City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer's latest short story collection, has been published. Jeff's collection is "set in the fantastical town of Ambergris, a complex landscape of stories, 'eyewitness' reports, 'faux histories,' and neo-Gothic imaginings" -- basically, the quirky, lush, funny stories that he's best known for. We were classmates at the Clarion Writers' Workshop back in 1992, and he's always been a sharp writer -- he won the World Fantasy Award for his novella The Transformation of Martin Lake back in 2000, and is a contender again for this fine volume.

In the first hour after death, the room is so still that every sound holds a terrible clarity, like the tap of a knife against glass. The soft pad of shoes as someone walks away and closes the door is profoundly solid—each short footstep weighted, distinct. The body lies against the floor, the sightless eyes staring down into the wood as if some answer has been buried in the grain. The back of the head is mottled by the shadows of the trees that sway outside the open window. The trickle of red from the scalp that winds its way down the cheek, to puddle next to the clenched hand, is as harmless now, leached of threat, as if it were colored water. The man’s features have become slack, his mouth parted slightly, his expression surprised. The wrinkles on his forehead form ridges of superfluous worry. His trumpet lies a few feet away… From outside the window, the coolness of the day brings the green-gold scent of lilacs and crawling vines. The rustle of leaves. The deepening of light. A hint of blue through the trees. After a time, a mouse, fur ragged and one eye milky white, sidles across the floor, sits on its haunches in front of the body, and sniffs the air. The mouse circles the man. It explores the hidden pockets of the man’s gray suit, trembles atop the shoes, nibbles at the laces, sticks its nose into a pant cuff.

Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

Australian schools may have to pay a copyright fee every time a student is told to look at the web, if a plan from the national collecting society is successful. The Copyright Agency pays Australian authors for the photocopying that takes place on schools by randomly sampling the schools annually, collecting $31 million in fees and dispersing them to authors.

Now they say that they deserve to collect for the use of the Web. Despite the fact that there's an implied license to read Web pages that goes along with publishing them (who puts up a web-page without expecting it to be read?) and despite the fact that the vast majority of pages online weren't created by Australians, and despite the fact that the vast majority of pages created by Australians weren't created by professional authors, the agency proposes that it should be able to collect a tax on behalf of all those authors in the world in order to line the pockets of its few lucky members.

This is a way to transfer Australia's tax dollars from its education system to its copyright sector. Australia already has an arts council that gives money directly to artists -- if it wants to give them more money, it should get a bigger budget and do so, not trump up some kind of ridiculous Internet tax that could cost schools their Internet connections:

Negotiations between the Ministerial Council on Education Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, representing the schools, and the agency have broken down over plans to change the scheme to include a question in the survey on whether teachers direct students to use the internet.

"If it turned out we'd have to pay them, we'd turn the internet off in schools," the council's national copyright director Delia Browne said.

"We couldn't afford it; it would not be sustainable. How on earth are we going to deliver education in the 21st century? How are taxpayers going to afford this."

Canada's doomed Bill C-60 had a proposal for this, too. Luckily for Canada, they kicked out Sam Bulte, the Hollywood-bought lawmaker who had led the charge for C-60. Link (Thanks, Daz!)

Alec Saunders reports that Montreal airport has put covers over its electrical outlets, presumably to stop people from charging their laptops and phones while travelling. Which is, you know, really dumb: frequent travellers need juice between flights, and airports that sell WiFi without providing the electricty to use it are like coffee-shops without toilets. They're missing out on the revenue they'd get from people who'd buy the WiFi if only they had the power to use it.

I’m sitting in Montreal’s Trudeau airport, and noticing what appears to me to be a new trend. Airports have been capping off the power outlets. Where have they all gone? It used to be that you could find a power outlet on a wall or a pillar at the gate, but not anymore. In recent weeks, I’ve travelled through Seattle, San Jose, Chicago O’Hare, Toronto, and Montreal. The plentiful power that laptop users used to depend on is virtually non-existant. Here in Montreal, I am sitting in a phone booth, because it has a power outlet for laptop users.

