Citypages Magazine has a collection of short interviews with freeway exit-ramp beggars in Minneapolis. The interviews are pretty heart-breaking, and it's a rare opportunity to find out more about something we only see through the rolled-up window of a car.

Damien Cummings
35W and University Avenue

Best job: "Working for Northwestern Bell, back in '72. Lineman."

Worst job: "Day labor stuff. Minnesota Barrel, for instance. They're heavy, you gotta stack 'em three high and stuff. But it was a job. I did everything there is."

Last job: "Senior center in Cambridge, doing maintenance work on their facility. I'm a handyman."

Dream job: "I dunno. I really don't. I'm on veterans' disability. I was in Vietnam."

Link (via Consumerist)

BMW's German page has been expunged from Google's search-results, apparently in retaliation for BMW's use of sleazy "doorway pages" that display different content to search-engine crawlers in order to fool them into valuing those pages more highly. A Google employee has confirmed the "Google Death Penalty" for BMW on his blog.

This willingness to punish wrongdoing even when it comes from big companies is a marked contrast with the anti-virus companies that had to be arm-twisted into releasing updates to their products to catch and remove the spyware and rootkits that Sony music was caught distributing on millions of music CDs.

It appears that at least some of the JavaScript- redirecting pages have already been removed from bmw.de, which is very encouraging, but given the number of pages that were doing JavaScript redirects, I expect that Google's webspam team will need a reinclusion request with details on who created the doorway pages. We'll probably also need some assurances that such pages won’t reappear on the sites before the domains can be reincluded. I'm leaving comments turned off on this post; there are no doubt plenty of other search engine optimization areas to discuss this.

Link (via Digg)

Best Buy stores sport large boards with mysterious numbers on them; it turns out that they refer to how much shoplifting is going on in the store, how it has fared at selling Sports Illustrated subscriptions, extended warranties and credit-cards. These are apparently in place to motivate employees to do better.

The author of Cabel's Blog LOL prised the information out of various Best Buy cashiers, and has posted a codex so that we can intelligently discuss each store's success at peddling easy credit with its employees.

Shrink Percent: Ahh, shrink. You probably call it "stealing". And this store is doing pretty good with handling it. The shrink percentage is, presumably, the percentage of Best Buy merchandise that is simply prancing right out the door. A shrink percentage of .50% is, apparently, bad news — so this store is doing pretty well.

Shrink Payout: Keep shrink low, and the shrink payout increases! Well, I have no idea how this shrink payout ($469) is distributed to employees (anyone know?), but I'd wager it winds up being a few extra dollars in your paycheck every now and then.

Link (via Consumerist)

Update: Nathan sez, "When I was working at Best buy the payout was done as a year-end bonus. After PI (that is, 'Physical Inventory') you would get a bonus check for what ever the Shrink payout was. $300 - $400 was the average for my store."

Update: Andrew sez, "Not sure exactly how different Best Buy is, however I can give you the rundown of how Futureshop (owned by Best Buy here in Canada) does it. Shrink is more than just loss to theft, it's also money lost to old products have prices dropped before they get sold (clearence, etc) and things being returned and marked down for sale as open box."

Simone Lueck, a photographer, has a stupendous gallery of photos of television sets in Cubans' homes:

In Cuba, television is the most important communication medium and a national pastime. No matter that the TV sets themselves are outdated, pre-revolution relics imported from America or sets from Russia over fifteen years old; green-hued beasts jimmy-rigged with ancient computer parts and fantastically adorned like religious altars.

Link (via Geisha Asobi)

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: colorize stills from classic black-and-white horror films. Link

The Locus Awards ballot is online, where science fiction fans can vote on their favorite works of 2005. I'm proud to report that I'm eligible in three categories: Best Fantasy Novel (Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town), Best Novella (Human Readable) and Best Novelette (I, Robot).

