Charlie "Jennifer Morgue" Stross was recently interviewed by John "Old Man's War" Scalzi, explaining his motives in writing a Bond-meets-Cthulhu spy-thriller:

The Jennifer Morgue is my latest novel, and it's the second in a series that follow the misadventures of a slashdot-reading sandal-wearing hacker-geek who's fallen into the wrong universe and can't get out. We first met "Bob Howard" (as he calls himself in these stories) in The Atrocity Archives. It turns out that magic exists; but it's a branch of applied mathematics. Computers being gadgets that can be used for theorem solving at high speed, Bob stumbled across this the hard way at university -- and only just survived long enough to be drafted by the Laundry, a shadowy British government agency for defending us from the scum of the multiverse.

And by "scum", I mean "scum". Or ichor. Or bubbling vile tentacled horrors from beyond spacetime. We are in H. P. Lovecraft territory here, and the horrid truth is that the stars are due to come right in just another twelve yearsor so, at which point we'll have Cthulhu to deal with. And Bob is expected to deal with this on a civil service salary, with matrix management and paperclip audits on top.

In The Jennifer Morgue, Bob is pitched into a role that he simply isn't suited for. He's a crap driver (and knows it), doesn't know how to tie a bow tie (he's more at home in a Linux t-shirt), and is just barely competent enough with a handgun to avoid shooting himself in the foot by accident. Unfortunately for him, he is a competent computational demonologist, which is why he's sent to the Caribbean to deal with enigmatic billionaire Ellis Billington, who is running the sort of caper that Her Majesty's Government would usually send James Bond to deal with (if being James Bond wasn't an automatic "do not hire" flag these days). But there's a catch (in fact there are several): Billington's occult defenses include a geas that can only be penetrated by a certain famous spy. So what's a hacker to do?

Link

Federated Media chairman and Boing Boing general manager John Battelle has a great piece on how the major media companies are mismanaging their interactive divisions.

There are two major forms of media these days. There is Packaged Goods Media, in which "content" is produced and packaged, then sent through traditional distribution channels like cable, newsstand, mail, and even the Internet. Remember when nearly every major media mogul claimed that the Internet was simply one more media distribution channel? They were right, but only in so far as it pertains to Packaged Goods Media. Over the past few decades, massive media conglomerates have built on the deep DNA of Packaged Goods Media.

The second major form of media, is far newer, and far less established. I've come to call it Conversational Media, though I also like to call it Performance Media. This is the kind of media that has been labeled, somewhat hastily and often derisively, as "User Generated Content," "Social Media," or "Consumer Content." And while the major media companies are unparalleled when it comes to running companies that live in the Packaged Goods Media world, running major companies in the Conversational Media field require quite a different set of skills, and consideration of radically different economic and business models - models which, to be perfectly frank, conflict directly with the models which support and protect Packaged Goods Media-based companies.

Link

Andrew Sullivan has posted a youtube of the old AT&T "You Will" ads about all the things AT&T would make possible through the Internet. I think these are the most emblematic advertisements of the era, defining the way that big companies totally missed the point of the Internet. They were like Thomas Edison declaring that the phone would bring opera to America's living rooms -- AT&T posited that the Internet would just amplify our normal, everyday lives, so you could "tuck your kid in from a phonebooth."

What they missed was that for all the normalcy that the Internet could enable, it would be much, much better at enabling deviance -- all the behaviors that were suppressed by society, or impossible to engage in given social constraints. Instead of "Have you checked a book out from thousands of miles away?" they might have asked, "Have you ever ripped an 18th-century book and sent it to a Gutenberg pal in another country to be OCRed?" or "Have you ever used a global mapping service to track down mercenary armies in distant lands" or "Have you ever discovered that your secret kink has an actual name, a newsgroup, an IRC channel and a monthly convention?"

I think we're still fighting this fight. People talk about ebooks, a phrase reminiscent of "horseless carriage," or "digital music rentals," or "Internet telephony," as though all of these things are just like their analog counterparts, but moreso. It's true that Expedia is like an automated travel-agent, but that's the beginning of the story, not the end. Google is like a library catalog, but it's more. Amazon is like a bookstore, but it's more. These things are sui generis -- they're not mere "Internet libraries" and "Internet bookstores" and "Internet travel agents."

Before I dropped out of the University of Waterloo, I proposed a thesis project about these AT&T ads -- about all the nascent ways that the Internet was way better at letting us be weird than it was at helping us be normal. I dropped out instead -- and followed the weird online. Link (via Global Nerdy)

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has an interesting entry about a tiny-bigfoot creature that is sighted on rare occasions.

The Agogwe is a downy-haired little unknown biped reported throughout east Africa. Said to have yellowish, reddish skin underneath its rust-colored hair, the Agogwe allegedly inhabits the forest of this remote region.

One of the most discussed sightings occurred near the turn of the twentieth century when Capt. William Hichens was sent on an official lion hunt to this region. While there, waiting in a forest clearing for a man-eater, he saw, as he would write, December 1937, in the London magazine Discovery: “two small, brown, furry creatures come from the dense forest on one side of the glade and disappear into the thickets on the other. They were like little men, about four feet high, walking upright, but clad in russet hair. The native hunter with me gazed in mingled fear and amazement. They were, he said, agogwe, the little furry men whom one does not see once in a lifetime. I made desperate efforts to find them, but without avail in that wellnigh impentratable forest.”

Link

At 1pm Eastern (10am Pacific), NASA will announce a "significant find on Mars." Not likely that it's little green men but rather evidence that water may still be flowing on the planet's surface. The discovery is based on photos taken from the Mars Global Surveyor. From the Daily Mail:

NASA researchers have documented the formation of new craters on the plant's surface and found bright, light-coloured deposits in gullies that were not present in previous photos.

They concluded the deposits - possibly mud, salt or frost - were left there when water recently cascaded through the channels.

In another photo a number of gullies on a crater wall can be clearly seen. The scientists believe that they may have been formed in relatively recent Martian history by erosion caused by flowing, liquid water.

Link to Daily Mail article, Link to NASA TV (Shhhh, Jason Tester!)

UPDATE: Here's NASA's Mission News page about the new evidence of water on Mars. Link

For two decades, Rosie Marie Costello of Tacoma Vancouver, Washington has received Social Security disability benefits for her son, Pete, who appeared to be severely mentally disabled, unable to communicate, shower, or take care of himself. Turns out though that Pete has been, er, "exaggerating," and his mom has been running a scam since her son was 8 years old. Prosecutors also suspect that she conducted similar fraud with a daughter who they haven't yet located. Over the years, Rosie cleared more than $200,000. From the Associated Press:

(US Attorney Norman) Barbosa filed with the court two videos of Pete Costello taken this year: In one, he allegedly feigns a mental impairment during an interview with Social Security workers by slouching unresponsive in a corner, picking his nose; the other is of him contesting the traffic ticket in a courtroom earlier this year.

Pete Costello sat in court Tuesday, saying nothing, but showing no outward sign he is mentally impaired. He works as an auto-body repairman and lives with a girlfriend and two of her children, prosecutors said.

"Obviously his mother did get him involved in this ... but he's been an adult for many years," Barbosa said.

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

Some recent posts from a journal I'm maintaining during a trip through Guatemala, on assignment:

* New report shows 21,000 women in Guatemala hospitalized each year from botched abortions. Abortion is illegal in Guatemala, except in cases where authorities accept proof that the mother's life is in danger without the procedure. Many women who do seek unsafe abortions die.

* Video clip from a mid-day walk through an open-air market. (here's a direct link to video in Quicktime or Flash.)

* Snapshots from market stalls.

Gastric bypass surgeries have become increasingly common in cases of morbid obesity -- I recently had a conversation with a hospital resident who said that he thought morbid obesity would disappear from the US within a few years because of the surgery. But when you go from 500 to 150 lbs, you end up with a lot of extra skin hanging around. The present-day solution is a further surgery called "body contouring" -- lifting the skin of your lower body "like a giant pair of pants, reattaching it in a higher, tighter position."

"The skin doesn't have the same elasticity and properties it had before, so it's much more difficult to try to reconstruct those patients and get the skin looking tight again," said Dr. Roxanne Guy, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. "Sometimes more than one operation is needed to get the desirable contour."