I got into a huge fight at London's Luton airport a couple months ago when I was ordered to unplug my laptop because it presented a "fire hazard." All the devices plugged into the outlets in the airport had to be "certified." I asked about the laptop adapters for sale in the Dixon's electronics shop beside me and was informed that they were certified, and I could plug back in if I bought a new adapter from them (imagine that -- a £50 electricty tax in the form of a mandate to buy a new adapter!). I'd just spent £13 on WiFi, so I kept arguing, demanding that they give me a quote I could publish in a magazine column about their policy, and they relented -- finally -- when I pointed out that the people in the first-class lounge visible through the picture window had all plugged their laptops in. Link (via WiFiNetNews)

Update: Glenn sez, "My friend Nancy Gohring just wrote from Paris (where she's about to fly back to Dublin) that Parisian airports will add 2,000 free electrical outlets for people to use; this was promoted in the airport magazine."

Update 2: Slavin reports, "Had the very same experience at Stansted (London) a few weeks ago. Same circumstances, had just paid for a British adapter, and for wifi." Crap. I used to fly out of Stansted 20 times a year. I guess not any more.

Disney is hiring an "Intelligence Analyst" who will monitor "open source media" to assess "threats that could harm, or make vulnerable, The Walt Disney Company (TWDC), its employees, guests, or assets:"

THE POSITION: The analyst thoroughly reviews information from open/public sources, official sources, and professional contacts, and conducts regular assessments of world events, regional/national security climates, and suspect individuals and groups. The analyst produces a range of written and verbal analyses for employees and management of the Company and provides tactical intelligence support to the Company's security and crisis management operators...

% of Total Duties and Responsibilities 45 [%] Monitors open source media, homeland security and law enforcement bulletins, and information from professional contacts, for international, national, and local news and intelligence that may affect the security and safety of TWDC. Maintains comprehensive files of intelligence on key issues and parts of the world; maintains record of threats received, assessments, and their disposition. Plays key information processing role in the Corporate-level Emergency Operations Center, when activated.

What a sweet gig! "These candy-ravers on LJ say they're going to throw an ecstasy party in Fantasyland tomorrow night -- throw on an extra security detail." Link (Thanks, Phil!)

The Re-Imagineering is a blog that bills itself as "A forum for Pixar and Disney professionals passionate about the Disney Theme Parks to catalog past Imagineering missteps and offer up tenable practical solutions in hopes that a new wave of creative management at Imagineering can once again bring back the wonder and magic that's been missing from the parks for decades. The opinions expressed at Re-Imagineering are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of The Walt Disney Company." Absolutely brilliant. Check out entries like this one:

With the existing attractions, Park Operations has been known to disable actuators in animatronic figures and turn off special effects because they can't afford to maintain them. The auctioneer pirate isn't moving like a chicken because he was animated poorly, he's moving like that because an Operations person repositioned his arm so the figure won't wear down his costume. This lack of cooperation between WDI and park Operations undermines the work of the imagineers and leads to what we call, "bad show."

The goal of Park Operations exclusively needs to be maintenance of the best show possible. If meeting this goal conflicts with their budget then they need to be involved earlier in the design process to address maintenance issues and/or the cost of maintenance needs to be included in the design budget for all new attractions. Yes that would raise the cost of the attraction but it's not fair to hand Park Operations the keys to a 100 million ride and say, "keep her looking good as new." It's not that operations folk are unconcerned with quality (one would hope), they're just being practical. It's no fun to inherit a Lamborghini if you can't afford the insurance.

Link (Thanks, Terry!)

Brad Hunt, the CTO of the MPAA, got an angry reception from a bunch of Hollywood tech-providers when he presented the MPAA's "A-hole" filtering plan.

For a couple years now, the MPAA has been promising to "plug the Analog Hole" by getting the government to pass a law crippling all recorders, so that they'll refuse to record anything with a secret watermark that says it's a copyrighted work (heaven help you if your son's first steps take place in the living room while the TV's playing -- your camcorder will be of no use).

Hunt gave the talk to a group of high-tech suppliers who provide entertainment technology for Hollywood and its viewers, and they greeted the A-hole proposal with the skepticism it deserves.

One questioner asked who would be responsible for the extensive consumer education needed. Hunt's answer -- that he hoped retailers would do it -- drew dubious groans.

The final question summed up the problem: "This is a room full of people whose living depends on this working. You're getting pushback to the point of hostility. If you can't sell this to us, how are you going to sell it to the target 16-45 demographic?"

Hunt said the marketplace would ultimately sort it out.

