There is a king and there are his n prisoners. The king has a dungeon in his castle that is shaped like a circle, and has n cell doors around the perimeter, each leading to a separate, utterly sound proof room. When within the cells, the prisoners have absolutely no means of communicating with each other.

The king sits in his central room and the n prisoners are all locked in their sound proof cells. In the king's central chamber is a table with a single chalice sitting atop it. Now, the king opens up a door to one of the prisoners' rooms and lets him into the room, but always only one prisoner at a time! So he lets in just one of the prisoners, any one he chooses, and then asks him a question, "Since I first locked you and the other prisoners into your rooms, have all of you been in this room yet?" The prisoner only has two possible answers. "Yes," or, "I'm not sure." If any prisoner answers "yes" but is wrong, they all will be beheaded. If a prisoner answers "yes," however, and is correct, all prisoners are granted full pardons and freed. After being asked that question and answering, the prisoner is then given an opportunity to turn the chalice upside down or right side up. If when he enters the room it is right side up, he can choose to leave it right side up or to turn it upside down, it's his choice. The same thing goes for if it is upside down when he enters the room. He can either choose to turn it upright or to leave it upside down. After the prisoner manipulates the chalice (or not, by his choice), he is sent back to his own cell and securely locked in.

The king will call the prisoners in any order he pleases, and he can call and recall each prisoner as many times as he wants, as many times in a row as he wants. The only rule the king has to obey is that eventually he has to call every prisoner in an arbitrary number of times. So maybe he will call the first prisoner in a million times before ever calling in the second prisoner twice, we just don't know. But eventually we may be certain that each prisoner will be called in ten times, or twenty times, or any number you choose.

Here's one last monkey wrench to toss in the gears, though. The king is allowed to manipulate the cup himself, k times, out of the view of any of the prisoners. That means the king may turn an upright cup upside down or vice versa up to k times, as he chooses, without the prisoners knowing about it. This does not mean the king must manipulate the cup any number of times at all, only that he may.

This web site is devoted to the postcards my grandfather collected from approximately 1906-1918. The collection is comprised of 435 postcards, most of which were produced in Russia, Poland and Germany. My maternal grandfather, Benjamin Swartzberg, lived from 1890 to 1985. For the past five years I have simultaneously been researching the history and origins of my grandfather’s postcard collection as well as the genealogical history of my grandfather’s family. Both aspects of my research have resulted in discoveries about my grandfather and his family which have been immensely gratifying. What follows is an account of my exploration into my grandfather’s life as seen through his postcards and his family history. You will find 36 images of Benny’s postcards here on this web page.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights," she says. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster..."

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.

"At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster," Jarvis says. "I didn't believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn't there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others."

We Love Katamari Damacy is the sequel to the magnificent Katamari Damacy in which you play a little cosmic prince charged with rolling around a magnetic ball that picks up household objects (thumbtacks, candies, mice) growing larger and larger until you begin to roll over and pick up entire cities, mountains and clouds. Playing the Katamari games is totally, utterly hypnotic, like playing Tetris was when it first emerged. And like Tetris, Katamari games make you start viewing the world in terms of what you can likely roll up.

Getting one million roses in We Love Katamari Damacy apparently unlocks a screen where the King of All Cosmos congratulates you warmly for your astonishing dedication. The photos of the gamer's screen reveals the text of this message.

On Friday night I hooked up a PS2 controller to a sturdy wooden chair with some string so it is immobile. I then taped the left analog stick in the forward direction. Then I put an oscillating fan in front of the controller-chair setup. To the fan, I attached a string with a loop on the end of it. I put this loop around the other analog controller so that when the fan oscillates, it pulls the stick in different directions.

The purpose of this setup is to collect one million roses in We Love Katamari.

Yes, I said one million. Doing this without assistance would be so ridiculously time consuming. It's not even vital to winning the game, but you get fun little things in the game for doing it.

Update: Patti accomplished the same thing with two rubber bands!

The phone will transmit your position to server (Uses Rails, Linux, Google Maps) and you/your friends can view where you are at in real time. I've hacked up tons of solutions to do the same thing, and this is simplest and cheapest (pretty much free if you have the phone, or $60 if you go pre-paid + 0.20 / day).

Update: Mike sez, "I've got one of these mugs and people need to know that they're NOT dishwasher or even hot water safe! Sort of like the parchment of the first ten amendments to our constitution - It garbles up and becomes a worthless jumble of letters when not taken good care of! Cooler heads (and water) are the only way to protect either."

Update: Here's a panorama of the place, thanks to Adrian.

Update 2: Frantisek sez, "'Kostnice' is Czech word for 'Ossuary'. When you wrote 'Kostnice Ossuary', you basically wrote 'Ossuary Ossuary'. The name of the town is 'Sedlec'. There are other ossuaries in the Czech Republic, the Sedlec one being the most famous (several Hollywood movies were shot here, including Dungeons & Dragons and Van Helsing)."

"The original directory with the photos is at Link"

Owner Bill Whittington told a North Carolina TV station that he noticed the cat's second tongue in December. He said he yelled when he saw the tongues flicker...

Whittington said Ripley's Believe It Or Not will feature Five Toes in its 2006 guide.

Now Tim's breaking fresh ground with a paper on broadband regulation that once again has opened my eyes to a whole new way of understanding the debate:

In the communications world some technologies attract what you might call a high chatter to deployment ratio. That means the volume of talk about the technology exceeds, by an absurd ratio, the actual number of deployments. ''Videophones'' are a great historical example, as is ''Video-on-Demand'' and, of course, the glacial sixth version of the Internet protocol (IPv6). In the 1990s, the technology named Voice over IP (VoIP) was a starring member of this suspect class. The technology promises carriage of voice signals using Internet technology, an attractive idea, and in the 1990s and the early 2000s it was discussed endlessly despite minimal deployment.

The discussion usually centered on the question: when would broadband carriers deploy VoIP? And the answer was always, ''not quite yet.'' There were reasons. Many within the industry argued that VoIP was not a viable technology without substantial network improvements. Engineers said that the Internet Protocol was too inconsistent to guarantee voice service of a quality that any customer would buy. Industry regulatory strategists, meanwhile, were concerned that offering voice service would attract federal regulation like honey attracts bees. As for the Bell companies, the main Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) providers, there was always the problem of providing a service that might cannibalize the industry's most profitable service.

I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:

Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.

Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.

O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.

David of Eatbrains.com says,

There is so much fucking zombie action tommorow, October 15, I don't even know what to do. Seattle, Minneapolis, Philly, Calgary. And then there's NYC next weekend.

See also the Graveyard Games, taking place in San Francisco tomorrow, Saturday October 15.

Previously:

Things to do in SF when you're dead: Zombie Flashmob

Hundreds of "zombies" mob posh Vancouver mall

According to the World of Warcraft terms of service, when you install the latest version of the game, an anticheat program called Warden snoops through your entire computer looking for "unauthorized third-party programs" that allow users to "hack" or "modify" the online game environment or "cheating of any kind." Warden then "communicates the information" it finds back to Blizzard. This "communication" process is described in alarmingly capacious terms that make it clear Blizzard has the option of examining your PC's hard drive anytime it wants. [...]

Breaking the rules isn't nice, but this is a game, people -- a game! It's not a matter of national security; nobody is going to get killed except the stupid video game avatars. Do you realize the government would have to have a warrant to get the kind of information Blizzard claims it has the right to suck out of your computer to stop cheaters? Doesn't that seem a wee bit wrong?

Save our set! Producers of Mouth of America Network, which recently announced "The Daily Set without Jon Stewart" tour and subsequent webcasts and podcasts arrived in New York today to take delivery of the set and begin the tour.

