-sweatshop advocacy group that once exposed labor abuses in apparel produced for Kathie Lee Gifford's clothing line, made new charges Thursday against The Walt Disney Company, releasing a videotape alleging that two Chinese factories making books for Disney operate under unsafe conditions.

At a press conference, Charles Kernaghan, director of the NLC, released an 11-minute videotape in which workers -- their faces hidden -- in the Hung Hing and Nord Race factories say they have been injured by unsafe equipment and show their bandaged fingers and cut hands.

Charles François Jeandel (1859 - 1942) was a honourable member of the Archeological Society of Charente. With his wife Madeleine, he seemed to have a quiet life in the countryside. Or not. Charles and Madeleine didn’t have any children. It’s a miracle that this album didn’t get lost or end up in the hands of a private connaisseur. Today, the collection belongs to the Musée d’Orsay. The blue cyanotyped pictures give a touch of morbid mystery to these very special scènes de campagne: no one will ever know who’s really dominating / dominated. Notice the solid wooden frame on a lot of the pictures: as in japanese kinbaku, the erotic fantasy has something to do with penal punishment.

Above, one of Jeandel's cyanotypes produced around 1880.

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

Wireless vendors Trango and Microserv created a 137.2 mile ground-to-ground wireless link using "off-the-shelf" equipment from Trango. This distance bests the Defcon Wifi Shootout winners by 12.3 miles. People are crying foul, however, because (1) there were no independant observers to verify the distance and setup and (2) the equipment used is not 802.11b Wi-Fi - though it does use the unlicensed 2.5 and 5 Ghz spectrum. Still, that distance is impressive. Write up, pics, and screencaps from the participants: Link. SOCALWUG discussion: Link. News.com story: Link. Slashdot comments: Link.

My fave /. comment = "Uhh, I'm pretty sure voyager 1 has the record for data transmission across a wireless link."

He gave a fairly detailed overview of the communications that they use with the Shuttle from launch to landing. Bill's has done launch and landing for the last 23 missions, including the last mission.

Fresh from a trip to Barrow, America's northernmost city, [U.S. Senator] McCain said anecdotes from Alaskans and residents of the Yukon Territory confirm scientific evidence of global warming. "We are convinced that the overwhelming scientific evidence indicated that climate change is taking place and human activities play a very large role," McCain said.

McCain, accompanied by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., spoke to villagers in Canada whose spruce trees are being attacked by the northward spread of spruce beetles. On Alaska's northern coast, they met Native Alaskans dealing with melting permafrost and coastal erosion.

(...)Opponents who ignore evidence of humans contributing to climate change, Clinton said, are participating in a trend of turning Washington, D.C. into what she calls an "evidence-free zone."

"You just keep saying something no matter how untrue and unfactual it might be, over and over and over again, and try to drive the politics to meet your ideological or commercial agenda," she said. "That is a grave disservice to our country..."

A tow truck driver was charged Wednesday with manslaughter after running over a Santa Ana man while towing his vehicle in June, officials said.

Paul Michael Sassenberger, 29, of San Bernardino County faces 20 charges, including taking a vehicle unlawfully, extortion by force or threat, attempted extortion, aggravated assault, reckless driving and using methamphetamine, said Mark Macaulay, spokesman for the Orange County district attorney's office.

Hunter S. Thompson's cremated remains, mixed with fireworks and packed into 34 mortar tubes, were en route to Woody Creek Wednesday. The unusual shipment from New Castle, Pa., via padlocked truck is one of the final steps towards a funeral Saturday expected to mix solemnity with pageantry.

This unintentionally hilarious article in Baptist Press News outlines the "few worthy efforts" by Disney in movie-making in the past several years. Columnist Phil Boatwright has gone to the trouble of weeding out the un-Christian flicks produced by gay-happy Disney since the implementation of 1997's boycott, and presents a list of movies that will not sully the souls of pure-hearted Baptist boys and girls.

Take note, if you will, of the caution placed here and there in the article. Boatwright warns that in 2002's Treasure Planet, "the story does include a father who abandoned his wife and child." Admittedly, I was puzzled by the remarks on the prevalence of Elvis' music in Lilo and Stitch: "At last, Elvis got to be in a good movie!"

Most amusing to me was the following excerpt from the review of Louis Sachar's 'Holes': "in the flashback story, a black man and a white woman fall in love, an act presented as against the law during that period, which leads to a tragedy perpetrated by a bigoted mob." I can't help but wonder: In reality, how many of those 'bigots' in the mob would have been Southern Baptists?

One of the shirt designs is an illustration I drew in 1990 for T-shirts that I sold in my print zine, bOING bOING. It features the zine's mascot Kata Sutra, a secret agent for the NeoWobblies.
Link

ItPlaysDoom.com is a site devoted to cataloging and reviewing all the different Dooms floating around out there. Fascinating reading:

The Jornada 820! The result? Carnage!
Doom runs faster on the Jornada than it did on my first Pentium PC. So fast, that the LCD screen can't keep up and blurs slightly. It's full-screen action, complete with sound effects, maps, options, WAD files... everything which makes Doom the fantastic game it is.

Satoshi Tomoda, president of the beverage maker, said: "Children copy and mimic adults.

"If you get this drink ready on such occasions as events and celebrations attended by kids, it would make the occasions even more entertaining."

The Kidsbeer label captures a nostalgic mood as it was modeled after classic beer labels.

"Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink," reads the product's advertising slogan.

"I had no bad words at all. I guess the earliest letter is dated in May and from then on up until now my name has been listed as Jeffery Scrotum Bag Barnes and I have no idea why."