This Hunt's an interesting character. I once was at a meeting with him where we had no Internet access, so I went and got the conference center to turn on an Ethernet jack. Before I could get hooked up to it and turn on a WiFi service for the room, Hunt grabbed it and hogged it for the rest of the afternoon, refusing to turn on connection sharing so that a room full of TV, electronics, and film people could get online too. Taking advice from him on how public-interest policy should be set would be like putting Scrooge McDuck in charge of the local soup kitchen. Link

Montreal (I):

Montreal (II):

(see this alternate Montreal map)

Helsinki:

Monterrey:

San Diego:

Mexico City:

(Thanks, Matti, Julien, Matthew, Edmz, Nick and Omegar!)

See also: London Anagram Tube Map, Toronto Anagram Subway Map, Amsterdam Anagram Metro Map, Chicago Regional Transit Authority Anagram Map, Maps for Manhattan, Oslo, Boston and Atlanta, Vienna U-Bahn Anagram Map, DC Metro Anagram Map, Stockholm Transit Anagram Map, LA Red Line Anagram Map, Maps for Cleveland, St Louis (x2), BART, and Singapore, Maps for Berlin, Copenhagen, Baltimore (x2), Maps for Calgary, Vancouver (x2), Philadelphia, Buffalo, Rochester, Hong Kong (x2), Seattle, Minneapolis, Detroit, Maps for Miami (x2), Dublin, Ontario, Dallas, Glasgow, Portland, Ottawa, Houston

Update: David made this alternate Montreal map.

Natasha Hynes, friend and former colleague of kidnapped American journalists Jill Carroll, says:

The Feb 26 deadline set by Jill's kidnappers passed by yesterday with nary a word about Jill. But I believe, at this stage, no news is good news. This morning, some reports from notable sources emerged indicating that Jill is still alive. These statements came from an Iraqi official and US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, with the Iraqi official claiming to know the kidnapper's name and address...

Link

Previous BoingBoing posts on Jill Carroll's abduction: Link

This is designer Alexander Reh's "Fully Loaded" chair. It's made from more than 450 12-gauge shotgun shells. "The bright brass tips create a massaging texture on the top of the chair, much to the contrary of their intended use," he writes. Along the same lines, here's a previous post about a shotgun shell vase.
Link (via MAKE: Blog)

Here's a video of Boing Boing favorite artist Coop and his awesome collection of Japanese toys!
Link

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) Former bOING bOING illustrator Kirsten Ulve has a show coming up at 219 N. Justine in Chicago from 5:30 to 8pm, called "Pictures You Will Like."
Link

Myst series co-creator Robyn Miller (aka Tinselman) made good use of the fake tilt shift method I posted earlier.

I've been hard at work on my scale model of early Disneyland and I'm now finally ready to reveal it. You will most definetely be impressed!... until you learn that my scale model is only a quick photoshop cheat. But it sure is fun!

Link

Reader comment:Graham Lampa says:

Some fellow flickr users and I who were jazzed by your original post on boing boing put together a flickr group for tilt-shift miniature fakes. We now have 43 photos in the pool and 20 posters, and it's cool to see what teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy effects others are coaxing out of simple blurring in Photoshop!

Tilt-shift miniature fakes group.

Also, my personal collection of miniatures (mainly from my trips to China and later Italy this summer.

Reader comment: Steve Lombardi, Microsoft's Virtual Earth Program Manager says:

Hey! thanks for that post on the photoshop tutorial. Made me wish I could work photoshop real bad. But some of my work buddies can, and created some great images.

I had posted on my blog about this guy earlier this month, and began to think about how to take the immense library of oblique imagery we were capturing from planes and 'miniaturize' them in this way. What Barbieri is doing is really expensive for each shot he gets. The tutorial you posted, along with a random birds eye image makes a really nice poor-man's compromise. In the end, it makes me want to get good with Photoshop even more!

A company that makes restroom supplies sponsors an annual contest to find "America's Best Restroom." Here are this year's finalists, as reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer Post:

* All Seasons Bistro, in East Lansing, Mich., which was cited for its streak-free mirrors, old-world floor tiles and fresh paint job. "This is one of a few public restrooms I would allow myself, my wife and children to use and not worry about it," the nominator said.

* Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, in Atlantic City, whose restrooms - with their stainless steel sinks, choice of hand towels or dryers and warm wood tones - "spare no expense."

* Hemenways, of Providence, R.I., a landmark waterfront restaurant whose restrooms are clean and have "simple elegance and charm."