Blame it on new math or the declining education system in America, but the measurements of the set as told to us by TDS were dramatically undermeasured and the set does not fit on the truck.

We need your help! The set pieces are at least 12 x 12 x 3 and weigh no less than 500 pounds. We need a vehicle that could allow the set to be toured, as planned.

Email us at producers@thedailyset.com if you can help. Thanks!

Previously:
The Daily Set, Sans Jon Stewart

Defensetech's Dan Dupont says,

Back in college I had a Soviet studies professor whose office was decorated with lurid, humorless security posters from the U.S.S.R. I thought they were artifacts peculiar to repressive, secrecy-obsessed regimes -- until I started covering the Pentagon.

On bulletin boards, doors and office walls throughout the building, my colleagues and I would find dozens of security posters and signs of varying quality and message – some of them just as spooky as those Soviet posters in my professor’s office (and some still focused on the Soviets, for that matter). My favorite, which one of my co-workers was kind enough to swipe for me, was a warning to government officials about to travel abroad. “Get your travel threat briefing before departing,” it screamed, the words surrounded by hideous, bloody drawings of what might happen to if you weren't careful – hostage situations, attacks in café’s, etc.

Also on DefenseTech today: this weird robo-mule with a leg-wheel hybrid. Link. (thanks, Noah Shachtman)

Snip from San Jose Mercury News story:

Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday it will bar chat rooms that promote sex between minors and adults and restrict all chat rooms to users 18 and older. The changes come under an agreement with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning.

"This is about protecting kids," Bruning said.

(Biochemist Chris) Elvin says that the team is dreaming up a range of applications for the material. At the moment the group is focusing its attention on using the stuff to make replacements for spinal discs, the spongy material that lies between bones in the spine.

The resilin molecules in a fruitfly's wings might have to stretch about 500 million times during its life, says Elvin, and a human may flex their back a similar number of times. Using a material that can withstand a lifetime's punishment could significantly improve existing artificial spinal discs, which are made of metal and polythene....

The team is studying how the material behaves inside living lab animals to find out whether it could be used in such implants.

The group is also trying to add a gene that makes spider silk to the modified E. coli, so that the rubber it produces is stronger than resilin itself while being just as stretchy. "People have been trying to do similar things with spider silk for a while," says Lakes, "and I think this approach could bear fruit."

Boing Boing reader Mike Ransom says,

My dad became a frequenter of thrift stores after retirement. During my weekly visits, I was accustomed to discovering a new atrocity, destined for speedy banishment by my mom.

One time my dad said, "I've got a painting to show you." I braced for some typical piece of kitsch, like the outhouse sketch he managed to keep in the front room for a couple of weeks before it was forcibly retired to his office.

It seems my mental preparation wasn't adequate. The large, framed print he trotted out crashed through the floor of my expectations in its grandiosity. I started to chuckle, then laugh, then helplessly slid off the couch and convulsed on the floor for awhile.It would have been a surreal scene from an outsider's perspective; my parents didn't react that much to my fit, though I think my brother was amused at my reaction.

This masterpiece depicts the rapture occurring from a perspective just outside Dallas. Some of the fascinating details: an airliner crashes into a building (ghosts of the passengers wafting heavenward), a pile-up on the freeway (ghosts again liberated), a graveyard releases another wave, etc. Don't miss the glowing linebacker Jesus placed dead center in the picture.

Previously: Awesomely weird Jehovah's Witness art

It's made with fun fur, ping pong balls, a paint pen, stuffing, and lots of hot glue (I didn't feel like sewing)  It's basically just a wreath-shaped pillow with a ribbon on the back to hang it on the door.

And in one small development that none the less sums up the mood, the left-wing administration of President Luiz Inacio da Silva, or "Lula", has announced that all ministries will stop using Microsoft Windows on their office computers. Instead of paying through the nose for Microsoft operating licences, while millions of Brazilians live in poverty, the government will use open-source software, collaboratively designed by programmers worldwide and owned by no one.

"This isn't just my idea, or Brazil's idea," Gil says. "It's the idea of our time. The complexity of our times demands it." He is politician enough to hold back from endorsing the breaking of laws, for example on music downloading, but only just. "The Brazilian government is definitely pro-law," he grins. "But if law doesn't fit reality anymore, law has to be changed. That's not a new thing. That's civilisation as usual." (He is not a hi-tech person himself, he says, but readily concedes that his children have "probably" done a fair bit of illegal downloading.)

Update: Martijn sez, "The Game of Life is not actually about mutation. It could be considered to be about evolution, though not darwinian evolution - no natural selection is involved either - just in the sense of having an evolving universe.

"Conway's Life is a simple mathematical universe that allows surprisingly complicated structures to exist and indeed, evolve. In a big enough grid one could, in theory, build a universal computer, so as an environment it's pretty powerful for having such simple rules. Still, it's a simulation more analogous to physics than it is to biology, even though the name would suggest otherwise."

Reader comment: Tom sasy: "Ninjalicious, the guy who wrote Access All Areas, died of cancer on Aug 23rd, just before the book was released. He was also known as Milky, and appeared under that name in Jason Scott's BBS Documentry.  Jason blogged about his death here."

Fortunately, I'd made a backup of my disk the night before using the best backup software for Macs, Super Duper, so I was able to recover everything but that day's changes to my hard drive. I asked people to resend certain emails, including Charles Platt, and he gave me this great tip: set up a rule in Mac's Mail.app to send a copy of every email that goes in and out over to a Gmail account. That way, you'll always have a searchable archive of all the email you send and receive.

I just set up the rule, and it seems to be working. Thanks, Charles!

"The idea was to transform physical properties into visual properties," Andersen explains. After working extensively with University of Michigan physicists Gordon Kane and David Gerdes, Andersen decided on four rules that would govern his representation of particles:

1. All the forms should be generated by one simple visual element.

2. The particles must have the same basic form, yet reflect differences in mass, parities, functions, and behavior.

3. There must be logical coherence between the particles according to the categorization and decay patterns of the Standard Model. Yet, the model must be open for possible extensions due to supersymmetry, string theory, gravitational forces, and the Higgs field/particle.

4. The particles' spins and directional velocities require a multidirectional visual quality.

Previously:

Apple's new thing? Video iPod. But more crap-o copy-blocking.

HOWTO rip a DVD with a Mac

Dear Harriet

Thank you for the card and a happy 52nd to you. I appreciate your friendship and candor- never hold back your sage advice-

All my best
George W.

P.S. No more public scatology

The 'Robot Johnson' design is of course from Robert Armstrong, famed underground cartoonist and founding member of the Cheap Suit Serenaders. If you’ve logged onto our website (http://gryphonstrings.com) you’re already familiar with Bob’s somewhat twisted sense of humor. We’ve run the design shown here a couple of times as ads in Acoustic Guitar Magazine, and people have called and emailed suggesting we issue a T-shirt, so we did. Leave it to Bob to combine all the hoopla about blues legend Robert Johnson, and the new fad for robots, into one character, Robot Johnson, complete with handy oil can and mechanical mascot. And any self-respecting robot would have to play a metal National guitar, don’t you agree?

(Fukuyama's) creations are made with moulded plastics, finished with leather, fur, precious stones and precious metals. In addition to the presenting these suits as objects, Fukyama wears his creations during performances.

"The Imaginary Foundation was established in Geneva in 1973 as an experimental think-tank for new ideas. Created by an eclectic group of free thinkers, the Foundation’s research spans all creative endeavors and assigns as its goal: the wish to eliminate set conventions in favor of the humorous, the abstract, and the visionary."

