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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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 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.

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!)

"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.

MP3 link | Podcast feed | Subscribe via iTunes

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.

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.

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!"

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

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.

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."

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.

"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."

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 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."

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).

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

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.

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

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."

Reader comment: Joe asks,

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

...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...

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

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.

Reader comment: Kinnell says,

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

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, has done more to expose illegal arms deals than the Ministry of Defence, the Export Control Organisation and HM Revenue and Customs put together," the Guardian proclaims, "simply by searching the internet and the trade press and attending the arms fairs the British government hosts."

Here's a snip from a concert rider written for Iggy and the Stooges back in the day, and attributed to their roadie:

With regard to the lighting design: (This was written by someone who doesn't really know what he's talking about. I cannot tell a lie. Lights-wisely speaking, I'm an absolute arse-head. But I know what I like. And although nobody goes home whistling the lights, it's also true that no-one goes to gigs to stare at the fucking P.A. stacks.)

Reader comment: Kim Cooper says,

The amusing rider linked today is not from "back in the day" but from the current incarnation of the band, featuring Mike Watt of the Minutemen. Back in the day, the Stooges' rider would have read more like "jar of Skippy, clean needles, change of socks." And they'd have been happy to get it!

Man, who knew IM chats could be so creepy? We were just as surprised not-surprised as everyone else to find that a creep like Mark "Maf54" Foley exists in Congress. Actually, more than anything we were surpised any member of Congress has the time to cyber it up with a child when there are more pressing matters going on like breaking our TVs, defending a false war, and redefining torture.

Rather than lose sleep about all of this we decided to do what we do best: draw up a Foley-Elephant hybrid manimal with it's nuts in an American flag banana hammock and slap it on a t-shirt. Bonus, the shirts have one of three random quotes from the chat logs (do yourself a favor and read this, it's creep-tastic). Depending on what we throw in your bag, you'll get a "Pedophant" shirt with one of the following super-awesome-gross quotes:

• (7:57:05 PM) i always use lotion and the hand
• (7:79:48 PM) is your little guy limp...or growing
• (8:08:31 PM) get a ruler and measure it for me

(...) Here's a nice jpeg of the art, by the way, for AIM icons and what not.

Update: Looks like others may be planning to profit from the congressman's misdeeds, too. BB reader jbuck writes,

Someone just registered maf54.com. "whois" gives

Domain Name.......... maf54.com
Creation Date........ 2006-10-04
Registration Date.... 2006-10-04
Expiry Date.......... 2007-10-04
Organisation Name.... Clifford E. Ogbehon
Organisation Address. P.O.Box 741431
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. Houston
Organisation Address. 77274-1431
Organisation Address. TX
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Someone grapped maf54.org this week too.

Loyalty to septic systems runs deep in a city that was incorporated to stop construction of a sewer line. Residents who fiercely deny that their tanks are the source of ocean bacteria also fiercely guard their privacy and their right to flush the estimated 2,400 septic tanks in a city strung along 25 miles of coast.

After decades of wrangling, Los Angeles County officials are promising to get tough -- threats of hefty fines by clean water regulators were an important push. During the next few months, investigators will begin testing sea water. If DNA tests show the waste is human and not from, say, raccoons or coyote, they will follow the trail up the creeks that traverse neighborhoods in Malibu, where clean water advocates such as Pierce Brosnan and Ted Danson live.

"When the results of these tests come back, I'll bet that once again we'll find that ... people's meat addiction, not their septic tanks, is causing this pollution," Anderson wrote in an e-mail through her publicist. "The best thing any of us can do to fight pollution is to adopt a vegetarian diet."

"He ran a hardware store after the war until big box retail happened," says Mckenzie. "Bonus points to someone who can tell me what this means on Image15 -- 'C-1 Standard Settings'? Enlighten me someone! =) "

Link to images.

Reader comment: Darren Bedwell says,

I have a manual for the B-29 (probably not too different) that explains how to operate the C-1 autopilot. The "A" and "R" refer to aileron and rudder.

In your recent post about the World War II how-to drop bombs notebook, the title refers B-52s. The B-52 was not around during WWII (first flight April 15, 1952).

There are a few references to the British and Germans in the notebook (page 3, item VI "Axis At[tack]" and page 5 "Offset Bombing: RAF - 1941 - Ruhr" , so this was likely from the European theatre (eliminating the B-29). That said, the two most likely candidates are the B-17 "Flying Fortress" or the B-24 "Liberator", both of which saw lots of use during the air war in Europe. Maybe the submitter has some more details about his Gandpa's service and can clear this up?

As for the mystery picture, no idea ;-)

I believe that C-1 is the autopilot part of the Norden bombsight. See the link below and search for C-1: Link More on the Norden bombsight: Link

In your article "HOWTO drop bombs: WWII paper notebook with instructions ", I found the following picture after image googling C-1 autopilot: JPEG Link. It looks very similar to the diagram on your article. It is an Autopilot commonly used in B-17's and B-24's.

Compared to the previous model, DER2 has thinner arms and a wider repertoire of expressions. The smoothness of her movement has also been improved, making it now even more likely for the uninitiated to confuse her with an actual human being.

Actroid’s limbs, torso and facial expressions are controlled by a system of actuators powered by pneumatic pressure. Once programmed, she is able to choreograph her motions and gestures with her voice.

"My father said that the patrollers would run you and ketch you and whip you if you didn't have a pass, when you was away from the pass.[HW: place?] But they didn't bother you if you had a pass. The patrollers were mean white people who called themselves making the niggers stay home. I think they were hired. They called their selves making the niggers stay home. They went all through the community looking for people, and whipping them when they'd leave home without a pass. They said you wasn't submissive when you left home without a pass. They hounded Lucy to death. She wouldn't let 'em get her, and she wouldn't let 'em get her quarter."

'I spent 15 hours a day for seven weeks sculpting a minute piece of diamond. The beams are made out of floating fibres that you see in sunlight.

'To paint the house, I took the hair from a dead spider's legs and made a paintbrush. Then it was a case of being very patient and careful.'

A Nascar fuel specialist claims he has invented a way to make high-end gasoline from animal waste. Dean Gokel says he can produce 110 octane "pigoline" -- gasoline made from hog waste -- that is indistinguishable on a molecular level from petroleum-based additives.

If other scientists confirm his technology -- which they have yet to do -- and can scale it up to industrial levels, Gokel hopes he can address two problems at once: addiction to foreign oil and biological pollution from commercial hog and poultry farming.

Says Frank Bell, the president of the Waste Elimination Biostill Systems (WEBS), Gokel's fledgling company: "This guy can take a gallon of piss, shit and water and turn it into a gallon of gasoline."

Reader comment: Shaun says,

Thanks for the article about Dean Gokel's pig-shit gas maker. I wonder, has anyone at Boing Boing noticed that this process was the prime source of fuel in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome? What with Mel Gibson really going nuts, and the world alledgedly sliding towards a fuel-driven PockEclipse, I have to wonder if art is imitating life?

Um, in Beyond Thunderdome, Tina Turner's character specifically explains that its methane they distilled from the pig crap, and the cars ran on that. This article states the end result is gasoline, not methane.

It's great that ernie points out the distinction between methane and gasoline, but he's abused the word "distilled." No distillation is required to get methane from excrement; all you have to do is put the crap in a sealed container and collect the gas that comes out. It's the product of natural fermentation with so-called "methanogenic" bacteria.

The recent scandal at Hewlett-Packard has had remarkable staying power. Like most others, I was taken aback by the investigatory methods HP officials used to find the source of boardroom leaks. They crossed the line, certainly as a normative matter, and, if the California indictments are any indication, as a legal one too.

Now let’s add a twist: What if members of HP’s Board of Directors had agreed in advance to be spied on? (...) Demanding such a waiver is not far removed from reality because of growing concern among firms about leaks of confidential or embarrassing information and the growing ease of publishing such things through blogging, media leaks, etc. (...)

In addition, in terms of existing doctrine, consent is a seemingly intractable problem for those seeking greater privacy protections for employees. Employee consent to monitoring eats away at privacy on the front end by eviscerating the “reasonableness” of their expectation of privacy; to the extent some privacy interest nevertheless remains, consent privileges the intrusion on the back end. Since the vast majority of employers now have some combination of surveillance/monitoring policies and waivers, consent has become a nearly all-consuming black hole, at least with regard to employee communications while at work or on employer-owned communications devices.

No single writer has done more to change the way I think about science fiction than John Varley -- and now that his classic short stories (the very best of his work) are all available in one volume, you can have your head done in by a master without having to haunt the used book stores looking for out-of-print collections. Link (Thanks, Monty!)

