A Tokyo rail company has put footstep-powered generators under its ticket-vending machines; the tread of passengers generates electricity to power the machines. I've always loved the idea of little piezo generators that capture our ambient kinetic energy as we move through the world.

JR East's new experiment consists of energy-generators under ticket wickets, a milliwatt-tracking counter, and 700,000 daily commuters. For the next two months, the railway company will be using using the vibrations of human footsteps at Tokyo Station to generate up to 100 milliwatts per second per person that walks through. The idea is to be able to generate enough electricity to power the wickets themselves and their display panels regularly.

Link

This Japanese 15x microscope attaches to your mobile phone's strap-grommet, ready to enlarge any fiddly little thing you happen across on your daily round. Link (via Gizmodo)

If you've been paying attention, you already know that the TSA's No-Fly list and secondary screening lists are a joke, but even so, this excellent investigative piece from CBS News will blow your mind. The TSA's lists contain people who are dead. They contain the presidents of foreign countries. They contain incredibly common names like "Robert Johnson." These farcical lists are supposed to secure the skies, and the way they're supposed to do it is by denying air travel to thousands of innocent people (without catching a guilty person smart enough to use a fake ID). Even worse, because the gargantuan lists have to be widely circulated, the CIA won't allow the names of actual terrorist suspects to be added to them -- in other words, the No Fly lists only contain the names of people who aren't under any serious suspicion.

"We got a look at the No Fly List from March. And included on that list were 14 of the 19 September 11th hijackers. How do you explain that?" Kroft asks.

"Well, just because a person has died doesn't necessarily mean that their identity has died. People sometime carry the identities of people who have died," she says.

"What you are saying is that you have no information that this person is alive and poses a threat. It's just a name in the database," Kroft asks.

"In order fort the name to get in the data base there has to be information that they are a known suspected terrorist," Bucella says.

"So you are saying it's just a coincidence that there are 14 names in the computer that match the names of 9/11 terrorists. I mean, the people that are on the list have the same date of births as the people that were killed in the – that died in – the suicide bombers from 9/11. I mean, how do you account for that?" Kroft asks.

Bucella asked how recent this watch list was. When told it was from March, she said, "For some reason the agency might not necessarily want to have taken the name off the list. I can't explain that."

"Also on the list is Francois Genoud, who was a Nazi sympathizer and financier of Arab terrorism. Been dead for ten years," Kroft remarks.

Link (via Making Light)

Jonathan Lundqvist says,

I'm a Swedish researcher who recently returned from a month in Iran, where I was interviewing bloggers on their possible participation in a democratization process.

During my stay there I picked up a few issues of some western magazines at the university bookshop, and found to my surprise that they were censored by the Iranian regime!

They had simply gone through the magazines and used black ink and white stickers to cover up any offending material - most notably images, in both articles and advertisements, of women with a little less clothes than prescribed by local laws.

To make a long story short, I snapped some pictures of the censored pages and I just thought that it may be fun for you so see how western magazines look over there.

Link to the full text of his post, including lots of magazine page scans.

Top Image: "Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Louis Vitton advertisement. They redesigned the dress. The black [portion of the dress] is not supposed to be there."

Middle: "The Economist, Apr 16 2005, pp78-79. Two censored images in the Books and Arts section. One of Billie Holiday’s shoulders and the other is some kind of drawing. I’m very curious as to what lies beneath here. It must be of considerable danger, considering the dual use of ink and sticker."

Below: "This is part of the wrapping that the magazines came in. Nashravaran Journalistic Institute is the organization (agency?) that handles that censorship. They also stamp all magazines with a stamp upon inspection. It’s mind-boggling to think of the people whose work it is to sit there with a giant felt-tip pen and cover up skin all day long."

Bottom: here's the original LV ad in which Uma's bazoomas are unencumbered by black ink, as is their natural inclination.

BoingBoing reader Skot shot this photo at a market in Costa Rica: a line of cleaning supplies called "Terror." Oh, what dark, foreboding poetry lurks in those long-lasting pink suds. Do we use it to cleanse the world of terror, or does the war on terror wash our Constitution away? One wonders what might become of the foolish adventure traveler who attempts to fly back to the US with this stuff in their suitcase. Link to larger size.

