(Click thumbnail for enlargement.) I just opened a letter sent to Boing Boing from some fools at Baker & McKenzie LLP in London.

The letter states that their client, Infront Sports & Media, "anticipates the possibility of unauthorized streaming and downloading of FIFA World Cup matches." The letter goes on to warn Boing Boing that Baker & McKenzie will be "actively monitoring your website ... to identify unlawful activity and will, if necessary, take appropriate action to ensure the protection of Infront's rights of those licenses."

Oh brother. I don't even know what the FIFA World Cup is. I'm guessing it's soccer, which I hate just as much as any other pro sport. Every editor at Boing Boing detests professional sports, and we would sooner stream a video of a crumpled up paper napkin in the corner of a room than show some jackasses running after a ball. The only time we would ever post anything about pro-sports would be to make fun of them.

Baker & McKenzie, be on alert: henceforth, Boing Boing will be actively monitoring your website to identify dumbass activity and will, if necessary, take appropriate action to point out instances of wasting clients' money by sending out unnecessary and obnoxious warning letters." (Thanks, Scott!)

Vincon sells striking, colorful magnetic/adhesive sheets printed with lush photos of fruit and other food that you trim and stick to your dishwasher, fridge and washing machine, turning your kitchen into a giant fruit-bowl. The sheets run about €100 each. Link (via Popgadget)

American trade negotiators have threatened to scuttle Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization unless the country shuts down the AllOfMP3.com website, which sells music under Russian copyright law, despite the ire of the RIAA and its international puppet organization, IFPI. Link (Thanks,Oliviab!)

Blue Coat, a censorware company, has blacklisted Boing Boing because some of our entries criticize censorware and describe the means by which it may be circumvented. Boing Boing presently hosts nearly 28,000 entries, and fewer than 100 of those deal with "proxy avoidance." Blue Coat has blocked the entirety of the site.

It appears that Blue Coat's policy is that any site that contains any information about the problems with its business model will be permanently blacklisted. Blue Coat treats sites that explain the problems with censorware as being equivalent to sites that actually defeat it, treating criticism of its rules as a violation of its rules.

If your company, school or government uses Blue Coat's indiscriminate and capricious censorware to block off the Internet, you can get around it using one of the many methods listed here.

If you're a CIO cutting regular checks to Blue Coat for keeping your network "safe" please consider the service's vindictive filtering criteria, and the certain fact that this means that they will block "safe" sites and fail to block "unsafe" sites, and that your users can readily defeat them, and ask yourself whether you're getting what you pay for.

Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 15:38:19 -0600
From: filtering@bluecoat.com
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Site Submission Results

Thank you for submitting boingboing.net/ to Blue Coat Systems, Inc.

You suggested the following rating(s): Blogs/Newsgroups Your comments were: "The category of Proxy Avoidance is incorrect. "

This site has been reviewed. However, it was already correctly rated as Proxy Avoidance, and Blogs/Newsgroups.

Link (Thanks, Dale!)

Update: Neil sez, "It might interest readers to know that Marc Adreessen, cofounder of Netscape, was on the board of directors of Blue Coat since 1999, but refused to stand for re-election in 2005."

Notorious torrent-tracker site ThePirateBay is making good on its vow to come back online following the Swedish police raid on its servers. The site is back online, and promises that searches will be working today. The raid reportedly came as a result of US government pressure on the Sweden. Link (Thanks, Joel!)

Bill Morrison, author of the new and wonderful book, Innocence and Seduction: The Art of Dan DeCarlo (which I reviewed on Mad Professor today) will be signing copies at Meltdown (7522 W Sunset Blvd LA CA 90046) on June 17, from 4 PM - 6 PM.

These Japanese shredding scissors are a nice, low-tech way to discard of docs at your desk. Link (via Shiny Shiny)

John Mark sez, "Folks who value creative content rescued from obscurity may be concerned about major fee increases proposed by the US Copyright Office. At the end of this month, they plan to double the fee for copyright records searching from $75 to $150 per hour (it was $20/hr as recently as 1999), and add a new $100 fee just to give frugal searchers an estimate of how much a real search is likely to cost!" Link (Thanks, John Mark!)