See also:
Varley's Red Thunder qualifies for preliminary Nebula ballot
The novel Heinlein would have written about GW Bush's America

The Think is the successor to the Leap and it's magnificent. The only thing I didn't like about the Leap was its aesthetic. It was big and heavy -- solid as anything, but also a pain to move from room to room and not the prettiest piece of furniture I'd ever owned.

The Think is like the Leap, but slimmed down and refined. It looks great, like a cross between the ethereal mesh of the cliche Herman Miller Aeron chair and the solidity of the older Steelcase designs. The Think has even fewer controls than the Leap (which had fewer still than the Aeron) -- instead, it is built from isometrically opposed materials that bend, give, and then hold to support you as you move, keeping you upright and balanced no matter how you squirm or fuss. That's key -- I hate being in a chair that makes me sit in exactly the same pose for protracted periods. No matter how good the chair is, it's not good enough that you want to be immobilized in it.

I'm intrigued by Steelcase's information on the production of the chair and the way that it is intended to be gracefully decomposed into recyclable elements at the end of its life. It can be disassembled with ordinary hand tools in five minutes (I put it together with an Allen key in about a minute), and 99 percent of the components are recyclable (and many are made from recycled materials to begin with).

Now that I've got it set up at my desk, I don't think I can part with it -- I suspect that when I move back overseas, a Think chair will accompany me. Link

I think this is now my favorite South Park episode ever, or at least a tie with the one in which a giant satellite dish grows out of Cartman's butt. It's that good. Snip from last night:

Cartman: You can just hang around outside all day tossing a ball around, or you can sit at your computer and do something that matters.

Adam Finley at TVSquad has an item here, and he rightly points out...

I think I can say with almost absolute certainty that South Park is the first television show in history where a character actually uses the word "pwnage."

Reader comment: Chance Wheeler says,

I don't know if it counts as saying "Pwnage", but on the episode "The Wrath of Con" on "Veronica Mars" "Ownage!" is shouted multiple times while characters are playing Unreal Tournament.

Here are some links to see the full WoW video: one, two, three.

The sword featured in the episode is actually an item that exists in the World .... of Warcraft called 'The Hungering Cold'. Comparison shots here.

Another excellent episode was "Good Times With Weapons" where the kids took on the likenesses of anime characters. Link. Apparently, Prosopopoeia makes for great South Park. Warning: Butters' fans may not want to watch this one.

A concealed room can also function as a direct passage to childhood memories. When David Lee and his wife, Daphne, moved into their house in Plano, Tex., in March, they found themselves with too many unused bedrooms. Mr. Lee set up a workroom with tools, a computer and a workbench in one of the empty rooms. But it did not take long for the couple to decide to install a bookcase door, at a cost of almost $2,000, and turn the space into a secret room. "I always wanted one," he said, "since watching Scooby-Doo way back when."

(Photo thumbnail above cropped and shrunk from a photo credited to Mark Peterman in the NYTimes)

RU SIRIUS: You're doing something with Terry Gilliam, who is absolutely one of my favorite directors.

NEIL GAIMAN: Bless! I hope that it happens. Terry has been working for many years on Good Omens, which is the novel that Terry Pratchett and I co-wrote about the end of the world…

Terry Gilliam has loved the book for years. He has been working on it for awhile. He recently came to us and said, "OK. I'm going to get the rights back to the script that I wrote with this guy called Tony Grisoni a few years ago. What is it going to cost me to get the option for myself?" Terry and I put our heads together and thought, well, we really want Terry Gilliam to make it -- we want this to be a Terry Gilliam film. We've said no to lots of people who want to make it into a cool, big commercial film... We decided that it should cost him a groat. And I don't believe they've actually made groats, which is an old English coin worth about fourpence, since about the 1780s. Which means he is going to have to go to EBay.

RU: He's going to have to do some searching… a magical quest.

GAIMAN: I mean frankly they're really cheap. We figured out we were going to need Farthings to pay the agent commission on a groat. I went to EBay and picked up a farthing for practically nothing.

1. Write to your local Member of Parliament. Letters (which are better than email) from just a handful of constituents are enough to get the attention of your local MP. Contact information and further advice here
2. Write to the Prime Minister. Contact information available here
3. Write to Tessa Jowell, Culture Secretary, especially if you live in her Dulwich and West Norwood constituency. She’s in charge of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, whose contact details are here
4. Write to Shaun Woodward, Minister for the Creative Industries and Tourism, especially if you live in his St. Helen’s South constituency. Contact details here
5. Write to David Lammy, Culture Minister, who is responsible for the arts market, especially if you live in his Tottenham constitutency. Contact details here

(Disclosure: I am a proud member of the advisory board of the Open Rights Group, which I co-founded)

The price hasn't been disclosed (although we've heard rumours) nor has the private owner, although some of the text on the lens is in Arabic and it carries a 'State of Qatar' emblem.

A neurologist enters a hospital room and approaches an older man sitting up in bed. The neurologist greets him, examines his chart, and after a brief chat in which the man reports feeling fine, asks him what he did over the weekend. The man offers in response a long, coherent description of his going to a professional conference in New York City and planning a project with a large research team, all of which the doctor writes down. The only problem with this narration is that the man has been in the hospital the entire weekend, in fact for the past three months. What is curious is that the man is of sound mind, yet genuinely believes what he is saying. When the doctor informs him that he is mistaken, he replies, ‘‘I will have to check with my wife about that,’’ then seems to lose interest in the conversation.

The man isn’t ‘‘crazy’’ or schizophrenic; he is quite coherent and can answer all sorts of questions about who his children are, who the current president is, and so on. He is confabulatory, owing in this case to the fact that he has Korsakoff’s syndrome, a disorder that affects his memory, producing a dense amnesia for recent events. But unlike other patients with memory dysfunction, who freely admit their memories are poor, a patient with Korsakoff’s syndrome will confidently report as memories events that either did not happen (or at least did not involve him) or that happened to him, but much earlier in life. This man’s act of describing the conference in New York City is known as a confabulation.

"What I am aiming at is not just memorizing figures, I am thrilled by seeking a story in pi," Haraguchi said...

Haraguchi, a psychiatric counselor and business consultant... took a break of about 5 minutes every one to two hours, going to the rest room and eating rice balls during the attempt, said Naoki Fujii, spokesman of Haraguchi's office.

Fujii said all of Haraguchi's activities during the attempt, including his bathroom breaks, were videotaped for evidence that will later be sent for verification by the Guinness Book of Records.

With the leaves turning in New England (I'm off to Martha's Vineyard tomorrow to teach the Viable Paradise writers' workshop) there's a lot of big-ass, gorgeous maple-leaves around for the taking. Link (Thanks, Ktrey!)

Belarus is an ailing former Soviet state (see previous post about electoral rigging by its corrupt dictator), and it's where my paternal grandfather's family comes from. All my life, it was a kind of romantic place of my origin, but all the news I ever hear from there is like this -- police-state tactics that make the Soviet era sound like a paragon of liberty. Sad.

Blogger [info]anei_aka_kirian writes (in Russian) about Sunday's "Smile" flash mob. It was very simple - people were to come to central square and wander around smiling. Information was spreaded in usual way. There were nearly one hundred of riot policemen near the square waiting for the mobbers. And... anei_aka_kirian visited the square with his girlfriend, both smiling. Policemen advanced to them, checked the passports, and then brutally took him to the bus, leaving his girlfriend behind. In the bus he was searched and his small knife was found. He had the official note of Ministry of Internal Affairs confirming that this knife couldn't be considered as a weapon, and it was wrapped. Nonetheless, policemen considered the guy to be one of the organizers of this flash mob and brought him to local police department. There criminal case was opened, and anei_aka_kirian could be punished with 3 months in prison or more for illegal storing of cold steel, despite that official certificate.

Heather Newton, the head of stone conservation, said that 20 per cent of the hundreds of 12th century Purbeck marble pillars that line the interior walls of the cathedral were bound with tape to prevent them crumbling. She added that a number of crockets, the decorative ends of the pinnacles on some of the towers, had been blown off in storms.

This is so mean, and yet convulsively funny. Stevens is actually not a lot more coherent than this, even without remixing.

Link (Thanks, Derek!)

Towards the end of the talk, Wendy was joined by Wired News's Quinn Norton, who talked about her experiences covering the Swedish Pirate Party movement. Link

Reminder: The speaker series is free and open to the public. Our next two speakers are Revver's Steven Starr, talking about Internet business-models that treat copying as a feature, not a bug, on Oct 17 at 7PM; then CPTech's Jamie Love who started the anti-trust action against Microsoft and founded the resistance movement at the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization, Oct 24 at 7PM.

Ketamine, sweet ketamine, answer to our glutamatergic dreams. In the long November night of the soul, in the ever-dark downpour of depression, it turns out that there might be a better umbrella than Prozac and Zoloft and Paxil and their serotonin-loving ilk. Of course, when it comes to antidepressants, nobody really knows anything, anyway, so why not go with ketamine, a mild hallucinogen known to club freaks as Special K?