Body contouring can involve any combination of surgeries including a tummy tuck, upper arm lift, thigh lift and lower body lift.

Because the frequency of these once-rare surgeries is increasing dramatically, Ethicon, a medical supply company owned by Johnson & Johnson, launched Shaping Futures, an organization that runs classes for plastic surgeons who want to master body contouring. In 2005 the group held four classes, and in 2006 the number increased to six. Shaping Futures also delivers an online newsletter and hosts speaker events as well as a website where plastic surgeons can share tips.

Link

New Zealand MP Judith Tizard has sponsored an amendment to New Zealand's Copyright Act. The new copyright proposal mirrors the US DMCA and the EUCD in that it criminalizes removing DRM, even if you do so for a lawful purpose. This has been an unmitigated disaster in the US: not only has it totally failed to keep copyrighted works from being copied without permission (every "copy-protected" work ever released is available on P2P networks within minutes of its release), it has also created an anti-competitive marketplace where companies can sue their competitors for making compatible products. Not to mention the devastating effects on user rights, and the chilling effect on legitimate security research.

The US had an excuse: when it passed the DMCA in 1998, no one else had tried this and seen how bad it was (though it wasn't hard to predict). But here we are, eight years into the DMCA trainwreck -- what possible excuse can New Zealand have for adopting this failed US policy initiative? Why would you want to import another country's disaster? Link (Thanks, Brett!>)

Update: Ben sez, "It would be great if you could post contact information for MP Judith Tizard so people know who to contact to fight this. Her ministerial web page is here, and her email is jtizard@ministers.govt.nz Suprisingly for a politician, Judith is an eminently sensible woman (my sister was her press secretary for a few years), but as 'Associate Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage', she has the Labels in her ear, so we need to give her a different side of the story."

Guardian games blogger Aleks Krotoski has a great post on the way that game-like elements are creeping into many Web services, from eBay to YouTube. She cites Max Kalehoff on the way that YouTube is like a game: you collect things, get points, trade, get feedback, and customize the experience.

Indeed. If YouTube does it, who else does it too? Well, the first one's obvious: eBay. The reputation system there is second to none, inspiring thousands of spin-off applications.

Any successful marketplaces, including Web 1.0 stalwarts like Amazon.com, do it too. But then this proposition begins to thin out. MySpace and other social networking software do it, sure.

Social virtual worlds like There.com and Second Life (which recently had its first winner, Anshe Chung) do it as well. Yet other contemporary 2.0 beacons, like Flickr and del.icio.us, don't meet all of the requirements. These sites have been purchased by the big boys for loads of money, but have they captured the imaginations of the masses like YouTube and others who apply game-like foundations?

Link (via Wonderland)

Update: Jonathan sez, "Frequent flier programs seem deliberately designed to create game structures: points, experience levels, prizes - even rare items only available to high level players. Not surprisingly, this has in turn bred a new generation of gamers who use sites like flyertalk.com to plan and execute complex mileage runs calculated to extract maximum points through ingenuity and patience. I defy you to tell the difference between a mileage runner and a WoW power leveller."

Danah boyd's paper "Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites" has just been published by the Internet journal First Monday. Danah is absolutely the best writer and thinker on the subject of social networking services, astute and surprising, with an accessible writing style that makes it possible for non-scholars to follow along. I was part of a group that read and critiqued this paper prior to publication and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

“Are you my friend? Yes or no?” This question, while fundamentally odd, is a key component of social network sites. Participants must select who on the system they deem to be ‘Friends.’ Their choice is publicly displayed for all to see and becomes the backbone for networked participation. By examining what different participants groups do on social network sites, this paper investigates what Friendship means and how Friendship affects the culture of the sites. I will argue that Friendship helps people write community into being in social network sites. Through these imagined egocentric communities, participants are able to express who they are and locate themselves culturally. In turn, this provides individuals with a contextual frame through which they can properly socialize with other participants. Friending is deeply affected by both social processes and technological affordances. I will argue that the established Friending norms evolved out of a need to resolve the social tensions that emerged due to technological limitations. At the same time, I will argue that Friending supports pre-existing social norms yet because the architecture of social network sites is fundamentally different than the architecture of unmediated social spaces, these sites introduce an environment that is quite unlike that with which we are accustomed.

Link

Here's a trailer of Mary Poppins re-cut as a horror film calleed "Scary Mary." Oh. My. God. This is so freaking AMAZING I am about to explode. Who knew that Julie Andrews could be so goddamned scary? I mean, REALLY REALLY SCARY. Like I actually got a little scared just watching it. There are lots of remix trailers floating around out there, but this is my all time favorite. Link

Bazzargh sez, "Pullbox is a new site selling downloadable comics, like the print version of 'Family Guy'. Unusually, instead of yet another DRM-laden ebook format, they're supporting the CBR format used in 'pirate' readers, and PDF. $0.99 a pop. There's a limited lineup at present, but I wish them well." Link (Thanks, Bazzargh)

Update: Patrick sez, "Slave Labor, publisher of very cool indy comics, has made PDF and CBZ versions available on their site for several months now. Issues are a steal at $0.89 or less. Or the best value with the first three collections of Andi Watson's "Skeleton Key" (a total of 23 issues) for just $5! Also look for two series, 'Whistles' and 'Byron,' being published exclusively in digital downloadable format."

At Institute for the Future's Virtual China blog, Jason Li points to scans of a 1965 pamphlet titled 怎样打飞机 ("How to Shoot an Airplane").
Link

From 1972 until 1996, Robert Shields of Dayton, Washington, kept a minute by minute diary of everything he did. He wrote 35 million words before he was stopped by a stroke. Link (Via Neatorama)

Jamey C. Shafer, who wrote a WoW guild guide for my upcoming book, Rule The Web, directed three excellent promo videos for Spike TV's 2006 Video Game Awards promos. 1, 2, 3.

My favorite ChristmaHannuKwaanzahSolstice music channel just went live for the 2006 holiday season. SomaFM's founder Rusty Hodge sent word, and says, "We've got over 900 songs in our Xmas rotation now. Christmas, Hanukkah, even a few Kwanzaa and Solstice songs." Um, Rusty -- aren't you forgetting FSM (peace be upon his noodly appendage) and Dawkinsonian atheism (science be praised!)? Anyway, the link to listen: 128k mp3, or Windows Media. Playlists and additional stream format/bitrates can be accessed from SomaFM.com.

In this Reuters roundup, media moguls are asked about their use of iPods. Unsurprisingly, studio heads from Warners and Disney love their portable music players (you have to wonder if they'll join with Universal in claiming that these devices are "repositories for stolen music, and they all know it").

Most interesting is this quote from Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons: "I had the whole bunch of (the Warner music collection) files put on before we sold it."

That sounds reasonable, but wait a sec: he's saying that before his company sold off its record division, he copied the entire catalog for his own personal use? Well, that's pretty slick, isn't it?

Link (Thanks, Andy!)

Amazon.com has a funny (but NSFW) video from the Pop-Up Book of Sex. Link (Thanks, Courtney!)

Dan Gillmor has a good piece about why phone-based cameras and videocameras mean that professional photojournalists are going to have a harder time making a living.

How can people who cover breaking news for a living begin to compete? They can’t possibly be everywhere at once. They can compete only on the stories where they are physically present -— and, in the immediate future, by being relatively trusted sources.

But the fact remains, there are far more newsworthy situations than pro picture takers. In the past, most of those situations never were captured. Not any longer.

Is it so sad that the professionals will have more trouble making a living this way in coming years? To them, it must be — and I have friends in the business, which makes this painful to write in some ways.

To the rest of us, as long as we get the trustworthy news we need, the trend is more positive.

Link

Researchers have demonstrated a test that detects "cancer genes" in smokers' breath. The assay tests for methylation, a specific biochemical reaction, in six tumor suppressor genes. The methylation is linked with the development of lung cancer. (Studies have previously shown that dogs can sometimes smell cancer on a person's breath.) According to the scientists at the New York State Department of Health, the test may someday be capable of not only identifying people who have undiagnosed lung cancer but those at high risk for it. From the American Association for Cancer Research:

The seven participants tested so far breathe for ten minutes into a commercially available handheld device, which cools the air, forming a condensed vapor, to which the methylation assay is applied. Investigators found it could detect the presence of the methylated form in all six tumor suppressor genes...

