Stephen Colbert's routine at last night's White House Press Corps dinner sounds like one of those perfect moments of comedy and commentary -- someone, find me a transcript!

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, "and reality has a well-known liberal bias."

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. "This administration is soaring, not sinking," he said. "They are re-arranging the deck chairs--on the Hindenburg."

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the "Rocky" movies, always getting punched in the face--"and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world."

Link (Thanks, Stefan!)

Update: Thanks to Butter71 for links to the transcript and video! w00t!

Update 2: Here's a high-quality torrent of the video.

Update 3: Youtube mirror (Thanks, Jon!)

Update 4: Alternative Quicktime link, Quicktime of Colbert's "audition reel" (Thanks, Krup!)

Cinema owners are freaking out over plummeting attendance. For me, going to the movies has stopped being nearly as much fun because of the crummy movies, the door-searches, the camera-confiscations, the nonstop advertising, security guards scanning the audience with infrared goggles, and especially the dumb anti-piracy nag-PSAs (hint to cinema industry: if I'm spending £13 to get into the cinema, I'm not a pirate, I'm a customer).

They propose to fix this by jamming cell-phones and creating nicer auditoriums. This seems like a pretty ineffectual band-aid to me. Better movies, fewer ads, eliminating invasive searches, infrared scanning, and no insulting pre-film notices would go a lot further to luring me back into the dark.

The mantra at ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood is ``ease, comfort and control.'' Besides reserved seating, the 15-screen complex has online ticketing and 21-Plus Screenings, where, if you're 21, you can bring alcohol into the theater.

``People complain about sticky floors, dirty bathrooms and zombie staff,'' said the ArcLight's Robert Brugeman. ``To get their attention, you have to offer a premium product.''

Theater owners are also taking aim at cell-phone users. NATO has made solving the cell-phone problem a ``high priority'' and is looking into jamming cell-phone signals.

Link (via Digg)

Update: Brian sez:

One particularly good theatre that has had no trouble luring me back again and again has been the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin - and why other theatre owners worldwide haven't hit upon it's recipe for success, I don't know.

The Drafthouse, first of all, bans children except for special events. Each seat comes with a table area where you have a full restaraunt selection (including beer & wine) and you can order before or during the movie using order cards. The cost is roughly the same as you'd get at a diner, and you can get a burger and fries with drink for the same price you'd pay for a popcorn, twizzler & drink at othe theatres.

And that's just for the "regular" movies that anyone else shows. They also show strange, odd indie films, host film festivals (right now, QT fest for Quentin Tarantino Fest is being held where Tarantino chooses his favorite movies) they have silent movies with live accompanyment, they have Videoke (Karaoke but with acting!) and they have two big shows: The Sinus Show (a live performance similar to but for trademark purposes completely different from Mystery Science Theatre 3000) and Foleyvision, where the sound to the movie is turned off and all voice acting, sound effects, and music are performed live in the theatre.

In short, it's a movie theatre that has all but seen the studios as inconsequential to the product it sells - which is entertainment. They get their biggest sellers - and biggest crowds - running old 80s films and having three local live actors in the studio heckling them. If they needed to, they could still run the place on public domain footage.

Update 2: Peter sez, "The St. Louis Cinema company owns three theaters in the area, featuring a cry-baby matinée. A designated time and day when children are allowed.

Their third theater, the Moolah, is an old Moolah/Shriners temple that was converted into a cinema/bowling alley (in the basement, decorated with full 50's bowling decor). In the theater are a few regular cinema seats, lining the walls and filling the balcony seating. The main seating area, however, is filled with soft leather couches and love-seats, equipped with coffee tables... all this in a historic moolah temple with original decor. ie: an inlayed decorative dome in the ceiling with soft, color-changing lights."

"A full bar is on premises and drink specials are often fit with certain films. (like $2 white russians when they re-screened the Big Lebowski)"

Update 3: Nim sez, "Oregon's McMenamin brothers have, over the years, bought up old hotels, schools, and even an old insane asylum and converted them into excellent combinations of restaurants, breweries, hotels, and movie theaters. All their locations feature McMenamins beer, often brewed on site."

The House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations has written a letter to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, blasting the museum for inking a secret deal with Showtime to make the network the sole commercial user of Smithsonian footage in documentary films:

The Subcommittee requests the Board of Regents to immediately review this contract to determine whether it violates the spirit if not the letter of the Smithsonian Trust and to consider changes to the contract which would fully guarantee that its terms are limited to a narrow set of programs and not a bar to other legitimate commercial filmmakers who we believe have the right to reasonable access to the collections and staff. The Subcommittee requests that this matter be brought to the attention of the Board of Regents at its May 2006 meeting and that a response be provided to the Committee regarding these concerns within 90 days.