Stephen sez, "Yesterday, a Joe Volpe parody site went up called YouthForVolpe.ca which lampooned the Liberal leadership candidate's drug money (ahem pharmaceutical donations) from children of Apotex execs. When Volpe gave back the money yesterday (CTV News called it 'Volpe's volte-face'), the website went down. At the time, I thought that the designers had thought that it was irrelevant or that it had served its purpose, so they pulled it. It turns out that this is not the case. Joe Volpe had the Canadian Internet Registration Authority sever the link from YouthForVolpe.ca to the server which hosted the website."

Mr. Volpe's campaign had the site shut down without knowing, it seems, who put it up: "Hi Everyone," wrote Brenden Johnstone, who is with the Volpe campaign, in an e-mail to other leadership campaigns. "There has been concern about how the issue of the Volpe donations was reflecting on the leadership race.

"My Office has had the website suspended through CIRA [Canadian Internet Registration Authority] and CDNS [Canadian Domain Name Services] and it will be down as soon as 6 p.m. I think the issue with the website has been dealt with. . . ."

Link (Thanks, Stephen and everyone else who suggested this link!)

Update: David sez, "An entry on David Akin's blog indicates that CIRA did no such thing. CIRA actually has a press release regarding the issue:

Bernard Turcotte, CIRA's President and CEO states "We have no record of any contact between CIRA and Mr. Volpe or his staff. Furthermore, CIRA does not deal with website content. This is and continues to be a guiding principle underlying our operations."

Update 2: Pete sez, "Policy Watch made a pdf of the Youth for Volpe website before it went down."

Update 3:Gavin sez, "Michael Geist is a CIRA board member and has reaffirmed that CIRA did not suspend the domain at the behest of Volpe. So it seems that if the domain was censored, it was done so by the registrar, not CIRA."

"The takedown occurred at the request of the registrar because the registrant failed to meet Canadian Presence Requirements"

Pee Wee's Playhouse is my favorite kids' show of all time. In fact it's one of my favorite shows of all time. Yo Gabba Gabba looks like it just might be the first great kids' show since Pee Wee. Check out the awesome trailers. I have no idea when or if the show will launch. Link (Thanks, mattereaterlad!)

In 2003, Miltos Manetas created used someone else's work to make a site with this fun Flash tool to create your own Jackson Pollock-esque "painting."
Link (Thanks, Mike Love!)

UPDATE: Seems that this site was, er, based on work, er, borrowed from the amazing designers at Stamen! Link and Link

The Oops List is a page with links to hundreds of images and movies of vehicle crashes. Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

On Memorial Day weekend, Clara Jean brown of Baldwin County, Alabama, prayed to the lord to protect her family from a storm in the area. Seemed like a good idea, until she said "Amen" and was struck by a bolt of lightning. From Associated Press:

The 65-year-old Brown said she is blessed to be alive.

Firefighters said its likely she was hit by a bolt of lightning that apparently struck outside and traveled into the house...

A family member said he will no longer assume it is safe to be indoors during a lightning strike.

The safety of praying is now up for debate though. Link

Fishermen at Kasyanka lake in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine recently reported that they had been "attacked" by piranhas. After fishermen caught five of the fish, authorities netted three more. They ranged in size from 2.7 to 5 inches. The piranhas, native to the Amazon, were likely pets abandoned by their owner. From Agence France-Presse:

"I can say with 98 percent certainty that we believe we have fished all the fish from the lake," wildlife protection official Anatoly Sergeiyenko was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying...

Sergeiyenko said authorities had decided to ban sales of piranhas in Dnipropetrovsk pet shops.

Link (via Fortean Times)

Carrie Vaughn's "Real City" is the latest science fiction story on Futurismic, about a world where computer-generated film effects have replaced sets and locations and costumes. It's the story of a startup bent on reviving "location" films, as an art-house prestige medium, and the problems they face trying to get a screen heartthrob to adapt to the old ways. It's thoroughly engaging, a nice little romance story.

He filmed in the alley behind the RealCity offices, with a full crew on hand to make it seem more like a real set. Cass came along to watch, and felt a buzz in the air at the sight of the camera on the dolly, the boom mike, the cables, the lights, the chairs. For a hundred years, Hollywood had been filled with sets that looked like this, before the blue screens, then the three-dimensional blueboxes took over. It wasn’t just a piece of history coming to life; it was a different medium being revived. Films done on location felt different, and she wondered if this hum of energy, the excitement that jumped from person to person with a glance or a word, was why.