Sponges and contraceptive foams were used in ancient Egypt, but as a contraceptive foam women were encouraged to use honey and crocodile dung as a spermicide. Aristotle suggesting layering the vagina with oil of cedar. Some sponges were soaked in lemon juice, something that actually worked because lemon is a mild spermicide.

Update: George sez, "Four years ago, my son died when he was shaken by a child care provider (a 51 year old grandmother).  Since then my wife and I have been working to prevent shaking injuries to young children.  

"It is appalling that young kids at Legoland are being subjected to the same kinds of rotational forces that induce shaking injuries.  This is a link to the American Academy of Pediatrics technical memo on SBS. The AAP memo states shaking is dangerous to children as old as 5. The danger should be apparent from the vivid graphic demo."

Update 2: Chris sez, "I'm totally sympathetic to the story given by George, but in fairness to Legoland I want to point out that their Robocoaster ride has 5 levels of action.  Kids below a certain size are only allowed to do levels 1 & 2, which have less much less violent motion and acceleration, and never turn the riders upside down."

Update 3: John sez, "It's quite right to be concerned about Shaken Baby Syndrome, but the motion and forces applied on the Robocoaster are quite different than those applied to a shaken child. When a baby is shaken, it is the forward-and-back motion that causes damage to the brain and spine (as seen in the linked video). Although the Robocoaster generates a great deal of side-to-side and up-and-down motion, riders' heads are braced against the seat backs, so the "whiplash" cannot occur. Of course, any thrill ride can be dangerous to those with medical conditions - that's why they always post those signs - but they're not inherently hazardous for healthy adults or children."

New documents (envelopes) are added at the left end of the "envelope buffer," and whenever a document is used (i.e., the envelope removed from the shelf), it is returned to the left end of the bookshelf. The result of this system is that the most recent (and frequently) used documents migrate to the left, while documents that are not used often or not used at all migrate to the right. After the system has been in use for a while, the shelf starts to look like the following.

In the above "frequency-of-use sorting" of files, some of the files on the right side will be classified as "holy files (神様ファイル)," to be retained indefinitely. These, however, are removed from the shelf and stored in boxes. If a "holy file" is in use, it is part of the working file group at the left. Thus, holy files are really dead files, but ones which the user cannot part with. The solution is to get them out of sight into a box someone. In essence, this system works on the principle that categorized files are dead files, and that categorizing files should only be done when they are to be put in your file graveyard.

Well, most of you guessed already. I got a book deal! Monster Island will be released in April of 2006 by Thunder's Mouth Press. I'm extremely excited and I have all of you to thank for it, all of you who legitimized my silly zombie stories by actually reading them.

Composer Adam Guettel and screenwriter William Goldman will collaborate on a musical version or the hit fairy tale film "The Princess Bride," the New York Post reported.

The 1987 Rob Reiner-directed, Goldman-penned movie fits the teasing description Guettel gave for his next project, while speaking backstage at the 2005 Tony Awards. While hesitant to specifically name his next musical due to "legal reasons," he did say it would have a "fairy tale" nature and would involve "a lot of swordfighting."

The way that hotels deliver Internet access is the single worst thing about the travel I do -- particularly in Europe, where there's a positive fetish for overcharging, using scratch-off cards that no one ever has stock of (at a hotel in Rennes: "Sorry, they're in the safe and the woman with the safe-key is on holidays), port-filtering, rate-limiting, and double-charging. If I stay in one more hotel where the WiFi in the lobby costs an addition $20 a day over the $30 a day that the WiFi in the room costs, I'm burning it down.

One hotelier in London at the Dorchester said that subsidizing Internet access would lead to a rise in all room rates.

Now we all know that's not true. The cost of providing Internet access is roughly a fixed expense, although some Internet providers who help hotels offer no-fee access charge based on usage plus fixed rates. The Dorchester charges #18.50 per day for high-speed access ($33), according to Sharkey's second column. Their likely depreciation and hard costs per month are almost certainly no more than $3,000 to $4,000--or 100-odd room nights' worth of Wi-Fi.

What Wyndham Hotels and Resorts along with other hotel chains found is that if you make Internet access free you go from "the needs of the minority" as the Dorchester technology director described it to the needs of the majority: Wyndham saw usage quadruple when they made Internet access free to members of their no-cost affinity club.

* PEZ Pal Boy character.
* 512 mb (holds around 120 songs)
* USB 2.0
* Plays MP3, WMA, WMA w/DRM
* Compatible with subscription services like Rhapsody To Go
* Uses 1 AAA battery
* Plug and Play
* Drag and Drop
* Can be used as a USB drive to store data files
* Repeat play or Random Play
* Store music in nested directories
* Comes pre-loaded with great indie music
* Lanyard hook
* Comes with earbud headphones and USB cable
* Limited run 1st edition

I used to buy a lot of DVDs, but since I split my time between the US and Europe, I found that half my discs wouldn't play on my Powerbook. Apple only lets you switch regions five times (though the studios actually say you're allowed to do this 25 times -- Apple actually imposes more restrictions than it has to), so I quickly ran out of region-switches and just gave up on DVDs for a while.

But I recently scored a little 2.5" hard-drive enclosure that can play any video stored on it -- in practically any file-format -- on a TV or through your laptop. I put an 80 GB hard-disc in it and started ripping my DVDs, throwing on my downloaded Daily Show clips, etc. Mark's HOWTO will be a great boon to me, since the method it details for DVD ripping is much simpler than what I've been up to thus far. And of course, a ripped DVD is a region-free DVD, so I can once again enjoy my movie-collection. Thanks, Mark, for giving me back the access to my property that the MPAA and Apple took away. Link (Thanks, Mark!)

Update: D'oh! Xeni blogged this yesterday as part of her awesome video iPod roundup.

Myanmar "employs one of the most restrictive regimes of Internet filtering worldwide that we have studied," said Ronald J. Deibert, a principal investigator for the OpenNet Initiative and the director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto.

Myanmar now joins several nations, including China, Iran and Singapore, in relying on Western software and hardware to accomplish their goals, Mr. Deibert said.

Microsoft, Cisco and Yahoo, for example, have all come under fire recently for providing technology or otherwise cooperating with the Chinese government to enable it to monitor and censor Internet use.

In the case of Myanmar, the regulations and customs are quite clear. The Digital Freedom Network, a human rights group based in New Jersey, notes that among things forbidden by Myanmar's Web regulations, introduced in January 2000, are the posting of "any writings directly or indirectly detrimental to the current policies" of the government. The rules also forbid "any writings detrimental to the interests of the Union of Myanmar."

Previously:
Xeni's LAT op-ed: war, blogs, news, and profit.

Boing Boing reader Mike Pence from kuro5hin.org says,

Mark's recent post about a Christian children's coloring book from 1954 pales in comparison to the horrific images of placidly smiling Jehovah's Witnesses standing before a burning world. (I grew up a JW -- what a mind job!) Many of these images are from books not primarily aimed at children, but children would be exposed to all these images -- as I was -- since they study right along with the adults at their endless meetings.

A journalist friend of BoingBoing on assignment in Baghdad for a large media organization says,

This is a video of a carbombing at checkpoint 3 (or 2 depending on what you call it). The really frightening part to me is that I walk past where this bomb went off daily. This place has gone beyond scary into really, really fucking scary.

Update: With permission, re-posting the Link to WMV video, dated October 4, 2005 (feel free to convert and/or torrent if you're so moved),

Claire Rind, a robotologist at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in England, screened a Star Wars film just for a bunch of locusts so she could monitor their brain activity for research to design a collision-avoidance system for cars.

Apparently, the research was to help her understand how locusts travel in dense swarms without getting tangled up in each other's flight. By showing them a Star Wars film (it's not specified which one of course) she studied their eyes and brain cells reactions to fast-moving objects and backgrounds in the film.

