A roundup of festive crap sent in to BoingBoing by you, dear readers:

• Evil Christmas Carols (audio). How beautiful! With "sinister" key changes to minor, they sound menacing, like soundtracks to silent movies about damsels in distress on Christmas eve.
• Weird nativity in FL retirement community, above (WTF? Raelians?)
• Scientific formula for blink-free holiday group photos
• War on Moisture: TSA bans snowglobes on planes
• Top 10 DIY Christmas trees
• $600 upside-down Christmas tree
• Flickr pool: your strangest holiday ornament
• Roombas singing Christmas carols (video)
• Rankin-Bass Santa + Rudolph rescued (previous BB post)
• 101 Classic Christmas Videos

• Gingerbread Katmari Damacy (above)
• Video: horribly Bad Star Wars Christmas: part 1, part 2
• Ultraviolent Star Trek holiday office diorama
• Baby Jesus kidnapped, returns with snapshots
• A Very Cthulhu Christmas (audio)
• More Ctholhiday cheer: Scary Solstice (audio)
• sf-themed holiday story collection (+ 2, 3, 4, 5)

• Newtonmas crafts (above): holiday tree topper, costume
• Iranian political asylum applicant mom jailed in NC after applying for permit to sell street art (BB reader Pembdasi, who submitted this item, says, "I am her half-brother. I just found out about this today, the day before Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas I suppose.")
• Silent choir sings "Silent Night" in sign language
• Retro ads: shopping mall Santas arriving by copter, parachute
• Zanta, holiday cult figure in Toronto. Here's more.
• Boymongoose: 12 days of Christmas, Indian-style (video). Re-blogged by popular demand -- everyone I've showed this to in person squeals, then emails it to 20 people. About: Link, and you can buy the boy-band's "Christmas in Asia Minor" album online, in CD or download form: Link. Includes such classic carol faves as "Hark the Herald, Angel Singh," and "We Are Wishing You A Merry Christmas."

(Thanks and happy hols, Huw Bowen, Rob Nachbar, Tim Shore, Dave Topping, Mark Vadnais, John/Disney Blog, Scott, Wil, Justin, Human, Mark Wu, Paul Campbell, Tay, Tobias, Robn, Stef, Jacob Appelbaum, and Santa's Helper!)

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Mystery of the Bayer Stone Head

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Photos of extinct long-horse
• Long horse on Wikipedia
• Balinese long horse

Link to image gallery, more media including audio, video, and text reports here: Link.

Link. (Thanks Raian)

U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in the northern district of Texas granted a preliminary injunction against Robert Davis, who operated Supercrosslive.com and had been providing direct links to the live audiocasts of motorcycle racing events. Lindsay ruled last week that "the link Davis provides on his Web site is not a 'fair use' of copyright material" and ordered him to cease linking directly to streaming audio files.

here's some of my favorite shitteos called "asdf." i guess the main thing that ties all these films together is that the people that posted them thought so little of their work that they just titled them by hitting the four "home position" keys under their left hand- pretty much the default "word" you type when you have nothing at all to say but you have to fill in a text box anyway.

Researchers exploring the so-called "Dark Web" analyzed 86 websites from groups labeled as terrorist orgs by the US government, using data mining software. In a report titled "Analyzing Terror Campaigns on the Internet," a team of tech and culture experts from several US universities compared them to 92 US state and federal government websites. The researchers determined that the government sites lagged behind in advanced web technologies. In short, they said, the terrorist groups demonstrated greater sophistication in their use of Web 2.0 tools.

I filed a story about that report for today's edition of the NPR News program "Day to Day," and spoke to one of the authors, Dr. Jialun Qin of the Univ. of Mass., Lowell. Does he believe the American government is losing a "war of websites" against terrorist organizations in the Middle East? Well, not exactly. Snip from transcript of Qin's comments:

According to some studies, the US government is the best in the world in terms of using the internet to communicate with the general public. So it's not a problem of the government, really -- the government is doing a pretty good job. The problem is that the terrorists are learning very fast, they're taking advantage of a lot of different new technologies including the internet. The US government has to improve its usage of internet. The terrorists surprised us.

Also in the segment: James Ellis of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a nonprofit group in Oklahoma City funded by the Department of Homeland Security. I asked him if he believed the government should be doing more to shut down these sites, as some have argued -- significantly, the report states that some portion of the activity ends up being hosted on servers inside the United States at one point or another. Ellis said:

It's more complicated than people realize. The information is transient. When you shut down a site, it doesn't go away, that community doesn't go away. In some cases, it can be more helpful to leave a site intact so you can monitor the activity, and watch it over time... watch them develop as indicators and warnings. It's like cutting off the head of a Hydra -- it's just going to pop up somewhere else.

Image: Left, a web graphic on one of the sites in the report. The poster depicts Abu Mus’ab Zarqawi, and the text says "Emir Zarqawi, may God save him. Eagle of Iraq, volcano of Jihad, and the beheader." Right, the NPR segment includes audio from the Al-Anbar website, which offers "holy war" hymns in an audio section.

Also on today's edition of "Day to Day," an amazing interview my colleage Neal Carruth put together -- this one is truly a must-listen:

Sunni Insurgents Launch TV Channel
Sunni insurgents in Iraq are running a 24-hour television channel, called Al Zawraa. The channel shows attacks on Americans and Shiites, as well as violence committed by Shiite militias. Saad Qasim, a translator in NPR's Baghdad Bureau, talks with Alex Chadwick.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Photographs from the Arkansas State Prison 1915-1937
• Japanese cosplay photos
• Photographs of pregnant animals

A Japanese research team has succeeded in filming a giant squid live -- possibly for the first time -- and says the elusive creatures may be more plentiful than previously believed, a researcher said Friday.

The research team, led by Tsunemi Kubodera, videotaped the giant squid at the surface as they captured it off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo earlier this month. The squid, which measured about 24-feet long, died while it was being caught.

"We believe this is the first time anyone has successfully filmed a giant squid that was alive," said Kubodera, a researcher with Japan's National Science Museum. "Now that we know where to find them, we think we can be more successful at studying them in the future."

Related BB posts:
• Unusual photo of large squid in parking lot
• Giant squid caught on film for first time
• Squid biomass exceeds human biomass
• More squid posts on Boing Boing

Related: Boing Boing video picks for 2006

Reader comment:

Brian says:

Regarding the "Japanese game show features food prepared by scantily clad cooks", it is a popular weekly　variety show known as Pu-Sma. The show has two hosts, Yusuke Santa-Maria and Tsuyoshi Kusanagi (of the pop group SMAP), additionally each episode will include two or more celebrity guests that will join in on the fun.

Yusuke is well-known for his passion of all things "Ero", so the show often exhibits scantily clad young women in one situation or another.

Each episode features a different competiton that takes place between the two hosts and their special guests. If the competition involves the purchase of something, the loser of the competition must pay for whatever items were used during that particular episode. The expensess can easily get into thousands of dollars that come directly from the losing team's wallets.

Related: Interesting perceptual illusion with faces | Mr Angry and Mrs Calm optical illusion | Excellent purple dot illusion | Optical illusion's effects last overnight | More illusions on Boing Boing

(Local medical officer of health Dr. Derek) Bell intends to refer the incident to the Medical Council because of the potential for injuries to bag-handling staff from sharp objects inside the bag, and the risk of exposure to blood and body fluids.

Mr Walker said the instruments were safely inside steel trays and he always asked patients beforehand if they had infectious conditions such as Aids or hepatitis. He declined to disclose what operation he performed at the Queenstown Medical Centre.

Started in 2000, the Web service, which charged just pennies per song and roughly $1 for an album, established its legality by claiming that it complies with Russian copyright laws, and that it distributes royalties through, and is licensed to sell its music by something called the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society.

Of course, that body was not officially recognized outside the country, and the legality of the business plan was hotly debated even inside Russia, but while that was being sorted out, the service grew to become what the United States Commerce Department called the world’s highest-volume distributor of online music.

The service quickly began suffering death by a thousand cuts this year — with Visa and Mastercard refusing to process payments for AllofMp3’s parent company, Mediaservices, earlier this year. Then last month, Russian authorities agreed to move to shut down the music service, after the United States gently suggested that such a clear and constant violation of international copyright standards could hold up Russia’s acceptance in the World Trade Organization.