Link (Thanks, Jeremy!)

This ingenius, hulking, $200 electric mosquito-catcher can nuke 1,200 bloodsuckers a night:

The trap uses a strip of octenol (to generate a scent that resembles breath), a UV bulb, and flashing LEDs (oscillating frequencies determined to coincide with spectral sensitivities of many mosquitoes). When mosquitoes get close to the trap, the patented airflow system that disperses the attractant sucks the insects inside, where they are collected in a mesh catch bag or a liquid catch pan that is easy and safe to empty.In a USDA suburban test, our trap captured up to 1,200 mosquitoes in a single night and diminished mosquito populations over an entire acre.

Update: Mr Jalopy sez, "this homemade carbon dioxide yeast brewing machine sounds like a great way to lure mosquitos to their demise. Same premise as the aforementioned $200 device, but without the 'LEDs oscillating frequencies determined to coincide with spectral sensitivities of many mosquitoes' which frankly sounds like bullshit to me."

Update 2: Jonderson sez, "The advertised rate of 1200 bugs per night is not even half of what one single bat will eat (roughly 3000 per night). Put up a $10 bat box and you can virtually eliminate mosquitos from the area entirely." Link

Update 3: Scott sez, "That bats will eat thousands of mosquitos each night is a myth:

Studies have shown that while bats devour a huge number of insects, mosquitoes are only a small part of their diet. A study of fecal pellets of bats in Indiana conducted throughout an entire summer revealed that the primary food items were beetles, moths, and leafhoppers.

Update 4: David sez, "There are over 1100 bat species worldwide, making up some 20% of all mammal species. Some bats eat fruit; other bats suck blood. Some bats (in Indiana) don't eat a lot of mosquitos; other bats in the Southwest eat tons."

(via OhGizmo)

GayDays, the annual, unofficial gay-friendly week-long party at Walt Disney World, is underway now. The event is sponsored by the likes of Bud Light, and has drawn an estimated 140,000 attendees. Link (via The Disney Blog)

Jim sez, "Captain Copyright includes two quotes about ISBN's from Wikipedia, but fails to follow the requirements of Wikipedia's GNU license by providing a direct link back to the source article or even acknowledging the GNU license as required by Wikipedia."

Captain Copyright is the propaganda cartoon character created by Canada's Access Copyright agency to "educate kids about copyright, in the most biased, one-sided and intellectually dishonest way imaginable. Link (Thanks, Jim!)

Update: Allison sez, "I found one of the suggested Captain Copyright activities for grades 6-8 quite interesting. Activity 2: Does It Break the Law?, the stated purpose of which is 'To identify actions that infringe copyright,' suggests getting students to 'use a dictionary to define the word infringement. Ask students to share their definitions.' Hopefully, they're not going to be using Merriam-Webster online, which states 'No part of the work embodied in Merriam-Webster's pages on the World Wide Web and covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher.'"

Here's an update to the story about the crazy judge who took a performance artist's kid away from her because she participated in a SubGenius celebration. He was especially offended by the fact that she wore a paper mache goat head in the performance.

Modemac of The High Weirdness Project says:

Since Rachel Bevilacqua's last appearance in court, both sides of the custody battle for her son have been preparing for the next -- and hopefully last -- court date, which is scheduled for June 12th. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Free Times has published an excellent article providing a summary of the case, and a look at where the parties stand at this time.

Link | Previous Boing Boing coverage here

CChits is a web-app meant to help people find and share cool music that's been released under Creative Commons licenses. It's built on Ning, a site that makes it easy to clone and customize web applications; in this case, CChits clones the popular link-sharing site Digg. Link (Thanks, Kenji!)

Ape Lad sez, "I can't believe no one has pointed out the unintentional goatse (worksafe link) on the Captain Copyright site, which is clearly lifted from the famous Superman pose. Also, ironic that most of the elements of his costume are borrowed from elsewhere: Shazam's arm protector thingees, the Sentry's belt, and the Spectre's color scheme."

Captain Copyright is the cartoon mascot of Canada's Access Copyright agency, part of an "educational campaign" to "help children." Link (Thanks, Ape Lad!)

Todd Lappin says: "There's a soldier in Iraq who's been posting some crazy pictures of American SUVs and pickup trucks that have been modified by civilian security contractors for use as gun trucks. They're insane, in a 'Mad Max at the Wal-Mart parking lot' kind of way."

