There are lots of amazing, beautiful robot sculptures made out of junk parts out there, but the robots at Bennett Robot Works in Brooklyn are really spesh. Link (via Watchismo)

Look at this photo. Does it look strange? Click here to turn it right side up. Does it look strange? This is called the Schiebe Illusion. (Via Mighty Optical Illusions, which has more examples on its site)

The wonderfully mysterious Athanasius Kircher Society is holding its Inaugural Meeting on Tuesday, January 16, at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. According to the Society's Proceedings, the event will be "a showcase of wonders, curiosities, and esoterica, inspired by the spirit of Father Kircher." At $12, this looks like an amazing, entertaining, extravaganza that would even impress PT Barnum.
Link

Ryan says: "Inspired last month by this BB post, I decided to write a little php script to generate papercraft covers for any iPod on the market.

"The iPaperCraft.com generator lets you choose your iPod, upload an image and viola! You've got a free Christmas gift for any hipster with an iPod." (The image I am using here is a Mary Blair illustration I found at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. See below for Mary Blair links. -- Mark) Link

Reader comment:

Stephen Worth says:

The Mary Blair picture you're using on your iPod cover is from the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. We've got lots of Mary Blair posts now, and I'm working on digitizing the New Golden Song Book in its entirety.

Little Verses Part One

Little Verses Part Two

Baby's House

New Golden Song Book Part One

New Golden Song Book Part Two

The ancient gods have heard my prayers! Behold, the entire crew of Battlestar Galactica, reimagined as Simpsons characters by Dylan Meconis.

Link to entire set. Shown here, the many faces of Boomer. (thanks, Sean Bonner!!!)

Kevin Evans says, "A co-worker's family lives right across the water from the launch pad that STS-116 launched from. They took some neat pictures & video." Link.

See also John Schwartz' excellent coverage of the launch and mission at the NY Times -- here are one, two, three, four of a number of recent pieces he's filed.

Last year, I posted about the medical uses of psychedelic drugs, including a University of Arizona study on psilocybin (magic mushrooms) as a possible treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. This week, the BBC News reports on that same study, apparently the first published results in thirty years examining psilocybin's possible therapeutic benefits. Critics are questioning the methodology of the small clinical study, which lacked a control group. On the other hand, Dr. Francis Moreno, the psychiatry professor who led the research, claims that the findings were interesting enough to "support the need for a proper controlled study." According to the BBC News article, the nine OCD patients who were given the drug, all who had taken psychedelics before, enjoyed a reduction of symptoms for up to 24 hours. They had previously not responded to other treatments. One individual's OCD symptoms vanished for more than six months. From the BBC News:

In this study, the people taking the drug rated the hallucinogenic experience as "stressful" at some times but "psychologically and spiritually uplifting" - describing encounters with past lives, faraway planets, and communing with deities...

However Dr Paul Blenkiron, a consultant in adult psychiatry at Bootham Park Hospital, York, said: "I'm concerned that the study only measured effects up to 24 hours and OCD is a chronic condition, not measurable in hours and days, but months and years.

"About 12% of people can suffer flashbacks after less than 10 exposures [to psychedelics] many years later, beyond the six months of this study, so long term effects should be carefully assessed."

However, he added: "If this substance was effective and had fewer side effects in severe treatment-resistant case, it would be an option."

Link to BBC News article, Link to Mind Hacks post with other relevant links and interesting reader comments about "flashbacks"

Danny O'Brien says:

As previously reported on BB, the UK music industry signed up a bunch of now dead musicians on a public petition to extend copyright there. Now the Open Rights Group is attempting to compile the complete list of the dead artists whose names the Phonographic Performance Limited (the copyright body representing the record industry) took in vain. Look through their scans and see if your favorite deceased artists were clumsily reanimated by the undead industry. (Then sign ORG's anti-extension petition on Release The Music).

Link

Flickr's got an awesome Xmas easter-egg: if you add a photonote called "ho ho ho hat," Flickr draws a Santa-hat on your pic; make one called "ho ho ho beard" and you get a snowy white beard. Link (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

BB pal Phil Torrone is launching a new open-source business that offers by-appointment-only laser etching for laptops, iPods, mobile phones and other electronics. CNET's Daniel Terdiman says they plan to share the plans for free, so anyone who wants to create a similar business -- including non-profits, schools, and the like -- can do so. Snip from Daniel's story:

Phil Torrone, an editor at Make magazine, and Limor Fried, a former fellow at the tech-focused art studio Eyebeam R&D, are working together on Adafruit Laser Services, a new, by-appointment-only business in Manhattan that etches custom artwork onto customers' laptops, iPods, cell phones and other gadgets. (...)