In addition to our concern about this particular contract, we would be concerned about any future agreements that are negotiated in secret, without Committee consultation, which commercialize Smithsonian resources or which appear to essentially sell access to Smithsonian resources. While the Committee recognizes that budget shortfalls, in particular the need for funds to repair and maintain an aging infrastructure, require the Smithsonian to be aggressive and imaginative in its fund raising, these actions are often controversial and raise the risk of damaging both Congressional and public support for the Institution.

Link, Link to WashPo article mentioned in letter (Thanks, Carl!)

UsersManualGuide.com links to hundreds of PDF manuals for consumer electronics from air conditioners to VCRs -- great for lost manuals and garage-sale scores. Link (via Gizmodo)

Milk from lactating wallabies is effective in combatting antibiotic-resistant bacteria:

A newborn wallaby lacks a developed immune system and relies on compounds in its mother's milk to protect it against diseases.

Ben Cocks, of the Victoria Department of Primary Industries, in Melbourne, said: "A huge amount of development happens in the pouch, and during that time they just rely on milk." The molecule, called AGG01, also kills other types of bacteria and fungus.

Link (via Futurismic)

A simple mod: trim the base of a standard Pez dispenser and it'll fit in the "hot shoe" clip on top of your high-end camera -- great for kids photographers or anyone who wants a sugar-storage unit integrated with her Nikon. Link (via Make Blog)

The Canadian Music Creators Coalition -- major artists who are demanding that record labsls stop suing their fans and locking them down with DRM-crippled music -- are holding a public event at Toronto's Horseshoe tavern on May 1:

Where: The Horseshoe Tavern,
370 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario
When: Monday, May 1, 2006. 10:30 am – 12 noon
To RSVP, or receive further information about the event, please contact press@musiccreators.ca.

Link (Thanks, Thomas!)

Update: Keith from CMCC sez, "Unfortunately, the event Monday is a press conference and not a public forum, concert or anything of the like. We appreciate everyone's support, but we'd like to keep tomorrow's press conference to accredited media only (makes it easier for us to organize). We'll hopefully have some sort of public event(s) when the initial push to meet with the Ministers is over."

The Computer History Museum has published a collection of 261 sales brochures for extinct computers, from the Univac to the Apple /// and lots of assorted Wangs, Zilogs, Bendixes and others. These are lovely and fascinating. Link (Thanks, Xavier!)

This YouTube video is the trailer for a documentary called "Voices from the New American Schoolhouse," which chronicles the radical education practiced at the Fairhaven School in Upper Marlboro, MD. Fairhaven appears to be a classical free-school, in which kids self-govern, design their own curriculum, and tutor their peers. I went to publicly funded schools like this from grade four to graduation, and they were the most important factor in the way I conduct my own adult life. Attending schools like this teaches many kids to run their own lives, blazing their own trail, inventing their own careers, and trying anything. Useful skills in a world where any job that can be described is likely to be outsourced.

The documentary is narrated principally by the school's bright, well-spoken students, who are eloquent and passionate advocates for open education. Link (Thanks, Danny!)

Update: Mike adds, You can buy the full length version of 'Voices from the New American Schoolhouse' at the Fairhaven website."

Sony musicians including Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers are suing the record label for screwing them out of their royalties on sales of music on iTunes and other digital music services.

At issue is whether the music sold through these services is a "license" or a "sale." Sony pays less to its artists for sales than for licensing (Sony artists reportedly earn $0.045 for each $0.99 song sold on iTunes). Naturally, Sony claims that the songs sold on iTunes are sales and not licensing deals.

This is where it gets interesting. As Brad Templeton and others have pointed out, Sony and others have long maintained that what you get when you buy an iTune is a license, not ownership of a product. That license prohibits you from doing all kinds of otherwise lawful things, like selling your music to a used-record store, loaning it to a friend, or playing it on someone else's program.

But if Sony says that it's selling products (and therefore only liable for 4.5 cents in royalties to its artists) and not licenses, then how can it bind us, its customers, to licensing terms?

According to the suit, the record company is treating digital downloads like traditional record sales, rather than licensed music, triggering a different royalty deal.

Under that old rubrik, the record company deducts fees for the kind of extra costs they used to incur when records were pressed on vinyl, including packaging charges, restocking costs and losses due to breakage.

Link (via /.)

Grand Master Masaaki Hatsumi is the last living apprentice of the last "fighting ninja," Toshitsugu Takamatsu. At 76, he continues to train would-be ninjas, and the AP's Hans Greimel spent a day at his studio, collecting ninja wisdom like "Always be able to kill your students."