Previously on BoingBoing:

• AllOfMP3 loses Visa account, switching to ad-supported
• US Trade Representative bends Russia over on copyright
• Is it legal to buy songs from Russian MP3 sites?
• USA: Russia can't enter WTO unless it shuts down AllofMP3
• Russian MP3 site given thumbs up by investigators
• Archived BoingBoing posts about AllofMP3.com

There was only one problem: as of the taping of that show, which concluded at 6:30 p.m., no such site existed. Which presented an immediate quandary for NBC: If a viewer were somehow to acquire the license to use that Internet domain name, then put something inappropriate on the site, the network could potentially be held liable for appearing to promote it. In a pre-emptive strike inspired as much by the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission as by the laws of comedy, NBC bought the license to hornymanatee.com, for $159, after the taping of the Dec. 4 show but before it was broadcast.

Conan being Conan, he and the late-night team soon built out and launched a bogus porn site at that address, all about horny manatees. Radar Magazine ran a followup item, pointing out that...

There are no FCC regulations that required NBC to buy the domain. "We have no regulations dealing with URLs," says David Fiske, an FCC spokesman. "I don't know what they're talking about, frankly."

"Yeah, the Times overstated that a bit!" wrote Marc Liepis, a spokesman for the show, in an e-mail, explaining that NBC has a policy of registering domain names mentioned on-air not to comply with regulations but "to prevent others from registering sites that our talent mention, then trading off our intellectual property."

Reader comment: Glenn Fleishman says,

"NBC bought the license to hornymanatee.com, for $159," More importantly -- "bought the license," what are we in the 1950s dot com world or something? Did they buy the license for all the internets? Where they smoking the drugs when they paid the $159?

According to Conan O'Brien, they licensed it for 10 years for $159, which isn't great but ain't too shabby. We posted a video clip of Conan explaining the whole thing here: Link

...And Andy Samdberg was on Late Night last night and attempted to converge the very viral "Dick in a Box" SNL Digital Short with HornyManatee.com by showing "Fan Art" he'd done of him and the Manatee with their dicks in festive, gift-wrapped boxes.

Here's the link to "Dick in a Box" (Link), though postings of which appear to be disappearing from YouTube as we speak, even though Samberg said last night that NBC had sent it to YouTube. Not THIS again...

NBC does in fact have an official YouTube account, under which they posted the uncensored version of Dick in a Box, among other things. So maybe they only half-understand how this viral video business works. Link.

Cityrag has compiled video links for a list of The 50 Greatest Cartoons as voted on by the animation industry in 1994. Here's an excerpt:

1. What's Opera, Doc? (1957)
2. Duck Amuck (1953)
3. The Band Concert (1935)
4. Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (1953)
5. One Froggy Evening (1956)

1. Volaticotherium antiquus - Ancient Gliding Beast.

Discovered in Mongolia, this little half a pound squirrel-like animal is a whole new order of animals. It is a mammal that glided 70 million years before any other mammals—and maybe before birds flew.

Quinn Norton files a report from the Global Voices Online conference in New Delhi, India, where about 100 bloggers from more than 25 countries gathered last weekend:

Exciting things happen when dedicated bloggers from around the world meet for the first time. For Briton Rachel Rawlins, being introduced to Tunisian exile Sami Ben Gharbia was the chance to meet a personal hero.

Gharbia is the creator of the Tunisian Prison Map -- an idea inspired by a New York Times interactive map charting murder locations in New York City. Gharbia turned the concept on its head: Instead of showing government figures on crime, he'd display where his former government was behaving criminally, imprisoning political dissidents for daring to speak out.

When you click on a place-mark on Gharbia's Google Maps mashup, a pop-up reveals details, stories and videos of prisoners and their families. The map is compelling and provocative, and it's one more reason Gharbia, who now lives in the Hague, says he can't go home.

The site is "the best advocacy tool I've ever seen anywhere," gushes Rawlins, managing editor of Global Voices Online, an international citizens' media group that held its second annual summit in India's bustling capital last weekend.

From where I stand, in the middle of Park Slope, I’m almost urban, not quite suburban, and alls I can say that the farthest thing on my mind is trying to be cool.

Here's the thing. I remember when Mamie was 6 months old I went out and spent $32 on a Sex Pistols t-shirt for her. Here I was imposing my youth on her, like my punk days would show everyone how cool my kid was. How cool I was. So can I tell you how stupid I felt when nannies at the local playground would look at me and ask me about the shirt.

”Well, it’s this band that I used to love.”

I didn't mention that the only time I listen to Never Mind The Bullocks these days is when I clean the house. Punk rock man, yeah. (Isn't John Lydon like 60 now anyway?) But saying that sentence I realized the shirt had nothing to do with my kid, and everything to do with me trying to show everyone what kind of parent I was trying to be. Which is so wrong.

A bunch of griefers in Second Life staged a members-only metaverse assault on "virtual real estate tycoon" Anshe Chung yesterday, during a staged SL event with CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman. A torrent of pixelated male genitals rained upon the victim, whose offline name is Ailin Graef.

Steve Hutcheon of the Sydney Morning Herald filed a comprehensive report of the incident here and tells BoingBoing, "If you can't visualize it, see this YouTube clip: Link Google Video Link." Snip from Steve's report:

"She is very popular, and some people don't like her," said CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman, whose Second Life avatar (online persona), GreeterDan Godel, was interviewing Anshe at the time of the attack.

"She's made a lot of money, and is one of the most prominent of all Second Life residents. So to some people, some griefers, that makes her a target."

Griefers are so-called because they create grief. Their antics are designed to interrupt proceedings in virtual worlds and games usually for no other reason than because they can.

Attacks like the one launched against Anshe are triggered by a program code that generates self-replicating objects.

Much like email spam, these "griefspawn" attacks can chew up system resources and slowing down performance. They can sometimes even trigger network crashes.

Daniel Engber, Slate Magazine's Explainer in Residence, has posted a list of submitted but unanswered questions from the preceding year. Many are truly unhinged, such as the one from a guy with apparent connections in Nigeria seeking advice on how to fence gold and gems. Mr. Engber has unwisely promised to answer the one that gets the most votes. Given the demonstrated ability of boing boing readers to bring web servers to their knees, I'm thinking this is a battle we can win.

# Given the exchange and dispersion of matter, how likely is it/how often do we inhale/consume and/or incorporate into our own protein structure molecules that were once in some historical figure, say Abraham Lincoln?

# Lasers are now powerful and small (at least I think they are), so why don't our troops carry laser guns?

#I have been pondering this situation for as long as I can remember (maybe age 7-8) and it drives me nuts. It makes me feel like my head will implode if I think any harder. Is the universe infinite? It must end somewhere. But when it ends... there must be something on the other side... right?

# If a group of passengers on a hijacked plane wanted to, could they bring a plane down by all of them using their cell phones at the same time?

# Can you tell me how long it will take if you eat rat poison to see if it is going to affect you? Please e-mail me back. Because my niece ate some.

# Hi. I just wanted to know if our eyeballs roll back when we are sleeping (or closed) or do they shake? Or...

# PYGMIES: How/when/where/still in existence/do we mate with them?

Greg from The Talent Show has already taken a pass as explaining most of the "Unexplained Explainer" questions. A sample :

"If we taught animals to talk, how would that affect the world?"

There would be more vegetarians, but we'd get definitive proof that cows are complete dumbasses.

"What would happen to the stock market if a meteor impacted the earth? What would happen to the global markets and the U.S. market? Say a meteor hits inside U.S. borders and takes out two states."

The insurance industry would crash, but the U.S. government would bail them out. Unfortunately the same won't be done for the millions of refugees created by the meteor strike. But at least the trillions of dollars wasted on the "war against meteors" will create a few more jobs, right? Also, we *must* abolish the death tax.

Link

I think I know the answers to two of the questions. If you don't read anything else, check out the Stavatti's TIS-1 proposal. The future is now (or, at least, coming soon).

For "breathing in other people", I read an article in (I believe) Science News around 1993. I've forgotten the specifics, and I've tried to track it down on the web, but have been unable to. It involved statistical modeling of gaseous dispersion in the atmosphere, and found a single exhalation would disperse after several hundred years. I believe the example they used was that, in every breath you take, you're breathing in Napoleon's last breath. Now it isn't protein or particulate matter, but it does give an upper bound to the answer.

For the Laser Rifle, check out Stavatti's Tactical Infantry System-1. It's a proposal submitted to the US Army for a gasdynamic laser lethal at over 1000 meters and up to 170 bursts/minute. Lethal lasers with a fast recharge and long life require a lot of energy, so you usually end up talking nuclear. Section VI of the proposal covers the challenges and risks to laser weapons... mainly that of cheaply producing large quantities of Polonium-210 (currently produced only in microgram quantities, and extremely lethal). It's interesting to note that Po-210 is the same thing that the assassin used on Mr. Litvinenko.

