This Flickr user has meticulously documented the creation of a 7"-on-a-side cube made form rubber bands -- never seen a rubber-band cube before -- though balls are common enough. Link (Thanks, Chris!)

Update: Here's video of the cube's maker bouncing it around his basement. (Thanks, Chris!)

The Transport Security Agency in Pittsburgh required a passenger to remove her body jewelry before allowing her to board a flight. I don't think that banning nipple rings makes airplanes safer, do you? What the hell are these dorks doing, wasting our time and tax-dollars to enforce petty, abusive, made-up policies like this? The 2006 elections can't come too soon for me.

At least one passenger who traveled through Pittsburgh learned this the hard way. She had to remove her piercings in a restroom after airport security told her she couldn't get on a plane with her hardware intact.

The pierced passenger filed a complaint with the Transportation Security Administration, which logs all claims against its personnel at airports across the country.

Link (via Fark)

This site sells giant, standing sans-serif letters with bookshelves hidden behind them -- you can spell out freestanding words and store your books around back. These remind me of the giant words painted on the walls of the Kotters' apartment in Welcome Back, Kotter. Link (via Cribcandy)

Microsoft censored a document that was presented to the United Nations's World Summit on the Information Society, purging references to Free and Open Source Software. They did so by pressuring the drafting committee to remove references to the software and the movement, which threatens their business-model. Subsequently, Thomas Lutz, the Austrian Microsoft mouthpiece, has gone on record with several outright lies justifying his company's cooking of the international political process:

"Increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the free software model is one example," stated the original document, according to the FSFE.

But the final version of the document contains no reference to free software. "Increasingly, revenue is generated by offering services on top of contents," states the final version of the document.

Thomas Lutz, the manager of public affairs at Microsoft Austria, asked for this section to be deleted as "it contains only a one-sided perspective on the ICT industry."

"The rationale for this is, that the aim of free software is not to enable a healthy business on software but rather to make it even impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product," he added.

Link (Thanks, Living Dead Girl!)

A reader writes,

Archive.org has been forced to take down over 1000 soundboard recordings of the Grateful Dead by Jerry's wife and a few (perhaps one) remaining member of the band.

"For years, Archive.org has served as the repository for the Grateful Deads copious electronic recordings. Now, the site will be limited to streaming "audience-recorded" shows.

"The reaction from the very large global Deadhead community has been very interesting, sociologically. People are confused, angry, depressed, grateful for the time they had, and more."

This is pretty disappointing. Deadheads made the Grateful Dead some pretty substantial fortunes over the years by acting as unpaid, volunteer evangelists for their commercial offerings. This is a genuine betrayal of the audience from a couple of greedy people who would line their pockets at the expense of the memory of the generous, mutually beneficial relationship between the band and its supporters. Link

Men's Health has a great selection of 14 little body-hacks that use little-known relationships between different parts of your body to cause it to bend to your will.

11. Stanch blood with a single finger!
Pinching your nose and leaning back is a great way to stop a nosebleed -- if you don't mind choking on your own O positive. A more civil approach: Put some cotton on your upper gums -- just behind that small dent below your nose -- and press against it, hard. "Most bleeds come from the front of the septum, the cartilage wall that divides the nose," says Peter Desmarais, M.D., an ear, nose, and throat specialist at Entabeni Hospital, in Durban, South Africa. "Pressing here helps stop them."

12. Make your heart stand still!
Trying to quell first-date jitters? Blow on your thumb. The vagus nerve, which governs heart rate, can be controlled through breathing, says Ben Abo, an emergency medical- services specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. It'll get your heart rate back to normal.

Link (via Digg)

Stanley "Tookie" Williams is co-founder of the Crips gang. He was sentenced to death on a murder rap in 1981, and faces lethal injection on December 13. While in prison, Williams has become an anti-gang activist and has received a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for his work.

After receiving more than 30,000 letters pleading his case, Governator Schwarzenegger is considering commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment.

Supporters, including rapper Snoop Dogg and Ras Baraka, the deputy mayor of Newark, New Jersey, have urged Schwarzenegger to spare Williams' life so he can continue his work with young people as an anti-gang activist...

In prison, however, Williams gained international acclaim for co-writing children's books about the dangers of gang life. An award-winning television movie starring Jamie Foxx, "Redemption," was based on his life.

Link

This hypnotic video is made with time-lapse frames from seven days' worth of the webcam at the Panama Canal's Miraflores canal. Watching the stately dance of the giant ships, day and night, passing through the locks, is like watching ogres waltz -- their grace is perfectly offset by their hulking, container-stacked brutal unloveliness. Link (Thanks, Bob!)

Open Access News has comprehensive coverage of the open access science publishing movement. Lots more detail on the Royal Society's shameful condemnation of open access. Link (Thanks, Peter!)