And, just so you know, the stuff also goes by the names "K, Ket, Special K, Riddle, Horse, Spesh, Vitamin K (not to be confused with the true vitamin K), Smack K, Kit-Kat, Keller, Barry Keddle, HOSS, The Hoos, Hossalar, kurdamin, kiddie, Wonk, Regreta and tranq."

Reader comment: Some readers wrote in to dispute the notion that ketamine sometimes goes by the street nym "horse," which is more commonly used to describe heroin. Yeah, well, take it up with the crack whores who wrote that Wikipedia entry I quoted. And a piece of advice: never get into a linguistics argument with a ketamine junkie, particularly a Wikipedia editor who is a ketamine junkie. THEY ALWAYS WIN.

BB reader Alex Rice says,

It also goes by the name "K-Fed", right? I just want to be sure so I don't look silly asking my doctor for a prescription.

You quote Wikipedia saying a nickname is "Vitamin K (not to be confused with the true vitamin K)". I found it funny that on the same day that WaPo article was published, the Times published an article on the "true" vitamin K: Link. (My commentary on the coincidence is here: Link.) Also, here's more informative article on the ketamine depression study: Link (published in Tucker's paper 7 weeks before Tucker's article.)

ארטוּרוֹ איקאזה דה אראנה-גולדברג, בלש דרג ג’, תחום מסחר אמריקה הצפונית, מחוז שלישי, רשות רביעית, מחלקה שניה (פרקדייל) חווה שלל הרפתקאות במהלך הקריירה המכובדת שלו. כשלכד נוכלים עשה זאת באמצעות שילוב מנצח של חריפות חושים ומסירות בלתי מתפשרת לחובתו.

בשלושה אירועים שונים זיכו אותו מפקדו והמנהל המחוזי של המחלקה להרמוניה חברתית בעיטורי כבוד, ואמו טיפחה מקדש של גזירי עיתונים וציונים לשבח, שתפס את מרבית חדר האורחים הצפוף שבדירתה הסמוכה לשדרות סטילס.

See also:
I, Robot on The Infinite Matrix
I, Robot, the podcast

Update: Avi sez, "Bli Panika also has Ted Chiang's classic short story '72 letters' in Hebrew."

Now the Torontoist blog has come up with some fantastic t-shirt designs celebrating the TTC. Will the Commission boycott, threaten, or embrace them? Link

OK, basically, I'd give a testicle for that.

Not necessarily one of mine. But you get the idea.

The Spanglers, of Randolph, Ohio, were the first to win a marquee prize in Disney's "Year of a Million Dreams" celebration. One of 50,000 online entrants, they were rewarded with a morning at the Magic Kingdom all to themselves -- and a VIP tour.

By noon the family had been on Space Mountain, to the Dumbo attraction, on a carousel filled with Disney characters and on the Jungle Cruise, where 11-year-old Ashley Spangler got to drive the boat. All were free of lines, of course.

Other prizes to be awarded in Disney's contest include a chance to be the first to stay overnight in the Cinderella Castle, trips around the world as grand marshal in the Disney parade, a membership to the Disney Vacation Club and more.

Some, like a pass allowing guests to skip lines at attractions for the day, will be awarded at random to unsuspecting guests visiting a Disney park. All the company's worldwide properties are participating, but the biggest prizes are at Disney World and Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

Bitchun.org is runs on open source code (still in alpha release), creating a marketplace for trading and rewarding favors for your friends and like-minded strangers. It's pretty amazing to have something I invented for a science fiction novel turned into running code!

What's the Bitchun Society and what's whuffie?
Whuffie is a high five, it's that look of appreciation you give for a job well done, it's a thumbs up. It's your personal capital with your friends and neighbors. It's whuffie! People who give out and receive whuffie are in the Bitchun Society. It was first mentioned in Cory Doctorow's novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

What is the Bitchun Society for?
Right now, being part of the Bitchun Society lets you find people who share your interests and can help you through the use of a special Skype bot we call the Bitchun Butler.

This year at Toorcon we had a talk that was done fully anonymously over Tor. As far as we can tell, it's the first anonymous talk ever given at a conference. Alan Bradley and Kevin Flynn gave the talk on methods for circumvent and conceal software copyright protection which technically violates the DMCA. Hopefully this sort of format will be used in the future to talk about somewhat controversial subjects without having to worry about the speakers being arrested (like Dmitry Sklyarov at Defcon and Steven Rambam at Hope). Alan Bradley ended up posting up his notes on how he got the talk to work, and so I just thought I'd share it in hopes that other conferences will adopt this setup.

BoingBoing reader Robert says,

I just stumbled across this while browsing the French quotidien that I used to read on the metro every morning when I lived in Paris. It's a photo essay about a "mule" beauty contest in a Lima prison, in Peru. Mules, as I'm sure most everyone knows, are the women who swallow nugget-sized capsules of cocaine in order smuggle them to other countries. The photos, to me, were uplifting in a way to see these women smiling, though you know they've had it hard, probably, all their life. I've done my best to translate the captions of the pictures:

(1) On October 3rd, the women's prison of Santa Monica in Lima, Peru, organized the finale of the beauty contest called "Miss Spring" of which all the participants are inmates.

(2) Nearly all of the participants in the contest are mules, women who swallow capsules of cocaine for trafficking abroad -- mostly, Europe or the US.

(3) Among the 11 finalists, many nationalities are represented, notably Bolivia, Thailand, Belgium, and Mexico. Enticed by the promise of easy money, women from "modest" origins come from all over the world to disperse drugs via the international airport in Lima.

(4) In 2005, the Peruvian police arrested about 125 mules of foreign origin at the airport, which makes 533 kilograms of cocaine confiscated.

(5) Of the 32,397 inmates incarcerated in Peru, more than 700 are foreigners, the majority of which have been implicated in some form of drug trafficking.

(6) According to the director of the prison, this contest doesn't just rate the women on their physique, though sex appeal is important. It also judges the women on their feminity and their value as a person.

(7) The winner last year, On Uma Chumsri from Thailand, is present at the contest. She has been in Santa Monica prison since 2004, still awaiting trial.

(8) The Dutch Dominica Cleopatra Cleoma poses for the photographers.

(9) His compatriot, Lisano Motina Nobels, danses with a local choreographer.

(10) This year the winner is the beautiful Koku Kasusura from Holland.

(11) Of the 927 inmates in Santa Monica prison, only 133 have been convicted. All the rest await trial.

The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further.

Reader comment:

Phil Smithback says:

Correct me if I'm wrong but I've been seeing this post (about teleporting caesium atoms) everywhere, but I think it's pretty misleading. If this has to do with the Nature letter that is up in their current issue on www.Nature.com, then what was achieved wasn't actually teleportaion - which most people would consider physically moving a trillion caesium atoms in space - but rather quantum teleportation - the transmission of quantum states over distance. The letter is none the less really, really cool, because it involves a quantum teleportation that hasn't been done before. I'm pretty sure if you're familiar with quantum entanglement (if not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement). However instead of the usual entanglement of, say, an electron and an anti-electron, the experimenters entangled a laser beam and the spin states of a bunch of cesium atoms. Then, when they changed the polarization of parts of the laser beam, the quantum information was teleported to the atoms' spin state. Still, it's not actually teleportation, and seeing the unqualified word teleportation plastered up everywhere has my friends all spouting nonsense about Star Trek and whatnot.

But at 10:15, he was still in the tournament with four other players, and it didn't look like the tournament would end anytime soon unless he took drastic action. So, he announced to the other players that he was going to go "all in" (bet the maximum and never fold) for every hand until he won or went bust. He was using a "commitment device"...

... which is when someone locks himself/herself into a course he/she wouldn’t otherwise want to have to follow, but as a result the person benefits.

The idea of a commitment device is counter-intuitive. How can it make you better off to lock yourself in so that you have fewer options to choose from? Aren’t more choices always better than fewer? If there is no strategic interaction, more is always better, but when you are competing against someone else, limiting your options can be helpful. A classic example is an attacking army burning the bridges behind them so that they have no easy way to retreat. It commits the army to fight harder and might lead the opponent to retreat, avoiding a battle altogether.