The military is also researching non-lethal laser weapons (dazzlers), but that's a touchy area, as blinding weapons are banned by the Geneva convention. The workaround is in Article 3, which states that it's ok to blind as long as that's not the purpose: "Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol."

BB reader Tom Matthews mentioned the Stavatti TIS-1 and gave a brief description of it under "The Unexplained Explainer". I'm writing to provide you guys with the actual PDF from the company who "makes it" -- PDF Link.

Another one of the unexplainables, explained. Current theoretical physics indicate the the universe is finite. Let's start with an obvious example:

Is the Earth infinite? Obviously, no. However, if you are a creature tat only moves along the surface of Earth, you might go on endlessly and end up where you started, since the earth is curved. For a two dimensional being the Earth might seem infinite, though it is not. You need to break through a third dimension and fly out to space to really understand that the Earth is finite.

This happens to us when thinking of the Universe. If we think in three dimensions, then the Universe seems infinite to us. However, if we understand that space-time is a third dimension and that the universe is curved along this dimension, we might understand that we might travel endlessly through the Universe only to end up on the other side. If we were to travel through space-time, we might very well find ourselves outside our Universe.

As to the second part of the question, the string of theories (pun intended) is so long we're better off letting the physicist duke it out for a while.

We here at Drivl couldn't resist answering Slate Magazine's 40 Unanswerable questions. Link

OK, what I actually had in mind was forcing Engber to address a question that was clearly unanswerable, but this is good too.

Since my academic background is in relativity and cosmology, though, I have to address the "finiteness of the universe" comment. Drawing an analogy to the surface of the Earth is pretty good as far as it goes. Essentially, you let two spatial dimensions represent space, suppressing the third because it has to do duty representing time. Pursuing that analogy, in a closed spacetime the "direction toward the center of the Earth" is playing the role of time and the center of the expansion is the big bang event. That is a rather roundabout way of saying that there is no spatial center just as there is no center to the surface of the Earth ("Mediterranean" notwithstanding).

However, the comment that current belief is that the universe is finite is no longer operational. As of the last 5 years or so, with highly refined measurements of the distances to very distance galaxies, we actually detect that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating due to the presence of dark energy. This necessarily implies that the universe is open and the whole idea of a spherical topology is moot. Not only that, but it means that the universe has always been infinitely big and is expanding only in the sense that the curvature is changing.

This whole discussion revolves around a misunderstanding of what the big bang theory actually says. People think of it like they think of a normal explosion -- there is space, and somewhere in it a big boom occurs, and from the boom stuff goes flying out into the existing space. Doesn't work that way.

The stuff (galaxies, etc.) is not flying anywhere. To be more precise, the local motion of any particular bit of stuff is approximately zero. You only see relative motion on cosmological distances, not locally, but that is because the space in between the stuff is changing. The stuff is only going along for the ride.

So a more accurate, if puzzling, picture is that, open or closed, the entire universe has always been full of stuff. The big bang did not happen at some center and stuff is flying out. No, the big bang happened everywhere, all at once, and nothing "flew out." Rather, the geometry of the spacetime in which the stuff exists began to change. Things get further apart because there is more and more space being created between the things, not because the things are flying in any particular direction. Think of it like a bunch of paper clips connecting rubber bands together. If you stretch the rubber bands, the paper clips get further apart, but not because they actually moved around on the rubber bands. The paper clips (galaxies) stayed put. It was the rubber bands (geometry) that changed.

There. Maybe I can work for Slate.

The teen's illness... when replicated in mice, allowed an international team of researchers to answer a fundamental question in the science of aging: Do we get old due to the accumulation of damage over our lifetimes or due to the genetic blueprint we inherit?

"What we say is [that] both are valid and that, in particular, damage to DNA contributes to aging," says Jan Hoeijmakers, a geneticist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and lead author of the study, which comprised teams from four different institutions in Europe and the U.S. "Damage accumulates ... but it is modulated by your genetic makeup. If you have better repair and/or slower metabolism, you age slower..."

The researchers compared the activity of thousands of genes in the liver of a 15-day-old mutant mouse to those in a normal mouse who lived two and a half years. The result? "The rapidly aging mice switched their activity from growth to maintenance and repair, up-regulating cellular defenses and down-regulating respiration and metabolism," Hoeijmakers says. "This also occurs upon natural aging, and if you [could] switch to this 'survival' mode early in life, you would live longer."

As I type this, a 99%-unclothed Naomi Campbell (okay, she's wearing shoes) is posing for photographer Nick Knight, who is using a 3D body scanning device to capture her likeness digitally in a warehouse somewhere. You can watch the whole supermodel camgirl stunt online: QuickTime stream link. It's live now (12:20pm ET), not sure how long they'll continue. Susannah Breslin, who points us to this spectacle, says "I can't tell if this will be interesting or not. Maybe if she hits someone with a phone." Link to project home page.

Update, 12:57pm ET: Ms. Campbell's not on set anymore, and the scanners aren't active -- but here are some low-res screengrabs from the video stream, so you can get an idea of how they set up the shoot (worksafeness: one of them contains blurry, pixelated, waist-up nudity): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

The model stood on a small circular platform, and scanners were perched mid-torso level on mobile, mechanical arms. I'm not sure where the resulting photos will be shown, but it looked really cool. There's a technical credit on the project website for the scanning technology -- "Kev Stenning at Rapido3D." Here's that company's website: Link. Would be interesting to know the resolution at which they're scanning for this shoot, and more tech specifics about the devices they're using.

Reader comment: Brem says,

The scanning system they are using is a set of Full Body scanners from InSpeck, a company I worked for, incidently: Link. Here is the product details: Link. It appears those actual cameras are 1.3 Megapixels. There are 4 cameras on two columns and the subject usually takes 50-80% of the image. So in theory: 1.3 x 4 x 0.8 = approx 4.2 Million polygons, but with sampling and polygonal reduction, it would come to aroudn 1 M polygons or less, depending on the needs.

They've started 3D scanning again, here's a snapshot of the QT feed: JPG Link JPG Link 2.

Your story gave me a most startling deja vu---remember "Looker"? (Ed. Note: Michael Crichton wrote that one.) Definitely a favorite for adolescent boys, at least. Now just be on the lookout for something to "happen" to the models so they don't have to pay them fees.

Related: 1960s TV commercial for V-RROOM! tricycle noise-maker | Creepy Crawlers TV commercial | Mr. Machine toy robot TV commercial

BRIAN FLEMMING: The early Christians, the very first Christians, did not believe in a human Jesus... If you look at the beginning of Christianity...nobody was mentioning Bethlehem or Jerusalem as the place where he was crucified. Basically, nothing that you and I would call the story of Jesus was told then. He was a savior who lived up in another realm. He had died and had risen back up to be with his father. All of this took place in an upper realm, not down on earth. Bit by bit, they added historical details.

The lives these performers led were predictably ones of booze, broads and hanging with guys (like Sinatra, the Rat Pack) who made much more money than these second and third bananas. They owed the casinos for the gambling losses, and constantly hoped that a big break would make them instantly famous. Our film profiles a group of these guys, and a woman named Fay McKay, a talented jazz singer who became known for her boozy comic parody of "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

Our film played the CineVegas festival in 2005, and is finally having its first theatrical play date at the famous Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, on January 8. We're waiting on whether IFC and/or Starz Cinema Channel are going to pick it up for cable showings. We're also looking for a distributor for DVD release.

Fay McKay is still alive and living in the desert, in obscurity. It would sure be nice for lots of people to see her do her famous comedy bit. Since it's the season, we've uploaded Fay's bit to YouTube. By the way, the actor/sleight-of-hand genius/show biz historian Ricky Jay is our film's narrator. Link

Wired News -- joined by the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, San Jose Mercury News and Bloomberg News -- is seeking documents and statements provided by former AT&T technician Mark Klein about the government spy program. AT&T says the pages contain corporate trade secrets. At 2 p.m. Thursday, both sides will make oral arguments before U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco.

Wired News attorney Timothy Alger believes it's unlikely that genuine trade secrets are at issue, but argues that even if they are, the public interest in the case trumps trade-secret protections.

"Even if there are trade-secrets interests, that interest has to yield to the paramount public interest in what the court is deciding," Alger said. "People should know if their phones are being tapped into by AT&T on behalf of the government."