Ford SuperDuty pickup (and here), Toyota Land Cruiser, Ford Expedition, Chevy Suburban, Chevy Avalanche, Chevy pickup, Another Ford SuperDuty, In convoy, Yet another Ford

Reader comment: Devon says:

Regarding your post about the Mad Max cars in Iraq, Death Guild/Thunderdome, my Burning Man group is doing our annual fundraiser this weekend. We have our full battle dome set up, and all of our mad-max style art cars at it. We even have a little video of the sort of mayhem we create on the site. We'll be running bungee fights all night.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a long article about the fraudulent presidential election of 2004.

George "I'm The Decider" Bush has been quoted as saying his job would be easier if he were a dictator. After reading this, it's clear that he already is one.

After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004 -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.

Link (thanks, John!)

Reader comments at following link:

Scott Sigler is the author of three novels combining science fiction and horror. I recently read his terrific first novel, EarthCore, about a platinum mining expedition in Utah that goes horribly awry when the mining party bumps into an ancient race of violent creatures that live in an immense underground network of caves three miles below the surface of the earth.

Earthcore was slated to be publsihed in 2001 by a division of Time Warner, but as Scott explains in this interview, the publishing deal fell apart due to circumstances beyond his control.

So, as an experiment, Scott started podcasting the novel, one chapter at a time. It's likely he was the first author to podcast a novel. And the experiment was a success -- 10,000 people listened to the EarthCore podcast. This led to a publishing deal, and EarthCore is now available as a print book. You can buy it on Amazon, or on Scott's website.

If you want to subscribe to Scott's novel podcasts, go to scottsigler.podshow.com.

Here's my interview with Scott: Link

Note: to subscribe to Boing Boing podcasts, copy the following address into your podcast client or iTunes (in iTunes select Advanced / Subscribe to Podcast...): http://feeds.feedburner.com/boingboing/iBag

Reader comment: Jack Mangan says: Very nice interview with Scott Sigler! Earthcore is truly fantastic. To clarify: his book was the first *podcast-only* novel. Morevi, by Tee Morris, was the first podcast novel. I've interviewed them both on my "Jack Mangan's Deadpan Podcast." [Sigler, Morris]

I was also one of the first to follow in their footsteps at www.podiobooks.com (which Scott mentioned), with my own podcast novel, "Spherical Tomi."

A tipster working for the IRS claims on his blog that the IRS's archiving has been outsourced to the lowest bidder, an unnamed company in Florida. If true, it means that this company will control the most intimate details of the finances of virtually every American.

"Sections of each agency "not related to the inner workings of the government" are being made to "bid" for the work they had done previously. Im part of the file retention unit (basically, the archives) of the IRS, and our section is one that has to bid.

"Yesterday], we lost that bid, to a company in florida. Which means that our government will no longer be controlling your tax documents that are archival in nature (and we also store documents for this tax year) it will be in the hands of the lowest bidder."

This is also happening to other governmental agencies, not just the IRS. Corporations aren't controlling the "inner workings" of each agency, but everything ELSE is being sliced up and delivered.

Link (via Consumerist)

A study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has concluded that the whole cost of a $0.67 fast-food meal supersizing is nearly ten times that, once you factor in all the hidden costs of overeating.

Based on their estimates, each fast-food "value" meal would cost an adult 5 cents more in fuel expenses -- as heavier passengers reduce a car's fuel efficiency - and about 35 cents in overall food costs, since heavier people need more calories.

Add to that the healthcare cost per super-size meal -- which ranges from 82 cents to $6.64 -- and these fast-food deals are no deal at all, Close and Schoeller assert.

"In essence," they write, "the more a person overeats, the greater the financial cost."

Link (via Health Hacker)

These German science enthusiasts model their favorite molecules with balloons -- shown here, the graphite lattice. Lots more on the site -- balloon buckyballs kick ass. Link (via Make Blog)

BB fave artist Tim Biskup and Gary Baseman will share the gallery at Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California, this summer. The joint show, titled Pervasion, runs from June 18 to September 24. The artists reception is June 17 with Baseman lecturing on July 30 and Biskup on August 6, both at 1pm.
Link (Thanks, Lindsle)

RPS25 is a rock-paper-scissors variant with 25 hand-gestures that combine to make 300 possible outcomes. The chart is a hoot! Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

A scientist claims to have recreated the Mona Lisa's real voice by measuring her face and hands and modeling her skull. Matsumi Suzuki told Reuters that he's confident that the voice is 90 percent accurate. Of course, we'll never know. From the Reuters article:

"I am the Mona Lisa. My true identity is shrouded in mystery," the portrait proclaims on a Web site.