The House of Representatives approved  H.R. 3132, the Children's Safety Act, on a vote of 371 to 52, that would amend the recordkeeping provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 2257 (currently requiring records to be kept of the ages and other information of performers in visual depictions of actual sexually explicit conduct).  It now awaits action in the Senate and the Judiciary Committee is working on a companion bill.

The measure would change current federal recordkeeping requirements as follows:

1.  Adding simulated conduct.  Under current law, the recordkeeping requirements apply only to visual depictions of “actual sexually explicit conduct.”  18 U.S.C. § 2257(a)(1) (emphasis added).  Under the proposed amendment, the qualifier “actual” would be dropped.

2.  Expanding the category of “sexually explicit conduct.”  The law previously defined “sexually explicit conduct” to mean (1) sexual intercourse, (2) bestiality, (3) masturbation, or (4) sadistic or masochistic abuse.  The amendment would expand that category to include “lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area.”

3.  Expanding the definition of “produces.”  The current recordkeeping requirements apply to any entity that “produces”material containing visual depictions of sexually explicit conduct. H.R. 3132 would define “produces” broadly to mean, among other things, “filming, . . . assembling, manufacturing, publishing, duplicating, reproducing, or reissuing a . . . film, videotape, digital image, or picture.”  The proposed definition is more expansive than existing law because it would eliminate the current definition’s exception for “activity which does not involve hiring, contracting for, managing, or otherwise arranging for the participation of the performers depicted.”

The actual language of the Pence Amendment is here: (PDF Link)

As this Hollywood Reporter article points out, this isn't just about pornography. That "simulated conduct" bit could chill creative expression in non-"adult" movies and television, too:

The provision added to the Children's Safety Act of 2005 would require any film, TV show or digital image that contains a sex scene to come under the same government filing requirements that adult films must meet. Currently, any filmed sexual activity requires an affidavit that lists the names and ages of the actors who engage in the act. The film is required to have a video label that claims compliance with the law and lists where the custodian of the records can be found. The record-keeping requirement is known as Section 2257, for its citation in federal law. Violators could spend five years in jail.

Under the provision inserted into the Children's Safety Act, the definition of sexual activity is expanded to include simulated sex acts like those that appear in many movies and TV shows.

Link to BBC story, Link to New Scientist story.
(Thanks, David Goldenberg, John Duffell, and the approximately 10 kerjillion other readers who suggested this)

This Stude is my favorite. Talk about youthful exhuberance! Everything about this thing is cool. The crazy orange paint, the engine w/twin blowers (now missing, sadly) and the full race interior. Look at that aggressive stance! I wish some crazy saint would build a full-scale version.

Yep, those are the little springs from ballpoint pens, used as some sort of coilover/spring shackle. Granted, it wouldn't work too well in the real world, but the verisimilitude is undeniable!

During his lifetime, Doroteo Arango (a.k.a. Francisco Pancho Villa) was known to be a ruthless killer, notorious bandit, and revolutionary. Despite his bloodthirsty reputation, he was considered, to the poor people of Mexico, to be an enduring hero. On Friday, July 20, 1923, Villa's luck finally ran out. As he drove through the city of Parral, a group of seven riflemen shot him dead. Even in death, Pancho Villa would not rest, as controversy continued to engulf him. Three years after his burial, it was alleged that an ex-Villista officer, Captain Emil L. Holmdahl, opened the tomb and removed Villa's head to sell to an eccentric Chicago millionaire. This is purported to be Pancho Villa's actual mummified trigger finger, which was also noted to be missing with his head. In a tribute to their fallen hero, the ever faithful Mexican people placed the finger in this reliquary to keep it safe, and more importantly, to serve as a glimmer of hope to all those that faithfully served and admired Villa.

In my kind of porno movies the girls wouldn't even have to get naked.
They'd just take the guys down to the rec room and
beat them repeatedly at chess
and then talk to them for hours about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
or the underlying social metaphors in the Aliens movies.

Buy stock in some hand cream companies
because there is about to be a major shortage.

And I'm not just talking about straight porn. Oh no.
There should be fuck films for my nerd brethren
of all sexual orientations.
Gay nerd porn flicks with titles like "Dungeons and Drag-queens."

Update: Stephen sez, "The rant in that link was a transcript of a track entitled 'Nerd Porn Auteur' from an Ernie Cline spoken word album. You can download that track and others from the album, all of which are totally hilarious."

And Chris sez, "Here's the interview I did with him."

The October issue has photos and a report on an item we mentioned in July in bb: a model rocket loaded with meth, set up to launch into the air when cops opened the dealers' car trunk.

The men concealed the ice methamphetamine in the body of a motorized, 3-foot hobby rocket connected by wires to the vehicle's cigarette lighter (see Photo 12). If stopped by law enforcement officers en route to their destination, they planned to open the trunk of the vehicle, raise the methamphetamine-filled rocket into launching position using a string and pulley system, and launch the rocket into the air (see Photo 13). The two men had tested a similar rocket filled with 2 pounds of gravel that reached a height of about 1,200 feet and, based on the results of that test, expected the plastic bags containing the ice methamphetamine to melt or disintegrate and the drugs to scatter into the air. On June 24, 2005, the men had an opportunity to test their device when a Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) trooper attempted to stop their vehicle on Interstate 70 in Callaway County. The vehicle exited the interstate and entered a restaurant parking lot; however, the two men failed to activate the rocket. The driver then fled the vehicle and discarded a small bag containing approximately 2 grams of methamphetamine, while the passenger remained in the vehicle.

"We developed the surf suit. I just know we did it," O'Neill says from his oceanfront home in Santa Cruz.

Meistrell, in constant motion inside the dining cabin of the company's 72-foot yacht, is similarly certain and direct. "I believe we did it first. And everyone copied us," he says.

O'Neill and Meistrell have locked horns in the wetsuit business and threatened lawsuits for decades. Each revels in his insistence that the other is wrong.

Bradner, the lone non-multimillionaire of the bunch, stakes his claim with professorial precision.

"The only invention I claim in this is the neoprene wetsuit," he says. "If somebody has documentation that precedes mine, I'd like to hear about it."

Would humans recognise intelligent life if we saw it?

Could we communicate with it? Should we even try?

Is Original Sin something that affects all intelligent beings?

Is Jesus Christ's redemption valid for intelligent beings throughout the universe?

or would other worlds have their own version of Jesus?

Would the Church send missionaries to ET planets?

What a great piece this is! Gene Hughes, the radio monitoring expert who published the first "scanner-geek bible" Police Call some 40 years ago, is profiled in Wired News by cracker legend Kevin Poulsen. At age 77, Mr. Hughes is now retiring. Boing Boing pal Steve Diet Goedde shot some wonderful photos of the wireless master, and the tools of his trade, for the story (sorry: no latex catsuits in this image set).

It was the best day amid the worst years of Gene Hughes' life. He was 13 years old and seeking escape from the loneliness of a Los Angeles foster home by playing with an AM radio his uncle had mailed him. Tuning around the dial, he picked up something different from the dance hall music and campy radio dramas that normally spilled from the tinny speaker -- something unexpectedly genuine. "I suddenly heard strange voices, women broadcasting addresses and numeric codes," he recalls.

He quickly figured out that he'd somehow tuned into Los Angeles Police Department dispatchers crisply directing the city's black-and-white police cars to real robberies, domestic disturbances and traffic accidents throughout the City of Angels.

That was 1940, nearly a half-century before shows like Cops would turn live police action into mass entertainment. And what might have sounded to someone else's ears like unwanted interference from a city transmitter, was to Hughes the pulsing music of an invisible world.

