A 78-inch-long model of the Starship Enterprise-D, featured in the title sequence of Star Trek: The Next Generation and used in other episodes, sold for $576,000 today at Christie's "40 Years of Star Trek" auction. The estimate on it was $25,000 - $35,000. From the Associated Press:

Other top sellers on Saturday's action included a replica of Capt. James T. Kirk's command chair from the bridge of the Enterprise-A on the original "Star Trek" series.

The painted wood chair was only a re-creation for a 1996 episode of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" that mixed action from that newer series with old footage, but it still sold for $62,400.

Link to AP article, Link to All Things Considered coverage

The Ultimate RPG Gaming Table is a homebrew project from some serious gamer makers. The table sports dice pits, individual lighted player stations, a DM's station with a space for a computer, and a system of under-table tubes through which the DM can pass "message spheres" bearing s33kr1ts to individual player-stations. Woah. Link (via Digg)

Update: RJ points out this rival high-tech gaming setup with an LCD projector:

I scan in adventure maps and Photoshop out all for the DM-only information (room numbers, secret doors, traps, etc.) and create a mask layer. We then suspend a digital projector (connected to my laptop) from the ceiling, pointing directly at the game table. I project the edited map onto the game table and scale it to match our miniatures. As the players explore the map, I erase portions of the mask layer, revealing the map beneath.

In this Daily Show clip, Jon Stewart collects many instances in which Bush describes what he believes to be "his job" -- "to protect the American people" -- and what's our job ("to go about our business"). It's an hilarious and enraging segment that shows what a creature of PR messages the "President" is, and how totally empty those focus-grouped aphorisms are. Link (via Plastic Bag)

Allerca, a company that is offering genetically modified cats at $4,000 each, makes you "agree" to a EULA before they sell you your puddy tat:

Purchaser shall not sell or transfer any Cat purchased hereunder to anyone other than an immediate family member, and shall not offer to any person the purchase of a Cat or any genetic material from a Cat, the rights Purchaser may have under this Agreement, or any other right related hereto, without the Company’s express written authorization.

The cats are sold neutered.

Link

Update: Patrick sez, "Allerca's headquarters was located in my apartment building, and they were evicted for non-payment of rent a few months ago. There was also an article in the San Diego Tribune, which questions their credibility."

Update 2: Waldo sez, "The president of Allerca agreed to create and sell my father a two-headed cat a couple of years ago."

I know nothing about this sculpture by Petroc Dragon Sesti, except that it appears to be a wax head that's been shot clear through, and it looks pretty wild. Link (via Wonderland)

Update: Allen sez, "This site explains more about these life-size sculptures:

The figurative sculptures encloded here were made in collaboration with the British Military, the male and female nude busts are made of 'hard wax' revealing the science of human self mutilation, through the impact of real military 20mm ammunition flesh wounds into the 'temporarely preheated to body temperature' wax busts.

"

Loid Mongoloid says: "Thought you might wanna update yer feature on the Fox news mis-labeling fiasco. My friend Austin and I have come up with some more examples of fox news mis-labeling."

BB "band manager" and Searchblogger John Battelle was named one of the ten "Best Marketers in the Business" this week by Advertising Age magazine. John is also the founder of Federated Media, the firm that handles advertising for a slew of sites, including BB, Digg, MetaFilter, MAKE:, and 43Folders. Congrats, JBat! From the Ad Age profile (photo by Bart Nagel):

"Talent management is not for sissies. You have to understand what it is to be an independent author making his living off of this. These are talented people living off fear and adrenaline."

This is John Battelle, co-founder of Wired magazine, chronicler of Google and, most recently, a sort of Moses of the blogosphere, talking about what it's like to lead that scattered nation of aggregators and instigators into a promised land of advertiser respect and, of course, higher CPMs...

"You need to be the kind of organization who knows how to keep those people happy and talk them off of ledges," he said. "That is not for the weak of heart, and it's not what traditional media companies are good at."

Link

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) Hughes says: "Just saw the posting about this, and wondered if this was the same person who put this up on Hollywood Blvd. (near Vine) in March of this year. I never found out who was responsible for this but it sure made me laugh."

Jamie Olson from California bought some Aquage shampoo, made by SalonQuest, and offered it for sale on eBay. Her eBay listing included her own photos of the product.

