Thinking of getting rich by melting down pennies and nickels to take advantage of higher metal prices? Think again -- Uncle Sucker's got a new law and will put you in jail if you get caught at the crucible.

There have been no specific reports of people melting coins for the metal, Mint spokeswoman Becky Bailey says. But the agency has received a number of questions in recent months from the public about the legality of melting the coins, and officials have heard some anecdotal reports of companies considering selling the metal from pennies and nickels, she says.

Under the new rules, it is illegal to melt pennies and nickels. It is also illegal to export the coins for melting. Travelers may legally carry up to $5 in 1- and 5-cent coins out of the USA or ship $100 of the coins abroad "for legitimate coinage and numismatic purposes."

Huh -- never thought of melting a coin for profit. Until now. Sounds intriguing. I smell a business model.

Link

The Ghost Relations Department is a deep blog written by someone with a serious geek-on for Disney's Haunted Mansion rides. Man there's a lot of good reading there -- stuff I never knew or suspected.

As many know, the Haunted Mansions have gained some inspiration from real homes across the country. Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland Mansions have some inspiration from the Harry Packer Mansion in Pennsylvania. Disneyland Paris' Phantom Manor draws some inspiration from the 4th Ward Schoolhouse (and possibly the Edward Hopper painting, House by the Railroad). Disneyland's Haunted Mansion has been know to have been inspired by the Evergreen House, which is now part of John Hopkins University. However, there was one photo in the WDI archives that proves to be more of an inspiration than the Evergreen House.

While this post is not intending to discredit the Evergreen house as an inspiration to the Disneyland Haunted Mansion, it is geared more towards what it inspired. The inside of the Evergreen House holds great similarity to the style of architecture found in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion. In one case, a griffin even stands guard at the newell post of a stairwell...

Link (via The Disney Blog)

Ron Mann, an indie filmmaker (I once worked for him, making CDROM adaptations of his movies), is running a contest to make a Flash clip promoting cannabis legalization. The winner gets $1,000 and wide exposure -- plus good karma for helping America win its cognitive liberty. Link (Thanks, Michael!)

Stephen Frug says: Link goes to a brief summary of proposed legislation which would treat blogs as ISPs, requiring them to police comment sections, fining them for posting copyright material (or for any member of internet communities posting it), etc. Passing this would be a huge restriction on freedom of speech, which is why I thought that Boing Boing would be interested. Link

Jamais Cascio, co-founder of World Changing and now my colleague at Institute for the Future, has posted an insightful essay about how robots that just verge on "lifelike" can sometimes be quite creepy. Cascio's thoughts were spurred by MIT techno-sociologist Sherry Turkle's recent experience bringing My Real Baby dolls, a robotic toy that flopped, into nursing homes. The human-machine love that emerged there freaked her out. (For a fictional take on this notion, see Jenn Shreve's short story Whooping It Up In The Uncanny Valley.) From Jamais's post at Open the Future:

Instead of sex-bots driving the industry, emotional companions for the aged and depressed may end up being the leading edge of the field of personal robotics. These would not be care-givers in the robot nurse sense; instead, they'd serve as recipients of care provided by the human partner, as it is increasingly clear that the tasks of taking care of someone else can be a way out of the depths of depression. In this scenario, the robot's needs would be appropriate to the capabilities of the human, and the robot may in some cases serve as a health monitoring system, able to alert medical or emergency response personnel if needed. In an interesting counter-point to Turkle's fear of humans building bonds with objects that can not understand pain and death, these robots may well develop abundant, detailed knowledge of their partner's health conditions.

Link

Link to Google Patent Search beta. Instant favorite new timehole. Fascinating, and infinitely better than the USPTO website (all data comes from USPTO, and results on Google do include links to the USPTO entries). No foreign patents for now, it seems, just US. Doesn't work for me in Firefox 2.0 on Mac, but IE and Safari in many variations seem to work just fine, and Firefox on PC or earlier iterations of Firefox on Mac may as well. (via Chris on Wayne's List)

In Sydney, Australia's Northern Territory, a plumber brought in to clear a clog in a woman's toilet had to call for, er, back up after he spotted a snake in the pipe. It turned out to be a 7-foot python. Wildlife officer Peter Phillips rescued the snake and will release it into the wild. From the Associated Press:

"I arrived to see a large python head peering out of the toilet bowl," (Phillips said.)

