Blogging.la contributor eecue says,

"Today I walked with half a million people in support of immigrants rights. I took some pictures and wrote about it. It was amazing."

Link.

A most fashionable headcovering from Japan in the form of human excrement. 5.5" wide, 4" high, and $22 per turd from jlist.com. Link (via suicidegirls/Vanessa, thanks Susannah)

nam june paik | rutt-etra video synthesizer | video feedback  | bathroom | i am drugs | elevator moods | pleix | post video art | park 4dtv  |  Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Reader comment: jesse jack sez,

It feels like a post including the Rutt-Etra synthesizer is incomplete without a mention of another amazing, early realtime video processor, the Daniel Sandin Image processor. And maybe a mention for Steina and Woody Vasulka, who created several works with both processors: Link.

About a month ago, illustrator Robert Ullman sent his latest promo postcard -- featuring Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann Al Franken (thanks Aaron!) as Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots -- to a bunch of art directors, including "five or six contacts at Entertainment Weekly".

Imagine his surprise to open the latest copy of EW and see an illustration of Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann as Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots rendered by another illustrator. Coincidence? Maybe. Link

I'm reading a terrific book by William Poundstone called Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System that Beat the Casinos and Wall Street. On page 153 Poundstone writes about a 1968 dinner meeting between mathematician Edward Thorp and fund manager Warren Buffett. Poundstone mentions in passing that Buffett and Thorpe discussed their shared interest in nontransitive dice. "These are a mathematical curiosity, a type of 'trick' dice that confound most people's ideas about probability," writes Poundstone.

Curious, I googled "nontransitive dice" and found a nice description of them by Ivars Peterson at the Mathematical Association of America's website.

Peterson introduces the subject with this intriguing paragraph:

The game involves four specially numbered dice. You let your opponent pick any one of the four dice. You choose one of the remaining three dice. Each player tosses his or her die, and the higher number wins the throw. Amazingly, in a game involving 10 or more throws, you will nearly always have more wins.

Here's what the dice look like:

The trick is to always let your opponent pick first, and then you pick the die to the left of his selection (if he picks the die with the four 4s, then circle round to the die with the three ones). It's just like playing Rock, Paper, Scissors -- only you get to see what the other guy picks in advance.

With these dice, you always have a 2/3 probability of winning -- what a great sucker's bet! Link

One of my friends used to like to take LSD and watch Hee Haw, a hillbilly variety show hosted by Roy Clark and Buck Owens. I never paid much attention to the show, but he convinced me to listen to the music of Roy, Buck, and Grandpa Jones, insisting they were geniuses. And he is right. I became a big fan of all three, and learned to love Hee Haw, even without drugs.

Yesterday, Buck Owens, a supremely gifted songwriter and guitar player passed away at the age of 76. He'll be missed. His music lives on. If you're curious, I recommend The Very Best of Buck Owens.
Link

In a dozen years of carrying a laptop computer, I've probably gone through an equal number of laptop bags. Backpacks, messenger bags, man-purses... I've tried them all. Thing is, I'm very picky. Last year, Cory turned me on to the joys of RoadWired products and on short outings I started carrying my 12" Powerbook in one of their excellent Compact Skooba Sleeves. At least once a week, someone asks me who makes it. That sounds like hype, but it's the truth. And I'm not sure why. Sure, it's a great bag, but it's pretty darn minimalist in terms of design. Maybe that's why it grabs people's attention.

Several weeks ago, I swapped out my deteriorating messenger bag that I carry on longer trips for the new larger Skooba Satchel, a beefed-up version of the minimalist Skooba Sleeve. I spent a week plus a weekend on the road with it and I didn't miss my trusty messenger bag once. Like the Sleeve, the Satchel's laptop pouch is lined with Air Squares for protection if when you drop it. In fact, the $99.95 Satchel is basically the Sleeve impregnated with a dozen more pockets. The main laptop compartment can hold 17-inch laptops, making it a bit oversized for my 12" Powerbook. If you also have a small laptop, you might first put it in a simple sleeve or one of the RoadWired RAPS diapers to keep things tight and tidy once it's in the Satchel. That also comes in handy so you can transport your laptop around a conference or to a cafe when you don't need the whole Satchel. (Think of the extra sleeve or RAPS as a shuttle craft.) Now if only the Satchel wasn't so heavy. But that's not RoadWired's problem--the Satchel weighs 44 ounces empty. Time to put my gear on a diet again.
Link

Metafilter's Stevil has posted an hilarious mashup of my angry note to American Airlines and the new Samuel Jackson movie, "Snakes on a Plane":

On Sunday, January 9th, I flew AA51 from London Gatwick to Dallas-Fort Worth. At Gatwick, I was confronted with a security check that exceeded sense and decency and, I feel, creates a terrible potential liability for your airline.

At Gatwick, I was directed to a security podium before I checking in for my flight. The security officer asked me a series of questions, such as:

* Where are you flying?

* How long have you owned your luggage for?

* Are there any motherfucking snakes in your luggage?

The security officer then handed me a blank piece of paper and said, "Please write down the names and addresses of ever motherfucking snake you're staying with in the USA."

Link (Thanks, Erik!)

O'Reilly OPG web producer, Justin Watt, successfully defended himself against a laughable cease-and-desist sent to him from a creepy outfit called Exodus International, which promises to help gay people obtain “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.”

About three weeks ago Exodus International sent Justin the cease-and-desist for this image that parodies the lame billboards that Exodus International uses to advertise their hideous message.

The ACLU jumped to Justin's aid by sending Exodus International a mind-blowingly great letter explaining why Justin is well within his rights to make laughing stocks of the homophobic group. And Exodus International backed off. Here's a USA Today article about it.

And here's Justin's blog entry with a link to the ACLU letter. Way to go, Justin and the ACLU!
Link

How have I been able to exist this long without a 1950s megaphone helmet? eBay has two - get one for you and your significant other and take your arguments to a new level.
Link

Brazilian mega-star Marisa Monte's new CDs from EMI ("Infinito Particular" and "Universo ao Meu Redor") come with DRM that can't be uninstalled, and requires you to "agree" to a contract that isn't published in Portuguese. Even if you disagree, the malware is installed. The DRM blocks you from playing the CD on Linux and MacOS, and from loading it onto an iPod. This, just as the Brazilian government has launched a Computers for All initiative to distribute 1,000,000 Linux PCs, seems particularly contemptuous of the Brazilian people. Ronaldo sez,

When you insert the CD in your computer, it automatically opens a window with the "License Agreement" of the CD. This is a very large contract in Portuguese, but it is very difficult to read. The agreement is opened in window programmed in flash, so it is impossible to cut and paste the text into another program. In some computers, when you try to scroll down the contract using the arrows, the text slides completely out of control, making it impossible to read.

After taking some time to read the agreement, the first thing that called my attention is that the text says that a full copy of the contract is available at the address "www.emimusic.info/". That is NOT TRUE. If you go to the "Brazil" link at the page, there is no copy of the agreement whatsoever at the website, contrary to what the agreement itself expressly says.

The text of the agreement says that the CD will install software in your computer in order to make the cd playable. However, it says that the user must acknowledge the fact that "certain files and folders might remain in your computer even after the user removes the digital content, the software and/or the player".

Additionally, it says the following: "This contract has been originally drafted in English. The user waives any and all rights that he or she might have under the laws of his or her own country or province, in regard of this contract drafted in any other language".

Finally, my favorite part. There are two buttons below the agreement. The first reads "Accept the Agreement" the second reads "Reject it". After reading all the above, I decided to reject it, and pressed the "reject" button. Immediately a screen with the word "Initializing" appeared, the proprietary software was installed, and the music started to play in my computer using the proprietary EMI player, as if I had "accepted" the whole thing.

(Thanks, Ronaldo!)

Update: Of course, if you want to get this music without infecting your PC, there's always ISOHunt -- thanks, Christopher!

Update 2: Before you click on ISOHunt, read this, from Malke: "IsoHunt tries to install Winfixer on a Windows machine. Since I know you use an Apple and I use Linux, it wouldn't affect us, but even here on Linux using Firefox with popup control, I got three popup window attempts to install Winfixer on my machine. Winfixer is really nasty malware (I do computer tech support/repair for a living and that's how I know about this) and will seriously mess up Windows users' machines."

Update 3: Clarification: it's not ISOHunt that hs the malware, it's some of the search results on the ISOHunt page.

Courtney, a graphics artist, like to use Altoid cases to hold extra X-Acto blades. But now where do the Altoid mints go? Why, inside a gutted iPod shuffle. Instructables has the instructions for making one of your own.
Link

Amid says: "Somebody has posted on Google Video a copy of the super-rare 1973 Disney film VD ATTACK PLAN, which is all about venereal disease protection. Who ever said Disney cartoons and condoms don't mix!

"I also mentioned it on CartoonBrew today."
Link

vaporlock says: "You had some stuff on your site today that mentions Pierce Bush, [the 19-year-old who supports his uncle George W. Bush's war in Iraq yet bafflingly hasn't signed up to fight for democracy in Iraq]. I made a video and posted it on youtube were I took the interview of Pierce and placed him in Iraq, thus making the interview that much more watchable. Check out the video and post it if you like."
Link

Chicago Tribune reports on how large retailers such as OfficeMax and Walgreens are offering on-premises ink-jet cartridge refilling services. Hewlett-Packard is pretending not to care, but the article says printer supplies account for about 70 of HP's printer business profits, and that 15-20 percent of the supply business has already moved to third-party refillers.

"I'm of the opinion it's just ink," said Sean Lowry, a senior vice president for Pacor Mortgage in Chicago, whose company is hooked on the service. "An average cartridge for a good printer or copier is $100. If you're using six or seven machines at the office, that's a lot of money."

Link (via Make Blog)

Boing Boing reader Jesse says,

My 10-year-old brother Brendan (now known as "Eddy Demon") is the frontman, lead guitarist, and principal songwriter for a punk rock band called "Total Annihilation." One of his best lyrics (in my book) is:

"You say cool, I say hot! / Together we made a robot!"

Anyway, they just released an EP, which features some originals (like "Rock and Roll on a Friday"), and some covers (like Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog"). They even have a creation myth:

Long ago there lived a demon by the name of Rock.Rock was inventing a plan to take over the world.After 2,000 years he had finally invented a plan.Rock created a style of music which he called Rock'N'Roll.The only thing Rock needed now was minnios to help him complete his plan to take over the world.

Link. The robot kid sounds kick-ass.

"Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston" is a life size statue by artist Daniel Edwards. It will be unveiled at Capla Kesting Fine Art in Brooklyn on April 7.

“Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston,” believed Pro-Life’s first monument to the ‘act of giving birth,’ is purportedly an idealized depiction of Britney in delivery. Natural aspects of Spears’ pregnancy, like lactiferous breasts and protruding naval, compliment a posterior view that depicts widened hips for birthing and reveals the crowning of baby Sean’s head.

Link (via PCL Linkdump)

Update: Here's a podcast interview with Daniel Edwards.

Well that's a relief. As the photo here clearly proves, a fresh crop of children have finally landed from outer space, to replace the hordes of Earth-children forcibly assimilated into robot consciousness. Link to "recycled cardboard rocket playhouse." (Thanks, Gary Grainger)

Previously:
- Random jpeg of cuteness: robot kid
- More evidence robots devouring our kids
- Earth-children's robot resistance marches on

On March 23, 2006, I wrote about Neil Bush's educational software company, Ignite! Learning, and about the company's shady investors, which include scions of the Chinese ruling class, United Arab Emirate royalty, and a Russian gazillionaire wanted on criminal charges for allegedly plotting to overthrow Boris Vladimir Putin. Neil's mother, Barbara Bush, is also a big beleiver in Neil's company -- her donation to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund was specifically earmarked for her son's company. (Here's a Houstin Chronicle article with more details.)

I asked readers to send in their suggestions for Ignite! software titles, were they to reflect the behavior and philosophy of Neil Bush and his investors. The suggestions were great, and I've posted some of my favorites below.

At the end of this entry, I'm running two emails sent in by people defending Ignite!. One is from a guy who is friends with Ignite! employees, who he describes as "distinctly kind and gentle individuals." The other email is from an actual employee of Ignite! who wishes to remain anonymous.

But first, here is my favorite entry, from Bob's:

Well, to promote traditional values, Ignite! would, of course, release different games for boys and girls. . .

For the girls:

Explora the Whora - As Explora, travel around the world knocking on hotel room doors looking for relatives of the rich and powerful. Maximum possible points for each round are based on the hotel guest’s family’s wealth and influence. Get friendly with the guest as quickly as possible, then collect points by extracting marriage proposals and/or blackmail payouts! Teaches young women how to move up in neo-conservative America and patriarchal societies around the world.