Soon after, a private investigator hired by SalonQuest, emailed Olson, demanding the she stop selling the shampoo.

You are displaying copyrighted Aquage containers in your advertisements," which, according to the private investigator, is a "violation of SalonQuest's legal rights under the federal Copyright Act.

Olson, however, refused to cancel her sales in response to Aquage's threatening email. This week, she got a second email from the company's private investigator:

"On September 7, 2006, this office contacted you on behalf of SalonQuest concerning your unauthorized sales of Aquage products on eBay. Despite being formally notified that you are violating SalonQuest's legal rights, you have continued to list additional Aquage products on eBay. Also, you have continued to display copyrighted Aquage containers in your advertisements, yet another violation of SalonQuest's legal rights under the federal Copyright Act.

"SalonQuest would prefer to resolve this issue amicably. However, unless you immediately and permanently discontinue your sales of Aquage products on eBay and through any other unauthorized channels, SalonQuest has authorized us to forward this matter and your file to its legal counsel for further action.

Of course, the reason SalonQuest is going after Olson isn't because they don't want her to take photos of the shampoo bottles. It's because they want to control the secondary sales market, and they are trying to use copyright law as an excuse.

It argues that it has contracts with its distributors limiting resale of products only to licensed vendors. Therefore, it claims that reselling its products is a breach of its contracts. But Olson never entered into a contract with Aquage. She just bought the shampoo at a store and is now trying to resell it. Aquage's contracts with its distributors doesn't give it the power to control the entire secondary market for its products.

For now, Olson isn't backing down. Here's her latest eBay auction for Aquage stuff. Link (Thanks, Greg!)

Update:

Fred von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney, says:

Saw the BoingBoing post about the copyright threats based on the photos of the Aquage shampoo. Aquage doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. There is a clear exception in the Copyright Act that permits people who are selling or advertising a product to make and display photos of the the stuff they are selling, precisely to stop this kind of effort to control secondary markets. The exception is set out in Section 113(c) of the Copyright Act:

"(c) In the case of a work lawfully reproduced in useful articles that have been offered for sale or other distribution to the public, copyright does not include any right to prevent the making, distribution, or display of pictures or photographs of such articles in connection with advertisements or commentaries related to the distribution or display of such articles, or in connection with news reports."

Fred

The folks at CartoonBrew describe an amazing mashup of classic films that was a true labor of love:

The visuals were achieved by printing out thousands of film frames (over 65,000 to be exact) and folding them into three-dimensional shapes. The paper-objects were then photographed and composited in After Effects.... The film is unlikely to ever find release in the US due to the fact that it uses unlicensed imagery from over 300 live-action features. But don't let that stop you from enjoying it online.

Link

Shawn McCullough of Old Radio Fun has compiled 31 scary radio plays for Halloween, including the original "War of the Worlds" broadcast and lots of other creepy tales. This Halloween collection includes over 175 MB of MP3s. here.

(Photo above by ZeWrestler shows the Martians landing site at Grover's Mill, New Jersey.)

Buy for $1.99 | Other items at the Boing Boing Digital Emporium

Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan premiered his Spring/Summer 2007 collection this week, and it's full of Swarovski-crystal-embellished animatronic couture. The clothes wriggle, unfold, collapse, and transform by themselves.

The final act in Chalayan's show, at left: this piece began as a dress, morphed into a hat, then rained down as a cloud of Swarovski crystal dust. Hot.

Snip from Sarah Mower's writeup at Style.com:

The girl walked in and stood stock-still, dressed in a long, high-necked corseted Victorian gown.

Then her clothes began to twitch, move, and reconfigure of their own accord. The mono-bosom top opened, the jacket retreated, the hemline started to rise, and—finally, amazingly—there she was, wearing a crystal-beaded flapper dress: a woman propelled through fashion history from 1895 to the twenties in the space of a minute. This was one of six incredible feats of technology and conceptual commentary at the heart of Hussein Chalayan's show.

(...) What really gave the show a disturbing sense of wake-up-to-reality was the soundtrack. Here, the changing shapes were connected to the sounds of the twentieth century—fragments of music, trench warfare, the ranting of Hitler, aerial bombing, jet engines, the beating of helicopter rotors.