Barnes said he received an apologetic call from a company official. He also has contacted an attorney to determine if he can take legal action.

Update: Caleb Smith has done this in Manhattan, too. (Thanks, Bruno!). Also, Francine Corcoran, a 91-year-old Minneapolis resident walked every street there. (Thanks, Sarah!)

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University...

Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.

"Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the 'electromagnetic force,' the 'weak nuclear force,' the 'strong nuclear force,' and so-called 'force of gravity,'" Burdett said. "And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus."

Last year a Chinese mathematician, Xiaoyun Wang, shook up the insular world of code breakers by exposing a new vulnerability in a crucial American standard for data encryption. On Monday, she was scheduled to explain her discovery in a keynote address to an international group of researchers meeting in California.

But a stand-in had to take her place, because she was not able to enter the country. Indeed, only one of nine Chinese researchers who sought to enter the country for the conference received a visa in time to attend.

Although none of the scientists were officially denied visas by the United States Consulate, officials at the State Department and National Academy of Sciences said this week that the situation was not uncommon.

Update: See also 1966's "White Glove Girl" a promotional board-game from Manpower Employment Agency. (Thanks, Jon!)

These smelly, highly reactive 'one-carbon' compounds are naturally produced from the breakdown of sulphur-containing amino acids in the mouth.

Dr Ann Wood and her colleagues at Kings College, London, reported these findings in the August issue of Environmental Microbiology. The odour-eating methylotrophic bacteria were isolated from the tongue, tooth plaques (supra-gingival plaques) and gum edge (sub-gingival plaques) of volunteers. They include strains of Bacillus, Brevibacterium casei, Hyphomicrobium sulfonivorans1, Methylobacterium, Micrococcus luteus and Variovorax paradoxus.

just like everyday at disneyland, a new day consists of resets for most computers. imagine if you will, a time when nearly every windows 2000 computer at disneyland is attacked by the same worm at the same time.

this really happened, and boy was it a mess for the few first hours. the main ticketing network was down, so everyone's park ticket had to be scanned in manually. then should you go and try to get a fastpass when the patched the computers, it wouldn't work because you didn't use your ticket for admission today. Or did you? Lets say then you give up fastpass rides and want to get something to eat, horribly the POS systems (that also run on windows 2000) were non operational. Okay, fine then no food. I guess I'll go on a ride. Oh wait, since the Cast Deployment System (known as CDS) runs on windows too, the cast members have absolutely no idea what they should be doing.

this was an amazing day folks. you should have seen how less crowded and nice everything was. (no fastpass) it was just magical for the cast members (who were off early so they could take advantage of the short lines)

Update: Alex of otaku.com sez, "we sell Famicom (Japanese version of the NES) controller TV remotes!"

"We seem to have a botwar on our hands," Hypponen said Wednesday. "There appear to be three different virus-writing gangs turning out new worms at an alarming rate, as if they were competing to build the biggest network of infected machines."

The first worm, dubbed Zotob, appeared on Sunday and appeared to have faded Monday. However, several Zotob offshoots and another new worm, Bozori, were subsequently unleashed. New versions of pre-existing threats Rbot, Sdbot, CodBot and IRCBot also began wriggling their way into computers. Systems at CNN, ABC and The New York Times were hit.

An official monitor in the online role-playing game Second Life told BBC News in April that he knows of spouses of game players who have actually paid money to online-game detectives to learn whether their mates are committing ''virtual adultery'' with other players' characters in the course of the game.

He reached down below a work-table and hosted up a huge triptych made out of three hinged car-doors stood on end. Carefully, he unfolded it and stood it like a screen on the cracked concrete floor.

The inside of the car-doors had been stripped clean and polished to a high metal gleam that glowed like sterling silver. Spot-welded to it were all manner of soda tins, pounded flat and cut into gears, chutes, springs and other mechanical apparatus.

"It's a mechanical calculator," he said, proudly. "About half as powerful as Univac. I milled all the parts using a laser-cutter. What you do is, fill this hopper with GI Joe heads, and this hopper with Barbie heads. Crank this wheel and it will drop a number of M&Ms equal to the product of the two values into this hopper, here." He put three scuffed GI Joe heads in one hopper and four scrofulous Barbies in another and began to crank, slowly. A music-box beside the crank played a slow, irregular rendition of "Pop Goes the Weasel" while the hundreds of little coin-sized gears turned, flipping switches and adding and removing tension to springs. After the weasel popped a few times, twelve brown M&Ms fell into an outstretched rubber hand. He picked them out carefully and offered them to her. "It's OK. They're not from the trash," he said. "I buy them in bulk." He turned his broad back to her and heaved over a huge galvanized tin washtub full of brown M&Ms. "See, it's a bit-bucket!" he said.

Update: This collection also seems to include the occasional Belgian coaster, like this one. (Thanks, Wendy!)

Our goal is to create a dramatic far-future universe that is internally consistent and abides as much as possible with the accepted facts and theories in the physical, biological, and social sciences. Thus matter cannot travel faster than light, matter and energy are conserved, no evolved humanoid aliens have been discovered, future ultratech social issues are likely to be very different to those of today, and so on. We embrace speculative ideas like drexlerian assemblers, mind uploads, posthuman intelligences, femtotech, magnetic monopoles, wormholes, as it is proposed that future sciences, technologies, and developments will make these possible. And we attempt a logical explanation for even the most fantastic-seeming elements in OA. We aim to paint a future that is plausible at every level, from the scientific to the social to the psychological...