Related posts on BoingBoing include:

• EFF suing AT&T for helping NSA illegally spy on Americans
• AT&T built warrantless wiretap rooms for the NSA
• AT&T retrofits privacy policy: your data is not yours
• Wired News publishes damning docs from EFF vs AT&T
• More archived BB posts on AT&T

In most cases, such as the killing of Atwar Bahjat, one of the best-known television reporters in the Arab world, insurgents specifically targeted journalists to be murdered, CPJ found in a new analysis. Worldwide, CPJ found 55 journalists were killed in direct connection to their work in 2006, and it is investigating another 27 deaths to determine whether they were work-related. Detailed accounts of each case are posted on CPJ’s Web site. The figures reflect increases from 2005, when 47 journalists were killed in direct relation to their work, while 17 others died in circumstances in which the link to their profession was not clear. CPJ, founded in 1981, compiles and analyzes journalist deaths each year.

Afghanistan and the Philippines, with three deaths apiece, were the next most dangerous datelines in 2006. Russia, Mexico, Pakistan, and Colombia each saw two journalists killed. All are traditionally dangerous countries for the press, CPJ research shows.

Reader comment: Mandy Hearne says,

I would add the death of David Rosenbaum to the list of unconfirmed deaths. The tactic of letting a person die of untreated wounds is not unfamiliar in the history of the US (see Assata Shakur's story, for example). A series of 'failures of the system' is a highly effective means of murder, it is neat and completely deniable.

And when telling the story to a friend from Turkey, who studied at a fairly "Leftist" university and is aware of the killings of journalists there, said that had David Rosenbaum's death happened in Turkey, there would be no doubt it was murder by the government. I think that the US has a history it has to own up to in the death, potential murder, of David Rosenbaum. Funny that the 'murderer' turned himself in: "Asked why Hamlin turned himself in, Morris said, "Stranger things have happened." Hamlin told police he would show them where he hid the weapon, Morris said."

Customers in both states can file a claim with Sony BMG to receive refunds of up to $175. State officials estimate some 450,000 compact discs carrying the XCP software were sold in California, while about 130,000 were sold in Texas. Customers have 180 days to file claims, which must include a description of how their computer was harmed and documentation of repair expenses. Some who used certain antispyware software to remove the programs installed by the Sony BMG CDs ended up with a glitch that disabled their CD-ROM drives.

As part of the settlements, Sony BMG also agreed not to distribute any compact discs loaded with any copy-protection software that hinders computer users from easily locating it or removing it from their computers. The record company also agreed to improve its disclosure practices.

Azureus is best known for developing a BitTorrent client, or program, that allows large media files to be easily shared over the internet. The program has been downloaded more than 130 million times. Earlier this month the company launched a video sharing site similar to YouTube, codenamed Zudeo. The site allows users to upload and view content. However, in contrast to most video sharing sites, Zudeo offers high definition videos. Users must also download a program to access and upload content.

The new deal means that users of the software will be able to download high-quality versions of BBC programmes, including Red Dwarf, Doctor Who and the League of Gentleman. Classic series such as Fawlty Towers will also be available through a BBC "channel".

Reader comment: Mathew says,

Unfortunately, the BBC content they are planning to distribute via BitTorrent is going to be DRMed, so the announcement is a lot less interesting than it at first seems: Link.

The giveaway ends January 18, or when the DVDs run out. The website is the social activism arm of Participant Productions, the company behind this film and others including Good Night, and Good Luck, North Country, and Syriana. Teachers can request a copy at this link.

Random trivia snippet: I went to a cool Current.tv event hosted by Al Gore last week in Los Angeles, and at one point Gore told the audience that Inconvenient Truth should have been named "Kill Al Volume 1," because the producers pretty much worked him to death to make and promote the movie. (Thanks, odiyya)

Reader comment: Brent the Closet Geek says,

The guys who run the dating site HotOrNot apparently donated some $25,000 dollars to help get the movie for teachers: Link.

Other reptile species reproduce asexually in a process known as parthenogenesis. But Flora’s virginal conception, and that of another Komodo dragon earlier this year at the London Zoo, are the first time it has been documented in a Komodo dragon.

Reader comment: Anonymous pedant says,

Strictly speaking, the miraculous pregnancies of the two komodo dragons aren't immaculate conceptions, unless you meant to imply the dragon fetuses aren't tainted by original sin. (The argument could be made that all komodo pregnancies are immaculate conceptions, so to speak.) Virginal conception is perhaps a closer term, I'd imagine, though I can't vouch for these two particular dragons' virtue. I have recently heard this mistake referred to snarkily as the "immaculate misconception."

Surely, you're aware of one of the greatest internet memes of all time: Raptor Jesus. He went extinct for your sins! Link.

The London Zoo which also had a "virgin birth" with one of its komodo dragons this April seems to think that the dragons are able to store sperm and use it when conditions for reproduction are optimal. Link.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is funding the Internet Archive to scan rare, unusual and culturally significant books and artworks at a bunch of major institutions, including the Boston Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Research Institute. The grant comes out of Sloan's concern that commercial entities are becoming the default repositories of the world's cultural heritage, and that the restrictions corporations impose on access to the works they display don't serve the public good.

"'You are talking about the fruits of our civilization and culture. You want to keep it open and certainly don't want any company to enclose it,' said Doron Weber, program director of public understanding of science and technology for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation."

The profoundly tasteless US-soldier-stuffed-piñata blogged yesterday on BoingBoing is no longer offered for sale at the Oriental Trading Company website.

Sorry, you'll just have to go find supplies for your jihadi slumber party somewhere else.

Link (Thanks, Breitbart!)

Reader comments:

Appalled anonymous reader says,

So it's tasteless to beat the piñata if it's soldiers, but totally ok if it's a donkey, or a butterfly?

Why no horror at the reindeer pinata, the (not nearly as realistic) fighter jet pinata, the Dora pinata, or the space shuttle pinata?

How about this video I found on YouTube about a guy trying to extract revenge on the piñata who killed his father? Kind of... Lynchian. Or something. Link.

2. Albertus Seba: Cabinet of Natural Curiosities---The Complete Plates in Colour, 1734-1765, edited by Dr. Irmgard Musch. Another breathtaking wonderbook from the German publisher Taschen. From the Amazon blurb: "In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned illustrations of each and every specimen [in his wonder closet] and arranged the publication of a four-volume catalog detailing his entire collection---from strange and exotic plants to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, insects, butterflies and more, as well as fantastic beasts, such as a hydra and a dragon. [These] illustrations, often mixing plants and animals in a single plate, were unusual even for the time. Many of the stranger and more peculiar creatures from Seba's collection, some of which are now extinct, were as curious to those in Seba's day as they are to us now. This reproduction is taken from a rare, hand-colored original." Once seen, never forgotten, these hand-painted dream photographs from the Baroque capture, with stunning vivdness, the aesthetic of wonder...

5. Losing Our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture by Regina Janes. The fact that there's an entire book devoted to this subject gives meaning to my life, and almost convinces me there's a god...

9. The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators by Gordon Grice. A mordant masterpiece, in which the author invents a genre all his own: Nature Gothic. The chapter titles---"Tarantula," "Recluse," "Mantid," "Black Widow," "Rattlesnake"---tell it all. Fascinated by the alien ways of the nonhuman world, Grice combines the sardonic deadpan of noir fiction with the best naturalists' unsentimental scrutiny of animal behavior and a rural midwesterner's applied knowledge of the predator-prey relationship. A Jean-Henri Fabre for literati who drive pickups with rifle racks.

Update: Great news! The RIAA won't cut and run in the War On Santangelo after all -- now they're going after her children:

[T]hey began investigating her children, ultimately filing suit against the kids after getting the daughter and a neighbor to admit to using Kazaa under oath.

Today the RIAA dropped the lawsuit against Santangelo herself, though Santangelo's first lawyer Ray Beckerman confirms for us the suit against her children now moves forward -- after her first battle drained the family coffers.

Mitsutaka Uchikoshi had almost no pulse, his organs had all but shut down and his body temperature was 71 degrees Fahrenheit or about 21.6 Celsius when he was discovered on Rokko mountain in late October, said doctors who treated him at the nearby Kobe City General Hospital. He had been missing for 24 days.

"On the second day, the sun was out, I was in a field, and I felt very comfortable. That's my last memory," Uchikoshi, 35, told reporters Tuesday before returning home from hospital. "I must have fallen asleep after that."

Here is yet one more idiotic copyright issue that I am absolutely outraged by. I have just returned from taking my sons to have their photo taken with the mall Santa. Every year I take them, and I choose the least expensive photo package, so that I can then buy a CD with their picture on it. They won't let you just buy the disk. The picture packages begin at $13.99, and then the CD is an extra $6.99.

Fine. But this year, there's an additional item you can purchase: A Copyright Release for an extra $15.99! You don't have to buy it, but I suppose the implication is that if you use the photo of your child with Santa without buying it, they can come after you?