WMV movie here (the animatronic stuff and the nude model are toward the end). Showstudio blog has a great "the making of" post about Chalayan's "One Hundred and Eleven" collection here. Photos, above, by Marcio Madeira for style.com. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

BoingBoing reader and Second Life resident JaneLame, who is anything but, has created BoingBoing t-shirts inside SL which she's distributing for free. Neat!

"Here's the direct link to the place in which we give them out (which requires having SL installed on your computer)," she says, "It's in SL Manhattan. To get one, a person should just touch the blue gingham box on the floor which says BoingBoing T-shirt."

If only transactions in the real world were as easy. Link to full-size screengrab. You can purchase actual BoingBoing t-shirts made from cotton instead of pixels here. It's not too hard, but you will need to do a bit more than touch a gingham box to buy these.

On this week's edition of Get Illuminated! we chatted with Loren Coleman. As BB readers know, Loren is the world's leading cryptozoologist who has spent the last four decades studying "hidden animals," from Bigfoot and Yeti to Nessie and Chupacabras, and the culture surrounding them. He blogs about his curious findings at Cryptomundo and is the author of seventeen books, including my favorites Bigfoot: The True Story of Apes in America, Mysterious America, and Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology. We spoke with Loren about how he became a cryptozoologist, what it means to be a Fortean, recent tales of Sasquatch, the case of the Dover Demon, and why the world is getting weirder.

MP3 link | Podcast feed | Subscribe via iTunes

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) Boing Boing reader Steve found this realistic phony crosswalk sign posted in Culver City, CA.

Total Crisis Panic Button
Start Running -- Danger is Imminent
Don't Think -- Stay Fearful and Alert
Obey Orders

Update:

The creator of the Total Crisis Panic Button is Jason Eppink, who has a bunch of other good stuff on his website. (Thanks, Ryan!)

Here's a clearer photo, taken by Steve Diet Goedde at the corner of Sunset and Silver Lake Blvd a few months ago.

John "PC" Hodgman's new book is out, as Mark blogged not long ago -- The Areas of My Expertise.

The author is currently on tour, doing signings in various US cities in the coming days.

He's mixing it up on stage in Minneapolis tonight with literary crazyman Neal Pollack, and he'll be signing solo in Los Angeles at Book Soup this Monday, October 9, at 7PM. Then Portland 10/10, Seattle 10/11, SF 10/12, and tons more dates here.

His blog is here. As you might surmise from the sheer volume of past posts about the man, BoingBoing <3 <3 <3 John Hodgman.

"8 BIT: A Documentary about Art and Videogames" premieres tomorrow night, Saturday October 7, at the The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. There will be another screening at MoMA on October 11.

Producer/Co-Director Justin Strawhand tells BoingBoing, "The film includes interviews with an expansive list of video-game based artists and theorists, tied together into a historical overview of the movement, from the demo scene to chiptunes to machinima to artists who hand-code their own video games."

It sounds great. Link to website, screening details, poster art, pix, here's a trailer.

Reader comment: mike says,

Blipfestival takes place in lower manhattan (nov30-dec3) celebrating 8bit music. over 30 performers from across the us, europe, and japan (lots from japan - really excited about that). the festival will feature many of the folks documented in the movie. just fyi. check out the festival site for more details. disclosure - i am organizing the festival....its still cool though.

I don't have any information about where this image came from, or who created it (anyone know?), but I love it. Link to full-size. (Thanks, Cyrus Farivar, whose email sig reads "Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.").

UPDATE: BB reader Michael Porcello says, "This cartoon was created by a college student named Asher Sarlin. You can find more of his cartoons at "Elephantitis of the Mind", Link."

A note on the artist's website reads, "Asher makes his comics for free, but a little financial support is greatly appreciated. Donations are totally safe and secure through PayPal. Thanks!"

As Cory blogged earlier this month, countless Battlestar Galactica fans around the world will huddle before their plasma portals tonight to watch the first episode in the new season of television's finest science fiction show. I'm going to a Frak Party here in Los Angeles with some BSG-loving blogger pals, and I understand that antifreeze-green Cylon-tinis will be served. I cannot wait. Link to the Frak Party planning site, created by Zack Exley (best known for his pioneering online activism work with MoveOn.org).

