Feliz Año Nuevo. Much gratitude to you for visiting our humble blog. I hope you'll come back when the calendar strikes aught-six. Image: Maria Magdalena, shot inside a church in Antigua, Guatemala (2004 / Xeni).

An intrepid New York City photographer spotted this faith-based fountain in Central Park. It stands in tribute to the secret Pastafarian society known to acolytes as PASTA CLUB. Believe. Link (Thanks, Adam Fields!)

"I guess they didn't try smacking it with a hammer.

"Silly Putty is a bizarre polymer, but like most polymers it has a transition temperature at which its physical properties change. In this case, there is a glass transition temperature (Tg) -- below Tg, the polymer will behave like a glass and shatter on impact instead of deforming. For example, PVC has a Tg of 83 C which makes it a reasonable choice for cold water pipes but not for hot water, which would cause it to flow like Silly Putty (addition of various plasticizers can adjust the Tg). However, often the viscoelastic properties of polymers have a rate dependence and this is the case for Silly Putty. Do the same amount of work over a much shorter time (smack it with a hammer instead of pulling) and the SP behaves as if its Tg has been raised. It then shatters into bits.

"You can read a mildly confusing scientific explanation here (from Case Western) along with pictures of Silly Putty subjected to the same force at different rates, or if you prefer a more visceral experience, watch the video from this experiment of what happens when you drop a 50 pound beach ball made of Silly Putty off the roof of a building."

Billboard allows you to get a birds-eye view of the Billboard Hot 100 by listening to all the #1 singles from 1958 through the millenium using a technique I've been working on for a couple of years called time-lapse phonography. The 857 songs used to make the piece are analyzed digitally and a spectral average is then derived from the entire song. Just as a long camera exposure will fuse motion into a single image, spectral averaging allows us to look at the average sonority of a piece of music, however long, giving a sort of average timbre of a piece. This gives us a sense of the average key and register of the song, as well as some clues about the production values present at the time the record was made; for example, the improvements in home stereo equipment over the past fifty years, as well as the gradual replacement of (relatively low-fidelity) AM radio with FM broadcasting has had an impact on how records are mixed... drums and bass lines gradually become louder as you approach the present, increasing the amount of spectral noise and low tones in our averages.

An investigation found that a former [Walmart] employee apparently tampered with a shipment of iPods and put the meat into several packages. The former employee now faces tampering charges, Local 6 News reported.

Here's the head of the Catholic League gloating over the organization's victory in convincing Comedy Central to pull a controversial episode of South Park this week:

The episode in question featured a statue of the Virgin Mary spraying blood from her vagina. It was one of the most vile TV shows ever to appear, and that is why I asked Joseph Califano, a practicing Catholic and member of Viacom’s board of directors (Viacom is the parent company of Comedy Central) to issue a public condemnation of the ‘Bloody Mary’ episode; I also asked that he do whatever he could to pull any scheduled reruns of the episode.

“On December 9, the day Califano received our request, he released a statement condemning the episode. He also said that any further decisions would have to be made by Tom Freston, president and chief executive of the New Viacom. For the past few weeks, we have been in touch with Freston’s office awaiting his decision. Yesterday, we received a phone call from Tony Fox, executive vice president for corporate communications at Comedy Central, informing us that there were no plans to rerun ‘Bloody Mary.’

“Already, we are being deluged with hate mail that is as obscene as it is viciously anti-Catholic. All because we exercised our First Amendment right to request that Comedy Central not offend Catholics again! But we’re used to such things and will not be deterred.”

Previously on Boing Boing:
"Bloody Mary" resurrected: censored South Park hits P2P

Reader comment: Damien says,

I've added some information regarding the controversy to the episode's Wikipedia page itself. Link

Here's the link to Comedy Centrals feedback form if anyone wants to send them a note letting them know how you feel about the whole South Park censorship deal. Maybe enough viewer mail will let them know they made a bad decision.

Comedy Central may have pulled down the rerun of the South Park episode Bloody Mary after the Catholic League successfully issued a complaint but over at its South Park Studios website, it is still making available clips of the episode for download. Link

I just read that Catholic League reply to the South Park episode; "... All because we exercised our First Amendment right to request that Comedy Central not offend Catholics again!" Their first amendment rights? What about the First Amendment rights of people to broadcast satirical cartoons? Why can't they not watch if they are so easily offended?

So we in the news business enter 2006 with one eye on the future and, whether we admit it or not, one eye fixed firmly on our Web stats. It could lead to some schizophrenia, like that old Saturday Night Live skit on subliminal news: "The state Legislature convened today in Olympia (horse sex), and Seattle officials (bestiality) requested funds for a new viaduct (perforated colon)."

So remember that prediction I made back in 2004, the one about mobile busting out in some kind of Web 2.0 way in 2005?

...

I think MakeBot is it. Or at least, what MakeBot points us toward is it. And the beauty is that a couple of code jockeys like Phil Torrone and his partner Sergio Zlobin can make it happen in a few days, using platforms (IM) and data structures (RSS) that already exist.

This all comes not from a major mobile company, or a hot new Internet startup, but from Make magazine, where Phil - who has been banging this drum for a long, long time - works. MakeBot points the way toward a possible end around the walled gardens of mobile carriers.

Former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has harnessed the Internet in his long-running feud with the UK Government. A forthcoming book covering his time as ambassador is currently being blocked by the Foreign Office, which has demanded he remove references to two documents from the book and his web site. Murray has responded by publishing the documents in full there, and by encouraging bloggers to disseminate the documents as widely as possible.