Reader comment: Anonymous says,

Your article on the terror cleaner reminded me of an energy drink [called "Semtex"] that I first encountered while traveling through the former Czechoslovakia: Link. Here's a nice page about the history of [the explosive substance called] Semtex and its use in terror incidents: Link.

BoingBoing reader Brad Wilson found some t-shirts in a Hong Kong shopping mall emblazoned with such tech-themed English terms as "BLOGGER," "EMOTICON," and "FTP" -- definitions included. Link 1 and Link 2 to larger images.

Reader comment: Donald Tetto says, "Somebody's been using Wiktionary... Link."

A Canadian Tory Member of Parliament has been suspended from participating in Conservative caucus meetings for making critical remarks about his party on his blog:

Caucus chair Rahim Jaffer said Wednesday that Turner was ousted in part for critical comments made about the party on the blog that he has maintained on his website since the federal election last January.

"There have been different attacks at different times. We've got quite a significant record of them," Jaffer told reporters, adding that the posts included criticism of the prime minister.

Link (Thanks, John!)

Representatives from the Center for Technology and Society at Brazil's prestigious FGV School of Law were barred from entering a recording industry press conference.

Yesterday, IFPI (the international version of the RIAA) held a press-conference in Brazil to announce their massive new global lawsuit campaign, suing 8000 people in 17 countries.

The delegation of scholars and activists from the Center for Technology and Society had been accredited to attend, but when they arrived, they were not permitted in the room. Organizers claimed the room was full, but press representatives in the room say that there was plenty of room. IFPI wouldn't even give the professors copies of the press-release, saying they'd run out of them.

FGV has fielded a petition to the Brazilian National Congress decrying this. The Congress is considering changes to Brazil's copyright law, and this is the kind of shenanigans that the entertainment industry is running:

The IFPI, that represents the major recording companies in the world, held this morning a national (Brazilian) press release to officially inform that they are initiating a new round of court actions, this time in Brazil, against users of peer-to-peer networks, a system for downloading files, including music, through software like Soulseek, eMule etc.. They are spreading their court actions from the USA to Brazil.

FGV´s Centre for Technology and Society, under the A2K programme, has prepared a document clarifying the situation and proposing an amendment to the Brazilian copyright law in order to bring a balance to the discussion.

Since FGV was not allowed to enter the conference room, there being bodyguards walking around to intimidate our peaceful professors, they waited until the journalists and photographers were coming out of the room to speak to them and to deliver the document.

All of the journalists got very interested on the issue, and were surprised that FGV was barred from the meeting, despite having had its accreditation accepted.

Link (Obrigado, Pedro!)

You may know David Byrne as a musician, author, and PowerPoint experimenter, but he also thinks about and designs chairs:

"Why chairs? Well, they have arms and legs and vaguely human scale — and shape. They're people — they hold you, support you, elevate you or humble you. They're funny or elegant, funky or gorgeous, social or aloof. They're characters with lives and histories...aren't they?"

Byrne's "Furnishing the Self — Upholstering the Soul" is at Pace/MacGill Gallery gallery in New York through November 25. Details here. (Thanks, Danielle Spencer!)

Cursors That Kill is a great tee that makes it look like you're bleeding pixelated blood from wounds opened by GUI cursors that have pierced your chest. Link (Thanks, Mikelite!)

Fantagraphics, publishers of the greatest comix in the world by the likes of Daniel Clowes, Los Bros Hernandez, and Jim Woodring, is opening a store in Seattle, Washington! The Fantagraphics Mega Mart opens for business this Saturday. I think there should be A Fantagraphics Mega Mart in every town. From the Flog!:

We will really pull out all the stops beginning in November, with a grand opening in early December. What I can tell you now: The store will contain everything Fantagraphics has in print, including our soon-to-be-legendary damaged room, featuring discounted and often out-of-print books unavailable anywhere else. The space also has room for exhibitions, which we'll have more news about very soon.

Link

All you need to know about this link is that it contains video of shrimp on a treadmill, and that it is not the latest viral release from the band OK Go.