SmartFilter is US-based firm that sells web-filtering software to private companies, state institutions, and government-controlled ISPs around the world. Not long ago, BoingBoing suffered the same miscategorization. We're not a porn site, either, but SmartFilter's dumb move blocked millions of would-be readers from accessing our site. No amount of reasoning would persuade them to lift the ban. Here are previous posts about BoingBoing's troubles with SmartFilter. See also BoingBoing's guide to defeating censorware. (Thanks, Seth)

Reader comment: Jay reminds us that

BoingBoing's guide to defeating censorware is actually blocked by Smartfilter under the category: Anonymizers. You probably already know this but its kinda pointless having a page about getting around stuff when you can't get to it in the first place (I can obviously get to the rest of BoingBoing from behind our SmartFilter) :)

I've mirrored your censorware page here: Link. I've invited other bloggers to do the same. I'm not sure what effect that'll have but it seemed appropriate to try to spread the word :)

"As an encore, the winning team will be paid $1 million more to decode another 100 people's genes, including a bevy of wealthy donors and celebrities. Already accepted for future decoding: Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul G. Allen and former junk-bond king Michael Milken."

Two senior Tibetan college officials have died following a shooting incident at a teacher training college in the Amdo region of China’s remote Gansu province. Separate sources confirmed the deaths of two top school officials in the shooting incident, at the Hezuo Teacher Training College in Kanlho (in Chinese, Gannan) prefecture during the college’s 20th anniversary celebrations in late September, according to RFA’s Tibetan service.

Lobsang, principal of the Hezuo Teacher Training College, shot Yang Zhihong, head of the school’s Communist Party unit, killing him on the spot, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He then shot himself, and died later from gunshot wounds.

“It is true the incident took place. There were some disputes between these two local officers,” a resident of the Amdo region said. We don’t know the reason for the shooting. There are no senior officials in the office right now due to a holiday(...)."

Previously:
School shootings: malignant, contagious social meme?

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim quickly he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed and getting to the patient within 3 hours, which is tough. Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. But doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

1. Ask the individual to SMILE.
2. Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
3. Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently, ie: It is sunny out today)

If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

-- Passed along by Michael Hawley

Reader comment:

Scott says

As a Neurologist, I think there is a lot of validity to these points. However, these symptoms are not all-inclusive, and are part of a widely distributed email (see http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/stroke.asp) which is often accompanied with a significant amount of misinformation. For further information on stroke, I suggest the American Stroke Association website at http://www.strokeassociation.org. Stroke currently is the leading cause of disability in the US, and the third most common cause for death.

And it's amazing how the stuff spreads. Link to full-size image whipped up by BoingBoing reader Mark Malamud.

Reader comment: Steve says,

Wow, Mark Malamud's 'I can't believe it's not torture' is awesome. I'm just waiting for a cheap Asian knock-off to turn up, like this gem: Link.

To completely derail the "I can't believe it's not" post, here's a funny list from McSweeney's last week. Link.

Each step emerges one step in front of you and disappears back underneath behind you as you go. This ‘bridge’ is purely mechanical, the weight of the person on it depresses each step a little, this force activates a submerged mechanism which raises the next step.

The public are invited to walk out on it as if walking on water, eventually reaching the middle of the lake, thirty steps and twelve meters from the shore. There they will stand alone and detached, stranded in the middle of a plane of water until they choose to return the way they came. For some people this experience of being cut off and surrounded by water will be peaceful, for others terrifying. For some walking across the water will be pure childish joy, whilst others will be too scared to try.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling by a three-judge panel allows the program to continue during the appeal that could take months.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Aug. 17 that the program targeting communications between people in the United States and people overseas with a suspected link to terrorism is unconstitutional. She refused Sept. 28 to postpone her ruling during appeals, but gave the government a week to ask the 6th Circuit to halt it from taking effect.

The Justice Department had urged the appeals court to allow it to keep the program in place while it argues its appeal, claiming that the nation faced "potential irreparable harm." "The country will be more vulnerable to a terrorist attack," the government motion said.

"The city government tried hard not to cut the tree when we built a new bus lane. It is more than 100 years old and it is important for the environment," said Susi Marsitawati of Jakarta's park agency.

"But later rumors spread that the government was unable to fell the tree because it has supernatural powers and is sacred," the official said, adding that Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso had filed a complaint with police...

Jeje Zainudin, chairman of the United Islam Youth, said... "It is not a matter of chopping down the tree but this is to counter a popular belief such as if [we] touch it, [we] will get sick or your cleaver will break."

For more than two weeks, the Aquila carefully towed a sonar cable from east to west and back again inside a 240-square-mile grid that the survey team had plotted using information from naval archives and the Kano Maru officer's account. The crew worked in shifts to keep the search going 24 hours a day...

In mid-August, the sonar picked up a 290-foot-long object with the sharp angles and jutting shadows of something man-made wedged into a terrace on the steep underwater slope of the volcano.

The Grunion, however, was 312 feet long. The Williamson team believes the bow may have plowed beneath a mat of thick sediment, hence the apparent shortage of about 20 feet. Skid marks show the vessel slid to rest about 1,000 meters from the surface, (survey manager Art) Wright said. Over the years, earthquakes along the tectonic subduction zone could have piled on more debris, he said.

Best line in the article:

"It's just all kinds of filth," said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read Fahrenheit 451.

Link

Fox also reported that "we are at war with Eurasia; we have always been at war with Eurasia." Link

Reader comment:

j7y says: They did it again during "Big Story Weekend" on Sunday. I try never to attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence, but this is a bit much.

Update:

It looks like a Runt Bike.

You know what's great about the internet? It's one giant cable access channel.

Link to a blog post on meathaus.com about John Kilduff's "Let's Paint TV," in which the indefatigably exuberant host mixes blended drinks, fields live callers (some of whom hurl sexual insults at him) and exercises on his treadmill in a suit while trying to paint a picture. Sometimes there are nude male models, too (work-safe, it's not porn by any stretch, and it's surely twice as gratifying). Video links: one, two, three, and don't forget his Let's Paint, Exercise, and Eat Chocolate Pie series.

Update: Sweet baby Cthulhu, how did I miss this? The versatile and charming Mr. Kilduff also hosts a cable television series called "Let's Paint, Exercise, and Cook Fried Eggs on a Foreman Grill." Had I but a fraction of this man's enthusiasm, I would most surely rule the world. Link. (thanks John)

Suzuki is a science hero, an amazing and brave Canadian researcher whose accessible, topical explanations of science topics have made him a national treasure.

This may seem obvious to some, but the whole point of conducting and publishing this research is to get people to actually use it. As public education, it helps raise awareness of environmental problems. But more important, it provides solutions to those problems. And most of those solutions are best implemented by our political and business leaders, rather than by individuals.

So if you ask me if it bothers me that politicians are stealing the solutions brought forward by my foundation, the answer is no. To use a computer term, we consider this information "open source." It's a free buffet; please take all you like. The whole reason why we do the research is to effect change. If those who have the power to make those solutions happen actually use that information, so much the better. This is how change happens.

This year's Emerging Technology Conference is about magic and the sufficiently advanced technology behind it. Some magical effects are made by big technology, others by judicious selection and integration of existing subtle technologies.

* The iPod can almost be seen as step backward in terms of the technology behind its user-interface, yet is found simple and usable by everyone from your kids to your grandparents.

* TiVo took a commodity, slow-as-molasses Linux box, imbued it with a smidgeon of magic in the form of a television hook-up, recorder, and decent user-interface. Was the TiVo really that much more advanced than the VCR? After all, you could indeed time-shift with tape—it just wasn't quite so simple and you spent far more of your time fiddling with storage than watching your shows.

* Google scored web pages not only by the words in them, but also by the number of times those pages were linked to by other web pages. From this simple idea came the incredible magic that let the Web scale. Was this the sufficiently advanced technology, or was it the combination of GFS and map-reduce that let Google's servers scale as the Web grew?

* BitTorrent pumps files into your hard drive at the capacity of your network connection. The technology of resource locators and fragmented files were sufficiently advanced together to create this magic and make the movie and television industry see the Internet as opportunity and not purely threat.

(Disclosure: I am a proud member of the conference jury for the Emerging Technology conference)

Gareth is a writer, the founder of Street Tech, and the author of many books about technology and cyberculture, including The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots (for which I had the pleasure of providing the illustrations).

In addition to interviewing Gareth about his critically-acclaimed 1993 Hypercard stack, Beyond Cyberpunk, we also discuss our favorite podcasts and look at some of our most interesting blog entries of the past week.

Link | Podcast feed |Subscribe via iTunes

Link to report at CNET.

From Denis, who is managing Bob's care:

Just went to your boing boing site. Wowie Zowie Batman! What an amazing job you're doing with everything.

Anyway, this morning Bob's daughter showed up at his house in tears because she had checked his PayPal account and found money for next month's rent plus more. Bob called me to say that he couldn't believe people would care so much about him and as we talked (which isn't easy for him at this point) he was overcome with emotion more than once. He is so touched and RELIEVED at the possibility of staying in his home. He kept repeating to me his deep felt appreciation and disbelief that people would care so much about him. What a humble and sweet man.