Previously on BoingBoing:
- BSG webisodes fly tonight
- New BSG podcasts from SciFi Network
- BSG TV series gets second season on SciFi
- Alien Sex! Bombs! Robots! Pathos!
- Fans Battle TV Over Galactica
- BSG Fans Can Be So Cruel
- Galactica becomes a regular series on SciFi

My NPR News colleague Laura Sydell did a radio piece earlier this week about the basics of instant messaging privacy, a topic of renewed interest in light of Congressman Mark Foley's digitally documented misdeeds.

Some aspects of the NPR story may be old news to regular readers of this blog, for instance: the revelation that the words you type into AIM or MSN Messenger don't just waft into ether, they can -- shock! -- be saved by the recipient or the carrier.

But Sydell also delves into what each IM service provider discloses about their data retention policies, and who shares what with whom, under what circumstances.

Link to archived audio and an interview that NPR's Melody Joy Kramer conducted via IM with Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist at the EFF. The image at top left in this post is, of course, not a transcript of *their* IM exchange, but rather of one reported to have taken place between Foley and a teenage boy.

The Imaginary Foundation, creators of the first in the "Artist's Series" of Boing Boing t-shirts, have a new line of surreal garments. At left is one of the t-shirt designs, titled "Infinite." At right is a sneak peek at IF's forthcoming cut-and-sew collection, available by the holidays.
Link

The lightning bolt seen in this photo lifted the photograher six feet into the air after he hit the camera's shutter releae button. The image was taken by amateur storm photographer Kane Quinnell of New South Wales, Australia. Lacking a tripod, he had set his camera on the hood of his car and set it for a four-second exposure. The fourth time he hit the button, this bolt struck twenty yards away. From the Daily Mail:

Mr Quinnell, an IT technician, said that as a small boy he was frightened by thunderstorms.

"I grew up and got over the fear factor and started to really enjoy the light shows," he said.

Now armed with a tripod, he hopes to continue with his new hobby.

"I am just waiting for some rain. There haven't been may storms lately."

Link (via Fortean Times)

A New Zealand medical journal recounts the story of a man whose incurable hiccups were cured with a finger up his ass:

A 60-year-old man with acute pancreatitis developed persistent hiccups after insertion of a nasogastric tube. Removal of the latter did not terminate the hiccups which had also been treated with different drugs, and several manoeuvres were attempted, but with no success. Digital rectal massage was then performed resulting in abrupt cessation of the hiccups. Recurrence of the hiccups occurred several hours later, and again, they were terminated immediately with digital rectal massage. No other recurrences were observed. This is the second reported case associating cessation of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage. We suggest that this manoeuvre should be considered in cases of intractable hiccups before proceeding with pharmacological agents.

Link (via JWZ)

Bruce Sterling, attending a conference on the future of printing in New Jersey, has kept a running log of all the genuinely weird and futuristic things that the speakers have said there:

"We're in the business of putting goo on a substrate."
"We need a taxonomy for 'printing-that-is-no-longer-printing.'"
"Your mega-customer, the anchor tenant in the mall of your dreams"
"It's the business of killing trees and putting chemicals on them."
"Baseball cards that suck in energy and run e-ink animated displays"
"They're not hiding, they're just selective."

Link

The Audioblogger service, which lets you "call your blog" and leave audio messages that become audio blog-posts, will cease on November 1.

If you've already created MP3 posts that way, they'll still work, but you can't create new audio posts with the service. Odeo runs the service, and a message to users said that resource limitations led to its closure. Other services offer similar tools, though. Snip:

Gabcast.com is a free service for recording by phone. Hipcast.com has a seven day free trial and lots of features. Gcast.com is another free service for phone recording.

All of the phone posting services listed above are compatible with Odeo in that they produce podcast feeds, which can be imported to Odeo. Any audio file at Odeo can be posted on a blog by copying and pasting some embed code.

I used Audioblogger a lot for a while, right around the time when the service was first released. One of the projects I used it for was a warblog in which the blogger phoned in messages from a satphone, while traveling through war zones. I experimented with it from more comfortable locations, too, including some geek events in LA. It was a neat idea, and I can imagine ways that such a service could still be used to create really interesting stuff online. Maybe I'll try some of the suggested successors.

I've just gotten a set of chapbooks from Penguin, a steampunk Victorian serial called "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters." The chapbooks are very handsome (see the Flickr set), and are being produced in limited runs of 5,000 copies each. The chapbooks come out weekly, sent directly to subscribers, and each one contains a chapter in the overall novel.