For the boys:

ShockAndAwecracy - As president G. W. Booyah, dress up in your flight suit and jump in to the cockpit of your NewWorldReorderer machine! Just press buttons to select countries from a map of the world, sending bombs and troops to spread democracy and freedom! Maximize your score by spending as much borrowed money as possible. Score extra points for enriching your friends with no-bid contracts to rebuild what you have destroyed (no rebuilding required). Teaches boys how to make friends and influence people.

Here, in no particular order, are the runners-up:

Snip from statement on the USC Annenberg website:

In February the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California invited a group of senior communication experts from industry, academia, and consumer groups to discuss how to begin to bridge differences over the issue of network neutrality. In cordial, off-the-record discussions several key principles began to emerge that we believe could serve as a base from which detailed discussions might proceed. We have continued to fine-tune these ideas over the past month. Not all participants are completely comfortable with every principle. But, we all believe that these Principles may help anchor the current debate and may help advance the conversation. We wish to place them on the record so that interested parties and the public can continue the process of reaching agreement on this important issue.

Here is the list of principles, released by Annenberg Center for Communication Executive Director Jonathan Aronson and Senior Fellow Simon Wilkie, a former FCC chief economist:

The Annenberg Center Principles for Network Neutrality

The goal of the Annenberg Center Principles for Network Neutrality is to provide a simple, clear set of guidelines addressing the public Internet markets for broadband access.

1. Operators and Customers Both Should Win: It is important to encourage network infrastructure investment by enabling operators to benefit from their investments. It also is important to ensure that customers have the option of unrestricted access to services and content on the global public Internet.

At Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman surveys several cryptozoology museums throughout the world. From the post:

Artist John Frick of Cumberland, Maryland, stands under his creation, a Mothman replica that hangs from the ceiling of the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia...

What cryptozoology and Bigfoot museums would you recommend to other Cryptomundo readers from your journeys and readings? (please post comments at Cryptomundo--ed.)

Link

Bruce Sterling looks a bit like a younger, healthier Johnny Cash in this vlog interview with Minnesota Stories vlogger Chuck Olsen, (director of Blogumentary). Earlier this week, the esteemed Mr. Sterling took a break from novel-writing in Belgrade to appear in conversation with "relational aesthetics" artist Rirkrit Tiravanija at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN. They spoke of shoes and spimes, and for a spell, all was right with the world. Link to more info. Also, the Tiravanija / Sterling talk will be here shortly: Link. (Thanks, Paul Schmelzer and Chuck Olsen)

BB pal Kirsten Anderson of Seattle's Roq La Rue gallery points us to the excellent work of Brian Jungen, a Vancouver artist who transforms everyday objects into very different forms. Seen here, Nike shoes and human hair reborn in the form of a Northwest Coast Indian mask. The piece is titled "Prototype for New Understanding #16 (2004). In another work, he assembled a multitude of the ubiquitous white plastic chairs into a whale skeleton.
Link

Last year, I posted about San Francisco art group Rebar's urban prank where they converted a downtown parking space into a public park for a day. The cover story in this week's issue of SF Weekly is a wonderful chronicle of Rebar's secret history and method behind the delightful madness. From the article:

As part of its spring 2003 "property" issue, the quarterly arts magazine Cabinet had bought half an acre in the middle of nowhere on eBay and dubbed it "Cabinetlandia." The editors offered readers 3-square-foot plots of the undevelopable desert at a penny apiece in a bizarre avant-garde statement of the illogic of ownership and the very idea of property. When (Matthew) Passmore proposed the equally bizarre idea of building a library on the site — every town needs a library, after all – the editors approved, doubting he'd ever actually go through with it.

Even to Passmore, the whole thing did seem a little ridiculous. He wasn't really an artist – six months before, he had still been a corporate lawyer. But it was too late to turn back. He and his friends had invested hours and hours planning the project, and Cabinet had already entrusted them with funds to buy materials. Passmore wasn't sure whether the library would be a "piece of art" or a project without much meaning, but he found the idea of bringing a slice of industrialized America into the wide-open Wild West very, very funny. So he lugged a filing cabinet and a few tools out of the minivan and left them on the ground. Then he drove half an hour back to the motel in Deming, the closest town to Cabinetlandia, and waited.

That afternoon, Passmore's high school buddy Jed Olson, a doctor living in Denver, arrived in his truck. Two more friends, Judson Holt, a litigation consultant, and John Bela, a landscape architect, flew from San Francisco to El Paso and met at the Deming motel. They drove over to Cabinetlandia and started digging...

When they'd finished, a crescent mound rose from the desert floor, flanked by solar-powered lights. A filing cabinet within the small hill housed the entire archive of Cabinet, waiting for anyone who might visit Cabinetlandia and want to borrow a copy. The crew gathered their equipment and planted a wooden sign that said "LIBRARY" into the ground, then started the long journey home.

Link (Thanks, Ken Goldberg!)

This surreal three-faced bisque doll head, a German antique, is up for auction on eBay right now. Current bid is GBP 21.99. From the item description:

very more beautifully and well received

three faces head

very more rarely three faces head, approx. around 1900, without damage. no tears or jumps, crying width unit a face with glass eyes, a laughing face with glass eyes, and a sleeping face
2, 8 inch

Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

BoingBoing reader Darren Rowse just pointed us to a shady site called World Blog Center, which touts itself as "prestigious virtual real estate location in which blogs from a variety of industry sectors are housed." I prefer to think of them as lying assholes, because they're claiming that BoingBoing is a "tenant," and exploiting the BoingBoing logo and name without our permission in their press releases, on their website, and -- according to folks they've hit up for cash -- in spam emailings soliciting paid membership.

On Darren's blog, a worldblogcenter.com spokesperson named Amja lied that BoingBoing gave them permission and asked to be a part of their dishonest scheme -- we did not. Snip:

Every single company we have listed in our news section has taken up space, and we have the emails to prove it. The latest company is Business Week Online who came on board today.

At the time, BoingBoing was listed in their news section. We did not consent to this, by email or otherwise. We've asked them to remove our name from their press re-lie-leases (BoingBoing.net is the first word in 9 copies distributed through various online press release services), we've asked them to remove our name from their site. They have failed to do so.

On their website, they claim, "The World Blog Center is PRESTIGIOUS. It is EXCLUSIVE and you could say ELITIST... you can't simply BUY your way in." Well, for the record, BoingBoing didn't.  Link to more on Darren's blog.

Update: Here's their domain registration info (Thanks, John Battelle!)

Domain Name: WORLDBLOGCENTER.COM
Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS2.INTERMEDIA.NET
Name Server: NS3.INTERMEDIA.NET
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Updated Date: 11-mar-2006
Creation Date: 09-dec-2005
Expiration Date: 09-dec-2006

Reader Comment: Mongo says,

Check out their Twin Towers-reminiscent logo. So not only are the "people" (innocent until proven otherwise, right?) behind the site unethical, they are overtly exploitative. Someone call Scumbags Anonymous for these losers!

Reader Comment: littlestar_43 reminds us,

They're really ripping off milliondollarhomepage.com.

CIO.com just published a swank new detail map of the North American Internet backbone -- 134,855 routers are represented, each color-coded to indicate which provider 0wns it. Information Aesthetics blog explains:

Red is Verizon, blue AT&T, yellow Qwest, green is other backbone players like Level 3 & Sprint Nextel, black is the entire cable industry put togethe, & gray is everyone else, from small telecommunications companies to large international players who only have a small presence in the U.S.

Link to PDF (1.1MB) , and link to related post on CIO.com blog.

On his blog, USC Annenberg Center for Communications scholar Kazys Varnelis adds,

CIO Senior Writer Ben Worthen, who produced the map with Bill Cheswick of Lumeta suggests that what it tells us is that the debate on net neutrality needs to be understood not only in terms of the last mile, but also in terms of the backbone. The players are increasingly the same.

(Thanks, Dan Lurie and Kazys Varnelis!)

A survey conducted by three privacy activists -- including EFF cofounder John Gilmore -- showed that TSA agents frequently fail to enforce the agency's rule that travelers must present government-issued ID at US airport security checkpoints. Snip from GovExec story:

Many of the travelers responding to the survey had forgotten their identification or it was stolen, or their driver's licenses had expired. Many of those who recounted their experiences at the airports said TSA screeners subjected them to extra security checks but allowed them to board the aircraft.

Other travelers were allowed to board planes after showing several forms of non-government identification, such as credit cards or school ID cards.

The survey was undertaken by a group of three activists calling themselves "The Identity Project." They are concerned about the inefficient and overly intrusive security policies implemented by the government.

Link (Thanks, Bill Scannell)

Thomas Hawk says,

Having been the subject of unwarranted police background checks and being detained when shooting in the streets of Oakland myself, I was dismayed to read about this guy, Ben Hider, who was detained by police for two hours, searched, forced to empty his pockets and frisked. His crime? Taking photos of the flags out in front of the courthouse. Although he was issued an apology this is just unacceptable behavior on the part of the police. Photography is not a crime.

Link to ABC News story from White Plains, NY. Here is Ben Hider's MySpace page. Looks like this is the photograph that got him in trouble.

Reader comment: Ryan says,

In response to the man who was hassled by police taking pictures of the (public!) courthouse...this link is to an attorney's page whic has a nice PDF that states a photographer's rights. I keep a reduced one in my wallet in the case I am ever confronted, which seems like it may be sooner than later these days. Here's the PDF link.

A friend of BoingBoing who is currently working in the United Arab Emirates reports that attempts to reach the popular social networking site MySpace using a terrestrial broadband connection are blocked. Sources tell us that the filtering system at use here is "SmartFilter," produced by the American censorware company Secure Computing.

The would-be MySpace user in the UAE reports: 

They give a pretty interesting screen message saying that it is blocked because it is inconsistent with their religious, moral and cultural values. I took a screen shot if you are interested. Also, Google seems to strip out all ads on their site here.

Earlier, our readers in the UAE reported that the state-run ISP in that country was also blocking BoingBoing.net, with the help of SmartFilter: Link.

Previously:
- Distributed BoingBoing, for those blocked by censorware
- SmartFilter, BoingBoing, and Adult Baby - Diaper Lovers.
- Xeni's NYT op-ed: Exporting Censorship
- More on SmartFilter blocking BoingBoing and other popular sites.

Reader Comment: Arthur Magill says,

I'm wondering if SmartFilter blocks BBC News, for displaying gratuitous nudity? This BBC News link points to photos of sculptures by Auguste Rodin, highlighting a forthcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Blocking a major news site like the BBC would be pretty serious. I'm not filtered here, so I can't check. If any of your readers could check, I'd like to know what the BBC would have to say. If it isn't filtered, I'd like to know why Secure Computing will make some exceptions and not others? I must be reading too much BoingBoing, because I keep wanting to shout at the world for being wrong. Keep up the good work.

For the second year running, Alice from the Wonderland blog has taken incredibly detailed notes from the "Game Developers' Rant" at the Game Developers' Conference (this year in San Jose, CA). The Rant is a panel where a bunch of luminaries from the gaming world get together and foam at the mouth, hurling obscenities and pearls of wisdom from the stage. Alice captured some real mind-blowers from this year:

Frank Lantz: Why does the phrase 'the player will be able to go anywhere and do anything' sound like nails on a chalkboard to me? It's based on a very naive and unsophisticated understanding of how simulation, how representation works. You have a thing, a part of the world, and you have a simulation of that. There's a gap in between, the gap is made up by all the differences, the way that this is not this.. the immersive fallacy is this idea that computer simulation allows us to close this gap and makes these things identical. But this gap is an essential part of how this representation works, this gap is where the magic happens.

Let's say a bear is attacking a friend of yours and is about to kill him. The word 'bear' will warn your friend. The word 'bear' would not be better if it had teeth and could kill you! The same thing is true of the bear mask that the tribal priest puts on, or the bears on the wall of the cave, and of the game 'Bear'. Statues wouldn't be better if they could move. Model airplanes would not be better if they were the same size as airplanes! By the same token, if you think about it, the incredible sense of freedom created by GTA is created by carefully limiting the actions of the player.

Link

The Union Pacific Railroad has gone trademark crazy. They're threatening to sue anyone who puts a Union Pacific logo on a model railroad, photographers who take pictures of Union Pacific trains, and even painters who paint pictures of Union Pacific trains. Model railroaders, photographers, and painters are freaking out, natch. Link to Trains.com thread, Union Pacific licensing program (Thanks, Robin!)

ACB sez, "Stencil artist Banksy has written an article for the Guardian on the war on graffiti and street art in Melbourne, Australia, until now one of the world's epicentres of street art, where the government has adopted a Giuliani-esque zero-tolerance policy to sanitise the city for the Commonwealth Games. In his article, Banksy points out that one of the places where evidence of Melbourne's unique, and now destroyed, street-art scene survives is in digitised photographs on the Web. Given that Australia has recently banned a video game involving graffiti and is considering a national internet firewall, one wonders whether such sites will remain accessible from within Australia for very long." Link (Thanks, ACB!)