I just made a photoset of a derelict White Alice / DEWline military radar installation I visited about a month ago out in remote western Alaska. The Distance Early Warning system (or DEWline for short) was built during the Cold War for the purpose of 'hearing' soviet airplanes as they approched. The government spent untold hundreds of millions of dollars on these installations back in the sixties and seventies and i'm unable to find a single picture of one anywhere on the internet. (...)

The photos from inside the facility look bright and illuminated but that's just camera flash. They were pitch black, and infested with caribou. It was a classic videogame scenario: naively exploring a derelict radioactive military facility in the middle of nowhere full of rusting filthy machinery with low-battery flashlight. Fun stuff.

Reader comment: Lloyd says,

Despite the fact that these sites were massive radio transmitters, they are not radio-active. They were powered by diesel generators. There was nothing "Atomic" about them other than they were designed to warn of an attack over the pole by Soviet aircraft. There is a huge amount of information reguarding the amount of money the US and Canada spent on these facilities. One of the best: Link.

I live in Nome, also on the Seward Penninsula, and the skyline above town is dominated by the shells of a White Alice radar site, inevitably known as "nomehenge". The Air Force came in and cleared out the site and wanted to tear down the shells, but met strident opposition from local residents. The radars are so large they are the most visible landmark in the area, and have guided many a lost traveler back to town over the years. So all that money really did save some lives. Unintentionally.

From what I can find, this location was not a DEW site, nor are there any radars. This location was part of the White Alice Communication System which used microwave transmitters to provide communications between DEW sites and other facilites. I found this document which gives a brief history, a map, and the toxic substances found at the site: PDF Link.

I loved the story about the abandoned Radar Station in Alaska. Ecspecially the part were Ezekiel mentioned that the setting reminded him of some videogame was nice. Because that is what they have been using our abandoned radar station for. It is a huge site situated on top of an artificial hill made from rubble from WWII called Teufelsberg (Devil's Hill), not far from the city center. Although it is in decay since the early 90's, it is strictly guarded. Pretty much one of the only occasions to visit this site was the premiere for the first part of the movie Resident Evil. People told me afterwards the party wasn't to successfull, but everybody agreed that the location was stunning. Chaos Computer Club has a website with nice pictures of the station and a bit of its history.

This site has lots of photos of all sorts of different abandoned missile bases, mines, sawmills, bunkers, gold drenches and stuff like that in Alaska.

We have a White Alice, too, (Yukon Kuskokwim Delta) also used for navigation by fishers, pilots, snowmachines, etc. maybe even for NZ godwit bringing the first bird flu (or not) DEW line sites tend to look like small, one-story shacks: Link. My Dad was a programmer for the SAC and SAGE systems, which linked the DEW line with the B-52s

I saw this photo set and was pretty stoked because I work for a contractor that handles EPA Superfund Records in the Region X (which includes sites in Alaska) offices in Seattle and some of those records are for DEWline sites. I'd actually never seen what one of them looked like, so it was good to get an idea. While none of the sites are "radioactive" as one person suggested, there are at least five of them that are on the EPA's CERCLIS (Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Information System) database. While this does not necessarily mean that they are Superfund sites per se (although that can always change), they have at some point been reported to the EPA (usually by a governmental agency) as potentially hazardous. This could be because of something as simple as extra barrels of diesel fuel laying around and no one is sure how to dispose of them or something much more complex like buildings containing asbestos that are now falling apart after years of not being used. So for those wanting to explore a DEWline site, I would suggest that they be careful which one they go to (hopefully the dangerous ones would have restricted access anyway) and to check the CERCLIS database beforehand. Anyone who is really curious can always get more information about these sites through the FOIA process too. Thanks, Kurt

The album Product Music: Vol 1 is a collection of memorable examples of the industrial song. Because if you're not buying a company's product, perhaps a few listens to their new dance tune will change your mind!

The songs range from mellow dance tunes ("The Frito Twist") to manic dance tunes ("Dance The Slurp", with its frenzied cries of "SLURP SLURP!!!") to haunting ballads (the somewhat disturbing "My Bathroom Is A Private Kind of Place", one of three tunes in the compilation from American Standard's classic industrial musical The Bathrooms Are Coming!).

Update:

A copy of the physical CD is up for auction on eBay.

Reader comment: Simon Sizer says,

I live just down the freeway from Yakima, and am all over national (international?) media references to it. Unfortunately, I don't have much to add to the sorry tale. I work in agriculture (and at the local newspaper), but not in hops-related fields. (Apples and obituaries, specifically.) But, anyway, here's what the local paper has to say about it so far: Link.

Our local Fresh Hop Ale Festival is coming up this weekend, and I aim to go. I'll have to see what the general mood is like. There's actually more talk about wine than beer in the area, since, while we grow an awful lot of hops, we don't do much local brewing, while there are many local wineries.

Anyway, I'm just excited to see us show up somewhere, even though it always seems to involve fires, or volcanic events, or mysterious data-gathering.

Don't worry about the effect on beer prices. The bottle cap costs more. Hops are a spice. In a strong IPA there is the equivelant of one ounce in a six pack. In a typical industrial lager, PBR, Coors, Bud, there is less than a quarter ounce.

Recent comments on the hop fire may be slightly off the mark. In this particular case, the 4% were restricted to Zeus and Columbus/Tomahwk hops (33% of the American hop harvest in 2005). Had the fire been among a less popular variety such as Centennial or Chinook it may have destroyed the entire crop and thus made it impossible to brew certain brewers' beers. Different hop varieties impart different flavors/aromas/characteristics. PDF Link

Update: Glyn sez, "It seems like the customers won this battle. Due to bad publicity and reactions from customers NextGenTel have removed the limit and NRK is now back on full speed in their network. What should I say? Thanks to the people contacting NextGenTel and to the blogs and media that understand how this was a serious violation to network neutrality."

Inspired by your post on recovering old analog tapes from the days of hacking, I dug up the only (old analog) copy left of the 'trip tape' that was shown at several hacker-'themed' party events in Ohio around the year 1991. The audio still holds, but some of the video got whacked out over the years, which adds more of the 'alienating' effect this video was trying to create at the time.

Reader comment: Ken Again says,

Many of the images (ie, the walking beach chair, Sorayama-type sexy robot, etc.) in the so-called hacker "trip tape" are lifted wholesale from a video I used to have called "State of the Art Computer Animation," a predecessor of the "Mind's Eye" series. Apparently Amazon has a source for some copies if anyone wants the unexpurgated version. Considering how far CGI has come in the past 2 decades it's interesting to see what holds up and what's antiquated. Link.

I'm not sure if the "Trip Tape uses footage from all three, but much footage is also from one or more of the "Qatsi" films by Godfrey Reggio (Phillip Glass conducts the score for each one): Naqoyqatsi, Powaqqatsi, & Koyaanisqatsi. I have them, and they're great by themselves. It was quirky seeing them "remixed".

Longtime Sigur Rós pal and fellow Icelandic native Jóhann Jóhannsson has a new album out this month, starring the venerable IBM 1401 computer of yore.

Jóhannsson's also been doing live performances of "IBM 1401, a User's Manual," as shown above. Adam Farrell from music label 4AD tells BoingBoing:

The story goes that Johannsson's dad was the technician on Iceland's first 1401. Johann found the machine in his dad's house, and sampled it for this album -- which is more of a classical / electronic album. He's experimented like this before -- he used ham radios and morse code transceivers on his Kitchen Motors CD. He figured sampling the world's first small business computer was the next step. Back in 1960, these devices weren't cheap: $2,500 a month to lease one.

The artist explains how the project came together in his own words here.

Link to project site, here's a video clip of the modern dance piece he scored for IBM 1401 (with someone narrating from the manual). Here are the machines you'll hear, and an audio file is here: MP3 Link.

Reader comment: Tore Sinding Bekkedal says,

You and your readers might be interested in knowing that there's actually a working 1401 in the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View. (In 1401 Shoreline Blvd!). It's under restoration, but the CPU is mostly working. There's a project page here which features video and interesting commentary by Ed Thelen.

There is also one working in Sindelfingen in Germany, but there does not seem to be any webpage about it.

I was at the LA County Fair this weekend and stumbled upon "Copyguard" technology. This is the sign in front of one of those Ye Olde Tyme photo booths where you dress up old west style and get photos taken. They have some mysterious type of anti-copy technology built into their photos. Perhaps it only works on daguerreotypes because my point and shoot camera was able to successfully copy the image.

The best part of the story is that an employee ran up to us to make Syd stop taking pictures - 'because they're copyrighted' though if the COPYGUARD worked there wouldn't have been any need to stop him.