The shrimp treadmill, invented and built by [Pacific University biologist David Scholnick], allows researchers to measure the activity of an exercising shrimp for a set period of time at known speed and oxygen levels.

Link (Thanks, ScottG In NYC)

Built by David Glicksman, the "Device Patented Process Indicating Apparatus" is a stately ambient display that can be configured to represent almost any PC data, from security threat levels to real-time stock prices to keystrokes per minute to weather fluctuations. The analog dials can be controlled independently and the test tube is filled with Agar-based gel that glows at five present intensities. The red light on top can be programmed to flash "in extreme circumstances." It will apparently be available for sale "soon."

From The Device description:

• Made of fine, handcrafted cherry wood, with a brass inlay and a lacquered finish.
• Measures 14" wide, 8" tall, and 6" deep.
• Green felt on the base protects The Device and your desk from each other.
• A 3' cloth sheathed USB cable provides PC connectivity.

Link (via MAKE: Blog)

The largest record company in the world has initiated the first big-media lawsuit against video-sharing websites. Snip from Financial Times:

In separate lawsuits, Universal alleged that Grouper.com – recently acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment – and Bolt.com had built up traffic by encouraging users to share music videos from its artists without their permission. In one incident, it claimed a video for the Mariah Carey song “Shake it Off” was viewed more than 50,000 times on Grouper without the company’s permission.

Link. (thanks, Glyn)

BB pal Steven Johnson's new book The Ghost Map will be published tomorrow. An account of an 1854 cholera outbreak on London's Broad Street, The Ghost Map is a magnificent combination of science thriller, cultural history, and celebration of cartography as a powerful tool to help us understand the dynamics of urban life. I'm halfway through the book and it's absolutely, er, engrossing. We're delighted that Steven will be our guest on next week's Boing Boing Boing podcast. From Steven's blog post that he wrote when he completed his manuscript:

In many ways, the story of Broad Street is all about the triumph of a certain kind of urbanism in the face of great adversity, the power of dense cities to create solutions to problems that they themselves have brought about. So many of the issues that define the modern world today -- the runaway growth of megacities, environmental crises, fears of apocalyptic epidemics, digital mapping, the need for clean water, urban terror, the rise of amateur expertise -- are there, in embryo, in the Broad Street outbreak.

So The Ghost Map is in part a disease thriller, with some genuinely spooky and unsettling narrative turns. But it also widens its focus to tell the history of London's sewer system, the evolutionary history of bacteria, the biological and cultural roots of the miasma theory, the bizarre waste management techniques of Victorian society, and so on. It is the story of ten days in London in 1854, but it's also an attempt to tell that story at three different scales of experience: from the point of view of the humans living through it, but also from the point of view of the cholera itself, and the city.

Link to buy The Ghost Map, Link to a video of Steven discussing the book, Link to his blog entry

Reuters: "The Kazakhstan central bank has misspelled the word “bank” on its new notes, officials said Wednesday." Link. (thanks, kingkong)

Senator Rick Santorum compares Iraq to "Lord of the Rings":

As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. (...) It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States.

Link (Thanks, Tim Grieve and many others)

Reader comment: Dan Armak says,

I thought you might want to post this explanation of what the Senator's allegory actually means for the benefit of readers who aren't familiar with LOTR.

In the LOTR, to draw the Eye away from Mordor, Gandalf and Aragorn led the army of Gondor to the Gates of Mordor to draw out Sauron's army and let Frodo sneak past them. This, they knew, was a suicidal move. As Gandalf said: "We must make ourselves the bait .... We must walk open-eyed into that trap, with courage, but small hope for ourselves." (Chapter IX, 'The Last Debate')

So the Senator is saying the US soldiers in Iraq are bait. They're there to die, just to keep terrorists' attention away from the US for a while.

Snip from a Reuters item:

Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday.

"We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the internet," Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police. "They can train themselves over the internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff said. "Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites."

Chertoff pointed to the July 7, 2005 attacks on London's transit system, which killed 56 people, as an example a home-grown threat. To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into "intelligence fusion centers," where they would work with local police agencies.