The ballot is drawn from the Locus Recommended Reading List, which is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the best work published in the field this year. Link

Gavin sez, "Just wanted to update you on the great success of FreeCulture.org's pledge to boycott DRM CDs. In under one month, more than 3,500 people have signed the pledge to never buy a DRM CD, ever. We have well surpassed our initial goal of 500 pledges and given people a positive step to take to show their disgust with an industry that wants to sell us less and treat us like criminals. There is just one day left to sign the pledge within our one-month deadline. If you haven't, please take a moment to stand up for your rights." Link (Thanks, Gavin!)

A man was arrested in Sayama, Saitama, Japan for dumping chocolate ice cream into a mailbox. Police are investigating whether he was involved in similar cases involving both ice cream and liquid soap. From the Mainichi Daily News:

Yoshiaki Kobayashi, 42, admitted to the allegations. "I was frustrated because my job was not going well. I wanted to vent my anger," he was quoted as telling investigators.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

The latest Star Wars/Mr Potatohead crossover is R2Potatoo, a perfect companion to last year's Darth Tater. Link (via Wonderland)

Update: Brian sez, "Don't forget the Spud Trooper!"

In this amazing animation, Super Mario Land is invaded by Katamari Damacy, a giant ball of assorted stuff from the brilliant video game of the same name. Link to 400k animated GIF Link to creator's version of this in Flash

See also Katamari Damacy versus Indiana Jones (Thanks, P2!)

Update: Jamal sez, "This was done by an insane flash animator that goes by Xenon. This is where his animations are located, but before you watch any of them make sure your speakers are turned down to a safe volume because he likes to yell and make your ears bleed. My favorite is probably the first one on the page."

Al Lewis, the actor who played Grandpa Munster and later became a political campaigner, TV host, and restauranteur, has died at 95.

Just two years short of his 90th birthday, a ponytailed Lewis ran as the Green Party candidate against incumbent Gov. George Pataki. Lewis campaigned against draconian drug laws and the death penalty, while going to court in a losing battle to have his name appear on the ballot as "Grandpa Al Lewis."

He didn't defeat Pataki, but managed to collect more 52,000 votes.

Link (Thanks, Tavie!)

AOL and Yahoo have proposed a system to charge senders a quarter of a cent for guaranteed delivery on each email sent to their customers. They justify this as an anti-spam measure, but of course it could make them billions, is unlikely to eliminate spam, and will undermine the ability of activist groups like MoveOn and others to correspond with their supporters. The justification AOL offers for this is that it could make email just as good as postal mail.

"The last time I checked, the postal service has a very similar system to provide different options," said Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman. He pointed to services like certified mail with return receipts, "where you really do get assurance that if what you send is important to you, it will be delivered, and delivered in a way that is different from other mail."

Just as good as postal mail. Hooray. Of course, you can always just tell your friends that they have to cancel their email accounts with their local ISPs and switch to AOL. I wonder if Yahoo will pay me $0.0025 for every email I receive at my mail server from Yahoo subscribers? I could clean up! Or is it only giant oligopolies that get to tax the rest of the Internet? Link (via MeFi)

Update: A reliable source sez, "One of Goodmail's competitors told me: 'Goodmail is sharing 80% of stamp revenue with AOL, and they gave AOL a big piece of the company in warrants to launch with them and kill their enhanced whitelist.'"

Update 2: Patrick sez, "Charles E. Stiles, an AOL postmaster says 'AOL has no plans of terminating the whitelist.'"

A temple in india receives 15,000 coconuts every day, couriered by an informal volunteer network of donors and traffickers -- the coconuts are used in religious ceremonies.

The temple of Maa Tarini in Orissa, India, receives the coconuts from faithful volunteers from distant parts of the nation. Bus drivers relay the coconuts from vehicle to vehicle, dumping them in collection points at state lines. The surfeit of coconuts around the Maa Tarini has spawned a local coconut candy industry.

Hold a coconut in your hand on a highway in Orissa and the next bus will surely stop to pick it up to take it to the temple in Ghatgaon in Keonjhar district.

The drivers' faith in the goddess Maa Tarini is complete - it is common to find the space behind their seats stacked with coconuts.

Even if the bus is on a different route, the driver will make sure to drop the coconuts in a collection box en route or pass them on to a bus headed for Ghatgaon.

"If I refuse to carry coconuts to the goddess, I may face various odds on my way," says Arun Sahoo, a bus driver.