An Australian-based computer programmer used sound-editing software to analyse Neil Armstrong's famous possible Moonlanding slip-up, and concluded that he did in fact say "It's a small step for A man..." The guy says: "The "a" was transmitted ... and can be verified in an analysis using Canadian sound-editing software called GoldWave."

Here's a roundup of some of the recent posts on xeni.net/trek, a reporter's notebook I'm keeping about stories followed on a recent trip to Tibet and to Tibetan refugee communities in Northern India.

* Interview with the founder of the Miss Tibet Pageant: Lobsang Wangyal is a tech-minded Tibetan cultural entrepreneur in Dharamshala, India. I met him there earlier this year, and shot the portrait above. One of his projects is the Miss Tibet Pageant, and I asked him to tell us about it. They're having a hard time coming up with funding to put on the event this year, and they've established a Paypal account (link here, top of page) so folks in the West who'd like to support it can help with cash.

Image: a portrait of Lobsang I shot earlier this year in India. Link to post.

* You can buy DRM-free Tibetan ringtones, cellphone wallpaper, and popular music at Nathan Freitas' new website, Cruxy.com. Among the Tibet-related stuff I found: electric banjo music from a Tibetan exile musician, which sounds like what might have happened if Jimi Hendrix gave up acid for yak butter tea, and moved to Lhasa. I don't know how you say "awesome," in Tibetan, but consider it said. Link to post.

* There's a $30K cash reward up for anyone who can make contact with the abducted Panchen Lama. Link to post.

* The Dalai Lama said this week at a press conference that his successor might be chosen by popular election. Link to post.

* If you've been following this series, you already know about the Tibetan Technology Center and their community wireless mesh network in Dharamshala, India. Here's news from a similar project working to wire rural indigenous communities in Laos and on Navajo Nation land in the USA. Link

Subscribe to the RSS feed for xeni.net/trek for updates, if you feel like it. I'm going to try and embed actual pieces of yak cheese in my next post, and lordy, you know you don't want to miss that.

Photo nerd notes: This image was shot with a Canon 5D, using a EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens, and managed with many gigs' worth of other images shot during the trip in Apple's Aperture.

Reader comment: Edward West says,

I was happy to see Xeni's link regarding the reward money offered for the safe return of the Panchen Lama. Following the links, it seems you can actually promise to donate to the monastery to increase the sum of the reward money. It would be great if BoingBoing readers could increase the size of the pot significantly. I'm pledging $500-- money well spent if it brings him home.

Here's some things to do and read to celebrate No DRM Day:

The Digital TV Liberation Front's Wendy Seltzer is giving a free talk tonight at Los Angeles's USC Annenberg School (main campus) at 7PM.

DefectiveByDesign's list of anti-DRM actions contains over 200 suggestions for activities you can participate in today and all year round to fight DRM.

DRMFree.org is a search-engine for DRM-free music for sale on the Internet, a single index of dozens of sites that sell or give away music without crippleware.

DRM.info is a site aimed at explaining DRM to the uninitiated -- what DRM is, why you should care, and what you can do about it. Tell your friends!

Who Killed TiVoToGo? is a murder-mystery from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that explains how even restricted services that let you get more out of your property are being axed by regulators and the entertainment industry (here's how to fight back).

Kembrew McLeod's guest-edited issue of the journal Cultural Studies contains uproarious scholarly works on the copyfight.

Anti-DRM banners for your site from Militant Geek.

Update: Matt sez, "Don't forget about the entries for the downwithdrm video contest."

Update 2: Dave sez, "Online video site 4Flix.Net has announced that to celebrate October 3rd as the Day Against Digital Rights Management (DRM), ALL of the premium video content currently available for download will be FREE throughout the month of October 2006. This is made possible by the generosity of this month's sponsor site."

Update 3: Mia sez, "Previously known for publishing Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Slave Labor Graphics has decided to start selling their comics online in a DRM-free format (CBZ and PDF files). A single issue costs less than a buck! Considering that most printed comics cost at least $3 these days, these downloads are a hell of a bargain. Titles include Skeleton Key, Emo Boy, The Cemetarians, and Next Exit."

Update 4 Justin sez, "Files Forever is a new service from DreamHost where anybody (well, during the beta test it is only open to current DreamHost customers) can quickly and easily set up their own iTunes-like store for any sort of file downloads.. with a difference: NO DRM! Files with Digital Rights Management of any kind are strictly prohibited on Files Forever. It just goes against the whole point of the thing."

Update 5: Yoni sez, "My friend just started a job teaching English in France, and the DRM-bug (in the form of region-locked DVDs) is making it impossible for her to legally show her students DVDs she owns on the school's DVD player. I thought about this a bit and realized - there's no clearly legal nontechnical solution to do something that is 100% technically feasible -- it's just artificially stopped by DVD trade regulations and international digital copyright law. Since it's the Day Against DRM, I wrote a post explaining a bit of the backstory and the possible solutions - and why none of them are acceptable."

Update 6: Aaron sez, "Daytrotter.com has free and DRM-free songs from artists who stop by and record in the Daytrotter studio on their way to and from Chicago -- unreleased and rare songs that appear nowhere else except on this site. All free. For a young site, they get some impressive names from the independent music scene -- Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Catfish Haven, Page France...|

William Talcott, a prominent San Francisco poet with dual Irish citizenship, had fans all over the world. But when he died in June of bone marrow cancer, his daughter couldn't notify most of his contacts because his e-mail account--and the online address book he used--was locked up.

Talcott, 69, a friend of beatnik Neal Cassady, apparently took his password to the grave.

Reader comment: Vikki says,

This decision on the part of the airline and the passengers of the airline makes about as much sense as banning liquids. He could be speaking English, albeit in code, and still planning to bomb the hell out of the place at any moment. Everyone's paranoid. Time to break out the marijuana.

This is hardly the first time this something of this sort has happened. A man was detained for several hours for speaking Arabic on the phone at a bus station. Two britasians were kept off a flight for speaking Urdu (although there is some evidence that they may have been trying to provoke an incident). A flight was even diverted because passengers felt threatened by two orthodox jews praying in Hebrew! There are many more cases like this involving Sikhs immediately after 9/11, I’m just showcasing some non-Sikh examples so that the rest of you can relate.

There's this, from CNN.com:

"An attorney for Foley, a Florida Republican, confirmed Monday that the former congressman is in an alcoholism treatment center. The fax was apparently sent from Clearwater, Florida, but Roth would not say if that's where Foley is being treated."

So, apparently Foley has gone to a detox center in Clearwater, Fl. What's in Clearwater? Scientologists! So, I followed my intuition and did a little Googling, thinking perhaps Foley is drying out with the Sea Org there. This is what I uncovered:

"FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ACCEPTS SCIENTOLOGY AWARD
On May 24, 2003, the "Clearwater Business Association" hosted a brunch in the Fort Harrison’s Ballroom, for Florida Congressman Mark Foley (R).

Also present at this event was "Republican State committee woman" Nancy Riley. Foley is featured on a Scientology web page promoting their anti-psychiatry front group C.C.H.R. ("Citizen's Comission on Human Rights"). The "Clearwater Business Association" (C.B.A.) appears to be primarily a way to bring politicians into the Scientology fold, by way of Scientologist Brett Miller (second from left in photo below). The primary affiliations of the C.BA.appear to be Scientology, W.I.S.E., and C.C.H.R., and not local businesses."

www.fso.org/en_US/news-events/pg005.html
web.tampabay.rr.com/sp/FLA.html (scroll down)

WTF. Hold me, I'm scared.

Reader comment: Al Hunt says,

So that's why he was doing this via email. I understand that Scientologists have to do all their molesting silently.

Ajit says,

Following Florida Congressman Foley’s resignation after ABC uncovered his sexual advances towards teenage Pages, there is been a lot of talk about the cover up, specifically by the House speaker who knew about this problem a while back.

Conspiracy of Silence is a documentary from 1994, supposedly banned from the Discovery channel, that documents the pedophile ring within Washington. The quality of the video is quite bad and it clocks in at 55 mins but it is interesting to see how insular Congress is and how little things have changed. Link to video, link to blog post.

Link to video clip. (thanks, Oxblood Ruffin!)

News stories about HP's ill-conceived investigation of board members' and reporters' phone records now identify the "pretexting" private investigator as Ronald DeLia, owner of Massachusetts-based Security Outsourcing Solutions.

Targets of HP's investigation included HP board member and Kleiner Perkins co-founder Tom Perkins, who quit the board and then wrote a letter to HP describing how investigators fraudulently accessed his personal phone records by using personal information such as his social security number.

Reader comment: Tim Howland says,

It's even more ironic! the security outsourcing firm identified with messing with HP (and who wrote a newsletter about how to avoid identity theft) seem to have missed cardinal rule number 1- keeping your info out of online directories. A simple whois lookup on the gumshoe's domain reveals their home address and home phone number: Domain Name -- SECURITY-OUTSOURCING.COM (...) Link. How could HP hire such clowns? Is the whole thing a carefully coordinated conspiracy to kick out an incompetent board of directors?