Somewhere between the years 2020 and 2050 researchers would develop the technology of Direct Neural Interface, allowing human minds to link with their computers. They would advance genetic engineering to the point of the first optional improvements or ‘tweaks’ to the human genome as well as create the first ‘provolved’ animals engineered for human level intelligence. The dream of nanotechnology would start to be realized, as nano-scale manufacture became a viable industry. And, using a combination of nanotech created advanced materials, robotics, and tele-operated devices, development of a truly viable and self-sustaining space infrastructure began in earnest. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in the year 2040 researchers created the first human equivalent, or turinggrade, artificial intelligence. The future would never be the same again.

The story is a sweet little hard-boiled post-apocalyptic cyberpunk thing. It reads like Neuromancer with less flash and more computer-savvy. I'll certainly come back for the next episode. Link (Thanks, Callum!)

Bullet points include the observation "Burning and ripping are becoming a bigger threat than P2P." Among the "major impediments to pivoting Into digital space" cited by Bainwol -- "Fair use 'theology' run amok." (Thanks, Jason Schultz)

Provided to Boing Boing readers by Bonnie Burton of Lucasfilm, who explains, "One of our designers made that sticker. And yes, that's [Darth Vader's] weight with the suit on. Keep in mind how much of his body was burnt off from that little lava incident on Mustafar."

Check it out, Donna Reed led a secret double life -- as a plunger-wielding sysadmin! Here's a series of "found" '60s-era snapshots from a data center in Los Angeles. They were accidentally discovered in a closet at that same facility, decades later, by a Boing Boing reader who asks to remain anonymous. They're like a time capsule from our mainframe ancestors.

Images (med = 640 x 480, large = 1280 x 960)

(a) Plunger power! Not exactly Hattori Hanzo Steel, but it'll do for slaying server-room foes that hide under floor tiles: med / large.
(b) Guy holding up brochure that reads L.I.F.E., Life Insurance Forecast Electronically: med / large
(c) Man seated at workstation: med / large
(d) Groundbreaking ceremony? med / large

Boing Boing pal Sean Bonner says, "I love these things, and love thinking that my phone probably holds more data than that entire room."

Geology geeks, take note: the USGS/Cascade Volcano Observatory website has some fascinating still and moving images of the Mount St. Helens lava dome growing over the past couple of months.

Recently, the USGS began publishing short AVI movies of the dome's progress, as seen from a camera *inside* (!) the crater. The August 16 movie is comprised of 45 stills over a 60-day period, and depicts dramatic changes as one portion of the dome rises and collapses -- not unlike a gloppy pot of oatmeal on your stove: [small, 1MB; large, 2.8MB]

The site also offers medium and high-resolution still photos, updated daily, which make nifty, nerdy desktop wallpaper. (Thanks, Mark!)

Photo: "Bill Mitchell of Atascadero, Ca., is comforted after he broke down crying during a prayer at a camp near Crawford, Texas, Friday, Aug. 12, 2005. Mitchell's son Mike Mitchell was killed in Iraq. Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who started the vigil along the road leading to Bush's ranch, has been joined by dozens of other families that have lost loved ones in the war in Iraq." (AP / LM Otero)

Joe Ranft, a major part of creative team at Pixar, died in an auto accident yesterday. Ranft was one of the heads of story on both "Toy Story" films, as well as the voice of Heimlich the Caterpillar in "A Bug's Life" and Wheezy in "Toy Story 2". He also worked on "The Nightmare Before Christmas", "Beauty & the Beast", "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", and many other films. The Hollywood Reporter has details on the accident (link), and the guys at Cartoon Brew (link) have been collecting more details and remembrances. He has been described as "the heart of Pixar", and his death is a huge loss for the animation community.

Reader comment: Mike Outmesguine says: Here's a really cool site that lets you get closeups of air traffic at several airports.

The term "nerd rock" has been associated with bands like Weezer and, more recently, the dreaded emo genre. But way back in 1980, before most of those emaciated, dyed-black crybabies were even born, a group called Three Day Stubble dubbed itself "nerd rock," and to this day has stayed true to that spirit. Stumbling straight outta Houston, the musicians of Three Day Stubble did everything back-assward: They wore polyester shirts and hot pants after 1975; boisterous singer Donald the Nut performed in platform shoes and shellacked his hair into a curl on his forehead (way before Salt 'n' Pepa), and his voice veered between Tiny Tim and a constipated Robert Goulet; they had songs about bodily fluids and poop and monsters; they had names like Mr. Hungry and Murderer Bob; and they practiced "Avi," a type of free-form performance art that incorporates spastic movements and ungodly vocal sounds.

"In a traditional Avi setting people will take turns entertaining each other by switching roles between performer and audience," says band (and spiritual) leader Donald the Nut from his current home in Japan. "Occasionally everyone starts doing Avi and the audience disappears. This is called Ménage Avi..."

Throughout the '80s, various members of the band relocated to San Francisco. Toward the end of the decade, Donald began appearing on The Gong Show to perform Avi. The band's documentary, Rubbin' and Wigglin' for You, documents his immediate gonging by Mr. T; the gilded one's distaste for Donald's antics was much like the Ogre's in Revenge of the Nerds.

Heroin addicts trying to kick the habit often profoundly grieve their lost "relationship" with the needles they use to inject the drug, according to a new study by a University at Buffalo doctoral student. This intense personal connection with the needle, which some addicts described as a "love affair," may be a factor in the high relapse rate among recovering addicts, according to the study's principal investigator Davina Moss, who recently earned a doctorate in counselor education from the UB Graduate School of Education....