"The concept of testing exhaled breath is not new - that's what breathalyzers do when they measure small volatile molecules such as alcohol, as well as inflammation molecules that are currently being assayed to test the activity of asthma and other lung diseases," said Spivack. "But what is rather remarkable here is that DNA can be tested in the air that comes from the lungs and airways, and that it might be possible to use this in diagnosis of lung cancer in particular, and gene-dysregulation disorders of the lung, in general."

Link

An American airline passenger with a "medical condition" attempted to mask the odor of her flatulence by striking matches. Instead, she caused a bomb-panic, and the plane made an early landing.

The passengers and five crew members were brought off the plane, together with all the luggage, to go through security checks again. Bomb-sniffing dogs found spent matches. The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal body odor, [Lynne Lowrance, a spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority] said. The woman lives near Dallas and has a medical condition. The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane. "American has banned her for a long time," Lowrance said.

Link (Thanks, Denis!)

The Japanese Wii manual reminds you not to pour orange liquid on your console. Other funny illustrations at Gizmodo. Link (Thanks, FishNChimps)

Every buy a gift for someone that you're absolutely certain they'll love only to realize that you're totally off the mark? New research suggests that the better you know someone, the harder it can be to predict their taste. According to researchers at Tilburg University and Kathiolieke University, we rely too heavily on preconceived notions because we often think we're much more similar to the people we love than we actually are. From a Journal of Consumer Research news release:

"Our results suggest that familiarity caused [people] to put an overly heavy weight on pre-stored information,” write the authors. “The pre-stored information that people possess about their partner is extensive. This elaborate knowledge makes predictors overly confident, such that they do not even attend to product-specific attitude feedback.”

In fact, the couples who participated in the study (all of whom had been dating for at least six months), were more likely to pay attention to feedback about their partner’s preferences when they were told they were the attitudes of a complete stranger.

Link

Here's a video of an intersection in Manchester that has metal pillars that lower into the ground to let buses and trucks pass. Some drivers race behind the buses to try to get through the intersection, but the pillars shoot up quickly and hit the cars. Link

We love Nancy. And we love Nancy panels taken out of context, which reveal hidden meanings.

Why are Nancy and Sluggo saying "Ouch" over and over again? Because they rode their long horses bareback to the hotel.

You can read the entire comic book by clicking on the image at Glyph Jockey's site. Link (More Nancy fun here)

When you pour hot liquid into the mug that has the Bill of Rights printed on it, the amendments that have been invalidated by Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Reagan disappear.

Drink your decaf in this dazzling mug - and watch your civil liberties disappear and reappear! Simply pour in your coffee or any hot beverage and watch the painstaking work of the founding fathers vanish before your eyes and then reappear after drinking up or cooling down. A great way to amaze and entertain a guest with satire. Imported.

Link (Thanks, Jason!)

I liked the Hanna-Barbera animated opening to Bewitched so much that sometimes I wished the entire show was done in that style. This Bewitched fan page has a detailed presentation of stills from the various title sequences, theme songs, and even a shot of animated Darrin's Life cereal plug.
Link (via Drawn!)

I'm hoping to get sewing lessons this Christmas. First I need a sewing machine. For the last couple of weeks, the CRAFT magazine blog has been reviewing entry level machines.

I have a Juki TL-98E, it's a straight stitch machine usually marketed towards quilters. I bought when I was starting The Organized Knitter for purely practical reasons - knee presser foot lift, extra wide and tall area under the arm, a very large removable working surface, and mostly metal body and parts. I got to use a lot of industrial machines in college and trusted the brand. Because it is a straight stitch machine it is very fast and strong, and I have not missed zig zag or decorative stitches yet. I've used it nearly every day for about three years and have had no troubles, which makes me very happy. The only disadvantage is the lack of a free arm which would be nice to have when doing things such as hemming cuffs. -- Megan Reardon of Not Martha

Link

Brian sez, "We at The Future of Music Coalition had an awesome Future of Music Policy Summit in Montreal recently. About 20 of the sessions are now being webcast.. I ran a pretty good panel, Format Wars: Digital Rights Management and Interoperability about halfway down that page."

The Future of Music conference is just about the best forum for discussion of music, democracy, technoloy and art in the world. These come highly recommended.

Link (Thanks, Brian!)

By 2020, NASA hopes to begin construction on a permanent moon base that would be used as a midway point for human missions to Mars. The outpost will be constructed at one of the moon's poles where the increased sunlight could provide power. From CNN:

NASA's lunar architecture team decided it would be better to establish a base than to conduct individual missions to the moon, as in the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s, (NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale) said.

Team scientists believe astronauts could use the moon's natural resources to maintain the outpost, and could use the base to prepare for the trip to Mars, an objective also set forth by Bush.

Sorties to other locations on the moon could also be carried out from the outpost, Dale said.

Link

I've been traveling throughout Guatemala since early November, maintaining a reporter's notebook here. On the days I spent in Antigua, each morning, the second-story room where I stayed filled with the intoxicating smell of freshly roasted coffee. I followed the scent-trail downstairs and discovered a neat little cafe where a guy named Fernando roasts, bags, and brews fresh local beans every morning. Video and photos (sorry, no smell-o-vision) are here: Link.

Here's a roundup of additional posts on xeni.net/trek from the past day:

* Guatemala: museum exhibit of teeny-tiny Xmas creches

* Indigenous films made by indigenous people

* Robert Gates and CIA history in Guatemala

* Rigoberta Menchú forms indigenous political party

Previous xeni.net/trek roundups: December 4, November 30, November 21, November 16

Alex sez, "From December 4 on, the Spain-based NGO Mensajeros de la Paz will be present in the virtual world of Second Life as a homeless teenager avatar named MensajerosDeLaPaz Jubilee. The kid hasn't any land nor properties, except for a cardboard box, some newspapers and a sign that says: 'Help a child have a second oportunity in his First Life.'"

"The action is intended to reach out for young people, and ask for help for abandoned and abused children in developing countries in South America and Africa," says Ana de la Calle, a communications representative of the organization.

"We think Second Life and other forms of new technologies can be a great way to connect with young people and make them a little more conscious about the huge population in the real world needing help, and it doesn't cost much to guarantee the future of another human being", says Salvador Dinez, art director of the ad agency ArnoldFuel and one of the designers of the project. The action also includes getting broadcasting online videos of the reaction of the Residents.

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

Here's a gallery of photos of screaming, terrified children having their pictures taken with Santa Claus. Link (via Neatorama)

The SF Chronicle has more details about the rescue of the family of James Kim, a CNet editor who has been missing in remote Oregon for 10 days. The stranded family survived by burning their car's tires for warmth; Kati Kim kept her two young daughters from starving by breastfeeding them. The family displayed incredible ingenuity, down to fashioning a signal from an umbrella topped with reflective striping. James Kim remains missing, and is the subject of an intensive search.

They ran the heater in their station wagon until the car was out of gas, then burned all the tires in a desperate attempt to keep warm. When the food ran out, Kati Kim breastfed her two young daughters to keep them alive.

Hope was running low for the Kim family nine days after they became stranded in the snowy mountains of southwestern Oregon while making their way toward home in San Francisco. Then, at 1:45 p.m. Monday, Kim spotted a helicopter her family had hired to help in the search. She waved an umbrella on which she had taped reflective striping, and soon she and the girls were saved.

Link (Thanks, Damien!)

See also:
CNet editor's wife and kids found alive, Kim still missing
CNet editor James Kim is missing

Designer Bethan Laura Wood has created a line of teacups that get prettier the more they are used. She treats the cups' interiors so that tea-stains build up more in patters she lays down -- the more tea you drink, the more pronounced the stain-patterns become. The patterns emerge idiosyncratically, based on your own style of tea-consumption. Link (via Digg)

George Martin, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have produced an album of Beatles mashups. Yes, really. It's called Love, and if the sample remix of Strawberry Fields Forever is any indicator, it's amazing (even if the disc only mashes up one Beatles song with several others -- which makes it not as interesting as Revolved, The Beastles, or The Beachles -- most of which EMI has censored with legal threats).