The multimedia artist, poet and novelist Brion Gysin may be the most influential cultural figure of the twentieth century that most people have never heard of.

Gysin (1916–1986) was an English-born, Canadian-raised, naturalized American of Swiss descent, who lived most of his life in Morocco and France. He went everywhere when the going was good, seeking to fulfill the “magician’s role” that he had chosen for himself. He dabbled with surrealism in Paris in the 1930s, lived in the “Interzone” of Tangier in the 1950s and traveled the Algerian Sahara with Sheltering Sky author Paul Bowles before moving into the legendary Beat Hotel in Paris.

Gysin’s ideas influenced generations of artists, musicians and writers, among them David Bowie, Keith Haring, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Genesis P-Orridge, John Giorno and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. None was touched more profoundly than William S. Burroughs, who said admiringly of Gysin: “There was something dangerous about what he was doing.”

It was Gysin who introduced the Rolling Stones to the exotica of Morocco and took Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones to Jajouka where he recorded the tribal musicians performing the Pipes of Pan. It was Gysin who provided the hashish fudge recipe published in Alice B. Toklas’ cookbook, promising “ecstatic reveries and extensions of one’s personality on several simultaneous planes.” It was Gysin who introduced Burroughs to an automatic writing method called the cut-up, a literary progenitor to sampling. And it was Gysin who developed, with Ian Sommerville, the Dream Machine—a device that allowed people, with the flick of a switch, to access altered states of consciousness without drugs.

Working with the authorization of Gysin’s literary executor, William S. Burroughs, John Geiger has produced the first-ever biography of the painter, poet and piper Brion Gysin, revealing at last a man decades ahead of his time, a true pioneer of the Inner Space Age.

My story is a novella called "Human Readable," and of all my short fiction, it is the story I'm most proud of. It's the tale of a world that's been upended by hyper-efficient planning algorithms based on ant-colony optimizations, so that Los Angeles has the best traffic in the world. However, when these networks crash, they really crash -- cars, surfboards, and many other common conveyances end up catastrophically failing, with concomitant loss of life.

Human Readable is the story of a couple who break up over their relation to the ant-networks. Reiner is a hacker who works on improving the networks. Trish is an activist lawyer who wants to see them regulated. Their irreconcilable differences turn them from being lovers into being political opponents.

"We, as a society, make trade-offs all the time," Rainer said. He was wearing a different suit this evening, something that Trish had to admit looked damned good on the studio monitors (better than her frumpy blouse and wool winter-weight trousers). "We trade a little bit of privacy for a little bit of security when we show identification before going into a federal building --"

The ewok held up his paw. "But how much should we be willing to trade, Ms. McCavity?"

She looked into the camera, keeping her eyes still, the way she'd been told to if she didn't want to appear tourettic. "Wickett, when Franklin said, 'Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty,' he wasn't spouting empty rhetoric, he was laying the groundwork for this enduring democratic experiment that we all love. Look, we're not opposed to the use of autonomous networks for *some* applications, even *most* applications, with appropriate safeguards and checks and balances. No nation on earth has the reliance that we do on these networks. Are they an appropriate way of advising you on the best way to get to the mall on a busy Saturday? Absolutely, provided that everyone gets the best advice the system can give, regardless of economic status or influence. But should they be used to figure out whom the FBI should open an investigation into? Absolutely not. We use judges and grand juries and evidence to establish the sufficiency of a request to investigate a private citizen who is considered innocent until proven guilty. We learned that lesson the hard way, during the War on Terrorism and the Ashcroft witch-hunts. Should we trade grand juries and judges for ant-colonies? Do you want the warrant for your wiretap issued by an accountable human being or by a simulated ant-hill?"

The ewok turned to the camera. "Both sides make a compelling case. What do you think? When we come back, we'll take your calls and questions." The lights dimmed and it adjusted its collar and cracked its hairy knuckles on the table before it. Ever since it had made the move to a pbs, it had been grooming its fur ever-more conservatively and trying out a series of waistcoats and short pants. It turned to her and stared at her with its saucer-sized black button eyes. "You know, I just wanted to say thanks -- I had self-identified as an ewok since I was five years old, but Lucasfilm just wouldn't license the surgery, so I went through every day feeling like a stranger in my body. It wasn't until your law got enacted that I was able to find a doctor who'd do it without permission."

Switzerland Zurich 29 October 2005
Czech Republic Prague 28 October 2005
Germany Bielefeld 28 October 2005
Austria Vienna 25 October 2005
Australia Sydney ?? October 2005

The Mütter's collection is devoted to preserved remains of human oddities. There are walls of syphilitic skulls (even a phrenologist's collection of suicide's skulls, annotated in crabbed handwriting with notes like OBSERVE SLOPING BROW -- EVIDENCE OF CRIMINAL MENTALITY). There's a woman whose body was converted to soap by the alkali soil in which she was buried. Cabinets of thousands of jacks, rings, coins and pins extracted from chokers' windpipes by a celebrated specialist whose main claim to fame was the invention of a device that could fasten a safety pin lodged in a patient's windpipe prior to extraction, thus making the removal much safer.

All this is collected in lifelong curator Gretchen Worden's magnificent, lavishly illustrated Mutter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Worden died last year after giving a lifetime of service to improving and promoting the Mütter. Worden's sensibility turned the place into a shrine to its inhabitants, and a gripping, endlessly haunting exploration of how we human beings understand our own bodies. The Mütter has just unveiled a new exhibit room named in her honor.

There are jars of preserved human kidneys and livers, and a man's skull so eaten away by tertiary syphilis that it looks like pounded rock. There are dried severed hands shiny as lacquered wood, showing their veins like leaves; a distended ovary larger than a soccer ball; spines and leg bones so twisted by rickets they're painful just to see; the skeleton of a dwarf who stood 3 feet 6 inches small, next to that of a giant who towered seven and a half feet. And "Jim and Joe," the green-tinged corpse of a two-headed baby, sleeping in a bath of formaldehyde.

So digital TV, and TV programs delivered by traditional TV companies over the Internet (IPTV) are considered important policy priorities by senators, congresscritters, MPs, and regulators, who are willing to throw up dumbass regulations like the Broadcast Flag in order to try to ensure that the Internet doesn't render TV obsolete.

Meanwhile, all the video I eat online comes from swarming downloads and cool, open source players like Broadcast Machine, technologies that not only don't need regulation to protect them -- they don't even really need much money.

This latter is what Om Malik calls "TV-over-IP." Not branded Time-Warner IPTV, top-heavy with rules, standards and laws, but TV-like material, delivered over IP, by the same dirty hackers who brought you the Web in the first place.

Now compare this with Television over IP, or broadband video. Television over IP, on the other hand is the high quality streaming video, that is made available over the fast pipes, without a set-top box. This is a (comparatively) fairly low cost, and perhaps a simpler model. This simplicity is one of the reasons, it might actually gain traction in the market. While I am not willing to put a lot in the “long tail” video efforts like video blogs and efforts of start-ups such as Bright Cove, I do think there is a lot of hope for branded content online, especially if content owners can create a superior experience. I have seen some of the video-over-broadband efforts of folks like Comcast and News Corp., and that looks promising. Other content owners are also cooking up broadband channels.

Today launch of mtvU Über, a network that allows aspiring student broadband creators to create broadband content is a step in the right direction, but not the final answer. The bottom line is that, the television over broadband needs some sizzling new kind of content in order for folks to go back and click. My feeling is that MTV should have done their MTV Desi channel over broadband, and perhaps used it as a learning experience for other niche channels over broadband. If done right, television over broadband has the potential to pip IPTV to the post.

Reader comment:Paul Randall says: "That ghosting effect you see in the scan (from the reverse page's image) can be reduced by backing the page with black paper before you scan. That will reduce the contrast between the paper backing and the other image. Just thought folks might benefit from this tidbit."