The documents consist of a Foreign & Commonwealth Office legal opinion concerning evidence that may have been obtained by torture, and several letters sent by Murray to the FCO during his time as ambassador. These letters state that the use of torture is routine in Uzbekistan, that US policy there (which the UK supports) is focussed on oil, gas and hegemony rather than democracy or freedom, and that by knowingly receiving evidence obtained through torture the UK is in breach of the UN Convention on Torture. "With Tony Blair and Jack Straw cornered on extraordinary rendition," says Murray, "the UK Government is particularly anxious to suppress all evidence of our complicity in obtaining intelligence extracted by foreign torturers."

Link to the former ambassador's blog, here is the Wikipedia entry on Craig Murray (which currently also includes text of the banned memos) and here is a related thread on MeFi.

Here's an excerpt from one of Murray's banned documents:

Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism.

Yet on 8 September the US State Department certified that Uzbekistan was improving in both human rights and democracy, thus fulfilling a constitutional requirement and allowing the continuing disbursement of $140 million of US aid to Uzbekistan this year. Human Rights Watch immediately published a commendably sober and balanced rebuttal of the State Department claim.

Again we are back in the area of the US accepting sham reform(...). In August media censorship was abolished, and theoretically there are independent media outlets, but in practice there is absolutely no criticism of President Karimov or the central government in any Uzbek media. State Department call this self-censorship: I am not sure that is a fair way to describe an unwillingness to experience the brutal methods of the security services.

Reader comment: Dave Monk says, "This website is tracking mentions of the banned memos as they hit the net."

"The proposed settlement will provide significant benefits for consumers who bought the flawed CDs," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Under the terms, those consumers will get what they thought they were buying--music that will play on their computers without restriction or security risk. EFF is continuing discussions with Sony BMG, however, and believes that there is more they can do to protect music lovers in the future."

"Sony agreed to stop production of these flawed and ineffective DRM technologies," noted EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "We hope that other record labels will learn from Sony's hard experience and focus more on the carrot of quality music and less on the stick of copy protection."

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) joined in this preliminary settlement agreement with Sony BMG this week to settle several class action lawsuits filed due to Sony's use of flawed and overreaching computer program in millions of music CDs sold to the public. The proposed terms of settlement have been presented to the court for preliminary approval and will likely be considered in a hearing set for January 6, 2005 in federal court in New York City.

Previous posts on Boing Boing: Link.

But faithful Boing Boing readers know that the Lonely Island dudes' overnight success was a long, long night in the making -- we were fans of Jorma, Andy, and Akiva years before they got their big SNL break.

Of the many headlines they made this week, none is so delightful as this Babelfish-translated item from Der Spiegel:

FRESHLY BAKED MUFFIN RAP STAR

Freshly baked Muffin RAP star could be abserviert therefore fast ice cold: "perhaps we stand there next Monday without ideas. And that is intimidating ", said Schaffer. "we can use each assistance."

And of the dozens of links to fan projects we've received, this one takes the (cup) cake: Boing Boing reader Nate says,

I was totally inspired by the SNL skit to produce a t-shirt for a developer I work with and so I want to send it out to anyone else who wants to upload it to cafe press or whatever.

Reader comment: Graham says,

Someone put up some Lazy Sunday bobbleheads on eBay. It's even got a background thing-a-majig. Link

Jimmy Wales told Times Online that despite widespread "resistance to the idea" of advertising on Wikipedia, "at some point questions are going to be raised over the amount of money we are turning down."

Wikipedia would be in a prime position to exploit the current boom in online advertising. It expects to record around 2.5 billion page impressions this month and traffic volumes are doubling every four months. According to figures released this month by Nielsen/Netratings, it was the ninth-fastest growing site on the web in 2005.

UPDATE: On Jimmy Wales's Wikipedia User Talk page, he says the quote has been taken out of context for the sake of hype and headlines.

Please read the story, not the headline. :-) I said to this reporter the same thing I have been saying to everyone for years. Nothing has changed. What I have been saying forever is that I think we will eventually, as a community, face the question of whether the amount of money we are turning down, and the amount of good we could do with that money towards our charitable mission, is worth more than our pride in being ad free. The way I like to put this is as follows:

it is easy for us to sit in our safe Western wealthy nations with broadband internet connections and pat ourselves on the back for not having any ads, but if, for example, having some google-style ads on the search results page only could bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, and that money could be used to bring Wikipedia to millions of people who currently have no access, I think that we, as a community, have to be serious and thoughtful about that decision.

Having said that, I personally remain opposed to having ads in Wikipedia. It's just that a serious NPOV discussion of the matter necessarily would involve us being really serious about what we are turning down and why. This is exactly what I've been saying for years. If you know why the press likes to run inflammatory headlines every few days, well, please let me know. I find it all a bit baffling to be honest.

A statement from me "I am personally opposed to having ads in Wikipedia" somehow becomes "Wikipedia chief considers taking ads".

-- Jimbo Wales 16:46, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

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

Reader comment: Colby Griggs says, "I'm sure I won't be the only one that says 'Where's the Yeti?' Link. Specifically - Pingu Throw SE. It's been updated so you can control the flight of the penguin after the Yeti bats him."

Reader comment: Andrew says, "Forgot Spaced Penguin -- Link."