Phillips removed the snake from the septic tank because he said it had grown too big to be pulled straight out of the toilet. The mostly nocturnal Carpet Python had probably taken up temporary residence in the septic tank because it was a good place to hide during the day and hunt for frogs.

Link

When I lived in Miami, Florida, I sometimes heard tales of people who had friends whose cousins' girlfriends' uncles said they knew someone who had found a bale of marijuana washed up on the beach that smugglers had dumped when fleeing the Coast Guard. Yesterday, a police officer stumbled upon more than 80 pounds of cocaine, apparently worth around $400,000, that had washed up on a beach just north of Miami. A police spokesperson told the Miami Herald that the drugs were wrapped in a cellophane package that was coated with barnacles. Link

MAKE: Flickr pool user Devowski writed up a turntable to an old keyboard to make a very strange circuit-bent hybrid instrument. From his description:

in the arm of the turntable there are 3 photo cells (light sensors) that are wired into the circuitry of the casio. the record on the player has three red leds mounted on it... when the leds pass under the photo cells, it causes a glitch in the keyboard, making some stange noises.

Link to Flickr post, Link to video on YouTube (via MAKE: Blog)

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who BB readers might remember conducted some kooky-fun experiments aboard the International Space Station, is now in Antarctica where he'll be doing more of his "Saturday Morning Science" experiments for the public. He's a guest on a six-week expedition searching for meteorites. From Science@NASA, the excellent newsletter that will document Pettit's experiments:

"There will be some spare time during our search," (Pettit says.) "We'll have tent days, days where the weather is so bad we have to stay in our Scott tents. From past history, this will probably happen one day a week. So what do you do when bad weather confines you to an 8 foot square tent whose basic design has not changed since 1920?”

"I plan to continue my Saturday Morning Science that I started on the space station four years ago. I have a microscope, a centrifuge, cameras and other gear for all kinds of scientific investigations.”

A selected list: Don plans to make a census of microbes in the upper layers of Antarctic ice. He's going to capture and photograph south-polar snowflakes and study their structure. He'll use his centrifuge to separate space dust from melted ice—and so on.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

(Image: Steve Wall.)

Continuing in our one, two, oh, screw it, let's make it a three-part series of posts on BoingBoing's De Facto Bruce Sterling Day -- here's an excerpt from the latest edition of His Futuriness' Viridian Design newsletter. He points to an end-of-2006 essay by the "dazed, miserablist-apocalyptophile" John L. Petersen, founder of The Arlington Institute. Petersen's words are a fascinating read, but the ride's a heck of a lotmore fun with Sterling's thoughts interspersed in (((nested parentheses))). Snip:

The world has to act now on climate change or face devastating economic consequences. Sir Nicholas estimated that at most humanity has ten years before the shift is unrecoverable. (((What if it's already ten years too late? Or twenty years? Shouldn't we be giving this prospect a lot more serious thought? We're not averting anything much; there are daisies blooming in Moscow.)))

What's going on here? What does this all mean? (((Settle in, folks; he's about to let fly.)))

These are extraordinary statements about massive earth changes. Are they just random trends that happen to be coincidentally showing up at the same time, or perhaps they reflect some big, historic, underlying dynamic == maybe the world is about to experience a shift unlike anything ever seen before. (((You know what's worse than a futurist who over- promises? A futurist who over-delivers.))) There are reasons to believe the latter could be the case. Many sources, both conventional and unconventional, suggest that we are living in a special time == that between now and 2012 the world will undergo an epochal shift to a new era.

This rapid evolution will produce a world that operates in fundamentally different ways than it has in the past.(((For instance, it might well operate the way a 500-pound gorilla operates when it (a) has Ebola (b) is on fire and (c ) has recently converted to Islam.)))

Link.

I'm having a great time playing Armadillo Run. It's a physics-based game in which you have to build a Rube Goldberg style contraption to make it to the next level. The simulated physics is incredible.