* Quad City International Airport, in Moline, Ill., which has facilities that are "clean, simple, pleasant and exactly what you want in an airport washroom."

* Wendell's Restaurant, in Westerville, Ohio, whose sports-themed restrooms are "praised for being neat, clean and having lots of towels and even mouthwash."

Link (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)

BoingBoing reader Kurt von Finck says,

Read with a mixture of dismay and pleasure today's BB article regarding blocking by SmartFilter. Dismay that a product with "Smart" in its moniker is so stupid, and pleasure that you've decided to stand up to it. Let me suggest an additional strategy.

What happens when the blogosphere uses so much tasteful nudity that the web is unusable for SmartFilter users? What happens when SmartFilter blocks so much content that the web is crippled for its users?

So, I have created the attached button (standard 120x90 size) that BB readers can put on their sites. It features the pubic region of Michelangelo's David sculpture, uses fairly neutral colors, and is taken from public domain stock photography. I release this work into the public domain, relinquish any claims over its use, and encourage BB readers to put it on their sites.

Maybe if enough of us do so, SmartFilter will just collapse under the weight of its own odious censoring.

Previously:
* BoingBoing banned in UAE, Qatar, elsewhere. Our response to net-censors: Get bent!
* Iran, Tunisia also use SmartFilter (which blocks BoingBoing as "nudity")

Reader comment: Kathryn says,

Along with the statue David, people could add the statue "Spirit of Justice," famous for Ashcroft's velvet draping: Link. Another famous topless babe is in Eugene Delacroix' Liberty painting: Link.

Scientists suggest that the Bubonic Plague may have triggered Europe's "Little Ice Age," a a bitter cold period between the 14th and 19th centuries. According to Utrecht University researchers, the Black Death wiped out so many people that millions of trees grew on the abandoned farmland. The huge new population of trees may have absorbed so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that the climate cooled. From the BBC News:

Dr Thomas van Hoof and his colleagues studied pollen grains and leaf remains collected from lake-bed sediments in the southeast Netherlands.

Monitoring the ups and downs in abundance of cereal pollen (like buckwheat) and tree pollen (like birch and oak) enabled them to estimate changes in land-use between AD 1000 and 1500.

The team found an increase in cereal pollen from 1200 onwards (reflecting agricultural expansion), followed by a sudden dive around 1347, linked to the agricultural crisis caused by the arrival of the Black Death, most probably a bacterial disease spread by rat fleas...

"Between AD 1200 to 1300, we see a decrease in stomata and a sharp rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to deforestation we think," says Dr van Hoof, whose findings are published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

But after AD 1350, the team found the pattern reversed, suggesting that atmospheric carbon dioxide fell, perhaps due to reforestation following the plague.

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

This 1782 painting by Henry Fuseli, titled The Nightmare, is a masterpiece of gothic art. It's on display at the Tate Britain right now as part of their exhibit "Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination." The exhibit sounds magnificent. I wish I could see these works in person but, alas, I'll have to settle for the catalog. From today's New York Times:

(The exhibit) is an exploration of the world of fantasy, mysticism, horror and sexual perversity that found expression in art and literature in Britain between 1770 and 1830 and which, fueled by novels, movies and even pop music, later became known as Gothic.

In literature, the iconic work was Mary Shelley's 1818 "Frankenstein." In art, the fad translated into paintings and drawings with strong narratives, muscular Michelangelo-inspired men and naked nymphs, as well as myriad fairies and demons...

The odd thing is that the man who came to personify the Gothic in English art was Fuseli, a Zurich-born self-taught artist who was in his mid-30's when he moved to London and who never spoke English fluently. Yet, more than any of his contemporaries, he turned to Shakespeare and Milton for material, attracted in both cases by the supernatural elements in their writing...

The 18th-century Swiss theologian Johann Casper Lavater wrote of Fuseli: "Specters, demons and madmen's phantoms, exterminating angels; murders and acts of violence — such are his favorite subjects; and yet, I repeat, no one loves with more tenderness."

Link

The Boase Concept builds prefab, treetop Ewok villages high in oak, alders, willows and poplars that are planted on toxic soil, and which gradually suck the gunk out of the land and purify it.

The buildings in the Boase development utilize solar-collecting facades, and the common areas lie under a "solar membrane" that both collects energy and invites natural lighting inside. Modular walls permit indoor-outdoor living and abundant natural ventilation. The walkability of the area fosters a healthy lifestyle for its residents, in close proximity to the surrounding city.