Link (Thanks, Mike!)

The Designer Emulation Kits are punch-out, working miniature replicas of famous designer lamps, which you mount on a 9V battery that serves as both power-source and base. Link (via Popgadget)

Snip from a piece by Saul Hansell in today's New York Times:

[Internet] data led directly to a suspect in a school bombing threat; it has also been used by the authorities to track child pornographers and computer intruders, and has become a tool in civil cases on matters from trade secrets to music piracy. In St. Louis, records of a suspect's online searches for maps proved his undoing in a serial-killing case that had gone unsolved for a decade.

In short, just as technology is prompting Internet companies to collect more information and keep it longer than before, prosecutors and civil lawyers are more readily using that information. When it comes to e-mail and Internet service records, "the average citizen would be shocked to find out how adept your average law enforcement officer is at finding information," said Paul Ohm, who recently left the Justice Department's computer crime and intellectual property section.

The issue has come to the fore because of a Justice Department request to four major Internet companies for data about their users' search queries. While America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft complied with the request, Google is resisting it. That case does not involve information that can be linked to individuals, but it has cast new light on what privacy, if any, Internet users can expect for the data trail they leave online.

The answer, in many cases, is clouded by ambiguities in the law that governs electronic communication like telephone calls and e-mail.

Link

CloneDVD Mobile is a new commercial program for ripping DVDs for viewing on phones, PSPs, iPods and other small devices. Based on the free software project FFMpeg, Clone DVD Mobile presents a simple way to convert your DVD collection into mobile movies.

There's no good reason that you should be forced to buy the movies on your shelf again as low-resolution, single-player thumbnails. After all, if you want to play your CDs on your portable player, you just rip them -- buying the movies you own all over again is strictly for suckers and people with a whole lot more disposable income than me.

# Convert movie DVDs to play on mobile video equipment like the Sony PSP, Apple iPod Video, iAudio X5, Creative Labs ZEN Vision, etc
# Convert movie DVDs to other file formats like DivX, XviD, AVI, MP4, etc.
# Utilises a high quality picture conversion engine
# Supports multi-angle movie DVDs
# Video Preview shows an overview of all selectable DVD titles
# Target size freely adjustable

Link (Thanks, Charlie!)

Update: Brandon sez, "Some people are having audio issues with CloneDVD Mobile and some DVDs. It seems the SlySoft people aren't about to fix it in the near future, possibly because they don't know how, or it requires stepping over the multi-angled scenes the software explicitly says it supports."

A Lego builder has constructed an elaborate tableau out of HP Lovecraft's tales of terror, cleverly dubbed "Cthulego." Link (Thanks, Krazmo!)

The makers of malicious spyware that was covertly installed on PCs of people who bought Sony music CDs has complied with EFF's demands that it clean up its act.

Back in December, I blogged about the Electronic Frontier Foundation's open letter to SunnComm, the makers of the MediaMax spyware that was automatically installed if you tried to play some Sony music CDs in your computer.

EFF presented a series of demands to SunnComm regarding steps it should take to undo the harm it had wrought on Sony customers. SunnComm has complied with EFF's demands:

SunnComm says it will ensure that future versions of MediaMax will not install when the user declines the end user license agreement (EULA) that appears when a CD is first inserted in a computer CD or DVD drive. SunnComm has also agreed to include uninstallers in all versions of MediaMax software, to submit all future versions to an independent security-testing firm for review, and to release to the public the results of the independent security testing. SunnComm and EFF are discussing how to ensure that legitimate security researchers who have been, are, or will be working to identify security problems with MediaMax will not be accused of copyright violations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In January, SunnComm published a complete list of all music CDs that employ the MediaMax technology and sent a letter to the independent labels using MediaMax with information about a security vulnerability in MediaMax version 5. Music label Sony BMG has separately committed to addressing security concerns arising from CDs using MediaMax.

Link (Thanks, Kurt!)