In many ways, the curly-haired, wide-eyed Hatsumi has been a victim of success: He has helped make ninja an international household name by training followers from Chile to South Africa. But he also has watched his legacy co-opted by goofy caricatures such as "Mutant Ninja Turtles" and schlocky Hollywood send-ups like "Beverly Hills Ninja."

"I think it's pathetic," Hatsumi says of the ninja's modern image.

Link (via /.)

Update: M Otis Beard sez, "Did you know there is a documentary film about Toshitsugu Takamatsu, with Masaaki Hatsumi in it as well?  It's a Japanese film, the title in English is "Takamatsu Toshitsugu, the Last Real Ninja".  It's based upon a black-and-white movie filmed in the '60s that shows Takamatsu Sensei teaching Hatsumi Sensei in a park. Takamatsu Sensei demonstrates unarmed techniques and weapon techniques from the nine schools, with comments in Japanese (subtitled in English) by Hatsumi Sensei. "

Doug says: "Every year on 4/20, students and residents gather on Farrand Field at CU Boulder to defy the authorities and smoke marijuana publicly. This year, the University of Boulder Police Department fought back by taking pictures of as many participants as possible. They have a website with photos up, offering an $50 reward to anyone who positively identifies someone who was photographed. Nothing about what the authorities plan to do with the information is posted. Scary." Link

Phillip Torrone of Make made a video showing off the funny things you can do with Logitech's Orbit webcam. Link

James Hughes, author of the remarkable book Citizen Cyborg is chairing a conference called "Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights" at Stanford on May 26-28. Hughes is with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and argues eloquently for the need for social institutions to support human enhancement technologies to ensure that they make all peoples' lives better, rather than widening the gap between rich and poor. This looks like a fascinating conference.

What, if any, limits should be considered to human enhancement? On what grounds can citizens be prevented from modifying their own genes or brains? How far should reproductive rights be extended? Might enhancement reduce the diversity of humanity in the name of optimal health? Or, conversely, might enhancements inspire such an unprecedented diversity of human beings that they strain the limits of liberal tolerance and social solidarity? Can we exercise full freedom of thought if we can't exercise control over our own brains using safe, available technologies? Can we ensure that enhancement technologies are safe and equitably distributed? When are regulatory efforts simply covert, illiberal value judgments?

Between the ideological extremes of absolute prohibition and total laissez-faire that dominate popular discussions of human enhancement there are many competing agendas, hopes and fears. How can the language of human rights guide us in framing the critical issues? How will enhancement technologies transform the demands we make of human rights?

With the Human Enhancement and Human Rights conference we seek to begin a conversation with the human rights community, bioethicists, legal scholars, and political activists about the relationship of enhancement technologies to human rights, cognitive liberty and bodily autonomy. It is time to begin the defense of human rights in the era of human enhancement.

Link

Hammerhead is a robotic Lego CD thrower that can hurl CDs hard enough to shatter them. It even has an auto-loader so you don't have to get up from the sofa to change the CD. Link (Thanks, Jake!)

I love the urgency in the narrator's voice-over for this 1961 B-movie Pagan Island: "Seaman William Stanton -- who has drifted in an open liferaft for nine days without much food or water after his tanker caught fire an exploded finds himself shipwrecked on a small uncharted south sea island! He finds to his amazement it is inhabited only by BEAUTIFUL NATIVE GIRLS!"Link (via Yesbutnobutyes)

A spoof of the V for Vendetta trailer, recast with Sesame Street characters. A for Awesome. Link (Thanks, Ash)

Snip from govexec.com story by Jonathan Marino:

The head of the Homeland Security Department's visitor tracking program on Tuesday called for the creation of a "global ID management system" to make travel easier while enhancing security...

[Jim] Williams said he wants to join forces with several DHS agencies to develop a global identification system that would cut wait times, reduce government fees for travelers, fight illegal immigration and, perhaps paramount, better defend nations from terrorists.

The US VISIT chief, who already oversees identity inquiries for nearly every visitor who enters the United States, said a worldwide identification system will better link nations in the fight against terrorism. In his speech, he likened al Qaeda operatives and sleeper cells - including the ones that attacked on 9/11 - to "submarines" that must surface to kill.

Link, via the Politech mailing list. More background on RealID here.

Eric Renner took some beautiful pinhole photos of carnival chalk prizes.