Who is it that gets together in mobs and hunts down, tortures and kills people who are different from them? Who is it that teaches modesty, courtesy, and generositv but lives in depravity, rudeness, and greed? Who is it that can gather together the time, energy and money to murder millions and destroy cities for the sake of a flag, deity, or economic system? Not weirdoes, not kooks or cranks or nuts. It's the "Normal" people who do those things.

It's the "Normal" people who believe there's only one "real world" and it's the one THEY'RE living in. It's the "Normal" people who kill each other over differences in that reality, and if someone can't trick themselves into ignoring the millions of inconsistencies or can't gloss over the gaping flaws in that reality-construct, or can't even pretend convincingly that they believe that flimsy and self-contradictory world is ALL TRUE, rather than have their own illusory stability undermined or accept that other ways of thinking and seeing might be valid, the "Normal" people imprison those "mentally ill," and experimentally destroy their personalities by use of drugs, electroconvulsion, and brain surgery.

Coleman is a suicide prevention and school violence researcher and consultant, and author of Suicide Cluster (1987) and The Copycat Effect (2004). He writes:

Here is what I am finding:

* Most contemporary school shootings tend to occur primarily during two periods of the school year - at the beginning (late Aug through October) and near the the end of the academic year (March-April).

* Copycats follow a regular temporal pattern that repeats - these could be after a primary media event in a day, a week, two weeks, a month, a year, ten years - vulnerable humans have internal media clocks.

* Copycats imitate the previous violent attacks, oftentimes down to specific details as that mirror the previous specifics of the shooter, the victims, and the methods.

* "Celebrity" events have a far-reaching impact and modeling effect -- so, of course, Columbine serves as a dark cloud over many school shootings.

One of the silliest things I have heard from cable news in the last several days during mid-September 2006, is that "these school shootings aren't like the other school shootings." This is short-sighted, and factually untrue.

Before the current model (post-1996) in which a member of the student body would go into their own school and kill fellow students, the pattern was one of outsiders -- often adults -- going into schools and killing students. In my book, I discuss some of the more infamous cases (...). Every year is different, and a fresh view must be considered based upon observations that are right in front of our eyes. What I do at the beginning of a new school year is to see if there is an emerging pattern that will be the re-worked "copycat" model for the new school year. To me, it was and is obvious where we were going this year.

Here's what I see: a mix of outsiders invading school, and students making plans too (...)

It is most definitely the real deal, a suit that never went into space, but was used for high-altitude pressure tests during the Gemini program. There were around thirty of these suits made, and this is the only one that wasn’t destroyed or put in a museum somewhere.

To be in the presence of this artifact is thrilling. It’s like seeing Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, except Lincoln’s hat was never worn by a freakin’ ASTRONAUT.

Millions of people—Christian millenarians, jihadists, psychedelicized Burning Men—are straight-out wishful about The End. Of course, we have the loons with us always; their sulfurous scent if not the scale of the present fanaticism is familiar from the last third of the last century—the Weathermen and Jim Jones and the Branch Davidians. But there seem to be more of them now by orders of magnitude (60-odd million “Left Behind” novels have been sold), and they’re out of the closet, networked, reaffirming their fantasies, proselytizing. Some thousands of Muslims are working seriously to provoke the blessed Armageddon. And the Christian Rapturists’ support of a militant Israel isn’t driven mainly by principled devotion to an outpost of Western democracy but by their fervent wish to see crazy biblical fantasies realized ASAP—that is, the persecution of the Jews by the Antichrist and the Battle of Armageddon.

When apocalypse preoccupations leach into less-fantastical thought and conversation, it becomes still more disconcerting. Even among people sincerely fearful of climate change or a nuclearized Iran enacting a “second Holocaust” by attacking Israel, one sometimes detects a frisson of smug or hysterical pleasure.

My friend Douglas Rushkoff feels the same way about him, and I'm reposting his blog entry because Robert Anton Wilson needs our help now.

UPDATE: Note from Robert's friend, Denis Berry: Sadly, we have to report that wizard-author-intelligence increase agent is in trouble with his life, home and his finances. Robert is dying at his home from post polio syndrome. He has enough money for next months rent and after that, will be unable to pay. He cannot walk, has a hard time talking and swallowing, is extremely frail and needs full time care that is being provided by several friends-fans-volunteers and family. We appeal to you to help financially for the next few months to let him die at his home in peace.

Douglas Rushkoff: I hope people I've inspired with my work would band together to help me out in my later years if I needed it. Which is at least part of the reason why I'm sending what I can to support cosmic thinking patriarch Robert Anton Wilson, whose infirmity and depleted finances have put him in the precarious position of not being able to meet next month's rent.

In case the name doesn't immediately ring a bell, Bob is the guy who wrote Cosmic Trigger -- still the best narrative on how to enter and navigate the psycho-spiritual realm, and co-wrote the Illuminatus Trilogy, an epic work that pushes beyond conspiracy theory into conspiracy practice. Robert Anton Wilson will one day be remembered alongside such literary philosophers as Aldous Huxley and James Joyce.

But right now, Bob is a human being in a rather painful fleshsuit, who needs our help. I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute, for I want future generations to know we appreciated Robert Anton Wilson while he was alive.

Let me add, on a personal note, that Bob is the only one of my heroes who I was not disappointed to actually meet in person. He was of tremendous support to me along my road, and I'm honored to have the opportunity to be of some support on his.

UPDATE JANUARY 11, 2007: Robert Anton Wilson is now in the next phase of whatever it is that happens when we depart our vehicular bodies, so no further financial assistance is required. Thanks very much for your help. RAW RIP Link

Reader comment:

Ken says: "Robert Anton Wilson is one of my heroes as well. I don't have a lot of money, but I do have a printing press, so I thought maybe I could help him out by selling some t-shirts and donating the proceeds. A friend of mine put together the linked design. Each shirt sold sends about $10 to RAW." Link

Here's an article about bill HR 6166, the "Military Commissions Act of 2006" which recently passed in Congress. At first the bill seemed to only concrete the ability of Bush to define the Geneva Conventions and allow torture to be used on detainees. But further analysis digs up the fact that it also defines non-allegiance to Bush as an act of terrorism. It then goes on to include the following into the corral of terrorism: vandals, people who fight near "protected buildings", squatters, petty thieves, and anyone "who with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States" collects information (such a broad term) "clandestine" means.

What's more, it also prevents the courts from arguing with it, people from bringing the Geneva Conventions into a defense trial, and prevents people held under these terms from receiving any knowledge of the charges against them - preventing any sort of defense. There is so much more and the bill is over 80 pages long.

It's just outrageous to think that one day BoingBoing might even be considered as enemy activity under these new laws.

Ever at the ready with ironic, 100% cotton weapons of freedom, Tim Murtaugh says:

You guys posted about my "I Am Not A Terrorist" shirt a few weeks back. I just created another one that says "Enemy Combatant" (in English this time). Knowing our fear of terrorism (and doing quite a bit to encourage it, in fact), the leaders of the US expect us to ignore them as they change the way our government operates at the highest levels. They are doing a big thing badly, and this is my small effort to raise awareness.

Reader comment: John Hosking says,

I clicked on the link to HR 6166 at this link, as included at the top of your BB post. My browser is set to ask me about cookies, so I was able to see what cookies the thomas.loc.gov site wanted to feed me. The first cookie's name is ForeseeLoyalty_MID_MsF0ld0M1Z. I, uh, rejected the cookie.

The US torture rules are far closer to those of the USSR than the UK. I thought you might be interested in a piece I've just written about the US Senate's recent legalisation of (it's not really) torture; while I knew that the controversial techniques were illegal in the UK -- and our armed forces have been forbidden to use them for over thirty years -- it came as quite a surprise to realise that the US Senate has, in effect, given its blessing to the standard interrogation techniques of Stalin's NKVD post 1939 (when they were told to stop beating people without authorisation). As far as I can make out, while the NKVD may have, in general, taken things a bit further than US interrogators would be allowed to, they were operating pretty similar rules to the ones just approved by the Senate.

HR 6166 is bad enough for what it actually _does_ say. There's really no need to make up new things to be alarmed about. Specifically, the bill does _not_ define non-allegiance to Bush (or to the office of the President) as terrorism.

The text of the bill says: "Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct."

The important bit is "subject to this chapter". Section 948c of the bill defines who is subject to this chapter as "[a]ny alien unlawful enemy combatant". Previously, in section 948a, it defines "alien" as "a person who is not a citizen of the United States". The authors of the article you've linked to have taken the "breach of allegiance" snippet as proof that the bill is aimed at US citizens, when the text of the bill clearly indicates otherwise.