I only got a chance to browse the first chapter before I had to go today, but it read like a good story --- it's definitely going into my queue. The physical objects are so lovely, so nicely designed, it'd be a shame not to read them. I'm especially fond of the gradient color of the covers, each installment a little darker than the previous, so they form a kind of descending color-wheel on the bookshelf. If you're going to bother to print a book at all, it's awfully swell to print a set as handsome as these. Link

Update: As many have pointed out, these can't be shipped to the US. You have been notified.

Update 2: Steven Farmer sez, "U.S. readers can order 'Glass Books of the Dream Eaters' from Amazon.co.uk, they just won't ship the product until January 25th, 2007."

The $10 Skeeter Bag attaches to an electric fan and sucks mosquitoes into it all day and night.

Testing for Skeeter Bag began in the summer of 2004 at a puppy breeding facility in Central Florida. The facility cares for over 100 adult dogs and as many as 30 puppies at a given moment. Their mosquito problem was out of control. On June 12, 2004 the first trap was set six feet above several dogs on the sleeping porch and by morning it had over 3,500 mosquitoes inside. As the mosquito season picked up as many as 38,000 mosquitoes were caught in a night (estimated by weight 1 gram » 1,000 dried mosquitoes).

Link

Todd Lappin says:

The messenger bag company Freitag has completed construction of its new store in Zurich; a building constructed entirely of old shipping containers.

Link

Earlier this week I wrote about writer Robert Anton Wilson's unfortunate situation (the short story: he has no money, has a few months left to live, and was facing eviction from his apartment). Yesterday, I wrote an update.

Today, I received this email from Bob's daughter, which contains a note from Bob. It's very moving. People opened their hearts and their wallets, and Bob is going to be able to live out his remaining days in peace. Thank you all very much.

On behalf of my Dad, RAW (Bob), I want to throw my arms around you "like a circle 'round the sun!" for your loving graciousness in posting Bob's need on your site. As of about 5 minutes ago, over $68,000 has come in. We are all overjoyed as it now means that we can continue to celebrate this phase of his life in the comfort of his own home, with all the care he needs, until his passing, honored by the loving support of so, so many wondrous folks. Just last week I was sick with heartache as we were faced with giving his notice and now, the world has simply and completely - transformed. Last night, he dictated a note that he wanted me to forward to you - below is the text. He is very weak, cannot sit up or eat on his own, and as he struggled with a whispery voice to express his gratitude, he broke into tears several times. How my heart swelled as I gazed at this man who has been both one of the most frustrating - and incredible - beings I have ever known. I would not be who I am today, had I not grown up with him. Much love, Christina Pearson

BOB'S NOTE:

Dear Friends, my God, what can I say. I am dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and totally stunned by the charity and compassion that has poured in here the last three days.

To steal from Jack Benny, "I do not deserve this, but I also have severe leg problems and I don't deserve them either."

Because he was a kind man as well as a funny one, Benny was beloved. I find it hard to believe that I am equally beloved and especially that I deserve such love.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, know that my love is with you.

You have all reminded me that despite George W. Bush and all his cohorts, there is still a lot of beautiful kindness in the world.

Blessings.

Robert Anton Wilson

This month's Wired Magazine includes a feature about the gaming gadget company that continued to live la vida high-burnrate long after their mobile device bombed... then came that mysterious, high-speed Ferrari crash on PCH.

Wired editor Robert Capps tells BoingBoing,

We recruited investigative reporter Randall Sullivan (who literally wrote the book on the Biggie Smalls murder/Rampart scandal) and commissioned famed comic book artist Jae Lee to illustrate the piece (Captain America, Fantastic-4, the Hulk, X-Men, Spiderman, and is illustrating Steven King's Dark Tower -- some say he's the next Frank Miller).

Snip from Sullivan's piece:

The crash became an instant media sensation. In Los Angeles, the destruction of the rare million-dollar Ferrari - and the strange story that rose from the wreckage - dominated local radio talk shows and TV newscasts for days. For most, it was just another diversion, the newest twist on the high-speed-chase formula the city loves. But the public attention would spell disaster for a handful of people connected to Eriksson, many of them fellow participants in one of the biggest debacles in the history of the videogame industry: the epic meltdown of Gizmondo Europe, Eriksson's former company.