The New York Times covers the steady erosion of frequent-flier programs. People who fly tens of thousands of miles per year on one airline or another get less and less for their loyalty.

US travelers don't know how good they have it. I've flown about 280,000 miles on British Airways since June 2004, but I get practically nothing for my trouble -- faster checkin and a lounge to use, but I've never managed to redeem my miles for upgrades, never managed to get a ticket on miles, not even when I book a year in advance. What's more, when BA loses my luggage, I get no help at all, and BA customer service on the phone is often rude enough to make me want to just cancel my trip.

With upgrades scarcer, there are still some benefits to elite-status programs, like getting first dibs on booking such choice seats as aisle seats toward the front of coach or exit row seats with extra legroom. But that, too, is fading.

Then last week, Northwest Airlines, in what it called a test program, started charging an extra fee, $15 for each leg of a flight, to reserve choice coach seats. Anyone can reserve them.

The reaction on Flyertalk.com was swift. You alienate your most loyal fliers "when you start taking away preferred seating," one Northwest Platinum Elite member wrote in a letter to a Northwest executive, adding that he would be taking his business elsewhere.

Link (via Consumerist)

These 18" x 18" panels of cunningly arranged squirtguns cost $50, but it seems like it's the kind of thing that would be pretty easy to duplicate on your own. It'd be wild to do a whole wall this way! Link (Thanks, Candy Addict!)

Mother Jones, a left-wing magazine, has published a Harpers-Index-style guide to copyright's worst excesses; it's notable that this week both they and their ideological opponents at the libertarian Cato Institute have both published material supporting the copyfight. It's truly a nonpartisan fight:

A DAY AFTER Senator Orrin Hatch said "destroying their machines" might be the only way to stop illegal downloaders, unlicensed software was discovered on his website.

BILL GATES had the 11-million-image Bettmann Archive buried 220 feet underground. Archivists can access only the 2% that was first digitized.

AMONG THE 16,000 people thus far sued for sharing music files was a 65-year-old woman who, though she didn't own downloading software, was accused of sharing 2,000 songs, including Trick Daddy's "I'm a Thug." She was sued for up to $150,000 per song.

MICROSOFT UK held a contest for the best film on "intellectual property theft"; finalists had to sign away "all intellectual property rights" on "terms acceptable to Microsoft."

Link (Thanks, Dave!)

Is FlashOnTheBlog's photos of a little "firefox" cute enough for you?
Link

It turns out that Barbara Bush's donation to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund is going straight to Ignite!, an educational software company owned by Neil Bush, the current administration's very own "Billy Carter/Roger Clinton" type character. (You may remember Neil as the fellow who headed Silverado Savings & Loan in the 80s. When the bank failed under his watch, he walked away with a mere sanction while taxpayers were forced to clean up his mess by forking over a $1 billion bailout.)

In his Talking Points Memo, Joshua Micah Marshall says Ignite! makes its money by jetting Neil to exotic locales, where he visits "international statesmen, bigwigs and criminals who want to 'invest' in Ignite! as a way to curry favor with the brother in the White House."

(Bush's international influence-peddling jaunts have also proven to be a great way for him to get laid, according to CNN:

[Bush] admitted in the deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.

The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.

"Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," Brown said.

"It was very unusual," Bush said.)

It turns out that lots of people besides Barbara Bush believe in her energetic young man: the rich kids of China's rulers, the United Arab Emirates, and Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky (who has been accused of trying to overthrow Putin's government to help his company) are all eager investors in Ignite!. Now, who's to say that the individuals in this rogues' gallery are only interested in getting the president to think kindly of them? Perhaps they truly want to help children learn.

Let's have some fun: what kinds of children's educational software might be produced buy Ignite!, were these investors to have a say in their development? Email your ideas for titles and descriptions to me and I'll post the best on Boing Boing. Link (Thanks, Haybales!)

Reader comment: Phil says:

After seeing the post earilier today about Neil Bush, I got to wondering what other Bush siblings have been up to. Here's an interesting [Wikipedia] entry on Marvin Bush (the youngest of the Bush brothers):

"He was a director of the Sterling, Virginia company Securacom, also known as Stratesec, from 1993 until fiscal year 2000. The Securacom/Stratesec company was publicly traded and backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corporation. Securacom/Stratesec was in charge of security at the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport, and United Airlines on September 11, 2001."

Reader comment: Leslie says:

The Wikipedia claim about Marvin Bush's ties to 9/11 seemed a little too "conspiracy theory" to me. A quick Google search turned up what looks like a more balanced view. I'm no Bush fan, far from it, but there is enough REAL evil stuff about these guys without manufacturing conspiracy.
Link

Reader comment: John says: "THIS is the funniest Bush I've seen all year." (It's a video of 19-year-old Pierce Bush, the President's nephew, out of his mind on coffee at 6:30 am)
Link

Technology Review magazine has posted a special report on ten emerging technologies they think are poised to have a big impact. The technologies they cover include:

Epigentics: Alexander Olek has developed tests to detect cancer early by measuring its subtle DNA changes.

Nuclear Reprogramming: Hoping to resolve the embryonic-stem-cell debate, Markus Grompe envisions a more ethical way to derive the cells.

Universal Authentication: Leading the development of a privacy-protecting online ID system, Scott Cantor is hoping for a safer Internet.

Cognitive Radio: To avoid future wireless traffic jams, Heather “Haitao” Zheng is finding ways to exploit unused radio spectrum.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging: Kelvin Lim is using a new brain-imaging method to understand schizophrenia.

Comparative Interactomics: By creating maps of the body’s complex molecular interactions, Trey Ideker is providing new ways to find drugs.

Nanomedicine: Kames Baker designs nanoparticles to guide drugs directly into cancer cells, which could lead to far safer treatments.

Link

Boing Boing reader Poopdog says,

This is a Murderlicious cake my sister made for a Mortal Kombat themed party she and her friends had. They watched both the movies and played the video game all night and enjoyed this delicious tribute to the finest fighting game franchise of all time.

Link

Nicole says: It's a lie detector - or, more accurately, a galvanic skin response sensor - made out of Legos, aluminum foil and velcro. What more need be said?

"I found this link through a post about 'Demonstrations of Implicit Knowledge' from Colorado's Cognitive Science comunity on LiveJournal (full disclosure: I am an employee of Six Apart, Ltd., and work on LiveJournal)."
Link (Some other cool demos)

Elizabeth Hickok's amazing San Francisco In Jell-O sculpture will be on display only for the opening day, April 1, of the Exploratorium's new exhibit series Magnitude X: Quake Science and Survival. The entire series sounds quite intriguing though. From the exhibition description:

Magnitude X includes an offbeat, quivering, large-scale Jell-O model of San Francisco made in the primary-colored shimmering medium by artist Liz Hickok... Meet dog heroes. See earthquakes pop up on an international map as they occur throughout the world. A sampling of a month-long collection of exhibits and demonstrations cover liquefaction -- the cause of major damage to homes built on sand and landfill -- the physics of waves, resonance, seismic action and the mathematics of sine waves. Meet geologists, first-responders, survival kit experts, and structural engineers. What do you want to know about your survival kit, your structure or your neighborhood, or how you can best be prepared? Every weekend, the Exploratorium provides a range of opportunities to pose all your pent-up personal questions to a series of experts.

Link to Exploratorium exhibit info, Link to Elizabeth Hickok's site

BB pal Alan Rapp just blew my mind with a link to the work of incredible photographer and installation artist Stephen Berkman. His subject matter, composition, and use of archaic processes results in deeply spooky, dreamy, and wonderful works.
Link

Earlier this week, I posted about a video clip of a purported Bigfoot stumbling in the snow in Ely, Minnesota. Apparently the shooter, Richard Sade, just realized he had a little more footage of the animal. Comments are welcome over at Loren Coleman's Cryptomundo blog.
Link

UPDATE: Sade as removed the video from YouTube. Link

UPDATE: The video is back again. See Loren Coleman's post for more info. Link

Make haste! Get thee to the Melbourne aquarium in Australia! Only three more days left to see the world's most ginormous frozen squid!

The 250-kilogram creature, caught by commercial fishermen off New Zealand’s South Island earlier this year, has cost the aquarium more than $100,000, which included purchasing and transporting the squid. The bill also included displaying the squid in a purpose-built 3½-tonne block of ice.

Link to item on the world's first all-squid, all-the-time SquidBlog! Image: courtesy Melbourne Aquarium. (Thanks, Scott Beale!)

Update: Alex Loke says,

The article mentions that there are only a few days left to see the squid, but the Aquarium website says the exhibit has been extended to September 30. That being, said I've seen it and it's pretty damned amazing.

Following up on yesterday's BoingBoing post about a proposed state-mandated internet filtering system in Australia, reader David points us to a Sydney Morning Herald report about the political maneuvering behind the deal, and says:

While the Labour plan was originally scoffed at by the Coalition government, they are now being placed under pressure by members within to support such a system. Family First, an emerging religous right party, has already expressed support for the idea. It's worth noting that the leader of the opposition (Labour) is so unpopular at the moment that he could head-butt Godzilla and still not stand a chance in hell of being elected.

Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch writes from Ecuador (via Rainforest Action Network):

The country is about to burst at the seams. There have been provincial strikes and road blocks since i got here. Although they subsided over the weekend, they’re gaining strength again, and the repression has been brutal.

There is now a state of emergency called in five provinces, with more to come tomorrow. The two demands of CONAIE, the national indigenous group, which is finally starting to be joined by other social sectors and universities, are: NO to the signing of the TLC, spanish acronym for the Andean Trade Pact, and the nullification of OXY’s contract and essentially the expropriation of their operations.

Never in my wildest dreams would i ever have thought that OXY would become the focal point of an entire nation, and it now looks like it has become such a flashpoint for the GoE that any offers by OXY to re-negotiate its contract or offer Ecuador more money are moot. I don’t think this government will survive without kicking OXY out.

The grassroots radio stations are calling on the forajidos, the loose knit community neighborhood groups responsible for the ousting of Gutierrez last April, to auto-convocarse (self mobilize and autonomous actions) to the streets in protests neighborhood by neighborhood, because large marches are now prohibited by the state of emergency, and they’ve been getting crushed by the military and police.

Link (thanks, Brant) Here's a related NYT story: Link to "Ecuador's President Declares a State of Emergency," by Juan Forero.

Image: "An indigenous Ecuadorean woman walks in her community of San Miguel del Prado, north of Quito, Ecuador, Wednesday, March 22, 2006. Thousands of police and soldiers were deployed to clear blocked highways Wednesday after President Alfredo Palacio's government declared a state of emergency in four provinces to curb protests against a proposed free-trade deal with Washington. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa R.)". Full-size photo here, here's another, and another.

Players who misbehave in the Roman online role-playing game Roma Victor will be punished by having their characters crucified and displayed in public spaces for other players to mock and throw things at. The first crucifixion is being doled out to "Cynewulf," played by a 27 year-old electrical engineer from Flint, Michigan, whose crime is "ganking" (ripping off) new players as they first appear in game. Cynewulf will be hung on the cross for seven days.

Crucifixion is to be used as a form of player 'ban' within the virtual world of Roma Victor, with the length of the ban reflecting the severity of the punishment. For cheating by exploiting a bug and advancing his or her character's skills unfairly, for example, a player might typically receive a seven-day ban; multiple or more serious offenses will result in a longer (or even permanent) ban.

Link (via Terranova)

Responding to South Dakota's statewide abortion ban, the Oglala Lakhota president on the Pine Ridge reservation -- a former nurse -- says she'll provide access to sovereign tribal land for clinics. Snip:

"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," [Cecilia Fire Thunder] said to [Lakhota Times editor Tim Giago] last week. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

Link to Native Times article (subscription required), or read excerpt on indybay website here. (Thanks, drogheda, Ryan and others!)

Reader comment: For those wishing to donate cash for the project, or extend messages of support, BoingBoing reader Lampbane says, " Contact info for president Fire Thunder can be found here."

Reader comment: A.V. says,

Careful with the Sioux abortion clinic donations. Although it's a great idea for the clinic, be careful about donations which may not actually go towards the desired destination.... definitely read that post before blindly sending money: Link.

Reader comment: Adam says,

The Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota posted this reponse on their site. Read it before making any donations. They thank the OGLALA SIOUX but indicate that they have no plans to open a clinic on the reservation. Of course, Planned Parenthood is a worthy charity and accepts donations through their official site. Link

The Minimum Security webcomic sends up South Dakota Senator Bill Napoli, who helped push through the state ban on abortion. It features a woman unable to choose what sort of salad dressing to have, who calls up Napoli's office to get him to make the choice for her -- the strip includes his office and home phone numbers in case you want to try, too. Link (Thanks, Steeltoe!)