Section 948d of the bill lays out the jurisdiction as follows: "A military commission under this chapter shall have jurisdiction to try any offense made punishable by this chapter or the law of war when committed by an alien unlawful enemy combatant before, on, or after September 11, 2001."

The "breach of allegiance" excerpt is as meaningful as "before, on, or after September 11, 2001". That is to say, not at all. I cannot see any reasonable interpretation of the text of the bill that includes non-allegiance to the president (by a US citizen -- who else would have any allegiance to the president?) equating to terrorism.

JH says,

The comments by Eris Siva are highly misleading, and of very questionable interpretation of the bill in question. I wonder if Eris actually read the text of the bill? Don't get me wrong - I'm very much against the bill, but if we start fighting it with false and misrepresented claims about its provisions, we'll look stupid from the start, and our arguments will just be dismissed an non-applicable. I did buy a couple "Enemy Combatant" shirts.

In response to the criticisms received in this story - the wording is very tricky. Yes, I actually have delved into and read the bill. I am very familiar with such material, and that's why this particular piece is so frightening. I do admit that for some reason, I missed the reference to 948c and "alien" combatants, but that should not detract from the other frightening aspects of the bill.

I apologize for the mishap, but point out the fact that the vague wording about unlawful combatants and the recent history of arrests in relation to terrorism charges does not rule out US citizens. Not only that, but H.R.1076 even shows that:

"(8) The term `enemy combatant' has historically referred to all of the citizens of a state with which the Nation is at war, and who are members of the armed force of that enemy state. Enemy combatants in the present conflict, however, come from many nations, wear no uniforms, and use unconventional weapons. Enemy combatants in the war on terrorism are not defined by simple, readily apparent criteria, such as citizenship or military uniform. And the power to name a citizen as an `enemy combatant' is therefore extraordinarily broad."

Apparently I'm not the only one who sees the wording as flawed seeing as how multiple news sources (such as the Washington Post: link) also point out the vagueness in the definitions and the clear link between this bill and others of its kind.

Residents found a picture of "Buddy Jesus" from [Kevin Smith's] 1999 film "Dogma" posted in the streets, accompanied by a badly photocopied pamphlet bearing a crude approximation of a US military crest and outlining a US "plan" to subjugate the neighborhood.

"That picture abuses our Imam Mahdi and his holy character, and mocks our sacred figures," said resident Abu Riyam Sunday, apparently mistaking the satirical movie still of Jesus for one of Shiite Islam's historical imams, whose images adopt a Jesus-like iconography.

Reader comment: ttrentham says,

Kevin Smith posted on his own blog about it today: Link.

This story is really unfair to Muslims -- thanks AFP. It makes them sound like morons, confusing obvious iconography of Jesus for that of one of their Imams. Anyone who knows anything about Islam knows that Jesus is also a sacred figure to Muslims (though in a different way than for Christians, clearly). Shoddy journalism on AFP's part -- shockingly insensitive and ignorant of the beliefs of 1 billion people. No wonder we have trouble understanding each other. See this Wikipedia link for a good explanation.

Although I don't know what the residents of Sadr City thought the "Buddy Christ" picture to be besides what the AFP story says, I think Chris underestimates the number of people who realize the significance of Jesus in Islam. One man AFP interviewed "apparently" thought it was the Imam Mahdi. I can't find any imagery for the Imam Mahdi, but iconography for figures important to Shia Islam are actually similar to "Buddy Christ". For example, pictures of Imam Ali: JPEG LINK.

I'm not sure how much recognition there would be of the Sacred Heart motif in Sadr City. The muscular and rather alive (as opposed to crucified) Western image of Jesus in the Buddy Christ does suggest Imam Ali. Also, the beard has a certain thickness that is close to representations of Imam Ali, as for example here: JPEG LINK.

I admit that Imam Ali appears in green with a hood, so it's not a close match. I've also never seen pictures of the Imam Mahdi.

Since "Buddy Christ" is not a typical western representation of Jesus (albeit playing off Sacred Heart images), it is entirely possible that the residents of Sady City assumed it was some mockery of Imam Ali or the Imam Mahdi by the occupation forces.

Although Chris' concern is commendable, for a Shia Muslim in Sadr City that iconography of Jesus might not be "obvious". The AFP doesn't paint Muslims as "morons", but it does show that the very Catholic Sacred Heart imagery might not be immediately apparent to some Muslims in Sadr City.

I don't know where the guys commenting about islam live, but I've lived all my life - 31 years now - in a city that is half catholic, half muslim, and most muslims here doesn't realize that Jesus is a prophet in islam. It's even usual to make jokes about Christ, just as some people makes jokes about Muhammad.

And I've never seen a muslim complain about profanation of christian images. For example, some time ago the spanish songwriter Javier Krahe cooked a crucifix for a TV program and the only ones who got offended were a few too delicate christians, but nothing serious (Link to video).

It is true, anyway, that muslims -at least where I live, Melilla, Spain- are not very comfortable about making jokes about christianism, for they have more respect for that religion than, e. g., judaism, and some think there shouldn't be jokes about any religion, at least the monotheistic ones. But I don't think any muslim feels particularly offended by the jokes about Jesus.

Will we please stop philosophizing over other religions just because we "live in the neighborhood"? Take it from someone born Muslim but who isn't religious, ALL Muslims consider Jesus a prophet and holy. In fact, it is one of tenants of Islam. You cannot be Muslim UNLESS you believe in the following:

(1) believe in God,
(2) believe in His angels (Gabriel and the whole shabang),
(3) believe in His books (New Testament, Old Testament, Quran),
(4) believe in His messengers and, finally,
(5) they do not differentiate among the messengers whom they claim to believe in. Anyone who differentiates among the messengers is, ipso facto, not a believer.

So let's stop making up stuff because of neighbors and actually start reading, eh?

Link to video, and here's the "reporter's notebook" blog I'm maintaining about the trip and stories encountered along the way.

My Wired News colleague Kevin Poulsen writes,

I've been puzzling over the Republican bill to deny accused terrorists fair trials, and the seemingly-irrational language champions of the legislation have been using to describe its purpose.

The goal, "is to render justice to the terrorists, even though they will not render justice to us." -- Senator Lindsey Graham.

"We don't want (terror suspects) to have everyday rights of American civilians right here. These are war criminals." -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

It occurs to me now that the whole 94-page bill really amounts to a common, one-character programming error.

if (person = terrorist) {
            punish_severely();
} else {
            exit(-1);
}

Can you spot the error? (Solution).

BoingBoing reader comments after the jump.

I'm in the graduate program at UF and got the real story straight from the College of Business Dean, John Kraft (he teaches one of my courses): Dr. Hall has had medical problems that have been known to the college over a year ago, and had recently been reinstated to lecturing since they thought he was ready. Sadly, he isn't and has been remanded for further help.

The reason that this hasn't been in any press is because the media has rightfully been respectful in its treatment of someone who really needs medical help.

I wasn't able to get a response as to whether he'll be eventually fired/retired, but the college and his colleagues are trying to help him - he is currently on leave.

Though i did not have him as a professor, I found Dr. Hall to be kind and enthusiastic in his teaching style and regard for his students. I wish him well and hope people understand.

Reader comment: Gavin Baker says,

The student rag at the University of Florida has a story on the "apparently stoned prof" featured on boingboing.

"Administrators, suspicious that John Hall was intoxicated during a Sept. 5 class, have put Hall on paid leave. His Sept. 7 lecture was cancelled, and he was replaced the following week. (...) Complaints by some of Hall's students prompted the lecturer's suspension, said Kyle Cavanaugh, vice president of human resources. Cavanaugh and the business college's administration are looking into the incident to determine whether Hall will be fired."

Link to full text.

Next Tuesday night, October 3, I'm hosting a free talk by Wendy Seltzer, the lawyer who founded EFF's Digital TV liberation front -- teaching people how to build the TV sets that the Broadcast Flag would ban -- and the Chilling Effects project -- which documents and analyzes the nastygrams used to censor Internet speech.

Johansen doesn't think what he's doing is illegal; he's adding DRM rather than breaking it. He and Farantzos were giddy about the prospect of Apple's iTV, hoping companies will pay up to get movies on the set-top box when it comes out, after seeing the ill effects of being shut off the iPod. Spurned by Apple? Step right up.

This is a different twist on the constant battle between DRM crackers and builders (see, just last week, Microsoft's lawsuit5 against a hacker for releasing an app that strips off its PlaysForSure DRM). If successful, DoubleTwist will eliminate Apple as a middleman to its own hardware. But in doing so, it just might help Apple sell more of that hardware. Apple enjoys fat margins on its devices, and perhaps should turn a blind eye, for now.