For each challenge, you're given a budget to buy rope, cloth, metal bars, metal sheet, and other components. Then you have to assemble a structure and adjust the tension of the component so that it will successfully deliver a basketball rolled up armadillo to a circular blue portal. The challenges get harder as you progress. The game cost $20, but you can download a 10-level demo version for free. (It's for Windows only.) Link

Reader comment:

Michael says:

Armadillo Run seems to me to be a mixture between Alex Austin's Bridge Builder and Sierra's Incredible Machine. If you like the physics of the game and can deal with less Rube Goldberg, I strongly suggest the 2006 free version of Bridge Builder. I got it from www.crypticsea.com. There are prettier and more complex versions at www.chroniclogic.com. Then there is a whole community built around the Bridge Builder games at www.bridgebuilder-game.com. Thanks!

Joshua says:

Your readers also might like to know that the game's website has a plethora of user-created scenarios, so if they decide to purchase the game they'll have a large quantity of challenging 3rd-party scenarios to choose from after they finish the built-in levels. They'll also have free access to the game's built-in scenario editor so they can create and share their own puzzles. I bought the game a few months ago and I still play it from time to time. There are some extremely challenging puzzles available for download.

Oh, and a minor correction: the "basketball" is actually intended to be a curled-up armadillo (hence the name of the game); although that's not exactly an important distinction.

Tom Kalil, President Clinton's former science and tech advisor who is now at UC Berkeley, wrote to tell me about an exciting new project he launched today at the University to enable ordinary people to support cool student projects on campus. Tom says:

"We launched an online marketplace today to help Berkeley students with great ideas for projects attract volunteers, mentors, money, and in-kind contributions. Berkeley students have compelling projects that, for example, expand access to safe drinking water, commercialize clean energy technologies, fight malaria, and provide healthcare to the uninsured.

The longer term goal is to create a replicable model for tapping the creativity, energy, and idealism of young people, particularly at research universities, to address the "grand challenges" of the 21st century.

Link to Big Ideas @ Berkeley Marketplace, Link to press release

Patrick Strange tells BoingBoing,

Constance is an independent publication out of New Orleans that collects the work of 40 artists that have returned to the city after Katrina and also of those who are still displaced. Edited by local graphic designer Erik Kiesewetter and editor/writer Patrick Strange, the book showcases artists' work with bios and contact info so that they can once again gain an audience that they might have lost due to the storm. We're really excited about it and the prospect that people out there will see that the New Orleans arts community is still here and making good work.

Link. A copy of one of these hand-numbered, limited-edition (1,000 total), 96-page sealed books is $20 via PayPal, and it looks great.

Aldo says: "Check out the floor at the new defence intelligence HQ in Moscow." Even Putin does a double-take. Link

Update:

Here's another photo of the logo. It's from the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie (GRU), or Main Intelligence Directorate. I badly need this on a T-shirt. In fact, the Russian government could probably pay off its deficit by selling clothing and accessories with this logo on it. The GRU could be the next Von Dutch! (Via Riding Sun)

Tom Marcinko says: "I can't decide whether this is meant to be this way, or if it's an accident, but an editorial in the Arizona Republic about the death of one of its editors is bylined by the person whose death is being reported on."

Here's a screen grab in case the page is changed. (click thumbnail for enlargement.) Link

My favorite 1000-square foot room in Los Angeles, know as Machine Project, has two interesting events taking place this weekend:

Friday we have Jason Brown lecturing on the connections between Gnosticism, memory palaces, text adventures, cybering, y2k and Roswell, all explained by the movie Tron. Saturday we have the triumphant return of the fry-b-q, this time featuring Joshua Bearman's first hand account of cuddling pandas in China.

Link

Jed Berk will be showing off the latest version of his autonomous light air vessels at Art Center in Pasadena this Friday.

Transitional Species: Autonomous Light Air Vessels (ALAVs) 2.0 are networked objects that communicate the concept of connectivity among people, objects, and the environment. Through the use of mobile technologies people can influence the behavior of the ALAVs by starting conversations and building closer relationships with them. ALAVs 2.0 reflects upon the current state of connectivity in our everyday lives. The potential of ALAVs 2.0 lies in its ability to captivate a wide audience and communicate the idea of people cohabiting a shared space with networked objects.