This site contains instructions for building your own semi-automatic air-cannon designed to fire rolls of toilet paper.

This will be handy if we're invaded by the kind of Klingons that hang around Uranus.

The real ingenuity lies within the auto loading mechanism of the cannon. It uses a bolt-like system which grabs and places the ammo in the barrel, directing the air flow only to the projectile being fired, and springs back to catch another projectile automatically. This in turns enables this cannon to be a semi-automatic cannon. As said earlier this loader can be used to design a full-auto air cannon relatively easily. Xinventions, is in the process of designing this full-auto cannon, and more info will be available to the public soon.

Link Corrected Link (via Red Ferret)

This HOWTO explains how to turn yourself into an early riser. I've always been an early riser -- when I was a kid, I used to get up at 4AM; these days, it's more likely to be between 5 and 6 -- and I love it. I get so much done while everyone else is asleep, by the time I get to work, I've already gotten my blogging done, worked on my novel, cleared out my inbox, done some physiotherapy exercises, Tai Chi and yoga, eaten a healthy breakfast and gone for a walk.

Apparently, non-early-risers make a lot of mistakes when they try to switch -- like just going to bed earlier, or going to bed whenever and waking up whenever. This article, written by someone who's tried many approaches, explains one approach that worked for him.

The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.

I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m too sleepy to read.

When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up.

Link (via Evhead)

FreedomHEC is an alternative to the annual Microsoft "WinHEC" conference. At WinHEC, Microsoft explains how you need to suck up to them and screw your users if you want your stuff to work in a Trusted Computing world. FreedomHEC (timed to follow WinHEC, also set in Seattle) explains how to use GNU/Linux to set your users free and make better programs.

Who: Hardware engineers and driver developers

What: High-intensity learning, networking and taking-back-the-PC-industry unconference

Where: Seattle, Washington, USA

When: May 26-27, 2006

Why: Take control of your own destiny and make your hardware valuable to the growing Linux market.

Link (via Vitanova)

Marcel Neundörfer's On Target urinal has a pressure-sensitive screen recessed into it -- score points by shooting the moving images onscreen. Not only does this add much-needed entertainment to otherwise dreary elimination functions, but it also improves aim -- if you stay on target, you'll avoid splashback and misses. Link (Thanks, Vipula!)

Update: Jeff sez, "This is a pretty flagrant copy of this project for the Media Lab, by Dan Maynes-Aminzade." (see this BB post from 2003)

A new Firefox plugin rewrites all the US prices in the pages you load into the equivalent cost in barrels of crude oil. Link (via CNet Blog Esoterica)

Wired News reports on Daniel Wright, a standup comic who gets his material by looking at new patents filed at the USPTO and making fun of them, keeping track of the best on his blog, Patently Silly:

Hardly a week goes by without Patently Silly featuring some new invention for pampering pets, be it the dog umbrella, pet product vending machine or meat-filled flying disk.

In the course of skimming thousands of patents each week, however, Wright also encounters an abundance of patents geared for the poultry and livestock industries. These patents -- which bear names like "spinal cord removal tool with adjustable blades," and "animal sorting and grading system using MRI to predict maximum value" -- offer a rather striking contrast to the soft and cuddly pet genre.

"If you're a dog, you get umbrellas and all kinds of good things," notes Wright. "But if you're a cow, you get stuck in an MRI that'll tell you how good your meat is going to taste...."

Link

Paul Robertson's LiveJournal has tons of delicious looping animated GIFs, apparently from his forthcoming animated short film Pirate Baby's Cabana Street Fight 2006. Most of them show shambling baby zombies that look a little like undead Stortroopers, including a standout one showing the undead getting their asses thoroughly kicked by a kung-fu kid. Link (Thanks, Josh!)

Bruce Schneier has an excellent article on why current invasive screening procedures are ineffective at stopping bombs, guns and knives from getting on planes, and has suggestions for how to introduce effective security.

One thing, though: his article mentions that in Europe, the ineffective and time-consuming process of separately X-raying laptops isn't practiced, but on my last flights out of Heathrow and Amsterdam airports, last week, I had to take my laptop out for a separate screen.

Of course, this isn't just bad because it wastes time -- it's also a problem because it lets the whole world, including laptop thieves, eyeball every laptop entering the airport. Plus every time you have to hold your shoes, coat, belt, ticket, ID, sweater and laptop while shuffling toward the X-ray machine, there's a chance that you're going to drop your computer and smash it to flinders. We have a security procedure designed for people with nine arms.

It seems like every time someone tests airport security, airport security fails. In tests between November 2001 and February 2002, screeners missed 70 percent of knives, 30 percent of guns and 60 percent of (fake) bombs. And recently (see also this), testers were able to smuggle bomb-making parts through airport security in 21 of 21 attempts. It makes you wonder why we're all putting our laptops in a separate bin and taking off our shoes. (Although we should all be glad that Richard Reid wasn't the "underwear bomber.")

The failure to detect bomb-making parts is easier to understand. Break up something into small enough parts, and it's going to slip past the screeners pretty easily. The explosive material won't show up on the metal detector, and the associated electronics can look benign when disassembled. This isn't even a new problem. It's widely believed that the Chechen women who blew up the two Russian planes in August 2004 probably smuggled their bombs aboard the planes in pieces.

Link

Instructables has instructions for building magnet-backed LEDs that you can arrange on your fridge into glowing, whimsical pixel-art that will scare you when you come to the dark kitchen for some midnight ice-cream. Link (via Cribcandy)

Don't Shoot the Puppy -- a dead-simple Flash game. If you move the mouse or type anything, you shoot the puppy. The objective is to not shoot the puppy. Therefore, to win, you must do nothing. Link (via Plasticbag)

Lukashenka, the corrupt dictator of Belarus, has a bad pop band campaigning for him in his crooked election. They sing a hilarious song praising him to the skies (and don't miss the video)...

Well-set and slim
He won't teach you evil
Father can bridle anyone
Father is stronger than the rest

He will settle conflicts
He is reliable and calm
He just throws a glance - and you see
Who is the master in the house

My grandfather came from Belarus -- I'm just glad he got out when he did, otherwise this might be the themesong of my homeland. Link (Thanks, Brendan!)

Phil Torrone of MAKE: hosted a robot dance party and posted a video of the festivities!
Link

My pal Bill Shunn calls himself an "accidental terrorist" because he once threatened to blow up an airplane while working as a young Mormon missionary in Calgary, Alberta. His hilarious memoir of accidental terrorism is now appearing in his podcast as a serial -- and between his great reading and the great material, it's bound to be one of my favorite podcasts for the weeks to come. Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Apple has issued a statement damning a proposed French law that would force it and other music-crippleware companies to license its technology to anyone who wants to build a music player.

Apple condemned the proposal as "state-sponsored piracy" and warned that it would result in its customers filling their iPods with "pirate" videos and music. This is intensely hypocritical. Apple ships millions of iPods holding up to 10,000 songs. Most customers for 60GB iPods have fewer than 10,000 songs' worth of CDs and no one is buying $10,000 worth of iTunes. While there's a certain amount of public domain and Creative Commons music likely to end up on iPods, and some video these days, there's no question that Apple's iPod business is built on the average customer's need for a way to take her/his unauthorized music downloads on the road.

What's more, as Steve Jobs explained to Rolling Stone in 2003, iTunes DRM doesn't stop people from making and sharing unauthorized copies of their music:

None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content. . . . . [There is] this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet --- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.

If Apple doesn't think iTunes stops "piracy," then why include it? Because it lets them send legal threats to competitors like Real when they make players for their own DRMed music that run on Apple devices. Real's effort to put a Real player on the iPod wouldn't have helped anyone commit "piracy" -- nor would the French law. All it would do is give iPod owners the option to buy their crummy DRM-crippled music from someone other than Apple, maybe getting a better price or better features or both.

In a response issued after the law won initial approval, Apple said: "If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers."

But, it added, the law could prove a boon for Apple and its popular iPod music players.

Said Apple: "iPod sales will likely increase as users freely load their iPods with "interoperable" music which cannot be adequately protected. Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy."

Link (Thanks, Herve, Dave and Peanutbutter13!)

Nature Magazine has publised a free, online/offine issue about scientific computing -- the way that science is advanced by computers.

One standout article (among many worthy pieces) is this article on massively multiplayer online role-playing games written by Vernor Vinge, the computer scientist and Hugo-award winning science fiction writer who coined the term "Singularity" and wrote the absolutely seminal proto-cyberpunk story True Names.

How can we prepare for such a future? Perhaps that is the most important research project for our creativity machine. We need to exploit the growing sensor/effector layer to make the world itself a real-time database. In the social, human layers of the Internet, we need to devise and experiment with large-scale architectures for collaboration. We need linguists and artificial-intelligence researchers to extend the capabilities of search engines and social networks to produce services that can bridge barriers created by technical jargon and forge links between unrelated specialties, bringing research groups with complementary problems and solutions together — even when those groups have not noticed the possibility of collaboration. In the end, computers plus networks plus people add up to something significantly greater than the parts. The ensemble eventually grows beyond human creativity. To become what? We can't know until we get there.

Link (Thanks, Timo!)

This site sells silver jewelry shaped like household objects like macaroni, fruit loops, Pez, and Barrel of Monkeys monkeys. Link

MIT researchers are making strides in the development of "smart materials" that can change shape. For example, imagine an airplane wing that morphs for better aerodynamics. The researchers' approach is based on the same principal that causes the material in lithium batteries to expand and contract during charging and recharging. From the MIT News Office:

In the quest for materials that would allow such morphing, engineers have recently focused on nature's approach to the problem. A plant that bends toward the light, quickly furls its leaves when touched, or pushes a concrete sidewalk aloft with its roots is essentially moving fluids between cells.

(Materials scientist Yet-Ming) Chiang realized that the solid compounds used to store electrical energy in lithium rechargeable batteries could be made to work in a similar way. The movement of ions to and from these materials during charging and recharging, he thought, was analogous to the moving fluids in plants...

The researchers have already demonstrated basic battery-based actuators that can pull and push with large force. Later this year, they hope to demonstrate the shape-morphing of a helicopter rotor blade. The morphing capability should allow for a more efficient design, ultimately making it possible for a vehicle to carry heavier loads.

Link

At Cryptomundo, Craig Woolheater posted glamour shots of a number of cryptozoology action figures that have been created over the years. Sasquatch! Mothman! Jersey Devil! Collect them all! (Seen here, the Shadowbox Myths & Legends Bigfoot from 1996.)
Link

A flock of crows is attacking residents of Warwick, England. First, the crows were targeting cars, scratching them up and tearing off windshield wipers. Now they've reportedly moved on to humans. Colin Wilkinson, a conservation officer with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, suggests that people "protect themselves by wearing hats" and not leave any food scraps around. From the BBC News:

"It is most unusual for these birds to do this, (Wilkinson said.)

"Attacking cars occurs from time to time but graduating to attacking humans is more rare.

"It is hard to explain except if it is an instinctive reaction to someone who is close to what they regard as their territory."

He said it was the time of year that crows would be pairing up, building nests and laying eggs.

"It simply might be that they are being more aggressive at this time of year, that is the most likely explanation," Mr Wilkinson.

Link

Artist Thomas Edwards has created this sculpture titled Blame, which senses the presence of gallery visitors and then swings an arm with an accusing finger towards one hapless person, and in a loud voice "proceeds to blame the viewer for some horrible crime against society. After that, the arm returns to scanning for a new victim to blame."
Link

LDM sez,

I joined the Yahoo Publisher Network, a beta program through which Yahoo provides text ads in much the same way that Google does. I started running the Yahoo text ads on many of my web sites.

A couple of days ago Yahoo sent me a notice stating they'd revised their Publisher Policy. Item '11.l' stated that I will not "display all or part of the Ad Unit to any user located outside the US". In other words, I can't allow users outside of the United States to view my pages if there is a Yahoo ad on the page!

Emilio González writes about using Google Earth to discover asteroid impact craters.

But the most important thing is, probably, that using a free distributed software ( Google Earth, but I'm also using NASA World Wind) anyone can search for similar structures. Probably I was very lucky, as after this success I spent many hours searching for more without results.

Link (thanks, Kazys!)

T-shirt looks like you have a FedEx envelope under your arm.
Link (Thanks, Phil!)

Over at Lost Remote blog, Cory Bergman writes:

NBC and CBS are two of the companies that we know have sent nastygrams to YouTube over copyrighted video, and I'm sure there are many more. YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley says in some cases, the same company is both uploading video and ordering YouTube to take it down. "There's been a few examples of marketing departments uploading content directly to the site, while on the other side of the company their attorney is demanding we remove this content," Hurley said. (...) Did you know YouTube has twice the traffic of Yahoo! Video and more than three times that of Google Video and AOL Video? Wow!