Aside: why do architectural firms' sites always suck? The site for this project is made out of unbookmarkable, unprintable, non-copy/pastable Flash, with an introductory animation, and all the substantive material in it is in PDF. Sheesh. These people are supposed to be concerned with the niceties of living -- how can they produce such unnavigable, anti-web materials? Link

Curated shopping is apparently a hot retail trend -- these are shops whose merchandise and decor are "curated" by someone with keen aesthetic sense. There needn't be anything linking the wares except for the sensibility they tickle:

Curated shopping--the concept of offering a selection of products as carefully edited as a museum collection--has become a retail buzzword in recent years (see "Shopping Etc.," March 2005). Colette, in Paris, and Moss, in New York, helped pioneer the concept, and both still set the standard for others. Now every major North American city seems to have at least one independently owned store with a decidedly unique approach to shopping. When it comes to furnishing interiors, these shop-owners-turned-lifestyle-curators assemble a contemporary mix of art, design, and craft that is exuberantly decorative and conceptual, even ironic. Unlike the pop-up retail trend--low-maintenance stores that appear temporarily in urban areas--boutiques that mix local and global designs are in it for the long haul, acting as incubators for lesser-known talents with bright futures.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

Scott Beale took a bunch of pictures of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party last night in San Francisco. Looks like Phil Torrone (left) took a break from his usual non-stop blogging at Make to attend.
Link

A while back I wrote about cool style of photography, called tilt shift, that makes aerial photographs of real scenes look like miniature models. The effect is charming, but expensive, because you have to buy a tilt-shift lens.

Here's a nice little tutorial for faking the same effect using Photoshop. The results are very nice.
Link Scott Froschauer says:

While purchasing a "real" tilt-shift (as you were calling it, in my business we call it a "swing and tilt") is too expensive for most of us, there is a cheap alternative. For about $100 you can get a Lensbaby, which is a super analog lens. No focus marks, manual apeture (I mean real manual.) I've been shooting with one for over a year and it is easily my favorite single lens (particularly on the bang/buck ratio.)

My favorite little auction-house in Toronto (on which the auction house in my story Craphound is based) is having another sale on March 2 -- this is like meatspace eBay, with more serendipity and chain-smoking antiques dealers furiously outbidding one another. The auctioneer is amazing, like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon, motormouthing a mile a minute. Wish I could be there!

6:30 p.m. Thursday March 2
195 Park Lawn Road, Etobicoke
@ Byzantine Knights of Columbus Hall

A full sale of mostly smalls, great picks for dealer, decorator, collector alike. Always a great selection, 15 boxes unpacked unseen. Vintage lighting – hanging and table, china, 40s Zenith radio, mirrors, 19th c. painted violin case, large Capo Di Monte vase, Pray Dieu for home, smokers stand (2), 30s sardine can camera, lucite table, older toys and games, Victorian prints (religious and secular), Japanese sword, Militaria – helmets, bayonets, World War 1 canteen, oil paintings, antique clocks, dolls trunk, nude oil signed Corbet Gray, silver plate candlabra, ornate nouveau clock c. 1900, working mission clock, quilts, 1920s onyx table lamps, bridge lamp, large native splint basket, Arabia Finland jug, Shorter cat teapot, mod items, Edwardian record player in Mahog, cabinet, Police badges from around the world, linens, West German pottery, costume jewelry and watches, mantle clock, art and reference books, Parianware recumbent figure, masonic tea service O.E.S.

Directions – Take Park Lawn 300 m N of the Queensway. Park Lawn runs N – S at the Western edge of the Ontario Food Terminal,

For more info call 416-253-6313 or e-mail – thecountrypolitan@hotmail.com

Boing Boing to net-censors: Get bent!

We've decided not to rejig our editorial process to make it easier for a censorware company to block us for their customers. Instead, we're creating a clearinghouse of information on how to defeat censorware.

Last week, we reported that Boing Boing was blocked by entire countries including the United Arab Emirates, and by many library systems, schools, US government and military sites, and corporations.

Today, we've learned that Internet Qatar, the sole ISP in the State of Qatar, has also banned BoingBoing.

We've heard from librarians in Africa who want to watch the video of the American Register of Copyrights denouncing Congress, employees at the Australian Broadcasting Company, students, and workers around the world who can't gain access to our work.