There are millions and millions of iPods out there, but what happens to all the empty boxes? The packaging is pretty nice, and at this point - as iconic as the iPod itself. So in Maker spirit, here is a photo diary of HOW TO to turn an empty iPod in to a little robot looking guy. Made with just the packaging materials, hot glue and paint, it could be a fun project for kids. I'm slowly working on a total of 50 (lots of iPod boxes) - the Steve Jobs one is next! And one more thing...broken iPod can/will be used for some internal electronics....

The personally identifiable information collected in the form of a digital scan of visitor's fingerprints is associated with a guest's pass. The fingerprint scan information is used to limit access to the theme park to only those who have purchased tickets or entered the park with a particular pass.

Unfortunately, many visitors to the theme parks are not aware of the new policy. They are not informed that their fingerprint information has been scanned and retained. Customers were not provided with information on how long the fingerprint information would be retained, nor whether the information collected would be used for other purposes other than the control of admission to the theme park.

Update: Looks like EPIC got some of this wrong. According to articles like this one, Disney only scans hand-geometry, not fingerprints. (Thanks to Kevin and many others!)

* Insects that fly without wings

* Astrophysics via helium balloon

* Nature-inspired catalysts for nanotechnology

"The finds further demonstrate that (the first skeleton found) is not just an aberrant or pathological individual but is representative of a long-term population," they write in Nature.

The team contends that Homo floresiensis, with its 380-cubic-cm-sized brain, is the outcome of a phenomenon known as endemic or island dwarfing.

This sees isolated species, released from the pressures of predation but constrained by limited resources, evolving either smaller or larger forms than would otherwise be the case.

[A]s the 37-year-old married reporter behind the numeric pseudonym "198964" learned, he shouldn't have assumed that Yahoo defends press freedom. When Chinese security agents asked executives at Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) to identify the man, they did so. Police grabbed him on a street, searched his house and seized his computer and other belongings, according to documents filed in his defense.

Mr. "198964," whose real name is Shi Tao, is serving a 10-year jail sentence for "divulging state secrets abroad." Bloggers, human rights groups and journalism organizations, including PEN and Reporters Without Borders, condemned the action.

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang brushed off responsibility. At an Internet conference Sept. 10 in Hangzhou, China, Yang said Yahoo and other U.S.-based multinationals "have to comply with local law."

Or else what? They lose access, that's what, which means losing profits.

Shi Tao's attorney, Guo Guoting — who was detained, placed under house arrest and shut out of his office before his client's trial — argues that the company has a greater obligation to international law than to local law. "China is a signatory of the [U.N.] International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," Guo told the Hong Kong independent daily Epoch Times. "Shi Tao … was legitimately practicing his profession, not committing a crime. The legal entity of Yahoo Holdings [Hong Kong] is not in China, so it is not obligated to operate within the laws of China or to cooperate with Chinese police."

As morally repugnant as Yahoo's actions may be, other tech vendors before it have acted similarly. "Many big companies, such as Microsoft and Nortel, in their quest to gain shares of the large Internet market in China, transform China into an information prison by collaborating with the Chinese regime on questions of censorship," Guo said. "They should not forget all moral principles under the temptation of financial gain."

Yahoo's hypocrisy is even more shameful because it is also in the news business. The company recently opened a news production division with promises of hard-hitting stories that U.S. mainstream media are afraid to report.

Yahoo launched "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone," pledging to send the former television reporter to "every armed conflict in the world within one year" and dispatch blog-sized "bites" of war.

Image: A photo of Shi Tao. I think it's good for each of us to try and remember that behind aliases like the Yahoo account "198964", there are people not unlike ourselves.

Do you EVER tape, glue, fold, bend, or manipulate the cards?


NO. None of my structures involve trickery. They are the "real deal."



What makes them stand up?


The cards stand up–and stay up–for two reasons. First, there are so many cards in large constructions, the combined weight of all the cards actually adds to the stability of the structure. Second, the weight is supported by the strategic arrangement of cards, called grids. Cards, arranged in grid patterns, resemble waffles or ice cube trays. The cards actually prohibit each other from bending and also prohibit each other from falling over. If you can learn to build a grid structure, you can build just about anything.

As Apple's share of the overall music market grows, it will be more and more difficult for you to walk away from the table during contract negotiations. Jobs will hold all the cards, because his customers--who form an ever-growing share of the music market--will be locked into his products. Like Bill Gates in the PC world, Steve Jobs will become the gatekeeper to tens of millions of music fans, and you will have to pay his price for admission.

How does ditching DRM help? If Apple's songs were distributed without copy protection, your customers would be able to switch to another program at any time. You could threaten to cut a deal with any of the other companies now clamoring for your business--Real, Napster, Sony, Microsoft, etc--and Jobs would know that his customers had the option of leaving his platform.

David Freeman, computer retailer and founder of the Freeman PC Museum, has been collecting computers since 1976. He says:

It is with great regret that we place our PC Collection up for purchase. My own unfortunate disability has forced us to find a good home for the collection. (...) This collection represents 30 years of collecting. Many of these computers are complete systems with all peripherals, software and marketing brochures.

What will Apple unveil at its press event on October 12th?
Upgrade version of iPod 2/1
Video iPod 6/5
Updated versions of Power Mac and Powerbook 2/1
Airport Express with Video 3/1
Itunes Video Store 11/2
Tiered Pricing for Itunes songs 6/1
Apple Game Console 7/1
OSX for PC 9/1

We are thrilled that our inaugural show in our fancy new space will be our annual Halloween themed exhibit, this year’s “Bad Moon Rising” show. We will be exhibiting work by artists from all over the country as well as overseas. The work, while dealing with dark themes, ranges wildly from the dark, futuristic digital portraits by Quintin Gonzales to the more playful cartoony paintings of Pooch. We are excited by the return of gallery artists such as Lisa Petrucci, Jim Blanchard, and Mike Leavitt as well as works by new artists to the gallery such as tattooist and painter James McLeod, Japanese Pop Surrealist Yo Ueno, and Lowbrow wood carver Ojimbo.

For the opening we will also have hearses from Rain City Hearse Club, monster film clips courtesy Something Weird Video, refreshing liquids and hideous candy, and live goth swamp-garage rock by ROT13!

Now EFF's Danny O'Brien has written an editorial about these 20 members of the House of Reps who signed the letter urging this. Suicidal congressjerks -- they haven't figured out that publicly advocating breaking your constituents' televisions and PCs is a great way to be sure that no one ever votes for you again.

The driver of digital TV legislation in the House is Joe Barton, Chairman of the Commerce Committee. And if what we hear through beltway back channels is true, Barton wants a deal. He believes that if the MPAA wants the Broadcast Flag in his bill so badly, it should be willing to compromise.

But the MPAA is in no mood for discussion. It wants to ram this bill through as quickly as possible, and it's leaning on Upton to stay the course. The letter is a way of saying that Upton isn't alone.

Fortunately for us, the fact that 20 out of 57 committee members support the Flag sends a message the MPAA doesn't want anyone to hear: the Broadcast Flag is controversial. If it wasn't, no one would be writing open letters to anyone else. And that means this committee has a duty to engage in serious, careful, comprehensive discussion and debate before the Flag legislation goes anywhere.

The Hollywood lobbyists are tallying their support, but they don't have the majority of the committee convinced. Do your part: tell your representative that you and your fellow constituents won't stand for the Broadcast Flag, especially without a hearing showing evidence that anyone but the MPAA and RIAA supports it.

The website, red-rose-stories.com, posted a notice on its home page announcing the raid and warning customers that the FBI now has access to all past customer information.