YouTube was also the subject of a cover story yesterday in trade mag Hollywood Reporter, along with the Lonely Island guys, whose Chronic-WHAT-cles of Narnia SNL phenom left television and movie biz execs deeply perplexed: "Do we mack on the cupcakes, or sue them?"

Link to THR story on YouTube, and Link to THR story on "Lazy Sunday."

Previous BoingBoing posts: Link.

Bob Staake is a terrific children's book illustrator (here's a great interview with him at Pixelsurgeon). My kids love all his books. Today, Fantagraphics released Staake's latest book, Struwwelpeter, and it's his best work yet. The art (which Staake draws using his ancient copy of Adobe Photoshop 3.0!) is creepy and happy at the same time, which is my favorite kind.

Struwwelpeter is Staake's adaptation of Der Struwwelpeter, a teach-kids-morality-through-fear book written 160 years ago by Heinrich Hoffman. When Staake was a child, he was exposed to the original book's, and never forgot its frightening and gory illustrations of mayhem and punishment.

The "scissor scene" (top) from Hoffmann's original Struwwelpeter. This is the image that haunted Staake (and others) from childhood on -- and the power of the gruesome scene compelled Staake to reinterpret the Hoffmann classic in 2006.

Staake's Struwwelpeter is both a faithful adaptation of the original and an inspired reexamination. it's my favorite book of the year.

Be sure to check out the excellent website Staake made for the book, which contains many sample pages, and historical notes on the original book and its author. Link

In Switzerland last weekend, a new and odd world record: 240 people built a village of one hundred igloos in 12 hours, with no motorized help. Link (Thanks, Jens Riedweg)

A recently-proposed law in Japan would outlaw many forms of vintage electronics and handheld gadgetry. Dozens of old-school electronic music enthusiasts in Japan took to the streets this week to protest (the ban may outlaw old synths and boomboxen). Here are photos. Tom at MusicThing blog posts details on the acts of civil geekobedience in Japan, and says,

I want to see the birth of an utterly ruthless terrorist organisation devoted to the protection of dusty musical gear. Someone should kidnap the relevant minister's family and torture them with copies of Country Moog: Switched on Nashville until the law is repealed.

Link

Labor party politicians in Australia want to censor the country's internet using state-mandated content bans that would be maintained by internet service providers:

Under the policy, announced by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley today, international websites would be banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority if they contained graphic sexual or violent material, rated R or higher.

Link to Herald Sun news report.

And in Guatemala (where the death squads are back in business, and reportedly canoodling with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld), a similar plan is under way.

The Australian Scottish censorware maker selling the filtering tech to Guatemalan ISPs calls its product a "broadband condom." Snip:

Yesterday, Bridge announced it had signed a deal with locally based Red Technologies to manufacture the GuardianBox in Guatemala and take licence revenue from all boxes used in the country. The contract requires the filtering system to be refined to recognise offensive Spanish terms. It is expected to be worth around £250,000 a year.

Link to Scotsman news article.

Kathryn Cramer has a related post on her blog here.

I've previously posted about Wilson Alwyn Bentley who in the late 19th century created an amazing collection of snowflake photomicrographs. Inspired by Bentley, Icelandic chemist Tryggvi Emilsson came up with a way to "preserve" the structure of snowflakes using superglue and microscope slides. The snowflake seen here has been stored in Emilsson's desk since 1979. From Popular Science:

1. Set microscope slides, coverslips and superglue outside when it’s 20°F or colder to chill them. Catch flakes on the slides or pick them up with cold tweezers.

2. Place a drop of superglue on the snowflake. Note: Gel glue doesn’t work. Find a brand that’s thin and runny.

3. Drop a coverslip over the glue. Don’t press down hard or the flake could tear or melt from the heat of your finger.

4. Leave the slide in a freezer for one or two weeks and don’t touch it with warm hands. The glue must completely harden before the snowflake warms up.

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

Here is another apartment complex in Taiwan in which units are branded "BLOGS." Link. This Taipei building is called "MRT Blog," and the MRT is the city's subway system. (Thanks, Poagao)

Previously:
In Taiwan, a condo project called "BLOG"

On the Make blog, Phil Torrone recaps Modern Marvels' top 25 inventions of 2006. Shown here: Matthew C. Grossman's "Shift Bicycle," designed to teach kids how to ride a two wheeler. As the tricycle picks up speed, the rear wheels get closer together, until they merge into a single wheel.
Link

Reader comment: John says:

In the story posted today is mentioned Matthew Grossman as the sole inventor of the SHIFT Bike. Others were also involved as part of a design project at Purdue, under the guidance of professor Scott Shim and in tandem with alumni Ryan Lightbody. The linked to article in question seems to state that it was designed in Austin, Tx. The original press release for the bike is linked here.

Iranian artist Seyed Alavi has installed this beautiful mural of an aerial view of the Sacramento River woven into the carpet of a skybridge in Sacramento International Airport. Link (Thanks, Retank!)

This Etsy seller produces lovely brooches and necklaces built from Cracker Jack toys. Link (Thanks, Irene!)

RockBox is a set of "open firmware" for various MP3 players, including the iPod, Archos and iRiver players. The firmware is the operating system for the player, which determines how the player behaves, what programs it can run, and what restrictions it puts on your actions. By loading an open firmware on your player, you get total freedom and lots of bonus features, like video-games and other third-party software. The code itself is free/open source software and has a giant and active developer community that's always adding new features to it. Link (Thanks, Pat!)

Ken sez, "Last year you ran a story about the cremated remains of 5000 people found in the closet of an Oregon psychiatric hospital. Turns out photographer David Maisel has been carefully documenting the canisters that hold those people's remains (!), taking individual photographic portraits of each one. Link (Thanks, Ken L!)

The Supreme Court of the United States has declined to overturn an important case about obscenity and the Internet, leaving anyone who publishes sexual material on the Internet in uncertainty about whether they're open to federal penalties.

At stake is the obscenity section of the Communications Decency Act, which bans publishing "obscene" material on the net. The problem is that US courts use "local standards" to determine whether something is obscene -- so if in the eyes of some local community, the material is obscene, then you can't distribute it there.

But the Internet can distribute material into all communities in the country, and because the Communications Decency Act is federal, prosecutors can bring their charges in the most sex-o-phobic corner of the country (say, the conservative Catholic private town that the guy who founded Domino's Pizza is building in Florida).

By turning down this case, the Supremes have said that the whole country is now subject to the decency standards from its most conservative, anti-sex, anti-nudity corners; that the local standard from that place will become the national standard.

"According to the court's decision," Alan Levy, a lawyer and member of the NCSF, wrote in an article for the New York Law Journal last year, "in order to prove that the statute is overbroad, one would have to present evidence regarding each of the 1.4 million web sites and determine whether each of the local communities in the Unied States would deem the material on that Web site as obscene. ... Considering that there are 94 federal districts in the country (temporarily ignoring that there are numerous communities within a district); if one multiplies the number 1,400,000 by 94, we reveal 131,600,000 possible applications of the CDA, and that only applies to adult sites that happen to have material related to [sadomasochism]."

Link (Thanks, Seth!)

The final Hugo Ballot is online, and my story I, Robot is a finalist for the best novelette! w00t!

Best Novelette
(207 ballots cast)
"The Calorie Man", Paolo Bacigalupi (F&SF October/November 2005)
"Two Hearts", Peter S. Beagle (F&SF October/November 2005)
"TelePresence", Michael A. Burstein (Analog July/August 2005)
"I, Robot”, Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix February 15, 2005)
"The King of Where-I-Go", Howard Waldrop (SCI FICTION December 7, 2005)

Link

What with Tom Cruise reportedly killing South Park's Scientology episode it's a good time to blog about "A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant," a 2003 musical depicting the kooky teachings of the Church of Scientology. You can even buy the soundtrack album!

A jubilant cast of children celebrate the controversial religion in uplifting pageantry and song. The actual teachings of The Church of Scientology are explained and dissected against the candy-colored backdrop of a traditional nativity play.

Avant-garde performance art and children's theater meet in one of the funniest and most bewildering holiday shows you will ever see: the OBIE Award-winning ironic masterpiece A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant.

(image caption: "Chigoziri Ikeme, Mario Quinonez, and Nikki Haddad as Thetans, Molly Matzke as Prince Xenu, Kristopher Barnett, and Kyle Kaplan as L. Ron")

Link (via Neatorama)

A Canadian pollster has slimed a law prof who posted his own analysis of their results, and the prof has fought back with more analysis of their rebuttal, making them look like even bigger jerks.

Michael Geist is the copyfightin' prof who posted an incendiary analysis of a poll conducted on behalf of the Canadian Record Industry Association. Michael found that a close examination of the poll revealed that downloaders buy more music than non-downloaders and many other points that invalidate the hysterical rhetoric of Big Music.

Pollara, who conducted the survey is a "single-issue pollster" who conducts polls on behalf of industry groups who need stats to back up their talking points. They responded to Michael's post with an 11-page memo that purported to rebut Michael, and went on to call him "impertinent and presumptuous" and that they hoped he wouldn't "distract us from the serious business at hand."

Michael's posted a great rebuttal of their memo:

* I noted the Pollara data found that P2P sources constituted only one-third of the music on people's computers.  Pollara argues that this only reflects the music on their hard drives, not their downloading activity. I frankly don't understand their complaint here.  They didn't ask about downloading activity, they asked about the source of music on their computers.  If they were to ask about all their music (online and offline), I suspect the number would be even lower as many users might well have more CDs that they have not digitized.

* Pollara seems to step out of the role of pollster in their memo by regularly offering what amount to legal opinions on music copying.  At page three of the response, they lump together P2P downloading, sharing with friends, and copying CDs that might not be their own.  Perhaps Pollara is unaware of the private copying user right that exists under current Canadian law that has generated more than $140 million for artists and the industry which specifically covers much of this copying.  This is not, as Pollara suggests, "unpaid-for-music" but rather copying that is well compensated. 

Michael's giving a talk at Toronto's Hart House on Mar 30, too. Link (Thanks, Michael and Derek!)

My latest issue of Lab Notes, research from UC Berkeley's College of Engineering, is now online. I hope you enjoy it! In this issue:

* Fracture mechanics of human bones

* How cells move

* Wi-Fi for auto safety

Link

Snip from a statement today by human rights advocacy group Reporters Without Borders:

[D]ocumentary filmmaker Hao Wu (...) was arrested in Beijing on 22 February after attending a meeting of members of a protestant church not recognised by the government as part of the preparation of his next documentary.

Hao, who lived for more than 10 years in the United States, is a contributor to Global Voices (...) "Hao's only crime has been to do his job as journalist in an independent manner," Reporters Without Borders said in its letter to [Chinese] President Hu [Jintao]. The organisation also called on US diplomats to raise Hao's case with the Chinese authorities, above all as part of the preparations for Hu's visit to the United States next month.

Hao was detained by the Beijing division of the State Security Bureau, which has officially confirmed his arrest. Two days after his arrest, police raided his home, seizing videotapes and editing equipment. He has not been charges and the authorities have not explained why they are holding him. Global Voices said they authorities could be trying to get him to provide information about China's underground protestant churches.

Using the nom de blog "Beijing Loafer", Hao maintained an online journal at Beijing or Bust, which was also the title of one of his documentary films. To foil China's state-run internet filters, Hao mirrored his blog at MSN Spaces. Under the alias Tian Yi, he also contributed in English to Global Voices. GV co-founder Ethan Zuckerman has launched a  support site for Hao. Snip:

Why didn’t we speak out about his detention earlier?
Hao’s family and friends in China have deflected questions about his detention for the past month, as authorities in contact with people close to Hao have urged them not to publicize the case. There had been hope that his detention was only for a short period of time, in which case publicity would not have been helpful.

Technical illustrator Kevin Hulsey has posted a fascinating explanation of how he used Adobe Illustrator to create an incredibly-detailed cutaway illustration of a cruise ship. All Hulsey had for reference was a paper blueprint. The illustration took him 720 hours to complete. From the HOWTO in the "Lessons & Tutorials" section of Hulsey's site:

All of the initial line art was done in vector based Adobe Illustrator. Most of the final color work.. was done in Adobe Photoshop. The techniques used in this demonstration tutorial are applicable to any 3 dimensional perspective drawing, regardless of scale or complexity.

This project presented many unique challenges. The actual ship was still in Germany being completed when I started the project. There was no photography or CAD reference to work from, only the paper blueprint... In order to have the brochures completed by the time the ship went into service, the final illustration had to be finished in under two months.

Link (via Drawn!)

Over at NPR's new "Mixed Signals" blog, host JJ Sutherland updates the story of Yodok Story director Jung Sungsan. Sungsan's musical recently opened in Seoul, and tells the tale of his imprisonment in a North Korean gulag. JJ explains:

Many people have posted or written in asking how they can give money [to Sungsan, who] put up a kidney as collateral for a loan to finance the show. (Here's the full story.)