Reader comment: Geoffrey says, "Don't forget Bird Snatchers! Link."

Jay Young, 27, the son of Colorado Gators founders Erwin and Lynne, holds several gator wrestling titles and has spent his entire life wrangling the massive reptiles. The city of Los Angeles recently hired him to attempt to remove a released pet gator from a public lake, and rumors abound that he’s taken a few “meetings” with Hollywood since his celebrated visit made local and national news. When I finally catch this wiry, muddy bayou man sauntering towards me, with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip and stringy hair in his face, it’s easy to see why.

“I learned to handle ‘em when I was small and they were small,” he drawls sleepily. “I mean, I got bit a few times, and each time I learned not to what I did again.” When prodded, he proceeds to name off his injuries nonchalantly, as if ticking off items on his Thursday grocery list. “A 6-footer—Tinkerbell—got my arm,” he says, pointing to a lengthy scar on his ropy forearm. “I let my arms get to far out to the side. Three fingers got crushed and held in a big one’s jaws…teething, I guess.”

...the terminal velocity of your typical bullet coming back down varies a lot but is normally more than 200 feet per second.

And, other writers on the subject (there have been quite a few) say that tests on cadavers show that skin is punctured and underlying organs messed up (my words, not theirs) at bullet velocities that exceed 180 feet per second. And, since falling bullets typically strike people in the head or shoulders, this appears to me to be a very dangerous practice.

Reader comment: David says: "I worked my way through much of my higher education as a night clerk in ER's, and every year at Xmas and the 4th of July there'd be a few falling gunshot wounds. I'd like to reiterate that the bullets are going more than fast enough to kill people when they hit the ground--there have been cases where a bullet punched through a car roof and hit someone inside. Moreover, the falling trajectory gives the bullet a much longer path through the human body than a flat trajectory, making the wounds much more gruesome than a typical gunshot, even if they don't hit the head or shoulders.

"Speaking as someone who's seen the results I can honestly say that shooting in the air is a Really Bad Thing. Really--don't."

Reader comment: Jamie of Slashdot says: "In their answers to the questions our Slashdot readers sent them, the Mythbusters team recently promised an interesting report on the 'bullets fired straight up' question...

What is your favorite Busted Myth and your favorite Confirmed one? ADAM SAVAGE -- I've always been partial to the Penny Drop myth, i.e. will a penny dropped from the Empire State Building kill you when it hits the ground? To me, that was one of the most elegant and simple applications of science to a question that we've done. Until last week. We just worked on a myth called "bullets fired up" -- i.e., will a bullet fired directly vertically kill you when it comes back down. We did tons of research on it, and in the end, added significantly to the body of knowledge that's out there on the subject. I won't give away the ending, but we nailed this one.

Reader comment: Ben says: "Despite every attempt to do so, I couldn't find an archived news story of the following very real tale (sorry). I know this might ring of a FOAF urban legend, but it's not! Trust me!

"In my hometown of Erie, PA, about 10-12 years ago, there was an incident just as described in your post. An adolescent girl was struck in the head with a falling bullet as she watched New Year's Eve fireworks...the irony of the situation was that she was attending on of those 'alcohol-free, family-friendly' New Year's Eve events, whereas the guy who shot the gun (who, incredibly, was eventually caught) was at a party a few blocks away.

"In the relatively crime-free location of Erie, where shootings are rare, this story was huge, and the criminal trial (as well as the girl's recovery) was followed by the media for weeks to come."

Set for release in late 2006, Reid Gershbein's sub-$1M feature tells the tale of "a man who loses his pregnant wife in a terrorist attack and then takes a job as a hit man."

Link to SF Chronicle story, and here's the movie website. No, wait, it's a movie blog. A mlog, 'cause we're truncated like that, yo.
(via Defamer, where there's more)

The head of policy studies at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth wants the university to suspend a student who made up a story about being grilled by federal antiterrorism agents over a library book and to reprimand faculty members who spread the tale.

Following the student's admission Friday that it was a hoax, Clyde Barrow, chairman of the policy studies department, said UMass should punish the student and faculty members, in particular two history professors who repeated the unsubstantiated assertion of the history student to a New Bedford Standard-Times reporter.

(...) ''It's unbelievable that this student is not being suspended for a semester," wrote Barrow, who said he does not know the student's identity. ''It's even more unbelievable that the faculty who jumped the gun on this story and actively promoted it on campus, the Internet, and blogs will walk away from their misconduct without any consequences."

As one eloquent BB buddy put it earlier this week, "There's already enough weird stuff going on in America right now -- it's not like anyone needs to make shit up."

The South Park episode killed by Comedy Central this week after Catholic groups complained has ascended to BitTorrent heaven: Link. (Thanks, Cody).

Defamer has more on the story: Link.

Previously on Boing Boing:
Comedy Central downs "Bloody Mary": South Park episode yanked

Reader comment: Todd Jackson says,

Comedy Central does take comments from viewers. If you disagree with the Catholic League, you might want to write in: Link.

Here's the Catholic League gloating about the recent South Park pulling, commending Comedy Central for pulling the episode and then calling the creators of the episode "bigots." Link.

(Disclaimer: this blog post is not an endorsement for said auction. If you drop Hamiltons on it, you do so at your own peril).
(Thanks, Jason)

Many of those low points will be familar to Boing Boing readers: Yahoo's role in the imprisonment of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, the Sony rootkit debacle extended dance remix, and Apple versus bloggers, to name but three.