“I am sorry to inform all interested parties that Red Rose Stories is a DEAD site,” read a statement posted on the website by operator Rosie. “The FBI has suceeded [sic] in closing me down. I am being charged with 'OBSCENITIES' and face charges for having posted such stories. Our stories are NOT protected speech. Please, please, be careful out there.”

The stories in question, according to the website’s announcements, include no images or videos, but describe acts of bestiality, urination, scat, BDSM, slavery, threesomes, orgies and sex with children.

I had read about this concrete Shell station ages ago in Preservation magazine as a North Carolina preservation what-have-you organization was trying to restore it as an office. Looks like a giant piece of candy corn. It's so appealing, you just want to touch it. Of the original eight built, this is the last one standing. Can you imagine being the ninny that decided to tear one down? Why tear it down? It is so small you can practically fit it in your pocket.

"They are beautifully crafted and unique. If you follow the links to the flickr page you can find a few more that I have scanned in."
Link

He made an offer on the Web site that if they posted pictures proving they were military serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, he would give them free access to the paid sections of the Web site.

For about six or seven months, people claiming to be members of the military have been sending in pictures of life overseas, ranging from picturesque scenery to hideous pictures of people burned black and unrecognizable, or with body parts mangled or blown apart.

According to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, the area that includes pornographic pictures was equally distasteful. "Normal people don't have the ability to imagine how perverse and horrific these images were," he said. "It certainly is content that shocks the community."

According to [state prosecutor Brad] Copley, many of the pictures of women clearly were taken without their knowledge or consent. "There's revenge photos all over the Web site. Boyfriends posting pictures of ex-girlfriends, pictures taken from hidden cameras," he said.

(...) The misdemeanors carry a potential penalty of up to one year in jail each, and the felony carries a potential penalty of up to five years in state prison. [Defense attorney Lawrence] Walters criticized the number of misdemeanors filed, saying the Web site itself should have constituted one count only. "It smacks of charge stacking," he said.

Reader comment: Cyrus Farivar says, "This is probably what did him in." Link

Kelly says, "Orlando Weekly, a local "indie" type paper like most cities have, did a full expose on the site and its owner." Link

It happened quite a while ago, in 2001. There was this big outcry over teenagers holding Satanic black metal concerts and stomping holy books and all that. Basically - imagine the whole Satanic Ritual Abuse hoo-ha with an added element of music.

I was in school during the time and there was an announcement made in morning assembly about it. According to the announcement, the crackdowns started after a imam (Muslim priest) walked into the woods and stumbled onto a black metal concert where holy books like the Quran and the Bible were set on fire and stomped on (and other such "Satanic" stuff).

The story (it's never really been verified) got picked up by Harian Metro ("HM"), a Malay tabloid, and they really made a big deal out of it. The government then got involved. There were crackdowns in schools, kids were stripsearched in some places, and there were posters and information everywhere about supposedly Satanic symbols - including pentagrams and the hand signs for "I Love You" and "Rock On". Merchandise from bands like ACDC and Limp Bizkit were banned; so were their music, for a while. People who wore black T-shirts were looked at suspiciously - one local radio station had a problem with this because their T-Shirts were black!

This then escalated into a witchhunt over many things youth-related; other forms of music, such as hiphop, dance, and rock in general, were targeted as being evil and morally degrading. Harian Metro kept making reports over "hiphop parties that are really orgies of sex, drugs, and alcohol" and basically how the youth of Malaysia were being corrupted by bad forces.

Things got a bit interesting when in one of those damn-them-hiphoppers reports, HM used pictures from a legitimate and legal music event hosted by a local music magazine (TONE or KLue, I can't remember which) and claimed it to be a sex orgy. The magazine took action and quizzed them over their motives; HM had no answer. This was the start of a major discussion and debate across the media about how much respect do Malaysian youths receive from their communities and from their government, about subcultures and misconceptions, and about youth issues in general.

There then was a short "Pink Metal" phase (girl bikers), but that died down quickly. Eventually everything died down, people forgot about it. There was never any actual proof about any of the claims; just "confessions" by anonymous 16-year-olds.

It was the Malaysian version of the Satanic Ritual Abuse saga, but it was also a strong indicator of how Malaysian youth was seen by the rest of the country. It did spark some energy in the youths about speaking up for their rights to express themselves and be themselves without being judged unnecessarily. There was also increased awareness about the different subcultures.

I thought everything was just super-hyped-up (for goodness sake, the people making the biggest noise were from a TABLOID - and they got busted eventually). It was a witchhunt and a wild goose chase all in one. But it was a very interesting time for Malaysia and its youth.

Yes, you are a good person. But a relative or friend may not be so law-abiding. And stuff happens. Here is what to do if you are ever arrested (mostly what not to do) and what you can expect if put behind bars. Written by two professors of criminology; one was a former correctional officer, and the other served eleven years in federal custody, including maximum security. They know what they are talking about, and they dispense their straight dope with surprising clarity and uncommon elegance and wit. (One chapter is called "You've Got Jail!"). They've written a guidebook to a distant country and its alien customs and ways; may you never arrive there. You get street-smarts from inmates and wise counsel from the Man. I rank my books by how dog-eared they are; this one had nearly every page marked and underlined. This is one of the books you want to read before you need it.

Sample excerpts:

The first thing you need to remember [if arrested] is keep your mouth shut and do not discuss your arrest or case with anyone, police or fellow inmates.

Jailhouse holding tanks are usually bugged with hidden microphones and video cameras. This technology is only incidentally for your protection. Its primary function is to provide the judicial system with an opportunity to gather more incriminating evidence.

In general, with few exceptions, attorneys want their money up front, in advance, or they leave you to throw yourself on the mercy of the court. The reasons are simple enough. If you are found guilty and sent to prison, you will be in no mood to pay your legal bill. Also, many of their clients are crooks who are not overly inclined toward scrupulous bill-paying in the first place. These facts lawyers know only too well, so they will exert great pressure on you to pay up front before your case is decided. You must resist their demands for large sums of money and only pay the attorney a portion of what they ask.

Yes, you have a Constitutional right to a fair trial, but if you exercise that right and lose the case, the prosecution most likely will demand severe sentencing penalties, in return for your having made them take the case to trial.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) is thought by convicts to operate a better system than most states. The prisons are cleaner, with more desirable food, and the prison staff is better educated, trained, and paid. It is fair to say that most prisoners would prefer to do federal time, day for day, as compared to state time.

Warning: Many men and women with no previous drug experience have become addicted to narcotics while in prison.

For example, gang bangers (members) may try to extort cigarettes from you or do a cell invasion in which they simply run into your house and grab your stuff. If you don't retaliate, they'll continue to do it to you. In this case, you may think that it's in your best interest to either join another gang for self-protection or "strap up" (get a shank) and hunt down your perpetrators and stick and cut them.

The scale of disaster in Guatemala from the recent hurricane is greater than previously thought. In this dispatch from Hospitalito Atitlan, there are personal reports from the village of Panabaj, where 1,400 villagers were killed in one mudslide.

This is the heart of the ancestral Maya homeland. These people are now isolated, homeless and hungry.

Please spread the word and a plea for help. There is information on this site about donations, and a call for medical supplies and materials that can be hand-carried by travelers to the region. Let me know what you can do and I will help to coordinate getting aid there.

Previously:
Hurricane Stan hits Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua -- hard

Our contributors in Pakistan are covering the quake with as much detail as the can. We have two blogs there, one in Lahore and on in Karachi and both are working very hard to spread info about what is going on.

We've also got several bloggers in Islamabad who are posting to the Lahore blog with first hand accounts from there. It sounds like Kashmir was hit the worst but we haven't spoken to anyone there.

