Ethan Zuckerman has a great post on his blog today about African baskets woven from telephone wire -- gorgeous handicrafts sold to the tourist market -- and whether the materials for those baskets comes from chopped-down telephone trunks.

Throughout the continent, fixed network operators are reporting significant losses from "vandalism" to their cables, both those buried beneath the ground and those hanging from poles. Thieves cut sections of cable to sell for the copper it contains - oddly enough, one of the worst affected companies is Zamtel, which reports lots of theft in the "copper belt" region of the country. In Nairobi, thieves have damaged the fiberoptic trunks, believing (incorrectly) that those cables had resale value. (I'm waiting for an art movement based on baskets of fiber that glow...)

These thefts have two costs for telcos - the cost of repairing infrastructure, and the lost revenue costs from being unable to delivery calls on lines that have, literally, been cut. Many telcos are expanding their use of wireless technologies in response - it's easier to protect and fence off a mobile phone tower than it is to protect cables that connect every neighborhood.

Link (via Make Blog)

Ben Rosenbaum wrote a story called "The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale" for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction back in 2001 that just floored me. It's a delicious magic realist story about hackers and ants. It impressed me so much that I tracked down Ben and we became friends and are now even working on a story together.

The story is now only, under a CC license -- and I'm so happy to have it here to re-read!

Sheila split open and the air was filled with gumballs. Yellow gumballs. This was awful for Stan, just awful. He had loved Sheila for a long time, fought for her heart, believed in their love until finally she had come around. They were about to kiss for the first time and then this: yellow gumballs.

Stan went to a group to try to accept that Sheila was gone. It was a group for people whose unrequited love had ended in some kind of surrealist moment. There is a group for everything in California.

After several months of hard work on himself with the group, Stan was ready to open a shop and sell the thousands of yellow gumballs. He did this because he believed in capitalism, he loved capitalism. He loved the dynamic surge and crash of Amazon’s stock price, he loved the great concrete malls spreading across America like blood staining through a handkerchief, he loved how everything could be tracked and mirrored in numbers. When he closed the store each night he would count the gumballs sold, and he would determine his gross revenue, his operating expenses, his operating margin; he would adjust his balance sheet and learn his debt to equity ratio; and after this exercise each night, Stan felt he understood himself and was at peace, and he could go home to his apartment and drink tea and sleep, without shooting himself or thinking about Sheila.

Link (Thanks, Ben!)

(Click thumbnails for enlargement) Last week my wife's mother gave us the book collection she had as a child. It's called My Book House and was published in 1937. There are 12 volumes in the set, and I love looking at the illustrations and reading the stories to my 3-year-old daughter. So far, our favorite story is called "Across the Fields," by Anatole France and illustrated by M.S. Hurford. I've posted the last two pages from the four-page story here, because they are so wonderful.

Catherine and Jack climb up above the fields on the slope of the hill where they can see all the fires of the village. It is a place which makes you realize how great the world is.

"Let's sit down here," says Catherine.

She seats herself, and, spreading her hands, scatters her flowery harvest round her. Her little body has been perfumed with them all, and in a moment the butterflies are circling round her. She picks and arranges the flowers, and make garlands and crowns of them, and hangs little bells at her ears for earrings. Little Jack catches sight of her thus, and at once is seized with admiration. He stops, and the whip falls from his hands. He sees that she is beautiful. He would like to be beautiful, too, and covered with flowers.

"I'll make you a crown," cries Catherine, "and you will look like a king." She puts the crown of flowers on little Jack's head, and he turns red with joy. She puts her arms around him, lifts him off the ground and stands him, all covered with flowers, on a great stone near by. She admires him because he is beautiful, and it is she that has made him so.

Little Jack understands that he is beautiful and the idea gives him a deep respect for himself. Stiff, immovable, his eyes round, his lips shut tight, his hands open and his fingers sticking out like the spokes of a wheel, he tastes a solemn joy. The sky is over his head, woods and fields are at his feet. He is in the middle of the world. He is only good, only beautiful.

Here's a set of homemade powerpoint slides to accompany Senator Stevens's hilariously craptastic "the Internet is made of tubes" speech. Link (via Vertical Hold)

Update: Patrick sez, 'The original slideshow of Senator Ted Stevens' "Internet is made of tubes" speech was Meryl Yourish's.'

The Psycho Sally doll is motorized for automated two-knived slashing action. Link (via Geisha Asobi)

Update: Steve sez, "the automated stabby doll isn't actually for sale. If you click on the add to shopping cart link, you just get a lame bunny begging for donations."

Modern Mechanics, 1932, featured these amazing glare-proof goggles. If only these were on the market today:

HEADLIGHT glare from approaching cars is practically eliminated by the cup-shaped aluminum shields shown on the left, which fasten onto regular spectacle frames.

Holes are cut a little to the right of the apex of the cones, which are one inch deep. When meeting a car, driver turns his head slightly to the right. This automatically cuts off the glare from the lights and enables him to watch the side of the road.

Holes in the sides of the cups aid wearer in watching cars at intersections.

Link

SF writer Lynda Williams sez, "My daughter (18) cared SO much about the ending of the Animorph series 'selling out' the readers that loved it with a nasty ending, that she has taken a whole year off school (sigh! be careful what you model!) to write an alternative ending as good as the books ever were! And she did it despite knowing it had to be considered fan fic and couldn't be a way to start a writing career -- just because she really, really cared."

The Yeerks know who we are and the world knows about them. An open war. But at the moment, it was basically one- sided.

Marco and I were riding the thermals created by Dracon beams. Dracon beams shooting down from one low-hovering Bug Fighter. Dracon beams that were cutting through our town like a hot knife through butter.

People were crowding to get out of buildings but had only seconds to get away. Most of the people leaving houses escaped, but those in twenty-story buildings were not so lucky. The Yeerks know who we are and the world knows about them. An open war. But at the moment, it was basically one- sided.

Link (Thanks, Lynda!)

A reader writes, 'Something about Sen. Ted Stevens' confused analogies describing the nature of the internet was very lyrical, so here is "The Internet is a Series of Tubes," the song.' LInk

Kyle from One Red Paperclip has successfully traded a paperclip for a house. Kyle started out with a single red paperclip, which he offered for trade, trading up and up all the way to a house in Montreal Saskatchewan.

As reported in earlier editions, Kyle, who for now calls Montreal home, began by swapping a red paperclip for a fish pen; the pen for a door- knob; the doorknob for a camping stove, and so on, and most recently has been offering a speaking role in an upcoming movie, "Donna On Demand".

Link (via Waxy)