George Martin, along with Paul and Ringo, produced this reinvention of the Beatles' music by going back to the original session tapes and creating new, and in many cases brilliant, versions of the already familiar catalog. It's NOT a rehash of what you've already got in your collection. In a lot of cases, it's like hearing this music for the first time all over again. 26 tracks, almost 80 minutes of music, reinvented and reimagined.

Link, Link to Love CD, Link to Strawberry Fields Forever mashup (via Making Light)

Update: Adam from EMI sez, "You can preview the album, listen to interviews and download podcasts, etc at the Beatles LOVE site."

Update 2: Ben sez, "The Beatles Love album is not just a remix album. It's the soundtrack created for the Beatles Cirque du Soleil show at the Mirage. And if you haven't been to the show, you haven't heard it at all! The theater has thousands of speakers and sounds amazing."

The US Air Force is ready to deploy a non-lethal weapon called the "Active Denial System" that makes your face feel like it is melting, but (usually) produces no lasting harm. People hit with the beam turn around and run away -- something the military calls the "Goodbye Effect."

Of course, if you were tied up in Abu Ghraib and being zapped with one of these things, you couldn't run away. And once the US military has it, you can be sure that it'll start showing up in the hands of, say, neo-nazi gangs, local phonebook-and-club cops, and the world's waterboarders.

The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven...

The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds...

In more than 10,000 exposures, there were six cases of blistering and one instance of second-degree burns in a laboratory accident, the documents claim.

The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military's claims.

The ADS technology is ready to deploy, and the Army requested ADS-armed Strykers for Iraq last year. But the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN.

Link

See also:
Real ray-guns
Beam of Pain
Pain transmitter to be used for riot control
Air Force chief says beta test weapons on US citizens
Sound of War

The new collected volume of the Y: The Last Man graphic novel series is out and it has left me on exquisite tenterhooks. This is one of my favorite graphic novel serials, about the travails of the last man left on earth after a mysterious plague wipes out every male animal on the planet save for Yorick Brown (the slacker magician son of a minor politico) and his pet monkey, Ampersand.

As civilization rebuilds itself after the death of 48 percent of the world's population, it confronts the possibility that the last generation of humans is alive today. Some turn to acts of heroism, others to barbarism, and Yorick sees them all as he travels incognito with a secret agent who has been charged with getting him to a lab where the secret of his survival can be uncovered.

In the new edition, Kimono Dragons, Yorick and Ampersand end up in Tokyo, which is miraculously unscathed -- or at least, so it seems. As they explore further, it becomes apparent that the Yakuza has been taken over by ruthless Japanese subculture teenagers -- Harajuku Bridge meets the Sopranos -- and that the vice industry continues to thrive.

The storytelling in Y is perfect for a serial -- tight, intense, and riddled with cliff-hangers. This installment is no exception. I am dying to read the next one!

Link, Link to every Y: The Last Man Collection

See also:
New "Y: The Last Man" collection
Must-read comic, Y: The Last Man
New "Y: The Last Man" collection: great sf adventure comic

Indie comix creator Tara Tallan's site Girlamataic Webcomics publishes an RSS feed of half-a-dozen free indie comic serials created by women, including her own long-running serial Galaxion. Tara and I worked together at Bakka, Toronto's science fiction bookstore, and she turned me on to many wonderful funnybooks, most notably Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan.

Link

Update: Stacie sez, "Certainly Tara makes great comics, but she doesn't own Girlamatic. Girlamatic has been around for a few years now, and is currently edited by Lisa Jonte, and was previously edited by Lea Hernandez." -- my mistake! I found out about it through Tara and assumed she'd started it...

DownloadPunk is an all-punk, all-MP3 (or WMA), no-DRM punk rock music site that sells old and new punk for $0.99/track. They've got a ton of my favorites -- even Canada's DOA!

Link (Thanks, Steve!)

Evo Terra of podiobooks sez, "We've just made a significant (and permanent) change which has our authors dancing around like little happy kids. Here's the gist: Podiobooks.com, with over 80 titles of serialized audio books -- all available for free -- recently increased the 'author share' of all donations received. Instead of giving authors 50% of all donations, we've bumped that up to 75%. No tricks. No gimmicks. Just trying to be one of the good guys and helping authors spread their work a bit more." Link (Thanks, Evo!)

Ben sez, "Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock (and rights-holder groups sock puppet) has been forced to accept changes to his copyright ammendment bill, making it legal for users to *gasp* download music onto their iPods and record TV shows using their VCR. Consumers could have faced $1,320 on-the-spot fines under the proposed changes, even if they were unaware they were infringing copyright. The ammendments were so retrograde that Google claimed they would cripple their business in Australia. The revised amendments still suck but it's better than it was. A minor victory for common sense!" Link (Thanks, Ben!)

See also:
Australia's copyright law breaks search engines
Aussie copyright criminalises iPod

LaCie's Huby is the weirdest damned hub I've ever seen -- it's a ball with many semi-stiff tentacles sticking out of it, a little like the Halloween USB Hub mod I blogged in September. Huby's many arms end variously in USB and Firewire ports, LED lights, a fan, and so on. Link (via Red Ferret)

John "Old Man's War" Scalzi interviewed Karl "Sun of Suns" Schroeder on his blog today. Karl is the best world-builder in science fiction today, a mad imagination harnessed to an incisive scientific mind.

5. You've done some writing for the Canadian Military. What was that about, what was it like, and what did the Canadian military learn from you (and vice-versa)?

In a word, weird.

You have to understand, I come from a Mennonite background, so the idea that I would have anything to do with the military never occurred to me--until I realized that the Canadian military is primarily a peacekeeping force (ignoring the fact that we had the fourth largest army in the world at the end of World War II) and the philosophy governing foreign affairs in Canada is something known as "human security" which basically says that individual rights trump national rights: people are more important than their governments. So when Canadian military researchers came to me asking that I take the results of their foresight exercises and build a fictional world to show them all meshing together, I said "huh?" and then jumped at it.

The result was "Crisis at Zefra", an adventure, cautionary tale, and technological fable about a peacekeeping mission gone bad in a mythical African city, set twenty years in the future. I'm told the U.S. Marines are big fans of "Zefra."

One thing I've learned working with the military is that some of the most flexible and open-minded thinkers are there. The people I've worked with in the Canadian army are keenly aware that the future will not be like the past, and that planning for the last war (or, indeed, war as such) is a bad idea.

Link (via Futurismic)

Update: Crisis at Zefra, mentioned above, is available as a downloadable PDF from the Canadian military's website -- thanks to everyone who pointed this out!

Karl Schroeder's new novel, Sun of Suns is the first book in a thrilling new steampunk/ post-singularity/ space-opera trilogy that is the finest and weirdest worldbuilding I can remember reading.

Virga is a world made of a giant pressurized fullerene balloon with an artificial sun at its center. Its volume is full of weirdly medieval people, who are largely ignorant of the true nature of their world. They harvest wood from the trees that cling to asteroids and use the lumber to build ring-shaped settlements which they spin up with bicycles to create local gravity, which prevents them from atrophying into horrific, misshapen spindly monsters. They lash these together to make nation states, and light them with smaller artificial suns that they light by means of miniatures of the artificial sun, which they light by following a recipe whose origin is lost to fable.

They build navies of ships that ply the low-gravity spaces between the nations and they wage glorious, weird, amazing wars in those spaces, with kerosene-powered rockets and rifles and sabers.

Sun of Suns is an incomparable adventure story. The naval battles and swordfights alone are enough to justify the purchase price. But as we follow Hayden, the story's boy-hero (orphaned when his parents' guerrilla mini-sun was blown up by a conquering nation, raised by sky-pirates) through his involvement in an unlikely quest to save another nation from a tribe of marauders, we discover even stranger truths about the universe outside of Virga, a strange place where Artificial Reality, governed by post-Singularity beings, is the rule of the day and the universe lacks all rules.