Previously:
7.6 quake hits Pakistan, India -- blog coverage, data analysis

"The employee who appears to be the subject of these allegations has been interviewed and has categorically denied them," (said Queensland state health minister Stephen Robertson.)

The worker at the centre of the allegations, who agreed to the investigation, was also accused of keeping the nooses of suicide victims and the drip bags attached to people who died in hospitals.

Those events, witnessed by U.S. Postal Service employees, led them to believe Wilson was abducting the children and trying to leave in a hurry.

They called Cincinnati police, who immediately issued an Amber Alert.

Using a videotape taken inside the post office, police also released a photo of the suspect, which was shown by local television stations.

Local TV stations also broadcast a description of Wilson and his new car, complete with the temporary tags.

Wilson knew nothing of any of this until about 7 a.m. Saturday, when his father-in-law, Jim Farley, called the house...

One laugh Wilson got is the blonde woman witnesses described in the front seat of Wilson's car. "That blonde woman is Wyatt, my 11-year-old son," he said.

The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters -- General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others -- each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them.

A reminder: I'm reading and signing books in London tonight at the Oxford Street Borders at 6:30PM, along with Pat Cadigan and Jon Courtenay Grimwood.

"Resource contention readily decomposes into a bunch of smaller problems, with distinctive solutions. Take dishes: every dishwasher should be designed with a 'clean' and a 'dirty' compartment -- basically, two logical dishwashers. You take clean dishes out of the clean side, use them, and put them into the dirty side. When the dirty side is full, the clean side is empty, so you cycle the dishwasher and the clean side becomes dirty and vice-versa. I had some sketches for designs that would make this happen, but it didn't feel right: making dishwashers is too industrial for us. I either like making big chunks of art or little silver things you can carry in your pocket."

She smiled despite herself. She was drawing a half-million readers a day by doing near-to-nothing besides repeating the mind-blowing conversations around her. It had taken her a month to consider putting ads on the site -- lots of feelers from blog "micro-labels" who'd wanted to get her under management and into their banner networks, and she broke down when one of them showed her a little spreadsheet detailing the kind of long green she could expect to bring in from a couple of little banners, with her getting the right to personally approve every advertiser in the network. The first month, she'd made more money than all but the most senior writers on the Merc. The next month, she'd outstripped her own old salary. She supposed it meant that she should make it official and phone in a resignation to Jimmy, but they'd left it pretty ambiguous as to whether she was retiring or taking a leave of absence and she was reluctant to collapse that waveform into the certainty of saying goodbye to her old life.

"So I got to thinking about snitch-tags, radio frequency ID gizmos. Remember those? When we started talking about them a decade ago, all the privacy people went crazy, totally sure that these things would be bad news. The geeks dismissed them as not understanding the technology. Supposedly, an RFID can only be read from a couple inches away -- if someone wanted to find out what RFIDs you had on your person, they'd have to wand you, and you'd know about it."

"Yeah, that was bull," Perry said. "I mean, sure you can't read an RFID unless it's been excited with electromagnetic radiation, and sure you can't do that from a hundred yards without frying everything between you and the target. But if you had a subway turnstile with an exciter built into it, you could snipe all the tag numbers from a distant roof with a directional antenna. If those things had caught on, there'd be exciters everywhere and you'd be able to track anyone you wanted -- christ, they even put RFIDs in the hundred-dollar bill for a while! Pickpockets could have figured out whose purse was worth snatching from half a mile a way!"

Many a frustrated author can tell you that being published is just the start of the dream of making it as a writer: If your publisher doesn't back your book, or it doesn't quickly connect with the reading public, it'll soon fall out of print and very few people will ever hear of you or your ideas again. That's exactly the frustration that's driven many writers to the Web, where anyone can publish and be guaranteed a world-wide audience for his or her thoughts.

But it's not the Web itself that makes that guarantee -- it's the search engines that tame the Web's terabytes upon terabytes of information by making it all searchable. Google Print could bring those same advantages to all the book world's frustrated and forgotten authors, putting their ideas before a limitless audience that could then buy their books. That seems like something any author or publisher would want -- and Google is willing to do the work for them.

Of course, Google isn't "just" a search engine -- it has ambitions far beyond that. Publishers and authors should keep their eyes on Google Print, and if Google steps beyond what "fair use" allows it to do, the law will be on their side. But for now, authors and publishers have far more to gain than they have to fear. Here's a core value for them to adopt: Don't be short-sighted.

He pleaded guilty to making racist remarks on his web blog which sparked off more than 200 comments.

Lim, whose postings were regarded less serious than Koh's by the court, was also charged under the Sedition Act.

In passing sentences, Senior District Judge Richard Magnus said the two had crossed the red line by wantonly breaching the basic ground rules.

He said passing a deterrent sentence was necessary so that such offending acts are tackled early and contained.

The judge also said that young Singaporeans may have short memories that race and religion are sensitive issues.

He said callous and reckless remarks on racial or religious subjects had the potential to cause social disorder, regardless of which medium or forum they are expressed.

The judge added the right of one to propagate an opinion on the Internet is not and cannot be an unfettered right.

EuroOSCON targets the specific needs of European developers, programmers, strategists, entrepreneurs, and technologists, helping them to deliver the benefits of open source technology to their companies and organizations. Tutorials, sessions, panel discussions, and on-stage conversations focus on all aspects of building applications, services, and systems with an emphasis on practical skills.

Update: Some photos on Flickr and in a gallery. (Thanks, Matt Gray, Sevaan Franks, Martin McKenna, and Wayne Dyer!)

Trend-spotting has, in essence, become just another trend. Consequently, the most successful trend forecasters are repositioning themselves as something more than mere arbiters of taste. They're now social scientists with a hipster edge. That's because it's no longer enough to be aware of "sext messaging" or video blogs or the drive-in movie revival. The real money and prestige are now bestowed on those who can translate the cultural hieroglyphics and the "whys" behind these blips.

For this reason, they no longer answer to the name "coolhunter." Some even bristle at the term "trend forecaster." Instead, they prefer "planner," "researcher" or "futurist." They often compare their work to cultural anthropology, though few, if any, have formal training in that field. They're quick to differentiate the short-lived fads from decades-long trends. They usually stress that their predictions are rooted in hard data.

They travel the world; watch people shop, eat and frolic; videotape and photograph them; monitor blogs; study census data; chat online with tens of thousands of consumers (most under 35); and devour every shred of pop culture they can find. They believe their research not only keeps marketing executives at Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Nike and Microsoft, among others, attuned to our cravings, but they map the origins of choice and cultivate that most precious commodity of all: consumer insight.

The short film pulls no punches. It opens with the Smurfs dancing, hand-in-hand, around a campfire and singing the Smurf song. Bluebirds flutter past and rabbits gambol around their familiar village of mushroom- shaped houses until, without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky.

Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs.

The final frame bears the message: "Don't let war affect the lives of children..."

"We wanted something that was real war - Smurfs losing arms, or a Smurf losing a head -but they said no."

Update: There's a slideshow of stills from the video, along with the audio track, here in Quicktime and WMV. If anyone has a link to a non-streaming, non-WMV-only version of this file, please let me know (I'm not interested in the WMV-only streams since they seem to be impervious to playback in VLC and mPlayer, and WMP for OS X is a steaming, unusable pile)

'Mae lived in the last village in the world to go online. After that, everyone else went on Air.' So begins Geoff Ryman's AIR, a moving novel about change, tradition, information, power and transformation. Ryman brings us to a remote Asian village one heartbeat in the future, introduces characters who live on the page and linger in the mind, and, in graceful, powerful prose, explores the challenges of negotiating both technological change and everyday life in the human community."