"It feels like a tattoo, and now I feel like I need to get more," said Digg founder Kevin Rose, on whose Apple Computer MacBook Torrone etched Digg's logo at Tim O'Reilly's Foo Camp conference earlier this year. "This is like a temporary tattoo (stickers) versus the permanent stuff."

Link to story, and link to Adafruit Laser Services.

They sell laser etching gift certificates online, and I can already think of someone on my Christmas list I'm gonna buy one for: Link. Note that the recipient (or a proxy) must appear in person in NYC with the item to be etched.

Image: a snapshot of Phil's first laser-etched beauty, from this BB post last year.

Reader comment: Daniel V. Klein reminds us that, "Etch-a-Mac has been doing this for a few years now."

Martin Nodell, creator of the Green Lantern, has died at the age of 91. The Green Lantern, based on a New York subway train operator holding a green lantern, debuted in 1940. Nodell later worked on the ad team that developed the Pillsbury Doughboy. (Image of Nodell from a fan's Green Lantern site.)
Link to AP obituary

This. (via Bonnie's Flickr stream!).

Jeff Wishnie of nonprofit org Inveneo says,

Inveneo is a non-profit that brings information and communication technology to remote and rural ares in the developing world. We're holding a Thumb Drive Drive. Donate old USB thumb drives (16mb and larger) so that they can be provided to school labs in the countries where we operate including Uganda, Rwanda, and Mali. Low capacity thumb drives are the AOL floppies of the 2000s. We'd like to put them to good use. Donations are tax deductible.

Link

Largest personal data breach ever at a US educational institution. BoingBoing reader Jonathan says,

I just got an email from UCLA, linking to the above site, in my inbox. Someone hacked and accessed their database which contained social security numbers. But it wasn't the student database -- I've never attended UCLA. It was their applications database -- I applied to their law school 3 years ago.

Link to UCLA's announcement of the security breach, and here's a snip from a related LA Times article "UCLA data breach among worst of its kind":

In what appears to be one of the largest computer security breaches ever at an American university, one or more hackers have gained access to a UCLA database containing personal information on about 800,000 of the university's current and former students, faculty and staff members, among others.

UCLA officials said the attack on a central campus database exposed records containing the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates -- the key elements of identity theft -- for at least some of those affected. The attempts to break into the database began in October 2005 and ended Nov. 21, when the suspicious activity was detected and blocked, the officials said.

And Tom Zeller at the recently-launched New York Times blog "The Lede" has more:

The amount of personal data held by universities often make them a particularly juicy target for hackers. And lax network security — sometimes in place to facilitate communication across departments and schools and institutes, all linked under a rangy university system — can make them easy targets.

This is the second bit of bad news in roughly a month for U.C.L.A., which is still reeling from the disturbing, viral video of one of its students being tasered by campus officers in Powell Library. The school’s chancellor announced an independent investigation into the incident on Nov. 17.

Link.

Mashup virtuoso DJ Riko has released his annual Xmas mix -- this year sporting Amillionsons' "Super Sharp Santa:" "the best drum-and-bass Christmas song you'll ever hear." Link (Thanks, Nick!)

See also:
DJ Riko's Christmas mix album
Whistler's Delight mashup mixes 22 whistling songs
Best mashups of 2005

Artist Amanda Visell has a show coming up at the 1988 Gallery in LA in January. I love her work. Link

I'm thrilled to report that BB pal and pervasive gaming pioneer Jane McGonigal has joined Institute for the Future as a research affiliate, the same position I hold there. Earlier this year, Jane was named as one of Technology Review magazine's prestigious "Young Innovators Under 35." (Previous BB posts about Jane here.) She'll be working on a variety of IFTF research projects and expanding our efforts to design "experiences from the future" that help make our forecasts more tangible to clients. As an affiliate, Jane will also continue her other work teaching, lecturing, and developing games with 42 Entertainment. Welcome to IFTF, Jane!
Link to Jane's site Avant Game, Link to IFTF

San Francisco resident "Tremain Calm" shares this scan of a legally-obtained bag of medical marijuana, featuring the presumably illicit use of Homer Simpson's likeness. Although -- who knows? Perhaps Homer, too, is a card-carrying member of that club, which would explain in part the character's penchant for donuts. Link to larger size. Bag label reads: "TRAINWRECK. Contingent to California H&S Code 11362.5 For medical use only. Do not operate heavy machinery or drive. This means you, Nicole Richie."