Previous installments of the Sony DRM Debacle Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

(Sony taproot graphic courtesy of Sevensheaven)

A number of animatronics and props from Epcot's defunct Food Rocks show at The Land pavilion are on sale on eBay. Food Rocks was a genuinely crappy show ("The Boogie Woogie Bagel Bakery Boy" was the highlight, if you can believe it), but owning a genuine Epcot animatronic aubergine is a pretty tempting proposition. Link, Link, Link, Link (Thanks, Ricky!)

Update: Thanks to everyone who pointed out that Boogie Woogie Bakery Boy was from the precursor to Food Rocks -- Kitchen Kabaret.

Pillow Fight Club stages giant, fre public pillow fights in major cities -- hundreds of people turn up with pillows and good-naturedly clobber one-another. The next one's V-Day in San Francisco:

When: 6pm on Valentine’s Day (February 14th)
Where: San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza (at Market and Embarcadero)

1) Tell everyone you know about PILLOW FIGHT!!!
2) Wait for the Ferry Building clock to strike 6:00pm
3) Don’t hit anyone with out a pillow (unless they want it)
4) Don’t hit anyone with a camera

Link (Thanks, Scott!)

Debcha sez, "Dorian Lynskey presents a London Underground map, transmogrified to represent music and musical influences. Each major line is a style of music (for example the Circle Line is pop, and the Docklands Light Railroad is classical), each station is labeled with the name of an artist. Junctions are artists working in two or more genres, and the branch lines are used to represent musical divergence (eg rap diverges into old-school and New York rap). I love the Tube map, and music, and mashing them together makes my head explode with joy." Link (Thanks, Debcha!)

Update: Here's Laura Cantrell's C&W/NYC subway map version of this -- thanks, Jeff!

This Flash app is a synth board for doing your own Super Mario Bros remixes: pick a tune from the scene-selector on the left and then hit the sprites on the right to mix in sound effects. Link (via Digg)

This site claims (update: incorrectly, see below) to provide instructions for cooking an egg by placing it between two live mobile phones:

# Switch on phone A and place it on the table such that the antenna (the pokey thing at the top) is about half an inch from the egg (you may need to experiment to get the relative heights correct - paperbacks are good if you have any - if not you may be able to get some wood off cuts from your local hardware shop).

# Switch on phone B and ring phone A then place phone B on the table in a similar but complementary position to Phone A.

# Answer phone A - you should be able to do this without removing it from the table. If not, don't panic, just return the phone to where you originally placed on the table.

# Phone A will now be talking to Phone B whilst Phone B will be talking to Phone A.

# Cooking time: This very much depends on the power output of your mobile phone. For instance, a pair of mobiles each with 2 Watts of transmitter output will take three minutes to boil a large free range egg. Check your user manual and remember that cooking time will be proportional to the inverse square of the output power for a given distance from egg to phone.

Link (via Negatendo)

Update: Esther sez, "Cell phones communicate with the cell tower, not each other. The egg shouldn't be between the phones, it should be between the phone(s) and the tower for this to even have a snowballs chance in hell of working. Furthermore, a cell phone only spits out 2W of power for *very* short intervals. As a matter of fact, cell phones try really hard to minimize their output power to A) conserve battery life and B) play nice with the other phones on the network. You don't want a phone close to the tower blasting all the other phone signals into oblivion."

Update 2: As many have pointed out, Esther's explanation misses the fact that cell-phone antennas aren't directional.

Boris Artzybasheff was a prolific magazine and advertising illustrator in the first half of the 20th Century. His specialty was anthropomorphic machines, such as sneering torpedoes, and smug internal combustion engines. I love the weirdness of his work, and the fact that it frequently appeared on the cover of Time many times despite its weirdness. If he were around today, his work would be confined to Fantagraphics.

I've long drooled for his 1954 art book, As I See, but even a beat up copy runs $200. From the dust jacket:

"The artist has divided the book into four sections: 'Neurotica' is a series depicting frustration, timidity, alcoholism, et. al; 'Machinalia' is of machines which take on human forms out of their essence, as in a weird, grotesque dream. 'Diablerie' interprets the fiendish, often ludicrous instruments of modern warfare; the final group, 'Escapades,' ranges widely on our culture and human vanities."