At fault in most of these cases is a US-based censorware company called Secure Computing, which makes a web-rating product called SmartFilter. But SmartFilter isn't very smart. Secure Computing classifies any site with any nudity -- even Michaelangelo's David appearing on a single page out of thousands -- as a "nudity" site, which means that customers who block "nudity" can't get through.

Last week, Secure Computing updated their software to classify Boing Boing as a "nudity" site. Last month, we had two posts with nudity in them, out of 692 -- that's 0.29 percent of our posts, but SmartFilter blocks 100 percent of them. This month, there were four posts with nudity (including the Abu Ghraib photos), out of 618 -- 0.65 percent.

In fact, out of the 25,000+ Boing Boing posts classed as "nudity" by SmartFilter, more that 99.5 percent have no nudity at all. They're stories about Hurricane Katrina, kidnapped journalists in Iraq, book reviews, ukelele casemods, phonecam video of Bigfoot sightings (come to think of it, he doesn't wear clothes either), or pictures of astonishing Lego constructions.

Why is SmartFilter content to deliver a product with a 99.5 percent false-positive rate? Because it has promised its customers that it will stop their users from seeing nudity (fat chance -- it's a dead certainty that Smart Filter has failed to class innumerable sites containing nudity), and punishing 24,875 nudity-free posts to get at 125 that contain mild or "art" nudity is fine by them.

Secure Computing told us that their categorization system protects kindergartners from being exposed to porn. We argue that not only are products like SmartFilter incapable of blocking all potentially kid-inappropriate sites, but why treat entire countries, or entire corporate sites full of working adults, as kindergartners?

The question of keeping your child from viewing content you don't want them to see can be addressed more efficiently locally, with tech tools like the browser Bumpercar. As BoingBoing founder (and father of two) Mark Frauenfelder explains, "My daughter and I found a bunch of great kid-friendly sites and have added them to the 'white list.' As a parent, I have local control of the sites she visits instead of handing over control to a remote group of people that I don't trust to do my job of being a parent."

The fact is, there's no effective way to censor the Internet in broad strokes. Only dumb CIOs and totalitarian governments like the UAE believe that adding censorware to your network will prevent the naughty stuff from slopping in. Having a human being review a few pages on a site every couple months is a perfectly adequate classification system, in SmartFilter's lights -- which is convenient, since a genuinely thoroughgoing review would be ruinously expensive.

Secure Computing offered us a devil's bargain: if we'd change the URLs of images with "nudity" (which, they assured us, included photos of Michaelangelo's David) to something they could detect and block, they'd let the rest of the world see us again. That guy in the UAE who was worried he'd be imprisoned for trying to read BoingBoing would be OK again.

We considered their offer, and decided not to do it. What happens when the next censorware company comes along with another editorial process they want us to engage in to help them censor the site?

More importantly: why should we let a company that helps corrupt dictatorships oppress their citizen dictate morality to us?

So instead we've decided to help put Secure Computing out of business. We're doing this in three ways:

• First, we're publishing a guide to evading the SmartFilter censorware. There are hundreds of ways to defeat these censorware apps, and we're going to catalog as many of them as possible.
  Link to "BoingBoing's Guide To Evading Censorware."
• Next, we're compiling a list of SmartFilter's dumb classifications. Send us your misclassified SmartFilter sites so we can add them to the list.
• Finally, we're producing a guide to convincing your employer to ditch SmartFilter. It consists of parts one and two above: a list of bad SmartFilter classifications and a list of ways that SmartFilter can be shredded like wet kleenex. Why spend money on bad technology that doesn't work?

Signed, the BoingBoing team:
- Cory Doctorow
- Mark Frauenfelder
- Xeni Jardin
- David Pescovitz
- John Battelle

(Internet Qatar screengrab: thanks, Patrick McKinnion)

Previous BoingBoing posts:
* BoingBoing now censored in the UAE
* Argonne National Laboratory is blocking Boing Boing
* ISPs in Iran, Tunisia also use SmartFilter (which blocks BoingBoing as "nudity")
* Stick Michelangelo's "David" on your blog to protest censorware

When Benjamin Franklin was 20 years old, he wrote up a 13-point "plan" for how he would live his life. He found that following the plan increased his happiness so much that he kept it up for the rest of his life.

He committed to giving strict attention to one virtue each week so after 13 weeks he moved through all 13. After 13 weeks he would start the process over again so in one year he would complete the course a total of 4 times.