"In Mona Lisa's case, the lower part of her face is quite wide and her chin is pointed," Suzuki explained. "The extra volume means a relatively low voice, while the pointed chin adds mid-pitch tones," he added...

The team also attempted to recreate Leonardo's own voice in a project timed to coincide with the release of the film "The Da Vinci Code." Suzuki said he was less confident about its accuracy because he had to work from self-portraits where the artist wore a beard, concealing the shape of his face.

Suzuki's work has made contributions to criminal investigations -- in one case after he successfully aged a person's voice by a decade. A recording of the voice was broadcast on television, leading to the apprehension of a suspect.

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

Virgin Mobile US will give you up to 75 free minutes a month if you're willing to watch video commercials on your phones be quizzed on the ads to confirm that you paid attention to them:

The program, called SugarMama, lets people earn one minute of talking time by watching 30-second commercials on a computer or receiving text messages on their phones, then answering questions to prove they were, in fact, paying attention.

Virgin Mobile, a relatively small cellphone carrier with four million mostly young customers, is aiming the program at teenagers, who can earn up to 75 minutes of free talk time a month.

Link (via SciFi Tech)

The Time Cube desk-clock slowly rotates through a variety of angular, geometric forms like a Clive Barker puzzle-box, snapping into cube-shape at noon and midnight. Link (via Gizmodo)

TechDirt and MobHappy blogger Carlo Longino, a veteran technology journalist, wrote an insightful essay on his personal blog about why journalism is broken and what could be done to fix it. Carlo's rant was a response to Mark Cuban's post titled "Why Journalism Matters." From Carlo's essay:

The biggest problem facing the journalism world is its ongoing ignorance of opinion. Facts are often meaningless without interpretation. To act like bias and subjectivity in that interpretation don’t exist is not only naïve, it’s short-sighted. For all that people talk about wanting “just the facts”, that isn’t true, they want them interpreted and presented in some particular way — witness the popularity of Fox News, or the interest in things like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. It’s this embrace of subjectivity that tends to separate old and new media, and is holding back journalism.

Link

Vinay Gupta has a fascinating article on WorldChanging that characterizes limited liability corporations as a form of government subsidy (because otherwise, these companies would have to take out expensive liability insurance). Gupta posits that thhis creates a "perverse incentive" to do bad things, like pollute, and wonders aloud what would happen if LLCs were phased out:

What if we phased out limited liability? Suppose, for example, we made shareholders liable for up to 1% of their assets in corporate bankruptcy cases - you can lose up to 1% of your net worth to cover the unpaid debts of corporations in which you own stock. Would that change shareholder behavior to less risky investments? Would it cool the economy - or increase corporate responsibility at no cost to the tax payer?

Could regulating the degree of investor protection become one way of pulling corporations back into line when corruption becomes rife? Would ENRON have happened if shareholders had been even partially liable?

I'm not enough of an economist to really understand the implications of this idea, but I'd like to open the floor up to discussion: is viewing limited liability as a subsidy to the investor a valid way of thinking about it, and is reducing that subsidy to the investor a plausible way of making our economy a little more risk-averse and therefor environmentally responsible?

Link

Virgin Atlantic airlines has contracted with a Remote Diagnostic Technologies to outfit all of its planes with Tempus telemedicine rigs that will link the jets to doctors on the ground who will advise flight crew on using on-board medical equipment and interpret the diagnostics they deliver:

Virgin Atlantic was the first airline to introduce defibrillators across its fleet and has used the MedLink remote doctor service, for many years. But Tempus' advanced technology significantly increases the airline's onboard medical provision. Cabin Crew will have expert help to differentiate between serious and non-serious incidents and do not have to make crucial medical decisions nor interpret medical information themselves. As with defibrillators, it is expected that this technology will soon be adopted as industry standard.