Concurrent with the earliest days of American radio, film, and comic strips, three dimensional carnival chalk figures were won as prizes at carnivals throughout the United States (1915-1940s). These gaudy, tantalizingly tasteless doll-sized fantasy figures were used to symbolize, idolize, and replicate the first Hollywood stars, radio personalities, and cartoon characters from the Sunday comics. People of all ages would stream to local carnivals, a longed-for form of entertainment, to play games of chance hoping to win a carnival chalk prize of their choice to take home. Harmless as this seemed, the evocative qualities in these stereotypical figures only reinforced the American population's deepest roots toward gender roles for women, men, race bias, and fantasy.

Link (via Rashoman)

A terrific Slate piece by Paul Boutin about the factors contributing to YouTube's success: it's easy to use, and it doesn't "tell you what to do." Snip:

The guys behind YouTube hit the sweet spot. Most important, they made it head-slappingly easy to publish and play video clips by handling the tricky parts automatically. Given up on BitTorrent because it feels like launching a mission to Mars? If you've sent an e-mail attachment, you've got the tech skills to publish on YouTube.

To post your own video, sign up for a free account and go to the Upload page. Select your file, click the Upload Video button, and you're done! YouTube's servers convert your vid to a standardized format, but you don't need to know what that format is. If you send the URL to your aunt, it'll play in her browser without spraying the screen with pop-ups and errors.

You don't have to upload video to use YouTube. If you just like to watch, it's even easier. There's no software to install, no settings to muck with. The video auto-plays as soon as you load the page, without launching more windows—why can't CNN do that?

Three months ago, I predicted Google Video would become the hottest thing on the Net. I was wrong, and I think Google has failed to take off for the simple reason that it's more annoying to use than YouTube. To begin with, you have to install Google's special uploading application. When I tried to upload the same clips I'd posted to YouTube, Google's app wouldn't let me. I combed through the FAQ and found this: "While we also support other digital formats such as QuickTime, Windows Media, and RealVideo … submitting your files in these formats may significantly delay us from using them on Google Video." Come on, guys. Whatever happened to "I'm Feeling Lucky?"

Link. Don't miss the lip-sync clip he links to. And Sam Anderson has a separate piece on Slate that takes a kiddingly serious look at the lip-sync genre.

"The Aphrodite platform shoes will have an alarm system, which emits a piercing noise to scare off attackers. The shoes are also outfitted with a GPS receiver and an emergency button that relays both the prostitute's location and a silent alarm signal to public emergency services. Where there are problematic relations with law enforcement, the shoes will relay the signal to sex workers' rights groups."Link.

Bostworld has scanned some pages from a tawdry exploitation magazine published in 1968 called Uncensored.

Magazines like Uncensored will always hold a special place in my heart. They served as my childhood introduction to such things as hippies, homosexuality, drug abuse and celebrity debauchery. In this way, they played a vital role in the development of my understanding of the world we live in.

These excerpts are outrageous enough on their own; they need no smirking commentary to nudge them into the realm of irony. The reader will either find tasteless expressions of masculine insecurity and xenophobia entertaining or the reader won’t.

Link (via PCL Linkdump)

Coop showed me the prototypes for his new limited-edition Hot Wheels cars a few weeks ago, and I damn near drowned in my own drool. Gorgeous designs, beautifully produced. Link, and the story of how this came to be is here (along with a super-hot promo poster, also designed by Coop).

The speaker lineup for the 25th International Space Development Conference next week in Los Angeles looks amazing: Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Rusty Schweickart, NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, "Science Guy" Bill Nye, Space Exploration Technologies' Elon Musk, X PRIZE founder Peter Diamandis, "space tourists" Dennis Tito and Gregory Olsen, JPL director Charles Elachi, and Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium. Link.

V. Vale of RE/Search Publications (also the creator of seminal punk zine Search & Destroy in 1977) says,

On Saturday, Beyond Baroque in Venice will host an event celebrating the release of PUNK 77 (a newly expanded third edition). We'll be screening rare, '70s Punk films (mostly not on video) and I'll host a panel discussion of "The '70s Punk Revolution" with DEVO founding theorist GERALD V. CASALE; GRAEME REVELL, founding mastermind behind '70s punk/industrial pioneers SPK. A Q&A will follow.

Tyler Emerson of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence says,

The Singularity Summit takes place at Stanford on May 13, 9:00am-5:00pm at Stanford Memorial Auditorium. Speakers include

- Ray Kurzweil, inventor, futurist, author of "The Singularity Is Near"
- Douglas Hofstadter, cognitive scientist, author of "Gödel, Escher, Bach"
- K. Eric Drexler, nanotechnology pioneer, author of "Engines of Creation"
- Nick Bostrom, director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute
- BoingBoing's own Cory Doctorow

and many more.