I was happy to learn today that Ken Steacy Publishing plans to re-issue the book. I don't know when or how much it will cost, but I've got my wallet out. Link

The Los Angeles Police Department is showing off a new GPS-enabled dart to help cops catch criminals who are speeding away. StarChase's Pursuit Management System consists of a tiny GPS receiver/cellular transmitter in a glue compound. The police officer uses an air launcher to fire the tracking device at the fleeing vehicle. The device then wirelessly transmits its location for display on a Web-based interface. From the Los Angeles Times:

(LAPD Chief William J.) Bratton hailed the dart as "the big new idea" and said that if the pilot program was successful, Los Angeles' seemingly daily TV fix of police chases could be a thing of the past.

"Instead of us pushing them doing 70 or 80 miles an hour … this device allows us not to have to pursue after the car," Bratton said. "It allows us to start vectoring where the car is. Even if they bail out of the car, we'll have pretty much instantaneously information where they are."

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) Artist Any Crehore sent me this photo of her playfully sultry painting of a tropical image moment. Her work gets better with each painting I see.
Link

Boy oh boy, these guys need a new logo. Link. (thanks, Jeff)

Former Real World castmember Irene McGee's great radio show and podcast NoOne's Listening, about media deconstruction, has been picked up by a commercial terrestrial radio station. It will air in the San Francisco Bay Area on Infinity Broadcasting's 106.9 Free FM on Friday nights from 11pm-midnight. The original, longer-format NoOne's Listening will continue to air on college station KSFS on Fridays 11am-1pm. Both are also available via podcast. The subject of tonight's Free FM show is culture jamming, with Irene interviewing our pals in the Billboard Liberation Front. (Previous posts about NoOne's Listening here and here.) Congrats, Irene!
Link

Helping Hands sounds like a pretty amazing group. They provide trained monkeys as helpers and companions to people who are physically disabled. At their closed colony in Boston, the group trains capuchin monkeys, a species they say that "have an active curiosity and a natural enjoyment for manipulating objects." The monkeys then live in foster homes to further prepare them before they're placed with the recipient. From the Helping Hands site:

When it is time for their training, monkeys come to live at the Monkey College in Boston. During their time at the College, monkeys are taught a wide variety of helping tasks and behaviors they will use to assist their human partners. Professional staff members dedicated to teaching and caring for the monkeys conduct the daily education program.

Monkeys learn how to help people with simple everyday activities such as opening and setting up a drink of water, providing food, picking up a dropped or out-of-reach object, or turning the pages of a book. Monkeys use their small, dexterous hands to do many kinds of specialized tasks.

A laser pointer directed by mouth control enables a quadriplegic or movement-impaired person to communicate his or her specific needs.

Positive reinforcement including verbal praise, affection, and food rewards is the essential tool used to support a monkey’s education and task performance. If a task is not performed as requested, the monkey is not punished but is given more time to practice the task. Most monkeys learn the basic task set within 18-24 months.

Link (Thanks Ruth Waytz, via Xeni!)

Matthew Rettenmund at BoyCulture blog sez,

This Madonna short, which looks from its condition to have been filmed sometime between the Civil and the First World War, reminds me of Kenneth Anger movies and also thatMadgeeat dubious old porn loop purporting to be Marilyn Monroe recycling a Coke bottle with her vagina. Nothing X-rated happens, though Madonna looks bitchin' in a bikini, suggestively eats and spits out a raw egg (foreshadowing the bukakke craze of the 2000s) and allows a friend to eat the fried egg off of her washboard abs. Yes, she was Madonna even back then.

Link (Thanks, Blogdonna!)

Previously:
BLOGUE, by Owen Thomas (apologies to Madonna)

Reader comment: Tobias says,

Sly Ciccone - The Immaculate Concoction is the best Madonna mashup to be heard anywhere for years - with album art + bittorrent + individual file downloads (coral cached). Hit my bandwidth baby! Link

Boing Boing reader peytonchi says,

xeni, my efforts to avoid seeing any pictures of the face transplant patient have failed thanks to david. can we get a unicorn chaser to wash away the haunting image of a face that doesn't quite fit?