"They described a feeling of 'oneness' with the needle, how they would caress the needle, and how they would never forget their first time using the needle -- much like someone would describe a first love."

One user in the study even suggested that if he didn't crave the feel of the needle, he might be able to kick his habit, says Moss, who has worked with heroin addicts for 13 years.

Moss also found that recovering addicts grieve the loss of heroin as if they were mourning a loved one's death. They expressed a love for the drug much like one loves a spouse. Such intense feelings have been reported in other studies of heroin addicts, as well as in studies of other drug addicts and alcoholics, Moss says...

"Heroin addicts have great difficulty ending their relationship with the drug," Moss says. "Their unresolved grief is not being addressed in treatment programs."

The battery unit is made from a layer of paper that is steeped in copper chloride (CuCl) and sandwiched between strips of magnesium and copper. This "sandwich" is then held in place by being laminated, which involves passing the battery unit between a pair of transparent plastic films through a heating roller at 120ºC. The final product has dimensions of 60 mm x 30 mm, and a thickness of just 1 mm (a little bit smaller than a credit card)... Using 0.2 ml of urine, they generated a voltage of around 1.5 V with a corresponding maximum power of 1.5 mW...

“Our urine-activated battery would be integrated into biochip systems for healthcare diagnostic applications,” says (lead researcher Ki Bang) Lee. He envisions a world where people will easily be able to monitor their health at home, seeking medical attention only when necessary.

1. It’s not piss powered. The piss is the electrolyte, allowing ionic conduction (but not electronic conduction) when added. The electronic current must then flow through the device, completing the circuit. The electrochemical reaction at the electrode is a standard redox couple driven not by the piss, but by the potential difference between the Mg and the Cu. It’s more like a piss switch.

2. The tech has been around for a long time. The salt solution activated (key word) cells have been around for a long time and have seen a lot of use in deep sea applications. Why piss is needed is beyond me. Table salt and water would be fine. Remember: piss is poisonous to the body, so it’s not like this would make a very practical implantable device out side the bladder or urethra, never mind that it’s not rechargeable.

"The boys...had to take a piss real bad. Side effect of the bloodwash..../Stack called out, "Don't waste the biomass, boys."/Tino and Drifter grumbled, but they each opened up a fuel-intake cap, unvelcroed their flies, butted their groins up to the vans, and did their best to top off the tanks."

"Last meals” is an installation that attempts to bring first hand experience to the table through 310 unique portraits of those executed in the state of Texas. The contents of the menu are comprised of the actual meals requested by prisoners killed on death row thus far. The trays portray a vivid portrait of the prisoners and the incidents that led them to their prosecution. The experience is further pushed, as one sits at confined dining units to digest the full scope, complexity, and finality of that moment. For those who do not have the appetite for this experience there are plenty of declined meals. Collect all 310 souvenir trays.

1. Select a local bookstore to carry out your reshelving activities.

2. Download and print "This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving bookmarks and "All copies of 1984 have been relocated" notecards to take with you to the bookstore. Or make your own. We recommend bringing a notecard and 5-10 bookmarks to each store.

3. Go to the bookstore and locate its copies of George Orwell's 1984. Unless the Ministry of Reshelving has already visited this bookstore, it is probably currently incorrectly classified as "Fiction" or "Literature."

4. Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as "Current Events", "Politics", "History", "True Crime", or "New Non-Fiction."

5. Insert a Ministry of Reshelving bookmark into each copy of any book you have moved. Leave a notecard in the empty space the books once occupied.

6. If you spot other incorrectly classified books, feel free to relocate them.

7. Please report all reshelving efforts to the Ministry. Email your store name, location, # of 1984 copies reshelved, and any other reshelving activities conducted, to reshelving @ avantgame.com. Photos of your mission can be uploaded to Flickr, tagged as "reshelving", and submitted to the Ministry of Reshelving group.

"We've come across lots of sites littered with bikes and bike parts," Const. Peter Lane said.

"They sit in the bush with hundreds of parts just fiddling with them all day..."

"For some reason, they find fiddling with bike parts satisfies that need for stimulation," Lane said

About £1bn is lost or lying idle in the UK's 24.7 million households, the study found.

An overwhelming 88% of the 1,500 people surveyed said at least £10 was lost in small change throughout their home.

A further 62% estimated they had at least £56 in jars, pots, pockets and down the back of sofas.

A former child actor and his wife were ordered to stand trial on Tuesday for the murder of a wealthy California couple who, prosecutors say, were tied to the anchor of their yacht and thrown overboard alive, never to be seen again.

Orange County Superior Court Judge John Conley ordered 26-year-old Skylar Deleon, who once starred in the "Power Rangers" TV series, and his wife, 24-year-old Jennifer Henderson Deleon, to stand trial for the murders after a two-day preliminary hearing in Santa Ana, south of Los Angeles.

Update: Gordon sez, "This guy was never a Power Ranger. He was an unspeaking extra in 2-3 episodes, but he never donned a suit or said a word. He was NOT a Power Ranger."

He found that magazines, newspapers and old bits of wood thrown away up to 46 years ago were in almost perfect condition, with pornography lasting the best of all.

He displayed a 1979 copy of the men's magazine Playboy which was in near mint condition, and said its thick wax coating could be the reason for its longevity.

Update: Not only does porn rot slowly, but it also contains lots of kaolin, a mildly radioactive clay used to coat paper and render it glossy. Because so much porn is printed on clay-coated stock, it is more radioactive than other forms of printed entertainment. This chart of the radioactivity of a Playboy mag is particularly excellent. (Thanks, Mike!)