NPR's Louisa Lim found the contact info. The person to email is Binna Choi (binna77 at hanmail.net). You can reach Jung Sungsan directly (mrjung1117 at yahoo.co.kr), but he speaks no English so any messages in English should be sent to Binna.

Me, I'm kind of skeptical about the kidney-hock part of this story, but Sungsan claims what he claims. What do I know about North Korean gulag musicals? Besides, stranger things have been pawned for showbiz, here or in Seoul. Link

One of my favorite artists, Amy Crehore, just finished two more "Monkey Love" paintings. (Click on thumbnails for enlargement) The one on the left is called The Two Timer, and the one on the right is called The Nibbler. See more of her lovely work at her site. Link

Steve Worth, curator of that bottomless cornucopia of stunning mid-century art and illustration, the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog, says: "I just posted a fun batch of scifi, horror and adventure related Mexican lobby cards from the late 50s and early 60s. I'm asking the readers to analyze the images and suggest visual techniques the artists use to try to entice moviegoers to buy a ticket. Fun stuff!"
Link

Andrew Tonkin says: Came across this quite by accident on Wikipedia - a 1987 (!) mash-up of Winnie the Pooh and Apocalpyse Now. It's brilliant, and lots of fun seeing which Hundred Acre Wood characters wind up on the PBR Street Gang. This seems right in line with the current "trailer remix" trend, even though it was made nearly 20 years ago!"
Link

Tinselman has an entry about Salvation Mountain, a desert hill near the Salton Sea in California that's being continuously decorated with brilliantly colored things by a man named Leonard Knight.

Rising up out of the desert near Niland California is Leonard Knight's whimsical vision of paradise: waterfalls, flowers, streets of gold, fields of rich green grass and towering pines. It virtually blankets a small hill and still, he continues to build.

Link

Reader comment: Bart says: "We've gone out to Salvation Mountain several times, each time showing more friends and family what Leonard has done. That entire southeast region of the Salton Sea has many interesting stops including Slab City (snowbirds and squatters community on a deserted military base), Bombay Beach (half underwater) and the numerous bird preserves (one dedicated by Sonny Bono). Quite an interesting place. I recently snapped a bunch of photos while out there.

A real estate developer in Taiwan decided to cash in on the coolness associated with the word "blog" by branding a condo project "BLOG." One problem, though: they neglected to register the "myblog.com" domain they stuck all over related ads.

Link to snapshot, and Link to related post on "Taipei Nights" blog, which is not a condo project at all. Neither is BoingBoing, despite the fact that it is my home. (Thanks, Peter and Premshree)

On March 20, 2003, the US-led invasion of Iraq began. I don't spend much time sifting through BoingBoing's archives, but just now I clicked on March, 2003 to look back at posts we made about the beginning of the war. Here's a fistful:

• Paul Boutin -- "Where is Raed" Iraq blog: hoax? real?
• Media giant ClearChannel sponsoring pro-war rallies
• Photos of San Francisco business district shutdown
• Is Iraq's Internet still functioning?
• US military leaflets dropped over Iraq
• War-blogging worth reading
• War demonstration pics, vids, audio fills blogs today
• Resignation letter from US diplomat who quit to protest war
• John Perry Barlow: "War in the Land of Peace"
• NYT on mobile tech and frontline war reporting
• WP's Howard Kurtz on warblogs
• French's Mustard: Eat me! I'm not French!
• SMS-psyops: CIA using cellphone spam in war on Iraq
• Newsweek's Steven Levy on warblogging
• American Military operation automatic name-generator
• Iraq-o-meter provides dashboard glimpse of war
• A Librarian slams the PATRIOT Act
• Snacks of Mass Destruction
• How to watch Iraqi Satellite TV on the web: The Saddam Show

Protests commemorating three years since the US-led invasion of Iraq are documented in photo streams at Flickr and other image-sharing sites. Relevant tags include antiwarprotest, march20, peacemarch, and of course, Iraq.

Shown here, Matthew Bradley's photos of a protest yesterday at the Pentagon. Link. (Thanks, Arnold Edmayer, spotted on DCist).

Below: found on Flickr under the "iraq" tag and shot by Daniel Ross -- evidence that Cartman was here.

Merlin Mann -- of the 43 Folders productivity blog -- gave an hilarious speech at BayCHI last week. Merlin is a very funny guy (see his laugh-aloud 5ives site for proof), and he's got a really good handle on personal productivity. MP3 Link (Thanks, Paul!)

Sunday was the first public London Copyfighters' Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop, a monthly fake-champagne brunch followed by impromptu speeches at Hyde Park's Speaker's Corner. Jose recorded the event and turned it into a podcast. Link

(see Flickr for the pics.)

The Cato Institute, an ultra-libertarian, right-wing think tank, has released a white paper damning the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act's ban on breaking the anti-copying systems used to cripple digital media, like DVDs and iTunes songs.

It's amazing to watch crippleware come under attack from all points of the compass -- Marxists and anarchists hate DRM. Libertarians hate DRM. Media studies people, economists, and musicians hate DRM.

But it takes sharp free-market types like the Cato characters to bust out elegant critiques like this one:

The movie industry has every right to segment the worldwide market for DVDs, but it should bear the costs of doing so. Those costs might include requiring no-resale contracts with distributors and monitoring sales in low-price countries to make sure DVDs were not being resold outside their intended market. Deciding whether those costs would be worthwhile might be difficult. The indus- try’s desire for market segmentation is not, however, a good reason to outlaw the sale of unofficial DVD players. The role of government is not to ensure that a private business’s pricing strategy succeeds, and consumers, who have not agreed to help enforce the DVD cartel’s segmentation scheme, are under no obligation to respect it.

I've heard for years that the Cato Institute was divided on DRM and copyright, so it's good to seem them taking a stand now. I think they've only scratched the surface, though. Of special interest to free-marketeers should be the way that DRM lets Apple hijack the music companies' copyright monopoly and turn it into a tax on Apple customers who switch from an iPod to a competing product. You can keep your MP3s if you switch from Windows to Mac, but if you switch from iPod to Creative, kiss your iTunes goodbye. Talk about anti-competitive!

And how about TiVo updating its devices to cripple them after their customers have already paid for them? Or Macrovision using its monopoly over DVD anti-analog tech to jack up its licensing prices to the movie industry? If you like free markets, DRM are a nightmare from top to bottom. Link (via Michael Geist)

Artist Coop wrote a glorious essay commemorating his nitro-fueled heroes of the 1970s, especially Evel Knievel.

It would be hard for someone born after 1980 to understand the hallowed place Evel held in the imagination of a kid back then. Forget fakes like Superman and Spider-Man, we had a real-life superhero to worship, a hero who dressed like a star-spangled Elvis, rode a Harley, smashed his bones like brittle Ortega taco shells, and who, in his ultimate act of insanity (and some would say of hubris) climbed into a red-white-and-blue rocket and shot himself over the gaping chasm of the Snake River Canyon. Like Icarus, he didn't complete his flight; missing the far side of the canyon, he plummeted to the canyon floor, narrowly avoiding drowning in the river below. I can still remember witnessing this event on ABC's Wide World Of Sports. just as I can instantly recall his painful slo-motion Caesar's Palace crash, the Zapruder film of my generation. As a kid, I had all the Evel Knievel toys, of course, and later tried to jump drainage ditches on my dirt bike in imitation of Knievel, earning a broken collarbone for my troubles.

Link

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) My daughter and I have been having a lot of fun solving the card puzzles in Perplex City (an alternate reality game that I previously wrote about here.)

The kind folks at Perplex City know I'm a fan, so they've given Boing Boing an exclusive link to a new card that will be available as a real card later this month. But you can solve it here and still earn a point. Also, Michael Smith, one of the creators of Perplex City, will be on G4's Attack of the Show tonight.)
Link

Espen Andersen -- a Norwegian net-head and a prof at the Norwegian School of Management -- has written an excellent article on why students should choose math at the high-school level, giving 12 reasons to pursue math at the secondary level. Here are my two favorites:

Choose math because you will lose less money. When hordes of idiots throw their money at pyramid schemes, it is partially because they don't know enough math. Specifically, if you know a little bit about statistics and interest calculations, you can look through economic lies and wishful thinking. With some knowledge of hard sciences you will probably feel better, too, because you will avoid spending your money and your hopes on alternative medicine, crystals, magnets and other swindles -- simply because you know they don't work...

Choose math because you will live in a world of constant change. New technology and new ways of doing things change daily life and work more and more. If you have learned math, you can learn how and why things work, and avoid scraping by through your career, supported by Post-It Notes and Help files -- scared to death of accidentally pressing the wrong key and running into something unfamiliar.

Link (Thanks, Espen!)

The Keyring Kite fits in your pocket and unfolds to something 80cm long, with 30m of string included! Link (via Gizmodo)

Update: Sasha found this on sale on a US web-store for only $3.50!

Longtime bOING bOING (the zine) and Happy Mutant Handbook contributor Shawn Wolfe had an art opening at Goods last week in Seattle, where he exhibited paintings as well as customized Adidas shoes.

Adicolor is this Adidas shoe that's being (re)introduced this week and there were similar solo artist shows in NYC, LA (and a couple other cities, not sure where) The blank white shoe comes with miniature Adidas spray paints and markers.

For these events the artist was given two pairs to customize. You'll see mine there. One pair reads "Trans" "Action" and the other pair reads "Movin'" "Units" (And new paintings on wood panels hanging in the background.)

Link

Sun has released the "code" for one of their microchips, the new OpenSPARC, under the free/open GPL license. This is awesome news -- now, if only Sun would stop shipping crippleware DRM that relies on trusted computing to shaft its users, I'd be totally, utterly thrilled.

Goals of the OpenSPARC Initiative

* To significantly increase participation in processor architecture development and application design by making cutting-edge hardware intellectual property freely available.
* To eliminate barriers to the next big build-out of the Internet.
* To improve collaboration and cooperation among hardware designers.
* To enable community members to build on proven technology at a markedly lower cost.
* To encourage innovation.
* To foster bringing bold new products to market.

Link (via Lessig)

In Make Vol 2, we ran instructions on how to make a marshmallow shooter gun. At this year's eTech conference, we brought a bunch of supplies so attendees could make their own.

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid took this awesome photo of a marshmallow gun in action, and it was picked up by Fark, where countless funmakers fired up their copies of photoshopped and tweaked the photo in hilarious ways. Link

I'll be on a radio show called Your Call today at 10am to talk about Make and DIY. I'll be joined by my friend Shoshana Berger, editor of ReadyMade magazine.

It's on 91.7 KALW in Berkeley San Francisco. You can listen to the KALW stream here, and an archive will be available after the show here.

On the next Your Call, we're whipping out the tin snips and firing up the soldering iron. The DIY movement is back in force and isn't just punk rockers and suburban housewives. Every week a new magazine pops up on knitting, whittling or home repair. Are people actually doing any of this? Or is being handy as much a fantasy as other magazine standy-bys, like having rock hard abs? We asked you to try two projects, and we tried our hand at them ourselves. Join us as we talk to the editors of Make Magazine and Berkeley's-own Ready Made and on the next Your Call with Rebecca Roberts and you.

Link

Over at Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman looks at a video clip that a man named Richard Sade says is a Bigfoot he caught on tape at the side of a road in Ely, Minnesota in January. One would think that a real Bigfoot from Minnesota wouldn't be so stumbly in the snow. From Loren's post:

I have no background or personal information on Richard Sade. Who is he? What was he doing on the road at that hour? Is this a hoax? Does the hair seem rather long on this Sasquatch? Is it a good video? What was the weather like at 4:30 am near Ely, Minnesota on that January day? Have there been other recent sightings from around there? If Bigfoot exists, won’t we expect such new footage to appear? What is actually seen occurring in this video? Is it a human in a suit or an authentic unknown hairy hominoid?

Link

Egglings are ceramic eggs with seeds. They're $8.95 each and are available seeded with lobelia, phlox, thyme, mint, and petunia (seen here). From the ELSEWARES product description:

These ceramic EGGLINGS look and feel just like real eggs. Just crack one open, add water, and you’ve created a springtime oasis for your desk or window (even if it's winter outside). Each comes with a terra cotta tray and seed pack. Growing is EASY — plants thrive for months in their shell and can be replanted in soil. Sold individually.

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

In February, we brought you the sad news that Octavia Butler, the genius science fiction writer, had died unexpectedly.

Now a charitable scholarship has been founded her name. The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund will "will enable writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops, where Octavia got her start." These are the science fiction writers' workshops in Seattle and East Lansing that serve as a kind of "boot camp for science fiction writers," graduating talented writers who often go on to fame in the field and outside of it (I am on the Board of Directors of the charity that oversees Clarion East).

The charity is seeking tax-deductible donations to raise a full endowment of $100,000.