Reader comment: Jesse Raub says,

It's probably a reference to a mid series episode where Homer gets his eyes pecked out by crows and gets prescribed medicinal marijuana - one of my favorite episodes. "They call 'em fingers, but I've never seen them fing. Oh! There they go." - Otto

The Planetary Society will announce a $50,000 prize for "Asteroid Tagging Designs" tomorrow at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the Apophis Mission Design Competition, you are invited to submit designs for a mission to intercept and "tag" a potentially hazardous asteroid headed towards Earth.

Image: old-school asteroid vanquishment technology from Atari -- Link. These death rays were very powerful in 1976, but do not work as effectively on contemporary space matter, hence the contest.

Snip from announcement:

Apophis is a near-Earth object (NEO), which will come closer to Earth in 2029 than the orbit of our geostationary satellites. On that pass, the asteroid will be gravitationally perturbed to an unknown orbit, one that that may have the slim possibility of hitting Earth in 2036. Very precise tracking may be needed to determine the probability of such a collision. Such precise tracking may require "tagging" the asteroid, perhaps with a beacon -- a transponder or reflector -- or some other method. Exactly how an asteroid could best be tagged is not yet known, nor is it obvious, which is why The Planetary Society is holding a competition.

Link.

A message on behalf of the BoingBoing team, from our business manager John Battelle:

We've noticed that our RSS feed stats, provider by Feedburner, have been fluctuating quite a bit lately. We've heard two reasons for this - one, Yahoo's reporting to FeedBurner has been down, and MyYahooRSS makes up a large percentage of our RSS readership. But a second source of Boing Boing RSS readers has skyrocketed lately - from a company called Pageflakes. We frankly don't believe that nearly two million folks have decided to subscribe to Boing Boing via this relatively new service, and we suspect someone (or more specifically, somebot) is taking advantage of the service for some kind of spammy reasons. We're looking into it with the folks at FeedBurner and PageFlakes, and will report back once we know more.

Update: BB reader Casimir Couvillion says,

I have a clue as to why Pageflakes may be over representing in Boing Boing logs.

I used Pageflakes for a short time a while back. Pageflakes had an annoying bug that would replicate the Boing Boing RSS "flake" many times over between visits, if the duplicates were deleted, they would reappear at the next visit. I just checked and there are 84 copies on my page alone. I don't know why Boing Boing was susceptible to this bug while other feeds weren't. I never submitted it to them as a bug and it was about that time that Google started supporting multiple pages on their personalized home page and I stopped using Pageflakes altogether.

Web pioneer Leslie Harpold has passed away. I only knew her slightly, but her prominence online -- her advent calendar and her sites like Smug -- makes her passing a huge loss for the whole net. Link (via MeFi)

Over at Valleywag, Clay Shirky has a terrific, meaty rant debunking factually sloppy hype in recent press coverage of Second Life.

I suspect Second Life is largely a "Try Me" virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use. Pointcast was a Try Me virus, as was LambdaMOO, the experiment that Second Life most closely resembles.

I have been watching the press reaction to Second Life with increasing confusion. Breathless reports of an Immanent Shift in the Way We Live® do not seem to be accompanied by much skepticism. I may have been made immune to the current mania by ODing on an earlier belief in virtual worlds:

Similar to the way previous media dissolved social boundaries related to time and space, the latest computer-mediated communications media seem to dissolve boundaries of identity as well. [...] I know a respectable computer scientist who spends hours as an imaginary ensign aboard a virtual starship full of other real people around the world who pretend they are characters in a Star Trek adventure. I have three or four personae myself, in different virtual communities around the Net. I know a person who spends hours of his day as a fantasy character who resembles "a cross between Thorin Oakenshield and the Little Prince," and is an architect and educator and bit of a magician aboard an imaginary space colony: By day, David is an energy economist in Boulder, Colorado, father of three; at night, he's Spark of Cyberion City--a place where I'm known only as Pollenator.

This wasn't written about Second Life or any other 3D space, it was Howard Rheingold writing about MUDs in 1993. This was a sentiment I believed and publicly echoed at the time. Per Howard, "MUDs are living laboratories for studying the first-level impacts of virtual communities." Except, of course, they weren't. If, in 1993, you'd studied mailing lists, or usenet, or irc, you'd have a better grasp of online community today than if you'd spent a lot of time in LambdaMOO or Cyberion City. Ou sont les TinyMUCKs d'antan?