The economic rationale for intellectual property is that faster innovation offsets the enormous costs of such inefficiencies. But it has become increasingly clear that excessively strong or badly formulated intellectual property rights may actually impede innovation - and not just by increasing the price of research.

Monopolists may have much less incentive to innovate than they would if they had to compete. Modern research has shown that the great economist Joseph Schumpeter was wrong in thinking that competition in innovation leads to a succession of firms. In fact, a monopolist, once established, may be hard to dislodge, as Microsoft has so amply demonstrated...

Unfortunately, the trade negotiators who framed the intellectual-property agreement of the Uruguay trade round of the early 1990's (TRIP's) were either unaware of all of this, or more likely, uninterested. I served on the Clinton administration's Council of Economic Advisors at the time, and it was clear that there was more interest in pleasing the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries than in ensuring an intellectual-property regime that was good for science, let alone for developing countries.

At the Viceroy, which is owned by the Kor Hotel Group, guests can check out a Sony PlayStation 2 or PlayStation Portable device free of charge. Then, if necessary, they can call on Mr. Conway, a "self-diagnosed videogame addict," to coach them on the finer points of popular games like "Twisted Metal: Head-On" or "Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee."

I'm doing another series of prints, this time for Banksy's site. You've probably heard of Banksy; he's done loads of graffiti all over the world. He gave some monkeys in a zoo pieces of cardboard with 'I'm a celebrity - get me out of here' written on them.

Anyway, his site features prints from loads of people, such as 3D, Jamie Hewlett, David Shrigley, and one of my favourite artists ever, Gee Vaucher. So I'm pretty pleased to be associated with the site, and I'm doing some different work to that on my own site. To start with there are four new prints, but I'm planning to add another six or so over the summer.

Update: The Silicon Alley Reporter article from 2000 isn't online anymore, but I found my email interview transcript! I asked a lot of annoying questions, but Donwood was patient and generous. This was just as Kid A was being released; Donwood had collaborated with Radiohead, Shynola, and Chris Bran to make a bunch of super-short little online promo videos for the record, which they called "blips," instead of doing full-song-length MTV-style videos. Begin excerpt:

Stanley Donwood: heloxeni

XJ: Where are you based?
SD: hidden away in the oxfordshire countryside i also work in london and bath

XJ: How did you meet and begin working with Radiohead?
SD: met thom at college. began working with radiohead in er um 1994 i think my first thing was the cover for my iron lung then the bends etc etc

XJ: Can you give us an idea of how you and Thom typically collaborate or exchange ideas with regard to your visual work? And with regard to his songwriting?
SD: we drink a lot and then argue. thom stares with a mystified expression while i attempt to explain my debauched notions eventually we go out to the pub and glare morosely out of the window at the rising floodwaters

XJ: What are some of the sources and inspirations for the iconography in your work?
SD: kid a is a very agoraphobic record. everything is far away. so landscapes. the music makes shapes and colors that i tried to use i like old paintings of battles where the aries look like jewels scattered on mud but close up are performing a ballet of atrocity the paintings were started during that horror in bosnia so my feelings about that found their way in. fire. fields. i had an idea of an empty battlefield when everyone had gone. sort of metaphorical, if thats not too annoying kid a was the constant soundtrack/inspiration though.

red pools -- an idea stolen from a book by alan moore and bill sincowitz [not correct spelling] called brought to light they used swimming pools filled with blood to count those killed directly/indirectly by the CIA since WW2. average body holds a gallon. biggish swimming pool holds 50,000. lots of pools. i used them as swimming pools for pyramid hotels

XJ: I read somewhere that before their scheduled release date, a number of the "blip" videos you guys did for Kid A were "hacked out of a server at EMI." How did you feel about that?
SD: i fucking love it. emi reckoned they had a secure server - theres no such thing. they wanted to do some kind of pokemon style blip collecting thing but it didnt work as far as im concerned once we finished the blips they were free to gentically reproduce wherever they liked

XJ: How would you feel if a Radiohead fan created a new, totally unauthorized short video out of the "blips" you created with Radiohead for Kid A?
SD: id be very happy. there should be no copyright on the net. its our last/latest free place. steal what you like and use it to make great things

XJ: Who is Doktor Tchock?
SD: he is an intastella selecta who lives in the house of the stars has been known to visit planet dearth during artistic emergencies.

Pentagon mad science division DARPA had their sorta-annual convention last week. And there was exactly zero mainstream media coverage of the event, as near as I could tell.

Luckily, Defense Tech had a couple of spies at the conference, to see what's doing at the Defense Department's Q branch. Flocking drones, brain caps, Pentagon pandas, wi-fi space dust, and terror-fighting phone books were in attendance.

Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, has asked for a hold to be placed on the contract to run the new top-level domain until the .xxx suffix can receive further scrutiny. The domain was scheduled to receive final approval Tuesday.

"The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children," Gallagher said in a letter that was made public on Monday.

Related links on Politech:

Milton Mueller on governmental flap over .xxx domains

Family Research Council on .xxx: Why Bush admin acted

"This is the Guild where Jim Henson met a young Frank Oz and Jerry Juhl back in the 1960s. Not long ago, I was President, and before that, Secretary.

"But now our government thinks it's harboring terrorists." Link

Here are 13 concept paintings by Oreb, published on Vintage Tips. They're from Disney's "Mars and Beyond" and are examples of Oreb's unmatched skill in composition, color, and expression. The animated versions of these designs that appear in the Disney short are gasp-inducing.
Link

Reader comment: Amid Amidi, who is writing a book on 1950s animation that will be published by Chronicle books, says: "Just a quick note to let you know that the person who posted those concepts is incorrect about those being Tom Oreb. I'm not sure who did the paintings, but Oreb never worked on Kimball's space specials. I just did two posts on the CartoonRetro message board explaining who did the design on the space specials, and who the painter might possibly be.