That's what really carries this book -- the worldbuilding. I've known Karl since I was about 16 (we co-wrote The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction in 2000) and I've never met a woolier, more imaginative, more audacious worldbuilder in all my time in the field.

This is just book one! There are two more to come -- I can't wait. Click below to read some excerpts that will give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

This post-it pad looks like an onion; each textured sheet is slightly different. Peeling a sheet off reportedly feels like taking a slice off a purple onion. The design won the grand prize at the Japanese Kokuyo Design awards. Link

In episode 4 of Boing Boing's Get Illuminated podcast, I spoke with Steven Levy, author of the excellent book, The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness. Steven talks about Steve Jobs' role in the creation of the iPod, why the Zune is lousy, why Sony can't make a good MP3 player, and what the rumored iPhone is going to be like.

MP3 Link | Podcast feed | Enhanced podcast | Get Illuminated show archive

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has an interesting item about a 30-pound carved stone head discovered in New York in 1932.

[I]t was found in New Paltz, New York, in 1932. It was dug up by William Bayer at the age of 9 while he was helping dig a grave. As the young Bayer related the story to his son (who is David Chisholm’s friend) years later, he surmised it was at about four feet deep when he found it. There was no Indian mound involved. It has been a Bayer family’s possession since it was found in 1932, until Chisholm recently obtained it. The stone has been used as a doorstop in Wisconsin for almost 50 years. It has been relatively unknown by the Bigfoot community, and only was recently mentioned to other interested parties and discussed elsewhere.

Link

RU Sirius interviews Adam Gorightly this week about his book, The Prankster and the Conspiracy. It's a fascinating story about how one of the founders of Discordianism was a friend to Lee Harvey Oswald and wound up being accused in various JFK conspiracy theories. Link

Flash: James Kim's family (but not James Kim) has been found alive. Link (Thanks, Alan!)

I've been traveling in Guatemala since early November, working on a series of stories. Here's a recent batch of notes from the road from the past few days, and the entire trip journal is at xeni.net/trek.

* Veladoras (video clip)

* Terremoto: a 5.9 earthquake hits

* Snapshot studies in Petén

* Medical aid for Mayan communities near Lake Atitlán

* Film on "femicides" in Guatemala: Killer's Paradise

* Film on sex workers in Guatemala: Estrellas de la Linea

* Some headlines in news here this week

Images: top (video clip) and bottom (thatch hut with banana frond; vulture on thatch hut), me. Middle (baby in bathwater) courtesy puebloapueblo.org.

The New Atlantis has a long, interesting article about J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project.

It was Oppenheimer whom the public lionized as the brains behind the bomb; who agonized about the devastation his brilliance had helped to unleash; who hoped that the very destructiveness of the new “gadget,” as the bombmakers called their invention, might make war obsolete; and whose sometime Communist fellow-traveling and opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb—a weapon a thousand times more powerful than the bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki—brought about his political disgrace and downfall, which of course have marked him in the eyes of some as all the more heroic, a visionary persecuted by warmongering McCarthyite troglodytes. His legacy, of course, is far more complicated.

Link

The excellent "Core77" design blog and website have a nifty guide to 77 gift ideas costing under $77.

Handheld Smoke Signal -- Guaranteed to attract plenty of attention from the neighbors, nothing says "look at me" more than waving one of these at the holiday picnic. And it's orange. So we like it. $13.99.

Fisheye Camera -- Keep it analog this year and drop one of these 35mm cameras on your favorite designer friend. And check that copy: "Visualize yourself bowled over by the devastating colors that only fine glass can deliver." Yowza. $50.00

Link

One of my favorite podcasts is "In Our Time," a BBC Radio 4 radio program about the "history of ideas."

Host Melvyn Bragg doesn't waste any time with long-winded introductions or the kind of bloviating that's made me swear off talk radio forever. Instead, he gathers together three or four experts and historians and starts drilling them with excellent questions about the particular show subject. The most recent show is about the speed of light: how it was discovered and what it means to science and technology.

Recent programs include:

Altruism - how can evolutionary biology explain it? [with guest Richard Dawkins, who dominates the other guests.]

The Peasants' Revolt - a lasting legacy for popular uprising?

Alexander Pope - "short is my date, but deathless my renown"

The Poincare Conjecture - how a 19th century mathematician changed how we think about the shape of the universe

The Encyclopedie - the great project of the Enlightenment

The Needham Question - did China lay the foundations of modern science?

Link to site | Podcast link | MP3 Link to current show | Show archives

On Saturday night at the Make Vol 8 launch party held at Machine Project, I got a chance to play with a cool mobile game prototype called Mobzombies.

It uses a handheld computer (a tiny Sony Vaio running Windows XP) that has a digital compass attached to it. The player wears a pager-sized clip-on device on his belt that contains an accelerometer and a wireless link to the handheld computer. The premise of the game is that you are being chased by zombies. You can see them on the display. You have to run away from the zombies by actually running in the room you are standing in. The accelerometers and digital compass figure out where you are and map it to the game world. It's incredibly fun!

The guys who invented it -- William Carter and Aaron Meyers of USC -- also gave me a cool Mobzombies T-shirt. You can buy one for $11. Link

In 1986 Lou Reimuller converted a department store mannequin into a working electric guitar. He dubbed it the teenar. Artist Amy Crehore has more photos on her blog. Link

From the Oct, 1937 issue of Popular Science, a motorized toothbrush "designed to allow the late riser to get his teeth brushed while he shaves." I don't even shave, but I would use this every day if it were in the market. Link

Wikipedia has an article on long horses (see previous Boing Boing entry here). Apparently, some people doubt they ever existed!

Above, a color photo of a long horse. Note that it is much longer than the horses shown in the black and white photos. This is because in later years, unethical breeders were breeding longer and longer horses. Eventually, their spines gave out, leading to the extinction of the breed. (Thanks for the image, Hudson!)

If you would like to become a member of the International Long Horse Breeders Association (ILHBA), place your palm against your computer display and read the following out loud in front of two witnesses:

As a initiate to the International Long Horse Breeders Association (ILHBA) I do hereby solemnly swear to uphold the following rules:

1. Before I die, I will go forth on a two-year mission to seek out a sample of long horse DNA for the purposes of cloning a long horse for the purpose of repopulating the planet with these magnificent animals.

2. When long horses once again grace our planet in abundant numbers, I will follow strict guidelines regarding their humane treatment, especially the one stipulating the limitation of strapping on one saddle per linear 18 inches of long horse.

3. Unless I am a bona-fide member of the ILHBA Lamarck Research Laboratory (LRL), I will not attempt to create a long horse by stretching an ordinary horse.

4. I will report any instance of a ILHBA member attempting to pass off a dachshund as a "miniature long horse."

Link

Reader comment:

Robyn says:

We're aghast. And we ask ourselves how the doubters refuse to believe in the long horse when so many have marveled at its elegance (and wept at its demise). But we may have the answer. Conspirators are afoot! And they mean to eradicate our beloved long horse from the collective memory. One hour ago, I received the above photograph in an anonymous email, along with the terse statement: "here's more proof for you... ha! bastard!"

Link Sean Bonner discovered that George Washington rode a long horse:

It's insane that some people are trying to say they never existed. I suppose these are the same people who say that just because there aren't dinosaurs walking around today they never existed either. One of the reasons this is so interesting in that, at least here in the US, Long Horses hold a dear place in our history since the first President of the United States, George Washington not only owned a Long Horse but it was his mount of choice. In fact he rode it so often that many portraits and images of him show his trust Long Horse with him.

Over at Cryptomundo, Craig Heinselman, editor of CRYPTO, reviews the excellent book, Cryptozoolgy: Out of Time Place Scale. This is the show catalog for the exhibit of the same name that explores the intersection between art and science, fact and fiction, belief and evidence. (Previous post about the exhibition here.) The exhibit is up at the Kansas City Art Institute until December 20. I have the catalog and it's quite wonderful. Of course, there are reproductions of the artists' works from the exhibition and provocative essays, but taken as a whole, the catalog's look, feel, and organization offers its own sense of curiosity, wonder, and mystery. From Heinselman's review:

One can not explain the layout and the books unique structure sufficiently, but suffice it to say it does not follow any standard practice for a softcover or hardcover, its design, structure, imprint, layout and texture are as specialized as the content and basis for its creation. One must see, hold and look at it to obtain a true sense...