In the early 2000s, Gizmondo rose to prominence as the maker of a handheld gaming device designed to compete with Nintendo's DS and Sony's PlayStation Portable. The company touted its gadget as the next big thing in pocket electronics and, at one point, talked of moving half a million units in just a few months. But critics panned the device, and it failed to entice many customers. A month before Eriksson went off the road, Gizmondo declared bankruptcy, having hemorrhaged nearly $400 million in less than four years.

It might have ended there, another high-flying company with big ambitions and a lousy product. But the crash put a spotlight on Eriksson and raised a series of questions: Who is he? What kind of person drives nearly 200 mph on a coastal highway? The answers led to even more puzzles. In just a few years, it seems, Eriksson went from languishing in a European jail cell to making millions as a tech executive to, even more improbably, becoming deputy commissioner of antiterrorism for an obscure Southern California transit police force. Before ­Eriksson lost control of his Ferrari in Malibu, no one in the US really cared about his strange story. But after the supercar came apart, Eriksson would find every inch of his life under scrutiny by the LA County Sheriff's Department, federal law-enforcement officers, and the media. That's when Eriksson and a tangle of cohorts would find out just how large a little bump could loom.

Link

Previously on BB:
* Rare Ferrari busted in half
* The phony police business is alive and well

UPDATE: scroll down to the bottom of this post to receive the Iranian Supreme Leader's guidance on breaking DRM and visiting dirty websites.

On his blog, Sayyid Ali Khameini offers advice to the faithful about appropriate conduct during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan:

Q: "If somebody masturbates during the month of Ramadan but without any discharge, is his fasting invalidated?"

Iranian Supreme Leader: "If he do not intend masturbation and discharging semen and nothing is discharged, his fasting is correct even though he has done a ḥarām (forbidden) act. But, if he intends masturbation or he knows that he usually discharges semen by this process and semen really comes out, it is a ḥaram intentional breaking fasting."

Link (thanks, John Parres)

Reader comment: Joe asks,

The Ramadan fast is only from sunrise to sunset. Does this mean it's OK after dark?

Joe, that would be a question for the Iranian Supreme Leader. You can submit queries on his blog right here.

Scott Eric Kaufman says,

I clicked over Xeni's link to Iran's Supreme Leader's stance on copyright. Now, I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I thought Cory'd be interested to know that the Supreme Leader of Iran has definitively (if confusingly) addressed the topic. Here's the text:

To Break Soft-wares’ Protecting System

Q: Some of the computer soft-wares work for 15 days only and are made by foreign companies. What is the ruling of breaking the protecting system of these soft-wares to make them free and work forever or taking the ready-made broken file? Knowing that these soft-wares are useful and are so expensive in the market and one can download them from the company’s site to be tested on the computer. Moreover, when breaking the protecting system, nothing is stolen from the company or the market and by this act I will benefit many people who cannot afford the soft-wares’ price. Also, what can I do with the cracks I used? Can I just use them instead of making them?

A: As long as the soft-ware companies – be it foreign or local – have the right that nobody can use these programs by breaking their protection without their permission; it is impermissible to break the protection and use these programs without the consent of the producing company. The mere intending to benefit people by breaking or high prices and inability of most people to take advantage of these programs due to their price does not justify, according to shar‘, violating others’ legal rights. As per the crack you have used until now, you should acquire the agreement of the original company in this regard; otherwise, you are not allowed to continue with using them.

Ed. Note: it's kind of hard to find this, but from the main site, click on "Newly Asked Questions," then "Cultural and Artistic Issues," then "To Break Soft-wares’ Protecting System."

In this category, you'll also find a Q&A titled "Visiting Web Pages on Which Sexually Exciting Scenes Would Be Seen":

Q: I use internet so much and enter so many unknown sites. I like to visit all sites, even the non-Muslim ones, to know everything about them in spite of the fact that I know I may encounter some obscene scenes. Anyhow, when I open a page I just have a look at it and if it is an obscene one, I immediately close it and go to see another one and so on. I only look to know and not for lustful aims. But sometimes, the sexual passion overcomes. Is it permissible for me to do so?

A: If upon opening a web page your eye will fall on sexually exciting scenes, opening and looking at the page is ḥarām for you.