"It's probably the most common misconception about Tom Oreb -- that he worked on Kimball's space specials. I made it a point to specifically write in my design book that he never worked on them."

Now that the bound proof copies of _Thud!_ are out, and will no doubt be winging their way to an e-bay near you, I would like to say that ANYONE WHO READS A WORD OF IT before publication day will be MADE TO SIT IN THE CORNER and their ENTIRE COUNTRY will be given DOUBLE DETENTION until every single person SAYS SORRY!!!!!

The neutron bomb is an incredibly strange weapon. From the profile:

Cohen came up with a design for a warhead about one-tenth as powerful as the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. If it was detonated at 3,000 feet above ground level, its blast effects would be negligible while its neutron radiation would be powerful enough to cause death within a circle about one mile in diameter. This was the battlefield weapon that came to be known as the neutron bomb.

Such a weapon obviously would be more civilized than large-scale hydrogen bombs, and would also be more humane than conventional bombs, because it would create an all-or-nothing, live-or-die scenario in which no one would be wounded. A stream of neutrons cannot maim people. It will not burn their flesh, spill their blood, or break their bones. Those who receive a non-lethal dose will recover after a period of intense nausea and diarrhea, and Cohen estimated that their risk of subsequent cancer would be no greater than the risk we experience as a result of exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke. As for the rest, death would come relatively quickly, primarily from shock to the central nervous system. As he put it in his typically candid style, "I doubt whether the agony an irradiated soldier goes through in the process of dying is any worse than that produced by having your body charred to a crisp by napalm, your guts being ripped apart by shrapnel, your lungs blown in by concussion weapons, and all those other sweet things that happen when conventional weapons (which are preferred and anointed by our official policy) are used."

After assessing every aspect and implication of his concept, he reached his modest conclusion: "The neutron bomb has to be the most moral weapon ever invented."

There were several minor injuries and one person was taken to a hospital with a leg injury, fire Battalion Chief Steve Wood said during a 1 p.m. news conference. In all, 17 people were treated, the majority for heat- or diabetic-related problems, he said. Thousands of Henrico County residents and/or taxpayers stood in a half-mile-long line as dawn broke while others waited in cars parked nearby or milled about not far from the entrance to RIR. One official estimate put the crowd at 5,500. Other observers estimated more than twice that.

Many had come prepared with books, snacks, umbrellas and chairs. The first car arrived at 1:30 a.m. By 6:30 vehicles were backed up on Laburnum Avenue about a half mile to Carolina Avenue.

The late Enoch Light was a bandleader famous for using "ping pong stereo" effects: bouncing sound from the left and right channels. The effect was put to good use on his two most popular albums, Persuasive Percussion and Provocative Percussion, both issued in the 1950s.

The cover art of his 60s LPs are phantasmagorically trippy blends of exotica, erotica, and psychedelia. The music on many of his albums of the era, however, sound like a slightly (very slightly) more hip version of Lawrence Welk. Lucky for me, I love Lawrence Welk's sound.

Coincidentally, this morning Sebastian of PCL LinkDump sent me an email which explained why the oddio community is hot for Enoch right now:

According to Robbie Baldock (manager of The Enoch Light Website):
"18 August 2005 sees the 100th anniversary of the birth of Enoch Light.

On that date please charge your glasses and toast the memory of the father of ping pong stereo.

To help with the global party, if you have any Enoch Light recordings or mixes you're happy to share with the world, please let me know. Here are two to get the celebrations under way:"
http://www.enochlight.com/

Find uploads:


http://dennyesq.blogspot.com/ (7 albums in 7 days)


http://www.weirdomusic.com/enochlight.htm

http://www.oddiooverplay.com/, will soon join in.

And more coming up!

Please, consider spreading the word.

Now Gomeche has reportedly been institutionalized, after years of behavior like this. The coalition of his former victims at GomecheWatch point out that the key advantage of this is that there once Gomeche is released, there will be a basis for having the local law take fresh complaints seriously and respond to them with authority.

Over the last few days, under Section of the Mental Health Act, he was moved from prison to the Cornhill Psychiatric Hospital in Aberdeen with a preliminary diagnosis of "psychosis", and there are reports that further tests now appear to diagnose bi-polar affective disorder with possible mild schizophrenia. This suggests that the cases may not now go ahead, and that in fact Section and treatment under the Mental Health Act will be the preferred resolution at this time.

While this does unfortunately mean that there may be no final legal closure for those who have suffered Ian Gomeche's criminal victimisation and harrassment over many years, it does ensure that he will remain isolated and unable to harrass while he undergoes treatment, something we must accept as a valid alternative. Additionally, it has been explicitly confirmed by the investigating officers that should he be released in the future and re-offend, IMMEDIATE action WILL be taken to bring him into custody without delay on first report received by the local police. This does guarantee some confidence at last among those who have suffered that we can finally go about our lawful business without having to fear his unrestricted reappearance in future.

But Basic Hip has started a new monthly feature called Hot Spots, featuring a dozen radio commercial jingles from the 50s-70s.