Octavia E. Butler (1947 - 2006) was a brilliant African American writer who broke barriers with her courageous and profoundly truthful books and stories. Winner of many awards including a MacArthur Fellowship, and speculative fiction's highest honors, the Hugo and the Nebula, Octavia was greatly loved during her lifetime and will be greatly missed.

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

Supporters of South Park who've launched a web petition and protest-letter campaign say:

Comedy Central suddenly switched out episodes of South Park -- replacing the previously-scheduled "Trapped in the Closet" without any explanation. According to a friend of mine (secretary for a certain company that owns Comedy Central), Tom Cruise has blackmailed the company into not showing the episode, which portrays him as a homosexual and his religion (Scientology) as a cult.

Update, 522pm PT: Here's a new url for the protest site: chefgate.info.

The French Parliament is considering a law that would force music-lockware companies like Apple and Microsoft to license their anti-copying software to other companies, so that customers who bought crippled music could play it on other vendors' players.

This is a good step, but for me, it leaves the big question hanging: will Apple and Microsoft have to license their players to free and open source software authors? The problem is that anti-copying software always comes with a licensing condition that requires implementors to design their players so that users can't modify them. It's like requiring everyone who licenses your internal combustion engine design to weld the hood shut.

Free and open source software (FOSS) -- collectively authored programs like GNU/Linux, Firefox, Sendmail, Apache and VLC -- has proven itself to be an important new way of producing valuable goods and services. From Amazon to Google, from the US military to the Mac OS, everyone who uses computers relies on FOSS to keep them running. What's more, FOSS upsets the dominance of incumbents in the marketplace, letting new entrepreneurs, non-profits, individuals and educational institutions compete with entrenched giants.

But the cornerstone of FOSS is that it should be modifiable by its users. Even though most of us will never write a line of code (no more than most of us will service our car-engines), the ability for all users to choose to understand, modify, improve upon and distribute the software they use is fundamental to FOSS.

Now, given that all anti-copying software requires that users can't modify it -- because you could change the "don't copy this" routine to a "allow this to be copied" routine -- and given that FOSS requires user-modifiability, how will the French Parliament resolve it?

An analogy: Apple iTunes is like a blacksmith who puts a toll-box at the head of a major road. Unless your horse is shod with his shoes, you may not pass. The French Parliament might require Apple to let horses wearing Microsoft shoes to use its road, and that's great -- if you're on horseback.

But if you're in a car, you're screwed. FOSS is an entirely different industrial production system that Apple and Microsoft crippleware can't accommodate -- will the French Parliament outlaw it because of that? Do the blacksmiths get full employment for life, even if it strangles the automobile in its cradle?

The French proposal would let music fans download music to their iPods from services other than iTunes or to rival players from the French iTunes store.

It could force Apple into choosing between making its service compatible with rival players or shutting down its online store in France.

Apple has so far declined to comment on the bill, which would also affect how its rivals run their music services.

Link (Thanks, Ben!)

Click MORE... below for tons of juicy commentary on this fight -- who's screwing whom and how.

The first chapter in a subscription-based ebook from Diane Duane, a popular author of young adult fantasies, is online.

Back in February, I posted about Diane Duane's vow to write the last volume in her Feline Wizards trilogy as a reader-supported open ebook. She's soliciting donations from readers, who get early access to her chapters as she posts them and a hardcopy of the book from Lulu.com once it's done.

Diane posted her first chapter for her subscribers last week and has just opened it to the general public -- now it's time to sign up to subscribe to chapter two!

Four-thirty on a Sunday morning is about the closest the City that Never Sleeps ever gets to turning its name untrue. Midtown Manhattan, in particular, is quieter then than at almost any other time except when it’s snowed. But there was little chance of that happening today. It was the third of June, and though New York’s wizards can do unusual things with their weather when the need arises, right now the busiest group of them had far more important business on their minds.

The light at the corner of Eighth Avenue and West Thirty-first Street changed from red to green, without any other visible result: no cars were waiting to move on either side of the intersection. In fact, nothing at all could be seen between Eighth and the River but various parked cars – not a single pedestrian, not even a stray dog. The only thing moving down that way, down at the far end of Thirty-first, was the Hudson River – seeming to slide slowly with the inward tide from the Great South Bay just now swinging, and the surface of the water gone the color and texture of tarnished beaten pewter in the pre-dawn twilight.

Sitting at the corner of Eighth and Thirty-first, watching the river, watching the paling sky, was a small black cat. To human observers, city cats often look furtive or nervous: but this one sat there like she owned the street. This morning, she did. The most senior worldgating technician on the East Coast of North America let out a long breath and turned her attention away from the placid slow roll of the river, looking uptown along Eighth.

Link (Thanks, Diane!)

I've just posted the final installment of the podcast of my story, "Nimby and the D-Hoppers," originally published in Asimov's, reprinted in a Year's Best anthology, and translated into French, Russian, Chinese and Hebrew.

Nimby and the D-Hoppers is an alternate future of deep green anti-technocracy, and the collission with dimension hoppers from more technocratic realities. I read the story in three installments and they're all online now. Next up, the three-story "Bugouts" trilogy, starting with Shadow of the Mothaship.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Podcast feed

This Guardian article, written by a former goth, makes the case that goths disproportionately grow up to be high-earning professionals -- and includes a 10-point quiz to help you figure out if your boss is a closet/reformed goth.

Visitors to the Archangel dental surgery in west London are confronted by a goth dentist, Didier Goalard, who says: "I've got goth friends who are doing quite well. There's a dentist in Lyon, a couple of solicitors, a Church of England priest."

"Goths are like masons," I have been told. "They're everywhere." But rather than blaming some sinister conspiracy, let us look at the reasons people become goths in the first place. According to Choque Hosein, formerly of goth band Salvation but now running a record label, "Goths tend to be the weirdo intellectual kids who have started to view the world differently." Cathi Unsworth is now a successful author, but she remembers that her own dark gothic past gave her an outlet for alienation. "I loved the bands, especially Siouxsie and the Banshees, but it wasn't a pose - I felt authentically depressed," she says. Unsworth was a teenager in Great Yarmouth, where she felt that "people didn't like me. It got to a point where I wanted to stop fighting against being different and embrace it."

Link

Copyfightin' humanities prof Siva Vaidhyanathan has just published a paper in which defines a new discipline that encompasses the copyfight. "Critical Information Studies" is Siva's name for the interdisciplinary field that the copyfight crowd are creating, a field with some comp sci, some law, some philosophy, some economics, some poli sci, some public diplomacy, some critical theory, and so on. Siva proposes that "Critical Information Studies" will cover:

* the abilities and liberties to use, revise, criticize, and manipulate cultural texts, images, ideas, and information;

* the rights and abilities of users (or consumers or citizens) to alter the means and techniques through which cultural texts and information are rendered, displayed, and distributed;

* the relationship among information control, property rights, technologies, and social norms; and

* the cultural, political, social, and economic ramifications of global flows of culture and information.

Link (Thanks, Siva!)

Superdickery is a website devoted to collecting evidence that superheros underwear perverts (mostly Superman) are giant bastards -- panels, covers and sequences that document the supers' bad behavior. Link (Thanks, Grayson!)

Update: Turns out this is a rerun of a post from last March that Mark made -- but given the whole underwear pervert thing, I'm gonna let the dupe stay. (Thanks, Ryan!)

The other day, my Institute for the Future colleague Paul Saffo showed me a stunning specimen he had acquired for his technological cabinet of curiosities. Manufactured in 1975, the Faber-Castell TR3 features a calculator on one side and a sliderule on the other. Paul photographed the TR3 and put it in historical context on his blog. From the post:

At first blush, the TR3 looks like the proverbial missing link, still dripping wet as it crawls out of the analog ocean onto the digital shore. And certainly proof, if any was needed, that technologies evolve. But the story is not quite so simple. For starters, the slide rule companies took calculators seriously, but only as slide rule substitutes. They assumed that calculators would slowly replace slide rules in the niches where slide rules were sold -- pleces like college bookstores. The slide rule manufacturers thus never guessed that calculators would become a must-have item for ordinary folk who would flock to purchase them in department stores, book stores, drug stores and even supermarkets. This meant that instead of a gradual shift that the slide rule makers could easily manage, the change was exponential and far beyond what they could possibly respond to.

But still they tried, and the TR3 was part of the effort... In the end, the TR3's calculator was far behind the competition, and the slide rule was superfluous as slip-stick jocks defected in favor of TIs, Commodores and HPs.

Link

Will Wright is the guest editor of the latest issue (14.04) of Wired, and has a great essay on the future of games, called Dream Machines.

(Shown here: A planet from Will Wright's forthcoming game, Spore.)

In an era of structured education and standardized testing, this generational difference might not yet be evident. But the gamers' mindset - the fact that they are learning in a totally new way - means they'll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption. This is the true impact videogames will have on our culture.

Society, however, notices only the negative. Most people on the far side of the generational divide - elders - look at games and see a list of ills (they're violent, addictive, childish, worthless). Some of these labels may be deserved. But the positive aspects of gaming - creativity, community, self-esteem, problem-solving - are somehow less visible to nongamers.

I think part of this stems from the fact that watching someone play a game is a different experience than actually holding the controller and playing it yourself. Vastly different. Imagine that all you knew about movies was gleaned through observing the audience in a theater - but that you had never watched a film. You would conclude that movies induce lethargy and junk-food binges. That may be true, but you're missing the big picture.

Link

Earlier today, I posted Esther Dyson's horrific flickr snapshot of an oven-roasted alligator in a light teriyaki glaze, spotted at the Explorer's Club dinner. Now, George Dyson offers BoingBoing a meat-free alternative with which to cleanse your palate. Above, oven roasted carbogators, ready to be eaten. "It's a family tradition to bring them to life during the holidays," explains George. Here, another specimen with Lauren Dyson. She's George's daughter, and founder of People For the Ethical Treatment of Alligators. OK not really.

The Online Computer Library Center has published its list of the top 1000 books held by its library-members -- The Bible, the Census, Mother Goose, the Divine Comedy and the Odyssey top the chart. Link (via Smart Patrol)

From a 1951 issue of Mechanix Illustrated:

“Tired Of TV? A certain New York executive was, so he took his 19 in. receiver, remounted the front on a swivel and now he and his friends find the set much more stimulating.”

Link (via MAKE: Blog)

Illustrator Saxton Moore ran a drawing contest on his blog inviting anyone to interpret their favorite character from Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. All of the posted entries are amazing, but here is the winner, artist Spacesick's illustration of Russell Cosby.
Link (via Drawn!)

Apparently this not a mouse or rat, but a cat. According CBS4, the kitten, born in Tunisia, was the only mutant with rodent-like looks in the litter of five. Check out the video for more rat-cat cuteness.
Link

UPDATE: Thanks to the readers who suggest that this animal is most probably a kangaroo rat and that the cat story is a hoax.

Hilarious blog maintained by Chaucer, who answers readers' questions.

My dog is a retriever, but he won't chase a ball. Every time I throw a toy across the room, he climbs in my lap and licks my face. I know he needs exercise--what do I do?

Pinned To The Floor

Ma Cher Pinnede to The Floore,

By my feithe, firste y oght to praise yow for yowre carefulle husbandrie and governance of yowre hounde. Ther arn sundrie folke who fede ther houndes with rosted flessh, or milk and wastel-breed and reken litel of the helthe of the dogges in question. Yowre care maken myne eyes to watre with teres, so like it is unto my love for litel Lowys my sone.

Link (thanks, Ruth and Coop!)

Over at the excellent Virtual China blog, my Institute for the Future colleague Lyn Jeffery posts about a massive Chinese BBS forum where participants are collaboratively writing a story called "My Seven Years in World of Gangsters." So far, there are more than 21,000 comments that make up the story. It's being translated at EastSouthWestNorth. From Lyn's post:

The post didn't start out as a collective project, or necessarily even as fiction at all. But somewhere along the line other commentators jumped in to continue or augment the story line. The end of the ESWN translation: "The translator does not know how long the story goes on because he has not made it past even a fraction of the comments..."

Link

In The Guardian, my favorite living novelist and culture critic JG Ballard explores modern architecture. His point-of-entry is the massive blockhouse, Hitler's fortifications on the French coast. From the article (photo by Sergio Gaudenti):

Death was what the Atlantic wall and Siegfried line were all about. Whenever I came across these grim fortifications along France's Channel coast and German border, I realised I was exploring a set of concrete tombs whose dark ghosts haunted the brutalist architecture so popular in Britain in the 1950s. Out of favour now, modernism survives in every high-rise sink estate of the time, in the Barbican development and the Hayward Gallery in London, in new towns such as Cumbernauld and the ziggurat residential blocks at the University of East Anglia.