Link (via Digg)

A virus that encrypts your files and refuses to give you access to them unless you pay a ransom has been cracked. The password for unlocking your files is now widely available:

This virus swaps files found in the "My Documents" folder on Windows with a single file protected by a 30-digit password. Victims are only told the password if they buy drugs from one of three online pharmacies.

The 30-digit password locking the files is "mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw". Using the password should restore all the hijacked files.

Link

Here's a thumbnail site that lists castles for sale around the world. I live in London, where it can be hard to find a derelict cottage for a million bucks, and we hear all kinds of stories about people who move to Italy and buy castles for sums that couldn't buy a doghouse in Zone 1. Link (via Digg)

A couple whose PC was repaired by a Best Buy was told their old hard drive would be destroyed, but instead it turned up at a flea-market:

"He said, 'My name is Ed. I just bought your hard drive for $25 at a flea market in Chicago,'" said Gerbus. "I thought my world was coming down."

Gerbus and his wife had good reason to worry.

A total stranger had access to the couple's personal information, including Social Security numbers, bank statements and investment records.

Link (via Digg)

Yesterday, ThePirateBay, the notorious Swedish torrent tracker, was raided by Swedish police. The MPAA issued a crowing press-release that danced on ThePirateBay's grave.

Now ThePirateBay has updated its website, promising to be up, running and fully operational in "a day or two" and has vowed to move to another country if necessary.

Although all tracking and indexing abilities are currently offline, ThePirateBay.org domain is still functioning. For the last 36 hours, it has been providing various updates on the raids and status of its administration. And true to their nature as being defiant in the face of the entertainment industry, ThePirateBay.org's days are far from over.

In large, bold text, the following text is scrolled mid-screen:

"SITE DOWN - WILL BE UP AND FULLY FUNCTIONAL WITHIN A DAY OR TWO"

Yesterday, ThePirateBay.org spokesperson "brokep" informed Slyck.com "we are moving it to another country if necessary." It appears ThePirateBay.org is making good on this promise. Carl Lundstroem, employee of Rix|Port80 told Slyck.com "As I take it, they have bought new servers, installed back-ups and are already up and running tests in at least one foreign server centre."

Link (via Digg)

Last weekend Quirks and Quarks (CBC radio's science program) did a fantastic segment on the science of happiness: why evolution created organisms that can experience happiness, what happens to your brain when you're happy or depressed, and why happy pills are unlikely to work (and why being a Zen master does, kinda):

Research into happiness hasn't been a traditional subject for psychology, but it's become something of a hot topic. We speak to several scientists on the cutting edge of happiness research.

Dr. Daniel Nettle, a reader in Psychology at the University of Newcastle, is the author of, Happiness, the Science Behind your Smile.

Dr. Daniel Gilbert is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of, Stumbling on Happiness.

Dr. Angela Clow is in the Psychology Department at the University of Winchester in London and studies the physiology of emotion, including happiness.

Dr. Richard Davidson is the Vilas and William James Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and studies the neurology of happiness.

Link

Update: Avi sez, "Lecture videos and notes from Tal Ben-Shahar's popular course at Harvard on 'Positive Psychology' are available online." Alas, the videos are in stinky-crappo RealVideo format.

Siva sez, "Crooked Timber is hosting a great seminar on Yochai Benkler's new book, The Wealth of Networks. CT solicited commentary essays from Henry Farrell, Dan Hunter, John Quiggin, Jack Balkin, Eszter Hargittai, and Siva Vaidhyanathan. Benkler has responded to all of them. The discussion ensues in the comments. This is an excellent teaching tool."

I've just started reading Wealth of Networks and it's just blowing my mind. Benkler's articulating the case for open source, open content and other collaborative efforts in a way I've never encountered, making the case that what we've got here is a new mode of industrial production, something not subject to the traditional economics of charity, government spending, or capitalism. As a reminder, the full text of the book is available under a Creative Commons license, too.

Henry Farrell argues that not only formal institutions but also informal norms are necessary for these technologies to enable proper collaboration. Dan Hunter celebrates the book, but worries that it covers too many topics, and that it’s written in language that non-academic readers may have difficulty in understanding. John Quiggin examines the underlying motivations behind the production of common resources, and suggests that Benkler’s arguments point to major flaws in innovation policy. Eszter Hargittai suggests that inequalities in the ability to participate may mean that these new technologies won’t do as much to flatten social hierarchies as they might seem to. Jack Balkin claims that Benkler’s book isn’t so much about new modes of cooperation replacing market mechanisms, as existing side-by-side with them. Siva Vaidhyanathan argues that Benkler’s book is guilty of a soft form of technological determinism, which overemphasizes the positive consequences of new technologies and implicitly discounts the less positive. Finally, Yochai Benkler responds to all of the above.