PLACE AND TIME:
Friday, December 15, 2007, 6 – 9 pm
Wind Tunnel South Campus
Art Center College of Design
950 S. Raymond Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91105

Link

At this risk of being barraged with another few hundred emails, I wanted to mention that I've added interesting comments from two physicists about the plane-on-a-moving-belt problem. They're at the bottom of the entry. Link

BB pal John Schwartz, who covers space and science for the New York Times, just told me that NASA TV is about to show shuttle crew attempting to retract this solar array, which is the big Discovery mission story of the day.

The thing to watch for, 220 miles over earth? "The old silicone coating is probably dried out, so when they start retracting, it should snow. Orbital dandruff. The big question is whether they'll be able to get this device, which has been open for about 6 years, to fold up neatly into its box."

Link to NASA TV home page. Image: solar array, courtesy Lockheed Martin. NASA coverage here.

My live notes and screengrabs from NASA TV follow after the jump.

Today is de facto Bruce Sterling Day at BoingBoing (link to previous post). In his latest Wired column, he says "futurism has no future," and digs into the results of a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project survey. He writes:

The bubble-era vision of a utopian Internet is dented and dirty. The Pew respondents seem to agree that personal privacy is a thing of the past, and they're split nearly 50-50 on whether the costs will outweigh the benefits. Technophobic refuseniks are likely to carry out violent resistance, and they may have good reason: Out-of-control technology is a distinct risk. The Lexus has collided with the olive tree, and its crumpled hulk spins in a ditch as the orchard smolders.

The future of the Internet lies not with institutions but with individuals. Low-cost connections will proliferate, encouraging creativity, collaboration, and telecommuting. The Net itself will recede into the background. If you're under 21, you likely don't care much about any supposed difference between virtual and actual, online and off. That's because the two realms are penetrating each other; Google Earth mingles with Google Maps, and daily life shows up on Flickr. Like the real world, the Net will be increasingly international and decreasingly reliant on English. It will be wrapped in a Chinese kung fu outfit, intoned in an Indian accent, oozing Brazilian sex appeal.

Link to "My Final Prediction." Image: I shot this portrait of Mr. Sterling a couple years ago in LA.

On his blog, the eminently wise Bruce Sterling points to an essay analyzing exactly how that "macaca" video led to senatorial candidate George Allen's death-by-YouTube. Bruce says,

This isn't a 'centipede,' but it's an interesting primer on how to create, leverage and exploit one. It seems to be mostly about timing. You need to toss matches when the grass is dry and the wind is in your corner. As far as media exploitation goes, there's zero practical difference between a 'macaca moment' and a 'bimbo eruption.' What would be really useful at this point would be a primer on 'good damage control.' How do you kill a centipede?

Snip from the politicsonline item, via Bruce's blog:

At today's New Organizing Institute/Center for American Progress event, Jim Webb campaign manager Jessica Vanden Berg told a much more nuanced story about how the campaign took their opponent's mistake and ran with it as far as they could. Macaca didn't just happen; the Webb people MADE it happen.

S. R. Sidarth took the original footage of Allen taunting him in front of a crowd on August 11, a Friday. By that evening the senior campaign staff had heard the audio over the phone and realized that they had something that could be significant. After they actually saw the video, they knew they had a real gem — not only had Allen made comments with a racial edge, but he'd also bullied the Webb staffer in public.


But how to spread the word? According to Vanden Berg, they chose to post the video on YouTube because it was free (simple enough). But before they tossed it out for the public to see, they'd already pitched the story to a Washington Post reporter, who wrote about it online on Monday. Only after the Post story appeared and the issue had been properly framed did the Webb folks send an email to their supporter list and to friendly bloggers.

The fact that the video was on YouTube made it particularly easy to distribute, since bloggers could insert it directly into their pages, but it was the campaign's promotional work that spread the word. And as the story developed, they constantly worked reporters and bloggers behind the scenes to shape the public discussion.