You can find similar articles touting 3D spaces shortly after the MUD frenzy. Ready for a blast from the past? "August 1996 may well go down in the annals of the Internet as the turning point when the Web was released from the 2D flatland of HTML pages." Oops.

For what it's worth (my two Lindens): More power to all the geeks out there who dig SL. I think it's kinda fun even though I suck at flying and teleporting, and don't look all that good in goth miniskirts. But what's even more fun is poking holes in lazily reported, hype-heavy tech journalism that reeks of eau de 1999.

Link to item, and there are many previous BoingBoing posts about Second Life here.

Reader comment: Richard Gray says,

I caught your post on Boing Boing quoting some old research about MUDs and the like. It prompted me to recall my days MUD'ing and the great folks over at the Realms of Despair.

Amongst the miscellaneous stuff stored in their archive is a reasonable collection of early research into the social aspects of MUDs. I thought you'd be interested in seeing the papers, and they are here: FTP link.

In particular I'd point out a rather interesting one regarding rape in virtual worlds. FTP link.

A new map created by Georgia's Department of Transportation erases a number of small rural communities off the face of the planet: gone, gone, gone, are Poetry Tulip, Due West, and Po Biddy Crossroads.

Roosterville, Hemp, and Cloudland are also among the nearly 500 towns removed from the state's official map, nuked because mapmakers say there isn't enough room to fit 'em all. Creative typography could help -- mapmaker Rand McNally won't be killing these communities off, because their map designers use varying font types and sizes. It's also nice to know this problem need not exist with digital maps. Snip from AP report:

Georgia's Department of Transportation, which drew the new map, said that the goal was to make it clearer and less cluttered and that many of the dropped communities were mere "placeholders," generally with fewer than 2,500 people. Some are unincorporated and so small they are not even recognized by the Census Bureau. The state began handing out the new map at rest stops and welcome centers over the summer.

(...) "We're not under obligation to show every single community," department spokeswoman Karlene Barron said. "While we want to, there's a balancing act. And the map was getting illegible." That doesn't ease the snub to the people who live in those places.

"This gets back to respect for rural areas," said Dennis Holt, who is leading a community group that wants to restore the good name of western Georgia's Hickory Level Community, population 1,000, which was founded in 1828 and recently put up five new welcome signs. "I'm not sure we're going to accomplish anything, but I would have felt bad about myself if I didn't say something about it."

Link. Image (AP): "Dennis Holt has been a resident of Hickory Level Community, Georgia, since 1970. His and several other small communities are being left off the state map."

Reader comment: Jeremy says,

This is a college in Due West, SC, one of the small towns being left off the map. How are they leaving it off the map with a college in the town? Oh, and my grandparents live in Due West.

Above: These comics were used in door-to-door holiday fundraising by Boston's Children's Medical Center, in 1949. Link.

Below: "Security is an Eye Patch." This "comic with a problem" was created by Charles Schultz in 1968, and features Peanuts characters Charlie Brown and Sally. A quick glance at the front cover, and you might think they're talking about crypto or keystroke logging, but no: this is a public health info-strip about an ocular affliction known as "lazy eye," produced for the US Department of Health. Link. (Thanks, Ethan!)

Gareth has uploaded part 2 of his wonderful geek gift guide.

PicoCricket
(Picocrocket.com, $250) If your child's interests run more towards felt and pipe cleaners than motors and gears, more CRAFT than MAKE, he might like the PicoCricket kit more than Mindstorms. Built in cooperation with LEGO, it includes a microcontroller and sensors, but it's more about embedding these technologies inside of other things (puppets and robotic plushies, kinetic sculptures, interactive lighting, etc.). In some ways, this kit is maybe more forward-looking than NXT, because it's about the disappearance of computer and robotic technologies into the fabric of our lives, and that's the future into which these kids are really growing.

Link

Robert Anton Wilson ("Paralyzed, bed-ridden, high in oath," Occupation: Mind Fucker) has a weblog. Just three entries so far.

I Don't Know

Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, "What happens after death?"

The Roshi replied, "I don't know."

Wavy protested, "But you're a Zen Master!"

"Yes," the Roshi admitted, "but I'm not a dead Zen Master."

Link (Thanks, John!)