We see a photographic representation of a still from the famed Patterson Film by Ellen Lesperance and Jeanine Oleson entitled Bigfoot & Nioka II. We see an acrylic and graphite piece by Walmor Correa in the style of a physicians guide entitled Capelobo from Project Unheimlich. And, this reviewers’ favorite, an oil and acrylic piece on wood paneling entitled Map of Cryptozoology by Alexis Rockman showing a global perspective on all things cryptozoological. These entries are but a taste of the art styles within the book, and exhibit itself, which range including photographic, taxidermy sculptures, line drawings, doodles, acrylic, oil and more. Link

Loren Coleman, who has contributed artifacts to the exhibition and a historical essay to the book, is selling personally autographed copies of the exhibition catalog for $75 including two other Coleman books of the buyer's choice. The funds will help support Coleman's cryptozoology research. Order it here. Alternately, you can pre-order the book from Amazon where it's currently out of stock.

A number of common lip-balm ingredients actually dry out and irritate your lips, prompting you to put on more lip balm, which makes this worse, calling for more balm -- and so on. It's a pretty slimy trick.

Other common lip balm ingredients to avoid are irritants like sopropyl myristate, eugenol, and phenol.

Instead, seek lip balms with FDA-approved protectants and/or a hydrocortisone base.

Link

Update: Snopes says this is a hoax.

Update 2: Consumerist's Ben Popken sez, "The US Pharmacist article seems pretty sound, perhaps he has some info the Snopes writer doesn't?"

The FDA-approved uses of salicylic acid are the application to hypertrophied skin lesions, such as corns, calluses, and warts. Salicylic acid possesses a keratolytic action that erodes the hyperkeratotic lesions. However, lips are not hyperkeratotic skin, as found in warts.8 When salicylic acid is applied to the lips, it can erode through the outer stratum corneum to damage living skin layers beneath—this creates a vicious cycle.

More from Consumerist here

Last year, I posted about a mysterious radio signal that knocked hundreds of garage door openers out of commission in Ottawa, Canada. This week, radio signals emitted by Cheyenne Mountain Air Station, the Colorado headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, had the same effect on area garage door openers. The Air Force was testing the frequency for a homeland security first response communications system. From the Associated Press:

Capt. Tracy Giles of the 21st Space Wing said Air Force officials were trying to figure out how to resolve the problem of their signal overpowering garage door remotes.

"They have turned it off to be good neighbors," he said...

Technically, the Air Force has the right to the frequency, which it began using nearly three years ago at some bases. Signals have previously interfered with garage doors near bases in Florida, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

In general, effects from the transmissions would be felt only within 10 miles, but the Colorado Springs signal is beamed from atop 6,184-foot Cheyenne Mountain, which likely extends the range.

Link

At many egg farms, chickens that are too old to produce are suffocated with carbon dioxide and then dumped in a compost heap. Apparently though, "zombie birds" that managed to survive have been spotted emerging from mass graves at Northern California farms. Now that slaughterhouses in the state have stopped accepting the unwanted birds, farmers say they have no choice but to compost them in sawdust. From the Associated Press:

A food bank proposed making sausage to feed the poor. A reptile enthusiast suggested using them as food for large exotic pets like pythons and alligators. And an industry group said in the future they could be used as fuel for power plants...

The egg-laying birds have only a pound of usable meat, compared to the 5-pound chickens typically raised for eating. Slaughtering the chickens, even to transport them unprocessed and frozen whole, would likely cost more than composting them, (said Petaluma egg farmer Arnie) Reibli.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

In this captivating video, a poor hamster has found himself trapped inside the C64 game "Monty on the Run."
Link (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

An guild of role-playing academics in World of Warcraft has been given a grant to recruit more academics (PhDs and ABDs, please) to play with them -- like the Terror Nova guild, but role-playing oriented and focused on credentials.

Tiger Team One, a medium RP guild on the RP server Kirin Tor (Horde), has recently received Title IX funds and a N.E.A. grant, as well as a "Stone Guard's Stipend," to recruit members and begin operations. Besides an advanced degree, applicants should be familiar with Rutger Haur films. Successful applicants will be expected to integrate PvP with RP. Chosen applicants will receive up to 5 silver coins in start up funds and access to a vent server. Future publications should address Conan-like dialogue and simply morality tales akin to Xena. Complete discretion assured. Our membership includes a MacArthur Fellow and an emeritus of the Institute for Advanced Study. Our manifesto is posted on http://www.tigerteamone.com. May the wind be at your back. We will not be interviewing at the M.L.A., A.H.A., A.P.A. nor the A.S.A.

Link (Thanks, Royski)

Rich sez, "Apparently the Toronto PET Users Group is still alive and well, coding and hacking Commodore hardware for more than 25 years!"

"It's obviously a lot of camaraderie," Mr. Bloomquist says. He hadn't heard of TPUG before 2003, but his own tinkering earned him not only a welcome to the group but the title of webmaster. "One thing I always wanted to do was hook my 64 up to the Internet," he explains, "and now I actually have the design and engineering background to do it. So I did it." And he found he wasn't the only one; soon, an army of other Commodore 64s made contact with his special Web server. "Within a week, I had 2,000 callers," he says.

Going online with a decades-old computer -- today's $600 desktops are thousands of times more powerful -- is no small feat, and the motivation for Mr. Bloomquist and others is a mix of novelty and nostalgia. Computer fans are enjoying the eighties revival as much as anybody. For the generation born in the seventies, computers and gaming are culture. Machines like the C64, which had one of the largest game catalogues of the decade, are a big part of their past, and now they want to reclaim it.

Link (Thanks, Rich!)

The TiVoToGo DRM has been cracked. This is the DRM that locks the files you move from your TiVo to your PC (something that is lawful, even without DRM). The DRM restricts how you use your TV shows, and prevents you from using it at all outside of a Windows system.

On this fascinating Wiki, a group of hackers are meticulously reverse-engineering the TiVoToGo DRM and finding ways of subverting it. They've put together a command-line app that breaks the DRM, which means that an easy-to-use graphic tool can't be far behind.

TiVo owners, rejoice! These folks are about to make your TiVo way more useful than it was yesterday.

TiVoToGo is the feature TiVo added in software release 7.1. It enables transferring video off the TiVo unit to a PC over a HTTP connection. You can access a rudimentary web interface at https://tivo:MediaAccessKey@your_tivo/. TiVo's official TiVoToGo website is here http://www.tivo.com/togo.

It looks like MPEG I frames are the only thing that isn't encrypted in the tivo file. It looks like a combination of Blowfish and ElGammal encryption (what's the evidence for this?). Is it a block cipher, or a stream cipher? Clearly everything we need to decrypt it exists. I would guess the "fingerprint", "salt", and MediaAccessKey are needed? Is the MediaAccessKey the public key, the fingerprint the private key, and the salt is used to maybe XOR the stream first? Or is there a nonce that gets used to initialize the cipher?

Link (via Engadget)

Update: George sez, "there has been a program in existence for at least a year and a half called DirectShow Dump that strips the DRM from .tivo files (the TivoToGo files' extension) and gives you a .mpg file that you can then use almost anywhere or then convert to another video format."

Just a few spots remain in my USC undergrad course, called "Pwned: Is everyone on this campus a copyright criminal?" The course runs for one semester only, starting in January 2007, and runs Tuesdays frm 3:30-6:30. It's a rare peek behind the scenes at DRM standards bodies, Congress, activist coalitions, hacker groups and all the other players who are shaping the future of every discipline, from engineering to international development, art to economics.

It's a COMM499 course and open to all students, regardless of your major. The main class assignment is to work through Wikipedia entries on subjects we cover in the class, in groups, identifying weak areas in the Wikipedia sections and improving them, then defending those improvements in the message-boards for the Wikipedia entries.

Every garden has a snake: computers aren't just tools for empowering their owners. They're also tools for stripping users of agency, for controlling us individually and en masse.