He tracked his progress by using a little book of 13 charts. At the top of each chart was one of the virtues. The charts had a column for each day of the week and thirteen rows marked with the first letter of each of the 13 virtues. Every evening he would review the day and put a mark (dot) next to each virtue for each fault committed with respect to that virtue for that day.

1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation.

2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.

3. Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.

4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.

5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e. Waste nothing.

6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.

11. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; Never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

12. Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Link (Merlin Mann linked to this last September)

The Artyom Reader points to some articles and a video about a family in Turkey that walks on all fours and communicates using a "primitive language."

“The patients had a rather primitive language… they spoke to each other using their own language, using only a few hundred words” which the parents could partly understand, Tan wrote. “They were mentally retarded; they could not count from one to ten. They were not aware of time and space. For instance, they did not know where they live (which country, which village, which city). They were unaware of year, season, day, and time. Otherwise, they had quite strong legs and arms.” “The sitting posture was rather similar to an ape,” Tan added. “They could not hold their heads upright; the heads were flexed forward with their skulls. They could not raise their heads to look forward. This head posture with flexed skull was rather similar to the head posture of our closest relatives, like chimpanzees.”

Link

As part of the Maker Faire this April in San Mateo, California, Make: is hosting the first film festival that celebrates makers and the DIY mindset. You have until March 24 to submit your clip, five minutes in length or less! Here are the details:

Grab those hacked CVS video cameras and $14 steadycams. It's time for MAKE: Movies! MAKE: is hosting the first festival for makers to show off their DIY short video clips. Don't think of it as a contest, because there isn't much to win if you make the cut... other than the admiration of your peers, a bag of MAKE: goodies, and the chance to see your work on the big (well, medium) screen at the upcoming Maker Faire in April. Our favorite footage will premiere at a special MAKE: Movies! party at the Maker Faire and shown throughout the event. Of course, you're invited to walk down the asphalt carpet and say a few words about your work. After the Faire, the selections will be available for free download on Makezine.com. So charge those batteries, fire up Final Cut, and... Action!

Here's what we want to see:

* Project demos: Your project is the star here, like the famed Shopper Chopper shopping cart and self-driving motorocycle.
* How-to's: From video explanations to Flash animated diagrams to claymation step-by-steps, these are your explanations, tips, and guides put into motion.
* Maker mini-documentaries: Give Nova a run for its timeslot with a short profile of the eccentric inventor next door or a brief biopic of a maker from history.
* Maker music videos: Think MTV meets cigar box guitars and circuit benders.

You can also nominate any videoclip that you think truly embodies the maker mindset.

Follow the link for the rules and submission guidelines. Link

Fred sez, "On Wednesday, March 1st, Free Culture @ NYU will be holding an art show opening on the 7th floor of NYU's Kimmel Student Center at 7 pm. All of the art shown will be works licensed under Creative Commons in order to display the benefits of having creative works that give rights both to the artists and to the art-appreciating public. Free Culture @ NYU's Creative Commons Art show will be up for the month of March, but will also be simultaneously released online on our website. As far as we know, this may be the first all-Creative Commons-based art show ever." Link (Thanks, Fred!)

Darren McGavin, star of the excellent 1970s television show Kolchak: The Night Stalker, died on Saturday. Over at Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman wrote an appreciation of McGavin, drawing out the fortean links in his career.
Link

Sun has thrown its financial support behind Architecture for Humanity, a project that publishes Creative Commons-licensed designs for sustainable housing. It's a brilliant project and it's great to see Sun returning to its open roots, instead of sucking up to Hollywood by shipping crummy DRM:

As part of his wish, Sinclair requested a means to allow architects, funders, non-governmental organizations and communities to collaborate on generating and implementing innovative housing solutions globally. Sun answered by offering to provide an online platform that will facilitate collaboration and sharing of designs and will use advanced technology to simulate geographic/seismic, political/cultural and financial ramifications of designs. Sun and Sinclair will gather additional support from the technology, entertainment and design industries represented at the TED conference.

"The technology industry is unique in being able to effect social, political and economic progress on a global basis," said Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer at Sun, and president of the Sun Foundation. "We take that responsibility, and our partners in innovation around the world, very seriously - that's why we're proud to provide the computing power needed for Architecture for Humanity to help improve living conditions for so many people."

Link