They also offer a package for $24.99 wherein you receive a 5x7, a CD and a copyright release. So, that's still more expensive than just going for Package A + a CD.

Frankly, I'm outraged by this. And tempted to see what happens if, you know, I decided to post the pictures of my sons on a personal website not having purchased the copyright release of my own children.

Reader comment: Shaun says,

…Claus Clause? :P

I was recently visiting my grandmother in Springfield, Illinois. She is 87 years old. She asked me if I could make a copy of a picture of my grandfather and her. She said Kinko's wouldn't make copies of it. She said they wouldn't copy it because it was a picture taken by Olan Mills Studio and it would violate copyright laws. The picture was taken in 1959.

This whole copyright issue is out of control, but to post every single complaint just weakens the stance of abuse. I use to work in a photo development section of a big box retailer. It's common to turn down professional photos unless you have a copyright release this is nothing new. In fact it was the most problematic part of the job, because customers didn't understand it. I'd like to also mention I've got pictures from the 20's with notes on them saying copies are prohibited.

Bart is right, but i don't think he explained the issue well enough. and given the trouble those of us who work/used to work in photo labs have with customers who want prints of professional images it might be nice to get it all out there.

photography copyright works this way; whoever takes the photo (and there by possesses the negs or original digital files) owns the copyright. most cases this is the photog, in the cast of photo studios (like with santa land) its the studio. this isn't a clever copyright trick to make more money, its just how the law works automatically to protect the creators of those images. that said, this makes it technically illegal for you and those guys down at the photo mat to copy (not distribute) those images without permission (copyright release) or proof of ownership (negs). now this is a big problem because the studios and photogs in question seldom explain this to their customers before hand, so when people go to get extra copies they get confused and angry at the lab guys.

photogs and studios are not in the business of taking photos for money, they sell prints (or rights to make prints). its how they make money. so many studios wont actually give out releases because it means the money for those extra copies goes to some one else instead of them. other places will sell you the negatives along with the prints or charge a fee for a release , and the best places will just give you a release and send you on your way. the fee is simply to offset the cost of loss business. this stuff has been going on for decades and is nothing new.

all thats different with this santa photo story is that they studio in question is advertising the release instead of waiting for people to come to them. i suspect there are two reasons for this. 1 disclosure: like i said these studios seldom if ever clearly state whats going on in regards to copyright (there will be a small sign or fine print paragraph somewheres but little else). by listing the release along with its price as part of a package people will ask what it is and then get a clear explanation (hopefully). 2. to prevent angry phone calls. every mall photo studio i've ever set foot in has a line of people waiting to yell at them because they can't make prints. if you explain up front, this is less likely to happen.

in short this situation is actually a step forward, now the customer knows what the legal situation is and can deal with it without insane amounts of frustration.

In Ryan's comment, he said: "all thats different with this santa photo story is that they studio in question is advertising the release instead of waiting for people to come to them"

but I see another, very important difference. They are double dipping by asking to be paid separately for the CD and for the release. What on earth are you buying when you pay them for the CD if not the right to use the file(s) contained on it? If they intend for you not to make copies from the CD, why are they even selling it without a release? Ryan says that if you show up at Photomat with the negatives, it implies that you have purchased the right to make copies. Well, if I show up with the image file that I legitimately purchased from the photographer/studio, I expect that I have paid for that same right to copy. The problem for the photofinisher, of course, is that they can't easily tell the difference between a legitimately obtained image file and one that came from a scan of a print.

When I recently hired a photog to take some pics of my human spawn, I was somewhat disappointed that, while I would receive a CD with digital copies, they weren't quality digital copies even though the fellow used some description of exotic Cannon cam. When I asked why he had brought forth many of the same arguments that were brought up here. Fair, I suppose. He has the right to is opinion and I have the right to believe he's wrong.

When I mentioned that $600+ was pretty much all that they were going to milk me for and that if I needed more copies I could very well scan them and reprint them, he was shocked. Shocked I say.

My rational is this: When I hire a contractor to do up some custom coding for me, that code is mine and I can do with it whatever I please. I paid for it, so I can open-source it or print it on toilet paper. Whatever. When I hire a contractor to do some stuff to my house, there are no stipulations on what I can and can't do on the kitchen counter. It's mine.

In my view, the photog is a contractor that I have hired to produce something for me. The fruits of the labour I paid the photog for are mine and mine alone. Well, perhaps they belong to the child, but until she pays off her staggering debts, they belong to me. Diapers are expensive, yo.

This view is not popular amongst the photog friends of mine, even though they do understand the logic.

Tinfoil's comment is correct, to a certain extent. However, under copyright law, there is a difference between someone who creates a copyrighted work for you as an employee and one who does so as an independent contractor. It comes under the Work for Hire section of copyright law. As an employee, anything you create automatically has the copyright assigned to the employer. As an independent contractor, it is assigned to the independent contractor, unless there is a written agreement that the copyright is assigned to the employer (along with several other conditions, but that's the relevant one here).

So what Tinfoil should have done when hiring his photographer is have him sign an agreement which stated that copyright is assigned to Tinfoil, and he is entitled to hi-res copies of the images. But Tinfoil neglected to do so. So while his logic is fine, it doesn't mesh with the current state of copyright law. And unlike some areas, he had the ability to mitigate that problem, by finding a photographer who was willing to sign over those rights.

I just wanted to point out the other side to this debate (though I am sure it is in the minority here).

Most people are looking at this in the view that they paid the photographer to take pictures and therefore they should own the rights to the images for the money they paid. I think however that it should be looked at differently. By charging you per print the photographer is potentially saving you money. A photographer, like everybody else in the world is trying to make a living at a job. They have set up their business plan so that they make a certain salary. Now the photographer has two choices, they can either a) Charge you a flat rate to take photos and give you the copyright or b) charge you less money to take the photos and then charge extra for your for prints. The advantage to paying for prints is that you only have to pay for what you use. If you only need a couple of prints then it doesn’t cost you a lot. If you do what a lot of prints then it costs you more. If the photographer was to charge a flat rate for the images then even if you didn’t want a lot of images you would still be paying a high dollar amount. It’s kind of like watching a DVD. I can either buy the movie if I think I want to watch it a lot, or I can just rent it which saves me money if I only want to see it one or two times. Renting is cheaper but has more limitations. (not a perfect analogy I know)

Keep in mind that often both of these options are already available with photography as was the case with the original article. The complaints seem to stem from the fact that the purchaser, in effect, can’t own the DVD for the rental price.

We live in a free market and believe me, there are no shortages of photographers these days that would be happy to take your picture. If you don’t like the deal one person is giving you then go find someone who’s deal you like better. Just remember to balance quality and price. With photography entering the age of digitization and access to the tools becoming more available, prices will fall and the market will get more competitive, just like the markets that entered the digital age before them. But remember that with increased access. Access is good in that it allows otherwise talented people who were unable to enter a field before the ability to do great work but with it also comes a lot of untalented people and in general you still get what you pay for. Writers, designers, editors, and now photographers have undergone this transition for both better and worse, but mostly for the better. But that is another conversation for another time.

Most advertising photographers make their money based on usage, not their time. In addition to that, most will not (and should not) ever give up the rights to their images. The photographers fee will basically be a calculation based on the medium, region, size and other factors. One photograph could be worth $2,000 or $20,000 depending on how it will be used. And as I said, once that time is up the photographer gets to do whatever he/she would like to with the image, including sometimes relicensing it to the same client. Most savvy clients know that they are not paying for the time, but just for the rights to use the image. This is, in addition to stock, one of the only ways to make passive income as a photographer.

I can't blame "service photographers" (portrait studios, etc) for thinking the same way, the only difference is their clients are not as educated about both the law and what should be considered a good practice for the photographer.

As a formerly LA-based photographer now in Denver I found that most clients want to pay a day rate and retain all rights to the images, not necessarily because they want to screw me, but that is the market that has been set up for photographers here, by my predecessors.

So instead of taking blow after blow to my ego, as well as accepting checks that barely cover my expenses, I work as a designer.

Officials, who declined to release the 56-year-old woman's name, said she spoke Spanish and apparently did not understand English.

She initially didn't want the baby transported to a hospital, but security officials called paramedics and insisted that the child be examined by a doctor...

"Rather than focus on the radiation dose, which is a small amount, we need to focus on why this happened, so it doesn't happen again," said Dr. James Borgstede, a diagnostic radiologist at Penrose-St. Francis Health Systems in Colorado Springs, Colo., and president of the American College of Radiology. "Human beings weren't meant to go through those things."