Link.

Interesting short history of a steam-powered bike and the 73-year-old man who invented it. As the Boston Globe reported, he "died in the saddle."

In this final design, [Sylvester] Roper’s engine consisted of a small boiler over a coal firebox that was good for about 7 miles on each stoking. As the inventor liked to say, “It would climb any hill and outrun any horse.”

The Boston Daily Globe:

“The machine was cutting out a lively pace on the back stretch when the men seated near the training quarters noticed the bicycle was unsteady,” the paper said. “The forward wheel wobbled, and then suddenly, the cycle was deflected from its course and plunged off the track into the sand, throwing the rider and overturning.

“All rushed to the assistance of the inventor, who lay motionless beneath his wheel, but as soon as they touched him they perceived that life was extinct,” the paper added. “Dr. Welcott was summoned and after an examination gave the opinion that Mr. Roper was dead before the machine left the track.”

Link (Thanks, Alan!)

Reader comment:

Justin Harris says:

Lindsay Books sells a book that includes a reprint of the Roper steam motorcycle plans. A modern reader recreated the steamcycle from scratch:

"Bob Jorgensen of Memphis took "Motocycles 1899" and immediately fabricated the engine that Sylvester H Roper used on his steam motorcycle."

http://www.lindsaybks.com/gallery/Jorg/cycle/index.html

photos and video of the repro here: http://www.lindsaybks.com/gallery/Jorg/cycle/index3.html

Sadly, I believe that the latest Lindsey book catalog related that Mr. Jorgensen has died.

Interesting short history of a steam-powered bike and the 73-year-old man who invented it. As the Boston Globe reported, he "died in the saddle."

In this final design, [Sylvester] Roper’s engine consisted of a small boiler over a coal firebox that was good for about 7 miles on each stoking. As the inventor liked to say, “It would climb any hill and outrun any horse.”

The Boston Daily Globe:

“The machine was cutting out a lively pace on the back stretch when the men seated near the training quarters noticed the bicycle was unsteady,” the paper said. “The forward wheel wobbled, and then suddenly, the cycle was deflected from its course and plunged off the track into the sand, throwing the rider and overturning.

“All rushed to the assistance of the inventor, who lay motionless beneath his wheel, but as soon as they touched him they perceived that life was extinct,” the paper added. “Dr. Welcott was summoned and after an examination gave the opinion that Mr. Roper was dead before the machine left the track.”

Link (Thanks, Alan!)

BB reader Donal says,

My girlfriend recently heard an interview on Irish public radio about US Charity "Send a Piano to Havana", a charity setup to send pianos to Cuba to help musical children get access to pianos, another on the list of item prescribed by the US embargo. I had a piano that my daughter learned on, my sister prior prior to that, but which I can't play and is now surplus.

Anyway, they're chock full of donated pianos, but according to their website, seeking funds to build a piano tuning school in Cuba.

I have the normal European dislike of the economic embargo imposed on Cuba (and hence the rest of the world's ability to deal with Cuba) by the US. I'm pitch deaf but all my kids are musicians. I can't imagine them not being able to be themselves because the US said no one could sell guitars, drums or pianos to Ireland.

Check out the website. I particularly like this line: "The Office of Missile and Nuclear Technology gave final approval, under the sole condition that the pianos not be used for "torture or human rights abuse."

Image: It's only a torture device if it's out of tune. Project participants Abel and Alexis in Cuba learn tuning techniques on a Steinway donated by Jim Wintner. Photograph by Benjamin Treuhaft, courtesy Send a Piano to Havana.

In related news, also in Cuba:

The U.S. military transferred the first group of detainees on Thursday to a new maximum-security prison at Guantanamo Bay designed to restrict contact among the prisoners and prevent attacks on guards. More than 40 detainees were brought to the $37 million prison perched on a plateau overlooking the Caribbean Sea from another maximum-security facility at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, said Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand.

Link to "Guantanamo Detainees Going to New Prison" (Forbes).