Link to segment details and archived audio, Link to Day to Day website. Previous "Xeni Tech" segments on NPR here.

See also Kevin Poulsen's terrific year-end roundup for Wired News, "Worst Tech Moments of 2005." Link.

More than 120 pages of proposed rules, released by the government Thursday, regulate the future of space tourism. This don't-forget list touches on everything from passenger medical standards to preflight training for the crew.

Before taking a trip that literally is out of this world, companies would be required to inform the "space flight participant" — known in more earthly settings as simply a passenger — of the risks. Passengers also would be required to provide written consent before boarding a vehicle for takeoff.

Legislation signed a year ago by President Bush and designed to help the space industry flourish prohibits the Federal Aviation Administration from issuing safety regulations for passengers and crew for eight years, unless specific design features or operating practices cause a serious or fatal injury.

Reader comment: Hamish Grant says: "That character on the amusement park carousel is Obelix, best friend of Asterix, the beloved cartoon character from Belgium, drawn by Goscinny & Uderzo.

"Obelix is typically seen carrying a large menhir stone (thus his name = Obelisk), which he manufactures and sells from his quarry near the village of invincible Gauls.

"The pose the carousel character is in suggests Obelix's typical presentation and I guess the intent was to have the riders be 'carried' by Obelix in place of his menhir. We have been conditioned by goatse to see something different!"

Reader comment: Andy says: "Yes I know there is far, far more important stuff in the world to worry about than this, but Obelix is French, not Belgian. Not only that, but Asterix, Obelix, their druid Getafix (I kid you not), Chief Vitalstatistix et al are such beloved symbols of French nationalism that you translocate them at your peril."

"Tin Tin is Belgian (written and illustrated by Herge), and indeed 'Asterix in Belgium' is easily one of the best of the Gallic warrior's excursions round Europe, but the chap himself is as French as they come.

"Oh, and thanks but no thanks for reminding me about that picture again. If I could edit one thing out of my memory..."

The late-1880s-era house, which Deriugin dreamed of encasing in concrete and using as the core for a 500-foot office and condominium tower, will be torn down within the next couple of months, Deriugin said.

“I’m not going to get my cost out of it,” he said.

Deriugin, 52, estimates he’s invested $2 million worth of time in “research and development” over the years.

The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most files of that type.

The files, known as cookies, disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week. Agency officials acknowledged yesterday that they had made a mistake. Nonetheless, the issue raised questions about privacy at the agency, which is on the defensive over reports of an eavesdropping program.

"Considering the surveillance power the N.S.A. has, cookies are not exactly a major concern," said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington. "But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy."

Until Tuesday, the N.S.A. site created two cookie files that do not expire until 2035. Don Weber, an agency spokesman, said in a statement yesterday that the use of the so-called persistent cookies resulted from a recent software upgrade.

Previously on Boing Boing

Eyeing web tracking bugs at Whitehouse.gov

Boing Boing reader Stricky says,

Here is the Google Maps reference of the Yakima Echelon station, twin to the Sugar Grove facility mentioned in the earlier Boing Boing post, and here are aerial photos: Link one, Link two.

Profile of NSA "listening post" for communications spying. Note: aerial photographs of the Sugar Grove NSA facility referenced in that post came from Cryptome.org, which moved the images off-site earlier this week. Then, the site to which they were relocated went offline. Cryptome.org is back online, but the Sugar Grove images are not.

Reader comment: Tony says,

Here are some more photos from the Echelon spy network, including some of the site here in New Zealand at Waihopai -- Link. Nicky Hagar also wrote a book about NZ's role in the network in 1996 -- Link.

There's a facility much like the one pictured, just outside Sacramento, California. Google Map's photos of the region are all super low res (Link) but TerraServer is a bit clearer (if black and white) -- Link

Owades was an American biochemist whose chief area of interest originally had been cholesterol. In the early 1950s, however, when work was hard to come by, he took a post first with a laboratory specialising in fermentation science and later one with Rheingold, then among the largest breweries in New York.

Beer is made by the fermentation of sugars obtained from various grains, principally barley. Owades realised that it could be made to feel less heavy on the stomach if many of the excess carbohydrates produced by the brewing process were removed.

Reader comment: Christopher Granade says,

According to Raw Story, these posters have been removed from Vienna bilboards. From the story, "Austrian media reported that the offending images were yanked yesterday — just a day after they started flashing at motorists — on personal orders of Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel. A woman answering the telephone at the chancellor's public information department who refused to identify herself said she could not confirm the report."

Bereaved by the forces of nature and discovered by wildlife rangers near certain death in the Indian Ocean off Malindi, the one-year-old male hippo calf dubbed Owen was on 27 December 2004 placed in Haller Park, a wildlife sanctuary in the coastal city of Mombassa, Kenya.

As soon as he was placed in his enclosure, the orphaned youngster immediately ran to the giant tortoise also housed in that space. The tortoise, named Mzee (Swahili for "old man") and estimated to be between 100 and 130 years old, was not immediately taken with the brash newcomer — he turned and hissed, forcing the hippo to back away. Yet Owen persisted in following the tortoise around the park (and even into a pool), and within days the pair had forged a friendship, eating and sleeping together. Owen has even been seen to lick the tortoise, whom he regards as his new mother. (Wildlife workers speculated that Owen may have been attracted to Mzee as a parental figure because the tortoise's shape and color are similar to those of an adult hippopotamus.) Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

When Mr Jalopy installed the application on his Macintosh, however, he was disappointed to discover that he had to frequently swap the discs. It ruined his reading experience. So he decided to copy all the discs to his hard drive. But the digital rights management woven into the software prevented him from doing that.