Link (Thanks, Siva!)

Wired News sent Thomas Greene to the ISS World Conference, a no-press-allowed conference for companies that sell wiretapping equipment to law enforcement, ISPs, telcos, and repressive governments. These super-s33kr1t spies blabbed everything in the bar, let Greene slip into the conference spaces and eavesdrop, and slipped him a copy of the conference CD to copy to his laptop.

Greene recounts some fascinating discussions he held with attendees about the ethics of selling snooping technologies to the kinds of governments that imprison and torture dissidents. In one case, he had a remarkable conversation with an attendee who assured him that the Bush administration was less conscientious of human rights than foreign dictators:

"Well, it's quite an issue," I said. "This is the equipment of totalitarianism, and the only things that can keep a population safe are decent law and proper oversight. I want to know what they think when they learn that China, or Syria, or Zimbabwe is getting their hands on it."

"You really need to educate yourself," he insisted. "Do you think this stuff doesn't happen in the West? Let me tell you something. I sell this equipment all over the world, especially in the Middle East. I deal with buyers from Qatar, and I get more concern about proper legal procedure from them than I get in the USA."

"Well, perhaps the Qataris are conscientious," I said, "and I'm prepared to take your word on that, but there are seriously oppressive governments out there itching to get hold of this stuff."

He sneered again. "Do you think for a minute that Bush would let legal issues stop him from doing surveillance? He's got to prevent a terrorist attack that everyone knows is coming. He'll do absolutely anything he thinks is going to work. And so would you. So why are you bothering these guys?"

Link

To mark the tenth anniversary of Timothy Leary's death, Joi Ito has posted a long remembrance of his relationship with the man -- physchedelic guru and cyber-enthusiast. Joi was Leary's godson and the executor of his estate.

In LA, I spent a lot of time with Tim working on a book and producing a TV show in Japan called "The New Breed" based on our conversations. He enlisted me as a "God Son" which he has been known to do from time to time to people he considered family. I continued to meet people through Tim. Tim's house was always open to anyone and was a crossroads where Hollywood stars, hippies, technologists, academics, artists and just about any other kind of person you could imagine would come and hang out and enjoy his hospitality and share thoughts. I miss Tim very much and I miss the network of people he helped bring and keep together. I am still in touch with many of the people from those days but it's obviously not the same without him. However, I believe his influence and legacy lives on and every day I say my favorite words of his: "Question Authority and Think for Yourself." That is the motto that I live by.

Link

Update: Joi sez, "I wasn't the executor of the estate. And on that note, his archives are still available for sale and no one has purchased them... if I had more money I would buy them. :-("

University of Birmingham microbiologists have found a bacterium that excretes electricity-generating hydrogen when fed sugar, and have made electricity from waste chocolate headed for the landfill:

The team fed Escherichia coli bacteria diluted caramel and nougat waste. The bacteria consumed the sugar and produced hydrogen, which they make with the enzyme hydrogenase, and organic acids. The researchers then used this hydrogen to power a fuel cell, which generated enough electricity to drive a small fan (Biochemical Society Transactions, vol 33, p 76).

The process could provide a use for chocolate waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill. What's more, the bacteria's job doesn't have to end once they have finished chomping on the sweet stuff. Mackaskie's team next put the bugs to work on a production line that recovers precious metal from the catalytic converters of old cars.

Link

Michael Geist sez, "Access Copyright has launched a new site that borders on parody, but is apparently serious. Captain Copyright, is a new "superhero" that educates children about the virtues of copyright, rushing to the scene in the event that someone publishes research without proper credit. While my first reaction to the site was that it is just silly, as I dug deeper, I now find it shameful. These materials, targeting kids as young as six years old, mispresents many issues and proposes classroom activities that are offensive.

"Activity Two seeks to build respect for the copyright symbol by asking the grade one students to role play by seeking copyright permission and to sell their copyright work. Activity Three asks the students to picture a world without copyright and to discuss whether their favourite book or song would still be created. Activity Six celebrates creativity by having the class create a group book with an additional page for the copyright notice. Activity Seven envisions grade one students creating their own copyright permission form."