In the several seconds the baby spent in the machine, the doctor added, he was exposed to as much radiation as he would naturally get from cosmic rays — or high energy from outer space — in a day.

"To my knowledge, it is the only record of a vertebrate fossil showing that kind of malformation," Dr Buffetaut, director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, France told BBC

"Living animals like this are known. But if you compare the number of reptiles born with two heads with the total number of reptiles born, it is very small.

"So the chances of finding a fossil like this are extremely low."

So here we go with a new issue of FLURB. I was waiting till I had gotten around to writing a story that would be just about impossible to commercially market, and now I think I've done it. It's liberating to know that FLURB is there for such a demented and counter-cultural tale as "The Third Bomb."

And now I'm also able print Charlie Anders's bisexual romp, "One Door Closes," Charles Stross's curious artifact from the future, "Message in a Time Capsule," Marc Laidlaw's caustic "Open Open Letter."

I may siphon in a couple more stories later this month or early in January, after taking some time off for the holidays.

For now: beware of sea cucumbers, garage door openers, sneezing, hipster publishers, and ... the space demons!

Piles of rubbish clutter the streets of the new urban sprawls. In overloaded hospitals, patients lie in corridors, victims of a pandemic. Water prices have rocketed, and temperatures have nosedived with a premature slowing of the Gulf stream.

Welcome to dystopian Britain, a thoroughly miserable snapshot of the country's woes come the middle of the 21st century. While the bleak scenario might seem unlikely at present, Sir David King, the government's chief science adviser, is urging policy-makers not to be complacent. A bleak future will only be avoided if they understand the threats and what new technologies might come to the rescue.

Professor King, a Cambridge chemist, decided more than 18 months ago that government departments needed to ensure their future policies were scientifically better informed. He set up two reviews, which have just been completed. One charted trends likely to affect Britain in the next 50 years or so. The other picked out emerging scientific and technological breakthroughs that will help shape that future. Link

Chinese astronauts walk on the moon, the world has splintered into currency blocs after an international exchange rate shock, and even robots have the vote.

It sounds like the exaggerated vision - utopian or distopian according to taste - of a parlour futurologist. But these scenarios of what life might be like around the middle of the century have emerged from 270 rigorously researched papers commissioned by the government that together purport to be the world's most extensive look into the future.

The Horizon Scan covers a vast range of science and technology, politics, economics and society - from internet crime to robotics, banking to the computer-brain interface, stem cell research to "grey power" in an ageing population.

And it is intended to do far more than feed a human curiosity about what life may be like for our children or grandchildren. Sir David King, the government's chief scientist, argues horizon scanning will have a powerful influence on policy-making - and not only in Whitehall. "Although it was designed as a tool for government, I believe it will also have a broader use across the private sector," he adds. Link

* Nativity scene with IG-88, Mister Burns, Lego Playmobil Jesus, and Plastic Kevin Federline (I think) Kevin Smith Action Figure Danté of the movie "Clerks" (thanks Monique and Brian Johnson). It materialized in an office at the PBS television network: Link.

* Christmas means torturing the poor suckers you work with and never having to say you're sorry. BoingBoing reader Phoebe chirps gleefully, "I gift-wrapped my co-worker's entire cubicle!" Link to evidence.

* Grant says, "Dec. 18 is the USPS's busiest mailing day of the year and today (12/20) is the busiest delivery day of the year. Check out this link to see an insider's look of the inner workings of the USPS's Manhattan distribution facility. Very cool for those that love to see how things work."

* Where do trees go after Christmas? Video Link.

* Frank Lloyd Wright Gingerbread House: Link.

* Kevin says, "This Washington Post article gives the behind the scenes story of one of the greatest Xmas songs of all time (and certainly the oddest). David Bowie appeared with Bing Crosby in his final Xmas special, just one month before Bing died in 1977." Link

* Alainsane says, "In December of 1999, my coworkers and I built this 'FOSABread' house out of junked computer parts we had around the office. It features a deluxe heatsink entryway, CD-ROM shingles, processor-seat windows, and an authentic nativity scene (as authentic as the one that inspired it!)." Link

* Hurricane FEMA victim's gingerbread house: Link.

* William S. Burroughs' "A Junky's Xmas": video Link (Thanks, Jesse).

We didn’t get the connection with 'Anthrax' the band at first," a county official said. "The other band names were on the back and not on the same side as the Anthrax one was."

BoingBoing reader Cameron snapped this photograph of a Edison Laboratory phonograph cylinder container from 1907, covered with anti-copying, anti-piracy fine print: "UPON ANY BREACH OF SAID CONDITION, THE LICENSE TO USE AND VEND THIS RECORD, IMPLIED FROM SUCH SALE, IMMEDIATELY TERMINATES." Link.

# Twenty-one percent believe that “next Bill Gates” will come from the United States while 13 percent believe he or she will come from India.

# (...) 83 percent -- believe that a typical 12-year-old knows more about the Internet than their member of Congress. Republicans (85 percent) and Democrats (86 percent) agreed with each other.

# Two-thirds of Americans believe that soon there will be no place in the world where we won’t be able to access the Internet. Sixty-six percent said that in 10 years they will be able to access the Internet anywhere they are in the world.

# (...) most Americans aren’t quite ready to rely on “citizen videos” for our news just yet. Seventy-percent said they would rather watch the evening news coverage instead of a citizen video report on an event. Though, only one year after YouTube burst onto the scene, fully 25 percent of those 18-49 years old would chose citizen video. Self-described progressives picked citizen video 30 percent of the time, while only 19 percent of those calling themselves conservative did.

They appear as two line items in a final transfer list between the space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station: items 811 and 811.1. Uplinked to the shuttle crew as a final preparation for the undocking of Discovery from the station on Tuesday, the list identifies 811 as Suni Williams, FE-2, and 811.1 as a ponytail.

Sunita 'Suni' Williams is the latest member of the station crew, having arrived with Discovery on December 11. Her title aboard the ISS is Flight Engineer-2 (FE-2). The ponytail is hers.

"Remove ponytail from 811 prior to transfer of 811" reads the resupply transfer list. "Report final stowage location."

"We believe 811.1 has been completed, please confirm," ground controllers wrote to the crew elsewhere in the list.

Williams, who arrived at the outpost last week with long flowing — and floating — hair, arranged to have her locks cut last Sunday and the clippings stowed on Discovery for a future hairpiece to be donated to a patient suffering from long-term medical hair loss.

Unique about the above archive is material little remembered about the history of rocketry and space travel. On pages 30 and 31 of the above children's book, the DYNA-SOAR project is discussed. According to the article which is paraphrased here, the Boeing Dyna-Soar was a follow-on to the X-15 program. The name came from the idea - "dynamic soaring." The booster for the man-carrying winged space glider was to be a military Titan ICBM ( Intercontinental Baslistic Missle ). After the initial test on the Titan, the high altitude orbital reconnaisance patrol bomber (a later advanced relative of Dyna-Soar) would be strapped to a mother plane, launched from beneath the wing and rocketed into orbit at 17,000 miles per hour.

"This work brings us closer to an understanding of the nature of animal dreams and gives us important clues as to the role of sleep in processing memories of our past experiences," (professor Matthew) Wilson said...

"These results imply simultaneous reactivation of coherent memory traces in the cortex and hippocampus during sleep that may contribute to or reflect the result of the memory consolidation process," Wilson and (postodcotoral researcher Daoyun Ji wrote in Nature Neuroscience.)

The woman came to the store in Nago on Oct. 26, and tried on a pair of jeans. She suddenly felt pain in her right knee and rubbed it with her right hand. The scorpion then stung her right index finger, officials said.

Store clerks called an ambulance and she was taken to hospital, where she stayed for five days...

(Employees) added that during the process of drying and pressing jeans, workers use chlorine agents so they don't believe the scorpion crawled inside the jeans at that stage. "We will investigate how it crawled inside the jeans and try to prevent a recurrence," one employee at the store said.

"It wasn't easy," Village Mayor Pierfranco Midali told Italy's Ansa news agency.

"We had to find the proper material, learn about the technology and especially find the money," he said.

The project cost some 100,000 euros (£67,110) and was financed by the regional authorities and a bank.

Owner Aaron Wang, 24, who opened the iMaid Cafe this summer, got the idea for the theme after seeing a piece about a maid cosplay restaurant on the television news in China.

"I call them maids not waitresses," said Wang, who moved to Canada from Beijing six years ago.

"They smile a lot and they are cute. I want somebody cute like the characters from cartoons -- big eyes, long hair and young."