He asked readers of his blog, Hooptyrides, for suggestions on how to fix the problem. Plenty of smart people offered ideas, but nothing quite worked. Now Mr Jalopy is disgusted with the New Yorker for producing such an unnecessarily ugly product. His commentary about the New Yorker's foolish stance on copy protection (which, by the way, does nothing to prevent people from copying and pirating the discs, but makes it damn near impossible for the owner of the discs to copy them to his hard drive for legal personal use) makes for excellent reading.

I am so profoundly disappointed. The New Yorker is in the business of selling magazines. Certainly, they make a few dollars off the Cartoon Bank and their various editorial compilations, but I would bet, that the overwhelming money comes from ad space. Perhaps I am wrong, but I doubt it. What are they afraid of? The 8 DVD's are going to be on P2P sites? The New Yorker is concerned that people will be downloading 60 GBs to read old Talk of the Town snippets? That high school kids are going to be trading them in the parking lot? They will be sold on street corners along with Harry Potter? Wouldn't this huge black market of Complete New Yorker piracy just create more demand for the magazine and more ad space dollars? It is fitting of a New Yorker cartoon!

I would be downloading all 60GBs, I am that devoted. But I don't have to because The Complete New Yorker is cheap, beautifully packaged and comes with a great highlights book. The scans are good, the software adequate, the extracts are decent so the searching really works, but I do revoke my recommendation that it is worth buying. You buy it, but you don't own it. Conde Nast still owns it. You can't use it in a fair, legal and sensible manner and you don't know that until you own it, as it doesn't have a sticker reading 'This DVD is Fucked.' It is not unreasonable to expect that consumers would choose to archive and eliminate the onerous disc swapping that is caused by being spread over 8 DVDs.

Reader comment: Glenn Fleishman says: "The Cartoon Bank almost certainly grosses between $4 million and $10 million a year, and produces a very fine net that may be in the millions. I wrote about the brilliant Bob Mankoff back in 1998 to 2001 in several articles across a few different publications. For instance, back six years ago, he told me that 'On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog' had netted the cartoonist $100,000 for his share. And that was six years ago. They don't release a lot of numbers, but I got some out of him, which is the basis for my wide range based on their projects since.

"In fact, I've argued elsewhere that when The New Yorker has been profitable, it's profit boost must be almost entirely attributable to The Cartoon Bank, which has extremely high margins as it's scaled up: they have a staff and a database, but much of the routine work happens during production of each magazine now that they've scanned all the cartoons in the back issues."

Reader comment: OM says: "That annoying 'disk swap' issue isn’t limited to the New Yorker collection. Pretty much any scanned magazine collection is set up along similar annoyances. Probably the most annoying example I have is the massive National Geographic set from 1998. Having ample hard drive space on my servers, it should have been an option to dump the entire contents on one hard drive for ease and speed of viewing. But nope, they’re afraid you’ll dump the whole thing on your hard drive and make a Ghost image to give to your friends. Which is basically what the NatGeo Society told everyone who bought the set and bitched about it – especially those who’re actually long-standing subscribing members! To be honest, the disk swapping was so damn annoying that I took the set back to the store I got it from – believe it or not, this place would take software returns on this package because a *LOT* of old NatGeo members had been screwed, and there’s nothing more irate than a bunch of senior citizens who’re worldly educated *and* have just gotten the shaft by an organization they’ve trusted for decades.

"You’d hope that other magazines would have learned from this lesson, but nope. They’ve been seduced by the demons known as 'BSA' and 'SPA' into believing that *everyone* is a pirate"

The problem was that once together, Silly Putty doesn't like to come apart, and none of us had any idea of how to deal with this effect. We tried everything: very strong people (didn't work), scissors (stabbing worked, slicing didn't), 28-gauge steel wire (broke), 22-gauge steel wire (broke), 16-gauge steel wire (too thick), and twisting and breaking (worked well for "smaller" pieces -- under five pounds, that is.)

Some Canadian guy I met in the elevator the other day sends this scan of a page from the original screenplay for Syriana, and says:

The line, as people have seen in the trailer and the movie, is "Corruption is why we win." This is a monologue about the virtues of corruption delivered by the actor Tim Blake Nelson, who plays an Oil industry lobbyist from the south named Danny Dalton, to Jeffrey Wright, an African-American corporate lawyer named Bennett Holiday.

One wonders why the writer/director Stephen Gaghan dropped the racist slur. Probably because it would further demonize a character who is already portrayed as amoral.

And if you haven't seen the film yet, you must. Link.

See also the related participate.net "Oil Change" website: Link, and this MP3 of a roundtable discussion with George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Siddig, See No Evil author Robert Baer, and writer/director Stephen Gaghan, interviewed by John Gallagher for the National Board of Review: Link.

Update: Warner Brothers has released the entire text of the Syriana screenplay online: Link.

Daze of dazereader.com says,

Comedy Central might or might not have deleted the South Park episode "Bloody Mary" from tonight's schedule after protests from offended conservative Catholics.

Update: Confirmed -- the December 7 episode in question did not re-air last night.