A judge in Pakistan has decided there is not enough evidence to try the main suspect in a purported terror plot to blow up airlines with liquids. This alleged international conspiracy is the reason you now have to carry less-than-3 oz bottles of mouthwash and shampoo in clear ziplock bags when you fly. Snip from BBC:

[The Pakistani judge] has moved the case of Rashid Rauf, a Briton, from an anti-terrorism court to a regular court, where he faces lesser charges such as forgery. Pakistan has presented Mr Rauf as one of the ringleaders behind the alleged plan to blow up flights out of London. The British authorities say they foiled it with Pakistan's help in August. They say proceedings against suspects arrested in Britain will go ahead.

The arrest of Rashid Rauf in Pakistan triggered arrests in the United Kingdom of a number of suspects allegedly plotting to blow up transatlantic flights. The Pakistani authorities described him as a key figure. But an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities or that he belonged to a terrorist organisation. As well as forgery charges, Mr Rauf has also been charged with carrying explosives. But his lawyer says police evidence amounts only to bottles of hydrogen peroxide found in his possession.

Link to BBC item, here's a related AP item via WaPo. Previous BoingBoing coverage of the War On Moisture: Link. (thanks, pete sicilia on Wayne's list)

Craig Silverman says: "I'm the Montreal journalist who runs Regret the Error, the media errors and corrections blog. Today, I published my annual look at the best/worst of the year in media errors and corrections."

From the Delaware News Journal:

An article in Sunday’s Local section on the estate sale of former Gov. Elbert Carvel quoted Olin Vanaman of Wilmington about his excitement in purchasing 35 of the governor’s decanters during the auction, including one used at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. Vanaman said he used a slang term when describing Carvel as "a big boozer,” but he did not mean that the former governor was a heavy drinker. Vanaman refers to people who collect decanters as "boozers,” he explained, "the same as guys who collect cars are gear-heads.” No reference to drinking or the consumption of alcohol was intended in the article.

Link

Here are some photos of the old Los Angeles zoo as it appears today. It's in Griffith Park. I went exploring there a couple of years ago and it's a lot of fun. But I warn you -- poison oak is all over the place and one member of our group got a systemic reaction. Link

Livejournaler kitsch_nista has posted some low-res previews from a space-themed photo spread by Peter Lindbergh in this month's Harper's Bazaar. Link to "The Future of Fashion." You can buy the real thing here (or at meatspace newsstands): Link. (thanks, Susannah!)

"Zatz Not Funny" has instructions for Mac users who want to unscramble TiVo files and play them on their computer or iPod.

TiVoToGo was originally released as a service accessed through the TiVo Desktop software — PC only. Files transfered from a Series2 TiVo unit are saved to the computer in a .tivo format. This .tivo file is actually an encrypted MPEG-2. While we quickly figured out how to remove TiVo’s gunk protection on Windows to free the MPEG, Mac and Linux users have been left out. Over the last year or so a dedicated group of hackers has been reverse engineering TiVo’s decryption mechanism which has now born fruit in the form of TiVo Decode. Utilizing your personal Media Access Key (MAK), TiVo Decode quickly removes TiVo’s protection as it converts the .tivo file to a .mpeg on multiple OSes without requiring any TiVo software.

Link

* monkey day
* trunk monkey 01
* make a sock monkey
* vulcan sock monkey
* plush monkey paintings
* trunk monkey 02
* monkey cliff diving
* daily monkey
* monkeys in the news.

Bonus links:

* hi! monkey!
* BoingBoing posts about monkeys

And in the news today:

British scientists have supported the use of primates in medical research to improve human health and reduce deaths from disease but only if no alternatives were available. Sir David Weatherall, lead author of a report on the use of non-human primates in research, said in some cases primates are essential to answer scientific questions because other animals such as mice and rats are too different from humans.

Link.

Others disagree:

[A]nimal welfare organisations condemned the 18-month inquiry as a "whitewash" and a wasted opportunity. They were especially critical of the absence of animal welfare representatives on the committee and its failure to consider the use of monkeys in drug tests. Each year about 3,300 monkeys are involved in scientific or medical research in the UK - about 0.1 per cent of all animals used.

Link.