"Best spent buck in weeks!" -- Dr. Strange-Q

"What a treat -- much smoother than the original Flash version from 8 years ago!" -- Trevour

"Whoah, I have a Flash file of this saved from the 90s, but the frame rate and sound quality on this one is SO much better! Release all the old Goddamn George Liquor Program shorts spruced-up like this and I'll buy 'em all!" -- Lyris

Mr. Crowdis does not own a computer right now (although he is planning to buy two). He writes his blog entries longhand at his kitchen table in the mornings, after he has breakfast and takes his pills. Then he mails them across the country to New Brunswick. There, a family member types them into a computer and posts them on Mr. Crowdis' eclectic blog, Don To Earth.

...

Readers are especially fond of snippets from his family history, including the story of his grandfather dying with a knife in his back while throwing a drunk out of the saloon he ran in a Colorado mining camp.

The next day the Off Broadway (down the hill) and Big Al's (up the street) went topless, and shortly thereafter so did some 350 bars and beaneries from Seattle to Baja. "I went out and got (topless queen) Carol (Doda) involved in anything," says (Condor promoter) Big Davey. "Anything they ever thought up in Hollywood, I topped it. I even had Carol chasing the mayor down the street. He wouldn't talk to her, but he's all right. (Mayor Shelley has indirectly befriended topless, regularly declaring that "Fun is part of our city's heritage.")

"We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk," Cohen says.

Those who displayed generally positive outlooks, including feelings of liveliness, cheerfulness, and being at ease, were least likely to develop cold symptoms. Unlike the negatively inclined participants, they reported fewer cold symptoms than were detected in medical exams.

The new study, which appears in the November/December Psychosomatic Medicine, replicates those results and rules out the possibility that psychological traits related to a positive emotional style, rather than the emotions themselves, guard against cold symptoms. Those traits include high self-esteem, extroversion, optimism, and a feeling of mastery over one's life.

"I was putting a collar around his chest, and he whacked me real hard with his head," Mr Karkos told the New York Daily News.

"Being kicked is part of the job, but I've never been hit that hard.

"I was pretty shaken up, kind of dazed. Then, later that night, I started to get the vision back in my right eye...

Although his vision is still not perfect, Mr Karkos has been able to see about 15ft...

What is the Venice Project? Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström built it with some of that $2.6 billion from selling Skype to eBay. Friis (who, by the way, is rather a babe) explains on his blog:

It’s simple, really — we are trying to bring together the best of TV with the best of the Internet. We think TV is one of the most powerful, engaging mass medias of all time. People love TV, but they also hate TV. They love the (sometimes…) amazing storytelling, the richness, the quality itself. But they hate the linearness, the lack of choice, the lack of basic things like being able to search. And wholly missing is everything that we are now accustomed to from the Internet: tagging, recommendations, choice, and so on… TV is 507 channels and nothing on and we want to help change that!

Flynt Leverett, a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, or NSC, and a former CIA analyst, said the White House told a CIA censor board to excise parts of a 1,000-word commentary on U.S. policy toward Iran that he had offered to the New York Times. (...)

[He] said there were two key paragraphs that the CIA board wanted to cut. The first was about U.S. cooperation with Iran concerning Afghanistan about the time of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. The second dealt with an offer by Iran to the United States in early 2003 to discuss the possibility of a "grand bargain" that would settle several disputes between the two countries.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have successfully directed adult stem cells from mice to develop into bone and muscle cells with the aid of a custom-designed ink-jet printer. They say it's a first step toward better understanding tissue regeneration, which may one day lead to therapies for repairing damaged tissues, as occurs in osteoarthritis.

Jamais Cascio writes about it here (image grabbed from his site), and there's more over at Bruce Sterling's blog ("You might well call it the Meatrix"): Link. (via beyond the beyond)

Supporters of the Bulgarian and Palestinian aid workers say their confessions were elicited through torture, and Libyan government is trying to cover up the real culprit -- unhygenic hospital conditions, and a failing health care system.

Link to today's news (AP). There's scientific background on the case at the journal Nature (including an analysis of HIV and hepatitis samples from the infected children) (Link), and a thread over at MeFi, too (Link). The New England Journal of Medicine has a related editorial here: Link. Snip:

"Science has not been respected in this court; without the scientific evidence, there's no way there could be a fair trial," said Richard Roberts, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, who hand-delivered a letter of protest signed by more than 100 Nobel laureates to the Libyan Mission to the United Nations in New York in late October. "The Libyan government doesn't want to admit that their hospital had a problem with hygiene that spread HIV," said Roberts. "These people were the ideal scapegoats: they were foreigners. And the Libyans knew that the Bulgarian and Palestinian governments couldn't kick up much of a fuss."

Billions and billions are expected to participate. Bryan & Dave say,

The Carl Sagan Blog-A-Thon commemorates the 10th anniversary of Dr. Sagan's death (December 20): Link. In conjunction with the blog-a-thon, we created celebratingsagan.com as a place for people who don't have their own blogs, but would like to participate. Aside from testimonial we have received original art and songs from worldwide Sagan fans who range from students to professors and pilots to musicians.

Update: Nick Sagan tells BoingBoing,

For more information on the subject, here's Cornell University's Chronicle Online on the blog-a-thon. Here's what I've said on my blog.

Audio link.

At age six, Nick Sagan's greeting, "Hello from the children of planet Earth," was recorded and placed aboard the NASA Voyager Interstellar Record. Launched with a selection of terrestrial greetings, sights, sounds and music, the Voyager I and Voyager II spacecraft have since left the solar system; they are now the most distant human-made objects in the universe.

Reader comments:

Andrew Tonkin says:

Thanks for that. You may wish to add that Richard Dawkins' video of "God Delusion" is actually part 2 of his "Root of All Evil?" documentary; Part 1 is entitled "The Virus of Faith." Users should search under the two episode titles, not "Root of All Evil?" which is misspelled on both clips.

In "The Virus of Faith," Dawkins challenges Pastor Ted Haggard of the New Life Church, the same Ted Haggard that resigned under sexual controversy recently. Interesting viewing.

You may be interested to know that google video also hosts a whole bunch of good BBC documentaries, including all three parts of "The Power of Nightmares"; "Tetris - From Russia With Love"; " Louis and the Nazis" and "A War On Science (Intelligent Design and Dover)".

Do you have any idea how many full length documentaries are on google video? I've watched at least one every night for the last few months. I'm afraid they'll get pulled so I download them as well. Let me show you something.

That's just the beginning. I'm a slut for conspiracy theories... Google video has every conspiracy theory video you can possible imagine. From the most balls out bullshit you've ever heard (this is awesome) to all the 9/11 and peak oil stuff. Also, it appears that George Bush (daddy bush) killed Kennedy. No shit.

Right now I'm working through the UFO stuff, having already completed the free energy and Tesla archives. These last two turn up some UNBELIEVABLE stuff! I'm serious. I honest to god don't know what to make of some of the free energy stuff. Make sure you check out the Disclosure Project!

I added to your list.

Over the past six months, Baghdad has been all but isolated electrically, Iraqi officials say, as insurgents have effectively won their battle to bring down critical high-voltage lines and cut off the capital from the major power plants to the north, south and west.

The battle has been waged in the remotest parts of the open desert, where the great towers that support thousands of miles of exposed lines are frequently felled with explosive charges in increasingly determined and sophisticated attacks, generally at night. Crews that arrive to repair the damage are often attacked and sometimes killed, ensuring that the government falls further and further behind as it attempts to repair the lines.

And in a measure of the deep disunity and dysfunction of this nation, when the repair crews and security forces are slow to respond, skilled looters often arrive with heavy trucks that pull down more of the towers to steal as much of the valuable aluminum conducting material in the lines as possible. The aluminum is melted into ingots and sold. What amounts to an electrical siege of Baghdad is reflected in constant power failures and disastrously poor service in the capital, with severe consequences for security, governance, health care and the mood of an already weary and angry populace.

Reader comment: Wim Lewis says,

Brings to mind the "infrastructure hits" in the backstory of Bruce Sterling's "Heavy Weather." Though it's an age-old third-world problem that power lines have significant resale value.

A full bench of the Federal Court yesterday upheld an earlier ruling that Stephen Cooper, the operator of mp3s4free.net, as well as the internet service provider that hosted the website, were guilty of authorising copyright infringement because they provided a search engine through which a user could illegally download MP3 files. The website did not directly host any copyright-protected music, but the court held that simply providing links to the material effectively authorised copyright infringement.

"Mr Cooper had power to prevent the communication of copyright sound recordings to the public in Australia via his website," the judges said. "He had that power because he was responsible for creating and maintaining his mp3s4free website."