It starts with "Digital Rights Management" -- the anti-copying measures that computers employ to frustrate their owners desires. These technologies literally attack their owners, treating them as menaces to be thwarted through force majeure, deceit, and cunning. Incredibly, DRM gets special protection under the law, a blanket prohibition on breaking DRM or helping others to do so, even if you have the right to access the work the DRM is walling off.

But DRM's just the tip of the iceberg. Every digital act includes an act of copying, and that means that copyright governs every relationship in the digital realm. Take a conversation to email and it's not just culture, it's copyright -- every volley is bound by the rules set out to govern the interactions between large publishing entities.

Playing a song for a buddy with your stereo is lawful. Stream that song to your buddy's PC and you could be facing expulsion and criminal prosecution.

Every interaction on the Web is now larded over with "agreements" -- terms of service, acceptable use policies, licenses -- that no one reads or negotiates. These non-negotiable terms strip you of your rights the minute you click your mouse. Transactions that would be a traditional purchase in meatspace are complex "license agreements" in cyberspace. As mere licensors, we are as feudal serfs to a lord -- ownership is conferred only on those who are lucky enough to be setting the terms. Our real property interests are secondary to their "intellectual property" claims.

When the computer, the network, publishing platforms, and property can all be magicked away with the Intellectual Property wand, we're all of us pwned, 0wnz0red, punkd. Our tools are turned against us, the law is tipped away from our favor.

Link to course catalog, Link to draft syllabus

Bill Willingham's Fables is one of the select, wonderful group of long-running graphic novels that I follow religiously. The premise is that all the mythical creatures of our fables have been chased from their homeworlds by the Adversary, a shadowy figure who sends an army of goblin warriors before him to rape and plunder. The Fables have settled on our world, in New York, back in the days when it was New Amsterdam, and they have lived there ever since, hidden in plain sight.

A new volume in the series, 1001 Nights of Snowfall, has just been published. It is set outside of the main action of the series, with Snow White visiting Scheherezade's Sultan to beg his help in rallying the Arabian fables to fight the Adversary, who even now marches on their worlds.

The Sultan imprisons and threatens to kill Snow White, but she charms him with her life's story -- a retelling of the Snow White myth from the dankest, filthiest Grimm rendition, mixed with enough vivid detail to curl your hair. The Sultan spares her life, but promises to kill her the next night if she doesn't have another story. So the next night she tells the origin stories of two more of the Fables whom we've met through the long-running series, and then again the next night, and the next.

I love origins-of comics, Peter Parker and his radioactive spider and all that. But this is absolutely the cleverest frame for an origins story I've ever read, capturing (as all the Fables storylines do) the true feeling of old legends and the odd dissonance of imagining them unfolding today.

The wonder of Fables is the treat that comes from the mixing of all the fables together, the great mythic 16-car collision. Willingham wrings genuinely original stories out of these old, old characters. Of course, he's just the latest steward of their storylines, in a centuries-old tradition of storytelling that has every generation reimagining its heroes and villains, fools and tricksters. It's the path that goes from Pygmalion to My Fair Lady to Trading Places.

1001 Nights of Snowfall mixes the artistic styles of several guest illustrators, each a loving tribute to the subject and each different from the ones that preceded it. This is a handsome hardcover gift-book, and it was certainly part of my Christmas present to myself.

Link, Link to all Fables collections

Update: Jeremy sez, "the first issue of the Fables series is available for free from the Vertigo website."

The Starbucks Gossip blog -- fans, employees, franchisees and critics have a far-ranging, vigorous debate on innumerable subjects related to the omnipresent coffee giant:

Starbucks CEO meets with Ethopian leader to discuss trademark dispute

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Starbucks CEO Jim Donald failed to settle their trademark dispute during talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopian. "Starbucks has not yet recognised Ethiopia's trademark ownership of the specialty coffee names [Sidamo, Yirgacheffe, and Harar], despite Prime Minister Meles' offer of a royalty-free licensing agreement," says an Ethopian official. In its press release, Starbucks says the meeting "was very cooperative and productive." (Read the story at Reuters.com | Read the story at BBC.com)

Link (via Fimolculous)

Fimoculous's "Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren't Reading" post has some real gems in it. I picked up a couple of new RSS subscriptions out of it.

27. T-Shirt Critic
I've got this theory that the t-shirt is becoming its own legitimate form of media -- informative yet dispensable. Probably the most frequent email query I get is "where do you get all those t-shirt links?" The answer is all over the freaking place -- but this site is one of the best. (See also: Preshrunk & iloveyourtshirt.)

26. Pruned
Ostensibly, this is a blog about landscape architecture, but it actually illustrates how any discipline has complexity and hybridity behind it, usually by gathering all sorts of random pieces of visual culture. (See also: BLDG BLOG & Things Magazine.)

Link (via Waxy)

The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab has just release Psiphon, a censorship-defeating program. Like EFF's Tor, Psiphon uses ordinary users' computers as re-routers for Web requests, bouncing requests for blocked and censored material to computers outside the censorwall.

The code for psiphon is announced as being released under the GPL, the most common and preferred open/free license, but I couldn't find a source repository. The download page says that the code is licensed under the "psiphon code license (GPL)," which makes no sense to me. It also contains a lengthy "agreement" that you have to enter into to get at the download that seems a little off-kilter for GPL'ed code. They just launched -- maybe they'll clarify this soon (or take down the notice that this is all under GPL).

What is psiphon?
psiphon is a censorship circumvention solution that allows users to access blocked sites in countries where the Internet is censored. psiphon turns a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server capable of retrieving and displaying web pages anywhere

What are psiphonodes, psiphonode administrators and psiphonites??
A psiphonode is a psiphon server that is operated by an administrator residing in an uncensored country (this is an integration of 'psiphon' and 'Node'). The psiphonode administrator is responsible for creating and managing user accounts and running the psiphon server. A psiphonite is a psiphon user, residing within a jurisdiction that blocks arbitrary web sites, and utilizes a psiphonode residing in an uncensored jurisdiction.

How does psiphon work?
psiphon acts as a "web proxy" for authenticated psiphonites, retrieving requested web pages and displaying them in a user's browser. psiphon uses a secure, encrypted connection to receive web requests from the psiphonite to the psiphonode who then transports the results back to the psiphonite. There is no connection between the psiphonite and the requested website, as psiphon transparently proxies the request through the psiphonode's computer allowing the psiphonite to browse blocked websites seamlessly.

Link (Thanks to everyone who suggested this link!)

This video of an octopus squeezing its large, rubbery body through a one-inch hole in a plexiglas box is positively eerie and entrancing. Octopi are freaking amazing, whether they're running on two legs and impersonating a crab or strangling sharks or escaping from their cages in feats of mechanical derring-do. Link (via Digg)

The Data-Mining Blog is a great, frequently-updated blog devoted to the new ways that people, governments, scientists and corporations are extracting more information out of the data-clouds we leave in our wake. It's enough to make you paranoid.

When Bruce Schneier talked at my speaker series earlier this year, he characterized personal information as a kind of pollution, easy to create, hard to destroy and potentially very dangerous.

Our approach to personal information reminds me of the days when we dumped our trash in the sea. "The sea is so big, our trash is so small, we'll never make a dent in its depths." Or our present view of greenhouse gasses, for that matter. We offgas all this personal data and the instruments capable of turning it against us grow ever-more sensitive.

Round Trip To Google

If you publish a blog and subscribe to Google's blog alerting, you can - by using the real time option for altering - get an idea of how long it takes Google to get each post.

• I posted Weekends At The Movies at 5:18 AM on December the first. The alert from Google came at 3:48 PM, a delay of 10 hours and 30 minutes.
• Now With More Matterhorn was published at 7:25 PM on November the 30th, the alert arrived at 2:32 AM on December 1st, a delay of 7 hours 7 minutes.

These figures suggest a substantial round trip time for blog publishing, indexing and alerting. Given that Technorati claims to have a mean time to index of 5 minutes (something which I personally doubt) Google seems to be pretty slow. Of course, I've only looked at 2 data points from a single blog. Perhaps there are other bloggers out there who can also share their stats on this one.