Here at Basic Hip Digital Oddio, we're jingle freaks!  Hot Spots is a new feature where each month we offer a downloadable set of 12 radio commercials from the 1950s-1970s.  You are invited to help yourself to the 24kbps MP3 spots below.  For those of you looking for better quality, a zip file of 16-bit, 22,050Hz, mono wav files is also available.  All ads are from original radio broadcast records and have been carefully processed with noise reduction software.  Very minor audio imperfections may still be evident.  These ready-to-use spots are perfect for spicing up your internet broadcasts or custom compilations! 

Officials said a fearsome array of weaponry - including knives, automatic rifles and hand grenades - had been smuggled into the prisons...

The gangs appear to have coordinated the fighting using mobile telephones, said Guatemala's Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann.

Sarah Zapolsky and her husband had a similar experience last month while departing from Dulles International Airport outside Washington. An airline ticket agent told them their 11-month-old son was on the government list....

Well-known people like Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and David Nelson, who starred in the sitcom "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," also have been stopped at airports because their names match those on the lists...

The TSA has a "passenger ombudsman" who will investigate individual claims from passengers who say they are mistakenly on the lists. TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said 89 children have submitted their names to the ombudsman. Of those, 14 are under the age of 2.

Over at TechJapan, we've managed to secure footage of the bizarre anti-piracy promo being shown in Japan's movie theaters that was recently discussed on Boing Boing. The clip is available in 3GP (Quicktime) and WMV (Windows Media) formats and we've also provided a transcript.

(Picture of girl looking sad.)
Girl: "Movies are being stolen."
Girl: "Our enjoyment (of movies) is being stolen."

(Black tear appears on girl's face.)
Girl: "Important things will be destroyed."

Text: I want to protect movies, I want to protect our enjoyment (of movies).
(Tear runs down girl's face, drops into water and skull appears. Fades to image of eroding film.)

Text and voiceover: Pirate movie eradication campaign

"The numbers are pretty amazing, in 24 hrs approx. 1 meter (37in) of rain fell during a weather phenomenom called a cloudburst. This is an average of 4in/hr. The event killed over 1000 people and forced people to be stuck in their offices for 2 days or mroe. The cities infrastructure has basically collapsed.

"The interesting thing is how blogs became an important agregator of information. The suggested blog has basically become the source for updates and additional information for the tragedy. I included one entry that shows an overview of the pictures.

"The surprising thing is how little has been told of the event. While it pales in comparison to Tsunami that hit last Dec, the statistics are still pretty amazing." Link

So what's going to happen when you've got all these different phones being billed by carriers as iPod killers or replacements and people come to find out their music won't play on them, or they can only listen to music that's been bought from one specific store or service? They're going to get pissed off, that's what's going to happen. They won't buy music that's tied to a specific device or has onerous limitations on what they can do with it -- which will probably rule out any carrier's download store from being a success. Regardless of how the record labels see things, people want to own their music, and owning music means being able to do with it what you like, and play it on whatever device you want.

GOOFUS wears street clothes to work, maybe a lab suit on occasion.
GALLANT wears three piece suits at all times.

GOOFUS is employed by a "university", a "hospital", or a "laboratory".
GALLANT is employed by a "Coalition", an "Institute", an "Association", a "Foundation", a "Council", or a "White House".

GOOFUS earns $30000 per year unless they cut his funding.
GALLANT earns $200000 per year but makes his real money from speaking fees.

GOOFUS lives anywhere in the country.
GALLANT lives in a wealthy area near Washington DC, but may have additional homes elsewhere.

GOOFUS may sometimes be filmed standing in front of big melting icebergs.
GALLANT may be filmed sitting in front of a bookcase or standing behind a podium at a $2000 per plate fundraiser, although there may be ice melting in his drink.

GOOFUS is a dues-paying member of several scientific grassroots organizations.
GALLANT is on the payroll of several scientific astroturf organizations.

GOOFUS gets summoned for jury duty but is never picked as a juror.
GALLANT claims "the jury is still out" on evolution or global warming, since he considers himself to be on the jury.

Reader comment: Genie says: "Thanks for the link to the Cindy Sheehan thing. Here's a link to a MoveOn site where people can find out where there's a vigil to support Cindy near them. There are going to be vigils all over the country this Wed. I know there are 2 here in Madison."

Researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) took up that question, and have now posted their study results: "A Comparision of the Size of the Yahoo! and Google Indices." Snip from conclusion:

Based on the data created from our sample searches, this study concludes that a user can expect, on average, to receive 166.9% more results using the Google search engine than the Yahoo! search engine. In fact, in the 10,012 test cases we ran, only in 3% of the cases (307) did Yahoo! return more results. In 96.6% of the cases (9,676) Google returned more results. In less than 1% of the cases (29) both search engines returned the same number of results.

It is the opinion of this study that Yahoo!'s claim to have a web index of over twice as many documents as Google's index is suspicious. Unless a large number of the documents Yahoo! has indexed are not yet available to its search engine, we find it puzzling that Yahoo!'s search engine consistently returned less results than Google.

Previously:
Battelle: more on Yahoo, Google, index, size

Battelle on Yahoo search claims, Google reply

Reader comment: Mike Winter says,

As you probably guessed, there are definitely some major questions about the NCSA study comparing Google and Yahoo! indices. I think everyone should re-read the methodology focusing on the assumptions made. The make it clear (if you read between the lines) that the test may be as much about the matching and filtering algorithms used by the two competitors as the number of pages. One of the goals of good algorithms (IMO) is to reduce the number of hits to a bare minimum, not give you a hit on anything that might be close.

So which is it? More pages indexed or poorer search & filtering algorithms? Or both? There has to be a better way.