(Ed. note: Monkey Day was earlier in December officially takes place tomorrow, December 14 -- but here at BoingBoing, every day is monkey day. Toss your poo with pride! Thanks Casey Sorrow)

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Reader comment: kurt place says,

while you are on the subject of monkey zen I have to recommend a site of great gaming (board gaming) called Pocket-monkey. it is a free java based site to play chess, backgammon, a battleship variation, and other great classic board games. Try it. Kurt aka stretchboy (my pocket-monkey moniker)

Ad-hoc charity group Valour-IT ("Voice-Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops") has donated more than 700 laptops loaded with voice-recognition software to US soldiers who've lost the ability to type due to lost limbs or severe hand/arm injuries. They expect to have delivered 850 or more by Christmas. A number of blogs authored by active duty military and vets worked together to raise awareness on the project. Mark Glaser at PBS Mediashift blog says,

It started last year when Army Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss injured both his hands and wanted to get back to blogging. His blog readers pitched in for Dragon Naturally Speaking software, and he and another blogger, FbL, put together Valour-IT and have raised more than $330,000 with two online Veteran's Day fundraisers fueled by milbloggers.

Snip from Mark's column -- quote from a laptop-drive organizer, a female blogger who goes by the nym Fuzzybear Lioness (or FbL):

We made our goal [to raise] $24,000 for the 10 days leading up to Veteran's Day [in 2005]. To my utter shock, we raised $100,000. I thought, 'Holy cow, what did I get myself involved in?' The VA [Veterans Affairs] and Military Order of the Purple Heart heard about us and the Undersecretary of the VA invited us to come out to visit one of the trauma units and deliver the laptops there...This year, we raised almost $230,000 in the two weeks leading up to Veteran's Day. We've delivered almost 700 laptops now. I figured this time around, with more media connections, I decided to think big and shoot for $180,000 and we blew right through that to $230,000.

How are computers with voice-recognition software helpful for wounded soldiers?

The psychological benefits of the laptops are just huge,” FbL said. “The medical people who work with the wounded soldiers say it has a big effect on their recovery. It’s motivational and keeps them in touch with the other soldiers who are still deployed, and it keeps them in touch with their families who might not be able to visit them. In Chuck’s case, he could do literally nothing for himself. He was a tank company commander in Iraq in charge of about 100 men. He went from that position to being in a hospital bed. It was just devastating for someone who was the big bad guy [in charge]. Now he could sit in his bed and talk to the laptop and do anything anyone else could do on a computer

Link to Mark's PBS column, "Valour-IT, Milblogs Give Hundreds of Laptops to Wounded Soldiers." Image: Cox & Forkum cartoon, lifted from Blackfive.net, a milblog that participated in the Valour-IT project.

Following up on yesterday's BB post about The Great Georgia Map Massacre of 2006, Dr. Paul J. Camp in the Physics department at Atlanta's Spelman College says:

I'm guessing that Due West, despite the college, was removed from the Georgia map because it is in South Carolina. Maps are funny that way. Mount Berry, on the other hand, is inexplicable as it is fully contained within Georgia and in turn contains the famous Berry College.

The full list of removed towns is here: Link.

I'm pleased to note that the town named for one of my ancestors, Laney, Georgia (mom's family), is not on the removal list. That may of course be because it was never on the map in the first place, being basically a ghost town encompassing parts of three roads and two farms. Satellite image here: Link.

There's something cool about being related to a ghost town.

BB reader Andrew Filer says,

I've been working on photographing every town on the Minnesota map, as well as from surrounding states/provinces: Link.

I've found that the state's map is definitely the most accurate, while online maps range from showing even the ghostliest of ghost towns (MSN Mappoint) to only showing towns large enough to have their own government (Google Maps).

Google has recently made improvements though, and while tiny towns are still often not searchable, they now show some hamlets at a deep zoom level.

One such town is Lockhart, Minnesota (Google Maps link), which I've photographed here: Link.

About the image: Link.

Following up on yesterday's BoingBoing post with home video/photos of this weekend's successful, nocturnal STS-116 liftoff, BB reader Zack says:

I thought you might also enjoy reading and seeing the experiences of a first time shuttle watcher -- me. Here's my livejournal entry about the night of the scrubbed launch: Link. And here's an image of the launch platform and its silhouette on the clouds above: Link.