Snip from NYT story:

Within minutes, I am standing in the Dollar General, on Tuscaloosa Street in Greensboro. Music Man has added a couple of bottles of cola and batteries for his remote control to his order. I pay the $7. It's a small price for the chance to see his house, which was designed by some of America's boldest young architects. As it turns out, Music Man gets so many visitors - architecture buffs who have seen his quirky domain in books and magazines - that he relies on them whenever he needs staples.

Music Man's house, with colorful glass embedded in concrete floors and shelves that move on skateboard wheels, is one of about 40 buildings conceived and built by the Rural Studio, an ever-changing troupe of architecture students who bring their tools, tenacity and talent to impoverished western Alabama. The 13-year-old program, under the auspices of Auburn University, is sometimes called the "redneck Taliesin."

Reader comment: Mark Eckenwiler says,

The truly underappreciated National Building Museum here in DC (in the kickass historic Pension Bureau building) had an exhibition about Mockbee's work last year: Link.

Also worth seeing - and open until January 29 - is the Liquid Stone exhibit that gives you reason to think that most concrete architecture is ugly because of the people who design and build it, not because of the material itself: Link.

NBM is one of those gems that most DC visitors have never heard of and thus never see. Xeni's followers should not make the same mistake.

The Whitehouse.gov Web site is bugged! Apparently the Webmaster for the site has hired Webtrends to track visitors around the site using Web bugs and permanent cookies. Here's the Web bug that I found on the home page of the Whitehouse.gov Web site (...) Similar Web bugs can be found on other Web pages at the Whitehouse Web site.

Before 9/11, the Clinton administration said this kind of Web tracking is a no-no for U.S. government Web sites [Link]. Because of the unique laws and traditions about government access to citizens' personal information, the presumption should be that "cookies" will not be used at Federal web sites. Under this new Federal policy, "cookies" should not be used at Federal web sites, or by contractors when operating web sites on behalf of agencies, unless, in addition to clear and conspicuous notice, the following conditions are met: a compelling need to gather the data on the site.

Show up at the next New York City Dorkbot meeting -- next Wednesday, January 4th at Location One gallery in SoHo, 7pm -- and find out.
Link to event info, Link to "Chipped," the project website for Mikey's RFID implant project.

Reader comment: Shannon says,

This appears to be a precursor of Mikey Sklar's project.

Reader comment: Nick says,

Suprised you've had this article up without someone mentioning Captain Cyborg himself, Kevin Warwick. This is a link to the details of one of his experiments with surgically implanted transponders, from 2002 (there was an earlier 1999 experiment as well).

Mikey sent me this link the last time he had a project at Dorkbot: replacing the pockets in his pants with conductive fabric to block RFID. A nice cozy place to keep your newly insecure hands.

My grad school classmate Meghan Trainor's thesis With Hidden Numbers had her embedding a rfid tag in her arm as well as in a bunch of handmade objects to trigger samples from an audio database when scanned. ITP's site is down right now but you can read more about it on her thesis blog or We Make Money Not Art.

Human implantable RFID tags are already in commercial use (approved by FDA and all that): Link. I stumbled across it when looking for some RFID stuff for a house I'm building.

In this interview, Mikey describes the process of getting getting an RFID tag implanted into his hand. Link

At what point does a newspaper find sufficient cause to break a confidentiality agreement? The 22-year-old student knowingly lied to the newspaper and harmed its reputation across the entire planet.

Three years ago, President Bush declared that he had "zero tolerance" for trafficking in humans by the government's overseas contractors, and two years ago Congress mandated a similar policy. But notwithstanding the president's statement and the congressional edict, the Defense Department has yet to adopt a policy to bar human trafficking.

A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department records.

The lobbying groups opposing the plan say they're in favor of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent thousands of firms, including some of the industry's biggest names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns.

The next wave of Army fighting vehicles are still on the drawing board. So, in the meantime, Boeing is outfitting 34 commercially produced limousine-style Hummers with radios and computer networking equipment to stand in for the vehicles during some upcoming war games.

Saudi religious scholars last May condemned the hugely popular talent show aired by Lebanese channel LBC as a crime against Islam when a young Saudi returned to a hero's welcome after winning in the Lebanese capital Beirut.

"The decision was taken last night because of a fatwa (religious decree) issued last year, since the program is culturally inappropriate," spokesman Humoud Alghodaini said.

Readers of the Beijing Youth Daily, which published the shots, wrote in to express their feelings.

One wrote: "The pictures are well shot, but the person who shot this is disgusting. He knew there was a pit, but was waiting there for someone to fall over."

Liu defended himself, saying: "I just knew that the city government has paved the pit, and without my pictures, the pit would not be noticed by the government, and there would perhaps be more people falling over."

Reader comment: Mike says: "In kindergarten (mid-1970s) we saw a short cartoon called 'The Rock in the Road.' The storyline was remarkably similar, but each time a character tripped over the title rock, he waited along with all the prior victims to watch the next guy. Hilarity ensues, lather, rinse, repeat. I don't remember whether this was supposed to teach us a lesson, or just amuse us before nap time. I can't find anything about the cartoon on Google; I'd love to see it again."

Reader comment: M says: "That's so strange he was recently in LA! I spoke to Mr. Schiavelli on 10/04/2005, At around 7:12 p.m. The reason I know this precise information is that we spoke while he and a woman were shopping at California Surplus Mart on Santa Monica Blvd., here in LA (time and date stamp on my receipt). We were both trying on pants and they only have a few dressing rooms. So we had some time to talk. His voice was very hushed and quite strained. I remember that the salesman told Mr. Schiavelli that he would be happy to call him when the other jeans came in, and I heard Mr. Schiavelli reply, 'That's OK, were from out of town.' I found the response rather odd and so did the salesman, I chalked it up to a older famous person not wanting to be bothered, but I guess he really did live out of town."