Update: This post was published at 9:23 AM on the December 2nd, the alert from Google was time stamped 3:22 AM on December 3rd - a minute shy of 18 hours.

Link (via Fimolculous)

Johan sez, "A few science fiction fans in Uppsala, Sweden, gather each first advent to bake something in gingerbread. This year the result was a very good-looking TIE Fighter Advanced. I wish I could have been there." Link (Thanks, Johan!)

Toronto now sports an authentic-esque "Maid Cafe" -- a Japanese cafe where women dressed up in anime maid outfits wait on patrons with lavish attention. Weirdly enough, it's just around the corner from the house I grew up in, at McNicoll Ave and Kennedy. Link (Thanks, Ian)

This line of geek girl jewelry has some very nice pieces made from microcontrollers and electronic components. Link (Thanks, Ruth!)

The IT Crowd, my favoritest geek TV show evar, has been picked by NBC, who will produce an American version of the show! w00t! Now, please don't screw it up, NBC.

Finally, the Channel 4 series The IT Crowd is being re-developed by writer and executive producers David Guarascio and Moses Port (Just Shoot Me, Mad About You); and Joe Port and Joe Wiseman (Son of the Beach, Dilbert).

Link (Thanks, Hochler!)

See also: IT Crowd cross-stitch

Update: Creator Graham Linehan disputes the names mentioned above: "I have been given some measure of creative control and have yet to make a decision about who's going to do it."

Update 2: Graham adds, ""Oops -- turns out they ARE writing the show!"

This week I was lucky enough to catch Toronto indie band Barenaked Ladies at the Gibson Amphitheatre in LA. I've been going to BNL shows since the band played the Scarborough Town Centre in suburban Toronto, while their parents sold their homemade demo tape out of a box next to the stage. I've been a fan for more than half my life, and I love the direction that the band has taken: musically, socially, politically and technologically.

The new album, Barenaked Ladies Are Me (BLAM) has everything I love about BNL -- charming, quirky, catchy songs (especially the uptempo ones) that combine a total enthusiasm with self-reflexive, ironic wit. BNL songs are sly jokes in musical form. My favorites are tracks like "Running Out of Ink," "Wind it Up" and "Why Say Anything Nice?"

The show was fantastic. BNL goofed it up on stage like the class-clown in high-school -- it was like seeing your buddies having the best time ever, except that your buddies happen to be fantastic musicians. They do rock-star poses that dissolve into giggles, a little bit of on-stage yoga, and generally freak out like they're having the time of their lives.

At the show, I bought BLAM on a 256MB USB key, for $25. The key came loaded with the entire new album in MP3 form, a ton of live tracks, graphics, videos, ringtones, and basically everything else you could want -- and when I was done moving all that stuff to my laptop, I was left with a useful USB key, instead of a lump of CD plastic that I would have to lug around with me every time I moved, pay to stick in a storage locker, and never listen to again.

The USB key is part of the BNL political/technical/social picture. Recently, BNL front-man Steve Page founded an upstart association for Canadian musicians and labels that takes the radically sensible position that DRM sucks, fans shouldn't be sued, and musicians should work the the Internet, not against it.

This has had widespread political ramifications in Canada. The departure of all the Canadian labels from the Canadian Recording Industry Association has left CRIA in the awkward position of only representing multinational, US-centric music companies. When CRIA hits up Parliament for special favours, they speak against the stated position of the Canadian-owned labels and Canadian musicians.

BNL and Steve Page have made great strides with this campaign, and they've spent a lot of time on Parliament Hill campaigning for a better deal for Canadian music fans and Canadian artists than anyone is going to get from the US-led majors.

BNL also gave lobby space over to global-warming groups that sold carbon credits to offset the tank of gas in your car for $5, and flashed interesting stats about carbon reduction on the jumbotron between the opening act and their show.

BNL encourage fans to upload and share concert shots and videos, make their own t-shirts, and generally make the band into part of their lives. This is so goddamned smart, it's easy to see why the labelsaurs hate the idea.

I don't go to a lot of shows -- and even fewer stadium shows -- but I'll always make an exception for BNL. It's not often you get to spend your money on great music from great people who not only aren't lobbying government to screw you over, they're actually spending their time fighting the bad guys. Link

Link to Barenaked Ladies Are Me

Link to remaining tour dates: San Diego, Buffalo, Hartford, Norfolk, Charlotte, Victoria, Vancouver, Prince George, Kelowna, Edmonton, Calgary, Lethbridge, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, London, Toronto, Sault Ste Marie, Montreal, Ottawa, St John, Halifax, St John's, Cambridge (UK), London (UK), Southampton (UK), Manchester (UK), Bristol (UK), Brighton (UK), Birmingham (UK), Glasgow (UK), Dublin (IE)

See also:
Barenaked Ladies release album on USB stick
Barenaked Ladies go remix crazy
BNL endorse Jack Layton
Hollywood's MP denounces "users," "EFF members" -- video
New Barenaked Ladies single as free, remixable multitracks
Barenaked Ladies guy on Universal's DRM SpiralFrog service
Canada's New Democratic Party embraces copyfighting musicians
Barenaked Ladies frontman on copyright reform

Update: Jodi sez, "I was at the fantastic BNL show last week at Gibson also. I got a bunch of great photos.

Update 2: Darren sez, "I really enjoyed the podcast they created while recording their latest albums. It's witty, insightful, appeals to fans, and exactly the right length."

Update 3: Rod sez, "This is a riff on Guns and Roses and the crazy sign they have plastered all over the Winnipeg arena regarding their right to confiscate your camera, etc in support of their 'copyrights.' Marked contrast to the Barenaked approach."

Pete Goldlust carves these elaborate sculptures out of standard wax crayons. Inspiring! Link (via Digg)

Tokyoite sends us this "photo of a chandelier made from the rubbery bits of dozens of Tenga - a Japanese penis pump. It was on display at the Peace Needs a New Logo event during Tokyo Design Week and appears on Future Perfect, a site about the collision of people and technology written by a researcher from Nokia. " Link (Thanks, Tokyoite!)

Update: Simon sez, "Tenga is actually a high tech, highly styled and designed masturbation device, which comes in five styles of simulated sex, not a penis pump.

USC's library has posted an archive of photos from the early days of Disneyland. Included is this shot of the giant squid "ride" from the original Tomorrowland. When Disneyland opened in 1955, they ran out of money and filled Tomorrowland with corporate exhibits (Dairy Farmers of America present the Cow of the Future! The Kaiser Aluminium Hall of Fame!) and the capper was an "exhibit" of the giant squid prop from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with a little person inside who made the tentacles wave around (the squid prop later ended up in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space). Link (Thanks, Debbie!)

Update: Tim sez, "With regard to that shot of the giant squid, I was 10 years old when I went through the "20,000 Leagues" show at Disneyland in July, 1959. (I met Walt the same day!) That photograph is just the tip of the iceberg. The exhibit was a walk-through of the sets from the movie, and was one of the coolest things in the park. As you probably know, the Nautilus (designed by the great Harper Goff, who worked on movies and the theme parks until his demise in the 1990s, and was one of the "Firehouse Five" dixieland jazz group with other studio guys, and who hung around with Jack Webb!) has attained a cult status. And for the kids lucky enough to have strolled through the actual sets (like George Lucas), it stands out among early Disneyland memories. One interesting little note: The elaborate pipe organ that Capt. Nemo plays in the film is still at Disneyland. It's in the 'ballroom' scene in the Haunted Mansion, repainted white. Early, nearly-unfinished Disneyland was the coolest place, where a boy's or girls's imagination filled in the blanks, in the empty, dusty spaces that Walt and his artists had not yet built anything upon. Today, there's not an inch of unassigned real estate in Disneyland. Too bad."

Update 2: Coop sez, "The Ed Wood movie featuring a giant, non-moving squid was his 1955 epic 'Bride Of The Monster'!

"I'd always heard it was stolen from Republic studios, as noted on the Wikipedia page for the film. Also, the film was made in 1955, and Disneyland also opened in 1955, so it seems unlikely, unless maybe the squid was in the 'Bride Of The Monster' FIRST, then migrated to Disneyland. (A better story, that!)" -- I stand corrected!