But modernism of the heroic period, from 1920 to 1939, is dead, and it died first in the blockhouses of Utah beach and the Siegfried line. Yet in its heyday between the wars, modernism was a vast utopian project, and perhaps the last utopian project we will ever see, now that we are well aware that all utopias have their dark side.

Link

Broken Frontier published a two part interview with Michael Dooley, who along with Steven Heller, co-edited the excellent Education Of A Comics Artist.

Michael says: "In it, I talk about comics folks like Kurtzman and Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton, Robert Williams, and Dan O’Neil, and so on, but I also drop the names of several other Boing-Boing favorites like Emmett Grogan and Abbie Hoffman, Michael O’Donoghue and Lenny Bruce, Colin Berry, and others. I even spend some quality time discussing how Paul Krassner (whose '... Comics Artist' essay includes the Disneyland Orgy story) was one of my primary influences, which I think ties nicely into your recent post about him.

"And if I haven’t mentioned it before, there’s a page on my publisher’s site that has free downloadable information (in PDF format) that we couldn’t fit into the book, such as teacher syllabi and an extensive online resources list."

Link to part 1 Link to part 2

Over at my favorite new blog, the Athanasius Kircher Society, there's a link to a 1940 "disturbing" Soviet film about bringing dead dogs back to life.
Link

Update: Ken Freedman of the fabulous WFMU blog wrote a terrific magazine-length article about this amazing film. Well worth reading. Link

Here's the latest news about performance artist Rachel Bevilacqua (AKA Rev. Magdalen), a SubGenius reverend who lost custody of her 10-year-son after a pink judge saw photos of a SubGenius convention she participated in. (Disclosure: I have been a card-carrying SubGenius reverend for 22 years and take the word of JR "Bob" Dobbs to be the literal truth. I have also contributed to Rachel's legal fund.)

Over at News.com, Declan McCullagh reports that the Federal Trade Commission has issued a subpoena to Google for all contents of a user's Gmail account, including deleted e-mails. The demand is not related to the DoJ's subpoena for search terms search database contents, but instead relates to a financial scam case.

In November 2003, the Federal Trade Commission sued AmeriDebt and founder Andris Pukke on charges that the company deceived customers about credit counseling and failed to use customers' money to actually pay their creditors.

AmeriDebt settled, but the courts are still trying to uncover the location of Pukke's apparently sizeable assets. (A Washington Post article in September said the IRS is seeking $300 million from Pukke. His attorney at the venerable firm of Jones Day charges a hefty $575 an hour.)

Pukke's missing money has been linked to a Belize developer called Dolphin Development, which counts a fellow named Peter Baker as a shareholder. The court-appointed receiver in the FTC case, Robb Evans & Associates (click here for PDF), sent a subpoena to Google on Nov. 1 asking for the complete contents of Baker's Gmail account.

Link (Thanks, David Alexander McDonald)

Jason Schultz says,

Here's a PDF copy of the actual order in the Department of Justice subpoena to Google for porn search results and queries (Gonzales v. Google). It's not every day that you see the phrases "teabagging" and "pearlnecklace" footnoted in a legal opinion -- see page 8, footnote 3. Also page 13, footnote 6 is highly amusing. Anyway, the bottom line is that Google has to turn over 50,000 random URLs from its index but no query strings, so most of the privacy concerns are now moot.

Link to PDF (Thanks, Jason Schultz!), and here's a related NYT report on the ruling by Katie Hafner. Attorney Daniel Solove has an analysis post on his blog, here.

Previously on BoingBoing:
DoJ search requests: Google said no; Yahoo, AOL, MSN yes.

The government of Pakistan is attempting to block access within the country to all websites that host caricatures of the prophet Muhammad -- and to shut down blogs authored inside Pakistan that post such material. On her blog, Michelle Malkin has posted a roundup of links related to the story.

The Long Goodbye
Jasmina Tesanovic
Belgrade, March 17, 2006

Slobo's body was not accepted in the Museum of the Revolution, the director said. There was no room there since there are other two current exhibits.

So with a little help from the government, Milosevic party members broke into the Museum of History of Yugoslavia and exposed his coffin. The director of the museum sent out a furious public letter of protest, but to no avail. His fans were already gathering and queuing to pay the last respect to their idol.

Some Ratko Mladic photos were also there next to Milosevic. Old phrases I almost forgot from bad old Milosevic days; such as Slobo my love, my hero, you saved us... his fans were always sentimental and hysterical, but never very modern in rhetoric.

War invalids from the nineties, the Milosevic wars, are protesting at the same time in front of the governmental building. Everybody is hoping those two crowds don’t meet.

A print ad for women's designer handbags that hurl forth in a projectile stream of vomit from the model's throat. Protein spills are HOT. Link. Ad is in Chinese, I believe this may be for a Taiwanese retailer. (Thanks, Mike Lietz)

Brady sez, "Northeastern University in Boston is having its Free Culture Movement kick off event this Thursday. There will be a panel discussion with panelists Lawrence Lessig, Derek Slater from the EFF and Nelson Pavlosky, founder of FreeCulture.org." Link (Thanks, Brady!)

This is an MP3 of a scan of the the NYC FM band the night that John Lennon died, courtesy of the masters of audio oddities, WFMU. Link (Thanks, Nemo!)

Gaylon Murphy and Steve Zingali of Orange County, CA, designed and build 3-foot remote control flying saucers and buzz them around town, sometimes scaring the locals into calling the cops.

Nick Peterson was stunned when he saw one of the disks fly past his girlfriend's upstairs apartment.

"I thought, that can't be a UFO, can it?" he said. "It's pretty weird."

The disks are made of foam and weigh about a pound. Each runs on a 7.4-volt lithium battery and has a propeller.

On weekends, Murphy flies the disks in Aliso Viejo, Newport Beach, Mission Viejo and Laguna Niguel.

He and Zingali, a facilities engineer and Mission Viejo resident, have sold four of the gizmos at $1,000 each and concede that their streaking light show is part hobby, part promotion.

Link

Here's William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") converted into the programming language ActionScript:

// Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
// by William Shakespeare
// ported to ActionScript 2.0 by Satori Canton
//
// Original poem can be viewed at:
// http://plagiarist.com/poetry/915/

var summer:Object = {};
var thee:Object = {};

summer.name = "Summer Day";
thee.name = "Thee";

summer.lovelyness = 9;
thee.lovelyness = 10;

summer.temperature = 98;
thee.temperature = 98.6;

summer.lease = new Date(2006, 7, 31).getTime() - new Date(2006, 5, 1).getTime();
thee.lease = new Date(2042, 6, 12).getTime() - new Date(1970, 8, 25).getTime();

summer.complexion = 0xFFCC33;
thee.complexion = 0xFFCCCC;

Link (via Digg)

In this video, gamers sadistically torture an action-hero in a game, until they get an hilarious, surprisign comeuppance (which I won't say anymore about, for fear of spoiling things for you). Link (warning, embedded WMV crashed my Firefox) (Thanks, Renzo!)

Update: Gudlyf sends in a link to a YouTube Mirror of the video.

A most disturbing stage video in which Celine Dione impersonates mid-'80s Madonna, most badly. Link to Paper Mag blog post with clip. (thanks Susannah Breslin)

sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ! is a program that takes your voice and finds the closest matches to the sounds you're making in a database of snippets from music videos, then plays them back. The creator describes this as "vocally describing" the sounds you'd like to hear to a computer, which can then find close matches and play them back. There's a video-component, too, as the video bits that accompany the samples from the music videos the computer selects are played back for you. The author has promised to release his code under the GPL free software license as soon as he can "find time to clean up that mess / comment the code / document it and find a way to make it easily installable." In the meantime, the videos of the code running are highly amusing and inspiring:

What would it mean if a mind music machine existed which would render it unnecessary to write, play or sequence music by allowing one to just think music to make it happen. What would it mean if such a machine would construct imagined music out of samples of ones digital music library, or even out of the vast amount of music found on the internet? Of course it would be used - for no other reason than its existence.

It would have discursive power just like P2P has discursive power. The very fewest P2P users share data because they feel that information wants to be free. They share just because they can. But that also causes a notion to be formed on what unlimited copyability and digitality actually means. A clear case of massage.

As there is no appropriate technology to read minds to transform thoughts into music the human voice supercedes the thoughts as it is the original instrument - the most direct way to express imagined music.

Even if s?H! in the existing form is far from being able to really recognize the desired music expressed by a vocal description it is working well enough to let, with some phantasy and my suggestion, the hypothetical mind music machine become vivid.

Link (Thanks, Tom!)

Esther Dyson's amazing food snapshot from the recent VIP "Explorer's Club" dinner may not answer that question, but it does show you what oven-roasted alligator looks like. Yikes! Or, as Esther might type in her disemvoweled flickr notes, yks! If I'd been there, I would have opted to nosh on the orchids instead. Of course, they're right next to the hissing cockroach skewers...

Update: Esther is always ahead of her time. "How Do You Properly Cook an Alligator?" is the subject of a front-page story in today's Wall Street Journal by Jane Zhang. Link (paid subscribers only), and here's an excerpt:

Award-winning author Will Shetterly has created a new comic-blog devoted to the parodical adventures of Supervman, the original costumed underwear-pervert. I wrote this weekend about Marvel recruiting science museums to give credence to its bid (with DC comics) to hijack the word "super-hero" from the public domain and turn it into property. Link (Thanks, Will!)

Britain is facing a WalMart-style glut of cheap consumer goods, but without the monster homes characteristic of the American suburbs. This Guardian article goes into fascinating detail about the lives of Britons who find themselves snapping up £3 t-shirts and having nowhere to put them in their teeny British homes. I live in one such home and virtually everything I own is in storage -- and I have overflow storage lockers in Toronto and San Francisco to boot.

The article talks about what this is doing to charity shops -- how cheap does a used tee have to be to undersell a £3 new one? -- and even the used-clothing market in Africa. Not to mention the environmental consequences, the labor conditions in the countries whence these cheap goods come, and so on.

I often feel like I'm drowning in plenty. Everywhere I go, there are discounts if I buy more -- it seems like everything in Britain is offered on a "3 for 2" basis -- and everything just keeps getting cheaper (the article notes that, adjusted for power, the prices of computers have dropped by 93 percent in the past decade). At the same time, the cost of storing this stuff just keeps going up and up and up -- my rents have been skyrocketing for a decade, no matter what city I land up in.

I'm stuck at home this morning waiting for delivery of a replacement dishwasher and washing machine: both appliances up and died in late February. I looked into getting them fixed, but between the cost of parts and the cost of labor (another thing that's not cheap in Britain), it was cheaper, much cheaper, to replace them. The company's even taking the old ones away for £10 each, a bargain way to get them out of my sight and off my conscience.

I love getting stuff delivered digitally. If I can download a movie on my hard-drive instead of a DVD, it's one thing less to try to cram onto the living-room's overflowing shelves. Now all I need is a bigger hard-drive.

You could see all this hoarding as a sign of a growing attachment to possessions. But Coombs sees it as the opposite. "What was in the living room this year will be in the bedroom next year and in the junk room the year after," he says. Kasriel says the chance to sell to eBay has boosted much we buy. "You can tell yourself you have a sensible financial route out."

Unashamedly "disposable" cheap goods, you could argue, are turning us into traders rather than curators of our possessions. It is another victory for capitalism: we have internalised the unsentimental stock control of the modern retailer. Juliet Schor, an American economist and leading critic of the bargain boom, thinks this new form of ownership is less pleasurable than the old one. "The psychologically satisfying process of personalisation that occurs when products are acquired and retained, is truncated," she writes in a recent essay. "Attachment is briefer and there is the constant pain of divestiture [getting rid of things]." What individual possessions represent to us is, she says, "more externally driven" - by marketing and advertising - and "less under the control of the individual consumer".

Shoppers at Primark in Oxford are cheerier about all this. "I was brought up with thrift," says an elderly man with a cravat and a perfect white moustache. "Brought up not to buy anything unless the old thing was worn out. But three T-shirts for a fiver ..." He holds them up: "They look very good." His eyes sparkle: "This is incredible."

Link (via O'Reilly Radar)

Crazy, confused "lawyers" from the San Diego firm of Branfman and Associates claiming to represent the creators of the "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" movies have sent a threatening letter to Neil Gaiman, claiming that he linked to their site (he didn't) and that doing so is illegal (it isn't).

Neil is doing what everyone should do when they get dumb lawyer-letters: posting the letter so that everyone can laugh at these lawyers and reduce the chances that anyone will be scared off by one of their letters and so that anyone who thinks of hiring these lawyers can see how clueless and dopey they are.

We have noted that the link from your website to the our (sic) client's website fot ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES has not been authorized by Four Square and is therefore in violation of certain trademark, copyright and unfair competition laws. In particular, your actions violate the Lanham Act (15 USC 1051 et. seq.) and the Copyright Act (17 USC 101 et. seq.).

Link (Thanks, Neil!)