Johnny Ryan, cartoonist extraordinaire, gave me a copy of his latest comic book, Klassic Komix Klub, when I saw him at Felt Club XL on Saturday. Johnny is known for his scatological and cartoonishly un-PC comics, and this time he has reached a new level of hilarious offensiveness. Klassic Komix Klub parodies a couple of dozen classic novels, including Robinson Crusoe, Crime and Punishment, and Heart of Darkness. (You can check out some of Klassix that don't appear in the comic here -- not safe for work.)

Klassic Komix Klub is a BRAND NEW limited edition comic self-published by Johnny, which debuts at Felt Club on December 9. KKK collects all 24 highly scatological, not-for-the-squeamish classic literature parody strips Johnny has drawn into one gorgeous package, wrapped up in a display-worthy three-color letterpress printed cover (w/metallic bronze and silver inks!) produced by Buenaventura Press. Only 200 copies were produced and we have limited quantities available. Each copy is signed and numbered. Various inks and papers were used, the pic above is just one sample of what you might receive.Please note that Johnny's last few parody books sold out extremely fast; also these are not available in stores. Only $10.

Link

Hm, does the ingredient list include sugartits? BoingBoing reader Rob Klause says,

I haven't seen Apocalypto yet, but when I saw the teaser-trailer some months ago, I was inspired. The result: Hot Chocolypto, a quick cooking show done in the same style of the teaser-trailer for Apocalypto-- quick visuals and many layers of sound. My budget didn't allow for panther rental, so my dog had to suffice.

YouTube Link.

Also, SNL aired an awesome remix of the Apocalypto trailer this weekend which sheds light on the *real* reason those pyramids were abandoned. Here's that video: YouTube Link.

In Los Angeles through January 20, the first ever gallery showing of photos by author Hunter S. Thompson. At left, "Sandy and Agar, Big Sur," 1961. The show, GONZO, coincides with the release of Thompson's final book of that same name. Link to info on gallery show. Includes guns, motorcycles, bruised faces, J. Edgar Hoover, knives, and some arty nudity. (Thanks, Clayton James Cubitt!)

Update: Amazon link to the book, GONZO, which includes an intro by Johnny Depp.
Reader comment: Steve says,

Don't forget that Starz is showing a Hunter S. Thompson documentary tonight called "Buy the ticket, take the ride."

The logos of the fast-food joints on a stretch of desolate American road reveals a kind of species mimicry, or evolutionary convergence:

Notice how all of these companies use shades of red and yellow in their logos? One might argue that Waffle House doesn’t really have red, but their buildings have red trim just below the roofline. I couldn’t find the logo for the L’il Cricket convenience stores (no website), but their logo is also yellow and red. One other one not visible from the photo above, but with the same color scheme is Pizza Hut...

Link (Thanks, Tom!)

I've just finished Rick Dakan's debut self-published novel "G33k Mafia," and it was fantastic! G33k Mafia is the story of Paul Reynolds, a comic-book artist who has been forced out of the video-game company he co-founded, stabbed in the back by his partners. While drinking up his misery in a Silicon Valley bar, he meets a beautiful high-tech con artist, Chloe, who offers to help him get back at his betrayers. She introduces him to her crew of hacker con-artists, and helps him run a classic Big Con on his erstwhile partners, netting him a fortune in the process. Paul falls in with Chloe and her crew, becoming enmeshed in a series of baroque capers with a geeky twist, like forging rare comic books for sale on eBay, and on the way Paul reinvents himself as an outlaw.

The story is gripping as anything, and the characters are likable and funny and charming. I adore caper stories, and this stands with the best of them, a geeky version of The Sting.

The book is also flat-out great-looking too, the best-designed self-published book I've ever seen, thanks to Dakan's prodigious graphic design talents (he's definitely the kind of polymath that makes for excellent geekery -- he's the co-creator of City of Heroes, besides!). The entire text has been released under a Creative Commons license, so you can try before you buy, and starting today, Rick's slashed the price for the book to a mere $5 -- a real bargoon.

There's only one small niggle I have about this book and that's that it was very poorly copyedited and proofread. There's a clunker of a typo, grammatical error or malapropism on practically every page. Rick promises that this will be fixed in subsequent editions, and that he's going to get a better editor for the sequel, which he tells me he's almost finished with.