BoingBoing reader Gwen says,

http://www.nohr4437.org/ has listings for many May 1 rallies in protest of HR4437 and seeking amnesty for and tolerance toward immigrants. The site's awful, you have to scroll down for links to regional May 1 events info. Here's a site specific to the SF Bay Area events. Legal info for marchers: This new legal info site is for students who are being persecuted for asserting their rights, and includes info specific to high school students'/minors' rights in California. the ACLU's Immigrant Marches info is here, and printable Bustcard for the DIY Planner set is here.

vegetable orchestra
biscuit city
jim victor
liz hickok
meredith allen
minimiam

Image: Food sculptor Jim Victor with his chocolate Harley-Davidson.

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock sez,

Strange Company have just released the first episode of their Machinima feature film, BloodSpell, under Creative Commons licensing (including a nice little rant on the page about why they're releasing three years' work for free.)

It's described as a "post-goth punk fantasy adventure" about a world where some people are infected with magic in their blood - when the blood is spilled, the magic comes out.

Over 10,000 man-hours of work have gone into BloodSpell, 99% of which were volunteer work. The full film will be about the same scale as the first Star Wars movie in terms of number of sets, characters, and number and complexity of action sequences.

There's some damned fine storytelling and editing/production work here -- machinima is still finding its legs, discovering what it's for, and the Strange Company folks are at the forefront of using the medium for feature-length drama, really getting beyond short comedy pieces. Link, Internet Archive mirror (Thanks, Hugh!)

A French proposal to change the way DRM is protected under law has been hijacked by entertainment companies and DRM vendors, and now promises to be one of the worst DRM laws in the world.

Previously, we wrote about the new French DRM law proposal, which held out the promise of being the first real attempt in the world to balance the legal protection of anti-user technology with the public interest. The activists of EUCD.info were concerned that the proposal was being hijacked by Universal/Vivendi, and this has come to pass.

EUCD.info's Jérémie Zimmermann sent us the following, shocking account of how the French law went from being fair and balanced to being a one-sided gimme to entertainment companies and their arms-dealers. Don't miss the last paragraph, where Jérémie announces EUCD.info's planned street-demonstration on May 7, at 2PM at the Place de la Bastille:

Jérémie writes:

The French Senate will consider a major revision to its copyright law on May 4th, 9th and 10th. This law will implement the EUCD (the European equivalent of the DMCA) and change French author's rights and copright. It was voted by the first chamber on Feb 21st. This will be the final parliamentary step of the examination process, as a shortened "emergency procedure" was called on such a crucial subject.

The Senators are grouped by commissions. The "Commission of Cultural Affairs" that is in charge of this law voted for proposed amendments. They were made public a few days ago, and the "rapporteur" (overseer/project leader) of the law, M. Thiollière will defend them so they can be examined and voted during the public debates.

There's bad news for a revolutionary proposal (Article 7) that requires DRM makers to allow anyone to build interoperable technology. This was strenuously objected to by Apple and the US Department of Commerce but it was unanimously voted in at the last moment during the first meeting. Now it stands to be completely neutered:

• Gone is the requirement that anyone may ask a regular court of justice to force a DRM publisher to give information needed for interoperability. Now a "high regulation authority of technical measures" will have sole discretion as to whether this information will be available.

• Previously, "information needed for interoperability" covered "technical documentation and programming interfaces needed to obtain a copy in an open standard of the copyrighted work, along with its legal information." Now this has been changed to "technical documentation and programming interfaces needed to obtain a protected copy of a copyrighted work." But a "protected" version of the work can't be played back in a different player, which means interoperability won't be attained with this clause.

• Previously, the only condition for receiving information needed for interoperability was to meet the cost of logistics of delivering the information. Now, anyone wanting to build a player will have to take a license on "reasonable and non discriminatory conditions, and an appropriate fee." When using information attained under such a license, you will have to "respect the efficiency and integrity of the technical measure."

• DRM publishers can demand the retraction of publication of the source-code for interoperable, independent software, if it can prove that the source-code is "harmful to the security and the efficiency of the DRM."

• A clause put forward by EUCD.INFO (a organization that sprung from the Free Software Foundation France, and whose members helped write this article) has been radically altered. Previously, it stated that "A protocol, a file format, a method of transforming or encrypting information cannot be as such considered as a technical protection measure." Now it has been changed to "The components of a technical measure, like a protocol, a file format, a method of transforming information, are still protected by the article XY." This is an article in the existing French industrial property law describing what is patentable and what isn't. Thus, this clause now imposes software patents on France!

• Article 7bis has been struck. This Article required DRM publishers to disclose the source-code of their systems to special computer security division of the French Army in charge of military infrastructure.