Ms Sabiene Heindl, general manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), said similar action could be taken against individuals who, like mp3s4free, used the internet to link to copyright-protected material. [She] said that this could apply even if a person had embedded a copyright-infringing YouTube clip in their blog or MySpace page.

"We don't make any distinctions between big websites or small websites", she said, adding that MIPI would consider individual blogs on a "case-by-case basis as to whether it would be appropriate to take action".

Roman has a recording. Sunita's got her snapshots. And Bill has his banner from up north. The STS-116 crew, living aboard Discovery and docked with the International Space Station, has mementos and favorite items packed with them. Launched on the evening of December 9, the six member crew has also delivered supplies for the ISS, a new truss segment, and a new station resident, who will stay on the ISS when Discovery returns to Earth.

For STS-116 commander Mark "Roman" Polansky, pilot Bill Oefelein and their four crewmates, the mementos in their personal preference kits (PPKs) and in the Official Flight Kit (OFK) are souvenirs of their just begun 12-day mission to be given to family, friends, and organizations that they support. For Sunita Williams, who moved onto the ISS on Monday, they'll act as reminders of home for the duration of her six-month stay.

"We all have a small amount that we can take up on shuttle," Williams told collectSPACE. "For the station we have a little extra [room] that we can take up of stuff that we can really use while we are up there, like a ball cap or whatever."

"Its just like your office, where you have pictures of your family or little things that are mementos to you and some of that stuff is a little extra for station crew members [as] we are going to be there for a longer period of time," said Williams.

I'll be joining CNN International host Kristie LuStout at 740pm Eastern/440pm Pacific for a look at some of the more interesting holiday-themed videos to be found online. Shown here, a very machinima Christmas: Visiting Scrooge, a two-part series filmed entirely in The Sims 2. More fun junque: Mobile yule log, Boymongoose, A Christmas Gory, Texas Xmas, and 10ZenMonkeys did a great roundup of darkly reworked classics here: Link. BTW I'm pretty sure Kristie LuStout is a Cylon, because it is not possible for a human to be that smart and gorgeous at the same time.

Wikipedia is having a fundraiser and we actually need the money :) There was just an audit, so you can feel more confident. And don't forget it's tax deductible for those end of year write offs! Link to more info on the December 2006 fundraising drive, and the audit is here: PDF Link.

[The report] contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops.

California is responsible for more than a third of the cannabis harvest, with an estimated production of $13.8 billion that exceeds the value of the state's grapes, vegetables and hay combined — and marijuana is the top cash crop in a dozen states, the report states. (...) Nationwide, the estimated cannabis production of $35.8 billion exceeds corn ($23 billion), soybeans ($17.6 billion) and hay ($12.2 billion), according to Gettman's findings.

Mountaineer Steve Rollins figures he has worked nearly 100 rescues on the icy heights of Oregon's 11,239-ft. Mount Hood. He has dropped by rope from helicopters near the peak using night vision, slogged through whiteouts and climbed into crevasses. Between gigs, the 29-year-old holds down a computer job with Nike. But like the other members of Portland Mountain Rescue, his lifesaving work is pro bono: "You could offer me a paycheck, but it wouldn't make the job any more rewarding."

Reader comment: Julie says,

Two famous US climbers are missing in China. "Renowned American climber Charlie Fowler and high-altitude mountaineer Christine Boskoff have gone missing in central-western China. The pair had been on expedition since the autumn, and had managed the first ascent of the oft-attempted Yala Peak in early October." They are trying to raise money for the search effort. Link

Her story first became known as she was included as a case study in neurologist Oliver Sacks' book An Anthropologist on Mars.

Interestingly, Grandin suggests that her autism helps her understand animals, as she suggests they have similar styles of thinking in some instances.

In the programme, Grandin explains her work and views on autism. Furthermore, the documentary highlights her as a bright and engaging person, far from the usual stereotypes of autistic people.

The Nicostopper is an electronic cigarette dispenser in which you can fit a maximum of 10 cigarettes at a time. Once the ciggies are in, you program the intervals at which you would like to take a smoke. Not only will you be allowed to take the cigarettes out only at the pre-defined intervals, but, like a discerning grandmother, the Nicostopper will also flash “self-help” messages each time to make you feel guilty as well.

Reader comment:

johnboy says: "The story behind those Santas is kinda disturbing and should be attached to that story"

Its purpose and appearance had been painstakingly created to appear benign. Few of the 70,000 or so who gathered were older than teenagers and their uniforms were so incongruous as to be unthreatening. Each was dressed as Grandfather Frost or the Snow Maiden, traditional Russian New Year characters.

Yet, according to Russia's liberal democrats, scenes like this are less a display of benevolence than a show of force. For them, Nashi, the Kremlin-backed youth group behind Sunday's parade, is an alarming throwback to the Soviet era.

As the youngsters swayed to the "patriotic karaoke" emanating from the stage, a voice boomed out from the loudspeakers exhorting them to reinvent Russia's lost glory.

Step into the bedroom and Mathias flips a wall switch. The draperies close automatically over the two windows. A surplus bombsight motor in the basement does the work. He throws another switch and the windows close. The radio in the living room can be turned on and off from the bedroom (and from the kitchen and basement as well). Extension speakers bring the sound to you wherever you are.

Clocks in the closet shut the radio off at 10 o’clock each night and turn it on at 6 a.m. On Saturdays and Sundays, the radio stays on until 11 and resumes at 8 in the morning. A special switch cuts out the shut-off clock, if Mathias wants to listen to programs after the usual sign-off hour.

When Mrs. Mathias sits down at her dressing table she doesn’t have to fumble with the twin lamps to turn them on. She merely pulls out the center drawer a fraction of an inch and the lights go on. A microswitch in the drawer does the trick.

Inside cover... wowie wow wow! The L&L Cafe on West Madison trumpets air conditioning and the "WORLD'S MOST GORGEOUS SHOWGIRLS," including a lineup of enticing names like 'Xonia,' 'Roszika,' 'Deidre' and 'Jackie Joy.' A little Googling reveals that the L&L was originally a swank, wife/sweetheart-friendly nightclub during WWII, but it is unclear when it transformed into a girl-ogling joint. More research shows that one of the L's in 'L&L' was Chicago restaurateur Danny Lardas, which might explain the need for abbreviation; I suppose "Lardas Showgirls" might have been a difficult sale. It's also unclear whether the old L&L has any relation to the current L&L Tavern on North Clark - a purported onetime hangout of John Wayne Gacy, Jeffery Daumer, and yours truly.

As the first in a series of joint collaborations, Google and Ames will focus on making the most useful of NASA's information available on the Internet. Real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the moon and Mars, real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle will be explored in the future.

Aside from war, however, machine guns do not seem to lend themselves to utilitarian purposes. A detached investigation of this prima facie absurdity is at least part of the reason I have been dispatched here, to shoot guns in the desert. I am now no longer detached; this no longer feels so absurd. The next range officer on the line hands me a full-auto Glock 18 and I fire before his fingers are off the gun. These firearms enthusiasts find it amusing that this model is de rigueur for the fashionable rapper; it is the most obtuse and imprecise weapon on the submachine-gun range. (Although for me, given that I could barely hit the desert with the Uzi, this seems an invidious distinction.) I crouch forward and am heavy on the trigger. There is a Winnie the Pooh doll crucified on sawhorse stocks; he is untidily aerated. Crane, a gentle man with a dog called Pigglepug, generously defends himself against a poster of an anonymous jihadi with a Palestinian kaffiyeh. Nearby a 12-year-old wields an M1 Thompson at a Mr. Happy doll. "This is better than Disneyland," he says.

"Obviously," Crane says.

I passed the Morse exam years ago while getting my ham license, but I never used -- or even considered using-- Morse on the air. Then back in July, with full knowledge of Morse’s obsolescence, I decided to learn it well enough to be able to actually carry on a radio conversation. To celebrate my modest progress, I ordered a top-line GHD telegraph key (the Rolls-Royce of keys) as an early Christmas present to myself. With exquisite irony, UPS delivered it yesterday afternoon, only hours before the FCC announcement was released.

It is tempting to conclude that the FCC’s action spells the end of Morse, but I am certain we will see a very different outcome. Freed from all pretense of practical relevance in an age of digital communications, Morse will now become the object of loving passion by radioheads, much as another “dead” Language, Latin is kept alive today by Latin-speaking enthusiasts around the world. Latin fans eagerly tick off the practical benefits of speaking a dead language, but of course they pursue their study because it is fun and challenging, gives them a sense of accomplishment and links them to a community of other passionate speakers.