Update: As many have pointed out, this is a Comedy Central humor piece and not real at all. Here is a direct link to the video, too. (Thanks, By the Grace of God, Remy, Roger, Sean and Andrew)

Update: Kyle goetz has generously translated these into English.

Over the past eight years the Golf Tournament has raised £200,000 to support the work of our industry enforcement agencies - investigating and prosecuting pirates and counterfeiters.

The hosts of Golf 2005, all members of the Alliance Against IP Theft, increasingly unite to pool resources, lobby government and promote the value of intellectual property to the UK economy. The estimated £11 billion lost last year to all forms of IP theft was money lost to future investment in new artistic talent, new products and innovation. It also put vast illegal profits into the pockets of crooks and organised crime.

Lloyd's of London is close to offering independent insurance protection worldwide against potential IP litigation involving Linux and open source software. The financial services giant has agreed to take on the risk associated with open source, and is finalizing arrangements to work through Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) who will become Lloyd's sole US representative...

Arguably, one of the worst-case scenarios is the so-called "colorable case" - where there is no substance to an IP claim, but a company is forced to waste millions of dollars to defend the claim or settles early for a large sum to make the case go away. The average US patent action is estimated to cost $2m, according to the American Intellectual Property Lawyers' Association.

My two most effective substitutions do date are for boning and hoops. Acting on a tip from my pal Melissa, I tried plastic cable ties instead of metal boning. Now, don't let the word plastic scare you... This isn't the flimsy plastic boning you find at the fabric store. These are heavy duty cable ties, the sort used for quick & dirty handcuffs and securing large bundles of wood/cable/whatever. They come in several lengths, but I opt for the 24" and 36" ties. In testing their resiliency, I would have to say that they have basically the same strength when used in corsets as 1/4" metal boning for far less money. A package of 24" cable ties (10 ties per pack) will set you back about $5.00 US. One-and-a-half packs is usually all it takes for me to bone a single corset. I use the cable ties whenever I need to place boning in a garment, such as at lacing edges, front stiffening, etc.

Rob Cooper, the Senior Producer on the game, writes in with the following:

I'm Rob, the Senior Producer on the Jamie Kane game. A couple of people have emailed the BBC asking for an official response to the Jamie Kane/Wikipedia thing. If you guys still have space for it, would you mind adding in the following, as there seems to be some confusion:

"Just to confirm, the BBC would never use Wikipedia as a marketing tool. The first posting was simply a case of a fan of the game getting into the spirit of alternative reality a little too much. The follow up posting was made by a fan of the game who happens to work for the BBC and was made without the knowledge of anyone in the Jamie Kane Team or BBC Marketing."

But last year Scott gave me a copy of his smart-ass young adult mystery novel So Yesterday, and I decided to risk it -- the blurb really made it sound like my cup of tea, and anyone as fun to talk to as Scott is couldn't possibly be a bad writer. I wasn't disappointed: So Yesterday was one of the most memorable books I read last year.

Keeping up with Scott's writing is nontrivial. He publishes about two novels a year, ranging from heavy duty space operas to young adult trilogies to snappy YA novels like So Yesterday. But this year at WorldCon, I was privileged to get a copy of Peeps, Scott's newest YA novel, pressed into my hands by Scott himself, and I've just pounded through it while I should have been getting over my jetlag in a St Petersburg hotel room.

Peeps is a science fiction vampire novel written for young people. It concerns a parasitologist who is a carrier for a perfectly realized, scientifically justifiable strain of vampirism. Cal, the parasitologist hero, is in the employ of an ancient secret society headquartered in New York's bowels -- a society that goes all the way back to the days of New Amsterdam and is the oldest secret society in the Americas, edging out the Masons by a couple decades. Cal's job is hunting down vampires -- "Parasite Positives" or "Peeps" -- and the rats who act as disease-reservoirs for their infections.

The story rockets along at an amazing pace, benefitting greatly from Westerfeld's breezy, wisecracking prose-style (think of Douglas Coupland crossed with a really good science writer like Steven Jay Gould). The action chapters alternate with engaging short chapters on the minutiae (heh) of parasitology, lucid scientific explanations of the role of parasites in the world and our body. Between the science and the mystery, Peeps is practically impossible to put down.

Scott's managed to write a vampire novel without ever once visiting the tired old tropes of horror fiction. Instead, he invents marvelous, scientific explanations for the characteristics of vampirism, like the anathema effect. Evolutionary pressure on infected Peeps to escape their home villages (where their cannibalism arouses the torch-wielding ire of their former neighbors) favors a mutant strain of the parasite the flips the "love" reactions in the brain to "hate" reactions, causing peeps to flee home for distant quarters, living longer, spreading the bug further. That's why religious peeps fear crosses.

This is some seriously inventive science fiction, written in an engaging style that's bound to spark young readers' interest in biology and parasitology (there's a short bibliography on parasites at the end of the novel). For adults, this scientific take on a hoary old subject will inspire admiration in the ability of an original talent to mine fresh ore from even the oldest veins.

As cities grew, with more police and bigger lynch mobs, peeps had to adopt new survival strategies to stay hidden. They learned to love the night and see in the dark, until the sun itself became anathema to them.

But come on: They don't burst into flame in daylight. They just really, really hate it.

The anathema also created some familiar vampire legends. If you grew up in Europe in the Middle Ages, chances are you were a Christian. You went to church at least twice a week, prayed three times a day, and had a crucifix hanging in every room. You made the sign of the cross every time you ate food or wished fro good luck. So it's not surprising that most peeps back then had major cruciphobia -- they could actually be repelled by the sight of a cross, just like in the movies.