Have each student work alone or divide the class into small groups. Have each person or group prepare a page for the class book. When all the pages are done, compile them to create the book. Add an extra page as a copyright page. Encourage students to tell you what information should be on the page. Affix a Captain Copyright sticker, and include the classroom name and the date of publication. Read the book as a class.

Provide model-making materials and encourage those students who are interested to build a model of Captain Copyright.

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

Update: A reader writes, "I found this in their Intellectual Property Disclaimer notice (at the bottom of each page) under the title 'Links from Other Websites', where they reserve the right to prevent people linking to their site who are critical of them. So much for free speech!

...pages with the following exception: permission to link is explicitly withheld from any website the contents of which may, in the opinion of the Access Copyright, be damaging or cause harm to the reputation of, Access Copyright.

Update 2: Stefan found this gem from the terms: "iv. You are not permitted to copy or cut from any page or its HTML source code to the Windows [TM] clipboard (or equivalent on other platforms) onto any other website."

Scientists in Israel have discovered eight new species of sightless critters living in a cave that has been closed from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, they look more like scorpions than Sanrio characters.

He said the cave's ecosystem probably dates back around five million years when the Mediterranean Sea covered parts of Israel.

The cave was completely sealed off from the world, including from water and nutrients seeping through rock crevices above. Scientists who discovered the cave believe it has been intact for millions of years.

Link

Reader comment: Robert Pugsley says: Those sightless critters found in a cave look really like some sightless critters living in a cave in Lanzarote called Munidopsis polymorpha.

There's a picture of them here. They've even built a sculpture of one.

Red Hat has developed a new MySpace like site called Mugshot -- but it's open source. I saw a short demo of Mugshot this morning at the Red Hat Summit in Nashville and it was pretty hot; they nicked the best stuff out of all the social networking sites and put them together in an open codebase.

The Mugshot client application is built with a special cross-platform code library developed in C with GLib and GObject. For network communication, Mugshot uses the open XMPP protocol also used by Jabber and Google Talk. The current version of Mugshot is built with Loudmouth, a GLib-based XMPP implementation developed by Imendio. The Linux version of the Mugshot client user interface is built with GTK and uses GConf for storing configuration data, which means it is closely aligned with the GNOME desktop environment. The Linux version uses D-Bus for interprocess communication, and will provide Firefox integration.

Link (Thanks, Segphault!)

At my local ice creamery, I was somewhat shocked that they had avocado ice cream as a special flavor on the menu. (I was more shocked when my niece ordered a scoop and loved it!) That's nothing compared to the flavors available in Japan. Today's Mainichi Daily News features a delightful photo gallery called "The Wackiest World of Japanese Ice Cream." Seen here is soy sauce ice cream. The photos were taken at the Cup Ice Museum in Ice Cream City at Namjatown theme park.
Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

A site that tracked scam artists running predatory self-publishing outfits has been shut down following a complaint to its ISP.

Absolute Write is one of the leading sites for information on publishing, including scam-debunking, and it did a very good job, too. Then Barbara Bauer, an "agent" whom the site had criticized, called up the site's ISP, Nashville's JC-Hosting, and invented a bogus Digital Millennium Copyright Claim. She told the ISP that Absolute Write had exposed her to spam by publishing her email address and that this was illegal and that the ISP had to shut down the site or be liable. This is not illegal, and it's not a DMCA claim. The ISP shut down Absolute Write anyway.

A week later, the ISP has not reinstated the site, and they are refusing to hand over Absolute Write's database so they can put the site back up somewhere else. Absolute Write has a legal fund (I just kicked in $100) to help them drag their foolish ISP into compliance, and to defend themselves against the predator who shut them down. Link

Update: The owner of the ISP says that he's in the middle of a longer dispute with Absolute Write about their bandwidth usage and other matters, and that terminating the site on the strength of the bogus excuse was just a "justification." (Thanks, PJ!)

Here's an interesting article in the June 2006 issue of PopSci about the 50 tons of red gunk that rained on India in 2001. It's possible that the stuff contains critters from outer space.

[Godfrey] Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples—water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis’s home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001—contain microbes from outer space.

Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600˚F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250˚F.) So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.

Link