That said, this is one hell of a book. A smart publisher could do a lot worse than to get Rick under contract -- though given his smarts and marketing savvy, he may not want such a thing. Link

Last week I did an interview with Tom from the Command Line podcast, and I was immediately struck by how knowledgeable and quick Tom was on the subjects that I care about -- technology, civil liberties, and social change. Curious, I downloaded some of the previous episodes of his podcast and found them to be even better than I'd hoped -- thoughtful, informative, and deep, a real plunge into the geeky end of the news-pool. There's great analysis and rumination, as well as detailed explanations of important security issues with common OSes and so on. Tom's just posted the episode with my interview, but don't stop there -- I've added this one to my subscription list. Link, Podcast feed link, iTunes "enhanced" podcast feed link

Volume ten of Tesseracts (the stupendous Canadian sf anthology series) is out, this time edited by Robert Charles Wilson (whose novel Spin won this year's Best Novel Hugo) and Edo van Belkom. The book features stories by many of Canada's great and up-and-coming authors, continuing in the tradition set by Judith Merril when she edited the first of these volumes, decades ago. ($15.29 in Canada, $14.25 in the US)

A reminder, I'm co-editing Tesseracts 11 with Holly Phillips -- the deadline for submissions is December 31!

We live in strange and perilous times.

This statement is no less true for having always been true. Times have always been strange. The future is as unknowable as it always was. As always, storm clouds have lately gathered on the horizon. As always, there are scattered rays of hope.

Sometimes, however, the storm seems closer than ever. You can hear the thunder and feel the lightning in the air. The going gets tough, and the thoughtful get nervous.

* * *

The nineteen-fifties and early sixties were such a time. Media iconography has draped that era in fading, contradictory images and emblems: Joe McCarthy vs. Marilyn Monroe; the radioactive atolls of Eniwetok and Kwajalein vs. the gilded, monoracial, faux-Christian suburbs imagined in such prime-time sitcoms as Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best. Ask the average seldom-reader what the science fiction of the nineteen-fifties was like and he’ll probably venture a guess involving The Jetsons, flying cars, and hyperoptimistic visions of cities on the moon.

There is some truth to this, but less than you might think. In fact, in those days, science fiction had fallen on hard times. The old pulp magazine markets had dwindled to a precious few. The revolution in paperback publishing took up some of that slack, but did so, in part, by mining the rich back catalogue of those same defunct magazines. SF was occasionally declared dead, and its salvageable organs were freely donated to B-movies and television.

Link

Mashup legends The Kleptones (24 Hours, A Night at the Hiphopera) have teamed up with the radical filmmaking project A Swarm of Angels to produce a series of mashup podcasts that set the mood for the scripts under development by the Swarm.

A Swarm of Angels is producing a £1 million film using money raised in £25 increments from individual "angels" who get to participate in choosing the script and overseeing the production. It's an experiment to see if you can make a movie without sucking up to a big dumb studio.

The Kleptones are on the Swarm's advisory board, along with comics genius Warren "Transmetropolitan" Ellis and me. It's really exciting to watch this project mature -- I can't wait to see the movie!

As part of the ethos of the project we want to work with music artists who are distributing their work under Creative Commons licenses. We’d like to hear from you, so The Kleptones can consider your work for more extensive mash-up releases as the project progresses (leave a comment or post to the forum if you have subscribed).

The next Kleptones moodcast for The Unfold (the other script under development) is ready for release next week (members preview). The next series of podcasts after this are planned as ‘character playlists’.

Link (Thanks, Matt!)

Uninsured Americans are sojourning to India to get life-saving surgeries they can't afford back home. These aren't medical tourists looking for a cheap tummy-tuck -- they're medical refugees whose lives will be ruined or ended if they don't get out of the USA. It's funny, I used to have great travel insurance in the UK through BUPA, but they wouldn't insure me while I was spending a year in the US -- health care here is too screwed up for them to promise to cover my medical bills.

Kathleen Schneiderwind is one patient who was desperate to get rid of the lightning bolts of pain shooting through her spinal cord. But she and her husband lost their health insurance when they retired, and the hip-resurfacing surgery doctors promised would help cost $30,000 in the United States.

Schneiderwind and her husband, both in their late 50s, didn't have that kind of money, and the thought of so much debt was scary. So they began searching for alternatives.

"We began to look at places outside the United States and traded e-mails with doctors in Turkey and India. It turns out that the doctors in Bombay were both more experienced in this particular surgery and would only charge a fraction of what we were going to have to pay at home," said Barry Schneiderwind by phone as he sat with his wife who was recovering at Wockhardt Hospital in Mumbai.

Not only has the treatment been first-rate, they say, they have been able to pay for their plane tickets and even get some dental work and a vacation in Goa for $10,000.

Link