Reader comment: Kendall Willets says,

There are entire books full of that sort of advice, published by very senior Muslim leaders. For instance the Ayatollah Khomeini had a whole book (available in English as well) full of clarifications on locker-room principles like "if you shake it more than twice you're stroking it", and what to do if you marry a woman who has a bone obstructing her vagina.

Since Islam has all the answers, Imams are expected to provide them, interpreted directly from the Koran. For instance, it was the Ayatollah who enlightened me to the fact that sex is only for married people, but you can get married for as little as 30 minutes provided certain financial details are agreed upon.

Cory Silverberg, the Sexuality editor for About.com, tells BoingBoing:

The Kinsey Institute is now accepting submissions for its second annual juried erotic art show. The competition is open to all artists 18 years of age and older. Entries must be original works in the following categories: painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, ceramics, fibers, or mixed media.

Link to more about the show. A PDF brochure is here. Deadline: February 5, 2007. Image: Link to full-size. A portrait of ballerina Tatiana Riabouchinska, 1944, by photographer George Platt Lynes (1907-1955), United States. (Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of George Platt Lynes). From a previous Kinsey Institute gallery exhibit titled "George Balanchine and his Dancers: The Ballet Photographs of George Platt Lynes."

Earthlings, we're not alone. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have located the fastest-moving, most remote planets ever observed by humans. Snip from WaPo article by Marc Kaufman:

...Based on the number of planets identified and the number of stars in the Milky Way, the scientists estimated that as many as 6 billion Jupiter-size planets exist in [our] galaxy.

"Our discovery . . . gives very strong evidence that planets are as abundant in other parts of the galaxy as they are in our solar neighborhood," Sahu said...

Link to full text. And from a NYT item by Dennis Overbye:

"...We're beginning to be able to calculate how many Earths there are, how many planets are habitable, if not inhabited..." Dr. Boss added.

Link.

The astronomers' findings were published in full today in the journal Science: Link, the full report is available only to paying subscribers. Here's a snip from the abstract:

More than 200 extrasolar planets have been discovered around relatively nearby stars, primarily through the Doppler line shifts owing to reflex motions of their host stars, and more recently through transits of some planets across the faces of the host stars. The detection of planets with the shortest known periods, 1.2–2.5 days, has mainly resulted from transit surveys which have generally targeted stars more massive than 0.75 M, where M is the mass of the Sun. Here we report the results from a planetary transit search performed in a rich stellar field towards the Galactic bulge. We discovered 16 candidates with orbital periods between 0.4 and 4.2 days, five of which orbit stars of masses in the range 0.44–0.75 M.

Image: Barred Spiral Milky Way Illustration by R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA. (Thanks, John Parres)

Reader comment: Kinnell says,

The Smithsonian had a great article recently (Oct 2006 issue) on the actions of locating these planets (extrasolar planets): Link.

Mongo says,

I would just like to point out for clarity's sake that we earthlings have never actually seen any other planet other than those in our own solar system. All other planets we have "discovered" are in fact located via the Wobble Method.

Excerpt from a post on Defensetech blog:

South London comedian Mark Thomas has always been a rather unusually political gag man -- leading protests, giving out leading spies' cell phone numbers, launching one-man WMD inspections, showing up at a Nestle factory "dressed as a huge teddy bear, and then produc[ing] a huge ghetto-blaster playing Zimbabwe's health minister making serious allegations about Nestle's baby-milk marketing methods." Think Michael Moore meets Sy Hersh. But way more pissed off.

Thomas' most provocative stunt may have come earlier this year, when he helped a bunch of teenaged schoolgirls set up an online arms dealership. Before long, they were pricing out tanks, negotiating for grenade launchers, and -- in his words -- buying up stun batons and other "equipment intended for torture or ill-treatment."

It was enough to get Parliament involved. MPs "praised comedian Mark Thomas for unearthing evidence of stun batons being sold through websites in the UK," according to the BBC. And the politicians began leaning on the trade and defense ministries to do something about the sales.

Yesterday, they did. "Two men have been arrested during raids by police investigating the sale of military weapons over the internet," the Times of London reports. "The men, aged 61 and 40 years old, were detained when more than 40 police officers swooped in on two properties in Kent early this morning. Both men were arrested on suspicion of possessing prohibited weapons."

"Mark Thomas, the stand-up comedian,