Reader comment: Stefan says: "Schiavelli was an occasional caller to the public radio (American Public Media) cooking show 'The Splendid Table.' I recall the host having to explain who this animated and enthusiastic fellow was; it was quite a surprise when I realized who she was talking about.

"This morning's tribute on 'Morning Edition' includes some brief audio of Schiavelli talking about his cooking."

Employees at the branch where people were sickened said they heard a noise like a clap or pop before people smelled a garlicky odour and began to feel ill. Police called to the scene found a mechanism with a timer attached to shattered ampoules, and patients complained of nausea and vomiting, Stepchenko said.

He said a custodian at another branch discovered a suspicious box before opening time and found ampoules attached to wires and a timer inside. The woman inadvertently broke one of the ampoules and noticed a repulsive smell but was not sickened, he said.

Reader comment: Robert says: "Methyl mercaptan smells like, but does not come from, rotten cabbage.

"Calling it 'rotten-cabbage-scented' is a little more accurate, but suggests that the scent was added after the fact, while in actuality, stench is a property of the mercaptan itself.

"In case you weren't aware, methyl mercaptan is commonly used as an odorant in natural gas, the better to detect leaks at very low concentrations."

Earlier this month, Warner/Chappell sent a harshly-worded lawyergram to the Austrian developer who wrote PearLyrics, threatening legal action if he didn't remove the software from distribution. Apple was cc'd, too, and they promptly yanked links to the app from apple.com. After the EFF's Fred Von Lohmann distributed an open letter taking Warner/Chappell to task, the music publisher issued an apology of sorts -- but PearLyrics remains offline, the chilling effect is still real, and music publishers are preparing a new legal assault on lyrics websites in January.

Link to segment, Link to Day to Day website, archived audio online after 12PM PT/3PM ET. Previous "Xeni Tech" segments on NPR here.

See also this related report filed for Wired News. Previous posts on Boing Boing about the PearLyrics debacle: Link.

My electric bills are killing me, and now I can finally figure out exactly why.

The Kill-A-Watt plugs into a wall outlet and will measure the actual electricity usage of any appliance. I've been wanting one of these things for years, to the point of seriously considering manufacturing one myself. I'm glad someone has finally done it for me. It looks like my computer costs me something like $216 a year to run. Trouble is, I have five of them. Something's gotta go.

Street price for this device is about $30. I should save that much in the first month.

An additional idea that I thought of would be combining these units with that cheesy home-network technology that communicates via your home's electrical system. (Or use WiFi) That way several wall units could communicate with a PC and give you a running total of your energy consumption. The system could automatically retrieve your electrical rates from the Internet and even give you a running total in dollars of what you're spending.

Reader comment: Dom Padden says,

We have a device in Australia called the Cent-a-meter that measures your whole household electrical consumption in real time -- not weeks later when you get a bill. Mine paid for itself immediately. I just bought it and placed it on the kitchen counter. The other people in my house took interest, calculated the cost of every appliance in the house (by elimination) and changed their habits. Our computers are surprisingly inexpensive to run but the whole TV-DVD-VCR stack gets turned off at the switch every night now, and the coffee machine is not turned on 24/7.

The Watts-Up meter from Electronic Educational Devices is similar to the Kill-A-Watt, but includes data logging and a serial interface. Link

That Kill-a-watt that you mentioned in the update today -- it's commonly used by techies to measure the usage of power supplies. As a general rule, the higher the wattage and the lower the useage, the better the power supply's efficiency.

# "Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the shuffle."

# "I know what I don't know, and to this day I don't know technology and I don't know accounting and finance."

# "Screw the nano."

# "I'm going to fucking kill Google."

I did some googling and found that it might be starting to run by end of January 2006."
Link

President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.

Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, "What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?"

In a country where about 75 percent of the population carries mobile phones, prosecutors felt it was time to move away from sending legal notices on paper and send them electronically instead, said Lee Young- pyo, an administrative official.

"Most people in South Korea have mobile phones and since the notices don't reach them immediately by regular mail, this is a more definite way for the individuals to know they have received a legal notice," Lee said.

On Tuesday, the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress begins -- it runs from December 27th to the 30th, and takes place at the Berliner Congress Center in Alexander Platz in Berlin. Joi Ito is giving the keynote (Link). I'm also speaking (Link). If you're in Berlin and you're interested in society, technology, the past, present or future, this is the place to be!

Photo: outside the Chaos con (also known as 22c3) in Berlin, shot by Jacob. Flickr tags for more of his photos from the event: 22c3 and ccc.

Reader comment: Cory Ondrejka says,

I'll be speaking at 22c3 as well (Link). Should be an amazing conference, plus I'll be living on the bleeding edge with the first public demo of the Second Life client running on Linux.

While looking for advanced polling information for the Canadian federal election in January, I stumbled upon this question on the Elections Canada FAQ page. Not yet able to find the penalty for such an offense, but will keep looking.

Q: Is someone allowed to eat a ballot?
A: Eating a ballot, not returning it or otherwise destroying or defacing it constitutes a serious breach of the Canada Elections Act.