This all shows that the "Cultural Commission" has failed utterly to come to grips with the social cost of legal protection for DRM -- free competition, protection of innovation, computer security, technological independence, privacy, etc. They've been captured by DRM lobbyists and the content industries. The new Article 7 follows the exact recommendations from Thomson an ex-French company that isn't worth much by now, except for its patents and some DRM project that Microsoft is interested in.

The French Libre Software associations are calling on their members and supporters to contact their Senators and tell them what's wrong with Article 7. STOPDRM.info, a new organization that organized flash-mobs in music superstore and in front of the stockholders-meeting of Vivendi-Universal will continue organizing events and protests. Feel free ask more info by contacting the members of the EUCD.INFO initiative and to come along the anti-DRM march starting at 2PM, Place de la Bastille, on May the 7th.

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid takes a look at the latest shipment from Valleyschwag, which sends you "t-shirts, ballcaps, notepads, stickers, keychains, and other booty" from Silicon Valley companies for $15 a month. Link

Alainsane sez, "The 1983 Sears Wishbook explained to potential customers, 'A laser sounds boring until [we explain] how it works.' Sears provided as much information as it thought necessary to arrive at its 'clean, ear-pleasing music' conclusion and then offered up its modest $589 price tag." Link

Update: Michael sez, "If you use the consumer price index to compare ’83 to ’06 dollars, the $589 Sear's CD player should actually be $1,192."

For reasons that only the dark vengeful lords of hell, dry ice, and mullets know, June 6, 2006 is National Day of Slayer. Link (thanks, Sean Bonner!)

Previously: Numerically cool dates in 2006

Reader comment: Dan says,

that date is also the date that the new movie 'the omen' premeirs. i'm making the website which will launch monday: Link.

Reader comment: Menno says,

To update the list even more, 666 is also the dat Entombed will release their new album [1] aswell as my own wedding [2]

Reader comment: Kevin says,

Slayer is touring right now with Lamb of God and will be playing in san diego on june 6th 2006. ive got my ticket. :-) i figure if Satan is going to rise up anywhere on that day, odds are it will be at a slayer concert. im keeping my fingers crossed...

UK national Gary McKinnon, whose hacking exploits we've covered before on BoingBoing, told prosecutors he broke into US government computer systems because he wanted to find out whether aliens and UFOs exist.

During his two-year quest, McKinnon broke into computers at the Pentagon, NASA and the Johnson Space Center as well as systems used by the U.S. army, navy and air force. U.S. officials say he caused $700,000 worth of damage and even crippled vital defense systems shortly after the September 11 attacks.

Link (Thanks, Johnny)

Reader comment: James says,

I'm a system administrator in the Navy, and also happened to have been stationed at a command in Naval Weapons Station, Earle, one of the sites compromised. Earle is a small base in New Jersey that consists mainly of a three mile pier with a few ammo ships. Why he thought there would be information pertaining to UFOs on unclassified computers, on a network that supported maybe 25 people, is beyond me.

Reader comment: Rob says,

This podcast contains an interview of MacKinnon that is pretty hilarious. "yeah, i was smoking a lot of cannabis then..."

Alex Steffen at Worldchanging blog says,

What if we made the anniversary of Chernobyl an annual opportunity to make sure we're not doing other dumb and potentially disastrous stuff now? (...) No technology is in itself trustworthy, and changing the world demands widespread understanding of and democratic control over science and its fruits. The Chernobyl disaster should have seared into our minds not only a disgust for radioactive pollution, but also a hatred of secrecy and elite control.

Link

Reader comment: Jim says,

My friends and I (the "weirdos" of our high school) did something similar on the 26th to remind people about human stupidity... we Wrote "Otrava. V'spomitye Chornobool" or "Poison. Remember Chernobyl" on our hands. When written in Russian, people get curious and ask you what's written on your hand, giving the perfect opportunity for a "don't be stupid" talk. All and all, not many people asked, but it's still a way to raise awareness of the dangers the disaster still pose. You can find a crappy camera phone pic of my inked-up hand here.

The Big Clip is a giant, pop-art paperclip that's big enough to clip large catalogs and magazines together across their whole covers. You can chain them together and hang them from the ceiling to make dangly coat-hangers, too. Link (via Cribcandy)

Kitsch-culture ephemera collector Ethan Persoff points us to a..

Long-lost 1980's Nancy Reagan anti-drug music video, "STOP THE MADNESS", The only music video to ever be sponsored by the White House. Barely aired even when it was new we have found and digitized a broadcast master for you to download and keep.