Whoah, nice photo, Zack!

One of those things you really have to see in high-res display, or printed out large-format on paper, to appreciate. Designer W. Bradford Paley has created an unusual set of 25" x 26" calendars for 2007, offered as free PDF download for personal use -- but you're really better off buying the professionally printed ones for $16/set. These are to wall calendars what Cory's "impractical geek watch" posts here are to regular ole wristwatches, though these do seem quite practical in a mindbent way. Snip from Paley's description:

It was designed to allow easy travel conflict spotting (since you can circle contiguous days with no weekend breaks), and to let people mark with one or two words the more important events during the year. It is printed on newsprint-like (though high-quality) stock, folded, and distributed in packages of three to help people feel comfortable using it as a scratch pad on which to plot their lives; inventing their own visual language as they go. (There is a topic on this Web site to which people can upload their visual inventions.)

The visual/cultural resonances with ancient native American calendars, mandalas, antique engravings of the solar system; the red weekends at the bright center and the wavy outer corona all have been turned to directly support the calendar’s use as a tool. It contextualizes every hour, even on a year’s time scale: if someone marks the calendar, then looks back in even as little as an hour, they will be able to see time’s inexorable march.

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Update: Whups, looks like their server's inexorable march has been temporarily slowed by too many BoingBoing visitors. Check back later if you're timedout, vale la pena.

DDR Design, a Taschen book by Georg C. Bertsch and others, captures the era of post-Stalinist, Soviet plastic design that dominated East Germany. These weirdly lovely anti-consumer goods are like dark mirror-images of America's fantastic plastic works -- haunting and even a little icky.

when the population exerted pressure on the party to abandon its anti-formalist stance and adopt a version of practical functionalism in design, the SED had to back off its anti-bauhaus line. ‘national in form, socialist in content’ was then the official party slogan for how to produce goods. plastics came to symbolize the practical, and valuable rather than the cheap and disposable. it was largely because of this that plastics came to be seen in the GDR by the majority of the population as a quality material and a sign of technological progress, not a cheap imitation. there was a general acceptance and even pride in the clever use of it to make socialism work even when resources were tight.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

Vicale offers a DIY action-figure toolkit: use a Flash-based configurator to spec out your fig's head, clothes, armaments and accessories and they'll build and ship it to you. I'd like it better if there was more customization -- especially in body type, etc -- but this is getting one step closer to my boyhood dream of being able to create a line of my own action figs. Link (via Tokyo Mango)

Update: Adam sez, "a buddy of mine in Brooklyn has been making custom figures for years for clients all over the U.S. They come in a unique, custom-made package also. At $599 a pop, they're not for everyone. For the person who has everything or who doesn't mind shelling out some cash for a totally one-of-a-kind personalized action figure."

On his Long Tail blog, Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson is thinking in public about the future of Wired as a "radically transparent" publication. He enumerates six tactics of transparency ("Show who we are", "Show what we're working on", "Process as content", "Privilege the Crowd", "Let readers decide what's best", "Wikify everything") and the upsides and downsides of each tack. It's a fascinating read -- it reminds me of some of the stuff that the Observer went through last year on its own journey to radical transparency.

"Process as Content"*. Why not share the reporting as it happens, uploading the text of each interview as soon as you can get it processed by your flat-world transcription service in India? (This may sound ridiculous, but it's exactly what wire services such as the AP have long done--they update their stories with each new fragment of information). After you've woven together enough of the threads to have a semi-coherent draft, why not ask your readers to help edit it? (We did it here, and it worked great). And while you're at it, let them write the headlines and subheads, not just for the site but also the punchier ones for the RSS feed and the one that has to work with the art for the magazine.

Upside: Open participation can make stories better--better researched, better thought through and deeper. It also can crowdsource some of the work of the copy desk and editors. And once the story is done and published, the participants have a sense of collective ownership that encourages them to spread the word.

Risk: Curating the process can quickly hit diminishing returns. Writers end up feeling like a cruise director, constantly trying to get people to participate. And all the other risks of the item above.

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