Reader comment: Martin says,

Both incidences of ballot-eating happened in Alberta, where many of us are disheartened by how all but one or two of the province's twenty-eight ridings are easily won by the Conservatives in every federal election. Link to news report about the "Edible Ballot Society" in the 2000 election.

Snip from NYT story by James Bamford:

Deep in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.

Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country.

A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the N.S.A. has suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the N.S.A. to bypass a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens has even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment.

Above, a photo snipped from this related item on John Young's Cryptome today: Eyeballing Sugar Grove Echelon Station, with satellite photos and maps of the site profiled in the NYT piece.

This Christian porn addiction program requires a fee before you get details on how each "leg" of therapy works, but "leg titles" include: "MASTERING MASTURBATION," "DEBUGGING DISTORTED THOUGHTS," and "FANTASY CONTAMINATION."

If "the computer desk or use area is becoming eroticized as an associated part of the ritual that you have grown to look forward to," this brain-cleansing program may hit the spot.

Questions like "Can I do one leg at a time?" are answered (their words, not mine), but one mystery remains: why is the dude in that header image wearing what looks like protective beekeper headgear? Surely there's a fetish site for that. Link (Thanks, Nihar P.!)

We bumped into a rather surprising policy at Walgreens. Apparently, to get the photos you print from the stores' self-serve kiosks, you must provide your name, address, and phone number. You take your photos with you, so they can't claim to be doing it for "safety" reasons. So WTF?

Reader comment: David says,

I worked in the photo lab at a Best Buy this past summer, and our self-serve kiosks also asked for name, number, address, and maybe email address. The machines themselves would force you to enter something for name and phone number, but the rest you could leave blank. I can't speak for Walgreens, or the people who designed the photo labs for best buy, but the only use for the name and phone number I ever had was to be sure I give the photos to the correct person. Maybe they would have been used differently if someone gave pictures I wasn't allowed to print (penetration), but I never had that problem.

The World Pyro Olympics, an annual competition for fireworks professionals, begins today in the Philippines. Link (Thanks, Max)

I just got back from the Sony Style store in the Westchester mall, (White Plains, NY) and I saw that the had many CDs in the shelves that had the XCP rootkits. I asked the manager about this and they said they were, and I quote, “still allowed to sell them”.

Previous Sony rootkit debacle coverage on Boing Boing: Link.

1. The Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
2. Filming of the First Live Giant Squid
3. New Homo floresiensis Discoveries
4. New Animal Discovered in Borneo
5. First Cryptozoology and Art Symposium at Bates College
6. Bobby Clarke's Manitoba Bigfoot Video
7. Bigfoot Bounty
8. Mystery Photos of Cryptid Felids and Fish
9. Disney Yeti Expedition
10. The Laotian Rock Rat is Discovered at a Meat Market

Excerpt from "A Human Package," written by Jasmina Tesanovic in Belgrade this week:

I hail a cab. It is snowing and gloomy, Friday 23 December. People in Belgrade are already hysterical because of the New Year holidays.

Please hurry to the special court, ex military court. Do you know where it is? Of course Madame I know, it is a very famous place these days, it is round the corner, you don't need a cab really.

True, the military court is an old renovated building for new war crimes, a monument to the last wars, my friend Stasa says. It's much fancier than The Hague court room. In my street live some war criminals, so no wonder they made their court there.

We Women in Black are official NGO onlookers. We enter the building with Natasa Kandic, the woman most hated by nationalists in Serbia, Natasa Kandic the representative of the victims and a human rights lawyer, plus the family members themselves: 15 women, all in all.

This is the last day of the first round of the trial of the Scorpions, the paramilitary formation which executed 6 Muslim war prisoners in the days of Srebrenica. During this mass murder of the Muslims, the Scorpions unwisely filmed their own crime. Last July, this video document was screened in The Hague during the Milosevic trial, and then all over the Serbian and international media. Some family saw the faces of their missing for the first time.

Now we see the faces of the arrested executioners. One young woman, a victim's relative says; it is so relieving to see their faces, so soothing, to see who killed your loved one, to see if he is a human, and to hear him speak for himself. It is so important to start making a difference between those who did the crime and those who didn't.

Previous Boing Boing posts on Jasmina Tesanovic -- filmmaker, author, and most recently, Mrs. Bruce Sterling: Link. She can be reached at email (politicalidiot - at - yahoo.com).

Photo: "Snowed," a snapshot of Belgrade by Flickr user Aleksandar Vacic.

Photographer Clayton James Cubitt points us to photos and an essay documenting the wedding of two Katrina survivors in Mississipppi. "These Habitat for Humanity volunteers have been getting no media love and they're doing such amazing things," says Clayton, "Basically, a small chapter from Walton County Florida has adopted Hancock County, MS, without any support from habitat International."

Snip from account by Lynn Nesmith:

"Everyone knows I'm always late for everything," confesses Suzie Burton. "All my friends and family laugh that I'll be late for my own funeral. But if the good Lord is willing, I'll be on time for my wedding."

Willing or not, Suzie was late for her nuptials to Josh Ward on December 21. In the aftermath of Katrina, an hour or so delay barely fazed the more than 60 friends and family who gathered in Pearlington for the wedding. The delay was maybe divine intervention. As the bride dressed for her big day, dozens of volunteers from Walton County put finishing touches on the couple's new house.

Reader comment: Ben Yaffe says,

"There was a great feature on the town following Katrina on 'This American Life': Link."