Featuring noted abstainers: New Edition, LaToya Jackson, Whitney Houston, David Hasselhoff, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tootie from the Facts of Life, the Goodyear Blimp, Casey Kasem (!) and many others

Starring Boogaloo Shrimp from the Breakin' movies - no, we're not making this up. BEWARE - this is poison. I personally gave up drugs sixteen times in a row after watching this. I overdosed on refusal.

Link to downloadable Quicktime link and lyrics. Link to more information, along with where a copy was found and what they took in trade.

Reader comment: Jesse McCann says,

Note the Nancy Regan Anti-Drug Music Video was produced and directed by Barbour and Langley, the gents who went on to create COPS.

Reader comment: rdeaguiar says,

Beyond Whitney Houston, video also includes Stacy Keach (convicted of cocaine smuggling, 1984), Lyle Alzado (steroid user who died of brain cancer he attributed to his steroid use) and John Matuszak (NFL player who died of heart failure at 38).

Reader comment: Tom says,

The "Stop the Madness" video Xeni posted reminded me of the mashup where Nancy and Ronald Reagan proclaim, among other things:

* Tonight I can report to you that Vice President Bush smokes marijuana regularly.
* Our goal is to expand drug trafficking at all levels of government and in the private sector.
* And there's one more thing... Nancy and I are hooked on heroin.

Links to the video and shortened audio version are here.

Reader comment: Factwino sez

The credits list Tim Reid as a writer for Stop the Madness. Some of you may remember him from his role as Venus Flytrap on WKRP in Cincinnati.

Organizers of HOPE this week announced more details on edition 6 of the hacker confab. Richard Stallman will keynote, and the call for speakers and presos remains open through May 15. Link, here's the con-blog, hotel updates, listserv subscribe instructions. The event takes place July 21-23 in NYC. (thanks, Macki)

Michael sez, "A group of geeks, lawyers, academics, policy experts, geographers, and librarians have joined together from across Canada to fight the evils of Crown Copyright (a Canadian thing) and proprietary formats. We're fighting to get access to our civic data - from high-res maps to minutes of city meeting."

Our goals are:

1. To encourage all levels of governments (county, municipal, provincial, federal) to make civic data and information available to citizens without restrictions, at no cost, and in useable open formats.

2. To encourage the development of citizen projects using civic data and information.

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

The Linux version of Democracy player -- a free and open Internet TV client -- launched today. Democracy combines VLC (which plays any video format), BitTorrent (which makes it possible to share large files without spending large sums) and RSS (which lets you subscribe to automatic feeds of video) to make a simple, elegant system for discovering, retrieving and viewing video. It's intended to provide a platform for indie and alternative TV, and it works equally well for TV from mainstream outlets.

The Linux release completes the set -- now there are working players for the Mac, Windows and Linux. The project actively welcomes code contributions from the community, and is overseen by the nonprofit Participatory Democracy Foundation. Link (Discolosure: I am a proud member of the Board of Directors of the Participatory Culture Foundation)

Twila sez, "'Alternative Freedom' will premiere TODAY in New York City's east village at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater on April 27 and run until May 3. The event is sponsored by the NYU freeculture group. The night of the premiere the directors (Twila & Shaun) will be doing a Q&A to discuss the film. On Satuday, Lawrence Lessig will introduce the film and talk afterwards."

While Congress changes our copyright laws under the behests of a few powerful corporations, individuals across the United States are losing their digital rights. Activists are working together to change this oppressive regime and create an alternative of freedom.

Two filmmakers uncover the most important legal battles of our time: Copyright Law and Digital Rights Management. Featuring interviews with DJ Danger Mouse, Lawrence Lessig and more.

Link (Thanks, Twila & Shaun!)

On the "Glenn and Helen Show" podcast this week, an interview with Hugo winner Vernor Vinge about his new novel, Rainbow's End." Glenn Reynolds explains:

We talk to him about the Singularity -- and how it may come from the superhuman "ensemble behavior" of ordinary humans with powerful computers linked via the Internet rather than through the development of superhuman artificial intelligence -- about signposts indicating how we're doing, about humanity's prospects for utopia or extinction, and related minor issues. We also discussed writing science fiction (the secret, he says, is "brain parasitism," taking advantage of readers' smarts), whether college is becoming obsolete, mind uploading, and the joys (or lack thereof) of virtual-reality sex, a question that perplexes Helen.

Link.