Here at Boing Boing, our only aim is to infotain. Voiçi, un objet d'unicorn art from BB pal michael donaldson (aka Q-Burns Abstract Message), who explains, "This is a unicorn painting my friend found at a garage sale in Florida."

Link, and here's an even larger size you can use as a desktop image, for whenever life shoves unpleasant things at your eyes: 1500x1125. That jpeg is big, big, big, almost as big as my love for unicorns!

Previous Unicorn Chasers on Boing Boing: Link

Australia's Sunday Times visits Isabelle Dinoire, the 38-year-old French woman who received the world's first face transplant two months ago. (Previous post here.) From the article:

Miss Dinoire remains reluctant to visit shopping centres and other busy places. But under the close supervision of a team of psychiatrists, she is gaining the confidence to return to society...

She says she is in a positive mood – though she is chain-smoking again – and is making plans to study computers and accounting at college, with a view to opening a baby-clothes shop...

Another of her surgeons, Bernard Devauchelle, said: "Her facial expressiveness is slowly returning and she is talking quite clearly, but has some problems with the letters P and B, which require the lips.

"She certainly does not look like the living dead. She's eating and drinking without dribbling.

"Psychologically, she has totally accepted her new face. Her return to smoking is not the best thing. But that's what she wants to do – we can't stop her."

There is still a risk that Miss Dinoire's body will reject the new face and for the rest of her life she will have to take preventative drugs, which cause an increased risk of cancer and kidney disease.

Link

Cook Industries sells this BBQ Kitchen rig for trucks. It's priced at $3395. The sales videos are quite a treat. From the product description:

No doubt about it. Cooking in the back yard would be more fun if you could have your whole kitchen out there with you. As a matter of fact, so would camping adventures. That's why many homeowners and campers are choosing the Ultimate BBQ Kitchen from Cook Industries.

Beginners may take up to two minutes to unfold the kitchen, while the more experienced will set it up in under a minute. It's just that easy to have your 90,000 BTU propane stove, grill and griddle, microwave oven, mini-fridge and yes, even the kitchen sink.

Link (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)

I'll be co-hosting WNYC's "On The Media" this week with Bob Garfield (the show's managing editor and co-host Brooke Gladstone is on assignment in Israel). Audio will be available later today, and the program airs nationwide at various times over the weekend (Link to list of NPR member stations that carry OTM).

This week's edition of the show includes a number of items I think BoingBoing readers will dig. Among them:

* Joseph Braude joins us for an interview about his piece in this month's The New Republic on internet growth in Iran, and the boom in Persian language blogs around the world. Stanford researchers say Farsi is now the third most common language for blogs (Link, thanks Paul).

* On the eve of Tuesday's State of The Union address, Slate political correspondent John Dickerson talks with us about his recent Slate piece which traces the history of this annual media spectacle.

* Why are there so many car chases in LA, and why do we love watching them on TV? Tad Friend took a look at that for the New Yorker, and he told us about some wacky moments in the back of police cars going 100+mph on LA freeways, in the course of researching that story.

Link to On The Media home, archived audio online later today.

SuitSat will be released into space today, about 3 hours from the time-stamp on this blog post! The SuitSat broadcast takes place soon after that (here in Los Angeles, tomorrow, Saturday Feb. 4th at 10:25 a.m. PST). Space buffs and ham radio enthusiasts around the world are preparing to tune in. Boing Boing pal Michael Perry plans to gather friends on Mount Hollywood (near the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood sign) at that time, and says:

The odds that we actually hear it depend on many factors most of which are out of our control but we're going to give it a go nonetheless and the worst that could happen is that we'll have had a nice walk. Assuming SuitSat closely approximates the orbit of the ISS, it's going to get up to 69 degrees in our smoggy sky that morning, and be in signal range for just under 10 minutes.

The math: You can calculate ISS orbits here, SuitSat stuff is here, More suitsat stuff here. And finally, how to listen to satellites with a walkie talkie is here.

Also, Mike Outmesguine says, "It should be noted that any sky will do. Mountain peaks not needed."