Link, and Link to t-shirt thumbnailed above. (Thanks, Erik)

Reader comment: Xopl says,

Not the first time:

"The hardest thing to determine is the purely domestic, self-motivated, self-initiating threat from the guy who never talks to anybody, just gets himself wound up over the Internet," Chertoff said.

Link. I'll see you all in jail.

Astronauts gave etiquette lessons and practical advice to potential space tourists attending this week's International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Some of the the tips are obvious, like clean up the toilet after using it, don't be a window hog, and avoid looking directly at the sun. (Apparently, one space tourist burned his retina by staring into the sun through a magnifying camera lens). From New Scientist:

The space veterans also offered practical advice to save time and frustration in orbit. They suggested women with long hair might cut it if they are planning to be in space for more than a couple of days. On shuttle flights, some women with lengthy manes spend about one hour every three days carefully shampooing their hair, then dabbing it dry. This is time that could be spent looking out the window at Earth.

They also said duct tape proves useful for capturing dental floss or fingernail clippings that might otherwise float around the cabin and become a nuisance to other passengers.

Link

AllofMP3, the notorious Russian music-selling site, has lost its Visa account and says it will switch to giving away free, ad-supported music. The site claims that its activities are legal under Russian law. Though it may not be legal under other countries' laws for their citizens to download the music, AllOfMP3 says it has a blanket license to sell the music and no obligation to figure out what the laws are in each of its customers' jurisdictions.

The US Trade Representative has been threatening to scuttle Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization if they don't shut down AllOfMP3, but nobody in Russia seems to care much about WTO membership. Sitting on one of the world's largest oil reserves makes membership in the WTO somewhat moot -- Russia will always be able to find trading partners.

AllOfMP3's new proposed business-model is a little confused. They say that they will give away free music in some kind of DRM wrapper, and force you to watch ads before you listen. But they also say you'll be able to play the music on an iPod, if you buy uncrippled music for cash.

But it seems unlikely that they'll be able to ship a working DRM (an oxymoron), and I don't understand how they'll be able to sell you the "premium" iPod versions if they don't have a Visa account -- isn't that the whole problem to begin with?

The "ad-player" sounds suspiciously like the business model that Kazaa and other P2P companies retreated to after the P2P venture capital dried up in the face of music industry lawsuits -- a path that led straight to spyware.

AllofMP3 said Tuesday that as of Wednesday, its business model would move toward an ad-supported distribution of free content. The company, which previously charged about $1 an album, plans to offer consumers a new software program that allows them to download any song from the site for free. AllofMP3 claims to have a catalogue of hundreds of thousands of albums, increasing at a rate of 1,000 per month.

Users of the new service will only be able to listen to songs by using the AllofMP3 software, and the songs will be usable on just one computer at a time. The interface, called Music for the Masses, will initially be available for Microsoft Windows, with an Apple version arriving in several weeks, Mamotin said.

Consumers who wish to transfer their songs between computers or to a music device like an iPod or another MP3 player, will have to pay for the music.

The idea, Mamotin said, is to make the offering attractive enough to win new customers and build a big enough community to attract advertising.

Link (Thanks, AV!)

Update: Michael sez, "They seem to have a couple of different end-arounds; one is at AllTunes.com (apparently a partner) and the other is at http://www.xrost.biz/ -- prepaid cash cards of some description. I don't have a real hunger for music, but I do use AllofMP3.com a *lot* for my daughter's current interests. And the $25 I put on there last March goes a very long way indeed at 5 or 10 cents a track. I am considering doing an xrost card for next year's payments now, though. :-)"

Here's a fascinating interview with Bob Arno, a Vegas-based consultant who studies the techniques of pickpockets:

How do you track down pickpockets?
I stuff my wallet with paper and keep it in my pants pocket. Then I linger in prime tourist spots in foreign cities. Sooner or later, someone steals the wallet, and I try to steal it back.

Really?
Yeah. If I successfully steal the wallet back -- and I often do -- the thief is usually willing to share the latest techniques.

What's a classic ploy?
A pickpocket squirts mustard on you unawares. He approaches you, points at the stain and starts to clean it. While he distracts you with one hand, he robs you with his free hand.

Link (via Schneier)