Remixers, start your engines. On a blog dedicated mostly to 50's pop music, this wonderful post about a collector who found a "synthesized speech" flexi record from 1961 in a junk shop. On this MP3 copy of that record, you'll hear a computer reciting Shakespeare and singing "A Bicycle Built for Two". Link to "Hal's Father," on Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else. (Thanks, Andrew Tonkin)

Reader comment: Coop says,

That recording is in fact, the direct influence on HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick researched space travel and computers for years during the extensive pre-production on 2001. He was given this same recording by Bell Labs, and was inspired to recreate the singing computer's performance as Dave disconnects HAL 9000's higher functions. Not sure where I got this info- it's either from the big Kubrick bio, or the documentary that came out a few years ago. Wikipedia claims that it was Arthur C. Clarke's idea.

Reader comment: Yann Seznec says,

Similar to your "1961 record of computer speaking and singing" post - Electronic musician Deltasleep found a crazy old RCA Mark II Demonstration record and has posted the mp3s on his blog. The RCA Mark II was a massive synthesizer at Columbia University in the late 50's used by people like Milton Babbitt...the wikipedia entry has more info. This record talks about how synthesizers will change the music world, has some hilariously bad renditions of pop songs, and even attempts some computer speech. Link

Reader comment: David New Abernathy says,

ibm's interactive speech demo also contains samples of non-english speech synthesis from ibm...

Reader comment: Donald Ankney says,

The "Bicycle built for Two" recording is actually a fairly seminal work is the development of electronic music -- it was originally done at Bell Labs by Max Matthews, who has been characterized as the father of computer music. The full version actually goes through several verses and includes accompaniment. It's available on CD as part of a great computer music retrospective: Link

Steve White is getting ready to tour the south and midwest with his fabulous Pez Theater show. Enjoy sample videos here.
Link

21stcenturylit.com has posted an mp3 of indie author and "This American Life" contributor Brent Runyon (THE BURN JOURNALS) belting out a folk cover of Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise".

If you like this, may I suggest two more MP3s of white people doing nerdy folk covers of old-school hiphop tracks: here's a previous BB post, Joan Baez-esque cover of NWA's Straight Outta Compton, and another old post, Nerd folksinger covers Baby Got Back.

Link (thanks, Scott, thanks Jon Adams)

Reader comment: David Gruenberg says,

Considering the brouhaha about Snoop Dogg I am nominating my favorite rap cover by a white artist; Gin and Juice by the Gourds.

Link to video. Reader comment: Thomas says,

The Gourds site is pretty lame. You have to join their Yahoo group (and submit a comment to the moderator, and then wait to be approved) just to check out the video. Jumping through all of those hoops just to check out a video is not an effective way to promote your music.

Reader comment: Anonymous sez,

Cat Power did several rap covers, including Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" and a cover of "Cross Bones Style." Not sure if all the covers were for one LP or just cuz. But both are kind of haunting, not unlike the "Straight Outta Comptom" cover you folks linked to. The "Cross Bones Style" cover is on Matador's 10 Anniversary CD compilation, called "Everything is Nice".

Whether either song is on the web, freely and visibly (if ya know what I mean), I'm unsure. Matador Records used to give away some singles for all of its recording artists via its site but alas it is finicky aobut what is given away these days. Not that there is anything wrong with that from a biz standpoint.

And, in all fairness, one of the most consistantly, great indy labels does still gives freebies of audio and video; just not for the aforementioned covers Cat recorded. Here's Cat Power's page which contains links to her site.

Reader comment: Scott says,

Folk artist Luka Bloom did a wonderful version of LL Cool J's "I need love" in the early 90s: Link

Reader comment: Jordan (Woodpecker's banjo player) says,

Just wanted to point you to Woodpecker's cover of Public Enemy's 911 is a Joke. Link

Reader comment: Ben says,

I don't want to perpetuate this forever, but I thought I'd point out that The Unholy Trio has a cover of Bring the Noise as well, including a (NSFW) video. The song was on a Bloodshot Records compilation from 2000. Their myspace page has the song available for download.

"Investigative reporter Ryan Singel and senior editor [and famed hacker] Kevin Poulsen scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, in a daily briefing on security, freedom and privacy in the wired world." So far, it looks pretty awesome. Link.

Common chat acronyms exalted in bargain bling. Link (thanks, Jen Collins!)

Gareth Branwyn says: "Street Tech Senior Editor Nate Heasley's boardgame Wits and Wagers has been selected as a winner of the Mensa Select Mind Games prize for 2006! The game, which involves betting on answers to trivia questions, was co-developed by Nate, along with Dominic and Satish of North Star Games. Rumor has it they still won't let Nate into the high-IQ society, but we're putting him through a routine of Soduko and Tangrams to improve his scores."
Link (Here's the Board Game Geek Link -- Thanks, Jon!)

Kate Braverman, author of the intense, visionary, and funny memoir Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles, is the guest on The RU Sirius Show this week.