Nell Boyce filed a really cool story for NPR News about SuitSat earlier this week, with a sneak preview of what you'll hear if you tune in. Snip:

[Frank Bauer, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland] says [SuitSat] won't be floppy because the astronauts have worked hard to make sure that it looks like a human: "They've put a lot of stuff inside it, like trash ... because they want to get rid of that, too." Even with all that stuffing, SuitSat won't look exactly like a lost astronaut. "People are thinking of the arms flailing around and everything. Well, they're tied, so they're right in front of the suit," says Bauer. "Sort of like you tie a turkey at Thanksgiving, to hold the stuffing in."

Still, the sight of the suit floating away is going to be an arresting image, one that's eerily reminiscent of all those classic scenes from science fiction movies where the astronaut goes hurtling into the black, endless abyss. And it will happen just days after the anniversaries of two shuttle disasters.

Bauer says that he and his colleagues talked about whether the sight was going to be too disturbing for the public. They decided it was worth it: "Isn't it kind of cool to allow us, in a very benign way, to let people see science fiction become science fact?"

Link to archived radio segment (with audio). Image: Cosmonaut and engineer Valery I. Tokarev makes adjustments on SuitSat.

Previously on Boing Boing:
Old space-suit recycled as experimental satellite

Update, 3:22PM PT: Michael Perry says,

They just released it; Mission Control chatter is all in Russian, translated (mostly) by an American woman in voice-over; however, the cosmonauts switched to English right before they launched the empty space suit saying, "Goodbye, Mr. Smith," with a thick Russian accent. Cosmonaut humor!

Apparently this is what has everyone so upset: Link to image directory, and here's a related NYT story. (Thanks, Jake Appelbaum)

Reader Comment: Anonymous says,

Here is a collection of images of the Prophet Mohammed dating back centuries, up to, including and beyond the present set of cartoons causing an uproar. Warning: some of the more recent images are generally offensive, not just to Islamic fundamentalists. Link

Snip from Washington Post story by Guy Gugliotta:

An FBI-led watchdog agency has opened an investigation into multiple complaints accusing NASA Inspector General Robert W. Cobb of failing to investigate safety violations and retaliating against whistle-blowers. Most of the complaints were filed by current and former employees of his own office.

Written complaints and supporting documents from at least 16 people have been given to investigators. They allege that Cobb, appointed by President Bush in 2002, suppressed investigations of wrongdoing within NASA, and abused and penalized his own investigators when they persisted in raising concerns.

The complaints are being reviewed by the Integrity Committee of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency. The complaints describe efforts by Cobb to shut down or ignore investigations on issues such as a malfunctioning self-destruct procedure during a space shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center, and the theft of an estimated $1.9 billion worth of data on rocket engines from NASA computers.

Link

Boing Boing reader Jim sez, "Maybe it's just me, but the new mountain lion family mascots of the Department of Homeland Security's Ready.gov kids' site looks just a little too much like furry hentai for me to not be really creeped out."
Link

On Declan McCullagh's always-informative politech mailing list, ACLU Technology and Liberty Project director Barry Steinhardt shared news of "a new ACLU white paper and interactive map detailing what is known and suspected about how the NSA's illegal spying on Americans occurs and where the interceptions are likely taking place."

Link to "Eavesdropping 101: What Can the NSA Do?". Steinhard explains, "It looks at the probable connections that the NSA has made to the U.S. civilian communications infrastructure. The map shows how the NSA's "surveillance octopus" likely entangles the country. We believe it is the first effort to visually illustrate what is happening." More at www.nsawatch.org.

Declan wrote,

I think the ACLU's map is intended to be more fanciful than based on any confirmed participation by U.S. telecom or Internet companies. The closest we've come to actual confirmation was a paragraph buried in the middle of a Los Angeles Times article last month about AT&T, mirrored here and cited in the EFF suit. Am I missing something?

To which the ACLU's Steinhardt replied,

You are right-- in part. No one outside of the Government and the providers themselves can confirm which specific companies are cooperating with NSA's "program". Our map very intentionally does not point to at any specific company or companies. Although if any company would like to make a pledge not to cooperate with the NSA's warrantless and illegal communications spying, we would be happy to p